The Winds of War

you don’t talk — a rare enough combination — and added to all that, you don’t want the job. He must be up to his nates in these people you describe who keep shoving to get near him. He must find you refreshing as well as useful. There can’t be many patriots in Washington.”

“Well, that’s an interesting thought. I don’t know why you’re buttering me up, but thanks for calling me a patriot with a keen mind. I do try to be as keen as the next guy, Warren. Possibly I was a wee bit mistaken in that small dispute about carriers versus battleships. If I’d been ordered to the Enterprise, for instance, instead of the California — which might well have been, had I ever learned to fly — I would have a command right now, instead of a skinful of booze. Thanks, Warren. Thanks for everything, and God bless you. Sorry I did so much talking. Tomorrow I want to hear all about your tangle with the Zeroes. Now if my legs will support me, I think I’ll go to bed.”

He did not stir till noon. Janice was out on the lawn, playing with the baby on a blanket, when her father-in- law emerged yawning on the screen porch in a white silk kimono, carrying a manila envelope.

“Hi, Dad,” she called. “How about some breakfast?”

He sat in a wicker chair. “You mean lunch. No thanks, I’m still off schedule from the travelling. Your maid’s bringing me coffee. I’ll have a look at my mail, then mosey down to Cincpac.”

A few minutes later Janice heard a loud clink. Victor Henry sat upright staring at a letter in his lap, his hand still on the coffee cup he had set down so hard.

“What’s the matter, Dad?”

“Eh? What? Nothing.”

“Bad news from home?”

“That coffee’s mighty hot. I burned my tongue. It’s nothing. Where’s Warren, by the way?”

“Went to the ship. He expects to be back for dinner, but I guess we can never be sure about anything anymore.”

“That’s exactly right.”

His voice and his manner were strained and queer, she thought. Covertly she watched him read and reread two handwritten letters, looking from one to the other, leaving a pile of office mail unopened.

“Say, Jan.” He stood, stuffing the mail back in the big envelope.

“Yes, Dad. You’re sure you won’t eat something?”

“No, no. I don’t want to eat. I’m a little tireder than I figured. I may even crawl back in the sack for a bit.”

When night fell, his bedroom door was still shut. Warren came home after seven. Janice told him what had been happening. He cautiously rapped at his father’s door.

“Dad?”

Rapping louder, he tried the knob and went into the black room. Soon he came out with an empty brandy bottle. The cork and foil lay in his palm. “It was a fresh bottle, Janice. He opened it and drank it all.”

“Is he all right?”

“He’s just out. Out cold.”

“Maybe you should look at his mail.”

Warren gave her a frigid glare, lighting a cigarette.

“Listen,” she said with mixed timidity and desperation, “those letters, whatever they were, upset him. You’d better find out what the trouble is.”

“If he wants me to know, he’ll tell me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Eat my dinner.”

Warren did not speak again until he finished his meat. He sat silent, looking straight ahead when food was not before him. “Dad’s taking the California thing hard,” he finally said. “That’s the whole trouble.”

“Well, I hope that’s all.”

He said, “Did you listen to the evening news?”

“No.”

“Big air strike on Manila. They made a mess of the Cavite Navy Yard. That’s all the news Washington put out. But the communicator on the Enterprise told me two submarines were bombed and one was sunk. That one was the Devilfish.”

“Oh God, no!”

“And there’s no word on survivors.”

“Maybe it’s a mistaken report.”

“Maybe.”

“Warren, I feel in my bones that Byron is all right.”

His chilly grim face looked much like his father’s. “That’s comforting. Till we get some more definite information.”

Chapter 61

To military specialists, “Clark Field” is the name of a United States defeat as grave as Pearl Harbor. With this catastrophe at the main Army airfield on Luzon, the Philippines lost their air cover; the Asiatic Fleet had to flee south; and the rich south sea islands and archipelagoes were laid bare at a stroke for conquest. There has never been a rational explanation for what happened there. Yet Congress did not investigate it. Nobody was relieved. History still ignores Clark Field, and remembers Pearl Harbor. Clark Field was half a day late for immortality. Two great disasters five thousand miles apart in one day are boring, and like any good editor, history has cut the repetition.

Clark Field occurred half a day later than Pearl Harbor because the Japanese could not, for all their clever planning, arrange for the dawn to come up everywhere at once. They gave up hope of surprising the Philippines, for the sunrise took five hours to traverse the bulge of ocean from Hawaii. Their bombers waited for good weather in starting from Formosa, and droned straight in over the main island of Luzon just before high noon, expecting alert and violent opposition. The ground observers, on a war footing after the Pearl Harbor news, sent a spate of reports to the command center, tracking the attackers from the coast all the way to their objective. They got there unopposed, nevertheless, and found the fighters and bombers of the Far East Air Force — a formidable armada, built up in recent weeks as the hard core of resistance to Japan — lined up on the ground. This ignominious occurrence remains unaccounted for. It was the Japanese, this time, who were surprised, very pleasantly so. They laid utter waste to General Douglas MacArthur’s air force, and flew away. Thus ended, in a quarter of an hour, any hope of stopping the Japanese in the south seas. No course remained for the American forces there but last-ditch stands and surrenders.

The Japanese at once set about to cash in on this startling success. Step one was to make Manila Bay uninhabitable for the United States Navy. Two days after Clark Field a horde of bombers came in and carefully, painstakingly destroyed the Cavite Naval Base at their leisure, having no air defenders to worry about. The Devilfish and Byron Henry were at dead center of this attack.

When the attack actually began, Byron was ashore with a working party, drawing torpedoes. The terrifying wail of the siren broke out not far from the big open shed of the torpedo shop. The overhead crane clattered to a halt. The echoing clanks and squeals of repair machinery quieted down. Chiefs, torpedomen, and machinists’ mates in greasy dungarees trotted away from their benches and lathes to take battle stations.

Byron’s party had four torpedoes in the truck. He decided to load two more before leaving. His orders called for six, and false alarms had been plentiful ever since Clark Field. But with the overhead crane shut down, it was slow work moving an assembled Mark 14 torpedo, a ton and a half of steel cylinder packed with explosives, propellant and motor. The sweating Devilfish sailors were rigging one to the guy chains of a small cherry-picker crane when Byron’s leading torpedoman glanced out at the sky. “Mr. Henry, here they come.”

Hansen had the best eyes on the Devilfish. It took Byron half a minute to discern