THE MASSIVE PBY FLYING BOAT TOOK OFF FROM SAN DIEGO BAY with a crew of eight and Lieutenant Commander Tim Dane along as an observer. Built by Consolidated, the flying boat initially looked as if it would never leave the surface, but her powerful Pratt and Whitney engines soon lifted her off the bay’s protected and gentle waters.
Dane was along for what he hoped was a long but pleasant ride. The idea had been Merchant’s. Dane was along not just to see the ocean below, but also the large numbers of ships traveling the Pacific coast, and try to get some idea of the difficulty involved in tracking any vessel that might be carrying enemy soldiers or contraband for enemy subversives already in place. Merchant and Spruance also wanted him out of the office for a while. The report he’d written about Japanese-Americans not being threats to American security and the abuses they were suffering at the hands of cops and the army had ruffled some high-ranking feathers. General DeWitt had gotten a copy and he was furious, as was Governor Olson. Olson was a politician who was in deep trouble with the electorate, but John L. DeWitt was a three-star general in charge of the Fourth Army and the western states. Even though he was in the army, he had to be respected until he calmed down.
The PBY could fly at over ten thousand feet and her top speed was a hair under two hundred miles an hour. Her pilot was an ensign named Ronnie Tuller who appeared to be a teenager, although he insisted he was twenty- two.
“There’s a whole boatload of ships out there,” Tuller said, laughing at his own bad joke, “and we have to check them over visually. If we fly at a conservative speed, say one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour, we can stay out here for a very long time. We’d likely run out of food and toilet paper before we ran out of gas.”
Dane was seated in the co-pilot’s seat. “Could you fly this thing to Hawaii?”
“Stripped down, stuffed with fuel, and with a lot of luck, yes. Realistically, we’d probably get close, and then have to land in the ocean because we’d probably hit a headwind or have to detour around a storm. Why?”
“Just thinking of all the people trying to get off the islands,” he said. Thoughts of Amanda kept intruding. Where the hell was she?
“Understood,” Tuller said. “I have heard that the Japs have a seaplane that is even larger than this baby and can fly twice as far. Too bad we don’t have some of those. Maybe we could run a shuttle to Hawaii and back.” Too bad indeed, Dane thought.
Tuller banked the massive plane. A freighter was in view, heading north, and he skillfully turned toward it.
“Just so you know, Commander, the idea of using our seaplanes was kicked around, but it just wasn’t feasible. Filled with refugees, it would be too heavy to make it back. Getting there we’d doubtless have to land short and refuel, and that’d be a mess what with Jap ships and planes all around. That and the fact that there were so many people on Hawaii who’d want to leave, and so few planes, kinda nixed the idea.”
Dane nodded and reluctantly accepted the logic. The people on the Hawaiian Islands were trapped. But was Amanda?
Observers on the PBY checked out the freighter. It was flying an American flag and several of her crewmen waved at the plane. No one in the PBY was taking chances, however, and guns were trained on her. Memories of an innocuous-looking ship unloading Japanese troops at the Panama Canal were still too fresh.
Tuller waved back. “We’ll attempt to contact them by radio and try to determine that they are what they say they are and that no one’s being forced to do anything bad because there’s a gun to their heads. Odds are, everything’s okay, but you never know. Even if we do make radio contact, we can’t always believe what they’re telling us if we’re to do our job. They may not be saboteurs but they could be smugglers.”
Dane smiled tightly. “I suppose if they start shooting at us, we’ll know everything isn’t on the up and up.”
“Absolutely, Commander. If they do, we get to shoot back. It hasn’t happened yet, but we’re ready.”
The Catalina carried three .30-caliber machine guns and two fifties. She could also carry two tons of bombs, but had none on this flight. If the bombs weren’t dropped, landing with them still on their racks was dicey at best and could result in an explosion. The other alternative was to dump them into the ocean, which was a waste of good bombs.
They left the freighter behind and flew on to the next one, gave it a look-see and moved on. Dane was coming to the conclusion that this excursion was a waste of time. A steady stream of ships was flowing both north and south and generally staying fairly close to the coastline. Despite her long-range capabilities, the PBY wouldn’t fly too far out into the ocean this trip. Other long-range planes were doing that and trying to prevent the sort of sneak attack that had devastated the fleet at Pearl Harbor. Long-range radar installations were being constructed on the hills around major cities and would also provide warnings. Still, everyone knew that nothing would or could be foolproof. The coastline was just too long and the ocean too vast.
Many military personnel wished the Japanese would make an attack. While the American fleet was virtually nonexistent, just about every airfield, airstrip, or even flat piece of land around the major West Coast cities was lined with American fighters and bombers, all piloted by young men eager to take on the bastard sons of Nippon. Dane had seen figures saying that almost fifteen hundred U.S. planes were ready to be launched at the enemy, with more on the way. Types of fighters included a few of the older P39 and P40s, which were outclassed by the Japanese Zero. Planes lined up in growing numbers included the army’s P47, the navy’s F4F fighter, which was a carrier plane without carriers, and the army’s twin-tailed P38.
Tuller coaxed the plane to a higher altitude. “I know there are Jap subs out there. I think I might have spotted one a couple of days ago, but the damn thing dived before I could turn and attack it. Hell, maybe it was a whale. I just don’t understand why they don’t hit our shipping. Jeez, the ships down there are so vulnerable. They aren’t even sailing in convoys, which is stupid if you ask me.” He laughed. “Nobody does, of course.”
Dane looked at the distant ships with his binoculars. “The Japs have a different mentality,” he answered. “The Germans think it’s a great idea to attack our civilian ships, especially oil tankers, and they’re right. On the other hand, the Japs see attacking anything other than a warship as an insult to their manhood. ‘Warriors attack warriors’ is their philosophy according to their interpretation of bushido. I think some Jap skippers would actually disobey orders to attack a freighter or a tanker and save their torpedoes for warships instead.”
Tuller rolled his eyes. “That ain’t too smart. Those ships are our lifeblood.”
That’s right, Dane thought. And maybe they’ll regret that someday. He also realized that he’d been calling the Japanese by the derogatory term
The great wall of water came on them like a giant black train in the middle of the night. One moment, Amanda was lightly holding the wheel and simply steering in the direction of California by keeping the boat aligned with the correct stars, and the next, the swiftly moving wave had blotted out the stars and the night. Before she could do anything more than scream, the wave crashed over the catamaran, inundating it and her under several feet of roaring water.
She lost her grip on the wheel and thought she was going to be swept overboard as the wave knocked her about. She swallowed what felt like gallons of salty, nauseating water. The lifeline Mack insisted everyone use, especially at night, caught and held her while her fingers tried to grab and claw at anything that would keep her on the cat. She was wearing a Mae West life jacket that might keep her afloat if she was swept overboard, but that was not what she wanted. If that happened, she’d be alone in the ocean and condemned to die a terrible death. She thought about that and desperately hung on to the deck and prayed that the line would hold.
The cat lurched upward and she thought it would flip over on its back like a turtle and kill her as it climbed the wave. A part of her mind recalled Mack saying that killer waves, rogues, sometimes appeared out of nowhere, squashing everything in their path. She also remembered him saying that a catamaran could go bow-down into the water and sink like a rock. She prayed for the boat to make it through the torrent.
After an eternity, the cat reached the wave’s peak, teetered, and lurched forward, skimming down the other side. It was a deadly and terrifying roller coaster ride.
It was over as quickly as it began. The rogue disappeared and continued on its journey. Amanda lay on the deck, gagging and vomiting the sea water she’d swallowed. She grabbed the lifeline and clawed her way back to the wheel, steadied it, and looped a rope around a spoke to keep it steady on course.
“Somebody!” she yelled. “Talk to me!”
