She heard moans. Sandy had been on deck with her, and she was a few feet away, trying to get up. She was on her hands and knees, retching and shaking, but otherwise seemed unhurt. Okay, Amanda thought, now where were Mack and Grace? In the cabin, she recalled.
At first the cabin seemed okay, but then she saw that a wall had caved in. From inside came the ominous sound of silence. Reluctantly, she unclipped her lifeline and moved into the cabin. Grace lay on the floor. She was moaning softly and beginning to move. Her pulse was strong, so Amanda moved on to Mack. To her horror, she saw that his skull was distorted and he was drooling blood.
“Sandy, get in here.”
“I’m sick.”
“You’re a nurse and these people are hurt. Get your butt in here.”
Sandy came in a few seconds later. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “My mind wasn’t working.”
Grace was coming around. Her eyes were clear and she seemed more stunned than injured. Neither she nor Mack had been wearing their lifelines, nor anything else, Amanda noted. They checked Mack over and looked at each other in dismay. Grace crawled to them and confirmed their diagnosis—Mack had a depressed skull fracture along with several broken ribs, maybe a punctured lung, and God only knew what other internal injuries. Maybe he’d be able to tell them if he regained consciousness.
“I don’t think he’s going to recover,” Amanda said sadly. “He might stand a chance if we were first-class surgeons instead of nurses and if this was a great hospital instead of a dinky sailboat.”
“You’re right,” said Sandy while Grace sobbed. “All we can do is make him comfortable and hope for the best.”
There was one bunk and it was damaged. They repaired it as best they could and carefully laid Mack on it. He groaned but didn’t wake up. They tied him to it, tried to give him some water, and then went out on deck. A beautiful multihued Pacific dawn was rising but they didn’t see it. They were only dimly aware that the seas were as calm as an inland pond, with nothing to remind them of the horror of the night and the killer wave.
Amanda was aware that the others were looking at her for directions. Grace was the oldest, but leadership was never her strong suit.
She took a deep breath. “Okay, first of all we take inventory. What’s left in the way of food and water, is the sail damaged, and, oh yeah, is the radio working?”
It didn’t take long to confirm that the news was mostly bad. The radio was smashed, and some of the food had been swept overboard along with a couple of containers of precious water. They’d all thought their provisions had been secured, but obviously not well enough. Their sail had been slightly damaged, but it could be repaired and, besides, they had a spare. Fortunately, the mast was solid.
“We should all pray for rain,” Grace said.
“And for Mack,” Sandy added.
Amanda shook her head sadly. “He might die without us knowing much about him except that he was our friend.”
Grace smiled shyly. “His name is Maxwell Garver and he was an embezzler from Kansas City.”
“You’re joking,” Amanda said.
“Nope. He worked for a bank that doubled as a brokerage house and he was stealing from them for about five years. He took the money and put it into cash and securities because he thought opening an account, even in another bank, would attract attention. When the Crash came, both the bank and the brokerage disappeared before they caught on to the fact that they were short some money.”
“How much?” Sandy asked.
Grace shrugged. “Who knows? Mack said he wasn’t interested in going back and claiming it because he was perfectly fine with his current life. Right now, it is sitting in a safe-deposit box in San Francisco. He did, however, write up a will a few days ago leaving it all to the three of us to be divided equally. The Three Stooges was the way he put it. If he doesn’t live, it’s ours, whatever it is.”
Amanda laughed sardonically. “Are you telling me we could be filthy rich and dying of thirst in the middle of the world’s largest ocean?”
“He gave me the key to the box, but I couldn’t do anything with it unless I had something to prove it belonged to me, like the will. When we get there, I guess we’ll find out.”
“But first we have to get there,” Sandy said.
Mack died that night, never regaining consciousness. They waited until morning, said some prayers, and gently pushed him into the sea. They’d wrapped him in a sheet so they didn’t have to look at his face as his body bobbed up and down. Nor did they have anything to use as an anchor. Fortune was kind, and the catamaran soon outdistanced Mack’s body. Unspoken was the fear that they’d have to watch while he was devoured by sharks, but that didn’t happen either. In a few minutes, he was gone, out of sight but not out of their minds. He’d been the one who really understood the boat and the ocean.
“We’re all alone, now,” Sandy said.
“Think we’ll make it?” Grace muttered.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Amanda whispered. She wondered what Tim was doing now and what he would do if he was in such a predicament.
Admiral Yamamoto was angry and frustrated. Once again the foolishness of the code of bushido was hampering operations. His submarine captains had reported numerous sightings of American merchant ships, but few had done anything about it. A score of long-range submarines lay in wait off the major American cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and, farther north, off Portland, Tacoma, and the British base at Vancouver. They, however, were waiting for the American Navy to emerge, not contemptible merchant ships. Sinking the American merchant ships could help cripple the American economy, but that point was lost on the devotees of bushido. He recalled a phrase from his time spent in the United States—with friends like these, who needs enemies?
Their excuses had been piously clever. They reminded him that they only carried a limited number of torpedoes; therefore, the precious weapons should not be wasted against lowly merchant shipping. Once the torpedoes were gone, it meant that the submarines would have to return to Japan for resupply while American and British warships cruised unimpeded. The fact that major American warships did not cruise at all in the Pacific did not deter the devotees of bushido. The goal of the submarine was to kill other warships, and merchant shipping was beneath them.
Regarding the supply of torpedoes, the sub captains had a point, so the first step toward solving their torpedo problem was to seize the large island of Hawaii and utilize Hilo Bay as a base. The other islands, including Oahu and the city of Honolulu, they would continue to ignore. The reinforced American Army garrison was no threat. It was stranded on Oahu.
The distance from Tokyo to San Diego was just under fifty-six hundred miles and using Hilo would cut the trip more than in half. With the American garrison on Oahu helpless and under long-range siege, the attack on Hilo would be a walkover and would largely eliminate the excuse that there weren’t enough torpedoes.
An attack on the Alaskan city of Anchorage was planned. It would give the Japanese Army, now suddenly cooperating with the navy, a North American base and one only twenty-four hundred miles from San Diego. Army Colonel Yasuyo Yamasaki commanded the garrison on Attu. His would be the invasion force. His unit would be reinforced, removed from Attu for the invasion, and the northern flank of the Japanese Empire would be protected. He had spoken with Admirals Nagumo, Toyoda, Kurita and Koga and all were in agreement that submarines and other surface warships must attack merchant shipping. Even though Yamamoto was admiral of the Combined Fleet, and senior, the others would also use their considerable influence to get the more junior and more aggressive commanders to comply.
Another solution to the supply issue was the usage of Japanese civilian tankers and freighters to provide the subs with fuel, food, ammunition, and, of course, Type 94 torpedoes while submarines were on station off America’s West Coast. These were just getting into place and would be situated far enough in the central Pacific where it was hoped they wouldn’t be noticed by American patrols. Japan had begun the war with sixty-five submarines, although twenty-one of them were obsolete, with another thirty-seven under construction. They would never be able to keep up with America’s production capabilities.
Therefore, Yamamoto’s goal was to keep at least five subs on station at each of the major American ports
