Distant Thunders

CHAPTER 14

T alaud Island appeared much as Irvin Laumer remembered it when they’d approached it so long ago in S-19, her diesels gasping on fumes. They hadn’t encountered another island fish in the crossing from Mindanao, and Irvin wondered if Silva had actually “sunk” the one that lingered there, as he’d claimed. Surely if he had, another had taken its place? Walker had picked one up on sonar, after all. Maybe they had been discouraged. Whatever the reason, he was relieved.

Island fish or no, nothing could protect them and Simms from the constant deluge of bird and flying reptile droppings.

“That is the place?” Lelaa asked, approaching him as she wiped at a greenish white smear across her dark fur with a towel. Irvin subdued a chuckle at the captain’s expense.

“That’s it,” he said.

“Where to from here?”

“Around the eastern point. There’s a broad lagoon, almost a tiny bay. S-19 was on the beach. There was a little protection but not much… I hope she’s still there.” He voiced his greatest fear. They knew there’d been storms since they left. A high enough surge could have carried her farther inland, making complete salvage impossible, or it might have even carried her off to sea.

“The mountain on the island smokes,” Lelaa observed. “Did it smoke this much when you were here?”

Laumer lifted his binoculars. It was a dreary, hazy, oppressive day. Still, he could see the dull, monochromatic outline of the distant volcano on the island. The smoke was blowing away to the south. “Yeah, maybe. Sometimes there’d be earthquakes-the ground would move. I don’t know. It looks like the thing’s a little taller than I remember it.”

Midshipman Hardee and Motor Machinist’s Mate Sandy Whitcomb were standing with him. Sandy said, “Nah,” but Hardee remained silent.

Irvin looked at him. “What do you think?”

“Well, sir, I’m not sure. The top was usually misty when we were here before, and down in the jungle where we spent most of our time, one couldn’t see it at all. That being said, I would have to concur with you. It does seem taller.”

“Hmm. Well, shouldn’t make a difference unless it decides to pull a Krakatoa on us.” As soon as he said the words, Irvin wished he could take them back. He’d always prided himself on his rationality, but some of the men’s superstition had rubbed off on him, he guessed. He noticed the accusing look Whitcomb gave him and smiled uncertainly. “Just kidding, Sandy.”

“If it’s all the same to ‘His Highness,’ the new commodore, I wish to hell you wouldn’t say shit like that.” Sandy gestured vaguely over his shoulder. “Me and the fellas who volunteered to come along did it because it’s a job that needs doin’ and we like you. We know you’ve got as much guts as Chief Flynn, but you had the sense to let him take the lead while you learned the ropes. You got more brains than he does, so you’re better than him for this caper. As long as you use them brains to accomplish the mission and don’t go jinxin’ us, we’ll get along fine.”

Touched and chagrined by the convoluted and somewhat backhanded compliment, Irvin nodded. “Don’t worry. Like I said, I was just kidding, but I won’t kid about stuff like that anymore. If you want me to throw salt over my shoulder, scratch a backstay, or jump up and down, spitting on myself, I’ll do it if it makes you feel better.”

Sandy and Hardee laughed. “Nah,” said Sandy, “It’ud be funny to see, but none o’ that would work anyway.”

“What is a Krakatoa?” Lelaa asked.

Sandy rolled his eyes. “A busted toe. A real bad one.”

Late that afternoon, they rounded the point. The wind had shifted out of the south and they took in everything but the staysails. The wind cooled them but their progress slowed to a crawl. Irvin wasn’t worried. The mouth of the cove he remembered so well was near, and he’d rather creep up on it than tack away and try to find it again from seaward. Better to approach it the same way S-19 had. A call came down from aloft and he knew they’d reached their destination.

“Any suggestions?” Lelaa asked.

“Ah, you’ll want to aim for the middle going in. There’s just sand, but it shifts around. The lagoon’s shaped kind of like a cursive capital E…” He looked at her blank expression and drew one on the bulwark with his finger. “We want the top of the E, the northern end. There’s rollers, usually, but it gets calmer when we’re in the point’s lee. Water there was deeper too.”

“Was?”

Irvin shrugged. “Was. Places like this can change every time a storm hits.”

“Leadsmen to the bow,” Lelaa commanded loudly, then looked back at Irvin. “You were saying?” she asked politely.

Irvin knew she’d just given him another tactful lesson in seamanship. “Ah, that’s it. We sail in and anchor as close to shore as the tide will let us. We should see the boat.”

Simms crept into the cove, her consort staying well back to avoid any hazards the flagship might encounter. Irvin and all the submariners were on the fo’c’sle staring ahead, passing the binoculars around and listening to the leadsman’s shouted depths.

“Goddamn, we should see her by now!” Tex erupted suddenly. He had the glasses.

“Maybe,” Whitcomb replied. The beach they’d left her on was still a mile or so ahead and it was hard to focus the binoculars while the ship passed through the rollers.

Hardee reached for the binoculars. “Here, let me have those a moment, please,” he said, somewhat imperiously. Tex handed them over, but then made comic gestures behind the boy’s back when he turned. He understood the concept of midshipmen just fine, but he wasn’t used to taking orders from sixteen-year-old kids. Hardee put the strap around his neck and quickly scampered up into the foretop-no simple feat with the ship pitching so-and scanned the shoreline from a higher perspective. The Lemurian lookouts probably had better vision than he did, even with binoculars, but none of them had ever seen the submarine before. They didn’t really know what to look for.

“There she is!” he suddenly cried down triumphantly.

“Where?” Irvin shouted back.

“About where she was, but… all I can really see is the conn tower! It looks like it’s leaning toward the sea!”

Irvin looked at the other submariners. When they left, the boat was almost entirely exposed and leaning hard to port-away from the sea.

“Well,” he said, “at least she’s still here. I guess we’ll know the score when we go ashore.”

Simms and her consort anchored a quarter mile from the beach, where there’d be plenty of water under their keels even when the tide was out. Irvin was anxious to get a look at the task before them, but decided not to waste a trip ashore just for sightseeing. All the ship’s barges went over the side filled with equipment; the disassembled steam engine was their “compact” model, but the parts were still heavy and bulky. The generator was one assembly, and although it wasn’t very big, it was heavy. Other tools and equipment went as well, but no camping gear or foodstuffs. They wouldn’t have time to establish their outpost that evening, and Irvin wanted to reimpress on everyone the hostile nature of some of the inhabitants of Talaud. Tomorrow they’d build a base camp, assemble the equipment they’d brought, and try to discourage the various predators he felt sure had returned to the area in their absence.

Rowing ashore, Irvin noticed few strikes at the boat. He’d gotten used to the incessant thumping of the flashies in the waters he’d crossed more recently and wondered why there weren’t as many here. There were some really big, goofy-looking sharks, he remembered. Maybe that was why. Or maybe it was the deep water all around. He shook his head. Something else for the irrepressible Courtney Bradford to figure out.

His boat nudged ashore and he hopped into the calf-deep water, shoes tied around his neck. Once on the dry sand, he sat down and pulled the battered shoes on his feet. Even while he did so, he looked at the submarine-or what he could see of her. They’d realized, the closer they came to shore, that the boat had been virtually buried in the sand. Not just buried, but sunk in the sand as well. He could easily imagine how it happened. A big storm had lashed the island, maybe even the one that was brewing when they left it. The surge rolled the sub back and forth on the wet, loosening sand, slowly displacing that beneath her, and dragging her down into it. When she was almost level with the beach, the sand collected atop her until all that remained visible was the tower and the four-inch-fifty gun. Irvin stood and approached the boat with the other men.

Lelaa stared at what little was visible in wonder.

“You went under the water in that?”

“She’s a lot bigger than she looks,” Tex said defensively.

“Jeez. She’s plumb buried!” said Danny Porter. “How the hell are we gonna get her out of that!”

Carpenter’s Mate Sid Franks laughed. He’d been talking with some of the ’Cats in his division. “Hell, this is the best thing that could have happened!”

“What do you mean?” asked Irvin.

“Well, sir, if she was still high and dry, we’d have had to dig a hole out from under her. No way we could push or pull her in the water. We could have built rollers, I guess, but we would’ve had to run them out in water deep enough for stuff to eat us. We couldn’t have made them stay where we wanted them either. This way, we just dig her out and dredge a channel into the lagoon!”

“Okay, I can see it’s easier to dig her out, but how do we dredge your little canal?”

“Easy. Well, not easy, but simple, maybe. We securely moor the ships and use their anchors to dredge a trench! Actually, I’m sure one of you geniuses can come up with something better than an anchor-maybe a scoop or something. We scoop the sand, hoist the anchors, or whatever, into the boats, bring it back, and reposition it. Then we do it again.”

“We’ll have to ‘do it again’ a lot of times,” Danny mused, “but yeah, that’ll work better than if we had to relaunch her.”

“Everybody hold your horses,” Irvin said. The sun had touched the treetops at the jungle’s edge. “First, you guys, all but Danny, help get that stuff ashore.” He pointed where dozens of ’Cats were carrying crates from the boats to the beach. “Then we get to work tomorrow.”

“What are you and Danny going to do?” asked Tex, a little irritated.

“We’re going to climb up there”-Irvin motioned with his chin at the conn tower-“and crack the hatch.” He took a battle lantern out of the pack he’d been carrying. “You can go on all you want about refloating the old gal, and that’s swell, but the first thing I need to do is decide whether there’s any point.” He sighed. “Hell, fellas, all that banging around might have opened her up like a sardine can. She might be full of water, for all we know.”

Suddenly, the ground shivered perceptibly beneath their feet and they heard a dull rumble even above the surf.

“What the hell?”

“Mr. Laumer, look!” Hardee almost shouted. He was pointing southwest, toward the volcano. From where they stood, they couldn’t see the mountain itself-the coastal trees were too tall-but they easily saw the gray column of smoke and ash piling into the sky. It seemed to glow just a bit at the bottom, and Irvin wondered if the setting sun was causing it. With the wind now out of the south, they were likely to get some of that ash.

“I sure wish you’d quit doing that,” Whitcomb said through clenched teeth. “Think positive, Mr. Laumer. The only thing the matter with her was she was outta fuel. She took a hell of an ash-canning by a Jap tin can. If that didn’t open her up, a few little waves ain’t goin’ to.”

Irvin nodded and took his eyes off the tower of smoke. “Okay. I’m sure she’s ready for sea,” he said, a little sarcastically, “but Danny and I will make that decision and we’re going to make it fast. Tomorrow we’ll start work on one of two things: refloating S-19 or breaking her up. Captain Reddy himself ordered me- ordered me -to make that determination as soon as I laid eyes on her, and that’s what I’m going to do. If Danny and I come out of that boat and say we’re taking her apart, there won’t be any discussions or arguments. Tomorrow we start taking her apart. I know she means a lot to you guys-she means a lot to me too-but Captain Reddy’s right. We need what she’s made of a lot more than we need her. Is that understood?

A little taken aback by Laumer’s sudden transformation from an easygoing shipmate to an officer who expected his orders to be obeyed, all the submariners nodded. Lelaa nodded too, in satisfaction.

“That said,” Irvin continued, “it’s my genuine hope that we can get her out of here in one piece. It would be easier, I think, and then we’d have all of her and not just the stuff we can get at. If we have to break her up, there won’t be another trip to bring back more of her. Next time it might all be buried or gone and a lot will go to waste.” He shrugged. “And who knows, Captain Reddy might decide we still need a submarine for some reason.” He looked at Lelaa, then back at his men. “So now you know how I feel. One way or another, we will accomplish our mission and there won’t be any bitching.” He looked at the column of smoke. “And whatever we do, I think we need to do it quick. I have a weird feeling this island isn’t too happy to have us back.”

That went… okay, he thought as he and Danny made their way up the damp dune toward the conning tower. They’re all swell guys, but Captain Reddy’s right. Somebody always has to be in charge. Well, he might not be the best choice, but he was there. Now that the job was at hand and he was off Lelaa’s ship, the time had come for him to step up.

There was a space between the four-inch-fifty and the conn tower that was free of sand, for the most part, and he eased onto the rotting strakes. They actually seemed to give a little beneath his weight. Somewhere beneath the sand was the top of the pressure hull but he saw none of it. He hoped it didn’t look as bad as what he could see of the conn tower and the exposed areas of the gun. Apparently all the paint had been blasted away and everything was an almost uniform reddish brown. They’d sealed the gun as best they could before they left and he hoped the seal still held. He hoped the submarine’s seals still held, for that matter, but his heart began to sink.

“Here,” he said, pointing at the gun access hatch on the front of the conn tower, “let’s see if we can get in that way.”

“Sure,” said Danny. The hatch was a new addition, not originally built with the sub, but like many of her sisters, S-19 had been upgraded-a little. Kind of like Walker and her Asiatic Fleet sisters, S-19 was literally generations behind the state of the art. They’d had so many accidents with the S-boats, however, many of them fatal, they’d been forced to make a few modifications over the years. The hatch was one. It was intended as a means to pass ammunition to the gun’s crew, and as an emergency escape outlet. The ability to escape the dangerous boats had been deemed an important feature. Besides the infamous Squalus incident, Irvin remembered hearing about several S-Boat accidents. In one case, the sub sank, leaving nothing but her stern poking out of the open ocean and her surviving crew had to be cut out. Another sinking of a different boat had left the bow exposed, and the crew escaped through a torpedo tube! Regardless how many “escape hatches” the boats now had, far too many of the class had gone down with all hands before the war even started.

“Damn, it’s stuck!” Irvin said, trying to undog the hatch. “Give me a hand!”

Danny moved to join him, and together they strained with all their might. No go. “Must’ve rusted shut,” Danny said ominously. Irvin glanced up at a sound and saw Lelaa standing there.

“Let me help.” Awkwardly arranged around the small wheel, the three of them gave another tug. To Irvin’s consternation and Lelaa’s delight, the dog finally spun.

“See? You just needed ‘girl help.’ I didn’t really do anything but touch the handle. You Amer-i-caans say that ships are ‘shes’ even when you give them ‘he’ names. Maybe you’re right. Girls always listen better to girls.”

Danny made a rude noise and spun the wheel to its stop. Looking at Laumer, he raised the hatch.

After the better part of a year exposed to fresh open air, they weren’t prepared for the stench that wafted out. It was ungodly, even to Danny. His submariner’s brain instantly categorized most of the smells, however, and even as he almost retched and stepped quickly away, his mood brightened a little.

“Aggh! People live in that?” Lelaa gasped.

“No!” Irvin insisted. “At least… not this bad. We used to vent her out every day. She spent most of her time on the surface, not all buttoned up. There’s months of stink down there that’s been baking in the hot sun!”

“A little more than that, Mr. Laumer,” Danny said. “There’s mold and mildew and other things, but she doesn’t smell any gassier than she did when we sealed her up.”

Irvin looked thoughtful. Scampering up the rungs to the top of the conn tower, he tried the other hatch, and it spun freely. It had been the one they used most often when they were here before. It clanked open against its stops and he peered into the dark hole. Remembering the battle lantern, he shone it down.

“Doesn’t look that bad,” he murmured noncommitally. “Smells nasty, but what do you expect? No more gas, so water hasn’t gotten to the batteries again.”

“Are you going inside?” Lelaa asked. Irvin seemed to consider.

“Well, at first I figured we’d let her air out overnight. Even if it rains, it won’t hurt anything, not really. Why?”

“I want to go inside,” Lelaa announced. “All I can see is this little thing poking out of the sand. I want to see inside!”

“Okay…” Irvin hedged. “It is nasty. And it’s hot in there too. Maybe not as hot as it used to be when it was in full sunlight. ..”

“Hell, let’s go,” said Danny. “You told the fellas we’d start to break her or get her out tomorrow, one or the other. They deserve an answer!”

Irvin nodded. “You’re right. Let’s do it.”

One at a time, they descended to the control room below. The smell was ghastly and it felt like breathing a putrid soup, but eventually they grew accustomed to it, even Lelaa. Irvin shone the light around until he settled on the switch he was looking for. It activated the red emergency lighting Spanky had turned on months ago. To Irvin’s surprise, the lights still came on, but just barely. There wasn’t much juice left at all.

“If we get her dug out, run a cable from the generator, maybe we can charge her up enough to start an engine,” Danny said.

“Maybe. Or if the compressed air tanks are still charged, we can turn one over that way. Just give her some fuel, and vroom!” He shook his head. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

“What are these big poles for, and what are those big, shiny wheels?” Lelaa asked, pointing to port.

“The poles are the periscopes. You know, those two things sticking up on top of the conn tower?”

“One is bent.”

“Yeah, it was damaged when the Japs were depth-charging us. Giving us a treatment kind of like what we did to the mountain fish with the “Y” gun. We use them to see above the water when we’re under it. Those wheels control the bow and stern planes. They make her go up and down underwater. That, and the amount of water we let in.” She looked around.

“Water in here?”

“No. In the ballast tanks. We let water in to go down, and blow it out with compressed air to go back up. That big wheel at the front of the compartment controls the rudder, just like on Simms. It makes the boat turn from side to side.”

“Sounds simple.”

“Believe me, sister. There ain’t nothing simple about it!” Danny quipped.

“Hey!” cautioned Irvin. “I don’t think ‘sister’ is an appropriate way to address the captain of a United States ship!”

Danny blinked, then nodded. “Yeah. Sorry. Bein’ back here on my old ‘sugar boat,’ it started to feel like old times.”

Lelaa blinked in acceptance. “Then let us be about the business of determining whether we can make it more like old times by getting your ‘sugar boat’ off this beach!”

They decided to go forward first, since the bow was buried deeper than the stern. The crew compartment looked much like they’d left it: decks clear, racks chained to the bulkhead. They’d removed some of the mattresses for bedding on the island and the others had turned somewhat gray.

“Here’s where some of the mildew’s from,” Danny said. “High humidity got the fart bags!” Irvin pointed the light, nodded, then looked around. It was the most spacious area in the boat and even some of the wooden folding chairs were still secured. A few had come loose, probably when the boat was rolling with the storm. Danny knelt and raised one of the linoleum-covered deck plates and Irvin shone the light.

“Forward battery looks just like we left it.” Irvin glanced at Lelaa. “We lost a few batteries in here and had some water coming in. Had to seal off the compartment. Some good fellas died. Gas.”

It was a simple statement, but Lelaa could tell the words still hurt. Irvin had already told her the story and explained what happened when seawater and sulfuric acid met. She also knew he’d been a junior officer and the decision wouldn’t have been his. She wondered how she would have felt. Probably the same, she concluded. Not guilty, certainly, but pained that she’d survived as a result of such a decision.

“All the passengers were in the torpedo room.” Irvin gestured forward. “No torpedoes, so it was the logical place to put them. There’s racks in there too.”

They moved to the hatch, which had been left standing open. Sure enough, there were quite a few more racks stowed in the compartment. There was also the most confusing conglomeration of pipes, valves, and instruments Lelaa had ever seen. She watched Irvin and Danny inspect a few gauges here and there and make approving or disapproving sounds. They inspected the bilge in the forwardmost area, in front of the fuel tanks.

“Well, she ain’t dry,” Danny announced, “but she ain’t sunk either. Looks about like normal seepage to me.”

“So?”

“So we look aft,” Danny answered, shrugging.

The aft crew’s quarters and officer’s country looked much the same. The batteries under the plates looked okay too. There was water in the bilge under the engines, but it hadn’t reached the huge machines.

“Those are the engines?” Lelaa asked. She’d seen the steam engines they were building, but the difference in sophistication was stunning.

“Yep,” Irvin said. “Two NELSECO diesels. Twelve hundred horsepower combined. They’ll move this tub at fifteen knots on the surface, if the sea’s calm.”

“And they were both running when you ran out of fuel?”

“That’s right,” said Danny. “They worked the last time we used them.” Lelaa looked at him and twitched her tail. She had much to learn about Amer-i-caans, but the statement sounded… odd.

“What is in the next compartment?”

“The motor room.”

Lelaa was confused now. “I have heard you, your people, use the words ‘motor’ and ‘engine’ interchangeably,” she said. “Why would S-19 need engines and a motor?”

Irvin started to laugh, but then realized it was a perfectly good question.

“Motors, actually. Plural. Okay, here’s the deal. Unlike the new Fleet Boats, S-19 can run her propeller shafts with a direct drive straight off the diesels. She’s actually faster that way. The trouble is, she can only run them one direction-forward. She can’t back up or use her screws for maneuvering with the engines. Since she has to use electric motors underwater-they don’t burn fuel, make exhaust, or need air; that’s how it works-we use the motors for reverse and maneuvering on the surface too. The new system’s really better. They don’t use the engines for anything but charging the batteries, and the motors do all the work. You’ve got forward and reverse and all the maneuvering you want all the time.” He patted one of the NELSECOs. “But these babies do pretty good.”

“I am anxious to see these ‘motors,’ but you did not answer my question: why is one a ‘motor’ and the other an ‘engine’?”

Irvin and Danny looked at each other.

“Ask Sandy,” Irvin said. “He’ll know.”

Danny nodded agreement, but then turned back to Irvin. “So what’s the verdict, Skipper? What do we tell the guys?”

Irvin rubbed his forehead, looked at his two companions, and sighed. “Tomorrow we dig. And I want everybody trying to figure out the best way to dredge a canal this thing’ll fit through!”