The frogmen (7 page)

"No chow?" Amos asked, the idea of something to eat making his stomach ache.

"There's a whole lot of rice," Max said, "if you call that chow. And some things that look like sweet potatoes."

Amos yawned and stretched. "I guess they have to move these little boats around at night, so we'll be wherever we're going by morning. And I don't think it's going to be Iowa."

John sat down beside him. "You think maybe this is some kind of mistake, Amos?"

"Could be."

"It is!" Reeder yelled. "And when I get topside I'm going to straighten it out with that Anderson."

A voice at the door said, "Good evening, gentlemen."

The man in the door was a Japanese.

He was wearing civilian clothes: a short, faded-blue-denim jacket with dull brass buttons, white cotton pants that were too loose, and blue tennis shoes. He had on a wide-brimmed straw hat and was carrying a cheap suitcase.

For a second, all four of them were paralyzed.

Then Max reached out and clamped the man's arms to his sides. Stooping to his level, he said, "Who you?"

The man was perfectly calm. "Turn me loose, Max," he said, in English.

"See if he's got a gun or anything," Max said.

Reeder felt along the man's chest and around his belt.

"Get that suitcase," Amos said to John. "See what's in it, but be careful. Max, you hold him. I'm going to get the lieutenant."

As Amos went out, Max lifted the man up and sat him gently down on the table but did not let go.

It was dark outside, the stars beginning to appear. Far behind, the island was a gray blotch raised a little above the level of the black sea.

One of the Polynesians was standing at the wheel; the other three were sitting in the stern sheets, cooking something on an iron brazier, the glow from the burning charcoal dimly lighting their faces.

"Where's the lieutenant?" Amos asked the man at the wheel.

The man smiled at him, shrugged his shoulders, and held his hands out, palms up.

"Do any of you speak English?" Amos asked.

They smiled at him but didn't say anything.

Amos climbed out of the cockpit and looked forward. In the dim starlight all he could see were the big sacks, which almost filled the boat from the bow to the cockpit bulkhead.

He climbed out onto the sacks and walked forward. The sacks were packed solidly all the way.

Calling Anderson's name, he went back to the wheel. He made the outline of a tall man with bars on his shirt collar, but the Polynesians just smiled.

"The lieutenant! The boss! The head man! Where is he?"

It was no good; they just sat and smiled.

Amos looked back at the island again, guessing

that it was no more than ten miles distant. Then he studied the compass face, which glowed dimly in front of the wheel. The lubber's line was steady onW.

He hesitated a moment, staring at the sacks lying like corpses in the dark, then turned and went down into the engine room.

John had the suitcase open on the bench and was carefully searching it.

Amos whistled softly to him and waited in the dark as John closed the suitcase and made his way aft and along the engine.

"He's killed the lieutenant," Amos whispered. "Pushed him over the side or something."

"Who's running the boat?"

"Those Polynesians are still aboard, but they can't, or won't, talk, so I don't know what happened. There's no sign of any more Japanese."

"No other boat around anywhere?"

"Not that I could see. We're about ten miles from the island. Anything in the suitcase?"

"Only clothes and shaving gear."

"What a mess! Look, I'm going to turn this boat around. Tell Max to hold the Japanese."

"Think those guys'U let you?"

"They don't care," Amos said.

As John went back into the cabin, Amos stepped out into the well below the wheel. He smiled at the three Polynesians squatting around the brazier and then tapped the shoulder of the man at the helm.

The man turned, and Amos made a motion that he would take over.

The man grinned widely but shook his head.

"We're going back," Amos said. "Something's wrong."

The man just smiled and shrugged.

Amos pulled at his hand, but the man wouldn't turn the wheel loose.

"Come on!" Amos said. "Get down off there!''

Hands from behind clamped his arms to his sides, spun him gently around, and pushed him back into the engine room. The door slammed shut, and when he pushed against it, he felt something outside wedging it shut.

Scared now, Amos went forward into the cabin.

The Japanese was still sitting on the table.

"I'm a Nisei, an American," he was saying as Amos came in. "My parents were Japanese, but I'm an American."

"Tell me a story," Reeder said angrily. "If you're a Nisei, why aren't you in a detention camp with the rest of them?"

"Because I'm in the Navy," the man said.

"What happened?" John asked Amos.

"The crew jumped me. We're locked in." He turned to the Japanese. "What did you do with Lieutenant Anderson?"

"He completed his assignment and was detached."

"I'll bet," Amos said. "Now, listen. We're taking this boat back to the island. If those guys outside are working for you, you'd better tell them not to give

us any trouble. Turn him loose, Max. Okay, go tell them to open that door."

The Japanese smoothed his jacket, crossed his legs, and smiled at them. "If you gentlemen will please just take an even strain, I'll explain what's going on."

"Move!" Amos said. "Get the door open."

"Ensign Amos Wainwright," the Japanese said, "let's don't start out on the wrong foot."

He spoke English with no foreign accent at all and had none of the Japanese difficulty with the letter 1.

"My name's Ko Tanaka," the Japanese said, "and I'm a lieutenant commander. I'm a graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, class of 1931, and I am your commanding officer."

"Our— what?" Reeder asked.

"I'm afraid you've forgotten the peculiarities Mr. Anderson warned you about," Tanaka said. "I'm one of them. This poor little boat is another, and there'll be more. So just bear with me, gentlemen."

Amos was at first surprised that the man knew his name but then remembered some of the spy stories he had read. This, he realized, was the sort of thorough preparation they made.

He wondered how the man knew what Anderson had told them. Had he been hiding somewhere, listening?

There was no place to hide.

"I'm sorry I can't tell you anything about what we're going to do," Tanaka was saying, "but I promise you that it's important."

"I bet," Reeder said.

Amos' NROTC instructor had been an Academy man and Amos tried to remember some of the Academy phrases he had used.

He had used "bilge" for flunk out, and "unsat" for failing. He put "foo foo juice" on his face for shaving lotion and referred to some girls as "yard engines." But anyone as thoroughly prepared as this man was would know, or could quickly guess, the meaning of all those.

"It's going to be a rugged trip," Tanaka said. "With lousy chow, no gedunk stand and no movies. But put up with it the best you can."

"Where're we going?" John asked.

"I can't tell you that, either."

And then Amos remembered one. "When you were at the Academy," he said casually, "did you ever frap the pap?"

The Japanese looked at him, frowning. "Do what?"

This man was lying. "We're going back," Amos said. "Max . . ."

Tanaka began to laugh. "What class were you in, Wainwright?"

"No class," Amos said, turning to John. "When the door opens, hit them. No talk, just hit them."

"Amos," Tanaka said, "things will be better if we start trusting each other. You caught me a little out of context there. Frap the pap. Frap, from the French, frapper, to hit. The PAP is the list of demerits for your crimes and derives from Published And Posted. I really hadn't thought of it for a good many

years. So let's cut out all this suspicion and get on with it."

Amos studied the man for a moment. "You may be who you say you are, and this may be something the Navy planned and knows about. But we're sailing due west, all alone, with no protection from anybody. We're in enemy water right now, and as long as we sail west, we only go deeper into it. Does the Navy know that?"

"It will be a beautiful thing," Tanaka said. "If we make it."

"And if we don't. . ."

Tanaka shrugged.

"That's what I thought," Amos said. "That's why it's so hard to believe that the Navy would deliberately put some of its people into a situation like this."

It was the first time Amos had seen any emotion in Tanaka. His voice was no longer soft and pleasant. "Did you ever hear of Guadalcanal? Or Savo Island? Or the Coral Sea? Or Tarawa? Do you remember the seventh of December, 1941? The Navy puts men where it thinks they can help defeat the enemy. That's why you're here. You were carefully chosen for a very good reason."

"To get our heads knocked off?" Reeder asked.

"Perhaps that, too," Tanaka said. "You won't be the first, nor the last." He smiled again. "All I ask is that you sail with me for a few days in the open ocean, where this boat wouldn't be worth the ammunition to blow it up. We'll be getting a message

soon and then I may be able to tell you why we're here and what's expected of us. Otherwise, we'll just head back."

"What if we refuse?" Reeder asked.

The smile disappeared. "For your information, Reeder, if this boat returns without being ordered to return by the Commander in Chief, Pacific, whoever brings it back will be court-martialed for mutiny. Whether I return with the boat or not."

"You got that in writing?" Reeder asked.

"There's a way to find out," Tanaka said. "I have no weapons. If you choose to turn the boat back I can only argue with you to the point of being thrown overboard."

Tanaka turned and walked out through the engine room. At the door, he called out something in a strange language and it opened for him.

"We'd better do it now, while we can still see that island," Reeder said.

Amos looked at John and Max. "If you wanted to get close to the enemy, maybe scout one of his islands or something, wouldn't a little wooden bucket like this have a better chance than anything else? Even a submarine?"

"Yeah," Reeder said, "and if I were a Japanese spy and wanted to go home, this is exactly the way I'd do it."

"He's home now, Reeder," Amos argued. "Everything west of here is all Japanese. So what does he need with us?"

"He couldn't have gotten this boat without us," Reeder snapped. "He couldn't have left that island without us! Get with it, Ensign. This guy's smart. He knows the Navy isn't going to let a Japanese roam around all over the place, so he's conned somebody into letting him go out on this phony secret-mission stuff. But just as soon as he's home, we're down the tube."

Amos thought about it, looking for help from John or Max, but both of them seemed as confused as he was. "Then there're only two things we can do," he said slowly. "Believe him, at least for a few days. Or go back right now. If we decide to go back we might get court-martialed, we might not. Either way, he'll put up a fight. That means we may have to kill him. If he's really a spy, then we'll get a medal. But if he's not. . ."

"Who'll ever know?" Reeder demanded. "All it takes is a dark night and a little push from behind."

Amos wished that somebody, Lieutenant Anderson or somebody, would suddenly appear and say No. Just No.

"No," Amos said.

Reeder shrugged and turned away. "Without him, there's no place for this boat to go but back."

Max reached up and put his hands flat on the low ceiling. "You going along with this, Amos?"

"For a few days."

"All right," Max said. He looked down at Reeder. "If anything happens to that guy and it turns out he's not a spy, people will ask a lot of questions. And

when they get through asking, they'll just turn around and point. At me. Because that's the way it is. So I'm making you a promise, Reeder. If anybody goes over the side, you do too."

BOOK TWO

Mutiny

The little boat rode the long, slow movements of the Pacific very well. Amos watched the bow wave rolling back and spreading, and listened to the small sounds the boat and sea created. There was the endless lap-lap of water against the moving hull, the creaking of the timbers, the stubby mast squeaking in its step, the sound of a gentle wind around the rigging, the slow, steady, hollow panting of the diesel, and the dry splashing of water.

Amos sat in the bow of the boat, sheltered from the spray by a little barrier of copra sacks he had piled up.

This was the third night at sea, and it seemed to him that each day things got worse.

As the little boat plowed steadily west into the Empire of Japan, Reeder became sullen and murderous. He would no longer speak to any of them.

Amos had asked why, upon this enormous sea, in this isolated boat, with no means of communication with anyone, Tanaka could not give them even a hint as to the reason for their being here, but the man would not. And gave no reason for that either.

The days were horrible. By order of Tanaka, the four of them were compelled to spend from dawn until sunset below in the small, stinking, crowded cabin, the air always full of the fumes of diesel oil, the heat from the sun and the engine making the room a Turkish bath. Tanaka produced a few paperbacks and some playing cards, but aside from these there was nothing to do.

"It's essential," Tanaka had told them, "that no U. S. Navy is ever seen aboard this boat. The deeper we go into enemy water the more the enemy will be looking at us. From patrol planes, submarines, even surface ships. You stay below."

The nights were only a little better. Out on the copra sacks, each of them had built a makeshift home for himself. Amos had his barrier against the spray. John had moved two sacks out of the pile and made an open coffin for himself. Max had kneaded and worked several sacks into one large, fairly smooth mattress. Reeder had built himself a little fort, piling the sacks on top of each other.