Ghostboat Read online

  A car came up, and Captain Melanoff and Lieutenant Nails of Defense Intelligence Command got out to view the boat. Melanoff’s red hair shot every which way in the breeze as he took off his cap to wipe his forehead.

  Nails pointed to the deck gun aft. “That’s where I found that sextant. Just dangling from those gears.”

  Frank wondered why that sextant bothered him more than anything else about this business. He felt a nagging desire to know its story—as if in some way it was the key to the mystery of the Candlefish. He approached Diminsky.

  “Admiral, what do you think?”

  There was a long silence. “The Japanese never claimed her as a war kill, you said?”

  “They did at first, but later they denied it.”

  Diminsky looked uncharacteristically perplexed. “Well... I don’t understand it... she’s in awfully good shape.” He looked up at Frank, expecting an answer, an explanation. The old man just could not stomach the unknown.

  At 1445 they were ready for boarding.

  A technician named Lloyd introduced himself to Frank. “I’ll be going down ahead of you, Commander. Just follow my light all the way. Don’t veer off into any compartments. Do exactly as I do.”

  “Okay,” Frank agreed, and the two of them were helped into protective suits by several technicians.

  Cook explained to Diminsky the reason for all the precautions.

  “If the compartments are flooded, there’s a high probability that salt water has found its way into the cells or the closed circuits. We don’t know what sort of life there may still be in those batteries. The entire atmosphere inside there may be chlorine gas.”

  “But you’d smell it right away.”

  “Not if it’s localized, compartment by compartment. Frankly, Admiral, we don’t know what the hell we’re going to find down there.”

  Frank turned to Lloyd. “What about flooding?”

  Lloyd shook his head. “She’d still be at the bottom. But then...” He hesitated.

  “But then what?”

  “I wouldn’t depend on anything, Commander.”

  Both men were fitted with radio headsets and gas masks. Through the plastic eyepiece, Frank peered at the demolition experts descending the gangplank to the Candlefish top deck, carrying a hydraulic jack and an acetylene torch.

  Frank reacted to a voice crackling in his ear. He turned and saw Cook grinning at him, clutching a microphone and carrying a portable radio. Cook was wearing a headset too. Frank gave him a Bronx cheer and then descended the plank after Lloyd.

  They followed the demo experts over to the conning tower and waited below while the others swung up to the bridge alone to set up their hydraulic jack.

  The demo men readied themselves over the conning-tower hatch.

  “Better stand back, sir,” one of them said, pitching his cigar overboard. “No telling where the pieces are gonna fly.”

  Frank kept his head below bridge level and waited for the first teeth-rattling sounds of the jack. When they didn’t come, he peeked over the edge. The other demo expert had a restraining hand on his partner’s arm, and there was a whispered argument going on.

  “What’s up?” Frank asked.

  His voice crackled over the speaker in Cook’s hand and rang out across the boat. The reticent expert stepped over the hatch and spoke to Frank. “Well, sir, it just occurred to me—there’s no rust or corrosion or anything—has anybody tried to open this thing by hand?” He got down on his knees in front of the hatch.

  “Mister,” called Frank, “it won’t open. Lieutenant Nails tried it—” He stopped in mid-sentence as the demo expert ignored him and gave the dogging wheel a tug. It spun out of his hand, and the hatch popped open like a cork.

  Frank stared at it.

  The demo expert got up and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Like she was greased this morning,” he said with a smile. His partner flung him the jack and swung off the bridge in disgust. He stood there and gazed down into the open black hole, curiosity taking over.

  Frank was climbing up the bridge rail when he felt a sharp tug on his protective suit.

  It was Lloyd. “Me first, sir. Everybody else off this boat.”

  The demo expert descended from the bridge. Frank stood aside and permitted Lloyd up the ladder first, then joined him on the bridge, where they both looked down “Into the access trunk hole. Lloyd switched on his light and aimed it below. In the dim light, they saw nothing but crisscrossed metal decking and a puddle of water.

  “Let’s go,” said Lloyd and dropped down into the conning tower, Frank right behind him.

  Frank landed in the puddle, and water splashed up over his rubber boots. He looked down to be sure it wasn’t acid eating through the protective material. Lloyd played his light quickly around the con. Frank followed the sweep of the beam and picked out familiar instrumentation.

  Frank lowered his light to search the deck. There were bits of broken glass, papers, litter. He held the light up to a bank of gauges: The glass had shattered on most of them.

  “Come on,” Lloyd said, and stepped into the well. Franks followed him down the control-room ladder. Their lights played around the bulkheads and picked out valves, levers, switches, and instruments—still intact. Litter covered the control-room deck: charts, books, pencils, ashtrays, a shirt...

  But nowhere they looked was there evidence of rust or corrosion or anything that might even remotely betray the wear and tear of thirty years underwater. There was only the minor flooding in the bilges.

  Lloyd’s voice went out over the headset radio: “We’re in the control room. She’s tight as a drum. Kind of messy, but we don’t see any bodies yet.”

  Frank shot another quick glance around the compartment. Lloyd was right. No sign of human remains at all. Everything pointed to recent human habitation, even to some sudden, unexpected mass exodus.

  Lloyd tapped him on the shoulder, and Frank followed the technician through the open connecting hatch.

  Holding the radio, Cook led Diminsky and Nails down the gangplank and aboard the sub, then up the ladder to the bridge. He stood over the conning-tower hatch and sniffed the air coming up from below. Then he lifted the mike: “Ed, this is Cook. I’m on the bridge. My nose tells me the air is okay. Have you found any sealed compartments?”

  Lloyd’s beam flashed around the next compartment and settled on the rows of green bunks stacked three deep down the length of the crew’s quarters. Frank went down the opposite corridor and threw his light on the bunks on that side. They were looking for bodies.

  “We’re in the crew’s quarters,” Frank reported over the radio. “No problem getting in. All the watertight hatches are wide open. Bunks are empty, no bodies here. Lots of personal belongings all over the—”

  He froze at the sound his foot made—a loud crunch. He whipped the light across the deck.

  “What the fuck was that?” Lloyd mumbled across the way.

  Frank moved and found the offending culprit. He had crushed a small framed photograph. He bent over and picked it up. “I just stepped on somebody’s mother.”

  Lloyd chuckled and moved on, picking his way through debris. The deck was littered with the crew’s personal belongings. Frank stopped again and picked up an old Gillette razor. He held it under the light: the edge was still sharp and gleaming.

  “Son of a bitch!” Frank heard Lloyd snap from the next compartment. He was standing half through the next hatch. Frank lumbered across the darkness and followed him into the forward engine room.

  They directed both lights at something in the aisle, blocking their way. It was main engine number one. “Got an engine jumped its mounting down here,” Lloyd reported over the radio. “Damned thing’s pulled away from the bulkhead, looks like it tried to drive through into the next compartment.”

  “Still no bodies,” added Frank.

  They picked their way delicately across the forward engine room, swearing as they lost their footing and slid around in a mess of
hose and oil.

  On the bridge, Diminsky and Cook listened to the comments coming from the radio and stared down into the gaping mouth of the conning tower.

  Diminsky spoke softly, concerned for the first time: “Must have been some kind of accident. Crew abandoned ship. And here it is.”

  “Yes,” said Cook wryly, “only thirty years later.”

  Diminsky looked at him sharply.

  Lloyd led Frank back through the midship compartments. The engine rooms had proved too dangerous a quagmire to traverse without proper lighting. They returned past the control room and picked through officers’ country. AH they found were more belongings scattered on the decks and a few overturned bunks.

  Eagerly Frank pressed on into the forward torpedo room. Lloyd caught up with him and warned: “Sorry, sir. Me first again.”

  Their lights picked out the old Mark 14 torpedoes, still racked in their bays, except for one lying peacefully on the deck against the bulkhead, as if it belonged there. Lloyd bent over the torpedoes and checked the warheads and the arming mechanisms. Frank stood out of the way in the darkness, until Lloyd straightened and mumbled, “Uh-huh.”

  Technicians had begun to file down the gangplank and aboard the forward deck, assembling their equipment. One of them gave a surprised grunt as the wheel started to turn on the forward hatch at his feet.

  The hatch puffed back, and Lloyd stuck his head out. He threw off his gas mask and climbed out.

  “We’ve got live fish below. Better get those two demolition boys back here.”

  “What about the crew?” Cook called from the bridge.

  “Tell Graves to take home the body bags. There’s nothing. Not even a bone. Maybe they all escaped before she went down.” Unzipping his protective suit, he looked up as he became conscious of everyone staring at him.

  “Well, go see for yourselves,” he said.

  Slowly the technicians headed for the bridge.

  Cook called out to Lloyd, “Where’s Frank?”

  “Said he’d meet you in the control room.”

  Cook nodded and set the radio down on the bridge. He dropped into the conning tower and stood in the darkness until the technicians followed him with lights. He borrowed one and looked around. Basically unfamiliar with submarines, he almost bumped into the periscope shaft. He played his light over it, then ran a finger along the tube. The grease was fresh.

  A Navy photographer, carrying a big case of camera equipment, descended the control-room ladder ahead of Cook and went through the connecting hatch to officers’ country. Cook waited in the control room, pressed against a bulkhead. He was there a full five minutes before Frank appeared, ducking through the hatch.

  “Had to start that guy taking pictures,” he said, pulling off his gas mask. “Let’s have a look at those instruments.”

  They directed light across the instrument boards. Glass was broken down here too, but everything looked workable. A technician came through and played his light on Frank.

  “Would you believe it? Forward battery’s still holding a charge.”

  Frank stared at him, then turned back to the panel and flipped a switch. Instantly the control room was flooded with light—the red combat lights. Frank stared at Cook’s red glowing face. The technician flipped another switch and the radar scopes came on.

  “She’s alive,” he said.

  By the time Diminsky descended to the control room to join Frank and Cook, the room was filled with the hum of electronics and the pinging of sonar. Everything was working. Diminsky looked it all over in amazement, then gestured expansively.

  “Well, what are we going to do with it?”

  Frank straightened and wiped his hands on the protective suit. “Admiral, I’d like to handle this personally.”

  Diminsky looked at him suspiciously, then shrugged. “Okay. Take a week and figure out what happened.”

  “A week!”

  “Ten days. If you need more—call me.”

  “I will need more.”

  “Mr. Frank”—Diminsky leveled a gaze at him—”you watch your step. If you come back to me with your wild stories, I’ll throw you out with them and put somebody else on this case. The last thing we need is more confusion. Let’s leave well enough alone and see if we can put this boat back into service.” He turned and looked for the hatchway. “Now then, I’m going to have myself a tour.”

  He disappeared aft. Frank turned sharply to Cook. “You get me a list of names.”

  “What?”

  “The crew of this boat. Get me a list of the men who served on her in 1944. Get the division reports, squadron reports, force reports, whatever you have to. They should still be here in Pearl. Get me all the yard reports—and get back to Walters for the stuff from his end. See if we can come up with anything?

  “Like what?”

  “Like a survivor.”

  October 11, 1974

  The rest of the day was largely unprofitable. Frank was hung out to dry while Diminsky locked himself in his quarters with a secretary and a member of the Board of Inquiry in the USS Catchewa mutiny case.

  But when Frank met Diminsky for breakfast late the next morning, he was at last prepared for the fight that lay ahead. He made his first move—

  “You want to do what?” Diminsky bellowed.

  “Take that boat out again. We’ll refit, lay in stores, and go out to sea. We’ll follow the same path she followed in 1944, on her last patrol.”

  “What the hell is that going to prove?”

  “I don’t know exactly. But I’m convinced it’s the only way we can get even a glimmer of an idea what happened to her.”

  Diminsky glared at him a long time, then said, “You’re convinced that something of a physical nature happened to the boat, right?” Frank nodded. “Suppose you’re wrong? Suppose it’s something else entirely? Suppose the men simply abandoned her when they found out she was breaking up inside? Suppose she was attacked—boarded? There are so many plausible explanations, why in hell do you pick the most implausible?”

  “I’m not picking anything. I’m just telling you that no simple explanations will wash! Not for what happened thirty years ago, Admiral!”

  Diminsky scowled and reached for the coffee. Frank pressed on: “Candlefish is a boat the Navy wrote off thirty years ago. At the very least, we have a chance to put her back into service. She’s in great condition, needs a minimum refit—she could pass her sea trials with flying colors. As a bonus, we can make use of her to find out what happened.”

  “It’s going to cost a fortune,” said the admiral.

  Frank shook his head. “We’ll go out primarily with the original equipment.”

  “Hell, no! Navy wouldn’t let you. Submarines are five hundred percent more sophisticated today.”

  “Only the nukes,” said Frank. “The fleet types are essentially unchanged from World War Two.”

  “What are you talking about? They’re all transistorized today. Improved radar and sonar, electronic countermeasure equipment—everything’s been updated.’’

  “But we’re not going into a shooting war. Besides, radio is still radio—”

  Diminsky scoffed at the simplification. “Admiral, we don’t need any improved equipment. What’s on board, once it’s checked out, will suffice. We have to be cost-conscious,” Frank added, parroting one of Diminsky’s favorite phrases.

  The arguments bounced back and forth over ham and eggs, toast, and four cups of coffee each. And ended with them no closer in spirit Finally, however, Admiral Diminsky succumbed to the sheer force of Frank’s persistence. “All right... I’m returning to Washington tonight. I’ll go to the head office tomorrow morning and present the plan to Smitty.”

  Frank gazed at him balefully. He knew what Diminsky would do: corner Smitty, give him the facts—and simplify everything. But it was better than nothing. Frank knew he had loused things up with the admiral through his own unrelenting abrasiveness.

  Shortly before noon, Frank con
tacted Captain Walters himself, bypassing Cook.

  Walters cackled over the phone, “God, I’d like to be there with her. To me, she’s magic.”

  Frank had to give him a lengthy description of the Candlefish before he could ask, “Listen, Walters, we need that information now. The official reports on Two eighty-four. The investigations, Board of Inquiry findings... What’s the holdup?”

  “The Submarine people. They want to go over it first. Our people, Ed. They screen everything.”

  “Well, tell them it’s going to me, Eyes Only.”

  There was a silence at the other end, and Frank knew he was pressing too hard. Walters was a good man, and if he had run up against a brick wall, it had to be a real brick wall. “Walters—just let me know immediately if I’m not going to get any of that stuff. And look, if you can, shoot it out to me before noon tomorrow. Diminsky’s going back to Washington, and I don’t want it to wait around until he looks at it, because that’s another eight weeks.”

  “Okay, Ed.”

  Frank hung up. He couldn’t let Diminsky put a clamp on the whole thing before he got enough information to justify his case. Fucking politics! Frank slammed out of his office and went back down to the dock.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon walking the boat between the forward torpedo room and the aft section. The demolition experts were disarming the entire load of Mark 14 fish. The Candlefish had fired eight torpedoes her last time out.

  Frank mulled that figure over. Not a very successful patrol, considering that the aim of any submarine venture was to expend all torpedoes before coming home—but then, her journey had been interrupted...

  Frank joined a crew of technicians picking their way through the rubble in the forward engine room. All ship lights were on now; the batteries were charged and functioning fine.

  One of the technicians picked up a length of twisted pipe and held it out for the others to see. “I don’t get what happened here. These lines just expanded from heat until they blew. How could they get so hot?”

  The men groped under machinery and in bunks for bits and pieces of wreckage. They slogged through the oily debris on deck and gathered around main engine number one, wedged up against the hatchway, trying to figure out how the thing had burst its mountings. Finally Frank pointed at it and said quietly, “We’ll want to get that back into shape.”