“Lookouts!” he shouted at the bridgewings. “Range estimates every fifty… uh, tails!” A “standard tail” was close enough to a yard that he wouldn’t need to convert it. He moved the wheel experimentally. They had tested the steering engine…
“One hundred yards!” called the port lookout, estimating the range to shore and using the accepted Navy measurement.
“Around nine hundred!” came the range from starboard, looking aft. He couldn’t see for himself, but he was relaying the estimate of another lookout on the aft deckhouse, above the fantail.
Russ began turning the wheel. “I’m giving her ‘right standard rudder,’ ” he explained to Ben. “I hope that even with the engine stopped we gained enough steerageway to bring her stern around.” He grinned. “Slow and easy, that’s me! Hell, I’ve been conning a ship with no engines at all lately! That makes you start thinking ahead!” That was also why Tolson hadn’t come any farther upriver. Without engines, if she got into trouble in the confined space, she was stuck.
“You’re doing fine,” Ben assured him. “Just remember, this rusty old tub of yours isn’t what’s important.”
“She’s more important than you think,” Russ retorted. “But don’t worry, I won’t break any of your toys.”
“Two hundred yards!” called the lookout. “Stern started to turn, but the current stopped it.”
Russ rang up “Astern Slow” and the vibration beneath their feet resumed. “I don’t think I can turn her into the current,” he said aloud, maybe to Ben, maybe to himself. “But maybe I can hold her by the tail while the bow swings out.” He looked at the starboard lookout. “Range?”
“About seven hundred. The… ah… closing rate? It is less.”
“Good,” Russ replied. He rang “Stop Engine” again, and spun the wheel before ringing “Ahead Slow.” The vibration ceased momentarily, then resumed with an entirely different resonance. He glanced at Ben with a self-deprecating grin. “Should’ve brought a couple of bridge officers along! Frankly, though, I don’t think anybody ever thought we’d really be steaming this bucket out of here.” He shrugged. “I didn’t.”
Ever so slowly, Santa Catalina coasted to a stop, her screw partially exposed, ponderously slapping the murky water. Just as slowly, she began to move forward-leaving only the slightest wake to wash over fascinated, watching eyes.
“Lookouts and leadsmen to the fo’c’sle!” Chapelle ordered. Sammy loudly repeated the command through a rusty speaking trumpet on the starboard bridgewing. Sammy was shaping up to be a pretty good bosun’s mate, Chapelle thought. Too bad he couldn’t blow a pipe.
“You want me to take the wheel, boss?” “Mikey” Monk asked. He’d suddenly become Chapelle’s exec.
“Not just yet,” Russ replied. “If anybody’s gonna crack this egg, it better be me.” He cast a look at Ben. “I don’t think the good major will shoot me if I do it. He might if I let somebody else, and I’d probably have it coming.” He called out to Sammy. “What’s our depth?”
“Five fathoms, Skipper,” came the reply. “Get deeper now,” Sammy added hopefully. He was watching a ’Cat stationed just aft of the forward crates, holding up the number of fathoms with his fingers as they were relayed to him. Ahead of the ship, several hundred yards, the steam barge putted along, testing the waters with its own lead, prepared to wave a red flag if the bottom came up.
Russ grunted, estimating just about zero margin for error. With her present load, Santa Catalina drew nearly twenty-four feet. Five fathoms was thirty. The ship wasn’t particularly heavily loaded, and she’d made it into the lake half full of water, so it seemed reasonable she could get out again, especially riding higher. But Russ didn’t know what the channel had done in the year and a half she’d been on the beach, or what the tide had been like when she came in. New snags or sandbars might have formed; even the channel might have shifted. That didn’t matter, since he didn’t know the channel anyway, and they’d just have to grope along, but a sandbar could be bad.
Slowly, slowly, they steamed to the south end of the lake, creeping along just fast enough to keep steerageway. The jungle closed in as they neared the river channel, clutching at them as they passed, it seemed. Clouds built up and they proceeded even more cautiously through an afternoon downpour. At one point, through the nearly opaque rain, Moe used his keen eyes to spot the red flag on the barge waving frantically, and Chapelle called down to reduce speed even more. They couldn’t stop because the current would move them unpredictably, so they began preparations to moor. Then word came that the depth at the river mouth was four fathoms- Santa Catalina ’s exact depth.
“Okay,” Russ said, licking his lips. He’d spent a lot of time poring over a yellowed Solunar chart on the wheelhouse bulkhead. The next time the tide would run higher than it now did would be at 0126 on the morning of November 12. He didn’t want to wait that long. “Dump the guns,” he ordered regretfully. The old freighter had been armed with a dual-purpose five-inch gun forward, and a three-incher aft. Both were badly corroded, their bores pitted beyond serious use, but he’d hoped to save them. Still, they’d been dismounted and rigged to go over the side in a hurry, prepared for this very eventuality. The ship needed only a few inches, and hopefully the guns would provide them. Massive splashes preceded a slight lurch aboard the ship, and tentatively, Santa Catalina eased forward.
Except for the drumming rain, the lethargic throb of the engine, and muted reports from Sammy, standing soaked on the bridgewing, there was complete silence on the bridge. They felt the slightest, prolonged, quivering shudder through their shoes as the keel kissed the bottom and slid through the silt. He hoped the rusty hull and ancient rivets would stand the strain-and they wouldn’t discover a random rock or boulder.
“Ahead one-third,” Russ ordered, hoping increased inertia would carry them across. They were committed now. They’d make it or get stuck, probably for a couple of weeks. There was little more they could do to lighten the ship, not without dipping into their precious cargo itself. He risked a glance at Ben and saw that the flier’s knuckles were white as he gripped his hat in his hand, poised as if preparing to wipe sweat from his brow with an imaginary sleeve.
He’d never seen Ben like this before-this… intense. He sensed what the man was straining against: the horror that after all they’d been through, fate might still steal their prize. Even now, on the brink of success, after all they’d struggled for and lost, a simple capricious sandbar might rob them of the unexpected-unimagined-treasure stored in those moldy wooden crates. Maybe for the first time, Russ truly understood what the planes meant to Ben; what they might mean for all of them.
To Ben, they were the ultimate expression of technology on this planet. They were also an almost holy connection to everything he’d personally lost. They were his Walker. Becoming a pursuit pilot and learning to tame P-40s-the hottest things America had in the air-had defined who Ben Mallory was. Since the “old” war had started and they’d wound up here, Ben had accomplished amazing things. He’d saved them all, most likely, by flying the battered old PBY until it literally disintegrated around him. Since then, he’d been instrumental in providing primitive but apparently reliable airpower to the Allies. He hadn’t been in the Philippines, but he’d made no secret of his disgust regarding MacArthur’s failure to bomb Formosa with his flock of B-17s during the brief but Godsent space between Pearl Harbor and the air attacks that ultimately slaughtered the big bombers on the ground.