“Belay that,” Flanagan said. “If we need it, okay. If we don’t no sense in having to lash it up again.”
“Water Lily, we have you in sight. You’re pretty damned small. Are you heading into wind? Big Bird over and out.”
“Wind velocity is zero. Repeat zero,” Arbuckle said. “Water Lily is on course three five zero. Repeat three five zero. Wind is zero. Water Lily over and out.”
“Aircraft in sight dead astern, Bridge,” the stern lookout yelled.
“Very well,” Brannon said. Arbuckle thumbed the button on the handset.
“Water Lily has Big Bird in sight. Can you tell us your landing procedure? Water Lily over and out.”
“Roger,” the voice in the handset said. “We’re going to come up from your back end —”
“From astern,” Brannon muttered to himself.
“— and put her down in the water on your right side. Big Bird over and out. Here we come.”
The B-29, trailing a long cloud of thick white smoke from its engines, was in plain sight, only a hundred or so feet above the water, flying straight up the wake of the Eelfish.
“My God!” Brannon half yelled. “That damned thing looks like an apartment house flying at us! What’s that crazy bastard trying to do, land on my afterdeck? Arbuckle, tell that bastard to sheer off to starboard, he’ll hit us!”
The big aircraft settled lower as it raced toward the submarine. Then, hundreds of feet astern, it delicately touched its massive tail to the water, lifted slightly as the abused engines stuttered and protested, and then, again delicately, touched its tail to the water. The tail raised slightly as if protesting and then settled gently, and then all of the plane was touching the water, rushing ahead, throwing up a huge wave of water that slammed into the pressure hull of the Eelfish as the plane’s port wing eased by the starboard side of the submarine’s Conning Tower only a half-dozen feet away.
“All stop!” Brannon snapped. He looked at the plane’s wing, rocking and then steadying as the giant aircraft settled deeper in the water and came to a stop.
“Rig out the bow planes,” Brannon ordered.
“Tell that plane commander that his port wing, that’s his left wing, is over our starboard bow plane, and if he can bring his people out along his port wing we can take them aboard without using a rubber boat,” Brannon said to Arbuckle.
“We can do that,” the aircraft man on the radio said. Brannon leaned over the bridge rail, watching Flanagan tie the end of a coil of twenty-one-thread manila line around his waist and jump down on the bow plane.
The line of airmen inching out along the plane’s wing came steadily toward the narrow end of the wing. Flanagan reached upward and held out a hand to the first man, who leaped down on to the bowplane and was assisted aboard the forward deck by Petreshock. On the deck Doc Wharton looked up at the bridge.
“Seventh man in line is hurt, sir. Might be easier to take him down the Forward Room hatch?”
Brannon, leaning over the bridge rail, nodded and gave the order. A moment later the hand wheel on the top of the Forward Torpedo Room hatch spun. The hatch opened and Jim Rice’s black beard came into view.
“So that’s what it looks like up here,” Rice said. “What the fuck you people doin’ up here, playin’ games?” He braced himself in the hatch as Doc Wharton led the wounded man to the hatch.
“You just sit on my shoulders like you did with your daddy when you was a little tad,” Rice said. “Papa’ll carry you down into the nice submarine, and don’t get any of your fuckin’ blood on the inside of this hatch because I’m the guy has to clean it.” Wharton and Fred Nelson eased the wounded man on to Rice’s shoulders.
“Do I hang on to your beard, Sandy Claws?” the airman said in a falsetto. “Sandy Claws don’t want to let the baby fall, do he?”
“Fuckin’ wise guy, we got,” Rice growled as he eased down the ladder rungs. “You people below, stand by to take this wounded hero off of me before he bleeds all over my dress dungaree shirt.” Relieved of his burden he ran up the rungs of the ladder and dogged down the hatch.
Captain Brannon faced the plane crew on the cigaret deck and introduced himself. A slim, boyish airman stepped out of the group.
“Major John Haskins, U.S. Army Air Force, Captain. I’m the plane commander, sir. We owe you something for this, sir.
“No, you don’t owe us anything.” Brannon looked at the group. “I’ve got to destroy your plane. If you don’t want to watch I don’t blame you. You can go below.” The young Major looked around and swallowed.
“I think I’d like to go downstairs, sir,” he said in a small voice. “I’ve, ah, got a wounded man to see to, sir.”
“I understand, sir,” Brannon said. He watched as the eight men followed the young Major down the hatch.
“Forward deck gun party to the bridge,” Brannon said. “Mr. Arbuckle, haul off about four hundred yards.”
The plane burst into flames on the fourth shot and began to slide under the sea, nose first. The last Brannon saw of it was the huge tail slowly going under. He turned away and went down the hatch.
He found the crew of the plane in the Crew’s Mess drinking coffee while Scotty Rudolph fussed in his galley making steak sandwiches.
“We’ll tell your people we’ve got you,” Brannon said to the plane commander, “if you’ll tell Mr. Michaels here what command we should address the message to. We’re sort of new at this. Never picked up any of you people before.”
“You’re not new at the business, though,” the Major said. “All those Jap flags painted on the side of your whatever it is we climbed up on, those stand for Jap ships you’ve sunk?”
“Yes,” Brannon said. “You check on your wounded man?”
“He’s okay,” Major Haskins said. “Your medico fixed him up. Don’t you have a doctor aboard these ships?”
“No,” Brannon said. “Just a Pharmacist’s Mate.”
“Supposing someone gets really sick, like a heart attack?”
“I don’t know about that,” Brannon said. “In nineteen forty-two, on the Seadragon, a crewman came down with a very bad appendix. The Pharmacist’s Mate made retractors out of spoons. They had some ether and a book on how to take out an appendix. So they operated on the Wardroom table. Both the patient and the Pharmacist’s Mate recovered fully.” The pilot shuddered.
Two hours later a message came instructing Eelfish to rendezvous with a destroyer detached from Iwo Jima to transfer the airmen. Four days later the Eelfish received orders to leave the area and head for Pearl Harbor. Brannon called Bob Lee and Paul Blake to the Wardroom and showed them the orders.
“I know it’s bad news for both of you,” Brannon said. “But try and look at it this way. We’ve invaded Okinawa. The next step is Japan itself, if they don’t surrender first. It’s my opinion that this war is about over. That pilot we rescued, he said he’d been carrying nothing but firebombs and blasting Tokyo. He said the city is almost burned to the ground.
“We know, in submarines we know, that Japan hasn’t been able to get tankers north to Japan, that they haven’t been able to get any cargo ships to Japan. They must be down to the bottom of the barrel on oil, rubber, tin, ore, everything they need. The Germans have surrendered, and I don’t think this war will last past Thanksgiving.”
“And then…” Blake’s voice had a slight quiver.
“Then all you Reservists who have done so damned much to help win this war will be getting out, Paul. Your wife, Mr. Lee’s wife, don’t have to wait on any quota system. I went to the American Embassy in Fremantle and asked about that. Once the war is over, whether you’re in the Navy or out, you just have to send them the boat fare and they can come to the States.”