The Ambassador's Son Page 17

  The truth was Phimble had argued with himself all night about exactly the same thing. He had finally reached the opinion that he’d screwed up, even though it had seemed the right thing to do at the time. It was only at the last second that Dosie had pulled herself out of her dive, and when Phimble saw the ocean so close and so smooth, he’d made a snap decision and landed. It had proved to be a gully washer of a belly flop, but at least they’d survived it, even though Fish-eye, his hatch open, had nearly drowned in the nose turret.

  Afterward, Phimble had stuck his head outside and heard the rumble of surf. Fearful of drifting into a reef, he’d put out the bow anchor and discovered by the length of the line before it went slack that he was in shallow water. The morning light had revealed why. They were near the big volcano-island. Just a little jig or jag in the night and he’d have rammed right into the thing. But that was neither here nor there. It was time to take the steps needed to leave. “Listen, Fisheye,” Phimble said. “I’ve seen you work wonders on engines other mechanics have given up on. How about it?”

  Stobs had apparently infected Fisheye’s mood. “I can’t fix this one, Mister Phimble. It’s shot. Can’t you see that?”

  “I can see you ain’t even trying,” Phimble answered tartly, before softening a bit. “Look, son, I know I FUBAR’d this thing. I should’ve kept flying south on the one prop that was still spinning. You and Stobs both can take a swing at me later. But right now, I need five minutes out of that engine, that’s all. It should be enough to get us into the air.”

  Fisheye ran his hand through his greasy hair, rubbed his long nose, then nodded his head over the engine. “Least there ain’t no bullet holes in her I can see. We were batting all over the sky, so maybe something pulled loose, a gas line or something. That could have set her afire. I’ll pull off the cowling, take a look.”

  “I’d be most grateful if you would,” Phimble replied, and left well enough alone.

  Megapode Dave was also standing on the wing and seemed to be studying the island, as if considering its possibilities. Phimble in turn considered the possibilities of the bird. Dosie had been in an uncontrolled dive when Phimble had asked the megapode to do something about it. Within seconds, the Catalina’s nose had risen as if a giant finger had pushed up on it. Phimble guessed they’d only been a hundred feet above the water when that had happened. “You’re some bird, Dave,” Phimble said. Dave didn’t respond. He had stopped contemplating the island and was studying the sky instead.

  Phimble joined him in his study. The sky was crystal clear except for the usual morning clouds on the eastern horizon, which would soon dissipate. There was only a faint breeze slipping in from the northeast. Maybe a signal fire with lots of smoke was the answer. It would be seen for miles in the clear air. But then it might be the Japanese who came in to investigate. Signaling to anybody and everybody would be a gamble.

  Phimble thought of Josh and was encouraged by the thought. When Josh wasn’t picked up, he’d likely figure out some way to get back to Melagi. The search for Dosie would begin the moment he got there.

  “What’s that white thing?” Stobs asked, pointing toward the island.

  Phimble studied after Stobs’s point, about halfway up the volcano. “Looks for all the world like a parachute hanging in a tree.”

  “One of the flares the Rule dropped?”

  “Too big,” Phimble answered, then something stirred inside him and he made several decisions at once. “I’m going ashore to scout out the place. Fisheye, keep at it, son. Stobs, see if you can fix the radio.”

  “The radio caught a round right between its eyes, Mister Phimble,” Stobs answered in a doleful tone. “And I’ve got little bloody holes all over my face from the glass of the dials. I’ve been picking them out all morning. They hurt.”

  “I’m sorry, Stobs, but . . .”

  “Sorry won’t fix my radio,” Stobs interrupted. “It’s a piece of junk!”

  “I got it, Stobs!” Phimble snapped back. “You can’t do anything. The world’s gone to hell in a handbasket. And you’ve decided to give up. Come over here and put your head on my shoulder and give us a good cry. Maybe you need burping.”

  Stobs, his lip out a mile long, glared at Phimble, and the ensign gave it back to him. “Guess Dave’s going after breakfast,” Fisheye said, breaking the tension between the pilot and the radioman. The megapode had hopped off the wing and was waddling down the beach.

  “Dave’s got his ways,” Stobs said. He picked at his face and brought out a tiny, crescent-shaped shard of glass. A tiny dribble of blood made a path down his cheek. “Let me have a look at your face,” Phimble said.

  Stobs waved the offer aside. “Naw, it’s all right. Look, Mister Phimble, you’re right. I’m acting like a baby. I’ll see about the radio. Might be something I can wire up.”

  “Thank you, Stobs,” Phimble said. He climbed through the nose hatch and worked his way into the interior of the Catalina and looked around until he found a machete. The boys had outfitted it well. He also found a canteen, filled it with water from a jerry can, and clipped it to his web belt. Then he climbed back out on the wing, walked to its tip, and hopped off into the shallow water and slogged to the beach. He started off in the general direction of the parachute, or whatever it was.

  “You be careful, Mr. Phimble,” Fisheye called after him.

  Phimble waved and trudged across the beach, finding himself facing a wide savannah of knee-high grass that seemed to go all the way to the volcano. There was nothing to do but start through it, and he did, stirring up little yellow butterflies that flitted around his legs. He had figured to reach the white object in an hour. It took him that long to reach the base of the volcano and start up it. Two hours later, he was still climbing, swinging his machete through the tangle of vegetation every step of the way. There were no paths that he could discover and no clearings at all, just solid bush entwined with wait-a-minute vines, studded with sharp thorns. When he’d nearly decided to turn around, he chanced to look up into the branches of a banyan tree and was astonished to find a man hanging there in a parachute harness. The man wore brown, full-length coveralls, and his chest was covered by a corrugated float jacket. On his head was a leather helmet with goggles covering his eyes. What appeared to be a stop watch dangled from his neck on a red cord. There was a pistol strapped in a holster to his waist. It was without a doubt a Japanese pilot.

  Phimble drew his forty-five, then looked around until he found a long stick and used it to poke at the pilot’s boots. The pilot jerked, as if coming out of a deep sleep, and then looked down at Phimble with a somber expression. Then he pushed the goggles up on his forehead and reached for his pistol.

  “Don’t try it,” Phimble warned. When the pilot kept fumbling with the pistol holster, trying to open its flap, Phimble shot a warning round into the air. That did the trick. The pilot dropped his hand away. “Now throw down that pistol,” Phimble demanded.

  “Sorry,” the pilot answered in a hoarse voice. “I cannot feel my hands.”

  “Your parachute harness must have cut off your blood.”

  “Hai. Yes.”

  “You speak good English,” Phimble said, although even as he said it, he reflected it was much too conversational a thing to say to an enemy pilot swinging in a tree.

  “English is a compulsory course at the Imperial Naval Academy,” the pilot responded.

  “You’re an officer? I thought all you Nippon fighter jockeys were sergeants.”

  “I am the leader of our squadron,” the pilot answered. “Will you please get me down?”

  Phimble puzzled over the situation, then reholstered his pistol. “I’ll have to climb the tree and cut you loose,” he said, “but you’re my prisoner. No funny stuff.”

  “I cannot be your prisoner,” the pilot answered.

  “Why not?”

  “I am samurai.”

  “Right now you look more like a goose strung up to be plucked.”

  Th
e pilot didn’t respond to Phimble’s remark but continued to hang from the tree while looking thoroughly miserable. Since the jungle earth beneath the pilot was hard-packed soil, Phimble looked around for something the man could land on that wouldn’t break his legs. Finally he piled up some loose brush, the best he could do, then shimmied up the banyan tree, the machete between his teeth. When he got a little higher than the pilot, he used the machete to hack at the parachute shrouds. It took a while, but he finally sliced through the last critical cord, and the pilot abruptly fell into the piled-up brush, grunting loudly when he hit.

  Phimble climbed down the tree, deftly removed the pilot’s pistol, and tucked it in his belt. Then he withdrew his own pistol and aimed it appropriately. The pilot rolled over and sat up, rubbing his arms and flexing his hands. He kept doing that for some time until apparently he’d restored adequate circulation. “You are from the Catalina,” he said, as a statement of fact.

  “And you’re the Rufe pilot. I wasn’t sure we got you. And you were lucky to parachute onto the island, and not in the ocean. The sharks would have eaten you, otherwise.”

  “It was also lucky that I had a parachute. Japanese fighter pilots don’t always wear them, you know. We find them too confining. But I have a . . . medical condition. I need a soft seat, so I carry mine to sit on.”

  “Let me guess. You have hemorrhoids.”

  The pilot nodded. “Yes, it comes from sitting in the cockpit for long hours. Do you have any water?”

  Phimble did, and handed over his canteen, which the pilot nearly drained. Then, without asking for permission, the pilot stripped off his parachute harness, the float vest, and the heavy coveralls, leaving him wearing only a pair of loose-fitting brown boots, the peculiar boots of a Japanese pilot, a pair of white shorts, and a skivvy shirt. There was also a broad white sash tied about his waist, which had many short red threads stitched in it.

  “What is that sash around your middle?” Phimble asked.

  The pilot patted the sash. “It is a traditional talisman of good luck. My mother stood on a Tokyo street corner and asked nine hundred and ninety-nine women to sew a red stitch in it. When Mama-san added hers, it meant one thousand women had wished for my safety and my success against the enemy.”

  “One thousand women agreeing on anything is powerful medicine,” Phimble acknowledged. He took another look at his prisoner. The Japanese pilot was no more than five and a half feet tall and nearly skeletal, his ribs showing clearly against his papery skin. He also had a thin, haggard face with a shock of ebony black hair that looked as if it had been a long while since it had last seen a comb. In short, he was a sorry sight, but if he was anything like most Japanese pilots who flew the Rufes and the Zeros, he was one helluva flier. And always dangerous. Still, since he held both pistols, Phimble figured it cost nothing to be friendly. “I’m Ensign Eureka Phimble, United States Coast Guard,” he said. “How about you?”

  The pilot bowed. “Mamoru Ichikawa, lieutenant, Imperial Japanese Navy. You may call me Ichikawa-san. Your Catalina is a tough airplane. I’m certain I struck it several hard blows, yet you were able to land safely. If you had not knocked me down with a lucky shot, I would have strafed you until you blew up.”

  “Good thing we got a piece of you, then.”

  Ichikawa allowed a quick grin which looked more like a grimace on his skeletal face. “Hai. You would be dead otherwise.”

  “Let’s be clear on our present situation. Things have worked out that you’re my prisoner.”

  “I already told you. I cannot be your prisoner.”

  “That’s foolish talk. There’s nothing dishonorable about being a prisoner. You got caught fair and square. You act like you’d rather be dead.”

  “Death is as light as a feather for those of us who serve our country and our emperor.”

  “But if you get killed, then some other poor slub has to be trained and sent all the way out here.”

  “I did not say it was efficient,” Ichikawa replied, after thinking through Phimble’s objection. “It is, however, glorious.”

  “Glorious don’t win wars,” Phimble retorted, then added, in a congenial tone, “but I have to say you fight pretty damned hard.” He waved his pistol down the hill. “Now, come along and don’t try to run off, or I’ll have to plug you.”

  Ichikawa looked around. “I need to use the toilet.”

  “Then pick a tree.”

  “Domo. Thank you.” Ichikawa stepped into the bush, went behind a tree, and then, with considerable crashing and crunching of low bushes, started running.

  Phimble knew he’d been snookered. He ran after the pilot, then stopped when a limb slapped him in the face. It hurt like hell and drew blood, too. Deciding it wasn’t worth the aggravation, Phimble gave up the chase. After all, the man was unarmed and practically unclothed, rendered therefore harmless. Phimble gathered up the pilot’s coveralls, helmet, and goggles as proof to the boys of what he’d found.

  On the way down the volcano, after being tripped a few times by slick tree roots and taking a good tumble off a low cliff, Phimble finally arrived at a small rock outcropping that gave him a nice view of the beach. Everything looked peaceful. He could see that Fisheye had the cowling off the starboard engine, which gave him some hope the boy had decided he could fix it.

  Then Phimble noticed that there was someone on the beach approaching the Catalina. He was astonished to observe that it was Ichikawa, carrying a short tree limb. Phimble fired his pistol into the air to alert Fisheye, but it was too late. The Japanese pilot leapt aboard the wing, ran down it and hit Fisheye with the limb, whereupon the mechanic fell headfirst into the water.

  23

  It was early morning when land hove into sight. According to Kennedy’s dead reckoning, it was Tulagi, the capital island of the Solomons, and Ready confirmed it. The bosun had the wheel and turned the PT boat to come up the island’s eastern shore. Less than an hour later, Ready eased into a small lagoon and found his way to a little American base of Quonsets and a few wooden hangarlike structures, all set back from the beach in the shade of palm trees and Norfolk pines. It was a neat, orderly, and clean place. Here, obviously, were engineers. Sure enough, a sign proclaimed it as home of the 27th Naval Construction Battalion, though why his PT boat had been brought there, Kennedy had no idea. Ready eased the boat beside the dock, and the Jackson twins tied her up. “You just rest up, sir,” Ready told Kennedy, who was resting his back by lying beside the starboard torpedo tube. “We got a few things we need to do.”

  “Such as?” Kennedy asked, raising his head up.

  “Supplies, sir. You know. We trade for this and that. All the stuff we’ll need for our journey north.”

  “We’re supposed to be in Melagi by this afternoon,” he reminded the bosun.

  “We may not make it,” Ready confessed.

  “Bosun, we have to make it. I gave my word we’d make it.”

  “Yes, sir, but things change sometimes. This boat don’t have what she needs to go up the Slot.”

  Kennedy was too tired to argue, and he was feeling a bit feverish, besides. He climbed off the boat, walked up a boardwalk lined by white rocks, and discovered a hammock strung between two Norfolk pines. Gratefully, he crawled into it. While he hovered close to sleep, he reflected that the place was amazingly free of bugs. There was the faint smell of turpentine, and he wondered if that had anything to do with it. That was the last thing he wondered until he came awake, though only barely awake, hearing Once’s voice (or was it Again’s?). When he opened one eye, he saw the twin, whichever one it was, walking with a trio of Seabees in dungarees and skivvy shirts. They were heading down the boardwalk to the dock. Then Kennedy fell asleep again, only to wake some time later to the hiss of an arc welder and the pounding of steel upon steel. He heard more voices and saw more Seabees and Pogo standing beneath a frangipani tree with Ready aiming a camera at them. Pogo was wearing a scarlet lap-lap. He also had on an outrageously complex necklace made
of cowrie shells and glass beads and shark’s teeth, and there were painted white streaks on his cheeks and forehead. He wore amulets around his biceps with tassels hanging from them and, for no reason that could be discerned, a big plaited straw plate decorated with various designs pinned to his hair. He brandished a gleaming machete and a huge, toothy grin as Ready happily clicked away, and the Seabees crowded next to him.

  All day, it seemed to Kennedy as he lapsed in and out of consciousness, Thurlow’s boys and the Seabees and Pogo went back and forth along the boardwalk. Once, he woke and found some of the Seabees standing beside him. One of them was holding a big banana leaf that he quickly tried to hide behind his back. Kennedy would have questioned the purpose of the leaf if he hadn’t subsequently passed out.

  Kennedy came fully awake when a big crane rumbled past on a road behind him. He shakily climbed out of the hammock and followed the crane and was astonished to find the torpedo tubes unbolted from the deck of his PT boat and dumped on the beach. In the place of the bow tubes were steel cradles that had, based on their shiny appearance, just been fabricated. Then a truck arrived. In its bed were what looked suspiciously like torpedoes, except they were only half the size of the Mark VIIIs generally carried aboard a PT boat. Ready came up alongside Kennedy. “Get your nap out, sir?”

  “What are you doing, Bosun?” Kennedy demanded. “You can’t just go around modifying a war vessel of the United States Navy. It’s against regulations.”

  “We’re Coast Guard, sir,” Ready explained.

  “It doesn’t matter. The boat’s navy.”

  “I guess that changes everything,” Ready acknowledged, though he made no move to stop the ongoing work.

  Kennedy felt the hammock call him again, and after getting Ready’s promise that no more unauthorized modifications would be made on the boat, he climbed in for more rest. When he awoke, he wandered back to the dock and found two shiny new torpedoes sitting in their shiny new racks, twin fifty-caliber machine guns mounted in the starboard and port tubs, and a twenty-millimeter Oerlikon gun on the stern. An eighty-one-millimeter mortar tube was mounted on the bow. Wooden ammunition crates were stacked high on the dock, and the Seabees were going back and forth across a steel gangway, stowing the crates aboard the PT boat.