The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [96]
Poor bastards. They'll never see the surface again. On the wing of the bridge, existence seemed benignly extended, stable as the feel of steel underfoot. Forgiving the Cork and its lucky-star crew all their sins of leisure, Ben raced back into the chart room to see how they marked the sinking of an enemy submarine.
He could have spared himself the effort. The jammed room was as still as a funeral parlor except for the pinging.
"It's still there, sir," the sonar operator called out, perhaps in case anyone's hearing had gone bad. In the greenish gloom, Danzer's face was a study in trepidation.
The executive officer at last spoke up. "Something's fishy about this. They can't shadow us that close after we blew up half the ocean floor." They must have taught logic at Annapolis.
Once more, the exec went calling on the captain. This time, their conference produced a marked slowing of the vessel. All hands stayed at battle stations as the sonar deepfinder was reeled in for inspection. Ben was there, scribbling like mad, when the sonar technician took a look at the sound head at the end of the cable and sourly gave his diagnosis:
"It's all chewed to hell, messed up the signal. A shark must have got at it."
Ben waited until general quarters was called off, waited while the decks emptied of cursing sailors and sheepish officers, waited as the medical officer vacated the sick bay, waited until he was alone in the soundless compartment. Then he put his hands to his face and laughed into them until he had to gulp for air.
Chortles were still coming like hiccups when he sat up to the typewriter in its restored spot. He was at full speed on the keys by the time the rap on the door came.
Danzer stepped in looking dazed.
"If it isn't the famous officer of the watch," Ben greeted him. "I guess next time you'll roust out the sonar tech ahead of everybody else, huh?"
With visible effort, the caller let that pass. He squared up as much as he was able and began: "I'm in a bit of a spot. The captain sent me to ask if you'll be writing anything about"—Danzer looked as if he would rather bite off his tongue than say it—"what happened tonight."
Ben couldn't help but grin and tap the typing paper in answer. "The case of the submarine that never was, you mean? Can't you see the headline? THE HUNTING OF THE SHARK. Beware the frumious Bandersnatch next, Lieutenant Danzer."
Danzer's face was a funny color, as if the ghoulish light of the chart room stayed with him. "Damn it, if you—"
Ben held up a hand. "Don't. As much as I'd like to, I'm not going to skin you in public. The outfit I have to answer to isn't going to let you look ridiculous, don't worry." He tapped the typing paper again, this time in a tired manner. "Oh, I could write it that way, hell yes, and it'd be red-penciled beyond recognition. So I'll do up tonight's stunt and then TPWP will take its turn. And in the end it'll come out as just one more unpleasant thing that can happen in war, Dancer."
10
The war changed tongues somewhere in mid-ocean as Ben hooked rides on anything that flew in the days beyond Australia. The spatter of sand and syllable where he eventually put down was a sparse island called Eniwetok, and out around it in the central latitudes of the Pacific were scattered other lingual odds and ends now synonymous with the battles on their beaches—Kwajalein and Tarawa, with Saipan and Okinawa and Iwo Jima and others yet to come. Eniwetok itself, Ben found, had been remade from the waterline up in the few months since being taken from the Japanese. Laundries, volleyball nets staked like flags, movie amphitheater, officers' club, enlisted men's canteen, chapel, library: it was all there, the practically magical portable platform of American amenities that materialized