“I think this is about where we’ll drop you and Chief Rhodes, tomorrow night. You’ll have a good mile and a half to paddle to get into the harbor itself.”
“Not to worry, sir,” Struthers said. “The Chief is a very strong man on that two-ended paddle. We’ll do fine from here.”
The port lookout cleared his throat and Hinman tensed.
“From this angle I can see a lot of big dark shapes in the harbor, Bridge. Looks like a lot of ships anchored all in a row.”
“Very well,” Hinman said. He smiled at Struthers. “Looks like the ship watchers up in the hills were right about there being targets in this harbor. You’ll have good hunting! Mr. Grilley, please carry out the orders in the night order book and let’s get out of here, we’ve seen enough.” He listened to the quiet reply to his order and felt the vibration in the deck as Mako picked up speed.
It was pitch black the following night as Mako crept slowly toward the center of the harbor entrance. Major Struthers and Dusty Rhodes, dressed entirely in black with black stocking caps on their heads and their faces and hands dyed black, assembled their small kayak on the deck forward of the gun. Captain Hinman had the bridge and as the Mako swung slowly in the ground swell at the harbor entrance he learned over the bridge rail.
“This is where you get off, men,” he called down. And then, in a voice too low to be heard on deck but heard clearly by the quartermaster, he said,
“Go with God.”
The small black kayak rode low in the water under the weight of Struthers and Rhodes and a dozen 10-pound limpet mines. Hinman saw a paddle blade flash briefly at the side of Mako and then the kayak and its two men were lost completely to view. Hinman turned to Grilley and Joe Sirocco, who had climbed to the bridge.
“Take over the deck, Don. Joe, I want to know where we are every minute in relation to the launching site. If everything goes well they should be back in four to five hours. I want the lookouts on half-hour shifts, Don, keep the relief lookouts in the Conning Tower in red goggles.” He punched his right fist into his left palm.
“Now comes the hard part, the waiting.”
The kayak paddled easily, even with its heavy load. Rhodes, sitting in the front seat hole of the tiny craft, suddenly stopped wielding his paddle.
“Ship dead ahead,” he whispered. “Big one!”
“Good-oh, mate,” Struthers answered in a whisper. “Under the stern we go!” Working their paddles underwater they eased forward until the kayak was under the overhang of the ship’s stern. Rhodes reached out a black hand and took hold of the ship’s rusty rudder post. They sat listening, hardly daring to breathe.
The ship was quiet. They could hear the splashing of water from an engine room pump on the starboard side. Rhodes pointed his hand at that side and Struthers gently paddled in that direction as Rhodes fended the kayak’s bow away from the hull. They reached the sluggish stream of engine room discharge water and Rhodes raised his hand. Struthers stopped the kayak. Rhodes reached down between his legs and got a mine.
He balanced the mine on the wooden rim that ran around his seat hole and carefully turned a knob that wound the spring-loaded timing mechanism of the mine’s detonator. He took a deep breath, picked up the mine in both hands and carefully placed the top edge of the round mine against the side of the ship and then pushed the mine as far down under water as he could reach, as Struthers leaned the other way to balance the narrow kayak. When he had reached the limit of his arms Rhodes carefully let the mine rest against the ship, feeling the magnets on the mine’s underside grab at the steel hull. He sat up and the two men backed the kayak under the ship’s stern. The second ship was barely 200 yards away. The kayak moved across the dark water toward the next target.
Rhodes was soaked with sweat as he finished placing the mine on the eleventh ship, a long vessel with high cargo booms that stood out against the black night sky. They were deep in the harbor now, three miles from where they had left the Mako. The Major gently sculled the kayak back under the ship’s stern and Rhodes clung to the rudder, breathing hard.
“I can see three more ships, mate,” Struthers whispered. “Take a breather, cobber, and then we’ll decide to take the next in line or give all a look and pick the biggest. Should have brought more bloody mines!”
Before Rhodes could reply there was a muffled explosion down the harbor toward the sea, followed by two more explosions and then another. A siren on a ship began to blow and then other sirens began to wail. They heard a rush of feet on the deck of the ship above them. Struthers leaned forward.
“Bloody mines must be going off! Fucking timing devices must be crook!” His whisper sounded loud to Rhodes.
A searchlight from one of the ships that had been mined flared into bright light and began sweeping the sky. Struthers whispered, as he leaned forward in the kayak.
“Bastards think it’s an air raid!”
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Rhodes whispered. “If we can get over next to the beach we can paddle back down the length of the harbor and get out to the ship.”
“No bloody chance of that!” Struthers whispered. “The little bastards will have boats all over the harbor in minutes! Best thing to do is head for the beach and go ashore, they won’t look for us there.” As they began to paddle toward the low beach they heard another explosion and felt a shuddering shock through the kayak’s thin canvas skin.
“That’s the one we just mined!” Struthers hissed. “We’re for it now, cobber!” They heard sharp cries on the ship back of them. “Keep it slow and steady,” Struthers muttered. “Bastards can’t see us unless we make a lot of fuss!”
The kayak’s bow slid into soft muck 50 feet from the shoreline and the two men eased themselves out of the small craft and pulled it up into the shelter of some small bushes.
“Stay here!” Struthers ordered and disappeared. He was back in five minutes.
“Big thorn bush up there a way. We’ll hole up in the bush. Good hiding place. Stay there the rest of the night and tomorrow. I hid in thorn bushes in New Guinea when I was running from the bloody Jap. Safe place to be if it’s big enough and this one is bloody big from what I could tell. Let’s break down the boat, can’t leave it here.” They worked swiftly in the dark, disassembling the small craft and stowing it in a bag of the kayak’s canvas skin.
The thorn bush was huge, covering almost an acre of ground. “On your belly, mate,” Struthers said. “Use the elbows and don’t raise your fucking head or the thorns will take your ruddy eyes out!” They wormed their way deep into the thorn bush, dragging the kayak behind them. After twenty minutes of crawling Struthers stopped.
“Far enough, this,” he said. “We’ve got a bit of an opening here, can sit up and stretch a bit without getting all bloody. You still got that bloody mine that was left over? Make sure that damned thing won’t go off, will you?”
“I made sure of that when we left the last ship,” Rhodes said. “So what do we do now?”
“First things first,” Struthers said. “Wait a bit here while I go back and make sure our tracks are swept away so no idle bastard of a Jap sees them and starts to wonder what kind of an animal crawled in here.” He left, elbowing his way along the ground.
He was back in a half hour, dragging a branch from a bush behind him. He lay on his back, breathing deeply in the humid air.
“Now, cobber, nothing else to do but sleep a bit. Bloody Jap isn’t likely to poke his head into a thorn bush without cause. Safe enough to sleep if you don’t snore. Tomorrow night we’ll take a walk down the beach a bit, put the little boat back together and go for a ride back to your comfy ship. Tra la la and all that sort of shit!”