The pack on his back created an awkward weight trying to pull him off the ladder. It didn’t help that the motion of the ship caused the ladder to sway like a pendulum. One moment he was swinging into space, and the next he was slamming back against the side of the ship. It seemed to Deke that the hardest part of the whole damn mission might be getting off this ship in one piece.
His foot slipped off and he frantically sought for a new foothold, his heart hammering. If he slipped, Deke knew that he would plunge right into the ocean. The weight of his gear would take him straight down to the bottom. Some of the sailors had rather gleefully informed him that the ocean here was more than a mile deep — a fact that he didn’t need to know.
If he could have picked the last place on earth that he wanted to be right now, his current situation would have been near the top of that list. Deke wasn’t afraid of much, but he hated anything to do with the ocean. Give him dry land any day.
As if the ladder wasn’t bad enough, the final challenge was to drop the last few feet into the launch itself. For whatever reason, the ladder stopped short of the water. Couldn’t those navy bastards have added a few rungs?
Deke glanced below him. The sea made the small launch bob wildly.
“That last step is a doozy,” warned Philly, who had come down the ladder just ahead of him. “Wait for it… hold on… now!”
Deke let go and tumbled into the launch, landing in a heap. It wasn’t pretty, but at least he hadn’t gotten wet. Nothing seemed to be broken.
Aboard the launch, they had no choice but to squat shoulder to shoulder on the small deck.
“I’ve seen bathtubs that are bigger than this boat,” Deke muttered.
“Good. You didn’t want us to be a bigger target for the Japs, did you?”
If Deke had a tough time of it due to his pack, he realized that he had little reason to complain when he saw Rodeo climbing down with the added weight of the radio that would be their lifeline to the fleet once they were ashore. Even so, the radio would be at the outer limits of its range. Their best hope would be to broadcast from higher elevations.
That was, if Rodeo even made it off the ship in one piece. As the destroyer fell into the trough of a wave, the ladder swung wildly, far over their heads. As the ship righted itself, Rodeo slammed hard against the steel sides. They heard him curse mightily before continuing down the ladder.
Yoshio followed. He was by far the smallest and lightest of them all, and he climbed down nimbly.
Next, the satchel charges that they would use to blow up the Japanese installation were lowered down. They all held their breath when the charges bounced hard against the side of the ship.
“Easy!” Lieutenant Steele shouted.
They all breathed again once the explosives were safely stowed aboard the launch.
The marines climbed down last. Bat was surprisingly agile for a big, gangly guy. When the ladder swung him far out to sea, he whooped with delight, like he was on a ride at the county fair. Ball was just the opposite, seeming to be pure deadweight on the ladder. He dropped the last few feet and landed in a heap that made even Deke’s arrival in the launch look graceful.
“That’s everybody,” Steele said.
The petty officer nodded curtly. He had been doing his best to keep the launch pinned against the side of the massive ship so that the soldiers could drop into the boat without getting the launch crushed in the process. He reversed the motor and backed away from the destroyer. He swung the bow around, checked his compass, and then headed due west toward where the land was supposed to be.
For now, there was only open water in sight — or as far as they could see on the starlit sea, at least. Deke gazed back almost regretfully toward the ship. From a distance, the roll of the ship in the big Pacific waves wasn’t even noticeable. USS Ingersoll looked like a small steel island.
Nonetheless, Deke was glad to get off the destroyer and to be heading for land, but at the moment they seemed to be on a very small boat on a very big ocean. Deke appreciated the fact that the salty old pilot seemed completely at ease as he worked the wheel, trying to dodge the biggest of the waves.
If the men had pictured racing toward shore under the cover of night, they were sadly mistaken. The launch made steady progress, but the petty officer was trying to avoid going so fast that he would cause a wake. Even the wake from a small boat, luminous on the dark surface of the sea, was enough to alert the watchful Japanese of their presence.
Given the heavy seas and the distance involved, any number of things could go wrong, but the occupants of the cramped launch had no choice but to say their prayers and hope for the best. The few words of conversation they attempted felt hollow, swept away by the wind into the vastness of the dark ocean around them.
“Here we come,” Philly said. “I hope the Japanese are ready for us.”
“Don’t you mean that you’re hoping that they’re not ready?” Deke asked.
“What I mean is that I hope their bunker is done so we can blow it up good and proper.”
“So you’re hoping the Japs have done a good job building that bunker?”
“What am I, a politician? Don’t go putting words in my mouth.”
They fell quiet after that, the only sound coming from the motor and the bow of the launch cutting through the water. The plan was to get Patrol Easy to shore under cover of darkness. Once the men were ashore, the boat would be making its way back to the Ingersoll. The boat would return for them in daylight, though, at noon on the second day, giving them roughly thirty-six hours to get the job done. If they needed more time, or an earlier extraction, they could contact the ship using the radio they were bringing along.
However, their time frame was limited. Not only that, but how long could they possibly hope to dodge the Japanese, who would surely be looking for them? If they didn’t succeed, the big guns would still be there to greet the troops who came ashore a few days hence.
“I see it!” Yoshio said excitedly, pointing west.
“You must be eating your carrots,” Philly replied. “I don’t see a damn thing.”
Deke squinted. Yoshio was right; there was a darker smudge on the horizon that could only be land. As the launch closed the gap, details began to emerge. A white line of surf seemed to glow in the distance. Above, a dark promontory loomed. This must be what had been dubbed Hill 522, on account of it being exactly that many feet high. This was where the Japanese ship-killer battery was supposed to be hidden.
The pilot began to cut back on the throttle as they came closer to land. With any luck, the breeze would carry the sound of the motor back out to sea before the Japs could figure out what was going on. If they were met at the shoreline by a Japanese patrol or if, God forbid, that big gun opened fire, the mission would be over before it even started.
“I can’t take you all the way in,” the pilot said. “The coral would tear the bottom right out of this boat. But I’ll get you in as close as possible.”
Lieutenant Steele nodded. “Do what you can.”
Close to shore, the pilot cut the motor to a whisper, then shut it off completely, relying on the momentum of the boat to glide them over the water. Deke looked down and saw coral glowing up at him through the water, no more than a few feet below the surface. The coral appeared to have some sort of natural phosphorescence. It might have been beautiful, if he hadn’t been aware that the tropical coral was sharp enough to shred the hull and cut any bare feet or hands that came in contact with it.
Soon they could hear waves crashing ahead, where the coral created shallows that the boat couldn’t cross. The foaming white line of surf was visible in the night. Just beyond the edge of the reef lay a wide beach that was their ultimate destination.