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For the first time in weeks, Hashimoto smiled. The orders had told him he could return to base and get additional supplies if that was necessary. He had thought about it briefly, but decided against it. He was safest under the sea and not alongside a dock at some navy base that was subject to bombing. No, he would proceed directly to the waters off southern Kyushu. He had food and water for several weeks normal cruising and could extend that by cutting back on rations. He had a full complement of Type 95 torpedoes. He did not have any of the distracting kaiten on this trip and didn't want them.

Targets of opportunity, the orders said. The I-58 and her sisters were free to roam and kill as they wished. Instead of working as ferries, they were to be sharks, predators of the sea. It was glorious, as was the phrase targets of opportunity. It was a submariner's dream and he vowed to live it to the fullest.

CHAPTER 29

With more than a thousand men and many tons of their equipment jammed onto the attack transport USS Luce, Morrell found it more comfortable to be on the deck than below in their cramped sleeping quarters. In this he was joined by hundreds of others, who, after several days afloat, found the accumulated stenches from belowdecks a little difficult to take.

Several days of puking and sweating had turned the interior of the Luce into something of a putrid garbage dump. No lights were permitted on deck, not even cigarettes, and Paul wondered if Jap pilots could really see the ship from the glow of a bunch of cigarettes. Maybe they could, but it probably was an unnecessary precaution. Even solely with starlight, he could see the shapes of other ships in the convoy.

Another, more primal force drove the men to the decks. They approached ever closer to Japan each time the Luce's bow surged into the choppy November waves. They all knew that death might strike at them at any moment, just as it was striking at those who were going before them. Along with the so-far-unseen suicide planes, Japanese submarines were presumed to be nearby, and no one wanted to be inside a ship as it sank into the depths of the Pacific. They would much prefer to take their chances on the cold waters of the ocean, rather than a downward plunge in a seven-thousand-ton steel coffin. Most of the soldiers had decided that the risk of being struck by a kamikaze while on the decks of the Luce was the lesser of evils.

Paul shifted his aching buttocks on the cold metal of the deck. There was a chill in the November air, but it wasn't really cold yet. If only he had a pillow or a cushion to sit on, things would really be okay. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, which he opened to the photo of Debbie. He could barely see her face in the stiffly formal studio picture she'd sent him. The face that looked up at him really wasn't her. It didn't show her laughing, or flashing that silly grin he liked so much, and it didn't capture anything of her personality. It didn't smell at all like her, and it sure as hell didn't feel like her, and the portrait was from the shoulders up so it didn't show any of the slender but delightful body he liked to hold.

But it was the only thing he had to remember her by and it triggered rushes of memories that almost caused tears to well up in his eyes.

"Nice-looking girl, Paul. Gonna marry her?"

It was Captain Ruger. Paul laughed reluctantly, folded his wallet, and put it back in its waterproof pouch. At least he hoped it was waterproof. "I hope so. If I get back, that is." Then he corrected himself. "I mean, when I get back."

Ruger sat down beside him and watched as a couple of soldiers edged by them. Right now their biggest danger came from being stepped on, not from the Japanese.

"I just put my wife and kids' picture away too. It hurts a lot to look at it, but I had to at least one last time. I guess everyone on this slow ship to nowhere feels that same way."

They had spent their last days on Okinawa packing their gear for the journey and spending their empty nights trying to forget about it. In what some felt was a macabre salute to the departing soldiers, there'd been USO shows galore to lighten their emotional burden. Bob Hope did arrive and brought Jerry Colonna and Frances Langford with him. Danny Kaye was there and so was Kate Smith. In just a few days they got more entertainment than many could handle, although that didn't stop some GIs with a warped sense of humor from announcing that Glenn Miller would be appearing at a particular field. This resulted in several hundred men waiting patiently at the designated place for the arrival of a man who had been killed a year earlier over the English Channel.

Finally, they had been taken out to the attack transport Luce, where they had, once again, waited. When they did move out to sea, it was to join a vast convoy. Comments were made about being able to walk across the rows and rows of ships all the way to Japan without getting their feet wet.

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