The last few days were a confusing blur. He thought back, trying to remember how he arrived on the shore of this island. The USS Yorktown had sustained significant damage at the Battle of the Coral Sea, but had come out victorious. The ship needed three months’ work to be fully functional, but aggressive Japanese tactics wouldn’t allow the respite. Undaunted, the Yorktown returned to Hawaii and yard workers completed the three months’ work in just three days. Days later, the Battle of Midway began and the Yorktown once again sustained heavy damage at the hands of Japanese dive bombers.
Covered with heavy debris and ruined planes, the giant ship began to list. The crew feared the carrier would capsize, so the ship was abandoned, the men taking refuge on the USS Hammann, a Sims-class destroyer. But the stubborn Yorktown did not sink that night. Coffman returned with a salvage and repair crew the next morning. They worked through the day, breathing air laden with smoke from the burning boiler room. Despite the conditions, the skeleton crew pushed planes and heavy equipment overboard, reducing the vessel’s topside weight. The effort began to work. The list lessened and it seemed the carrier would once again limp back to Hawaii for repairs.
But the Japanese returned, using darkness and the debris-filled ocean to cloak the submarine’s approach. Coffman, who stood on deck wearing coveralls coated with black soot and oil, saw the four approaching torpedoes first. He shouted a warning, but there was nothing the crew of the Yorktown could do. The ship was dead in the water.
But they were not alone. The USS Hammann opened fire with her 20mm guns in an attempt to destroy the torpedoes. For her effort, the Hammann was struck amidships. The explosion tore the destroyer in half and the Yorktown’s would-be rescuer jackknifed and sank, taking the rescued crew with her.
Two of the torpedoes struck the Yorktown, punching holes in the hull and flinging Coffman from the deck. He remembered the cool air as he fell from the smoky deck to the open ocean. After that, there was a lull. He woke hours later. The sun dipping below the horizon cast silhouettes of the now distant fleet. He immediately thrashed and called out. But no one would hear him. No one, but the three men adrift alongside him. They’d managed to slip him into a life jacket and had saved his life, but over the next few days he’d wondered if he would have been better off dead.
As days passed, his throat and tongue swelled from dehydration. The skin on his forehead burned with boils from sun exposure. His body ached. And as hard as he tried, he couldn’t move his legs. The last morning he remembered, he woke to find one of the men missing. They didn’t know if he’d simply died and slipped beneath the waves, if a shark took him, or if he’d swum away in delirium. But the end, for all of them, was near, so they didn’t worry about it too much. Resigning himself to death was the last memory he could recall.
Then he woke up here, on this beach.
The boils still stung his forehead.
His throat felt scoured.
And his legs.… He tried to move them again, but couldn’t. He’d assumed they were broken, but having felt no pain from the gull’s attack, he knew better. His back had been broken. Either when he’d been flung from the Yorktown, or when his body had struck the water.
But if he had made it here, perhaps the others had, too? He looked around for some sign of life.
Palm leaves shifted a scratchy tune powered by an ocean breeze. Cumulus clouds drifted past high above, their passage reflected by the calm lagoon water. But he couldn’t see any bodies nor could he hear any voices. But there was an aberration in the sand next to him.
Four gouges, like the beach had been tilled by miniature oxen, traced a path back to the jungle. The lines were so straight and evenly spaced that Coffman had little doubt they were manmade. He leaned over to inspect the nearest tracks. The motion sent a stabbing pain up his back.
He growled in agony as he realized that his time in the ocean had kept pressure off his back. Perhaps it had even healed him some. But now, on land, every motion could have dire consequences. As the pain subsided, he opened his clenched eyes and saw that the lines in the beach were framed by footprints.
Booted footprints.
The other men had been dragged away, their heels plowing twin paths through the sand. But who took them?
As pain flared anew, Coffman straightened out and looked out over the lagoon. He imagined the shape of this inlet from above and recalled nothing resembling it on any of the maps he’d studied. Had they somehow landed on an uncharted island? Had the men been dragged away by local islanders? If so, there might still be hope of survival.
A crunch of dry palms caught his attention. The sound came from directly behind him, so he couldn’t turn to see it.
Crunch. Closer this time. The steps were slow. Furtive. Careful. As though Coffman might present some kind of a threat. That meant whoever was there saw him as a threat. Which meant …
Coffman lay back down, craning his head backward. Through an upside-down view of the jungle, he saw black boots and tan pants step into the open. He turned his gaze skyward, but the figure charged and all Coffman saw was the butt of a rifle. Then nothing.
*
He woke to an all-consuming pain. His scream was dulled by a gag tied tightly ’round his mouth. He fought to move, but had been restrained.
“Calm yourself,” came a voice. The accent was distinctly Japanese.