Chapter 15

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1941

9:00 A.M.

CRASH!

All at once the world faded from around Joe, except for the gurgling sounds of water and the hiss of bubbles that came off of him. All the noise and madness vanished. He felt still and cool, floating in a calmer version of the world than the one he’d just come from.

Then he opened his eyes.

The world under the water was more chaotic than anything going on above. Huge pieces of wreckage from both battleships and airplanes sank around him in white clouds of bubbles. On the surface, the bottoms of boats cut along the water like black knives, moving toward the flailing arms and legs of sailors in the water. And up ahead, huge and black like some sort of castle of shadows, the wreck of the Arizona sat on the ocean floor, leaking a steady stream of ruined equipment and cloudy, toxic oil.

Oil, thought Joe, remembering the fires overhead. He knew that he had to swim past the fire if he wanted to break the surface safely. He heard loud splashes behind him and turned to see Harper and Norman crashing into the water. Danny came last, his arms at his sides, cloaked in bubbles.

Danny opened his eyes and saw Joe. He gave him a thumbs-up and began swimming toward him.

WHOOSH! A heavy green crate crashed into the water over Danny and smashed into the side of his head. For a moment, all Joe could see were bubbles. Then the crate sank beneath them, and he saw Danny floating, stunned in the water, unmoving. A cloud of red was beginning to flow out of the right side of his forehead.

“No!” screamed Joe under the water, but it just came out in a cloud of bubbles. With all his might, he pumped his arms and legs, powering forward toward Danny. He wrapped an arm around Danny’s middle, hugging him tight to his chest. Then Joe moved his legs for all they were worth, trying to outswim the spread of the oil fires while keeping his knocked-out friend from sinking.

Quickly, Joe’s chest ached. His limbs felt numb. He tried to keep swimming, but he was growing weak, lightheaded. He turned his eyes upward, to the blades of light coming down through the surface. He needed air.

He kicked . . . but Danny was too heavy! He reached up, but though his fingers were inches away from the surface, they didn’t break.

Joe felt his shirt billow up around him as he and Danny began to sink toward the bottom. He tried to kick hard, but soon his limbs felt heavy. He watched the surface slowly begin to drift away . . .

The light on the water was blotted out by a shadow. Two hands broke the surface and seized his outstretched fingers. The hands pulled, and the surface rushed to meet him.

The gasp of air that Joe sucked down was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted. He heaved with breath as the two men pulled him onto the boat. He slumped onto a bench along the boat’s edge and panted for dear life as the men who’d rescued him laid Danny down on the floor. By the crossed anchor insignia on their uniforms, Joe knew they’d been rescued by the coast guard. While one of the men began pumping on Danny’s chest, the other began pulling Harper and Norman out of the water behind them.

Danny’s skin was pale and clammy. The wound on his forehead leaked red rivulets through the water on him. Joe thought he looked dead already.

The coast guard officer pinched his nose and blew into his mouth. Then he put his hands on Danny’s chest again, one, two, three—

Danny lurched, and seawater bubbled out of his mouth. The officer turned him on his side and slapped him on the back to get him to spit it all out. Joe had never been so excited to see someone throw up.

They got Harper and Norman aboard and got them stabilized; both of them looked pale as death but were conscious and speaking. Then the coast guard officer fired up the boat’s motor and aimed it toward shore, with his partner standing at the front scanning the sea for more sailors to rescue.

As they drifted, Joe took in the madness around him. The West Virginia’s deck was burning like crazy, sending pieces of flaming ship sailing down into the water around them. The other battleships along the row were all at least partially destroyed, their decks smoking and burning.

Joe saw a line of sailors standing on a huge gray shape that he assumed was a surfaced submarine . . . until he saw the massive propeller jutting out of the water at one end.

“Is that the bottom of a ship?” he asked, almost unable to believe it.

“That’s right,” said Harper. “The USS Oklahoma, by the looks of it. It must have taken on too much water and capsized entirely.”

“That’s why you counterflood,” croaked a distant voice.

“Danny!” said Joe, kneeling down next to his friend. Danny’s eyes had finally opened. His breathing was slow, but he managed a smile. “You okay, man?”

“I’m all right,” said Danny, sitting up with a groan. “Just need to get onshore and never leave again.”

As they puttered over to the capsized Oklahoma and picked up four more sailors, Joe scanned the horizon for Pop or Skipper. There was so much wreckage floating in the splashing waves around them that it was hard to pick out one thing from another. A number of times the thing that he was almost positive was a dog turned out to be a piece of debris or a floating shirt.

“Have you heard anything about a Marcus Dean?” he asked one of the coast guard officers. “He was a mess officer from the West Virginia?”

“Sorry, kid, haven’t heard anything,” he said.

Joe’s heart sank. He gulped and tried to fight through it. “What about a dog?” he asked.

The coast guard officer squinted at him. “A dog?”

“Look!” All heads turned to Seaman Norman, who was having a fit pointing over the edge of the boat. “Over there! I heard her, honest to God! It’s the same bark as before!”

One of the coast guard officers began trying to restrain Norman, but then Harper began pointing and shouting too.

Joe went to the edge of the boat and peered into the bobbing waves full of debris.

Whuff!

There! In the distance, he could make out Skipper paddling her way through the smoke and wreckage. She was dragging something with her . . . a person, someone big, by the looks of her struggling . . .

“She’s got my dad!” shouted Joe. And now, after all he’d been through, tears finally poured from Joe’s eyes and rushed down his face. “It’s Pop! Skipper saved him!”