Pacific Storm

PROLOGUE

It was a long night for Charlie One and Strangler Mackenzie out on the Melville Island group. Strangely named, they were a pair of very diligent Aborigine coastwatchers working in a unit called the “Black Watch” established by patrol officer Jack Gribble from the Native Affairs Branch at Snake Bay. The native contingent was doing some very effective work. American pilot Lt. J. Martin had been rescued after a grueling 214 kilometer overland trek by these able scouts, and the Army was thankful for it, and for the capable eyes these men brought to places few others could even travel.

Gribble had pulled together thirty-six men in all, Aborigine natives, and given each one an easy handle he could live with and pronounce, as their own real names were beyond his grasp. The unit worked out of a small ration station, and the natives were given all the tobacco they could ever want as an advanced payment for services, with a promise that they would be paid in real cash at the end of the war, whenever that came.

Dem darn blurry Japs gonna make war for a very long time, thought Charlie. Who knew how long it might take before they would ever see any real money, but at least the nice new naval uniforms, regular food, and a new rifle with the tobacco were good prizes in the short run. Charlie had trained with Ginger One and Harry One on how to throw grenades, mount and use a machine gun in a coastal lighter, and best of all, how to ride in an undersea boat, all the way out to Timor Island to have a look at what the Japs were up to there.

Blurry Japs put men on dat island too. Gonna fill dem trees with snipers in time. Very dangerous there on Timor now. But methinks dey come here now too, right on dis Melville Island, and very soon.

The coastwatchers had been brought under tighter Army control in June of 1942, with the aim of finding and rescuing downed allied pilots, capturing enemy pilots, locating and investigating plane crashes from either side, and also providing assistance as spotters for the West Point Defense Coastal Battery. On occasion they would even serve as guards for the Australian Naval Headquarters at Darwin, and Charlie One had recently finished a tour there before heading back up to the north coast of Melville Island as a coastwatcher. He was very glad to be where he was when he saw the Japanese planes heading in for Darwin again that day, and heard the distant explosions, saw the tall billowing columns of smoke on the horizon to the south.

Yup, he nodded inwardly, blurry Jap soldiers be follerin those planes in just another day or two now. All these places out amonga mangroves soon be crawling with bad men carrying rifles.

In fact, on this very day he had been sent here with Strangler Mackenzie to look for an unidentified plane. It was feared that the Japanese were already landing early detachments on the island from seaplanes. But it was no seaplane Charlie One saw that evening as he peered north from the coast of Bathurst Island. It was a flock of enemy planes chasing something much bigger and getting some real trouble for their effort.

“Strangler!” he called insistently. “Lookie here!” His mate was soon up at his side, eyes wide as the two men watched the battle scene unfold. They saw the arrival of enemy torpedo planes, swooping down on a distant ship, large and menacing on the seas. Then they gasped in awe at what they saw next, and sat mesmerized by the smoke and fire of anti-aircraft guns. Strangler had the presence of mind to pull out his picture box and was snapping photographs of the scene as best he could in the waning light.

“What dem blurry Japs chasin’?” asked Charlie.

“Somethin big!” said Strangler.

“We best be done gawkin’ and take that picture box south to Darwin. They be wantin’ those photos on a plane straight away.”

“Heather 16 be dokin’ at Darwin now,” said Charlie. “That’s Bin Sali’s boat. He can give dem pictures to his Lieutenant.”

Heather 16 was a coastal lugger that had been operating in a small fleet of pearling boats along the Kimberly Coast, and was now pressed into service as a patrol boat out of Broome, owned by Lt. D.L. Beau Davis. A capable man, Davis spoke both Russian and German in addition to several dialects of Aboriginal language, and even a little Japanese. Not to exclude anyone, his lugger was now crewed by seven Chinese, two Timorese and one Malay in addition to Bin Soli and Lenny Leonard, two Aborigines. He plied the waters off the coast for years, trading tobacco and turtle shells with the local natives, along with dingo scalps and sometimes even a pearl or two nestled in a good clay pipe.

Well known in these parts, Davis made the acquaintance of an enterprising journalist, and this is what Charlie One had in mind, for he had seen the two men together drinking in bars at Darwin and talking long into the night.

“L.T. be givin’ us a pearl for dem photos,” Charlie suggested, “cause he be givin’ dem to dat reporter for some good money.”

Strangler nodded eagerly as the two men set foot south, ready to run down to the coastal lighter tied up at the shore and sail all night from Bathurst Island across Beagle Gulf to Darwin. What they carried was indeed a pearl of great price, for their photos would soon find their way into the hands of that curious newspaper correspondent and journalist, a man named Cyril Longmore who had come out to document the war on the Kimberly Coast.

When Longmore got them developed that same day, he gaped at the images, amazed to think the Japanese would have been engaged with such a large and formidable looking vessel in the Timor Sea. He knew for a fact that there were no Australian or British ships in the region, and a few long conversations with associates on the telephone soon convinced him that there were no American ships about in these waters as well.

As it happened, Longmore, later to be Captain Longmore, was good friends with the Australian Prime Minister John Curtin, who was an old journalist and newspaper man himself. So he was able to get the photos quickly into the right hands to attempt to answer the very same questions running through his own mind. Curtin had also just been sworn in as Australian Minister of Defense, and when Longmore called, the photos got some very high level attention, very fast.

So it came to pass that knowledge of a strange, unaccountable warship in the Timor Sea soon traveled from the eyes and ears of two Aboriginal scouts, to journalist Cyril Longmore, and thence to Prime Minister John Curtin himself, and right into the hands of Allied intelligence units. Copies went out quickly to Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, and then on to the British Naval Station at Trincomalee on Ceylon by plane for a flight to Alexandria. After that it was just a few quick hops to Gibraltar where other curious eyes were soon to see them and note the uncanny similarity to a ship they had confronted just days earlier. The next plane to England would begin to unravel the long mystery that had baffled British intelligence for a very long year, and the word “Geronimo” was soon again being whispered in exclusive circles, and carried once more to the arcane halls of Bletchley Park by a most able and determined man.