SILENT RUNNING, the second episode in my CRASH DIVE WW2 submarine adventure series, releases today!

Lt. Charlie Harrison survived the horrors of Rabaul and the midnight battle with the Mizukaze. When he reports to Sabertooth at Pearl, he must contend with a crew that is less than welcoming.

While underway, the captain reveals the submarine’s mission–to go to the Japanese-occupied Philippines, deliver supplies to the Filipino guerillas, and bring American refugees home.

When Sabertooth crosses paths with Yosai, one of the big IJN aircraft carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor, the mission changes. As disaster strikes, Charlie must take command and make the ultimate decision–get the refugees home, or risk everything on an all-or-nothing attack.

Get it here!
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Below is the first chapter of SILENT RUNNING, the next episode in my CRASH DIVE series. The episode officially launches February 15 and is available here for preorder. Enjoy!

CHAPTER ONE
REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR

Naval Station Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

December, 1942.

Charlie Harrison set down his sea bag and stared at his new home.

The Tambor-class boat lay tied at the end of one of the piers extending from the jetty that housed the Submarine Base. A sea tender refitted her for war. Shirtless workers in dusty dungarees toiled in the sun amid a tangle of hoses, wiring, and gear.

No sign of her crew, who’d long left for Oahu’s beaches and beer halls.

She was a football field in length and twenty-seven feet wide at the beam. Four big GE motors drove her at a top speed of twenty knots on the surface. A pair of Sargo batteries propelled her at nine knots while submerged at depths as low as 250 feet. She could travel an impressive 11,000 nautical miles.

Her name was Sabertooth.

Like all submarines, she’d been named after a creature of the sea. The sabertooth fish was a small but fierce tropical predator with big curved teeth. Sabertooth’s teeth consisted of twenty-four torpedoes, from which she could bite from six tubes forward and four aft.

The air sounded with the whir of rivet guns. Sparks flew from welds. Trucks unloaded spare parts. A pair of sailors in a rowboat repainted the hull. Mattresses hung on a line to air out. Charlie watched the sailors go through their routine.

Sabertooth was captained by Lieutenant-Commander Robert Hunter. With a name like that … Charlie had hoped it was an omen. That the captain knew how to find and sink Japanese ships. But Sabertooth’s war record spoke otherwise, he’d found out back in Brisbane. Three patrols, only two sinkings.

To the west, dozens of proud surface vessels lay moored, an impressive display of American power even at rest. With the calm blue waters and the palm trees gently waving in the balmy breeze, the scene looked quite peaceful.

Then he spotted the distant listing hulk of the great battleship Oklahoma, which still lay half-submerged in the water. A grim reminder of the day that started the war.

December 7, 1941.

In just a few days, the Navy would mark the first anniversary of the vicious surprise attack that devastated American power in the Pacific.

It was hard to stand here, where America’s war began, without feeling reverence for the dead. That, and a sense of awe.

Charlie gazed out across the pristine waters of the harbor and tried to picture what it must have been like on that terrible day.

Nearly 200 fighters and bombers roared out of the rising sun.

He knew the story well enough; every man in the Navy knew it, if not the exact same version. Every fist-clenching, teeth-grinding, blood-boiling bit of it.

The first wave assaulted Battleship Row and the six airfields. In just minutes, a bomb crashed through Arizona’s two armored decks and struck the magazine. The resulting explosion ripped her sides open like tin foil and broke her back in a massive fireball. She sank within minutes, taking more than a thousand souls down with her. Six torpedoes hammered West Virginia, which also went under. Nine torpedoes drilled into Oklahoma, making her list so heavily she almost capsized. The fighters strafed the airfields, chewing up the planes parked wingtip to wingtip in neat rows. Then the second wave screamed out of the clouds; 170 planes joined the attack. Flag flying and AA guns blazing, Nevada steamed through black smoke toward the open sea, surrounded by a swarm of howling bombers. After several hits, the battleship beached herself off Hospital Point.

The sons of bitches. The dirty sons of bitches that did this.

For the men at Pearl, it had been two hours of pure horror.

Charlie could imagine it now. Bombs whistling. Geysers from misses. The great battleships bucking at the hits. Massive fireballs bursting. Black smoke rolling across the sky. Planes roaring past. Tracers streaming up from the AA guns. The bow of the destroyer Shaw exploding in a spectacular spray of fire and debris.

The men screaming in the water. The water afire and choked with corpses.

Everybody helpless against the merciless onslaught.

A year ago, he heard the news of the attack while serving on the destroyer Kennedy in the Atlantic. He’d listened to the President’s address on the radio. He’d joined the submarines hoping for to pay the Japanese back for what they did. He’d longed for action, and he’d found plenty of it on his first war patrol with the S-55. He had the wounds, Silver Star, and promotion to prove it.

Now he stood ready to do his duty and get back into the war.

The ghosts of that war still haunted Pearl, but so did the martial spirit of an angry awakening giant. The battle had ended, but the war went on. A big reckoning was coming. Japan had started it. Men like Charlie were determined to finish it.

For this was not a battle of nations, but of men, and of the endurance of men.
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Very happy today to announce that my WWII submarine thriller CRASH DIVE is now available in audiobook via Audible, offering nearly five hours of entertainment.

This edition of CRASH DIVE is published by Blue Heron and narrated by the great R.C. Bray, with whom I had the pleasure of working on the audio version of SUFFER THE CHILDREN. Bray did an amazing job, as always, making my work come alive with a stellar performance.

Click here to listen to a free sample and buy it.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
RABAUL

Fortress Rabaul. The lion’s den. A hub of merchant shipping that was the lifeblood of an empire that controlled one-tenth of the world. Home of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Eighth Fleet.

Located on the northeastern tip of New Britain, the town had been built in a sunken caldera along the natural anchorage of Simpson Harbor. Forested mountains loomed beyond the town. Vulcan Volcano smoked in the western jungle.

Before the Japanese came, the island had been an Australian territory. Australian units had been sent to fight in North Africa, leaving the garrison depleted. The Japanese landed in January 1942, swept aside the defenders, and hunted them down in the jungle. Then they turned the town into an impregnable land, air, and naval base ringed by artillery and anti-aircraft guns.

The captain studied the harbor defenses through the periscope and whistled at the view. His officers eyed him anxiously.

“All ahead one-third,” he said. “Steady as she goes.”

The S-55 crept as close to the mouth of Simpson Harbor as Kane dared take her.

“I see a lot of ships tied up,” he observed. “What do you think, Reynolds? They’re all lined up in a row, like sitting ducks. Maybe we should go in there and take them out.”

“I was thinking, we could skirt around—”

“I was joking, Reynolds.”

Entering the harbor would be suicide. Assuming the S-55 could navigate the minefields without being blown out of the water, she’d have to stay out of contact of roaming patrol boats. Then she’d be in shallow waters—clearly visible and with nowhere to dive deep to escape.

They’d just have to wait until some ships came out.

The problem was they only had enough fuel and provisions for four days before they had to turn back for Brisbane. They had no idea when a ship might emerge from the harbor mouth. It might be hours, it might be days, maybe even weeks.

“It’s too bad,” Kane said. “I can see the meatballs on their sides.” Japanese naval insignia, a blood-red sun on a white field. “Makes a nice target.”

Sound waves thudded against the hull. Distant booms.

The men glanced at each other.

“MacArthur’s bombers,” the captain said. “It’s raining hell up there. The B-17s are stirring up the hornets’ nest. I see Zeros flying everywhere. Down scope. Helm, right full rudder.”

“Right full rudder,” answered the helmsman. He turned the wheel.

“I wonder how they like having bombs dropped on their heads,” Rusty said.

“Come to east,” Kane ordered. “Maintain speed. All compartments, stand by to dive.”

He was turning the boat around. The S-55 was visible from the air, and although the Zeros were preoccupied with the bombers overhead, Kane was wisely avoiding any risk of detection. He didn’t want the Japanese to know he was there until his first torpedo hit.

More than that, he wanted to get as far away from the bombing as possible. The B-17 “flying fortresses” weren’t precision weapons; they dropped big sledgehammers from eighteen thousand feet. It would be in keeping with Frankie’s luck to have come all this way to the lion’s den only to be sunk by an errant five-hundred-pound bomb made in the U.S.A.

“Dive. Eighty feet. Battery, how much juice do we have in the can?”

The hull vibrated with booms thudding in rapid succession.

The telephone talker relayed the battery room’s answer. The captain nodded, satisfied.

“All ahead flank.”

The submarine glided across Blanche Bay to safer waters.

The captain clapped Charlie on the shoulder. “Wait and hurry up, Harrison.”

“Yes, sir,” Charlie said with a smile.

He felt the same excitement that infected the rest of the crew, who imagined returning to base with a broom tied to the shears and several meatballs painted on the hull.

The broom signified a “clean sweep,” a patrol in which all torpedoes were fired. The meatball insignia were brags of ships sunk.

He didn’t think they’d have to wait much longer. The bombing was likely to get the Japanese thinking about accelerating departure schedules. Ships might be on the move soon.

The S-55 would reach Duke of York Island by nightfall. There, her engines would recharge the battery. Then the old sea wolf would become a hunter. And return to Simpson Harbor …

Want to read more? Get CRASH DIVE for Kindle here.
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