Louis LAmour - Night Over the Solomons

Contents

Foreword

T HERE HAVE BEEN, in every period of civilization, those men (and some women) who have lived on the outer fringes. They were frequent on our own frontiers as well as in Australia, the Pacific islands, Africa, Canada, Latin America, and wherever else men faced the unknown with the chance of wealth or fame for the survivors. The men of whom I write in the stories in this collection were such adventurers.

Back in my pre-World War II knockabout days, I got to know a lot of men like my heroes Turk Madden, Mike Thorne, and Steve Cowan. Some were exploring the jungle for gold, diamonds, or orchids. Others sought their fortune fishing for pearls, prospecting for oil, or flying planes for Chinese warlords. Many of them had a boss, but some were loners operating on a shoestring out in the great beyond.

My Turk Madden stories grew out of an unrealized dream I shared with one of the latter fortune seekers. Id become friendly with a bush pilot who would land a seaplane on a wet handkerchief if the price was right. He had been flying prospectors and planters, among others, to various sites in the remote Amazon-Orinoco country. Over coffee in a cafe we developed the idea of starting an express-passenger operation in what is now called Indonesia.

From previous experience I knew there were people willing to pay premium prices for speedy transportation and delivery of express or freight to places where boats rarely called. There appeared to be enough small but valuable cargo around, in addition to passengers, to allow us to show a profitat least on paper.

But before we did more than dream about it, my stories began selling to the action pulp magazines back home and I elected to give all my attention to my writing. But I never did drop this whole idea entirely for I created Turk Madden, who did tramp piloting for a living.

As men who spent a lot of time on the waterfront when not airborne, it was inevitable that Madden, Thorne, and Cowan would be drawn into the intrigue of World War II. For they trafficked information as well as people and cargo, and to those of us who have worked along the docks of the world, there is little information that can be kept secret for very long. If youre interested and reasonably alert you usually know what cargo is being shipped where and often can figure out why.

Many of us working dockside or as seamen in the East Indies in the late thirties got our first hint of what Germany and Japan were planning for the world when groups of their citizens began showing up unexpectedly in some of the smaller outlying ports. Were they stockpiling supplies for future raiders? Were they checking harbors, coves, and river mouths that might be used by merchant raiders? But once men started unloading unusually large shipments of sensitive Japanese and German cargo, we suspected a more disturbing motivation for their presence.

The more resourceful intelligence agents, like my Steve Cowan character, often get their best information not through subterfuge but just by listening in the right places. I was able to write about pocket submarines in a story about the East Indies, which Ill include in another collection, two years before the vessels first appeared at Pearl Harbor because early word had leaked out about them in the Pacific ports I visited. There are few secrets when men who do the work talk together, and I observed a lot of listeners as well as did a lot of listening myself back then.

Im reminded of the time my small ship got the better of a large German freighter, which, typically, was discharging cargo but taking on very little. One of their seamen defected and came aboard our ship looking for a job. We were short-handed so we took him on. When they came looking for him we had him in the shaft alley, where they did not think to look. There was considerable discussion over him, and our captain was ashore several times talking to our consul, but when we sailed he was still aboard.

Preparing these stories for publication brought back a lot of old memories of other times. I almost wish I was back there on the waterfront again with the smell of the sea, tar, and spoiling fruit. I liked those off-the-end-of-the-world seaports like Gorontalo, Amurang, Hollandia, Port Moresby, and Broome as they used to be. I liked the people who inspired these stories just as they were, too. I wish some of them were still around to talk to and learn from. But I believe we will surely find their descendants mining on the moon and Mars, capturing asteroids, or finding the remnants of other lives at the outer limits of the solar system in the century to come.

AUTHORS NOTE

NIGHT OVER THE SOLOMONS

This story concerns the discovery of a Japanese base on the island of Kolombangara in the Solomon during World War II. Shortly after my story was published the Navy discovered this Japanese base of which I had written. I am sure my story had nothing to do with its discovery and doubt if the magazine in which it was published had reached the South Pacific at the time.

My decision to locate a Japanese base on Kolombangara was not based upon any inside information but upon simple logic. We had troops fighting on Guadalcanal. If the Japanese wished to harass our supply lines, where would they locate their base?

From my time at sea I had a few charts and I dug out the one of the Solomons. Kolobangara was the obvious solution. There was a place where an airfield could be built, a deep harbor where ships could bring supplies and lie unnoticed unless a plane flew directly over the harbor, which was well hidden. No doubt the Japanese had used the same logic in locating their base and the Navy discovering it.

My story however, offers an intersting coincidence. It offers two of them, in fact.

The lead character, an American named Mike Thorne, reaches shore from a torpedoed ship. My story was published in 1943. On January 31, that same year, Capt. Jefferson DeBlanc shot down three Japanese planes and was himself shot down, bailing out just above the water and injuring his back and legs. With the aid of his life jacket he swam to shore on Kolobangara.

On August 2nd of that same year a young man named Jack Kennedy, his PT boat sunk at sea, made it to shore with some shipmates on one of several islets off the coast of Kolombngara.Sometimes the imagination precedes reality.

To the memory of all those soldiers,
sailors, and pilots of fortune from whom
I learned so much during my knockabout days.

NIGHT OVER THE SOLOMONS

A Bantam Book / April 2005

Bantam edition / December 1986

All rights reserved.

Copyright 1986 by Louis & Katherine LAmour Trust

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except

where permitted by law. For information address:

Bantam Books New York, New York.

Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Please visit our website at www.bantamdell.com

eISBN: 978-0-553-89952-8

v3.0

WINGS OVER KHABAROVSK

T HE DRONE OF the two radial motors broke the still white silence. As far as the eye could reach the snow-covered ridges of the Sihote Alin Mountains showed no sign of life. Turk Madden banked the Grumman and studied the broken terrain below. It was remote and lonely, this range along the Siberian coast.