Final Harbor

Chapter 1

Far back in the mists of time, 320,000,000 years ago on the geologic time chart, huge predator fish and reptiles swam in the warm seas that covered much of the Earth. Of all the toothed horrors that swam in those Devonian Age seas and in all the seas down through the eons of time, only one great predator survived virtually unchanged, except for a reduction in its size to accommodate to its reduced food supply — the shark.

From the time when man learned to wage war on the seas he yearned for the ability to strike his enemy unseen from the safety of the depths of the sea, yearned for a weapon that would be as deadly as the dreaded shark.

He invented the submarine.

The night air was thick and soft, heavy with humidity. Occasionally a land breeze drifted across the sea from the dark bulk of Borneo, the wind bearing on it the faint trace of wet vegetation, the smell of land. In the darkness of early night the U.S.S. Mako, Fleet Submarine, prowled Makassar Strait, her camouflage paint dull and blotched in the starlight.

Just aft of the submarine’s open bridge Capt. Arthur M. Hinman kept his solitary night watch on the cigaret deck, his short legs braced against the slow roll of his ship. The ship’s Executive Officer, Lieut. Comdr. Mike Brannon, a plump man with a studious manner, stood in the cramped bridge space with the Officer of the Deck and the quartermaster of the watch. Above the four men three night lookouts perched in the steel webbing of the periscope shears, searching the horizon through night binoculars.

For as long as man has gone to sea custom had dictated that the man who commands a ship must stand apart from those who serve under him. The custom is well founded; by the law of the sea and nations a ship’s captain has the power of life and death over his crew. He is their judge and jury and, if necessary, their executioner. Command at sea is one of the loneliest of all professions.

That ancient custom had changed somewhat in the peacetime submarine service of the U.S. Navy. The change had come about gradually as the submarine grew more and more complicated. The demand for intelligent, highly skilled sailors to man the increasingly sophisticated ships had led to a form of special camaraderie among submarine crews and their officers that was based on the respect each man held for the skills of other crew members. But as the submarine captains took their ships to war, inexperienced in the grim game of fool’s dice they must play with the enemy’s warships, untested except in peacetime war games, the ancient wisdom of a Captain’s need for removal from his crew was recognized. The decision to be bold or cautious, to attack against heavy odds or to evade, rested in the mind of only one man, the submarine’s Commanding Officer.

Lieut. Comdr. Arthur M. Hinman, USN, Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. Mako, was ill-fitted by nature for the solitary role of a ship’s captain. Hinman was a gregarious man with a consuming fondness for practical jokes that had been nurtured in the small Iowa town where he grew to manhood. His bubbling sense of humor, his love of an elaborate practical joke, had earned him a demurrer in his official record which read, in part:

The stigma had followed him throughout his early career, effectively slowing him in his struggle for increasingly responsible assignments until it was announced that he had become engaged to the daughter of a highly regarded Admiral. The Admiral was not noted for his sense of humor or his tolerance of anything that was not strictly Navy regulation. His paternal blessing of the fiancé of his last unmarried daughter was taken as irrefutable evidence that Arthur M. Hinman had at last outgrown his small-town fondness for jokes and games and had become a serious Naval officer.

The Admiral’s daughter and Arthur Hinman made an odd couple. He was of medium height with the muscular body and feline grace of the middleweight wrestler he had been at the Naval Academy. She was taller than he by several inches and lean, a flat-chested girl-woman with an ungainly stride she never quite learned to adjust to her consort’s shorter legs. Long before Arthur Hinman had appeared on her horizon other young and ambitious officers with an eye to the promotional advantages that would be theirs if they took her as a wife had looked her over and passed her by in favor of a woman more feminine, less sharp of tongue.

Hinman saw something in Marie the others had missed. He appreciated the steel and flint of her character. He recognized that her caustic tongue was a defense weapon, employed because she lacked the outward attractions of most women. He sensed the deep, throbbing capacity for physical passion that resided within her spare body and he found a joy in the elfin spirit she had kept so well hidden from her father, the Admiral. Their union was consummated in a curiously sensual night a month before they walked from the chapel at the Naval Academy beneath an arch of swords held by Hinman’s fellow officers. The marriage developed into an enduring and passionate love affair that in time became the envy of other Navy officers — and their wives.

The marriage of the Admiral’s daughter and Lieut. Comdr. Arthur Hinman ended in noise, fire and blood on a sunny Sunday morning when the pilot of a strafing Japanese dive bomber zeroed in on a car he saw approaching the chapel at Hickam Air Field. Marie Hinman and two other Navy wives in the car died on that Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor.

The news of the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor reached the U.S.S. Mako at sea, two days outbound from Balboa, enroute to the submarine base at Pearl Harbor.

The news of his wife’s death and her burial was given to Captain Hinman an hour after Mako had made its way past the wreckage of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet, the ship’s crew standing at shocked attention to honor the memory of the thousands who had died on that flaming Sunday morning.

The Navy Chaplain who had taken Captain Hinman to one side on the dock had difficulty telling his tragic news. Captain Hinman wasn’t listening to him. He was looking, standing on tiptoe, searching for Marie’s head above the crowd of people on the dock. And then the impact of what the Chaplain was saying had hit home. He rocked back on his heels, his eyes veiled, his face grave. He stared at the Chaplain for a long moment.

“Please stand by, Padre,” he had said. “I have work to do. My ship, you understand? When I have taken care of my ship’s needs I want you to take me to her.”

The Chaplain had nodded wordlessly and watched Captain Hinman as he walked over to Adm. Chester Nimitz and saluted and then began to talk, a ship’s Captain engaged in ship’s business with a man who had also been a ship’s Captain and now commanded a fleet. When Captain Hinman had finally saluted the Admiral and come back to him he nodded his thanks at the Chaplain for waiting and got in the Navy car the Chaplain had called for. He said nothing on the ride to the cemetery where the remains of hundreds of the dead had been hastily interred. He stood for a long time at his wife’s grave, marked only by a painted number on a plain white wooden cross. Then he had stepped back, saluted crisply, executed a smart about-face and marched back to the car. He said nothing in the car and when the Chaplain stopped the car on the dock alongside the Mako Captain Hinman got out and then turned and bent down to speak to the Chaplain.

“Thank you, Padre,” he said quietly, “I know it has been hard for you, too.” Then he had wheeled about and strode over the narrow gangway to his ship’s deck, took the salute of the deck watch and disappeared down the Forward Torpedo Room deck hatch.

The Executive Officer coughed discreetly and the sound carried back to the cigaret deck.

“Damn it, Mike,” Captain Hinman said, “if you want to talk to me come back here. Don’t just stand there.”

“Figured you might be thinking about something, Skipper,” Brannon said. “Ship’s captains are always supposed to be thinking deep thoughts, aren’t they?”

“You have to stop thinking every once in a while,” Hinman said. “Go crazy if you don’t. What’s on your mind?”

“Tomorrow morning is on my mind,” Brannon said. “As per your night orders we’ll be in position to dive at zero five hundred. We’ll dive on a course due west into the harbor mouth of Balikpapan. That way the sun should hide the periscope if anyone’s looking for us.

“Someone will be looking for us,” Hinman said. “That’s the name of the game. We’re going to have to go in as close as we can. The Staff in Pearl wants to know exactly how many oil tankers are loading in that harbor, what other kind of shipping is in there. We might have to go right into the mouth of the harbor from the way that chart looks.”

“The chart isn’t all that good,” Brannon growled. “It’s old, damned old! The channel is marked for depth but off to the south of the channel it only says possible shoaling. There’s a river comes down about there and I suppose it drops a load of silt. I just don’t know how much room we’ve got once we’re out of the ship channel and to the south of it. If I may suggest, sir, we might lay off a day submerged and watch, see what comes out. That way we might be able to get an idea where the deep water is south of the channel.”

“No,” Hinman said. “Anything that comes out of the harbor is going to turn north, not south.” He nodded as he saw Brannon jerk his head toward the after end of the small cigaret deck and he walked back to the rail and stood with his back touching the barrels of the twin 20-mm machine gun that was mounted in the center of the cigaret deck. Brannon joined him, his voice a low murmur.

“Chief of the Boat said to tell you that he and Ginty have finished modifying all the exploders in the torpedo warheads, sir. He says they’ll explode only on contact now, the magnetic circuits have been disconnected. I shouldn’t stick my nose in your business, sir —” his voice trailed off.

“It’s a good Irish nose,” Hinman said. “We’ve been friends a long time. Stick it in.”

“Well,” Brannon began. He looked up at the stern lookout who was standing in the periscope shears, his elbows braced on a pipe that ran around his lookout stand, his hands holding his binoculars to his eyes. Brannon’s voice dropped even lower.

“I’m worried, Skipper. The Bureau of Ordnance says that no one, not a ship’s captain, not even the experts in the torpedo shop on the Base can touch one of those Mark Six exploder mechanisms. The Chief and Ginty have done more than touch them, they’ve taken them apart and modified them!”

“On my direct orders,” Captain Hinman said.

“I know,” Brannon answered.

“You know how many torpedo failures we had on our first patrol,” Hinman said. “Nothing but failure! Nine fish that ran hot, straight and normal according to the Sound man and passed under the targets as they were supposed to do and not a one of them exploded. Then eight more that we fired to hit the targets and they ran as they were supposed to run and nothing happened! Then the two we set to run at two-feet depth and they hit the side of the target and just sank! The damned exploders don’t explode.”

“That doesn’t change what BuOrd says,” Brannon’s voice was stubborn. “You, the Chief and Ginty could all be hauled up in front of a General Court-Martial when we get back to Pearl and they take the fish off and find their damned exploders have been tampered with!”

“You’re assuming we’ll have torpedoes left aboard to turn in at Pearl,” Captain Hinman’s voice was dry.

Brannon shrugged his meaty shoulders. “It would seem likely we will. The patrol orders tell us to observe and give a detailed report on the shipping in the harbor at Balikpapan and to report on the size and course of any convoys that leave the harbor.”

“So other submarines to the north of us can have first crack at the ships!” Hinman growled. “Those damned bureaucrats at Pearl Harbor want their old friends, the Captains with three full stripes, to get the first crack at the ships so they’ll get medals and promotions! I’m the youngest commanding officer in the submarine fleet, did you know that? They want to make sure the older skippers get the targets.

“I know what the patrol orders say. I’ll obey the orders. I want your plot laid down so I can go right into the mouth of the harbor if I have to. You let me worry about everything else.”

“I know my Irish nose is too big,” Brannon said mournfully, “so I’ll stick it in some more. You’re not only my Captain, I consider you to be my friend, and this damned exploder business has me worried!”

Hinman reached out in the dark to put his hand on Brannon’s shoulder and then he thought better of it and pulled his hand back.

“I know how you feel, Mike. We both know there’s something wrong with the design of that Mark Six exploder. We both know it’s never been properly tested. But the BuOrd people and the Staff at Pearl are going to keep on saying that the submarine captains are missing the targets rather than admit they’ve given us a defective weapon. Every captain who has complained about the exploders has had his ass chewed out! Hell, Donaho in Flying Fish damned near got a General Court for telling those dummies at Pearl what he thought of their exploders — and what he thought of them!” He drew a deep breath.

“I intend to follow my orders to the letter. I will observe the shipping in the harbor and report what I see. And then, by God, I intend to carry out a sentence in the patrol orders you seem to have forgotten. It reads, quote and unquote, no attack on enemy shipping will be carried out unless conditions are most favorable and the chance of enemy reprisal minimal.

“If there is enemy shipping to be attacked then the conditions are going to be favorable! If Chief Rhodes is right about what’s wrong with those exploders and if he and Ginty have corrected that error, then by God, we’re going to end this exploder controversy once and for all!”

Brannon turned toward the bridge. “Very well, sir. We should be about three miles due east of the harbor when we dive.”

“Not ‘about three miles due east,’ Brannon. My night orders say we will dive exactly three miles due east of the harbor mouth.”

Brannon was busy at his chart in the Control Room, sliding a set of parallel rulers across the harbor mouth of Balikpapan when Chief Torpedoman Gordon “Dusty” Rhodes stopped beside him.

“I gave him the word, Chief,” Brannon said in a low voice. “I told him that he had laid himself, you and Ginty open to a court-martial but he says it doesn’t make any difference. He’s going to shoot all the fish we have and if we get hits he feels this will end the argument about the Mark Six exploder, that they’ll have to modify the exploders.”

“I didn’t think we’d be doing much shooting this patrol,” Rhodes said. “I thought we were on a search and observe patrol.”

Brannon tapped the chart with his dividers, touching the port of Balikpapan. “The Dutch, to be precise, the Royal Shell Petroleum Company, built a big oil refinery here, back in eighteen ninety-nine. The whole area is full of oil — they say it’s almost pure stuff. The people who were running the refinery tried to sabotage it when the Japs moved in, that would be last January, but they didn’t do much of a job of sabotage. The Japs have got the refinery in operation. Japan lives on oil, you know. This is one of their biggest sources of supply.

“Which means that they are going to protect it, protect the oil tankers that leave here for Japan. I think we’re going to find as many destroyers in that harbor as there are tankers. I’ve tried to talk to the Old Man about the possibility of tanker convoys under strong escort but he just ignores me. He used to be willing to talk about everything with me. Now he only tells me what he has to tell me. He’s changed a lot since the ship was put in commission.”

“He’s got more reasons than most of us to change,” Rhodes said. “He’s lost more than any of us.”

“His wife? Yes, that’s a reason, Chief. But that’s behind him now. The ship comes first. This patrol isn’t going to be any picnic. The Japanese are getting damned good at anti-submarine warfare and they’re going to get a lot better!”

“How would we know how good they are?” Rhodes said. His eyes were veiled, his face without expression.

“Chief,” Brannon said slowly, “you and every other Chief of the Boat hold a position found only in submarines. You aren’t one of the officers and you aren’t really one of the crew. You sort of float in between both. So I’m going to tell you something for your ears alone, understand?

“We lost the Perch a little while back, in March. She survived a number of attacks before they got her and her Captain got off several messages before the Japs got the ship. From what he said the Japanese anti-submarine attacks were extremely well coordinated, they have sonar equipment much better than we ever realized and they used it with great skill. He tried every evasive maneuver he had been taught and none of it worked! He said in one message that they were so sure of him that they played with him like a cat with a mouse!

“We’ve lost seven submarines this year and the war isn’t nine months old! I try to talk to the Old Man about evasive tactics and things like that but he doesn’t seem to want to talk. I’d just like to know what’s got into him, why he’s changed.”

“We notice it,” Chief Rhodes said. “He used to be an easy Skipper, easy to live with. Hard if you didn’t know your job but easy if you did. Now he’s easy one day, hard the next. He doesn’t stop and shoot the shit with the crew like he used to do. They notice things like that. Some of the people wonder if the lousy luck we had the first patrol has made him afraid, nervous.”

“He’s not afraid, Chief. Not that! If anything I’m afraid that he’s not afraid at all! But I guess we’ve all changed a little. If you’re going aft will you ask the baker to give me a cup of hot coffee and a couple of doughnuts?” He watched Rhodes’ broad back move toward the After Battery Compartment. The rest of us might change, he thought to himself, but the Chief of the Boat won’t change. He’ll always be what he always has been, a solid rock of a man, an invaluable link between the Wardroom and the crew, governing the enlisted men with a shrewd practical psychology backed with the unspoken threat of sudden physical violence if his orders were not obeyed to the letter. He turned to his chart and went back to work.

“Coffee’s coming up,” Rhodes said to him a few minutes later. “No doughnuts this morning, sweet rolls. The baker will split a couple and fix ‘em with butter for you.”

“That canned butter!” Brannon made a face.

“Soaks in real quick, doesn’t taste too bad,” Rhodes said with a chuckle. He went forward through the Forward Battery Compartment where the officers and chief petty officers slept and into the Forward Torpedo Room. “Ginch” Ginty, the Mako’s leading torpedoman, was sprawled in a folding canvas chair in front of the shiny brass doors of the six torpedo tubes. He stood up as he saw Rhodes approaching, balancing his massive weight on his toes.

“Old Man get the word on the exploders, Chief?”

“The Exec told him. They must have talked a lot about it. The Exec is worried that if we turn any fish in to the Base at Pearl we’ll all get a General Court for modifying the exploders. The Old Man says not to worry, he’s going to shoot all the fish!”

“Hot damn!” Ginty said. “Sounds good!” He sat down in the canvas chair.

“It won’t sound so good if those exploders don’t work,” Rhodes said.

“They got to work!” Ginty rumbled. “Once these babies are armed, once this warhead hits anything with four pounds of impact force, that exploder is gonna work! You’re gonna hear the biggest fucking noise you ever heard!” He reached up and patted the dull bronze 600-pound warhead that loomed over him. “This baby will make the biggest noise in the world if the Old Man can find anything to shoot it at and if he can hit it!”

“He isn’t a bad shot,” Rhodes said. “He made some nice approaches on those targets on the first patrol. And we got hits with those two fish that were set for two feet. He said he saw the fish hit the side of the ship and then bounce up in the air and fall away without exploding.”

“He says he saw that,” Ginty snorted. “Wasn’t no one but him lookin’ through the periscope!”

“Lieutenant Cohen was on the sound gear,” Rhodes said. “He said he tracked the fish right into the target.”

“Him!” Ginty said derisively. “What the fuck does he know? Fucking Reserve feather merchant! He ain’t a sailor! What was he in civilian life, some sort of preacher?”

“He was studying to be a Rabbi,” Rhodes answered.

“Rabbi? That’s a Jew preacher, ain’t it? So what does he know about torpedoes and submarines? You know what that silly fuck told me one day? He said he could hear shrimp on the sound gear! How the hell can you hear shrimp? They can’t swim! What do they do, talk to him in Jew talk?”

“They click their tails when they move along the bottom,” Rhodes said. His voice sharpened a trifle. “And lay off using that word ‘Jew.’ It isn’t polite. People can be sensitive about things like that.”

“I’ve got a sensitive ass,” Ginty growled. “And I’d like to get off my ass and open these outer doors and shoot these babies!”

“I think you’re going to get your wish,” Rhodes said slowly. “In fact, I’d bet money on it. Just keep your fingers crossed that the exploders work!”