Silent Sea

CHAPTER 9

The orders from Fremantle routed the Eelfish down the eastern side of Celebes Island through the Molucca and Banda Seas and then westward along the north side of the archipelago called the Lesser Sunda Islands to Lombok Strait. Mike Brannon walked into the Wardroom and sat down. He yawned hugely, and John Olsen moved his charts to one side so Mahaffey could put a cup of coffee in front of Brannon.

“How’s the route home look?” Brannon said.

“They’ve given us three different days, three times when we can enter Lombok Strait,” Olsen said. “I figure if we can run on the surface for a couple of days, and we should be able to do that, we can make the first ETA for Lombok.” He indicated the thin pencil line he had drawn on the chart.

Brannon pulled the chart around in front of him. “We should be able to run some of the way on the surface. At least down to the point where we turn west. I don’t think there’s much, if any, shipping on the east side of Celebes. No reason to be.

“That brings up the danger of sunburn. The lookouts, none of us, have seen much daylight this trip. You’d better issue an order for shirts and hats to be worn while topside. I don’t suppose that Doc Wharton has got any suntan lotion in that magic box of his.”

“I mentioned that to him before you woke up, sir. He says he’s got cocoa butter for burns and he’s got iodine and that he can make a good suntan lotion out of that stuff. I never heard of that but he says it works.”

Brannon grinned. “I guess they’d think we were crazy if we tried to draw suntan lotion as part of our supplies. Who ever heard of needing suntan lotion on a submarine?” He looked around as a very gentle rap sounded on the bulkhead beside the green curtain that served as a door.

“Permission to speak to the Captain?” Steve Petreshock’s face appeared through the curtain.

“Of course, Steve,” Brannon said. “Come in. Sit down.”

Petreshock leaned over the Wardroom table. “I’d like to keep it low, sir. Don’t want my voice to carry up forward. It’s about the prisoner, Captain.”

“What about him?”

“Well, sir, he’s getting awfully friendly. He sits with me on watch, on the four to eights, sir. I okayed that because I thought he was kind of lonely, maybe a little scared about what’s going to happen to him.

“So I encouraged him to talk a little, to tell me about going to school in the States, his wife, that sort of thing. It sort of led from one thing to another and he’s told me about how it was in Japan after he went back for his mother’s funeral, all about his old man. He really thinks a lot of his old man. About how they drafted him into the Merchant Marine and how it is there, the living and the working on the oil tankers he’s served on.

“After I’d get off watch and go back aft I’d write down everything I could remember he said.” He reached in his shirt pocket and took out a thick packet of paper and put it on the table.

“Lot of stuff in there about Balikpapan and the oil they get from there, Captain. I thought some of it might be useful to you.”

“I think it might be,” Brannon said. “Thank you. Keep listening to him. Write down whatever he says, no matter even if it’s about girls or food or anything.”

“There’s something else, Captain. He’s sort of opening up real good now with me and with the guys who live in my room. I figured if maybe we could let him eat in the Crew’s Mess, I’d be with him all the time as a sort of guard, I figured with all the guys around him he might open up even more. I didn’t push him, but this morning he started to tell me about how many times he’d been in convoys that were attacked by submarines and what their orders were when they got attacked. I figured that if all hands were tipped off to treat him good that he might really open up.”

Brannon looked at Olsen, who nodded approvingly.

“Sounds all right to me,” Brannon said. “But what sort of reason are you going to give him for changing the way he eats, for letting him go back to regular chow?”

“I thought a little about that,” Petreshock said. “He’s a sailor and he’s an officer. He’s pretty bright. I’ll just tell him that he’s the first prisoner we ever had and that we didn’t realize that he was no danger in the mess hall at chow time and that it would be easier on us, on my people, if one of them didn’t have to carry his chow tray to him. He washes his dishes in the sink in the room, sir. Says that one of us shouldn’t have to clean up after him. I think he’ll think everything’s okay.”

“Keep coaxing him to talk a little but don’t push it,” Brannon said. “John, you’d better get hold of the Chiefs and tell them what’s going on and have them coach their people to treat the prisoner nice and to talk with him but not try to interrogate him or anything like that.”

The crew, as Petreshock had anticipated, welcomed the prisoner at the mess table. His fluent command of English, his obvious pleasure at being out of the war, and his keen engineering interest in the Eelfish led him to recount funny stories about his undergraduate days at Stanford. He began to tell stories about his shipmates in Japan’s Merchant Marine, how one day a lookout on a tanker he was serving on threw an entire convoy into panic when he sighted a periscope. Later, after heavy depth charging, a dead whale came to the surface. The lookout had seen the whale spouting and had mistaken the gust of spray from the whale’s blowhole for a periscope. Scotty Rudolph got into the act, asking the prisoner for Japanese recipes and very carefully writing down what the prisoner told him. After each meal Petreshock took the prisoner back to the Forward Torpedo Room and shackled him to a torpedo skid and then went back to the Crew’s Mess to write down everything the prisoner had said, aided by Scotty Rudolph, whose ear for gossip — a faculty shared by most ship’s cooks — and whose memory spurred Petreshock’s own memory of what had been said.

Eelfish ran on the surface for two days and nights through seas empty of Japanese shipping. As the submarine approached the Lesser Sunda Islands Brannon gave the order to submerge during the daylight hours so enemy air patrols wouldn’t spot them. It was an hour past noon on the second all-day dive when Perry Arbuckle motioned to the Quartermaster of the Watch to raise the search periscope for the hourly check on sea and sky. He swung the periscope around and gasped.

“Captain! Captain to the Conning Tower!”

Brannon scrambled out of the Wardroom and ran into the Control Room and up the ladder to the Conning Tower.

“What have you got?”

“Snakes, sir! Millions of snakes, long brown snakes with yellow bellies all over the ocean! They’re swimming with us!”

Brannon looked through the periscope and saw that the surface of the sea was covered by a mass of sea snakes, all swimming steadily westward. He shuddered and recoiled as the periscope lens brought a snake’s head into close view.

“My God!” he muttered. “Imagine swimming in the middle of those things. I’ll bet they’re poisonous, too.” He turned and went to the ladder, and started to descend. “Next time, Perry, try to pick up something we can shoot at. I’m going to get a few hours’ sleep.” He grinned at the Reserve Officer and went down the ladder.

An hour later Arbuckle walked to the periscope and waited for the Quartermaster to raise the long steel tube. He put his eye to the lens and froze.

“Captain to the Conning Tower!” Arbuckle’s voice was hardly more than an agonized croak. Mike Brannon, roused from a deep sleep, stumbled through the Control Room and climbed to the Conning Tower.

“Not more damned snakes!” he grumbled. He put his face to the big rubber eyepiece on the periscope and the Quartermaster saw his shoulder muscles bunch up.

There, almost dead ahead of the Eelfish, a submarine was lying, fully surfaced. He twisted the periscope handle to bring the submarine focus and saw the insignia on the side of the Conning Tower: U-135.

“Down periscope!” Brannon snapped. “Sound General Quarters. Rig for silent running. Set all torpedo depths two feet. Open the torpedo-tube outer doors.” He waited, fidgeting, listening to the small noises of the crew hastening to their battle stations. John Olsen, a battle telephone set hung around his neck, climbed three steps of the ladder into the Conning Tower.

“All battle stations manned, sir. Torpedo depth set two feet. Torpedo tube doors open. Sonar is manned. The Plotting Party is standing by.”

“Sonar reports no contact,” Paul Blake said from the after end of the Conning Tower.

“Up battle ‘scope,” Brannon said to Brosmer. The Quartermaster punched the button that controlled the battle periscope and the oily tube slid upward. Brannon went to his knees and caught the two handles of the periscope as they rose above the deck, snapped them outward, and rode the scope upward, his eye at the lens.

“Mark!” Brosmer looked upward.

“Bearing is three five zero.” Brannon heard the gears in the TDC clicking as Arbuckle cranked in the bearing.

“Range is one zero zero zero, one thousand yards. Angle on the bow is zero eight zero port. There’s a lot of people on the deck and the bridge of that damned sub! They’re staring into the water.”

“You’ve got a solution,” Arbuckle said from the TDC. “Stand by Forward… My Irish oath! A damned U-boat in this ocean… stand by.”

“Fire one!” He counted down from six to one.

“Fire two!”

“Both torpedoes running hot, straight, and normal.” Blake’s voice was loud in the Conning Tower. Brannon hung on the periscope handles staring at the enemy submarine. He saw a man on the bridge of the submarine suddenly wave his arms and point at the surface of the sea. There was a flurry of activity among the men on the deck of the submarine and then the first torpedo from the Eelfish hit the U-boat and exploded with a great gout of water and fire. Seconds later the second torpedo slammed home into the heeling submarine and blew it apart.

“Two hits!” Brannon yelled. He pulled the periscope around in a 360-degree search for other ships.

“Come to forty feet,” he called down the hatch. “I want a radar search.” He waited as the Eelfish planed upward. Rafferty, manning the radar, reported no contacts other than two small ones bearing three five eight.

“Those are the target,” Brannon said. “Stand by to surface. Chief of the Boat to the Conning Tower with a boathook and a safety line. Two seamen to the Conning Tower for deck rescue party. Maybe we can get another prisoner.”

The Eelfish surged upward, and Brannon climbed the ladder to the bridge hatch, hanging on with one hand, turning the wheel that undogged the hatch with the other. He heard Jerry Gold say “Twenty feet, sir,” and he pushed the hatch open, gasping as the residual water in the bridge flooded down the hatch.

Ahead of the Eelfish the German U-boat had broken into two pieces, its stern rising out of the water before it began to slide down to the sea bottom. Flanagan climbed over the bridge rail followed by two seamen.

“Chief,” Brannon yelled over the bridge rail, “if we can get a prisoner I want one. For God’s sake don’t fall over the side, don’t even get down on the pressure hull.” Flanagan looked at the water and drew back. The surface of the sea was alive with long, sinuous, swimming snakes.

The submarine’s bullnose eased slowly through the snake-covered water as Brannon conned the Eelfish toward a mass of debris on the surface. He raised his binoculars and searched the debris. He saw shattered bodies, pieces of what looked like mattresses, and other debris. Flanagan and the two seamen, trotting up and down the deck looking at the water, searched for a survivor but saw none.

“You see anyone alive, Chief?” Brannon called down to the deck. Flanagan shook his head.

“Deck party below,” Brannon ordered. He waited until Flanagan dropped down the hatch and then moved to the port side of the bridge to get out of the way.

“Clear the bridge,” he ordered and as the Quartermaster followed the lookouts down the ladder he punched the diving klaxon button twice and dropped through the hatch opening, pulling the hatch closed.

“Sixty-five feet,” he ordered. He turned to Perry Arbuckle. “Make a continuous periscope observation for the next ten minutes. Then go to one hundred feet and resume regular submerged patrol. Periscope observations on the hour. I want the sonar manned for the next hour. Stand easy on Battle Stations. Smoking lamp is lighted. Close torpedo tube outer doors.” He went down the ladder to the Control Room where John Olsen was standing at the gyro table with the plotting party. Brannon picked up a telephone and thumbed the button that connected him with all compartments.

“This is the Captain,” he said. “An hour or so ago Mr. Arbuckle saw an ocean full of swimming snakes. A few minutes ago he saw a German U-boat, lying to on the surface with a lot of people on deck. I assume those people on the German submarine were looking at the snakes. We scored two hits on the U-135, and it broke in two and went down. We searched for survivors and found none.” He put the phone down and turned to Olsen.

“Damned submarine was just sitting there, John. She was lying to. Half of the crew must have been on the deck. Looked like a Sunday afternoon at New London.”

“We don’t have much of a plot, sir,” Olsen said. “Just the firing data and the one set of bearings and range.”

“Didn’t need much,” Brannon grinned. “I saw one guy on the bridge begin to wave his arms. I think he must have seen the wake of the first torpedo because the people on deck began to mill around just before the fish hit. I didn’t see anyone jump over the side, though, so I don’t know what he was waving at.

“Hell of a choice,” Olsen said. “Jump over the side into a mess of big snakes or stand still and get hit with a torpedo.”

Admiral Christie read the Eelfish contact report the next morning at a breakfast meeting of his staff.

“That’s the second U-boat that’s gone north into the Java Sea out of the Indian Ocean,” the Operations Officer said. “And it’s the second one we’ve sunk.” He grinned at the Admiral.

“I thought Mike Brannon had run out of Irish luck after he lost that outer door. So we order him to come home and he bags a German U-boat!”

“That part in the Eelfish contact report about the sea being covered with snakes, big snakes,” the Operations Officer said, squirming in his chair. “I hate snakes!” His assistant, a chubby Commander, looked up from his plate of ham and eggs.

“You’re in the right part of the world for snakes, sir. Australia is the only continent where there are more venomous snakes than harmless ones.”

“Belay the small talk,” Christie said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.” He looked at his Staff Engineer.

“What about repairs to the Eelfish? How long?”

“Can’t say, Admiral. Can’t tell until she gets here. We don’t know if she’s lost the outer door. We don’t know if there’s any damage to the tube itself. Have to wait until she’s here and we can send a man over the side to look. If she needs a new door, if the tube is okay, we’ll have to order a door from New London and have it flown out. That’s one thing we don’t stock in spare parts, a new outer door for a torpedo tube.”

“Have you ordered a new door?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, damn it, order one! Eelfish won’t be in here for another nine, ten days. By that time maybe we can have a new door here.”

The Staff Engineer shook his head slowly. “Sir, I’ll bet you a new set of khakis that when we get all the paperwork done and air mail it there the people on the other end will tell us that we have a Class Z priority and that they can’t ship the damned door until there’s a full moon or some other damn fool thing.”

“Never mind exercising your boundless optimism,” the Admiral said. “Get the order in by radio, not air mail.”

“Yes, sir,” the Staff Engineer said. Admiral Christie looked around the table.

“I can’t fault Mike Brannon for that casualty on the outer door. With Mark Fifteen torpedoes in the after tubes it can happen. It did. But he had a damned good patrol all the same. One tanker down, a good big one, a prisoner who speaks good English and who’s talking a blue streak, and a German submarine. He deserves a medal for this one.”

“He deserves a kick in his big Irish ass,” Captain Sam Rivers, the Admiral’s Operations Officer grumbled. “Three nice fat tankers coming along in a row. The nearest escort way back on the flank and he gets only one of the tankers. He should have got at least two.”

Admiral Christie grinned at Captain Rivers. “Sam, I do believe we’ll send you out on a war patrol. When you bag a great big Jap cruiser we’ll hold an ass-kicking ceremony on the dock because you didn’t get a battleship! You are the hardest damned man to please I ever saw!”

The Eelfish eased carefully into a berth alongside the submarine farthest outboard of the submarine tender in Fremantle, and Admiral Christie bounded over the gangway.

“Damned fine patrol, Mike,” the Admiral boomed. “Shame you had that casualty, but you did a damned fine job.” The Admiral pumped Brannon’s hand and the two men walked forward on the deck.

“We’ve got the prisoner below, sir,” Brannon said. “He talked a blue streak, especially after we sank the U-boat. I’ve had all that typed up and it’s with my patrol report. I hate to say this about the enemy but I have to, sir. He’s a very nice guy. Very nice. I wouldn’t want to see him thrown into some crummy jail cell or strung up by the thumbs. What will they do with him?”

“Our intelligence people here want to have some long talks with him,” Admiral Christie said. “We notified his wife, you know. I wrote her a letter. Once our people here are through with him he’ll be sent back to the States and put in a federal prison. Probably near ‘Frisco I’d think. That way his wife could visit him.”

A Chief Warrant Torpedoman followed by two Chief Torpedomen came down the gangway and picked their way through the Eelfish crew, who were sitting on deck, eating fruit and reading their mail. The Chief Warrant spotted Flanagan and the trio came up to him.

“Monk,” the Chief Warrant said, “Good to see you. What the hell happened in the After Room?” He turned to the two Chiefs with him.

“This is Chief Torpedoman Monk Flanagan, Chief of the Boat. Monk, Randy Nuthall and Bob Wilson. They’re my tube experts. Can we go down to the After Room?”

“Glad to meet you,” Flanagan said to the two Chiefs. “Have to use the Engine Room hatch, Mr. Glover. We’ve got the reload fish for Number Seven in the middle of the room. Can’t get down the hatch.”

He led the way, and when the other three men finished scrambling under the reload torpedo and stood up at the after end of the room, Chief Warrant Pines said, “Why don’t you start at the beginning, Monk?”

Flanagan nodded and told how the tube had been fired, the noise the runaway torpedo had made in the tube, and how he and Fred Nelson had decided to get the fish out of the tube.

“How in the hell did you get a line around the tail of that damned fish?” Wilson said. “My God, the screws turning up maximum RPMs, the hot exhaust gases?”

“You take a look at the screws back there on that fish,” Flanagan said. “That steel cable all wrapped up in the screws, that’s how we did it. We didn’t have to pull the damned thing out of the tube. The Jap dropped a charge right above our bow. You can see the damage up there when you go topside. The boat took a down angle by the bow and this fish came sliding out. Jammed its busted-up screws in the bulkhead to the Engineering Log Room. Then we had to jockey the damned fish out of the bulkhead and then move the after end of the skid over and pull the fish away from the tube so’s we could get the inner door closed. It wasn’t what I’d call a picnic.”

“Water coming in all the time?” Wilson asked. Flanagan nodded. “Got to be waist deep before we got the inner door shut. Helluva mess.”

“How many of you back here?” Chief Nuthall asked.

“The Gunnery Officer, he’s a Reserve named Lee, Fred Nelson, the guy who has the After Room and me. They bled high-pressure air into the room to keep the water down, but it didn’t do much good. The Old Man had to wait until the tin can up above would drop charges, and then he’d put the drain pump on the line and get some water out.”

“What about the outer door?” Warrant Glover asked. “Is it still there?”

“I don’t think so,” Flanagan said. “Nelson didn’t hear it banging or anything on the way home. I’d bet it’s gone.”

“The Squadron Office told me something about the warhead being armed,” Glover said.

“The stream of water coming out of the tube spun the impeller and armed the exploder,” Flanagan said. “We dropped it out and disarmed it.”

“You’ve had a lot of experience taking exploders out of warheads,” Mr. Glover said with a crooked grin.

“Mr. Glover.” Flanagan’s face was set, expressionless, as he looked at the shorter man. “Between you and me and these other two Chiefs we all know damned well that the Mark Six exploder doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to work. You got to know that every boat that goes to sea out of Australia is modifying the exploder to work on contact. And you know something else. It’s all a bunch of fucking nonsense. Pearl Harbor modifies the torpedo exploders for contact before they give them to the boats. But out here, shit!” He laid a hand on the warhead of a reload torpedo. “The way this room is, full of fish, partly flooded, we couldn’t change the exploders back to the way we got them.”

The Chief Warrant Torpedoman looked at Flanagan, the crooked grin still in place. “You figure you’re looking at a court-martial? Stop worrying. The big boss over in Brisbane, Admiral Carpender, he’s been relieved. Admiral Kinkaid took over. He’s an old buddy of Admiral Nimitiz. Admiral Kinkaid has put out the word, and when he puts out the word you obey. The exploders will be modified in the shop before you get them.

“Admiral Christie’s no dummy. He’s whipped and he knows it. As of now you don’t have to go through that crap of modifying the exploders and then changing them back on the way home.

“Now what the hell else is wrong with this fish? At least you got the bastard shut down, and it looks like the air flask and the after body might be okay. No discoloration in the metal that I can see.”

“The tail cone has got to be all messed up inside,” Flanagan said. “When I got that wire into the screws I know it chewed up the idler and the bevel gears. The gyro is okay. We took it out and checked it and stowed it away. I’d guess the depth and steering engines might be okay. I don’t know about the main engine.

“The warhead split when it hit the outer door. It’s been leaking exudate. We sealed the split with Tacki-wax, but I guess you’ll have to deep-six the warhead.” He paused.

“Okay for me to tell the Old Man about the exploders? He’s kinda worried.”

“I don’t see why not,” Warrant Glover said. “I knew Mike Brannon when he was a cub, down in Panama. He’s good people. Just tell him to act surprised when he gets the official word.”

“We’ll go over the side tomorrow morning,” Chief Wilson said. “Take a look at the door area of the tube. If nothing’s busted up we can hang a new door for you as soon as we get it. When we got a copy of your Skipper’s message I told ‘em we didn’t have a spare door. But they fucked around for three days. Then the paperwork took another three days. You know what the Navy is like.

“If we’re lucky we should have a door in another three, maybe four weeks. Then we got to requisition dry-dock space for you. No telling how that will come out. We might get you in dock the next day, might take a week or two. That shouldn’t make you too hot under the collar. The beer is awful good here, and the ladies are something out of this world.”

“If you want to drop by for lunch at the CPO quarters on the tender tomorrow,” Chief Nuthall said, “We could give you a report on what that tube looks like. If you’re interested.”

“I’m interested,” Flanagan said. He led the way up to the deck. John Olsen saw him climb out of the Engine Room hatch and beckoned to him.

“You’d better get the prisoner ready for transfer, Chief. They’re taking him to our intelligence people at the Bend of the Road. But this is an Australian port and we have to observe protocol; they’re sending a squad of Aussie soldiers to take him over there. Make sure he’s in clean clothes and tell him to be on his best behavior.”

Flanagan stood to one side as the prisoner climbed out of the Forward Torpedo Room hatch, blinking in the bright sunshine. He walked slowly down the deck, speaking to crew members, shaking hands. At the gangway a small, wiry Australian Army sergeant had drawn his squad up in formation. He extended a sheaf of papers to Flanagan.

“Just sign this top one, cobber,” the sergeant said to Flanagan. “I keep that one to show you turned this bastard over to me. The others are for your office wallahs to file away. Thank you, cobber, and now we’ll take this slant-eyed bastard to your people.” He grinned evilly at the prisoner, and Flanagan felt a shiver of premonition.

“You will go with these people to our headquarters,” he said to the Japanese. “I wish you luck.” The prisoner bowed from the waist.

“You have treated me humanely and with much kindness,” he said. “I offer you my hope you survive the war and live in peace and happiness.” He bowed again and turned to the squad and smiled.

“Good morning, gentlemen. A nice day for a walk.”

“I’ll good morning you, you yellow son of a bitch!” A soldier in the squad reversed his rifle, raising it, aiming the steel-shod rifle butt at the prisoner’s head. He drew back his arms to smash the prisoner’s head as Flanagan started toward him.

“Hold it soldier!” Mike Brannon’s voice was a whip. The soldier turned, his rifle still upraised, and looked at Brannon, who was standing on the cigaret deck.

“Ground that rifle and come to attention, soldier!” Brannon roared. He climbed down from the cigaret deck and walked, stiff-legged, his eyes flaming, to the Australian sergeant.

“Identify yourself, Sergeant. Name. Rank. Unit. Name of your commanding officer.” Brannon took a piece of paper and a pen from his breast pocket and wrote, as the sergeant, standing stiffly at attention, carefully gave the identification Brannon had demanded.

“This is an American prisoner,” Brannon said slowly. “American. Not Australian. He will be treated by you in full accordance with the Geneva Convention Articles of War. You will escort him to our headquarters as instructed. You will do so without harming him in any way. I am going to telephone as soon as you leave and a doctor will be on hand to examine him. If there is one mark on him, one mark, Sergeant, I’ll have you court-martialed and shot! Is that clear?”

The Australian looked into Brannon’s blazing eyes.

“Perfectly clear, sir.” He saluted, his hand quivering at his hat brim in the approved Australian manner.

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” he said. “These chaps of mine, me, we fought in New Guinea, sir. We know what the Jap did to our nurses when they captured them. I can’t blame any of my chaps for wanting to brain this bast —… this prisoner, sir.

Brannon returned the Australian’s defiant stare. “I think I know how you feel. Bear in mind that this prisoner was not at New Guinea. He is not a Japanese soldier. He is an officer in their Merchant Marine. Based on his conduct aboard my ship I am confident that he will make no effort to hinder you in your work or to escape. Which means that if you report that you had to shoot him dead because he tried to escape I will still have you court-martialed. Carry out your orders, Sergeant.” He returned the sergeant’s salute and watched the squad form around the prisoner, each man carefully keeping his distance, and march up the gangway and into the submarine tender. He turned to John Olsen, who had come to the gangway.

“We brought that fellow so damned far and got so much out of him and they’d have killed him on my own quarterdeck!”

Olsen nodded. “I don’t think the Aussies will ever forget the atrocities the Japs committed against their nurses. I don’t think they should forget. It was a beastly, evil thing to do.”

“Let’s get the Chief of the Boat started on getting the crew ready to go ashore,” Brannon said. “We, you and I and Bob Lee, have got to sit down with Admiral Christie and his staff this afternoon.” He turned to go down the deck, and John LaMark, who had the gangway watch, spoke in a low voice.

“If that Aussie had moved that rifle butt one inch toward the prisoner’s head I’d’ve shot the son of a bitch in the kneecap!”

“Gunner,” Brannon said. “the forty-five pistol the deck watch carries is supposed to be unloaded.”

“Yes, sir,” LaMark said. “I musta forgot that order, sir.” He pulled the gun from its holster and pointed the muzzle skyward and released the clip. He put the clip in his pocket, worked the slide, and caught the live cartridge as it was ejected from the gun.

“Full clip and one up the spout,” Olsen said in a dry tone of voice. “Gunner, you’re a bad man, you know that?”