Silent Sea

CHAPTER 25

Captain Mealey and Captain Bob Rudd were standing on the pier when the Eelfish berthed in Pearl Harbor. The two Captains came down the gangway and shook hands with Mike Brannon. Captain Mealey looked around.

“Where’s John Olsen? Captain Rudd has some very good news for him.” Brannon sent John LaMark in search of the Executive Officer.

“John,” Captain Rudd boomed, “never had the pleasure of knowing you before, but Captain Mealey’s told me so much about you that we’ve decided not to send you to PCO School.” He grinned, his beefy face glowing as Olsen’s jaw fell.

“Any Exec who’s made six successful patrol runs and can satisfy this S.O.B. here who’s called Mealey doesn’t need to go to PCO School anyway. Damned place is crowded with people who don’t rate command half as much as you do, so we’re detaching you today and sending you to take over the Sablefish. She’s on the building ways now, and she won’t go into commission until about next April. She’s going to be a beautiful ship. Got everything in her that all of you people on war patrol have been screaming for.” He reached out a massive hand and began to pump Olsen’s hand. Mike Brannon stood by, his face beaming.

“When do I leave, sir?” Olsen asked. “I mean, I’m not anxious — yes, I am — but I’d like to take everyone to dinner if I have the time.”

“Courier plane out of here at ten hundred tomorrow. You’ll be on it. Captain Mealey has your orders.”

The two Captains and the relief-crew officers and chiefs left, and John Olsen went down below to begin his packing. Brannon was called to the gangway by a seaman and found a serious-looking Lieutenant Commander waiting there for him. “Lieutenant Commander Ralph Ulrich, sir,” the officer said. “Captain Rudd’s yeoman gave me my orders to report aboard as a replacement for Mr. Olsen, sir.” He handed Mike Brannon a set of orders and waited as Brannon read through them.

“Welcome aboard, sir,” Brannon said. “We’re about to go to the hotel. If you wish you can report here each day and sort of oversee the refit. You’re welcome, of course, to go to the hotel and meet the crew, the other officers. See me at any time you wish. I’m not being inhospitable. The crew is tired, the Wardroom is tired. It’s been a very long and boring patrol.”

“But a successful one,” Lieutenant Commander Ulrich said. “You rescued the entire crew of a B-twenty-nine. That’s ten lives saved, sir.”

“The Staff calls it successful, I don’t,” Brannon said. “We didn’t add a single flag to the Conning Tower.” Ulrich looked at the side of the Conning Tower where the Rising Sun and merchant flags of the ships sunk by the Eelfish showed as a brilliant patch of color against the blotched gray war paint.

“I understand, sir,” Ulrich said. “I’ll report to you every other day if that’s all right with you?” Brannon nodded and went below to pack for the two weeks of rest and relaxation that he felt he and his crew had earned.

When he returned from the rest period Brannon summoned his new Executive Officer to the Wardroom. He had the new officer’s jacket opened in front of him.

“I see that you made one war patrol in the Flying Fish, early in the war,” Brannon said. “Captain Donaho gave you good marks as an Assistant Engineering Officer. A good word from Mr. Donaho is a volume of praise from any other officer.”

“I hope I earned his good word,” Ulrich said solemnly.

“I’m sure you did. Now let me explain a few things to you sir. When we leave for sea this will be our seventh war patrol. With very few exceptions every man aboard this ship put her in commission and has made every war patrol. We’re a very close-knit bunch of people. It won’t be easy for you, coming aboard. I will do everything I can to make you welcome, because you are welcome, but submariners, as you should know, can be clannish. John Olsen was not only respected by the entire crew, he was liked.” He looked at the younger officer.

“You’re Academy, sir. I expect nothing but the best from you.”

“I expect to give my best, sir.”

“I’m sure you do,” Brannon said. “I should warn you in advance that I think Eelfish has the best Wardroom in the whole submarine navy.” He grinned wryly. “I should also warn you that the two of us are the only Academy officers in the entire Wardroom. All the rest are Reservists.”

“All of them, sir?”

“All. And I couldn’t ask for better men, not if I could have the pick of the top five of any year you can mention at the Academy. Half of the crew are Reservists, as well. I couldn’t ask for better men. On this ship we are submariners. Nothing more, nothing less. As a crew we’ve gone through some pretty hellish times, one of them with Captain Mealey.”

Ulrich stared at his lean hands and then looked at Mike Brannon. “I know, sir, Captain Mealey gave me a copy of all your patrol reports and action reports. I can see what you mean, the Mako, all that.”

“The Mako. All that.” Brannon said. He stood up. “I depend on my Executive Officer to be my right arm, Ralph. Your right arm will be the Chief of the Boat. A Chief Torpedoman named Flanagan. Called Monk by his friends because his shoulders slope downward. Depend on him. He won’t let you down. No one in this crew will let you down. Now I want your estimate of the work done by the relief crew.”

“It’s all done except the hull check, sir. The Yard people are worried about that time you went to the bottom off Borneo.”

“We went through all that in Fremantle,” Brannon said sharply. “Why is it necessary to do it now?”

“Well, ah, the people in Pearl don’t really trust the people in Fremantle, sir.”

“Hell and damnation,” Brannon growled. “The damned war will be over before we ever get back out to sea, and if it isn’t there won’t be any targets left to shoot at.”

In the next two weeks, while Eelfish was waiting to get dry-dock space and during the week the ship was in dry dock, Ralph Ulrich proved his worth. No matter what Brannon wanted Ulrich seemed to know it ahead of time. Materiel needed by the Eelfish Chiefs for work that wasn’t obtainable unless one went through endless red tape was somehow available at once if Ulrich took charge, using all the contacts he had made in almost three years as Captain Rudd’s Staff Engineering Officer. Chief Morris gave his assessment of Ralph Ulrich to Mike Brannon, saying, “Good man to have around. Knows every son of a bitch in the Yard who has anything we might need. Gets it with no fuss or bother.”

The day before Eelfish was to sail on her seventh war patrol a tall, broad-shouldered Lieutenant climbed out of a Staff car on the dock and asked for permission to come aboard.

“Captain aboard?” he asked the gangway watch.

“He’s below in the Wardroom, holding a meeting with the officers,” the gangway watch said. The Lieutenant dropped down the Forward Torpedo Room hatch and went to the Wardroom. Mike Brannon looked up with an expression of irritation on his face as the Lieutenant stepped through the green curtain, and then he got to his feet, his hand out, a broad smile on his face.

“By Heaven, Dusty Rhodes as ever was, as my good Irish mother used to say.” He gripped the Lieutenant’s hand and pumped it up and down.

“This is Dusty Rhodes, gentlemen,” he said to the officers sitting around the table. “He used to be our Chief of the Boat in the Mako. Got bumped up to J.G. after the third run. How the hell are you, Dusty? How’s John Barber, your wives, children?”

“Four-oh on all sides,” Rhodes said. “Barber is in charge of all the engine room work on the boats coming in from patrol. His wife and daughter are fine. So is my wife and my sons. Your lady and daughter okay?”

“I guess they are,” Brannon said. “I haven’t seen them since forty-three, almost two years. This a friendly visit, or are you official?”

“Both,” Dusty Rhodes said. “I’d like you to come to dinner tonight at my house, if you can. Barber and his wife will be there.

“The official part is that you’re getting a few new-type torpedoes. They’re called ‘Cuties.’ Kind of small. They’ll load them this afternoon, and I’ve got a savvy Chief who can fill your people in the Torpedo Rooms in on how to service them. One of the officers who worked on the development of these new fish will be over after lunch to fill you and your officers in on how you use these things.”

“Why that?” Bob Lee asked. “What’s different about these fish?”

“Well, for one thing, they’ve got a sonar ear in the warhead,” Rhodes said. “It picks up screws and guides the torpedo in to the screws. So to be safe you fire them from a depth of one hundred fifty feet. That way, by the time the fish has planed up to its depth set in the tube it’s far enough away from you that it doesn’t turn around and come back and bite you in the ass. For another thing, they’re a lot slower than the Fourteens or even the electric Mark Eighteens.”

“Have they been used?” Brannon said.

“Captain Bennet in Sea Owl had some pretty good results with the first ones we sent to sea,” Rhodes said. “He said they weren’t much use against a fast target but they’re hell on patrol craft and picket boats, and that’s about all that’s out there right now.

“What will they think of next?” Jerry Gold said.

“Don’t wish for anything, sir,” Rhodes said with a grin. “I’ve got a five-inch rocket launcher up there in the shop and hundreds of rounds of rockets, and some lucky boat is going to have that monstrosity bolted to its foredeck.”

“What can you use a rocket launcher for?” Gold asked.

“Shore bombardment,” Rhodes said.

“Forget I spoke,” Gold said hastily. “My mother wouldn’t want me bombarding a seashore.” Rhodes grinned and turned to Brannon. “If you can make dinner tonight I’ll send a car for you about eighteen hundred.”

“I’d love to come to dinner,” Brannon said. “A car? Does a full Lieutenant rate a car?”

“This is the Pearl Harbor Navy, sir,” Rhodes said. “Nothing but the best for the fighting men.”

Eelfish slipped past the net tender at the entrance to the harbor and turned its bullnose toward the west. The destroyer that had led the submarine out of the harbor whistled in salutation and turned away to re-enter the harbor. Later, down in the Wardroom, Mike Brannon opened his patrol orders, read through them briefly, and pushed them over to Ralph Ulrich, who was sitting at the table with his charts and navigational gear.

“Doesn’t sound very exciting,” Brannon growled. “Lifeguard duty and sweep up any picket boats that might be around to give warning of the B-twenty-nine raids. Targets must be awfully scarce out there.”

“Did you hear about the Japanese attempt to smash up the invasion fleet at Okinawa, sir?” Ulrich asked.

“No,” Brannon said. “One of the things you have to learn, Ralph, is that no one tells any submarine captain anything. What happened?”

“The invasion of Okinawa took place on April first,” Ulrich said in his careful voice. “On the fifth the Japanese decided to send a task force from southern Japan down to Okinawa to smash the invasion forces. The task force was the super-battleship Yamato, a light cruiser, and seven or eight destroyers.”

“That wouldn’t be a big enough force,” Brannon said.

“The Japanese had been attacking the invasion ships at Okinawa with hundreds of kamikaze planes, sir, suicide planes that carried big bombs. The pilots crashed them into their targets. The Japanese figured that they had done a lot more damage than they did, although they did enough. They hit about forty ships with those planes. The task force was sent to mop up what was left.

“Our intelligence people say the Fleet Commanders couldn’t find any oil to fuel their ships. All they had in all of southern Japan was something like twenty-five hundred barrels of oil. Not nearly enough fuel for the one-thousand-mile round trip to Okinawa. But they went anyway.

“The intelligence experts reason that the battleship ran so low on fuel it couldn’t maneuver. It had no air cover, and our carrier planes sank the battleship, the cruiser, and some of the destroyers.” He looked at Brannon.

“The submarines were responsible for that victory. The reason Japan hasn’t got any oil or anything else it needs to fuel its war machine is the submarines.”

Brannon nodded. “Set the course for Midway. We’ll top off our fuel tanks there.”

Eelfish reached its patrol station and began to prowl the area assigned to it, staying on the surface night and day. The lookouts and the radar watch reported constant aircraft contacts, bombers going to Japan to hit its cities and returning. From time to time there were reports of planes being ditched and the reports from submarines racing to pick up the survivors.

“The trouble is,” Mike Brannon complained one evening at dinner, “we’re a little bit too much to the west of the flight line from the Marianas to Tokyo. Bungo Strait, where we are now, used to be a hot spot when Japan had warships that could put to sea. Now it’s dead.

“Ralph, you know a lot of people in Pearl. Draft a message asking we be reassigned to a more productive area. Send it with an information tag for anyone you think might argue our case for us.”

A week later Eelfish was moved to the north and east. Four times in a matter of seven days Eelfish raced at top speed toward an area where a plane reported that it was going into the water, and four times the Eelfish was just a bit too far away and lost the race to a closer submarine. Jerry Gold began muttering about fuel-oil supplies and hinting that high-speed chases that were likely to be fruitless before they began were draining his fuel-oil tanks.

The emergency signal came late in the afternoon watch. It was broadcast by a “Dumbo,” one of several communications aircraft that cruised along the flight route of the big bombers that were leveling Tokyo with fire raids. A B-29 with two engines shot away was coming down. Ralph Ulrich, efficient as always, had the plane’s reported location on his plotting board in little more than a minute.

“We’re nine thousand yards away, sir. Twenty minutes at fifteen knots. We should steer course zero four zero.”

“Come left to zero four zero. Make turns for fifteen knots,” Brannon ordered. He turned to climb up the ladder to the Conning Tower. “Assemble the rescue party in the Control Room. I want a constant radar search.”

Five minutes later, as Eelfish raced toward the area where the B-29 had gone down, Rafferty reported that he had a contact on radar.

“Contact bears two six zero, repeat, two six zero. Range is one three zero zero zero yards, repeat, thirteen thousand yards, Bridge.”

Lieutenant Jerry Gold turned in the bridge to inform Mike Brannon on the cigaret deck and saw Brannon beside him.

“Sound General Quarters,” Brannon said. “Secure the radar for five minutes and then take another bearing.” He stood to one side in the bridge, listening to the reports that came up through the bridge speaker. Five minutes later he nodded at Gold, who ordered another radar sweep.

“Contact now bears two five six. Repeat, two five six. Range is one one five zero zero yards. Repeat, eleven thousand five hundred yards,” Jim Michaels’s voice was calm.

“Contact course is zero nine eight, Bridge. Contact speed is fifteen knots.” Ulrich’s report was delivered in the emotionless tone he used in times of stress.

“Very well,” Brannon said. He bent to the bridge transmitter.

“Plot, we have to assume this is an enemy ship. What does his course show in relation to our last position of the downed plane?”

“He’s heading right for them, Bridge,” Ulrich said. “He’s a little over fifteen thousand yards from the plane. Request the Captain to take a look at the plot, Bridge.”

Brannon went down the ladder to the Control Room. Ulrich pointed at the plot with a pair of dividers.

“We can come right to course three five eight, sir, and dive now. We’re thirty-two hundred yards from his track as he moves toward the plane. Gives us plenty of time.”

“Very well,” Brannon said. He raised his voice so it would carry to the bridge.

“Dive the ship! Come left to course three five eight.” He heard the thuds of the lookouts hitting the deck in the Conning Tower and the blast of the diving alarm. Eelfish slid downward.

“Forty feet, Jerry,” Brannon said. “Raise the radar mast. I want to get one more bearing on this rascal and see if he maintains course and speed.”

“He’s twenty-five minutes away from the plane at his present speed,” Ulrich said. “We’ll have to stooge around a little, depending on how you want to attack, sir.”

“Depends on what he is,” Brannon said. “How did he look on the radar screen, Mr. Michaels?”

“Small, sir. Not a big pip at all.”

“Probably a patrol boat,” Brannon said. He looked at the plot and picked up a pair of dividers and pricked off a distance along the course Eelfish was on.

“I don’t want to attack him when he’s close to the plane, if the plane is still there. I don’t want him to get close enough to machine-gun the fliers if they’re in rubber boats.”

“I figured that, sir,” Ulrich said. “We can shoot him when he’s still a little over three thousand yards from where we think the plane went down. That’s well over a mile from the plane area.”

“Give me two radar checks, three minutes apart,” Brannon ordered. He watched as Ulrich drew in the plot as the information came to him from Michaels.

“He’s on course, still making the same speed,” Mike Brannon said. “We’ll shoot at him with a Cutie, and if that misses we’ll nail him with a regular torpedo, and if that fails, by God, I’ll battle-surface!”

“We’re carrying Cuties in tubes Five and Six,” Flanagan said from the vent manifold. “Mark Eighteens, the electric fish, in tubes One and Two, sir.”

“Very well,” Brannon said. “Sixty-five feet. Sonar, start tracking as soon as you’re able to get a good fix on him.”

He watched the plot of the attack slowly develop, looking at his watch from time to time.

“It’s time,” he said to Ulrich. He turned to Jerry Gold. “One hundred and sixty feet. Talker, inform the Forward Room that we’ll fire two Cuties from Five and Six at one hundred sixty feet and then come back up to sixty-five feet. I want the outer tube doors on One and Two opened as we hit periscope depth.”

Blake was now the sole contact Brannon had with his target. He sat in the Conning Tower, the big mufflike earphones clamped over his ears, his whole being centered on the beat of the single propeller that he could hear coming closer and closer. As he fed his bearings to the plotting party the rate of advance of the target along the drawn-in course Ulrich had given for the enemy ship moved with mathematical precision toward the small X on the plot that marked the position of the downed aircraft. Eelfish slid through the sea, 160 feet below the surface.

“One minute, sir,” Ulrich said. Brannon nodded. “Hell of a way to conduct a torpedo attack with no sighting of the target for, what, damned near twenty minutes. Stand by forward…”

“You have a solution any time, Captain,” Arbuckle said from the Conning Tower.

“Now!” Ulrich whispered.

“Fire five!” Brannon said. He waited the ten seconds he had been instructed to wait between Cutie firings.

“Fire six!” Another long ten seconds crept by and then Paul Blake reported.

“First torpedo running straight away from us, sir. Second torpedo is following the first, sir.”

“That’s what they said would happen when they briefed me in Pearl,” Brannon said. “Once the first Cutie gets clear of the ship the second one will follow the screws of the first until the first one zeroes in on the target screws. If it hits, the second fish will go right into the explosion area.”

“Torpedo track is sixteen hundred yards, sir. Running time to the target should be one minute fifty seconds. We should have an indication in… in one minute, sir.”

Brannon waited, feeling the tenseness in his legs as he stood at the gyro table staring at the plot, watching the black second hand on the stopwatch hitch its way around the dial.

“Five seconds,” he whispered, half to himself, and then a distant rumbling sound shook the Eelfish, followed in ten seconds by another slight shock that could be felt in the hull of the Eelfish.

“I think that was a hit, sir!” Blake called out. “Two good big explosions in my gear, sir.”

“Sixty-five feet!” Brannon ordered. “Close the outer doors on Five and Six. Stand by to open the outer doors on One and Two.” He scrambled up the ladder to the Conning Tower and stood by the periscope.

“Passing seventy-five feet, sir,” Gold called out.

“Open outer doors on One and Two! Stand by for a periscope observation!”

“Mark!” Brosmer read off the bearing and Arbuckle cranked the bearing into the TDC.

“He’s dead in the water. Set torpedo depth two feet. Range is twelve hundred yards. There’s a fire aft, on his fantail. Angle on the bow is one zero zero.”

“Depth set two feet on One and Two,” Flanagan said. “You’ve got a solution, sir,” Arbuckle said.

“Stand by forward…

“Fire one!” He waited, his eye glued to the periscope lens. “Son of a bitch is flying his Rising Sun flag… WOW!” A crashing explosion battered at the Eelfish.

“Hit! Dead center. Bring me up to forty feet. Radar search all around.”

Eelfish slanted upward, and Brannon heard Michaels report there were no contacts.

“Machine gunners to the Control Room. Rescue party stand by. Ulrich, I want you with me on the bridge. Surface! Surface! Surface!” Eelfish shuddered as the high-pressure air slammed into her ballast tanks and she rose, bursting through the surface of the ocean with a great cloud of spray.

“Lookouts!” Brannon shouted as the three men clambered up into the periscope shears. “We’ve got some aviators out there on the starboard bow somewhere. All ahead full on all four main engines.

“I’ve got ‘em!” the starboard lookout yelled. “Three small rubber boats bearing zero one zero, Bridge!”

“Come right to course zero one zero,” Brannon ordered. “Make turns for two-thirds speed. Rescue party to the deck as soon as we’re steady on the new course. Machine gunners to the bridge. Load and lock weapons. Mr. Ulrich, take the conn. I want to put the ship between that patrol boat and the fliers.” He watched as Ralph Ulrich maneuvered the Eelfish so the bulk of the submarine was between the listing patrol boat and the three rubber boats full of fliers.

“I thought we got a good solid hit on that son of a bitch, but he’s still floating,” Brannon growled.

“He’s got a wooden hull,” Ulrich volunteered. “They usually absorb a torpedo hit, even gunfire, better than metal ones.”

“Get those people aboard as quick as you can,” Brannon called down to Chief Flanagan on deck. Flanagan raised an arm to indicate he understood, and with Steve Petreshock and Fred Nelson assisting he hauled the fliers out of the rubber boats and up on the deck and hustled them aft to the ladder that led up to the cigaret deck.

“Welcome aboard,” Brannon said, smiling. “Who’s in command?”

“I am, sir, Lieutenant Colonel Roberts, Jack Roberts.” A tall, lean man with a sweeping mustache stepped out of the group of fliers.

“I’m Captain Brannon, Mike Brannon. All your people here? Anyone hurt?”

“We all made it, no one hurt,” the Colonel said.

“Small boat standing around the bow of the patrol boat, Bridge!” The port lookout’s voice was high, excited. “Man in the midships section of the boat is waving at us, Bridge. About ten people in the boat. The boat is under way on its own power, Bridge.”

“Let’s see what he wants, Mr. Ulrich,” Brannon said. “Gunners, stand by if he tries any funny business.”

“That’s close enough!” Ulrich yelled at the people in the small boat. “Do any of you speak English, and if you do what do you want?”

The man in the center of the boat who had been waving at the submarine raised his voice. “I speak English, sir. Can you give us a course to steer to land?”

“We’ll give you a course in a minute,” Brannon called out. “Do you need anything else, food, water, medicine?”

“We have enough water for four days. We have no food. I have two men with burns, sir.”

“Stand clear of me,” Brannon shouted back. “We’ll make up a couple of bags of canned food for you and give you some sulfa powder for your burned men. I’ll tell you when to come alongside to get the stuff. Can you tell me the name of your ship and commanding officer?”

“I am not required to do that under the rules of war, sir.”

“Very well,” Brannon said. He turned as Scotty Rudolph hauled the second of two clean garbage bags bulging with cans of food up through the bridge hatch. “We can make the transfer on the port side, Captain,” Ulrich said. “Chief Flanagan has a safety line rigged, so he can put a man down on the pressure hull.”

“Very well,” Brannon said. “What turns are we making?”

“Making turns for three knots, sir,” Ulrich said.

“That shouldn’t be too fast for him,” Brannon said. He waved his arm at the small boat. “Come alongside. When you have the food aboard steer course two seven five. You are about eighty miles from land. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir, and we thank you,” the man in the boat yelled back. “We should steer course two seven five and we are eighty miles from home.”

The boat eased in toward the Eelfish. Chief Flanagan tied a safety line around Petreshock’s waist and took a turn around the barrel of the deck gun as the torpedoman eased his way down on to the curve of the wet pressure hull, clamping the fingers of his left hand between two deck boards. Fred Nelson, crouching on the deck, handed Petreshock a bag of food. The small boat drew closer, and Petreshock could see the faces of the men in the boat, closed, without expression. He swung the bag of food back and forth, gauging the distance to the small boat.

“That’s close enough,” Flanagan shouted. The man in the boat who had done the talking to the submarine nodded and raised his right arm. Petreshock saw the sudden gout of flame, and then he collapsed on the pressure hull, legs sprawling, blood staining the sea as his body splashed into the water. Fred Nelson bellowed, grabbed the safety line, and hauled Petreshock’s body out of the water as the man in the boat fired his pistol again and again.

The stuttering roar of the twin twenty-millimeter machine guns was drowned out by Booth’s high-pitched Rebel yell. The cluster of men standing in the small boat went down under the hail of 20-mm shells. From the cigaret deck aft of the bridge the quad pom-pom also began to bark, its explosive shells ripping into the Japanese sailors, tearing at the hull of the small boat.

Mike Brannon leaned over the bridge rail. Flanagan and Nelson had dragged Petreshock’s limp body up on the deck and were moving aft, toward the ladder to the cigaret deck. Brannon bent his head to the bridge transmitter.

“Stand by below to take a wounded man.” He turned to Ulrich. “Circle that patrol boat. I want that boat sunk! We should be able to do it with the pom-pom and the twenties.” Flanagan touched his Captain on the arm.

“Steve’s bleedin’ like hell, but he’s breathing pretty good. He got it in the head, above his left ear, up in the hair. I couldn’t see how bad.”

“Very well, Chief. Get these fliers below as soon as you can. I’ll be down as soon as we get things squared away up here.” He turned as the quad pom-pom began systematically to stitch the hull of the listing patrol boat. From the gun platform below, and in front of the bridge, John Wilkes Booth was lashing at the patrol boat with the twin twenties. A sudden gush of flame erupted from the midships section of the patrol boat, followed by a dull explosion. The ship rolled over and began to sink.

“Cease fire!” Brannon yelled. “Ralph, secure the gunnery party. As soon as they’re below dive the ship. I want to go to one hundred feet while we get this mess sorted out.” He dropped through the hatch and went down to the Control Room. Lieutenant Jerry Gold nodded toward the Crew’s Mess. “Petreshock is in the Crew’s Mess, sir, with Doc. The fliers are back there also.” He turned as the diving alarm sounded and a lookout slid down the ladder and manned the bow planes.

“One degree down bubble,” Gold ordered. “They’re probably working on Steve back there, and I don’t want the poor bastard to slide off a mess table on deck.”

Brannon shouldered his way through the people crowded around a mess table where Doc Wharton was working on Petreshock.

“Far as I can tell, Captain, all he’s got is one hell of a deep slot cut in his skull. Bone ain’t broke, though. Like every other torpedoman he’s got a thick head.” He looked up as Fred Nelson, his eyes glaring fiercely from either side of his great hawk nose, growled.

“I can clean the wound,” Wharton said, “and give him a shot to put him to sleep for a few hours. When he wakes up maybe then we can find out how much damage was done, test his reactions, how he feels.”

“Very well,” Brannon said. “But if he needs more than we can give him let me know and we’ll head for the nearest friendly port.” He nodded to the Lieutenant Colonel. “If you and your officers will follow me, sir, we’ll go up to the Wardroom and get some coffee and something to eat.”

Pete Mahaffey was waiting with a platter of sandwiches and pots of coffee. Mike Brannon sipped at a cup of coffee while the fliers ate. The Lieutenant Colonel put his cup down and wiped his mustache with a handkerchief.

“We owe you a vote of thanks, Captain,” he said. “Our radioman didn’t get a receipt for our Mayday call, and we figured we might have gone down with no one knowing where we were. When we saw that Jap ship coming toward us we figured it was a prison camp for all of us for sure. But then we saw an explosion. Guess that was your torpedo. It didn’t make much of a noise or anything. I thought a torpedo hitting a ship would be like a bomb.”

“I think we had a low-order explosion with that warhead,” Brannon said. “It happens every once in a while. Same as you get dud bombs, I guess.

“I want my Chief Pharmacist’s Mate to take a look at all of you, Colonel. Then if you would give our yeoman your names, ranks or ratings, and serial numbers we can notify your home base that you’re all safe.” He stopped as a firm rap sounded on the bulkhead of the Wardroom. Doc Wharton stuck his head in through the curtains.

“Steve came to while I was bandaging his head, Captain. He won’t take a shot. Says that all’s wrong with him is a big headache. He wants to go back on watch.”

“Negative on the watch,” Brannon said. “Tell him my orders are light duty only. Keep an eye on him, Doc.” Wharton nodded and left.

“I can’t figure out why that guy opened fire,” Brannon said. He looked at the fliers sitting at the Wardroom table.

“We fight different battles, I guess, but it’s been evident to us for months now that this war is over. I don’t think a submarine has seen an oil tanker or any merchant ship of any size for months, now. We haven’t seen a Jap warship for, oh, weeks. The information we get is that the Japs are out of oil.”

The Colonel nodded his head. “We hear the same thing. I’ve been flying that route from Tinian to Japan for about six weeks now. Hardly ever see a ship down there, except for those little ships like the one you just sank. Tokyo is half burned away now. Same with the other industrial areas. We drop fire bombs on ‘em by the ton. But I guess they don’t give up easy.”

In the Crew’s Mess the off-duty crewmen surrounded John LaMark and John Wilkes Booth, the gunners who had killed the Japanese in the small boat and then sunk the patrol craft.

“Can’t figure that dude in that small boat,” LaMark said. “The son of a bitch is looking right at those gun barrels, he can see that both of us, me and the Chief, are staring right at him, and he still begins loosing off rounds out of that damned pistol he was hiding. Hell! He knew that if he made a wrong move he was going to buy the farm but he did it anyway. Can’t figure it.”

“Man takes on odds like that dude in that boat did,” Chief Booth said. “Just think what a picnic the Marines are going to have when they invade Japan itself. Jap kids will be dropping grenades on every round-eye head they can see.”

Mike Brannon came in and stood at the head of the Wardroom table. “We want all of you to be as comfortable as possible,” he said to the fliers, “but you have to understand that we don’t have any extra bunks. Your people will have to hot-bunk it with our people. We hope you’ll understand and be patient.”

“You must have done this before,” Colonel Roberts said.

“Only once, off the Bonin Islands. We picked up a crew from a B-twenty-nine. The plane wouldn’t sink and we had to shell it. A Major was the plane captain and it upset him quite a bit when we had to sink his plane.”

“Major Haskins,” the Colonel said. “Kind of a short fella, always trying to grow a mustache. Never could quite make it.”

“That was his name,” Brannon said. “How is he?”

“Dead,” the Colonel said. “Jap Zero did the suicide thing. Crashed him head on at twenty thousand feet. Both planes exploded.” Brannon nodded slowly.

Two days later, cruising on the surface, the Eelfish was challenged by an Army B-25. Lieutenant Bob Lee, who had the OOD watch, made the correct reply by voice radio and watched as the plane swung far out ahead of him and then came back, aiming directly at the submarine. Lee yelled at the lookouts and hit the diving alarm. As the Eelfish passed 100 feet with a steep downward angle the B-25 dropped a string of bombs off to the port side. The explosions shook the submarine and later, in the Wardroom, Mike Brannon had pointed things to say about bomb-happy pilots.

The days wore on, and life in the Eelfish became difficult. The ten extra men aboard complicated the sleeping arrangements, and Scotty Rudolph swore silently as he prepared extra meals from his shrinking food supplies. Shortly after dark on a rainy night Jim Michaels brought a message in to Mike Brannon, who was drinking coffee in the Wardroom and talking with the plane commander. Brannon decoded the message and called for Ralph Ulrich.

“We’ve got to get out of this area,” he told Ulrich. “We’re right in the way of Admiral Halsey’s task force on its way to hit at Japan.” He looked at the pilot of the B-29.

“If one of our own aircraft tries to bomb us I don’t want to take a chance with some edgy destroyer skipper.”

Eelfish raced to the northeast, and after it circled for four days Brannon asked for orders. The answer came back in 48 hours; return to Pearl Harbor. The rescued fliers groaned in unison. All their personal belongings were on Tinian Island, in the Marianas.

During the midwatch on the morning of August 8 the Chief of the Watch notified the Bridge that an Ultra radio message was coming in. Brannon left the cigaret deck and in the deserted silence of the Wardroom decoded the message. Ralph Ulrich, possessed of the intuition that every good Executive Officer must have, appeared in the doorway of the Wardroom holding two cups of coffee and stared at Brannon’s ashen face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, putting the cups on the table.

“The President has announced that the most destructive weapon known to mankind has been dropped on a Japanese city called Hiroshima. This one weapon has obliterated the entire city and killed everyone in it!”

“My God!” Ulrich said. “Did he say who dropped this weapon?”

“A bomber from Tinian,” Brannon replied tonelessly. “That’s the home base of our passengers,” Ulrich said. “I’ll get their skipper in here.”

Lieutenant Colonel Roberts came into the Wardroom rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Ulrich gave him a cup of coffee and Brannon handed him the message. He read it and nodded.

“So they finally used it,” he said.

“It?” Brannon said.

“We called it the ‘Thing,’ ” Roberts said. “Two weeks or so before you picked us up they cordoned off a whole corner of the field where we flew from. Never saw so many civilians in the war zone in my life. My crew chief told me they were all big-dome scientists and they had some new weapon that could wipe out a city the size of Chicago. No one believed that, naturally. But the rumors kept flying around, and when they built up this great big bomb, funny looking thing my crew chief said, big and round and fat, and then they started building a second bomb well, we sort of began to believe them. Some, not all.”

He sipped at his coffee. “I wonder,” he said in a reflective tone, “if the shock wave from something like that would affect the aircraft?”

The second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki as the Eelfish neared Midway en route to Pearl Harbor. Before Eelfish arrived at Pearl the war was over.