"Yes, sir?" the chief of the boat, the senior noncommissioned officer aboard, said. He had been standing only a few feet away, invisible in the darkness.
"Take this officer to the wardroom," MacGregor said. "See that he's comfortable, and then tell Doc to prepare to take aboard nine other wounded. Tell him they are… in the same condition as Captain Banning."
"The 'same condition' is blind, Chief," Captain Banning said matter-of-factly. "Once you face it, you get used to it in a hurry."
"Aye, aye, sir," the chief of the boat said to MacGregor, then put his hand on Captain Banning's good arm. "Will you come this way, please, sir?"
MacGregor noticed for the first time that Captain Banning was wearing a web belt, and that a holstered Colt.45 automatic pistol was hanging from the belt.
A blind man doesn't need a pistol, MacGregor thought. He shouldn't have one. But that guy's a Marine officer, blind or not, and I'm not going to lack him when he's down by taking it away from him.
The chief torpedoman, who had been supervising the storage of the gold crates in the fore and aft torpedo rooms, came onto the deck.
"All the crates are aboard and secure, sir," he said.
"Let's have a look, Chief," MacGregor said, and walked toward the hatch in the conning tower.
The substitution of gold for torpedos had been on the basis of weight rather than volume. The equivalent weight of gold in the forward torpedo rooms was a small line of wooden boxes chained in place down the center line. The torpedo room looked empty with the torpedoes gone.
"We're taking nine blinded then with us, Chief," Commander MacGregor said. "Ten, counting that Marine captain. I said they would have to bed down on the deck. But we can do better than that, with all this room, can't we?"
"I'll do what I can, Skipper," the chief torpedoman said.
"Let's have a look aft," MacGregor said.
Ten minutes later, the Pickerel got underway, her diesels throbbing powerfully.
Launched at the Electric Boat Works in Connecticut in 1936, the Pickerel had been designed for Pacific Service; that is, for long patrols. Since she was headed directly for the Hawaiian Islands, fuel consumption was not a problem. With at least freedom from the concern, Commander MacGregor ordered turns made for seventeen knots. Although this greatly increased fuel consumption, he believed it was justified under the circumstances. The farther he moved away from the island of Luzon into the South China Sea, the less were the chances he would be spotted by the Japanese.
There was time, until dawn-too much time-for Commander MacGregor to consider that he was now what he trained all his adult life to be, master of a United States warship at sea, in a war; but that, instead of going in harm's way, searching out the enemy, to close with them, to send them to the bottom, what he was doing was sailing through enemy-controlled waters, doing his very best to make sure the enemy didn't see him.
The one thing he could not do was fight. He hated to see night begin to turn into day. He had been running at seventeen knots for seven hours. And he had thus made-a rough calculation, not taking into consideration the current-about 120 nautical miles. But as he had been on a north-northwest course, heading into the South China Sea as well as up the western shore of Luzon, he wasn't nearly as far north as he would have liked to be.
He was, in fact, very near the route the Japanese were using to bring supplies and reinforcements to the Lingayen Gulf, where they had made their first amphibious landing in the Phillipines three days after they had taken out almost all of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.
There would be Japanese ships in the area, accompanied by destroyers, and there would be at least reconnaissance aircraft, if not bombers. This meant he would have to spend the next sixteen hours or so submerged. Since full speed submerged on batteries was eight knots, he would not get far enough on available battery power to make it worthwhile; for it would not get him out of the Japanese shipping lane to the Lingayen Gulf. But he had to hide.
"Dive," Commander MacGregor ordered. "Dive! Dive! Dive!" the talker repeated.
The lookouts, then the officer of the deck, then the chief of the boat, dropped quickly through the hatch.
The captain took one last look through his binoculars as water began to break over the bow, and then dropped through the hatch himself.
The roar of the diesels had died; now there was the whine of the electric motors.
MacGregor issued the necessary orders. They were to maintain headway, that was all; as little battery energy as possible was to be expended. They might need the batteries to run if they were spotted by a Japanese destroyer. He was to be called immediately if Sonar heard anything at all, and in any event fifteen minutes before daylight. Then be made his way to his cabin.
Captain Banning was sitting on a Navy-gray metal chair before the fold-down desk. MacGregor was a little surprised that the Marine officer was not in a bunk.
"Good morning," MacGregor said. "You heard? We're submerged."
"And you want to hit the sack," Banning said. "If you'll point me in the direction of where you want me, I'll get out of your way."
"Coffee keeps most people awake," MacGregor said. "Perverse bastard that I am, I always have a cup before I go to bed. You're not keeping me up."
"I'm not sleepy," Banning said. "I've been cat-napping. I did that all the time ashore, but I thought that was because it was quiet. I thought the noises on here would keep me awake, but they haven't."
"I think it would be easier for both of us if you used my bunk," MacGregor said. "Whenever you're ready…"
"I could use a cup of coffee," Banning said. "Yours is first rate. And it's in short supply ashore."
"I'll get us a pitcher," MacGregor said. "Cream and sugar?"
"Black, please," Banning said.
When he returned with the stainless steel pitcher of coffee, MacGregor filled Banning's cup three-quarters full.
"There's your coffee, Captain," he said.
"I heard," Banning said. "Thank you."
He moved his hand across the table until his hand touched the mug.
"I issued, earlier on tonight, an interesting order for a Marine officer," Banning said. "'Piss like a woman.'"
"Excuse me?" MacGregor said.
"I went to the head," Banning said. "Ashore, you learn to piss by locating the target with your knees, then direct fire by sound. I learned that won't work with your toilet, and, to keep your head from being awash with blind men's piss, went and passed the word to the others."
He's bitter, MacGregor thought. Then, Why the hell not? "How did it happen?" MacGregor blurted. "The U.S. Army done it to me," Banning said, bitterly. "The one thing they did right over here was lay in adequate stocks of artillery ammunition."
"I don't quite follow you, Captain Banning," Commander MacGregor said.
Banning very carefully raised his coffee mug to his lips and took a swallow before replying.
"I was at Lingayen Gulf, when the Japs landed," he said. "I got the arm there"-he raised his arm-in-a-sling-"and took some shrapnel in the legs. Naval artillery from their destroyers. The kid with me… I shouldn't call him a kid, I suppose, a mustang second lieutenant, and one hell of a Marine…" (A mustang is an officer commissioned from the ranks.) "Anyway, he got me to a school, where a Filipino nurse took care of me and hid me from the Japanese until I was mobile. Then she arranged to get me through the Japanese lines. We'd almost made it when the U.S. Army artillery let fly." "Shrapnel again?" MacGregor asked gently. "No. Concussion," Banning said. " 'There is no detectable damage to the optic nerves,'" he went on, obviously quoting a doctor. " 'There is no reason to believe the loss of sight is permanent.'"
"Well, that's good news," MacGregor said. "On the other hand," Banning said bitterly, "there's no reason to believe it isn't. Permanent, I mean." His hand was tight around the cup, like a vise.
"When will you find out?" MacGregor asked. Banning shrugged. "If they really thought it was temporary, I would not have been sent home with you," Banning said. "The official reason seemed a little flimsy." "What was the official reason?" "I was the Intelligence Officer for the Fourth Marines,"