The same scene was being duplicated in the conning towers of Chicolar and Whitefish. Perhaps both skippers were standing in their conning towers, their stations for most of the battle to come, also peering at their radar scopes, also waiting, possibly also seeing in their own allegorical conception what it was they were about to do. The call of the wild wolf had been heard. The pack was gathering.
Richardson straightened up, indicated to Quin that he should take over the radar again, replaced his goggles. He stood silently as his eyes once again began their acclimation to the dark. Momentarily he had been blinded by the considerably brighter lights of the radarscope, his mind distracted by contemplation of the hell he was about to unleash.
The PPI ’scope, as the dial he had been watching was called, had been designed with a view to use at night. Its predominant color was red. Beside it was another hooded dial, the A ’scope, which gave precise ranges but had a profusion of green lighting guaranteed to produce instant night blindness lasting many minutes. Richardson had avoided looking at the A ’scope, but even so it would be some minutes before his night vision was fully restored. He readjusted the red goggles more comfortably, returned to the forward part of the conning tower, stopped with one foot on the ladder leading upward. “Scott,” he said to the quartermaster, “I’m going up on the bridge. We’ll be getting some kind of a radar contact before long. We’ll be picking up some islands up ahead, too, but I’m expecting ships. We might be shooting torpedoes before daybreak.”
The radar operators had all been thoroughly briefed as to the prospect of getting a return on land or small islands which would resemble ships. The whole submarine was already keyed up. His prediction about imminent combat, confirming the knowledgeable guesses already rife, would be known throughout the ship within seconds. Tension would increase, but so would alertness and readiness.
Eel’s speed might even increase a fraction of a knot as the electricians once more sought carefully to balance the loads on her four generators and, if possible, slightly increase the output of the four big diesels.
Already he could see better. One last look around the conning tower. It was businesslike, calm, efficient. This was the way a submarine should be. He climbed the few steps to the bridge, ducked under the overhang. “Permission to come on the bridge,” he called.
“Permission granted, Skipper.” Buck Williams, Officer of the Deck, had his elbows on the overhang, binoculars to his eyes, peering over the front of the metal windscreen. Richardson stood beside him, the goggles dangling again around his neck, binoculars also to his eyes.
“We should get contact pretty soon, Buck,” he said, sweeping the murk with his glasses. “We’ve got Quelpart on the radar. I guess you know that. And there’s a flock of little islands that will show up dead ahead pretty soon now. What we’re watching for is a formation of ships moving between the land formations.”
“How long before we’re in radar range of the first island?” asked Williams.
“Not sure. Maybe half an hour. Time to get my night vision settled down, I hope.”
Eel’s bow, lowered nearer to the water’s edge by the powerful thrust of her propellers, steadily, almost hypnotically, drove apart the quiet sea. Two white streamers of roiled water, several feet abaft the bullnose and on either side, formed an inverted V. In the center of the V, her bow forming its point, lay the submarine. Little else could be seen of the sea. The hollow of the bow wave formed just forward of Eel’s bridge. Aft, the returning bulge of seawater tended to sweep up the submarine’s rounded sides and occasionally lap into the base of her free-flooding superstructure. Farther aft yet, four exhaust pipes, two on each side, spewed forth a thunder of spray and steam. Occasionally a wave gurgled toward one of the yawning openings of the pipes, to be hurled backward in white confusion under the force of the exhaust gases. All the way aft, abaft the stern mooring line chock, there was a white-ribbed disturbance in the sea, a burbling from below. Immediately beyond, coming in from the sides, the dark waters hurled themselves into the cleavage behind the submarine. The only note of her passage was the straight white wake stretching out astern, growing less in the distance as quiet returned to the Yellow Sea.
The air as usual was dank, still, and cold. Richardson’s night vision was returning, but he still found it difficult to distinguish the horizon, where the sky and the water met. All was the same dark grayness. Overhead, no stars to be seen. As before, he had the impression that visibility was not unduly restricted, but that somehow there was a salt content to the air, a thin concentration which gradually brought haze of sky and haze of sea together in a unity that defied piercing.
He had no feeling at all. It was as though he were watching from somewhere else. His second self, the buried one of which he was so keenly aware, was about to take charge. This was his profession, his metier. This was what he was a master at: the relentless power of Eel’s four big diesel engines, her spinning propellers, the unimaginable potential for destruction in the ten torpedo tubes she was about to use; himself, the controller of it all — the controller, and yet as much as any one of them, controlled.
From whence had come the intelligence sending Eel on this deadly errand? Admiral Small, of course, but where did he get it? The admiral had mentioned Fort Shafter as being a special source of information. This must be what he was referring to. This must be why Mrs. Elliott, Cordy Wood, and Joan had such high security clearances. They all worked there. One of the peculiar things about Joan’s job was the strange hours. Frequently she would spend several days in a row inside the Shafter compound, never leaving, sleeping at odd times in the room assigned to her. Then she would be off for several days. Joan had once lived in Japan, and she could both read and speak Japanese. Her father had been in the diplomatic service. She said she thought he was dead, but she never talked about him. There was more to his story. Could he have been in intelligence? Could he still be? Could that be the reason for Joan’s reticence? Was she, also, in intelligence work?
It must be so. She had known about the lifeboats even before Rich had told about them. She had known about the Walrus, and what had happened to her. Submarines had been benefitting from special information about convoy movements since nearly the beginning of the war. Joan’s knowledge of Japanese would be needed to translate the messages into English. There must be a large group involved with just this part of the work, and it would be very highly classified. No wonder Joan had been so reluctant to talk about herself!
Little bits of information began to piece themselves together. Joan’s seeming familiarity with the names of the submarine skippers, for one thing. She knew who was on patrol, and who had just returned. And she knew how well they’d done and what their problems had been, almost as though she, as well as Rich, had been reading the daily dispatches. Several times he had had the feeling that she was pretending ignorance simply in order not to appear too well informed. The last night before sailing, he was suddenly struck by the notion that she knew of Operation ICEBERG. It was intuition, nothing more, and he had been trying to think of a way to find out without violating the secrecy imposed by Admiral Small, when she interrupted him in the way she knew so well, which always led to other things far removed from submarines and the war.