“Take a light strain on that tagle, shitheads! When I get this strap off ease her in a little at a time, just like you put it in your old lady the first time! Keep your fuckin’ eyes on me and your ears open!”
Captain Hinman and Don Grilley watched Ginty start and stop the torpedo on its way into the tube, sensing the motion of the ship through his feet and legs, using all the skills he had learned in years of muscling torpedoes in other Torpedo Rooms. When he had closed the inner door and engaged the gyro and depth spindles he turned to his talker.
“Tell Control that Number One tube is reloaded, gyro spindle engaged, depth set four feet, depth spindle disengaged. And tell ‘em we’re starting the reload on Number Two.” He turned to the reload crews. “Now lay out that tagle, you cowshit kickers and see if we can do this one half-way right!”
Captain Hinman ducked through the low water-tight door and went into the Wardroom. Grilley followed him and the cook put fresh cups of coffee in front of the two officers.
“The American submarine sailor is an amazing individual,” Hinman said. “Just amazing! Take Ginty; I doubt that he had a high school education. His service record is full of incidents of trouble he’s been in. He’s been reduced in rank three times. Always for fighting while on liberty. He came to us because he got in a fight with British and French sailors in Hong Kong and the skipper of his S-boat figured that if he didn’t transfer him he’d be court-martialed again and get an Undesirable Discharge.”
“He’s never been in trouble on Mako,” Grilley said.
“That’s due to Dusty Rhodes,” Hinman said. “Ginty’s the strongest man I’ve ever seen but he respects Rhodes.”
Sirocco had come into the Wardroom while Hinman was talking.
“Tubes forward are reloaded, we’re secure from General Quarters and steady on the course to the patrol area, sir,” he said. “The last weather report we got before we dove indicates the water front is moving past us and we should be clear of it by nightfall. We’ll be off Luzon by morning.”
“Very well, Joe,” Hinman said. He yawned. “I’m going to get some sleep. Call me an hour before dark.”
Mako plowed on beneath the sea, rolling heavily from time to time. Dusty Rhodes drew a half cup of coffee from the urn in the Crew’s Mess and made his way forward.
“Heard you had some high-priced help up here on the reload,” he said. Ginty scowled at him.
“Fuckin’ gold braid! Why can’t they stay the hell out of a sailor’s way? Ain’t no call for the Old Man to come up here and want to pull on the tagle! That’s my work! He’s gold braid, he oughta keep himself apart from the troops.
“You give me a choice and I’ll take that miserable fuckin’ Mealey any time over these buddy-buddy fuckers, even if Mealey did turn the water off in the showers! That son of a bitch of a Mealey, he knew he was the Captain and he let you know it! He knew his place and he knew my place and he knew the place of every shithead aboard! Fuckin’ Navy’s gettin’ too soft! For a while there after this Old Man’s old lady got creamed at Pearl he was like a regular Navy officer. Bite your ass off if you looked at him sidewise. Now he’s back like he was when I come aboard, grabassin’ around all the time.
“Shit, he even put a rubber spider in the Jew-boy’s bunk! Anyone puts rubber spiders in any bunk in my Room and they’ll have that spider up their ass, believe you me!”
“I know how you feel, Cinch,” Rhodes said gently. “Do me a little favor, huh? Don’t tell anyone else how you feel. You have to understand, Cinch, that the Old Man was hit real hard when his wife was killed. Now he’s got a new wife and he’s as happy as a clam in muck. But because he’s happy and plays a little grab-ass doesn’t mean he isn’t a good submarine man or a good skipper.”
“Fuckin’ Japs don’t play no grab-ass!” Ginty muttered. “He was over in the States when we found that out, Chief. He don’t know what those depth charges sound like yet.
“Another thing; the people in the Radio Shack say that Pearl’s been tryin’ to raise two boats out here for the last five days and they ain’t gettin’ no answer to the calls. That only means one thing, Chief, fuckin’ Japs have got those boats! Ol’ Jap don’t play grab-ass, we both know that.”
Rhodes nodded, making a mental note to tell Lieutenant Cohen to tell his people to keep their mouths shut about things like lost submarines. He touched Ginty lightly on the shoulder.
“Hell of a job on the reload, Ginch. I don’t think there’s another Forward Room could have done it, rolling and pitching like we were. If you want to sound off, do it to me. I’ve got good ears and what they hear doesn’t go out of my mouth.”
Mako surfaced at full dark in seas that were still long and rolling but without the wind that had torn spray from the wave tops and hurled it like buckshot. Lieutenant Cohen took a position report and a contact report on the small convoy into the Radio Shack. An hour later Cohen came into the Control Room.
“Captain on the cigaret deck?” he asked Sirocco, who nodded.
“We’ve got a special mission,” Cohen said in a low voice as he climbed the ladder and went up to the bridge.
Chapter 24
“Welcome to General Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Submarine Navy!” Captain Hinman said to his officers who had gathered in the Wardroom. He put his hand on the message Nate Cohen had given him earlier.
“Our orders have been changed,” Hinman continued. “We are not going to our patrol area. We are ordered to proceed to Subic Bay, south of Manila, and there contact some Army people who must have escaped from the Japs after the surrender at Marveles. These Army people, they’re apparently a guerrilla force, have found a Scotch missionary and his wife and their two small children in the jungle. We are to make contact, pick up the family and take them to Brisbane.”
“Sounds interesting,” Pete Simms said. “Go in to the beach, rescue people! We’ll have to make up a landing party, sir. I’d like to volunteer to lead it!”
“That won’t be necessary,” Hinman said. “The message says the Army people have a boat and will bring the people out to us.”
“If I may, sir,” Don Grilley said slowly, “I don’t quite understand the part about ‘General MacArthur’s Submarine Navy.’ ”
Hinman looked around the table.
“As most of you may know,” he said, “I don’t like politics in any form. Apparently the submarine command in Australia is one big pot of politics. It boils over constantly, I am told. One of the more influential politicians down there is the Commanding Officer, SouWestPac. He’s reputed to be a very close friend of Dugout Doug, or to be formal, General Douglas MacArthur.
“Captain Rudd filled me in on a lot of this before we left Pearl. He told me that submarines operating out of Australia do an awful lot of special missions because MacArthur wants them to do those missions. It follows, or this is the way I see it, that when a submarine is on special mission it isn’t shooting torpedoes at the enemy, damn it! The situation down there, I’m speaking of the political situation now, is so bad that a number of officers, including one Rear Admiral, have offered to resign their commissions!
“Captain Rudd told me something else. The submarine command officers in charge down there are all old Gun Club boys, people who were assigned to Newport and to torpedo and exploder work at one time or another. They all think the Mark Six exploder is sacred. You can modify the exploder if you’re working out of Pearl but if you’re working out of Brisbane or Freemantle and they catch you doing that you’re in deep trouble. So I want you to tell your people that they should keep their mouths shut when we get in. The less you say, the less any of us say, the better.” Hinman pushed the message over to Joe Sirocco.