“I’ve got him, Skipper. Let him go. I’ve got him.” Hinman eased Grabnas’ sagging head by the rail of the lookout stand and felt the man being taken from him. He scrambled down to the bridge.
“No need for your medico,” Struthers said slowly. “The man’s had it. You want me to hand him down to someone?”
“Where’s he hit?” Hinman said, his breath coming in huge gasps. “How do you know he’s had it, damn it!”
“Captain!” The Australian’s voice was hard, flat. “The man’s been cut near in half!” He put his hands under Grabnas’ armpits and with one foot kicked Grabnas’ limp legs into the hatch opening.
“Below there, mates! Take this chap!” Joe Sirocco reached upward and let the limp legs fall against his chest and took the burden. He turned to the Control Room hatch.
“Below, there! Take Grabnas, will you, Pete?”
“I’ve got him, sir!” John Barber’s voice was steady. Sirocco released the body and spun back to the periscope and began a search for the third ship. He swung the periscope around in a complete circle once, then twice.
“Can’t see the other target, sir. He must have hauled his ass out of here while you were taking care of the other two!”
“Lots of Japs in the water, Captain,” Major Struthers was unsnapping the flap on his pistol holster. “Mind if I pot a few of the bloody bastards? I’ve got a lot of good chums dead at the hands of the Jap! Wouldn’t do for this lot to get picked up or to swim to one of those bloody islands and live to fight another day!”
Hinman stood, his eyes closed tightly. Then he opened his eyes and looked at Struthers and up at the dark traces of blood on the periscope shears.
“Deck guns, secure and get below. Fifty-caliber machine guns switch stations to the bridge stanchions. Smalley, begin firing at the targets in the water! Major, pick your own targets!”
Mako moved slowly through the flotsam of the two sunken ships, the machine guns hammering steadily at the men in the water. A flash off the port bow caught Major Struthers’ eye.
“Ah, you bastard!” the Major said genially. “Shoot back at us, would you? Poke your bloody head up for another look-see!” He steadied his heavy pistol on the bridge rail and aimed carefully. The pistol roared and bucked upward. “Got you! Just like shooting ‘roos in the outback!”
“Aircraft!” Smalley’s scream cut through the noise of the guns. Hinman looked aft and saw Smalley swing his twin 20-mm guns upward and begin firing a long burst out to the starboard side. Then he saw the plane, a black bulk against the starlit sky, saw it suddenly soar upward as the tracers reached toward it, saw two bulky black objects fall from the plane and tumble toward the water. The bombs hit well out to starboard and exploded with a huge roar squarely in the middle of a huge cluster of swimmers.
“Clear the bridge! Down periscope! Dive! Dive!” Hinman’s voice was a roar. “Major, damn you, get down the hatch!” He shoved Struthers toward the hatch and waited until the lookouts and the machine gunners had hurled themselves down through the hatch, not bothering to use the ladder, depending on the big hands of Joe Sirocco to catch them and spin them toward the hatch to the Control Room. Hinman slammed the diving alarm twice with his hand and dropped through the hatch.
“One hundred feet!” he snapped as he slid down the ladder to the Control Room. “Get some down angle on her, damn it! There’s a plane up there!” Mako knifed downward. Far off to one side they heard the crash of two more explosions.
“Mako it one hundred and fifty feet,” Hinman said. He stood, panting, watching the long black needles of the depth gauges move around the dials of the gauges in front of the bow and stern planes.
“That’ll do it. Level her off.” He turned round to Aaron, who was standing quietly by the gyro table.
“Where’s Grabnas?”
“In the Forward Torpedo Room, sir,” Aaron replied. Hinman nodded and ran forward. Ginty was standing by the torpedo tubes.
“He’s in Number One tube, sir,” Ginty said, his voice a low growl. “Doc made sure nothing could be done for him. I thought the tube was the best place for him, until you give some orders.”
“Very well,” Hinman said. He stood, staring at the shiny brass face of the torpedo tube door, tasting the bile that had risen into his throat. Then he turned and went back to the Control Room.
“Stand easy on Battle Stations,” he said to Sirocco. “Tell the galley to serve coffee to all hands and ask Tom to bring me a cup, please.”
“He can’t, sir,” Dusty Rhodes said. “Tom took a bullet through the neck from that first ship. He wouldn’t go down below when I told him to go. He’s in the Crew’s Mess, Doc is working on him.”
“Oh my God!” Hinman said. He ran aft to the Crew’s Mess. Thompson was laid out on a mess table surrounded by crew members.
“How is he, Doc?” Hinman demanded.
“I think he’s gonna be okay, sir,” the Pharmacist’s Mate said. “He took one right through his neck. Good thing he’s got such a big neck! Lots of room in there for something to go through. There isn’t any arterial bleeding so I figure the bullet didn’t hit anything serious. What I’m worried about is infection. I heard the Japs rub garlic on their bullets. That would cause infection.”
Hinman looked down at his cook. Thompson’s normally coal black, smiling face was ashy in color.
“How you feeling, old friend?” Hinman said.
Thompson opened his eyes. “Fine, sir. Doc’s gonna fix me up just fine.”
Chief John Barber came into the Crew’s Mess carrying a pair of long-nosed pliers, an alcohol torch and a piece of stiff wire 18 inches long. He put the torch on a mess bench and, using the pliers, he bent one end of the wire back to form a smooth, blunt end. Then he formed a larger loop at the other end. He stuck the pliers in his pocket and lit the alcohol torch and passed the flame up and down the wire several times. He handed the torch to one of his machinist’s mates and held the pliers in the flame.
“That ought to sterilize it,” Barber grunted. He held the wire in the pliers, the larger loop toward the Pharmacist’s Mate.
“Okay, now thread your gauze through that loop and then I’ll crimp it closed so it won’t slip out.” The Pharmacist’s Mate put a half-dozen six-inch long pieces of cotton gauze into the loop of wire and Barber carefully squeezed the loop tightly closed. He handed the wire to the other man, who dipped the gauze into a bottle of iodine.
“This is gonna sting you some, Tom, so hang on.” The man on the table rolled his eyes and then closed them and his big hands clamped down on the edge of the mess table.
“Someone hold his head steady.” Doc Whitten said. Chief Rhodes moved around to the end of the table and put his big hands on either side of Thompson’s face.
Doc Whitten crouched down until his eyes were on a level with Thompson’s neck. He pushed gently, feeding the stiff wire into and through the man’s neck until Barber, standing on the other side of the table, grunted and reached down and got a grip on the end of the wire with his pliers.
“Pull it through very slowly,” Whitten said. “I want that iodine to touch everything in there.” Barber nodded and began pulling on the wire. The iodine-soaked gauze disappeared into the hole in Thompson’s neck and the big man on the table gasped and Rhodes clamped his hands tightly on Thompson’s face. Barber began to pull on the wire and a low moan came through Thompson’s teeth.
“My fucking oath!” Major Struthers said.
Johnny Johnson, the ship’s cook, handed Whitten a coffee cup. “I mixed as much sulfa powder in that vaseline as it would take,” he said. Whitten nodded his head and picked up a wooden spatula and began packing the sulfa-loaded vaseline into the holes in each side of Thompson’s neck. When he had finished he put a square of gauze over each hole and strapped the squares down with tape. Thomas opened his eyes.