“I must have slipped up,” Sirocco said slowly. He looked at Rhodes and Barber.
“I’m doing what I shouldn’t do,” he said. “But I trust you two. Implicitly.
“Yes, there’s something different. I’m Naval Intelligence. A Reserve, that’s true enough. I was put aboard the Gudgeon as a sort of training period. They put five of us aboard submarines so we could get qualified as submarine men. Three of the five were Chiefs, by the way. Just so we’d have the experience.
“Then the war broke out so they left me aboard Gudgeon and I made two war patrols. The Gudgeon’s Captain didn’t know my status. After two runs on Gudgeon I went to the Staff at Pearl. Bob Rudd knew about me but no one else other than the Admiral, Nimitz. The reports came in about defective torpedoes, defective diesel engines, lots of those, John.
“Washington thought it was a long-range sabotage plan that was being put into operation. So they sent me to sea on Mako with Captain Mealey. To check out the torpedoes. Admiral Nimitz and Bob Rudd figured that Mealey was a hard enough case so that he’d make an aggressive patrol. There were two other submarines closer to Truk than we were, did you know that? They could have taken the assignment but they wanted Mealey to do the work.”
“I’ll bet Captain Mealey let you know how he felt about having you aboard,” Rhodes said. “He isn’t the sort of man who would keep that kind of thing to himself.”
“What he didn’t like, really, was the idea that if there was something wrong with the torpedoes, the exploders I mean, that his word wouldn’t be good enough, that I had to be there as an observer and to confirm his report. But he’s a hell of a man, you know. He treated me better than I expected and I learned a lot from him.”
“And what did you learn about the things they wanted you to find out about, the exploders?” John Barber asked.
“Nothing that you regular Navy people didn’t know,” Sirocco said. “But that’s the way it goes in any bureaucracy. Now I’m going back to Washington for reassignment with a few days off in Pearl. That reminds me, speaking of Pearclass="underline" I went up to the Squadron office and fixed things so we don’t have to leave here until after Mako leaves on her next patrol. I sort of wanted to watch her go to sea and I thought you’d like to do that, too.”
“You were assuming we would take the gold?” Rhodes said.
“I didn’t assume anything,” Sirocco said with a wide grin on his craggy face. “1 knew what the plan was.
“If you refused the promotions, either one of you, they were going to fly you back to Pearl, let you have one night with your wives and then march you up in front of Admiral Nimitz to tell him why you preferred to be a Chief in Iceland for the duration of the war to being a Lieutenant in Pearl Harbor, doing important work and being at home every night!”
Chapter 29
Dusty Rhodes tried to swallow the lump in his throat and failed as he stood on the New Farm Wharf in Brisbane and watched the U.S.S. Mako maneuver in the Swan River to begin the trip downriver to the sea and her fifth war patrol. The Mako was the only ship that Rhodes had ever put in commission and, he feared, the last ship that he would love as a sailor. John Barber stood beside him, his face dour.
“She’s making too much smoke out of number two engine,” Barber grunted. “Damn fool on watch isn’t taking care of things like he should.”
Rhodes nodded. His eyes were on Ginch Ginty, his new Chief’s hat already battered and “seagoing,” as he secured Mako’s topside for sea. Ginty paused in his labors and Mako finished her turn in midriver and his eyes searched the wharf. He raised a hand shoulder high in salute to the two former Chief Petty Officers and then he turned his back on the wharf and went back to his work. Lieut. Comdr. Joe Sirocco, standing a yard or so away, moved up beside Rhodes and Barber.
“Hurts a little, doesn’t it?” Sirocco said softly.
“Too damned much,” Barber grunted. “That bastard on watch in the Forward Engine Room is letting that number two engine smoke too damned much!”
“It’s like watching a daughter get married, I guess,” Sirocco said. “No matter how nice the new son-in-law is, you know that he’s not good enough for your own flesh and blood.” Barber looked at him and then nodded his head and turned away as Mako, still trailing a thin plume of smoke from her number two engine exhaust, moved down the river, the pilot boat trailing astern.
Rhodes turned to Sirocco.
“What time does our plane leave, sir?”
“Eighteen hundred,” Sirocco said. “They’ll send a car for our gear at sixteen hundred. We’d better figure on eating an early lunch and an early dinner or else eat a late lunch and take along a box lunch or something. It’s a long way to Pearl.”
“How come Ginty’s doing topside?” Barber asked as the three men walked down the wharf toward the submarine tender. “DeLucia’s Chief of the Boat, isn’t he? Captain didn’t change his mind, did he?”
“No,” Rhodes answered. “DeLucia’s smart. He knew that Ginty wanted to do the topside work, Ginch is a damned good all-around sailor, so DeLucia asked him to take topside. It makes Ginty feel important and it puts him in DeLucia’s corner.” He looked at Sirocco.
“How long you going to be in Pearl? Long enough for you to come out to the house and meet our families, have dinner with us?”
“Oh, yes, long enough for that. Probably a week or more and then I’ll go back to Washington for de-briefing and write reports for about a month and wait for my next assignment.”
“I’d hate like hell to have your job,” Barber said. “You’re a hell of a good sailor, hell of a good submariner, why’d you want to be a damned undercover agent?”
“You make it sound like something dirty,” Sirocco said. His big, battered face was grinning. “I didn’t ask for it. You know how the military is, you join up and say you’re an expert cook and they put you to driving a truck or something. I’m a mechanical engineer. So they made me an intelligence agent. I don’t like it, I never wanted it but I do it because they told me to do it. All I can say is that the two patrols on Gudgeon and the two on Mako made it worthwhile.” The three of them walked by an American Red Cross booth where coffee was on sale and on down the wharf to the Salvation Army booth where coffee and doughnuts were free. Each of them dropped a pound note in the bowl the Salvation Army girl had put at the end of the coffee bar for contributions, accepted their cups of coffee and doughnuts and walked out onto the wharf and stood in the sun.
“What did she draw for a patrol area?” Rhodes asked around a mouthful of doughnut.
“Luzon Straits,” Sirocco said. “The stretch of water just north of Luzon Island and south of Formosa. Good water, deep as hell in most places, up to three thousand fathoms if I remember the chart. Lots of small islands to hide behind. The Straits are a funnel for all the Jap shipping moving between the Philippines and the Empire; in fact everything going to and from Japan goes through the Straits.”
“Sounds like a good area,” Rhodes said.
“I’d say choice,” Sirocco answered. “I heard there was some bitching from older captains when Mako was given the area. A lot of the older guys are still virgins, haven’t sunk a ship yet. They want lots of targets so they can collect their medals and get a boost in rank. Before I forget it, I saw a ship movement memo in the Squadron office yesterday. Eelfish is over in Freemantle, getting ready to go out on her first patrol. Mike Brannon’s her skipper.”