“Here we go!” Hinman sang out. “The wolf among the sheep! Give me some ranges, God damn it!”
“You can shoot, Captain!” Bob Edge’s voice was high.
“Fire one!” Hinman yelled. He felt the shock under his feet as a fist of compressed air shoved the torpedo in Number One tube out. He counted down from six to one.
“Fire two! Right five degrees rudder! Stand by…
“Fire three!”
A mushroom of fire bloomed at the waist of the first ship in the line of enemy ships.
“Hit! Hit on the first target! Give me more speed, damn it!
“Fire four!
“Right ten degrees rudder! More speed! Pour on the coal!”
“Hit! Hit on the second target!” Simms’ scream came from the cigaret deck aft.
“Meet your helm right there, damn it! Stand by forward!” Captain Hinman was braced in the small bridge structure, his binoculars clamped to his eyes. He lowered the glasses and let them hang by the neck strap and gripped the teak edge of the bridge rail.
“Give me a set-up on the next target!” he yelled down the hatch. “We’re closing fast, damn it! Look alive down there! Meet that helm, damn you! Meet it right there!”
“You’ve got a solution on the next target!” Lieutenant Edge’s voice from the Conning Tower was high, excited.
“Fire five!
“Belay the set-up on the fourth target, he’s too small! Right fifteen degrees rudder! I want to run down between the third and fourth targets, down the starboard side of that fourth target to the next two targets.”
“Tin can! Tin can! The other side of this ship to our starboard!” The starboard lookout’s voice was a high yell. Hinman spun to his right in the small bridge, searching with his binoculars.
He saw the high bridge of a Fubuki destroyer-leader on the far side of the small freighter whose bow was drawing even with Mako’s bow. The Fubuki and the freighter were on an opposite course to Mako and the small freighter was screening Mako from any gunfire from the Fubuki. He took a quick look ahead at the two ships he had picked out as his next targets. They were at least 1,500 yards distant, he had plenty of time to dive and run submerged under those two ships before the Fubuki could work its way clear of the two ships he had hit and the small freighter and get back to him.
“Close torpedo tube outer doors!” Hinman yelled the order down the hatch to the Conning Tower. He waited calmly, gauging Mako’s speed and the speed of the small freighter that was now almost abeam of Mako and barely 50 yards away. He gasped in disbelief as he saw the starboard side of the freighter suddenly blossom into flame as a dozen or more heavy machine guns opened fire. Above him a lookout called out and then moaned as a hail of machine gun fire swept through Mako’s bridge structure. Hinman felt a heavy fist slam into his right shoulder and then another fist drove him back from the bridge rail. Instinctively, he slammed his left hand down on the diving alarm and then hit the alarm a second time. Another jolting blow savaged his rib cage and he lurched to one side as the quartermaster’s body fell against him. He tried to draw a deep breath to yell the order to clear the bridge but something was blocking his throat. He opened his mouth and tasted the blood that filled his throat and mouth. As he sagged he reached for the latch that held the hatch to the Conning Tower open and tripped it. The weight of his body forced the hatch closed.
The gunfire that riddled Mako’s bridge echoed in the Conning Tower and was heard in the Control Room. When the diving alarm went off Chief Mike DeLucia reacted, yanking the lever on the hydraulic manifold that opened the vent on bow buoyancy tank and then pulling the levers that vented the main ballast tanks. Lieut. Don Grilley moved over from the plotting desk on top of the gyro compass to stand back of the bow and stern planesmen.
“Hard dive!” he said. “There’s trouble up there, get her down fast!” He heard a voice yelling faintly over the bridge speaker as Mako sliced downward under the sea. He took a quick look at the men in front of him and at DeLucia and then he moved back to the chart table and swiftly marked in Mako’s position at the time of diving. That done, he moved back to the bow and stern planes.
“Sir,” Dick Smalley on the bow planes half turned toward Grilley. “Sir, what depth do you want?” Grilley suddenly realized that no order had been passed down for a depth. He looked at the depth gauge in front of Smalley. The long black needle was passing 200 feet.
“Ease to a five-degree down bubble,” he ordered and went up the Conning Tower ladder until his head and shoulders were in the Conning Tower, bracing himself on the ladder against Mako’s diving angle. He saw Nate Cohen standing at the periscope, running the long tube downward. Cohen turned to face him and Grilley saw that Cohen’s normally dark face was ashen.
“Where’s the Skipper?” Grilley asked.
“No one got off the bridge before we dove!” Cohen said, his voice almost a whisper. “Someone up there started shooting at us. It sounded like they got a lot of hits on the bridge. I heard someone yell and then the diving alarm went off and the hatch was closed from topside. When we went under, when the bridge went under water, the hatch started to leak. Chief Maxwell went up the ladder and found that the hatch was only caught by its latch, it wasn’t dogged down. When he tried to turn the hand wheel I had to hold him on the ladder so he could use both hands. That’s why I was late in getting the periscope down.”
“I think someone was laying on top of the hatch, sir, on top of the hand wheel on the other side of the hatch.” Maxwell said. “At least that’s what it felt like, sir.”
“Sir,” Mike DeLucia’s voice from the Control Room was insistent. “Sir, we’re passing three hundred feet with a five-degree down angle and going all ahead full!”
“Level off at four hundred feet, all ahead one third,” Grilley called down to DeLucia. He looked at Cohen.
“Did you hear the Skipper give the order to clear the bridge, Nate?”
“No, sir,” Cohen said. “We heard a lookout yell that he saw a tin can, a destroyer, and then the gunfire started. We were awful close to that one small ship on the starboard side. I had the ‘scope turned in that direction and I could see a big destroyer beyond the small ship right next to us. The next thing that happened was the diving alarm went off and there was an awful lot of gunfire and then the hatch closed. And then the other…” his voice trailed off.
“What other?” Grilley asked.
“When I was holding the Chief so he could dog down the hatch Pete Simms yelled into the bridge transmitter.”
“What did he say?” Grilley’s voice was patient.
“He was saying ‘No! No! No!’ ” Cohen whispered. “Just that, over and over!” He looked at Grilley.
“I think you’re the senior officer aboard, sir,” Cohen said softly. “You’re the Captain!”
“Come on down in the Control Room, Nate,” Grilley said. He waited beside the plotting table until Cohen joined him.
“I’d like to go back up and see if we can pick up our people,” Grilley said. He looked at the plot.
“There’s a destroyer up there, Captain,” Cohen said. “I saw the destroyer. Big ship. I don’t imagine we’d have much of a chance if we stick our head out up there.” He hesitated, eyeing Grilley.