“Let’s start over, Froms,” he said calmly. “And this time get it right.”
“I only put down what you told me,” Fromley whined.
Potts slapped him upside the back of the head, hard. “If you had put down what I said, asshole, he wouldn’t have figured it out.”
Fromley rubbed his head. His eyes watered. “But I did. I only put down what you said.”
“What an asshole,” Potts said, moving to the first cell. “He came up here just to give us a hard time. I bet he doesn’t do that to the others. Just us two because we know what that nigger is doing, and that Bleecker is a nigger-lover. You know how I know? I’ll tell you. Because he and Crocky were on other boats together. That’s why he’s the way he is, and when I confronted him with the evidence of that colored boy trashing our compartment, look what he did.” Potts squatted down near the cell. “He took it away from me, crushed it out of existence, and tossed it away. He covered up for him, and now he’s trying to railroad us into a court-martial.”
“But there were only the potato peels.”
Potts looked at Fromley. “You gonna stand there arguing with me, or are you gonna take the readings as I give them to you?”
Fromley opened the logbook. “Maybe we should do it right this time?” he asked meekly. “Then, when the lieutenant looks at it—”
“Froms, shut the fuck up.” Potts leaned over and read the ampere readout on the meter, glanced up at the clock on the bulkhead, and then gave the accurate reading and time to Fromley. He turned and looked at Fromley, who wet the tip of the pencil and wrote something in the log. “You better get it right this time.” Fromley took a deep breath. “I will if you will give it to me right,” he said, lifting his chin.
For the next several minutes Potts moved from one cell to the other. Then he stood and went over to where Fromley was writing down the information. He jerked the logbook from him and looked at it. “Jesus Christ, Froms. What the fuck are you doing? We don’t want to start a new set of log entries. We want to go back to where we started this set and change the times and the entries to match what I’m giving you. What do you think this shows if you start a new set of entries?”
“The correct readings?”
Potts shoved the logbook at him. “Take this, Shit for Brains, and erase the entries I’ve given you”—he put his finger on the first entry made after the departure of Bleecker—“here. Then go back to this entry.” He flipped a couple of pages forward. “Start here. Make sure the cell I give you matches the one here. Change the time to match the time I give you and change the ampere readings to match the new ones I give you.”
“But—”
“Don’t ‘but’ me, Froms. You’ve gotten in enough trouble with Bleecker without us leaving him enough evidence to send us to a court-martial. Just do as I tell you.”
Fromley scratched his head with the hand holding the pencil. “Okay, but all this erasing and changing are going to show up when someone reads the log.”
“People do it all the time.”
Fromley shook his head. “No, they don’t. When they make an erroneous entry, they line it out, and right below it, they make the corrected entry.”
Potts sighed. “What you want to do? You want to start a new logbook, or you want to correct the entries?”
Fromley looked at him. “I don’t want to go to Leavenworth, where I’ll be shared.”
Potts laughed. “Ain’t no one going to share you, Fromley. You’re too ugly.” He touched the logbook. “Now do what I say.” He looked at the clock. “Damn, we’re over two hours behind now thanks to Danny ‘the Greaser’ Bleecker. I hate mustangs,” he said, shaking his head. “They’re a pain in the ass.”
“Yeah,” Fromley said with a chuckle. “A real pain in the ass.”
“Yeah. They can’t make up their minds if they want to be an officer or keep playing at being enlisted. Just like he did when he came down here covering up for Crocky.”
Shipley straightened from the navigation table. He glanced at the clock on the bulkhead and cocked his head to one side. It is amazing how much the Navy runs on its time. Time becomes more important when you never know which time zone or what part of the day you’re working.
“I have to go up and relieve the XO, OPSO.” He looked at Van Ness. “Cliff, work with Alec here to bring us an interception course to the merchant vessel. No closer than a thousand yards astern of her. Don’t want a silhouette giving away our position.”
“Aye, sir,” Van Ness answered. In the back of his mind was the question of whether he was still on the skipper’s shit list for his actions yesterday.
Shipley looked at the chart again. “Not much information.” Logan stood quietly to the side. “Lieutenant Logan, just so I’m sure you understand, there are to be no more transmissions from the Squallfish without my express permission.”
The intelligence officer nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“We still haven’t heard from Naval Intelligence.”
“Yes, sir, I know, but they’ll reply.”
“I hope so.” Shipley turned back to Weaver and Van Ness. “I want to do this quickly and quietly. Brief the XO and, Lieutenant Weaver, when you and the XO are ready to execute, do it.” He buttoned up the top layer of his foul-weather jacket and grabbed his rain slick off the hook on the aft bulkhead. Bits of ice fell onto the deck.
Shipley was as excited as a submarine captain could be as he climbed up the ladder onto the bridge to relieve Arneau. The icy rain was still coming down, as thick as it was thirty minutes ago when the XO had relieved him. Neither man spoke as Shipley took the binoculars. Arneau pointed off the port bow about two points. Though he said nothing, Shipley knew the merchant vessel they were about to shadow lay in that direction. The sting of the Arctic air hurt his lungs as he breathed. He pulled the watch cap down with its cut eyeholes and mouth over his face.
Arneau stepped back from the hatch to let two sailors emerge. And he stood there until the two off-going watches dashed down the ladder to the relative warmth of the inside of Squallfish. Then he nodded at Shipley and disappeared.
Ten minutes later he felt the submarine change direction, and he knew Arneau and Weaver were maneuvering the boat toward the stern of the merchant vessel.
Shipley walked over to the nearest watch and shouted in the sailor’s ear, “Keep a close watch off our bow, sailor! We are going to pass close to another ship!” He couldn’t see the man’s expression through Senior Chief Boohan’s makeshift winter mask, but the man nodded his understanding. Shipley told the other lookout the same thing. Now three of them served as the eyes of the submarine, for belowdecks it was only sound, hunkered over the sonar position, who would be able to detect anything they might miss. He had secured the radar by having the fuse removed and placed in the OOD’s box so they could quickly restore it, if needed. He did not want any more Van Ness incidents while they were inside Kola Bay.
FOURTEEN
“We’re through, sir,” said Arneau as he stood near the sound operator, the ping of the echo sounder audible from the earphones the operator had lying on the narrow shelf he called a desk.
“What depth are we showing beneath us?” Shipley asked from the bridge, squatting near the open hatch.
“Two hundred feet,” Master Chief Boohan replied, his face appearing in the red light of the conning tower.
Shipley stood, the cold trousers touching his legs, and he looked forward. Two thousand yards ahead, which was one nautical mile, the stern light on the freighter led the path. The light was all that was visible in the thick fog that had appeared after the freezing rain had passed.