Wright held on to the coaming as another roller lifted Mackerel’s bow out of the water and sat it back down with a thunderous crash. Wright was still amazed at how tiny their submarine seemed in seas like these. Once when he was at submarine school, he saw a large cruiser plow through the rough seas off Long Island. The waters before it had yielded to their steel master, parting before the heavy bow. With Mackerel it was not so. The seas tossed her mere two thousand tons at will with only the slightest resistance.
Wright looked at his wristwatch. The jostling and rocking had the effect of making a four-hour watch seem much longer. He and O’Connell had been on the bridge most of the afternoon, almost four hours, though it felt like twice that. Hubley and Tee were due to relieve them any time now.
Wright sighed at the thought.
Being relieved by Tee was never a pleasant experience. He always behaved as though he was doing Wright a favor, very condescending and never polite. It was as if he was holding Wright personally responsible for having to get out of the rack and stand watch on the bridge for four hours, disregarding the fact that it was indeed his job to do so. Wright detested being relieved by Tee. But it was a small price to pay for getting out of the weather, after all.
“What’s for dinner?” O’Connell asked with a grin, as he always did at this point in the watch.
“I don’t know. I’ll check.” Leaning down to the open hatch, Wright took a long sniff at the warm air rising out of the small opening. “Smells like chili mac, again!”
O’Connell shook his head in disgust. The lookouts up in the periscope shears overheard Wright and reacted in a similar fashion. One of them shouted down, “Man, those cooks have got to learn how to make something else. If they don’t, I’m going to start fishing for our supper while we’re on watch.”
Wright laughed at the thought and checked his watch once more. It won’t be long now, he thought. We’ll be out of this intolerable weather and chowing down on chili mac in the wardroom, and even have a game of cribbage or two. He raised the binoculars with a small smile and continued to scan the sea.
Beneath Wright and O’Connell, inside the conning tower, Tee made his way up the ladder from the control room, conducting his usual pre-watch tour. Hubley was still finishing his dinner in the wardroom, so Tee toured by himself this evening. Glancing around the control room, he caught sight of the petty officer manning the SD radar screen.
“Anderson, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Tee barked, placing his large hands on his hips.
“What do you mean, Mr. Turner?” Anderson knew exactly what Tee meant. He just did not want to give in so easily. He had come to expect Mr. Turner to chew him out at the end of every watch. Every man in O’Connell’s watch section had come to expect it. Turner would always accuse them of making a mess out of the spaces. He would carry on about how filthy everything was then refuse to relieve the watch unless everything was cleaned and ready for inspection. Personally, Anderson thought Mr. Turner was slightly insane, not to mention a complete ass.
“Don’t give me any of your lip,” Tee snapped. “There’s a coffee stain on the deck under the chart desk.”
“I don’t know how it got there, sir.”
“I don’t care how it got there, either. Just clean it up. I’m not going to take the watch with this conning tower looking like shit.”
“I’m manning the radar, sir.”
“I don’t give a shit. D’you want my guys to have to clean up your mess, Petty Officer Anderson?”
Anderson finally capitulated, as he always did. He hated Mr. Turner, but he had learned not to argue with him. He knew that Turner would just shout until he got his own way. Anderson also did not want to gyp Mr. O’Connell or Mr. Wright out of getting relieved on time. Some officers were not worth the loyalty, but in his mind O’Connell and Wright were. If he did not clean up the mess, Turner would relieve them late for sure. It had happened more than once before.
Grabbing a rag out of a nearby locker, Anderson crawled under the chart desk to clean up the brown stain. It only took him a few minutes to wipe away every last spot. He was away from his panel for mere moments. He was still cursing Turner under his breath when he got back to the radar panel and nonchalantly checked the display.
The wiggly green line of the cathode ray tube display showed a small spike. It had not been there before.
Anderson quickly adjusted the dial to check the range indicated by the spike. He gasped in horror when he read it and a cold chill ran straight from his scalp to his toes.
The spike had to be a contact. It was less than two thousand yards away from the ship, and rapidly closing.
Anderson swallowed hard and choked out a whispered, “Oh my God.”
Wright was about to poke his head down the hatch to see what was taking Tee and Hubley so long when he suddenly heard the bridge intercom squawk.
“Bridge, radar!” It was Anderson the radar operator’s voice, very agitated. “Aircraft closing! Aircraft closing! Range one mile!”
O’Connell and Wright exchanged brief expressions of horror before O’Connell could grope for the intercom and the diving alarm.
“Crash dive!” O’Connell shouted into the mike. “Crash dive!”
“AAOOOGAAAHH!… AAOOOGAAAHH!” The diving alarm sounded and the lookouts sprang from their perches in a mad dash for the hatch. As O’Connell hastened the lookouts through the hatch, Wright desperately searched the sky for the approaching aircraft. The endless gray clouds hung low, making it impossible to see anything above a thousand feet.
The main ballast tank vents opened creating water spouts as the tanks quickly flooded to start Mackerel's rapid descent. The water spouts shot fifty feet into the air, drenching everyone on the bridge. Wright grabbed the coaming to steady himself as the deck began to angle down.
The last lookout was almost down the hatch when Wright heard a noise like hail hitting a tin roof. He looked up in time to see a Japanese bomber, all guns blazing, emerge from the clouds off the port beam. He could see the sporadic stream of tracer rounds extending from the bomber’s wings to hit Mackerel's hull just below the waterline. Each shell hit with deck-shattering impacts. As the plane closed the range, Wright heard the staccato typewriter-like rhythm of the Japanese twenty-millimeter guns. He ducked behind the bridge coaming just in time to avoid the high velocity missiles slicing across Mackerel's width, raking the conning tower and the bridge. The sharp impacts seemed to shake his very skin and he felt small bits of ricocheting metal brush past his face and arms. Within seconds, the plane had zoomed over them.
Wright touched his body in several places not quite believing that he had not been hurt. Then he glanced over to where O’Connell had been standing and gasped at the dreadful sight before his eyes. O’Connell’s body lay crumpled on the deck, his chest profusely bleeding from two gaping holes. Blood covered the bridge railing behind him and ran along the deck. Blood was everywhere.
Wright stared at O’Connell in shock and disbelief. It was several moments before he suddenly realized that Mackerel’s lower decks were already awash and that she was headed down fast. He scurried over to O’Connell and attempted to pull him toward the still open hatch. O’Connell’s limp body seemed like it weighed a thousand pounds. The only sign of life was a wheezing noise coming from his punctured lungs.
Shouts from inside the conning tower reached Wright: “For God’s sakes, come on! Leave him, sir! Get down and shut the hatch!”