“The Chief of the Boat working?” Olsen chided Flanagan. “I thought when you attained that exalted position you didn’t have to work anymore, just tell others what to do.”
“Those people in the Torpedo Shop in Fremantle check those exploders with an eagle eye,” Flanagan grunted. “They’d love to have a solid case where they could prove that we modified the exploders so they could drag someone up in front of a court-martial. So I’m working.” He sat down beside Olsen on a mess bench.
“This is all a bunch of damned foolishness, you know.” Flanagan kept his voice low so the cook on duty in the galley wouldn’t hear him. “Hell, we wouldn’t have to do this crap if we were working out of Pearl Harbor.”
“I know,” Olsen said cheerfully. “Count your blessings. We’re lucky we’re going to go into Fremantle and to a hotel in Perth for the R and R period. If that Admiral Carpender over in Brisbane had his way we’d be going to our rest and recreation up in Exmouth Gulf. You could have two weeks of playing soft ball in the sand and cool off with two beers a day
“I heard about that deal,” Flanagan said. “Chief Yeoman in the relief crew, guy I knew a long time, told me they even had a name for that deal. They called it Operation Potshot. You know why it didn’t go through?” Olsen shook his head.
“A couple of real hard-assed submarine officers, guys who’d made patrol runs and were too senior to go back to sea on a submarine, they got together and decided that the Admiral was cruising with too much right rudder. They started a big study project on the whole thing. This Chief Yeoman said they’ve been making studies for months and they’re going to keep making studies until the Admiral forgets about it or else he gets transferred.” Olsen grinned.
“What gets me,” Flanagan continued, “is this whole business of treating a submarine sailor as if he was some sort of a dangerous animal. What in the hell is wrong with letting us have some R and R in a city where they’ve got decent restaurants and bars? What’s wrong with a submarine sailor rolling in the sack with some woman — if she’s willing?”
“I don’t see anything wrong with it at all,” Olsen said. “All I know is that the whole command down here is FUBAR. Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. You come into port after a patrol run and if you tell Admiral Christie that the Mark VI exploder he developed doesn’t work you’ll find yourself so deep in hack that you might wind up reading weather instruments on some mountain up in Alaska. Last time we were in port I heard that Admiral Christie doesn’t ever allow himself to get into a conversation with the big boss in Brisbane, Admiral Carpender, because if he does he’s afraid he’ll get into a shouting match and he’ll wind up in hack. I haven’t figured out yet how you put an Admiral in hack, but I guess other Admirals know how to do that.”
“Hell of a way to fight a war, isn’t it?” Flanagan asked. “I’ll bet none of those Admirals ever made a war patrol. They should have been with old Stoneface Mealey when he had the Mako that one run and went into Truk and hammered about eight, nine fish into that battleship and then got the immortal shit kicked out of the Mako by about a dozen tin cans. Maybe they’d realize when a man comes in from a tough war patrol he rates something better than a softball game, sand fleas, and two cans of beer a day.”
“I’m pretty sure Admiral Christie recognizes those things,” Olsen said slowly. He stood up, and Flanagan rose. “I guess both of us had to blow off a little steam, Chief. Let’s keep it between ourselves, okay?” Flanagan nodded and went forward, ducking his head and raising his foot to go through the watertight door opening to the Control Room. Scotty Rudolph came out of the galley.
“Got some fresh prune Danish,” he said. “Like one?”
“No, thank you,” Olsen said. He looked at the W.T. door where Flanagan had disappeared going forward. “That Chief Flanagan, he’s a remarkable sort of man.”
“Yeah,” Rudolph said. “He’s one of those old-timey Chief of the Boats. I seen a few of that kind in the fourteen years I been in the boats. Flanagan’s hard but he’s fair. Do what he tells you and do it right and you’re okay. Fuck up and he’ll have your ass in little pieces. I like that kind of a Chief of the Boat. You always know where you stand. I figure we’re lucky to have him.”
Olsen nodded and rinsed his cup and put it in the cup rack. We’re lucky to have Flanagan, he thought to himself as he went forward to the Wardroom. Lucky to have Flanagan and damned lucky to have Mike Brannon. With those two and a little luck maybe I’ll live through this damned screwed-up war. He pushed through the curtains at the door of the Wardroom and saw Mike Brannon sitting at the head of the table.
“Torpedo exploders are all returned to their original condition,” he said. “What’s got you looking like death warmed over, Captain?”
Brannon pushed a message flimsy across the table. “I’ve got to see the Staff as soon as we get in. They want three extra copies of our contact and patrol reports. That only means one thing to me, that I’m going to get reamed out for something. Damned if I know what for.”
“Keep one thing in mind, sir,” Olsen said. “Don’t let them forget it, either. You sank ships. Not one of those people has done that.”
CHAPTER 4
The U.S.S. Eelfish moved along the west coast of Australia, an hour away from the seaport of Fremantle, only hours away from two weeks of rest and relaxation for the crew in the city of Perth, twelve miles up the Swan River from Fremantle. Overhead a clumsy PBY-4 dipped its wings in a salute to the submarine and the Eelfish bridge watch waved back happily.
Jim Rice, a tall, heavily bearded torpedoman, was sitting in the bight of a double bowline knot on the end of a line that had been rigged over the starboard side of the Conning Tower. He braced his bare feet against the side of the Conning Tower and with great care began to touch up the small battle flags that he had painted on the side of the Conning Tower. Two small cans of paint, one red, one white, hung from a cord around his neck. His tongue stuck out of one corner of his mouth, a red tip in a thicket of black beard, as he delicately added a little white paint to the array of flags; four Rising Sun flags that stood for two Fubuki destroyers and two escort vessels sunk by the Eelfish, three white flags with a red ball in each flag’s center for the three small merchant ships Eelfish had sent
to the bottom in Leyte Gulf. Captain Mike Brannon leaned over the side of the bridge and grinned at Rice.
“Going to make a career of art when the war is over, Jim? You’ve got a nice touch with a brush.”
“No, sir,” Rice answered. His white teeth gleamed in the center of the black beard. “Once this war is really over I’m gonna find me a nice rich widow and spend the rest of my life sleepin’ between silk sheets and eatin’ good. No more of those twelve to four watches at night for me.”
“I always heard that most rich widows are old and fat,” Brannon said.
“Don’t matter, Captain. You can always find a nice young filly on the side for hard ridin’.”
“Two women?” Brannon’s eyebrows rose. “You’re asking for trouble with two women. Double trouble.”
“No trouble for a good submarine torpedoman,” Rice said airily. He looked up as the PBY-4 dipped low over the submarine, its engines thundering.
“Get lost, you bastard! You’re making me nervous and I don’t want to smear these nice little flags.”
Down on the main deck John Olsen was talking to Chief Monk Flanagan.
“Captain’s a little worried, Chief. You sure the Base exploder shop won’t be able to tell if we modified the exploders?’