“What’s on your mind, John?” Brannon asked. He bit into the roll, savoring the sweetness of the prune filling.
“This damned gulf is too wide to patrol submerged,” Olsen growled. “Fifty miles is too wide. Takes us all day, submerged, to cover half of the distance. Takes us all night on the surface to go from one side to the other. Too much can slip past us. I’d like to go up the gulf a little way, about twenty, twenty-five miles, half way up to Tacloban.” He pointed at the chart. “We’ll be here when we surface tonight. By the time we’ve finished charging the batteries we’ll be off the east of Leyte Island. We could turn north and run at ten knots up the coast for a while. Stay close enough to the coast so the mountains hide us from radar in case they got a night-flyer out there or a patrol boat. If we don’t see anything in a couple of hours we could come right and angle back to our area and be there before we have to dive for the day.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Brannon said. He reached for Olsen’s pack of cigarets and took one. “Work out the courses and speeds.” He waited as Olsen busied himself at the chart. He looked at the result and nodded assent.
“Enter the courses and speeds in the Night Order Book,” Brannon said. “Might break the monotony.” Olsen slid out from behind the Wardroom table and unfolded his long, lean length. “Hope we run into something,” he said. “The crew’s getting itchy.”
In the ship’s galley Scotty Rudolph stared balefully at a big dishpan full of boned steaks. He turned to a messcook.
“Get one of them jugs of papaya juice I bought in Fremantle and mix a cup of the juice and a cup of Wooster sauce together and paint each side of each steak with the gunk. Put a thin coat each side. Use that brush hangin’ from that ventilation duct.”
“What’s that for?” the messcook asked.
“Aussie beef is tough. They feed their cows on grass. Papaya juice is a tenderizer, but you got to be careful, you can’t use it full strength. That stuff will turn the toughest steak you ever saw into gray mud you put it on full strength and leave it on. Hour or so should be about right. Make them steaks nice and tender.”
The Eelfish surfaced an hour after the sun had dropped behind the mountain ranges of Leyte Island. The submarine’s four big diesels belched a small cloud of black smoke and then settled down to a steady pounding, three of the engines charging the two giant storage batteries, the other engine moving the Eelfish at a sedate six knots. Mike Brannon climbed through the bridge hatch and took a deep breath of the fresh night air.
“Nice night, Jerry,” he said to Lieutenant Jerry Gold, the ship’s Engineering Officer, who had the Bridge Watch. “Going to be a quarter moon in a couple of hours.” He went aft to his night station, the cigaret deck area back of the periscope shears. He leaned against the 1.1 quad pom-pom gun mount that stood in the center of the cigaret deck and raised his night binoculars to his eyes to search the horizon. Above him, in the lookout stands in the periscope shears, the three lookouts adjusted their night binoculars and searched the sky, the horizon, and the sea.
A few minutes before midnight Mike Brannon heard Lieutenant Gold reciting the litany that all Officers of the Deck on a submarine must go through when they are relieved of the Deck Watch. He listened as Gold told Lieutenant Bob Lee that the battery charge had been secured at twenty-three hundred hours, that number one main engine was on the line and making turns for six knots, the lookouts had been relieved, the below-decks watch had been relieved, the fresh-water tanks had been topped off and the evaporators were being shut down, depth set on all torpedoes was four feet, all torpedo tube outer doors closed. Course was 285 degrees, true.
“You’re relieved sir,” Lee said to Jerry Gold.
“Thank you,” Gold said. “The Captain’s on the cigaret deck and he hasn’t had a cup of coffee for two hours.”
“Why don’t you send up some coffee for the Captain when you go below?” Lee said with a grin. Gold nodded his head and dropped through the hatch to the Conning Tower.
John Olsen brought Brannon’s coffee to the cigaret deck, balancing the two coffee mugs one on top of the other.
“Thanks, John,” Brannon said. He sipped at the hot, sweet liquid. “Anything on your mind tonight?”
“I’d like to make a radar sweep at zero zero thirty, sir,” Olsen said. “One sweep to get a fix on the mountain peaks on Mindanao and Leyte for navigational purposes.”
“Very well,” Brannon said. He walked forward to the small bridge. “The Exec will make a radar sweep at zero zero thirty hours, Bob. He’ll tell you when he lights off the radar.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Lee said. “Radar sweep at zero zero thirty, ten minutes from now.” He moved to one side as Olsen went down the hatch.
Brannon heard the SJ radar antenna begin to turn, and from below decks he could hear the voice of Elmer Rafferty, the radioman who doubled as a radar operator, calling off the bearings and ranges to the mountain peaks on Leyte and Mindanao islands. There was a short pause and then Rafferty’s voice went up a notch in tone.
“Contact! Several small pips bearing zero eight five, sir. Range is… range is one five zero zero zero yards, fifteen thousand yards, sir!”
“Secure the radar,” Olsen’s voice was sharp. “Bridge! Tell the Captain that radar has a contact bearing zero eight five. Range is one five zero zero zero, fifteen thousand yards. Radar is secured, pending Captain’s orders.”
Lee turned and saw Brannon standing behind him. “I have the word, Bob,” Brannon said. He lowered his head to the Bridge transmitter.
“Control. Let’s get another radar bearing on those contacts. Make it short but get a good bearing and range.” He looked upward as the radar antenna steadied on the bearing, and then he heard Rafferty’s voice.
“Positive contact bearing zero eight four, sir. The range is closing slightly, closing a little bit. Contact is coming this way, sir.”
“Secure the radar,” Brannon ordered. “Come right to course three one five. All ahead full. Mr. Olsen to the bridge.”
“Steady on course three one five, all ahead full is answered, Bridge.” The helmsman’s voice from the Conning Tower was flat, unemotional. Brannon heard the coughing roar of the other three diesel engines starting and then the quickening of Eelfish under his feet as the ship picked up speed.
“Very well,” Lee answered the helmsman. He turned and repeated the information to Brannon as Olsen climbed out of the hatch and went back to the cigaret deck.
“That radar contact look solid to you?” Brannon asked.
“Jim Michaels was in the Control Room when we lit off the radar,” Olsen said. “He’s damned good on that thing. They told us in Fremantle when we took him aboard that he was the best they ever saw. I tend to believe him when he looks at those little spots of light and tells us he’s got a solid contact.”
“Several pips might be a convoy,” Brannon said. “Go below, John, and start the plot. I want to stay on this course until we know more about the contact, until we know its speed and course. Once we’ve got that I want to be put on a parallel course, an opposite course to that of the contact. I want to run past the contact at no more than four thousand yards. Clear?” Olsen nodded and went forward to the bridge and down the hatch. Two minutes later his voice came over the bridge speaker.
“Bridge. Tell the Captain that we want to make two radar sweeps, one now, one in five minutes. Recommend slowing to ten knots until we have course and speed of the contact.”