Hinman looked at Joan Richards. The WAVES uniform, designed in haste for the women who volunteered for service in the Navy, tried but didn’t hide the fact that Joan Richards was a woman. His eyes went from her small feet, encased in black uniform shoes, up past her slim legs and her flaring hips that nipped in to a small waist and then the deep bosom and above it a pert face with deep blue eyes and blue-black, curly hair. The woman vibrates, he thought to himself, she makes the whole room vibrate!
“Sit down, sit down,” Butler said. “Have a cup of coffee. There’s a couple of sandwiches left; we didn’t get a lunch. We’ll go out for dinner later. How the hell are you, Joan?”
“Full of fascinating information,” she said. She sat down and poured herself a cup of coffee. “The Navy is a funny place, Ben. They put us in a barracks that had been built for men. It had urinals in the toilets, those waist-high things? So one of the girls filled the urinals with dirt and planted some flowers in them. When the Captain came around on his first inspection he almost had a heart attack! He didn’t know what to say so he just stomped out so mad he could spit!” She grinned, her dark blue eyes dancing in merriment.
“And I’m absolutely up to the minute on venereal disease! They gave us lectures with motion pictures. Very graphic. Showed close-up pictures of how a man can tell if he’s got the clap. You should have heard some of the girls moan! I think they would have liked to date the man who was the model even if he did have the dirty old VD! Look at Captain Hinman! He’s blushing!”
“I am not!” he spluttered. “It’s hot in here!”
“Indeed it is,” she said, and took off her uniform jacket. The white fabric of her severely cut shirtwaist strained and threatened to burst as she turned and flung the jacket on the couch and Hinman felt a tightening in his groin.
“Don’t mind me, Captain,” she said. “I’ve been talking to editors like Ben here for so long I’ve forgotten how to talk like a lady, not that I ever was one. Is there any more coffee?”
“A ship’s captain, Joan,” Butler said, filling her cup, “usually reads the service record of a new person who comes aboard his ship to acquaint himself with the person’s abilities, marital status, age, things like that. Captain Hinman is now your boss so why don’t you fill him in on your background?”
“Fine,” she said. She pulled a package of cigarets out of her black Navy purse and lit one.
“Joan Esther Richards. Age, thirty-four years. Height, five-feet-two inches. Weight, one hundred twenty-five pounds. Condition of health, perfect. Father was Irish, mother Spanish. Temperament, said by some to be explosive. I think I’m rather sweet, myself.
“Marital status, divorced. No children. Married when I was twenty-one to a boy of twenty-three who was still a boy of twenty-three two years later. He showed no signs of growing into a man. I had become a woman, an adult. So I divorced him. No romantic interests at this time.
“Professional background: I went into advertising at the age of twenty-one as a secretary. Worked my way up to assistant copy writer, to copy writer, to assistant account executive, the first woman in my agency to hold that position and finally to head of public relations for the agency. Joined the Navy because most of the men in my agency were asking for special deferments to keep from being drafted. So far I’m not sorry. What else, Ben?”
“You left out that you’re honest, capable, hard-nosed and very humble,” Butler said. “But not bad to look at, not bad.”
“Ben wanted me to marry him, years ago,” she said, turning to Hinman. “I refused. He’s just too damned bright to talk to at breakfast every morning. You don’t have to return the courtesy of telling me about yourself, Captain. I nosed around in the Navy Department the other day. I think I like you.”
“So far I think I like you,” Hinman said. “But I have to say that gallantry is not my strong suit.”
“Good. Phoniness isn’t something I admire,” she said. “Now should we get down to work?” She opened a briefcase she had brought with her and took out a large ring notebook.
“Your itinerary is on the front page, sir. The advance work has been done on all the stops up to and through Houston. I can do the rest of it while we’re on the first half of the tour. The schedule of appearances and speeches follows the itinerary. With very few exceptions I can tell you in advance who the bastards are. Ben has told me all about what he wants done in that area.
“I’ve gone over the speeches you wrote, Ben. There’s a couple of things I want to change in the speeches aimed directly at the women’s groups he’ll be talking to but we can talk about that.” She gave the book to Captain Hinman, who leafed through it.
“It seems to me to be something like a circus,” he said slowly. “You provide the elephant and I ride on it and smile and wave my hand and make a speech whenever you press my button.”
“It isn’t a circus,” Joan said. “There is no elephant and no one is going to make you say anything you think is wrong. You are scheduled to make twenty-five speeches, sir. I could book you into a hundred and twenty-five without half trying! The people want to see you. They want to hear you. You have to understand that! All I’m here for is to try to make sure you don’t put your foot in your mouth and fall on your ass!”
Hinman looked at her, his hard face beginning to break into a smile.
“I believe you can do that, Lieutenant. I do believe you can do that. Now what do you want me to do now, next?”
“Read that first speech,” she said crisply. “There isn’t one person in a hundred who knows how to read a speech to a live audience. Ben has done a marvelous job with these talks so get up on your feet, sir, and show me how you read. Let me give you one tip, if you don’t mind. An audience is made up of individual people so when you stand up there in front of a sea of faces remember that and talk to someone in the second row for a few minutes and then go back a few rows, maybe shift over to the other side of the group and talk to someone there. Keep doing that every few minutes. It makes it easier for you and it establishes a rapport with the people who are out there listening to you.”
“This isn’t going to be as easy as I thought it would be, Ben,” Hinman said. He held the notebook in his two hands, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet.
“It’s easy now,” Butler said. “Wait until you goof in public and afterward our sweet-tempered angel here gets you alone where no one else can see or hear and reads you off like a longshoreman and then throws her earrings at you. She’s famous for that.”
“The Navy won’t let us wear earrings, Ben dear. I’ll throw my shoes at him!”
“As long as it isn’t your lingerie,” Butler said.
“That’s a bad idea? Look, Ben, our submarine captain is blushing again!”
Chapter 14
Mako eased slowly away from the pier, her screws making a bubbling swirl in the oily water of the Loch. Chief John Barber stuck his head up out of the After Engine Room hatch and waved at his wife and daughter on the pier and then his head disappeared and the heavy black hatch cover came down, its hand wheel whirling as Barber secured the hatch for sea.
Spook Hernandez stood apart from the families of Mako’s crew who had been invited to watch the ship leave on its third war patrol. The blindness brought on by the wood alcohol had passed after four days of hospital treatment. On his right sleeve he wore the insignia of a Second Class Torpedoman. The court-martial Captain Mealey had called for had reduced him one grade in rank, fined him three months’ pay and, acting on Captain Mealey’s harsh demand, had disqualified him for all further submarine service. The reduction in rating didn’t bother Hernandez greatly, he had been broken in rank before and won it back. The disqualification for submarine duty was what made his bile rise in his throat. It meant that he now could serve only on destroyers, a ship he hated, or work in a torpedo shop at Naval Base.
“Fucking near twenty years in the Boats down the drain, you white-mustached son of a bitch!” he muttered to himself as he watched Capta
in Mealey ease the big submarine away from the pier and turn the ship for its passage down the Southeast Loch and through the harbor. “I hope the fucking Jap sinks you!” He turned away and walked by June Rhodes and her two sons, who were watching Mako leave.
Chief Rhodes walked to the after deck of the Mako as the ship completed its turn and raised his hand to his family. Then he went about his duties, checking each deck hatch to make sure it was secured, leaning his weight on the handles of the ammunition lockers that were built into the Conning Tower, checking the two squat 5.25 deck guns to make sure their barrels were tightly secured in the stands. Both guns were built of stainless steel so no clumsy breech and muzzle covers were needed. Satisfied, he asked for permission to leave the deck and go below. He climbed up on the cigaret deck and went below to begin his rounds of checking everything below decks. When he had finished he drew a cup of coffee from the urn in the Crew’s Mess and sat down at a mess table beside John Barber.
“How’s Simms?” Rhodes asked in a low voice.
“He’s like he always is,” Barber said. “I don’t see any changes. I didn’t like the bastard before, I don’t like him now. Like to drove me crazy last three days with do this and do that and do it yesterday. Dottie tells me he wasn’t at home last eleven, twelve days of the rest period. Where was he, aboard?”
“At the BOQ,” Rhodes said. “Nate Cohen told me that when we went to the ship to meet Captain Mealey, after the other officers had left Simms asked for permission to live aboard, to supervise the overhaul. The Old Man asked him if his family was here on the Base or in town and when he said yes the Old Man cut him off at the knees, told him no. I guess he checked in at the BOQ that day.”
“One of these days Hendershot is going to brain that simple bastard,” Barber said morosely. “If I don’t do it first! He treats us as if we don’t know anything. Hell, Hendershot has forgot more about a submarine than Simms will ever know! That ol’ Kentucky boy is gettin’ hot as hell under the collar. He’s gonna read off Simms one of these days and we both know the Old Man won’t stand for that.”
Rhodes nodded. “I’ll speak to Hindu. You hear where we’re going on this patrol? I asked Grilley but he said only the Old Man and the Exec know but that he thinks the Old Man will give the officers the word after we get clear of the net at the harbor entrance. Hinman used to tell us before we got away from the pier.”
“Nope,” Barber said. “I don’t know. I don’t worry about stuff like that. Wherever we go I ain’t gonna see it from those engine rooms. All I worry about when we start a run is will the damned torpedoes work right.”
“The fish will run good,” Rhodes said. “Ginty and the new guy in the After Room, DeLucia, and I went up to the Torpedo Shop and did the finals on each fish ourselves. And the Old Man has given me the word to modify the exploders again.”
“No shit!” Barber said. “He told you that?”
Rhodes nodded and sipped his coffee.
“He told me he wants to be there to help Ginty and me when we modify the exploders,” he said. “From what he said he knows a little something about torpedoes and exploder mechanisms.”
“He knows engines,” Barber said. “He came back to the engine room when I was fine-tuning the fuel injectors and he sure as hell knew what questions to ask and I sure as hell knew I’d better give him straight answers. I like to go to sea with a man like that.”
“So do I,” Rhodes answered. “Most of the crew isn’t too happy. Cutting off liberty the last three days for all but the married guys didn’t sit too well. They figure he’s a hard-ass.”
“Don’t make a shit to me what they think,” Barber said. “All I want is for him to get me home safe. Getting so it’s harder and harder to go off and leave Dottie and the kid. Must be a sign that I’m gettin’ old or something.”
The destroyer that had led Mako through the harbor net and out to sea whooped its whistle three times and turned away and Mako’s crew settled down to the boring routine of running down the long sea miles to the patrol area. Captain Mealey sent Joe Sirocco to the bridge to take over the deck and summoned the officers to the Wardroom.
“Joe has read our patrol orders,” he said. “I want you to know where we’re going this trip.” He touched the right side of his white mustache with his finger.
“We’ve got a good patrol area, one that should give us a lot of targets. It’s south of Luzon, on the shipping lanes out of the harbor at Manila. We’ll run on the surface as long as we can on the way out. I am going to hold drills, a lot of emergency drills on the way out. This crew and all of you have to be letter-perfect in everything. We’ll hold deck gun firing drills beginning the day after tomorrow. Chief Rhodes fixed up some small kegs with flags on them for targets.”
“Are you going to attack on the surface with the deck guns, Captain?” Lieutenant Simms was grinning. “Hell, I’d like to pick a boarding party from the crew, sir. We could board and destroy the way the old Navy did it!”
Captain Mealey stared at his Engineering Officer. “If I contemplate boarding an enemy ship, Mr. Simms, I will pick the men to board.” He stood up. “You have my permission to tell our patrol area to your people.”
Lieutenant Grilley found Chief Rhodes and sent him to the Forward Torpedo Room to tell the people up there where Mako was going and went aft to talk to the people in the After Room himself. He met Rhodes in the Crew’s Mess.
“Sounds like a good area, Chief. People up forward happy?”
“Reasonably, sir. They’re still hot about no liberty the last three days but they’ll get over that. Ginty is worried about if the Japs have closed the bars in Manila.”
Lieutenant Simms yelled his information about the patrol area to the men on watch in each Engine Room and then went back to the Maneuvering Room to give the word to Chief Hendershot and his people. When he had finished he stood, leaning negligently against the door of the head. Chief Hendershot was sitting on the padded bench in front of the control console.
“The Old Man is thinking about forming a boarding party to take smaller ships, stuff too small to waste a torpedo on,” he said with a grin. “He wants me to lead the boarding party, take the prize at cutlass point!”
“Didn’t know we had any of those aboard,” Hendershot said. “I think we got six old bayonets around. Could use them I guess. They won’t fit the rifles but we could carry ‘em.”
“Officers have swords,” Simms said. “I’ve got mine with me. It was my graduation gift from the Academy; my father paid over two hundred dollars for it. Beautiful piece of steel — you can shave with it.”
“Kinda hard to do that in that small stateroom you people live in, isn’t it?” Hendershot’s mouth was smiling but his eyes were wary.
“Your sense of humor went out of style in the Depression, Chief,” Simms said. “What we should do with this submarine is to take out the tubes in the After Room and the rest of the gear back there and cut the hull so it could be opened up like a clamshell. Then we could keep a PT boat back there, flood down, launch the PT boat and really raise hell with the enemy! Excuse me, I’ve got to use the head.” He opened the door to the tiny toilet and backed in and closed the door. He came out in a few minutes and went forward. Hendershot went over and opened the door to the head and turned back, his face dark with anger.
“You!” he said to one of his gang. “Get a bucket and a brush and clean that fucking toilet bowl. That bastard’s got a revolving nozzle for an asshole! Sprays the whole damned bowl! Fucker has got a head of his own in the Forward Room and a guy to clean it. Why in the hell does he have to use our head?”
He asked the same question of Dusty Rhodes as the two men sat in the Chief’s Quarters, next to the Captain’s stateroom, his voice low but vibrating with anger.
“I don’t know of any regulations says he has to use the head in the Forward Room,” Rhodes said slowly. “The man on watch at the torpedo tubes in the Forward Room can use the Officers’ head up there if he has to piss and th
ere’s no one to relieve him. About all I can do is to tell you to grin and bear it. Maybe he won’t do it again.”
“Shit!” Hendershot rasped. “He did it every fucking day on both the other patrol runs! He’d come back there and shoot the shit with the guy on watch at the board and then he’d go in our head and spray that damned bowl with his crap! I don’t like cleanin’ heads, neither do you. We’ve both cleaned enough of them in our time. I’m gonna think of something.”
“Think twice when you do,” Rhodes said crisply. “You know this Old Man, you served with him. Don’t put your head in the meat grinder. He’s nobody to fuck with, this Old Man.”
“Oh, shit, I know him,” Hendershot said. “He’s always been a hard rock. But he’s tougher now than he used to be. Used to be he’d hit you with the Book if you fucked up but he didn’t use to disqualify anyone like he did Spook. That was a hell of a belt for getting drunk. It was enough the silly bastard got the shit scared out of him, blind for four days.”
“It was where he got drunk,” Rhodes said. “He got drunk aboard and Barney killed himself on that drunk. The Old Man could have given him a General instead of a Summary Court.”
“It was still a hell of a belt,” Hendershot insisted. “I didn’t hear about anyone trying to help Spook out at the trial.”
“Grilley tried, he tried real hard,” Rhodes said. “Nate Cohen volunteered to give testimony about Spook’s character and they heard him and said thank you.”
Hendershot looked at Rhodes. “You know that; you must have been there.”
“I was,” Rhodes said. “Captain asked me to give my opinion of Spook’s ability. I gave him a good send-off, said I’d go back to sea with him any time.”
Final Harbor (The Silent War Book 1) Page 14