Rhodes thought for a moment. “Ginty is a marvelous torpedo-man. He knows this ship from stem to stem. DeLucia is a damned good torpedoman, one of the best, just not as good as Ginty. He knows the boat as well as Ginty does. But I think DeLucia has the edge on Ginty in organizing and managing ability. If it were up to me I think I’d give the job to DeLucia.”
“I don’t want to hurt Ginty’s feelings,” Hinman said.
“Let me talk to him,” Rhodes said. Hinman nodded.
Rhodes found Ginty in his Forward Room, checking the work he had asked be done on his torpedo tubes.
“Damned relief crew bastards don’t do nothin’ right,” he growled. “Can’t even grease things right! Look at the gobs of guck hangin’ off n these fittings!”
“You should be up on the tender buying yourself a Chief’s hat and some khakis,” Rhodes said. “Let the other people worry.”
“Whaddya mean, let other people worry? This is my fuckin’ room, Chief! I mean Mister Rhodes! This is my room! If I don’t do it who the else fuck is goin’ to do it right?”
“If I decide to take the gold you’ll have a lot of other things to worry about if the Old Man makes you the Chief of the Boat,” Rhodes said. Ginty whirled around and stared.
“That’s the last fucking thing I want! I ain’t no Dusty Rhodes, mother hen to all the fucking chickens!
“I’m Arnold Samuel Ginch Ginty of the Asiatic Submarines! The Old Man gives me your job and I’ll go ashore and that red-head will hide me where no Shore Patrol will ever find me. She already told me that!”
“No profit in thinking like that,” Rhodes said. “But you’re putting the Old Man in a bind. He’s been thinking about putting DeLucia in charge of both rooms.” He let his voice trail off.
“The Old Man wants his torpedo rooms run right, he wants fish that run hot, straight and normal every damned time, tell him to put me in charge!” Ginty’s voice was belligerent. “I ain’t taking nothin’ away from Mike DeLucia. He’s a damned good torpedoman. One of the best. But he ain’t as good as I am just like I’m not as good as you are.
“DeLucia wants to be Chief of the Boat, for Chrissakes! He studied you all last run, you know what? When you cracked a whip on someone he’d go around day or so later and try to find out how the people felt who got nicked by the whip. Shit, he pure wants that nose-wipin’ job! He ain’t gonna be one, two, three after you but I’ll help him out all I can!”
“I’ll suggest that to the Old Man,” Rhodes said. Ginty caught his arm in an iron grip.
“Chief, Mr. Rhodes, dammit it’s hard to say that! You do more than suggest it! You tell him this is the way it has to be! He’ll listen to you, he always listens to you. You do this for me, you hear?”
Rhodes went into the Wardroom where Captain Hinman sat with Pete Simms.
“If you get Ginty and DeLucia in here for a talk, sir,” he said, “if you suggest to Ginty that you need the best man you can get to take charge of both Torpedo Rooms, put that first, sir, he’ll jump at the chance to do that rather than be Chief of the Boat. DeLucia will do a good job as Chief of the Boat and Ginty will help him all he can. But you’ll save face for Ginty and Mike if you work it so Ginty thinks he should be in charge of both rooms.” Hinman grinned and nodded his head.
“I’d appreciate it, Dusty,” he said, “if you’d talk with Barber about your own situation. I hate to crowd you but if you both decide to refuse the commissions I’m going to need all the time I can get to get you transferred back aboard.
“The trouble is, the Staff doesn’t like Pearl Harbor boats or captains. And they might cross me by letting you stay Chief and putting both of you in the relief crews. I don’t think either of you want that.”
“I’ll let you know in half an hour, Sir,” Rhodes said and went in search of Barber.
He found the balding man sitting on a bollard on the dock, morosely watching the men he had been in charge of rig the fuel oil lines to fill Mako’s fuel oil tanks with 125,000 gallons of fuel oil.
“They doing it right, John?”
“Of course,” Barber answered. “I taught them how to do it. Dusty, I don’t much like this idea of taking the gold. How do you feel about it?”
“I didn’t think about it too much at Quarters,” Rhodes said. “It was too much of a shock. Since then I’ve been thinking a lot about it. I don’t much like the idea. All I ever wanted out of this Navy was to be Chief and to do a good job and get my twenty in and then get a good job in the Yard, so I could put the boys through college and so I could be with June all the time. This doesn’t change things all that much, we’ll both revert back to Chief when the war’s over and this means we’d both be home every night in Pearl.”
“Means we’d be moving into Officers’ Country to live,” Barber said. “A lot of officers got no use for a Reserve, got no use for a Mustang who’s come up out of the ranks. Got to think of that, got to think about a lot of things. They don’t give you enough time for the thinking.”
“As long as we’re chewing things over.” Rhodes said. “If we say no we might be going back to sea with Pete Simms in Sirocco’s job. That doesn’t make me turn somersaults with joy.”
“The son of a bitch has got a screw loose, somewhere,” Barber growled. “Old Man came to me before the start of this patrol. You know that Mealey told the Old Man to get rid of Simms? Thought you did. Old Man says he wants to keep him aboard, this was in Pearl, because he said Pete Simms had good stuff in him and that he’d been kicked in the balls by his wife and needed another chance. Shit, the only kick in the balls he’s had is the one old Hindu gave him in that head back in the Maneuvering Room!”
“Maybe the Old Man was right,” Rhodes said slowly. “Simms did a pretty good job this patrol. He didn’t fuck up any.”
“How could he fuck up? The engines ran good. Hindu takes care of the electrical stuff like it was a baby. We didn’t have any hard things to get over. Outside of Grabby Grabnas gettin’ killed and Tommy takin’ that slug through the neck in that silly damned deck gun action we didn’t have a tough patrol.”
“But the whole idea of taking the gold doesn’t sit right, does it?” Rhodes said softly. “It doesn’t sit right because it doesn’t feel right. It isn’t something we wanted. I was up in the Forward Room, talking with Ginty a while ago and that feeling was nagging me when Ginty apologized for calling me Chief. And then I remembered this.” He took out his wallet and pulled out a slip of paper and unfolded it.
“Remember this? I showed it to you on patrol. The paper June gave me.” He squatted beside Barber and read the words on the paper aloud in a soft voice.
“Accept what is offered even though it is not wanted.”
“I remember that,” Barber said. “You think what she wrote down was meant for something like this?”
“All she told me was that it would mean something at the right time and I should follow it, that I’d know when the right time was,” Rhodes said slowly. “I keep getting a feeling that this is the time her old gods told her about. “
“Well, if you take the gold then I’ll take it,” Barber grunted. They both turned as they heard footsteps.
“How about getting your flat asses up to Ship’s Service on the tender and buying yourselves some collar bars and hats so I can take you to lunch at the Officers’ Club downtown?” Joe Sirocco said.
“That is, if you don’t mind eating in the presence of some people who are pretty stupid, as a rule. Not like the Chiefs’ Club, I’m told.”
“Heard that the food isn’t that good, either,” Barber said. “When we get back to Pearl you come out to my house for dinner. That Dottie of mine puts out a meal would make a professional cook in a fancy hotel go and slit his throat!”
“It’ll have to be eat and run,” Sirocco said. “I think I’ll only be in Pearl for a few days.”
“Sir,” Rhodes said, eyeing the big officer, “let me ask you something straight out. No offense in the asking. None taken if you’ tel
l me to mind my own business.”
“Go ahead,” Sirocco said, grinning.
“You’re not a regular officer,” Rhodes said slowly. “You might be a Reserve, you might not. But there’s something different about you. I’d like to know what it is.”
“What gave you that idea?” Sirocco said. He was still smiling.
“Ginty noticed it first, I think,” Rhodes said slowly. “The way Captain Mealey treated you. Captain Mealey doesn’t like any Reserves. He’s Old Navy. You know that.
“Putting you aboard as Exec when Pete Simms rated the job on the basis of his patrol runs, his time in rank. To quote Ginty: You’re too smart for a Reserve, too smart for a regular Navy officer. Too many people higher than you in rank treated you with too much respect. For my own part, I like the way you operate. You’re one hell of a man.”
“I must have slipped up,” Sirocco said slowly. He looked at Rhodes and Barber.
“I’m doing what I shouldn’t do,” he said. “But I trust you two. Implicitly.
“Yes, there’s something different. I’m Naval Intelligence. A Reserve, that’s true enough. I was put aboard the Gudgeon as a sort of training period. They put five of us aboard submarines so we could get qualified as submarine men. Three of the five were Chiefs, by the way. Just so we’d have the experience.
“Then the war broke out so they left me aboard Gudgeon and I made two war patrols. The Gudgeon’s Captain didn’t know my status. After two runs on Gudgeon I went to the Staff at Pearl. Bob Rudd knew about me but no one else other than the Admiral, Nimitz. The reports came in about defective torpedoes, defective diesel engines, lots of those, John.
“Washington thought it was a long-range sabotage plan that was being put into operation. So they sent me to sea on Mako with Captain Mealey. To check out the torpedoes. Admiral Nimitz and Bob Rudd figured that Mealey was a hard enough case so that he’d make an aggressive patrol. There were two other submarines closer to Truk than we were, did you know that? They could have taken the assignment but they wanted Mealey to do the work.”
“I’ll bet Captain Mealey let you know how he felt about having you aboard,” Rhodes said. “He isn’t the sort of man who would keep that kind of thing to himself.”
“What he didn’t like, really, was the idea that if there was something wrong with the torpedoes, the exploders I mean, that his word wouldn’t be good enough, that I had to be there as an observer and to confirm his report. But he’s a hell of a man, you know. He treated me better than I expected and I learned a lot from him.”
“And what did you learn about the things they wanted you to find out about, the exploders?” John Barber asked.
“Nothing that you regular Navy people didn’t know,” Sirocco said. “But that’s the way it goes in any bureaucracy. Now I’m going back to Washington for reassignment with a few days off in Pearl. That reminds me, speaking of Pearl: I went up to the Squadron office and fixed things so we don’t have to leave here until after Mako leaves on her next patrol. I sort of wanted to watch her go to sea and I thought you’d like to do that, too.”
“You were assuming we would take the gold?” Rhodes said.
“I didn’t assume anything,” Sirocco said with a wide grin on his craggy face. “1 knew what the plan was.
“If you refused the promotions, either one of you, they were going to fly you back to Pearl, let you have one night with your wives and then march you up in front of Admiral Nimitz to tell him why you preferred to be a Chief in Iceland for the duration of the war to being a Lieutenant in Pearl Harbor, doing important work and being at home every night!”
Chapter 29
Dusty Rhodes tried to swallow the lump in his throat and failed as he stood on the New Farm Wharf in Brisbane and watched the U.S.S. Mako maneuver in the Swan River to begin the trip downriver to the sea and her fifth war patrol. The Mako was the only ship that Rhodes had ever put in commission and, he feared, the last ship that he would love as a sailor. John Barber stood beside him, his face dour.
“She’s making too much smoke out of number two engine,” Barber grunted. “Damn fool on watch isn’t taking care of things like he should.”
Rhodes nodded. His eyes were on Ginch Ginty, his new Chief’s hat already battered and “seagoing,” as he secured Mako’s topside for sea. Ginty paused in his labors and Mako finished her turn in midriver and his eyes searched the wharf. He raised a hand shoulder high in salute to the two former Chief Petty Officers and then he turned his back on the wharf and went back to his work. Lieut. Comdr. Joe Sirocco, standing a yard or so away, moved up beside Rhodes and Barber.
“Hurts a little, doesn’t it?” Sirocco said softly.
“Too damned much,” Barber grunted. “That bastard on watch in the Forward Engine Room is letting that number two engine smoke too damned much!”
“It’s like watching a daughter get married, I guess,” Sirocco said. “No matter how nice the new son-in-law is, you know that he’s not good enough for your own flesh and blood.” Barber looked at him and then nodded his head and turned away as Mako, still trailing a thin plume of smoke from her number two engine exhaust, moved down the river, the pilot boat trailing astern.
Rhodes turned to Sirocco.
“What time does our plane leave, sir?”
“Eighteen hundred,” Sirocco said. “They’ll send a car for our gear at sixteen hundred. We’d better figure on eating an early lunch and an early dinner or else eat a late lunch and take along a box lunch or something. It’s a long way to Pearl.”
“How come Ginty’s doing topside?” Barber asked as the three men walked down the wharf toward the submarine tender. “DeLucia’s Chief of the Boat, isn’t he? Captain didn’t change his mind, did he?”
“No,” Rhodes answered. “DeLucia’s smart. He knew that Ginty wanted to do the topside work, Ginch is a damned good all-around sailor, so DeLucia asked him to take topside. It makes Ginty feel important and it puts him in DeLucia’s corner.” He looked at Sirocco.
“How long you going to be in Pearl? Long enough for you to come out to the house and meet our families, have dinner with us?”
“Oh, yes, long enough for that. Probably a week or more and then I’ll go back to Washington for de-briefing and write reports for about a month and wait for my next assignment.”
“I’d hate like hell to have your job,” Barber said. “You’re a hell of a good sailor, hell of a good submariner, why’d you want to be a damned undercover agent?”
“You make it sound like something dirty,” Sirocco said. His big, battered face was grinning. “I didn’t ask for it. You know how the military is, you join up and say you’re an expert cook and they put you to driving a truck or something. I’m a mechanical engineer. So they made me an intelligence agent. I don’t like it, I never wanted it but I do it because they told me to do it. All I can say is that the two patrols on Gudgeon and the two on Mako made it worthwhile.” The three of them walked by an American Red Cross booth where coffee was on sale and on down the wharf to the Salvation Army booth where coffee and doughnuts were free. Each of them dropped a pound note in the bowl the Salvation Army girl had put at the end of the coffee bar for contributions, accepted their cups of coffee and doughnuts and walked out onto the wharf and stood in the sun.
“What did she draw for a patrol area?” Rhodes asked around a mouthful of doughnut.
“Luzon Straits,” Sirocco said. “The stretch of water just north of Luzon Island and south of Formosa. Good water, deep as hell in most places, up to three thousand fathoms if I remember the chart. Lots of small islands to hide behind. The Straits are a funnel for all the Jap shipping moving between the Philippines and the Empire; in fact everything going to and from Japan goes through the Straits.”
“Sounds like a good area,” Rhodes said.
“I’d say choice,” Sirocco answered. “I heard there was some bitching from older captains when Mako was given the area. A lot of the older guys are still virgins, haven’t sunk a ship ye
t. They want lots of targets so they can collect their medals and get a boost in rank. Before I forget it, I saw a ship movement memo in the Squadron office yesterday. Eelfish is over in Freemantle, getting ready to go out on her first patrol. Mike Brannon’s her skipper.”
“Good man,” Rhodes said. He chewed slowly on a piece of doughnut. “Damned good man. Mako was lucky. We had Brannon as the Exec for two runs and then we had you for two runs. I don’t know about now, with Pete Simms riding as Number Two.”
“He might be all right,” Sirocco said slowly. “The Chaplain and the Squadron legal officer were waiting for him when we got in from the last patrol. His wife’s divorce went through while we were at sea. The legal officer had all the papers. Pete seemed kind of relieved that it was all over.”
“How about their little girl?” Barber asked.
“I don’t know,” Sirocco said. “Pete said something about being able to see her any time he was in the area as long as the war is going on. Once the war is over there’s some sort of an arrangement drawn up so he can see her at regular intervals.”
“Damned shame he’s such an asshole,” Barber said. “That is a nice little kid. His wife is a nice woman, ex-wife I mean. But he’s an asshole!”
“You can use that kind of language when you’re an enlisted man,” Sirocco said with a broad grin. “But officers don’t talk about fellow officers in quite that way. You have to say he’s a gold-plated asshole.”
Chief Torpedoman Ginch Ginty stood in the middle of the Mako’s Forward Torpedo Room, his Chief’s hat pushed back on his head, his meaty fists on his hips.
“Johnny Paul Shithead,” he rumbled. “You seen me get this room ready for a war patrol four times now and by now you should know what you gotta do! I put in for you to get bumped up to First Class and you better by-God do your damned job and do it right or I’ll bust your ass down to Second Class again! They’s some clothing adrift in that upper bunk aft, they’s a thirteen-fourteen tool layin’ on the work bench space up for’d and you’ll be lookin’ for that damned tool in the bilges once we take the first sea outside of the reef. The fuckin’ deck outboard of the port sound head is crummy. Do your fuckin’ job, sailor!” He turned and stomped out of the Torpedo Room, heading aft. Johnny Paul reached for the sound-powered telephone and dialed the After Torpedo Room.
Final Harbor (The Silent War Book 1) Page 36