by Robb White
At four in the morning he finished the thing and leaned back. Slowly, like something stepping out of a fog bank, he began to realize that what he had written on those pieces of paper was—simply—his death warrant. Up until now he had thought of this op plan of his as only a ridiculous set of plans written merely to satisfy the whim of a petulant, disagreeable man. But now, like a blow—like a fist in the mouth—he knew that this same man would use these nonsensical plans; would put him in the open ocean, in the dark, three miles from a hostile island. His chances of getting back to the Shark were —exactly—zero.
Through the mist of his fatigue and fear Ken gradually saw Stevenson not as a lieutenant commander in the Navy, not even as a man. Stevenson became, in Ken’s mind, his executioner, his murderer.
And there was, now, nothing Ken could do about it.
He was so absorbed in his own despair that he didn’t notice Carney come in; didn’t even hear him ask Willy for a cup of coffee.
Willy’s cheerful voice brought Ken’s mind back into the wardroom. “Coming right up, Mr. Carney. How we doing?”
“Better, but still lousy. Seventy on the last one.”
“That’s real lousy,” Willy agreed, bringing in the coffee.
As Carney sipped it he looked across at Ken. “No soap,” he said quietly.
Ken looked up.
“I talked to the Skipper. He won’t take the boat into the lagoon, Ken.”
Ken shrugged. “Well, thanks, anyway.”
“He’s got a point,” Carney said. “It’s a dangerous slot to go into.”
Ken nodded.
“How’re you coming with your op plan?”
Ken looked steadily across the green table at him. “It’s finished, but it won’t work. Are we going to dive some more?”
“We’re through for the night. But it sure is lousy. Good thing nobody’s trying to ash-can us—we’d never get under in time. Why won’t it work, Ken?”
“The nights aren’t long enough.”
Willy came in with some sandwiches. “We through for tonight, sir?”
“All through.”
“That’s good. We’re just a little weary, that’s all. A little weary. Tomorrow we’ll get to clicking better.”
“I hope so,” Carney said. “What’s in these sandwiches— shoe leather?”
“No, sir. Couldn’t get any shoe leather this trip.”
Carney got up with a sandwich in his hand. “What can you do about it, Ken?”
“Nothing.” Ken gathered up his papers and rose. “Good night, sir. Night, Willy.”
Carney stood looking at the door through which Ken had gone. Willy came in and said, “Mr. Braden looks like he’s been talking to a ghost.”
“Poor guy,” Carney said.
“He looks like a nine-of-spades man to me,” Willy said.
“What’s that, Willy?”
“Old Man Death mighty close to nine-of-spades people. Mighty close. But I tell you who the real nine-of-spades man is—the Skipper.”
“I don’t believe in that stuff, Willy.”
“I don’t either. Just something to talk about.”
Carney looked at him. “It isn’t even much to talk about, Willy. Nor think about, either.”
“No, sir. I guess you’re right.”
As Ken went into his cabin he saw that Si Mount was already asleep in the lowest bunk. But Pat Malone was down on his knees on the deck.
Ken waited in the doorway until Malone finished praying.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Pat said, standing up.
“You didn’t,” Ken told him. Then, as he started to undress, he said slowly, “I wish I could pray some.”
“Go ahead, Ken.”
“No. I should have done it a long time ago. If I do it now maybe God would think I was only praying because I’m in a jam.”
Pat got into his bunk. “Well, I do my praying now while its quiet because when the depth charges start coming down around your ears you don’t have time. But then I figure that the Lord knows what He’s doing, so that if you started to pray now He could make up His mind what to do about it.”
Ken reached for the fight switch. “All set?”
“Douse ’em,” Malone told him.
Ken turned out the fights. Then, in the darkness of the cabin, he got down on his knees on the cold steel deck and prayed.
Ken turned in his op plan at eight o’clock. Stevenson took it without a word and dismissed him.
Ken spent the rest of the morning studying the Japanese ideographs; writing down the little crooked symbols and trying to remember which ones stood for what.
When Stevenson came in for lunch he smiled at Ken. Then he reached out and patted him on the shoulder. “That’s better, Mr. Braden,” he said pleasantly. “That’s a pretty good op plan. There are a few changes I want made—I’ve made notes in the margin. But it isn’t too bad, as a start.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ken said, wondering how Stevenson could think like that. Sure, there were a lot of plans, a lot of details of time and movement, but the whole thing was as meaningless as the jabbering of an idiot.
Then, suddenly, Ken began to wonder. As Stevenson took his napkin out of the ring, Ken watched him. Perhaps, he thought, there was a way out of this mess.
At the end of the meal Stevenson announced to the officers at the table that they were going to practice diving for the rest of the afternoon. “In fact,” he went on, “we’re going to dive this boat from now until we reach sixty feet in fifty seconds. Is that clear?”
The officers nodded.
“Right! Check!” Stevenson said, leaving the room.
Phil Carney was sitting next to Ken. For a long time after the Skipper left he just sat, his hands around his coffee mug. Finally he raised his head. “What’s the matter with us?”
Si Mount said, “Phil, there’s just no spirit in the boat. The men are trying. When you’re in your division it looks like every man is doing his job all right. But there’s just a little time lag here and there.”
Frank Doherty, the Engineering Officer, said, “We act like we’re playing around off New London, Connecticut, U.S.A. In a couple of days we’ll be west of Midway and right under the gun. We’re going to get our heads knocked off if we don’t start handling this boat right.”
Carney slowly nodded his head and gripped his coffee mug. “Gents,” he said, “let’s get behind the Skipper and get this boat under the water right. Let’s forget our personal feelings and go to work. I hate to be corny, but the life you save isn’t going to anybody else’s—it’s going to be yours. Maybe.”
No one said anything. One by one they filed out, leaving Ken alone in the wardroom.
All afternoon the boat submerged, stayed below awhile, and then came back to the surface, only to submerge again.
Ken stayed in the wardroom studying the Japanese numbers until, at last, he heard Stevenson saying over the PA system, “That’s a little less lousy, men. Secure from general quarters.”
Soon Pat came into the wardroom. He looked a lot more cheerful now. “That’s better. Were smoothing out a little. How’s it going, boy?” he asked, tapping Ken on the shoulder. “Hitotsu, futatsu, mitsu, yotsu …”
“Come againsu?”
Chapter 5
From then until they reached Midway Island, Ken either studied Japanese, corrected his op plan, or worked with the Minox cameras.
The Minox wasn’t much bigger than a pack of chewing gum but, Ken found, it was an extraordinary machine. No wonder, he thought, they called it the “spy camera.”
With Willy’s help he set up a small darkroom in the service pantry where he could develop the pictures he took. Then, in as many different degrees of light as he could find, he took photographs of all sorts of papers and writing. The Minox pictures were tiny but, with a magnifying glass, he could see that they were extraordinarily sharp and clear even when the writing on the paper was thin and the light poor. With the extremely fast film he
had he was now sure that he could get a picture of the code—if he found it—with only the dimmest light.
Satisfied with the Minox and with the watertight case for it, Ken checked over his other gear. Somehow oil had gotten on some of the fittings of the rebreather outfit. This scared him for a moment for he had seen what happens when pure oxygen under two thousand pounds pressure comes in contact with oil. The explosion is instantaneous and violent, blasting the lungs out of whoever is wearing the rebreather when it happens.
The Chief of the Boat took over there, though, and cleaned off every trace of oil. But, just to be sure, Ken took the outfit up to the flying bridge one afternoon and tested it, letting oxygen slowly into the bag until he was certain that there wasn’t going to be any explosion when he went under water with the thing.
The night before they got to Midway, Ken found Si and Pat Malone both in their bunks, but neither one asleep. As he came into the tiny cabin he had a feeling that they had been talking about something and had abruptly stopped when he came in. This made him feel uncomfortable—as though they had been telling secrets and didn’t want him to know.
He undressed without saying anything and climbed on up to his high bunk. Si asked, “All set?” and Pat said, “All set, Ken?”
“Douse ’em.”
For a long time after the lights went out there was no sound from Si or Pat, but when Ken thought they must be asleep, Pat suddenly asked, “Ken, you awake?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been wondering if the Skipper has changed his mind about going inside the lagoon.”
“No, he hasn’t.”
There was then another long pause before Pat said quietly, “We’re in trouble, Ken.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“All sorts. Si and I were talking about it when you came in, and at first, we thought that there was no use crying on your shoulder about it. But since you’re up to your neck in it anyhow, you might as well get the whole picture.”
“All right,” Ken said, “what is it?”
“The Skipper,” Malone said. “The men aren’t with him. That’s BIG trouble in a submarine. In the surface Navy it’s sort of different. Each man is freer up there, each man can do more or less what he wants to. Say a carrier is getting dive-bombed. Well, the scared guys, the cowards, can jump off. But there’s no jumping off in a sub. When we start getting a working over we’re all in here together and we’ve got to stay in here until it’s either over and the boat is still in one piece or—the sea comes in.
“We’re stuck. Stuck with a scared Skipper and a scared crew. You know something, Si? I don’t think we’re ever going to get back to Pearl Harbor. It’s a feeling in my bones or somewhere. I think we’re going to catch it this trip. Catch all of it.”
“No use thinking like that, Pat,” Si told him. “That’ll just give you the blues. In fact, a scared skipper and a scared crew stand a better chance of getting back because he won’t take us into any trouble. Ken up there is the only one who’s liable to catch it.”
“Oh well,” Ken said, “as they say in the Marine Corps, ‘Who wants to live forever?’ ”
“Me,” Malone said. “In fact, forever isn’t long enough. If there’s one thing I really love, it’s living.”
“I don’t object to sleeping, either,” Si said. “And I’m going to do some of it right now.”
Soon both Pat and Si were asleep. Ken, feeling more alone in that cramped room than he had ever felt in his life, couldn’t sleep.
What, he wondered, was the difference between a brave man and a coward?
And, he wondered, was Stevenson really scared? Was he, really, a coward? Or was he just a man with a little mind? A man who couldn’t see his way through all the rigmarole of the Navy? Who couldn’t see the forest for the trees? Or was Stevenson so busy with his own career and advancement in the Navy, so careful not to hurt it, that he would take no chances at all?
There were no answers to any of those questions.
So Ken began to wonder if he was a brave man or a coward.
There was no answer to that, either.
They took on fuel and supplies at Midway and, at dusk, set out to sea again.
That night at supper Phil Carney asked the Skipper if they were going to start enemy-territory routine.
Stevenson thought for a moment and then said, “Not for a day or two, Phil. The patrol plane boys at Midway said they hadn’t sighted any sign of Jap activity for a week or two. So we’ll run on the surface during the day as well as the night. I want to get out there and finish this job and get back so we can get ourselves back into the war.”
“So do I, Skipper,” Carney agreed. “But I’d hate to get back into the war by having some Jap plane spot us on the surface in daylight and knock our ears off.”
Stevenson laughed dryly. “So would I. In order to avoid that, I’ve written in the night order book to ride the vents at dawn.”
“That’d help,” Carney agreed.
“I have also instructed the daytime lookouts and the radar watch to be on their toes. If they do their jobs properly they should be able to spot a plane in plenty of time for us to get under and out of the way.”
“Those things come in pretty fast, sir,” Carney said dubiously. “And we still aren’t diving as fast as we should be.”
“Maybe being west of Midway will speed the boys up a little. Maybe the sight of a Jap plane with that tomato ketchup spot on it will hurry ’em up, huh?”
“I hope we don’t have to have that,” Carney said.
“It’s safe as a church. Remember when the Japs tried to take Midway we whaled the daylights out of them. They won’t be back for a long time.”
“They still own the rest of the Pacific,” Carney said. “They’ve got a lot of island bases to keep supplied. That’ll mean a lot of planes and ships moving around out here.”
“I’ve already told you that no Jap movement has been sighted for a week or so. I’m in a hurry, Phil. I want to get this job done and over with. I see no reason to spend all day submerged. It’s hard on the crew, hard on the batteries, and it’s slow.”
Ken watched Carney’s face as he said, “Yes, sir.” Carney’s eyes were sober and worried. He was not happy.
After Ken, Si, and Pat got into bed, Ken asked, “What was that discussion at supper all about?”
Si answered from his bottom bunk. “Generally, after we leave Midway and get out into enemy water we go submerged during the day and only come up to charge batteries during darkness. But the Skipper wants to run on the surface for a couple more days.”
“And Carney doesn’t want to?” Ken asked.
“I don’t blame him,” Si said. “You’re kind of asking for it to be caught on top during daylight.”
Malone said angrily, “And I said last night that he was scared. Now I don’t know whether he’s scared or just dumb. He’s never seen how fast a Jap plane can come right out of the sun and blast you. I hear that our fly-boys in the Atlantic are giving the Nazi subs a beating. Just blowing ’em out of the water. Remember that joker who said, “Sighted sub, sank same’? He was a fly-boy who got a Nazi on the surface in daylight.”
Si said seriously, “The crew isn’t going to like this one a little bit, Pat.”
“I know it. I’ll bet Willy has already told them every word the Skipper and Phil said. I can just hear the guys up in forward torpedo or maneuvering hashing it over. They’ve got a Skipper who’s not only scared but stupid, too.”
“Take it easy, Pat,” Si said. “He could be right, you know. He might have gotten some dope at Midway he hasn’t told us about. There might not be any Japs within a thousand miles of here and he knows it.”
“I sure hope so,” Malone said.
“What does riding the vents mean?” Ken asked.
Si said, “Usually when we’re on the surface the valves and vents to the ballast tanks are closed. You see, the water comes in through what we call Kingston valves in the bottom of the
boat and pushes the air out of the tanks through the vents. Now when you ride the vents you open the bottom valves but keep the vents closed. The water can’t get into the tanks against the air pressure that way. Then if you have to dive in a hurry, all you do is open the vents. It saves a few seconds getting under the water.”
“Oh,” Ken said. “One more question. I guess from now on we’ll be doing crash dives?”
Malone laughed. “I don’t know where those movie characters got that expression “crash dive.’ There just ain’t no such animal. Every dive in a boat is a crash dive. You do every one of ’em just as fast as you can. If the Skipper of a boat started hollering ‘Crash dive!’ the way they do in the movies the crew wouldn’t know what he was talking about.”
“We never say anything but ‘Dive’ or ‘Take her down,’ something like that,” Si added.
“I had a Skipper who made it a point never to seem excited about anything” Malone told them. “So we always knew when he was excited. When nothing was going on he’d order ‘Dive the boat’ just like anyone else. Now if anything was going on, he’d be calm as milk and say, ‘Well, boys, let’s go downstairs.’ ”
“I’ve noticed that the Skipper isn’t the last man to come down off the bridge,” Ken observed. “I thought that was an old Navy tradition.”
“Not in the boats, Ken. The Skipper’s got to get below to the conning tower. The last man off the bridge is always the Quartermaster, and it’s his job to close the hatch. So he gets to step on everybody else’s fingers going down the ladder but nobody ever steps on his. I knew a Quartermaster who just loved to jump down right on my head. I wore a helmet every time I had a watch with that guy.”
“If I ever learn this Japanese and get some spare time I’m going to try to find out what goes on in this boat,” Ken told them.
“Don’t,” Pat advised. “It’ll drive you batty. Just look at the instructions for flushing the toilet.”
Ken laughed, remembering those instructions.
This is how you flush a toilet in a submarine:
1. Close bowl Flapper Discharge Valve A.
2. Open Gate Valve C in discharge pipeline.