by Robb White
3. Open Valve D in water supply line.
4. Open Valve E.
5. Close Valve D.
6. Close Valve E.
7. After use, pull Lever A.
8. Release Lever A.
9. Open Valve G in air supply line.
10. Rock Valve F until pressure is 10 pounds above sea pressure.
11. Open Valve B.
12. Rock valve lever inboard to blow overboard.
13. Close Valve B.
14. Close Valve C.
15. Close Valve G.
Chapter 6
Mu’ ti-ny, v.i. … To rise against, or refuse to obey, lawful authority in military or naval service.
Ken closed the dictionary and stared straight down the empty wardroom. In the bookshelf he saw the familiar canvas straps and metal binder of the book of Navy Regulations.
Putting the dictionary back, he got the Regulations and ran his finger down the index under M. Munitions, Murder, Muster, Mutiny.
Mutiny was sub-paragraph (1) under Article 4: Offenses Punishable by Death.
He closed the book without reading it.
At eight o’clock that morning he had gone once more to see Stevenson. He had pointed out to him that, while the op plan might look good on paper, it actually was impossible to accomplish. He had reminded Stevenson of the admiral’s warning that it was imperative to keep the Japanese from suspecting that their radio station had been discovered.
Stevenson had been surprisingly pleasant and patient, so Ken, his hopes rising, had said that the only way was for the boat to come in close to the islands at night to let him out. Then come back in close to pick him up before dawn. That, he had insisted, was the only way, unless, of course, Stevenson would take the boat into the lagoon.
Stevenson, his voice pleasant, had said, “Mr. Braden, you will execute the operation plan as approved by me.” Then he had added, “That is a command.”
Would it be mutiny? Ken wondered. If he could, somehow, get this op plan to the admiral and let him see how suicidal it was not only as a threat to Ken’s life but as a threat to the success of the mission—would the admiral consider his refusal mutiny?
He wasn’t sure, but he was fairly sure that Stevenson would try to have him court-martialed. It would certainly be the end of his career in the Navy.
What would his father think? Ken wondered. His father, an Army doctor, had devoted his life to military service and he had great pride in the Armed Forces of America. If he was now still alive in some Japanese prison camp how would he feel when he heard that his son had disgraced himself and been dismissed from the Navy?
At last, as the Shark rammed her way eastward on the surface, Ken stripped the problem to the bare bones. If he tried to carry out the op plan as approved he would, inevitably, be caught in daylight on or near one of the islands. That was absolutely unavoidable. If he was seen by the Japanese they would know instantly why he was there.
That was one side of it. Now if he refused to carry out his orders, that would be insurrection, mutiny.
What should he do?
Ken got up, put the book of Regulations back on the shelf, and picked up his overseas cap. As he started to put it on he looked at the little gold eagle on one side of it and at the lone silver bar on the other.
They would take that eagle and that bar off his cap. They would take the thick and the thin gold stripe off the sleeves of his coat, and take the gold buttons off.
Ken put his cap on and stepped out into the corridor.
He had made his decision. He was not going to obey Stevenson’s command.
There was no answer when he knocked at Stevenson’s cabin.
Willy, coming by with a tray of clean coffee mugs, said, “I think he’s back aft, sir.”
“Thanks, Willy.”
Passing the radio shack, Ken went into the control room. There was a feeling of alertness here. No one was talking, no one playing cards, or lounging around. There was a man on each of the big wheels which controlled the bow and stern planes; a chief was standing by the long levers which opened and shut the valves and vents; another chief was looking up at the panel of red and green lights glowing steadily above him.
“Seen the Skipper?” Ken asked a chief.
The chief jerked his thumb upward.
Ken, his mind concentrated on the words he was going to say, climbed slowly up the ladder to the conning tower.
There, too, men were alert, tense. The helmsman stared fixedly at the floating face of the compass warmly lighted in its bronze bowl as he slowly turned the spoked wheel a little to port, a little to starboard. The soundman, his headphones on, was listening to the probe of his radio waves going out through the water. The talker, odd-looking with the big sponge rubber pads over his ears, relayed the messages coming and going in a low, quick voice. Men on engine controls and enunciators stood in silence.
At the radar Pat Malone, the radar operator, and the Chief Electrician were talking almost in whispers.
“Seen the Skipper?” Ken asked.
“He’s on the bridge.”
Ken started for the vertical steel ladder which led up to the round hole between the deck of the bridge and the overhead of the conning tower. Then, with his foot on the ladder, he hesitated. “OK to go up?” he asked Pat.
Pat frowned. “Hell be down in a minute, Ken. You know how he hates unauthorized people on the bridge.”
Ken went over and leaned against the bulkhead.
He needed a few more minutes, he decided.
He tried then to put into words what he was thinking. Careful, controlled words, for he knew that what he was going to say to Stevenson in a few minutes was going to have a profound effect on his future. The words he was going to use would be used again—against him—in his court-martial.
“Something ails our mechanical eye,” Malone said over his shoulder.
“Turn it off,” the chief told the operator.
In a moment Stevenson’s voice came down from the bridge. “What’s the matter with the radar? The antenna isn’t moving.”
Pat went over to the other end of the voice tube which went up to the bridge and said, “Radar’s gone out, Captain. The chief’s working on it.”
“Bear a hand on it,” Stevenson ordered. “This is no place to be running around blind, you know.”
Then Ken heard Stevenson’s order to the lookout float down through the open hatch. “Be alert, Ammons. The radar isn’t working, so you’re the eyes of the boat.”
The lookout’s voice sounded even fainter as he called down from his perch, “Aye, aye, sir.”
“Here’s the trouble,” the chief said. “Just a bad tube.”
“Good. Fix ’em up, will you, Chief?”
Pat went over to the voice tube. “Captain?”
Stevenson’s voice came down flat through the tube. “Captain, aye, aye.”
“Burned-out tube. Be fixed in a minute,” Pat told him. “Right. Check.”
Ken heard Stevenson repeating the news to someone else. The chief went over to the talker and said, “Tell Sampson to send me up a 6V6GT on the double.”
The talker’s voice, muffled in the shield around the phone’s mouthpiece, said, “Juice, the chief wants a 6V6GT in conn. On the double.”
Pat turned to Ken. “How’s the boy?”
Ken looked at him and then away. “All right,” he said. Phil Carney came climbing down the ladder from the bridge. He nodded to Pat and Ken and went over to the radar. “Fixed yet?”
As the chief turned, a messenger came up from control with a new tube. “This what you want, Chief?”
“Yeah, thanks.” He pulled the bad tube out, put in the new one, and turned the set on. The face of the radar was a dial-like glass with many concentric circles scribed on it. There were also thin lines radiating out from the center. Slowly the face turned a pale green. The chief flipped another switch, and a glowing white line running from the center of the tube to the outer rim began to revolve.
Ken heard Carney catch his breath even as he reached and turned a switch. The line swept around the dial faster, the white spot glowing again.
Carney did something and the line moved back and forth, only a little, the spot in the east growing brighter and moving in toward the center.
Ken remembered afterward, putting things together one by one, just about what happened then.
As Carney leaped to the voice tube to the bridge, Ken heard the lookouts voice in a sudden scream.
Carney said, “Bogey, Captain, bogey! Bearing one zero eight, distance five miles. Coming in fast. Aircraft.” Then he whirled to the talker. “Rig out bow and stern planes.”
The talkers voice sounded all through the boat. “Rig out bow and stern planes.”
The lookout was still screaming, and Ken could hear his faraway, frightened voice clearly, crying, “Plane! Its a plane. It’s a Jap!”
Then Stevenson’s voice coming down through the open hatch. “Clear the bridge!”
Ken watched men come tumbling down through the hatch and down the ladder into the conning tower. Three of them were already down when he heard the sound. It was like the hard, rapid clapping of hands. Instantly after that he heard things striking the metal of the bridge with a ringing, hard smack.
Somebody on the bridge began to scream in agony.
In a moment Si Mount fell through the open hatch. He made no effort to catch the rungs of the ladder, but fell all the way to the steel deck.
Blood poured from somewhere under his clothes.
After Si came the Quartermaster, a young Irish boy named Murphy. Murphy stood on the ladder, his head up out of the hatch and yelled, “Bridge clear? Everybody down?”
There was no answer.
Murphy closed the hatch with a crash and spun the big wheel which locked it shut. “Hatch secured, sir.”
When Murphy turned and climbed on down the ladder Ken saw that his face was concealed behind a mask of blood.
Now the machine gun bullets striking the superstructure had lost the clear, ringing sound. Even as Ken ran toward where Si lay on the deck, he listened to the hard cracking of the bullets against the steel. As he reached Si and knelt beside him he heard a different sound. This was heavier—like a huge hammer pounding on the side of the boat. It hit five times and then stopped.
Blood was coming from somewhere below Si’s waist. As Ken unbuckled the belt and pulled the trousers down, he heard Stevenson say, “Dive the boat!”
The talker repeated the order, and all through the boat other orders and sounds began. The Klaxon hooted as the vents opened, the induction valves closed with a crash, the diesels stopped, and the motors began to whine.
Suddenly, in an electric voice, Carney said, “Where s the Skipper?”
Everyone in the conning tower stopped what he was doing and stared.
Carney leaped to the voice tube leading to the bridge. “Skipper? Skipper?’ he yelled.
Stevenson’s voice was a rough, strangled whisper coming through the tube. “I’m on the bridge. I’m hurt. Dive the boat, Phil.”
Carney wheeled again. “Open that hatch! Get him down!”
Stevenson’s voice sounded now cold, distant, and angry. “Mr. Carney, dive this boat. Take her down. The plane is coming in again and two more are following. Take her down!”
Carney said into the tube, “Were coming to get you.”
The sound of the machine gun bullets began again, first into the water and then ringing against the steel.
A gasp and a choked-off moan came down through the tube. Then Stevenson, his voice very faint, said, “It’s too late, Phil. I’m hit. Bad. Take her down, please.”
Carney turned to the talker. His face was white, his lips gray, as he said, “Take her down.”
The reports began to flash in.
“Green board.”
“Air in the boat.”
“Flood negative.”
As the boat nosed under, Ken could hear the sea pouring over the foredeck. He could hear it rushing around the forward gun mount and then striking against the rounded steel of the tower.
Machine gun bullets were slamming into them again as the water rose.
Ken heard it gurgle as it struck the safety lines.
Then Stevenson’s voice came for the last time. “So long,” he said. “Good luck.” They could all hear the voice tube on the bridge clang shut and then hear the water sweeping over the screen.
In a moment there was no longer any sound of the open water moving across the boat.
Carney stepped to the periscope. “Stop her at fifty-five, I want to take a look.”
“Up periscope,” he ordered, then stooped to his knees, waiting.
The oiled, metal shaft of the periscope began to move upward as motors somewhere hummed. As the handles snapped out when they cleared the edge of the well, Carney grabbed them and, rising as they rose, with his eye pressed against the rubber guard, he began to turn the scope.
The talker reported, “Fifty-five, sir.”
“Very well,” Carney said, swinging the scope aft. For a long, long time he held it steady there. Then he walked it slowly all the way around.
“Down periscope,” Carney said, his voice quiet. He flipped the handles up so they wouldn’t hit the well edge.
“Take her down to a hundred,” Carney said. “All ahead full. Don’t bother with silent running, they can’t hear us anyway.”
From below Ken could hear the orders to the bow and stern planesmen, and to the men on the ballast tank controls. In a moment the talker said, “One hundred feet, all ahead full.”
“Put her on nine zero and hold her,” Carney said.
The helmsman turned the wheel, the spokes slapping against his hands. “Course nine zero, sir.”
Carney said to the people in the conning tower, “I think the Skipper’s dead. I watched him for as long as I could see him. He was lying face down in the water. There was a lot of blood. He didn’t move at all.”
Then Carney went over to where Ken was working on Si.
Si had been shot in the leg, below the hip. Carney helped Ken put a belt tourniquet above the ugly wound and then turned to Murphy, who had by now wiped some of the blood off his face. Murphy’s forehead had had the skin peeled back so that there was a loose flap of skin, but it didn’t look very serious.
Carney said over his shoulder, “Go left to three six zero, hold it for one minute, and then go back to nine zero. All ahead standard.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Carney said to the talker, “Get the Pharmacists Mate up here, please.”
Carney patted Murphy on the shoulder. “You’re going to survive, Murph, for many a St. Patrick’s Day parade.”
Then he turned back to Si, who was still unconscious from his fall. Where the bullet went in there was a bloody hole about the size of a fifty-cent piece, but, for some reason, the bullet had not exploded in him and had come out as neatly as it had gone in.
With the help of Pat, the stand-by helmsman, Ken, and the Pharmacist’s Mate, they got Si down into the boat and stretched out on the wardroom table. Then Ken and Pat and the stand-by went back to get Murphy but he was already coming down the ladder by himself.
By the time they got back to Si the Pharmacist’s Mate had cut away the rest of Si’s trousers and was looking at the ugly, bloody wound.
Si came to and tried to sit up, but they pushed him back.
“Something’s wrong with my leg,” Si announced.
“It’s got a hole in it,” Pat told him. “Can you move it?”
Si moved it, wincing, then laid it down again.
“I don’t think it hit the bone,” the Pharmacist’s Mate said. “I’m going to give you a shot, sir. Then all I can do is clean it up a little.”
“That’s the Navy for you,” Si said. “When in doubt give all hands a shot.”
The
Pharmacist’s Mate grinned as he snapped the end off the morphine syrette. He jabbed the needle into Si’s arm and said, “Now I’ll work on Murphy until that takes effect on you, sir. What happened, Murph? Willy, you got any hot water?”
“Coming up,” Willy said from the service pantry.
“How do you feel, Si?” Pat asked.
“Fine. I hurt all over. Who pushed me down the ladder?”
“I did, sir,” Murphy said. “I’m sorry, but you were having a little trouble getting down.”
“Thanks, Murph.” Si looked up at Pat. “I don’t hear any ash cans. What’s happening?”
“We’re zigzagging at a hundred feet. No depth charges yet.”
“Maybe those planes didn’t have any,” Si said.
As the Pharmacist’s Mate cleaned Murphy’s head, Ken sat down on the table beside Si. “That stuff taking effect yet?”
“Some. I feel groggy. Boy, that plane got to us in a hurry, didn’t it? Anybody else get hurt?”
Ken was about to tell him when the loud-speaker clicked and the talker’s voice said, “Attention in the boat. Now hear this.”
There was a pause and then Carney began to speak, clearly and slowly. “This is Carney, the Exec. Men, the commanding officer is dead, so I have assumed command of the boat until I get further orders.
“Now, for those of you who don’t know what happened, I would like to tell you that the Skipper gave his life for us. He was hit by the first plane to attack and was not able to get off the bridge. He refused to let anyone open the hatch and go get him. Instead, he ordered the boat to go down before it could be torn open by the heavy-caliber machine guns.” Carney stopped for a moment.
Then he went on. “I would like for all hands to join me in prayer. Oh Lord, we who are alive in this boat want to thank You for giving Paul Stevenson the courage he had. Now his body lies in the open sea, lost to all men, but his spirit of courage and self-sacrifice are not lost. God, be good to Paul. Amen.”
Chapter 7
For a long time there was silence in the wardroom. There seemed to be silence all through the boat. Ken could hear only the pulse and whine of motors, the sound of air coming from the blowers. No man made a sound.
At last Si Mount asked, “What happened, Ken?”