Silent Sea (The Silent War Book 2)

by Harry Homewood

  “Man could lose his appetite looking at you,” Doc Wharton said. “So it don’t make no difference how good you can cook. Blake’s girl is a good-lookin’ kid.”

  “Hell, Blakey, I didn’t mean to make you blush,” the ship’s cook said. “You married a nice kid. Got a smart old lady. She asked me how I made Swiss steak at that party we had.” He jumped to his feet as the General Quarters alarm began clanging.

  Mike Brannon went scrambling up the ladder to the bridge. “What have you got, Perry?”

  Lieutenant Arbuckle turned, the radio telephone handset that had been installed in Fremantle in his hand.

  “Mayday message from a B-twenty-nine, sir. He’s got two engines still working, and one of those is overheating. He’s zeroed in on us with his RDF, and he’s on his way here.” The handset buzzed and he held it near his ear as Brannon edged in and put his head close to Arbuckle’s.

  “Big Bird to Water Lily. Do you read? Over.”

  “Read Big Bird scale ten,” Arbuckle said. “Over.”

  “Give us one more signal so we can get you on the radio direction finder again, Water Lily. Big Bird over and out.” Arbuckle held the transmit button on the handset down and counted to fifteen.

  “Roger,” the aircraft operator said. “We should be in sight in four minutes. Request Water Lily point bow into the wind. Big Bird over and out.”

  “Aircraft rescue party to the bridge,” Brannon ordered. He and Arbuckle moved to the port side of the small bridge as Chief Flanagan led a half-dozen of the crew’s strongest swimmers out of the bridge hatch and down on deck. Steve Petreshock, burdened with a one-man rubber boat, began to unknot the lashings on the boat.

  “Belay that,” Flanagan said. “If we need it, okay. If we don’t no sense in having to lash it up again.”

  “Water Lily, we have you in sight. You’re pretty damned small. Are you heading into wind? Big Bird over and out.”

  “Wind velocity is zero. Repeat zero,” Arbuckle said. “Water Lily is on course three five zero. Repeat three five zero. Wind is zero. Water Lily over and out.”

  “Aircraft in sight dead astern, Bridge,” the stern lookout yelled.

  “Very well,” Brannon said. Arbuckle thumbed the button on the handset.

  “Water Lily has Big Bird in sight. Can you tell us your landing procedure? Water Lily over and out.”

  “Roger,” the voice in the handset said. “We’re going to come up from your back end —”

  “From astern,” Brannon muttered to himself.

  “— and put her down in the water on your right side. Big Bird over and out. Here we come.”

  The B-29, trailing a long cloud of thick white smoke from its engines, was in plain sight, only a hundred or so feet above the water, flying straight up the wake of the Eelfish.

  “My God!” Brannon half yelled. “That damned thing looks like an apartment house flying at us! What’s that crazy bastard trying to do, land on my afterdeck? Arbuckle, tell that bastard to sheer off to starboard, he’ll hit us!”

  The big aircraft settled lower as it raced toward the submarine. Then, hundreds of feet astern, it delicately touched its massive tail to the water, lifted slightly as the abused engines stuttered and protested, and then, again delicately, touched its tail to the water. The tail raised slightly as if protesting and then settled gently, and then all of the plane was touching the water, rushing ahead, throwing up a huge wave of water that slammed into the pressure hull of the Eelfish as the plane’s port wing eased by the starboard side of the submarine’s Conning Tower only a half-dozen feet away.

  “All stop!” Brannon snapped. He looked at the plane’s wing, rocking and then steadying as the giant aircraft settled deeper in the water and came to a stop.

  “Rig out the bow planes,” Brannon ordered.

  “Tell that plane commander that his port wing, that’s his left wing, is over our starboard bow plane, and if he can bring his people out along his port wing we can take them aboard without using a rubber boat,” Brannon said to Arbuckle.

  “We can do that,” the aircraft man on the radio said. Brannon leaned over the bridge rail, watching Flanagan tie the end of a coil of twenty-one-thread manila line around his waist and jump down on the bow plane.

  The line of airmen inching out along the plane’s wing came steadily toward the narrow end of the wing. Flanagan reached upward and held out a hand to the first man, who leaped down on to the bowplane and was assisted aboard the forward deck by Petreshock. On the deck Doc Wharton looked up at the bridge.

  “Seventh man in line is hurt, sir. Might be easier to take him down the Forward Room hatch?”

  Brannon, leaning over the bridge rail, nodded and gave the order. A moment later the hand wheel on the top of the Forward Torpedo Room hatch spun. The hatch opened and Jim Rice’s black beard came into view.

  “So that’s what it looks like up here,” Rice said. “What the fuck you people doin’ up here, playin’ games?” He braced himself in the hatch as Doc Wharton led the wounded man to the hatch.

  “You just sit on my shoulders like you did with your daddy when you was a little tad,” Rice said. “Papa’ll carry you down into the nice submarine, and don’t get any of your fuckin’ blood on the inside of this hatch because I’m the guy has to clean it.” Wharton and Fred Nelson eased the wounded man on to Rice’s shoulders.

  “Do I hang on to your beard, Sandy Claws?” the airman said in a falsetto. “Sandy Claws don’t want to let the baby fall, do he?”

  “Fuckin’ wise guy, we got,” Rice growled as he eased down the ladder rungs. “You people below, stand by to take this wounded hero off of me before he bleeds all over my dress dungaree shirt.” Relieved of his burden he ran up the rungs of the ladder and dogged down the hatch.

  Captain Brannon faced the plane crew on the cigaret deck and introduced himself. A slim, boyish airman stepped out of the group.

  “Major John Haskins, U.S. Army Air Force, Captain. I’m the plane commander, sir. We owe you something for this, sir.

  “No, you don’t owe us anything.” Brannon looked at the group. “I’ve got to destroy your plane. If you don’t want to watch I don’t blame you. You can go below.” The young Major looked around and swallowed.

  “I think I’d like to go downstairs, sir,” he said in a small voice. “I’ve, ah, got a wounded man to see to, sir.”

  “I understand, sir,” Brannon said. He watched as the eight men followed the young Major down the hatch.

  “Forward deck gun party to the bridge,” Brannon said. “Mr. Arbuckle, haul off about four hundred yards.”

  The plane burst into flames on the fourth shot and began to slide under the sea, nose first. The last Brannon saw of it was the huge tail slowly going under. He turned away and went down the hatch.

  He found the crew of the plane in the Crew’s Mess drinking coffee while Scotty Rudolph fussed in his galley making steak sandwiches.

  “We’ll tell your people we’ve got you,” Brannon said to the plane commander, “if you’ll tell Mr. Michaels here what command we should address the message to. We’re sort of new at this. Never picked up any of you people before.”

  “You’re not new at the business, though,” the Major said. “All those Jap flags painted on the side of your whatever it is we climbed up on, those stand for Jap ships you’ve sunk?”

  “Yes,” Brannon said. “You check on your wounded man?”

  “He’s okay,” Major Haskins said. “Your medico fixed him up. Don’t you have a doctor aboard these ships?”

  “No,” Brannon said. “Just a Pharmacist’s Mate.”

  “Supposing someone gets really sick, like a heart attack?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Brannon said. “In nineteen forty-two, on the Seadragon, a crewman came down with a very bad appendix. The Pharmacist’s Mate made retractors out of spoons. They had some ether and a book on how to take out an appendix. So they operated on the Wardroom table. Both the patient and the Pharmacist’
s Mate recovered fully.” The pilot shuddered.

  Two hours later a message came instructing Eelfish to rendezvous with a destroyer detached from Iwo Jima to transfer the airmen. Four days later the Eelfish received orders to leave the area and head for Pearl Harbor. Brannon called Bob Lee and Paul Blake to the Wardroom and showed them the orders.

  “I know it’s bad news for both of you,” Brannon said. “But try and look at it this way. We’ve invaded Okinawa. The next step is Japan itself, if they don’t surrender first. It’s my opinion that this war is about over. That pilot we rescued, he said he’d been carrying nothing but firebombs and blasting Tokyo. He said the city is almost burned to the ground.

  “We know, in submarines we know, that Japan hasn’t been able to get tankers north to Japan, that they haven’t been able to get any cargo ships to Japan. They must be down to the bottom of the barrel on oil, rubber, tin, ore, everything they need. The Germans have surrendered, and I don’t think this war will last past Thanksgiving.”

  “And then ...” Blake’s voice had a slight quiver.

  “Then all you Reservists who have done so damned much to help win this war will be getting out, Paul. Your wife, Mr. Lee’s wife, don’t have to wait on any quota system. I went to the American Embassy in Fremantle and asked about that. Once the war is over, whether you’re in the Navy or out, you just have to send them the boat fare and they can come to the States.”

  “It isn’t so bad, Paul,” Lee said. “If we went back to Fremantle we’d be there for what, three weeks? Then we’d be gone again. So we miss that one three-week leave. If the Captain is right we probably will have our wives with us before Christmas.” Blake nodded and went to the door of the Wardroom. He turned.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said to Brannon. Bob Lee turned to Brannon.

  “He’s so damned young — what, twenty-two?”

  “And you’re what, how old?” Brannon grinned.

  “Well, twenty-six, sir. We older types can take a little disappointment.”

  “Good thing we can,” Brannon said. “I haven’t seen my wife and daughter for two years.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Captain Mealey and Captain Bob Rudd were standing on the pier when the Eelfish berthed in Pearl Harbor. The two Captains came down the gangway and shook hands with Mike Brannon. Captain Mealey looked around.

  “Where’s John Olsen? Captain Rudd has some very good news for him.” Brannon sent John LaMark in search of the Executive Officer.

  “John,” Captain Rudd boomed, “never had the pleasure of knowing you before, but Captain Mealey’s told me so much about you that we’ve decided not to send you to PCO School.” He grinned, his beefy face glowing as Olsen’s jaw fell.

  “Any Exec who’s made six successful patrol runs and can satisfy this S.O.B. here who’s called Mealey doesn’t need to go to PCO School anyway. Damned place is crowded with people who don’t rate command half as much as you do, so we’re detaching you today and sending you to take over the Sablefish. She’s on the building ways now, and she won’t go into commission until about next April. She’s going to be a beautiful ship. Got everything in her that all of you people on war patrol have been screaming for.” He reached out a massive hand and began to pump Olsen’s hand. Mike Brannon stood by, his face beaming.

  “When do I leave, sir?” Olsen asked. “I mean, I’m not anxious — yes, I am — but I’d like to take everyone to dinner if I have the time.”

  “Courier plane out of here at ten hundred tomorrow. You’ll be on it. Captain Mealey has your orders.”

  The two Captains and the relief-crew officers and chiefs left, and John Olsen went down below to begin his packing. Brannon was called to the gangway by a seaman and found a serious-looking Lieutenant Commander waiting there for him. “Lieutenant Commander Ralph Ulrich, sir,” the officer said. “Captain Rudd’s yeoman gave me my orders to report aboard as a replacement for Mr. Olsen, sir.” He handed Mike Brannon a set of orders and waited as Brannon read through them.

  “Welcome aboard, sir,” Brannon said. “We’re about to go to the hotel. If you wish you can report here each day and sort of oversee the refit. You’re welcome, of course, to go to the hotel and meet the crew, the other officers. See me at any time you wish. I’m not being inhospitable. The crew is tired, the Wardroom is tired. It’s been a very long and boring patrol.”

  “But a successful one,” Lieutenant Commander Ulrich said. “You rescued the entire crew of a B-twenty-nine. That’s ten lives saved, sir.”

  “The Staff calls it successful, I don’t,” Brannon said. “We didn’t add a single flag to the Conning Tower.” Ulrich looked at the side of the Conning Tower where the Rising Sun and merchant flags of the ships sunk by the Eelfish showed as a brilliant patch of color against the blotched gray war paint.

  “I understand, sir,” Ulrich said. “I’ll report to you every other day if that’s all right with you?” Brannon nodded and went below to pack for the two weeks of rest and relaxation that he felt he and his crew had earned.

  When he returned from the rest period Brannon summoned his new Executive Officer to the Wardroom. He had the new officer’s jacket opened in front of him.

  “I see that you made one war patrol in the Flying Fish, early in the war,” Brannon said. “Captain Donaho gave you good marks as an Assistant Engineering Officer. A good word from Mr. Donaho is a volume of praise from any other officer.”

  “I hope I earned his good word,” Ulrich said solemnly.

  “I’m sure you did. Now let me explain a few things to you sir. When we leave for sea this will be our seventh war patrol. With very few exceptions every man aboard this ship put her in commission and has made every war patrol. We’re a very close-knit bunch of people. It won’t be easy for you, coming aboard. I will do everything I can to make you welcome, because you are welcome, but submariners, as you should know, can be clannish. John Olsen was not only respected by the entire crew, he was liked.” He looked at the younger officer.

  “You’re Academy, sir. I expect nothing but the best from you.”

  “I expect to give my best, sir.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Brannon said. “I should warn you in advance that I think Eelfish has the best Wardroom in the whole submarine navy.” He grinned wryly. “I should also warn you that the two of us are the only Academy officers in the entire Wardroom. All the rest are Reservists.”

  “All of them, sir?”

  “All. And I couldn’t ask for better men, not if I could have the pick of the top five of any year you can mention at the Academy. Half of the crew are Reservists, as well. I couldn’t ask for better men. On this ship we are submariners. Nothing more, nothing less. As a crew we’ve gone through some pretty hellish times, one of them with Captain Mealey.”

  Ulrich stared at his lean hands and then looked at Mike Brannon. “I know, sir, Captain Mealey gave me a copy of all your patrol reports and action reports. I can see what you mean, the Mako, all that.”

  “The Mako. All that.” Brannon said. He stood up. “I depend on my Executive Officer to be my right arm, Ralph. Your right arm will be the Chief of the Boat. A Chief Torpedoman named Flanagan. Called Monk by his friends because his shoulders slope downward. Depend on him. He won’t let you down. No one in this crew will let you down. Now I want your estimate of the work done by the relief crew.”

  “It’s all done except the hull check, sir. The Yard people are worried about that time you went to the bottom off Borneo.”

  “We went through all that in Fremantle,” Brannon said sharply. “Why is it necessary to do it now?”

  “Well, ah, the people in Pearl don’t really trust the people in Fremantle, sir.”

  “Hell and damnation,” Brannon growled. “The damned war will be over before we ever get back out to sea, and if it isn’t there won’t be any targets left to shoot at.”

  In the next two weeks, while Eelfish was waiting to get dry-dock space and during the week the ship was in dry dock, Ralph Ulri
ch proved his worth. No matter what Brannon wanted Ulrich seemed to know it ahead of time. Materiel needed by the Eelfish Chiefs for work that wasn’t obtainable unless one went through endless red tape was somehow available at once if Ulrich took charge, using all the contacts he had made in almost three years as Captain Rudd’s Staff Engineering Officer. Chief Morris gave his assessment of Ralph Ulrich to Mike Brannon, saying, “Good man to have around. Knows every son of a bitch in the Yard who has anything we might need. Gets it with no fuss or bother.”

  The day before Eelfish was to sail on her seventh war patrol a tall, broad-shouldered Lieutenant climbed out of a Staff car on the dock and asked for permission to come aboard.

  “Captain aboard?” he asked the gangway watch.

  “He’s below in the Wardroom, holding a meeting with the officers,” the gangway watch said. The Lieutenant dropped down the Forward Torpedo Room hatch and went to the Wardroom. Mike Brannon looked up with an expression of irritation on his face as the Lieutenant stepped through the green curtain, and then he got to his feet, his hand out, a broad smile on his face.

  “By Heaven, Dusty Rhodes as ever was, as my good Irish mother used to say.” He gripped the Lieutenant’s hand and pumped it up and down.

  “This is Dusty Rhodes, gentlemen,” he said to the officers sitting around the table. “He used to be our Chief of the Boat in the Mako. Got bumped up to J.G. after the third run. How the hell are you, Dusty? How’s John Barber, your wives, children?”

  “Four-oh on all sides,” Rhodes said. “Barber is in charge of all the engine room work on the boats coming in from patrol. His wife and daughter are fine. So is my wife and my sons. Your lady and daughter okay?”

  “I guess they are,” Brannon said. “I haven’t seen them since forty-three, almost two years. This a friendly visit, or are you official?”

  “Both,” Dusty Rhodes said. “I’d like you to come to dinner tonight at my house, if you can. Barber and his wife will be there.

  “The official part is that you’re getting a few new-type torpedoes. They’re called ‘Cuties.’ Kind of small. They’ll load them this afternoon, and I’ve got a savvy Chief who can fill your people in the Torpedo Rooms in on how to service them. One of the officers who worked on the development of these new fish will be over after lunch to fill you and your officers in on how you use these things.”