Silent Sea (The Silent War Book 2) Read online

  to the bottom in Leyte Gulf. Captain Mike Brannon leaned over the side of the bridge and grinned at Rice.

  “Going to make a career of art when the war is over, Jim? You’ve got a nice touch with a brush.”

  “No, sir,” Rice answered. His white teeth gleamed in the center of the black beard. “Once this war is really over I’m gonna find me a nice rich widow and spend the rest of my life sleepin’ between silk sheets and eatin’ good. No more of those twelve to four watches at night for me.”

  “I always heard that most rich widows are old and fat,” Brannon said.

  “Don’t matter, Captain. You can always find a nice young filly on the side for hard ridin’.”

  “Two women?” Brannon’s eyebrows rose. “You’re asking for trouble with two women. Double trouble.”

  “No trouble for a good submarine torpedoman,” Rice said airily. He looked up as the PBY-4 dipped low over the submarine, its engines thundering.

  “Get lost, you bastard! You’re making me nervous and I don’t want to smear these nice little flags.”

  Down on the main deck John Olsen was talking to Chief Monk Flanagan.

  “Captain’s a little worried, Chief. You sure the Base exploder shop won’t be able to tell if we modified the exploders?’

  “They won’t be able to tell, sir.” Flanagan looked at the plane overhead. “Those bastards in the exploder shop are getting cute. Chief in the Afterbody Shop, the torpedo shop on the tender, he tipped me off that the exploder shop on the Base was putting a little drop of clear shellac on some, not all, of the exploder studs that fasten the exploder to the warhead. Not much shellac, not enough to notice it when you backed out the studs but enough to see it if you’re looking for it.

  “They keep a little notebook, mark down which studs they shellacked on which exploder. That way, if you noticed a little flake or two of shellac when you backed out the stud and if you made a mistake, put some shellac around every stud or if you didn’t see it at all, they’d have you.

  “What I did was to get a can of the same kind of shellac. And a notebook. When we remodified the exploders we went by our own book so each exploder would be exactly the same as it was when we got it. I’d bet some good money they won’t know we fucked with their damned exploders, sir.”

  A lean destroyer closed on the Eelfish from the starboard side, a signal light on its bridge blinking furiously.

  “They’re saying they’ll lead us in, sir,” Bill Brosmer said to Bob Lee, who had the OOD watch. He raised a signal gun he had brought to the bridge as the Eelfish neared port.

  “You want to receipt affirmative and say thank you, sir?”

  “Make an affirmative reply and say thank you,” Lee said. He turned to Captain Brannon. “Sir, the destroyer will lead us in to the harbor.”

  “Very well,” Brannon said. “Tell the destroyer we’ll take up position five hundred yards astern.” The destroyer’s signal lamp blinked in reply and Brannon watched as the graceful ship swung ahead of the Eelfish and took up position, slowing its speed to accommodate to the Eelfish. Deep in the harbor another signal lamp began blinking.

  “The Pelius is making a signal to us, Mr. Lee,” Brosmer said.

  “Tell him to go ahead,” Lee said. Brosmer raised his signal gun and cradled its rifle butt in his shoulder. His index finger clicked the trigger signal on the lamp. The signalman on the submarine tender answered in a blur of light flashes.

  “He’s telling us to moor alongside the outboard submarine, starboard side to, sir,” Brosmer said.

  “Acknowledge,” Lee said. Ahead of them the destroyer signal lamp began to repeat the message.

  “What the hell,” Brosmer growled. “Doesn’t that bastard think we can read code?”

  “They don’t know we’ve got you on the bridge, Bill,” Mike Brannon said genially. “Acknowledge and tell them thank you. This is no day to be getting picky.” He turned to Bob Lee.

  “Let’s set the maneuvering watch. All hands not on watch or working will muster topside in clean dungarees, shined shoes, and clean white hats. Tell Chief Flanagan to get his line handlers organized.”

  Chief Flanagan lined up two ranks of off-duty crewmen on the afterdeck and put Chief Pharmacist’s Mate Wharton in charge. He took the line-handling party to the foredeck.

  “I want two men for each line,” he said. “For those of you who haven’t done this before remember one thing. Don’t try to catch the monkey fist on the end of the heaving line they’ll throw you from the other submarine. That monkey fist is loaded with lead and you’ll break your hands. Let the monkey fist fall and grab the heaving line, and haul in the mooring-line eye and put it over the cleats. That’s all you got to do. Then you gather up the heaving lines and coil them up nice and neat. Now stand by your line-handling stations.” He turned to the bridge.

  “Off-duty crew in formation on the after deck, Bridge. Standing at ease. Line-handling party is stationed.”

  “Very well,” Lee said.

  Flanagan turned to look at the bulk of the U.S.S. Pelius. There were four submarines alongside the tender, and on the outboard submarine Flanagan could see groups of men standing beside coils of mooring line. A submarine on war patrol carries no mooring lines, no anchor, and no anchor chain. The possibility that depth charges might tear open the mooring line lockers and that the line might foul the submarine’s propellers, the danger that depth charges might knock the anchor loose and that it would roar out with its 630-foot length of chain and thus immobilize the submarine under water were too great to risk. Nor did submarines on war patrol keep their bronze-wire lifelines, which were usually strung on posts along the edges of the deck. Those might rattle under water and give away the submarine’s position. Only the heavy stanchions that had a special fixture on their tops to accommodate the spud of a 50-caliber machine gun were left in place, and those stanchions were braced and welded to make sure they couldn’t rattle.

  The Eelfish eased in toward the outboard submarine in the nest next to the Pelius, Captain Mike Brannon watching carefully as Lieutenant Robert E. Lee, his voice crisp as he issued orders to the helm and the maneuvering room for changes of speed, maneuvered the submarine toward its berth. As the bow of the Eelfish passed the forward deck gun of the submarine it was to moor alongside, Lee raised his voice.

  “Rudder amidships. All back one-third. Pass mooring lines aboard.” The heavy lead-loaded monkey fists on the ends of the heaving lines whipped across the Eelfish deck, and the line handlers hauled in the mooring-line eyes and slipped them over the cleats.

  “All stop! Double up all mooring lines.” Lee turned to Captain Brannon. “Ship is moored, sir.”

  “Nice landing, Bob,” Brannon said. “You’ve got a really good feel for the ship.” Lee grinned like a little boy. “Bridge! Permission to take the gangway aboard?” Flanagan’s voice came from the afterdeck.

  “Permission granted,” Brannon said. He walked back to the cigaret deck and dropped down to the deck as a short, heavyset officer, his Captain’s eagles gleaming on his shirt-collar tabs, put one foot on the gangway. “Permission to come aboard, Captain?”

  “Welcome aboard, sir,” Brannon responded. He waited as the Captain and his staff crossed the gangway, saluting the American flag, which hung from its staff at the ship’s stern, and John Olsen, who was standing at the gangway.

  “I’m Sam Rivers,” the Captain said to Brannon. “Operations Officer for Admiral Christie. The Admiral is coming aboard in a few minutes. Let me extend my congratulations for a fine patrol, sir.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Brannon said. He turned as Admiral

  Christie came bounding down the gangway, his hand extended to Mike Brannon.

  “Damned fine patrol, Mike!” the Admiral cried. “Damned fine, two Fubukis, wow! Good shooting!”

  “Thank you, sir,” Brannon said. “I just wish we could have got them before they got the Mako.”

  The Admiral’s smiling face became grave. He put his arm a
round Brannon’s heavy shoulders and walked him up the deck away from the group of Staff officers.

  “You did everything you could, Mike. It wasn’t your fault, not in any way. You followed your orders, your patrol orders, the way every officer in this Navy has to follow his orders. You made all possible speed to come to the Mako when they told you they had a convoy and invited you to share in the action. We all know that.” He stopped and removed his arm and turned to face Brannon.

  “I want you to know this, Mike. I cried when I read your contact report, the part about the Mako transmitting the Twenty-third Psalm as the ship was sinking into the Philippine Trench, out of control. My God, what brave men! And how terrible it must have been for you, to have to stand and hear that message and not be able to do anything. I cried, Mike. I did.”

  “I’ve got to write to Art Hinman’s bride,” Brannon said. “They were only married, together, a few weeks, you know. I don’t know what to say, I’ve never met her.”

  “I wrote to her,” Admiral Christie said. “I told her that based on what you had told us, what the Mako told you, that Captain Hinman died instantly when the Mako’s bridge was swept by very heavy gunfire. I think it makes it a lot easier for someone who has lost a loved one if they believe that the loved one died instantly, with no pain or suffering.” His face sobered. “I’ve had to write too many of those letters, Mike. Too many. But you write to her. You should.”

  “That’s good of you, sir,” Brannon said. “One other thing. I’d appreciate it if someone in your office could give me a roster of Mako’s crew. I knew most of them and I’ll spend my rest period writing to their survivors.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Admiral Christie said. “Now, if you don’t mind, let’s talk about other things. The exploders worked all right?”

  “Yes, sir.” Brannon’s voice was suddenly flat, without emotion. “I missed with some fish. John Olsen missed with one he fired, but those we were accurate with, they worked.”

  “The only real criticism I have, Mike,” the Admiral said, “is that you shot too many torpedoes at those small freighters. One torpedo for each would have been enough. By the way, we can’t give you a kill on that patrol craft that was rammed by the freighter. You didn’t have anything to do with its going down, but we’ll give you a damage on that one.”

  “The patrol vessel wouldn’t have sunk if we didn’t go into the convoy, sir.” Brannon’s voice was suddenly edged with an anger he tried to conceal. “It was our direct action that caused him to get rammed. My contact report noted that the patrol ship fired at us and we had to silence him with our machine guns.

  “I’m sorry, Mike,” the Admiral said. He slapped Brannon on the shoulder. “All the same a damned fine patrol. I’d like to see you at my office for a debriefing in, oh, about three hours. I’ll have one of my aides come down and pick you up. The buses to take your crew to the hotel in Perth will be here in two hours, a little less.” The two men turned and walked up the deck. Admiral Christie stopped and turned to face Brannon.

  “I’ll tell you this, before the briefing, and you’ll hear it again from my intelligence people. It should make you feel a little better about the Mako.

  “When you blasted those two Fubukis you killed the man we call the ‘Professor.’ His name was Captain Akihito Hideki. He was the best antisubmarine man they had in their whole Navy. Our code breakers in Pearl Harbor said the traffic about his going down in your attack was very heavy. You’ve probably saved a lot of our own submariners by sinking him. Try to keep that part in mind.” He stopped at the gangway, saluted, and bounced across the swaying gangway to the next submarine. Mike Brannon watched his bounding progress across the other submarines and into the vast hull of the submarine tender, wondering where he got his energy, how he retained it under the enormous weight of his responsibilities. He turned as John Olsen walked up to him.

  “We’ve got to paint over one of those Rising Sun flags on the Conning Tower, John. They’re giving us a damaged on that patrol boat that was rammed.”

  “I know,” Olsen grumbled. “I damned near swung on that ass of a Lieutenant who works for the Staff when he told me. You’d think he’d just hit a home run or something. Son of a bitch has never made a patrol run and he’s drawing submarine and sea pay for working here on land.

  “I gave the tender permission to bring fresh fruit and mail aboard, sir, while you were talking with the Admiral.” He looked at Brannon.

  “Did he say anything about the exploders, sir?”

  “He asked if they worked,” Brannon said. “I told him the simple truth, that the ones we got hits with worked fine. He didn’t ask anything more than that, I didn’t offer anything more than that.” He looked down the deck at his crew, many of them sitting on the deck reading their mail while they ate the cold-storage apples and oranges that were a standing feature of a return to port.

  “The buses will be here in a couple of hours, John. You’d better tell the Chief of the Boat to get the crew ready to go to the hotel. I want you to take over for me. I’ve got to go to the Admiral’s office this afternoon.” Olsen nodded and went in search of Chief Flanagan. He found him sitting on the after capstan eating an orange.

  “Read all your mail already?” Olsen asked.

  “Didn’t get any,” Flanagan said. “I was brought up in an orphanage. Stayed there until I was seventeen. Then I enlisted in the Navy. Makes it kind of convenient. I don’t get any mail so I don’t have to write any letters.” He nodded toward Paul Blake, the sonar operator who was standing by the side of the ship staring at the water.

  “Blake got one of those Dear John letters. His girl back home dumped him for some Four-F civilian. He’s taking it pretty hard.”

  “Is there anything we can do?” Olsen said.

  “I don’t know,” Flanagan said. “I’ve got to think about it some. He’s too good a kid, too damned good on that sonar for us to lose, to go sour over some silly-assed broad. I might get him pissy-assed drunk or something. I don’t know.”

  “Captain wants all hands to be ready to get on the buses in two hours, Chief. You’d better take care of that now.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Flanagan said. He wadded the orange peel in a big hand, walked forward to where a big trash can had been placed, and dropped the peel into the can. The yeoman, John Wilkes Booth, came over the gangway holding a piece of paper in his hand.

  “Some dude out in the country from Perth has written a letter to the Staff, Chief,” Booth said. “He says that next Monday he’ll throw a big barbecue for up to twenty of the crew on his ranch. They call the countryside the ‘outback’ in this part of the world. He says he’s got horses to ride and that if we bring our own rifles and ammunition the guys can hunt kangaroos and emus. Staff has already okayed drawing rifles and ammunition for anyone wants to go.” He handed the paper to Flanagan.

  “I’ll announce it at quarters,” Flanagan said. Booth turned and looked down the deck.

  “Hey, Geronimo,” he yelled at a swarthy Machinist’s Mate. “Some rancher out in the country wants to take us huntin’ on horseback for kangaroos. I’ll put your name down for the hunting party and we’ll find out if you can really ride a horse.”

  “You do that,” the Machinist’s Mate said. “I’ll show you how to ride bareback, like I used to do back home.”

  “Shit,” John LaMark said. “You Indians didn’t have enough money to own horses. You walked around dressed in an old crummy blanket until you came in the Navy and they gave you a sea bag full of new clothes.” He ducked as the Indian threw an apple core at him.

  “You know my name,” the Indian said. “My name is Charles Two Blankets. And they were good blankets. I didn’t have to go to Small Stores to get a pair of shoes if I wanted shoes. I just shot me a deer, skinned it, and tanned the hide and made me a pair of moccasins. You white people would starve to death if you lived in my part of the desert and the mountains. You know something else, wise ass? I don’t have to stay on this shi
p with clowns like you if I don’t want to. Friend of mine on the tender come down here a little while ago. He told me they’re looking for Indians who can speak the Indian languages. It’s better than code for sending messages. We begin to talk in Apache and that old Jap won’t know what the fuck to do.”

  “How you gonna make smoke signals big enough to be seen in Pearl from out here?” LaMark inquired innocently. “You gonna burn both your blankets?”

  “Ah, shit,” the Apache said. “You just make sure you sign up for this huntin’ trip and I’ll get you on a horse and ride you until your soft ass comes apart at the seams.”

  “I’ll personally take both your asses apart at the seams,” Flanagan said. “Get squared away for the trip to the hotel.” The sailors who had bunched up to listen to the exchange between Charlie Two Blankets and LaMark broke up and went below to get themselves ready for two weeks at the hotel.

  In the ship’s Wardroom the Lieutenant in charge of the Relief Crew, which would repair whatever had to be repaired on the Eelfish and paint ship, pushed his coffee cup to one side and smiled at Mike Brannon and Bob Lee.

  “I’m obliged for your hospitality, gentlemen, and I appreciate how little needs to be done and how clean your ship is. We’ll move you tomorrow and take off torpedoes.” He paused and lit a cigaret.

  “You’d have to do duty here to realize how dirty some ships are when they come in, how much gear has broken down. When we get an Eelfish it’s a big break.” He rose and left the Wardroom. Brannon turned as Olsen came through the green curtains and sat down.

  “The crew will be ready when the buses get here, sir,” Olsen said. “The Squadron Office sent word that when you’re ready to go ashore they’ll provide a car. You and I are being quartered in a house the Navy’s rented for the duration. If it’s all right with you, I’ll go over with you when you’re ready.”