Another evening conference over coffee in the wardroom was in progress. It differed from its interminably long predecessors, however, in one salient feature: the ebullient spirits of the wolfpack commander. The physical reaction to his strenuous athletic exertions on the periscope, and the mental ones of conducting the approach and attack, had expressed themselves in extreme fatigue. He had announced he would nap for an hour, but instead slept so soundly that it had been necessary to shake him to announce the evening meal. In the meantime, Eel had surfaced and was now well clear of land in the broader reaches of the Yellow Sea to the west.
Euphoria was evident in Blunt’s animation and appearance. A decade had again dropped off his face. His eyes were bright and alert. The near-catatonic paralysis which had twice seemed to possess his thought processes was no longer evident. He was, Rich felt with a peculiar foreboding, again like the much-admired skipper of old. Instead of merely listening almost noncommittally to the arguments placed before him by Rich and Keith and, less frequently, one of the others, this night he joined eagerly in the discussion.
“The thing to do, Rich, is to put Whitefish in the Maikotsu Suido where we were, maybe all the way down at the southern end again. But how do we know the Japs will continue to run ships through it?”
“That’s the main part of the problem, Commodore,” said Richardson. “They won’t, if they think there’s a submarine there. So far, there’s still a chance they may not realize there’s two of us around. If they’re as confused as our headquarters sometimes seems to be, they might think a single boat got those four cargo ships the other day.
“After Chicolar was sunk we lay pretty low, remember, for several days. There was no reason for them to suspect more subs around, especially if they didn’t get their times well coordinated. That would explain their lack of air-patrol activity, and it might even explain Moonface. It would have been a great coup if he could have come in with proof positive of another boat in the area. Since we hit into that big convoy in the Maikotsu Suido, however, we’ve seen a number of aircraft. They’re obviously out looking for us. If they figure they’ve pinpointed our location they will probably feel other areas are fairly safe. We know one thing for sure: these ships moving up the coast of Korea are vitally important to Japan’s occupying forces in China. Remember the briefing we got just before getting underway.”
“What are you proposing, Rich?”
Keith’s eyes were fixed upon Richardson. This had already been discussed, and Rich knew he had the wholehearted support of his executive officer. “If we send the Whitefish in there, Commodore,” he said slowly, “and get detected ourselves some distance away, they might think the area is clear.…”
“You mean deliberately get spotted by aircraft out in the middle of the Yellow Sea? They’ll have their best patrol craft out looking for us, and they’ll be carrying more than just the two bombs we heard the other day! When they spot us they’ll keep the air saturated with aircraft! They’ll prevent us from surfacing, just as we did the Nazi subs in the Atlantic! Once we zeroed in on one we stayed there till it ran out of battery, and when it had to come up, we killed it!”
A long appraising look passed between them. Blunt was now again his old self, else there would have been no chance at all for Richardson’s scheme. As Keith had remarked, it made no difference whether he really had conducted a good approach or only thought he had. The effect would be the same. But though his confidence had returned, at least for the time being, his prewar submarine experience could not have prepared him to cope with the realities of aircraft. They were there, and they had to be feared, but one had a job to do regardless. Rich and Keith had realized this would be the point upon which the decision would turn. They would be pitting the vigilance of their lookouts against the speed of an airplane and an enemy pilot’s ability to deliver his airborne depth charges accurately.
“Yes sir,” Richardson said, “that’s just what I mean.”
The storm must have come straight down from the Gulf of Pohai, also known as the Gulf of Chihli, which was an extraordinarily apt name, thought Al Dugan. Swathed in foul-weather gear and oilskins, he, four lookouts and a quartermaster strove to keep an alert watch on Eel’s heaving, ice-covered bridge. This was a hell of a way to fight a war. Even though he knew the scheme was to decoy Japanese antisubmarine effort away from Whitefish, it was just Eel’s luck to have to do it in a freezing norther. His own immediate misfortune was to have to spend three more hours on the bridge sticking his nose in it. This was the second day out in the middle of the Yellow Sea, and nearly all the time had been on the surface in this cursed storm. The bad weather had probably kept enemy aircraft more or less closed in also, for Eel had seen only half a dozen planes during the entire two-day period and, although she had deliberately dived late, the planes had never approached closely enough to drop depth charges. It was even possible the submarine wallowing in the frothy sea had escaped detection amid all the whitecapped waves. For that matter, no shipping had showed up in front of Whitefish’s torpedo tubes either. At least, she had sent no messages. By agreement, while in the Maikotsu Suido Whitefish was to remain under radio silence unless her presence was revealed by an attack upon a Japanese ship.
Very likely the five cargo ships sunk during the past several days had represented a pretty fair percentage of Japan’s available shipping for the supply runs to China. This alone might explain Whitefish’s lack of contact; it was also likely that the Japanese convoy shipping officials were awaiting more certain evidence that the coast was clear before sending additional ships on the suddenly perilous voyage to the north. In the meantime, Dugan was thoroughly miserable. He hunched his shoulders inside his heavy garments, checked again to see that the hood of his parka was as tightly knotted around his face as possible. Even so, water was sneaking in, running down his neck, soaking the front of his shirt inside the fur-lined jacket which was under the waterproof parka. His mittens — he had worn a pair of woolen mittens inside a pair of leather ones — were soaked through. A thin sheeting of ice crystals had formed on the outside of the outer leather mittens, and they had lost all ability to keep out the cold. His mistake had been in thinking to warm his hands by shoving them in the pockets of his parka trousers. Water had somehow already found its way there, and it was not until he felt the wetness around his fingers inside the inner mittens that he had realized it.
The submarine was barely moving through the water, barely maintaining steerageway, keeping herself head on into the seas so that, should a sudden submergence be necessary, there would be minimal impedance by wave action. Also, to improve the diving time, Eel was riding well flooded down, her ballast tanks only partly emptied. She was consequently low in the water and logy in her motion, rising slowly to meet the white-crested waves as the sea thrust them relentlessly down upon her in monotonous procession. Always she rose a little, but never enough. The sea would burst through her bullnose and over her bow in a solid mass of green icy water which would then travel aft, draining swiftly away through her slatted foredeck as she struggled to rise beneath it. It inundated the forward five-inch gun and reached the base of the bridge with sufficient force to send another shower of spray and roiled white water solidly over the forty-millimeter platform to burst against the steel bulwark behind which Dugan and his bridge crew were huddled. The lookouts had been brought down from their perches high on the periscope shears, instructed to remain close together behind the bridge bulwarks. Watching the sky was the important thing, Al had told them, repeating the instructions that all previous Officers of the Deck had told the lookouts in their turns.