“After Nimitz gives out the medals this noon.” He stopped, his grin spreading all over his face.
“Old Iron Ass didn’t say anything about medals, did he? I knew the son of a pup wouldn’t! Well, Nimitz is giving you a Navy Cross, Art, and he’s giving Mike a Silver Star! We can’t have a hero without a fucking medal, you know! FDR will repeat the medal-giving on camera, as Butler says.” He laughed out loud.
“Art, you’ve got a lot to learn about how things are done on shore. You’ve been at sea too damned long. Where was I? Yeah. When Nimitz is all through I’ll have a car and a driver at your gangway. I want you and Mike to come to lunch with me. Butler will be there.”
“I want to thank Butler,” Hinman said slowly, “but there’s something else I want to do as soon as I can.”
“I know,” Rudd’s booming voice went soft. “Lunch won’t take long and the car and driver will be waiting. Now get your asses out of here, you’ve got about an hour before Nimitz comes aboard and if I know you, Art, it will take that long for you to find your white shoes!” He watched the two men go down the steps and enter the rear seat of the car waiting for them. He crooked a finger at the car’s driver and the man came up the steps to him.
“Take Captain Hinman and Commander Brannon to the Mako,” he growled. “Stand by there until the Admiral leaves. Then bring both of them to the O-Club. Get your chow while they eat and then stand by. And don’t forget this: When Captain Hinman gets out of the car at the cemetery you get out and take a walk! You understand?” The driver saluted and trotted down the steps. Commander Rudd watched the car pull away and went back into his office and his paper work.
Chapter 8
Chief John Barber climbed out of the Engine Room hatch on the after deck and picked his way forward through crew members who were sitting and squatting on deck, reading their mail and chewing at apples and oranges that had been brought aboard. He saw Dusty Rhodes standing up near the bow and walked up to him.
“Saw you talking with Nimitz,” Barber said. “He say anything about the patrol, what you did to the exploders?”
“No,” Rhodes said. “He asked about June and the boys. Told me to be sure to tell her to call his office or his wife if they need anything, any help.” He took a sip from the coffee cup he was holding and offered it to Barber, who turned it so he could drink from the other side of the cup.
“That all he said?” Barber asked.
“He did ask me if I’d go back to sea with Captain Hinman,” Rhodes said slowly. “Told me I didn’t have to answer that question if I didn’t want to, said he was just trying to get some information from an old shipmate.”
Barber eyed Rhodes. “And?”
“I told him I’d go to sea with the Skipper as quick as I’d go to sea with him. He said that was all he wanted to know. I kind of think he wanted to hear that.” Rhodes looked up the pier and saw a bow-legged Chief Warrant Officer rolling down the pier.
“Well, here it comes,” he said to Barber. “That’s Gimpy Haines, the Chief Warrant in charge of the exploder shop on the Base. I had him as a Chief of the Boat once, a long time ago. Hard son of a bitch but usually pretty straight. He’s probably heard we did something to those exploders and he wants to get the story from me before his people start unloading fish.”
“See you later,” Barber said.
Haines boarded the Mako and walked up the deck to Rhodes, who stuck out his hand and greeted him.
“Heard you had a pretty good patrol,” Haines said.
“Pretty good,” Rhodes answered. “The shop gave us good fish. No trouble with them at all. The six we fired all ran perfectly. Fired two at a tanker and got two hits. The ship exploded. Fired two at another tanker and got one hit. That ship blew up. Fired two down the throat at a DE and got one hit. Blew the bow off the DE. Sorry that your people have got to take eighteen fish back. If we’d stayed out there the Old Man would have fired the whole load.”
“And we never would have known what you did to those damned exploders, would we?” Haines smiled crookedly.
“I wouldn’t say that. The Old Man wrote it all up in his patrol report. He asked me to make a special report on what I did and that’s in my report on the torpedoes.”
“You got what, close to twenty years in now?” Haines looked away from Rhodes.
“Nineteen last month,” Rhodes said.
“Hell of a chance to take, disobeying a BuOrd directive,” Haines said. “Whole nineteen years could go down the slop chute.”
“I acted on orders from the Captain.”
“Makes two of you don’t give a shit about your careers,” Haines rasped. “Or was there more than two of you in this?”
“Ginty, the First Class in charge of the Forward Room, helped me work on the exploders,” Rhodes said. “He’s a damned good man. The Old Man asked us what we thought was wrong with the exploders and we both said we didn’t know. So he ordered us to try and find out. We found out what was wrong and we fixed it.”
“This man Ginty around?”
Rhodes looked down the deck and saw Ginty standing near the Conning Tower, eating an apple. He beckoned and Ginty came padding up to the two men.
“Mr. Haines, Ginch Ginty, S-Boat sailor, Asiatic Fleet before he came to Mako. Ginty, this is Chief Warrant Haines, the man in charge of the exploder shop on the Base.”
Ginty nodded. Haines returned the nod.
“Mind telling me what you did to the exploders?” Haines asked. “I’d like to know what kind of mess I’ve got when we pull those eighteen fish.”
“No mess,” Rhodes said. “We deactivated the magnetic circuits of the exploders. Didn’t cut any wires, just disconnected the circuits to and from the capacitor and taped the leads. Then we did a modification to the exploder ring.” He took a deep breath.
“Let me get something straight, Mr. Haines. Are we talking here unofficially? I mean, are we talking man to man like we used to when you were my Chief of the Boat and I ran your torpedo room for you?”
“Unofficial all the way,” Haines. grunted. “What goes in my ear don’t come out my mouth. I just want the straight dope before all those hot-shots start fucking around. You know they flew some people all the way out from Newport Torpedo Station when they heard what you people had done? Once those experts begin talking and farting around I won’t be able to find out nothing so I want to know now.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Rhodes said. “All we did was to deactivate the magnetic circuits, like I told you. When we had the first exploder out on deck, we’d taken the fulminate of mercury cartridge out of it, we thought we’d see if the exploder ring would unseat if we rapped the edge of the exploder housing with a rawhide maul.”
“Fucking exploder ring wouldn’t unseat when you took a full swing at the exploder with that maul!” Ginty rumbled. “Whoever designed that Goddamn thing ought to have their head examined! Too much spring tension in the ring to unseat so we relieved some of the tension. Fucked around with it, little by little, until we had it so it would unseat if you gave it a good rap.
“There’s another thing you people ought to be worrying about. All these fish got those oversized warheads on ‘em. That’s gotta make the fish run deeper than they’re set to run. We told the Old Man about this and he figured we’re right so he set the fish we fired to run at four feet and we had targets that drew pretty good, maybe fifteen feet or more.”