“Reduce speed to two knots at seven minutes and fifty-five seconds from the time of observation,” Mealey ordered. Grilley looked at Sirocco and grinned. The difference of five seconds was meaningless but it was a continuing rebuke to Sirocco’s suggestion to the Commanding Officer that he go up for a look.
“Mr. Cohen,” Mealey’s voice was crisp. “Try to keep one ear on the target. Advise me at once if he changes his speed or course and continue to give me all you have on the other ships.”
“The ships out ahead of the target are doing what they have been doing, sir,” Cohen said. “Running back and forth across the target’s course. The decibel level is rising steadily, they’re getting closer to us. Main target’s screws are steady.”
Sirocco took a plotting sheet and climbed half way up the Conning Tower ladder, resting his broad back against the rim of the hatch. Mealey turned and squatted to look at the plot.
“Captain,” Sirocco said, “if the ships sweeping ahead of the target peel off and go back toward the target’s stern to sweep there they should be passing over us when we are less than three minutes from our shooting point.”
“We’ll go up then,” Mealey said. His forefinger traced the track on the plotting sheet. “They’ll be making so much noise they won’t be able to hear us coming up or hear the outer tube doors being opened.” He touched the plotting sheet again.
“I don’t think any of the four destroyers out front will go into the atoll. This is the sticky part of the voyage for them. I think they’ll all peel off and circle backward, that’s what I’d order if I were in command of them.” Sirocco looked at the stop-watch that hung around his neck.
“Suggest we reduce speed to two knots, sir. We’re within a thousand yards of our shooting point. We have fourteen minutes to go before we shoot!”
“Make turns for two knots,” Captain Mealey said.
“Two sets of twin screws, one behind the other and coming this way!” Cohen’s voice floated up through the hatch. “This seems to be consistent with the previous maneuvering but now they’re a lot closer to us!”
In the Forward Torpedo Room Ginty cocked his head suddenly and listened.
“Ship movin’ fast out there on the port bow,” he said slowly. “Got to be one of the tin cans guardin’ the wagon. Son of a bitch ain’t too far away, either! Listen, they’s another one!” He moved down the length of the room, his restless hands plucking at the block and tackle that would be used to haul the reload torpedoes into the tubes.
“If those bastards pick us up and start droppin’ shit on us don’t grab at the fuckin’ fish!” he growled at a young sailor from the Engine Rooms who had been picked for the reload crew because he was as strong as a horse. “You got to grab somethin’,” Ginty continued, “grab your cock!”
“You think we’ll get depth charged, Ginch?”
“Fucking ay!” Ginty snorted. “That Old Man back there in the Connin’ Tower ain’t got no blood in his veins! He’s fulla ice water! Ain’t no skipper in this whole fuckin’ Navy got the guts to make an approach like this, bust right underneath twelve tin cans! When he sticks that fuckin’ ‘scope up he’s gonna start shootin’ at that fuckin’ wagon and them destroyer captains is gonna go nuts and they’ll hit us with more shit than you ever heard!”
As the enemy’s screws thudded louder and louder Cohen began to draw his skinny legs together and to sit straight up on his stool. Sirocco noticed that Cohen’s knees were now almost touching and he wondered if the change in Cohen’s position was unconscious, that as danger grew nearer the move to close his legs had been a defensive reflex to protect his genital area. Sirocco shook himself, he had more to think about than wondering about Cohen’s legs. He bent over his plot. Cohen was sending him a stream of bearings now and Sirocco and Grilley plotted rapidly.
“Give me the time to shooting, Plot,” Mealey’s voice seemed detached, without emotion. He stood in the Conning Tower, looking at Bob Edge and Paul Botts and seeing neither man. In his mind’s eye he was seeing the deployment of the ships above and ahead of him, sorting them out from the profusion of bearings that Cohen was feeding to the Plotting party. He was preparing himself for the critical moments that are the acid test of a submarine commander in war, the ability to make accurate judgments of critical distances, speeds and angles. The Executive Officer with his Is-Was and the officer on the TDC would work out the firing problem but it was the information he fed to them as he looked through the periscope that would determine a successful attack or a failure. It was his judgment of the maneuvers the destroyer captains would go through that would determine if Mako carried out the full attack and got away or whether Mako went down, a victim of the destroyers’ attacks.
“Four minutes, Captain,” Sirocco said. “We can begin to come to periscope depth in one minute if the escort ships leave.”
“Very well,” Mealey said. “I’m going to shoot all six tubes forward as he goes by us and then swing ship and give him the after tubes.”
“He’s just over six hundred feet long, sir.” Sirocco said. “At fifteen knots he’ll pass the first firing point in about twenty-five seconds, sir.”
“Understood,” Captain Mealey said. He cocked his head upward as the thunder of ship’s screws overhead filled Mako’s hull with sound, shaking the ship.
“Three ships have turned this way and are coming over us,” Cohen’s voice was cracking slightly. “Target ship is steady on course, no change in speed, sir.”
Mealey touched the right side of his mustache with his forefinger. He had hoped only two ships would turn toward Mako, leaving the other two destroyers of the van on the far side of the target and temporarily out of the fight.
“Sixty-five feet,” he ordered. “We’ll open the torpedo tube outer doors at one hundred feet! Torpedo Officer to the After Room. Chief of the Boat to the Forward Room!”
Sirocco looked at the depth gauge in front of the bow planesman. It read 175 feet, the long black needle moving. The needle passed 150 feet and then 120, 110.
“Open outer doors on all torpedo tubes!” Captain Mealey ordered, his voice crisp. He looked down into the Control Room from his squatting position beside the periscope well.
In the Forward Torpedo Room, which had no depth gauge, Ginty had been watching a gauge that showed the water pressure outside of Mako’s hull. As the needle of that gauge crept downward Ginty placed the socket of a big Y-wrench over a stud on the end of a shaft that would turn a worm gear and open the outer torpedo tube door and slide back the hull shutter for Number One tube. He nodded at Johnny Paul, who put his own Y-wrench in position on the stud beside Number Two tube.
The pressure needle touched 44.4 pounds and Ginty heaved mightily on the Y-wrench as the telephone talker cried, “Open all outer torpedo tube doors!” Ginty’s broad back seemed to widen as he spun the wrench viciously, felt the door come up against the stops and then he whipped the wrench off and started on the tube below Number One, the Number Three tube. He finished opening that door and dropped down into the bilge in front of Number Five tube and wrestled the big wrench around in a flashing circle. The reload crew listened in awe to Ginty’s mighty gasps for air in the humid heat of the Torpedo Room. Ginty felt Number Five door come up against the stop and glanced upward. Paul was still working on his second outer door, to Number Four tube.
“Shit!” Ginty grunted. He slammed his wrench onto the stud on the bottom tube of Paul’s bank, Number Six.
“Watcha fuckin’ legs,” he snapped as he spun the last tube door open.