“Just remember, I hadn’t told her one damned thing about the patrol and you know they kept everyone away from the dock when we came in because we were so badly busted up. So she didn’t see the ship. And she took me out in the kitchen and pointed at the calendar on the bulkhead and there was a red crayon circle around the day we hit the battleship!
“She said that she knew that on that day we had been in great danger but that she didn’t worry because the old gods told her we’d get back home safely!”
“I know,” Barber said, nodding his head, “Dottie told me that story after I got home. Made me feel kind of funny inside.”
Rhodes took his wallet out of his hip pocket and opened it and took out a folded slip of paper. He handed it to Barber.
“June gave me this the day before we left port,” Rhodes said. “Told me to keep it with me all the time.” Barber unfolded the slip of paper and read it aloud.
“Accept what is offered even though it is not wanted.”
“I don’t get it,” he said. He handed the paper back to Rhodes, who folded it carefully and put it back in his wallet.
“Neither do I,” Rhodes said. “She told me that the gods told her that a time would come when this would mean something to me and when that time came I should obey what was given to her, what she wrote down.”
Chapter 23
Mako made rendezvous with the storm in the Luzon Straits between Luzon and Formosa. As storms went in those latitudes it was not a major weather event. The winds howled at 60 miles an hour and the seas were sullen green giants 40 to 50 feet high with almost a mile of water between their tops of wind-whipped spray. Captain Hinman, dressed in rain clothes, shouted above the wind to Joe Sirocco.
“This is where we should patrol, in Luzon Strait. All the shipping going to and from Japan uses this strait. Lots of deep water. You’d get more ships here than trying to pick them off when they come out of harbors.” Sirocco looked at the dark bulk of the mountain that was Bataan Island, rising more than 3,000 feet above the sea to starboard, and nodded and then grabbed at the bridge rail as Mako plunged her bow deep into a long, rolling sea and staggered upward, shedding the tons of water which roared down her narrow deck and broke, smashing into spray against the Conning Tower structure and soaking everyone on the bridge.
“What’s our next course change?” Hinman shouted above the wind.
“We just passed Babuyan Island ten miles to port. That mountain is over thirty-five hundred feet high. When it bears two zero four degrees relative we can come left to course two three four and come down past Cape Bojeader, that’s on the northwest tip of Luzon itself. Once clear of the Cape we can alter course to port again and, run on down the coastline, I’d suggest about forty miles off the land.”
“Very well,” Hinman said. He studied the sullen gray sky.
“We’ll stay on the surface today,” he said in Sirocco’s ear. “No sense in going down in this weather. I’m going to turn in. Call me if the weather changes or if we see anything. Keep the lookouts here in the bridge space and maintain a periscope watch.”
Lieut. Bob Edge, manning the search periscope in the Conning Tower, sighted the small convoy at mid-morning.
Captain Hinman was out of his bunk at the first rap of the messenger’s knuckles on the bulkhead of his tiny stateroom. He grabbed at his bunk rail to steady himself and pulled on pants and shirt and stuffed his feet into sandals.
“Can you see them yet?” he yelled as he climbed up the ladder to the bridge.
“Not yet, sir,” Pete Simms shouted from beneath his rain hood.
“Chief of the Boat to the Bridge with a strong line,” Hinman ordered. Dusty Rhodes came up to the bridge with a small coil of manila line over one shoulder and gasped as a sudden rain squall swept over Mako, soaking him to the skin.
“I want a safety line on a lookout,” Hinman shouted to Rhodes. “I want to put him up in the shears.”
Rhodes swiftly tied a bowline on a bight knot in the line. One of the lookouts gingerly pulled the two loops of the knot up over-his legs and Rhodes tied the bitter end of the line around his waist.
“It’s like a sling,” he said in the lookout’s ear. “If you go over the side the line won’t cut you in half at the belly, it’s around your legs and body.” He paid out the line as the lookout worked his way up to a lookout stand in the periscope shears.
“One hand for you, one for the ship,” Hinman yelled at the lookout. “Hang on, fella!” The lookout grabbed the waist-high pipe railing around the lookout stand with one hand and raised his binoculars to his eyes with the other.
“I got ‘em!” he yelled. “Three ships bearing about three two zero, Bridge. Look like two little freighters and one destroyer. Destroyer’s making lots of smoke. They’re headed this way!”
“Get him down from there and rig me up,” Hinman said to Rhodes. “I want to get a good look.”
Hinman scrambled up to the lookout stand. He clung there for a long moment, searching through his binoculars.
“Sound General Quarters!” He yelled suddenly. “Plotting Party to the Conning Tower!” He balanced himself against Mako’s savage rolls and pitching, raising his binoculars whenever Mako steadied for a few seconds at the top of a roll. He heard Joe Sirocco’s voice, faint under the wind, reporting to the Bridge that he had the targets in the search periscope.
“Give me a range and a bearing,” Captain Hinman yelled as he scrambled down into the bridge and stripped off the safety line.
“Targets bear three four zero, sir,” Sirocco’s voice came up the hatch. “Range is two five zero zero and the angle on the bow is ten starboard.”
Mako rose on the top of a long wave and the people on the bridge could see the targets. Two small coastal freighters of about 3,000 tons and an old coal-burning destroyer. A bright light winked briefly on the destroyer’s foredeck.
“Destroyer’s opened fire with deck guns,” Hinman yelled. “Lookouts below!” A gout of water shot up on the side of a long wave, far off to Mako’s starboard bow. “He can’t hit anything with that kind of a platform, he’s rolling like hell!”
“Left ten degrees rudder,” Hinman ordered. “Joe, I’m going to run down the starboard flank, shoot from that side.”
“That’s where the destroyer is, sir,” Sirocco answered.
“Affirm, Plot,” Hinman said. Mako slid to the top of a long wave and the guns on the destroyer fired again. A shell went by high overhead, its screech muffled by the wind. Captain Hinman leaned over the hatch to the Conning Tower.
“Plot! How does it look? Are we going to get a shot?”
“Yes, sir,” Sirocco called up through the hatch. “In about a minute we’ll all be in the same wave trough. We can shoot then. Torpedo run will be twelve zero zero yards, sir.”
“Open the outer doors in the Forward Room,” Hinman called. “Here we go!”
Mako breasted the crest of a wave, spray whipping across the bridge, and Hinman saw the three ships.
“Come on!” Hinman yelled. “I’ve got the bastards right in front of me up here! Give me a solution!”
“Commence shooting whenever you’re ready, sir,” Sirocco yelled.
“Fire one!” Hinman yelled. The destroyer was steady on its course, rolling heavily as it tried to turn toward the Mako.
“Fire two!”
Captain Hinman saw the first torpedo leap clear of the water far short of the target. The torpedo tail-walked for a few brief seconds and then plunged back into the water, turning to the right; it was porpoising in and out of the water and headed in a long, curving course back toward Mako.