Wright was astonished, though a little skeptical. He had been on board long enough to know how quickly rumors spread. He also knew how easily they were embellished and distorted. Sailors were a very superstitious lot and they always needed an explanation for everything under the sun. Random events did not exist. The fact that a random event could cause their deaths or the death of one of their shipmates was not comprehensible. It was even scoffed at. The blame always had to be attached to something or someone. It helped to make sense of senseless things and it gave them something to think about.
“I don’t know about that,” Wright said. “I was up there, remember. I was the last one off the bridge. Anderson saved our lives by giving us those few seconds of warning. I’ll always be grateful to him for that. And you should be, too. And you’re right about one thing. You shouldn’t tarnish his memory like that.”
“He could have given you plenty of warning, sir,” Johnson said, sounding annoyed with Wright, “if he’d been at his fucking station doing his fucking job. We could have been well below before that plane got anywhere near us and Mister O’Connell would still be here.” He paused and then added, “Anderson would still be here, too, if it wasn’t for fucking Mr. Turner!”
“What has Turner got to do with this?” Wright exclaimed.
“It was Turner who ordered Anderson to leave his post, sir, to clean up a fucking coffee stain. A fucking coffee stain, sir!”
Wright’s heart skipped a beat. A tingling sensation crept up and down his spine and he suddenly felt cold. He had not believed anything Johnson said until now. Now it was all becoming very clear to him.
“What…” Wright muttered.
“You knew about that, didn’t you, sir?” Johnson said. “It happened like fucking clockwork at the end of every watch. Turner always had to have his little conning tower looking spotless before he could relieve the watch. Well, this time Turner got bit in the ass. He told Anderson to leave his post to clean up a coffee stain and because of that Mr. O’Connell died. Anderson shot himself because he couldn’t live with the guilt. The only reason we haven’t ratted on Mr. Turner is because we don’t want Anderson’s family to lose his medal. That’s worth more to us than sending Turner to a general court martial, like he deserves. So we all hate Turner, sir, and we don’t want him as our division officer. That so wrong, sir?”
Anderson drunk and almost AWOL, then committing suicide. Turner not acting like himself and crying at Anderson’s memorial service. It all fit together now in Wright’s mind. He felt both angry and afraid at the same time. Angry at not seeing it before, and afraid of what he now knew about Tee.
“I can see by the look on your face that you believe it, too, sir,” Johnson said. “You and Mister O’Connell were friends, right, sir? Well, don’t you worry. We’ll take care of Mr. Turner when the time comes.”
Wright did not respond. His head hurt and he felt a bit dizzy. He left the sailors and made his way back to Salisbury, still conversing by the torpedo tube breeches with the torpedoman of the watch.
“What’s wrong with you, Ryan?” Salisbury asked. “You look ill.”
Wright rubbed his head, unable to tell him. “Nothing, Joe. Let’s just go relieve the watch.”
Mackerel spent all day at periscope depth, holding position between the two points of land with short one-third and two-third bells to counteract the effects of the current flowing in and out of the channel. The conning tower and most of the ship was quiet. The crew had exerted themselves during the night, manning the deck guns, and now most were resting up for the next night. The gentle purr of the electric motors combined with the reduced oxygen levels did well to put the off-watch crew to sleep, and tempted a few of the men on watch to do the same.
So far, the day had been an uneventful one. There had been no sign of the Kurita. The officers kept the scope trained up the channel and every hour or so a ship or two would pass through, heading in to port or out to sea. A small squadron of destroyers steamed by at high speed in the late morning, but they passed well clear of Mackerel and did not pose a threat. Periodically, a flight of aircraft would appear over the land. Whenever they appeared to be heading in Mackerel's direction, Tremain ordered the ship down to two hundred feet to prevent the submarine’s dark shape from catching any attention. After enough time was given for the aircraft to pass, Mackerel was back at periscope depth again, searching. It was unlikely that an aircraft would spot the submerged submarine, anyway. A low gray cloud cover had set in and it removed most of the water’s translucency.
Waiting was the hard part of submarining, waiting for the enemy and being patient, having faith that they would come. It could be extremely boring, so boring that one could easily forget how close the enemy actually was.
Late in the afternoon, Cazanavette took the conn while Tremain caught up on some sleep in his cabin. Salisbury and Wright were the officers on watch.
“There goes another one,” Salisbury said, looking through the scope. “Small freighter, eight thousand yards away. Bearing three zero zero. It’s heading up the channel.”
Cazanavette came over from the chart desk and took the scope.
“Probably heading to Kobe,” he said. “Yep. Here, Ryan, take the scope. Give me a good angle on the bow. I want to see how good you are … Hey, Ryan!”
Wright had been deep in thought only a few feet away, but he had not heard a word the XO had said.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Wright finally said.
“You need some coffee, Ryan?”
“No, sir.”
“All right then,” Cazanavette said impatiently. “Take the scope and tell me the angle on that freighter.”
Wright took the scope and swung it around until he saw the Japanese freighter. He almost missed it because only its topmasts were visible above the waves. They appeared as two tiny sticks cruising along the northwestern horizon. Shikoku’s mountains in the background made the masts even more difficult to discern.
“I can only see the tops of its masts, sir,” Wright said. “I can’t see any of her hull. I can’t tell which way she’s headed.”
Cazanavette and Salisbury exchanged smiles.
“Well, use what you do know,” Cazanavette said in a tutoring tone. “How many masts do you see?”
“Two.”
“Okay, if she were pointing at us or facing away how many would you see?”
“Probably only one, sir.”
“Right. So, since you can see two masts, you know that you’re looking at one of her beams. Which way is she drawing?”
Wright centered the crosshair on one of the masts and held it steady. He waited and watched as the mast slowly move to the right.
“Right bearing drift, sir.”
“Okay, so if she’s bearing three zero zero, and she has a right bearing drift, that means she has to be headed which way?”
“Somewhere to the north, sir.”
“Okay, so what’s the angle on the bow?”
“Starboard one hundred?”
Cazanavette turned up his bottom lip. “Not bad. That’s the best you can do with what you know. After you get used to seeing those mast arrangements, and you get used to the different separations on different ships, you’ll get better at it.”
Salisbury took the scope back. Cazanavette pulled a recognition book out of a locker and handed it to Wright.