“Mr. Lee brought you a cup of coffee,” he said.
“Thank you,” Brannon said. “Nice night.”
“Yes, sir,” the Quartermaster said. “Hope it’s raining when we get to Lombok Strait. That place scares me.”
“Me, too,” Brannon said. “Pray for rain or at least an overcast.
Eelfish, running at full speed, traversed the dangerous strait between the islands of Bali and Lombok and raced out into the Java Sea, heading for Makassar Strait. Six days later Eelfish submerged an hour before dawn off the northernmost tip of Celebes Island.
Lieutenant Michaels, who wore several hats as the ship’s Commissary, Radio, Radar, and Sonar Officer, came into the Wardroom an hour after Eelfish dove. He handed Mike Brannon a sheet of paper covered with groups of numbers.
“This message came in before we dove,” he said. “I broke it down, but all I get is another code, sir.”
“Okay, Jim,” Brannon said. He nodded at John Olsen, who was sitting at the table with his charts in front of him. “Let’s go into my stateroom, John, and see what we’ve got.”
An hour later Brannon looked at the words he had decoded from the message Michaels had given him. He handed the paper to Olsen, who whistled in surprise. Brannon reached for the chart Olsen had brought in with him. He laid the chart on his bunk, and with a pair of parallel rulers he covered the compass rose on the chart, then moved the rulers to Eelfish’s position and drew a light pencil line on the chart.
“They’re coming right down our street,” he said to his Executive Officer. “Where are the dividers?” He took the dividers, pricked off the distance along the course line, and leaned back.
“I make it they’ll be here about midnight tonight, maybe a little after midnight.”
“If the people in Pearl Harbor who got this information know what they’re doing,” Olsen said slowly. “Seems too good to be true, three tankers and only three destroyers? Big tankers?’
“They know their business in Pearl,” Mike Brannon said. “I didn’t tell you this before, but Admiral Christie told me that those people in Pearl who work with the Japanese codes have gotten so good that last April they broke a coded message that said Fleet Admiral Yamamoto and his staff were going to fly out of Rabaul to visit bases in the Solomons on an inspection tour. The code breakers had his itinerary, the numbers and types of planes in his party, down pat.
“A big bunch of long-range P-38s flew out of Guadalcanal and ambushed Yamamoto’s planes and shot every damned one of them down. The Japanese lost the best Admiral they had and his Chief of Staff and a lot of other high-ranking officers.”
“I never heard about that,” Olsen said.
“Damned few people have,” Brannon said. “From what the Admiral told me they had a hell of an argument in Pearl about using the information they had gotten from the codes. The people who broke the codes were afraid that if they went after Yamamoto the Japanese would know that their codes were broken and the code breakers would have to start all over if the Japanese changed their codes. But Admiral Nimitz and Admiral King in Washington figured that Yamamoto was so valuable to the Japanese war effort that they gave the order to go ahead with the ambush.”
“Japs didn’t realize their codes had been broken?”
“Two things argued against it,” Brannon said. “Or that’s what I’ve been told. First of all, there were some heavy storms, real bad ones, along Yamamoto’s route. One of the planes sent a message about the storms. Apparently none of Yamamoto’s planes reported an attack by the P-38s. And we have never claimed any credit for shooting down the Admiral and his group. But keep that to yourself, all of it. I don’t think the other Wardroom people need to know about it.”
Eelfish surfaced a half-hour after full dark, the water streaming from her superstructure, the four big diesel engines coughing into life and then settling down to a muted roar as three of the engines went on the battery charge.
In the Forward Torpedo Room Steve Petreshock checked and rechecked the torpedo tubes, his anxious eyes searching for evidence of any small fault that would hamper a successful firing. Jim Rice watched him.
“What I’d like to know,” Rice said, “is how those people in Fremantle know we’re supposed to see a convoy of three big oil tankers and some destroyers out here? Hell, we ran all the way up here and never saw one damned ship, not even a fishing boat.”
“I don’t know how they know,” Petreshock said. “Get some oil and take care of that gyro spindle on number two tube, will you? Son of a bitch feels a little sticky to me, and I don’t want a fucking spindle hanging up.”
“Does seem funny, though,” Rice said as he went between the tubes with an oilcan. “If those tankers do come along it will be the first damned thing that’s happened the way it was supposed to happen since I been in this fuckin’ submarine navy.” He squirted some oil on the gyro spindle shaft and worked the spindle back and forth gently.
“So far, seems to me, the Jap is outfumbling us. If he was half as smart as the Japs is supposed to be, he’d have won this damned war by now.” Paul Blake leaned out of his bunk above the reload torpedoes on the port side of the room.
“If the Japs had good sense they would have invaded Pearl Harbor. If they had they’d have won the war right then.”
Lieutenant Arbuckle came out of the Officers’ Head, buckling his belt.
“If the Japanese ever bombed the Panama Canal, they’ve got submarines that can carry small planes, or if they used saboteurs to blow up the Canal locks we’d be in a nasty pickle. I share the wisdom of the bearded savant, Mr. James Rice, Esquire: The Jap is just outfumbling us.” He ducked his head and lifted his leg to go through the watertight door opening to the Wardroom, to Officers’ Country.
Brannon heard the sharp word “Contact!” come up the bridge hatch, and he turned and went forward to the bridge space.
“Contact, Bridge.” The voice of the Chief of the Watch was tinny over the bridge speaker. “Radar contact bearing zero zero five, repeat zero zero five. Range is one four zero zero zero repeat fourteen thousand yards. Several pips on the radar, Bridge.”
“Sound General Quarters!” Brannon snapped. The muted clanging of the alarm floated up through the bridge hatch and Brannon could hear the steady thud of feet down below as the crew raced to Battle Stations. He listened to the reports coming over the bridge speaker.
“All Battle Stations manned, Bridge. All torpedo tube outer doors closed. Repeat closed. Depth set on all torpedoes is four feet. Repeat four feet. Plotting party standing by in the Control Room.”
“Very well,” Brannon said into the bridge transmitter. He turned to Lieutenant Lee.
“Go below, Bob and start the plot. I’ll take the bridge. I want intermittent use of the radar. I don’t want them to pick up the radar if I can help it. Tell John Olsen I want him up here for a minute.”
Olsen climbed the ladder to the bridge and stood beside Brannon.
“They’re a good quarter-hour behind schedule, Captain.”
“We’ll have to speak to them about that,” Brannon said. “How far north of Celebes are we?”
“Fifteen miles north of Celebes, sir. We’re about dead center between Celebes and that little island of Biaro. We should have a three-quarter moon in about an hour.” Both men looked upward as the radar antenna moved in a small arc.
“Targets bear zero zero two, Bridge. Range is closing. Range is now one three zero zero zero. Repeat thirteen thousand yards. We’d like to double-check range with another radar observation in three minutes.”