“Fine,” Brannon said.
“What else?” Mealey asked.
“The only other things I am curious about — I guess John, who’s my navigator, is equally curious, sir — is how the three submarines will travel to the patrol area, wherever that area is — they haven’t told us as yet. And how you’ll deploy your force in the patrol area, how you will attack.”
“Our area is Luzon Strait,” Mealey said. “The Strait is the crossroads for shipping going north and south to and from the Empire of Japan.
“Hatchet Fish and Sea Chub are leaving this afternoon for Exmouth Gulf. They’ll top off with fuel there and wait for us. We have a long way to go to get on station, so we’ll run in line, with the Flag leading the column, and run as economically as we can to the patrol area. I haven’t checked the charts closely, but I estimate it will take us a good thirteen or fourteen days to get on station.
“I don’t plan to try for German efficiency and make each of our pack cruise in a rigid formation in the patrol area. It’s a big area, and what I plan to do is to station the other two ships so as best to cover the sea routes the Japs are using. When one of us sights a target or targets he’ll notify the others. If that sounds loose and haphazard, perhaps it is. At the moment that’s the way I see it.
“Now a word on why I chose Eelfish for my flag. I have studied your patrol reports, sir. I am satisfied that you are an aggressive, efficient Commanding Officer. I am confident that we will work together very well as a team.”
“If I may, sir,” Olsen said. “You must know that we, all of us in submarines, have studied your patrol report on the attack on the battleship at Truk. Those patrol reports were circulated to the whole submarine force, sir. And if I am not out of order, that attack was one of sheer, cold guts!
“I talked to a Chief in the relief crew here who said he was in Pearl Harbor when you came back to port, and a Chief on the Mako said that as scary as that whole operation was, no one was really afraid because you were in the Control Room. I mention that because if you didn’t know it I think you should, sir.”
Mealey looked at Olsen, and the smile appeared briefly under his white mustache. “That sailor didn’t know how scared I was during that depth-charge attack. I had a fine ship, a well-trained crew. Part of that was due to you, Captain Brannon. You were the Executive Officer aboard the Mako before I took over. And let that be the last of the mutual admiration society. We have a lot of work to do once we get under way.” The waiter appeared with three chilled cups of vichyssoise.
“When did you arrive in Australia, sir?” Brannon asked.
“I arrived in Brisbane two weeks ago,” Captain Mealey said. “I flew over here five days ago.”
At the end of the meal Mealey pulled out a pipe and a worn tobacco pouch. “I see no need to disturb you aboard ship any more than necessary,” he said as he filled his pipe. “I’ll report aboard at zero seven hundred, day after tomorrow.”
Back aboard the Eelfish Brannon gave Pete Mahaffey orders to draw bed linen for the unused bunk in his stateroom. He listened to the noise of the people in the Forward Torpedo Room finishing their work. He closed the cloth drape that served as a door and sat on the edge of his bunk.
Captain Mealey was a fire eater, and he was a master at surviving prolonged depth-charging attacks. How would Lieutenant Commander Michael P. Brannon measure up against the standard that Captain Mealey had set and would undoubtedly expect him to equal?
He wondered, as he had wondered so often about the late Captain Hinman, did men like Mealey ever really feel the fear that he felt when he went into action? At lunch Mealey had said he was frightened during the depth charging at Truk. Did he say that to make him and Olsen feel better, to show himself as no different than they? And why had Captain Mealey chosen the Eelfish for his flagship? The Captains of the Hatchet Fish and the Sea Chub were both senior to Brannon. Both men were close to promotion to four-stripe Captain.
There was the point John Olsen had raised; what was Captain Mealey doing in Brisbane for over a week? And even more importantly, why had he been sent to the Australian command to take command of a wolf pack when he could just as easily have formed a wolf pack with Pearl Harbor boats?
There must be a reason, he mused, a reason for all of this. He got up and combed his thick black hair in front of the small steel mirror above the washbasin. The next six to eight weeks could determine the fate of his entire Naval career. If he failed in any way with those cold blue eyes watching him he could figure on being relieved of command and relegated to a desk job ashore until he had his time in for retirement.
CHAPTER 13
Captain Mealey stood quietly on the cigaret deck of the Eelfish as Mike Brannon eased his ship out from between the submarine tender and another submarine. Once clear of the submarines alongside the tender Brannon maneuvered through the harbor toward the open sea.
On the main deck Chief Flanagan was securing the topside for sea. He could feel the cold eyes of the grim-faced Captain on the cigaret deck watching his every move. When he had finished he patiently double-checked his work and asked the Bridge for permission to go below. He climbed to the cigaret deck and murmured a polite “Good morning, sir” to the austere Captain in his heavily starched khakis. Captain Mealey nodded, raised the binoculars hanging around his neck, and studied the submarines that were jostling back into position alongside the tender. Flanagan went below to the Crew’s Mess, where Scotty Rudolph put a cup of hot coffee and a freshly made doughnut in front of him.
“Gonna be something different this time, huh?” the ship’s cook asked. Flanagan bit into the doughnut and nodded. He chewed slowly and then washed the doughnut down with a swig of coffee.
“Wolf-pack operation with the Hatchet Fish and the Sea Chub,” he said. “They’re waitin’ for us in Exmouth Gulf. The three of us will operate in a wolf pack, like the Germans do. Only they do it with ten to twenty submarines in one pack. This four-striper who’s ridin’ with us, Captain Mealey, he’s the Flag.”
Rudolph sipped at his coffee. “Don’t envy our Old Man having to operate under his eye. I knew him in Panama, years ago, when he had an R-boat. Tough son of a bitch. Hell of a seaman.”
“Tough fighting man, too,” Flanagan said. “There’s a mustang in the relief crew, name of Botts. I knew him when he was a Chief Torpedoman before the war. He was on the Mako when Mealey took the Mako out and dove under twelve destroyers at Truk and slipped about eight fish into a battlewagon.
“Botts told me that this guy is made of ice water and chilled steel. Went through the most hellish depth charging any submarine ever took, came up once and sank a big Jap destroyer with one fish, and then went down again to seven hundred feet, get that, seven hundred feet, and got away from the other eleven tin cans.”
“Too damned bad they didn’t keep him on the Mako,” Rudolph said. “Maybe if they had done that the Mako wouldn’t have got sunk.”
“Could be,” Flanagan replied. “But he made four stripes while he was on that patrol run, and they don’t keep four-stripers on submarines. Only way he could get back to sea, I guess, is to do something like this, take out a wolf pack of submarines.
“But like you said, I wouldn’t want to be the Old Man with him looking over my shoulder. I don’t know how many times in my life I got the topside of a submarine ready for sea, and when I was doing it a little while ago, with that dude standing on the cigaret deck, I felt like a seaman deuce. I double-checked everything, and then I began to worry that I’d missed something and started to do it all over again. He can sure make you feel funny when he looks at you with those eyes.”