“Give me a radar check. I want to know how many ships there are out there.”
“I read seven ships maneuvering radically, Bridge. Range to the mass of ships is six thousand yards.”
“Very well,” Captain Marble said. His Executive Officer, a tall, lean, dour man named Abe Wilkinson, looked at his commanding officer.
“We’re going over to help Eelfish, aren’t we?”
“No,” Captain Marble said. “Captain Mealey gave us our orders. He was specific. We are to wait here and intercept and sink any shipping that comes our way.”
“I understand, sir,” Wilkinson said patiently. “But at the time he issued those orders to us nothing was said about one or the other of us being attacked with depth charges. I would assume that if we were being pounded, as Eelfish is being pounded, that Captain Mealey would come to our rescue.”
“Don’t assume,” Chet Marble said, the acid in his voice apparent to everyone within earshot on the bridge. “Captain Mealey would come to our rescue if he could see another Medal of Honor in it for him. We will follow our orders, sir.” His Executive Officer stared at him for a long moment.
“Permission to go below, sir?”
“Granted,” Captain Marble said. “Send me up a cup of coffee when you get below.” He turned and leveled his binoculars at the fires on the horizon. His Quartermaster turned his back on his Captain and stared to the eastern horizon.
On the Eelfish, twisting and turning 600 feet below the surface, the temperature had climbed to 120 degrees. The humidity was 100 percent. Puddles formed on the deck, on level surfaces, and re-formed as rapidly as they were wiped up. The continual barrage of depth charges had long since broken all the lights and most of the gauge glasses. The interior of the Eelfish was lit by battery-powered battle lanterns equipped with heavy glass fronts that could not be broken by anything less than a direct blow with a sledgehammer. The interior of the Eelfish reeked with the fetid odor of stale air and sweating men and the stench of fear.
The hours wore on. Up above, on the surface, the Japanese destroyers had established a pattern. Two of them searched for the Eelfish with sonar beams, and when they found the submarine they took up position on either side of the Eelfish, while the other five destroyers made their runs between their two sister ships, dropping depth charges off their sterns, firing them out to the sides with Y-guns.
The Eelfish responded to the attacks, speeding up when Paul Blake reported that an attack run had started, turning in half circles, changing depth upward and downward to throw off the gunners on the Japanese ships who were setting the depth-charge explosion depths. Captain Mealey stood at the gyro table, a soggy towel draped around his neck. Mike Brannon stood beside him. Mealey peered at the luminous dial of his wrist watch, barely visible in the gloom of the Control Room.
“It’s daylight up above,” he said. They’ve been at it for over eight hours.” He wiped his face with the end of the towel as Paul Blake reported that another attack run had begun.
“Right fifteen degrees rudder,” he snapped. The two men stationed at the helm grunted with effort as they turned the ship’s rudder by hand power.
“Rudder’s fifteen degrees right, sir,” one of the men gasped. He hung on the brass wheel, sobbing with his effort, gasping for air in the oxygen-depleted atmosphere.
“Very well,” Mealey said. “Seven hundred feet, Mr. Gold. Smartly, if your people can do it.” At the bow and stern planes the two Battle Stations planesmen gasped and grunted as they fought to tilt bow and stern planes downward by hand power alone. Eelfish slanted downward as the crashing explosions of the depth charges shook the submarine and twisted it in a vortex of water until the hull rivets creaked and groaned under the strain.
In the Forward Torpedo Room Steve Petreshock had organized his torpedomen and the reload crew into four groups. Two of those groups worked at the job of turning the sound heads by hand power while the other two groups rested.
“Son of a bitch can go back to hydraulic power any time he wants,” Rice grunted. “Fucking Japs know where we are anyway, so why make us do this shit, go to hand power on the helm, the planes and the sound heads?” He staggered away from the sound head shaft and sagged against a torpedo skid. “Bad enough you wear your ass out reloadin’ all the fish in this room, including that fucking Numbers Five and Six, bad enough you got to do that without puttin’ up with this shit.”
“Save your breath,” Petreshock grunted. He looked at the pressure gauge and tried to whistle and failed. “My God, we’re at seven hundred feet! What the hell does he think this damned submarine is?”
In the Control Room Mealey stared at the plot and then looked at Jim Michaels.
“What was the last contact you had with Maulers One and Two?”
“They receipted for our message that we were beginning the attack, sir. Mauler Two receipted for the message inviting them to take part in the action. Mauler One did not receipt for that message, sir.”
“Bastards!” Mealey growled out the word from between clenched teeth. “If one of them would get over here and fire at one of those tin cans up there it might help out a hell of a lot. As long as they think they’ve got only one submarine here they might stay here all day and night.” He looked at Flanagan. “How many torpedoes do we have, Chief?”
“Three, sir. One in Number Six tube forward. Two back aft. In Nine and Ten tubes, sir.”
“Three fish, seven destroyers. Bad odds,” Mealey grunted. He looked up as Paul Blake’s voice came down from the Conning Tower.
“Here they come again, Control. Three destroyers coming at us from dead ahead, sir.”
“Rudder amidships. All stop.” Mealey snapped. “We’ve been turning away from his attacks. Last three runs he peeled off on each side to catch us. We’ll see if this does any good, staying almost still.” The crew braced, hearing the thunder of the destroyer screws, wincing as a man at the sharp crack of the depth-charge exploder mechanisms going off, and then the shattering roar of the exploding charges shook the Eelfish like a rat in the jaws of a terrier. In the After Torpedo Room Fred Nelson was thrown from his feet in front of the torpedo tubes. He hauled himself erect by grabbing at the torpedo roller stand, blood gushing from his hooked nose.
“One more like that, you fucker,” he growled, “and I’m puttin’ in for a transfer from this fuckin’ submarine navy.” He moved down the length of his torpedo room, patting men on the shoulders and backs.
“Don’t none of you people start pukin’,” he said, “because I ain’t got the patience to clean up after you. Last time I looked at the depth gauge that S.O.B. up there in the Control Room had us at seven hundred feet. No wonder the damned room’s beginning to leak.”
“You want to report leaks?” the telephone talker stammered, his chin wobbling with fear.
“No I don’t want to report no damned leaks,” Nelson growled. “That S.O.B. in the Control Room has got enough on his mind without me adding my share of shit. As long as I ain’t worried about a little water comin’ in you don’t have to worry.”
In the Conning Tower Paul Blake clung to the edge of the shelf on which his gear was mounted. Lieutenant Perry Arbuckle, who was hanging on to the periscope cables for support, saw the effort that Blake was making to stay calm.
“Must be hell up in the Forward Room, turning those two sound heads by hand,” Arbuckle said, trying to keep his own voice conversational. Blake nodded and bent his head, listening. His head came up suddenly, his eyes wild.