“Don’t you ever sleep, Pete?” Brannon asked. “I’ve told you before that you don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to serve coffee.”
Mahaffey grinned. “My poppa told me when I came in this Navy, sir, to do my job and don’t let no one ever do it better than I do it. I’ll see if the baker has any fresh pastry.”
“If we submerge here at dawn, a little before dawn,” Olsen said, touching the point of a pair of dividers to the chart, “if we submerge here and run up the coast at two knots — we’ll run well offshore and at one hundred feet — we can be right here” — the dividers touched a small pencil mark — “right here just about an hour after dark. We can surface and make a run up the rest of the way while we charge batteries. We can come in pretty close. Water’s deep all the way in to the beach almost. Be there in plenty of time to launch Flanagan at twenty-two hundred, sir.”
“No indication of currents on that chart,” Brannon said with a frown. “I don’t want to put him off in that damned little rubber boat and have him get pushed way off course by currents.”
“I doubt there’ll be any current to amount to anything, sir. The tide in Leyte Gulf is only two, two and a half feet, high and low water. I don’t think we have to worry about that.”
Eelfish surfaced after full dark that night and began the run up the coast of Leyte Island. To the port side the dark bulk of the mountains loomed against the black night sky. On the foredeck of the Eelfish Steve Petreshock finished blowing up the one-man rubber boat and threw the empty CO2 cylinder over the side. He clipped a small compass with a hooded red lamp and a battery to a cross brace in the boat. He checked the spare CO2 cylinder and fastened it in its holder under the wooden seat.
“Don’t step on this, Chief,” he said as he laid a thick billet of metal in the bottom of the boat. “That’s a new gadget they gave us in Fremantle two runs ago. It’s a Christmas tree made of aluminum. You take hold of the thick end, the butt, and you twist it with your other hand and keep pulling it out and it stretches out about eight feet with all sorts of little aluminum branches coming off of the main shaft. It goes in this clip on the back of your seat.”
“What the hell is it for?” Flanagan asked.
“No way the radar could pick you up in that little boat against the mountains,” Petreshock said. “With this gadget up they can grab you right away.”
“Thanks a bunch,” Flanagan said. The Chief Torpedoman was dressed in dark blue dungarees with black socks and a pair of regulation white tennis shoes that had been colored black with shoe polish. He wore a thin black jersey that covered his heavy, sloping shoulders and a black watch cap. John LaMark, the Gunner’s Mate, came ambling up the deck and handed him a .45 automatic and two clips of ammunition.
“Stick it in your belt,” LaMark said. “Figured you would get all fouled up if I brought you a belt. You already got that junior fireworks belt on you now.”
“Coming up on the launch point,” Olsen said from the bridge. Mike Brannon climbed down from the cigaret deck, walked forward, and handed Flanagan a canvas haversack. “That Army guy has been in the hills since right after the war started, Chief,” he said. “Might be nice if you gave this to him.”
“What’s in it, sir?”
“Cook put in a ten-pound canned ham, and Mr. Olsen found a bottle of Australian scotch somewhere. Doc Wharton had a good idea and he put ten pounds of sulfa in the pack, and Fred Nelson contributed a big pinup of Betty Grable.” Flanagan nodded and put the haversack in the boat.
“We’re at launch spot, Captain,” Olsen said.
“Very well,” Brannon answered. Petreshock and Jim Rice eased the small rubber boat over the side as the Eelfish slowed to a stop and held on to the bow and stern lines as Flanagan climbed down into the boat. He picked up the double-ended paddle and looked up at the deck.
“Could be, sir, like we talked about; maybe this guy’s camp is some distance away and I can’t make it back before morning.”
“I’ll be here every damned night until the invasion force drives me away,” Brannon growled. Flanagan raised his arm and Petreshock and Rice cast off the lines. The Chief of the Boat shoved away from the side, and Brannon blinked in surprise as the small rubber boat was lost to view in seconds in the darkness.
“Take care of him, Lord,” he breathed softly to himself. He went aft and climbed up on the cigaret deck.
“Begin Condition Alert as per the Night Orders,” he said to Perry Arbuckle. He went back to the cigaret deck, catching at the periscope shears for support as the Eelfish heeled to starboard to begin running up and down a course off the landing area.
Flanagan settled down to a steady beat with the two-bladed paddle, keeping his eye on the small ruby-red face of the compass. The landing area, according to information received from the guerrillas, was a dark portion of the shoreline just north of a white, sandy beach. He caught sight of a gleam of white sand in the starlight and corrected his course to aim the boat to the right of the beach. As he neared the beach he stopped paddling and eased the gun in his belt. He paddled gently toward a tangled mass of foliage at the dark part of the shoreline and felt the nose of the boat ground in soft muck. He put the paddle in the boat, took the pistol out of his belt, and pulled the slide back to put a shell in the chamber, letting the slide go home with a sharp click.
“Don’t shoot, sailor,” a deep voice said out of the darkness of the shore. “I’m Sergeant McGillivray, and there’s four rifles aimed at you. Let my people come out of the bushes and pull your boat up on the shoreline.”
Two shadowy figures came out of the dark bushes, took hold of the boat, and pulled it up toward the bushes. Flanagan sat in the boat, the gun cradled in his lap, his finger on the trigger, his thumb ready to flip off the safety. A large figure suddenly appeared, his white hair shining in the faint light of the stars.
“Glad you made it, sailor,” the large man said. “When you get out of your cruise liner there’s about four inches of muck. Move right on up to me and we’ll get to some dry ground.” Flanagan felt his shoes sink down in soft mud as he got out of the boat. He followed the figure of the large man. He looked around as he heard a scraping, sucking noise and saw the rubber boat being pulled into the bushes. He held the pistol in front of him.
“Something we have to do, Sergeant,” Flanagan said. “Do you remember your service number?”
“Yeah,” the man said and rattled off a seven-digit number.
“How about your wife’s maiden name, your mother’s maiden name?”
“Okay. My wife’s maiden name was Malden, Mary Ann Malden. My mother, rest her soul, was a Shaughnessey, Mary Margaret Shaughnessey.”
“Good enough,” Flanagan said. “I’m Chief Torpedoman Flanagan of the Eelfish. I’ve got some orders for you.”
“I know,” McGillivray said. He turned and spoke rapidly in Tagalog to some men who had materialized out of the bushes.
“They’ll lead the way,” he said to Flanagan. “Point men. They can see in the dark like cats. I’ll go ahead of you. Six men behind you. We’ve got a pretty long walk, all uphill. If you get winded, say so, and we’ll stop. We’re used to this.”
Two hours later the party stopped. “Camp is just ahead,” McGillivray said. “I’ll give you time to get your breath, so when my people speak to you you won’t be heavin’ like a damned whale, the way you been heavin’ the last hour.” He grinned, and Flanagan saw his white teeth shine in the faint starlight. They moved toward the camp, and Flanagan heard the low voices of sentries challenging the party and McGillivray’s answers. At the edge of the camp clearing they stopped, and Flanagan saw two or three small fires burning. He looked around and saw a smiling Filipino, rifle held at port arms across his chest, next to him.