“We still have a curfew at sundown,” he said. “There will be no R and R period at the hotel. All maintenance work necessary will be done by ship’s company. Needed stores and supplies can be obtained from the Yard in the usual manner. You are to report to the Operations Office in seven days, sir. The Operations Officer will expect your ship to be ready to go to sea at that time, sir.”
“Go to sea in seven days?” Brannon asked, his heart jumping wildly. “To where, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t know, Captain,” the Lieutenant said. “I’ve got seven more submarines coming in today and tomorrow, and I have to tell each one of them the same thing.”
A week later Brannon went up to the Operations Office, where a weary Staff officer waved him to a chair beside his desk.
“I’m told you’re ready for sea,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Brannon said. “We’re ready.”
“One last thing,” the Staff officer said. “You have to get clearance from the Materiel Office. They’ll be down to inspect you day after tomorrow. You’ll get your orders as soon as they give me your clearance.”
“Can you tell me where we’ll be going?” Brannon asked.
The Staff officer yawned and rubbed his face. “I suppose so, Captain, but don’t tell your crew or I’ll be in hack.” He shuffled through some papers.
“New London.”
Brannon fought to keep his face noncommittal. He stood up and left the Operations Office, trying not to skip with joy. New London was a short train ride from New York. His wife and daughter were with her parents in Brooklyn. He made a project out of walking slowly back to Eelfish and found Ralph Ulrich.
“We’ve got to get clearance from some outfit called the Materiel Office. Day after tomorrow. You did a lot of duty here. What’s that involve?”
“It involves what I’d call tough luck,” Ulrich said “Those are the people who go around checking up to see if you’ve got all your Title A gear. Your engines, periscopes, deck guns.” He looked up and down the deck. “The lifelines, which we don’t have, and an anchor and chain, which we don’t have.”
“And?”
“And if we don’t have those things they won’t clear us for departure from port. Where’s our anchor?”
“In New London,” Brannon said. “They took it and the anchor chain and the lifelines and posts off before we left for the Southwest Pacific, just as they do on every submarine going into the war zone. They shouldn’t want things like that.”
“They’ll want things like that,” Ulrich said in lugubrious tones. “That’s their mission in life, to want things like that.”
He paused, chewing his lower lip in an unconscious imitation of Mike Brannon.
“I know a guy who has a warehouse here, a Mustang Lieutenant, sir. Last time I was over there, before I came aboard, it was full of things like deck posts and anchor chain and bronze-wire lifelines. If I had a little bargaining power, like some whiskey, I might be able to big-deal a truck and come back here with what we need. But I know he doesn’t have any anchors.”
“What’s he do with that stuff, why’s he got it?”
“I don’t know why he’s got the warehouse or what’s in it, sir, but I’ve heard tell that every once in a while he finds a buyer for some of the stuff that belonged to submarines that didn’t come back from war patrol. Ghoulish business, but some people like to make a buck.”
“Use the ship’s recreation fund,” Brannon said, “Get whatever you think you need to bribe the son of a bitch.” He started to turn away and stopped as Ulrich cleared his throat.
“About an anchor, sir. I know he hasn’t got any anchors. But I think maybe the Chief of the Boat might have an idea or two about how to get an anchor. I don’t know, but you told me once that he was dependable.”
Chief Flanagan knocked politely at the bulkhead of the Wardroom and went through the green curtains and sat down at Brannon’s invitation. Brannon outlined the problem.
“I guess what we have to do, sir, is to steal us an anchor,” Flanagan said.
“Steal?” Brannon said. “How do you steal something that must weight a ton? If I gave permission — and I sure as hell can’t do that.”
“Twenty-two hundred pounds, to be exact,” Flanagan said. “I didn’t mean steal, sir. Borrow was the word I meant to use. Plus one hundred and five fathoms of chain.”
“Mr. Ulrich said he might be able to find the anchor chain,” Brannon said. “Where are you going to borrow an anchor?”
“I can’t answer that, sir, because I honestly don’t know. But I’ll tell the Captain if I find out where I can borrow an anchor, sir.”
That afternoon a small truck pulled up on the pier. Ralph Ulrich got out and summoned a working party. The seamen from the Eelfish unloaded a tangled mass of bronze-wire lifelines and a pile of deck posts with eyes in the tops. Mike Brannon, summoned to the deck by Lieutenant Lee, watched the unloading from the bridge and then watched Chief Flanagan drive a crew of seamen and torpedomen to install the deck posts and string the lifelines.
“Cost me a case of whiskey,” Ulrich said as he climbed up the ladder from the Conning Tower. “Would have cost more, but I argued that I was showing that big-dealer a whole new field of operations, and he saw my reasoning.”
“Anchor chain?” Brannon asked.
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Ulrich said. “He didn’t have a truck that could carry a hundred and five fathoms of chain.”
The chain arrived shortly after noon. Flanagan supervised the stowage of the chain in the chain locker and led one end of the chain through the fairlead and the chain stopper, around the wildcat gears, and down the hawsepipe. He turned to Steve Petreshock.
“I want a small punt by late this afternoon. The kind the Yard uses to paint waterlines. But big enough to hold several people. I want a heavy-duty block and tackle, a marlinspike, and some rags. I want all that gear ready before dark.
“Where the hell do I get a punt?” Petreshock asked.
“You want to make Chief, Petreshock? Use your initiative. I need a punt, the heavy-duty block and tackle, a marlinspike, and some rags. Before dark.” Petreshock shrugged his shoulders and went down the hatch into his torpedo room.
Two hours later he jumped out of the back end of a truck and signaled to Flanagan, who went up on the dock. A waterline-painting punt was in the back of the truck. The two men wrestled the small boat off the truck and laid it on the cement pier. Petreshock jumped up in the truck body and got a heavy block and tackle and a big marlinspike.
“I got plenty rags in my room,” he said. “What do you want to do with the punt?”
“Put it in the water,” Flanagan said. “Get your people and put it in the water and tie it up alongside. You get any oars?”
“You don’t need oars to paint a waterline,” Petreshock said. “You pull the punt along with lines.”
“Don’t tell me what I already know,” Flanagan said. “Oars.”
“Got some paddles in my bilge from those rubber boats we had,” Petreshock said. “They do?” Flanagan nodded his head.
At two in the morning Flanagan, Jim Rice, Steve Petreshock, and Fred Nelson climbed down onto the pressure hull and eased into the painting punt. They wore black turtleneck sweaters and dark blue watch caps, and their faces and hands were blackened with camouflage cream. Bob Lee came along the deck as the punt disappeared in the darkness. He turned to Chief Ed Morris, who was leaning against the side of the Conning Tower, smoking his pipe.
“What the hell is going on, Chief? Who were those people? What were they doing?”