“That’s the Chief of the Boat and friends,” Morris said. “They’re gonna go steal an anchor somewhere. Hell of an idea, stealing an anchor. If they get the damned thing in that little punt the whole rig will probably sink and with all that black stuff on their faces and hands they’ll be impossible to see in the water and they’ll drown.”
“Steal an anchor? Have you been drinking, Chief?”
“I haven’t been drinking, Lieutenant. I got the Chief’s duty below decks. Sure they’re gonna steal an anchor. The Chief of the Boat is queer for stealing anchors, didn’t you know that? Does it in every port we hit.”
“Wiseass,” Lee said. He turned his back and started to walk away, and then came back.
“Damn it, Chief, I’m the Officer of the Day, and I demand to know what in the hell is going on!”
“I thought you knew, that you were kidding with me, sir,” Morris said. “What’s going on is some clown on the Base is coming over here tomorrow, today really, it’s after midnight, and if we don’t have an anchor hanging up there on the billboard we ain’t gonna get any clearance to go where they’re going to send us, which I hear is New London.
“So this afternoon I did a little scouting for the Chief of the Boat and I found out that an LST carries the same sort of anchor we do and there’s four LSTs tied up in a nest across this arm of the harbor. The Chief of the Boat is gonna steal one of those anchors and bring it back.”
“That’s impossible!” Lee said.
“Mr. Lee,” Morris said, “there is no such word as impossible to a Chief of the United States Navy. Some things might take longer than others, but nothing is impossible. Not to a Chief Petty Officer. Flanagan will steal an anchor. And he’ll bring it back here. If he doesn’t sink and drown.”
An hour later Lee heard a gentle splashing, and the punt, barely afloat, eased up beside the pressure hull amidships. Chief Morris came around the Conning Tower and went down on the pressure hull, his arm holding on to one of the newly installed deck posts, and helped Petreshock and Fred Nelson get out of the punt. The two men ran forward on the deck, and Petreshock went down the hatch to the Torpedo Room. Lee heard the clank of the anchor gear, and a fathom or so of cable rattled out of the hawsepipe. The two men still in the punt paddled it forward. A few minutes later Lee heard Flanagan’s low order to walk the anchor in, and there was a muted clanking noise. Jim Rice got out of the punt, went down the hatch, and appeared a few minutes later with a gallon can of paint and two brushes. He dropped down into the punt, and Lee could hear the slap of the paint brushes.
“Might be a good idea, Lieutenant,” Morris’s voice sounded at Lee’s shoulder, “to come with me and take a look at the moon from the other end of the deck.”
The Materiel Officer appeared the next morning with his clipboard and a small staff. The inspection took hours, and when it was finished the officer turned to Ralph Ulrich.
“Everything is in order. I’ll sign your clearance and send it to the Operations Officer. I understand you’re getting underway at zero seven hundred tomorrow.”
“Fuel,” Ulrich said.
“Oh, yes,” the Materiel Officer said. “Here it is. A destroyer coming in from Okinawa will be alongside on the other side of the pier late this afternoon. No room for her at the destroyer docks, and she’s leaving tomorrow afternoon for Mare Island. The Fuel King man will be down here after the destroyer docks to unlock the lines under the pier. You’ll fuel first. You’re down for fifty thousand gallons. That will get you to Panama if you run at two-thirds speed on two engines. The destroyer will fuel after you do.”
“That’s the last thing I want to do, run to Panama on two engines at two-thirds speed!” Brannon snapped when Ulrich told him the news. He turned to Lieutenant Jerry Gold.
“That guy from Materiel said this tin can was coming in from Okinawa?” He looked at Ulrich, who nodded. “Okay, I’ll bet they give liberty to two-thirds of the crew. They’re over here, alongside our pier, away from their own command. I know tin-can sailors. They’re a lot like us.
“The people with the watch will be bitching. Jerry, I want you to get up to the O-Club. Take some money from the recreation fund. Ulrich, you get the money, go with him. Bring back some beer and some hard liquor. Enough to get about two dozen people drunk.
“Get hold of Morris and Booth. Those two Chiefs are the biggest con artists in the submarine navy. Tell them what we want to do and have the engine room people standing by to take on fuel when the Fuel King man gets here and unlocks the valves.” Ulrich looked at him and grinned.
“You’re getting right into the swing of being a Navy Yard man, sir,” he said. He went off with Gold, chuckling.
Chiefs Booth and Morris wandered across the pier while the Eelfish Engine Room people were hooking up the fuel hoses. A few minutes later Morris came walking back, and looking carefully up and down the dark pier, opened one of the Conning Tower ammunition storage lockers and took out a case of beer. An eager destroyer sailor rushed across the pier and grabbed the case, followed by another destroyer man, who grabbed the case of whiskey that Morris pulled out of the ammunition locker.
At a little after twenty-two hundred hours Jerry Gold walked into the Wardroom where Mike Brannon was playing solitaire with a worn deck of cards.
“All fuel tanks topped off, sir. One hundred and eleven thousand gallons of fuel aboard. Destroyer is fueling now, sir.”
“Everything okay?” Brannon asked, putting a red jack on a black queen.
“There’s two or three people in their Black Gang sober enough to shut off the valves when their tanks are full, sir.”
“Good,” Brannon said. “Tell the Chief of the Watch below decks that I want a zero five hundred reveille. Serve breakfast at zero five thirty. We get under way at zero seven hundred.”
Jerry Gold went to his stateroom smiling gently. “Hot damn,” he said to himself. “If I can steal sixty thousand gallons of diesel oil I might be able to slip an old gold crown or two into my pocket. Have to make sure my white jackets have pockets.”
Eelfish reached Panama four days ahead of schedule. A three-stripe Commander came aboard, a smile creasing his red-veined cheeks.
“Been kind of a naughty fellow, haven’t you, Captain?” he said genially. “You’re way ahead of schedule. Can’t let you through the Ditch until your scheduled time, four days from now.” He looked at the bright blaze of Japanese battle flags on the Conning Tower. “There is an alternative, unless you want to fight with Pearl Harbor, and that’s pretty hard to do because it takes seven days for them to acknowledge anything we send to them.
“You can go through our Ditch tomorrow morning at zero six hundred. But if you do that you’ll have to act as a target for a division of destroyers on the other side that hasn’t had a live submarine to work with for over a year. What’s your decision sir?”
“We’ll be happy to act as a target for the destroyers,” Brannon said solemnly.
“It’s wait here four days or work with them four days, so it’s all the same,” the Commander said. “Zero six hundred. Tugs will be here at zero five hundred to get you into position.”
The Eelfish cleared the Canal at dusk, pointed her bullnose north, and began running on four main engines. Down in the radio shack Ralph Ulrich stood with Jim Michaels as Rafferty listened to the signals coming over the air.
“They keep asking us where we are,” Rafferty said.
“They’re supposed to be submarine killers,” Ralph Ulrich said “Let them find us. We’re going home!”
Ulrich went into the Wardroom and reported to Mike Brannon that the destroyer division commander was asking for Eelfish and what he had decided to do.