Torpedo Run (14 page)

"That's not the point. You were on watch, and you left without permission. So did Murphy. This is flagrant disobedience of orders."

"I brought him with me," Peter said. "I've found out, Mr. Archer, that if you want a favor from anyone—like a tug or spare parts—Murph and Mitch, the bosun, always know who to talk to."

"Then you had better prepare yourself to do without the services of Murphy."

Peter looked at this cold man in the moonlight. "Why?"

"Because I'm preferring charges for a general court-martial against him."

Peter felt oddly cold all over. Cold and remote and suddenly stronger than he really was. "Why?" he asked.

"For the careless loss of top-secret codes, which, if found by the enemy, could cause the loss of many ships and men."

"Was it all Murph's fault, Adrian?" Peter asked.

"Of course!"

"Adrian," Peter said quietly, "I don't know what you think a war is, but I'm going to tell you what it is not. You're out here to fight the Japs, not the men in your boat."

For the second time since he had known him Archer seemed to have an emotion. It showed in his low, furious voice. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that so far all you've done in this war is read off regulations to the men, parade your authority, and act like a fool."

Archer stood in the moonlight and looked at him for a long, silent moment. When he spoke again there was no more emotion. "I can prefer charges against you for insubordination, leaving your watch station, and—"

Peter interrupted him. "I wouldn't," he said.

"I'm not going to," Archer went on. "But I will accept and will forward, recommending approval, your request for a transfer from my command. In the morning, Mr. Brent."

"I stay with
Slewfoot,"
Peter said quietly.

"Then you force me to prefer those charges."

"Did you give Murph orders to put those codes in the rubber boat, Mr. Archer?"

"Of course."

"Did you give him orders to take them out again?"

Archer started to say something and then stopped and thought for a while. "He should have known enough to take them out. Do I have to give an order for every detail?"

"Suppose somebody at Murphy's trial tells how you ordered those codes to be dropped into the boat just because we were aground but, at the time, in no danger of being taken by the enemy? Suppose the judges decide that the codes were your responsibility, not an enlisted man's?"

"You talk as though I were being court-martialed instead of Murphy."

"Perhaps you will be," Peter said.

"Mr. Brent, your insubordination is going to force me to take action against you."

"No, it isn't," Peter told him. "I have the codes."

"How did you get them?"

"That doesn't matter. The thing is I have them. So let's just forget the whole thing." He turned back toward Mike's tent, but then stopped and said, "And unless you want to get shot, you'd better knock before you come into a tent, Mr. Archer."

Slewfoot
was a sad boat as, at last, she sailed again from the mouth of the Morobe and into the Pacific on what was to be her longest patrol.

In the days it had taken to repair her hull and get her out of that mud, Peter had watched her superb crew break into pieces like a china plate dropped on a brick floor.

And Adrian Archer was the man who dropped and broke it.

One of the broken pieces was made up of Mitch, the bosun; Stucky on the 40-millimeter; and, oddly, Sam. These three were the closest to violence and mutiny against the Captain.

More moderate were Sko, the Preacher, and the Professor; but, to Peter, their moderation seemed more dangerous than the evident hatred for Archer shown by Mitch's group. As the boat moved through the dark night, Peter wondered what was going to happen when Sko and the Preacher and the Professor got to the end of the line. They were for giving Archer a chance to show what he could do in a fight before they finally judged him. What was their judgment going to be if Archer failed them and failed the boat?

Then there was the broken piece made up of Jason, Willie, and Skeeter, who would side with Mitch one day and Sko the next. In Mitch's tent these three would plot dark mutiny. In Sko's they would agree to give Archer at least one chance.

Oddest of all the pieces was Goldberg. He sided with neither Mitch nor Sko, although his hatred of Archer was more bare and evident than that of any other man aboard. Goldberg seemed to have set himself the task of protecting the kid, Britches, from Archer's onslaughts.

Murph was a little splinter all by himself, skittering around trying to find where he fitted with all the groups but in the end staying closer to Peter, who realized that he, himself, was a splinter without a place.

Since the night of Archer and the tent and the talk in the moonlight, Archer had treated Peter with absolutely correct senior-to-junior, chain-of-command procedure. He showed Peter no hostility—and no friendship. The only times he spoke to Peter were to give him correctly phrased, by-the-book orders. He never discussed the methods or the progress of the repairs or the problem of getting her out of the mud. He never discussed anything. He simply told Peter what to do and, usually, how to do it.

On this night, for the first time, Peter was really afraid. He had been scared many times before, but never afraid, never apprehensive. He had never thought before that the crew of
Slewfoot
would not fight the boat to the best of their ability and courage.

But this crew that had fought as one man was now broken into separate little groups of men who might not, when they had to, pool their strength for their own survival.

The days with Archer had been the worst Peter had ever endured. Because the men had not yet been driven to actual insubordination and mutiny against Archer, they took their hatred of him out on each other. Any little thing—a dropped wrench, a lost bolt, a bent nail—would start a fight. Not just an angry outburst but a savage, murderous fight—between friends of long standing.

As Peter stood on the dark bridge beside the Captain the whole miserable thing came down finally to this: the crew of
Slewfoot
were no longer occupied with sailing her. They were occupied only with their hatred for Adrian Archer.

So, as they cleared the strait and entered enemy water, Peter Brent was afraid. The night was pitch dark, with rain clouds gathering to windward. On the stern Mitch, Stucky, and Sam sat on the depth charges, facing forward so they could see Archer. (He had an annoying way of suddenly appearing right behind a man, and you never knew how long he had been there, or what he had overheard.)

"Who'll know?" Mitch demanded. "We get in a fire fight and somebody turns the thirties or the fifties on him. Who'll know?"

Stucky and Sam were not yet ready to go this far. Mitch called them chicken, but they didn't think it was that, it was only that …

Sam said, "Well, maybe nobody will know. But
you'll
know, Mitch."

Down in the engine room Sko and Murph were talking it over, Sko chomping slowly on the big cigar. "Anyway you slice it, Murph, it's murder," Sko said.

"All
right,"
Murph yelled angrily. "Isn't what he's doing to us murder? So isn't it better to murder one guy rather than have him murder twelve guys?"

"We're still breathing," Sko said. "And if Mitch doesn't lay off all this yakking I'm going to have to straighten him out."

"That'll be the day," Murph said sarcastically.

"It'll be quite a day," Sko said around the cigar.

Forward of the starboard torpedo racks Goldberg and Britches were standing up. Archer could see them in the darkness, and he had given orders for all hands to stand up at their battle stations.

Britches, whispering, was telling Goldberg what he had heard in Mitch's tent. "He said the only way was to get rid of him. You know how I mean?"

"I know how you mean," Goldberg said.

"And Mitch was griping because you wouldn't come in with them," Britches told him. "Mitch said he didn't see how you could take the treatment he's been giving you and not come in with them."

"I'm kind of used to it, Britches," Goldberg said. "They've been picking on me and my folks for several thousand years. You get used to it."

"Do you think Mr. Brent knows what's going on?"

"He knows."

"Who's telling him?" Britches demanded, not liking the idea.

"Nobody's telling him. He just knows."

"Then why doesn't he do something?"

"You can't stop a man from thinking," Goldberg told him. "But if Mitch starts to do anything besides think, Peter'll stop him."

"Do you know … " Britches' voice began to squeak so he stopped and started over again. "Do you know what they do to you for mutiny on the high seas?" he asked, his voice under control, but full of awe.

"They take you out and shoot you," Goldberg said.

He turned then and looked down at Britches and decided that things were pretty cockeyed when a kid only seventeen years old could be eight thousand miles from home fighting a war in the dark.

Willie stuck his head out of the radar shack and said, "Bogey, Captain. Range two thousand, bearing two nine three." As Willie started to go back to the scope Archer turned and said, "When reporting objects on the radar give the range, bearing, number of objects, size of objects, course and speed of objects, and your estimate of purpose, Williams."

"Looks like a little
daihatsu
to me, going toward New Guinea."

"On what course, Williams?"

Willie wished that Archer understood a little more about how a radar worked. He had picked this tiny bogey out of the snow and didn't think that many radar operators would have seen it at all and here he was getting a bad time from the Captain because he didn't know what the enemy crew had had for chow. "Gosh, Captain," Willie said plaintively, "the blip's so small and moving so slow, I can't figure out all that stuff."

"Then don't report it until you can," Archer said.

"Those little
daihatsus
can't make more than seven or eight knots," Peter said, working the Is-Was board. "Your closing course is two eight six."

"It's not possible to determine a closing course. Mr. Brent, without knowing the speed of the boat."

"We generally go in around fifteen hundred rpm," Peter said. "Above that makes too much noise. At fifteen hundred the course is two eight six."

Without answering, Archer shoved the throttles forward. Peter watched the tach needles move past 1500 and go on to almost 1900,
Slewfoot
throwing herself forward now at 35 knots.

"What is my closing course, Mr. Brent?" Archer asked.

Peter turned the Is-Was. "Two eight nine," he said. He knew exactly what Sko was doing—giving that cigar a beating as his engines labored against the mufflers.

"Give me a bearing and depth for torpedoes," Archer commanded.

Peter stared at him in the dark.
"Torpedoes?
A
daihatsu
is only about fifty feet long."

"So is the conning tower of a submarine," Archer reminded him coldly.

Peter worked out sets for all four torpedoes, and Archer passed the word to the Preacher and Goldberg.

Goldberg was disgusted. "So now we're killing mosquitoes with a shotgun," he told Britches as they ground the speed, set the depth into the torpedo mechanisms.

Sko came up out of the engine room, the cigar stern in his teeth. Peter could tell from ten feet away that Sko was mad. He stopped abaft the bridge, planted his feet apart, slammed the cigar to an upward tilt, and said, loud and clear, "Somebody's wrecking my engines running 'em so fast with the mufflers on."

Archer turned slowly around from the wheel and faced him. "Your duty station is in the engine room. And, on patrol, you will wear a life jacket and helmet."

Sko stood there a moment longer, the cigar belligerent, then turned and went below. Peter, knowing what he was going to do, turned to watch the three tachometers. Slowly and evenly the revs dropped back until they were at the maximum rpm with the mufflers on.

Archer saw this too and angrily shoved the throttles forward. The tach needles did not move, the sound of the muffled engines did not change, the speed of the boat remained the same.

"Make a note of that, Mr. Brent. Manual control of the engine speed assumed without authority."

"I'll make a note," Peter said.

Archer turned to the radar shack. "Have you had a recognition signal from the bogey?"

"No sir, and I don't expect to get one," Willie told him.

Archer turned to the intercom and said, "Man your battle stations. All hands
will
wear life jackets and steel helmets. Life jacket ties
will
be two-blocked. All shirt sleeves
will
be rolled down and buttoned."

In the darkness the men moved around, picking up life jackets and helmets and putting them on. All except Goldberg. He put on the helmet, cocking it as much as you can cock a steel bucket, but he had not even brought his life jacket on deck.

Archer called down, "Goldberg, report to the bridge."

"Why get eaten out for a life jacket?" Britches whispered to Goldberg. "Put it on before he reams you."

Goldberg just grinned at Britches and climbed up to the bridge. "You send for me?" he asked, his voice as belligerent as Sko's cigar.

"I ordered you to put on your life jacket," Archer told him.

This interested Peter, and he stood beside Archer and watched Goldberg. Once before, Goldberg had been told—by Jonesy—to put on his life jacket and Goldberg had said, "Skipper, if it's okay with you I don't want to wear a life jacket." Jonesy had let it drop.

Archer did not. When Goldberg just stood there in silence, Archer said coldly, "Well?"

"I don't wear life jackets," Goldberg said.

Now, Peter thought, this is the time to let this thing drop; leave it alone.

Archer said, "I order you to put on your life jacket."