The Fighting Agents

by W. E. B Griffin

  Lennox had seen in Whittaker somebody much like himself in character, and with similar command responsibilities, and with an understanding of command. Very early on, Lennox had decided that having Whittaker aboard was very much what it must be like to be captain of a cruiser flying an admiral’s flag. Where the cruiser and the accompanying task force went, and what it would do, was the admiral’s responsibility. But the operation of the cruiser was the cruiser captain’s responsibility.

  And Whittaker had acted as Lennox believed a good admiral would behave. Despite the authority the orders from COMSUBFORPAC had given Whittaker—which had in effect made the Drum his personal taxicab—he had leaned over backward to avoid even the suggestion of giving Lennox orders.

  He had asked questions, and “wondered if it would be possible to” do what he had the clear authority to order done. He had always scrupulously referred to Lennox as “Captain” or “Skipper,” even long after Lennox had started calling him “Jim.”

  And the night before, when they were alone with the talker on the bridge, Whittaker had asked “if it would be possible to” have a dry run of what would take place when they were off Mindanao.

  “They assure me, Skipper,” Whittaker said, “that the outboards have been tuned by an expert. But cynical sonofabitch that I am, and with no reflection intended, Sir, on the U.S. Navy, I’d like to check that out.”

  “What you would really like, Jim, right, is a dry run?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Whittaker asked. “Is that going to be possible? ”

  “Does the Army use the phrase ‘SOP’?” Lennox asked.

  “Yes, Sir,” Whittaker said.

  “I violate mine,” Lennox said. “The SUBFORPAC SOP clearly states that when we are within the operating range of Japanese aircraft and proceeding on the surface, we will always be in a ‘prepared to dive’ condition. That means all hatches except the one here will be secured, and that we will be making sufficient headway so that the sub’s diving planes will have effect in case we have to make an emergency dive.”

  They had, during the voyage, exchanged technical lore. Whittaker had been surprised to learn that the diving planes on the Drum functioned like the ailerons of an airplane, controlling up and down movement of the submerged submarine. He knew that because of the dynamic forces acting upon the diving planes, the faster a submarine was moving across the surface of the ocean, the quicker it could be submerged.

  “In other words, Skipper,” Whittaker said, “a dry run is a lousy idea?”

  “In these waters, if I follow the SOP,” Lennox said, “what I get is a boat ready to make a dive, and a crew of sweat-soaked, temperature-exhausted sailors not only getting on each other’s nerves, but not able to function fast when they have to. So what I do is leave the hatches open when I can in waters like these, stationing men by the hatches to close them if they have to, and I make damned sure my lookout has the eyes of a hawk.”

  “And to conduct a dry run would mean stopping the boat,” Whittaker said, “increasing the time it would take you to submerge if a Jap plane spotted you.”

  Lennox nodded. “Spotted us.”

  Whittaker shrugged.

  “Okay, if that’s—”

  Lennox interrupted him.

  “Another unpleasant situation that comes to mind,” he said, “is us sitting on the surface a half mile or so offshore of Mindanao, and unable to submerge because there’s a trio of Army guys in rubber boats with outboard motors they can’t start.”

  Whittaker looked at him but didn’t say anything.

  “And while I am being the high priest of doom and gloom,” Lennox said, “I have another scenario. There we are off Mindanao, and we get the boats out of the torpedo room, blow them up, and they leak. Since I can think of no other way to get those heavy little boxes ashore, that would mean we would have come all this way only to have to go all the way back for more rubber boats.”

  “I’d like to add to that gloom-and-doom scenario, if I might, Sir,” Whittaker said.

  “Go ahead, Jim,” Lennox said.

  “We are on the surface off Mindanao, the boats have inflated properly, and the outboards have even started. Then the Army guys—whose total experience with rubber boats is limited to Lieutenant Hammersmith’s time with an inner tube in a swimming pool—start loading those heavy boxes into the rubber boats and drop the boxes over the side, fall overboard themselves, and I’ll let you figure out the rest yourself.”

  “You’ve had no training?” Lennox asked, surprised and concerned.

  “No, Sir,” Whittaker said. “There wasn’t time.”

  “Well, then,” Lennox said, “the question is not if we do a dry run, but when.”

  “I think, if it’s possible,” Whittaker said, “we should.”

  Lennox looked at Whittaker.

  If I hadn’t been so obliging, he wondered, would you have pulled the rank the COMSUBFORPAC orders give you?

  “You told me, Jim,” he said, “that to a pilot, darkness rises from the ground.”

  “Yes, Sir, it does.”

  “Then I think we should do the dry run tomorrow, at dusk,” Lennox said.

  “Thank you, Skipper.”

  The day had been spent preparing for the dry run. This was mostly a good thing for the boat, Lennox realized, though it was risky. The morale of the crew was helped by the chance not only to do something constructive, but to get out on deck. The risk of being spotted by a Japanese patrol plane was no greater with them there, but submerging would take longer because of the people and the equipment on deck.

  Lennox posted extra lookouts and ordered the manning of the machine gun and Bofors cannon. He didn’t plan to use them, but it gave their crews a chance to get on deck and to feel useful, and he decided the price, the extra forty-five or sixty seconds it would take the gun crews to drop through the hatches and close them, was worth it.

  The rubber boats themselves, as Lennox had supposed they would, posed the greatest problems. If the chief of the boat, who by default became the rubber boat expert, had any thoughts about the idiocy of sending people with no training or experience with rubber boats to make a landing through the surf on an enemy-held shore, he kept them to himself.

  The first problem was to get the boats from the forward torpedo room through the hatch and onto the deck. The chief of the boat considered his options and decided that because of the weight and ungainly bulk it would make more sense to uncrate them below and pass them through the hatch, despite the risk that they would be impaled and torn on something sharp on the way.

  The boats, which carried their own air bottles, were designed to be inflated with the bottles. Even if the boats were thrown over the side uninflated and sank, if the pull cord for the air bottles was pulled, the boats would inflate and pop to the surface.

  Although spare air bottles had been provided, the chief of the boat decided that the smart thing to do was not to use the bottles until it was necessary. He called for the air hose normally used to charge the air bottles in torpedoes, and when he had the first boat unrolled and lying limp on the deck, filled it with compressed air.

  When that boat was expanded, he ran soapy water over it to check for leaks. When he found none, he opened the exhaust valves, and as they hissed and the boat collapsed, he looked at it thoughtfully.

  Then he went aft and stood with his hands on his hips and spoke with Lennox and Whittaker, who were on the bridge.

  “Two things, Skipper,” he said.

  “Go ahead, Chief,” Lennox said.

  “I think we could stow the boats aft of the conning tower,” the chief of the boat said. “Properly stowed, we could even submerge with them.”

  “Good idea,” Lennox immediately agreed.

  “Second, there’s no way the boats will carry all that weight.”

  “Then we’ll have to use the spares, too,” Whittaker said.

  “I meant using the spares,” the chief of the boat said. “The first time you flexed the boat in the
surf, that weight’d rip the deck . . . or the bilge, whatever they call that sheet of rubberized canvas . . . free of the inflation chambers. If it didn’t rip through before you got to the surf.”

  “What do you suggest, Chief?” Lennox asked.

  “We got a hundred and sixty percent of life jackets aboard,” the chief said.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Whittaker said.

  “It means we got sixty percent more life jackets aboard than there is people,” the chief said.

  “And?” Lennox asked.

  “They’re rated at two hundred pounds,” the chief said. “Which is just about what them ‘film’ boxes weigh.”

  “You mean put a life jacket around a film box,” Whittaker asked, “in case the bottom lets go?”

  “I mean wrap jackets around the boxes, tie lines to them, and tow them ashore,” the chief said. “And around them boxes with the weapons and the ammo, too.”

  “Could they be towed?”

  “There’s only one way to find out, Skipper,” the chief of the boat said.

  “Put people on it, Chief,” Lennox ordered.

  “Carefully, Chief,” Whittaker said. Both the chief and Lennox looked at him in surprise and annoyance, but then smiled when Whittaker went on. “If we were to lose just one of those ‘film’ boxes out here, your beloved captain and myself would spend the rest of our days in Alcatraz.”

  “I take your meaning, Sir,” the chief said with a smile.

  By midafternoon, each of the boats had been brought on deck, inflated, checked for leaks, deflated, and then stowed, firmly tied to the mount of the twin Bofors aft of the conning tower.

  The top was cut from an empty fifty-five-gallon oil drum, and then the drum three-quarters filled with seawater. Each outboard motor was test-run for five minutes, the noise incredible inside the hull.

  The chief torpedoman was placed in charge of floating the “film” boxes. He cut the flotation packets from life preservers and tied them around the wooden boxes. The available light line was soon exhausted, and two sailors made what was needed by first sawing through a length of four-inch manila hawser and then untwisting the strands.

  After that, there was nothing to do but wait until dusk fell.

  Commander Lennox waited until he was sure that Whittaker was in the control room, and then he started the dry run.

  “Close all hatches and watertight doors,” he said, and the talker repeated the order.

  Lennox could see the hatches on the deck closing, and he could hear a dull metallic clanging from all over the boat. With the exception of the hatch from the bridge, which would be his responsibility to close, the boat should now be watertight.

  “All hatches and watertight doors secured, Sir,” the talker confirmed.

  “Prepare to dive,” Lennox ordered. “Clear the bridge!”

  “Prepare to dive,” the talker repeated. “Bridge being cleared.”

  “Dive!” Lennox ordered

  “Dive! Dive! Dive!” the talker said, and dropped through the hatch. Lennox followed him, then closed the hatch after him.

  The sound of the Klaxon hurt his ears.

  “Take her to one hundred feet,” the captain ordered, and put his hand out to steady himself as the bow of the Drum nosed downward.

  Ten minutes later, the bow of the Drum broke the surface again.

  The moment it did, Lennox started his stopwatch.

  As soon as he was on the bridge, with water still spilling over the deck, he started issuing orders.

  “Battle stations,” he ordered.

  The talker repeated the command, and the Klaxon went off.

  “Man all cannon,” Lennox ordered.

  Submariners erupted from the hatches and went to the guns.

  “All astern one-third,” he ordered. “Make her dead in the water.”

  The pitch of the just-started diesels changed.

  It was time for another command, but there was nothing standard that Lennox could recall that fit the situation.

  “Make all preparations to launch the rubber boats,” he finally ordered.

  Now there was activity from every hatch on the deck.

  As crewmen freed the rubber boats from the Bofors mount and handed them to crewmen on the deck, other crewmen emerged from other hatches. The weapons and ammunition boxes were first placed on the deck in a line, then tied together with ten-foot lengths of line.

  By the time the crewmen carrying the limp boats had reached the forward deck, others had air hoses waiting. It took what seemed like a long time for the boats to be inflated, and by the time they were, Whittaker, Hammersmith, and Radioman Second Joe Garvey had come onto the deck, wearing their gear, and were waiting.

  The chief of the boat and the chief torpedoman put the rubber boat over the side themselves, lowering it with ropes until it touched the nearly horizontal section of the hull, then they jumped down onto it with ropes around their waists.

  Then they pushed the boat off the hull into the water and raised their hands to help Whittaker from the deck to the sloping part of the hull and into the boat itself.

  Whittaker jerked the starting rope of the outboard motor. When he had it running, he checked to see that the line tied to a grommet in the heavy black rubber was in place. Then he put the motor in gear, and the boat started off. When the line tied to the grommet drew taut, crewmen slid the first of the two larger ammunition and weapons boxes (now wrapped with life preserver flotation packs) into the water, then skidded the line of small “film” boxes after it.

  Then the process was repeated for the second boat, except that both Hammersmith and Joe Garvey got into that one.

  The atmosphere had been tense: to see if the boats could be launched and whether or not the flotation packets would keep the weapons and film boxes afloat.

  Then Lennox heard a guffaw, then a belly laugh, and then a high-pitched giggle. The first thing he thought, angrily, was that someone had fallen over the side. That, despite the genuine threat to life, was always good for a laugh from his men.

  And then he saw the object of the amusement.

  Jim Whittaker was fifty yards off the bow, making a wide turn to return to the Drum. The strain on the line towing the boxes behind the rubber boat, plus the weight of the outboard motor and of Whittaker himself, had caused the bow to rise almost straight up out of the water. The outboard was open full bore, but it was just barely moving, and Whittaker himself looked as if he was about to sink into the water.

  Sound carries well over water, and Whittaker heard the laughter of the crew.

  He rose to the occasion. Balancing himself precariously, he saluted crisply.

  “Man overboard!” a shout went up, followed by a bellow of laughter.

  Lennox looked quickly to see what had happened. The chief torpedoman had lost his footing and gone into the water. The chief of the boat was trying, with absolutely no success, to haul him back aboard by the rope around his waist.

  The captain of the USS Drum picked up his electric hailer and started to put it to his lips. Then he took it down and slammed it painfully against his leg until the pain was such that he was no longer overcome with hysterics.

  “Attention on the deck,” he finally announced. “Prepare to recover rubber boats!” And then the temptation was too much. “And while you’re at it, see if you can recover the chief torpedoman.”

  XIII

  1

  PÉCS, HUNGARY 0500 HOURS 21 FEBRUARY 1943

  Canidy woke in the dark in a large bedroom in the Countess Batthyany’s hunting lodge. He was buried deep in goose down, his nostrils full of perfume.

  But then he realized it wasn’t perfume, it was something he had found in a bottle in his surprisingly ornate bathroom. The bottle bore a “Lanvin Paris-London-New York” label underneath the words “Pour les Hommes.” His French was good enough to understand what that meant, and the stuff hadn’t smelled half bad when he sniffed at the bottle neck, and so he had liberally splashed i
t over himself after he’d wiped himself dry with a thick towel about the size of a pup tent.

  The cologne would be a nice change from the way he had smelled after the fishing boat from Vis to the mainland, and after the farm truck—redolent of horse manure— which had carried him across Yugoslavia to the neighborhood of the Hungarian border.

  It was only when he had put on a pair of silk pajamas and the odor of the “Pour les Hommes” had not diminished—had, in fact, seemed to intensify—that he began to suspect the legend on the bottle was directed to the gentle sex. If they doused themselves in “Pour les Hommes,” men would be drawn to the smell like moths to a candle.

  It had confirmed the somewhat cynical impression he had formed not long after they’d first shown him his room that the Batthyany family had apparently not only done their hunting in considerable comfort, but also that when they returned from the vigors of the field, the comfort they’d received then had been furnished by females. In his bathroom, he had found a bidet, and in a heavy bookcase by the bedside was a collection of leather-bound photo albums, the photographs portraying handsome men and women in their birthday suits performing what could only be described as sexual gymnastics.

  He had at first wondered whether the albums had been purchased—they looked professionally done—or whether the Counts Batthyany had been unusually skilled amateur photographers. But when he got into the second volume, he recognized the huge fireplace in the main room of the lodge behind three dark-haired beauties and a hairy, skinny, mustachioed gentleman.

  The thought passed through his mind that it might be fun to peel several of the neatly matted photographs free of the albums and take them home for Ann. It might brighten her day, he thought. But then he decided against that. Ann took sex very seriously. But then he was sure that as far as Ann was concerned, dirty pictures would be as high on her taboo list for him as carrying on with Her Gracefulness, the Duchess of Stanfield.