W E B Griffin - Men at War 4 - The Fighting Agents
Page 22
The final sea trial after refitting of the USS Drum--SS-228, a 311-foot-long submarine of the Gato class--required her to approach the Alenuihaha Channel from the open Pacific, on the surface, in the hours of darkness, navigating by celestial navigation.
She would remain on the surface, crossing the channel until she reached the shelf, whereupon she would submerge to maximum operating depth on a course that would bring her off Waikahalulu Bay. She would then rise to near periscope depth and maintain that depth and course in the forty-odd-fathom water until visual contact with their assigned target was established, by periscope, in daylight.
She missed Waikahalulu Bay by five miles. Her skipper, Lieutenant Commander Edwin R. Lennox, USN, a stocky, round-faced, sandy-haired officer who had three days before celebrated his thirtieth birthday, was disappointed, but not surprised. There was really no good way to read the currents of the Alenuihaha Channel or the offshore waters of the island.
When his periscope picked up the targets, without taking his eyes from the rubber eyepieces of the periscope. Commander Lennox softly ordered, "Battle stations, Mr. Rutherford. Gun crews to stand by."
"Aye, aye. Sir," Lieutenant William G. Rutherford, USNR, the Drum's twenty seven-year-old executive officer, a tall, black-haired, skinny man, said. He pushed the heel of his hand against a round brass knob. A bell clanged throughout the submarine, and there was frenzied activity everywhere but around the periscope itself.
"Steer zero eight five," Commander Lennox ordered.
"Coming to zero eight five, it is. Sir," the helmsman said. And a moment later, "Sir, the course is zero eight five."
"Periscope down," Commander Lennox said.
"Take her to one hundred feet."
Commander Lennox slapped the handles of the periscope in the up position.
"Down periscope," he ordered, and the periscope moved downward.
"One hundred feet, Sir," the chief of the boat reported.
"Hold her so," Commander Lennox ordered. He crossed the crowded area | and pushed down on the lever that activated the public address system.
"This is the captain speaking," he said.
"If I have to say it again, and I think I do, the way to achieve speed is to be sure of what you're doing, and then to do it carefully. We will lose time if somebody falls down a ladder or over the side."
There was a murmur of chuckles throughout the boat.
"Gun crews standing by, Sir," the chief of the boat said.
"Very well," Commander Lennox said.
"Bring her around to two sixty-five."
"Coming to two six five it is, Sir," the helmsman replied. The Drum banked like an airplane as she changed course. And then she straightened up.
"Up periscope the captain ordered, and the periscope rose.
"Sir, the course is two six five," the helmsman reported.
"Keep her so," Commander Lennox said, and turned to the executive officer.
"Got your watch, Bill?"
"Punch it," Commander Lennox said, then: "Surface, surface!"
Twenty seconds later, in boiling water, the bow of the Drum emerged from the sea.
There was a burst of black smoke as she went from battery to diesel power.
Commander Lennox, It. Rutherford, and a talker came onto the conning tower.
"Make turns for ten knots," Commander Lennox ordered.
"Gun crews man your guns, report when ready."
The talker repeated his orders into his microphone.
Bluejackets in steel helmets and life vests poured from hatches in the conning tower. Some made their way to the five-inch cannon mounted forward of the conning tower, and began to prepare it for firing. Others went to a rapid- firing 40mm cannon mounted on a platform just below where the skipper, the exec, and the talker stood. A third group went to the 20mm rapid-firing cannon mounted on the rear of the conning tower.
Other sailors formed a human chain, passing ammunition from the submarine to the guns.
One by one, the guns signaled (the gun chiefs raising a hand overhead) their readiness to open fire.
"The guns are ready to fire, Sir," the exec reported, and then added, "One hundred eighteen seconds."
"Commence firing," Commander Lennox ordered.
"Commence firing," the talker repeated.
Commander Lennox and the exec put binoculars to their eyes and trained them on the shore of Waikahalulu Bay. There were targets in place, wooden frameworks covered with canvas, fairly credible replicas of oil storage tanks.
The five-inch fired five rounds; one fell nowhere near the targets, but the other four went where they were supposed to go. Meanwhile, the 40mm and 20mm rapid-firing cannon fired continuously, the 20mm in a rapid staccato, the 40mm in a slower, more measured cadence. The targets were obscured by dust and smoke.
Commander Lennox counted the five-inch rounds. The moment he saw the muzzle flash of the fifth round, without taking his eyes from his binoculars, he ordered, "Cease fire, secure the guns, clear the decks."
The talker repeated the orders. The sailors at the guns now prepared them for submersion. The crews of the rapid-firing cannon began to pass unfired ammunition back into the hull, and then they all went below.
"Sir,"the talker said,"chiefofthe boat reports gun crews secure from firing."
"Dive! "the captain ordered.
"Dive! "the talker said.
"Dive!"
A Klaxon sounded. The exec, the talker, and finally the captain went through the hatch and secured it after them. By then, the decks were already awash.
"Take her to a hundred and fifty feet," Commander Lennox ordered.
"One fifty feet, aye," It. Rutherford repeated.
"What have we got, Helmsman?" Commander Lennox asked a minute later.
"Sir, we are steering two six five degrees...." The helmsman paused and waited until the needle on the depth gauge was where it was supposed to be, and then went on, "at one five zero feet, sir."
"Keep her so," Commander Lennox ordered, and then he stepped to the public address system again.
"This is the captain speaking," he said formally.
"For a bunch of Kansas hayseeds and Brooklyn thugs, that wasn't half bad. And the chief of the boat would have told me by now if somebody had gone over the side."
Chuckles and laughter ran through the boat.
Leaving the microphone open. Commander Lennox said, "Take her up, make turns for sixteen knots, and set us on a course for Pearl Harbor."
He let the spring-loaded microphone switch go and motioned for the chief of the boat to come to him.
"Chief," Commander Lennox said, "I would not be too upset, when you check the guns, if you were to find something that would take, say, thirty-six hours to fix" "Aye, aye, Sir," the chief of the boat said.
"And, of course, if the men aren't needed to help with the repair, there's no reason I can see why they shouldn't be given liberty."
"Aye, aye, Sir," the chief of the boat said.
"Surface, surface!
"It. Rutherford ordered.
[THREE]
They had worked out a cipher:
On the fifth of February KSP had sent a message, as opposed to responding to one of Fertig's messages. So far, all that establishing a radio link with the United States had done was to enable Fertig to get word to his wife that he was alive and not in a Japanese POW camp.
KSF FOR MFS NAMES OF TOWN AMD STATE WHERE PATRICIA LIVES
WILL BE USED AS CODE PHRASES FOR DOUBLE TRANSPOSITION STOP
SEND TEST MESSAGE IMMEDIATELY KSF BY
Patricia, Fertig's daughter, was living with her mother in Golden, Colorado.
Using that as the basis for a rudimentary double transposition code, Fertig's homemade transmitter sent a meaningless phrase to KSF. Receipt of the message was acknowledged, but the reply, in the new code was only:
KSF FOR MFS MO TRAFFIC FOR YOU AT THIS TIME KSF OUT
Two days later, on February 11,1943, there had been
another message for
MFS:
YOUR STATION DESIGNATED WYZB REPEAT WYZB STOP ALL REPEAT
ALL FUTURE TRAFFIC WILL BE WITH KAZ REPEAT KAZ STOP KAZ
HAS FILE OF ALL PAST TRAFFIC KSF OUT
KAZ was the call sign of General Douglas MacArthur's General Headquarters, Southwest Pacific Command, in Australia. They heard KAZ on the air all the time, but had been unable to get KAZ to respond to their calls.
Now things might be different. But several hours of calls to KAZ had produced no response whatever. There were several possible explanations for that, the most likely that radiations from Gerardo Almendres's homemade transmitter were for some reason unable to reach Australia. Fertig did not permit himself to dwell on the possibility that MacArthur did not want to talk to him, While Fertig did not personally know MacArthur, he had a number of friends who did. To a man, they reported that Douglas MacArthur, onetime Army Chief of Staff, later Marshal of the Philippine Army, and now once again in U.S. Army uniform, had an ego on a par with, say, Charlemagne's.
While Fertig did not believe that the fall of the Philippines was MacArthur's fault--indeed, he had acquired a deep respect for MacArthur's military ability;
MacArthur's delaying actions with his limited resources had been undeniably brilliant--he suspected that MacArthur was personally shamed by his defeat.
If that were the case, that shame might be deepened by proof that not all American officers and Philippine forces had hoisted the white flag and marched docilely into Japanese captivity.
During his brief service as an officer, Fertig had quickly learned an old soldier's requisitioning trick. If you need something for one hundred men, and you want to be sure you get it, you requisition a quantity sufficient for two hundred. Or four hundred. Then, when the supply authorities cut your requisition by fifty percent, or seventy-five percent, you still wind up with what you really need.
Fertig had been "generous "in his communications with KSF with regard to his estimated strength report for the troop strength of the U.S. force in the Philippines. Not dishonest, just generous. He had elected to take the word of Philippine army officers who had not elected to surrender (putting his own serious doubts aside), when they told him how many men they had at their disposal, and how anxious--providing he could supply and pay them--they were to put themselves and their men under the command of Brigadier General Wendell W. Fertig and the U.S. forces in the Philippines.
If they told him, for example, that they had five hundred troops just waiting for the arms and food that would permit them to engage the Japanese, he took them at their word, even if it looked to him as if the five-hundred-man force consisted of a couple of officers and maybe sixty Philippine Scouts.
He had added up all the Philippine forces he was told were anxious to place themselves under his command and come up with a figure just in excess of six thousand officers and men.
His "requisitions" for arms and food and gold coins had been based on this strength figure.
MacArthur, according to the radio message from San Francisco, had been made aware of this troop strength.
Fertig wondered how Douglas MacArthur was going to react to learning that, after he had reported his forces had fought to the last man and the last bullet, there were six thousand troops under a brigadier general still fighting on Mindanao.
When Second Lieutenant (formerly Private) Robert Ball of USFIP came to report that MacArthur (or at least KAZ, his radio station) was finally being heard from, Brigadier General Fertig, a Thompson submachine gun beside him, was drinking a cup of tea on the shaded veranda of his combined headquarters and quarters. The tea was Lipton's. It had been grown in the Far East, sent to the United States, blended, put in tea bags, and then sent back to the Far East. How it had passed into the hands of the Moro tribal chief who had given it to Fertig, Fertig didn't know.
All he knew was that Lipton was putting out a better product than he had previously suspected. The tea bag that had produced the tea he was now drinking was on its fourth brewing cycle. (Brew, dry, brew again, dry, etcetera.) He knew this because he was a methodical man, and each time he drenched the tea bag in boiling water, he tore one of the corners of the tea bag-tag off. The tea-bag-tag drying on the bamboo railing beside him was corner less
He felt that it behooved him to conceal from his subordinate staff the excitement he felt now that MacArthur was finally being heard from.
"Thank you. Ball," he said, with as much savoir-faire as he could muster.
"How long do you think it will take Captain Buchanan to decrypt the message?"
"About thirty minutes, Sir," Ball said.
"Fine," Fertig said.
"I expect to be here in half an hour, when Captain Buchanan is finished."
Forty-five minutes later, Captain Horace Buchanan handed Brigadier General Fertig the two sheets of paper on which he had neatly lettered (Signal Section, HQ, USFIP, did not possess a typewriter) the decrypted message. From the look on Buchanan's face--disappointment and embarrassment--Fertig knew that there was little good news in the radio message.
"Thank you," Fertig said, and read the message:
KAZ FOR MPS
ONE LT COL WENDELL W. FERTIG CORPS OF ENGINEERS US ARMY
RESERVE DETAILED INFANTRY
TWO COLONEL MARCA RIO PER ALTA PHILIPPINE SCOUTS DESIGNATED
MILITARY GUERRILLA CHIEF OF TEMPORARILY OCCUPIED ENEMY
TERRITORY
THREE THE ISSUANCE OF MILITARY SCRIP IS EXPRESSLY
FORBIDDEN REPEAT EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN
FOUR COMMAND OF GUERRILLA FORCES WILL BE EXECUTED ONLY BY
OFFICERS PRESENTLY IN DIRECT COMMAND OP SAME
FIVE THIS HEADQUARTERS WILL ENTERTAIN REQUISITIONS FOR
SMALL IN SIZE URGENTLY NEEDED EQUIPMENT ONLY
BY COMMAND OF GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR COMMANDER IN CHIEF
SOUTHWEST PACIFIC COMMAND
WILLOUGHBY BRIGADIER GENERAL USA
Fertig looked up and met Buchanan's eyes.
"I took out the 'stops' and stuff, General," Buchanan said.
There had been a faint hesitation, Fertig noticed, before Buchanan had called him "General."
It wasn't only a little bad news, it was all bad news.
As far as MacArthur was concerned, he was a reserve lieutenant colonel in the Corps of Engineers, not a brigadier general in command of U.S. forces in the Philippines.
Colonel Marcario Peralta was "military guerrilla chief of temporarily occupied enemy territory." Fertig did know Peralta. Peralta had been a successful lawyer in Manila before the war. The last Fertig had heard, just before the surrender, Peralta had been a major. Now he was a colonel, which meant that Fertig was supposed to be subordinate to him.
That could explain why MacArthur had pointedly reminded him that he was a lowly lieutenant colonel.
There was another possibility: If he had not promoted himself, and thus offended MacArthur's sense of the military proprieties, it was possible (now that he thought of it, even likely) that he would have been promoted to colonel and named "military guerrilla chief of temporarily occupied enemy territory."
The really worrisome paragraph was the one about forbidding him to issue scrip. He'd been issuing the scrip, signing each one-, five-, and ten-dollar bill himself; and the crude money had been accepted by the Filipinos; they had taken him at his word that, when the war was over and the Japanese had been driven from the Philippines, it would be redeemed at face value.
And since MacArthur obviously was not about to send him gold, the scrip he was "expressly forbidden repeat expressly forbidden" to issue was the only way he had to pay the troops and to buy whatever the natives were willing to sell.
That was even more important than his rank, or Colonel Peralta's appointment as "military guerrilla chief." Peralta was on the island of Panay. There was little or no chance that he would try to exercise command over Fertig. Peralta was no fool; he knew that Fertig would simply ignore him.
&nb
sp; "Captain Buchanan," Fertig said, "I presume that no one but you has seen the contents of this message?"
"No, Sir."
"It is herewith classified Top Secret," Fertig said, and put a match to it.
"No one else is to be made privy to its contents."
"You may tell Lieutenant Ball and whomever else you wish," Fertig said, "that the message dealt with our reinforcement in the future."