W.e.b. Griffin - The Corps II - CALL TO ARMS

"Commander MacGregor, sir," he said. "I'm the skipper." The Navy captain returned the salute. "Captain," he replied, acknowledging Commander MacGregor's role as captain of his vessel, "this is Captain Banning. He will be sailing with you. Captain Banning, this is Captain MacGregor."

The blinded Marine officer put out his hand.

"How do you do, sir?" he said. "Sorry to inflict myself on you."

"Happy to have you aboard, Captain," MacGregor said, aware that it was both inane and a lie. He certainly felt sorry for the poor bastard, but the Pickerel was not a hospital ship, it was a crowded submarine, with only a pharmacist's mate aboard. No place for a man who was not only wounded but incapable of feeding himself-or of seeing.

"Captain Banning," the Navy captain said, "will sail with you. I now ask you how many other then in his condition you are prepared to take aboard."

"Sir, I have only a pharmacist's mate aboard," MacGregor replied.

The Navy captain said, "There are nine others suffering from temporary or permanent loss of sight. They will require no special medical attention beyond the changing of their bandages."

"I'll have to bed them down on the deck," Commander MacGregor said.

"You can, without jeopardizing your mission, take all of them?" the Navy captain asked.

"Yes, sir."

"They will come out with the next whaleboat," the Navy captain said. "Thank you, Captain. Have a good voyage."

"Thank you, sir," MacGregor said.

"Permission to leave the ship, sir?" the Navy captain asked.

"Granted," MacGregor said.

The Navy captain saluted MacGregor, then the colors, and then backed down the ladder into the whaleboat.

"Chief!" Commander MacGregor called.

"Yes, sir?" the chief of the boat, the senior noncommissioned officer aboard, said. He had been standing only a few feet away, invisible in the darkness.

"Take this officer to the wardroom," MacGregor said. "See that he's comfortable, and then tell Doc to prepare to take aboard nine other wounded. Tell him they are… in the same condition as Captain Banning."

"The 'same condition' is blind, Chief," Captain Banning said matter-of-factly. "Once you face it, you get used to it in a hurry."

"Aye, aye, sir," the chief of the boat said to MacGregor, then put his hand on Captain Banning's good arm. "Will you come this way, please, sir?"

MacGregor noticed for the first time that Captain Banning was wearing a web belt, and that a holstered Colt.45 automatic pistol was hanging from the belt.

A blind man doesn't need a pistol, MacGregor thought. He shouldn't have one. But that guy's a Marine officer, blind or not, and I'm not going to lack him when he's down by taking it away from him.

The chief torpedoman, who had been supervising the storage of the gold crates in the fore and aft torpedo rooms, came onto the deck.

"All the crates are aboard and secure, sir," he said.

"Let's have a look, Chief," MacGregor said, and walked toward the hatch in the conning tower.

The substitution of gold for torpedos had been on the basis of weight rather than volume. The equivalent weight of gold in the forward torpedo rooms was a small line of wooden boxes chained in place down the center line. The torpedo room looked empty with the torpedoes gone.

"We're taking nine blinded then with us, Chief," Commander MacGregor said. "Ten, counting that Marine captain. I said they would have to bed down on the deck. But we can do better than that, with all this room, can't we?"

"I'll do what I can, Skipper," the chief torpedoman said.

"Let's have a look aft," MacGregor said.

Ten minutes later, the Pickerel got underway, her diesels throbbing powerfully.

Launched at the Electric Boat Works in Connecticut in 1936, the Pickerel had been designed for Pacific Service; that is, for long patrols. Since she was headed directly for the Hawaiian Islands, fuel consumption was not a problem. With at least freedom from the concern, Commander MacGregor ordered turns made for seventeen knots. Although this greatly increased fuel consumption, he believed it was justified under the circumstances. The farther he moved away from the island of Luzon into the South China Sea, the less were the chances he would be spotted by the Japanese.

There was time, until dawn-too much time-for Commander MacGregor to consider that he was now what he trained all his adult life to be, master of a United States warship at sea, in a war; but that, instead of going in harm's way, searching out the enemy, to close with them, to send them to the bottom, what he was doing was sailing through enemy-controlled waters, doing his very best to make sure the enemy didn't see him.

The one thing he could not do was fight. He hated to see night begin to turn into day. He had been running at seventeen knots for seven hours. And he had thus made-a rough calculation, not taking into consideration the current-about 120 nautical miles. But as he had been on a north-northwest course, heading into the South China Sea as well as up the western shore of Luzon, he wasn't nearly as far north as he would have liked to be.

He was, in fact, very near the route the Japanese were using to bring supplies and reinforcements to the Lingayen Gulf, where they had made their first amphibious landing in the Phillipines three days after they had taken out almost all of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

There would be Japanese ships in the area, accompanied by destroyers, and there would be at least reconnaissance aircraft, if not bombers. This meant he would have to spend the next sixteen hours or so submerged. Since full speed submerged on batteries was eight knots, he would not get far enough on available battery power to make it worthwhile; for it would not get him out of the Japanese shipping lane to the Lingayen Gulf. But he had to hide.

"Dive," Commander MacGregor ordered. "Dive! Dive! Dive!" the talker repeated.

The lookouts, then the officer of the deck, then the chief of the boat, dropped quickly through the hatch.

The captain took one last look through his binoculars as water began to break over the bow, and then dropped through the hatch himself.

The roar of the diesels had died; now there was the whine of the electric motors.

MacGregor issued the necessary orders. They were to maintain headway, that was all; as little battery energy as possible was to be expended. They might need the batteries to run if they were spotted by a Japanese destroyer. He was to be called immediately if Sonar heard anything at all, and in any event fifteen minutes before daylight. Then be made his way to his cabin.

Captain Banning was sitting on a Navy-gray metal chair before the fold-down desk. MacGregor was a little surprised that the Marine officer was not in a bunk.

"Good morning," MacGregor said. "You heard? We're submerged."

"And you want to hit the sack," Banning said. "If you'll point me in the direction of where you want me, I'll get out of your way."

"Coffee keeps most people awake," MacGregor said. "Perverse bastard that I am, I always have a cup before I go to bed. You're not keeping me up."

"I'm not sleepy," Banning said. "I've been cat-napping. I did that all the time ashore, but I thought that was because it was quiet. I thought the noises on here would keep me awake, but they haven't."

"I think it would be easier for both of us if you used my bunk," MacGregor said. "Whenever you're ready…"

"I could use a cup of coffee," Banning said. "Yours is first rate. And it's in short supply ashore."

"I'll get us a pitcher," MacGregor said. "Cream and sugar?"

"Black, please," Banning said.

When he returned with the stainless steel pitcher of coffee, MacGregor filled Banning's cup three-quarters full.

"There's your coffee, Captain," he said.