Dolan was on the cabin floor on his side, curled up. Darmstadter looked out the windshield, then back. Dolan straightened, grew almost stiff, and then went limp.
[FOUR]
ISO Degrees 20 Minutes West Longitude
There were four people on the bridge of the conning tower of the USS Drum as she made fifteen knots on a course of 275 degrees through oil-smooth, gently rolling seas. They were almost exactly halfway around the world from the Adriatic Sea and Budapest, Hungary, where at that moment it was 5:25 a.m." February 21, "the next day."
The Drum's captain, It. Commander Edwin R. Lennox, USN, and Capt.
James M. B. Whittaker, USA AC were in clean and pressed but unstarched khakis. Commander Lennox wore a battered brimmed cap whose cover was once white, but was now nearly brown with oil stains. Captain Whittaker was hatless.
The talker, with a headset and microphone device over his head, was also hatless. He wore a light blue denim shirt and a darker-shade pair of denim trousers, as did the lookout, who also wore a blue sailor's cap, the brim of which he had turned down all around.
The lookout, Commander Lennox, and Capt. Whittaker all had identical Navy-issue Bausch & Lomb ten-power binoculars on leather straps around their necks.
Commander Lennox looked at his wristwatch, and then, with a sailor's eye, at the darkening sky.
"Anytime you're ready, Jim," Commander Lennox said, "you can go below."
Whittaker smiled.
"Aye, aye, Sir," he said.
"Permission to leave the bridge?"
"Granted," the Drum's captain replied, smiling back.
They had grown to like each other on the voyage from Pearl Harbor.
Lennox had thought about the growing friendship a good deal during that time--remembering what he had been told by a full lieutenant when he'd been an ensign aboard the Kingfisher- He'd been told that her skipper wasn't really such a hard-nosed sonofabitch as he seemed, but that a skipper couldn't afford to have friends, that command was indeed a lonely thing.
He had accepted that then because he was an ensign, and ensigns believe what they are told by full lieutenants. But it was only after they had given him the Drum, his first command, that he'd really understood it The master of a man-of-war could not have friends He could be civil and courteous, but there had to be a wall between the skipper and everybody else aboard It had a little to do with "familiarity breeds contempt," but there was more to it than that.
The captain had to appear omniscient to his crew, and one of the best ways to do that, especially if you were convinced that at least two of your officers were far smarter than you were and better leaders of men, was to be aloof, to be somewhat mysterious, to share no opinion or confidences with anybody.
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