The Commodore (9 page)

“We've refueled and reprovisioned. I need some ammo, but they wouldn't bring it pierside. I expect to rearm tomorrow at anchorage.”

Halsey nodded approvingly. “We may have stopped them for the moment, but they'll be back. And so will
J. B. King.
I'll take care of Admiral Lee's concerns. You get rearmed.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sluff said, standing up. He hadn't finished the Scotch but it had hit him anyway.

“You okay?” Halsey asked.

“Indians and firewater,” Sluff said. “I appreciate the hospitality, but I don't drink unless I know there's a night off to recover.”

Halsey grinned. “I can guarantee you one night off, Captain,” he said. “But after that—”

“Yes, sir, we'll be ready.”

“Once again: Good job getting those people out of the water. The battleships couldn't stay there, not with Jap destroyers swarming everywhere, and you were the only tin can left. Good decision.”

“Thanks, Admiral,” Sluff said.

As he walked through the chief of staff's office, he and Browning exchanged angry looks. “Be seeing you, Commander,” Browning said, deliberately not calling Sluff by his proper title of Captain.

“Anytime,
Captain,
” Sluff replied. “Call me Tonto again when you come. See what happens. Sir.”

Browning glared again, but kept his mouth shut. Sluff wondered if Halsey had overheard their little exchange. Suddenly, he didn't give a damn.

 

SEVEN

The phone over his head squeaked. Sluff opened both eyes this time, and saw daylight streaming through his lone unbolted porthole. He looked at his watch. Almost nine. As he reached for the phone he realized the exec must have put the word out: Leave the skipper alone until he's had the sleep he needs. “Thanks, Bob,” Sluff said. “I better get up and at 'em before the new commodore catches me sleeping in. Appreciate that, by the way. Not sure how you kept the entire ship quiet like that.”

“You may not have been the sole late sleeper,” Bob said. “I've alerted the signal bridge to be watching for a light from
Gary
and Mose is inbound with coffee and a fat pill.”

He'd returned to the ship after his meeting with Halsey and met with the exec and the department heads. Everyone was impressed that he'd actually met Halsey and even had a drink with him. Sluff told them what the admiral had said about their efforts to rescue all those people. He kept his little argument with the chief of staff to himself. After his debrief, he and the exec retired to the inport cabin, where Sluff did tell the exec about Browning, and predicted that there might yet be some fallout from all that.

“Best cure for that noise is to get back to sea and away from all this headquarters crap,” Bob had said. “And, in that regard, we finally have a home. We've been assigned to DesDiv Two-Twelve. One Commodore Latham is the division commander, embarked in
Gary.
I don't know if there's a squadron commodore. There's one other ship, the
Westin,
and they'll be arriving in port here tomorrow at noon. We'll chop when they get here and probably head north tomorrow afternoon sometime.”

“Perfect timing,” Sluff had said. “I'll feel a lot better with a divcom between me and all these flags.”

“That depends on the new divcom,” Bob had pointed out. “Some of these guys can be real sundowners. And, now, Captain, I have some more message traffic for you.”

Two hours later the ship had come fully back to life. The deck divisions were giving the topside another scrubbing to remove the final traces of fuel oil from the survivor-pickup operation. The engineers were completing repairs on one of the main feed pumps in preparation for lighting off the forward plant. Sluff had ordered the signal bridge to send an Able Jig to the commodore, whose flagship had anchored two miles away to receive a fuel barge. ComDesDiv 212 had replied with a curt acknowledgment and a request for a readiness-for-sea report. The ammo barge had come alongside
King
at the appointed time and a conga line of sailors was humping five-inch rounds fore and aft to the pass-down scuttles.

Sluff, sitting in his chair on the bridge, initialed the RFS report and handed it back to the exec. As soon as the ammo was safely stored in the magazines, they'd be ready to get under way on one hour's notice. The three Bs of warship survival: beans, bullets, and black oil. The forward plant was coming back on the line, the aerials had been repaired, and Sluff sensed that the crew was ready to get back to dealing with the Japs.

“Bridge, Signal Bridge.”

“Whatcha got, Sigs?” Sluff answered. The officer of the deck watch was set back on the quarterdeck while the ship was at anchor, but the signalmen, the eyes of the ship, always knew where to find the captain.

“Gig approaching, Cap'n,” the chief said. “Got a ball. Might be the new commodore. We can't make out a burgee while he's bow-on.”

A brass ball on the flagstaff of the approaching boat meant a four-striper on board. “Right,” Sluff said. “Make sure the exec and quarterdeck are ready. I'll come back to meet him.”

By the time Sluff got back to the quarterdeck, the swallow-tailed red and white pennant on the boat's flagstaff was finally visible. The exec was waiting and ready, the quarterdeck cleared of all the usual stand-arounders, and swabs were being deployed along the main deck to get the last traces of fuel oil off the route to the captain's cabin.

The commodore turned out to be a red-faced man, a bit overweight and shorter than Sluff. He came up the accommodation ladder, saluted the national ensign on the fantail, saluted the officer of the deck, and requested permission to come aboard. The petty officer of the deck rang out four bells on the topside speakers and announced, “Destroyer Division Two-Twelve, arriving.”

“Welcome aboard, Commodore,” Sluff said, extending a hand. He had to bend a little bit to achieve the handshake. The commodore looked up at him, squinted, and then said, “Harmon Wolf, right?”

“Yes, sir, and this is my exec, Bob Frey.”

The commodore shook hands with the exec and then wrinkled his nose. “You have a fuel spill?” he asked. His eyes were darting around, doing a quick inspection.

“No, sir,” Sluff said. “We picked up the survivors of
Walke, Calhoun
, and
Morgan.
They were pretty much covered in it.”

“Oh, right,” the commodore said. “Okay, let's go to my cabin.”

Sluff glanced at the exec before answering. First little hiccup. “We can go to
my
cabin if you'd like, Commodore,” he said. “But the unit commander's cabin on this ship was converted to a Combat Information Center when she was built.”

The commodore blinked as if totally surprised by this news. “I had planned to embark, Captain,” he said, his almost petulant tone of voice indicating that he was not pleased by this unexpected development.

“You still can, of course,” Sluff said. “I'll move into my sea cabin, you take over my inport cabin. We'll fit your staff in wherever we can.”

The commodore nodded. This was the standard procedure, but he'd obviously expected that a brand-new destroyer like
J. B. King
would be properly appointed to support a unit commander.

Sluff and the exec escorted the commodore to Sluff's inport cabin. They had to dodge sailors who were reloading ready-service AA ammunition clips along the deck mounts and sponging up little patches of fuel oil. The exec had sent the petty officer of the watch ahead to clear the way, but there was still a lot of activity. The sailors tried not to stare at the diminutive division commander. The commodore's eyes never stopped moving, looking over every detail as he made his way up the main deck. Once they were in the cabin, Mose brought coffee. Sluff sat at his desk, the commodore in the only other chair, and the exec plopped down on the couch.

“Tell me about the battleship fight,” the commodore said. “And why
J. B. King
left the formation.”

Whoops, Sluff thought. Word do get around. He nodded and related what he'd told Halsey. When he was finished, the commodore sat there without saying anything. Then he got up and began to pace around the cabin. “That will not happen under my command, Captain,” he said. “I want to make sure you understand that.”

“Absolutely, Commodore,” Sluff said. “Unfortunately we didn't have a unit commander for the destroyers, and Admiral Lee—”

The commodore turned and shook his finger sideways. “Admirals do not normally communicate with individual ship captains,” he said. “But when they do, it's incumbent on you to follow the last order given and
not
to take independent action.”

“Our last order from Admiral Lee was to open fire when the big guys did.”

“Not talking about that,” the commodore said. “Talking about your last stationing order. The last order to you was to take station in the van. Absent any other orders, that's where you were supposed to stay.”

“And be torn up by the Long Lances that I knew were coming?”

“You could not know that,” the commodore pointed out. “You might
suppose
that, but you could not
know
that.”

“And, yet, we're here now, and the rest of the van destroyers are on the bottom of Ironbottom Sound.”

The commodore stared at him. Sluff realized he might have gone a few words too far, but, on the other hand, he might as well stake out his command philosophy while he could. Or, while you're still in command, he realized.

“XO,” the commodore said, softly. “Give us a minute, please.”

The exec got up and left the cabin. When the door closed, the commodore sat back down. “You're new to this, Wolf,” he said. “Your ship is new, your crew is new, and
you
are new. That's the only reason I'm not going to relieve you of command right here and now. Here's a secret you apparently don't know: When a senior officer gives an order, it just might be that he knows a lot more than you do about the tactical situation. He may or may not have time to bring you into the picture. He may only have time to give you an order. And when the senior officer does that, and the junior officer does something else, it can fuck
everything
up. In your case it didn't, but if you make a habit of obeying some orders and not others, inevitably it will. I have to know,
right now,
that if I give you tactical orders, you will obey them to the letter and you will not ‘improvise' according to your instincts, hunches, or superstitions.”

“Yes, sir,” Sluff said.

“You'd better,” the commodore said. “I intend to run a tight division. We're only three ships right now, but more are coming out from Pearl and even LantFleet to make up for our losses out here. We will drill and we will practice and we will drill some more, so that when the Japs come, they'll be facing an enemy as disciplined as they are. I do not care what
you
think about anything, but you'd damned well better care about what I think of you and your ship. Clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Sluff said. He felt his face getting face red with embarrassment.

“Good,” the commodore said. “One last thing: I understand you've been to see Halsey?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don't do that again, ever.”

“They summoned me, Commodore,” Sluff said. “It's not like I went looking for an audience.”

“Bully for you,” the commodore said. “But understand this: In the future, they'll summon
me.
And if they summon you,
you
summon me, got it?”

I wonder, Sluff thought. If Halsey wanted the straight skinny, he was reportedly inclined to go directly to the source. “Yes, sir,” he said again.

“Now you may call my gig,” the commodore said.

“Will you still want to embark, Commodore?” Sluff asked.

“I'll let you know, Captain,” the commodore said. Sluff called the exec back in and asked him to escort the commodore back to the quarterdeck. He should have been the one to do that, but at the moment, he was too angry to be sufficiently respectful. As the commodore left, he did have to ask himself the question: Who you mad at—him or yourself?

Destroyer Division 212 set sail from Nouméa Harbor at four thirty that afternoon. The commodore's flagship, USS
Gary
, a Porter-class, led the column of three, with
Westin,
a Benson-class, second, and
J. B. King
bringing up the rear. The commodore's staff had sent over a copy of the DesDiv 212 standard operating procedures, which Sluff had read and then told the exec to make sure all the officers read as well. As the ships left port and navigated through the minefield channel, the commodore used signal flag hoists for all his tactical signals. The ships were stationed at five-hundred-yard intervals, the traditional distance between destroyer-type ships operating in a column formation.

Sluff was sitting in his captain's chair, watching carefully as the ships turned through the various legs of the swept channel. The quartermasters and the exec were busy taking fixes every three minutes to make sure that they didn't play follow-the-leader into the minefield. When they finally emerged, the formation speed was increased to twenty-seven knots and a course was set for Guadalcanal, nearly six hundred miles distant. The commodore signaled one of the numbered zigzag plans, executed it, and the ships then began to make seemingly random course changes, turning together alternately left and then right of the base course in accordance with a cammed clock mounted on the steering console. The commodore had put them on one hour's notice for thirty-four knots, which meant that the engineers down below had to light off the other two boilers periodically just to keep them hot.

The exec, finished with close navigation, came over to the chair.