On Seas So Crimson

by James Young

  “Oh my word,” Norah gasped, the mental image playing in her mind. “That’s horrible.”

  “Yeah, Trevor’s lucky to be alive, both because of the crash and the fact that the mud and water smothered the flames without drowning him.”

  Lucky to be alive is in the eye of the beholder, Adam thought.

  “So what happened to you after the Treaty of Kent?” Fussner asked.

  “I caught a ship out of Portsmouth to South Africa,” Adam said. “From there, caught a South African tramp steamer to the Dutch East Indies—where I got hunted down by a man my father had sent to tell me Mom was dying.”

  “Jesus,” Fussner said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Everyone’s sorry,” Adam said sadly, “which makes no sense, since they didn’t give her the cancer.”

  Fussner looked at him uncomfortably.

  “Sorry, that was awfully poor of me,” Adam apologized. “I guess I just took it for granted that she’d always be there. So what’s the Army Air Corps setup?”

  “They’re bringing a bunch of us Eagles together, yes,” Fussner said, giving Norah a sidelong glance.

  Ah, don’t want to take a chance that our lovely Miss Norah might be a German spy, Adam thought.

  “Let me guess—you’re joining Don Blakeslee?” Adam asked with a smile.

  “How did you know that?” Fussner asked, raising an eyebrow. Adam quickly told Fussner of his time waiting for the United States to allow him back into the country.

  “Lot of sleeping, lot of poker playing,” Adam said. “All the time wondering if my mother was going to die before I got home.”

  Fussner looked at his watch.

  “Not to cut this short,” Fussner said, “but that statement about sleep reminded me I should catch some shuteye before we get to Denver.” With that, Fussner stood up, Adam sliding out of his chair right behind the Army officer. He extended his hand.

  “Good luck to you,” Adam said solemnly.

  “You too, Major Haynes. Gentlemen,” Fussner said, nodding to Burke and West.

  “Sir,” the two men replied nearly in unison. Looking at Norah still sitting down, then at Adam, they both nodded in Norah’s direction.

  “Nice meeting you ma’am,” Burke said. “We’ve got to get back to our game.”

  “The pleasure is mutual,” Norah said, smiling.

  The three other pilots left, leaving Adam and Norah sitting alone. The dining car was starting to pick up in business, but Adam decided to go ahead and buy Norah another soda. He returned with it a moment later, the two of them staring at the plains of Kansas passing by. Adam looked off to the south and noticed the sky darkening, a massive thunderhead starting to form.

  “You know, I’ve read the Wizard of Oz…” he started.

  “I’m sure it’ll miss us,” Norah said, stopping him. There was another moment of silence as they watched the storm continuing to build. Finally, Norah turned to him, looking him square in the eyes.

  “Forgive me for prying, and since there’s a chance we’ll never ever speak again I understand if you don’t want to tell me,” Norah started with a rush. “I just want to know what you said when the Americans asked you to join them in Britain.”

  Adam looked away, staring out into the Plains. As he looked out the window, his eyes started to glisten.

  “That I didn’t have the time or the inclination to teach and fly with a whole bunch of men who were going to be dead in six months anyway,” Adam said quietly. “It’s a statement that’s haunted me ever since because I was right—out of the six men who came to see me, only Fussner and Trevor are still alive. Out of the three squadrons of Eagles that started the Second Battle, only seven of the original pilots remain.”

  Norah placed her hands on Adam’s, startling him into looking at her.

  “I’m no expert at fighting,” Norah said. “I can’t even beat up my sisters, much less shoot at some men I don’t know. But I do know that those sound like pretty long odds, and I don’t think you would’ve made much of a difference in them.”

  “I might’ve been able to do more, maybe taught them something,” Adam said. “I was too focused on killing Germans to care…that’s why I wanted to stay with the Poles so badly.”

  “Why do you hate Germans so much?” Norah asked, squeezing his hands as she looked into his face. Adam found himself wanting to tell her to mind her own business, then stopped.

  “Do they teach you interrogation in nursing school?” he asked quietly.

  “Usually they give us a scalpel,” Norah joked quietly, causing Adam to laugh. “Seriously, they teach us to recognize pain, and you seem to have a lot of it.”

  “You’re going to think me a bit strange,” Adam replied.

  “You have a price on your head, and you appear to be addicted to danger. Besides, you’re talking to a woman who is traveling across the country to draw little lines on paper…I don’t think I can comment much on strange.”

  “I loved a woman…” Adam started, then swallowed hard. “Her name was Zepherine, and she was a nurse. She and I were engaged, and we always joked we’d get married in Paris once all the insanity in Spain was over.”

  Once more, he looked out onto the Plains, this time with the tears actually starting to roll down his face. He angrily wiped them away.

  “You know, it’s all right for a man to cry,” Norah said gently, glad to see they were still somewhat away from everyone.

  “Oh, I know,” Adam said. “My mother used to always yell at my Dad when he told me men don’t cry. She’d remind him that it was a toss up who cried more when I was born, me or Dad.”

  Norah laughed along with Adam, waiting for him to finish.

  “Well, on April 26, 1937, Zepherine was in Guernica, Spain, at the hospital,” Adam seethed. “It was clearly marked with Red Crosses, the town all but defenseless, but the Germans didn’t care.”

  Adam could hear the bitterness in his own voice, the anger that always began to creep in when he thought about that day. He had been on his way to the town to tell Zepherine she needed to leave, to escape, to flee with him out of Spain.

  Probably some folks who would have thought me a coward, Adam thought. But the damn Fascists were starting to force us back towards Balboa. To his utter regret, he had gotten to the outskirts of town just in time to see the air raid in all its awesome glory.

  “The Germans razed the town,” Adam continued. “Once their fighters had cleared the air, they came down to strafe, killing everyone, even women and children, in the streets. Only darkness stopped them from continuing to murder people from the skies.”

  “Adam, you’re hurting my hands,” Norah said calmly. Adam looked down, shocked, and realized that he had begun to grip with all his strength.

  You would think that I would learn to stop holding a woman’s hand when I’m talking about Germans, he thought, letting go and starting to pull his hands back in shame. Norah reached out with surprising speed and gripped them.

  “It’s all right,” she said soothingly.

  Adam could see the chaotic scene in his mind’s eye, the flames leaping and throwing chaotic shadows in the gloom, the smoke choking his lungs as he desperately searched for his beloved. It was well after midnight when he had finally found her, her body amongst a score of others mowed down by machine gun fire, splayed in the crazy manner common to violent, sudden death.

  I should have known better than to turn her over. Zepherdine’s face had been down to the street, having fallen naturally into the hollow of her arm. Foolishly, Adam had rolled her over, meaning his last memory of her would be the ruin that the German bullets had made of the left side of her face. Adam had personally carried her to the graveyard that night, paying a local priest to perform the Catholic service over her grave.

  “How much longer did you stay?” Norah asked.

  “I didn’t have any kills then,” Adam said quietly. “I had damaged a few, gotten a couple off of Frank Tinker’s tail, but not killed any of my own.”<
br />
  Looking away from the window, he looked directly at Norah, his face a terrible thing.

  “That changed,” Adam explained grimly. “I flew as much as possible over the next three weeks, until I wouldn’t be able to get out of my aircraft at night because my arms were spaghetti. I flew mainly ground attack missions because I figured I’d kill more of the bastards that way.”

  “What made you stop?” Norah asked, her voice trembling slightly at Adam’s transformation.

  “Tinker made me stop, actually,” Adam said. “Part of it was because I finally passed him in total number of kills, most of it was because there was only one other way my little campaign was going to end.”

  “I’m surprised you stopped when he told you to,” Norah observed.

  “Funny thing about being told if you’d be shot if you ever stepped into a cockpit again, it tends to persuade a person to stop doing so really quick,” Adam said. “In retrospect, Tinker saved my life. Or at least, I ended up better than he did.”

  “What do you mean?” Norah asked.

  “Poor man shot himself after Spain fell to Franco’s men,” Adam said. “Guess he couldn’t handle it. I just came home and nearly got myself disinherited by my father.”

  “What?”

  “My father had lots of German contacts,” Adam said. “He was enthralled by what Hitler did in bringing Germany out of the ashes, so he started helping those idiots in early ’38, just after I got home.”

  From the look on her face, I think she can figure out why that might not have gone over well, Adam thought. In a way, it was fortunate that Adam had relatives out in California, because going to visit them was likely the only thing that had kept him and his father from coming to blows. Seth Haynes had not approved of his son’s romantic adventurism in the first place, much less when it started to interfere with the his business dealings.

  “Do you and your father still talk to one another?” Norah asked.

  “We buried the hatchet when I was finally let back into the country,” Adam said. “The Lufwaffe firebombing and gassing London…well, that really put things in perspective for him.”

  “Did you see London after the Germans bombed it?” Norah asked.

  “Not much,” Adam stated, feeling uncomfortable as he remembered whom he’d been with at the time. “Tried to find a friend’s mother and wife, but there was too much fire and gas.”

  “I still can’t believe the Royal Family fled,” Norah observed.

  “I can’t believe the King is dead,” Adam replied wearily. “At least, minus South Africa, almost everyone decided to fight on.”

  “Judging from Mr. Churchill’s speeches,” Norah said, “the Commonwealth won’t rest until they see Germany destroyed.”

  Well Churchill says a lot of things, Adam thought. They should have listened to him during those nine months of ‘peace’ after Hitler died.

  “Lots of war to fight yet,” Adam allowed. “opefully the Russians are able to hold on, or good ol’ Winston can give all the speeches he wants.”

  “You seem skeptical,” Norah snorted.

  “With the Vichies throwing in with the Krauts, that’s a lot of ground to fight over to Germany,” Adam replied.

  “But you just mentioned the Russians…” Norah began.

  “I had a chance to talk with a very interesting gentleman, a White Russian, on the way to South Africa from Great Britain,” Adam said, his tone forlorn. “Some of the things he told me were going on in Russia, with Stalin…let’s just say allying with that man’s like cutting a deal with the Devil himself.”

  “Now you sound like Mr. Churchill,” Norah laughed.

  “Mr. Churchill’s no dummy,” Adam retorted. “I think he knows Mr. Stalin probably has more blood on his hands than Hitler, the former’ss just a little more keen on keeping things in house.”

  Norah sighed, shaking her head.

  “I think that you have led a very interesting life, Adam, and we better get back to our booth before people start to think we’ve snuck back to the sleeper cars,” Norah said.

  Adam gave her a wry look.

  “That would be mighty forward of me, I think,” Adam stated.

  “And very foolish to attempt,” Norah glowered.

  Hey, you brought it up, Adam thought.

  “Do you play gin rummy?” Adam said, changing the subject. “I’ve got a deck of cards in my travel bag.”

  “No, but I’m willing to learn,” Norah said. “I think we’ve got a couple more days on this train ride until Seattle.”

  “Yeah, at least,” Adam said, standing up to pull out Norah’s chair. “But I guess it beats being chased over southern England by a bunch of murderous Germans.”

  “I would certainly hope my company wasn’t that trying,” Norah snickered, giving Adam a hard look.

  “No, not that trying,” Adam said, then quickly dodged her playful swat at him. The two of them headed back towards the car, Adam walking behind Norah.

  Nope, not that trying at all…and the view is certainly better, Adam thought.

  Houston

  1500 Local (0300 Eastern)

  5 May (4 May)

  “Well, that tears it,” Captain Wallace said, reading the signal being relayed from the Hobart, the next ship forward in the Allied formation. “XO, looks like we’ll be seeing action in about two hours.”

  The signal was quite brief, it ending before ‘action’ had been out of Captain Wallace’s mouth.

  ENEMY SIGHTED, 60 MILES N, NW. ALL SHIPS FOLLOW LEADERS, PHILLIPS SENDS.

  “About damn time, I’m tired of dodging air strikes,” Jacob observed. “Let’s give these yellow bastards a kick in the teeth so they’ll go home.”

  Dumb bastards should’ve came after they bombed Surabaya, Jacob thought. Although they definitely do seem to be giving it the college try today.

  The day so far had been a festival of dodging almost hourly air attacks, most of which had been relatively inaccurate thanks to the intermittent cloud cover. Judging from the radio traffic, there was a significant aerial battle occurring both to the west and east, with fighters from both sides feasting on the bombers attempting attack the respective fleets. All Jacob knew was that the Japanese were not their normally accurate self, which was quite all right with him, especially since there had been none of the dreaded torpedo bombers.

  I hope they’re out of torpedoes, because they’ve more than made their money with those attacks, Jacob thought. Not that the Revenge handled being bombed very well. While the elderly British battleship hadn’t succumbed, her hasty underwater patch job had started to give way before she’d made it to the south side of Java. The last Jacob had heard, it was questionable whether the ship would make it to Ceylon or Sydney. As for the Hermes, her own crew and a Royal Navy repair vessel were desperately trying to patch her damage, but it was not looking good for the venerable carrier if Phillips’force failed to turn back the Japanese invasion thrust.

  “Sir, the vessel is ready in all respects,” Jacob said. “We’ve got enough fuel and ammo to get through this fight, probably another if it comes to that.”

  Although I really don’t think this is going to be a two step brawl, Jacob thought. This has the air of a grand finale. The reconnaissance reports, while confused, were pretty clear about one thing: Japanese battleships were coming down the Makassar Strait in numbers. To meet them, Admiral Phillips had consolidated all of his heavy units south of Java, then brought them north into the Java Sea under the aegis of land-based air cover.

  Then again, as slow as those old battleships are, we might have to two step just so they can get close to the enemy, Jacob thought, annoyed. In a concession to the battlecruisers Repulse and Renown’s thin armor and acknowledgment of the IJN battleline’s superior speed, Phillips had split his force into two groups. The faster vessels he placed under the control of Vice Admiral Crutchley aboard the Prince of Wales. Crutchley’s reputation, stemming from the Victoria Cross he had won in the First World War a
nd the Battle of Narvik, had many of the Allied captains believing the fight would be over by afternoon.

  Crutchley is probably glad to be finally engaging in a daylight fight, Jacob thought. Nightfall has not been friendly to the Royal Australian Navy.

  “I cannot believe that Admiral King specifically ordered Admiral Hart ashore,” Captain Wallace observed, startling Jacob.

  Then again, we are both looking at the same fast ships and wondering if we’re going to be fast enough, Jacob thought.

  “I think he’s still upset about Rear Admiral Glassford’s death,” Jacob stated.

  Or put less diplomatically, Admiral King thinks there are too many star-wearing corpses in this war already, Jacob thought uncharitably. With that idiot Admiral Jensen and most of his staff getting killed, that Army bastard riding the Shark to the bottom, plus Rear Admiral Glassford, the Navy’s not going to run out of ship names for the next decade.

  “This is what a naval officer lives for, and he’s earned this right,” Wallace stated. “I don’t think Admiral Phillips was very happy to be overruled.”

  Guess Jacob thought. Those chimps alone are going to be two or three perfectly good destroyers with bad names.

  “At least it’s not that damn Dutchman again,” Jacob muttered lowly. Captain Wallace gave him a glance, staring back into the bridge to make sure that the Dutch liaison officer, a commander from Admiral Helfrich’s staff, hadn’t overheard him.

  “XO, it’s probably time for you to head back to Battle Two,” Wallace said tightly. “Try to keep your opinions of our hosts to yourself.”

  “Aye-aye, sir,” Jacob said, saluting. “Good luck to you.”

  “And to you, XO,” Wallace replied, his face softening somewhat. “Try not to get any more stitches.”

  “Sir, you try not to get a splinter haircut,” Jacob said, heading down to the main deck. He turned and looked as the Houston began to turn to starboard, following the Hobart. As the cruiser went through her maneuvers, Jacob had an opportunity to take in the group of slower vessels.