Path of the Storm

by Douglas Reeman

  Gunnar cleared his throat again. ‘I know that some of you were expecting to go to newer and bigger ships, were perhaps hoping to see a bit of shore-time.’ He set his mouth in a smile, but sensed the latent hostility in the faces and the quick exchange of glances. ‘Well, in this man’s navy every day can bring a surprise. The job in hand is the one that counts. The one we have to concentrate our efforts on.’

  In spite of his every effort Gunnar was unable to work up any enthusiasm, even his own words seemed to mock him. The job in hand! What a joke! By a roundabout course he was to take the Hibiscus south-west and then north-east to the isolated island group of Payenhau, about one hundred miles south of Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek’s stronghold. They couldn’t have sent him further from the scene of operations if they had posted him to Niagara Falls! Payenhau was off the shipping routes, pretty barren and seemingly useless but for one thing which had just been noticed by the brains in Washington. The tiny group lay between Taiwan to the north and the uncertain hotch-potch of newly hatched nations, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, to the south. A small chink in the protective ring around the Communist mainland. Its very isolation was one good point, but the fact that its sheltered anchorage was extremely well protected and deep decided the next course of events. Hibiscus would, without fuss or drawing attention to herself, carry out a survey of the anchorage, check the island for security and then report back her findings. Then, if all went well, Gunnar was ordered to prepare permanent moorings for one vessel, one of the navy’s cream, a Polaris submarine.

  The planners thought that it would be a nice quiet place for a single submarine to rest up during a tour of duty, without actually being taken off operational control. There the crew could find a small break in the monotony of canned movies and stale air, could stretch their legs and sniff at the grass, if there was any. Small maintenance jobs could be carried out in the sheltered safety of the anchorage, and perhaps in time bigger things would be laid on.

  The other important point was that the arrangement would be with the full blessing of the Nationalist government in Taiwan. The Chinese would be in it, and not just onlookers. It was their island, and not just another American base. Short of actually supplying the Chinese with nuclear submarines for their own use—and this was generally decided to be nothing more than laying the keel of World War III—it was thought to be far better to make them feel they were entirely involved in the full naval operations of the China Seas. Like a constant barricade, the terrifying power of the Seventh Fleet guarded the Formosa Strait, and was in constant readiness for a major conflict, but the Red power for subversion and inner destruction had to be fought by the people themselves. American help was always generous, but it was more than often wasted. It started as a bonus for the underprivileged peoples of South East Asia, and then became part of their lives. From that moment they came to rely on American help, and when at any time it was withdrawn, it left behind not gratitude but bitterness and even open revolt.

  Gunnar’s orders made the Hibiscus’s task sound almost important if not actually vital. But, try as he might, Gunnar could see no further than the personal slur this assignment implied.

  Suddenly he could find no more words, no further explanations. He nodded to the big lieutenant. ‘Very well, Mister Maddox. Dismiss the hands.’

  Lieutenant Maddox turned about and saluted, his tanned, athlete’s face uncomfortable. ‘Oh, Captain, the matter of liberty!’ He looked vaguely over the port rail towards the town. ‘A last look for some of them, sir?’

  Gunnar felt a surge of unreasonable anger in his throat. They had not even been listening to his words! All they thought about was getting ashore again, women and cheap drink!

  ‘No liberty!’ His grey eyes had hardened. ‘We sail as planned. Tell the O.O.D. to stay at the brow and ensure that no one goes ashore for any reason!’

  Maddox nodded glumly. ‘Very well, sir.’

  Gunnar stepped from the raft and swayed. He realised that he had been standing too long in the blazing sun, and his shirt was already black with sweat. Damn them, he thought vaguely. But they’re not going to mess things up for me, the ship, or anything else!

  Maddox stepped to his side, his voice quiet. ‘Are you okay, sir?’

  Gunnar turned, the anger checked just in time. ‘Thank you, yes. I’d like to see you and the engineer officer in half an hour.’

  With quickening steps Gunnar hurried down the narrow side deck which he knew he would soon know like his own skin, and within minutes had thrown himself full length on his bunk in the semi-darkness of his small cabin. It was no use. He would have to exercise more self-control. They would be looking for weakness, watching him at each testing moment. He lay back and closed his eyes. Perhaps it would be better once they were at sea. Deep in his heart he knew that was not so. He not only had to prove himself to the ship and to the admiral, he had to believe in his own judgement and ability. Nothing could change the past. But only the immediate future could help ease the inner pain of it.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Robert Maddox watched the seamen breaking away and hurrying below to the doubtful coolness of the overhead fans, and then removed his cap. Thoughtfully he ran his fingers through his thick, rebellious hair and stared at the blinding glitter across the crowded harbour. Now the actual moment had arrived he was more than apprehensive. Inwardly he cursed himself for his lack of foresight. After all, he had done staff work in Japan, he should have known the mind of top brass well enough to foresee a change of sailing orders for the Hibiscus.

  For three months Maddox had lived a life of comparative bliss as executive officer of the dry-docked ship. Half the crew had been discharged, and the remainder were either billeted ashore or merely dropping aboard from time to time to attend to small jobs outside the province of the dockyard workers. The officers lived in hotels, and but for the O.O.D. hardly ever put in an appearance. Even the O.O.D. usually managed to detail one of the chiefs for his job while he joined his friends in some bar or other. It was an ideal existence for the officers, a suitable ending to a fairly uneventful commission. Maddox, as a high-and-dry exec, enjoyed the luxury of granting the other officers’ fancies and requests. It was unlikely that they would ever meet again in another ship, so what the hell? The previous captain had been flown home to the States to be discharged. He was old for his rank and had been too often passed over for advancement to be given a new appointment. Unable to see the end of his last ship, or even greet the man sent to relieve him, he had passed from their lives with hardly a word, except to the engineer officer, who still refused to say what had passed between them.

  Now there was Gunnar, as young and fresh as the previous captain had been jaded and bitter. With the complication of new orders, and the sudden influx of spare men to replace the discharged ones, it should have been fine to receive a captain like Gunnar. Impassive, competent-looking, with decorations to prove his worth, he should have been the man for any job.

  Maddox decided that his own sense of guilt was more than half to blame for his inner uncertainty. If only he had kept a tighter rein on things during the refit, not allowed the other officers to gang up and take advantage of him. Before it had not mattered. Soon, within hours of this moment, the ship would be alive again, at sea, a moving factor which contained and controlled them all. And he was exec, expected to enforce discipline over the men who had done as they liked under his control in the past, and expected to present the little, dated ship to the new captain as a going concern. It was all very Worrying.

  Maddox was unconcerned about his own ability as an officer. What he lacked in open ambition he made up for with dogged determination and stubbornness a mile wide. As a lieutenant (jg) he had served his time with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, where every officer, high or low, was expected to perform ten duties at one. His tough and cheerful acceptance of tasks, his ability to handle even the most reluctant seaman plus the fact that he had captained the water-polo team which beat the British
at Malta, had brought him to the area of recognition. Upon promotion to lieutenant he had been appointed to the communications staff in Japan.

  Japan. Just to think of it made Maddox’s wide mouth water. The life dreamed of by every unmarried officer. And a man of Maddox’s simple earthy requirements had found all the enjoyment he needed. Office hours, not too much work, and a new world to be found every night. And there was Mary. She was a navy nurse, and should therefore have known better, Maddox told himself repeatedly. They had had a whirlwind affair which lasted six months. When she had told him that she was pregnant Maddox had been shocked, and immediately protective. Three hours later he managed to convince himself that it was not completely his fault. The following day he was certain that he had been wronged. Sitting at his desk at headquarters he had been idly leafing through a sheaf of despatches concerning ship movements when he had spied the one referring to the old Hibiscus. Two swift telephone calls, and a brief interview with the flag lieutenant had done the rest. Within three days Maddox was winging over the East China Sea en route for Hong Kong and his first post as exec.

  His nagging feelings of guilt and uncertainty were soon lost in the excitement and noisy gaiety of Hong Kong. A fine-boned Eurasian secretary had finished the job for him, and only that morning he had left her crying quietly in his hotel room. And Mary? She had probably already been flown Stateside and been cared for by the system.

  Maddox had anticipated a quick return to Japan after Hibiscus had been handed over to the Nationalists at Taiwan, but overnight everything had changed again. The new captain for instance. He had started off friendly enough, yet Maddox, who was not entirely insensitive, felt that Gunnar was finding every hour of contact with his exec a tremendous effort. That first meeting in Gunnar’s cabin, he had watched his almost boyish features harden with surprising swiftness at the slightest mention of the past. When Maddox had spoken indifferently about Payenhau and the job Hibiscus had been given, Gunnar had burst out, ‘We’ll make a good job of it whatever they give us!’ Then he had looked almost embarrassed and said: ‘Sorry. I’m a bit tired.’ He had stood just below the overhead light, his short fair hair giving his pale features a touch of Scandinavian coolness, yet the quick movements of his hands making a lie of his outward calm.

  Maddox walked to the rail and stared down at the scum and flotsam which bobbed trapped alongside. He would have to watch Regan, the first lieutenant, he thought grimly. Next to the departed captain, and Maddox’s predecessor who had been promoted to command a destroyer, Regan was the senior officer remaining from the original wardroom. He was a hard man with little conversation. But he retained the knack of short bitter attacks on anything and anybody who crossed his path. He took a malicious delight in riding the two junior lieutenants, Kroner and Inglis, and was not slow to taunt Maddox when he had explained that the actual task allotted Hibiscus was a secret prior to sailing.

  Regan had grinned, showing his big teeth like an evil rabbit. ‘Why all the secrecy then? It’s a load of unnecessary crap to make the new skipper feel a bit more important than he really is!’

  When Maddox had failed to answer he had added: ‘One more damned has-been, I guess! Who else would be given this rust-bucket?’ He had laughed his short, barking laugh. The sure sign of a man lacking real humour.

  Maddox had made his first effort at that point to assert his authority. ‘You know you shouldn’t speak about the captain like that in front of me!’

  Regan’s grin had widened. ‘Oh Jesus! Surely you’re not crawling to him!’

  Kroner, the communications officer, who was a bit scared of Regan’s cruel wit, had laughed weakly.

  Maddox had let his heavy limbs relax slightly. Open conflict was unwanted, but it was something he understood very well. ‘Talk like that again in my presence, Alan, and I’ll log you!’ He had felt a grin spreading in spite of his faster breathing. ‘Then I’ll smash your goddamed teeth down your throat, okay?’

  They had not spoken since.

  He glanced up at the stack, from which he could just make out the shimmering haze of gas. It would soon be time. Just a few tugging wires kept the ship tied to the other world of temptation and personal ambition. Once free, their destinies would be bound together, and under the hand of Mark Gunnar.

  Half an hour before the captain had mustered the crew to ‘read himself in’, Maddox had asked jokingly: ‘What sort of people do they have in Payenhau anyway, sir? I’ve been looking at the manuals and the place seems a bit bleak.’

  Gunnar had torn himself from some inner thoughts with obvious effort and looked at him for several seconds. ‘It’s a Chinese penal settlement.’

  Now Maddox wondered if the captain had suspected him of asking a trick question. He had heard it said that Gunnar had been a prisoner of the Reds in Viet Nam. Maddox shook his head and sighed aloud. In this heart, and with a dozen sailing preparations to complete, it was possible to attach stupid significance to anything.

  Chief Tasker, the chief gunner’s mate, clumped to his side and stood watching the exec with dull, embittered eyes. He was a dour man, tall and gaunt like a skeleton, yet so efficient that he could usually foresee any accident on deck, be it with gear or a matter of seamanship, before it had happened. He had been in the ship a long time, and refused one transfer after another. Like the engineer officer, he never explained his reasons. In fact Tasker rarely explained anything. He disliked officers, yet sought no companionship from the enlisted men.

  Maddox eyed him warily. ‘Well?’

  ‘About this liberty.’ Tasker’s small jaw jutted stubbornly. ‘Some of my party want to slip across and buy some gear before we sail.’

  Maddox sighed. ‘You heard the captain, Chief!’

  Tasker grunted. ‘I’ll tell them you said they can’t go, sir.’ His dull eyes seemed to gleam momentarily with some small pleasure. ‘They’ll like that!’

  ‘They can go to hell as far as I care!’ Maddox was tired. Weary from three months of sexual pleasures, and now dragged down with the burden of duty. ‘And so can you, Chief!’

  Tasker touched his cap. ‘Thank you, sir.’ He strode away, his heels digging at the steel decks with each long-legged step.

  Deep in thought, Maddox walked slowly to the brow where Lieutenant Inglis, pistol on hip, stood gloomily staring at the water.

  ‘Okay, Peter?’ Maddox joined him at the rail.

  Inglis shrugged. ‘O.O.D. is grim at any time.’

  Maddox stretched his massive arms. ‘I’m going to shower and change. I’ll be below if you want me.’ He suddenly remembered that he could no longer call his room his own. Accommodation was tight at any time. The additional body of the doctor, Connell, had been quartered with him in the upper bunk.

  I wonder why they want a doctor? he thought uneasily. Various visions of one pox or another flitted through his weary mind, but he could find no satisfaction. Nor could he with the captain’s explanation. He suspected that Gunnar was a bit puzzled too.

  He forced a grin. What the hell was the use of moaning all the time? There had to be a break somewhere!

  He slapped the young lieutenant’s shoulders. ‘See you in hell!’

  After all, he told himself as he stood noisily twisting beneath the cold shower, a change was everything. In any case, even on Payenhau there might be one more girl who wanted to share her problems.

  The thought gave him immediate comfort, and he began to sing.

  * * *

  Before the sun had time to touch the glittering horizon line the nightlife of Hong Kong had swung into first gear. Every house, shopfront and moored merchant ship, seemingly every window in the smooth-fronted skyscrapers, sparkled in a million lights of as many hues and shades. It was as if each of the thousands of searching, restless souls was out and about in search of final salvation, and the sounds of pumping music mingled with the slow grinding growl of traffic even reached the darkly shadowed hull of the Hibiscus.

  The fading light along the dockside gave the shi
p a kind of beauty, and as the navigation lights opened their red and green eyes on either side of the bridge it was indeed like a reawakening.

  The brow had been dragged ashore, and only a few lines now held the slender hull to the squeaking pontoons.

  On the bridge the duty officers moved quietly and purposefully in the cramped space, the only lights coming from the ready-use chart table and from the gyro repeater. Voice-pipes squeaked and stuttered, their voices connecting the bridge with every part of the ship, while telephones buzzed, were answered and then discarded as the ship went through the final motions of getting under way, with the indifferent thoroughness of a ballistic rocket about to be fired from its pad.

  Mark Gunnar plucked at the collar pins of his shirt and glanced briefly along the shadowed jetty. A warm evening breeze pushed impatiently at the hull and chilled the skin at his throat. He could see the mooring wires tautening and slackening with each moist breath of wind as the hull was pushed jerkily away from the land.

  All the reports had been completed. Lieutenant George Malinski had sounded quietly competent from the bowels of the engine room, and Gunnar had had a brief picture of the composed little man standing loosely on his catwalk, whilst around him the dials and repeaters clicked and purred into life, and the engines waited like great shining beasts to be unleashed. He was a good man, Gunnar thought. He would have liked him up here on the bridge.

  He could sense Lieutenant Inglis at the rear of the compass platform by the telephone talker, his frail figure outlined against the black rectangle of the charthouse door.

  Maddox was half lying over the port wing, his big body jerking as he called down instructions to some of the side party.

  That would be Lieutenant Regan in the eyes of the ship, his face in dark shadow as he stood beside his fo’c’slemen watching the bridge.

  Aft on the fantail Kroner could be heard shouting in his high-pitched voice at some anonymous seaman who had failed to release enough wire to allow the impatient dockworkers sufficient slack to free the shore end of it when the order was called.