Path of the Storm

by Douglas Reeman

  Then he turned on his heel and thrust his way through the door and back towards the bridge.

  * * *

  Maddox forced his body into a corner of the wheelhouse, his face set and determined as the public-address system squawked, ‘All officers report to the bridge!’ The words were torn away even as they were uttered, and Maddox thought that every bone in his aching body was bruised or broken by the constant, crazy tossing of the ship.

  The captain stood on the other side of the wheelhouse, his face towards the streaming glass, his shoulders stiff and squared as if on parade. The other watchkeepers still remained at their stations as if they had never moved, and the compass line appeared to be welded to the same figure, one two zero.

  First one officer and then another staggered and fell into the humid, streaming compartment, and each one seemed to forget the menace of the storm as he realised the tense atmosphere which awaited him. Only Malinski, excused because he held their lives in his hands merely by staying with his racing engines, was absent.

  Maddox checked them over and said harshly, ‘All present, sir.’ He knew that it was now or never. ‘I think I’d better tell them what’s happening, sir.’ He saw Regan’s eyebrows lift with astonishment and noticed too that the doctor’s normally impassive face seemed dazed and empty.

  Gunnar nodded curtly. ‘In the chartroom. I’ll give you three minutes.’

  They followed Maddox into the small, damp-smelling space and closed the door against the listening seamen of the watch.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ Regan rubbed his bristled chin. ‘Is this some new disaster?’

  Maddox’s eyes flashed warningly and for once Regan fell silent instantly. ‘It’s like this.’ Maddox found that he was speaking fast, like a man short of breath. ‘The captain intends to go back to Payenhau!’ He saw the mingled stares of surprise and resignation and added sharply, ‘He’s got some crazy idea that there’s a Red invasion coming off!’

  Kroner asked nervously, ‘When did all this happen?’

  ‘Right now, that’s when!’ Maddox cursed as the deck swayed and threw him against the table. ‘Bella just died. The doc says that the captain more or less made him die in agony.’ He glared at Connell’s lined face as if for support. ‘Well?’

  The doctor nodded wearily. ‘It was dreadful. He refused to allow me to kill the pain. He just wanted him to talk!’

  Brutally Maddox continued: ‘So this is the picture. Gunnar expects us to drag back to the islands and sniff out the danger. He’s got some crazy idea that it’s now or never as far as the commies are concerned.’

  Kroner asked, ‘Has he asked permission?’

  ‘No, he has not.’ Maddox sounded triumphant. ‘He says it would only be refused.’

  Regan grunted. ‘It would too. They probably expect him to run for shelter ahead of the storm. To Hong Kong perhaps.’

  Kroner peered at the bulkhead as a big wave thundered against the hull like a hammer beating an oil drum. ‘It would be a shelter in Payenhau?’ His voice sounded weak and submissive.

  The exec glared at him. ‘You’ve not understood a word, have you?’

  Regan raised his hand. ‘Just a minute! Are you saying that the captain actually asked you to get our opinion?’

  Maddox looked away, his eyes angry. ‘No. I just wanted to let him know how we all stand. If we go back there, there is bound to be a court of enquiry. What with all the other things that have happened, Gunnar’ll be lucky to keep his skin. But I want him to know that we’re against the whole crazy scheme. If we make that clear now we’ll not be held to blame.’

  Regan rubbed his chin again. ‘Hell, I’m in this for a career, I don’t want my name lumped with his in a court-martial!’ His eyes glittered across his big nose. ‘But again I don’t want to be charged with insubordination!’

  Maddox shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. I’m in too deep to pull out now.’ He looked at his brother. ‘I told the captain I’ll not be held responsible if Colonel Jago tears him apart!’

  Pip Maddox spoke for the first time. ‘I’d never have thought it possible!’ The others stared at him as he continued in a quiet, shocked tone, ‘After all he’s been through, after all he’s done, and now you’ve not the guts to back him up?’

  His brother said gruffly, ‘Stow it, Pip, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Don’t I?’ The young ensign swallowed hard. ‘I think I know the captain better than any of you. He’d bust himself wide open for any one of you if you got in a jam, but you!’ He searched their faces. ‘You don’t even rate a handshake from him!’

  Maddox lifted a telephone from the rack and waited until he could hear the captain’s brief acknowledgement. ‘I’ve spoken to the officers, Captain.’ He turned away so that he could not see Pip’s contemptuous expression. ‘I’ve told them what you intend to do. Is there no alternative?’ He waited, his eyes on the streaming metal wall.

  Gunnar must have had his lips close against the mouthpiece, his words seemed to ease their way into Maddox’s bruised mind. ‘It’s either my way or you take over the ship, Mister Maddox.’

  Maddox stared round at the others. ‘What did you say, Captain?’

  ‘I shall place myself on the sick list as from now, and you can see the ship through the typhoon.’

  Maddox gasped. In his mind he could see with devastating clarity the reeling deck when Gunnar had so skilfully swung the ship to face the oncoming storm. Even then the captain must have been planning and preparing, allowing the weather to act as his ally as he conned the ship closer to Payenhau and lengthening the last dash to Taiwan.

  ‘Take over the ship?’ He repeated the words aloud and heard Regan say sharply: ‘Like hell you will! I’d rather sail with my old mother than have you in command!’

  Maddox said quietly: ‘Very well, sir. If that’s the way you want it.’ In a sharper tone he added: ‘But this isn’t finished, Captain. You’ve no right to put the ship in danger just to work off an old score!’ But the phone was dead, and he slammed it on the rack with sudden fury.

  Regan straightened his cap. ‘Well, gentlemen, I have the deck. If you’ll excuse me?’ He grinned mirthlessly at Maddox as he passed. ‘He’s got you over a barrel at the moment, old friend.’

  Maddox watched them troop back to their stations, his brow furrowed and dark with anger. To his brother he said thickly, ‘The damn fools can’t see I was doing it for them!’

  But Pip brushed him aside, his face confused and embarrassed. ‘Were you, Bob? It didn’t sound that way to me!’ Then Maddox had the chartroom to himself.

  When he reached the wheelhouse it all seemed normal again. Gunnar stood loosely by the helmsman his arm crooked around the telegraphs, and Regan had his face pressed against the glass as he watched a white shadow coasting past the port beam. In the blackness beyond the wheelhouse only the wave-crests showed themselves as if to mock Maddox with their power and constant menace. He knew that he could never hold the ship in this storm, never in a thousand years. There was nothing in Gunnar’s face to show his inner thoughts, or even if he would have carried out his threat. Maddox stared out of the windows towards the racing mass of water. Against the salt-caked glass his reflection floated across the tumbling waste like a spectre. But instead of himself he saw only the disappointed and ashamed face of his brother.

  Behind him Gunnar said almost conversationally, ‘Ease your helm, Paice, don’t make hard work of it.’

  Paice answered in the same vein: ‘Sure thing, Captain. She’s takin’ it like a goddamn whale!’

  Maddox felt a smarting in his eyes. What was the matter with these idiots?

  Before he was finished, Gunnar would drive them all to destruction.

  * * *

  Once again the Hibiscus’s narrow bows began to climb towards the hidden sky as a challenging mass of water thundered down to meet her. Gunnar gritted his teeth and clung even tighter to the telegraphs, and mentally ticked off each nerve-stretching second.
It was like fighting the sea single-handed, using the ship as a weapon, or a living, breathing force to smash through one barrier after another. His throat felt like a kiln, and he had to blink his eyes to clear away the sensation of blurred and dazed numbness which seemed to obstruct each painful calculation.

  They were riding the edge of the storm’s wild circle, fighting through the careering water and swooping cloudbanks almost blind in the face of a continuous downpour of torrential rain. Hours had passed since he had used his blackmail on Maddox, yet time appeared to have lost its meaning altogether. Only now was real, only the reeling, dripping world of the wheelhouse was fact.

  The wind which enveloped them and deadened their minds with its insane shrieking had moved up another notch on the scale, and Kroner’s last garbled report stated that it had passed one hundred knots and still rising. Gunnar looked around him at the crouched, clinging figures, all of whom centred on the man at the wheel. McCord, the quartermaster, had replaced the indomitable Paice and was fighting his own private war with the shining wheel as he peered fixedly at the compass, his thin face streaming with sweat and exertion. Gunnar stiffened and tightened his grip as the ship began to stagger sideways, caught a body blow by a flailing crest which had broken every rule by cutting diagonally across the path of its companions to push savagely at the starboard bow.

  ‘Right full rudder! All engines ahead flank speed!’

  McCord cursed and then said shakily: ‘Comin’ right, sir! Zero eight five, zero eight eight!’

  Gunnar released his hold and reeled across to the clipped chart. ‘Meet her!’ He peered at the rambling, seemingly haphazard pencilled lines of his dead reckoning. Sidestepping, checking, but always moving painfully towards the Payenhau group of islands which should now be lying somewhere ahead, lost in the screaming madness of the storm.

  A door slammed shut and he felt Kroner breathing heavily at his side.

  McCord yelled, ‘She’s steady, sir!’ He sounded surprised.

  Gunnar grabbed at the pencil as it rose in the air and floated from the table. ‘Ease your helm, McCord, and come left to zero four five.’ He moved again, painfully and carefully, not trusting a step without a handhold. One sudden lurch and he could smash himself senseless. ‘Any luck with the radar?’ He looked at Kroner’s white face for the first time.

  Kroner shook his head. ‘Nothing, sir. Just distorted tangles!’

  ‘I guessed as much. The waves are too high anyway to get much of a picture.’

  Kroner said thickly, ‘How are we making out, sir?’

  Gunnar shrugged. ‘We’ll live.’

  A phone buzzed and Kroner pressed it to his ear. ‘Yes, I got that.’ He nodded violently. ‘I’ll tell the captain.’ He looked at Gunnar with a mixture of respect and dread. ‘Radar reports a brief shadow of Payenhau, sir. He’s lost it now, the scopes are clean again, but we’re on course for contact, about ten miles.’ He gulped. ‘Jesus, Captain, I don’t know how you found anything in this!’

  Gunnar smiled tightly. Neither do I, he thought. ‘Tell the engine room to reduce speed and give me a steady fifteen knots. We’ll ride it out and head in at first light.’ The ship shuddered and reeled tiredly on to her side, bringing the battered watchkeepers alive as if they had been touched with a naked power circuit.

  ‘Hold her!’ Gunnar joined the helmsman and pushed the wheel in the man’s fumbling fingers. ‘Come right again, meet her!’

  Gunnar watched the ticking gyro and counted seconds. Through the soles of his shoes he could feel the ship fighting back, feeling her way through the surging criss-cross of broken water. There were still some dangerous moments ahead, but the worst might be over. Already he could feel the vessel’s new confidence and prayed that his own strength would match it. He even found time to think back, to recall Maddox’s angry face and Bella’s last moments alive. They all thought him mad, and perhaps he was. But by now his despatch would have been delivered by Burgess, and no matter what had happened in Payenhau the admiral would be in no doubt of how to react. He would no longer be lulled into satisfied complacency by Jago’s previous reports, and if any sort of uprising had occurred, a swift despatch by the Hibiscus’s radio would start the machine working. In this sort of war you had to plan, to be swift and to be sure. If he had learned nothing else in Viet Nam, Gunnar knew that it was better to act swiftly and incorrectly than not to act at all.

  Again the door banged, and Maddox stood shaking himself in his shining oilskin, his face flayed red by the spray and rain. In a gruff formal tone he said: ‘I’ve checked for damage, sir. Everything holding firm.’

  Gunnar nodded. ‘Good. Now go and make some arrangements to feed the men.’

  Maddox eyed him cautiously. ‘In this?’

  Gunnar turned away, the destructive forces of exhaustion and mental strain tearing at his mind like claws. ‘I don’t expect a four-course meal! Tell the cook to do his best. Tinned peaches, anything, but keep them occupied! They’re at low enough ebb already. I don’t want them dead on their feet when we drop anchor tomorrow.’

  Maddox looked at the captain. ‘It was planned, wasn’t it, Captain?’

  Gunnar smiled gravely. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘You’ll throw away everything just for an idea?’ Maddox could not conceal the bitterness in his voice. ‘Risk the ship as well!’

  ‘If necessary. The ship is here for a purpose. While I make the decisions you’ll just have to bear with it.’ A shutter seemed to drop behind Gunnar’s grey eyes, and Maddox knew it was pointless to continue.

  Gunnar said sharply: ‘Check the radar scopes again yourself, Mister Kroner. See if you can get something definite.’

  Gunnar had kept Kroner continuously busy between radio and radar throughout the storm, and as he had suspected, the man was almost grateful for it. Kroner had almost cracked at the beginning. Bit by bit he was making recompense, if only by staying on his feet.

  He said: ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it? Earlybird and men in space, and we can’t even get the goddamn radar to work properly!’

  Gunnar looked at him with surprise, noting too the wide grins of the unshaven faces around him. Kroner had made a crack. Things had to get better now.

  * * *

  As the little Hibiscus eased her way painfully under the slight protection of Payenhau’s south western approaches, the storm raged on across the hills and villages of the main island and flattened the rain-starved gorse and bushes along the high slopes like wet fur.

  Sergeant Rickover lay on his side in his camp bed, a book angled to meet the yellow and wavering glare of his oil lamp. Some of the power cables had been damaged by a falling mast above the citadel, and the electric light had been halved throughout the honeycomb of passages and emplacements. This neither worried nor surprised the big marine. The generator was unreliable at the best of times, and lack of proper electricians made future improvements unlikely.

  He was only half-reading the book, and his ears listened to the muffled wail of the wind and the swish of rain against the concrete walls. But the town and the anchorage were on the lee side of the island and well protected by the hills behind them. Rickover had seen one other typhoon hit the island, and had endured worse discomforts in other parts of the world. Here he was safe and snug, and a telephone would tell him if he was needed. Perhaps after the storm had passed Base would send a Red Cross team or some crackpots from the U.N. to repair the damage and patch up the mess. Either way they would be company, fresh faces to break the boredom.

  Rickover thought about the Hibiscus and wondered how she was faring. He thought too of Gunnar’s grave, determined face and decided that the ship had little to worry about. It was just that Gunnar took it all too personally. The big guys made the decisions, so what was the point of getting steamed up? It would all be different in a year or two anyway. With the way the world was shaping it would be just a matter of time before it was equally divided into two entirely different camps. The whites against the coloured races
. It showed great possibilities for fighting men, and sometimes Rickover wondered if that was what really bothered his colonel. Jago was probably anxious in case he was too old to wait for the big, final crunch.

  The phone whimpered in its leather case and with a groan Rickover rolled on to his back and pulled it from its nail. ‘Sergeant Rickover. Who’s that?’

  It was a Chinese corporal, a small, round man who followed Rickover about like a faithful dog. The sergeant pretended to be disgusted by such servitude, but nevertheless he had taken a liking to the little man. The corporal was apparently in charge of the citadel’s guard patrol. ‘Big worry, Sergeant! All telephone lines down!’ He paused, and Rickover could hear him breathing heavily.

  ‘So what?’ The marine wearily sat up and scratched his chest. ‘Tell your officer!’

  ‘No officer, Sergeant. All gone.’

  Rickover swung his legs over the side of his bunk and stared at the phone with exasperation. All gone. How could that be? ‘Okay, Seltzer, I’ll be right down.’ He waited for the man to chuckle with delight at his nickname as he normally did. His real handle was far too difficult for Rickover’s uncomplicated tongue. But there was silence.

  Rickover stood up and stretched. Phone lines down, that was one thing, but where the hell were the Chink officers? There were always a couple on duty at the very least. As usual, he would have to sort things out. Some ‘adviser’, he thought gloomily. More of a goddamn nursemaid!

  As an afterthought he cranked the handle of another phone set and waited for the explosion of Jago’s anger. Instead another fractured Chinese voice rattled in his ear. ‘Colonel not here. He gone out.’ Click, the phone died in his hand.