Towing Jehovah

by James Morrow

  “Don’t listen to him, Ensign,” said Pembroke, tearing into a pint of macaroni salad.

  “Oliver, you gotta get into the spirit,” said Flume, popping a deviled egg into his mouth.

  “That’s some golem, huh?” said Pembroke.

  “Bet you could drive a Pershing tank down his urethra and not even scratch the fenders,” said Flume.

  “God, what a smile,” said Pembroke.

  As the last Devastator completed its run, happy chatter spilled from Strawberry Eleven’s transceiver, five creatively fulfilled war reenactors singing their own praises.

  “Powder river!”

  “Golly, this is swell!”

  “Got that baby comin’ and goin’!”

  “Hot-cha-cha!”

  “The beers’re on me, boys!”

  Now the third Dauntless echelon moved into position, climbing swiftly to fifteen thousand feet. Through the haze of his fear, Oliver sensed that the raid was going well. He was particularly impressed by the forgotten art of dive-bombing, the skillful and reckless way the SBD pilots turned their planes into manned bullets, swooping out of the clouds, plunging headfirst toward the midriff, and, at the moment of payload release, pulling out just in time to avoid cracking up—a truly magnificent performance, almost worth the seventeen million dollars it was costing him.

  The Dauntlesses peeled away and attacked, dropping their demolition bombs on the navel. Spewing flames and smoke, a seething orange tornado spun across God’s abdomen.

  “It’s so beautiful!” gasped Pembroke.

  “This is it, Sid—this is our masterpiece!” squealed Flume.

  “We’ll never top it, never, even if we do a D-Day!”

  “I’m so excited!”

  A husky female voice shot from Strawberry Eleven’s transceiver. “Valparaíso to squadron leaders! Come in, squadron leaders!”

  The head of Torpedo Six responded instantly. “Lieutenant Commander Lindsey here, United States Navy,” he said in a tone at once curious and hostile. “Go ahead, Valparaíso.”

  “Captain Van Horne wishes to address you…”

  The voice that now filled the PBY’s cabin was so enraged Oliver imagined the transceiver tubes exploding, spraying glass into the cockpit.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Lindsey?!”

  “My patriotic duty. Over.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Fuck you! Over.”

  “You’ve got no right to destroy my cargo!”

  “And you’ve got no right to destroy the American economy! I don’t care how good your English is! Can’t you Japs ever play fair? Over!”

  “Japs? What’re you talking about?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about!” said Lindsey. “America first! Out!”

  “Get back on the air, you dipshit!”

  As the two squadrons turned west and headed for Point Luck, Strawberry Eleven circled the corpse, a slow, leisurely loop extending from nose to knees. The bellybutton, Oliver noted, was considerably larger now, a quarter-mile-wide crater into which the Norwegian Sea flowed like water spiraling into a bathtub drain. The neck sported a gaping cave, its portal a mass of shattered ice and shredded flesh. The only problem was that, in his admittedly inexpert judgment, God wasn’t sinking.

  “They did a great job with the bellybutton,” said Pembroke.

  “Navel warfare,” said Flume, deadpan.

  “Hey, that’s a good one, Alby.”

  “Why isn’t there more blood?” asked Oliver.

  “Beats me,” said Pembroke, polishing off the macaroni salad.

  “Is it frozen?”

  “Bombs would’ve thawed it.”

  “So where is it?”

  “Probably it never had any,” said Flume. “Blood’s such complicated stuff—I’ll bet even Mitsubishi can’t make it.”

  As the PBY glided across the body’s right nipple, her transceiver began broadcasting again. “Red Fox Leader to Mother Goose,” said Lindsey. “Red Fox Leader to Mother Goose.”

  “Mother Goose here,” said Admiral Spruance’s portrayer aboard the Enterprise.

  “We dropped our last egg ten minutes ago. Over.”

  “What about Scout Bombing Six?”

  “Likewise disarmed. We’re all headin’ home for another batch. Over.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Sir, the Japs might be listening in.”

  “No screening vessels, remember?” said Spruance. “No Bofors guns.”

  “Targets A and B were hit hard, sir,” said Lindsey. “Real hard. Over.”

  “Was Akagi shipping water when you left her?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then we’re shifting to Op Plan 29-67,” said Spruance.

  “Op Plan 29-67,” echoed Lindsey. “Dandy idea.”

  “The second strike’s taking off now, McClusky commanding from his Dauntless section. We can begin recovering your planes any time after 0945 hours. Over.”

  “Roger, Mother Goose. Out.”

  “Now will you tell me about Op Plan 29-67?” asked Oliver.

  “An emergency strategy,” explained Pembroke.

  “What emergency strategy?”

  “The swellest one ever,” said Flume.

  At 1120 a new wave appeared along the western horizon—three V-formations of torpedo planes coming in near sea level while three echelons of dive bombers rendezvoused from several miles up.

  “Commander McClusky, Air Group Six, to Captain Van Horne on Valparaíso,” came the actor’s reedy voice from the PBY’s transceiver. “You there, Van Horne? Over.”

  “This is Van Horne, asshole.”

  “Question, Captain. Is Valparaíso carrying a full complement of lifeboats?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I’ll assume that means yes. Over.”

  “Keep your paws off my cargo!”

  “Captain, be advised that at 1150 hours we shall be implementing Op Plan 29-67, whereby Valparaíso comes under attack from a section of Devastators armed with Mk-XIII torpedoes. Repeat: at 1150, your ship comes under attack from a section of…”

  Oliver lurched out of the mechanic’s station and scrambled toward the machine-gun blisters. “McClusky said he’s gonna hit the Valparaíso!”

  “I know,” said Pembroke, grinning.

  “Op Plan 29-67,” said Flume, winking.

  “He can’t hit the Valparaíso!” moaned Oliver.

  “Valparaíso, not ‘the’ Valparaíso.”

  “He can’t!”

  “Shhh,” said Pembroke.

  “You have thirty minutes to abandon ship,” said McClusky from the transceiver. “We strongly recommend you keep your officers and crew out of the water, which we estimate to be about twenty degrees Fahrenheit. You’ll be rescued within two hours by the decommissioned aircraft carrier Enterprise. Over.”

  “Like hell I’m gonna abandon ship!” said Van Horne.

  “Have it your way, Captain. Out.”

  “You can shove your torpedoes up your ass, McClusky!”

  Pembroke ate a radish. “A desperate strategy,” he explained, “but unavoidable under the circumstances.”

  “As the tanker sinks,” Flume elaborated, chewing on a chicken thigh, “she’ll drag the golem down with her, deep enough to swamp those wounds.”

  “After which the lungs and stomach will finally start to fill.”

  “And then—”

  “Shazam—mission accomplished!”

  Oliver grabbed Flume’s shoulders, shaking the war reenactor as if attempting to rouse him from a deep sleep. “My girlfriend’s on the Valparaíso!”

  “Oh, sure,” said Pembroke.

  “Let go of me this instant,” said Flume.

  “I’m serious!” wailed Oliver, releasing Flume and rocking back on the balls of his feet. “Ask Van Horne! Ask him if he isn’t carrying somebody named Cassie Fowler!”

  “Hey, take it easy.” Flume uncapped a Rheingold with a cast-iron
Fred Astaire opener. “Nobody’ll get hurt. We’re giving the Japs plenty of time to save themselves. Want a beer? A Spam-and-onion sandwich?”

  “You heard the captain! He’s not gonna abandon ship!”

  “Once he absorbs a hit or two, I’m sure he’ll reconsider,” said Pembroke. “It takes hours for a big boat like Valparaíso to go down—hours.”

  “You people are insane! You’re out of your fucking minds!”

  “Hey, don’t get pissed at us,” said Flume.

  “We’re only doing what you hired us to do,” said Pembroke.

  “Contact Admiral Spruance! Tell him to call off the attack!”

  “We never call off an attack,” said Flume, swishing his index finger back and forth. “Have a nice cold Rheingold, okay? You’ll feel much better.” The impresario snatched up his intercom mike. “Ensign Reid, I think it would be a bad idea if Mr. Shostak back here got his hands on our transceiver.”

  “Listen, fellas, I’ve been lying to you,” groaned Oliver. “That body down there isn’t a Jap golem.”

  “Oh?” said Pembroke.

  “It’s God Almighty.”

  “Right,” said Flume with a snide smile.

  “God Himself. I swear it. You wouldn’t want to hurt God, would you?”

  Flume sipped his beer. “Phew, Oliver, that’s a pretty lame one.”

  At exactly 1150, just as McClusky had promised, a V of torpedo planes circled around and, ignoring Oliver’s frantic protests, ran for the tanker, dropping their Mk-XIIIs and sailing over the deckhouse, concomitantly slashing the Vatican flag to ribbons. Like sharks on the scent of blood, the five torpedoes cut across the Val’s wake, passed under her starboard tow chain, grazed her stern, and kept on going. A minute later, they struck a berg and detonated, filling the air with glittering barrages of ice balls.

  “Hah! Missed!” came Van Horne’s voice from the transceiver. “You clowns couldn’t hit a dead cat with a fly swatter!”

  “Golly, I thought our boys were better trained than that,” said Pembroke.

  “They’re not used to these low temperatures,” said Flume.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Oliver looked out to sea—past the Valparaíso, past her cargo. A massive ship, encrusted with rockets and guns, was steaming onto the battlefield from the south.

  “Hey, Oliver, what the heck is that thing?” demanded Flume.

  “Don’t ask me,” the Enlightenment League’s president replied, putting on his headset.

  “You said there’d be no screening vessels!” whined Pembroke. “You explicitly said that!”

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea what that ship’s doing here.”

  “Looks like one of them Persian Gulf tankers, Mr. Flume,” said Reid over the intercom.

  “That’s what she is, all right,” said Eaton. “A goddamn Persian Gulf tanker.”

  “Isn’t that just like the nineties”—Reid banked Strawberry Eleven, flying her west across the tow chains—“showing up when you least expect ’em?”

  “Missed!” cried Anthony, storming up and down the wheel-house, glove wrapped firmly around the transceiver mike, its cable trailing behind him like an umbilicus. “Missed, suckers! You couldn’t hit an elephant’s ass with a canoe paddle! You couldn’t hit a barn door with a water balloon!”

  He didn’t believe himself. He knew it was only through a happy accident that the first Devastator formation had launched all five of its fish without scoring a hit. Already a second V was looping around to the west, making ready to strike.

  “Captain, shall we order the crew into life jackets?” asked Marbles Rafferty.

  “Sounds like a good idea,” said Ockham.

  “Get the hell off the bridge,” Anthony snapped at the priest.

  Rafferty pounded his palm with his fist. “Life jackets, sir. Life jackets…”

  “Life jackets,” echoed Lianne Bliss.

  “No,” muttered Anthony, setting the mike atop the Marisat terminal. “Remember Matagorda Bay? A sixty-yard gash in her hull, and still she didn’t sink. We can easily absorb a couple of obsolete torpedoes—I know we can.”

  “They’ve got ten left,” noted Rafferty.

  “Then we’ll absorb ten.”

  “Anthony, you must believe me,” said Cassie. “I never thought they’d come after your ship.”

  “War is hell, Doc.”

  “I’m truly sorry.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Fuck you.”

  Remarkably, he could not bring himself to hate her. True, her duplicity was monumental, a betrayal to rank with that ignominious moment at Actium when Mark Antony had abandoned his own fleet in midbattle to go chasing after Cleopatra. And yet, at some weird, unfathomable level, he actually admired Cassie’s plot. Her audacity turned him on. There was nobody quite so arousing, he decided, as a worthy opponent.

  The door to the starboard wing flew open and Dolores Haycox charged onto the bridge, gripping a walkie-talkie. “Forward lookout reports approaching vessel, sir—a ULCC, low riding, bearing three-two-nine.”

  Anthony grunted. ULCC. Damn. Despite the blood transfusion, despite his quick and clever maneuvering through the bergs, he still hadn’t managed to outrun the Carpco Maracaibo. He snatched up the bridge binoculars and, peering through the frosted windshield, focused. He gasped. Not only was the Maracaibo a ULCC, she was a Persian Gulf tanker, heavy with formaldehyde but coming on fast. Her thorny profile shifted east and steamed past a berg shaped like a gigantic molar, on a direct course for God’s left ear.

  “What’s that, a battleship?” asked Ockham.

  “Not quite,” said Anthony, lowering the binoculars. “Your buddies in Rome are obviously serious about making me surrender the goods.” He pivoted toward his chief mate. “Marbles, if we got uncoupled from our cargo, these Devastators would have no reason to target us, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then I propose we ring up the Maracaibo and ask her to shoot our chains apart.”

  Rafferty smiled, an event so rare that Anthony knew the plan was sound. “At worst, the skipper turns us down,” noted the chief mate. “At best—”

  “Oh, he’ll say yes, all right,” Ockham insisted. “Whatever Rome’s ultimate ambitions may be, she has no wish to see this ship go under.”

  “Sparks, contact the Maracaibo,” said Anthony, shoving the transceiver mike into Lianne Bliss’s hand. “Get her skipper on the line.”

  “They shouldn’t be attacking your ship like this,” she said. “It isn’t right.”

  Anthony was not surprised when, barely thirty seconds after Bliss ducked into the radio shack, the Maracaibo lashed out, shooting a Sea Dart guided missile toward the second Devastator formation. If Cassie’s story was true, he reasoned, then the forces represented by the World War Two Reenactment Society and those represented by the Gulf tanker had not been privy to each other’s machinations—but suddenly here they were, arriving simultaneously in the same unlikely sea, competing for the same unlikely prize.

  “Hey, the Maracaibo can’t do that!” screamed Cassie. “She’s gonna kill somebody!”

  “Looks that way,” said Anthony dryly.

  “This is murder!”

  The instant the Devastators began their chaotic retreat, the V dissolving into five separate planes, Bliss piped the radio traffic onto the bridge.

  “Scatter, boys!” screamed the formation leader. “Scatter! Scatter!”

  “Christ, it’s on your tail, Commander Waldron!” a flier shouted.

  “Mother of God!”

  “Bail out, Commander!”

  Anthony raised his hand and saluted in the general direction of the Gulf tanker.

  “Tell the Maracaibo this is just a reenactment!” screamed Cassie. “Nobody’s supposed to be getting hurt!”

  As Anthony tracked it with the binoculars, the lead torpedo plane shot straight across the Val’s weather deck, doggedly pursued by the near-sentient Sea Dart.

  “Why’s the missile so poky?” asked
Anthony.

  “A heat seeker, designed to lock on modern jet exhaust,” Rafferty explained. “It’ll take ’er a while to realize she’s tracking an antique radial engine.”

  With an odd mixture of pure horror and indefensible fascination, Anthony watched the missile home in. An explosion brightened the steely sky, vaporizing the Devastator’s two-man crew and disintegrating her fuselage, the thousand flaming shards flashing through the air like a migraine aura.

  From the bridge speaker a flier screamed, “They got Commander Waldron! Waldron and his gunner!”

  “Christ!”

  “Just like in ’42!”

  “Lousy bastards!”

  “Dirty Japs!”

  “The Maracaibo doesn’t answer,” said Bliss, rushing out of the radio shack.

  “Keep trying to raise her.”

  “She’s stonewalling us, sir.”

  “I said keep trying!”

  As Bliss returned to her post, two more missiles leapt from the Maracaibo, a svelte French Crotale and a delicate Italian Aspide, speeding toward the third Devastator formation. Seconds later came the roaring vermilion glare of the exploding Crotale, outshining the midnight sun and bursting the lead plane apart, followed by the shrieking, swirling, red-and-purple plumage of the Aspide, setting its target aflame. Four white parachutes blossomed above the Norwegian Sea, gently lowering their riders toward death by hypothermia.

  “Holy shit, the crews bailed out,” said Rafferty.

  “God help them,” said Ockham.

  “No, we’ll help them,” said Anthony, snapping up the intercom mike and tuning in the bos’n’s quarters. “Van Horne to Mungo.”

  “Mungo here.”

  “There’re four men in the water, bearing two-nine-five. Drop a lifeboat, pick ’em up, give ’em hot showers, and stand by to rescue anybody else who jumps.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Once again Dolores Haycox popped in from the wing. “Starboard lookout reports torpedo wake approaching, sir, bearing two-one-zero.”