More men lost. His men now. Since Captain Blinn was lost to them with Pope, he was senior. He’d ordered the torpedo attack-it made no difference that there wasn’t any choice. Those men now steaming blind and helpless at flank speed directly toward the enemy were under his orders. But what of these men? Chances were, with Mahan headed straight for her, Amagi would concentrate on the helpless destroyer. The fire aimed at Walker had already slacked. She could almost certainly slip into the squall. He rubbed his forehead vigorously and looked into the wide-eyed, expectant faces of the men around him. They wanted him to do it: to give the order to turn back. They were willing it. Didn’t they understand it was death? They had a chance to live-all they had to do was abandon Mahan to Amagi’s fury.
No, they couldn’t live like that and neither could he. They’d run far enough. It didn’t matter anymore where they were. The fight was here and they would face it. Shades of gray no longer existed. Everything was a stark black and white once more. Was that what it all boiled down to? Had the entire Asiatic Fleet been sacrificed just because it was there? The salvo buzzer rang and numbers one, three, and four let loose, but he didn’t even hear. Finally his gaze fell upon Reynolds. The boy was the youngest and most junior crewman on the bridge. The look he returned was… pleading.
“Come about! Bring us as close alongside Mahan as she’ll bear.” He gestured at the bombers above. Three of them flew lazy circles, watching, as if afraid to descend into the line of fire. “Maybe we can at least keep them off her.”
“Skipper, the Jap cruisers behind us are out of the squall. They can see us now.”
“Good. Let ’em watch,” Matt snarled. Some of the men giggled nervously. “How much longer for the torpedoes, Mr. Sandison?”
“Ten seconds.”
Walker finished her turn and sprinted after Mahan. The sea frothed around her with the strikes of enemy shells. She staggered from another impact forward.
“Time?”
“Three… two… one…” Sandison looked up from his watch with a wretched expression. Damn! More duds-or whatever it was that had been wrong with the torpedoes since the war began. They were nearly even with Mahan now. Her speed was dropping off.
“See if-” Matt was interrupted by a bright snap of light, and he looked up in time to hear the detonation of the single massive explosion that disemboweled the Japanese destroyer. The ship hung, jackknifed, her bow in the air and her stern already slipping. The flames were bright against the dark squall beyond. Wild cheering erupted and Matt cheered too-but they’d missed Amagi. She was turning toward them in case there were more torpedoes in the water, and therefore, for a moment, she couldn’t fire. Shells fell in earnest from the cruisers behind, but Amagi suddenly blurred. The squall was moving over her. Toward them. They were a mile away.
“Skipper! Get a load of this!” shouted Flowers. He was looking to his left, at Mahan. A column of spray collapsed on her deck and a man struggled through the cascade. He pointed at them with his right hand and held that arm up. Then he patted his chest with the left and brought it from below, across the bottom of his elbow and up alongside the other. Then he vanished in more spray.
“What the hell?” muttered Sandison.
Mahan dropped back and they saw men on her wreckage-strewn deck heaving on the exposed steering cables. She sheared to the right and narrowly avoided colliding with Walker’s stern. With a burst of speed, she lanced forward along the starboard side. The same man as before stood between the two torpedo mounts, still rigged out. He pointed at them exaggeratedly.
“My God, they’re still loaded!” shouted Sandison. Matt ran onto the bridgewing and held up his own right arm. Then he took both arms and brought them up, diverging on either side of where his arm had first been. The man on Mahan’s deck held up an “OK” sign and scurried away.
“Left twenty degrees!” Matt shouted. “We’re going to run up both sides of her! We may not have any torpedoes, but the Japs don’t know that!”
Amagi had crept out of the squall, but just barely. It was almost as if the storm followed her. Now she was pointed directly at them and water peeled from her bow as she surged ahead. They were so close and the angle was such that only a couple of her secondaries would bear. They’re still plenty big, thought Matt, and as soon as we come alongside, the entire secondary broadside will come into play. It would happen in less than two minutes.
Mahan moved farther and farther to starboard. With the loss of her forward fireroom, Walker could barely make twenty-five knots. Mahan looked like a wreck, but she was keeping up. The roaring bombers swooped to attack in spite of the incoming shells. Machine guns clattered above and behind. The salvo buzzer rang. Antiaircraft rounds raked Walker’s bridge as the two four-stackers streamed past Amagi’s bow. Lieutenant Flowers spun away from the wheel and collapsed to the deck, and Matt jumped into his place. The maelstrom of fire and the kaleidoscope of images were beyond anything they’d experienced yet. Amagi’s side was alive with flashing muzzles, and Walker drummed with impacts as numerous as the raindrops of the previous squall.
Simultaneously, Walker heaved with the close impact of a pair of bombs, and the plane that had dropped them slanted unnaturally toward Amagi, trailing smoke. It impacted with a monstrous fireball directly atop her amidships turret. Two more explosions rocked Amagi from the opposite side and she heeled sharply toward Walker with the force of the blows. The salvo buzzer rang. WHAM!
Another bomb detonated and shells from the other cruisers still fell. Some even struck Amagi. Amid this tempest of fire, smoke, overpressure, and death, they were finally consumed by the squall.
CHAPTER 2
Elation surged in Matt’s chest as the green deluge- tinged with the reflection of explosions and flames- descended upon them. In spite of himself, a shout of exultation escaped. Instead of the comforting, drumming rain on the deck above, however, a shocking… silence… stunned his senses. He heard surprised shouts on the foredeck and then the confused murmuring of the bridge watch, but for a moment there was nothing else. He spun to look past the chart house. As the rest of the ship… materialized out of the greenness behind them, he began to hear it-the ship itself. The reassuring thunder of the blowers as they roared into being, the shouted obscenities of the number two gun crew amidships. On and on, until he heard the tumult as far away as the fantail. But other than the increasingly alarmed voices of his crew, the normal sounds of his ship, and the loud ringing in his ears caused by the din of battle, there was nothing.
But there was rain. The rain he’d expected to pound his ship at that very moment was there-but it wasn’t falling. It just hung there, suspended. Motionless. He raised his hand in wonder amid the pandemonium, waved it through the teardrop shapes, and felt their wetness on his hand. He moved out from under the shelter of the deck above and felt the rain as he moved through it, saw it wet his ship as their forward motion carried them along. Just as his initial shock began to give way to an almost panicky incredulity, the screws “ran away,” like when they left the water in really heavy seas. The sound lasted only seconds-at least Spanky was on the job-but it drew his gaze over the side. He blinked in uncomprehending astonishment. The sea was gone. Down as far as he could see, past the boot topping, past the growth-encrusted red paint of the hull, into the limitless greenish-black nothingness below, were only uncountable billions of raindrops suspended in air. Before the enormity of it could even register, the deck dropped from under his feet and a terrible pressure built in his ears. He grabbed the rail and pushed himself down to the wooden strakes of the bridge-anything to maintain contact with something real. What he’d just seen couldn’t possibly be. His stomach heaved and he retched uncontrollably. He heard the sounds of others doing the same as the sensation of falling intensified. Then there began a low-pitched whine, building slowly like a dry bearing about to fail. It built and built until it became torment. The pressure increased too. He dragged himself back into the pilothouse, careful not to take both hands off the d
eck at once. He scrunched through broken glass and blood until he reached his chair, attached to the angled right-forward wall, and he slowly climbed up the braces.
His eyes felt like they were being pushed into their sockets, but he saw that everyone else on the bridge was down. Reynolds met his gaze with an expression of controlled terror. Riggs sat on the deck with his palms over his eyes. Matt looked through the shattered, square-framed windows and saw men on the foredeck crawling amid empty shell casings, or trying to hold on to something as if they, like he, felt they would fly away from the ship like a feather if they let go. And all around there was nothing but the wet, greenish void. The screeching whine continued to grow until it drowned the noisy blowers. He held his hands over his ears with his arm linked through the chair, but it made no difference. The sound was inside his head. Again he fought the urge to vomit.
Abruptly, with terrifying suddenness, the deck swooped up beneath him like a roller coaster reaching the bottom of a dip and rocketing upward. With a thunderous roar, the raindrops that had remained poised for what could have been only moments, plummeted down and became the deluge they should have been from the start. Exhausted from straining against the impossibly contradictory sensations of weightlessness and gravity, he collapsed into his chair and stared numbly out at the now perfectly normal squall. Walker coasted along, her engines stopped, losing way on the rain-stilled sea.
Matt gathered himself while the men picked themselves up and stumbled back to their stations. In their confusion, they sought the comfort of their responsibilities. He didn’t know what had just occurred, but he knew that, for now at least, he must do the same. Later the time would come for questions. He still had a crew and a ship to save, and to fight with, if need be. The cries of alarm began to grow again, but then, with unspeakable gratitude, Matt heard the booming voice of the Bosun rise above the tumult.
“Stow that girlish gab! Where do you think you are? You! Yeah, you, Davis! Secure that shit! Form a detail and clear these goddamn shells! Look at this mess! LOOK AT MY BEAUTIFUL DECK! You’d think a bunch of goddamn hogs or even snipes been rootin’ around up here. You think you’ve been in a battle? I’ve had scarier fights with the roaches in the wardroom! Quit pukin’, Smitty. You sound like a frog!”
Matt listened as Gray’s abuse moved aft. He cleared his throat and rubbed his lips with wet hands. He tasted blood. Riggs stood, shakily, holding the wheel, and Matt nodded at him. “Damage report,” he croaked, his voice a harsh rasp. He cleared his throat. “Damage report!” he demanded more firmly. “Why’ve we stopped?”
The blowers didn’t sound right. Sandison was on the bridge phone, listening intently as reports came in.
“Lieutenant McFarlane shut down the engines,” he reported. “Water’s coming in, but the pumps can handle it-when we get them back. Forward fireroom’s out of action. Fires are out in the aft fireroom. It’s full of smoke from raw fuel on the burners and they’re venting it now. As soon as they can get in, they’ll relight the fires. Should be just a few minutes.” Sandison’s voice had a cadence to it as he repeated the information he heard.
“We took a lot of hits forward and there’re lots of casualties,” he added grimly. “Doc’s dead. He was working on Rodriguez when a shell came through and just… took him apart. Lots of the wounded were killed in the wardroom. One of the nurses is dead.” His face turned ashen. “She was standing next to Doc. The other nurses have been helping out. Mr. Garrett reports one dead and two injured on the fire-control platform and he thinks Mr. Rogers is dead. There’s… blood running down the mast from the crow’s nest. He sounds a little rough.” Sandison replied to Garrett and then listened to other reports, nodding as he did as if those making them could see him.
“There’s water in the paint locker, but”-he shrugged-“there’s always water in the paint locker. Probably mostly rain. We were real lucky with the hull-at least below the waterline. Most of the leaks are coming from loosened plates, from near misses. A lot of the shells hit us on flat trajectories and just punched through the upper hull. A few lighter shells exploded. The number three gun’s out of action with four men killed… but all the big stuff must’ve been armor-piercing and didn’t hit anything substantial enough to make them blow.”
He listened a little longer and then looked at Matt. “Jesus, Skipper, we have a lot of holes.”
“Anything on the horn? Anything from Mahan?”
Sandison shook his head. “Radio’s out of whack, sir. Radioman Clancy just reported there hasn’t been a peep since we entered the squall. Before that there were lots of distant distress calls, merchant ships mostly, under attack and begging for escorts.” He cleared his throat. “Just static now. Something probably came unplugged.”
Matt took a breath. “Casualties?”
“Don’t know yet, sir, but… a lot.”
The captain removed his hat and ran fingers through sweat-matted hair. “Torpedoes?”
The ensign shook his head guiltily. “No sir. Just the ones in the three mount, and with everything that’s been… I’m sorry, sir, I just don’t know.”
“Very well. Secure from general quarters. There’s too many men just standing around with so much work to do. But keep the crews on the guns and a sharp lookout. See if we can get some hot food into these guys.” He stifled a jaw-racking yawn that wasn’t quite an act. “And I need more coffee. Also, as soon as Lieutenant Ellis is able, have him report to the bridge.” He paused and added in a softer tone, “Ask the Bosun to detail some men to bring Mr. Rogers down.”
The rain continued and Matt yearned to be under way, making as much distance as they could under cover. There was no way of knowing Mahan’s fate. They’d taken as much pressure off her as they could, but he didn’t know what to think about how that turned out. Evidently Walker had returned to help Mahan while she was making a suicide charge to let them get clear. Hopefully, the confusion saved them both. But even if Mahan had made it, she would be in bad shape. Maybe even sinking. Then again, she could be miles away by now. Either way, there was nothing he could do for her. Amagi was badly hit, that much he knew. How badly was anybody’s guess. Enough to retire? Hopefully. Enough to sink? That would grant his fondest wish. But whether Amagi swam or not made little difference, because the other cruisers were still coming. He didn’t think they would give up, not when they still had spotter planes to guide them. They couldn’t be far away.
When Walker regained steam pressure, she must press on. All they could do was pray that Mahan had escaped. Matt suddenly wondered if the other destroyer had experienced the same phenomenon Walker had. He shuddered, and glanced quickly around the gloomy pilothouse. He didn’t think anyone else had seen what he had, and he couldn’t completely banish the suspicion that he’d been teetering on the brink of madness. It had to have been a hallucination, brought on by exhaustion and the stress of combat. The motionless raindrops were certainly explainable, he assured himself. They’d passed into the most intense squall he’d ever seen. Squalls were by nature extremely unstable. Who knew what sort of strange winds might exist within one? Sudden gusts that could capsize a ship weren’t unheard of. Why not some freakish updraft? His nervous fingers tried to reshape his sodden hat. That still didn’t explain what he’d seen when he looked over the side. Nothing could explain that. It couldn’t have happened-must not have happened.
“Skipper, Mr. Garrett says the squall’s passing.”
The volume of rain had diminished and it was perceptively lighter. Matt stirred and turned to see a woman’s face peering at him fearfully from the ladder at the back of the quarterdeck. All that was visible was her rain-drenched hair, head, and shoulders. Her big brown eyes widened in surprise when they met his and her mouth formed an O of alarm. The white of her uniform blouse was stained and sooty, her cheek smeared with grease and blood where she must have wiped it with her hand. Immediately, and without a word, she raised a shiny coffee urn and placed it on the deck. She gave it a tentative shove in his directi
on as if it were an offering to a terrible god and then vanished down the ladder.
“Coffee’s here,” he muttered, then blinked and shook his head. He moved from his chair and was surprised his legs supported him. “Get Spanky on the horn. I want those engines now!”
They were fully exposed to the midafternoon sunlight by the time they had steam to move, and then only with the starboard engine. The water beneath the fantail churned and foamed as the screw began to turn. The deck vibrated horribly and pieces of broken glass fell from the empty window frames. The pressure was rising on number four, and soon Ensign Tolson, who’d replaced Bob Flowers, wouldn’t have to fight the unbalanced thrust of a single screw. The squall still raged astern, but it was dissipating. They all expected the menacing forms of Japanese cruisers to emerge at any moment, and every eye watched the sky for spotting planes or bombers. If only they hadn’t lost the boilers, they’d have been long gone by now.
Jim Ellis was on the bridge. There was blood and soot on his uniform, and his eyes were puffy and swollen. His customary ebullience was tempered by the horror he’d seen, and he spoke in a soft, somber tone. “The ship’s a wreck, Skipper. Just about everything topside is shot to hell. We’re in better shape below, if you can believe it, but we’re still taking water, and the faster we move, the more we’ll take. Hell, most of the water’s coming in through holes above the waterline. Waves slopping in.” He sighed. “You know, my granddaddy was at Manila Bay. His brother was at Santiago Bay. He always said there’d be days like this, only he always made it sound more fun.”
Matt nodded wearily. “Dad was on a can just like this in the North Atlantic, during the last war. They chased a few subs, but they never saw anything like this. Somehow I think his stories may have been closer to the mark. He didn’t have fun. I can’t imagine many things more miserable than one of these four-stackers in the North Atlantic. At least I couldn’t until the last couple of months.” He paused. “And today, of course. Especially today.”
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