At the Midway

by J. Clayton Rogers

  "Sergeant Hoskins! Detail some men to search--"

  He was cut off mid-sentence.

  The guns of the Florida had erupted.

  1406 Hours

  On seeing the wakes for himself, Oates had immediately ordered the messengers on the bridge to run like hell down the starboard side and tell everyone in hearing to fire at the three approaching objects, now almost abeam. The torpedoes had been spotted far earlier than he would have thought possible. With luck, they could blow them out of the water before they got close.

  Midshipman Davis was tying a cord around his shorts, which had started to drag the more he sweated, when the electric indicator on the casemate wall clicked and he looked up to see: COMMENCE FIRING.

  "Fire at what!" he cried, seeing nothing out the gunport.

  On the decks and turrets above them machine guns began to chatter. Spent cartridges drummed on the metal plates like a storm of railway spikes on a tin roof. An instant later the top-deck six-inchers plugged the air, sending deep thuds up and down starboard. About seven hundred yards out he could see the water explode. But nothing else. He slapped the breech of the six-incher in frustration.

  "Mr. Davis!" one of the gunstrikers shouted. "It can only be one thing! Tor--"

  "Fire at the strikes!" Davis yelled. They were too low to see the wakes, but if they could not shoot at an unseen target, they could shoot at a target seen by others. They ranged in on the white wall of water that was coming closer and closer to the ship.

  "Fire!"

  The swift jerk of his arm spoke to those who could not hear through the din and their earplugs. They leapt back. Davis squeezed the trigger. Underneath, the deck jumped. There was a screech from the mount spring as the gun recoiled. Then they were at the breech. The casing shot out in an acrid plume of smoke and cordite and clattered on the deckplates. The next shell was already rammed home.

  Pump!

  That was how the six-incher concussion felt. Not a sound, but a deadening of sound. Like the deafness induced by hard coughing.

  Pump!

  One had to move fast to avoid the ejected casing. Davis dodged, then peered through the gunport. The view to starboard was blocked by a thick cloud of smoke. It did not affect their rate of fire. They had not been able to see anything in the first place.

  1410 Hours

  Damn! Oates' gunners had been trained to fight enemy fleets--to concentrate on the enemy's "knuckle," the apex of his deployment--not submerged torpedoes. Confused, the gunners churned the ocean into a foam of wild shots. They might as well have been shooting in the dark.

  After ordering the machine guns and six-inchers to fire, Oates ordered flank speed. He hoped to "comb" the torpedoes, which entailed aiming the ship at them to present the least target possible. The helmsman whipped the wheel over, but they were making too little headway. The torpedoes would reach them before the Florida was halfway into her turn. Though the engine room bell clanged wildly, it would be several minutes before they could raise full steam. Oates had considered the possibility that the area was sown with Japanese mines, but the new kind of self-propelled torpedo--fired from an invisible submarine--had been the threat furthest from his mind. Underwater craft were primitive, pop-bolt affairs incapable of long ocean voyages.

  Or so Oates had believed.

  Running out to the bridge, he was just in time to witness the first ragged salvo. The noise was terrific, like having cymbals clapped against one's ears.

  "Sweet Jesus, Grissom!" the captain bellowed at the top of his voice. "Submarines!"

  "I'm not so sure, Captain. Those wakes must have been over a mile out when the lookout spotted them."

  Oates ran inside and took up the phone to the crow's nest. Out the side of his eye he caught the glint of cascading cartridges. There were two .30-caliber machine guns halfway up the fighting mast, about twenty feet below the forward lookout. Next to the lookout, they had the best view of what they were firing at. They showed no sign of easing off. Obviously, they saw something.

  The crow's nest lookout did not answer for a long time. Oates assumed the gunfire was making it nearly impossible for him to hear the telephone ringing. Then, abruptly, came a voice--hard to hear--but frantic beyond reason.

  "Slow down, son! I can't understand a word!"

  Across the pilothouse the ordnance officer was making overwrought gestures as he spoke into his own telephone. Oates read from his expression that his gunners could no longer bracket the wakes in their range finders. The captain pressed his lips against the mouthpiece in his hand. "What's happening up there? We've lost track--"

  A flurry of incomprehensible fear shot out.

  "Calm down! Listen, son, we're depending on you. Tell me clearly--"

  "Serpents!"

  Nothing else he said was understandable. In the midst of guns and gunfire, Oates felt a terrible chill.

  The ordnance officer was calling to him. The next thing Oates knew, the cacophony of guns shifted to port.

  "They've changed course!"

  Grissom raced in, eyes wide. "Sir! I saw them! It's them!"

  "Why are we firing to leeward?"

  "They swerved abaft. They're headed for the lagoon."

  1422 Hours

  Lieber let go with a long string of Teutonic epithets as the two marines working the beam off him suddenly raced out of the bunker.

  "Hart! They've abandoned us!"

  Hart stared at him. "They're coming back."

  Gunshots sounded on the beach. And a chorus of fear and pain in the bunker when the men still trapped ignored their wounds and struggled to free themselves.

  The earth shuddered. Hart watched as a clump of marram grass came loose and rolled down past his head. He moved his right arm up and tried to gain purchase on the broken concrete behind him. His fingers slipped. He tried again and again, tearing his skin. Blood dripped from his fingertips. "Fritz... goddammit...."

  "They have artillery. I heard the Top."

  Ace's head appeared slowly out of the clutter of masonry. His head was bloody. He reminded Hart of the Assyrians in the Book of Isaiah who woke up dead. Shoving his hands outward, he was able to haul himself part of the way out of the rubble. "Flitz, there's something wrong. I come apart somewhere...."

  "Hold on, Ace. If you'd come apart, you wouldn't be talking."

  Above, more rifles spat.

  "Why aren't they using the artillery?" Hart cried. "They can't--"

  There was a small, flat "boom!" The trapped men shouted excitedly. Three more rounds followed in quick succession.

  But when they heard screams, the men in the bunker lost their voices. The roar gobbled the air out of their lungs. They were galvanized by the next splash of screams, began to wriggle like captured worms, desperately, blindly, with nowhere to go even if they got out. Several men began to sob. Hearing the shock, horror and deaths of their fellow marines without being able to lift a hand to help them was as bad as sharing their fate.

  The ground slammed up, quaked and shattered. Timber rolled over and crushed men a second time. A shadow fell. They glimpsed a long dark neck and a marine caught sideways in giant jaws, terror and blood raining down.

  1435 Hours

  "What do you expect me to do?" Oates shouted. "Fire on my own men?"

  "There won't be any left if you don't!" Grissom insisted frantically.

  The silence that had fallen over the battleship was eerie, a kind of collective seizure. The creatures that had slipped through the two points of coral in the channel had twisted left and right, as if annoyed by the crash of naval ordinance. They unwittingly dodged the hundred-odd six- and eight-inch shells and thousands of machine gun bullets aimed at them. Their speed alone threw gunners off target, the majority of shells landing fifty yards behind them.

  Then the firing ceased and amazed sailors looked on as the three giants lifted themselves onto Sand Island and attacked the landing party. A faint "dink" in the air indicated the fieldpieces at work.

  1450 Ho
urs

  He'd been reprimanded before for a transgression in Number One Turret. Only this time, Ensign Garrett wanted to fire the twelve-incher rather than suppress it. Under extraordinary circumstances, he had the authority to overrule the gun captain.

  And things could not get more extraordinary than this. One of the pointers was speaking. And the gun captain, rather than hitting him, was listening to him.

  "The three-inchers missed! It's a slaughter. Oh God--why doesn't the captain do something?"

  His choked sobs tore at their hearts. The gun captain peered through his own telescope, then pressed his hands to his headset. With abject helplessness, he turned to Garrett. "Still no orders."

  "Are we ranged in?"

  "Central Station homed us on the island. But that's the last I heard from them."

  "Then let's start the marbles rolling," Garrett said tensely. "Open fire."

  Biting the inside of his cheek, the gun captain said, "On your authority?"

  "I'll piss it in blood on the deck if you want. Fire!"

  1454 Hours

  The men in the pilothouse were too distracted to notice when Singleton once again trespassed on their aerie. He pressed against the broad glass and stared towards the atoll like a child gaping through a store window. "Ahhh...."

  "What are they, Singleton?" Oates demanded when he saw him.

  "Plesiosaur.... No. Much, much too big. Oh... it's not possible. Captain... this is God telling us what fools we are. They're going to kill everyone on the island. You must fire on them."

  "Dammit!" Oates slammed his fist against the side of the binnacle. The compass float bobbed violently. "Get off my--"

  The next instant half the men in the pilothouse were flung onto the deck. Light ripped through the sky. Singleton was gashed cheek to jowl by broken glass as the windows burst in hundreds of jagged pieces.

  They were barely back on their feet before the Florida was whipped even more violently to starboard, water flipping up in a great curl, as though a redwood had been dropped flat-smack in the ocean.

  As the ship righted herself the men in the wheelhouse leapt to the bridge screen. Boiling gray clouds swept leeward. Through a break in the smoke some of them caught a glimpse of a twelve-inch shell as it skipped off the waves like a flat stone, then hopped over the length of Sand Island, catching a glint from the sun before disappearing. On the island itself huge plumes of sand erupted.

  Oates whirled on Grissom. "Who ordered that salvo!"

  Grissom had a dozen tiny cuts on his hands. Picking himself off the deck, he grasped a stanchion to steady himself. "The gun captains must have fired on their own."

  "All of them?" Oates gasped. What his exec was telling him was as impossible to believe as the creatures themselves.

  1456 Hours

  The earth heaved up with a terrific force even the monsters could not match. Four times the earth broke against the sky. Shock waves rolled and crashed.

  The men in the bunker went numb, deaf. Their inner beings shriveled with the conviction of death. Some were buried a third time.

  Lieber lifted his hand, felt nothing. He tried to listen to the heavy shower of sand, but heard nothing. All he could see were jagged forms penetrating the harsh cloud that was slowly settling down. But there was no mistaking the sharp odor of maxemite. The creatures were not the only authors of destruction. Midway had undergone bombardment from the Florida's big guns.

  His eyes burned. He closed them. On opening them next, he saw an arm moving spasmodically not five yards away. Someone was suffocating. And there was not one blessed thing he could--

  He attempted moving his legs. To his astonishment, he not only tried, but succeeded. The drumming limbs of the monsters and the man-made quake had combined to shift the beam off his legs. His trousers were shredded, his knees and the top of his legs shorn of skin. But he was free.

  He could not work his legs. Still, by grabbing hold of timber and masonry, he was able to lurch towards the arm.

  Hart's face was buried under a bare inch of sand. Pinned down as he was he could not lift his head even that much. All Lieber had to do was reach across and scoop a couple handfuls away.

  "They shelled us, Hart." Lieber arched as pain gripped his legs.

  "You got loose," Hart gasped. "Can you make it into the quad?"

  "It has to be done," Lieber agreed. With every foot up an ordeal of physical anguish, Lieber worked his way out of the bunker.

  1504 Hours

  Ensign Garrett did not shirk responsibility. When he saw the gun captain grab at his headset, he knew the ordnance officer was transmitting every curse he'd ever learned at sea. Who the hell had given the forward turret permission to fire? As the gun captain cringed, Garrett got his attention and pointed at himself. The gun captain nodded, then spoke into his mouthpiece. A moment later he blanched and turned a guilty eye on the ensign.

  "Mr. Garrett, he says you are to wait here. The Master-at-Arms is putting you under arrest."

  Garrett nodded.

  Captain Oates was not going to wait for a formal Mast. Two armed sailors came to remove Garrett to the bridge. They were dazed, hardly capable of concentrating on the task at hand. Compared to sea beasts, a puny human prisoner was small game indeed. As Garrett was marched aft, they passed Amos Macklin and William Pegg. They stank to high heaven. Garrett's bruises, which he had all but forgotten about, throbbed mysteriously when he caught Amos' eye.

  On the bridge every eye was turned on Sand Island. The smoke had not yet completely cleared.

  "Give him credit, sir. That broadside chased the serpents off." Lieutenant Grissom saw Garrett, rolled his eyes and turned away. The ensign felt his career shoot craps with that roll. He could only hope worse wasn't in store. He stared at the back of Oates' head. The captain's neck was as red and beefy as his face with layer after layer of harsh summer burns. Tiny hairs had been bleached and curled by weather.

  Then the captain lowered his Zeiss glass and pushed away from the rail. Any notion Garrett had of Oates as a helpless old man was immediately squelched.

  "The fisherman. I should have known." Oates' blue tunic was buttoned tightly at his neck and the flesh bulged out like a frog in song. He had the same dazed look as the guards: trying to act in a rational manner while staring the impossible in the face. "What you did in Number One was mutinous. You incited others to mutiny."

  "I take full responsibility, sir."

  "Do you? Do you also take responsibility for the men killed by your treason?" He threw an angry glance at his ordnance officer. "You realize the other turrets also fired? They thought the wires had failed."

  Garrett swallowed hard. Telephones were almost as new to the Navy as radios. Transmissions often became garbled, or failed completely. The ensign had known he was risking a full broadside when the forward turret fired. The other gun crews would assume they had missed a command and follow suit.

  "Mr. Garrett, you can't take responsibility. That belongs to me." The captain's neck pulsed madly in the tight collar. He seemed ready to crush his cigarette out in Garrett's eye. He spat out angry clouds as he spoke. "But I can see you locked away in hell. I could have you hanged for this. Goddammit, I will have you hanged. The Articles of War… the Articles…."

  He wavered, apparently overcome by his own wrath. He began to lift his cigarette, then seemed to find it too heavy and let his arm drop. Going over to the sea chair bolted to the deck, he dropped heavily onto its thin cushion. "Mr. Garrett...."

  The phone jangled. Grissom answered. His mouth twisted. "Wakes, Red, One-Oh-Oh! Captain, they've circled the island!"

  Captain Oates said nothing. He gripped the chair arms, his knuckles white. A tiny curl of smoke rose next to the entrance of the wireless cubicle. Oates' cigarette had rolled against the bulkhead after slipping from his fingers.

  "Captain, if we cut to starboard, they'll come up on our beam. We can blow them out of the water with our twelve-inchers."

  Dr. Singleton was rapturously aw
aiting the reappearance of the creatures. The exec's words barely registered in his mind. Yet the captain's steady silence perturbed him. Turning, he looked at the man in the sea chair and he rushed forward.

  "See here!" Grissom shouted as the doctor took hold of Oates' collar.

  "Back away, Mr. Grissom. Your captain needs air. Uh... I believe you're in charge, now."

  Lieutenant Grissom moved to push the doctor away. But when Oates neither protested nor affirmed this action, he paused.

  "Captain Oates has taken ill." Sotto voce, he added, "My God, man, it's his heart. Let me help him!"

  For a moment, Grissom was held in a trance. Then he raced for the telephone. "Where are they now?" he demanded of the lookout. He listened a moment, then cursed. "We'll never match their speed in time."

  "I see them!" a petty officer on the wing shouted.

  Grissom again hesitated. It appeared the creatures were coming around the atoll after their rude ejection by the twelve-inchers. They were nosing towards the northern opening of the lagoon, insouciantly passing a mere five hundred yards off the Florida's starboard quarter. There was no question they must be interdicted. But Grissom found it difficult issuing commands while Oates sat wide-eyed and helpless in the pilothouse.

  "Mr. Grissom," Garrett stepped up. "Request permission to return to my post."

  The exec blinked. Here was the proof. He was in charge. But he would not contradict the captain's orders--not in front of him. "You are under arrest, Mr. Garrett. Take him to the brig. Helm, hard to starboard. We'll get as close to the shoals as we dare. We have to get between them and the atoll." Grissom looked at the ordnance officer. "Order all rapid-fire guns to get ready. If we can beat them to the break, they'll come right up on us."

  While the exec was giving orders, Singleton caught the attention of Oates' orderly. "C'mon, boy."

  "But sir, you're not a real doctor."

  "Even a fool like you must see we have to get him out of here."