China Sea

by David Poyer

  It was Usmani, holding an M-16. He pumped it over his head like a fedayee, grinning, and then went running down the ladder. He vanished into a canvas shelter between the bridge and a smaller deckhouse that supported what looked like an antiaircraft mounting.

  Pistolesi and four other Gaddis crewmen emerged from behind the superstructure and raced forward. They discovered a hatch in the deck, jerked it open, fired down. Casings spun, raining into the sea. The fireman pulled an object from his pocket, fiddled with it, and dropped it through the hatch. Black smoke gushed out, whipped away by the rising wind.

  Dan jerked himself out of his astonishment and sprinted for the bridge.

  Doolan and Colosimo whipped helmeted heads around as he burst in. Wedlake, who’d reached for the small of her back, paused. He said rapidly, “They had me restrained below. I heard explosions. What happened?”

  Chick explained tersely that the Shanghai had come out of the mist and drizzle without warning. It had popped up on the radar, vanished, then appeared again inside two thousand yards. Inside of a minute later, coming in at high speed from upsea, it had begun firing. The first burst had ripped up the water ahead of the stem, obviously a signal to heave to. The bridge team, trying desperately to locate Dan, had maintained course and speed. The second burst had been the one he heard. Three shells from an automatic gun had penetrated the starboard side about Frame 130, one exploding in the chiefs’ head and shower, the others in the mooring and towing gear locker on the main deck. That was when Zabounian had pulled the GQ alarm.

  At that point, Juskoviac had ordered them to heave to. “I didn’t want to, but I had no choice,” Colosimo said tightly. “He said he was next in command and ordered me to go to ‘all stop.’ I didn’t know where you were. So I obeyed him. Then they came alongside.”

  “Where is he? You say he left the bridge?”

  “Right, when he saw they intended to board. I don’t know where he is now.”

  Dan thought rapidly, staring into the radar screen. They were on 300 now, making about seven knots, maintaining steerageway against huge green seas from the starboard bow. The Shanghai had come in, not from the west, where Doolan had guessed the enemy group lay, but from the north. Downwind and downsea, which meant she could use her superior speed to close rapidly from a quarter already obscured by rain.

  But if Chick’s DRT plot was right, the Katori and perhaps the other gunboat were still out there.

  “Bobbie,” he said slowly, “how did you say these people attacked the Marker Eagle?”

  “Just like this. One came in from starboard, made us heave to, and boarded. The other came in from the opposite side. The big ship stayed about a mile away.”

  Dan told Chick to get the lookouts on a close visual search to port. He jogged uphill to the wing as Gaddis rolled, cupping his face against a renewed volley of rain. To the east the sky was black as asphalt, and the wind was rising minute by minute. The seas were building, too, bulling in from the northeast. So high and with so much water in the air that the piloting radar could not pick up a solid contact only a couple thousand yards away.

  But if that was true for them—

  He ducked back inside and said tersely, “Did this guy alongside us ever get any message off? Call Radio. Check with CIC. See if they intercepted anything.” The reservist turned away to obey, and Dan asked Bobbie, “When this gunboat closed, when they were making up, tell me exactly what happened.”

  “Like Dom said, they came alongside. We put down the jacob’s ladder. It took a while because it’s so rough. They were looking back over their shoulders and shouting to the men on the boat. Then when all of them were on board, I guess it was seven or eight of them, all of a sudden one yelled something. That was when the shooting started.”

  Topmark said, “Pistolesi and them were waiting behind the RHIBs. The boys got the drop on them, just blew ’em all away. I don’t think they even got to shoot back.”

  Colosimo: “Sir, checking the times in the ESM logs against the deck log: A couple of transmissions while they must have been approaching us. No transmissions intercepted once contact began.”

  “And then we boarded them back and took out the crew they left behind.”

  They nodded, and he contemplated the near-incredible fact that the gunboat had closed, fired on, and at last even boarded them without detecting their masquerade. Hard to credit, but then he wasn’t seeing a low-lying and unfamiliar ship between bursts of squall, from the deck of a pitching vessel much smaller and lower than his own. The containers, the gun covers, the nose job on the mack had done their work.

  Now it was time to throw off the disguise, and reveal the predator within.

  Dan looked back at the Shanghai, to see the dungaree-clad Gaddis seamen knotted on the bow, waving across to their compadres on the boat deck. They were carrying AK-47s slung over their shoulders, carrying pistols, some toting three or four weapons.

  “Boarding party requests permission to come back aboard,” said the phone talker.

  “Give me the bullhorn,” Dan snapped. He twisted the switch on and went out on the wing. Pointed it at the tossing craft, the faces that lifted as he said, “On the gunboat. Can you hear me?”

  They nodded. “I want all of you back aboard, but first I want you to get all the flammables and loose ammo you can find belowdecks and stack it under that canvas. All the fuel and gas and pyro you can find. And get rid of those souvenirs! You’re not going to make it back across carrying all that weight.” A couple of them glanced across the foaming gap, the looming side of the ship; black rifle shapes flew over the side and disappeared into the ever-ravenous maw of the sea.

  The phone talker: “CIC reports intermittent contact bearing 252, eleven thousand yards.”

  “That’s them,” said Doolan urgently. “It’s in gun range. We can get a fast solution—”

  “We’re not trained up for long-range fire, Chick.” It was attractive, but an extreme range gun duel was not going to win him this battle. Long before they had the other ship’s range, missiles would come burning through the mist, homing on them.

  He had to get in killing-close. Close enough to shove a snub-nose into the other ship’s belly and pull the trigger.

  He thought for a moment more, then put fenders over to starboard, lessening the battering Gaddis’s hull was taking from the gunboat, and bent a longer line on the sea painter, so if he ordered her paid out and trailed astern it could be done instantly. He adjusted course by gradual increments to port, putting the prevailing sea on the quarter, till they were running west by southwest. Then snapped more orders, the boatswain and phone talker relaying them.

  The containers on the starboard side stayed; those to port were released and shoved over the side. They splashed and fell aft, some sinking immediately, others rolling low on the surface. The gunners and loaders swarmed over the mounts to port, ripping off the tentlike gun covers.

  “Range and bearing to the intermittent,” he said, not taking his eyes from the binoculars or the binoculars from the mist.

  “Skunk Delta: two-five-zero, seven thousand yards.”

  Three and a half miles. Every yard closer increased the effectiveness of his guns, but what was all-important now was the angle at which they met. He kept his glasses on a darker patch of sky off the starboard bow. If the contact they were calling Skunk Delta was the second Shanghai, he could take it out without risking much damage from return fire. Five or six thousand yards, in this weather, would be extreme range for what had looked, on the craft he still towed along wallowing off his starboard side, like a Soviet-style optical-sighted thirty-seven-millimeter. But if Delta turned out to be the cruiser, he’d have to make an instant decision.

  “All containers free, port side.”

  “Guns manned, port side.”

  “Very well. Pass to all stations, weapons tight,” Dan said, just to make sure they knew not to fire until he gave the word. “Range and bearing, Skunk Delta.”

  “Skunk Delta
: two-five-five true, four thousand five hundred yards.”

  The obscured sky, the occasional blasts of rain made the pilothouse dim. The gray drizzly light made it seem like they were underwater. He glanced at Bobbie, who had read the range and bearing off the repeater. She was there still, only the back of her thin neck visible as she nestled her face into the black rubber light hood. The butt of her revolver stuck up out of her jeans; the gray steel battle helmet looked enormous on her. He could not decide if she looked vulnerable or intimidating. Maybe both. Past her Robidoux stood at the chart table, staring at the Fathometer. The chromed V of a pair of dividers glittered in a silver cone as he twirled them rapidly round and round. Colosimo was staring forward, fingers pale on the barrels of his binocs. As he caught Dan’s eyes, he gave back a tight grin. Doolan stood to his right, gaze distant, listening to the gun control circuit whose headphones were wrapped around his skull.

  A nudge; Dan looked down; the boatswain was holding out a flak jacket. “Mr. Doolan said to send them up here,” he said. Dan told him good, make sure everyone had them on, everyone on the guns, too. As he struggled into it, the steel plates weighed him down, but its heavy, warming embrace felt good. He took the battle helmet with less enthusiasm.

  “I’m going out on the wing. Keep those ranges and bearings coming, Bobbie. Watch for any other pop-ups; they could come from any quarter. Chick, make sure the fire control radars stay off till I tell you to illuminate. Our only chance of pulling this off—”

  “I know; I know,” Doolan snapped. Dan regarded him for a second, then let it pass. Chick didn’t seem nearly as happy about going into battle the second time around.

  On the wing the fine driven mist-drizzle wetted him through at once. Wedlake yelled through the open door, “Delta, two-six-zero, three thousand … seven hundred yards!” It sounded odd to be getting reports in a woman’s voice. The CIC phone talker seconded that with a course and speed of 030 at ten knots.

  He stared into the blowing rain, into the darkness in the midst of day. They had to see something soon. If Delta was the Katori class cruiser, it was tracking slowly across his bow, her course keeping her into the sea for comfort while closing the merchant contact she’d sent her gunboat in to board and search. Right now, she had to be waiting for a radio report. He wished he had a native Chinese speaker aboard. But even if he did he wouldn’t know prowords, call signs, proper terminology.

  “Skunk Delta, 260, three thousand yards.”

  He had barely time to register that the bearing was unchanged—that most likely meant the other ship had turned toward him, was no longer on 060 but something closer to the reciprocal of his own course—when a gray form condensed suddenly out of the squall. It was low to the sea, so close he flinched back as it jumped toward him out of rain-fog and darkness to fill nearly the whole field of his binoculars. She was coming at Gaddis bow on, so close he could see the distinct leaps and splashings of the white foam boundary where her stem wedged the sea apart. Her guns were leveled, pointing so directly at him that he could see the black emptinesses within the tubes.

  Three thousand yards, a mile and a half. She was close, by one reckoning. But he wanted her closer still. For a moment his mind searched frantically. Then he turned his head and yelled, “To the signal bridge: Hoist the black ensign!”

  “Hoist what, sir?”

  “That flag the signalmen made up. The skull and bones. Break it at the masthead! Dip it; hoist it; do it three times. Do it!”

  A moment later came shouts from aft, the snap and flutter of cloth going up the halliard. He studied the oncoming bridge but saw no flicker of response. Well, response didn’t matter. All he had to do was confuse whoever stood in the other pilothouse, trying to interpret the apparition looming out of the mist ahead, trying to read a nationality from a wind-whipped flag; trying to make sense of a confusing outline of containers and superstructure, the gunboat riding close alongside, obviously either boarding or about to board. All he had to do was keep that one man off balance, keep him undecided long enough to get Gaddis’s hungry gun muzzles a few hundred yards closer.

  “Skunk Delta, two thousand three hundred yards, closing!”

  “Very well,” he said, keeping his tone bored. “Weapons officer: All guns, load.”

  He heard the command recede down the line mouth to mouthpiece, mouth to mouth. Heard the hollow clanking and thumping down on the forecastle as the first seventy-pound five-inch shell came up the hoist and went into the transfer tray, was swung to the proper angle parallel to the barrel axis, transferred, backed up by its propellant charge, and rammed home into the breech. Heard the familiar clang as the fifties charged, one abaft each wing, two on the flying bridge over his head.

  “Chick, pass the following to all mounts. The target is a cruiser on our starboard bow. All fire will be visual sights and local control; Fifties will concentrate on the bridge; twenties, on the forward guns; forty-mil and five-inch, superstructure for the first few rounds, then lower sights and fire into the hull centroid. The main battery will fire armor-piercing projectiles until exhausted, then shift to VT. There will be no further targeting commands during the engagement. Each mount captain will keep his gun in action as long as he has ammunition and the target is on a safe firing bearing.”

  “Aye, sir. Permission to man up the starboard side mounts.”

  “Negative; hold the starboard gun crews inside the skin of the ship. They’ve got glasses on us, too. Chick: Backstop me on this; what’s the arming distance for five-inch armor-piercing?”

  “About five hundred yards, I think.”

  Wedlake, her voice going higher: “Range is now two thousand yards even, closing very fast!”

  Colosimo, mouth distorted as he stared ahead: “How fucking close are you going?”

  Dan lowered his binoculars, seeing now with unaided sight how shockingly near the other ship really was. He could see pale ovals in the round bridge windows that had to be faces. Mist, rain, and deception could only shroud him for so long. Any second now, they would see Gaddis for what she was.

  “Weapons officer: Train port batteries out to three-zero-zero relative. Stand by for batteries released. OOD: Increase speed to flank.”

  The shouted orders filled the bridge. The EOT pinged. Gaddis could not exactly surge ahead—no steam-powered ship did—but inside of two or three minutes, when he’d need all the speed he could muster, she’d be accelerating in earnest.

  For a few minutes he’d been afraid. The dread was still down there, crawling around in the basement, but it was giving way now to something cooler and less human, of which he was always faintly ashamed afterward; to the remote ironic detachment that always came over him in battle. Aloud he said, “You want to know, how close, Dom?”

  “How fucking close, I said, sir!”

  “Well, let’s see. I would call it R plus one-half T. Take half of our tactical diameter, T, at this speed, which is the distance we’ll travel as we come right ninety degrees. R, arming distance on the five-inch, before the shell’s ready to explode, is five hundred yards. That means I commence my turn…”

  He ducked back out on the wing, and picked out one of the seas that came steadily in on their quarter. Waited till it had almost reached them, till it would in fifteen seconds more begin to lift Gaddis’s stern, and turned his head and yelled, “Right about … now. Right full rudder, steady course three-five-zero! Mr. Doolan! Port side batteries, local control, fire for effect, your target: cruiser, three-three-zero relative, continue firing until target is obscured or destroyed—batteries released! Starboard side, clear the containers over the side, clear the gun covers; starboard batteries, man and load!”

  Gaddis staggered sideways. Taken by the mounting of an overtaking sea as her rudder began to bite, body-blocked suddenly sideways by thousands of tons of cresting water, her bow whipped hard right and she snap-rolled nearly to her scuppers. Dan grabbed the safety line as the deck dropped away beneath his boots like the trap of a gallows. He da
ngled for a moment like a kid on the monkey bars, then clawed his way up to a more secure handhold as the rapidly swinging bow, like some deadly indicator, pointed for an instant at the onrushing cruiser, then swept on, past it, unmasking the port side abruptly to the oncoming enemy.

  The swell swept past with the roaring of a thousand birds starting from their roosts, and as the deck rolled back upright the sights of all the port-side guns, lifting from their aim down into the sea, rose to bear directly on the oncoming ship.

  The 40mm and 20mm and fifties opened fire simultaneously, a crash and firestorm of noise and fury. Crossing the pilothouse at a run, Lenson emerged onto the port wing to a blasting confusion of gun-flashes, dirty brown nitrate-stinking propellant smoke, and a spewing rain of hot cartridge cases from directly above. He clung to the splinter shield, deafened and half-blinded, peering out over the surging sea. Tracers in red, yellow, and orange flew lazily upward, hung in the air, hardly seeming to move, then plunged precipitously, puckering the sea like heavy raindrops around the still-approaching cruiser. It seemed to him that none of them were hitting. He opened his mouth to yell, then slammed his teeth closed; any shout was futile in the ongoing clamor; realizing, too, that hits would barely show, that the fifties and perhaps the twenties might glance off, but that the larger calibers would penetrate, wreaking most of their damage within, out of his sight.

  With a bellowing blast and a huge sphere of orange flash, the five-inch let go. The long tapered barrel recoiled slightly. The gas ejector whiffed black smoke out the muzzle. The empty propellant case clanged out on the deck as the barrel rose a trifle, tracking the target through Gaddis’s roll. Then it fired again, shaking the whole forepart of the ship. The smoke was whipped away instantly by the storm wind, obscuring the oncoming silhouette, yet not enough, he hoped, to deflect his gunners’ aim.