“Cap-i-taan Risa-Sab-At will now demonstrate the Baalkpan Arsenal Blitzer Bug!”
The “Blitzer Bug” was the simplest thing in the world; basically, a pipe with a barrel on one end that fired from a spring-loaded open bolt. Originally called the Bug Sprayer during development, because it kind of looked like one, Commander Brister had suggested that it would be most useful in a Kraut-like blitz assault, and the name just naturally evolved. It was fully automatic only, so far, and fired very fast as long as the trigger was depressed. To make it shoot only once or twice required serious practice. That was of little concern today, when the idea was to impress.
Risa clutched the weapon tight against her shoulder, holding the pistol grip and the magazine, and leaned forward as she aimed down the sights and squeezed the trigger. There was a long, raucous buuuurp! And the third barrel was blown apart. Risa grinned hugely and held the weapon up while the crowd erupted once more.
“How was it?” Silva asked, muttering in her ear.
“You were right. It’s a handful,” she replied, still grinning. “It took all my strength to keep it on target. I think it will be very wasteful of ammunition.”
“Yeah, but maybe in the right hands, like these commandos Chackie’s workin’ up in Manila, they might shine.”
“Could be.”
The demonstrations continued, with Silva and Risa, then Abel, Stuart, and even Lawrence putting various pistols through their paces. Most of these were junk in Silva’s view, or required too much potential machine time and handwork to make. A nice revolver based on the Single-Action Army Colt Russ Chapelle had discovered aboard Santa Catalina, and intended to give to the Skipper, was very accurate, but got out of time after two cylinders were fired. Silva thought it had potential, but the guts needed work. A copy of a Mauser “Broomhandle” in. 45 ACP fired once, then locked up. Probably the best was a copy of Silva’s beloved 1911 Colt. It was a pretty thing, he had to admit. The slide was color case hardened, and the frame was a kind of purplish blue. A few machining shortcuts had been taken, but it felt right in his hand. Firing quickly but carefully, he managed to empty three magazines on target before it started getting tight and failed to function. Abel and Lawrence both fired others like it until they too started having problems. Dennis figured the pistols might be too well made, in a sense, and needed more “slop.”
During these exhibitions, Bernie, Ronson, and their strikers continued fooling around with the torpedoes. The small-arms demonstration at an end, Ben Mallory and a couple of his pilots wowed the crowd with modest stunts in the ever popular P-40s overhead, while Silva took charge of the four-inch-fifties. As acting gunnery officer, he merely designated the targets and gave the command, “Commence firing in local control!” After that, he appraised the quality of the gun’s crews drill as much as the performance of the weapons. On the whole, he was pleased. The crews were young recruits who’d never seen combat, but they were well trained and confident.
Walker ’s old number four gun performed well with the new shells, just as Bernie said it would. It had been tested quite a bit already, and the people of Baalkpan were used to its rushing crack and the associated pressure. Dennis frowned when he saw a couple of the shell casings had indeed cracked, but was satisfied, particularly by the much-improved explosive force of the new “common” shells and the glorious shocks of distant spume they threw up in the bay. The new gun did fine as well-at first-with the black-powder shells provided. Accuracy was good, and several of the farthest targets were destroyed before the left recoil cylinder split on a seam and the right fill plug blew out, both spewing oil all over the gun and its crew. The spectators laughed and cheered, but even then, Silva-who’d avoided a dowsing-wasn’t disappointed. The gun worked and so did the mount. None of the elevating and training gear had failed. The new telescope sights made with Imperial lenses seemed as good as the old ones. A recoil cylinder was just a pipe. They could make better pipes. He gave the command to cease firing and secure, and over the rumble of the people nearby, he heard a new, different sound.
“What the hell’s that?” he demanded as a tiny aircraft blew past overhead. It sounded like a giant mosquito, but even as little as he knew about airplanes, he noticed several things at once. The craft was an open-cockpit, single-seat monoplane with a smallish radial engine, and it had fixed landing gear-with wheels!
“People of Baalkpan and the Grand Alliance, the Air Corps presents the P-1 Mosquito Hawk!”
Dennis guffawed; he couldn’t help it. “Skeeter Hawk my ass! That’s a homemade, pint-sized ‘Fleashooter!’”
“You’re right,” confirmed a female voice behind him in a flat, distant, tone. “That’s Colonel Mallory’s latest; a pursuit ship for the carriers. He says it’s a scaled-down cross between a P-36 Hawk and a P-26 Peashooter.”
“Pam!” Dennis said, turning to face the short, dark-haired woman.
“What? No ‘sugar pie’? No ‘honey dew’?” she asked sarcastically in her strong Brooklyn accent.
“No,” Silva answered simply.
“I oughta hate your guts.”
“Yep. Why don’t you?”
Pam took a deep breath and let it out. Around them, all eyes were on the little plane as it swooped low over the shore and snap-rolled to the right, over the water. “’Cause I can’t, that’s all. You’re a jerk, a turd, the worst asshole in the world, for not comin’ back to me when you were supposed to-not even comin’ to see me when you finally got here, but… did you know Sister Audry thinks you’re some kinda Holy Warrior called to ‘smite’ our enemies?”
Dennis blinked. “Hell, no! Huh. Maybe that explains why she was so nice to me the other day. All my hee-roin’ musta impressed her after all, back when we was marooned. She really thinks that?”
“Yeah… an’ I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“ You don’t believe that stuff!”
Pam shook her head. “I told you I don’t know what to believe,” she snapped. “But maybe you did help out more where you were than you would have back here. At first I figured you just like the damn war too much to leave it, but she talked a little sense, and I guess it’s not my place to judge whether you were ‘called’ by God or some goofy sense of duty.”
“Hey, don’t knock the war, doll,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “It’s the only one we got.”
“Damn you! Can’t you ever be serious? About anything?”
Dennis looked around and saw that Risa, Abel, Stuart, and Lawrence had moved a short distance away, clearly leaving them to hash this out in relative peace while the crowd enjoyed the antics of the new plane.
“Bein’ serious can get a fella in a lotta trouble,” he admitted softly.
The small plane performed a barrel roll that caused the spectators to cry out, and Dennis pointed at it. “Colonel Mallory in that thing?”
“Probably. He’s like you in that way. Always jumpin’ in the fire when he doesn’t have to.”
“Somebody has to.”
“But why does it always have to be guys I care about?” Pam flared, loud enough for Risa to hear, and she came to embrace her friend.
“Because you, like I, are drawn to the sort who care enough about you-and the cause we fight for-to do their duty as they see it, no matter what,” Risa murmured.
Tears came then. “Are you tryin’ to tell me this big dope stayed away because he cares for me?”
Risa looked at Dennis and blinked discomfort. “Of course he did, my sister. He cannot protect you here… and ultimately, neither can Col-nol Maal-ory.”
“But I don’t want protection!” Pam whispered into Risa’s fur, then paused. “You know, that’s what Sister Audry said too.”
The new plane dove toward the bay, and with a grumbling stutter, bullet geysers erupted around yet another target barrel, and amid more thunderous acclaim, the odd little pursuit ship pulled up and raced back toward Kaufman Field. When Silva looked back to where Pam and Risa had been, they were gone.
Bernie was adjusting the depth controls on the torpedoes with a ratchet, setting them to run at five feet. “We’re starting to get a little rubber from Ceylon. We’ll get more in India. Colonel Mallory began testing the ’Skeeters with leather tires, but when we were coming up with the recoil cylinders for the guns, he came by and had us make Oleo struts to take the shock on his gear.”
“What did he use for guns?”
“Basically, Blitzer Bugs mounted in the wheel pants, with long magazines following the struts up and through the wings. All they need is light springs for the followers, since they’re pushing the cartridges down. They work pretty good.”
“Forty-five-ACP airplane guns?” Silva asked doubtfully.
Bernie sighed in exasperation. “Sure. What are they gonna shoot at? Creeping zeps and packs of Grik.” He waved at the sky. “There aren’t any Zeros up there, and the Flea-I mean, the Mosquito Hawk-can even outrun that damn Jap spotting plane if it ever shows up again. Besides, the principle of the Blitzer Bugs should work with bigger stuff, like thirty-ought six, when we get around to it.” He rolled his eyes. “You’d’ve known all this if you’d been here, instead of running loose in the east! Now leave me alone. I’ve got ‘fishy’ stuff to do!” he added angrily. Silva stepped back and watched while the strikers started slathering lard all over the first torpedo, already poised at the rear of the left tube.
“I’ve been watching them,” Abel offered at his side. “The first one is the ‘cold’ torpedo, and it utilizes only compressed air that operates a three-cylinder engine to turn the counter-rotating propellers. That is all very straightforward, but the complexity of the guidance system is most fascinating and impressive!”
“They ain’t got a warhead on the end of that thing, do they?” Silva asked.
“No. It is a practice head, they called it.”
“Good. Let’s ease back a little, just the same. C’mon, Larry. It’s been my experience that torpedoes are more dangerous to them around ’em than they are to who you’re shootin’ at!”
“I want to watch what they do,” Lawrence objected.
“You can watch with us from back a ways. Like Mr. Sandison said, let’s leave him be.”
Small motor launches loaded with several observers each eased into the watery range at predetermined distances, while the crowd talker described the first weapon as a Mk-I cold-air torpedo and proudly described the complexity of the device. Bernie finally stepped back and ordered that it be pushed the rest of the way into the barrel of the tube. The gyro had been set for a simple, straight run. When the weapon was fully inserted to the spring-loaded stop, a striker removed the propeller lock and closed the circle door just like he’d done it a hundred times. Finally, he inserted a big brass cartridge into the firing chamber at the top rear of the tube, gently closed the little door, and stepped back to Bernie, presenting him with a lanyard attached to the hammer.
The torpedo had no warhead, but the air flasks were the first of their kind made on this world and were stoked beyond a thousand PSI. They’d tested them, of course, but Bernie didn’t want anyone on the mount when the charge went off and all that air tried to dump into the complicated little engine under somewhat stressful acceleration. He didn’t think anything bad would happen, but there were an awful lot of pieces to fly in all directions if it did.
“Ready!” he cried, stretching the lanyard and looking nervously at the suddenly silent grandstand. By prior arrangement, Adar stood and made a grand, throwing-away gesture.
The impulse charge detonated with a hollow, muffled boomp! and the slimy torpedo squirted from the tube with a high-pitched skirl of air, followed by a billowing cloud of white smoke. It splapp ed noisily into the water and vanished from sight, but a surge of bubbles rose to the surface in a gratifyingly straight line.
Bernie, Dennis, and nearly everyone near the mount raced to the water’s edge to watch the bubbling wake. Deadly flasher fish and other finned… things… leaped into the air or churned away from the weapon’s path. Swirling lizard birds took notice of the disturbance in the water and angled down, swooping and pacing the trail of rising air. The torpedo was going straight-but it was clearly also going disappointingly slow. It seemed to take forever to reach the first boat stationed two hundred tails offshore, and when they raised a little flag signifying its passage, Bernie looked at his watch.
“Eight, maybe ten lousy knots!” he ground out, barely heard over the happy cheering and shouts from the spectators.
“Least it’s runnin’ true,” Dennis consoled, “and those ’Cats on the boats’ll be able to tell us if its runnin’ at about the right depth.”
Bernie brightened. “Yeah. And I knew it would be slow compared to the hot air torp.” He grinned tentatively. “I think it works!”
The second boat raised a flag at four hundred tails, and Bernie confirmed his initial speed estimate, but he was in a better mood by then. Finally, the eight-hundred-tail boat waved its flag but heaved out a net with a marker that indicated the torpedo had come to a floating, exhausted stop. The net would snare the wallowing weapon and mark its position. They wouldn’t have used it if the propellers were still turning.
“Kind of pitiful,” Bernie muttered aloud, “but it proves all the really complicated stuff works.”
The second torpedo was prepared, with Ronson shadowing the strikers like an expectant mother. Externally, the “Mk-2” looked exactly the same, but the starting lever would complete a circuit instead of opening a valve. It was loaded and made ready just like its predecessor, but this time Ronson took the lanyard. At the same signal from Adar, the electric torpedo leaped into the bay, but there were no bubbles this time. The crowd cheered, then waited expectantly. Ronson snatched his binoculars to his eyes, staring at the first boat. But there was no flag.
“Maybe they just didn’t see it,” he said. “That’s part of the point. It’s supposed to be hard to see… and it should be faster than the first one. Maybe it went by before they were looking for it.”
“Hey, Ronson,” Silva said.
“What?”
“I see it.”
“Where?!”
Dennis pushed the binoculars down, about the same time chittering laughter erupted in the stands.
“Oh, goddamn!” Ronson spat when he saw his torpedo floating on the surface about forty yards away, its slowly turning propellers pushing it directly back at them like a chastened dog.
“Better luck next time, Mr. Rodriguez!” Silva said with theatrical solemnity.
“I… I don’t get it. It must’ve shorted out.”
The launch of the third torpedo, the “Mk-3” was the last event of the day, and everyone knew it was supposed to be a somehow more advanced version of the first, so a lot was expected. All preparations were apparently the same as those previous, but as a “hot” torpedo, it was equipped with a fuel source-kerosene-that would send a jet of flame into the air flask as the resultant hot, expanding air and kerosene exhaust gushed into the motor. Theoretically, this would generate exponentially greater pressure, speed-and heat, of course. That was how it worked on the Mk-14 torpedo they’d copied in most ways except the engine. They were experimenting with turbines for the short-lived torpedoes, but like the batteries, they weren’t there yet. After the directional and depth performance of the Mk-1, however, Bernie was emboldened to think the Mk-3 was “it,” and with yet another signal from Adar, he confidently pulled the lanyard.
The tube boomp ed again and the fish lashed out into the water, leaving a far more energetic trail of steamy froth behind.
“’Ook at her go!” Lawrence cried excitedly. Compared to the first two, the Mk-3 was indeed going like a bat out of hell. Bernie was the first to notice that the wake looked a little… wobbly, though, and his fingers clenc
hed his binoculars more tightly. Nearly to the first boat, the torpedo suddenly porpoised, almost leaping out of the water for an instant before diving under the boat and the erratically waving flag.
“Now!” a striker shouted.
“Maybe thirty knots!” Abel cried in response. He’d been looking at his watch and hadn’t seen the surprising caper. At perhaps three hundred tails, the torpedo jumped again, significantly off track to the left, and this time it looked like a leaping fish, the sun glinting sharply off its polished body. It fell back in the water with an enormous splash and a crazy corkscrew of foam. Seconds later, a large, steamy bubble exploded on the surface close enough to rock the second boat and nearly toss several of the observers into the bay.
“Wow,” Ronson gushed, and Bernie rounded on him.
“I’d say that one went hot, crooked, and abnormal as hell,” Dennis quipped, “but between it and the first, it looks like you’re circlin’ the right tree, Mr. Sandison!”
Bernie spun to face Silva, enraged and embarrassed, but when he didn’t see the mocking expression he’d expected, he took a breath.
“He’s right,” Ronson said, waving toward the standing, cheering spectators. “And everybody knows it but you! Sure, it’s not perfect. Mine sure wasn’t! But it did work… mostly. And you’ll figure out what didn’t.” He grinned and pointed at the torpedo mount, smoke still hazing the third tube. “Just think: by the time the Skipper gets back with Walker, we can put that back on her-and stick fish in it too!”
CHAPTER 17
The Torpedo Day festivities at an end, all those in charge of the various divisions who’d participated joined Adar and most of the Allied high command at long banquet tables beneath a colorful pavilion rigged considerably back from the old seaplane ramp. The spectators dispersed rapidly as the usual afternoon showers threatened, and guards were posted to keep the curious from disturbing the planned debriefing discussion.
Silva and Lawrence sat near Bernie, but a little to themselves, with Silva suddenly unsure he was supposed to be there. The gathering had a kind of “no enlisted men allowed” air to it, which was very unusual in Baalkpan, but he’d simply followed Mr. Sandison, Ronson, and Abel Cook when they made their way over, and they didn’t object. Lawrence had followed him and probably never noticed the odd atmosphere. Risa sat with a group of ’Cat Marine officers and other infantry types. Something was up, Dennis decided. Something besides the debrief, and he’d hang around until he found out what it was or somebody ran him off.
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