by David Poyer
He glanced at his watch and his throat closed. Only ten minutes before the ships would be here. “Move it, Lem, move it now!”
The throttle came open. The line came dripping out of the sea. Everett aimed the bow left, into the unswept portion of the mine field. As good a place as any, Gordon thought, pulling off his mask, then tripping his weight belt and gear and Mark 16, dumping them all pell-mell. If there were more contact mines, what they towed might bump one. But he had no more time for safety. Only just time to haul it clear, drop it, pick up his men, fire the charges, and clear out.
He saw the boat then. A sharp shadow between him and the fires. He heard shouting, distant but clear, and for a moment didn’t realize what it meant. Then he did.
“Down, Lem! Get low!”
Flashes from the dark, a stutter of automatic fire. He sprawled into wet wood and rubber. The little raft, burdened deep with the drag of mine and bags, made way with agonizing slowness across the flame-lit sea.
Another flash and stutter. This time, the Z-bird flinched as humming things plucked their way through rubber and air. One clanked and sparked by his feet, and Gordon started. How could they see to aim? The boat was black, both divers were dressed in black.
Then he saw how. Behind them, aft of the prop, glowed a phosphorescent arrow. Pointing right to them.
If only they’d brought rifles. Anything to keep them off for a few more minutes.
He blinked then, and clawed beneath the floorboards. He came up with Tupperware. He popped the lid, and the Browning dropped into his hand.
Looking back, he saw the silhouette shorten, swing bow on to them. Then it was obliterated in the muzzle flash.
Gordon pumped out fourteen rounds as fast as he could pull the trigger, hardly bothering to aim. No chance of a hit at this range. All he wanted to do was persuade them they were facing rifles, or a machine gun. When the automatic was empty he dropped it, ducking again as a fresh fusillade came in.
They did seem to be lagging back now, though. Two minutes later, he judged that this was far enough. “Cut it!” he shouted to Everett.
But he didn’t seem to hear. Gordon flung himself back down, pulling his knife free of the calf sheath, and hacked desperately at the line. It separated with a snap, and they leapt forward.
The acceleration tumbled Everett back, and Gordon saw the gleam of blood across his chest. He shoved him aside and grabbed the throttle. The motor yammered as he shoved it hard over.
The lightened boat swapped ends like a squirrel on a branch and headed back for the channel. Behind him he saw the pursuers hesitate, then turn to follow. They were close, no more than a hundred yards behind, but freed now of its burden the Z-bird romped, throwing luminous curving sheets of spray. He was thinking he might outrun them when he noticed that the raft was sagging in the middle. And that there was water in the bottom now, too.
So that was that.
He froze as suddenly and simultaneously the howl of a powerful engine burst over him, a new stick of bombs tore the shoreline apart, and over it all rose the terrifying clatter of automatic rifles.
Gasping as something seared the back of his thigh, he went over the side as the raft slid downward, pulled under by the still-running Evinrude.
Then he was in the water, enfolded by warm darkness through which bullets slid like frying bacon and propellers whined like a sawmill at full blast.
He wondered then, burrowing for the depths like a wounded mole, whether the rest of the team had seen the boat. Or guessed, from the firing, that he and Everett weren’t going to be back to pick them up.
Burgee and Maudit and Terger. They were good men. He’d done his best. As had Lem. As they all had. Now, at the end, it was in God’s hands.
He hoped God had read the plan.
0206 HOURS: U.S.S. TURNER VAN ZANDT
At that moment, Lenson, sweeping the night sea with the low-light goggles, saw it come on ahead. Low in the water, bobbing up and down and being waved back and forth. He searched to the left, but couldn’t see any in that direction. Nor was there one to starboard. Which side was the cleared lane on?
“Light in the water!” he yelled, then lowered his voice instinctively. “Light in the water. Off to port. Only one.”
The 21MC said: “Bridge, Sigs: infrared light, one point off starboard bow.”
Dan saw it at the same moment, dimmer than the first, but indisputably there. It didn’t look like a hundred yards between them. “Christ,” muttered Shaker, beside him, “I hope Jakkal picks those up. Steve!”
“Ahead two-thirds, indicate ten knots, come right, steer three-two-five.”
“Coming right, new course three-two-five,” said the helmsman.
“Farther right,” said Shaker. “Farther! I don’t like the heading Jakkal’s on.”
Dan pushed up the goggles, leaning over the chart as McQueen plotted the lights. Van Zandt was headed fair for the channel, but he couldn’t tell where Adams was going. By his chart, they were thirty, forty yards too far to port.
They couldn’t both be right. But he trusted McQueen. He straightened now and put his hand on the older man’s shoulder. “Okay, Mac, I’m gonna be with the captain from now on. Keep a good track. Yell loud if there’re any problems.”
“Got it, Commander.”
Standing beside Shaker now, gripping his binoculars and sweating under the long-sleeved jacket and canvas hood, Dan recast his mind into taking responsibility for it all: the whole dark length of her, and all her men. For this was how a captain thought, not of the part, but of the whole ship.
He’d felt it before, understudying Bell. He hoped he wouldn’t have to take over tonight. But if he did, there’d be no time for hesitation, confusion, or fear.
The whole ship … he knew that throughout her now men were leaning into their sights. The target-designation transmitters, atop the pilothouse, where the 76mm was laid from. The .50 machine guns. The Phalanx. The men on the torpedo tubes, ready to fire by hand in case power failed. And the small-arms party aft. He hoped they maintained discipline. Held their fire, held their talk, showed no lights.
The bobbing light slipped down the port side. Through the binoculars he caught for a second the black blur of a head beneath it, an arm.
He turned, to see McQueen lay a tiny triangle just inside the crosshatched boundary.
Suddenly the night split apart. Huge detonations shook the ship like a puppy, rolling her hard to starboard. The men on the bridge cried out. Dimly through the thunder, the shouting, cut Shaker’s voice, angry and at the same time cold. “I don’t know what it is. And it’s too late now. Fuck the mines! All ahead flank!”
It had begun already, he thought, crouching behind the splinter shield. The utter confusion of battle.
The sea leapt up around them in huge columns, wiping out the island, the stars, the very darkness, like a new Deluge. Van Zandt plunged through them, still accelerating, as they toppled and roared down like a dozen waterfalls.
The distant whine and howl of jet engines dwindled. Across two miles of water came the frying crackle of small arms and the occasional deeper note of heavier guns. Dan leaned against steel, sweating, waiting for the first flash of a shot aimed their way, the first glowing ball of missile exhaust.
With naked eyes, he could see lights moving on the shore now, trucks or possibly flashlights. They were close enough for that. The island lay behind and above them, a darker darkness, more menacing by the second. He remembered a passage from an old story; the looming island to leeward, the deserter’s hat drifting past, telling the new captain when he had steerageway. He yanked his mind back. Against the flickering sky, he could make out the double crest of Jabal Halwa.
“Halfway through,” came the chief quartermaster’s quiet voice. No one on the bridge said anything for a moment; then Charaler, also quietly, gave the official response: “Very well.”
Something had changed. It was suddenly quieter, like a theater before curtain. The pop and clatter came c
lear and distant. Then he knew what it was. The endless whistle of the shamal was gone. They were in the lee of the island. The enemy was only seconds away now. Yet still his lights searched skyward, still his tracers blinked upward in fiery streams; here and there a rocket kindled and rose in its fiery arc, detonating long seconds later over the water as its warhead self-destructed. He was still firing at the departed aircraft.
There was a bump under the hull, and Dan caught his breath. Other gasps came from around him. But no explosion followed. He had no idea what it was.
“Bridge, Sigs: Challenge from the island.”
He swung instantly, lifting his glasses, getting them tangled with the goggle straps, yanking them apart with a curse. The blue light glinted across the water from the spit, laying a fan-shaped glisten on the waves. It tapped out slowly P Q P.
Shaker: “Don’t answer. Maintain course. Pass the word to pick out your targets.”
Charaler: “Aye, sir.”
McQueen: “Sir, navigator holds us passing the inner boundary of the mine field.”
Shaker, calmly: “Very well.”
Ahead of them, at that moment, the profile of a destroyer leapt suddenly from blackness, outlined by two balls of brilliant-hot gas. Dan could see the dwindling red dots of the shells. Seconds later, two novas ignited over the island, painful brightnesses suspended from streams of smoke. They swung, then steadied beneath parachutes. They stripped night from the shore, the hummocks, the tortured rocky crags, the sand spit to port.
And directly ahead, frighteningly close, showed them a huddle of prefabricated huts and tents, and two piers outstretched. One long, one short. Several boats—he couldn’t tell how many—were near the short one, not tied up but standing a few yards off, as if just getting under way. A shapeless dark mass, probably more craft moored in a nest, occupied the southern side of the long pier. And the harsh light showed him more, five or seven more, scattered between him and the beach.
“Illuminate! Radars on!”
Wise, from CIC: “CWI in radiate. All radars coming up.”
“Weapons free,” he heard Shaker shout into the intercom.
“Cover your eyes!” Dan shouted. He ducked below the level of the windows, and squeezed his own shut.
The world lit red even behind his covering hand. The bellow rattled the deck plates and windows like a beast shaking a cage. One after another, five missiles flung themselves off the forecastle, filling the pilothouse with unbearable sound, glare, heat, and an incredible density of bitter, choking smoke.
When he straightened, cracking one eye to check, he caught the last at the apex of its trajectory. A moment later, it nosed over and curved down, a ball of lucent fire that was still burning fiercely when it merged with one of the hillocks in a blinding flash.
He thought, They’ve got to know we’re here now. In the guttering light of the falling star shells, the huge fluffy cotton trails of solid-fuel boosters led directly to Van Zandt.
“Gun action port, target small boats, batteries released,” shouted Shaker. “Torpedo action port, fire when you bear. All hands commence fire!”
Dan was looking aft, standing by for it, but still the first gun flash caught him with his eyes unshielded. The sphere of white-orange fire was big as a house and the blast, with the gun trained forward, blew him back into the bulkhead. He pulled himself back inside the bridge, blinking. But salvo flash destroyed only the central portion of vision. He looked to the side as the 76 fired again.
Adams was firing, too, had been whanging away steadily, the old five-inchers crashing out a broadside every three seconds. Her shells threw up huge spouts of white water. One hit a moored Boghammer, seventy pounds of steel and explosive traveling at three thousand feet a second, and the graceful hull ballooned weirdly for an instant before it disintegrated in a blast of orange flame.
Dan was staring at the pier when he realized suddenly he could see men running along it. They were that close. According to the chart, there was twenty feet of water at the end of that pier. Van Zandt drew twenty-six. He jumped to the radar. “Four hundred yards to turn!” he shouted. Ahead, Adams was already swinging her stern left, sheering off from the shore.
“Hold your course, Steve,” said Shaker, his voice iron. “How far to the pier, XO?”
“Five hundred yards!”
“Torpedoes away. I said that to you, phone talker, pass it and quit gawking around! XO, keep feeding me ranges. Officer of the deck, slow to five!”
“Ahead one third, indicate five knots.”
“Four hundred yards.”
“Fifties, commence fire.”
A hollow whump came from aft: high-pressure air kicking the torpedoes out of the tubes. At the same instant, the machine guns cut in above their heads. The noise was incredible. Yet it still increased, the clatter building to a roar. They had six of them firing, four .50s from above, two M60s from aft on the flight deck.
Dan lifted his face from the scope hood, called “Three hundred yards,” and looked to port for the torpedo wakes. He couldn’t see them, but he’d heard them go out. The port tubes were now empty.
“Gunboat to port, incoming, firing!”
He saw the red wink from the boat’s bow. The sound was lost in the clamor Van Zandt was putting out. Then suddenly bullets were whacking through thin metal around him. Someone screamed above him, on the flying bridge.
“Get some guns on that boat! Designate to Phalanx,” said Shaker.
Lewis must have had his finger on the button. A deep note like a bass viol, and Dan saw the shadow pause as spray splashes leapt up around it. The splashes tracked it for a second, then stopped. Their attacker looked undamaged for a moment. Then it disappeared. Sunk, he realized. And no wonder, with fifty or sixty inch-wide holes through it from one side to the other.
“Two hundred yards to the pier! Captain, we’ve got to turn or we’ll ground!”
“Hold your course, Steve,” said Shaker.
Dan lifted his head from the scope hood to a scene that no one in the U.S. Navy had seen since World War II: a shore installation taking the concentrated bombardment of two warships at close range. White, red, orange bursts flickered fast as the finale of a fireworks display. Adams had shifted fire from the boats and her shells were landing ashore now, a little long, but even as he thought this, the next salvo laddered down a hundred yards into the middle of the compound. Buildings blew apart in mushroom columns of flame. A truck cartwheeled through the sky. The crash and thud of the heavy shells echoed back from the mountain like the sky falling in.
It was a destroyerman’s dream, the enemy illuminated, distracted, and confused. They still think they’re being bombed, he thought. Then the fact that they were close enough to spit on the beach registered with utter horror. “Captain! One hundred yards to pier!”
“Very well.”
“Bridge, Main control.”
“You can’t tie up here, Captain. Not enough water!”
Shaker chuckled calmly. It sounded mad in the clamor. “Don’t worry so much, XO. Okay, Stever, come right and parallel the shore. Kick her up to fifteen.”
“Bridge, Main control.”
“What, damn it, Rick?”
“Cap’n, something just whanged into us on the port side.”
“Damage?”
“No damage, just a hell of a big clang.”
Meanwhile Charaler rapped out orders. They swept past the pier and it dropped behind. Their tracers reached toward it and dropped into the shadows alongside. The 76 clanged steadily from aft, its shells going home in crashing white blasts amid the buildings and boats. Several of them were sinking, listing over. A bow poked upward; there were men on it, scrambling about like ants on a sinking leaf. Tracers arched into them. The Iranians were firing on their own boats.
Dan bent his face again into the radar hood. To his horror, he saw that one of the Intruders had found their frequency. An angry seethe of jamming covered the screen. He jerked his head up and shifted to the al
idade. “Mark! Jabal Halwa, south ridge, bearing two-nine-nine. What’s the bearing when we’re out of the anchorage, Chief?”
“Wait one … two-nine-oh, say again two-nine-oh.”
“Depth,” said Shaker calmly.
“Five feet under the keel, shoaling fast.”
“Steady, Stever, Adams draws more than we do. Stand by … okay. Right hard rudder, now.”
The helmsman spun the wheel and the deck leaned under their feet. Dan grabbed for the chart table. Empty brass from the .50s rolled above their heads.
She came around fast, faster than Adams, and Charaler steadied her up on the reciprocal. The piers and buildings grew ahead of them again.
They know we’re here now, Dan thought. Now it’s our turn to play target.
As if to confirm it, a shell splash leapt up directly ahead. The spray rained down on the forecastle as Van Zandt tore into it. Tracers sailed out from the shore, fell short, then lifted. They stitched along the water and began clanging into the hull. “Shore battery, counterfire, to the right of the small pier,” someone screamed. He ignored it and took another bearing on the mountain. “Range to the piers, keep ’em coming,” Shaker shouted.
“No radar, estimate four hundred yards and closing.”
“Starboard tubes, fire when you bear!”
Thuds aft.
“Torpedoes away. All torpedoes expended.”
“Mount thirty-one out of ammo, sir!”
The ready magazine held seventy rounds. The loaders below would be sweating now, but for the moment their main gun was out of commission. The .50s resumed their clatter as the range closed.
The ship jerked under his feet, and he heard a crunch like two Cadillacs colliding. “Hit aft,” shouted one of the talkers.
“Increase to twenty knots,” said Shaker. “Damage control, Bridge: Get me data on the hits! Dan, did you plot those Q markers when we came in?”
“Yessir. Plotting a course out now.”
