Assault on Zanzibar: Book Four of the Westerly Gales Saga

by E. C. Williams

“They’ve gotten smarter, I guess. Looks like they’re waiting for their mates to show up before trying a rush. I’d say there’s one group here on the north side, and one more on the east, so no more than a dozen shooters. They don’t have any targets, so they’re just trying to keep our heads down. But my marksmen and their spotters can see muzzle flashes if they fire close enough to the edge of the bush, and draw a bead that way.” Askaris had chopped away the bush, and enlarged the clearing, so that the jungle had an abrupt, clearly defined edge

  Sure enough, in a few moments, the spotter lay down his scope, leaned over, and shouted a few words in his marksman’s ear. The sharpshooter nodded, drew aim, and fired a single round.

  “Got ‘im, Joe!” The spotter shouted triumphantly after taking up his scope and looking again. “I can just make him out, lyin’ there at the edge of the bush in a pool o’ blood! Good shootin’.”

  “See, we’re still gonna win, Commodore. By the time other Pirate teams show up, these ‘uns ‘ll be out of ammo, or nearly so, and my sharpshooters will have attrited them to some degree. I figure it would take a rush of fifty or more to breach the boma That’s eight to ten teams, and they’ll never build up that big a force before more of my guys come up to our aid.”

  “So Camp van der Merwe is just a big spider trap, luring them in to be killed.”

  “Never thought of it that way, Commodore, but that’s a good way to put it. O’course we’ll have losses, too – we can’t avoid at least a few. But on balance, I think these attacks hurt them more than they do us…”

  At that point, Landry’s voice was drowned out by the whoosh of an airplane passing over at extremely low altitude. They looked up to see a Puffin, barely above tree-top height, bank sharply to come around again.

  “What the bleedin’ hell …?”

  A radioman-striker approached them at a half-run, bent double to avoid Pirate gunfire, and shouted something in Landry’s ear.

  “What’d he say?” asked Sam.

  “He said that airplane is up on voice radio, asking for ‘Hedgehog actual’. Hedgehog’s the camp’s radio call sign, and he said ‘actual’ is radio talk for the CO hisself. I guess that’s me. Or, since you’re aboard, maybe you…”

  “No, Frank – you. I’m just a visitor.”

  “Better go see what he wants then.”

  Sam, curious, followed Landry, both trying to run while staying as low as possible, as he made his way to the HQ hut in the center of camp.

  As soon as they entered the hut, before their eyes could adjust to the relative darkness after the bright sunshine outside, they heard the radioman say, “Bull, this is Hedgehog. Stand by for Hedgehog actual, over.” He then handed the mic to Landry.

  “The is Hedgehog actual, over,” said Landry.

  “Chief, this is Bull. Tell me where it hurts, dearie, and I’ll kiss it and make it all well.”

  “Schofield, vous débile, what the fuck are you up to now?

  “Tut, tut, Hedgehog. Proper radio procedure, if you please. And respect: that should have been ‘Schofield, you moron, sir. Over’”

  Landry chuckled into the mic. “You’re in for a shock, Dave – I outrank you now. But that’s for later – why are you buzzin’ my camp? Over.”

  “Here to help, Hedgehog. Got a bunch of fireworks for your unwelcome visitors – just need to know where to set ‘em off. Over.”

  “Hell, you can see, can’t you, Dave? Look for puffs of white smoke and muzzle flashes at the edge of the bush – that’s where the Pirates are. Over.”

  “Isn’t that ‘danger close’? For the camp, I mean. Over.”

  “Not for strafing. How big are your bombs? Over.”

  “Smallest in the inventory – 50 kg fragmentation. Over.”

  “Merde. Too close for frag. Strafe only. Say again, strafe only. Over”

  “Wilco. Commencing strafing run on targets of opportunity. Bull standing by this freq.”

  “Hedgehog actual standing by.”

  Sam and Frank dashed out of the HQ hut and searched the sky for Dave’s Puffin. They saw it in the eastern sky in the act of banking sharply and lining up for its strafing run. They could not tell, at first, whether it had picked the eastern or northern band of Pirates. When it became clear that the northern band was the target, they ran back to their former position on the boma, to watch.

  The guerillas kept up their deliberate harassing fire all along their front, clearly marking their position with gun smoke and muzzle flashes, although they remained concealed in the bush. Bull came in at treetop height and opened up with his 37mm gun. The noise was deafening. His aim seemed to be good, corrected after the first few rounds to hit a yard behind the edge of the undergrowth, just where the Pirate riflemen seemed to be concealed. Each round threw up such a gout of earth and vegetation the watchers could not know whether they were explosive, or solid shot striking with such kinetic force as to seem so.

  After that run, Dave pulled up sharply and went around again, then roared over their heads to strike the eastern band of Pirates. The same deafening chaotic noise and spouts of earth, and he pulled up again, this time loitering in a lazy circle around the camp at an altitude of a thousand feet or so. Dave’s fire silenced the Pirates in the bush, at least for the moment. Sam and Frank did not speak for minutes, awestruck and somewhat deafened by the noise.

  “That,” Sam finally said, “Was fokken awesome.”

  Dave waggled his wings, and Landry took that as an invitation to come up on the radio. He and Sam ran back to the HQ hut, this time upright, as there seemed to be no more risk from Pirate fire.

  “Bull, this is Hedgehog actual. Over.”

  “Hedgehog, hope that did the trick. I’m out of one-inch ammo now, so I’ll have to return to Charlie. That is, unless you have a target for my bombs. Break. How’d I do? Over.”

  “Bull, that was incroyable, magnifique! I don’t think there were any survivors – you certainly silenced ‘em, that’s for sure. Break. Listen, on your way back to Chole Bay, look closely for small bands of Pirates making their way in this direction. The buggers you just shot up were almost certainly waiting for reinforcements before rushing our lines. If you see ‘em, frag ‘em. Over.”

  “Roger that, Hedgehog. What direction will they be coming from? Over.”

  “Any direction, Bull. Sorry I can’t be more specific, but the bush is infested with the bâtards. Over.”

  “No worries, Hedgehog. I’ll fly low and slow in increasing circles around the camp, and me and my observer will keep a sharp lookout. Got enough fuel to do that for a while, and I gotta ditch these bombs before I try to touch down, anyway – might as well try to make ‘em count. Over.”

  “Thanks a million, Bull. We could’ve taken care of the chi bai ourselves, o’course, but you saved us a lot of ammo. Over.”

  “Bullshit, Hedgehog. I saved your asses and you know it. Call next time you get frightened and we’ll come rescue you again. Bull out.”

  “Balls. Hedgehog out.” Landry handed the microphone back to the radioman, who was trying unsuccessfully to stifle a grin.

  “Guess I had to let the wise-ass have the last word, since he did help out,” Landry said ruefully.

  “We’ve been missing a bet, Frank. Since the guerillas on the island have no AA, they’re pretty much helpless against air attack, barring a lucky hit with a rifle. And they’re not likely to get AA, either, since an effective anti-aircraft gun would be a damned awkward burden to carry around in the jungle.”

  “Might be you’re right, Commodore. But it just underlines our need for man-portable radios, which we need anyway to coordinate action in the bush. And now, to talk to the airplanes.”

  “Last I heard, the radio boffins back home were close to a workable design, Frank. It may not be much longer until you …”

  A distant sound of explosions interrupted Sam. They ran out of the hut and looked around for the source. They saw plumes of smoke and bits of tree-limbs in the east, a few klicks awa
y, and Dave’s Puffin, banking sharply to go around for another run. Both men cheered: Bull had obviously found a target.

  “The good guys won this one, Frank!” Sam exclaimed. “All we have to do is string together enough days like this, for long enough, and we’ll beat the bastards!”

  In retrospect, Sam realized that the battle for Camp van der Merwe hadn’t exactly begun the string of victories he had so exuberantly expected. The Pirates had paid a painful and bloody price to learn an important lesson. They never again attempted attacks, nor moved fighters or supplies, during daylight, rightly guessing that the kafir bird-machines were blind in the dark. So that glorious win was a one-off.

  Yet, very gradually, the military situation on the island improved in favor of the RKN. A sister to the Mafia Utukufu was launched, once an engine and armaments for her arrived from Hell-ville. Both were intended for a similar vessel for the Nosy Be regiment’s new maritime detachment, but had been diverted on assurance that they would be replaced from the steady stream of series-built engines and guns on their way from Kerguelen.

  The new motor gunboat, christened Mafia Askari, was somewhat larger and beamier than her sister, to allow for greater endurance. She had a larger fuel capacity, and could stow adequate food and water for her crew to allow cruises of up to a week, in mild weather. Permanent iron stanchions allowed for the quick rigging or un-rigging of an awning over the entire parallel midbody, and for slinging hammocks for up to a third of her crew to sleep in rotation. In sail rig, she was a two-masted junk, with modest sail area, intended only for loitering on a cruise station to save fuel. In action, the sail halyards had only to be cast off and the sheets hauled inboard for the sails to collapse onto the awning stanchions, out of the way of the crew. The sail battens were bamboo, and the sails themselves woven from bamboo fiber, both chemically treated for fire resistance. For damage control, Askari had a P-250 pump that could be used either for fire-fighting or de-watering.

  Askari’s most important improvement was her armament: she mounted two 75mm recoilless rifles, one on each quarter. Each was mounted on a sturdy steel post that supported both the weight of the gun and of the gunner, seated in a canvas sling. The gun could be swiveled inboard for ease of cleaning and maintenance. Mounted in the bow was one of the new aircraft-type repeating 25mm rifles, belt-fed, with a longer barrel. Adding small arms for the crew, her total firepower meant she out-gunned any single dhow that came within range of her 75mm rifles, or she could take on two at once with throw-weight equal to each.

  Perhaps equal to her material value to the defense of the island was the morale boost she gave to the islanders. Sam had promised that the locally-built gunboats would stay a permanent part of Mafia’s own self-defense force, and not be re-deployed elsewhere – a gift that was no great sacrifice on Sam’s part, since the vessels were hardly ocean-crossers, and were too big and heavy to be taken aboard any ship available to him.

  Askari now manned both entirely, except for the berths of skipper and engineer. Since the watu wa Mafia, like their cousins on the mainland, had lost literacy after the Troubles, they could not learn much about navigation or engineering until they learned to read. Teaching them was a problem initially because no one had any materials for, nor any clue about, the teaching of written Swahili. As a result, askari selected as future commissioned officers and NCOs learned Kerguelenian. Perhaps in the future some African Cyril or Methodius would re-create written Swahili, but for now, Mafians were learning to read and write (and speak) a language foreign to them.

  The arrival of Scorpion and Wasp doubled the number of schooners available to Sam. He at once tasked them with cruising, as a task group of two, north of the island, to intercept corsairs headed south to prey on Kerg shipping. Vectored toward pairs of gun-dhows by Dave’s Puffins flying high-altitude recon missions, they began to make progress on the vital shipping protection issue. It was difficult to tell from statistics, always late and woefully incomplete, but Sam thought this aggressive forward interception strategy was more effective than the former one of the Stingers cruising alone and responding to reported sightings of gun-dhows, and Maydays from merchant schooners already under attack. By relieving them with Joan and Albatros whenever they needed rest and resupply, he could maintain a constant two-schooner patrol, with a surge capability of two such patrols at once.

  But the most joyful arrival, for Sam, was that of the Tommie Sue, completely refitted as a warship and delivered by most of the merchant crew who had sailed her with him from French Port to Hell-ville – those who wanted to join the Navy, and whom he had judged qualified.

  In a brief ceremony held at anchor in Chole Bay, Sam commissioned her the RKN Schooner Hornet and manned her with experienced officers and crew drawn from throughout the fleet; he had dispersed the delivery crew to other vessels to gain familiarity with Navy ways.

  Sam was more in love with her than ever – lusted to command her, in fact, although that was of course impossible. Her temporary captain had told him that, flying either of her two drifters, which Sam had personally designed – one lightweight, deep-cut one for light airs, and a smaller, flatter, heavier one for higher winds – she had the legs of any gun-dhow on any point of sailing that it was possible to carry one of them. He reported, too, that on a beat, she could sail a full point closer to the wind than any schooner on which he had ever sailed. With the addition of waterjet pods and a more powerful MG set, she could easily maintain eleven knots or more while motor-sailing in a decent breeze, and six knots in a dead calm.

  Her most magnificent feature was that, like the Mafia Askari, she had double the firepower of her sisters. Taking advantage of the advances made in reducing the weight of the 37mm gun for use in planes, she mounted two of these weapons. With two sets of parallel tracks laid athwartships, and slightly longer gun-balconies, both guns could fire from one side at the same time, or one on each side. With both guns deployed to one side, she would take on a pronounced list, of course, but not a dangerous one in anything but a very high sea. (For more stability, her bilge keels were now filled with lead.)

  Both guns were semi-automatic and magazine-fed, so each could keep up a higher rate of fire than the older, single-shot versions. In broadside they could, together, shoot a gun-dhow to splinters in the time it would take it to get off two or three rounds from its three-inch bronze gun. Once she was fully worked-up, Sam planned to deploy her alone against two-dhow sorties southward.

  With Hornet, he now had five motorized armed schooners at his disposal, and each now carried a motor-launch armed with a 75mm recoilless rifle. While not there yet, he reckoned he was closing in on the capability to mount a close blockade of Stone Town, Zanzibar’s only seaport.

  As new Puffins arrived from Reunion, now that a flow of engines, guns, and sheet aluminum had been set up from Kerguelen, Dave Schofield had renewed with the arrival of each aircraft his campaign to again employ them in offensive actions at sea, until Sam forbade him to mention it again. It was still

  his firm conviction, reinforced by recent experience, that airplanes were too essential in the reconnaissance role to risk in offensive action in any situation that put them in the slightest risk. He wanted to wait until there were enough planes and trained pilots – an as-yet undetermined but very large number, in his mind – to afford sustained losses.

  So far, he had not lost a single sea-going vessel of the Navy to enemy action. This was due, in his mind, to prudent tactics, superior armament, more efficient damage control, and a healthy serving of good luck.

  Aircraft were far more vulnerable than ships, to both accidents and enemy action. As a demonstration of the former, two Puffins had disappeared without a trace during their delivery flights from Reunion, whether from pilot error or mechanical failure would never be known, because in neither case was there a Mayday from the pilot.

  The arrival of the “Nosy Be Expeditionary Force”, crowded on the decks of the Soet Melissa hired schooner, brought another glimmer of hope. Not
quite the full battalion promised, it consisted of two companies of riflemen plus a joint headquarters/logistics/weapons company, the whole commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel. They would have no effect on the battle for the island until fully trained in the odd kind of warfare waged on Mafia, and that would take weeks – or months. But their mere presence was reassuring. (The promised contingent from Reunion was still weeks away from arrival, availability of transport rather than readiness of the troops being the hold-up).

  It happened that Sam turned in one night in a cheerful mood. Part of his good humor stemmed from the improved war situation, and a large part from the merry evening he had enjoyed entertaining the officers of his staff and Benoit Murphy to dinner, during which the company made deep inroads into Governor McLeod’s latest gift of aged rum.

  He was sunk in a deep, dreamless sleep, the best sleep he had enjoyed in days, when he was abruptly wakened by the PA system and bosuns’ pipes calling all hands to quarters. At once fully awake, he darted topside in his nightshirt, pausing only long enough to step into his shoes. On his way, he heard explosions – not gunfire, but louder blasts. When he reached the Flag Box on the quarterdeck he could hear the unmistakable bang and clatter, and even smell the exhaust, of Pirate diesel engines – from directly overhead!

  He looked up. It was a clear moonless night, and he could distinctly see, obscuring the stars, a very large dark object moving slowly over the Charlie, trailing a dispersing veil of smoke or vapor through which the stars shone dimly. At that moment, there was another explosion alongside Charlie’s starboard side, throwing up an immense spout of seawater, drenching everyone on deck and causing the carrier to heel violently to port. This threw Sam to the deck, but he leapt up instantly, and shouted “Lights out!” Almost simultaneously, Charlie’s officer of the watch shouted “Darken ship! Darken ship! D’ y’hear there? Pass the word to douse all lights!”

  Sam heard the sharp reports of one-inch rifles, and saw their muzzle flashes on the Albatros, the only other vessel present in Chole Bay. Her quick-thinking OOW, or perhaps Al Kendall, her CO, had at once doused all deck lights, and realized that the one-inchers were the only weapons they could elevate enough to use as AA guns.