At the Midway (74 page)

The
Florida
finally had coal.

1033 Hours

Up went the signal flags.  A Company gladly ceased fire and fell back.

"Corporal Slayton!  See that piece of coral in the lagoon?  The one with all the bird shit on it?  I want you to line up the three-pounder on it, range fifty yards.  Don't stand stupid.  I'll be giving you a nice fat stationary target."

"Aye aye, Top."

"Okay, snappers.  Let's remind our guest there's a nice hot meal waiting for him."

Several green glances were thrown at the bunker.  The stench had become potent.

"By file!  C Company!"

The volley hooked the beast's attention.  It surged towards the ruined bunker.  Ziolkowski waited unbearably long before calling out to the signalmen.  "Signal B Company to advance!"

Green semaphore flags snapped in the wind.  The men gathered at the distillery came out firing.  Confused by this new nuisance, the creature again halted.

"She's all yours, Slayton."

The three-pounder barked.  There was a bright flash at the creature's flipper, instantly followed by a
bang
!  With a squeaky howl of protest, the creature pulled back.  The next round exploded on her flank.

The last three rounds all missed.  By then, the creature was swooping and dodging in instinctive evasion as it pushed towards the lagoon.

"C and D Companies!  Fix bayonets!"

"You're crazy as shit, Top!" Enderfall screamed.

"Charge!"

Slayton had foreseen and dreaded a command to advance.  But to
charge
?

"Damn your eyes, Slayton!  It's turning in circles.  One good push and she'll bolt to sea!"

Frantic to get into action, William began lifting his end of the stretcher, expecting Enderfall to follow suit.  But the private was as stunned as Slayton and only gaped as Ziolkowski dropped forward and howled.

Instead of berating William, the sergeant set up a cheer.  "There you go!  That's it!  Let's get going!  Slayton, dig the shit out of your pants!  There she goes, fucking goddamn fish.  We'll show you!  Hey, you tar salts!  Got any flags in your kit that could warn First Platoon to lay flat?  They might get some stray shots their way.  No?  Never mind.  They'll fall down quick enough when the thirty
-
aughts come flying.  But you won't miss, will you, boots?  That fish is bigger than any barn door you'll ever see.  Pick it up, Enderfall.  Mr. Pegg, don't let a jake hand show you up.  Up and ahead, the both of you.  We'll chew that bastard, we'll take a squatting shit on its head!"

His profanity went unheard by most of the
Florida
marines, the spongy atmosphere absorbing his words as much as the gunfire drowned them.  But seeing William and Enderfall pick up the stretcher and start forward said it all.  The old top kicker was cocking his snoot at death and he wanted them to join him.

His lunatic example was not quite enough.  Corporal Slayton had to prod them on.

No goading was needed for Pegg, though.  Ziolkowski got a rough jouncing as the boy ran forward for all he was worth, curling the air with inchoate curses.  With some shouting of his own, Enderfall tried to slow him down.

"Don't drag, Enderfall," Ziolkowski commanded.  But he too was startled by William's ferocious plunge.  He'd intended to be an example, not an aimless suicide.  Slayton's marines slogged ahead in two long files, firing as they went.  They aimed high enough to keep from hitting the trio racing for the compound.  Yet despite being burdened and injured, William managed to pass them.  Ziolkowski tried to twist his head around the musette bag Enderfall had placed under his head to glimpse the creature, but all he could see was the boy's back.  His bandages were sopped with blood.  The pain had to be excruciating, yet he showed no sign of noticing.  Just the reverse.  He gave every indication of racing healthily and heartily to his demise.

And then everything stopped dead.

Only once before had Ziolkowski and Enderfall heard anything besides squeaks from the creatures
-
-
when just before chasing him out of the lagoon, the one they figured to be the mother growled angrily at the young male under the impression that he had hurt the serpent with green stripes.  Now, though, it let out a roar so boggling half of Slayton's men instantly threw down their guns and ran.

William had heard the creature at full throat before.  On the deck of the
Lydia Bailey
, when the monster let out a full-lunged roar while facing the crew.  It had proved an announcement of horrors to come.  William's determination was shattered on hearing it again.  He was sure the creature was speaking to him.

I missed you once, boy.  Duff sauce or no, I won't miss again
.

It leaned sideways and looked directly at William.  Was it possible… was that a glint of recognition?  No.  It was looking at William and the two men with him because they were so far ahead of everyone else.

"Come on!" Enderfall hollered, tugging in the opposite direction.

Even more mystifying than William's headlong charge was his dumb paralysis before the beast.  Lowering his eyes, he found Ziolkowski looking directly at him.

"Go on, Private Enderfall," the sergeant said over his shoulder.  "No sense all of us going down."

Whether or not Ziolkowski had given permission, he would have bolted.  This last stroke of consideration from the sergeant touched him deeply.  Instead of dropping his half of the stretcher outright, he gently rested it on the ground before running away.

The shuddering ground told Ziolkowski he was about to meet the great jaws once again.  Broad daylight, this time.  The creature would finish what it had begun.  He reached into his pocket for his knife
-
-
only to discover it missing.  Presumably, it was still in the pocket of the soiled trousers Enderfall had discarded.

"Untie yourself quick, Bill!  Get the hell out of here!"

A series of jerks.  William was pulling the stretcher around.  "I left one behind.  I won't leave another."

"Pull it over the end of the pole if the knot's too tight.  Do it, boy!  You can save yourself!"

Ziolkowski lost sight of Slayton's men as the head of the stretcher went down.  He was sure the boy was going to escape
-
-
and was shocked when William sat down next to him.

"I'm sorry," he sobbed.  "I can't pull it fast enough."

There was no time for more.  Ziolkowski grabbed him by the neck and pulled his tear
-
streaked face to his chest the instant before the greater shadow fell on them.

But Slayton's marines
-
-
those who had not fled
-
-
began firing again.  Between their ragged volleys and the fire
-
at
-
will shots from the Second Platoon, they inflicted enough confusion to vex the creature.  It lumbered away from the bunker and out of the compound.  Slowly, with mute reluctance, it set an oblique course across the dunes to the lagoon.  After a long glance backwards, it slid into the water.

With a wild whoop the marines and sailors lit out after the beast.  Shots were fired on the run as they tried for one last pot before it disappeared under water.  Even Enderfall returned.  William pulled himself together and they took up the stretcher again, joining the race to the beach.  They had not gone far before Enderfall tripped, went face-first into the sharp coral sand.

As Ziolkowski was spilled onto the ground, he caught a glimpse of the balloon disappearing over the water.

"So long, Fritz," he sighed.  And promptly heaped curses on the hapless Enderfall.

On the Cliffs of Time

The abrupt cessation of gunfire on one flank and its sudden reappearance on the other threw the creature into a fit of confusion.  Like the giant squid of the lower depths, it seemed the humans had many limbs, curling around and attacking from all directions.  No man had ever laid eyes on one of these tentacled monstrosities.  They could only infer their existence from the giant suction
-
cup wounds occasionally found on whales.  And only a small number of Tu
-
nel had ever confronted the over
-
sized cephalopods.  They did not plumb the depths for food the way a sperm whale did.  But over millions of years the occasional encounter was impossible to avoid and they had proved unhappy for Tu
-
nel and squid alike.  The handful of clashes had been so striking that they had been firmly planted in the racial memory of the serpents.  When the female Tu
-
nel twisted frantically in the compound
-
-
on the compound, since she covered practically the entire quad
-
-
it was an instinctive reaction against the unpredictable, grasping squid.  She was not comfortable on land in the first place.  She could not move as quickly as the youngsters had and she was acutely aware of her weight.  The man
-
o'
-
war stings of the bullets were increasingly annoying.

The sudden flash of pain in her flipper caused her to forget her hunger.  What was happening?  What had caused this tear in her skin?

It must be the land attacking her.  The land was painful and heavy.  To the men below she seemed to be moving with supernatural alacrity, but she only felt the weight of waterless gravity and the consequent sluggishness.

There was solace in the ocean.

And to the ocean she fled.

XXXI

1215 Hours

The machinist's mates looked on with ill-concealed apprehension as Singleton nodded and the drilling began.  There was no danger.  The warheads had been removed.  But as a rule, sailors were made uncomfortable by the proximity of torpedoes, no matter what their condition or status.  They represented a new form of naval warfare: death from the invisible.  It was so ominous a threat that at the turn of the century the French based their entire navy around the submersible weapon.  To the men watching it seemed battleships were as dated as Phoenician galleys.  All an enemy need do was set loose a school of Whiteheads or Bliss
-
Leavitts, then sit back and watch as the mightiest fleets in the world were destroyed.  The
Florida
was equipped with eighteen
-
inch torpedo tubes, as were most of the battleships in the U.S. Navy--making the twelve
-
inch guns topside superfluous, in the judgement of less nostalgic analysts.

The first lieutenant
-
-
the acting executive officer
-
-
had ignored Singleton's and Hart's request for help.  With the captain unavailable, or indisposed, they saw no recourse but to appeal directly to the chief machinist.  The
Florida's
condition remained dire.  But when the officer heard their idea, he readily drew men away from the repair crews to help.  With the arrival of the
Iroquois
, power again coursed through the warship.  This enabled the machinists to hoist torpedoes out of the torpedo room forward to the shop on the next deck up.

"We'll have to bring them up, anyway," Singleton reasoned.  "We won't be able to launch them from the bow tubes."

The two civilians were so intent on watching the machinist drill into the torpedoes they did not notice the arrival of a stormy presence at the back of the machine shop.  But when an engineer's mate entered and announced he had removed the mercury circuit tubes from one of the bulkhead doors, Captain Oates exploded.

"Who gave you orders to do that, Mister?"

"The Chief--"

Oates whirled on the chief machinist.  "And why did you order that?"

"I can explain, sir."

"That's good, since you're the one I'm asking."

"Dr. Singleton and Mr. Hart here approached me with an idea to kill the serpents."

"And why didn't you come to me or the first lieutenant before proceeding?"

"Sir... the lieutenant was preoccupied.  And we'd heard you were...."

"What?  Incapacitated? 
Dead
?"

Singleton tried to warn the captain with a glance.  If his temper continued unchecked, he stood a good chance of making the rumor come true on the spot.  The drugs the surgeon had given him no longer raised his color.

He caught Hart studying the small glass tubes of mercury held by the engineer's mate.  They still had much work to do.  Familiar with military bureaucracy, the former army lieutenant assumed someone had already told the captain what they were doing.  There was very little time to correct the oversight.  He stepped forward.