Sentinels of Fire (13 page)

“Sky One,” Marty answered.

“How much of that new VT frag we have out there in the mounts?”

“We've got about a hundred rounds in each mount, XO,” Marty said. “Got some from the tender. After that, it's gonna be Able-Able common, mechanical time-fuzed.”

“Okay, that's good,” I said. “We may have to split out the battery if they divide into two packs.”

“Got it,” Marty said. “Remember to turn back east again if it looks like a pincer.”

“Right,” I said. Leave it to Marty to remind me that our current course would present the long axis of the ship to both sections of kamis. That would definitely
not
do. Then I noticed the ship was boring a straight line through the sea.

“Broad weave, if you please. Base course still north.”

Then we waited, everyone staring into the bright haze, each man executing the standard AA search with his binoculars: look right, go up, look left, go up, look right, go up, look left, go up, then go down, look right, go down, look left …

The radar bedspring array on director fifty-one was doing the same thing in short, jerky movements, while down in Main Battery Plot two fire-control technicians were staring at separate oscilloscopes, where a fuzz of green spikes glimmered across the round screens, looking like a freshly mowed lawn. If the radar found something, a spike would rise up out of the grass, as it was called, and they'd lock onto it. The big amplidyne motors that trained and elevated the boxy director whined and keened in response to the operator's hands on joysticks inside the director. It was an annoying noise. Everyone was waiting for the lock-on.

“Captain's in Main Control,” the
1
JV talker announced to no one in particular. The officers on the bridge glanced at one another. So that's where he was. Okay: The main plant was operating in a reduced capability mode. Otherwise we'd be making 25 knots or more.

Everyone heard director fifty-one stop searching. The amplidynes went from loud, complaining noises to very small movements. I looked up above the bridge. The director was pointed due west.

Good: no pincer.

The two forward five-inch guns swung out to port, their twin barrels trembling as the computer down in Plot sent minute train and elevation angles to their amplidynes. I was frustrated by the limited range of the five-inch guns. I had served on a light cruiser designed for antiaircraft work, but her guns were six-inch, which could reach out to almost thirteen miles. It didn't sound like much of a difference, but it was.

I jumped when the five-inchers went to work. Everyone did. The sound hurt my ears, and another cloud of sulfurous smoke enveloped the bridge. I still couldn't see anything out there in the haze, but the miracle of radar was working for us. I could feel the ship quiver as all three mounts, fore and aft, got into it, hurling fifty-four-pound projectiles out to where the Japs were ducking and weaving a hundred feet above the sea surface, coming in at 350 knots, each with a five-hundred-pound bomb slung under its belly and each one intent on driving himself, his plane, all its remaining aviation gasoline, and that hair-triggered bomb into our guts.

I tried to think of what else I should be doing as the guns hammered my ears. We were properly positioned to bring all guns to bear, so no more maneuvering. The ship was buttoned up. With only two boilers available we were going almost as fast as we could go. The gunnery department was fully engaged, with ranges, bearings, and angles of elevation passing through all those sound-powered phone circuits. The five-inch gun mount crews were turning and burning, serving the six barrels in a sweaty cycle: dropping the breechblocks, ejecting the still smoking powder can, ramming a new round, ramming a new powder can, raising the breechblock, and closing the ready circuit key.

B-blam.

Do it all again. Wait for the hiss of gas-ejection air. Drop the breechblock. Both gun crews racing each other, sweating hands on each side, humping the big shells out of the hoists and into the hungry, smoking maws of the guns, punch the hydraulic rammer, extract it, put the powder can in, ram again, extract, raise the block, squeeze the ready key.

B-blam.

There, I thought. The variable-time shells were finding something to detonate on. Black puffs, low down on the water. One. Five. Many. Then the black dot, bucking and weaving through the whirlwind of fiery steel fragments, getting lower and lower as some terrified nineteen-year-old Jap fixated on the American destroyer, muttering fervent prayers to his ancestors, and then joining them as a five-inch shell came through the canopy to vaporize him and his plane.

One down.

Then two down, both creating large gasoline fireballs splattering across the sea as the five-inchers kept it going until someone down in Plot released the master firing key.

There was a moment of silence.

Where were the other two? These guys hadn't even made it into forty-millimeter range. Something's not right here.

Then the midships forties burst into action, but on the
starboard
side.

Pincer! God damn them.

Director fifty-one slewed frantically all the way around to starboard, and all three five-inch mounts followed it in big, lurching jumps, but there was no lock-on, and no more time, either. I sprinted through the pilothouse out to the starboard bridge wing in time to see two more Zeros flying no more than twenty feet off the deck, coming in from the east, with bright flashes blinking at us from the twenty-millimeter cannons under their noses. They were too close for the five-inch to engage, so the forties and the twenties took up the slack, streaming several lines of white-hot steel that arced out over the water, higher than the incoming planes, but then settling back into their faces. I felt rather than heard the Japs' twenty-millimeter rounds hitting the forward superstructure. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the lookout next to me fly backward and thump off the bulkhead, leaving a red spray as he slid down to the deck.

The Japs were close, very close, and the lines of tracers from our twenties were converging now, blasting pieces off the planes. The five-inch guns remained pointed at the enemy, but the Japs were so close that the five-inch shells wouldn't have had time to arm. Something stung my right leg just below the knee, and then the single porthole of the captain's sea cabin exploded in a shower of glass right behind me. The two planes were close together now, as if racing, both trailing streams of white gasoline vapor and engine oil smoke, no more than a thousand yards, when
Malloy
's twenties found that five-hundred-pound bomb underneath the left Zero. It exploded with a yellow-white flash, shredding the plane and upsetting his wingman, causing the second Zero to drag a wingtip into the sea and then disintegrate into a million pieces, half of which ended up clattering all over the decks and bulkheads of
Malloy.
Its bomb skipped twice on the water and, as I took a huge breath, flew sideways over where the forward stack would have been and out into the sea on the other side, where it went off with a thunderous blast two hundred yards away.

All the guns ceased firing, but my ears still rang with the hammering of the forties and twenties closest to the bridge. Behind us, off the starboard quarter, a patch of avgas was burning brightly on the sea. I turned to go back into the pilothouse but stopped short at a scene of significant carnage. There were twenty-millimeter cannon holes everywhere. All the watchstanders seemed to be down on the deck, which was carpeted with blood and shards of glass. Anyone not wounded or dead was attending to his shipmates. Two phone-talkers had been pretty much torn to pieces by the hail of shells, and Ensign Gall, the junior officer of the deck, was slumped under the captain's chair with a fist-sized hole in his throat and an expression of total surprise still on his face. The chart table on the back bulkhead of the pilothouse was smoldering, with whitish smoke streaming out from the drawers where the charts were kept. The helmsman was still at his station behind the wheel, but he was holding his steel helmet in both hands and gawking at the bright shiny furrow carved by a twenty-millimeter projectile across the top of his helmet. The lee helmsman was down on the deck with the bosun's mate of the watch, tending to another phone-talker, who was crying hysterically because his right leg was hanging by a flap of skin at a ninety-degree angle from his knee.

The chief hospital corpsman, Chief Bobby Walker, came out into the pilothouse from the passageway that led back to Combat. His uniform was already blood-spattered, and he was carrying an armload of battle dressings. His feet went out from under him as he stepped out onto the bloody steel deck, but one of the quartermasters caught him just in time. The chief immediately began the process of triage, ordering the able to start handing out and applying bandages to the not-so-able.

Jimmy Enright came out of Combat, trailing a sound-powered phone-set wire. He, too, had blood spatters on his khakis. He stopped short when he saw the pilothouse, which was beginning to resemble an abattoir, with the chief corpsman shouting orders and bloody bandages flying everywhere. Then Jimmy saw me, still standing in the starboard hatchway.

“We couldn't raise the bridge talker,” he said, his voice sounding higher than usual. “You need to get that bandaged, XO.”

“What?” I replied and then looked down at my leg. My right trouser leg was black with blood, and my right shoe squelched when I moved. I bent down and raised the pant leg to reveal a large gash on the right upper side of my calf. I remembered the sting. Now, suddenly, it hurt like hell.

“Damn,” I said. “Well, scratch, right?”

Jimmy grunted, but he knew what I meant: Compared to the bloody mess all around us, my wound was manageable. “Still,” he said, grabbing a battle dressing from the pile on the deck. “Put your leg up here.”

Chief Walker came over, watched Jimmy's clumsy attempts to fit the bandage to the wound, swore, and shouldered him aside. I waited stoically while the dressing was applied, along with a healthy dusting of sulfa powder. Then I realized that Chief Walker had probably been all over the ship, looking for wounded crewmen.

“How many?” I asked.

“One radioman dead, along with some of the radios. Rest of the ship is okay, as far as I know. My striker's out checking. Between the bridge and Combat we're looking at a dozen or so. This is the worst.” He stood up, examined his handiwork, and nodded.

“Doc,” I said quietly. “Seen the skipper?”

The chief, whose face looked weary well beyond his age, glanced up at me. Then he looked around the pilothouse, saw no captain, and shook his head. Two men on the other side of the pilothouse called urgently for the chief. The man they were tending was convulsing, his feet pounding out a mortal tattoo on the deck. The chief let out a sigh and went back to work.

Jimmy stared at the bloody scene on the bridge.

“We done with bogeys?” I asked.

“Nothing on the radar when I came out,” he said. “We've got two dead and seven wounded in Combat, two bad, the rest manageable. That bastard shredded us pretty good. One of the Freddies is down, but amazingly, the radar consoles are okay.”

“You should have seen that five-hundred-pounder flying over the forward stack, or what's left of it,” I said. “I about crapped my trou.” I hesitated. “Jimmy, I don't know where the captain is.”

I hadn't meant to say that. It just popped out. On the other hand, Jimmy Enright was the senior department head. It was only fair to make sure that he knew what was going on. The man who'd been convulsing suddenly went rigid, blew a bloody bubble from his mouth, and then relaxed with a gurgling sigh. One of the men tending him swore.

Jimmy looked out the front windows. “Should we slow down now, maybe?” he asked.

“Go back into Combat and get me a radar fix on Okinawa; see how close we are to our assigned station. I've got to…”

Jimmy nodded. “Right. Go find him. Something's really wrong.”

“Yeah,” I said. “God damn it. The crew talking yet?”

“No, sir,” he said. “They're all too scared. It was like being in the fish barrel in there, when that guy strafed us. Nowhere to go. Shit flying everywhere. Guys screaming, even when they hadn't been hit. Now that I think of it, the ones who
were
hit didn't make a sound.”

Jimmy went back into Combat.

“Officer of the Deck,” I called. “Secure from GQ. Set Condition Two. Get damage reports from DC central. Slow to ten knots. Broad weave. Get a DC party up here to clean up the bridge. Get lookouts back on station. There's still two hours of daylight left.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” a shaken Jerry Morrison replied. I turned to the helmsman. “All engines ahead two-thirds, turns for ten knots. Helmsman?”

The kid with the creased helmet gaped at me. He was trying not to look at all the blood and gore on the deck.

“Put that damned thing down and get on the helm. Broad weave. Now!”

“Broad weave, aye, sir,” the kid said. “But, sir?
Jesus!
”

“Jesus, aye,” I said, “but we're still here, and so are the goddamned Japs. Broad weave, and you've got the lee helm, too, until someone relieves you.”

I left the bridge and went down into the interior of the ship. The effects of the strafing were everywhere. Holes in bulkheads. Light fixtures dangling over mounds of broken Plexiglas. A fire extinguisher had been punctured, blowing white powder everywhere. A scuttlebutt, Navy slang for drinking fountain, was leaking all over the deck from a single round. There were men moving through the passageways now that general quarters had been secured. Many of them looked stunned. You should have seen that five-hundred-pounder, I thought as I headed aft. Shafts of white sunlight streamed incongruously through the outer bulkheads.

I checked the messdecks, after-officers country, and the chiefs' mess and then went out onto the main deck aft, greeting frightened sailors, pretending everything was okay, almost pulling it off until they got a look at my right leg. The bandage was holding just fine, but the lower part of my khaki trousers was pretty well soaked. I found myself trying not to limp.