The Commodore (3 page)

“Anything hot, Rogers?” Sluff asked, still trying to digest what the exec had told him. It was then that he noticed that Radioman Third Class Rogers looked positively pale as he handed over the clipboard. “The op report from last night, sir,” he said, shaking his head. “They got creamed, sir. They ran into fuc—uh,
battle
ships.”

Rogers left the cabin without another word. That was unusual. The crew depended on gossip from the radio gang to find out what was going on. The radio messengers would usually linger in the captain's cabin to find out what the ship was going to do next. As if the captain knew, Sluff thought. Destroyers were the workhorses of the fleet, and any given day's plans usually changed hourly as admirals or commodores made snap decisions. A day on a destroyer where everything went by the plan for that day usually meant that the ship had missed a message.

He finished dressing, sat down at his desk, and opened the metal clipboard, while Mose perched on the couch and gave Sluff's uniform shoes a quick polish. His heart sank as he read the short but sad report, sent out by the skipper of the
Helena.
While
John B. King
had been making the milk run from the U.S. base at Nouméa, six hundred miles away, the cruiser force had gone out into the waters north of Guadalcanal looking for trouble. Trouble, in the form of a Jap surface-action task group containing not one but
two
battleships, had more than obliged. For some odd reason there had been two admirals in the task group last night, Rear Admiral Dan Callaghan, embarked in heavy cruiser
San Francisco,
in charge, and Rear Admiral Norman Scott, embarked in light cruiser
Atlanta,
apparently just along for the ride. The report confirmed that both flag officers had been killed in the ensuing gunfight.

That was stark enough news. The senior officer left alive in
San Francisco,
the flagship, was a lieutenant commander.
Four
American destroyers had been sunk outright. The other two, although damaged, were out there now searching for survivors. The antiaircraft light cruiser
Atlanta,
anchored now somewhere nearby and barely afloat, was so badly damaged that the Marines were indeed shuttling landing craft out to her to take her crew to safety ashore. Given the Marines' situation, surrounded by Jap army units, “safety” was a relative term, so
Atlanta
must be in imminent danger of sinking.

The antiaircraft light cruiser
Juneau
had been torpedoed and was also barely afloat, apparently with a broken keel. The heavy cruiser
Portland
was going around in circles out in the sound after being torpedoed in the stern. The skipper of the heavy cruiser
Helena,
which had also been damaged, had assumed command of what was left of the cruiser force. Amazingly, the report was claiming that one of the Japanese battleships had been knocked out of the fight. Who the hell managed that, Sluff wondered.

He downed his coffee and then decided he'd better get topside right now. As dawn broke, there'd almost certainly be Jap air raids from the airfields up in the Shortlands, or even Rabaul itself. As he opened his cabin door he almost collided with the chief signalman, Chief Hawkins, who had a visual signal pad on a clipboard, which he handed to the captain. The chief had that “stand by, everything's changed again” expression on his face.

“What now, Chief?” Sluff asked as he scanned the brief message, knowing that the chief would have read it on his way down from the signal bridge. Like the radio gang, the signalmen were a prime source for the hot scoop.

“Gonna go find the
Washington
and the
South Dakota
and report for duty,” Hawkins answered crisply. He was a short but muscular man, mid-thirties, with a permanently sun- and wind-burned face and startling white eyebrows, the product of hours spent topside supervising the guys who worked the signal lights and the flag bags.

“Right,” Sluff said, initialing the message form. “Take this to XO on the bridge and tell him I said to get the navi-guesser to lay out a track. Make sure they see this in Combat, too.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the chief said, and took the ladder up to the bridge two steps at a time. Sluff followed, trying to ignore the growing pit in his stomach. Last night our cruiser force got mauled by Jap battleships. Apparently Admiral Halsey, in command of everything but back in Nouméa, had decided to up the ante.

You wanted to see some action, he told himself. Here it comes.

 

TWO

Guadalcanal

A chorus of “Captain's on the bridge” greeted him as he stepped through the pilothouse door. He refilled his coffee mug from the chart-table coffeepot and then went over to his captain's chair on the starboard side of the bridge. Outside, it had begun to rain again, a heavy South Pacific squall that drummed on the overhead and made conversation pointless and visibility impossible. The only benefit was that these heavy showers washed the paint-eating salt and boiler soot off the weather decks. Sunrise was a half hour away, but the tropical dawn made the ship plenty visible should Jap torpedo bombers appear out of the rain clouds.

“Where's XO?” he asked.

“Gone down to Combat,” the officer of the deck, Lieutenant Junior Grade Heimbach, replied.

He reread the visual signal:
J. B. King
detached first light. Proceed RDVU with TF 64, est. posit. 80 miles west of Cape Esperance. Report for screening duty NLT 1800K. Maintain strict radio silence. Advise CTF 64 fuel and ammo status en route. Hoover sends. Acknowledge.

Sluff didn't know the complete composition of Task Force 64, so he called down to Combat on the bitch-box and asked them to look it up. Then he called the chief engineer to get a fuel report. They'd topped off before leaving Nouméa, and the transit to Cactus had been done at a relatively slow twelve knots to accommodate the transports, so they should be at 80-something percent. The engineer, Lieutenant Cliff Harper, called back and reported 80 percent on the nose.

Sluff considered that number. They were ten miles south and east of Cape Esperance, so a ninety-mile transit to the rendezvous, assuming the big guys showed up on time. That meant they would join up at something less than 80 percent. On the other hand, there were fuel barges only about twelve miles away in the harbor of Tulagi.
J. B. King
didn't have to make the rendezvous until 1800, so they basically had all day. He decided to divert into Tulagi, top off the fuel, and then take off for the rendezvous. At twenty knots, it should only take five and a half hours.

The XO called back up to the bridge and reported that Task Force 64 was composed of the fast battleships
Washington
and
South Dakota,
accompanied by just two destroyers, the
Calhoun
and the
Morgan.
Rear Admiral W. A. “Ching” Lee was the task force commander. Sluff told the XO that they would first divert to Tulagi to scrounge more fuel, and then head for the rendezvous. The exec acknowledged and said they'd send up a course recommendation for the drive over to Tulagi, which was an excellent harbor on Florida Island, visible across the sound.

A battleship force, Sluff thought. The situation after last night's engagement was bad enough that Halsey had cut loose two battleships from the
Enterprise
carrier group to come up to Guadalcanal to revisit last night's debacle? It frustrated him that he didn't know what was planned for tonight, but that was life in the fleet. The big bosses often left their destroyers completely in the dark as to what the immediate plan was, relying instead on voice radio orders telling them to go there or to do this as the tactical situation dictated. The destroyers' principal mission was to “screen” the heavies. If they were in transit from point A to B, look and listen for lurking Jap subs. If an air raid developed, close the big guys and shoot down attacking torpedo bombers while trying not to get run over by the capital ships as they twisted and turned to get away from approaching ordnance. The good news was that the bosses rarely told the destroyermen
how
to do their jobs. The bad news was that the tin can sailors never quite knew what the hell was going on until it landed on them.

The rain stopped suddenly, as it usually did. One minute, a deluge. The next, a steam bath as the hot steel decks evaporated all that moisture. Sluff looked out the porthole nearest his chair, which gave him a view of the dirt-strip Marine air base known as Cactus, which was the field's radio call sign. He saw a veritable parade of aircraft taking off, one after another, with their landing lights flickering through the palm trees as the pilots tried to see through the clouds of dust each time one left, their massed engines sounding like a disturbed hornets' nest in the light of dawn.

The bosun's mate of the watch opened the side doors that led out to the bridge wings, so Sluff got out of his chair, grabbed his binocs, and went out to take a look. Behind them was the
San Francisco,
not anchored, but not moving either.
Helena,
who'd sent them the flashing light message earlier, was not in sight. Two miles behind the
Frisco
was what looked like the
Juneau.
She and
Atlanta
were the same class, designated as antiaircraft light cruisers, mounting eight twin-barreled five-inch mounts, six in line, three forward, three aft, and two more on the hip. He was pretty sure he was looking at
Juneau
because he could see the sag the exec had been talking about. There was a hundred-foot-long black smudge along her port side where the torpedo had gone off. He realized that, if he could see that sag in her hull from here, she was not likely to make the trip back to safety at Nouméa, some six hundred sea miles away.

He looked around for the
Atlanta,
but couldn't find her. Then he saw a small swarm of boats congregating in an area closer to shore, where there seemed to be a cloud of steam, light smoke, and disturbed water, about one mile inshore of
Juneau.
Good grief, he thought, has she gone down? He looked hard to see what they were doing over there, but the lenses were so badly fogged he couldn't make out anything. He stepped back in and called the signal bridge on the bitch-box.

“Where's
Atlanta
?” he demanded.

“She went down about five minutes ago, Cap'n,” Chief Hawkins replied. “Just before that squall came in on us. Turned turtle, and then disappeared. They'd been taking people off for an hour, so…”

“Damn,” he said. “Okay, so is
Helena
still within flashing-light range?”

There was a moment's pause, and then the chief said yes, although she was hull-down on the southeastern horizon.

“Wilco his last visual signal to us, if you can raise her.”

The chief acknowledged. “Wilco” was short for “I will comply,” which was a message that only a ship's captain could send. “Wilco” told the boss that the captain had seen and understood the order,
and
that his ship was able to carry it out.

Combat came up with a course for Tulagi Harbor, and the ship turned northeast to go find some fuel oil. As they came out from under the lee of Lunga Point, they saw the Cactus dive-bombers working over something large just beyond Savo Island. Whatever their target was, she was still capable of shooting back, as the sky filled with black puffs of AA smoke. It was good to know that the Japs had some cripples out there, too.

The exec came up to the bridge from the Combat Information Center, two decks below. The ship was still at general quarters, and Sluff intended to keep the ship at GQ until they made it into Tulagi Harbor. It was only twelve miles from Guadalcanal's Lunga Point to Tulagi, but he felt pretty exposed out there in the sound. The Jap air forces could come in at any time after sunrise, looking for the cripples, and he did not want to get caught napping if they did. General quarters meant the bridge was crowded with extra people: GQ phone-talkers, the officer of the deck and the junior officer of the deck, all the quartermasters, extra lookouts, with everyone dressed out in a steel helmet, a kapok life jacket, and personal battle-dressing medical kits. There wasn't much noise as there wasn't anything happening, yet, and he'd clamped down on unnecessary chitchat on the sound-powered phone circuits that spread throughout the ship like nerve bundles.

“Officer of the deck, increase speed to twenty-seven knots,” Sluff ordered. “Broad weave.”

“Speed two seven, broad weave aye, sir,” the OOD replied, and then gave the orders to the lee helmsman. Sluff could almost feel her jump when the snipes opened the main steam throttles and poured on the oil. Normally he'd make a transit at a more economical speed, but if they were going for fuel, why not get over there in a hurry? Twenty-seven knots and the broad weave also made it harder for any lurking Jap subs to set up a good solution.

“
Atlanta
's gone,” Sluff said to the exec, who was standing next to his captain's chair.

“I heard,” Bob said. “Gotta wonder what were they thinking, putting light AA cruisers in the line against Jap battleships.”

“Yeah,” Sluff said, quietly. “You see the signal from
Helena
?”

“Yes, sir,” the exec said. “A battleship formation. That means that what happened last night isn't over.”

“Precisely,” Sluff said. “The Japs are trying to get a bombardment group down here to smash the Marines' airfield once and for all. As long as the Cactus air force is intact, they can't resupply their army guys on the 'Canal.”

At that moment, they both heard the sound of very large shells coming in, making a heavy, sheet-ripping, wa-wa-wa sound as they rotated out of the sky and smashed into the sea around them, raising bright green waterspouts a hundred feet into the air.