The warning came from a pair of Repub Seevogels that’d been watching Martinique for days without even being pestered by the impressive air armada they’d reported growing there. It was like the Leaguers wanted them to know what they were up against. They’d signaled when they saw Leopardo and another DD come in two days before, and that seemed to stir things up. Then, that morning, word came in that it looked like somebody shot a hornet’s nest. Ships—even a trio of battleships—were getting underway and planes were taking off. Shortly after, there’d been a short, frantic “mayday” from a scout plane. There was only one place all that power could be heading—there’d been League scouts over Santiago Bay as well—and Ronson felt helpless, too much like when they’d all been waiting for the inevitable Japanese attack on Cavite.
Worse, Ronson knew Captain Reddy wanted the enemy to see them. The scouts had already spotted them, but it was important the Leaguers be certain that they, and possibly Captain Reddy himself, were still there. The good thing was, there’d be no enemy fighters—they didn’t have the range—and the bombers couldn’t stay long. The enemy fleet couldn’t arrive before late the next day at the earliest, and Ellie and Adar would be long gone by then. They didn’t have to just sit and take it when the bombers came either. Both destroyers, like all the new DDs, had dual-purpose guns, and Ellie had been upgraded with the new standard four twin 25mm mounts, as well as five twin-mounted water-cooled .50s. Two flanked the gun director near where Ronson and Stites now stood, another pair was on the amidships gun platform, and one was right behind the aft deckhouse. They were better armed against air attack than any 4-stacker destroyer ever was before.
The roar of an engine came from aft, almost drowning the impulse charge of the catapult rigged to port. Smoke swirled and a PB-1F—the newest type of Nancy floatplane—was ejected over the water and rumbled into the sky. “Well, we’re stuck here for now, with all the sacrificial lambs ashore,” Ronson said, referring to the scores of old P-1B Mosquito Hawk “Fleashooters” they’d used to bait the airfield. Some had been flown down off the carriers, but more were unloaded from the freighters and literally rolled through the streets to their final destination. “We even reported in, that we’re ready as we’ll ever be,” he added. “Actually feels kinda weird just to make a routine radio transmission after we’ve been blacked out so long,” he reflected. “Sneakin’ around without comm has really been a pain, but I get it. The enemy learns stuff from our wireless traffic even if they can’t break our codes.”
“Like what?” Stites asked.
Ronson twisted his big mustache. “All sorts of things. Approximately where we are, for one thing. The League’s got radio direction finders, same as us. And if everybody’s jabbering away, they can even get an idea about the size of our force and how it’s distributed. Now they know where we are, though, we can squeal all we want.”
“Nobody’ll answer.”
“Nope. Not for a while. I guess it won’t matter, once the balloon goes up, except for the task forces still sneakin’ around. They’ll keep their traps shut until the Leaguers get wise.”
With their planes gone, Ellie and Adar got underway and the growing breeze was almost cool. This was the farthest Ronson had been from the equator in a long time and it was refreshing. Together, the destroyers slowly steamed back and forth in the outer harbor inside the long eastern breakwater.
“We gonna have anything in the air to meet ’em when they come?” Stites asked grumpily, still focused on the expected attack.
Ronson noted several ’Cats listening closely, blinking nervous curiosity. “A little,” he replied. “Not all the planes they strung out on the fields were wrecks. Probably could’ve done some good with ’em against bombers if we had time to train Nussies to fly ’em. No sense wasting our pilots in ’em, now we’ve got better planes.”
“So some of our new pursuit ships’re here? Be neat to see how they do.”
“Just a few,” Ronson warned. “Most’re still on the carriers, or with Ben Mallory.”
“Flyboys,” Stites grumped, and launched a brown stream of real tobacco juice over the rail. Not a single drop touched the deck below before it splashed in the foam alongside. “I hope they kick the shit out of ’em.”
Seepy Field
Puerto Rico, NUS Territory
The lush, grass airstrip named “Seepy Field” on the northeast end of Puerto Rico—the third largest of the NUS-occupied “Isles of Cuba”—was wide and flat and bounded only by the sea and a modest cluster of mountains to the southeast. Dense trees bordered it on the lower slopes of closer hills, providing cover for Jumbo Fisher’s thirty TBD-2s, twenty-two P-5 Bull-Bats (the nickname had stuck hard) of the 7th Pursuit Squadron under Ez “Easy” Shiaa, and Orrin Reddy’s four P-40Es, all under Ben Mallory’s overall command. Particularly observant enemy scouts might’ve seen lines in the grass where planes had landed, but the aircraft themselves were well-hidden. Only one enemy scout ever overflew the place in any case, a three-engine medium bomber Ben identified as a “Kingfisher.” Its crew was probably equally impressed by the area’s future utility as an airfield, but apparently found nothing amiss.
Preparing the airstrip hadn’t required much effort by the Nussie labor battalion sent to perform the task. All they’d done was mark its boundaries, remove a few cartloads of stones, fill some holes, set up tents and other necessities under the trees, and keep the strange, hadrosaur-like “cattle” chased away. Virtually the entire sparsely populated island was given over to ranching since there was fine grazing and few predators. Preparing for the logistical requirements of Ben Mallory’s Army/Navy air corps detachment was another matter, however, taking weeks. The most frustrating aspect required gathering nearly three hundred wagons and draft animals. Horses were rare, so “dillos” had to suffice. These were somewhat stunted (compared to their continental cousins), but still gigantic, armadillo-like “armabueys.” They also needed about half the remaining population of the island, mostly women and children since their men were off with the army or fleet, to converge at a little fishing village called Port January, about where San Juan would be on a different Earth. When the SPD Tarakan Island backed into the docks and offloaded her burden of fuel barrels, bombs, and torpedoes, as well as Ben’s ground crew personnel and all the stuff they needed, the real work began. By morning, Tara was gone, empty except for the twenty-four boats of Nat Hardee’s MTB-Ron-5. Directed by the ground crews, women and kids loaded hundreds of tons of fuel and ordnance on the wagons and laboriously hauled it all seven miles east across streams and stretches of swampy ground until they reached the new airfield under cover of another night. The delicate, dangerous freight was unloaded and concealed in hastily built bunkers under the trees by the bulk of the labor battalion. By the time Ben’s planes started landing, already loaded with fuel and munitions, most of the locals had dispersed. Ben was impressed by the civilian effort in particular and came down hard on anyone he heard denigrating Nussie devotion to the cause. So did the ground crews who’d helped them.
Not that there was much time for reflections of any sort, as it turned out. They’d barely gotten settled in, a mere two days after their arrival, when the radio squawked the warning they’d been waiting for and Ben passed the word to sound the scramble alarm.
“What’s the dope?” Orrin asked, running up with Jumbo.
“League bombers, headed for Santiago. No fighters, and even the bombers must be carrying extra fuel, but it looks like they’re sending all they have. Maybe about twenty three-engine jobs, and ten twin-engine.”
“Then it’s time for us to paay them a visit as well,” Shirley said grimly.
“Still not sure I ought to go,” Cecil Dixon grumbled, staring at one of the last four P-40s in the world, dark and mottled in the shade of the trees. “Always been a better wrench than a pilot.” Nobody thought he was afraid, but he’d made it clear that he believed the plane was wasted on him.
>
Ben growled, exasperated. “You may not’ve had a commission in the old days, Lieutenant Dixon, but you taught an awful lot of guys to fly P-40s. My money’s on you showing us again. C’mon, let’s get going.”
“My Far—I mean, TBDs—are loaded with bombs. No change?” Jumbo asked. The new torpedo bombers had finally been designated “Banaakaai,” basically Lemurian for “Thunderer.” The pursuit pilots immediately, probably inevitably, changed that to “Farter,” and the bomber crews—understandably proud of their new planes—had simply reverted to calling them “TBDs,” or just “Twos,” again, in an effort to suppress the slander.
Ben shook his head. “No. Even if we had time, the word is about half the League fleet sortied too. You’ll get your chance with torpedoes later.”
“Don’t forget, Colonel,” called Orrin, splitting off toward his own plane. “You may command our little wing here—hell, you’re in charge of everything with wings, when it comes down to it—but when we’re in the air today, we’re in reserve. If we have to jump in, you’re supposed to follow my lead.”
“No arguments,” Ben called back. “My one and only tangle with Macchi-Messerschmitts, they nearly ate my lunch.” He nodded at Shirley, grinning. “She’s way better than I am—as long as her feet don’t slip off the rudder pedals.” Shirley was very short and had to sit on two parachutes to see through her gunsight. She also wore special thick-soled sandals instead of the wooden blocks she’d once used just to reach the rudder pedals. The sandals made it hard to walk, however, so her ground crew laced them on her and hoisted her into her plane.
Orrin grinned at the sight as he vaulted up on the wing of his own P-40 and settled into the cockpit. “Come to think of it,” he shouted back at Ben while his Lemurian crew chief strapped him in, “I’ve spent more time out of these crates than I ever did in ’em, and it’s been a while since I mixed it up with Japs over the Philippines. I’m a little rusty. Maybe you better watch my ass!”
Ben snorted to himself. Regardless of his past, Orrin had been dogfighting Grikbirds in Nancys and Fleashooters. They were slower, but way more maneuverable. All he’d ever asked about the enemy’s Macchi-Messerschmitts was whether he could turn with them or not. Impressed by Orrin’s grasp of something so fundamental, he’d said, “Yeah, barely.” Orrin had only nodded.
The four P-40E Warhawks fired up easily, blue smoke swirling and jetting away, their healthy exhaust sounds a testament to the loving maintenance they’d received. Shortly afterward, with Orrin’s plane flanked by Ben’s, and Shirley’s by Cecil’s (Dixon was rusty, despite the reorientation flights they’d made back at Baalkpan, and would follow Shirley’s lead), they taxied out on the grass field and thundered into the sky. Once airborne, they orbited while the TBD-2s joined, followed by Easy’s P-5s. When their formations were sorted out, fifty-six aircraft, loaded with bombs, bullets, and precious aircrews, slanted off to the east-southeast.
CHAPTER 40
////// League-Occupied Martinique
The Caribbean
The die was cast, and Victor Gravois, Gouverneur Militaire du Protectorat des Antilles, was enjoying a splendid early lunch with Capitano Campioni aboard his enormous 46,000-ton Littorio Class battleship Impero, while they waited patiently for news of the grand air and sea attacks Gravois ordered against Santiago. His and Ciano’s suspicions had been confirmed by a recon plane launched off a scouting cruiser; Captain Reddy’s destroyers were in Santiago Bay, and a large number of aircraft had been gathered on nearby fields. There was no news of Reddy’s carrier, but they were doubtless right that it had retired into the Gulf.
There’d be a much longer wait before they learned how Ammiraglio di Divisione Bruto Gherzi’s three battleship, four cruiser, and eight destroyer bombardment raid went, but that should be anticlimactic since its target was two aged, dilapidated destroyers, a helpless fleet of sailing ships at anchor, and the city of Santiago itself. In any event, the bombardment element’s primary purpose was more intimidation than destruction—though it would certainly perform a lot of the latter. How better to accomplish the former? But now that the final curtain had been raised, Gravois felt almost giddy, anticipating a most pleasant wait.
Impero was the newest and arguably most powerful ship in the entire League fleet, rushed to completion just months before the fateful operation that brought them to this dreadful world. As such, she was Ammiraglio Gherzi’s flagship in the Antilles. But Gherzi left her behind for his sortie, shifting his flag to the Lyon Class Tourville, an elderly but powerful and highly modernized French battleship. He was under Gravois’s operational direction, but held orders directly from the Triumvirate never to risk Impero in unfamiliar waters. That was fine with Gravois, since the rotund Gherzi was a slave to his stomach and his table in the spacious flag officer’s suite was exquisite.
The company wasn’t bad either. Ciano was there, Leopardo anchored nearby, and Capitano Campioni was an old friend and enthusiastic convert to Gravois’s scheme. Campioni worried about Gherzi, who was neither terrified of the OVRA, nor as deferential to Marshall Messe as he probably should be. Campioni believed Gherzi’s primary loyalty was to his duty to carry out orders, period, and thought he’d follow Gravois’s when the time came. If not, Campioni would be happy to take his place. Gesturing gently at a window with his half-filled wineglass, Campioni now indicated the other ships remaining at Martinique. “I wish we all could’ve gone,” he said wistfully. “I understand our fuel constraints, but another battleship, four more cruisers, and five more destroyers—including yours, my dear Ciano—would’ve made the impact”—he smirked—“even more profound. And I suppose we could’ve even towed that loathsome old toad out there along. Whether she can move or not, her guns still fire.” He was referring to the only other BB still sharing the harbor, the old Spanish dreadnaught Espana.
“Come, come,” Gravois chastised. “She’s in little worse shape than some of our French battleships, I hear. Their maintenance was too long neglected.”
“True,” Campioni grudged, but his face wore a sneer. “Espana’s engineering problems aren’t severe, she’s just . . .” He sighed. “So poorly manned. A proper crew would have her seaworthy in hours, not days. Or weeks. The Spaniard is a fine soldier,” he granted begrudgingly, “more experienced and ruthless than my Italian brethren, but I fear his seamanship has declined precipitously in recent centuries.”
“Well,” Gravois said, “then it’s fortunate we have so many of them for land operations, while the French and Italians carry the League at sea!”
“What of the Germans?” Ciano questioned.
“What of them?” Campioni countered harshly. “They have but a single cruiser here.” He was referring to KMS Hessen, still anchored as well. Her sister, Elsass, was the only other large German surface combatant, and she’d been kept in the Med. Always dissatisfied with their subordinate standing in the League, the German contingent was growing increasingly rebellious and Marshall Messe didn’t trust them. Gravois intended to use that to his advantage. “And their single remaining submarine is at home, under repair,” Campioni complained.
“At least they have one,” Gravois pointed out, remembering he’d abandoned another—U-112—in the Indian Ocean. He cared nothing for its crew, but the submarine would’ve been handy now, parked in the mouth of the Pass of Fire. Then of course, there was that lone French submarine that wasted itself in a premature attack on their current enemy. . . . He took a sip of his wine. “Come,” he admonished again, “I know you would’ve enjoyed some action, but you’ll soon have it. In the meantime let’s enjoy our meal”—he also gestured at the window—“and the scenery.”
Campioni stared at him, agog. “Scenery? With respect, sir, you’ve not been ashore on this miserable island. The deadly snakes are so numerous they could only be sustained by the multitudes of vermin and insects that infest the place.”
Gravois’s voice turned hard. “At lea
st you’ve felt dry land beneath your feet, Capitano. I can’t remember when Ciano and I last did. Our ‘allies’ won’t permit it. Just as well, because your view is much more pleasant than what we’ve endured at Puerto del Cielo for so long. You can’t imagine the depravity we’ve witnessed. . . .” He shook his head. “Believe me, Capitano Campioni, Don Hernan and his Blood Priests would make your serpents and vermin blush. Enough of your complaints.”
“Then why do we tolerate them?” Campioni asked, genuinely curious.
Gravois sighed. “Because Don Hernan and I have an understanding, and he’s currently occupying all the enemy armies in this hemisphere. Despite our naval power, do you think we could hold this outpost with a mere five thousand troops—Spanish or otherwise—if he wasn’t?” He shrugged. “And since Don Hernan trusts me, I can topple him whenever I wish.” Ciano would know that was a boastful simplification at best, especially since Don Hernan trusted no one, but if their analysis was correct, he’d soon be utterly dependent on Gravois.
They felt more than heard a quick, staccato thumping, like someone jumping up and down on the deck overhead. Then a speaker on the bulkhead crackled and a bugle call blared through the metal grill. Gravois wasn’t familiar with Italian alerts, but Campioni and Ciano knocked their chairs over jumping to their feet. “I must go to the bridge,” Campioni called behind as he bolted through the hatch.
“What is it?” Gravois demanded of Ciano.
“Air attack. I must return to Leopardo!”
Gravois’s mind reeled. How? he demanded of himself. Then he knew. Captain Reddy’s Maaka-Kakja must’ve slipped past our scouts, somehow. “No,” he snapped. “You’ll never reach her in time and you must stay with me. Let’s go out on the flag bridge and observe.”
The first thing they saw was a cluster of heavy smoke plumes rising like black towers against a bright green mountain. Gravois hadn’t been ashore, but knew where the island’s two airfields were. One, at least, was catching hell. A junior officer rushed up behind them, probably sent by Campioni, and Gravois snatched his binoculars. Focusing on a flitting shape, he gasped. “Those are bombers! Real bombers, with two engines!” he exclaimed. He’d seen the aircraft Muriname made for Kurokawa on Zanzibar, but these weren’t the same at all. He wondered what other surprises the enemy had conjured since the League’s intelligence-gathering apparatus was eviscerated by their expulsion from the Indian Ocean.
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