Winds of Wrath

by Taylor Anderson

  “There are quite a few of them,” Ciano stated grimly, “and some are heading this way,” he added, voice rising.

  Gravois watched ten blue, twin-engine shapes arrowing toward the harbor. Dark clouds blossomed around them as ground-based antiaircraft batteries finally opened up. The surprise had been so complete, he was frankly amazed the gunners reacted so fast. A ball of orange fire rolled into the sky about where the other airfield was, but Gravois saw some of their own planes taking to the air. A few would’ve been aloft already, he consoled himself, and they’ll be coming soon. Quick enough?

  * * *

  * * *

  “On your tail, Cecil! Seven o’clock!” Orrin Reddy shouted in his mic. Any need for radio silence vanished when A-Flight’s ten TBD-2s swept over the first, largest airfield. Each dropped two of their four 250-pound bombs. The dirt strip erupted in massive, dusty brown stalks that cratered the runway. Then the bombs started finding planes and fuel storage tanks and those explosions were much more colorful. B-Flight’s bombers had more trouble finding the smaller, better-hidden airfield farther from the harbor, and fighters were already rising before they turned in on it. Others already in the sky were going after them. A section of Easy’s pursuiters dove, and just as a Macchi-Messerschmitt riddled a TBD-2 with holes and sent it plunging into the jungle to sear the trees with flames, a pair of “Bull-Bats” got their first air-to-air kill, exploding the same “Macchi-Mess.” But there were more, and Orrin quickly realized, surprised or not, League pilots were pretty quick on the draw.

  The Bull-Bats held their own, in pairs, keeping League fighters off their bombers pretty well. As the confusion of the dogfight spread them out, however, they started falling to the swifter, more heavily armed planes. New explosions gouging the second airfield diverted some defenders and Easy’s pilots reorganized to chase them. The sky over Martinique started to resemble a giant spaghetti pile of smoke trails, streaming tracers, and white vapor streaking from radically maneuvering wingtips. League fighters fell to earth, but so did Bull-Bats and TBDs. Orrin cold-bloodedly figured the exchange rate at three to one in favor of the League, but the Allies could afford that. And it was actually better than he’d cynically predicted.

  C-Flight, each plane carrying two 500-pound bombs, charged toward the harbor, low over the trees, with a mixed gaggle of Macchi-Messers—and freaking Stukas!—after them. All of Easy’s 7th Pursuiters were occupied.

  “Third Pursuit! Tallyho the bandits after C-Flight!” Orrin had called, peeling over and starting his dive. He’d just taken the little squadron of P-40s in its overwatch position away from Ben Mallory—and Ben away from himself. To his credit, Ben hadn’t squawked, and he, Shirley, and Cecil immediately followed Orrin in.

  They downed several planes in their slashing dive, and most of the pursuit—all but the slower Stukas—broke away from C-Flight in confusion. The bombers carried on through a growing barrage of AA fire from the ground and ships at anchor. Some staggered from hits and started to smoke as they separated and went for specific targets. The sudden appearance of Orrin’s modern planes seemed to draw every League fighter on the island, however, and the 3rd Pursuit quickly found itself almost as outnumbered as the enemy had been by Bull-Bats.

  Two overriding questions that had haunted Orrin, Ben, Shirley, and Cecil were answered very quickly in the savage free-for-all that ensued: P-40s could turn with Macchi-Messerschmitts, at least at low attitude. More importantly, “rusty” as they might consider themselves, they’d all been flying something in combat against challenging opponents of various kinds ever since they came to this world. The mighty League air force had never been tested in the air. Their pilots were a lot rustier, and it cost them.

  Cecil Dixon flipped his plane into a tight left bank and Shirley swooped and shattered his attacker with her six .50s. Small chunks fluttered away, followed by the entire left wing. The fighter crashed into a camouflaged storage building that erupted with secondary explosions like a fireworks show. Orrin caught a tightly turning Macchi-Mess with a difficult deflection shot and it disintegrated into dozens of flaming fragments. That brought his rapidly rising total to four League planes, so far. Then he spotted a pair of Stuka dive bombers pulling away, either lured by easier targets or repelled by the growing hurricane of flack directed at the Allied bombers. Despite being warned, Orrin was still surprised to see their distinctive, unchanged, gull-wing shapes. Junkers must’ve gotten through whatever made Willy Messerschmitt merge with Macchi, he mused, as a burst from his guns sent a Stuka tumbling into the trees. Ben got the other one and they pulled up, looking for more dangerous game. It wasn’t hard to find.

  Despite the stress of combat, even the fear, Orrin felt a kind of inner peace he’d rarely experienced since the Philippines. The enemy was different, even the world was, but the circumstances were the same. He was fighting for his life over mountainous jungle in a desperate battle against planes at least as good as his. And the League reminded him of the Japanese. They were fascists with a mighty fleet, here to conquer. But he was back in a P-40, flying like he was built with it, exhilarated by his skill, the raw power of his plane, and even the fierce nostalgia of the moment. More significantly, as much as he’d enjoyed working with Admiral Lela, he’d never liked the responsibility of being Makky-Kat’s COFO. He suspected Matt knew that, and was probably even a little disappointed he hadn’t stepped up more vigorously. But he’d done his best, damn it. And as much as he—mostly secretly—admired his cousin for taking charge of . . . everything, it seemed . . . Orrin wasn’t made that way. He was just a fighter jock at heart, never cut out to wear the heavy brass. He knew Matt probably felt the same way and bucked under the weight, but he had the will to carry it. Orrin didn’t. Now here he was, doing what he was best at, only part of a team he wasn’t really in charge of once again. Even over a backseater in a Nancy. And for the first time since he lost his last P-40 over Luzon, he was having fun.

  “Intel was right,” Orrin heard Ben’s stressed voice say as he chased a Macchi-Mess in front of Orrin’s guns. The sleek shape with the mottled paint scheme started smoking and dived away. Another took its place almost instantly and Orrin didn’t even have to maneuver to blast it out of the sky. “All their fighters are here,” Ben continued. “Shit!” he chirped.

  Orrin saw tracers flaring past Ben’s plane and remembered he was responsible for helping his squadron mates, and protecting Ben in particular. Matt would never forgive me for blowing that. Instinctively, he kicked his rudder left to bleed some speed before cutting right again to point his nose at Ben’s attacker. Six .50s rattled in his wings and the Macchi-Mess in front of him came unzipped amid a cloud of aluminum confetti and fell away in two large, burning pieces. An instant later, the fun ended when Orrin’s plane shook again—and he wasn’t firing. Pain lanced up his legs and the windscreen in front of his gunsight started going opaque. “Oil!” he shouted, disgusted voice tinged with shock and fear. “I’m hit and blowing oil, goddammit!” Acrid smoke boiled up under the instrument panel, immediately followed by a gust of flame. For an instant, as the burning agony engulfed him, he thought he’d jump and take his chances with the Leaguers. Stupid, he just as quickly realized, as the flames seared his face around his goggles. His shattered, burning legs wouldn’t let him jump—and he’d never be a prisoner again. Gritting his teeth and closing his eyes, he pushed his stick forward.

  As low as he was, he only suffered for four more seconds before, entirely by accident, his burning plane slammed into the fueling pier serving one of the tank batteries the TBDs hadn’t hit. The crash that killed Orrin Reddy, Second Lieutenant, US Army Air Corps, wasn’t particularly spectacular and the nearby oil tanks weren’t ruptured, but the wooden dock was demolished and fueling lines ignited, leaking burning oil into the clouding water of the bay.

  * * *

  * * *

  Victor Gravois was stunned by the scope of the disaster, and how quickly the serene
certainty of his grand scheme was threatened. A constant stream of messengers brought him the latest reports and he digested them as best he could, but what he saw with his own eyes was bad enough. Tall columns of gray-black smoke stood over both airfields, joined by steamy tendrils rising from the jungle. Almost half his precious fuel reserves around the harbor were burning, and flaming oil was spreading on the water, hindering firefighting efforts. The raid had been a complete surprise, but the quality—and quantity—of the aircraft was just as unexpected. The little fighters had been no match for his modern planes, one-on-one, but they’d brought enough to more than occupy the League fighters that took off before many were slaughtered on the ground. And they weren’t the pathetic little things he’d seen before either. These were probably less than a decade behind the best planes he had, and perhaps that far ahead of anything the League could make with its current priorities. Their numbers had made the difference, falling like flies, but felling or repelling most of the defenders as well. The appearance of four modern planes (one of which, at least, was lost) had been almost superfluous, except for how they covered the bomber approach to the harbor.

  And those bombers! Not only were they nearly as fast as his own, they flew through more than enough concentrated fire to have blotted them all from the sky. Half of the first ten were blown apart before they reached their targets, but the rest wreaked enough destruction to justify the loss of them all. Tank batteries and docks, along with three precious, irreplaceable freighters tied to them, were blasted by what behaved like 250kg bombs! Other bombers, apparently finished with the airfields and still armed, came in as well. Impero and one of the newer cruisers savaged them with their heavy AA artillery suites and remained untouched. Leopardo as well, because she was so close alongside. But even though more than half the attacking bombers were shot down, they damaged every other ship to various degrees. Most were badly shaken by near misses, but one of those ruptured a destroyer’s hull and sank her. Another destroyer was gutted by a hit directly amidships and sank in flames as well. Most critical, in Gravois’s opinion, a French Suffren Class cruiser was horribly mauled and disabled by bombs that smashed her aft engine room and a forward turret. A fire consuming ammunition in the hoists still endangered her.

  Perhaps most dramatically, the poor, immobile Espana was utterly destroyed. Her formidable appearance and weak AA must’ve drawn the bombers and she suffered hits on her fo’c’sle and amidships before Impero’s fire damaged a plane (apparently still carrying at least two bombs) that crashed into one of Espana’s aft gunhouses. The bomb blasts and wash of burning fuel somehow reached an aft magazine and the detonation was stupendous, shattering the ship’s stern and sinking her at once. Every window on Impero’s starboard side turned to shards of flying glass, causing dozens of casualties. Gravois was lucky to escape serious injury himself, and even then he could barely hear over what sounded like constant, screeching brakes in his ears.

  Reports told an even grimmer tale. Of the four bombers held back from the raid on Santiago and the twenty fighters and fifteen dive bombers Gravois had at dawn, half of everything had been destroyed on the ground. Eight fighters and seven dive bombers had apparently been shot down, and many of the survivors were damaged or destroyed trying to land on cratered runways! It was a catastrophe. His once mighty air arm had been whittled down to a single fighter, five Stukas, and two medium bombers fit to fly—other than those still winging toward Santiago, of course. His fuel reserve, already meager, was burning up around him, and a lot of his ordnance stores ashore had gone up in flames as well.

  Ciano returned from inspecting his ship and joined Gravois and Campioni on Impero’s bridge. “Perhaps”—he hesitated—“perhaps we should recall Ammiraglio Gherzi and the airstrike,” he suggested.

  Gravois rounded on him. “To what possible advantage? The enemy planes at Santiago could not have made it here. The attack had to come from the enemy carrier. And as bad as our losses were, theirs were more severe. Their carrier is virtually disarmed! We can’t allow the planes at Santiago to go to her.” He fumed. “And we’ll need some time to make hasty repairs to at least one airstrip so our planes can land when they return.” A thought struck him and he turned to Campioni. “Our remaining planes can still take off, can they not?”

  “Carefully,” Impero’s captain hedged.

  “Good. Then I want them all back up at once, every seaplane we have as well, searching for that enemy carrier. I want it found and killed, do you hear?” He was looking out at the harbor, suddenly aware of a glaring flaw in his dispositions: the destroyers that had picketed the approaches to Martinique—and might’ve given warning of the raid—had been dispatched with Gherzi’s task force, and hadn’t been replaced. “I want ships out searching as well.”

  “Most should make repairs before putting to sea,” Campioni objected, “though one cruiser and two destroyers can sail at once.”

  “Very well, send them. But I want everything out searching as soon as possible, even if that leaves only Impero and Leopardo to protect our remaining oilers and cargo ships until Gherzi returns.”

  “It’ll be costly in fuel,” Campioni warned, “something we’re suddenly far shorter of.”

  “And what of Gherzi?” Ciano pressed. “His sortie was designed to overawe the enemy. You don’t really think he’ll catch Captain Reddy at Santiago.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “He’s burning fuel as well, for little return. We can’t afford such extravagance now. He should be recalled.”

  Gravois considered that. When he spoke, his voice had lost a lot of its heat. “You’re right, of course. But we can’t remain confined in this harbor, and much of Gherzi’s fuel is already spent. To recall him now will just ensure it was all wasted. Besides”—he tried to cheer them—“we’ll soon have more. The supply convoy remains sensibly silent, but it must’ve left the Azores by now.”

  “Escorted by another thirsty battleship, two cruisers, and four destroyers,” Campioni pointed out. “They’ll suck the oilers dry by themselves.”

  Gravois frowned. He wanted those ships for his ultimate plan. The stronger he was, the easier it would be to defy the Triumvirate—and win converts to his defiance without a fight. But Campioni was right. He had to get through the current crisis first. “Send a priority message to the commander of the reinforcement and supply convoy informing him . . .” He paused. He couldn’t let the slightest hint of what had occurred escape. “Tell him fuel constraints still concern me, and limit our operational flexibility.” He managed a wry shadow of a smile. “That much is true, and no secret to anyone.” He looked back at Campioni. “Continue that we have sufficient large combatants to achieve our goals and no fuel for more.” He glanced outside at the still-burning cruiser, tempted, but shook his head. “Two destroyers are quite enough to escort the convoy the rest of the way to Martinique. The other ships would merely be a drain on our resources and must turn back.”

  CHAPTER 41

  ////// USS James Ellis

  Santiago Bay, NUS Territory

  The Caribbean

  Here they come!” came the cry down from the crow’s nest on the foremast, high above the fire control platform. Even as Ronson heard the piercing Lemurian shout, Ellie’s general quarters alarm sounded and her crew raced to their battle stations. The same thing was happening on Adar, but even though bells started ringing all over Santiago, Ronson saw little activity in its streets. A few people were running for cover, some loose animals wandered, but that was it. The same was true for many of the ships in port. They looked fine from a distance, and a few had even been quickly disguised to resemble Nussie warships, but most were old, rundown merchantmen, not even fit for sea. Santiago was where they’d ended their commercial careers due to age, disrepair, insolvency of their owners, or any number of ordinary, mundane reasons. But with Santiago’s real maritime power and wealth and many of its people already evacuated, its fle
et of derelicts would serve a final upright purpose.

  Ronson redirected his binoculars at the sky to the east. Three Vs of planes, bigger than anything they had but Clippers, were dark against the high, white clouds. Again he was reminded of Cavite and the Japanese bombers that blew it to hell. Two formations seemed to be edging toward the airfield and the city and one was coming straight for the harbor. “This is it,” he told Stites. “I gotta get aft.” He paused and looked at the man with the bulging cheek and scruffy beard. “I know you don’t have an antiaircraft director for our four-inch-fifties, but the Skipper’s counting on you to be on your toes about ranges and designating targets. The ’Cats on the twenty-fives and fifties can take care of themselves. Good luck.”

  With that, he slid firehouse style down the ladder to the signal bridge behind the pilothouse where he heard Captain Brister barking orders in his scratchy voice. Bounding down the metal stairs and racing aft past the galley under the amidships gun platform, he waved at Tabasco, who was sending mess attendants off to carry ammunition to the guns above. “Don’t let us vapor lock if we have to step on the gas,” he called good-naturedly to Johnny Parks, Ellie’s engineering officer, as the big man squeezed down the hatch to the forward engine room.