Path of the Storm

by Douglas Reeman

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Douglas Reeman

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. Reprieve

  2. Memories

  3. The Island of Tin Gods

  4. First Blood

  5. Burgess

  6. You never know what’s afoot

  7. A Name from the Past

  8. The Facts of Life

  9. Death Wears a Hat

  10. Towing Job

  11. Conflict

  12. Storm Warning

  13. ‘She’s Going Over!’

  14. Traitors or Patriots?

  15. Attack

  16. A Matter of Gunnery

  17. Final Gesture

  18. Pirelli

  19. ‘It will be an Honour’

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The old submarine-chaser USS Hibiscus, re-fitting in Hong Kong dockyard before being handed over the Nationalist Chinese, is suddenly ordered to the desolate island group of Payenhau.

  For Captain Mark Gunnar – driven by the memory of his torture at the hands of Viet Cong guerillas – the new command is a chance to even the score against a ruthless, unrelenting enemy.

  But Payenhau is very different from his expectations, and as the weather worsens a crisis develops that Gunnar must face alone.

  About the Author

  Douglas Reeman joined the Navy in 1941. He did convoy duty in the Atlantic, Arctic and the North Sea, and later served in motor torpedo boats. As he says, ‘I am always asked to account for the perennial appeal of the sea story, and its enduring appeal for people of so many nationalities and cultures. It would seem that the eternal and sometimes elusive triangle of man, ship and ocean, particularly under the stress of war, produces the best qualities of courage and compassion, irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the conflict … The sea has no understanding of the righteous or unjust causes. It is the common enemy, respected by all who serve on it, ignored at their peril.’

  Reeman has written over thirty novels under his own name and more than twenty best-selling historical novels, featuring Richard Bolitho and his nephew Adam Bolitho, under the pseudonym Alexander Kent.

  Also by Douglas Reeman

  A Prayer for the Ship

  High Water

  Send a Gunboat

  Dive in the Sun

  The Hostile Shore

  To Risks Unknown

  With Blood and Iron

  HMS Saracen

  The Last Raider

  The Deep Silence

  The Pride and the Anguish

  The Greatest Enemy

  Rendezvous – South Atlantic

  Go In and Sink!

  The Destroyers

  Surface with Daring

  Strike from the Sea

  A Ship Must Die

  Torpedo Run

  Badge of Glory

  The First to Land

  The Volunteers

  The Iron Pirate

  In Danger’s Hour

  The White Guns

  Killing Ground

  The Horizon

  Sunset

  A Dawn Like Thunder

  Battlecruiser

  Dust on the Sea

  For Valour

  Twelve Seconds to Live

  Path of

  the Storm

  Douglas Reeman

  For Cherry Kearton, my good friend

  ‘In the path of the storm

  all men are fearless’

  Old Chinese saying

  1

  Reprieve

  THE BRITISH CROWN Colony of Hong Kong seemed crushed beneath the glare and relentless heat of the midday sun. Even for high summer it was unusually hot, the humid air almost wet to the touch, so that the colourful crowds jamming the waterfronts scarcely moved, but jostled in buzzing and aimless confusion.

  But it was Sunday, and as usual the crowded harbour and anchorage was alive with craft of every description, from fussing paddle-wheeled tugs to timeless stern-sculled lighters. Tall, ribbed-sailed junks barely moved through the throng, their ragged reflections poised on the flat blue water like bats, whilst here and there smart navy launches and gigs of pale grey and gleaming brass scudded on small, fine bow-waves as their perspiring coxswains strove to make sense out of the harbour regulations.

  The lush green heights of Victoria Peak were lost in a shimmering heat-haze which mercifully hid the jumbled misery of squatters’ shacks and refugee hovels which were beginning to invade what was once an area reserved solely for the rich, whose villas still managed to maintain a kind of lordly reserve in the world’s most overcrowded city.

  The British naval dockyard, however, was quiet by any standards. Sunday was Sunday in any language, and apart from a few gloomy watchkeepers, the sleek destroyers and tall cruisers were deserted, as if the heat had winkled out every living thing from the high bridges and grim gun-turrets.

  Hong Kong was still the most popular liberty port in the world, and daily the sailors of the American Seventh Fleet and men of the local British squadrons surged ashore in search of amusement. The Americans found particular pleasure in taking a taxi to the colony’s border and recording the surly-faced Communist guards on the other side of the wire.

  For months at a time the men of the U.S. Seventh Fleet patrolled the Formosa Strait, watched over the countless shipping movements, and kept the seas open from Japan to as far south as Australia. Every mile of the Red Chinese mainland presented some hidden menace, a fault of navigation or error of seamanship could spark off an international incident, which again could escalate to open conflict. Every man knew this, yet newcomers to Hong Kong gathered their Japanese ‘Leicas’ and hurried to this strange, defenceless-looking frontier between East and West to record for all time the actual face of the enemy.

  At this very moment a giant aircraft carrier lay like a grey cliff in the centre of the anchorage. The fourth largest ship in the world, she represented merely by her presence the sleepless power of the Seventh Fleet. Other warships browsed at their moorings nearby, but the tourist steamers and bobbing harbour craft were only interested in the carrier, and, even in the blazing heat, hands were busy with uptrained cameras the puffing craft swam in the carrier’s great shadow, and devoured every item of interest. The bright, toylike planes, wings folded, which just peeped over the edge of the flight deck, the maze of radio antennae and busy radar scanners, even the size of the ship alone, was enough for the tourists, and every Chinese guide thanked the heavens for her visit.

  It was hardly surprising, therefore, that few observed the one warship moored on the fringe of the anchorage, aboard which, Sunday or not, there was a sign of life and activity.

  The submarine chaser U.S.S. Hibiscus was twenty-three years old, and in spite of her new coats of gleaming grey paint and freshly burnished brasswork, a closer inspection quickly laid bare the lie presented by the three months’ refit which had been completed only the previous day, when shyly and unsurely she had been coaxed from a deep dry-dock and warped to her present mooring beneath the towering cranes of the loading jetty. Since her keel had touched the water for the first time in Portland, Oregon, she had lost count of the miles she had steamed, forgotten the dozen captains who had conned her through the bleak Atlantic in 1942, or dodged that crazed kamikaze in the Pacific. The captain who had rammed another chaser on the last day of the war with Japan, or the one who had been court-martialled for running the ship aground in the Korean war. Hibiscus had seen them all come and go, like the men who had looked after her, and the work they had done together. Normandy, Korea, Viet Nam, each leaving some scar or dent on her one hundred and seventy-three feet, every mar
k like part of the navy record itself. As she grew older her jobs grew less vital, and like this particular day she got used to being on the fringe of things. Target towing, carrying food and blankets for earthquake victims, instructing eager ensigns in the mysteries of navigation, or merely suffering months of mothballed retirement, Hibiscus had little left to experience. Only one crisis after another in the struggle for world mastery had retained the necessity of keeping ‘just one more ship’, but even the mounting tension with Red China had seemed insufficient to prevent her last journey under the flag which now hung limp and unmoving in the unwavering sun.

  She was a graceful little ship, flush-decked, sleek and uncluttered by the top-heavy mess of radar and antennae which bruised the outlines of her newer and more powerful counterparts. There was a small, open-topped bridge behind which a raked mast and squat single stack made up the bulk of her superstructure. She was narrow-beamed, barely twenty-three feet at her widest part, which was not the fantail, where the assembled crew were packed in a tight, sweating circle of white starched caps and upturned squinting faces, as each man craned to listen to the voice of the new, and supposedly the last, captain under the American flag.

  Lieutenant-Commander Mark Gunnar stood on the top of a life-raft, stared gravely above the heads of the waiting men and looked along the full length of his new command. The brief ceremony of taking over the ship was completed against the background of sounds from the harbour, the clank of a winch, the mournful hoot of the Star Ferry steamer, even the far-off roar from the Happy Valley Racecourse. The stilted words, the carefully phrased paper which gave him command, control of this small, tired ship, six officers and some sixty men. The sea of upturned, anonymous faces, blank and meaningless. In time, in a very short time, the people would emerge from these faces, the weak and the strong, the ambitious and the incompetent. All in good time.

  Gunnar stood quite still, the effort of appearing relaxed making his back ache, so that he was conscious of the sun’s glare across his slim shoulders, the painful throbbing behind his quiet grey eyes. He could feel the sweat beneath the rim of his cap, and his short fair hair moist against his forehead. A few moments longer, and then he would go to his quarters. The quiet, dark room below the bridge, where he would find peace, even for a short while, to think and plan. All the quick-fire elation he had tried to retain since his arrival in Hong Kong had faded, even the gentle stirring of the little ship beneath his feet as a tug surged pantingly abeam failed to disperse the ache of disappointment which had met him within minutes of landing at Hong Kong airport.

  After all those months in hospital. The patient agony of surgery to his back, the meaningless promises of the doctors and the silence from the appointments office. The long, slow-healing process on his shattered mind, and the final feeling of weakness, mingled with delirious excitement, he had felt on the day of his discharge.

  He often thought back to those days, the months before the hospital. Viet Nam—the very name was like a knife turning in his insides, yet he seemed unable to leave alone the terrifying memories. In that wretched country, as one of the many U.S. advisers, Gunnar had thought of returning to the States for many reasons. Now, all he wanted to do was cut free of the land and return to the sea.

  His new-found buoyancy had stayed with him on the long, well-organised flight to Hong Kong, had lasted until his trip to the flagship, the giant carrier out there surrounded by gaping tourists.

  Gunnar was to get a command well enough. The Hibiscus. A small, clapped-out submarine chaser which had been refitted so many times that hardly anything of the original ship remained. She had been overhauled for the past three months in a British dockyard with the sole intention of handing her over complete, a going concern, to the Republic of China Navy on Taiwan. No doubt Chiang Kai-shek’s naval arm had already selected officers and men for the very ship Gunnar was being offered as his own.

  Captain Anderson, the admiral’s chief of staff, had handed Gunnar the thick wad of orders and one large sealed envelope. He was a big man, and had sat comfortably on the edge of his desk, swinging one fat leg, and staring at the envelope as it lay in Gunnar’s motionless fingers.

  ‘The handover to the Nationalists has been delayed.’ Anderson tried to make it sound interesting. ‘Not exactly indefinitely, but long enough for you to get the feel of things again.’

  Gunnar had felt the spacious room closing in on him. Get the feel of things again? Trite, meaningless words. What the hell did this captain know about it?

  What could Anderson understand about the constant nightmare, the recurring dream of pain, and desperate fear? The Viet Cong had not the luck to capture many Americans alive. When they did they made the most of it. Gunnar could still not bear to have anyone stand behind him. In the jungle headquarters of the Communist guerrillas he had steeled himself not to look at the shadow of the man whose turn it was to go behind him, to strip away his raw skin with a bamboo blade. It went on and on, so that he had listened to his own screams like someone on the outside of himself. Even after his escape, and his return to supposed sanity, he still heard those screams.

  But once aboard the flagship he began to see through the façade of friendliness and compassion. The admiration was false. It had to be. They were not even jealous of the medal awarded to him by the President. Jealous perhaps of the navy’s reputation, but not of him. Even this final jolt, the awaited-for command, was like a slap in the mouth.

  Anderson had continued evenly: ‘You’re only twenty-nine, Gunnar. In a while or so something better will come along. But after your past experiences you’ll want to get back into the swing of things as easily as possible, eh?’

  Only twenty-nine, but with an unspoken slur against his name. It would have been better to be court-martialled. Better to have died.

  ‘I had hoped for something a little better, sir.’ Gunnar’s youthful features hardened slightly. His racing thoughts were playing havoc with his carefully preserved calm.

  Captain Anderson had folded his arms and regarded him thoughtfully. ‘The Seventh Fleet is stretched to the limit. We’ve not got ships to throw about any more. Experienced officers are worth gold bars, and your sort of experience is at an absolute premium.’ He dropped his eyes. ‘However, there are certain factors. You have been very ill after your treatment from the Reds. Before that you were some months away from the sea. Hibiscus will be a sort of “coming home” for you. You’ve got your orders there, they’ll explain what is wanted by the admiral. Make a good job of it, and I guess you’ll not suffer.’

  ‘And if I botch it? I suppose they’ll say I’m running true to form!’ Two spots of colour glowed suddenly on Gunnar’s pale cheeks. It had burst out before he could check himself. Well, what the hell. ‘I know what they’re saying about me——’

  Anderson interrupted sharply: ‘I didn’t hear a word of that. Things are different in the navy today. It’s more like a big business concern with directives being issued by a Board who only care about results in some major plan that we on the spot cannot envisage. They don’t care if a man here and there gets hurt. Fighting to keep the peace is our business. But the sort of peace is very much their affair!’ His voice had softened a little. ‘Get to the ship, Gunnar. It’s a command for you, and I would say a fair offer under present circumstances.’ He grinned comfortably. ‘You’ve no enemies aboard here.’

  Gunnar had found himself on his feet. Already the fast-moving events seemed to have left him behind. ‘Can I see the admiral, sir?’

  ‘Negative.’ Anderson’s voice was showing signs of impatience. ‘He’s too busy, and in any case he instructed me to do the honours.’

  Gunnar had walked in a semi-daze to the smart launch which was waiting at the main gangway to whisk him across the harbour to his ship. This ship. Once he had looked back at the giant carrier, and wondered what the admiral had really said.

  His searching mind came back to the present with a sharp wrench, and he had to re-focus his eyes on the faces around h
im. He cleared his throat. ‘So this is the picture. This ship will stay in commission until further orders. Men due for other appointments and long leave have been replaced by others among you, so there will be no additional work per man. We will leave Hong Kong at dusk and get the feel of being a ship’s company again.’

  He dropped his eyes to the broad shoulders of Lieutenant Robert Maddox, the executive officer, who was standing immediately below him. A giant of a man, but at twenty-six was showing signs of running to overweight. Gunnar had told him the bones of his orders, but was unable to fathom the exec’s inner reactions. Apart from that they had hardly spoken. The twenty-four hours Gunnar had been aboard had been a whirlwind of activity, from gathering stores, topping up the fuel tanks to their maximum of sixty tons, to reloading ammunition to the magazines.

  It was odd to realise that Maddox too was almost new to the ship. He had come from a shore appointment on the navy staff in Japan. He had been exec only while Hibiscus had been in dry-dock, when her crew had either disported themselves in Hong Kong’s nightlife, or prepared to leave the ship for the last time after it had been handed over to the Nationalists.

  Gunnar glanced quickly at the other officers. Regan, the first lieutenant and gunnery officer, a trim, hawk-faced man with very dark eyebrows which joined above his beaked nose. Kroner, lieutenant (jg), the communications officer, handsome and empty-faced, like a naval officer in a recruitment advertisement. Malinski, the engineer, who had been in the ship on and off for six years. A typical engine-room product. Tough, sallow, with the deceptively sleepy appearance worn by his kind when suddenly forced to mix with the upper deck. A frail, willowy lieutenant (jg) named Inglis made up the wardroom, except for the doctor. Captain Anderson had made this point very clear. Hibiscus would be detached from the main fleet operations, and a doctor might be essential. So Bruce Connell, whose piercing blue eyes had watched Gunnar almost unwinkingly since he had started to speak, had joined the ship.