Path of the Storm

by Douglas Reeman

  He climbed to the ladder just as Kroner appeared smoke-stained and wild-eyed on the wing. ‘Did you send it off?’ Maddox shook his fist at the land. ‘We’ll give those bastards something to remember when the planes arrive!’ He realised that Kroner was gripping his arm and stared at him, his fist still in the air. ‘Well?’

  Kroner was shaking. ‘That mortar bomb knocked out the radio shack! I didn’t get a chance to send!’ He turned and looked as if he was going to be sick. ‘Jesus, it’s like a slaughterhouse down there!’

  Maddox pushed the quivering officer in front of him and into the shuttered wheelhouse, where the men’s eyes gleamed whitely at him through the thin haze of smoke. ‘Hold on, Don! Hold on, for Christ’s sake!’ To the helmsman he barked, ‘Keep her steady!’

  Once the racing ship brushed an outjutting sandbar, and for one terrible moment Maddox imagined they would tear out the bottom, but with a nerve-jarring wrench Hibiscus ground over the sand and thrashed her way into deeper water, stack gas mingling with the smoke of her wound as it streamed away astern.

  The gun had fallen silent, and after a few moments Regan joined them in the wheelhouse. ‘Five killed and two wounded,’ he reported flatly. ‘I didn’t stand a chance with that pea-shooter. If we could have caught the bastards in the open I could have cut them to pieces with the twenty-millimetres!’

  Maddox rubbed his eyes, willing himself to think coherently. ‘All engines ahead standard.’

  Regan said quietly, ‘Well, Bob, what do we do?’

  Maddox watched the land sliding away on the beam and replied: ‘So he was right after all. He was goddamn well right!’ A nerve jumped in his cheek. ‘My God, Pip’s back there!’

  As if he had not heard Regan continued evenly, ‘We can hightail it for Taiwan and get help, or——’

  Maddox studied the gunnery officer’s deepset eyes with desperation. ‘Or what?’

  ‘Go back.’ Regan gave a thin smile. ‘Fight our way in and get your brother back.’ He paused. ‘And the captain, of course!’

  ‘I’m not sure—I mean, I don’t know …’ Maddox looked frantically around the wheelhouse. ‘If we got in there again they’ll tear us apart!’

  ‘We’ll be ready for ’em this time.’ Regan was grinning like a wolf. ‘Come on, Bob, do you want to live for ever?’

  His grin changed to a sneer as Maddox turned away and said, ‘I must think, I must decide what to do!’

  ‘You sure must. You’re in command as of now, God help us!’

  Maddox wheeled round. ‘And don’t you forget it!’

  Regan opened the door. ‘I’m going to tour the gun positions. I’ve sent Chief Tasker to see to the wounded. I guess I’m exec, eh?’

  Kroner interrupted, his face ashen, ‘I’ve just remembered something.’ The others stared at him. ‘You remember when the captain took your brother on the chase in the fishing boat Osprey?’ He gestured excitedly. ‘When he went up to the northern islets?’

  Regan rubbed his chin. ‘What of it?’

  ‘He went through the eastern channel!’ He peered at their blank faces. ‘Well, don’t you see? That fishing boat is deep draught, at least eight feet.’ He waved his hands violently, ‘Hibiscus only draws seven and a half!’

  Maddox walked to the chart, conscious of the trembling in his legs. ‘We’d have to keep the speed right down, and even then we’re three times as long as that scow!’

  ‘Even so, it’s worth a try.’ Regan was studying the chart. ‘Christ, Don, I didn’t know you had it in you!’

  Kroner glared at him as he dabbed his mouth with his handkerchief. ‘I want to live, that’s for sure. But I reckon we stand a better chance like this than going in bull-at-a-gate!’

  ‘He’s right.’ Maddox stood up slowly. ‘If we go in slowly we might feel our way through that channel. It’s narrow, but short.’ He thought of his brother’s look of disappointment and shame. ‘We’ll do it!’

  Regan grinned. ‘You’re not such a punk either!’ He paused by the door, his angular features and beaky nose making him look like a pirate. ‘One thing, if we make a friggin’ mess this time, no one will ever hear about it! We’ll all be in the bone orchard by the time the brass gets on to it!’

  Maddox controlled his breathing and said, ‘Come left to zero nine zero.’ By now the first shock was wearing off and the whole ship would know what he was doing. What was he trying to prove? It didn’t make sense. They were all acting like strangers. Even Kroner seemed to have taken on a new being.

  Paice spun the wheel. ‘Steady on course, sir.’

  Maddox picked up the p.a. and after a moment said: ‘This is Lieutenant Maddox speaking. In a few moments we are going to re-enter Payenhau.’ He stared emptily at the microphone, hearing the metallic echoes fading around the ship. ‘Where we will, if necessary, engage the enemy.’

  He dropped the handset and listened to the clatter of an ammunition hoist.

  Engage the enemy? He did not even know who the enemy was.

  * * *

  ‘Pull like bloody hell!’ Gunnar clutched the whaleboat’s gunwale as the startled seamen dug their oars and then picked up the rhythm which had fallen apart with the first explosions. It had been a matter of minutes, yet already it seemed as if they had been crawling across the open water for eternity.

  With sick horror Gunnar had watched the creeping barrage of mortar fire, the familiar pattern which he had seen before used against houses and troops, trains and children. Then as the slim grey hull had tacked round to break free from the confined anchorage he had seen the tell-tale orange glow abaft the bridge, the whirling dust-cloud of flying metal and belching smoke. Unlike small-arms fire or low-trajectory weapons, the mortar bombs were able to fall from directly overhead, and whereas their chances of success against surface craft were normally slight, on this rare occasion, with a slow-moving target in a predetermined and zeroed area, the result of that one hit would be all the more devastating. Straight down, like the bomb from a diving aircraft, missing the scanty protection of the main hull and carving deep into the heart of the ship herself.

  Anders had shouted: ‘Must have got the radio, Captain! There’s nothin’ much else there!’

  It’s enough, Gunnar had thought. Then as the ship gathered speed and the whaleboat had swayed in confused disorder, he had seen the new danger to themselves. Now the boat was within yards of the beach and the end of the sandspit. A few feathers of spray spattered alongside the wooden hull and Pip Maddox ducked involuntarily.

  ‘Rifle fire, I think, sir!’

  Gunnar shaded his eyes, conscious of the oarsmen’s taut faces as they put their full weight against the slender blades. The bowman yelled and let his oar skid clear of the boat as he threw one hand against his shoulder. Connell started to scramble to his feet as the blood began to seep between the man’s fingers, but Gunnar snapped: ‘Sit tight! Time for him later!’

  With a lurch the boat grounded in the sand and Gunnar hurled himself over the side, aware of the cool water swilling around his legs, the indistinct, almost casual, crackle of small-arms which he knew was coming from the citadel. The gates were now shut and he could see a few small movements from the crude walls.

  The boat tilted and Bella’s shrouded body rolled forgotten across the thwarts. ‘Hit the deck!’ Gunnar tugged out his pistol and threw himself behind a small pile of rocks.

  Anders was yelling. ‘Spread out! Keep yer heads down!’

  More firing, the danger only real because of the close whimper of bullets overhead.

  Gunnar lay still, his heart pumping painfully against his ribs, his eyes watering with concentration. He tried to imagine What Maddox would do now. Probably made off to safety While the going was good. There was little else he could do.

  Anders wriggled through the sand, his face red with exertion. ‘What now, Captain?’ He gestured towards the distant orange flashes. ‘The bastards have got us pinned down well enough!’

  Gunnar eased himself up on his elbow
s. The firing was dangerous but inaccurate. One good rifleman alone could have done the trick better than the hidden men on the ramparts. He thought quickly of the mortar fire and began to shape his vague plan. It was obvious that the ship’s return had been a complete surprise to the enemy, and everyone appeared to be nearer the other end of the island. By the prison camp, for instance. So sure of complete surprise and overwhelming victory that they had left the citadel almost unguarded.

  ‘Hell, here come the reinforcements!’ Pip Maddox sounded shaken.

  Gunnar’s ear had already picked out the whine of a jeep’s engine without really taking in what it meant. ‘Chief! Three men on the double! Cover the coast road!’

  But no shots were fired by the crouching sailors as the jeep swung into view, and they all saw the burly, helmeted figure of Sergeant Rickover behind the wheel. Bullets pattered in the dust beside its wheels, and some actually ricocheted from the flat steel by Rickover’s hands, but like an uncontrollable chariot it plunged over the edge of the road and came to rest in a cloud of dust and smoke.

  Rickover unceremoniously hauled Jago’s body from the back and bawled something to the other three occupants who threw themselves down beside him.

  Rickover blinked at Gunnar with cheerful surprise. ‘Jesus, Captain, I didn’t know it’d be you!’

  Anders grimaced sourly. ‘The President couldn’t make it!’

  Gunnar peered down at Jago. He looked old and grey, his face deeply lined with pain. ‘Is he okay?’

  Rickover unslung his carbine and said briefly: ‘One in the leg. The bone’s all splintered.’ Then he squinted over the rocks. ‘The bastards are all coming down the road behind us. We made a road block to hold up their transport, but it’s a matter of minutes. I left the rest of my guys behind, dead or wounded.’ He gestured to the wounded corporal and two Chinese troopers. ‘This is the lot as far as I know!’ He looked again at the citadel. ‘It’s there or nothing for us, sir. If we wait here we’ll either get shot or drowned, if we’re lucky!’

  The marine’s eyes were cold and professional. It was a military problem, no longer a matter for conjecture. ‘There’s only a few guards. The gate’s the problem.’ He grinned without humour. ‘They’re not too strong. More for show than any-thin’.’ He cursed savagely as a splinter of stone rattled against his helmet. Then he added quietly: ‘The jeep would do it. Once there we could hold off the main rush for a few hours and get that goddamn radio!’

  Gunnar said: ‘I’ve already sent Burgess to Taiwan. At least I didn’t wait to be told what might happen!’ He wriggled higher along the rocks. ‘If Maddox runs for Base we can expect the full works by tomorrow.’

  Rickover was staring at him strangely. ‘I don’t get you, sir?’ He cocked his carbine. ‘The Osprey is still here! I saw it at first light. At anchor on the west side!’ He gripped Gunnar’s arm. ‘Hell, sir, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!’

  Gunnar looked away, his set face only half masking the despair and shock which welled up inside him like a flood. It was impossible! The Osprey had never sailed, it had been here all the time while the Hibiscus had been sawing her way through the typhoon’s fringe, every hour which Bella had suffered, and he himself had schemed and plotted to make this one last gesture.

  It was a pattern, and an exact copy of what had gone before. All that misery and suffering, the agony of disgrace and failure had taught him nothing, and his betrayal had been all the more complete.

  He wiped his face with the back of his hand and tried to reassemble his tumbling thoughts. How they must have laughed at him. It had been too easy.

  The cold, consuming fire of anger suddenly flared into something wild and terrible, and with steel in his voice he yelled: ‘Anders! We’re going to rush the gates with the jeep! Full covering fire on the ramparts!’

  Pip Maddox said breathlessly: ‘I’ll go, sir! I could do it!’

  Gunnar regarded him searchingly. ‘Not this time.’ But they both whirled round as the jeep’s engine roared into life.

  Rickover stood up, his face no longer cool and unruffled. ‘Seltzer! Come back, you mad bastard!’ He shouted again into the noise of the tyres ripping at the roadway: ‘Come back! You’ll never make it!’

  Anders threw up his carbine. ‘Rapid fire!’ He glared sideways at the seamen, his eyes red-rimmed with danger. ‘Shoot, you goddamn bandits!’

  The firing sounded puny, but Gunnar saw the grey splinters fly from the top of the ramparts, and then he was up and running after the jeep, followed by Rickover and the two remaining soldiers.

  He heard the marine gasp as he ran: ‘The poor bastard’s wounded. He’s already saved my hide, but it’s his pride that he’s after this time!’

  With a shattering crash the jeep exploded against the tall gates. The wood splintered and yawed drunkenly, but held from the rear by strong chains it opened less than two feet. The jeep was on fire, and as Gunnar panted up the slope it blew up in one final detonation. Sickened he watched Seltzer’s fat shape fall away into the holocaust and lose its meaning and reality.

  But Rickover was past him, already kicking at the side of the nearest gate where it had been wrenched free from its rusted hinges. Between clenched teeth he snarled, ‘One for you, buddy!’ and fired into a small running group of soldiers beyond the guard hut.

  Then, scorched by Seltzer’s funeral pyre, they were all in the courtyard and running like madmen for the citadel. One of the Chinese soldiers at Gunnar’s side fell without a murmur and Gunnar fired his pistol directly into the face of a man who crouched behind a pile of ammunition boxes. He screamed and rolled back into the shadows, the top of his head blasted away. Then they were running down that familiar passageway, their shadows leaping ahead of them in the faint glow of oil lamps. Gunnar felt mad, crazed beyond reason or control as he tore headlong ahead of the others. A few more yards and they would be in Jago’s bunker.

  Rickover put his shoulder against the steel door and thrust it open. For some unknown reason the electric lights were working here, and the scene was all the more unreal because of it.

  Jago’s headquarters, his seat of empire, was a shambles. Even his giant picture of the marines under fire was defaced and crudely daubed in Chinese characters. A young lieutenant and two soldiers lay spreadeagled in their own blood by the far door, and in those frantic split seconds Gunnar realised that they must have been some of Jago’s men who had, like Seltzer, stayed loyal.

  Three panting, sweating Chinese leaned against the radio table, their eyes fixed on Gunnar’s face, their expressions fearful but triumphant.

  Rickover looked past them at the tangled ruin of the transmitter and said slowly, ‘I guess we were too late, Captain!’

  Gunnar dropped his arms to his sides. It seemed hopeless, as if there was a more powerful force available to counter every move he knew.

  He looked up as Rickover said flatly: ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? These Red bastards know every game in the book. They murder, cheat, torture and lie. Anything to get their ends.’ He gestured towards the three soldiers who had carefully laid their weapons beside the radio. ‘Yet when they get caught they immediately expect fair play in capital letters!’ The carbine jumped in his hands, the sound deafening and metallic in the confined space, its echo mixed and blended with the other two shots, killing any cry or sound which the soldiers might have made. In the harsh light the blood looked bright and unreal.

  Rickover crooked the carbine under his arm and looked at Gunnar calmly. ‘I guess you can fix me for that, Captain? But the bastards had it coming!’

  Gunnar shrugged heavily, hearing the distant scrape of feet in the courtyard and Anders’ resonant voice. ‘I never saw a thing, Sergeant.’ He walked slowly out of the bunker, and without warning the current died and plunged it into merciful darkness.

  Rickover slammed the door, shutting off the smell of cordite and death. My God, he thought, they even taunt us in death. They brutalise us and make us like them in our efforts to survive an
d win.

  Jago’s voice echoed down the passageway. ‘Put me down, you clumsy ape! I’m not dead yet!’

  Outside in the early sunlight Gunnar stared round at his little party. It was not much, but it was a start. Chief Anders was dressing the wounded seaman’s arm, and Connell was attending to a non-co-operative Jago.

  One of the sailors, a giant Texan named O’Brien, held out his arms which were covered with the great, spilling colours of Old Glory. He grinned self-consciously. ‘Just brought it along, Cap’n. I guess poor ole Bella won’t be needin’ it right now?’

  Gunnar looked around at their strained faces and felt the prick of emotion behind his eyes. No regrets, not a word of complaint or fear for what he had done to them all.

  Jago looked up, his face shrunken with fatigue and pain, ‘Well, what are you waiting for, Gunnar?’ He pointed impatiently to the ramparts. ‘Hoist the flag, it’s the least we can goddamn well do!’

  Gunnar climbed the steps, feeling the sun on his neck, sensing their eyes following his figure along the rough concrete wall. He stared down at the panorama of destruction, the burned-out jeep and its charred driver. The few crumpled figures, and the distant, listing whaleboat with its canvas-sewn occupant. It was somehow a fitting place for such a useless gesture of defiance.

  The big flag clung to the pole and then filled itself from the hill-top breeze. Gunnar looked up at it and saluted. It would not be there for long, but it was a sign of faith.

  Like the murmur of an onrushing wave he heard the sound of a great intermingled roar. As yet unseen, the infuriated rebels were coming to finish what they had begun. What we all helped to begin, Gunnar thought wearily. By our trust and carelessness, by our clear-cut ignorance, we helped very well.

  Jago croaked: ‘You’re running things now, Captain. So let’s get on with it!’

  Gunnar wondered if Jago saw the flag like the one in his bunker. He hoped that he did.