Path of the Storm

by Douglas Reeman

He reached the others and said evenly: ‘The radio’s kaput, but we hold the citadel. We’ve just got to stick it out until help arrives.’

  Rickover gathered up a bag of magazines and looked at him with open admiration. ‘All we need now is the goddamn cavalry!’

  Jago had seated himself awkwardly on a box beside the gate, a rifle and two pistols within reach. ‘I sold you, Gunnar,’ he said quietly, ‘but I’ll back you now, no matter what you do!’

  Gunnar slumped by a weapon slit and watched the first running figures rounding the bend in the road. What are we doing here? What is the point of it all now?

  He blinked to clear the mist from his eyes and said firmly, ‘Wait till I give the signal!’

  16

  A Matter of Gunnery

  PIRELLI OPENED HIS eyes and blinked in dazed bewilderment. For several minutes he lay tense and still as his sleep-fogged mind crept unwillingly back to life, then he relaxed slightly and stared upwards at the small circle of bright blue overhead.

  To anyone but a hardened and professional seaman, the Osprey’s cable locker was just about the worst and most uncomfortable hiding place imaginable. Situated right forward against the stem, it was sealed from the rest of the boat by a collision bulkhead, and received its only ventilation via some small holes above the bilges, and of course the circular outlet in the deck above, through which the cable was allowed to rattle on its way to the sea-bed. But now the boat rode easily at her mooring, and the shining Jinks of the cable hung straight down beside Pirelli’s makeshift bed and disappeared below him in the narrowest, sharpest point of the stout hull.

  Pirelli had decided on this place almost as soon as he had planned to stow away in Osprey for her trip to Taiwan. He had slipped aboard in the darkness, feeling instantly with his inborn sailor’s cunning that the vessel was deserted. Then going forward through the small living quarters he had released the narrow watertight door to the cable locker and eased himself inside to await events. There was a wide shelf which stretched from beam to beam just behind the sealed door, upon which Burgess had stored a roll of used and well-patched canvas, but to Pirelli’s aching body it became the most comfortable bed he could remember.

  Just as he had expected, Osprey had sailed, her heavy diesel muffled but steady as the boat chugged away from the anchorage and pushed her blunt stem on to the open sea. The motion was sharp and savage, and even Pirelli soon became aware that the weather was worsening. Strangely, he did not care, he had fooled them all, and was almost clear. In Taiwan he would complete the rest of his plan. Once in the busy dock area he knew he would be able to find shelter and make arrangements to find a berth on an outgoing ship. Anything was better than to be discovered by some Chief Provost and slung into the nearest cage to await trial.

  He quickly worked out how many legal occupants there were in the pitching boat. He had heard Burgess’s heavy step on deck and listened to him giving his orders to the Chinese deckhand. There was also an engineer quartered right aft. And of course there was the girl.

  The first night out, when the wind had brought the spray hissing and sighing against the wooden sides, and salt water had even sprayed down from the higher seams on to Pirelli’s hiding place, she had come down to the small cabin, so near to Pirelli that he could have touched her but for the bulkhead. As soon as she lit the gimballed lamp Pirelli had pressed his eye to the wall, and had soon found a place which had eluded both paint and filler. He quickly forgot the stench of the bilge water and diesel, the nerve-jarring shudder each time the stem plunged down into a trough, and everything else, as he watched her slip out of her clothes and sit on the edge of her bunk, combing her long black hair and watching herself in a small mirror. He wanted to confront her, to push her down on that inviting bed like that other girl, to make everything complete. He would have told her about the night she had met the captain aboard the old wreck, when he had listened to their furtive movements and waited for them to settle down on the boatdeck. It would have been easy to kill them both, but escape was more important. All the same, he would have liked to let her know that he had seen them together.

  Pirelli had remained motionless behind the thick partition, his eyes gleaming in the narrow pointer of light as he had watched her every movement. How smooth and supple her shoulders looked beneath the lamplight, how full of promise her small, perfect breasts.

  Pirelli sat up with a jerk. The foul air and exhausted sleep had dulled his mind. What did the girl matter now? Something had gone wrong. For some reason or other the boat had returned to Payenhau. He imagined at first it was because of the threatened storm, but like most seamen Pirelli could judge matters concerning his natural element very well without the benefits of navigational training. They could have reached Taiwan without effort before the storm could touch them. There had been no engine trouble, and Burgess had seemed quite happy about things, for Pirelli had often heard him singing from the wheelhouse.

  He pressed his eye against one of the seams and peered again at the nearby land. It was unfamiliar, yet he knew it was Payenhau. Why should Burgess come back? And in any case, why return to a different part of the island? Anxiety began to gnaw at his insides, and several times he toyed with the idea of leaving his hiding place and swimming ashore. For hours he had laid jammed in the cable locker while the boat’s new anchorage had gone berserk and thrown him from one painful position to another. The engine had kept running although the anchor was down, and Pirelli guessed that Burgess was taking no chances on dragging his hook as the storm raged and bellowed across the nearby hills.

  Someone had left the Osprey in the dinghy even while the storm was battering at the moored boat, and Pirelli marvelled at the stupidity or urgency which would make such a trip necessary. Now in the early sunlight he could see that the beach was barely twenty yards away, so whoever it had been had known what he was about.

  But what had awakened him? He tried to sit upright and cursed as the pain lanced through him. He could not stand much more of this, living in his own filth, and not even knowing what was happening.

  There was a thud as a hatch was thrown open, and immediately Pirelli crouched on the alert, the rifle in his big hands. Sunlight streamed into the cabin where he had hungrily watched the naked girl, and he saw Burgess stamp down the ladder, and he noticed that he appeared to be dragging his daughter behind him. Burgess was very red in the face, while his normally immaculate shirt was soaked in spray and sweat. The girl was dressed in shirt and jeans, and appeared to have been crying. She looked wild-eyed and defiant, and even as Burgess turned to face her she said: ‘You lied! You lied!’

  Burgess stepped back two paces, his bearded features angry. ‘You hold your tongue! What’s done is done!’

  Pirelli blinked and squinted harder through the crack. Burgess was drunk, or very nearly so, but it was something else which had transformed the girl so suddenly. Gone was the quiet, secret smile Pirelli had seen in this cabin, and instead she looked on the point of hysteria.

  Burgess glared round. ‘This is my chance to get all the things I wanted. No more crawling and waiting, it’s all over!’

  She tried to plead. ‘But you promised, you said you would go! Who told you to come back to Payenhau?’ She moved her hands with quick desperation. ‘Mark Gunnar is relying on you, don’t you see?’

  Burgess swayed and banged the table. ‘Don’t you dare to talk to me about him! He’s finished as far as I’m concerned!’ He faced her, his teeth bared like an animal. ‘You dare to lecture me! You talk of that—that——’ He broke off as she clung to his arm, her eyes shining with tears.

  ‘Get away, and forget your precious captain!’ He said in a quieter tone: ‘He took your body, didn’t he? Made you a whore just like your mother!’

  She fell back as if he had struck her, her knuckles against her mouth.

  ‘Did you think I didn’t know?’ Burgess’s voice was getting louder. ‘I tried to keep you clean, to save you for something better, but you knew best! All my life I
have been dogged because of one mistake, you! But that’s all in the past. With this money I’ll be able to pick up the old threads or start again just as I please!’

  The girl seemed to have gained a small control of herself. Her body was motionless and very erect as she stood and faced her father. ‘For the promise of some gold you sold the Americans? For the idea that someone else was to blame for your own faults you are prepared to let Captain Gunnar wait for help that will never come in time?’ Her lip quivered. ‘Do you really think you can live with these things?’

  Burgess pulled a silver flask from his pocket and lifted it to his mouth. Pirelli could see the neat spirit running down his beard like spittle.

  Then Burgess said: ‘Gunnar was a fool to come back. As it is, the coup is complete, the island has fallen to Yi-Fang’s men, and that’s all there is to it. All I did was to keep him informed.’ He glared at her with red, accusing eyes. ‘You always pretended to love these island people, that old idiot of a headman and the others! Why change now just when they have got their independence?’ He coughed as the spirit caught at his throat. ‘My God, I wish I had a pound for every British Colony which has got its independence by drawing a bit of blood! I didn’t hear any American protests about those!’

  ‘But these are people! We know them all, and you know as well as I do that Tao-Cho is no party to all this! He is merely the reason given by Yi-Fang——’

  She broke off with a cry as Burgess seized her wrist. ‘You stow that sort of talk! I want to get clear of here with a good skin!’

  She pulled her hand away and stared at him with angry contempt. ‘So it’s true! You’ve been helping the Communists just as Mark Gunnar suspected!’

  Burgess gave a sloping grin. ‘Your Mister Gunnar knew no such thing! He thought an attack was coming from the outside, his sort always think like that. “Remember Pearl Harbour” and all that guff! But these people are too clever for the Gunnars of this world. Right under their noses I did it, I did it, understand?’

  ‘I do now.’ Her voice had gone very quiet, so that Pirelli Wriggled closer to hear it. ‘When I thought you were sleeping off one of your drinking bouts you were piloting one of Yi-Fang’s landing craft. You were running stores and ammunition for this uprising. I suppose that is what was happening when Lieutenant Inglis was killed?’

  Burgess held up his hands. ‘I had nothing to do with it. How was I to know that the young fool would land there and then? He was killed by the men guarding the arms cache. Yi-Fang’s men shot a couple of prisoners from the camp and dressed them in Red uniforms just to put Gunnar off the scent. Imagine! Old Jago believed every word Yi-Fang said to him. His protégé, his dear little idol, an all-American product!’ He laughed with insane delight, so that his daughter shrank away from him.

  ‘And all the other incidents?’ Her voice was tight and despairing.

  Burgess shrugged. ‘Oh, some of Yi-Fang’s boys. They thought Gunnar could be scared off, just like that maniac Bella who was killed.’

  Pirelli wiped his streaming face and looked round the cable locker as if to reassure himself he was awake. One fantastic revelation after another. Bella dead? Hibiscus back and facing a rebellion? What the hell was going to happen to him?

  He heard Burgess say in a more controlled tone, ‘I’m going to get the rest of my money, so you stay here and keep out of sight.’ He looked down at her with a strange light in his eyes. ‘Otherwise you might get something you’ve not bargained for!’

  Another footfall sounded on the ladder, and Tsung, the big deckhand, stood framed in the sunlight. The girl ran towards him. ‘You must help me! Take me ashore!’ Her voice broke at last. ‘Please! I will explain later!’

  The big Chinese looked at her in the same strange way as her father. But it was Burgess he addressed. ‘I am going now. I leave a guard.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Just in case anyone gets difficult.’

  Burgess nodded. ‘I see. If you think it’s necessary.’

  He sounded almost humble, and the girl cried: ‘What are you saying? What is Tsung to do with this?’

  The big Chinese regarded her emptily, then began to climb the ladder. Then he called down: ‘Not Tsung any more. My name is Bolod!’

  * * *

  Like a blind man using his stick, the Hibiscus crept forward at a dead slow speed towards what appeared to be an impenetrable wall of fallen cliffs. Only an unbroken flurry of white surf betrayed the narrow entrance of the channel, and it was hard to believe that the chart was not lying about its width.

  Maddox ran from one side of the wheelhouse to the other, leaning first over one wing and then the other. He felt cold, yet the sweat poured down his body, soaking his shirt and making him shiver uncontrollably. ‘Eight fathoms, sir.’ The voice broke in on his aching mind, so that he had to wrench his eyes from the swaying shoreline and concentrate on the ship’s cautious approach. Paice was at the wheel, lifejacketed and with a heavy pistol at his belt. Like everything and everyone else he was accepting the new role, playing the part for which each man was trained, yet which so rarely overshadowed everyday routine. In the hours it had taken Maddox to con the ship close inshore amongst the treacherous and deceptive islets, the ship had transformed itself into a compact fighting unit. Helmeted gunners crouched beside the forty-millimetre and the six slender twenty-millimetres, whilst from beside the grey shield of the little three-inch on the fo’c’sle Maddox could see Chief Tasker’s bony frame unnaturally distorted by his anti-flash gear and hung about with equipment like a deepsea diver.

  ‘Seven fathoms, sir.’

  A low black shadow drifted from the land and glittered momentarily in the sun’s path, and Maddox jumped as he heard Regan’s voice on the speaker and saw the immediate response of two of the slender twenty-millimetres as they sniffed towards the unknown object like eager terriers.

  A lookout reported with relief, ‘It’s a barge of sorts, Lieutenant!’ He steadied his powerful glasses against the glare. ‘One of the old L.C.I.s the Chinks were usin’.’

  Cautiously the ship idled nearer. The landing craft had probably been blown from its moorings in the storm, Maddox decided. There was no sign of life aboard, and its narrow hull Was heavy with shipped water.

  ‘Stop engines!’

  The Hibiscus nudged closer, and Kroner said, ‘What’s the idea, Bob?’

  Maddox wiped his face and leaned over the bridge wing, the sun rasping his neck and shoulders. ‘It might come in handy.’ He glanced back into the wheelhouse as if to see the chart table. ‘I’m worried about the depth. If we could lighten the ship and get rid of some unnecessary gear.’ He faltered, uncertain of himself, and at the same time relieved that he had shared the fear which was uppermost in his mind. ‘The depth-charges, for instance?’ He signalled with his arm and saw a gleaming grappling hook streak across and grip into the L.C.I.s’ gunwale.

  ‘It would be better to ditch ’em altogether.’ Kroner seemed unable to face the prospect of another delay, even if it meant putting off his own death.

  Regan appeared at the rail, his eyes slitted as he stated up at the bridge. ‘Are you souvenir hunting?’

  Maddox shouted: ‘Send a boarding party! I’m going to unload the D.C.s.’

  Regan seemed to appreciate the idea, sketchy though it was, and was soon heard bellowing orders as the listing boat grated alongside.

  Maddox watched the seamen crawling over its narrow side-deck and said: ‘Check our drift, Don. I don’t want to pile up just yet.’ He lifted his glasses and peered at the shadowed cliffs. A bleak, menacing place. It was quite obviously deserted, yet the fact that he had chosen the correct method of approach gave him no satisfaction. Once through the channel they would be laid bare soon enough.

  Thank God the ship was still equipped with the old-style canister depth-charges. Anything more complicated would have taken more time, would have cut away their tiny margin of safety.

  The charges rattled and banged as they were rolled along the upper deck, and Chief Taske
r goaded another party to rig the lowering gear directly above the landing craft.

  Kroner added after a while, ‘At least there’ll be no danger of getting blown up by our own charges!’

  Maddox grunted. It was true. One mortar bomb on the fantail and that would have been the end of it.

  He swayed and ran his fingers across his unruly hair. He could never have imagined himself dealing with such a situation, but he knew better than to ponder over his potential too much.

  The shore looked much nearer, and with some alarm he realised that the current’s possessive drag was more powerful than he had imagined. The chart’s instructions were cold and laconic. Once inside the narrow channel the tide would become a race, a veritable sluice which would carry the ship along with it like lumber in a chute. At the narrowest part there would be barely twenty feet on either side of the hull, and any small projection would gut the ship like a herring.

  ‘All unloaded, sir!’

  ‘Right. Tell the engine room what we’re doing, and that I want immediate response to the telegraphs!’ I should tell Malinski myself, Maddox thought anxiously. Gunnar would have done so. But he would recognise the fear in my voice, would lose what little faith remains. Harshly he said, ‘Drop the L.C.’s anchor and cast off.’

  ‘Cast off, sir!’ The landing craft wallowed clear and then came up short on its cable. A boat full of unwanted death, a milestone of their failure.

  ‘All engines ahead one-third, steer two eight zero!’ The ship trembled and began to gather way. Maddox said quietly, almost in the helmsman’s ear, ‘In a moment I shall want you to take over, Paice.’ He saw the man’s finger stiffen on the polished wheel. ‘Just hold her in the centre of the channel no matter what else happens. There’ll be no time for orders, you’ll be on your own, okay?’

  Paice nodded without taking his eyes from the gyro. ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘I’ll use the engines as much as I can if we get into difficulties, but if that happens,’ Maddox shrugged, ‘we’ll not have much room to play with.’