Gunnar said, ‘I’ll get you as close as I can.’
A bridge lookout yelled shrilly: ‘Smoke, sir! Dead ahead!’
Every glass was trained, each man held his breath as he sought to pierce the heavy, unmoving haze.
Maddox said quietly, ‘I’ll get aft then, sir.’
‘Yes, you do that.’ If he was killed Maddox would be clear and ready to take over. Then it would be Regan’s turn. Dead men’s shoes. He turned involuntarily and held out his hand, ‘Thanks, Bob. And take care.’
Maddox gripped his hand. ‘I guess we’re all wishing we were ten thousand miles away.’ He paused, his eyes moving with sudden anxiety to his brother who stood by the after screen. ‘But if we have to be here, there’s no one I’d rather have balling me out!’
He moved away and paused by his brother. ‘Look after yourself, kid, and we’ll make it a double wedding.’
Pip Maddox tried to smile, but his face froze as the talker repeated: ‘Ship at twelve thousand yards. Destroyer, sir.’
Gunnar felt the chill at his throat. ‘Clear the bridge!’ The wheelhouse would offer some protection for a while. ‘Increase to twelve knots!’ He ground his teeth as the ship’s remaining engine valiantly tried to reply. More speed than that and the ship might become unmanageable. He paused on the port wing and looked up at the two big flags. For a moment longer he wondered if he would ever see them lowered. Then he slammed the steel door and said, ‘Tell the gunnery control to hold on until I give the order.’
There would not be long to wait now.
* * *
The wheelhouse seemed airless and darker than usual, although the bright sunlight made fine-edged gold bars through the narrow observation slits and gleamed across the set faces of the bridge team.
Kroner said: ‘You were right, sir. She’s an ex-Russian “Gordy” class, nearly two thousand tons, and thirty-six knots.’ He seemed to drag out the last piece of information as if he could not accept such crushing superiority.
Gunnar steadied his glasses and watched the other ship’s high, unbroken bow-wave as it cleaved through the low surface mist and turned slightly away from him. She was big all right. Even with the poor visibility he could see the powerful five-point-one mountings, all four of them, and the low breaks in her superstructure where her torpedo tubes were housed and ready. A low plume of smoke floated from her raked stack like a banner, and he could see the glitter of glass on her high upper bridge as she turned imperceptibly to cross Hibiscus’s slow line of approach.
It would be a destroyer. He guessed that below that craggy silhouette there were troops as well, crammed like sardines with the usual Chinese disregard for comfort and efficiency, but under the present circumstances a very real menace.
‘Right standard rudder.’ He heard the wheel squeak behind him, and watched the narrow wedge of the bows begin to swing. ‘Steady as you go, meet her.’
His body felt limp and weightless, and he found that his breathing had become short, even painful. It was as if he knew he was beaten before he had started. Another gesture, another set of patterns.
‘Steady on zero four five, sir.’
‘Very well.’ Gunnar wiped the back of his neck and watched the other ship growing out of the clear water like a nightmare mirage. He must not think of defeat, yet it seemed vital to consider what had to be done after the Hibiscus was destroyed. The thoughts and ideas crowded through his aching mind in disordered confusion. Perhaps a landing party might be sent to help defend the citadel, or the dying ship herself might be sunk in the channel to prevent a quick entry by the destroyer.
A voice said flatly, ‘Gunnery control reports ready to engage, sir.’
Gunnar steadied himself with an effort. If Regan could visualise this grey mass of steel as a target and not as a messenger of death, then it was up to him to act accordingly.
Kroner shouted, ‘They’ve opened fire!’
But Gunnar had already seen the two foremost guns wink briefly, their twin detonations almost lost in the harsh glare. With the sound of tearing silk the shells ripped overhead and plummeted into the open sea in two tall waterspouts.
Surprisingly, the effect on Gunnar’s nerves was instantaneous. Calmly he ordered: ‘Come right to zero eight zero. Open fire!’
Almost before the wheel had gone down the three-inch cracked like a steel whip, the sudden crash making their ears sing as the slender barrel lurched back on its springs and a long tongue of flame leapt towards the enemy.
‘Short!’ The talker held his hands across his earphones, afraid of hearing anything but the voice at the other end.
Gunnar watched the Hibiscus’s first offering with sadness. A thin wafer of spray directly in line with the destroy’s bridge. He heard the clang of the breech, the clatter of an ammunition hoist, and almost immediately, ‘Shoot!’
The bridge lurched again, and with disbelief he saw the destroyer swing away on a diverging course.
Ensign Maddox shouted, ‘She’s pulling off, sir!’
Gunnar bit his lip. ‘She’s carrying mines. Those sort always do. She’s not ready to be blown sky-high by her own cargo.’
He saw the enemy’s guns give their lethal flashes and waited, counting the seconds. Again the awful screech followed by the double crump, crump and the tall columns of water. How beautiful they looked, graceful and glittering in the sunlight. The columns seemed reluctant to fall, like jewelled curtains, yet Gunnar could sense that they were much closer than before. The Chinese captain was taking no chances with the Hibiscus’s pea-shooter. He would haul off out of range and pound her into scrap with his big guns at leisure.
‘Give me a course for the west channel!’ He heard Kroner fumbling at the chart table.
It was impossible for the destroyer to land its troops anywhere quickly but beyond the west channel, Hibiscus’s own survey had proved that. The Chinese commander would naturally expect the limping Hibiscus to keep clear, to give him room to do just that, for her own safety’s sake.
Gunnar tightened his jaw. If this was the only way to shorten the range, this was how it would be.
‘Tell Malinski I want to up the speed. Keep giving me revs until I order otherwise!’ To the silent helmsman he added, ‘Hold her, Paice, and tell me immediately she starts to swing!’
‘Range five thousand yards!’
Maddened by the Hibiscus’s alteration of course, the destroyer turned again, this time to run parallel. This manœuvre enabled her after guns to bear, and within seconds the shells were falling almost alongside. Gunnar felt the hull tremble with each body blow, heard the thunder of the guns as they dwarfed and swamped the Hibiscus’s solitary reply.
‘Left standard rudder! Meet her!’
He heard Paice swear and saw him swing the wheel with sudden anxiety as the compass began to tick past the line. ‘Comin’ left too fast, sir!’
Gunnar tore his eyes from the spray-shrouded destroyer. ‘Reduce to seven knots! Rudder hard right!’
It was as if the ship was trying to save herself and was no longer content with man’s efforts alone. As her narrow bows disobeyed the labouring rudder, two waterspouts rose directly on her starboard bow. There was one heart-stopping bellow of sound as the shells exploded on the surface within yards of her hull, so that the ship quivered as if struck a direct blow.
Christ, Gunnar thought, if she’d been on course she’d have taken both shells smack on the forecastle!
He snapped: ‘Drop the smoke floats, and tell Malinski to make smoke too. I want the best goddamned screen this ship has ever had!’
A handset buzzed and then Kroner reported tightly: ‘Two gunners wounded, sir! Request replacements from the twenty-millimetre crews!’
‘Do that!’ The light automatic weapons were useless in this particular fight. And at any moment the three-inch might go. He dashed the sweat from his eyes. ‘Come right to zero nine zero!’
From his position by the chart table Ensign Maddox felt like a mesmerised spectator. Gunnar an
d Regan were holding the show on their own, while lost in his maze of racing machinery Malinski was doing his best to bring the Hibiscus into the jaws of the other ship. Every time the gun fired or an enemy shell exploded nearby, Pip Maddox felt as if the very life was being squeezed out of him. His eyes felt swollen and too big for his head, and he knew that his face was shining with sweat, sweat as cold as ice-rime, although the wheelhouse was like a potter’s oven.
He tried not to think of the quick, moving burial, nor of what would happen to him in the next few moments of his life. He looked instead at Gunnar, as if to see him more clearly, to gain some support and strength from his example. Perhaps if you met Gunnar in a shore establishment, or in a corridor of some staff office, you might not notice him. Just one more officer, just another small link in the navy’s chain of control. Yet here he was alone, an individual captain like so many of his predecessors. Pip tried to remember the names which had been drummed into him at the academy, men and ships which had on those rare and gallant occasions cut loose from the fleet and the command of great admirals and had fought their battles alone, like private jousts, without fear and without hope.
Pip noticed that the captain was still wearing the cap he had given him in the citadel, when that too had seemed hopeless and ended. The thought and the sight of Gunnar’s impassive face gave him a small spark of determination, and he clung to it like a drowning man.
Kroner held his hand across a telephone. ‘It’s the exec, sir! He says that there are landing craft in the channel, two, maybe three of them.’ He waited as Gunnar wrestled with this new implication.
Gunnar said, ‘Probably coming for the troops aboard the destroyer——’ He ducked his head as a violent explosion thundered against the rear of the bridge and filled the wheelhouse with black smoke.
Voice-pipes shouted and several telephones began to buzz simultaneously. Gunnar grinned. ‘Very near, but not a hit!’ He opened a shutter and peered aft. The floats were already bobbing astern, the stack too was adding to the screen, and it had been from there that the smoke had come to fill the wheelhouse. A freak explosion alongside had sucked it down and blotted out the forepart of the ship in a dense, choking cloud.
‘In a minute I’m going to turn back into the screen, then I’ll move around his stern and have a go for those mines. I can’t beat him to the channel now.’ Gunnar masked the disappointment in his voice. The smokescreen gave everybody a sense of safety, yet he knew that the destroyer’s captain was so confident that he was more interested in getting rid of his human cargo than facing a straight combat.
Aft on the fantail Maddox rubbed his hands as the last float splashed astern. He grinned at Tasker and said, ‘It all helps, Chief!’ He felt the deck cant very slightly. The Hibiscus was wallowing round into her own screen.
A seaman yelled: ‘How are we doin’, Mister Maddox? Are we pullin’ out yet?’
Maddox shrugged and wiped his grimy features. ‘Just getting a second wind.’
The sunlight closed over the ship as she steamed slowly back along the side of the smoke, her stack adding to the same impenetrable bank. Maddox opened his mouth to call to his waiting men, when it happened.
With the scream of a maniac wind the shells dropped in one tight group. Whether the Chinese had used guesswork or radar no one knew, but even as two shells thundered alongside, a third struck the deck below the starboard side of the bridge, and a fourth cleaved across the maindeck without exploding.
The man standing next to Maddox was plucked from his feet and flung over the side like a piece of torn canvas. He felt Tasker pulling him to his feet, heard his voice as if from afar off shouting, ‘The bridge, sir!’
Everywhere men were running and yelling amid a tangle of firehoses and twisted metal. The deck beside the bridge was pouring smoke and flame, and the hull itself looked as if it had been clawed by some giant steel hand.
Maddox thrust his handkerchief over his mouth and staggered blindly up the bridge ladder, his shoes skidding as he almost fell across the tangled remains of something which had once been human. The wheelhouse door was jammed and he had to throw his full weight to free it. Inside it was a fog, a place where nothing seemed either familiar or real.
A figure blundered from the smoke, his skin gleaming like silk in a single shaft of sunlight which appeared to be shining upwards through the far side of the bridge.
Maddox grasped his brother’s arm and pulled him towards him. Pip’s shirt had been blasted from his body, and even his watch and identity tag had vanished. Pip retched and clung to his brother, his lungs wheezing in real pain as he drew in the air from the open doorway.
Tasker reached the wheel and stared down at Paice’s crumpled body. The side of his head had gone, there was nothing that could be done for him.
Maddox slowly regained control of himself, and then as the smoke funnelled away through the door he saw the true extent of the damage. The side nearest the explosion was riddled with holes and one large split which pushed the metal inwards like paper. The talker had been almost cut in half and lay with his shattered headphones still clamped on his gleaming skull like a being from another world.
Tasker shouted: ‘Here, sir! Over here!’
He ran to Gunnar’s side and helped Tasker to lift him into a sitting position beside the bent and ruptured voice-pipes. Tasker said thickly, ‘I’ll take the wheel!’
Gunnar opened his eyes and stared at Maddox’s grim face without recognition, but then, as the first shock wore off, he grimaced and doubled over in agony. ‘My side! Christ, Bob, something hit me there!’
Maddox held Gunnar’s probing fingers away and carefully tore aside a strip of bloodied shirt. He kept his head lowered to hide his face from the captain, and then in a firm voice said, ‘I’ll try and make you comfortable.’
He saw Pip’s white face and heard Gunnar say between his clenched teeth, ‘I’m glad you’re okay, Pip.’ Then full realisation seemed to flow back into him, and his eyes which had been dulled with pain blazed with sudden urgency and anger. ‘Get me up!’ He struggled even as Maddox tied the dressing around his waist. ‘Get me up, damn you!’
Maddox looked at his brother, but the boy was only half aware what was happening. Gunnar was wounded, how badly he could only guess, but it might kill him without proper care. He thought fleetingly of Connell’s calm face and his smooth, cynical words. Damn Connell! Damn the whole goddamn mess!
He felt Gunnar’s fingers on his arm and heard him say: ‘Bring her about, Bob. I’m going in after that destroyer!’
Slowly, painfully, the Hibiscus turned through ninety degrees and re-entered the smoke. On her fo’c’sle the gunners waited behind the shield, a shell in the breech and others ready to load. The jackstaff glittered in the sunlight, next the anchor cable and then with a final thrust the ship was through and out of the smoke.
Gunnar clung to a stanchion and tried to level his glasses. The destroyer was still there, a couple of points off the starboard bow, her hull beam on. There was only a small bow-wave under her raked stem, and Gunnar could see the small shapes of other craft creeping out from Payenhau’s brown mass to receive their reinforcements. He could feel the pain above his hip like a vice which seemed to be tightening across his whole body, the agony blunting his senses and making a mist across his eye.
‘Report damage, Bob!’ He forced the words from between his teeth. Then as the exec moved reluctantly towards the rear of the bridge Gunnar said, ‘You come here, Pip.’ He saw the desperate, helpless look in the ensign’s eyes as he slipped his arm around his shoulder and used him like a prop as he watched the other ship.
The gun opened fire, but the sound was muted as it pointed directly over the bows.
Gunnar clung to the boy’s shoulder, feeling the smooth skin under his hand and remembering the girl who was waiting in Payenhau.
How well the Chinese captain handled his ship, he thought. There was no longer any point even in running away. Just one of those torpedoes would be e
nough for the poor Hibiscus!
Maddox called, ‘Four more killed, sir, and all the starboard battery out of action!’ He paused, unwilling to add to Gunnar’s anguish. ‘Don Kroner’s dead too, sir.’ Maddox swallowed and tried not to think of the gaping, terrified eyes above that frightful wound. Could it really have been the debonair, clean-featured Kroner? He forced himself to continue: ‘Engine room report hull damage in three frames, sir. But the pumps are holding the intake so far.’
Gunnar did not answer. Instead he turned to the ensign. ‘Let me see the ship!’ He struggled to the open door and peered along the full length of his listing command, each foot of the inspection making his heart bleed. He saw the great splinter holes and twisted tubs, the flame-scorched paintwork around the dead and crumpled gunners.
Two waterspouts alongside blinded him, and as he reeled back he tasted cordite amongst the falling spray. He felt the familiar hot breath against his neck and cringed as another shell found its mark. He watched the mainmast stagger and then plunge over the side, and heard the crash of falling machinery. Through the mist across his eyes he saw a man’s hand lying on the grey steel like a discarded glove, and above the crackle of exploding machine-gun ammunition he heard someone screaming, the sound scraping at his ears until he found that he was willing the unknown man to die.
Maddox broke into his dazed thoughts. ‘Starboard engine’s stopped, sir!’
Gunnar thrust his way from the startled ensign and wrenched a telephone from its hook. ‘Captain here! Report damage!’
Malinski sounded spent. ‘We’re done for, Captain. I’m sorry, but that last one has put the shaft right out of line! Even if we had the time it would be a dockyard job!’
Gunnar nodded blindly. ‘Yes, I see. Well, you’d better bring your people up top.’
‘What’s happening, sir?’ Malinski seemed very far away.
‘The destroyer is turning towards us. They seem to think we are stopping their unloading after all, so they’re coming to finish the job.’
He dropped the handset and heard Maddox ask, ‘Will you strike, sir?’
Path of the Storm Page 38