“Stick it to the bastards!” shouted Landa.
Ingram’s heart thumped. The cruiser’s two forward turrets had trained forward, their six barrels pointed right at him. He hoped that at this range, the guns couldn’t depress low enough. He keyed his mike, but fell into a racking cough as gunsmoke once again swept around him. Finally, he wheezed, “Captain. They’re going to--”
Landa yelled in the pilot house. “I have the conn. Evasion course. Right five degrees rudder!” Then, “Rudder amidships!”
The star shells went out. Ingram couldn’t see a damn thing and yet the Howell’s guns still fired. At what? He was thinking of calling a cease fire when one of mount fifty-five's star shells burst on the horizon, once again illuminating the cruiser.
“Jeez.” The cruiser was closer, but still turning to port. Soon, they would pass on reciprocal courses.
Ingram found his voice and ordered the ship’s forty millimeter cannons to commence fire. They let go instantly, the guns pumping with a deliberate, methodical, cadence.
“Todd,” Landa yelled up to him. Red lights inside the pilot house cast a soft glow to his face. His pupils glistened as Wilson fired another four-round salvo. Landa’s lips twisted into a grin. “Give the sonofabitch everything we got.”
At this range, why not? So Ingram ordered the twenty millimeter cannons to commence fire. Soon, the Howell was engulfed in a world of hammering, thudding gunfire, smoke and flame spitting from muzzles of all calibers.
“Ingram!”
“Sir?”
“I said everything, damnit.” Even in the dark, Ingram could see Landa’s fist shaking at him.
“I don’t understand.”
“Take mount fifty-five off illumination. Switch ‘em to common ammunition.”
“What about--?”
“Do it, damnit!”
“Yes, Sir.” Ingram keyed his mike and relayed the order to Wilson.
“How the hell do we see the target?” yelled Wilson.
“Captain’s orders.”
“Director fifty-one, aye.” Wilson said dryly.
With three stars still up, Ingram could see white smoke pour from the cruiser’s superstructure. And at twenty-seven knots, she heeled so far, it seemed her pagoda-shaped upperworks would topple right into Ingram’s lap. Sliding past at a dizzying speed, her forward gun turrets belched a soft-orange flame.
Before Ingram knew it, projectiles ripped overhead, sounding like express trains. Without thinking, he was on the deck, his fingers frantically scratching for something like a fox-hole surrounded by a three-foot thick belt of armor. He looked up to see Seltzer lying beside him, his arms over his head. They looked at one another with stupid grins, then regained their feet.
“I swear that one had my street address on it.” Seltzer’s teeth chattered.
Expelling a long breath, Ingram wondered how long he had been holding it. “Take me six months to clean my underwear after that one,” he agreed.
“Mount One. Fire torpedoes!” roared Landa.
At two second intervals, five bursts of black powder charges kicked the five Mark 15 torpedoes from their tubes. Ingram looked for their wakes but they were lost in the darkness.
“What the hell?” It was Dutton.
“What?” shouted Ingram, just as Wilson fired another five-gun salvo.
Dutton’s had found some composure, for his voice was again coated with frost. “Looks like the Riley is out of column. In fact, hold on--let’s watch the next sweep--yes, she’s pulled out. To starboard.”
Ingram looked aft, but the Riley wasn’t visible. To port, he couldn’t see Savo Island any more. Just smoke.
“You sure, Luther?”
“Absolutely. They’re about a thousand yards off our starboard quarter, now. The interval between the cruiser and her is now about fifteen hundred yards. And I think she’s increased speed.”
“Ollie,” Ingram mouthed.
The TBS receiver crackled in the pilot-house. “LITTLE JOE, LITTLE JOE. THIS IS CRABTREE. INTERROGATIVE YOUR INTENTIONS.” Little Joe was the Riley; Crabtree was Destroyer Squadron Twelve’s Commodore.
The response from the Riley was garbled, “...BIG DOPE...MINE...”
“What do you think the Riley is doing?” Landa yelled up to Ingram.
Wilson loosed yet another salvo, all five mounts firing common ammunition. “I wish I knew. Do you suppose--”
“Quiet.” Landa leaned in the pilot house and cocked an ear to the TBS loudspeaker. “Looks like she’s reversing course.”
The voice on the TBS was desperate, “LITTLE JOE. THIS IS CRABTREE. RETURN TO FORMATION. I SAY AGAIN. RETURN TO FORMATION.”
“...HAVE...TOJO FOR LUNCH...”
The last two of mount fifty-five's starshells descended to the western horizon, the cruiser still visible. It was obvious now that she turned rapidly, heading back the way she came. Ingram swept aft with his binoculars but couldn’t spot Toliver’s ship. Nothing. What is it? Something lingered. Then the flares dropped into the ocean, the cruiser lost again to the night.
“Jack,” Ingram called to the gun director, “You have visual on the cruiser?”
“Barely.”
Ingram hung on the grab rail as Wilson squeezed off another five rounds from his guns. Then he keyed his mike. “Luther, what’s damned Riley doing?”
“Going faster ‘n hell, in fact--Todd! Jesus!”
Ingram figured it out at the same time. The Riley was steaming in between the Howell and the Japanese cruiser. “Cease fire! All batteries,” he shrieked, punching the rail-mounted ‘cease fire’ lever. Had everyone heard? Sometimes, when men were in a rhythm, their heads down, giving it their all, they ignored the cease fire alarm; they didn’t want to hear it; didn’t want to stop shooting.
He listened. In Mount fifty-two, the five inch mount just forward of the bridge, projectile and shell dropped in the gun’s tray with a 'clang-clang.' Then, the ramming motor hummed as the spade shoved the round in the barrel and breech clicked shut. Then...
Nothing.
Mercifully, the Howell’s guns fell silent.
Landa, his voice hoarse from the smoke, yelled, “Ingram! Who told you to cease fire?”
Ingram’s reply was obliterated as three rounds cascaded from the Japanese cruisers after turret. Involuntarily, Ingram ducked, holding his breath, as the projectiles screeched past. He looked up. Amazing. He was still alive.
“Right five degrees rudder!” Landa was sending Howell into an evasion routine. “Ingram! Resume fire, you stupid sonofabitch.”
“The Riley is--” Ingram clutched a stanchion as the cruiser fired a round. It smacked the ocean a hundred yard abeam of the Howell and skipped over her with a shrill wheeeeee.
Ingram pointed abeam. “She’s right there!’
Spittle flew as Landa yelled, “What the hell are you--”
“The Riley! Between us and the Jap.”
“Oh.”
The man on the TBS almost sobbed. “LITTLE JOE. LITTLE JOE. IMPERATIVE YOU--”
‘CRACK!’ The Howell lurched sideways, as if ambushed by an overweight thug in a dark alley.
Ingram looked around. What the hell am I doing on the deck? He shook his head, but he couldn’t hear. Next to him, Seltzer was on hands and knees, spitting over the side of the pilot house.
Ingram ripped off his headphones and pressed his fists to his head; a vain attempt to staunch the high-pitched ringing in his ears. After a moment, he grabbed a stanchion and pulled himself to his feet.
Seltzer looked up to him, his face stark white, his lips moving.
Landa was talking, too. Shouting maybe, but Ingram still couldn’t hear. In the lights red glow, the captain’s eyes searched and darted from Ingram to the ocean, his face an orange-red, his uvula wiggling a macabre dance in the back of his mouth.
Then the ringing receded and Ingram could once again hear, as if someone had just flipped a master switch in his skull.
“...Ingraaaam, damnit!”
/>
“Huh?”
“LISTEN TO MEEEE.”
“Sir?”
“Are you okay?” Landa had swung the Howell to port, heading almost due south.
Ingram shook his head. “Yeah, yes sir.” Then he looked up, seeing Jack Wilson lean out of his hatch raising his eye-brows.
Ingram gave a thumbs up and mouthed, ‘you?’
Wilson’s lips moved with ‘we’re okay.’ But with his hands he pantomimed the numerals five-three, pointed aft, and drew a finger across his throat.
Ingram checked aft. In the darkness, everything seemed jumbled, he couldn’t tell what was going on. ‘How about mounts fifty-four and fifty-five, Ingram mouthed to Wilson.
‘Okay,’ Wilson answered.
Seltzer, still on hands and knees, looked up and said, “No word from the aft torpedo mount or mount fifty-three.”
“Anything from the damage control party?” asked Ingram.
“Not yet,”
Ingram wiggled on his headphones and keyed his mike. “Luther, what’s with the Japs?”
“Gone. Headed back up the Slot.”
“What about the Riley?”
“DIW,” reported Dutton. Dead in the water.
Ingram kneeled. “Captain, do you suppose the Riley is in trouble?”
At least six men swarmed around Landa, all wanting something. He held a palm toward Ingram. ‘Wait.’
After a few moments, Dutton announced, “Riley is gone.”
“What do you mean, ‘gone?’“ demanded Ingram.
“I mean there’s no blip.”
JOHN J. GOBBELL is a former Navy Lieutenant who saw duty as a destroyer weapons officer. His ship served in the South China Sea, granting him membership in the exclusiveATonkin Gulf Yacht Club.@ As an executive recruiter, his clients included military/commercial aerospace companies giving him insight into character development under a historical thriller format. The Last Lieutenant is the first of five stand-alone novels in the Todd Ingram series. The most recent, Edge of Valor, was released by the U.S. Naval Institute Press in Summer, 2014. Altogether, he has written seven novels involving U.S. Navy action and is currently at work on his eighth. He and his wife Janine live in Newport Beach, California. He can be reached at [email protected].
THE LAST LIEUTENANT: A Todd Ingram Novel (The Todd Ingram Series Book 1) Page 53