Assault on Zanzibar

by E. C. Williams

  “Can you handle the extra load, Dave?”

  “Just about, Commodore – by using every Puffin I have, and every additional one I’m likely to get. I can extend their range by removing their guns and adding wing tanks. We’ll need to start right away – yesterday woulda been good – and use every cloudless day to set up a photographic base of all of Zanzibar outside of Stone Town, all of Pemba, and a big stretch of African mainland opposite the two islands.

  “After we have that base record proven, we can focus on any sites with evidence of construction. They can camouflage a hangar, even a big one, especially if it’s in a forest with tall trees, but it’d be hard to hide it while it’s being built.”

  “Good points, Dave. I’ll see if I can do something to speed up the production of planes. I don’t want to stint on your roving anti-corsair patrols – they’ve been fairly successful working with the schooners in attriting southward-bound raiders.”

  “If it would help speed up their manufacture, I could use the older Model-A Puffins in the recon role, without guns, and perhaps an extra fuel tank in the nose instead. With their lighter airframe, and maybe even a greater wingspread, they’d make ideal photo-recon aircraft.”

  “Write up that recommendation, Dave, and I’ll forward it. We’ll see what the aviation boffins say.”

  “Aye aye, Commodore. And I’m afraid I have some unwelcome news about our new radio nav system; the Pirates have figured it out and are now jamming it.”

  “Jamming it? How?”

  “By broadcasting noise on the same frequency with a powerful transmitter and overwhelming our signal, sir.

  “We discovered this last night, on a calibration run – as soon as the plane neared Zanzibari air space, they picked up the signal and started jamming it. Until we come up with a counter-measure, or, better, an undetectable and/or un-jammable system, nous sommes baisées.”

  “Does this make the system totally useless?”

  “Well … not totally useless, Commodore. We can still use it to find our way home, once we’re out of the range of their jamming but back into our signal’s range. And the system has features that allows for much more accurate dead reckoning than we could do before – using the unreliable old compasses, our watches, and scribbling calculations on a knee pad. And, of course, we can home on the radio beam of one of our schooners that’s found a corsair, if out of the range of Pirate jamming.

  “And, on second thought, I think we can still bomb Stone Town harbor at night just on dead reckoning and lavish use of flares … maybe a second plane loaded with flares instead of bombs …”

  “Good. Keep thinking like that, Dave. As far as improving the system to make it un-jammable …well, that’s another task for another set of boffins. I’ll get a signal off to French Port right way, or Todd will, getting them started on the problem.

  “That’s the agenda done, and you all have other things to do. We’re adjourned for now.”

  Eighteen

  “My question is: are we in all respects ready for another major assault on Stone Town, to try and bring the Sultanate to the point of peace talks?”

  Sam was addressing a meeting of his staff, plus Dave Schofield, Frank Landry, Lieutenant (I) Hank Dallas, and the captains of Albatros, Roland, and Hornet (ex-Tommie Sue), the only vessels presently in Chole Bay.

  “That question is, of course, up to me to answer,” Sam continued. “What I require from you is detailed reports on progress and levels of readiness in your respective domains.

  “In no particular order, then, I’ll start with the ground war on Mafia Island. Captain Landry?”

  Landry could still be startled by the use of his new rank; ashore, he insisted on being addressed as “Chief” by subordinates, or, when alone with old mates like CSM Richburg, simply “Frank”.

  “We haven’t wiped ‘em out, Commodore, but we’ve pretty well neutralized ‘em.”

  “Details, Frank?”

  “Well, for example, we’ve actually had some surrender to us, in ones and twos.”

  “Wah! Pirates, surrender? That’s 'n nuwe ding, Frank. Pirates never surrender.”

  “A new thing indeed, Commodore. But when everyone else in your team has been killed, you’re out of ammunition, and you haven’t eaten in days, it’s surprising how that fanaticism begins to wane. We estimate that fewer than five percent of their re-re dhows make it through our blockade, and, now that both the Nosy Be force and the Réunionnais are trained and acclimated, we’re aggressively patrolling the whole of the island in force. With the flyboys and the Mafia class gunboats fighting as a team, we’ve pretty much cleared out Dar Creek. Some tried to hide up the Rufiji or its tributaries, in the mangrove swamps there. But that meant farther to sneak down the coast, farther to go upstream to find a suitable hidey-hole, and more opportunity for interception. And, once we found them, they were just nearer targets.

  “The Kikosi wa mafia is now led top to bottom by Mafian askari – no more Kerg officers or noncoms needed for the Regiment. Same thing is true for the Mafia-class gunboats. Mafia Island will soon be able to defend herself unaided except for supplies of arms and ammo. In peacetime, that is – we can’t abandon them now, o’course.”

  “Of course. That’s heartening news, Captain Landry. Well done.

  “Now, Commander Schofield: the air picture, if you please.”

  Three months had passed since the successful raid on Fat Boy’s hangar site near Stone Town. That site had not been re-built. Hundreds of hours of flying time was devoted to photo-reconnaissance flights over a wide area of Zanzibar, Pemba, and the African Main opposite the islands searching for evidence of another zeppelin site; multiple candidates were turned up, then ruled out on closer examination. If the Pirates were persisting with the dirigible project, the site was well-hidden. All of this was too well-known among attendees to need repeating, so he didn’t.

  “Aye aye, Commodore. First, the squadron – that is, the RKN’s total air arm – now numbers twelve aircraft: Two Pathfinder Puffins, two Puffin LR’s – that is, Puffin A’s configured for long-range reconnaissance -- and seven Model B Puffins, the dive-bomber variant. Finally, we have a single surviving Petrel; it’s useful in ground support on the Island, and in attacking southbound corsairs.

  “Obviously, we’ve outgrown Charlie in terms of the number of planes we can embark, so at any one time, six are at anchor in the bay. For routine maintenance and repair, we rotate the twelve planes through the six cradles available aboard Charlie.

  “As the air arm grows further, it will perhaps need to be re-organized into two squadrons, and we may also need to think about either another carrier, or a shoreside station to support flying boats. If the latter, a marine railway would allow planes to be removed from the water quickly, and without damage to their hulls, for maintenance and repair. It would be cheaper and quicker to build than another carrier – but, on the other hand, a second carrier would give us more geographic flexibility in the employment of warplanes.

  “The quickest way would be to acquire a merchant schooner and convert her to use as a seaplane tender – keeping her loaded with fuel, munitions, and spares, and crewing her with aviation ratings.

  “We’ve been very successful, working with the cruising schooners, at intercepting southbound corsairs. So successful that they’re now getting hard to find. Four or five months ago, dozens were sailing away with impunity to raid our shipping; now, we can hardly find one to attack. We’ve seen none in the past week, in fact.

  “Finally, we think we have fully developed both the weapon and the tactics to deal with enemy zeppelins, should we encounter them again. In brief: tactically, it just means climbing above the target and dive bombing it. The weapon is an incendiary bomblet with an arrow-head spike nose, very sharp, to pierce multiple layers of fabric. On contact, a timed fuse ignites, setting off the bomb in about one or one and a half seconds. The idea is that the bomblet will slice through to a hydrogen cell, go off, and ignite the gas: scratch
one dirigible. We’ll drop ‘em in clusters of three – they’re small enough that our armorers have figured out how to attach three to a bomb point.”

  “D’you think they’ll work, Dave?”

  “God weet, Commodore. We’ve tested ‘em against mock-ups of what we think is the composition of an enemy zeppelin’s hull, on the ground, and they work. But against the real thing? We won’t know ‘til – and if -- we try the real thing.”

  After Schofield, the three schooner COs, in turn, described their recent actions in Operation Sheepdog, the ongoing effort to stop Pirate gun-dhows on their way south to raid Kerguelenian shipping, or on their return after the completion of a cruise. Coordination between schooners and aircraft had proved highly productive. The swift-sailing, two-gunned Hornet had been particularly successful.

  The conversation among the Commodore and the three skippers turned to the possibility of replacing the single 37mm guns on Albatros, Joan of Arc, Roland, Wasp, and Scorpion with twin lightweight 37mm guns and lengthening their gun-balconies, as was done with Hornet. They also eagerly awaited the arrival of the new purpose-built schooner now building in French Port, the not-yet-named “super-Hornet”. This was, like Hornet, a vessel with a fine entry and run, for speed, but bigger, with a three-masted topsail schooner rig, a more powerful MG set and waterjet propulsion pods, and designed to carry three lightweight 37mm guns utilizing two gun balconies a-side. Of the usual composite construction but, like Hornet, with aluminum framing – Sam was persuaded to drop his bias against it – she had plenty of net tonnage for stores, munitions, fuel, and water, for long cruises.

  As much as Sam, a schooner-man to his bones, was enjoying this conversation, he cut it off in the interests of time, and called on Hank Dallas for the intel picture.

  Dallas, still sullen about his forced separation from his Nosy Be bride, gave a brief overview of the intelligence situation that overlapped with Doug’s report on the results of aerial reconnaissance flights and told them little they did not already know. He did have one bit of good news, however: he and Konyn had unmasked the Pirate spy on the shore of Chole Bay. He told them how they had done it:

  “On arrival, Mister Konyn gave me a crash course in Swahili, and we started questioning all of the villagers, all around the shores of Chole Bay. After some days, I no longer needed Percy – Sub lieutenant Konyn – to interpret for me, so we split up, to be more productive. We narrowed it down to just one suspect – a lone fisherman, no wife or family, who lived by himself of the outskirts of a farming village some ways inland and traveled daily to the bay to fish.

  “No one knew him at all well. He claimed that he was a refugee from the north of the island, and that his family had been killed by Pirates. Everyone assumed his un-social behavior, so unlike that of Mafia islanders, was due to his grief for his dead family. Konyn questioned him first, and reported something odd about his Swahili – it was fluent, but he sometimes used non-Mafia expressions, and pronounced some words strangely. We both interrogated him at length, and finally broke him: he was a native Swahili speaker from Pemba, of pure African descent but a Muslim from birth, and had been inserted for just the purpose of watching vessel movements on the Bay. He was a good linguist – he had almost mastered the Mafia accent and expressions, just not quite well enough.”

  Sam already knew this, of course, but most present didn’t; they applauded Dallas.

  “What’d you do with him?” someone asked.

  “He’s in irons, in the brig, right here aboard Charlemagne. We’re still interrogating him, but he’s clammed up now – seems to be in a deep funk over being caught and then broken. When I return to Nosy Be, I’ll take him with me, and keep working on him. I still have hopes of turning him, and somehow infiltrating him back into Zanzibar to work for us, but that’ll be a protracted process, if it’s successful at all.”

  Sam adjourned the meeting soon after that, and went topsides, for fresh air and his “accidental” meeting with Doctor Girard. This seemingly-casual encounter and conversation had become an almost-daily habit with them, and one they both looked forward to. He knew that eventually this would be noticed, and cause gossip. To hell with it, he thought. We’ve each lost our spouse through enemy action. We find solace in one another’s company. For conversation. In public. Only evil minds can find something in that to gossip about!

  As he emerged on the quarterdeck, he looked forward, and, as he hoped, saw Marie strolling along the line of Puffins in their cradles on the starboard side, stopping occasionally to reply to a greeting from a sailor at work – she was immensely popular with the crew, and not only for her looks; she was unfailingly civil to everyone, regardless of rank, and the many whom she had treated for wounds, accidental injuries, or illnesses looked upon her as a healing angel.

  But of course, among a population predominately male, her looks could not help but play a part. Today, for example, in shapeless working whites, no makeup, and hair pulled back into a chaste bun, she was striking enough to turn heads, just as she was, at any French Port ball or chic watering hole.

  Sam strode forward, and called out, “Good morning, Doctor! How are you today?”

  She smiled, and replied, “Very well, Commodore. And you?”

  Near enough now for private speech, he said, “Good – aside from being sick and tired of staff meetings and hankering for some action. Don’t you get bored, too, Marie – just riding the hook here in Chole Bay? I doubt the old Charlie can barely move now, from all the barnacles and weed she’s no doubt accumulated!”

  She smiled. “No, Sam, dear – I don’t hanker for action. To me, action means blood, mutilation, and death to young men I’ve long known, who’ve been my patients – not excitement, relief from ennui. Thank you, Commodore, but boredom is just fine with me.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Marie – I hate casualties, too – would suit me if I could beat the Pirates without losing a man – but we must beat the Pirates, and that means battle, and even the most one-sided battle unfortunately means people wounded, even killed.”

  “I understand that, Sam – I didn’t mean to imply that you’re callous, uncaring about your men. In fact, I find what I’m doing now rather tedious.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Teaching trainee medics for the Kikosi, through an interpreter, in batches of five. Day after day, saying the same things, demonstrating the same procedures, waiting for what I say to be translated, over and over.” She illustrated the tedium by droning those last phrases in a weary tone, which made Sam laugh.

  “Still, you’re doing good work, Marie,” he said. “Frank Landry tells me that giving the askari their own medics has improved their survival and recovery rate from wounds, and done wonders for their morale. They love their medics, too – respectfully call ‘em Daktari – Doctor.”

  “I know, Sam. And I suffer the tedium – and do it myself, rather than delegating it to interns – because I know how important it is. It has its lighter side, too. For instance, I had great trouble at first getting them to grasp the germ theory of infection. Then, all at once, they got it, and no subsequent batch had any trouble with it. I found out that my interpreter had, ingeniously, started translating it as demons of infection, who thrived in dirt, filth, dried blood, and the feces of flies, and that’s why wounds had to be kept clean and bandages changed frequently – to keep away the demons!”

  Sam laughed along with Marie.

  “They couldn’t grasp the notion of natural, living creatures too small to see – but unseen spirits, well, that was simple enough, and explained it fully, and in consonance with their world-view. But whatever works, right, Sam? And if that idea spreads to midwives and mothers of small children, I think we’ll see a drop in infant mortality, which is of course a good thing.”

  They chatted for a while longer, then Marie went back below to sick bay, to continue her lecture on discouraging the demons of infection, and Sam took another turn around the deck. It was amazing how a few minutes of inconsequent
ial conversation with her cheered him right up. He wasn’t really sure why it did, but he liked the feeling.

  He went below to the flag mess, for a pleasant light dinner. It was delicious, as were all Ritchie’s meals, and he enjoyed sharing it with Benoit Murphy and the COs of the schooners present in the Bay, whom he had invited to delay their return to their vessels and dine with him.

  He didn’t realize it at the time, but this was to be his last relaxed moment for quite a while.

  He returned topside to walk off the effects of his meal, and encountered Dave Schofield, running at top speed from the Air Shack toward him.

  “Commodore, flash message from the photo-recon flight. A very large number of gun-dhows – he’s orbiting to get a precise count – has appeared off Pemba Island. Specifically, in Chake Chake Bay – the bay is absolutely full of anchored dhows, he said.” He paused to catch his breath, then went on: “They must have arrived there sometime in the last twenty-four hours, and they must have come from the north, because they sure as hell weren’t there yesterday or in Stone Town harbor or any place else we’ve been overflying.”

  “Oh, my,” Sam said quietly, too shocked, even, to swear. This was what he had feared all along: the rest of the Caliphate, or some part of it, had finally come to the aid of Zanzibar. He had no doubt that this fleet was to be part of another effort to re-take Mafia Island and drive the RKN back to the Mascarenes – if not all the way to Kerguelen.

  “Dave, we need to know more as soon as possible – how many, how armed – everything!”

  “I ordered the pilot to stay over Pemba until he got a full ship count, and as much intel as he could gather. I told him to take any risks necessary – fly as low as needed – and radio intel back as it’s gathered. In case we lose the plane, I want as much information as he can provide before he goes down.”