The Dead Alone (Empires Lost Book 3)

by Charles S. Jackson

  As she passed through the narrows that separated the two bays, her lookouts immediately reported the sighting of an H8K flying boat pulling away from the pier at Tan Tui. Thinking the pilot and crew mad to attempt a take-off with so many enemy aircraft above, the captain had a message of warning sent out by radio, which inexplicably received no response, although they received confirmation from a small gunboat a short distance to the south.

  A second call met with a similar lack of response, and both the lookouts and bridge crew were stunned, a few moments later, by the sight of that same flying boat opening fire upon the approaching gunboat and blowing it to pieces within seconds. For whatever reason, it was patently clear that whoever was aboard that aircraft was certainly an enemy and should be dealt with accordingly. From a distance of no more than a mile, she opened fire with her bow-mounted 120mm turret, the first shell howling past overhead but sounding terrifyingly close all the same.

  “It’s been an honour serving with you, sir,” Schultz declared with hollow fatalism as he stared past his pilot and watched the destroyer loom menacingly out of the smoke to their north, heading straight for them.

  “An optimist, I see, ensign…” Ritter observed with dark sarcasm, flinching as a second shell also ripping past overhead, this time bursting in a huge pillar of water not far at all off their nose to port. “We’re already pushing forty knots, and I’m no navy man, but I suspect they’ve never fired that big bastard at anything faster than another warship their entire life. If they’ve any flak cannon, we’re doomed, but they’ve got their work cut out for them if they’ve only that main gun to use against us!”

  “Wie, bitte…?” Schultz hissed sharply as a third shell hit the water just a hundred yards off their nose, showering the entire aircraft with water and causing it to lurch into the air momentarily as it passed through the spray before crashing back down again and speeding on.

  “I never said they’d be lousy shots…” Ritter conceded through clenched teeth, his own heart pounding over the fright he’d just received as he continued to stare straight ahead, his hands clenched tightly around the controls.

  “Ich glaub, mein schwein pfeift…!”

  “Willkommen in meiner welt, bruder. …” Ritter muttered drily, almost managing a snort of real laughter over that.

  “Beatrice to all units… Beatrice to all units…!” Donelson wheezed breathlessly into the radio headset Langdale had given her, legging it into the jungle east of Tan Tui with as great a pace as she and the rest of the men around her could manage. She knew the codename was one there was no chance any of them would recognise, however it was the only one that had come to mind and it seemed instinctive to use it. “Warning to all units: you must clear the area immediately…! Repeat: clear the area immediately! Intel reports imminent detonation of an explosive device in the Tan Tui area powerful enough to damage or destroy anything within a two mile radius! Looking at the detonation may also result in permanent blindness. I repeat again: permanent blindness. All units, land or air are instructed by order of Override Code Septimus to vacate the area and maintain an exclusion zone of at least ten miles to avoid danger. Repeat again: Override Code Septimus. All units to evacuate the Tan Tui area immediately and maintain a ten mile exclusion zone wherever possible. Collection of priority personnel may be enacted after the blast has cleared. All unit commanders to spread the word and act accordingly. Trooper out…”

  “How far now?” Langdale asked nervously, running beside her as they dodged around a clump of close-knit palms and crashed through the undergrowth beyond.

  “A mile… maybe a bit more…” She managed eventually, her words and breathing laboured with exertion as the continuous activity and the physical trauma of the morning began to tell on her remaining stamina. “Not enough…” she added unnecessarily, the fear as clear in her voice as in his. On either side, soldiers and escaped prisoners alike were also charging through the jungle as fast as they were able, many slowed somewhat as between them, they carried or assisted the wounded from the hospital with Watson right there alongside to monitor their progress.

  “Beatrice, this is Yellow Leader… come in please…” The transmission burst suddenly into her earpiece, momentarily distracting her and almost sending her crashing him into the trunk of a tree which she barely managed to dodge at the last moment.

  “Reading you, Yellow Leader,” she replied eventually, not sounding at all pleased. “Hope this is worth it: we’re a wee bit busy right now…”

  “Understood, Beatrice” the squadron leader replied quickly in apologetically clipped, British accent. “We’re evacuating the area as ordered, however we’ve spotted a Jap flying boat making a take-off run across Ambon Bay. Wouldn’t normally be something I’d bother you with, but the cheeky bugger just blasted one of their own patrol boats out of the water and it’s now being fired on by a Jap destroyer. Thought perhaps we should check if it was some of our boys that we didn’t know about.”

  “Oh Christ, Carl…!” she blurted softly, stopping for a moment and bringing Langdale to a sudden halt also as the rest of her group continued on around them.

  “They’re on their own now, Eileen!” He argued desperately, having heard everything over his own radio set. “There’s no time!”

  “Yellow Leader, the flying boat isn’t to be stopped!” She ordered, sending a frustrated glance his way but otherwise ignoring him. “They’re to be allowed to leave at any cost! Please assist if possible before exiting the area.”

  “Understood, Beatrice; will comply… Yellow Leader out…”

  They began running once more, having at least made good use of that short pause to catch their breaths before continuing on, although they were now well behind most of the others and would struggle to catch up. It was only as they burst into a small, swampy clearing that they were forced to come to a sudden halt once more, the path blocked by dozens of their fellow escapees, all shielding their eyes and staring upward in bewilderment and awe.

  The Crocodiles waited there, directly above them in a ragged line of three, huge rotors blasting the undergrowth, the water and the surrounding trees with downdraft as they hovered just a few dozen feet above the ground. Ugly, brutal-looking craft of almost insectoid appearance, at that moment they were the most wonderful sight Langdale could have ever imagined.

  Ritter had to admit; the gunnery control officer in charge of laying that destroyer’s guns was just about as good at his job as anyone had a right to be. The Emily’s speed was approaching seventy knots now, and he could feel it almost skating across the surface of the water, yet still their pursuer continued to land shell after shell in their immediate vicinity, mostly chance alone so far preventing them from having received either a direct hit or something close enough to disable the aircraft.

  “I hate be negative, Mein Herr, but we appear to be quickly running out of water…” Schultz pointed out nervously as the beach on the opposite side of the bay began to loom ever larger in their field of vision.

  “I’m aware of that, ensign,” Ritter replied tersely, not exactly sure what to do about the situation in all honesty.

  The fact remained that good a flier as he was, he was a land-based pilot who’d never even considered the very different procedures and general mechanics involved in getting a twenty-five ton flying boat into the air, and he’d already taken at least twice as long as the usual 90-100 second take-off run an experienced flying boat pilot might’ve required. The distance between the two sides of the bay – a little more than two and a half nautical miles heading due west from their original mooring – had seemed unnecessarily large as he’d taken the H8K away from the jetty. Right now, the beach closing quickly with every passing second, it seemed that perhaps an entire ocean wouldn’t be enough.

  A wall of water exploded and rose up across their path in the next moment, again shaking the aircraft and showering it with spray. Now at least two miles behind them, Karukaya had come about to present both of its main guns in broadside
and her gunners were firing for all they were worth, each weapon capable of five or six rounds per minute. A situation that had been difficult to begin with suddenly became one of almost insurmountable odds, and as Ritter craned his neck back over his shoulder to stare out at the receding warship, it fired its guns again.

  Two fast-moving shapes flickered past overhead at that same moment, heading in the opposite direction. The shadows they trailed behind on the surface of the water seemed to be in the shape of almost perfect crosses, the darkness of them eerily reminiscent of the Balkankreuz insignia used by all Luftwaffe aircraft. The deafening howl of twin jet engines reached the flying boat seconds later, rattling its airframe and startling every man aboard.

  Flight Lieutenant Rory Jameson of RAF 177 Squadron came in low and hot from the west, diving to within a few hundred feet of the treetops over the Hitu Peninsula and then swooping down across the choppy water of Ambon Bay with his wingman off his port quarter. They’d picked up the flying boat easily enough, and it would’ve made a fine target, but orders were orders and Yellow Leader had made it clear that the Emily was not to be touched.

  The destroyer two miles further on was another thing entirely however, and as the pair of A-5A Bushrangers topped out at 450 knots, he armed the rocket pods beneath his outer wings. Each pod carried five long, slender HVARs – High-Velocity Aircraft Rockets – and each unguided, folding-fin missile carried the same explosive punch as a five-inch shell. Jameson ripple-fired all ten rockets at a range of two thousand yards, his wingman following suit a few seconds later as both jets then lurched skyward once more and banked sharply away to the south.

  Karukaya, as originally designed twenty years before, had been fitted with almost non-existent anti-aircraft capability. During 1941, she’d been laid up and refitted with a pair of triple-mount 25mm Type 96 AA, the modification requiring the removal of one of her 120mm main gun turrets. Due to the sharp angle of approach, she’d not been able to bring her lighter guns to bear on the fleeing Emily, but she was able to fire on the approaching Bushrangers now, fingers of pink tracer reaching out toward them as they released their own weapons and turned away. It was to no avail. Already at the very edge of the Type 96’s effective range, the speed of the retreating jets was such that their gunners never even got close.

  The barrage of HVARs however proved devastatingly effective. Even the most advanced unguided rockets were inaccurate at best, and they were most effectively used when fired in salvo as a result. Of the twenty fired between the two A-5As, six struck the Karukaya with the combined force of a destroyer’s broadside. Explosions blossomed along her entire length, shattering and tearing apart her superstructure as fire ripped through her lower decks. Her forward 120mm magazine went up next, breaking her in half just ahead of the bridge. The torn wreckage that was left took just a few minutes to sink below waves covered by the thick black smoke and deep red/orange flames of blazing fuel oil.

  Ritter finally felt the aircraft break away from the surface of the bay a few seconds later, the Emily’s four Kasei radials howling with the strain as she surged forward, suddenly free of the drag that was part and parcel with her seaborne take-off.

  “This is your chance, ensign… take the wheel, if you would…” Ritter barked quickly, tensing his own grip on the huge control wheel before him as his co-pilot did the same. “Follow my lead and pull back in three… two… one…now…!”

  The aircraft fought them all the way as they hauled back on the controls as one, speed building now that it was fully airborne. Ritter had no clue as to the Emily’s minimum stall speed, and all he could do was hope for the best as the flying boat struggled desperately for much-needed altitude. The beach shot past beneath their nose, and Schultz gasped as they all heard and felt the scrape of palm fronds against the planing hull below, although to his credit, the boy never let go of the controls for a moment.

  “Come on, you big drecksau!” Ritter growled, arms shaking with tension as he continued to hold the wheel almost to his chest and the Emily’s nose finally began to rise, the mountains of the Hitu Peninsula directly ahead of them. As if by magic, the H8K suddenly settled down completely, and to his own amazement, Ritter was able to trim the flaps and exchange the power climb for an almost leisurely bank around to starboard, making for the valleys to their north than would eventually lead to the other side of the island and the open expanses of the Molucca Sea.

  The Emily’s gunners were surprised at the complete lack of aerial opposition as they cruised on, hugging the treetops to begin with as the pilot began to acclimatise himself to the more details intricacies of piloting a huge, multi-engined flying boat. None of them could’ve known that the few Japanese combat aircraft that had either managed to get airborne or had already been flying as the air raid had begun had been blown out of the skies in the opening minutes by the deadly, shark-like Sabre jets.

  Smoke surrounded him, filling his eyes and nostrils and soaking his clothing in its acrid stench. The prevailing winds were already blowing westward up the beach, bringing with it the smell of burning and death from the shattered warships out on the bay, and added to that now was the carnage he himself had wrought in the bombing of the airfield and the raging pyre that had once been a 21st Century fighter jet.

  Thorne staggered on through the jungle, pistol in hand but not feeling even close to being ready for a fight, either physically or mentally. Behind him he could hear the crashing sounds of at least a squad of Japanese, and although the swirling breeze and the thick vegetation made it impossible to accurately gauge their distance, he was willing to bet they were definitely too close for comfort.

  He was dazed and uncertain on his feet, and he suspected the physical trauma of the ejection might well have exacerbated the concussion he’d already suffered just days before. He suspected the enemy troops currently bashing about behind him in pursuit however were unlikely to cut him any slack over it, and there was nothing to be done other than tough it out as best he could. He was mostly managing well enough, although the outer edges of his elbows and shoulders particularly were stinging more than a little as a result of several awkward, unintentional collisions with trees as he’d tried to make good his escape.

  With a headset over his ears, he was able to listen in on the general chatter of the air battle that had continued on quite happily without him, although he’d quickly discovered that his radio had been damaged during the ejection and subsequent landing, and while it still received signals well enough, he‘d so far found it impossible to transmit as much as a single word.

  He’d initially thought perhaps to circle around to the south-east and find a section of beach from which he might signal a friendly pilot or – even better – one of the incoming Crocodile gunships. That plan had been thrown out completely the moment he’d picked up Donelson’s transmission warning of the detonation of the device stored in Kormoran’s hold. The decision had been crystal clear from that moment on as to which direction he should choose instead, although it nevertheless was made with a frightful level of profanity as accompaniment. Wasting no time, he turned westward and plunged deeper into the jungle, heading towards the foothills below the towering heights of the Hitu Peninsula.

  Hasegawa's squad had run into Jinkins’ men on the north-western side of the camp, some distance from the situation developing at the Hospital. Initially outnumbered and pushed back by heavy fire from assault rifles and squad automatic weapons, the rapid deployment of reinforcements drawn from other positions across the surrounding area quickly began to turn the tide against the Australians firing from the treeline beyond the camp’s perimeter.

  With the arrival of several heavy machine guns and a pair of infantry mortars, the Japanese had eventually begun to force an advance on the Allied positions, the judicious use of smoke and high explosive mortar bombs enabling them to push up onto the Australians’ right flank through the jungle to the north. Within ten or fifteen minutes, Jinkins was in real danger of being forced to withdraw, with a
number of his men dead or wounded, particularly on that collapsing right flank.

  It was at that point that the gunships had arrived, thundering in low overhead behind the deafening screech of their turbines and the chest-battering thump of their huge rotors. The whirring chatter of the Crocodiles’ chin-mounted rotary machine guns were partnered by the slower, more methodical ‘thud-thud-thud’ of its accompanying 40mm grenade launcher as both weapons unloaded on the Japanese troops below, instantly spreading chaos, death and destruction among them as bodies were torn apart and barracks huts were exploded and set afire. The first climbed away with a surge of power, entering into a shallow ‘figure-eight’ manoeuvre as a second gunship swept down onto the same targets, this one unleashing even greater destruction as it ripple-fired a brace of 3-inch rockets from pods mounted beneath its wide, drooping stub wings.

  Toward the rear of the group that had been pushing forward on the Australian position, Hasegawa was among a fortunate few to avoid death and destruction from above, although for all that he was nevertheless left with a few superficial wounds to his head and upper body and a serious first degree burn to the back of one shoulder from standing far too close to a barracks hut that had exploded into flames. The shattered remnants of his troop were forced to withdraw in disarray, and Hasegawa eventually took a moment’s rest at the side of the main road leading north to Paso, just a few hundred yards up from the towering presence of Kormoran, her nose still stuck fast into an otherwise pristine beach.

  He was shirtless now and perched uncomfortably in the front passenger seat of a commandeered Jeep as a medic bandaged the burn on his back. All the while, he was shouting into a hand-held radio unit, issuing frantic orders for reinforcements and wincing continually as the corpsman worked on his wounds and lances of pain shot through him. Smoke and dust floated everywhere, filling the air around them with the stench of fire and death, with at least a dozen warships now burning out in the bay, and he could see the partially-sunken remains of at least half a dozen more. Enemy jets continued to shriek past overhead, their bombs, rockets and huge, nose-mounted cannon continuing to wreak havoc on shipping and on land targets across the other side of the bay.