“Grikbirds, Grikbirds!” came a human shout over the radio. “Ten o’clock high!”
Orrin looked up and slightly left. The sunrise on his flat glass goggles found that really bad angle and briefly blinded him. He swore, mostly at his own stupidity—the problem with the goggles wasn’t new—and quickly got past the glare.
“I see ’em!” Seepy shouted. So did Orrin then, as the bright afterimage of the sun started to fade. The Grikbirds were close, half a dozen or so, arrowing in with talons extended, wingclaws ready, for one of their trademark slashing runs.
Orrin looked ahead. He’d only penetrated as far as La Calma once before, and it was a weird place. There wasn’t much of a city, but the bay served as a critical stopping place for ships that couldn’t make it all the way through the pass on one tidal race and the brief slack that followed. A steamer might still make it if it beat the full force of the opposing tide, but that was chancy. A sailing ship had no hope at all, and the shattered debris of ground-up wrecks was always washing to and fro. Thus, La Calma, reported to have some wicked swirling currents, maybe the most extreme daily sea level fluctuations in the world but a good, clean, rocky bottom a stout anchor could grab, would probably always have a few ships taking refuge there. There’d been six or seven steam transports the first time Orrin came this far several weeks ago. Today, however, as he’d kind of suspected, the place looked packed. “Bombers hold steady. Prepare for defensive fire,” he ordered over the radio, flipping the switch to transmit.
Seepy shifted in his aft cockpit behind the spinning prop, readying his Blitzerbug SMG. Coming in like they were, he wouldn’t get a shot until the Grikbirds actually hit them or blew past, and it was a tense few moments of waiting for that. Maneuvering wouldn’t help. Scattering the formation to spoil their attack, dilute their defensive fire, and make them easier to hunt down one by one was exactly what the Grikbirds wanted. Besides, most of these Grikbirds were already doomed and Orrin wondered if they were smart enough to know it.
P1-Bs were the oldest Fleashooters still in service. They were smaller, slower, and less heavily armed than the newer C variant, but were plenty fast, deadly, and even maneuverable enough to absolutely slaughter Grikbirds committed to tight attack formations. And that was the quandary Grikbirds faced in the diminished numbers they’d been seeing; lone or scattered attackers could be driven off or killed by a Nancy’s defensive fire, but attacks like this were terribly vulnerable to pursuit ships. This was demonstrated yet again as smoky tracers started arcing through them, shredding wings in clouds of bright feathers, starting vaporous red streamers of blood, or simply crumpling the ferociously stooping predators like starlings slamming panes of glass. One wounded Grikbird landed a glancing, tearing blow on a Nancy’s wing as it tumbled past. A couple escaped, tucking tighter and abandoning their prey, but the rest were already falling lifeless to earth even as three pairs of Fleashooters roared over Orrin’s formation and pulled up to resume their protective overwatch.
“Who’s hit?” Orrin called out to his bombers. He could see blue-painted fabric fluttering behind a Nancy to his right.
“Akka Five, over,” came the quick response from one of the experienced Lemurians in the mostly human squadron. The ’Cat’s voice sounded strained but calm.
“You need to head back, Akka Five? Over.” Any lone, damaged Nancy that had to abort wouldn’t stand a chance and would cost them a pursuit ship to protect it.
“Neg-aa-tive. We caan make it through the strike, over,” came the response.
“Okay, if you’re sure. Good job, Sabers,” Orrin called to Easy’s pursuit pilots. There were a lot of Impie replacements in the 7th and this was their first action. He was proud of them. A little envious too, since he’d been a pursuit pilot himself. A pretty good one, he thought, having bagged several Zeroes in a P-40 over the Philippines. But that was a world—and what seemed a lifetime—away. Sometimes he longed for one of the four or so P-40Es they still had on this world, but at the rate they’d squandered them he doubted he’d ever lay eyes on one again.
“Thaank you, sur,” Ez said.
“Strike Lead, Strike Lead, this is Gri-maax Lead.” That was Colonel Fao-Nuaak, bringing the fighters and bombers in from Nicoya. “We’re at six thousaand feet, coming in high on your staar-board quarter. Over.”
Orrin wrenched his head around, saw the large, stacked formations of planes approaching. “I see you, Gri-maax Lead. Any trouble? Over.”
“A few Grikbirds,” came the dismissive response. Orrin nodded but frowned. It was early yet, but he’d still expected a little more resistance, even in the dark, with the moon they’d had. He looked back down at La Calma, getting closer, and felt a chill. There were at least twenty large ships at anchor, maybe half that many smaller ones, and that looked like about as many as the bay would hold. Most of the heavies had the high-sided, blockier outlines of steam-powered Dom ships of the line, and there were more here than remained to protect El Corazon. He wondered if they’d stripped the Caribbean entirely. But they couldn’t have, could they? The Nussies would’ve warned them.
“The target is rich,” he announced. “We’ll go first and take them from the south. You follow us in, Gri-maax Lead. Over.”
“Roger thaat, Strike Lead.”
Orrin banked slightly south, studying the layout of the ships and making assignments while his strike force followed, then he turned sharply north, the world pinwheeling below. “All Akkas, tallyho. Don’t forget: focus on the heavies. Drop two eggs each and we’ll come around and follow Gri-maax flight’s attack for another run.” Pushing the stick forward, Orrin led his Nancys in.
Throughout the war in the east, the Doms had struggled to come up with effective antiaircraft measures and hadn’t managed much more than massed musket volleys and swivel guns. The Grik, with Kurokawa’s aid, of course, had done better. And Allied ships had been badly plagued by Grikbirds until recently, when more automatic weapons became available. It looked to Orrin as he dove that the Doms were still stuck with swivel guns. They were dangerous, of course, and there were lots of them lining the bulwarks of the ships and in the fighting tops. More than he’d ever seen. But he didn’t intend to get close enough for their little clouds of canister to be tremendously effective. The trouble was, whether the League gave them the idea or there’d been contact between the Doms and Grik—or Kurokawa—they’d never been aware of, or the Doms simply came up with a similar notion all their own, the heavy swivel-gun volleys vomiting up from the targets weren’t composed of short-range spreads of musket balls; they spat hundreds of little shells the size of baseballs that carried much farther—before exploding right among the diving planes like clouds of hand grenades.
“Shit!” Orrin roared through the popping smoke and blizzard of balls the size of buckshot laced with small fragments of iron that shuddered his Nancy and sleeted through its wood and fabric. A few pieces stung his forearms and legs as well, but everything still worked, so the cuts must’ve been small or shallow. He refocused on his target, straightening his dive at the smoke-shrouded ship. “You okay?” he shouted at Seepy.
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
“Stand by.” Orrin reached for one of the two bomb-release levers and wrenched it back, even as he pulled back on the stick. To his relief, the Nancy slowed and swooped obediently, and he could finally spare an instant to look around. Nearly all the ships on the south side of the bay were wreathed in smoke from their protective fire, and more than just a few of his planes weren’t pulling up. Most of those crashed into the sea, blasting up tall columns of spray. One smashed directly into the ship that shot it down, all its bombs going off, and the ship exploded under a rising plume of burning airplane fuel. A few bombs hit other ships, but most exploded alongside their targets.
“We hit our taarget,” Seepy reported. Orrin was so sickly engrossed in watching the disaster unfold, he hadn’t even looked. “One hit the d
eck, blew the hell outa the fo’c’sle. The other hit the side an’ blew, but didn’t look to hurt it. I think they’ve aarmored ’em up!”
Orrin figured Seepy was right. Greg Garrett had reported he suspected as much after his prize ship, Matarife, tangled with some Doms on the other side of the pass. He hadn’t been there to fight, though, and hadn’t had the luxury of staying to confirm his hunch.
Orrin flipped his Talk switch. “Gri-maax Lead, Gri-maax Lead, begin your attack now.” Only a few of Fao’s older Nancys carried even a single .30-caliber machine gun, so they couldn’t go in firing to keep the gunners down—as Orrin should’ve directed his strike to do. . . . “Take some Fleashooters with you to shoot ’em up and focus on the ships that already fired. But get a move on. Don’t give ’em time to reload!”
“Roger, Strike Lead,” replied Commander Fao. “Staarting our run now. . . . But whaat’ll we do about the others?”
“We lost six planes,” Seepy was saying. “Some others is daamaged.” That left maybe twenty Orrin could use. He’d’ve liked to bring more Fleashooters down to cover them, but his pursuit pilot’s instincts kept screaming that there would be more Grikbirds and he couldn’t thin their top cover too much.
“We’ll take care of those, Gri-maax Lead, following our own guns in this time,” he added bitterly. He was supposed to be the experienced commander, and had even developed that tactic here in the East against ground targets, but they hadn’t fought ships in a while and he’d still been thinking in terms of old defenses. Of course the Doms adapted! “This is Strike Lead. Sorry guys. My screwup. All Akkas, follow me. We’ll attack the ships in the north bay this time, east to west. You all saw about how far out their swivel bombs went off. This time we’ll chase our tracers in.”
And that’s how it went, at first. Despite how effective the Dom’s initial aerial broadside was, the enemy had been taken by surprise and was still rattled. The land-based squadrons hammered hard at the now-near-helpless ships closer to the main channel, and several erupted in flames. Masts and stacks were blown down amid towering jets of white water that inundated ships with spray. Mixed with the gleeful chatter, however, came increasing reports that if bombs hit decks, the ships got blasted bad, but if they hit the sides, they had little noticeable effect.
Orrin’s squadrons were in position now, aiming at unscathed ships closer to shore, swooping down in staggered lines, starting to angle toward distinct targets.
“Grikbirds!” came several shouts at once. “Maany Grikbirds!” punctuated the 7th’s Ez Shiraa.
“What’s happening, Easy?” Orrin demanded tensely, aligning the nose of his plane on another Dom liner. This one, like others on the inside, looked squatter, lower in the water, and had only rudimentary auxiliary masts. Its paddleboxes looked bulkier than others Orrin had seen as well. More disconcerting, he wasn’t seeing a bright wood deck with people running to their weapons or to get under cover. That’s when it dawned on him that people were already under an armored cover. Or were they people? Even as he watched, Grikbirds started boiling out of the ship, fore and aft.
“Goddamn!” Orrin shouted over the radio. “They’re carriers. Grikbird carriers, and they’re scrambling! Get down here, Sabers, or they’ll eat us alive.”
“There’s Grikbirds up here too,” came Ez Shiraa’s strained voice. It was clear he was maneuvering hard. “They comin’ from ever-where!”
Orrin felt another chill but managed to blot out the rising fluttery feeling in his chest. “Okay, Akkas,” he said lowly instead. “Looks like we surprised ’em—while they were getting ready to mousetrap us. We’re even now. Pick your targets and just flow through the flying lizards. Chase your tracers, like I said. Those carriers are bad news and we have to get them.”
Twenty-one PB-1F Nancys of the 3rd, 6th, and 7th Air Wings barreled down into the swirling maelstrom, smoky tracers lancing out. Grikbirds swarmed out of six of the ships like bats from a cave at dusk, rising to meet them, flapping their wings, instinctively making high-pitched, challenging shrieks. Twin .30 cals in each plane, then the observer/copilot’s .45 ACP Blitzers, swatted at them, scythed them down, made a twinkling fog of blood spray and colorful spinning feathers in the early-morning light—but there were already more than a hundred Grikbirds in the air, wheeling, pouncing, slashing at what they no doubt thought were other creatures not unlike them, attacking their nest.
Somehow, through all this, Orrin and his Nancy pilots scored hits on all six carriers, and even though all they had were high-explosive incendiaries—just the thing for wooden ships—the topside armor, at least, wasn’t very thick, and two of the new Dom ships went up quite spectacularly. Four didn’t seem hurt at all. After Orrin dropped his bombs, all he could do was fly, jinking through the savage, swirling Grikbirds, firing bursts from his guns at any coming at him from the front, and relying on Seepy to keep them off his back. One hooked his rudder with its teeth, nearly swinging the plane out of control, but Seepy stitched it—probably shooting a few holes in the tail himself—and it fell away. Immediately, he shouted, “Whaat the hell’s thaat? Three o’clock low!” and Orrin risked a glance at one of the burning carriers. He thought he saw a Grikbird—or something that looked like one, only it was three times as big—fly out of the forward part of the ship. It furiously beat its huge wings at first and then soared toward shore, low over the water, and directly into the tall trees beyond the beach.
“Don’t know,” Orrin replied, gritting his teeth and trying to keep the plane under control. It wasn’t easy, fighting against the savaged rudder, and he still needed more speed before he could climb. Banking right, he followed . . . whatever it was, and pushed the throttle to its stop. Nothing was chasing them at the moment, but the sky seemed full of falling Grikbirds and staggering planes. A lot of those looked like they’d never make it back, and his gut twisted with dread. Pilots on this raid were supposed to bail out and let their damaged planes crash, preferably in the water if they could arrange it, and if it looked like their chutes would carry them to shore. Then their real nightmare would start. Doms might not eat prisoners, but they did torture them and didn’t keep them, and sometimes they fed them to other things. Few would let themselves be taken alive, and very few downed pilots had ever walked out from behind enemy lines.
“All bombers, this is Strike Lead. Get up high and into formation as quick as you can. Pursuit ships will protect. Do not chase Grikbirds.”
“Then whaat’re you doing, Strike Lead?” came Gri-maax Lead’s familiar voice.
What am I doing? Orrin asked himself, realizing he’d been scanning for the strange, huge Grikbird, flying low over the little town of La Calma now. There were a few shots below, and musket balls warbled past. He noticed there were some new warehouses and wished they’d thought to bomb them too. He also noticed one of the land-based Fleashooters that joined Gri-maax’s attack had come up alongside and he wasn’t just risking himself and Seepy anymore. “Just getting some speed,” he said, reluctantly pulling up and back to the west. Behind him to the left, great columns of smoke stood over La Calma Bay, and Grikbirds still swirled around, carefully avoiding the smoke—they didn’t like it—but looking almost as dense as bees around huge gray hives. Troubled, he kept climbing.
Reaching the rallying strike at six thousand feet, he found only nine of the initial thirty members of Akka Flight, which meant he’d lost twenty Nancys and forty people out of the force he led directly. The 7th Pursuit Squadron lost four planes. Another nine Fleashooters and Nancys from Nicoya had fallen. Ironically, the two PB-5D Clippers joining them shortly after, returning from their predawn strike against Boca Caribe, hadn’t even seen a Grikbird until they skirted the hornet’s nest over La Calma. The few that challenged the huge planes there had seemed intimidated by their size and approached tentatively. They were easily driven off with machine-gun fire.
But all together now, heading west, the formation started coming un
der almost constant attacks, and despite how many Grikbirds they shot down, a lot of planes were taking damage. Several were lost to slashing attacks that darted in and ripped away control surfaces or flipped planes out of control. One of the Clippers completely lost an engine when it collided with a Grikbird, and the whole skin behind the engine tore away as well. Leaking fuel streamed from punctured copper tanks. Orrin turned the Sabers loose to chase the Grikbirds for a while, and they got several, but a Fleashooter was mobbed out of the sky when the pilot’s wingman couldn’t shoot the creatures that snatched on to the plane. More Grikbirds got through gaps the Sabers left and shredded a couple more Nancys. It was incredibly frustrating, and Orrin finally called the pursuit planes back, and they all fought on together.
At last, around midday, as what remained of the strike finally passed between El Corazon and the massive, smoldering mountain, the last Grikbirds broke off. More planes were coming to escort them in, from Nicoya and the carriers. The Fleashooters out of Nicoya were particularly low on fuel. Except for his painfully sore ass on the parachute/cushion he was sitting on and the exhausting battle with his bucking rudder pedals, Orrin no longer had to think about the actual flight and was free to ponder its implications. Recovery operations when they reached the ship, in daylight, would be routine.
The mass Grikbird attacks might’ve been a spontaneous reaction to such a large Allied intrusion by various flocks on the prowl, or maybe the Grikbirds themselves quickly carried dispatches describing the raid far and wide. It was known they were often used like giant, vicious carrier pigeons. In the latter case, maybe somebody in command finally just said “To hell with it” and turned big reserves of the creatures they’d been hoarding loose. Regardless, the myth that they’d run the Grikbirds off was broken, and that alone was valuable information. They’d learned quite a lot, in fact; things the Doms couldn’t have wanted them to know, like about the carriers, and that they still had loads of Grikbirds, of course. In addition, they’d confirmed that whether the Dom warships still around El Corazon were armored now or not, the ones coming through the pass sure were. Good information; exactly the sort of thing Orrin had pushed for the raid to find out.
Pass of Fire Page 18