But the tide was inexorable, and they had only a brief respite before it became abundantly clear that the ever-growing Grik force on shore probably could reach the ship when the sea achieved its lowest ebb. Matt was pacing the deck, his sword and pistol belt clasped about his waist, watching Chief Gray heap abuse on those who couldn’t handle the companionways as effortlessly as ballerinas—while carrying mattresses up from below. Spanky, a Springfield rifle slung on his shoulder, was with him, grimly viewing the Grik who’d decided to stay back until they could swarm forward in force. Following along behind was Lieutenant Miyata, looking nervously around, unsure what to do.
“I don’t see any guns over there,” Spanky commented. “Prob’ly have ’em all massed against Second Corps and can’t move ’em all the way over here.”
“Maybe,” Matt allowed. He’d been pausing periodically to view the desolate landscape around Grik City and create a proper mental image of the place in daylight. The city itself was a filthy, sprawling, low-lying hovel, and Matt was strangely reminded of the dried mud mounds that rose around crayfish holes when the creeks around his childhood home ran low. Thousands and thousands of wood and adobe crawdad holes, he thought. Miyata had indicated the “Celestial Palace” to them; compared to the rest of the city, it was certainly impressive, at least. It was immense, for one thing, rising like a mountainous, stone cowflop in the center of the city. Not a cowflop, exactly, Matt thought, rejecting the first metaphor that came to mind. More like a gigantic dome—or the top of a monumental cowflop-colored toadstool. A broad stairway led up the northern flank to a broad landing and arched entrance about a third of the way to the top. There was apparently no other way in, higher than that, but there did appear to be openings, like skylights or vents here and there. Beyond the “palace,” they could see the top of the great peaked wall that separated the city from the jungle to the south. A helluva lot like the wall in King Kong, he mused, but Chack’s the most dangerous thing on the other side of this one, he decided confidently. He blinked and stared southeast where clouds of white smoke rose above II Corps’s pitched battle, to join the darker smoke rising above the ruined Grik fleet in the anchorage. What a god-awful, terrible place. Not worth a single, solitary life, but as good a place to kill Grik as any, I suppose. He looked back at his companions.
“They want to take your ship, Captain Reddy,” Miyata said, nodding at the Grik on shore. “That is the most likely explanation to me, why they have not brought more artillery.” He shrugged. “You must understand that to Kurokawa, USS Walker has been the symbol of all that has thwarted the Grik, and no doubt the Grik commanders, perhaps even their First General Esshk in particular, would like nothing more than to have her.”
“That’s not gonna happen!” Spanky seethed, and Matt nodded. “No, it’s not,” he said with certainty. He flinched slightly when the number two gun barked above them, from atop the amidships deckhouse. The bright, off-colored tracer slammed into the Grik on shore and blew many of them into the sky when it burst. The main battery was still slaughtering Grik, but ammunition was beginning to dwindle. Matt accepted that. When the Grik got too close, they’d be “under” his guns. Better use the ammo while they were bunched up at a distance. The machine guns would have to do when they got close. Walker had virtually no protection against boarders—or their muskets, which the Grik horde apparently possessed in considerable numbers. There were only the rail and the safety chains, and the crew was busily lashing mattresses to them, as many deep and as fast as they could. It didn’t look good, but it was clear by everyone’s attitude that there was no way the Grik would capture USS Walker while anyone aboard her lived.
“Captain!” cried Ed Palmer, catching up. He hadn’t bothered with a message form, but if he came in person, Matt knew he had important news.
“What’ve you got, Ed?”
Palmer gulped at the sight of the Grik, and a frown spread across his boyish face. He jerked his gaze away from the enemy. “Uh, Keje’s comin’. The whole fleet’s comin’. All we have to do is hold on.”
Matt shook his head. “I’d be happy to see the DDs, but what the devil is Keje doing, bringing Big Sal in the bay? I’d rather have her planes.” He gestured at the channel. “Besides, with the tide this low, I’m not sure he can even get Big Sal’s fat ass through the deep part!”
Palmer shook his head. “He’s not just coming for us. They’re going to land everybody and kill every Grik in the city!”
Matt rubbed his chin. “Okay. I guess that makes sense. No half measures anymore. I’m still worried about the channel, though.”
Palmer’s face fell. “No reason to be, sir.” He hesitated. “It’ll be a few hours before they can sort things out. Tide’s liable to have turned by then.”
Matt nodded. At least his friends weren’t being idiots, but that wouldn’t help Walker much in the short term. “Any good news?”
“Uh, yes, sir. They’ll keep as much air on the Grik here as they can. There might be a lull while they shift Amerika . . . but Mr. Laumer’s comin’ in.”
“What good can he do? His boats don’t have any guns.”
“No, sir, but he’s bringing us reinforcements and some mortars.”
“That’ll help,” Spanky grunted.
Matt noticed that Dennis Silva and Lawrence had drifted closer while he talked with Palmer, and that big Marine named Horn was with them. Petey was clutching Silva’s neck much like he had Sandra’s and Rebecca’s before him, but he didn’t seem nearly as relaxed as in the past. His head kept jerking toward the explosive sounds of the guns, and his eyes were huge, and constantly darting. Silva didn’t even seem to notice him now, and he was grinning that special, gap-toothed “Silva Grin,” that implied he thought he’d just come up with the greatest idea the world had ever known.
“Good Lord, Silva,” Matt practically groaned. “What’ve you got in mind?”
“Oh, nothin’, Skipper. Just a notion.”
Matt couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Spill it!”
Dennis shrugged, and gestured east with his chin. “Queen Maraan an’ Second Corps’ got the main Grik army facin’ off with her, right?”
Spanky nodded.
“We got what looks like the rest o’ the Griks in the city waddin’ up yonder to come tromp on us. . . .”
“What’s your point?”
“Why, somethin’ purty obvious. Hell, even my little lizard buddy here seen it before I did.” He ruffled Lawrence’s crest, and the Sa’aaran hissed at him. “With ever-body off fightin’ us, er getting ready to, I wonder who’s left downtown to babysit the Sequest’ral Momma?”
“He’s got a point, sir,” the Marine said earnestly. “But it might be a fleeting opportunity. When the whole fleet steams into the bay, the Grik are bound to pull something back, beef up that palace thing they keep her in. If we’re going to go, we need to do it soon!”
Matt looked hard at Silva. Did he know what he was asking? He nodded slightly to himself. Of course he did, despite that goofy grin. “What do you want to do?”
“I want one of the PTs when it gets here, a few sacks o’ grenades, a Thompson, and a BAR. I’ll leave my Doom Stomper here. You might need it. Oh, and I’d like to take a few fellas, if you can spare ’em.” He looked at Toryu Miyata. “Might need him too, o’ course. He knows a little of the layout, an’ has a idea where they might keep the puffed-up, lizardy queen,” Silva said.
Matt looked at Miyata, and the Japanese sailor jerked a tense nod. “Very well. What then?”
“Why, we haul ass straight to the dock in front of the palace, run in, an’ kill that big fat lizard bitch, once an’ fer all!”
“Lizard bitch!” Petey echoed querulously.
* * *
The arrival of what remained of Laumer’s little mosquito fleet, burbling up alongside Walker’s starboard quarter, must’ve stirred the Grik on shore to action. They probab
ly would’ve come soon at any rate; the tide was almost out. There remained only about thirty yards of water between the damp, sandy bar and the dry side of the ship that was now visible well below the boot topping, all the way down to where it curved away toward the keel. The Grik waved gaudy red and black pennants, bordered with macabre trinkets, and their impatient roar rose to a shattering crescendo. Suddenly, the strident, bellows-operated horns they relied on sounded the note everyone had come to dread: the signal to attack.
“Here they come,” Gray shouted, unnecessarily, pacing behind the sailors and Marines lining the mattress breastworks. With Irvin’s arrival, there were close to two hundred defenders now, about half armed with the 1903 Springfields the destroyermen had jealously guarded. A few Krags remained aboard, but most of the reinforcements were armed with the increasingly ubiquitous Allin-Silva breechloaders and a sprinkling of Blitzer Bugs. Long, triangular bayonets on the Allin-Silvas glistened occasionally in the beams of sunlight that avoided the smoke and the rapidly clouding late-morning sky.
Matt was standing with Sandra as Silva’s party clambered down the starboard side onto the waiting PT boat. He hadn’t even been surprised when she showed up, and couldn’t really summon any genuine anger either. Somehow, he’d known she would come. She always had. Anxious as he was for her and their unborn child, he knew that whatever they faced that day, they’d face together. It had been building to this, he guessed, since the very day they met. Chief Gray had been furious when he discovered that Diania had accompanied Sandra, however, and had ordered her back on one of the boats that would return to Big Sal. She refused. He did manage to get her armed (she hadn’t thought of that) and sent down to the wardroom where Sandra would take over as chief surgeon.
Silva’s shore party consisted of him, Horn, Lawrence, Pack Rat, and Isak Reuben—of all people—who’d just jumped down on the PT without permission. He had a Krag, and hadn’t paid any attention to Spanky’s orders to get back on the ship. He just kept muttering something about his boilers. Spanky gave up and quit yelling. Commander Herring had volunteered and was in nominal command, but everyone knew who would really be in charge. He stepped aside and said something to Ian Miles before joining the others, and the China Marine lance corporal just looked at him incredulously. Irvin already had sixteen Lemurian Marines crammed on the boat.
“They’ll need a doc!” Pam Cross shouted, running up with a Blitzer Bug slung over her shoulder, and pitching a backpack down to waiting hands.
“Not you, doll!” Silva roared back. “Not this time!” He’d been tugging at Petey, trying to get the little tree-gliding lizard to let go so he could toss him back to Sandra. Maybe Petey was too terrified, but he wouldn’t be budged. The harder Silva tugged, the deeper Petey’s claws sank through his T-shirt. Blood was starting to soak through. Pam stuck her tongue out at Dennis and glared at Sandra, daring the other woman to refuse her. Sandra just shook her head and looked away. What could she say? With her here, Pam had more real business going with Silva than Sandra had coming to Walker.
“Skipper?” Dennis demanded.
Matt took a breath, then shook his head as well. “She’ll be safer with you, Chief Silva,” he said at last. “Good luck to you all, and God bless.” He hesitated, as if he wanted to say more, but then turned toward the roaring Grik horde, now sprinting across the sandbar. “Get below,” he ordered Sandra, and strode toward the ’Cats and men who would defend his ship.
Pam climbed down and defiantly faced Silva, fishing in her pack. “Here, stupid. Fatso Lanier gave me this for you.” Dennis took a battered, stainless steel butter knife from her hand and looked at it, remembering. Up where the blade flared into the handle was a deeply inscribed U.S. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I got promises to keep.” Inwardly, he thought Captain Reddy might be right about Pam being safer with him, and he felt torn between an instinctive urge to defend his ship, his Home, and doing what he knew he had to do. Pam’s presence might complicate that, but there was no point arguing with her. With an artificial nonchalance, Dennis Silva took a last, long look at USS Walker. Abruptly, he turned to Ensign Hardee, standing at the wheel beside Irvin Laumer. “Let’s get on with it!” he grated. “What the hell are we waitin’ for now—the goddamn Easter Bunny?” Resignedly, he quit tugging at Petey and glared at the big eyes staring back at him. “Maybe you’ll be safer with us too, you little creep—or catch a sword swipe for me.”
“Creep!” Petey shrieked.
The twin six-cylinder engines rumbled noisily as the crowded boat backed away from the ship, her crew watching for snags in the shallow water. Above them, they heard Walker’s machine guns start to roar.
CHAPTER 26
////// USS Walker
Grik fell like dominoes under the withering fire of four machine guns lining the rail, and the twin 25-mm gun tubs in the waist. A downy fuzz rose above the charging swarm, mixed with spattered muddy sand, sprays of red, shattered weapons, and gobbets of flesh. White puffs of smoke rose as well, from matchlocks, sending whirring balls over the heads of the defenders, or flurries of mattress stuffing drifting downwind.
“Riflemen, hold your fire!” Matt yelled, when a couple shots answered the Grik. Crossbow bolts were starting to thump into the mattresses too, or sleet by overhead. The 4"-50s were still firing, spitting long tongues of flame, but they were having more and more trouble engaging the closest targets. They’d keep after those farther behind when they couldn’t depress their muzzles anymore. “At one hundred yards . . . ,” Matt continued, gauging the distance. He wanted his first volley to slam them. “Take aim!” he cried, echoed by the Bosun.
“Fire!”
It was impossible to miss. At least two hundred Grik fell with that first volley, the heavy 450-grain bullets of the .50-80-caliber Allin-Silvas often plowing through one target to hit another. The Springfields and Krags had a similar effect. The mortars Laumer brought began thumping, but their baseplates tended to skate across the ship’s steel deck, leaving scars in the paint, and their crews immediately started looking for ways to wedge them in place.
“Fire at will!” Matt roared, echoed by the Bosun and others. Then he drew his 1911 Colt and moved up beside Juan Marcos, who was busily working the bolt of his Springfield and selecting targets between competent shots. The one-legged Filipino had proven himself with a rifle before. Juan cursed when his bolt locked back, and he fished another stripper clip out of his ammo belt. Inserting it in the guide with practiced ease, he slammed the five .30-06 cartridges into the magazine with his thumb, tossed the clip away, and resumed firing. Matt peered over the mattresses and saw the Grik were still getting closer. The first volley must have slowed them, but they continued surging forward in “the same old way.” Scattered Blitzer Bugs ripped into them with dull buraaaps! and bodies literally poured into the shallow water alongside the old destroyer. There were no flasher fish yet, but Matt was sure they’d come. Unfortunately, there was no way they could eat the entire causeway of flesh that was beginning to form—not nearly as fast as the Grik built it with their own bodies.
“Campeti!” Matt roared at his gunnery officer, atop the amidships deckhouse. Campeti stuck his helmeted head over his own breastwork of mattresses to look down. “Sir?”
“Shift your machine-gun fire farther back! We’re helping them build their damn bridge! Have your riflemen do the same.”
“Aye, aye, Captain!”
“Boats!” Matt called aft. “Have the twin twenties chop ’em up farther from the ship!” Gray relayed the order with a nod, but then hurried to join his captain. “It’s not gonna do any good, Skipper. Look what them devils are doin’!”
Matt peered through a gap between the mattresses and the deckhouse. At first he didn’t understand. Then he did. As fast as dead and dying Grik fell in the water, others were hurling more, those killed behind, in on top of them! “Good God!” A big musket ball slapped the steel beside his face, dishing it in like
a hailstone on a car. The lead spattered, and hot fragments gouged his cheek. He reeled back.
“You okay Skipper?” Gray demanded. Matt nodded, touching his face. For the first time, he paused long enough to measure what they were taking. The tightly stuffed mattresses, at least doubled in most places, were absorbing the enemy projectiles amazingly well, and they quivered like live things under the onslaught. They couldn’t stop everything, however, and ’Cats in a steady trickle were limping or being carried forward toward the companionway to the wardroom. Half a dozen or more bodies lay where they’d fallen. Most of those had grisly head wounds, he noticed. A ball blew through and smacked against the number three funnel, reminding him that even the mattresses couldn’t hold up forever. “Cap-tan!” Juan called. “They’re nearly to the side of the ship! Right here below me!”
“Go, Boats. Round up anyone far enough aft that the Grik can’t reach and bring ’em forward! We’ve got to keep them off the ship!”
“Aye, aye, Skipper!” Gray growled, and trotted aft, keeping his head down. Matt heard a twin roar above his head and watched a pair of P-1 “Fleashooters” swoop down and scythe into the Grik mass with their own wheel pant–mounted Blitzer Bugs. The sound of their weapons was different from the handheld versions, and barely audible over their motors, but each plane left twin streaks of writhing Grik in their wakes as they pulled up and circled around for another pass. The Grik wailed in pain and terror, but aircraft didn’t have the same effect on them that they once had. Matt wondered about that. These particular Grik had probably never seen an airplane before. He shook his head. He needed Nancys right now, with their antipersonnel fragmentation firebombs! Where were the damn Nancys? A ’cat torpedoman, acting as a talker, had his headset plugged in at the mount. “Ask Mr. Palmer to find out where our air support has gone! We need bombs, not bullets. We’ve got plenty of bullets of our own!” he ordered.
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