“Just give it a chance,” urged Ben. “It’ll grow on you.”
“Like a great, hideous tumor, I suspect,” retorted the ’Cat. They all laughed. Suddenly there was a sound like heavy gravel being thrown hard against the plane’s aft fuselage, followed by a high-pitched shriek.
“What the hell!”
“Plane! Plane! Behind us shooting!” came the panicked cry from one of the Lemurians in the waist.
“Shoot back at him!” Mallory bellowed as he instinctively shoved the oval wheel forward to the stop. With the nose pointed at the sea—too close—he slammed the throttles forward and began banking right. He had no idea what was on their tail except it must have come from Amagi. That meant it was an observation plane of some sort and had to be dragging floats. The thing was, the Japanese had seaplane versions of almost all their first-line fighters—including the notorious Zeke. If that was what was after them . . . All he could do was what he’d done. The dope coming out of China and the Philippines was that the Zeke couldn’t dive, and if it did it had a hard time turning right against the torque of its radial engine. “Ed,” he shouted over the roar of engines, the rattling moan of the stressed airframe and the screech of terrified Lemurians, “get an eyeball on that guy and see what we’re up against!”
Palmer dragged himself aft and upward. It seemed like forever before he reached the waist gunner’s compartment, but when he did, he was greeted by a dreadful sight. Daylight streamed through a dozen bullet holes in the ceiling of the compartment and he knew there were probably many more aft. The Plexiglas in the starboard observation blister was shattered and a hurricane of wind swirled around him. There were brains spattered all over the forward bulkhead and the deck, and blood seemed to have been smeared over every surface with a mop. The dead Lemurian was sprawled in the middle of the aisle, his partner curled in a fetal position on the port side of the bulkhead, rocking back and forth and emitting a keening moan. Ed barely controlled his reflex to retch and snatched the headset off the live Lemurian. “Snap out of it!” he yelled, somewhat shakily. He leaned into the intact blister. First he looked down—he couldn’t help it—at the rapidly approaching water. He was no pilot, but he damn sure would have been pulling up by now. He took a deep breath and faced aft. Nothing but sky. Their maneuver should have caused their pursuer to overshoot and dump some speed before trying to match their turn. He should have been able to see it.
More “gravel” slammed into the plane. Many of the impacts were quieter that the first and he felt them more than heard them. They must have been in the wings. A final burst sounded directly overhead and it ended with an explosion of sound up forward.
“Goddamn it! What the hell is he?” Mallory screamed.
Ed lunged to the shattered blister, his hat instantly disappearing in the slipstream. Through squinted and watering eyes, he caught a glimpse of a winged shape swerving from starboard to port. He leaped back across the dead Lemurian and finally caught a good view of their tormentor. “It’s a biplane,” he cried into his borrowed microphone, incredulously. “Radial engine and three floats. One big one under the fuselage and two smaller ones under the wings. I swear to God it looks like a Stearman with floats! Two crew—pilot and spotter. The spotter has a gun too.” Ed grabbed hold of the .50-caliber machine gun in its pintle mount and prepared to open fire. There were flashes of light from the Japanese spotter’s gun before the plane began to bank toward them for another run. The PBY had the lead in their race to the deck, but the biplane was almost as fast and much more agile. Ed looked behind him for an instant, checking to see if the gun in the damaged blister was okay. He blinked. “Uh, Ben . . . I see smoke. Are we on fire?”
Even as Ben’s mind absorbed Ed’s report and he realized they were under attack by a lowly “Dave” or, to be more specific, a Nakajima Type 95, at present he was too busy to respond with anything more than “Shoot him!” He was trying to pull the big plane out of the dive he’d put it in while listening to the starboard engine, almost directly over Tikker’s head, tear itself apart.
“Help me with the stick, Tikker! We’ve gotta get her nose back up!”
“Yes, yes!” agreed the copilot. “But the engine!” Everything Ben had taught him flew in the face of what they were doing right now.
“I know,” Ben yelled to be heard over the calamitous uproar, “but we can’t pull out with only one engine.” He motioned over his head while he pulled back on the wheel. “I think the Japs must’ve knocked a jug off her—a cylinder. That’s what that god-awful racket is, a piston flailing around, on the loose, banging the crap out of the jugs on either side.” He shook his head and snorted, an almost rueful expression joining his clenched-teeth concentration. “I wouldn’t have thought a Dave would have the firepower to do that.”
“That kill engine?” Tikker asked nervously, looking up at the clattering monstrosity mere feet above his head. Oil was leaking everywhere, running back along the wing, spraying from the cowling, pouring a growing stream of gray-white smoke.
“Maybe,” Ben replied. “Right now I just hope it has enough horsepower to keep us from getting wet!” From behind them, they heard the staccato and felt the vibration of one of the .50s opening up. He glanced nervously up at the engine and then at the gauges. Temperature was through the roof, oil pressure was nonexistent. RPMs were dropping . . . He looked at the altimeter and saw it was no longer spinning. With a sigh, he realized they’d begun to level off. Now, if they could shake or shoot down the enemy plane, they’d be all right. He began to give the order to shut down the starboard engine when it suddenly erupted in a bright fireball of greasy yellow flames.
“Shit!” screamed Tikker. “Fire! Fire! We on fire! We burn! Goddamn!”
“Cut the fuel!”yelled Ben. “Activate the fire extinguisher and feather the prop!”
Tikker quickly obeyed. He closed the valve that allowed fuel to flow to the burning engine and hit the extinguisher, but in growing panic he scanned the control panel.
“I cut fuel and use extinguisher like you tell me—like you show me! But you never show me feathers for prop!”
If Ben hadn’t been so terrified, he would have laughed. As it was, he simply reached over and feathered the prop himself and watched while the blades turned edge-on, somewhat reducing the drag of the now dead engine. Thankfully, the flames had almost entirely flickered out as well. A fuel line must have been hit too, and as fuel and oil sprayed on the increasingly hot engine . . . Ben and Tikker both sighed with relief when the last tendrils of flame disappeared. One disaster averted. Now what? Throughout the battle in the cockpit, they’d heard intermittent firing from aft and Ben wondered how Ed’s battle was going. So far, the enemy had scored no further hits, but they were still on the defensive. That didn’t sit well with Mallory’s personality or fighter training. The question was, what else could they do? He glanced at the airspeed indicator; with the port engine at full throttle, they were barely hovering around ninety knots. He thought a Type 95 could do about a hundred and fifty, so they weren’t going to outrun him.
He berated himself. That’s exactly what he should have done from the start, if he’d known what was after them. The Japanese pilot must have used their leisurely exploration of the enemy fleet to work himself into what he thought was a one-chance attack. If Ben had thrown the throttles to the stops and slowly climbed, they would have had a forty-knot and ten-thousand-foot advantage. As it was, he, Lieutenant Benjamin Mallory, trained fighter pilot, had been bested in his first aerial combat by what was essentially an obsolete trainer with floats. It didn’t matter that he’d assumed the enemy was far more capable. He shouldn’t have assumed anything. Hindsight could hurt.
“Ed,” he called over the intercom.
“Thanks for remembering me,” came the sarcastic reply. “I see you have at least stopped our uncontrolled plummet to the sea and the smoke’s not quite as bad.”
“Sorry about that,” Ben replied in his best upper-crust British accent. “One of
our engines developed a bit of a . . . stitch and we thought it best to let it rest a while. We only have one other one, you know.” His voice turned serious. “What’s our troublesome little friend been up to?”
“He’s been coming in on our flanks, trying to get an angle on our engines, I guess. His last few tries have been to port. I guess he knows the other one’s out.”
“How are things back there?”
“One of the gunners is dead. I’ve been alone back here most of the time. I finally got the other one to snap out of it and he’s doing okay. I think he got a piece of the bastard on his last attack. He’s on the port side. Starboard’s a little unpleasant.”
“Understood.”
“Other than that, things are about the same. We’re a long way from home and almost out of ammo.”
“Can the gunner back there handle things for now?”
“Well . . . I guess.”
“Good. Then I want you in the nose turret.”
“The nose turret! Ben, this guy hasn’t come anywhere near the nose since he started.”
“That’s about to change. Give all your bullets to the port gunner and tell him to hammer away the next time that Jap gets in range. He’s got all the bullets in the world, got it?”
“Sure, but . . .”
“That’s when I’m going to lower the wing floats.”
“What! Damn, Ben! That’ll just slow us down even further. We’ll be sitting ducks!”
“No, listen! If he thinks we’re about to set down, he’ll pull out all the stops. He has to shoot this plane down to destroy it. Once we’re down, he can shoot at it till he runs out of fuel or bullets—which he has to be getting low on—and not do any appreciable damage unless he gets another lucky hit on an engine. Besides, he’s bound to know our marksmanship would improve dramatically. Hitting a moving target from a stationary one is a lot easier than moving versus moving.”
“Are we going to land on the water?”
“Not unless we have to,” Ben confessed.
“Why not? It sounds like the perfect plan. We’d have all the advantages. If we don’t shoot him down, we just wait till he flies away.” Ben cleared his throat.
“We set down only if we have to. Honest to God, I don’t think I can get this crate off the water with one engine. Half the time I don’t know how I do it with two. You keep forgetting—I’m not a seaplane pilot. I’m still making most of this up as I go.”
Ed groaned. “Okay, Ben. I’m with you. And here comes our little friend, right on cue.”
“Get in the nose, Ed. As soon as he starts shooting, I’m lowering the floats. Anything could happen after that.”
Ed rushed forward. When he arrived, he was reminded just how much he hated the nose turret. It was built for guys a lot smaller than he was and it seemed like a stupid design. He had actually given it a lot of thought and believed he could have come up with something better. The first change would have been the emplacement of something more powerful than a measly .30-cal. It might have been a little cramped with a .50, but they could get a smaller guy. If they got a smaller guy to work the plane’s radios and help with navigation, that would be fine too. He put on the headset and racked the bolt, chambering a round.
“Aaaa-eeesh!” cried the gunner in the waist. “I chop him up good that time! Shoot up tail! Maybe kill gunner. Get even for my friend!”
“Where’d he go?” questioned Ben.
“Straight out, away. Direction . . . nine . . . nine clocks?”
“You get that, Ed? I think it’s working. Keep your eyes peeled.”
“I got it.” Palmer strained his eyes through the cloudy Plexiglas. The plane and all its components had been through so much, looking for a plane through the turret was like looking for a minnow in four feet of murky water.
In any event, it took much longer than any of them expected for the Dave to get around in front of them. Maybe it was being careful, or maybe it truly was damaged and had lost some speed. Whatever the reason, when Ed first saw the enemy plane, it was already closer than they’d hoped to spot it, but it was doing exactly what they’d expected: going for the PBY’s remaining engine from the front.
“There he is,” Ed announced, more calmly than he felt. “I can’t judge distance through this crummy glass, though. You’re going to have to tell me when he’s in range.”
“Uh, he’s already shooting at us, so whenever you’re ready . . .”
“Have you seen this can of ammo down here?” he demanded hotly. “This one can of ammo? I need him closer!” A few bullets began to strike the plane.
“He’s getting closer!”
“Just a few more seconds!” Ed could see the plane clearly now. If it was damaged aft, he couldn’t tell, but it was coming straight in, yellow flashing from its single forward firing machine gun. More bullets were hitting the PBY and Ben’s voice grew more insistent. Even Tikker’s voice rose in an indignant shriek. Ed paid no attention—even when one bullet grazed the curved Plexiglas mere inches in front of his face. He was concentrating on the sights. They were crude and pretty much limited to known ranges, but he aimed carefully at the steady target of the biplane’s round engine, raised the sights a little, and started to fire. He wasn’t using short bursts like he ought to have; he was trying to hose out a solid wall of lead that the seemingly flimsy biplane couldn’t survive. Evidently, by the sounds of impact, that’s what the enemy hoped as well.
Finally, exultantly, he saw a flash and a gout of smoke erupt from the Dave’s engine, and the plane seemed to wobble as if the pilot was struggling for control. Ed let out a whoop, but an instant later the firing pin in the .30-cal snapped on an empty chamber. “I’m out!” he yelled over the comm.
“Relax,” shouted Ben in return. It sounded like he was talking over a hurricane. “He must be empty too, or you wrecked his gun.”
Ed studied the oncoming plane. Sure enough, the shooting had stopped . . . but why was he still coming on? The Japanese pilot was clearly having trouble keeping the plane in the air. He ought to have been headed for the deck where he could set down on the water and call for help. The last thing in the world he should be doing was struggling to maintain altitude and trying to keep his nose pointed right at the PBY as the distance between them closed . . . Ice water poured down Ed Palmer’s back. “He’s gonna ram us!” he shouted. “The crazy bastard’s gonna ram us with his plane!”
“Where is he?” Ben’s voice sounded almost as panicked as his own. “The windscreen is gone! All I’ve got is my sunglasses, but blood keeps getting in my eyes. Tikker doesn’t even have sunglasses! You have to tell me, Ed!”
“Oh, God! . . . Okay! He’s eleven o’clock low, so I doubt you’d see him over my turret anyway. We’re closing pretty fast, so whatever you do, do it now!”
In the space of an instant, Ben Mallory made up his mind. Up and away would make them a bigger, slower target. Up and toward might do the same thing, but it was better. Down and away was probably the worst choice he could make. It would give the enemy time to fine-tune his aim. No, down and toward would surprise the enemy and he’d have no time to adjust. “Hold on!” he screamed.
Ed watched it all from the confines of the turret, almost removed somehow from the trauma of the moment. When Ben actually turned toward the suicide plane, his panic reached a point of almost surrealistic calm. Analytical. He thought he knew what Ben was trying to do and whether it was inspired by madness or brilliance he didn’t know, but it seemed to be working. Suddenly, the Type 95 was clearly visible trailing smoke and angling for the spot the PBY would have been in just a few seconds. The big bright red circles clearly contrasted with the dark green paint. Ed almost thought he could see the pilot’s face. It looked like they were clear. Then, with a tight, rolling maneuver that the big flying-boat could never match, the agile biplane flipped on its back, the light gray bottom of its big central float flashing in the sun, and slanted toward them again. Even if he’d had time to warn Mallory, he wouldn’t
have known what to say.
Someone must have warned him, or maybe he saw it himself, because the Catalina suddenly banked right as hard as he’d ever felt it—back toward the enemy again—but this time it was too little, too late. Ed closed his eyes when he felt the jarring impact and saw the first flash of the fireball.
It was midafternoon when Walker steamed into Baalkpan Bay and the usual midday squall had just passed. By the time they gazed upon the city in the steamy light, they could clearly see the many changes that had been made since they’d left. Fort Atkinson loomed above them at the harbor entrance; its big guns with their gaping mouths would be a formidable deterrent to a rational enemy. But the Grik weren’t rational. They would be slaughtered, but chances were they’d get past the fort.
Around the city, they saw a high earthen rampart, reinforced with heavy timbers and faced by obstacles and entanglements on both sides of a wide moat. More heavy guns poked from embrasures and there was good killing ground before them. While they watched, work was under way to reinforce the overhead protection beyond the rampart—particularly over the guns. Pointless against Amagi’s main battery, of course, but it might help against secondaries or fragments. Beyond the fortifications, Matt saw little change to the city he’d come to think of almost as home, but the fortifications themselves made a profound difference.
In the distance, tied to the old fitting-out pier, was Mahan. A wisp of smoke coiled from her number one stack and she seemed to be nearly half covered by Chief Gray’s new light gray paint scheme. Matt knew Jim wouldn’t be goofing around with paint if a lot of his ship’s other issues hadn’t already been resolved.
By contrast, if the city and its surroundings looked different now than they had when Walker led the Allied Expeditionary Force to raise the siege of Aryaal, the destroyer had changed just as much. Gone was her own dazzling light gray paint. Instead, the elderly ship was almost a uniform orange color, with heavy, darker streaks down her sides. Harsh red rust shone through the smoke-blackened sections, and the large numbers, 163, that had stood so tall and proud at her bow were nearly obliterated. Clusters of splinter wounds and a few larger holes were visible in her flanks, and streams of water coursed over the side as beleaguered pumps struggled to force it out of the overloaded, battered hull. Alone she would have been a dismal, dispiriting sight, but the hundreds of hollow-eyed, bedraggled Lemurians packing her top-heavy deck gave testimony to the greater tragedy.
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