“Goddamn it Billy! Don’t waste ammo on that floating junk heap! We can take her later with a boarding party, for Christ’s sake.”
“I don’t like the looks of her, sir. And there’s lots of men on that trader. All of ’em have guns.”
“Popguns! To hell with them. Get those pump boats.”
“Aye, sir.”
“What’s that on her deck? Those bales?”
“Look like bales to me, sir.”
“Take a closer look with your binoculars. Is that marijuana?”
“Hard to tell, sir, but it could be. Color’s about right.”
“All the more reason not to shoot her up, Billy. We can use that stuff—help pay for some of this damage at least. Six Thunders blown to hell! God knows what these Commie terrorists have done to the boat basin and the Balbal fort. Washington’s gonna be pissed, Billy. Mightily pissed.”
Shortly after Sortie, heavy weather, which had been building throughout the day, descended on the embattled vessels. Icy winds poured down at gale-force velocities from the white-edged, black-bellied anvil clouds gathered over the islands. These winds, which resemble Aleutian williwaws, are known locally as vientos azores (“hawk winds”), because of the speed and ferocity of their assault. Under their blast on this day, seas rose instantly in great, churning, conflicting surges, swamping pump boats and fast boats with impartiality. Two of the Millikan force’s Thunders went under with all hands. Many of the attacking pump boats survived, however, drifting awash with crewmen clinging to wooden hulls and outriggers until the winds moved off to the east. Fortunately, the yawl Seamark, making her way north out of harm’s way, was proceeding on engine power—had she been under sail, she would have been knocked down and swamped instantly. These winds, though, were just what the attack-force commander, Captain Katana, had been hoping for. It gave him the opportunity to lure the Millikan force farther to the north.
“Why the hell didn’t you open up on him when we had the chance?”
“The time wasn’t right, old man. If he’d seen we outgunned him, he’d likely have made tracks out of range. I want him well away from San Lázaro, up in the reefs of the Dangerous Ground, where he can’t turn tail and run from us. We’ll—ah, there he is, see him? He sees us, too. Yes, he’s coming on, old son. Just the way we want him.”
* * *
Nonstop lightning, thunder as loud as naval gunfire, sheets of rain and seawater slashing ships and men with the impact of chilled bird shot, seas moving at speed in all directions, colliding, erupting in bone-white bursts that stood frozen in the lightning glare, taller than mastheads; sudden rifts in the swirling black clouds, blue sky, hot sunlight turning the water milky green where it wasn’t white, glimpses of Balbal emerald-green and silver with the flailing undersides of coco fronds. Seamark tossed, bucked, rolled her masts nearly to the wave tops, throwing Miranda to the bitter end of the lifeline she’d tied to the rudderpost. The harness bit deep into her back, but she kept her grip on the helm while the big dog crouched with wide-planted paws on the cockpit’s leaping deck, his eyes grave through wet-matted hair, riding it out, weathering it. To the west the Moro Armado rolled rail to rail, her blunt bow scooping green water and catapulting it aft, over the pilothouse, where Millikan stared through binoculars into the chaos ahead . . .
“There they are, Billy—030, about five hundred yards, maybe seven hundred. Right standard rudder.”
“In this sea, sir? We’re damn near on our beam ends now.”
“The sea’s coming every which way, I don’t see it makes any difference how we steer. And stop questioning my orders. Right standard fucking rudder!”
“Aye, sir. Helmsman, right standard fucking rudder. Steady on fucking 018, if you can hold her there.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Smirks in the gloom . . .
“Watch your language on my bridge, Billy! Goddamn it, that’s the third time we’ve seen them in the past half hour, and we’re not closing on them. What’re we making?”
“Turns for ten knots, sir.”
“That shit box can’t make ten knots. It can’t make five knots from the looks of her. What’s going on?”
“It’s these seas, sir. Maybe moving her along quicker than us? Who knows in seas like these.”
“Well, let’s get her. Now! Ring up all ahead flank.”
“Sir, this old engine, sir. She’ll tear herself apart at flank speed. We’ll—”
“Don’t question my orders, Gunner Torres! All ahead flank!”
“When’s the last time you pulled sea duty, Commodore?”
“None of your goddamn business. Just ten years ago, you insolent, mutinous son of a bitch.”
“Well, I refuse to destroy this vessel unless you put the order in the log, sir, and in writing to me personally.”
Millikan laid his hand on the butt of the .45-caliber model 1911A1A Colt automatic pistol holstered at his right hip, then saw that Torres had his own hand on a similar gun butt. A great following sea crashed over the gunboat’s fantail, and the ship shuddered, faltered, squatted scupper-deep in the confused and roaring combers. Her bow lifted skyward, corkscrewed sharply to starboard, her keel screaming. . . . Slowly she regained her feet.
“You have the conn, Mr. Torres,” the commodore said when the gunboat had struggled back to equilibrium.
“Aye, sir. Helmsman, I have the conn. Boatswain’s mate of the watch, enter that in the log. Time: 1523.”
As the first wave of hawk winds moved off to sea, small craft that had survived its fury began rejoining their mother ships. Those swamped but not sunk pumped their bilges or bailed by hand. As they did so, a predator in false colors moved sharklike among the disabled Thunders of the Millikan force. It was the Blue Thunder fast boat stolen early in the operation by Katana’s competent subordinate, Kasim Ali of Jolo, the Samal sea raider whose men comprised most of Katana’s pump-boat fleet. His pilot was the renegade American known as Curt Hughes, late of the Millikan force. Kasim sought out those swimming Tausuqs and crippled Thunders that lay helpless in the water, pumping out or trying to start their waterlogged engines. He destroyed them without mercy.
“A la derecha, Brusco. Pronto, pronto. Más rápidamente.” The Thunder spun to its right, and Curt saw the target—another fast boat spewing white gushers from its bilge pumps, the two-man crew emptying buckets of water over the sides, oblivious of approaching danger. Kasim was calling him Brusco and it took Curt a while to figure it out. Then he got it. Brusco is Spanish for ‘abrupt’—or ‘curt.’ They found they could communicate okay in Spanish. Kasim was all right. But Christ, what a killer . . .
“Despacio, mas despacio. Sí, bueno,” Fifty yards now, forty—the crewmen still unaware. Then one looked up. He smiled first—a helping hand!—saw the truth. Horror widened his eyes. He jumped for the M60, but before he could reach it, Kasim’s Lewis gun was hammering him, hammering the Thunder, chopping it to pieces. Curt brought their boat alongside the other, Kasim emptied the drum into the cockpit, then popped a stick grenade—smoky sizzle of the fuse—and tossed it into the enemy boat.
“Adelante!” Curt nailed the throttle, and they leapt ahead just as the grenade exploded. Behind him he saw the other Thunder break in half, explode as fire hit its fuel tanks.
Kasim laughed uproariously, then spotted swimmers in the water ahead—Tausuqs from a sunken boat. Dead meat before they knew it . . .
Only two Thunders made it back to the Moro Armado. They reported another fast boat still afloat behind them, pumping out when they last saw it, and possibly a fourth heading up from the south to assist it. Moro Armado, known irreverently among the saltier members of the Millikan force as the Albino Armadillo, was gaining now on Bloedig-Feeks. Seas were settling fast, but occasional gusts and swirling low clouds still swept down from the heights of Balbal. That island now lay astern on Armadillo’s quarter, and the eponymous prison island of Moro Armado dead abeam. It appeared deserted from the vantage point of Armadillo’s bridge, no boats at anchor or
alongside in Narr Lagoon. But the commodore did not have much time to reason why. (He did not know as yet that the camp commander, Balabatchi, had defected to the “other side” and removed the healthier, more combative and influential prisoners from the island, taking them to San Lázaro itself to provoke a popular rising.) The commodore was understandably concerned: each time a squall blew through, obscuring Bloedig-Feeks from his sight, she seemed to leap far ahead of him. At one point, toward the end of the main storm, he had her within half a mile’s range. Now she was at the very limit of his three-inch guns’ reach—nearly four miles. Then he would close again, to three miles, two and a half. Another squall. Back out to four miles. Now, though, with sunset only an hour or less away, he had her within the grasp of his guns.
“Put a shot over her bow, Billy.”
“Aye, sir. I’ll get the crew to the gunmount.”
“They’re not at their stations? Goddamn it, Billy, we’re at general quarters! Where the fuck are they?”
“I sent the crew below in shifts, sir, for a hot meal. We may have a long night ahead. You know what they say, sir. A stern chase is a long chase.”
“Bunch of goddamn pogy-bait pansies you’re making of them, Billy. Let ’em eat horse-cock sandwiches at their battle stations. Hot joe’s hot chow enough when you’re going into combat.”
The gun crew raced to its mount, trained out on the wake of the Bloedig-Feeks. Torres, down at the gunmount, cranked in some more elevation. Shell loaded, breech closed and locked. Fire. The splash fell astern of Bloedig-Feeks, a bit to the left.
“Add fifty, right seventy-five,” Billy told the trainer.
Fire again. Still short, but on line this time.
“Add twenty-five.”
Fire. Over, about five yards. The splash threw water back on Bloedig-Feek’s bow.
“Drop ten. Fire.”
This time the splash was fifty yards astern of the trader, fifteen yards to the right.
“What the hell’s going on? You had her bracketed! Now get on her, Billy, and pound her. To hell with that marijuana—I want that cracker box in slivers. Now!”
“I think she speeded up, sir. Just before we fired that last time.”
“Just shoot, Billy. Hit her!”
And so it went for half an hour—Moro Armado expending ammunition in a futile attempt to lay just one round on the fragile wooden hull of its jinking, stutter-stepping, seemingly helpless target. Each time Katana saw the gunboat’s forward crew loading, he increased or reduced the Q-boat’s speed. His exec, former Chief Boatswain’s Mate James Francis Culdee, USN, had the helm. An accomplished ship handler and Korean War Bronze Star winner, Culdee managed with each change of speed to slip Venganza subtly to starboard or port. This totally confused Gunner Torres and his crew. As for Commodore Millikan, never a calm man at best, it reduced him to a state approaching apoplexy.
With dark fast approaching and the radar he’d ordered from BuOrd in Washington still not installed, he knew he must make use of the remaining daylight or run the risk of losing his prize. As this game of ducks and drakes proceeded—Armadillo’s three-inch shells skipping futilely off water where the enemy should have been but wasn’t—both ships were fast approaching the reef-studded waters of Dangerous Ground, just east of Perniciosa Island. The sun was settling fast on the horizon. Captain Katana excused himself from the schooner’s fantail and went below to the cabin. Boatswain Culdee conned the ship into the entrance of Dangerous Ground’s tortuous channel.
When Katana returned, he was dressed in the crisp, high-collared whites of an officer of the late Imperial Japanese Navy. The crest on his cap was the gold, sixteen-petal chrysanthemum of the emperor. From his left side swung a long, sheathed samurai sword.
“Now, my old friend, we are ready for battle.”
“And about time,” Boatswain Culdee replied.
The sun hung red and fat, shifting shape as it dropped toward the horizon. No wind. Heaving seas. The evening star, to the east, was green. Seamark lay beyond the Dangerous Ground, hove to while Miranda pumped her bilges. She could not bring herself to leave just yet, not until she knew the outcome of the battle. All day she’d heard the booming of Millikan’s guns. No reply from Venganza. She had navigated the nightmare channel through reefs and coral heads with infinite skill and every bit of seamanship she owned. Checking the bilges, she found no leaks, just the water laid there by the hawk winds. Coming topside she stared to the west, back into the channel, into the setting sun. Two black shapes were moving slowly, twisting and turning through the ball-peened glare of sunset. Smaller, quicker shapes accompanied them—the Thunders. One was definitely with Venganza—Kasim and Curt had lasted. The first of the larger shapes was certainly the Venganza: Miranda recognized the low schooner profile and high sheer as the boat turned into the widening exit of the channel. Then Venganza heeled sharply to port. Rounded up. And stopped. She saw men pulling the tarpaulin from Sôbô’s gun. And suddenly she saw what he had been aiming at all along.
“Why the hell we stopping here?” Culdee asked. “We’re barely out of the coral.”
“Surely you know why, old man?” Sôbô smiled, but his eyes were hard black stones. “Surely you recognize the beauty of it, the classic structure, the wonderful inevitability? We’ve crossed his bloody T! All of our guns bear on him. Only his forward guns bear on us. Togo at Tsushima! Oldendorf at Surigao! Classic!”
Culdee looked, smiled, and laughed out loud. “You have. Let’s hit ’em now. Hard.”
“Keep the conn if you would, Boatswain. I’ll serve the gun. Just hold her on the engines, right here, across the channel mouth.”
Sôbô walked forward, no haste, his whites almost phosphorescent in the eerie light of sunset.
Beautiful, Culdee thought. There’s three vengeances at work here. Miranda’s on that guy Curt. Mine on Turner. And Sôbô’s on the whole U.S. Navy. This is Surigao in reverse. Miniaturized, sure, but the same setup. Only this time Sôbô is Jesse Oldendorf. And Turner is Admiral Nishimura. Beautiful . . .
Two Thunders shot forward through the last light, away from Armadillo, up the last hundred yards of the channel. The schooner lies broadside, their intent is obvious. Hit her hard, rake her fore and aft with machine-gun fire, with 40-millimeter grenades from the stubby M79 launchers. Then board her and bolo what’s left of the crew.
Flames leapt from the forward hatch of the schooner. A great white-hot gout of water threw one Thunder’s bow sideways. Her motor overrevved and exploded in a chuff of white smoke. Dead in the water. The Tausuq crewmen stared at one another, mouths gaping. The second round blew the fast boat to bits, the Tausuqs along with it . . .
“What’s that?”
“A gun, sir. A big one. Up there on the forward hatch. It was under that tarp.”
“That sneaky bastard! We—”
“Won’t help to bitch, sir. We’d better get out of here. He’s got more gun than we’ve got.”
“What do you mean? We can’t get out of here! Back down through this goddamn channel? What makes you think he’s got more gun?”
“That’s a five-inch, sir . . . I know the sound.”
“Well, hit him, Billy. That’s a wood hull. Hit him with the three-inch. Hit the sneaky yellowbelly before he hits us.”
Here it comes, Culdee thought. He flinched involuntarily at the flash from Moro Armado’s bow. The shell exploded on Venganza’s fo’c’sle, starting fires and sending splinters flying. Sôbô fired from up forward again—good, the gun’s okay. Sôbô’s round smashed the gunboat’s pilothouse, taking off half of it in a great blinding flash.
Moro Armado’s second round hit the schooner’s cabin roof. Gone. Splinters stung in Culdee’s arm.
A Thunder bellowed out of the dark, machine guns winking. Bullets ripped along the schooner’s gunwales. Bales of marijuana jumped at the impact. Men screamed. Small-arms fire stabbed at the Thunder, but she was gone. A grenade blew on the ruined bow.
Sôbô’s gun fired, the
flame ten feet long. The Moro Armado was slewed half-sideways now, nudging toward the coral, and the 4.7 round smashed her after gunmount. Culdee saw it wrench up and backward in the flash, the gun crew in fragments.
He couldn’t see Millikan’s remaining Thunder, but their own fast boat was alongside, under the lee of the schooner, away from Moro Armado’s gunfire. Kasim was yelling to Sôbô. Sôbô leaned down toward him, pointed toward the Moro Armado, chopped the air. Kasim nodded, grinning. Boarding party! Culdee saw Curt, dull-eyed and white in the glare of the fire now blazing on Venganza’s bow. Then they were gone . . .
Then they were back—no, it was the other Thunder, Millikan’s, loaded to the gunwales with Tausuqs off the Moro Armado. Culdee ducked away from the muzzle flashes of their guns. The Thunder thumped alongside. Tausuqs over the rail—bolos flashing—another boarding party. Theirs.
Culdee saw a Tausuq swinging at him. He ducked, and smashed the man with his right fist, felt bone snap, then drew his pistol with his left hand. An awkward cross-draw. Shot Tausuq in the face. Splat. Red hole.
Sôbô fired . . . a hit between wind and water. Red flames shot from Moro Armado’s engine room.
The Moro Armado fired again. Culdee felt the deck lift under his feet, then sag. Venganza lost way. Her engines, too, were gone now. A fire blazed down below, flames licking through the companionway hatch. He used the last of the schooner’s way to nudge her bow well up on the coral berm of the channel. She ground up over it, growling deep in her guts, her timbers yelping like a pack of hounds. She stopped, aground. But the channel was blocked now. There was no way out for either boat.
The two heavies lay not a hundred yards apart, exchanging gunfire.
Culdee, crouched low, played a fire extinguisher on the flames from the companionway. He moved down as they died down, forcing the fire back deeper, deeper, until rising water from the shattered hull killed it altogether. Then he crawled back topside. An AK from one of the dead Moros was lying nearby. He checked it—loaded, intact. He rested it over the body of the Tausuq he’d killed and began firing single shots at the burning Moro Armado. Something roared out of the dark—Kasim’s boat. Curt was slumped in its cockpit, blood dark on his face.
Blood Tide Page 25