The skipper finally came up on Tactical Four.
“Okay, you guys, we can’t wait for the whole gang. Forget the battlewagons—we can’t hurt them with these popcorn bombs. We might be able to give those cruisers a bloody nose, though. Any more bombers up?”
Two more Dauntless pilots checked in. Max, who was flying a fighter armed with rockets, told Mick to take charge of the bombers and to roll in on the lead cruiser. He’d take the fighters to the rear of the cruiser column and make a rocket attack.
“Drop your whole load, guys, and then make one more pass with fifties. Aim for those pagoda structures. Kill the bridge officers, maybe we can slow ’em up.”
“Roger that, Skipper,” Mick said. “But these little bombs aren’t going to do shit.”
“We’re buyin’ time here, Mick. They don’t know you’ve got little bombs.”
“Wilco,” Mick said and then shifted his three-pack of Dauntless dive bombers onto Tactical Two. He gave a quick briefing for the two nuggets who were flying against the Jap varsity for the very first time.
“They’ve covered their topside decks with twenty-five-millimeter guns for AA work,” he told them. “That’s like a fifty-cal times two. We’ll roll in from ahead. Try to pull out directly on top—don’t get out on either side, because that’s where the teeth are.”
“Pickle when?”
“Angels three,” Mick said. “If your guns bear, shoot while you’re pulling out. It keeps the AA crews occupied. Arm your toys.”
Four minutes later they arrived within gun range of the lead heavy cruiser, whose forward turrets were firing perfectly timed salvos at the distant CVE formation. They knew they were in AA gun range because tracers began reaching for them through the patchy clouds below. As they circled into attack position, Mick switched back to Tactical Four and told Max they were rolling in on the lead cruiser.
“Roger that,” Max called. “Boss says they’ve been hit three times and are losing way. She may not be there when we get back, so we may have to go find Taffy Two.”
“You got pigeons?”
“Boss says pigeons to Taffy Two are one three zero for forty miles,” Max said. “He thinks, anyway. We’re right behind you, going for tail-end Charlie.”
“Roger, roger, here we go,” Mick said and switched back to Tactical Two. “Okay, Breakfast Clubbers, on your backs, on your bellies, aiming for the anchors.”
Mick rolled inverted and began pulling on the stick as the horizon spun in his windshield. Sky-sea horizon line, then all sea, then black dashes with white wakes, each dash getting bigger as the altimeter unwound. When his nose was settled on the bow of the lead ship, now easily defined as a heavy cruiser busy shooting at his carrier, he split his flaps to steady the dive and concentrated on the pointy end. No circling carriers here, just a sleek-looking cruiser focused on carrier-killing while sending streams of hot red and white tracers up in his direction.
At five thousand feet he dropped the nose sharply and then at three thousand pickled his load of baby bombs. He had to pull hard to avoid driving his Dauntless through their bridge windows. As the g’s built up he struggled to keep his injured hand tight on the stick, and then he felt a popping under his glove and a sensation of wetness that hadn’t been there when he started down. For a brief instant the pagoda bridge structure had been visible, and he’d fired a burst from his fifties for as long as he could see it. His eyeballs were dragging under the g-load, so he couldn’t tell if he’d hit anything.
He pulled out no more than five hundred feet over the cruiser. He couldn’t see what if any effect his bombs had had, but it hardly mattered. Even if he had hit her, they’d mostly bounce off, with maybe a few topside AA gunners out of action if one dropped directly on a gun tub. He flew a jinking pattern straight out the cruiser’s wake and then realized he was headed right for the next one. He saw a fighter drop out of the sky and unleash a barrage of five-inch rockets at the back of the cruiser line before pulling left out of his dive and right into the cruiser’s full starboard-side AA barrage. An instant later he went into the sea in a ball of fire.
Mick had one split second to decide: Strafe number two or pull out? He jinked right and pulled up, not knowing whether or not there were more fighters rolling in on the column. One of the nuggets came up on Tac Four.
“You hit him and I hit him, Mick,” he said, “but he’s still crankin’.”
“Follow me back up,” Mick said. “Angels eight. Where’s Benny?”
“Right here, Mick. You guys started a fire, but she’s still bangin’ away down there. We gonna hit her again?”
“You bet,” Mick said. “Same deal—come in from dead ahead, strafe her ass down the whole length. Then we’ll go find us some real bombs.”
They regrouped at eight thousand feet, out of range of most of the twenty-five-millimeter AA that was still streaming off the two cruisers. The lead cruiser had a fire going amidships, but it didn’t look too serious. The second cruiser had fallen out of line for some reason and was no longer firing at the jeeps, but the next three in the line were blazing away. Mick could still see those much larger ships in the distance to the northwest, black blobs that flashed yellow and red once a minute like some lethal clockwork.
It took three minutes to get back into position to reattack the lead cruiser. Mick examined his right hand. There was watery-looking blood leaking out of his glove and down his right forearm. He considered taking the glove off but then thought better of it. Strangely, now it didn’t hurt very much.
“Okay, boys,” he said. “Roll in, steady up as soon as you can, and start shooting at three thousand feet. Short bursts until you’re on target, then give it to ’em. Pull out on the deck and fly a snake dance straight down the wake. Gaggle-up at angels eight.”
Mick put his right hand back on the stick. It felt spongy now, but at least it gripped the stick when he told it to. He slipped his oxygen mask aside for a moment and took a sniff. For the first time, he detected the odor of rot. He’d never smelled gangrene before, but, as in one’s first encounter with a rattlesnake, he recognized it when he smelled it.
That’s not good, he thought, but then had to start jinking hard to avoid a barrage of banging AA shells.
He went back on the mask and rolled in again. It seemed a little easier this time, and from ahead, anyway, there also seemed to be less AA fire. He could see smoke arising from amidships on his target, but it was white, not black. Something combustible but not vital. Or maybe steam?
He took it down to two thousand instead of three. He’d told the nuggets to start shooting at three to give them time to get their lineup right. He had done this before. He waited until he was about a mile and a half in front of the cruiser and then opened up full throttle, walking the short-burst shell splashes from his fifties from the water directly in front of her bow and then across her foredeck and into that weird, castle-like structure of her forward superstructure. He held the stream of tracers for a dangerous few seconds right at the level of the bridge windows, watching the rounds pummel the glass and seeing ricochets flashing out the bridge wings from inside. At the last possible moment he flipped the Dauntless on her side and flew past the bridge of the ship in a full left-ninety bank to avoid collision. He blasted out from behind the cruiser and then dropped down to the deck, jinking hard right and then left to avoid the sudden stream of AA tracers. He heard a couple of pings on the hull of the aircraft and actually felt something hit the armored seat back, but then he was clear and climbing back for altitude.
While he waited for the nuggets, he switched frequencies and called Max. There was no answer. He tried the other fighters, but they weren’t up, either. He checked the radio dial to make sure he’d picked the right freq and then went back to his nuggets. They were still with him.
“I can’t raise the skipper,” Mick said. “So let’s go back to mother and see if she’s still floating. If not, we’ll go find Taffy Two and rearm.”
They rogered as they form
ed up on him. Both declared that they were out of gun ammo. Down below the first cruiser was still going, but her guns had, for now anyway, fallen silent. The tail-end cruiser, which Max and his fighters had rocketed, was headed northeast, apparently out of the fight for the moment. Mick couldn’t see any smoke or fires, but she was definitely leaving the party. He looked for the Madison Bay up ahead but was unable to pick her out among the jeeps, who were still going as fast as they could to the east-southeast, pursued by shell splashes and clouds of funnel smoke. Mick switched to Madison Bay’s land-launch and called the tower.
Nothing.
Then he saw her, way behind the other CVEs. She was aflame from one end to the other and rolling over on her beam ends. He could see her hull number, emblazoned on the flight deck, through all the smoke. Two cruisers had closed into close range and were sportingly firing into the hulk as little black dots dropped into the sea from her side. He looked for Gambier Bay, the other jeep at the back of the formation, but couldn’t find her.
The three other carriers were still steaming south of east, out of the wind now, trying to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the wolves pursuing them. Mick realized there’d be no landing on any of them, and he still didn’t know exactly where the other Taffys were, or if they even knew what was going on back near Leyte Gulf. If he and his two nuggets took off on an Easter egg hunt, they could be out of the game for more than an hour.
“You guys know how to get to Tacloban?” Mick asked. They both rogered in the affirmative. The Army had captured that airfield a day after the initial landings. It was tiny, but they could get fuel and fifty-cal there, if nothing else.
“I’ve still got plenty of guns left. You guys head to Tacloban, get what you can, and get back out here.”
“Where you goin’?” Benny asked.
“Back down to break some more windows.”
Mick bent the Dauntless back down toward the Jap ships. His two wingmen rolled southwest to head for the Army airfield, which was actually inside Leyte Gulf. Mick saw the lead Jap cruisers leave Madison Bay to her fate and train their guns on the next nearest CVE, which was already making smoke from places other than her stacks. To the northwest he saw the battleships coming on through the line of squalls, getting bigger and bigger. Seeing that no one was shooting at him, Mick began a slow climb to get some more diving room and to take another look at his right hand.
Holding his stick with his knees as the Dauntless went up, he gingerly removed the sopping wet leather glove and sighed. The skin on the back of his hand had split like an overripe tomato, with deep cracks running all the way out to his knuckles. He could actually see tendons and the big vein that snaked across the back. Strangely, he felt no pain other than a general soreness, but then he saw what looked like a jagged red tattoo running up the underside of his forearm. He cracked his mask and then slid it right back on his face. No doubt about it—the gangrene monster had him by the arm, and that red snake progressing up his arm was not his friend.
He tried to get the glove back on, but that was hopeless. He scanned the instruments. Fuel, good enough. All the other dials were still standing at twelve o’clock, indicating ops normal. He knew the plane had been hit, but the nuggets hadn’t warned him of a fuel or oil stream, so he didn’t think he was leaking anything volatile, and the controls still worked. He had himself, probably one-third of his fifty-cal left, a working barge, and the world’s supply of fat targets.
What more could I want? he asked himself with a grin. Pick one, go get it.
Piece’a cake, he thought, remembering the major. He would have loved this shit. His right hand felt like a warm sponge. He decided to ignore it.
FIFTEEN
A really dark rainsquall was blowing across the sea to their west, and Marsh turned Evans toward it to try to hide for a few minutes. They slipped into the welcome obscurity of tropical rain, although the ship was making so much black smoke he wondered if the Japs couldn’t still see them. Apparently they could. Another salvo of eight-inch came howling through the rainsquall and thankfully went long. The steam leak from the forward fireroom was diminishing as the boiler emptied itself. Marsh prayed that all that steam was coming up through the stack; otherwise, his whole forward fireroom crew had been roasted at six hundred degrees. A shell would have been kinder.
Reports came in from the gunnery department. They’d lost mounts fifty-one and fifty-three. All the topside AA gun stations on the starboard side were reporting heavy casualties. Marsh knew that the forward fireroom had to be permanently out of commission. Damage control central reported that a DC team was still trying to get down into the space to determine how bad the situation was. Main control had cross-connected the forward engine room with the after fireroom, so they still had two engines, but no longer twenty-seven knots’ worth until they could get a second boiler going in the after fireroom. From the feel of the ship, any fires still burning in the forward boiler room were being smothered by inrushing seawater. Marsh called main control and reminded them to shore up their forward bulkhead. They said they were already doing it.
The rabbi came into the pilothouse with a preliminary casualty report. His uniform was blood-spattered, not from injuries but from assisting in the wardroom, which was now the ship’s principal casualty station. Twenty-seven known dead, that many again wounded seriously enough to be out of action. For once he was not smiling, and neither was Marsh. He said he was going back down the starboard side to tend to the wounded still in their gun tubs. Marsh told him to keep undercover as best he could, because Evans wasn’t done with this fight yet. He nodded somberly, handed Marsh the blood-spattered casualty list, and then tried to get off the bridge without slipping on all the blood on deck.
Evans had expended six of her ten torpedoes and still had three five-inch guns out of five operational, although with an as yet unknown number of personnel casualties. Marsh was sorely tempted to just hide in the rainsquall for a while until they could get themselves back together.
Then he remembered the battleships.
He brought the ship about, slowing down to fifteen knots to ease the pressure on the snipes, who were trying desperately to get the remains of the steam plant stable again. They emerged from the rainsquall to a depressing tableau. Another of their tin cans was in the process of capsizing about five miles away. The Jap cruiser line was still pressing in on the fleeing jeep carrier formation, although they were now being swarmed by aircraft who were doing everything from dropping tiny foxhole busters to making strafing runs. The jeeps, like the old battleships, had been loaded out for close air support work at Leyte, not a fleet action, so the planes were reduced to doing whatever they could. Marsh didn’t see any sign of the other destroyers, but much of the sea area was obscured by the remains of chemical smoke clouds and rainsqualls.
One of the jeeps, probably Gambier Bay, was burning from midships to stern and dead in the water some ten miles distant. Another ship, whose identity he couldn’t make out, was also stopped and completely afire. Then he swung the binoculars around to the northwest to see where the battleships had gone.
Unfortunately, nowhere.
He lowered his binoculars to see two behemoths, followed distantly by their own pack of destroyers, lumbering in his direction while still lofting booming salvos at the jeeps. The only good news was that they, too, were being swarmed by naval aircraft. Marsh thought he’d seen three, maybe four battleships originally, but now he wasn’t sure how many there were. Two were bad enough.
“Time to get the hell out of here, XO,” a voice at his elbow said quietly. Marsh turned around. It was John Hennessy, staring at the oncoming battleships through his binoculars.
Just then, as if to make his point, three enormous explosions shook the ship as one of the battleships dropped a salvo two hundred yards short and directly abeam. The water columns from the shell splashes were higher than Evans’s masthead. The Japs were ranging on the ship with one turret. Once they got a hit, they’
d let fly with all six guns and obliterate Evans and all her works. Marsh immediately ordered a left standard rudder to put the ship in a turn away from the enemy and back into the rainsquall.
“Think we can outrun that with only one boiler and a fireroom full of water?” he asked.
“We can try,” Hennessy said. He wasn’t kidding. He was pleading.
Marsh was certainly tempted. They’d done what the admiral had told them to do. They’d run straight in against outrageous odds, conducted a torpedo attack that had momentarily disrupted the Jap attack, and actually hit one cruiser. Evans was down to half propulsion power and two-thirds of her gun capability. The starboard-side main deck was awash in body parts among the forty- and twenty-millimeter ranks. The cruisers had beaten the hell out of them and sunk at least two brother destroyers, and now there were two battleships coming, one of which was taking an unholy interest in Evans.
Marsh looked around the pilothouse. The door to the chartroom was wedged open, and the deck inside the tiny passageway was covered in gore. The bridge 1JV talker’s body had been wedged between the helm and lee helm, and the looks on his remaining bridge crew’s faces clearly indicated their votes.
Unfortunately, at that precise moment, he could visualize Beast McCarty, sitting there on the O-club steps. You’re scared, aren’t you? You’ve always been scared. This war is man’s work. Warrior’s work. One day you’ll meet the elephant, and personally I think you’ll fuck it up.
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