by Lou Cameron
“With 155 shells, Sir Reginald? One of my agents spotted a detachment of U.S. Marines moving heavy artillery shells through town just now. The marines are not alone. There’s a large force of Venezuelan regulars led by marine instructors, too. Couldn’t get close enough to map their exact positions, but they seem to be setting up all over the place. Martial Law’s been declared and all civilians have been ordered to stay indoors. Rather neat move, since it means any of our spies will risk getting shot if they move about enough to help us.”
Admiral Rice-Davis moved out on the bridge wing with Greystoke in tow and raised his spyglass to peer at the dim shoreline. He lowered the old-fashioned Nelsonian glass and said, “Hah, humbug and twaddle! Ram Triumphant is well within range and I see no flashing of bloody Yankee guns. They have no big guns! My own chaps told me so, what, what, what?”
Greystoke looked at his watch again, swallowed, and said, “It’s not that hard to hide a howitzer. My people were quite sure about those shells they saw moving out of an apparent innocent civilian warehouse. We know the Venezuelans and Yanks are working together. We know there are hundreds of sheds and swampy dells no British agent has ever investigated. Seems rather odd to have men bringing up the ammo when one has no guns, doesn’t it?”
“Balderdash! If they have any real defenses set up, why haven’t we heard about it yet? Look over there, what, what, what? Ram’s entered the estuary. Transport of Royal Marines right behind. They haven’t fired. They won’t fire. They wouldn’t dare.”
At that moment the ton of high explosives Hakim’s agents had planted in the hold of Greystoke’s launch with a time fuse exploded in a deafening roar!
Both men on the bridge wing hit the deck as the air was filled with smoke and flame and the shattered debris of Greystoke’s launch. The whole ship tingled to the shock waves of the tremendous explosion as Greystoke grinned like the Cheshire cat and said, “I say, we seem to have been torpedoed, what, what, what?”
Rice-Davis ignored him as he sprang to his feet with surprising grace for such a fat old fart, and darted into the main bridge, yelling at the officers on the deck in there, “On your feet, God strike a bloody light! Can’t you see we’re under attack?”
He snatched the intercom speaker from its cradle by the wheel and barked, “Damage Control, Report!”
Some idiot started sounding battle stations, forgetting all the battle stations had been manned since dawn. Admiral Rice-Davis yelled, “Avast that bloody noise, goddamn your mother’s eyes. I’m waiting, Damage Control!”
A worry-voiced ensign down below the water line replied over the intercom, “Damage Control to Bridge. We’re taking a little water in compartment xix but the pumps can handle it easily, Sir. Our blister absorbed most of the explosion and we only sprang a few rivets inside.”
Rice-Davis smiled and said, “I say, good show! Any casualties?”
“Nossir. The torpedo blew that launch alongside to kindling wood but her crew was aboard, thank heavens. I say, the torpedo must have hit the launch and exploded her warhead a few inches out from our blister. Lucky thing, too! It must have been a perishing big charge.”
Rice-Davis said, “Carry on” and switched to the lookout high above. He said, “Well, Lookout?”
“Sir?”
“I know I’m a Sir. “I’m waiting for your perishing report! Didn’t you track that flaming torpedo’s wake? Can’t sink the perishing submarine if we don’t know where it is, what, what, what?”
“Uh, submarine, Sir?”
“Right! Submarine! Boat that runs under the water. Do you see any flaming Yankee craft above the water out there? Get the wax out of your ears and the sand out of your eyes, lad! We’ve just taken a ruddy torp like a ruddy sitting duck!”
The officer in the, crow’s nest protested, “Sir, I don’t think the U.S. Navy has any submarines!”
“What, what, what? No submarines? Humbug and twaddle! Search the waters for a perishing periscope, Goddamn it! Somebody just torpedoed us and I mean to sink the bugger!”
He switched off and yelled to his signal officer down the bridge, “Have our escort sweep 360 degrees for that flaming Yankee whatever. No submarines my sweet Aunt Fanny! God strike a bloody light, doesn’t anybody around here but me know we’re at war with the bloody United States Navy?”
Greystoke joined him, frowning. This wasn’t the way the fake torpedo attack was supposed to be affecting the old sea dog. He caught the admiral’s eye and said, “It’s true the U.S. Navy doesn’t have any commissioned submarines, Sir Reginald. I was just thinking about that German merchant vessel you spotted earlier. The new Holland boats can only travel a few miles on their batteries, that’s why hardly anybody but the Germans have been experimenting with them.”
Rice-Davis frowned and said, “Germans? What Germans? We’re not here to fight any perishing Germans! Have it on good authority we’re not to fight the Germans for at least twenty years. Kaiser Willy would never attack us while his grandmother was alive. He’s always been afraid of her.”
“Yes, and he’s fond of his uncle, Prince Edward, but hates his young cousin, George. I don’t think any German would admit to that torpedo we just took, Sir Reginald, but Whitehall did snub the Kaiser’s offer to help negotiate a settlement with Cleveland and somebody obviously just tried to sink you.”
Rice-Davis puffed back out on the bridge wing, muttering, “Sneaky little bugger. Withered arm, you know. Can’t get along with his cousin, the Czar, either. Wouldn’t put anything past a lad who’d steal toys under the Christmas tree at Windsor, what, what, what?”
Rice-Davis picked up his telescope and trained it on the western horizon as Greystoke suggested, “Maybe we’d better pull in our horns a bit until Whitehall’s had time to digest this mysterious torpedo attack.”
Rice-Davis said, “Balderdash! Our lads are up the flaming estuary now. Look like we were retreating if we backed off now, what, what, what?”
“Sir Reginald, may I remind you this was to be a probing action only? Damn it, somebody just tried to sink you!”
“Piffle. Only ruptured a few plates. Probably meant to shake us up. Take more than a spot of noise to do that, what, what, what? Here, take this glass and tell me if you see any resistance ashore! Our lads will disembark on the Tucupita docks with the band playing ‘Rule Britannia’ and not a button missing, mark my words!”
Greystoke knew he was probably right. His own bluff hadn’t worked, and there was nobody left in the Great Game with a better one.
~*~
A Venezuelan scout ran to join Captain Gringo, Gaston, and the others around them on the pickle-shaped point of land just north-east of the endangered provincial capital. The point was well wooded and guarded the approaches up the deep water channel from the sea; but that was about all one could say for it. The ground between the trees was wet sponge underfoot—to dig in was to drown. So Captain Gringo had his mixed force of Venezuelans and Americans behind a hastily thrown together barricade of tree trunks covered with muck. The logs would stop small arms fire – anything larger than that would blow the barricade and anyone behind it to splinters and hash. The scout saluted and said, “They are just around the bend, Colonel Walker. Moving no faster than a man on foot. There are two torpedo rams, buttoned up. Behind them are the transports. The soldados are on deck, for to take the air, and a band is playing.”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Bueno. Get back to your outpost. Fire your rifle when they round the bend over that way.”
“Won’t they hear us, my Colonel?”
“Yes, I want them to. Carry on, sergeant.” He returned the scout’s salute and turned to walk back from the barricade where Lieutenant Bronson and some other soldiers and marines were working, stripped to the waist and muddy as hell. He nodded approvingly as he saw Bronson hadn’t been afraid to get his hands dirty and said, “Well, they’re coming. I see you guys are set up pretty fair.”
Bronson wiped a hand across his muddy face and scowled down
at the line of what looked like stove pipes sticking out of the mud at an angle as he said, “We planted ’em like you told us to, Walker. But this isn’t going to work.”
Captain Gringo stepped over to peer down one of the stove pipes. It wasn’t really a stove pipe but an improvised roll of sheet iron, torn from a rooftop in town. He could just make out the brass-fused nose of the big 155 shell nestled in the bottom. He said, “It has to work. The Seminoles used wooden cannon against us in the Everglades and the solid earth around that tin casing should hold better than any goddamn cypress log. If we have the elevation right, the shells should go almost straight up and come down all over the place out there in mid-channel.”
Bronson grimaced and said, “I read about the Seminole wars at the Point, too. But those were black powder and ball improvisations. This stuff is H.E. and those shells arc big! They’re going to tumble, too. There’s no rifling in those loose fitting tubes, Walker. They may come out, when we light the dynamite fuses down to the charges under ’em. But they’re going to come down ass over tea kettle.”
“I know. That’s why I set the fuses for air bursts. We don’t have to hit anything, as long as they go off somewhere in the vicinity of John Bull. I’ve got to get back to the machine gun nest I set up. When you hear me fire, light the fuses and run like hell. If our big guns don’t work, we’re going to have some awfully big holes in the ground around here!”
He started back to the barricade nearer the water. But Bronson tagged along a few paces and when they were out of earshot of his work detail, he stopped Captain Gringo and said. “Walker, I have to have a word in private with you.”
“Okay, we’re private.”
“Dick, I take my job as security man here sort of serious.”
“As well you should. What’s the problem?”
“Uh, I know you from the Point and I never believed that story about you getting in trouble out west, but, well, I had to check. I sent a cable to War, last night, after you’d left.”
Captain Gringo pasted a smile across his face and said, “That’s what I’d have done. What did War wire back?”
“They didn’t. Our wires were cut before I got an answer to my check on you.”
“Gee, that’s tough. I guess you’ll have to wait until this mess is over and communications are restored, huh?”
“Yeah. Meanwhile, I’m sort of taking you at face value and it’s going to mean my ass if I’m wrong. So ... am I right or wrong, Dick?”
Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Depends on what’s right and what’s wrong. I guess, sometimes it’s hard to tell. You want me to back off, if I’m under suspicion?”
“Hell, no! You’re the only guy around who seems to know what to do! But, for the record, have I your word as an officer and a gentleman that you haven’t lied to me, Dick?”
Captain Gringo thought about that. His friend, Gaston, had taught him to be even more practique with his professional honor than that court martial and death sentence had in the beginning. Bronson was a poor dumb kid who thought the world was run on the level. Captain Gringo knew Bronson would take his word. On the other hand, they were both West Pointers and they both knew the Code. He looked Bronson in the eye and said, “You have my word I’ve never done anything I thought wrong and you have my word I’m standing by you on the line today against a common enemy. I’ve never done a thing that could endanger the security of your post and I’m trying to help you hold this position. Don’t push me any further.”
Bronson nodded and said, “I was afraid you’d say that. You’ve been bullshitting us about that story being a cover up, right?”
“What do you think, Bronson?”
Bronson smiled wearily, and held out his hand. As Captain Gringo took it, Bronson said, “Jackson used some pirates at New Orleans, if I recall my history lessons. I can’t pardon you like Jackson could, so this is only until the wires are up again and I can’t say I didn’t know for sure.”
Captain Gringo laughed and added, “You always were a Pollyanna, kid. What makes you think any of us are going to be alive when the wires are up again?”
He left Bronson in command of his “artillery” and went back to rejoin Gaston and the others along the barricade. He’d placed the two machine guns side-by-side with the belts feeding from opposing directions. As he dropped to a log seat behind them Gaston said, “I have heard of a two gunman with pistols, but a two gunman with machine guns is trés unique. I could man one of them, Dick.”
Captain Gringo said, “I’ve a better job for you. Robles has a thin screen behind us guarding the neck of this point from a surprise attack from the mainland. Why don’t you go back and see that he’s set up right?”
“Merde alors, the fun promises to be out here on the point. Who is going to attack us from the rear? Do you think the Brits will land scouts?”
“No, they’re too overconfident to worry about that. But Robles is still more worried about a stab in the back and while this point is a good place to dominate the channel, it’s a hell of a place to be trapped. I was talking to him, setting up this barricade. He says that aside from the Castro faction, there’s a mess of would-be-British subjects we might have to deal with once the shooting starts. I’ll listen for your pistol. Don’t yell for help unless it looks really hairy to the rear. What are you waiting for, a kiss goodbye?”
Gaston told him to fuck himself and marched away, muttering. Captain Gringo knew he didn’t have to worry about his back, now, so he stared out at the blank expanse of sluggish water. The tide was coming in and it looked as if that was all that was coming in. Then he heard a distant rifle and called out, “Okay, troops, this is it!”
The ugly snout of a torpedo ram poked around the bend and he yelled, “Hold your fire. She’s armored in the first place and probably won’t spot us in the second.”
A Venezuelan near him made the sign of the cross, snicked a round in the chamber of his rifle, and rested it across the log in front of him. Others up and down the ragged barricade were doing the same as the long, low ram slid abreast of them, like a big steel cayman. Downstream he heard the distant tinny sound of a brass band playing like they thought they were holding a concert in Hyde Park. He shook his head wearily and said, “That’s the trouble with fighting. Nobody but primitive tribesmen and little people for almost a century. Couple of weeks in Apache country would shape you Brits up better for the big one you keep talking about.”
The ram passed on as a second came around the bend with the first transport right behind it. He saw the transport deck was crowded with freshly scrubbed jolly lads in pith helmets and tropic full dress kit. He took a deep breath, got a good grip on both machine guns, and opened up with twin muzzles blazing!
He fired one gun at the ram, knowing the slugs bouncing off her plates wouldn’t hurt anybody, as, with the other gun, he cut a line of white froth across the water toward the transport’s waterline. The men on either side of him opened up with everything they had, of course, and some of them were aiming to kill, but the Royal Marines on deck had taken the hint and were either down or getting there poco tiempo as the first rifle rounds started spanging paint off the superstructure over them. The band played on as if nothing had happened. He’d heard they were like that.
The ram stopped dead in the water and began to swing her gun turrets ominously as Captain Gringo tap danced slugs along the rail of the transport and wondered aloud, “What the hell is Bronson waiting for?”
The ram fired a salvo of four-inch shells, fortunately high, and some of his men behind the logs flattened in the mud as the screaming shells exploded somewhere in the trees behind them. But most of the defenders, Venezuelan as well as Yank, returned the ram’s fire with enthusiasm, bouncing bullets off her armored superstructure as her bridge light signaled the transport to fall back.
Captain Gringo could see the landing force was more annoyed by the small arms fire than concerned. The ram fired again to teach the perishing natives a lesson. Then, like a string of
colossal fire crackers, the improvised cannon Bronson and his crew were manning began to go off and even Captain Gringo was impressed.
The earth quivered like jelly as the 155s tore skyward ass over elbows, screaming like banshees as they arched over the river. It got even noisier as they began to burst in mid-air above, between, and all around the British vessels. A lucky hit knocked the funnel off the ram, obscuring her in thick smoke at deck level as her guns blazed blind. A four-inch gun sounded like a popping cork next to an exploding 155. Some of his men were standing as they cheered and Captain Gringo yelled, “Take cover, damn it!” Unless he’d counted wrong, he’d shot his wad and they hadn’t really stopped the Brits with all their wild fire. The last shell fragments were splashing out there on the water and the sudden silence was eerie as the world stood still, teetering on the balance of war and peace.
Then, before he could see what the task force’s next move might be, he heard the rattle of small arms fire behind him and, above it, the three rapid shots of Gaston’s pistol, held skyward. Captain Gringo swore, shoved another belt in one gun, and lifted it from its tripod to lug it back toward the sounds of skirmishing to his rear. As he dog trotted past the grinning Bronson, Bronson asked what was up and he snapped, “Guerrillas. To the barricade, and stop the fuckin’ landing if they try one!”
He tore through some brush and around a big tree to spot Gaston and Major Robles behind a fallen log, their backs to him as they fired at someone beyond. He saw other Venezuelan regulars to the right and left had formed a skirmish line. A couple were hit; the rest were holding. He lugged the Maxim over to Gaston and Robles, and propped the water jacket over the log, snapping, “Who, where, how many?”
“Ah, I was afraid we’d lost you,” Gaston said. “That tree line, a hundred meters out. We turned back their first charge, as you can see if you will observe that species in the white shirt over there on his face in the grass. I think they are reforming for a more determined rush. Some of these green troops fired too soon and only dusted their advance skirmishers, hein?”