Into the Storm (5 page)

“Gun crews, load!” Garrett shouted into his mouthpiece.

“Fire on the nearest target as soon as you’re ready, Mr. Garrett,” Matt said, and stepped back to the speaking tube. He looked to see how the other destroyers, in line abreast, were maneuvering. “Conn, starboard ten degrees.”

At this speed,
Walker
’s range finder was useless because of vibration, but Garrett estimated the range to target. “Fire up-ladder. Range, nine five-double-oh!” The shouted commands came rapidly and Matt heard the tinny replies of the gun crews leak from Garrett’s earphones. He couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride in his crew as they went about their duties with calm, well-drilled precision. After the range, bearing, and apparent speed of the target were fed into it, the mechanical fire-control computer reached a solution.

“Surface action starboard. Match pointers!” Garrett instructed the three crews whose weapons would bear. He listened as they reported their readiness and looked at Matt. “The guns are ready, Captain.”

“Commence firing.”

“Three rounds, salvo fire. Commence firing!” He leaned forward and stabbed the salvo buzzer button. The nerve-racking, jangling
raaaa
sound was almost instantly overwhelmed by the simultaneous concussion of three 4-inch guns. Even before the first rounds fell, the buzzer sounded again and the second salvo was on the way. Splashes kicked up beyond and astern of the closest enemy destroyer, but seconds later more splashes rose among the ships when their friends opened fire as well. The third salvo seemed to have the range, but it was still behind the enemy.

“They’re even faster than I thought! I guess I didn’t lead them enough,” Garrett said apologetically. He fed corrections into the computer. Somebody got a lucky hit with the first salvo, and the third Japanese destroyer belched black smoke from her curiously raked ’stack and slowed out of line. Men cheered and even Matt felt like pumping his fist. It looked like the hit came from
Pope
or
Encounter
. The remaining enemy ships continued the charge. They opened fire from the twin mounts on their foredecks, all three shooting only at the damaged British cruiser.

“They’re making for
Exeter
. Get on them, Mr. Garrett!” To Matt, the enemy strategy was clear. They were trying to get in a few licks on the primary target and slow her down still more. Her escorts would then be forced to leave her or stand and fight. Either way, the result would be the same. Another salvo slammed out from
Walker,
and this one looked on target, but there were no explosions. Either they were still shooting long, or the shells were passing through the thin-skinned Japanese ships without detonating.

“That’s it!” shouted Garrett into his comm. “No change! No change! Rapid fire! Let her have it!” The geysers erupting around the advancing enemy now resembled those that had bracketed
Exeter
a short time before, if not in size, then surely in volume. The Japanese couldn’t know that
Exeter
’s fire control was out, and Matt had to admire the courage of their approach. They began to angle for
Exeter
’s starboard side. Knowing their gunnery was in capable hands, Matt realized his place was in the pilothouse. Without a word of distraction for Garrett, he dropped to the quarterdeck below.

“Captain on the bridge!” somebody shouted.

“As you were. I have the deck, Mr. Flowers. You keep the conn.”

“Aye, aye, sir. You have the deck. I have the conn.”

“Skipper.” PO Riggs spoke up. “Captain Blinn on
Pope
sends to execute a starboard turn in column and prepare to fire torpedoes.” Blinn was senior to both Matt and Captain Atkinson on
Mahan
and had authority over the three American destroyers.

“Very well, acknowledge. Mr. Flowers, bring us in behind
Mahan
when she makes her turn.”

Ensign Bernard Sandison, the torpedo officer, stood on the starboard bridgewing and adjusted his headset while an ordnance striker fiddled with the connection linking the antiquated torpedo director to the two mounts on the starboard side. As the four destroyers accelerated to block the enemy thrust, his eyes burned when they turned into their own smoke screen.

“Sir,” commented Flowers,
“Exeter
’s firing torpedoes.” He pointed at the cruiser, now off their port bow. Puffs of smoke drifted aft from her amidships tubes, but the splashes when the weapons hit the water couldn’t be distinguished from those of enemy shells. Then, as they looked on, there was a small reddish flash between
Exeter
’s two funnels. A column of black smoke rocketed skyward and a cloud of escaping steam enshrouded her amidships. Except for the racket of the blowers and the wind, there was stunned silence in
Walker
’s pilothouse, broken only by someone’s soft, pleading murmur.

“No, oh, no . . . no.”

Matt didn’t know who said it. It might have been he. Somebody cursed.
Exeter
’s speed dropped to nearly nothing, as if she’d slammed into a wall. Shells rained down and more began to hit as she wallowed on helplessly at barely four knots. The Allied destroyers executed another turn, in column, and ran up
Exeter
’s starboard side, placing themselves between the doomed cruiser and the oncoming enemy ships. Through the thinning haze of the smoke screen, the Japanese cruisers were visible, much closer than before. At the head of the line, smoke and steam spewed from
Encounter
as her torpedoes leaped into the sea. The two American destroyers ahead followed suit.

“Engage as they bear with the starboard tubes, Mr. Sandison.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” he replied, and cried into his microphone: “Torpedo action starboard! In salvo! Fire one, fire three, fire five! Fire seven, fire nine, fire eleven!”

Matt peered around the chart house. The amidships deckhouse was in the way, but he saw the cutoff-looking muzzles of the pair of starboard triple launchers angled out thirty degrees from the side of the ship. As he watched, the first three 21-inch-diameter, 2,215-pound MK-15 torpedoes thumped out, one after another, the sun shining on their burnished metal bodies as they plunged into the sea with enormous concave splashes. They disappeared, but a moment later dense trails of effervescent bubbles rose to the surface in their wakes. There were only three, however.

Sandison looked at his captain with an apologetic, frustrated expression. “Sir, there’s a casualty on the number-three mount. They don’t know what it is yet, but the torpedoes are secure.”

Matt swallowed a curse. It probably wasn’t anybody’s fault, just worn-out equipment. “Very well, Bernie. Let me know what you find out. Light a fire under it, though. I want those torpedoes!”

“Captain!” cried the talker. “Lookout reports torpedoes in the water!”

Matt looked at him blankly for a second. Of course there were—Then realization struck. He ran to the bridgewing and shouldered Sandison aside.

“JAP torpedoes!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Right full rudder!”
Walker
heeled sharply. “Signal to all ships—torpedoes inbound! Lots of torpedoes! Am evading!” During his brief glance, he saw over a dozen wakes. He looked back at the incoming streams of bubbles, which contrasted sharply with the dark, deep water. They should be relatively easy to avoid in daylight, but there were so many. They might blunder into one while maneuvering to miss another.
Walker
was only thirty feet wide, and Matt instinctively turned directly toward the oncoming weapons to present the smallest possible target. The rest of the column of destroyers disintegrated into chaos as they maneuvered independently as well.

“Lord, looks like the Nips just flushed a covey of quail,” said Flowers as dryly as he could manage.

“Rudder amidships!” With gratifying alacrity,
Walker
steadied, and the cant to the deck disappeared.
She may be old,
Matt thought with an unusual sense of proprietary satisfaction,
but she still handles like a rumrunner.
Nimbleness wasn’t a trait usually associated with four-stackers, but Chief Gray had told him an extra three feet of depth had been added to her rudder as an experiment. It worked, but there were objections to the added draft and, as far as Gray knew, only a couple of her sisters were ever altered.

“Here they come!” someone yelled. Almost everyone in the pilothouse but the helmsman rushed to the bridgewings and looked anxiously at the water as a pair of torpedoes raced by on either side of
Walker
’s frail hull. The one to starboard passed less than a dozen yards away. A young seaman’s apprentice named Fred Reynolds, a boy who looked all of thirteen, grinned at Matt with a pallid expression and then vomited over the rail. The malicious wind made sure that most of the spew wound up in his close-cropped hair. The salvo buzzer rang again, and the number one gun fired alone. The report stirred the bridge crew from the momentary relief of having dodged the torpedoes, reminding them that they were steaming directly toward the enemy.

“Where the hell do you think you are? Watching toy boats in a duck pond?” bellowed Chief Gray as he ascended the ladder. He gave Reynolds a malevolent glare and pantomimed dumping a water bucket on the deck. The boy wiped his mouth and staggered back to his station. The rest of the bridge crew followed suit. Matt winced inwardly. He’d been as guilty as the others, but Gray just winked at him and sighed theatrically when no one was looking. Matt nodded grimly and turned.

“Left full rudder! Helm, tack us back onto the tail of the column as it re-forms!”

There was a loud
clang
above their heads, and Lieutenant Rogers’s voice blared from the crow’s nest speaking tube. “JESUS CHRIST! A shell just took a notch out of the mast about two feet under me!”

The salvo buzzer rang and three guns fired again. Matt looked down at number one and was surprised to see a young man in Army khakis carrying four-inch shells from the wardroom below to replenish the ready-lockers.

“That’s Mallory,” said the Chief, reading his mind. “He came aboard with that other officer.
He
seems a decent sort.” Matt nodded his understanding and noted Gray’s obvious opinion of Captain Kaufman.

The column shook itself out. But their relief over evading the torpedoes was shattered when they were brutally reminded of the one member of their group that couldn’t evade anything. A towering column of water spouted directly under
Exeter
’s aft funnel on her starboard side. She heeled hard to port and then rolled back into a pronounced starboard list. A heavy secondary explosion sent debris and smoke high in the air.

The salvo buzzer rang.
Wham!

They couldn’t worry about
Exeter
now. Waterspouts were rising around
Walker
again, and there was another loud noise somewhere aft.

“Damage report!”

Ellis’s voice came over the intercom. “Nothing serious, Skipper. A new hole in the aft funnel. The shell didn’t explode. It must’ve been armor-piercing—and it’s not as if we have any armor.”

Raaaaa! Wham!
Cheers erupted from fire control when a big explosion rocked a Japanese destroyer. It veered hard out of formation, smoke obscuring the bridge. The other two enemy destroyers finally broke off their attack and retreated behind a smoke screen of their own, toward the protection of the remorselessly approaching cruisers.

“Skipper.” The grim voice was Riggs. “Signal from
Exeter
to all ships. Captain Gordon says thanks for the help, but he’ll take it from here.” Matt strode to the port bridgewing and stared at the once-handsome ship that had seen so much action in this war before the United States was even involved. She’d hounded the
Graf Spee
to her doom, but past glory meant nothing now. Lifeboats were in the water and men were going over the side. He took a deep breath.

“Acknowledge. And send, ‘Good luck,
Exeter
. God bless.’ ”

Shells still pummeled the helpless cruiser as
Walker
, last in line, sped impotently by. Matt slapped the rail in frustration. “God help them,” he muttered.
God help us
, he added to himself. Another huge explosion convulsed
Exeter,
and she rapidly rolled over onto the boats and men in the water. He could see the red paint of her bottom come up on the far side as her superstructure disappeared into the sea. And still the shells fell. The number one gun was silent now, no longer able to bear on their pursuers, and he saw the grim expressions of its crew as they watched
Exeter
go down.

“Skipper . . .” It was Riggs. “Signal from
Pope
. She says to resume line abreast and continue making smoke. She also wants to know if we can increase speed.”

“Acknowledge, and tell her we’ll try.”

 

The next hours were like a feverish nightmare. They gained some distance on the cruisers, but they never moved completely out of range. Periodic savage salvos churned the sea around them, and all the destroyers were damaged, mostly by near misses. An eight-inch shell detonating close aboard made a hell of a concussion and
Walker
’s riveted seams leaked in a dozen places. More enemy aircraft arrived, and they finally cut the smoke, figuring it just made them easier to spot from the air. Only fighters had appeared so far, but they were carrier planes and they strafed the lonely ships repeatedly. They soon decided to wait for the bombers and cruisers to finish the job after one of their number fell to the destroyers’ machine guns. It narrowly missed
Mahan
as it plunged into the sea.

A few tantalizing squalls marched across the horizon, but it seemed they could never reach them. Matt vigorously rubbed his eyes and looked at his exhausted bridge crew and their haunted expressions. The trauma of watching
Exeter
’s destruction—the most powerful member of their group—had etched itself on their faces, and he knew they believed it was only a matter of time before they all met a similar fate. One by one.