Josh felt his jaw dropping, “Rocks? And you’re not kidding?”
“Nope. We only had a handful of mines when the war started, and we used them all trying to stop the Krauts from leaving San Diego. You do remember that little escapade, don’t you?”
Josh shook his head, “I still can’t believe that was all of them.”
“Every last stinking one, young Lieutenant. Now, Josh, I’ve gone and told you a deep dark military secret. I want you to tell me something.”
“Shoot.”
“What the hell is ‘Operation Firefly’?”
Captain Heinz Muller was commodore of the convoy and its escorts. It consisted of a dozen transports, freighters, and fuel tankers all traveling slowly and in formation. Neat and tidy like good little Germans, Muller liked to think. Muller had a decent sense of humor and his crew, except for the Communists and anarchists among the enlisted men, liked and respected him.
Muller had retired from active duty five years earlier and held the rank of captain in the naval reserves. At age sixty, he fully expected to finish his life in a rocking chair with a beer in his hand and a buxom young fraulein to hop off his lap and keep the glass full. He was a bachelor and the fantasy came easily to mind. But then came the war and the surprise order from the kaiser to take command of both the ancient pre-dreadnaught battleship Preussen and the hastily gathered convoy.
Four destroyers and the light cruiser Pillau accompanied him and his battleship as additional escorts.
The fourteen thousand ton Preussen was a virtual museum piece. She’d been commissioned in 1905. She was primitive in comparison with modern ships, such as the Bayern or, he shuddered, the American Arizona or Pennsylvania. Since the 1906 launch of the British super-ship, the Dreadnaught, naval architecture and warship design had been revolutionized. It was ironic that the Dreadnaught herself was now considered obsolete after only fifteen years of existence.
The Preussen carried a mere four eleven-inch guns and a number of 6.7 inch guns, none of which could stand up to the Americans who had escaped from Puget Sound. If it hadn’t been for the damned American submarines, now long dead, Muller and his ship would have been back in Germany and the transports steaming on their own. The destroyers were there to herd the civilian ships and the light cruiser’s job was to watch over the destroyers. The Pillau could steam at twenty-seven knots, but carried only six-inch guns. Nobody had expected that they would have to look out for American battleships.
The Yank submarine menace was gone, but, even before the escape of the Americans, there was the fear of Yankee surface raiders. Not every destroyer or cruiser had been accounted for and the Americans certainly had other subs, but they were in the Atlantic. At least that’s where German intelligence said they were. He harrumphed to himself. German intelligence had been far from perfect so far.
“Ship on the horizon!” a lookout yelled and Muller cursed.
“Two ships,” the lookout corrected.
Scores of telescopes and binoculars were instantly trained on the distant smudges, upperworks just beginning to appear over the horizon. Muller’s heart skipped a beat. They were large and their design wasn’t German. Please let a merciful God make those ships British and not American, he thought.
God was not merciful. A few moments later and Muller’s worst dreams had been realized. He had found the Arizona and the Pennsylvania. “Order the convoy to scatter and run for their lives. The destroyers and the Pillau will follow me.”
They were two hundred miles away from Los Angeles, and, while his radio was broadcasting the alarm, he knew it was a fruitless gesture. Were there any German warships in the vicinity? Highly unlikely, he admitted to himself.
Flashes on the American ships showed that their great fourteen-inch guns had fired. A moment passed and shells fell short of the Preussen. Muller fired his forward turret. His own shells fell well short. He had fired just to show the Yanks that the Preussen had teeth. Maybe it would delay the Americans and give his sheep a chance of escaping. The Americans fired again and this time the shells landed long. They were bracketed.
“Tell the destroyers and the Pillau to try to escape,” Muller ordered sadly. “And keep trying to raise our fleet. They have to be out there someplace, damn it.”
More shells landed, and water splashed over the German battleship. Fragments from the shells struck down on the deck. A dozen crewmen fell in screaming bloody heaps.
Suddenly, Muller was lying face down on the deck of the bridge. Bodies lay around him. The ship was rocking violently and flames were shooting out from a score of places. A human arm lay near him. It was his. He tried to get up but hands held him down and placed a tourniquet on the stump of his shattered arm.
“Status!” Muller screamed through waves of pain. The report was dismal. The forward eleven-inch turret had been destroyed and the engines were not responding. His ship was dead in the water and sinking. He sobbed and gave the order to abandon ship. The Preussen hadn’t lasted ten minutes against the Americans.
As he was being lowered into a lifeboat he realized that the Americans were no longer firing at the helpless old battleship. A small mercy, he thought. A shell struck the Pillau and the five-thousand-ton cruiser broke in half. One of the American battleships was in with the transports, sinking them with her secondary battery of five-inch guns. One did not use fourteen inch shells on a transport any more than one used a shotgun to kill a fly. It also occurred to him that perhaps the Americans didn’t have an abundance of fourteen-inch shells.
A couple of transports struck their colors. Their crews began abandoning ship. There weren’t enough boats for the men on the troop transport and they spilled into the water. Many would drown. God help them, Muller thought.
Two hours later, the Preussen still stubbornly held onto life. From where he sat in a lifeboat, Muller could see that she listed well to port and would sooner or later capsize. A brave ship, Muller thought. More ships were appearing over the horizon. The German Navy had arrived. Finally, Muller thought bitterly. The Americans had wrought their havoc and long since disappeared.
CHAPTER 20
Why me, thought Luke as he stood in front of what was thought to be an empty wood-frame house. Because you’re the only one available, that’s why, he thought as he answered his own question. He gripped his .45 automatic and waited while the rest of the detachment, six soldiers from the provost marshal’s office, came up. Four took up positions by the front door and two in the rear.
The house looked as if it had survived the earthquake of 1906, but might not make it much longer. Windows were shuttered and paint was peeling.
Luke took a deep breath. He wasn’t a cop but he was going to have to act like one. “We know you’re in there. Come out with your hands up or you’ll get shot.”
There was silence and then a voice cried out. “I’m not going back!” Luke picked up on the sense of desperation in the man’s voice.