There was a second's hesitation. What if it was an American plane? Was the Augusta's floatplane out on some damn fool errand? Hollowell sure as hell didn't want to shoot down an American plane.
At that moment, the portside destroyer opened fire, and searchlights lit up the sky. Instead of helping, it blinded the men in the Augusta.
"Dammit," snarled Jardine as he tried to blink away the sudden loss of night vision.
"Can you see it?" screamed Hollowell.
"No!" Jardine could see nothing except light streaks across his eyes. Then it was in front of him. "Yes!" he yelled back. The guns opened up at the dark plane that was dreadfully close and still only a few feet above the water. Streams of tracers laced the sky, but none seemed to hit the plane that was now only a hundred yards away and closing in with horrifying quickness.
"It's going to hit us!" Haverman moaned, and covered his head. The plane was headed right for them. Then, at the last second, the plane was struck by a shell and shuddered. It seemed to rise up higher by a few feet and flew right over Jardine's head. It was so close that he saw the landing gear above him. With a roar it crashed into one of the eight-inch bow turrets. Explosions and flames racked the bow of the ship, hurling Jardine to the deck. He screamed in fear and confusion as the cloud of burning gasoline swept above them, showering him with flaming debris. Frantically, he pounded at the host of little fires that had started around him until they were out. Only then did he realize that he had burned his hands.
Behind him, damage-control parties rushed toward them and their hoses sent water hurling onto the major fires. Secondary streams doused Jardine's gun mount and ended any fear of their ammunition exploding. Jardine heard others moaning in pain and realized that, other than his hands, which had begun to blister, he wasn't badly hurt. He whimpered at the joy of it. The goddamn kamikaze, and that's what it had to have been, had tried to kill him, but had failed. He was still lying facedown, with debris on top of him. He had to have a lot of bruises, but all of his limbs seemed to be functioning.
Ensign Hollowell lurched to his feet. The right side of his face was all red and one eye was closed. "Sound off," he ordered, and the men complied, identifying themselves. Everyone was alive, but a couple were injured. Haverman said he thought his leg was broken, and that seemed to be the worst of it, presuming that Jardine's burns weren't too bad. Maybe he could get a trip back to the States out of it?
"I think I'm okay," Jardine responded, "but there's a bunch of crap on my back." He didn't want to move. The debris wasn't all that heavy, but there might be an unexploded shell or something else that might hurt him if he moved it himself. "Somebody check it out, please."
Ensign Hollowell staggered to him and pulled some things off him. Then he looked down. "Aw, shit," Hollowell said, and started gagging. "It's an arm."
Jardine shrieked and jerked away, causing the limb to flop down on the deck where he stared at it in shock and revulsion. The arm had been ripped off at the shoulder and was badly burned. "Ain't one of our guys," Jardine finally said. "Thank God." Somebody had been ripped apart, but it wasn't one of his buddies in the gun mount. He was being heartless, but so what? He was alive and the other guy wasn't and that's all there was. "Hey, maybe it belongs to that Jap pilot?"
Hollowell looked at the severed arm in the light of the still burning gasoline. Damage control had brought the fire under control and there were no more explosions, but flames still flickered in a score of places.
"There's a ring on the hand," Hollowell muttered, and willed himself to examine the ghastly thing further. "Oh, Christ have mercy," he whispered as he turned the charred hand over and examined the ring. "Oh, Lord."
"What is it, sir?" Jardine asked. What the hell was so important about a ring? He looked at it more closely, shocked to recognize a West Point ring, class of 1903.
Chapter 42
President Harry Truman's demeanor reflected the shock and sadness of the entire nation. For all his faults, MacArthur had somehow been considered immortal, and his death had been a severe blow to the nation's collective spirit.
"I want a full military funeral for the man, and that includes his body lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda. If his widow will permit it, General MacArthur will be buried in Arlington with absolutely the fullest military honors possible. Like him or not, the man was a legend who died for his nation, and we will not permit his memory to be forgotten."
Marshall and Leahy nodded. For a nation that was still grieving the loss of FDR, the announcement of the death of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in a kamikaze attack on the cruiser Augusta was too much to bear.
"For reasons I will never comprehend, I don't believe he ever liked me," Truman continued, "but I can't hold that against him. Hell, if every man who disliked me stood in a line, that line would likely circle the earth at least a couple of times. What is important is that he is the highest-ranking American killed in this or any other war, and he will be given what he deserves, a military funeral that includes a parade to Arlington."
Marshall nodded. Deaths of ranking officers in combat were rare in modern warfare. Maj. Gen. Maurice Rose, commander of the 3rd Armored Division, had been killed in Europe, and Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, the commander of the Tenth Army on Okinawa, had been killed by Japanese artillery on the last day of the fighting on that island. Other generals, such as Wainwright and Sharp, had been captured in the Philippines, but no one even approaching MacArthur's five-star rank had even been scratched.
As they discussed an outline for the funeral, Truman realized that the death of MacArthur removed a strong Republican candidate for the presidency in '48. Realistically, that only left New York's Tom Dewey as a threat to his election as president in his own right.
Truman hated himself for thinking of partisan politics at a time like this, but he'd been at it for so long it was impossible not to. At least MacArthur's tragic end had deflected questions regarding Japan's so-called list of prisoners they'd received from a Swedish emissary. He'd promised a response to it as soon as the people at the Pentagon had finished examining it, and a lot of parents and wives were getting angry and frustrated at the length of time it was taking.
Truman shook his head. It was all so futile. "What were the total casualties on the Augusta?”
Leahy responded, "Besides MacArthur, ten killed and seventy-two wounded. All of the dead and most of the seriously wounded were in the forward turret which was directly hit by the plane. The men in that turret were burned by the gasoline from the plane. Fortunately, the ammunition in the Augusta's turret did not explode, so she'll be back on station fairly shortly. The majority of the other wounded are light to moderately so and will return to duty within a couple of weeks."
"All right," Truman sighed, "just bring MacArthur's body home as soon as possible."
As a result of the explosion and fire, little had been found of Douglas MacArthur's mortal remains. The largest portion identifiable as his was his right arm, and that only because the hand wore his West Point ring. Other body parts had been found but were too badly damaged to determine whether they were his or somebody else's. Ironically, more of the Jap pilot's body had been found strapped in the cockpit of the wreckage of his plane than had been found of MacArthur's. The navy had even identified the Jap before burying him at sea. Sometime in the future, some scholar or military historian might want to find out more about the otherwise insignificant man who had struck down General of the Army Douglas MacArthur.