Steven Wilson
Armada
For so appears this fleet majestical,
Holding due course for Harfleur. Follow, follow;
Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy,
And leave your England…
The destinies of two great empires… seem to be tied
up in some goddamned things called LSTs.
Chapter 1
Something was wrong. Cole was aboard PT-155, standing to one side of the tiny bridge with the microphone in his hand, but it was much too light and yet he couldn’t quite make out the other PTs. Something was wrong.
Then he knew — they were out in daylight. They never went out in daylight. A thick veil of fog smothered everything so that at first it looked dark. That was all right, the darkness was all right. But it was a false night. He could see the other boats, to port and starboard, but they were vague, ghostlike shapes that floated silently over the flat sea. He looked aft in confusion and could just make out DeLong with the 40-millimeter, its long snout trained over the stern. He was comforted by DeLong’s presence.
“Some soup, huh, Skipper?” It was Harry Lowe. He was at the wheel, his easy smile just as much a comfort as the presence of Eckstam, Murray, or Tommy Rich, or any of the other crew members of Cole’s boat. Except that Harry Lowe was dead.
Cole stood, stunned — watching his handsome executive officer pass the wheel lightly through his fingertips, scanning the compass, glancing out into the fog. But they were out in daylight — they never went out in daylight.
You go out at night because that’s when the enemy convoys sailed, trying to pass unnoticed. Cole knew that — Lowe knew that — why were they out in daylight? Had somebody made a mistake? Cole’s mind stopped on that one word, mistake. It was a mistake.
“Some soup, huh, Skipper?” Lowe said again, but this time, when Cole looked at him, half his head was missing.
Cole stifled a scream, but when Lowe turned to him this time, he was fine.
“What’s going on, Harry?” Cole asked. He didn’t hear himself speak. It was as if he had imagined the words.
“Orders, Skipper,” Lowe said. Again that smile on a face so handsome most of the guys had said, at one time or another: “Mr. Lowe, you oughtta be in pictures.”
“Orders?” Cole said, confused. He didn’t remember the orders. They go out at night — hunt for freighters, barges, and E-boats — because that’s when they go out. Maybe run up against MAS boats if they were lucky. F-lighters if they weren’t. F-lighters were thick skinned and the most heavily armed enemy boats.
“We’ve got something off the starboard quarter, Skipper,” Lowe said, and looked at Cole expectantly. Cole didn’t reply — he was trying to think this situation out. Everything about it was wrong, and underlying that awareness was the sharp stench of fear. After a moment Lowe reminded Cole gently: “Better tell the other boats.”
Cole knew to do that. He should have done it immediately. He had the microphone in his hand and he always took station on the starboard side of the bridge so that when he got the word from radar he could pass it on to the other boats. He looked at the microphone as if it were some mysterious device. He pushed the TALK button, held it close to his mouth, and said: “Cole, to all boats. Starboard quarter.” He realized that he didn’t have the distance and speed and suddenly grew frightened because in this fog — just like at night when there are no stars and no moon and you might as well be swimming in ink — the enemy could be on you in no time.
Cole turned to Lowe, Harry Lowe with the Clark Gable mustache on William Powell features with a Robert Taylor smile, and was about to ask him speed and distance, because he was suddenly very afraid. But now everything was in slow motion, and his words hung in his throat. He felt as if he were drifting with no way to control what he was doing.
He had to warn Lowe. He remembered now. It wasn’t in daylight, in a thick fog. It was at night, and it was very cold. And then he had the speed and distance, but it didn’t make any difference. He had to tell Lowe but he couldn’t; he could feel his body moving like a plump, tethered balloon, but he had no voice.
Lowe was smiling at him again and Cole grew angry, wanting to scream at Harry Lowe to pay attention to what he was doing, to call off the attack because it was a trap. He heard himself screaming, but his words were sucked into the silence of his dream, and he felt rage and impotence. Call off the attack! He was cursing Harry Lowe now, something he had never done when Harry was alive; but Harry wasn’t listening, he was just maneuvering the boat into position, sailing inexorably toward his own death.
Now Cole was sitting in the tiny shack that they used for the ready room at the base, trying to explain to a very sympathetic but tired debriefing officer what had happened and why Harry Lowe’s blood and brains were all over him. Cole leaned forward in his chair — he didn’t have enough strength to hold himself upright — and told the debriefing officer, who kept yawning, what had happened.
“Why’d you go out in daylight?” the debriefing officer asked, sliding his hand over his mouth to cover a yawn.
Cole tried to straighten up to answer, but he thought if he stayed hunched over like this, he could hold himself together. He didn’t tell the debriefing officer that he was afraid that his body would fly apart like Harry Lowe’s head. Cole realized that the officer had asked him a question. “We didn’t,” Cole said, trying to make the man understand. “We went out at dusk, like we always do. We ran into the convoy at oh-two-forty-eight.”
A tiny yawn was forced into submission by a shrug. “Yes. But why did you go out in daylight?” he asked again. And then he looked at Cole with a mixture of sympathy and pity and said: “Was it your fault?”
“My fault?” Cole thought, and realized that he could save himself by just waking up — knowing now that it was a dream and he didn’t have to put himself through this. Everything was very familiar now, and the confusion that Cole had felt earlier in the dream was replaced by dread. He knew where the dream was taking him. “No,” he said. “You see, the E-boats and F-lighters were hiding behind the slower vessels. In the convoy. We didn’t pick them up until it was too late.”
An excuse.
The debriefing officer was writing something down, and Cole knew that what he just said was an excuse. It was my fault. I should have known better. I should have made sure.
Cole could tell now that he was close to waking up, how, he wasn’t sure, but something told him that he would wake up soon. It wasn’t much comfort.
He was on the bridge of PT-155 again, but this time they were in the middle of a battle. Red and green tracers were sawing through the air and someone had fired star shells into the fog in a vain attempt to illuminate friend and foe. They were on the step now, racing ahead at full speed, with the boat shaking from the recoil of the guns, her hull trembling out of fright or excitement.
Cole knew what was going to come next. He’d seen it when he was awake and a thousand times in his dreams, but he couldn’t stop it. The memory of it, the sight of it, was always present. Harry Lowe, rich, good-looking, decent — “That Mr. Lowe is a helluva guy,” the crew said…
Cole’s eyes shot open. He saw the patient blades of the overhead fan turning slowly, pushing a touch of air throughout his room. He rubbed his face roughly, felt the tears mixed with the sweat, swung his legs out of bed, and dropped his feet to the floor. Sometimes the tears kept coming even after he woke up. He stifled his sobs with the ball of his fist, trying to choke back the sounds and the taste of guilt.