Blind men in the darkness, Reubold thought. It will be a fight of blind men in the darkness.
The first shell thundered over Cole’s head, and without realizing it, he, DeLong, and Edland followed its progress, their heads twisting in unison. There was a tremendous explosion aft of them.
“Holy shit!” DeLong said. “Those are cruisers.”
“The German guns I told you about,” Edland said, moving close to Cole. The roar of the engines made it difficult to talk and everything was delivered in a near shout. “They must be using tracers as some sort of aiming device.”
“Well, it’s working out pretty well for them,” Cole said. “That landed too close for comfort.”
A round exploded to starboard followed by a round to port as the diabolical green tracers swept the water.
“They’ve got us straddled,” Cole said. “Okay, Randy. Evasive action.” He leaned over the bridge roof. “Murray?” he shouted to the gunner on the forward 20mm. “Commence firing.” He turned again to DeLong. “I’ve told everybody that you’re the best boat handler in the fucking navy. Now I want you to get us alongside one of those bastards without so much as a dented gunnel. Cover him like paint.”
DeLong nodded. He wrapped his fingers around the three throttle knobs jutting out of the instrument panel and eased them to full power. It was hell on the engines, running at top speed for an extended period of time, especially engines that were several hundred miles past rebuilding — but then so was getting blown up.
Cole watched as dozens of tracer rounds split the darkness, red and green, passing one another in a merry game of hide-and-seek. The 37mm cannon on PT-155’s bow began to fire, a steady chunk-chunk-chunk, and he thought he could feel the boat shake with each discharge. The forward 20mm just in front of the bridge and offset to port joined in; somehow its bark nothing more than an ineffectual bang. With each blast came an intense blaze of white light from the powder flare. He looked away from the contest in the blackness to see DeLong working frantically to keep the boat on course but away from enemy shells. His concentration was inhuman, his eyes boring into the darkness, and for a moment Cole was convinced that the young ensign saw everything clearly and that night had been replaced by full light.
Harry Lowe.
The thought struck as surely as it had been a punch in the gut. It was night, like the night that Harry was killed, and they were fighting E-boats, like the night that Harry was killed. Cole quickly turned away so that no one saw the horror that he was sure was etched on his face. Get a grip, he commanded himself. But a voice reminded him, in barely a whisper, that he was responsible for his men, responsible for Randy, like he was responsible for Harry. But now Harry was dead and Randy was standing in his place. The same place. And it was night. And those were E-boats.
Suddenly radio chatter from the other boats broke into Cole’s thoughts. They were random bursts of excited commands and warning, the PT boats trying to maneuver into position, trying to stay out of the reach of those guns.
Cole snapped up the microphone, all other thoughts gone, and began directing the fight. “Cole to all boats. Get in. Get in fast. Don’t get fancy. Close with them as soon as you can and don’t let any daylight between you and them.”
The water erupted nearby, shaking the boat, and Cole saw Edland sitting with his back against the day room housing, stunned. He reached out his hand and Edland took it with a wry: “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Cole said. “The navy takes care of its own.”
The battle increased in intensity and Cole realized that it was every boat for itself. There was no structure to it, no definition. It was fire and flee, return and do the same thing. Try to hit the enemy boat but not those of your companions.
“Here we go!” DeLong shouted in a burst of excitement. Suddenly PT-155 whipped to port and heeled over so heavily that Cole thought she would capsize. He heard men shouting, and then a fierce barrage of blasts, and finally saw tracers flying in every direction.
He realized what had happened. DeLong had taken PT-155 directly at an E-boat, forcing the enemy vessel to change course, and as it had, DeLong had practically thrown the PT on her beam, coming completely about and alongside the E-boat.
Alongside the E-boat, and within yards of her.
Cole had prepared himself to see the hydrofoils, and in his mind knew what they looked like, but the unexpected sight of them shocked him, and even seemed to calm the racket of battle. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered in awe as the E-boat grew. “That’s a big son of a bitch.”
“Port thirty,” Hardy shouted into the voice tubes as a shell landed aft. Firedancer had been drawn into the battle almost immediately and into the role that Hardy had seen her playing, that of coach with an occasional foray into the midst of combat. All that had disappeared with the first blast of the E-boats’ big guns. Firedancer’s pom-poms, 4.5-inch guns, and deck-mounted Lewis guns joined in the moment that the two forces slammed into one another.
A steady stream of glowing green tracers sped out from the darkness and ricocheted off of the hedgehog mount where A-turret had once been. Shells bounced into the air, screaming like banshees — a shrill, hideous scream that raised goose bumps on a man’s skin. The sound ran its fingertips up Hardy’s spine, looking for a place to enter his soul.
Somebody fired a flare, not from Firedancer, because, by God, Hardy would have anyone’s head that had done such a thing. Then the whole scene was suddenly frozen in the ghastly yellow light — a rich tableau of destruction. He was frozen for an instant, as was everything around him. Number One at the tubes, yeoman of signals at the Aldis lamp, the chief petty officer; what-was-his-name? — at the Tannoy, awaiting orders.
The only movement that Hardy saw was below him at B-turret. It was the twisted act of a gunner kicking the 4.5-incher’s breechblock, until the loader could swing it open and slide another shell into the breech. Calmly Hardy thought: I shall have to have a chat with the gunnery officer about this; it appears that the gun has jammed again.
Seconds passed, so slowly that they should have been hours and even the explosions were muffled to the sound of distant thunder, a natural sound in a wholly unnatural event.
“We’ve taken bricks aft,” Number One called to him above the din. “Two I think. After supply party’s on it.”
“Take us back half a mile,” Hardy returned. “I want to be clear of the Americans so that we don’t fall into them. Whoever comes our way has to be the enemy. Can you see anything? I can’t see a damned thing.”
Number One pointed. “Two points off the starboard beam. Two boats are burning. I don’t know whose.” Another hit shook Firedancer and Hardy felt someone hit his arm with a cricket bat. He looked down to see the sleeve torn away and the arm glistening with some kind of liquid.
“Captain?” Number One said.
“Let it be, Edwin. Take us back and set us up again. By God, Jerry won’t get past Firedancer.”
Reubold pulled an MG-42 out of a deck locker and balanced it on a cutout in the armored bridge. Kunkle whipped the E-boat back and forth trying to disengage from the enemy boat, but the Americans, despite the S-boat’s greater speed, hung so closely to S-205 that none of the guns could be brought to bear. The enemy boats continually snapped at the sides of the boats, forcing them to turn, driving them back on their own wakes, crowding them so that the S-boats could not break free. Reubold’s boats, on the thin hydrofoils, shuddered against each sharp turn, protesting the weight of the boat and water. They were too fragile. Reubold knew that he was aboard a thoroughbred who would race until its heart burst, but she demanded a straight, unimpeded course. And this, he could not give her.