"They've been slipping small barges through the passage, here and here, usually after midnight," Ross said, roughly circling an area on the map that lay between the two officers on the flying bridge. "We're going to have to move on from here tonight, anyhow. So why not try our luck where the reefs get nice and tight for them?"
Kennedy slapped idly at a mosquito that was buzzing around his ear. "Our turn to lead off, Barney?"
His friend smiled. "Sure you won't get run over in the dark?"
"Eyes like a cat, my friend. Like a cat!"
"The morals, too," Ross replied, grinning. "Okay, you take us out. We'll-"
Kennedy could never be sure, but he thought the crew reacted even before the alarm sounded. They'd been training so hard that their ability to anticipate one another was almost spooky. Before he consciously understood what was happening, men were charging to their battle stations. The ship's twin 50s were manned and ready, all the canons were tracking, including the 40 mm Bofors mounted aft, and a 37 mm antitank gun way up on the bow, flanked by a set of 30 cal machine guns and a deck-mounted mortar. The boat's supercharged V-12 engine, a Packard 4M-2500, was snarling furiously even before Kennedy got his helmet on, which was about the same time the boat's chief came stomping up, yelling at everybody to calm down and stow their peckers away.
"Over there, Mr. Kennedy," said Chief Rollins, pointing to a low, black shape that was heading toward them like a speedboat. It was flying an outsized Australian ensign.
Kennedy grabbed a pair of binoculars. Through the glasses, his first impression firmed up. It was about the size of a speedboat and powered by an outboard, but a very quiet one. He still couldn't hear it, in fact. There were five figures seated inboard, two of them women, for sure, and all of them carrying rifles of some kind-although he'd be damned if he knew what type. They looked big enough to stop an elephant.
"Goddamn," he muttered. "Chief, better tell the men to put their pants back on. Looks like we have polite company for a change."
George Ross was nearly dancing from foot to foot beside him. "Are they-?"
"Yup," said Kennedy, "they are."
The sound of the outboard reached them only when the boat was about twenty-five feet away. Chief Rollins whistled in admiration as it bumped up against the side of the torpedo boat. "She's a beauty," he said.
"Thank you, Chief," one of the women said as she effortlessly hauled herself up over the side. "I take it you mean the boat, right?"
Rollins hardly knew where to look, and Kennedy could see why. The woman was handsome, even striking, and her eyes sparked with a mischievous humor. She was dressed in some sort of dark blue coverall that did cover all, but still gave the men of both PT boats plenty to think about.
"Captain Jane Willet, commanding HMAS Havoc," she declared, and snapped a salute directly at Kennedy without having to enquire which of them was the captain. Even without a shirt, and with his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, she seemed to recognize him-But of course she would, he thought. Kennedy felt the strangeness of the moment, meeting someone who seemed to know all about him-who probably knew more about him than he did himself, in some ways. He'd been able to avoid some of the personal ramifications of the Transition hiding away and fighting down here in the mangroves inside the Great Barrier Reef. After Midway, and the attacks on New Guinea and Australia, there'd been no time to indulge in undergrad fantasies of "what-if." He'd been promoted; then his boat and his men had been thrown into the firestorm and ordered to make the best of it. Now, he felt like his mind was stretching and twisting in a completely unnatural fashion. He hadn't felt it so strongly in months.
"I'm Lieutenant Kennedy," he said, returning the woman's salute. "And this is Lieutenant Ross, the skipper of the other boat." Kennedy searched his memories of the chaos after the Transition. "The Havoc, eh?" he said. "I guess you'd be the ones launched those rockets at Yamamoto's home base? Sank two carriers and a bunch of cruisers?"
"We are," said Willet, squinting in the fierce tropical sun. Kennedy had noticed that most Australians seemed to walk around with a permanent squint.
Lieutenant Ross stepped forward eagerly, cutting his friend off. "It's an honor, Captain Willet. And a privilege."
"Thank you, Lieutenant," replied the submariner. She appeared somewhat taken aback by his earnestness. Kennedy smiled to himself. He doubted there was a man anywhere in the navy who believed in this war as much as his friend.
Ropes dropped down to secure Willet's launch as another pair of her shipmates came over the side of the 101: a second woman, smaller and a few years younger than Willet, and an old salt who wouldn't have looked out of place on Kennedy's boat. The captain introduced the woman as her "intel boss," Lieutenant Lohrey, and the guy as her own chief, Chief Petty Officer Roy Flemming. He was grinning hugely, and paying almost no attention to Kennedy or Ross. He only had eyes for the boat.
"If you'll excuse me, this doesn't look like a standard early-series Elco, Lieutenant. You got a lot of mods here."
Kennedy smiled again. "You mean the armaments? Yeah, well, the welds on some of them are still warm."
Willet's boat chief walked over to the nearest cannon, the forward-mounted 37 mm can opener, and stroked it with a loving air that Kennedy recognized only too well. His own chief had been inordinately proud of the refit, which the squadron had done on their own initiative back in Pearl, using a bare minimum of information cribbed from a copy of Jane's Fighting Ships of World War II that had arrived with Kolhammer's Taskforce. They didn't have any superrockets or death beams to play with, but every man on the 101 was certain they'd turned the old girl into a really formidable fighting ship.
"You didn't really see this sort of configuration until late forty-three, forty-four," said Chief Flemming. "You know, pound for pound, the old PT boats were just about the heaviest hitters of the war."
"You'll have to excuse, Roy," said Willet. "He's an enthusiast."
Kennedy had climbed down from the flying bridge to the deck, where the last two Australian sailors had come aboard. Their coveralls were much thicker than the other three and seemed heavily padded. They wore some sort of protection at their knees and elbows, which reminded him of athletic cups, of all things. Each carried a pair of mysterious black tubes slung across his back. Their headgear resembled German helmets, and their eyes were hidden behind goggles that reflected his image like a mirror. They never stopped moving their heads, scanning the tree line and the mangroves like hunting dogs. They didn't smile much either.
Willet saw him checking them out. "Sorry, we don't mean to be rude, Lieutenant. But you're way behind enemy lines here. And good manners are always the first casualty of war."
Kennedy shrugged it off. He was acutely aware of being caught half-naked, but neither of the women seemed at all interested. Perhaps the rumors were true after all. "Well, Captain," he said, "visitors are always welcome. But I assume you're here on business."