"Engage as they bear with the starboard tubes, Mr. Sandison."
"Aye, aye, sir!" he replied, and cried into his microphone: "Torpedo action starboard! In salvo! Fire one, fire three, fire five! Fire seven, fire nine, fire eleven!"
Matt peered around the chart house. The amidships deckhouse was in the way, but he saw the cutoff-looking muzzles of the pair of starboard triple launchers angled out thirty degrees from the side of the ship. As he watched, the first three 21-inch-diameter, 2,215-pound MK-15 torpedoes thumped out, one after another, the sun shining on their burnished metal bodies as they plunged into the sea with enormous concave splashes.
They disappeared, but a moment later dense trails of effervescent bubbles rose to the surface in their wakes. There were only three, however.
Sandison looked at his captain with an apologetic, frustrated expression. "Sir, there's a casualty on the number-three mount. They don't know what it is yet, but the torpedoes are secure."
Matt swallowed a curse. It probably wasn't anybody's fault, just wornout equipment. "Very well, Bernie. Let me know what you find out. Light a fire under it, though. I want those torpedoes!"
"Captain!" cried the talker. "Lookout reports torpedoes in the water!"
Matt looked at him blankly for a second. Of course there were— Then realization struck. He ran to the bridgewing and shouldered Sandison aside.
"JAP torpedoes!" he yelled over his shoulder. "Right full rudder!" Walker heeled sharply. "Signal to all ships—torpedoes inbound! Lots of torpedoes! Am evading!" During his brief glance, he saw over a dozen wakes. He looked back at the incoming streams of bubbles, which contrasted sharply with the dark, deep water. They should be relatively easy to avoid in daylight, but there were so many. They might blunder into one while maneuvering to miss another. Walker was only thirty feet wide, and Matt instinctively turned directly toward the oncoming weapons to present the smallest possible target. The rest of the column of destroyers disintegrated into chaos as they maneuvered independently as well.
"Lord, looks like the Nips just flushed a covey of quail," said Flowers as dryly as he could manage.
"Rudder amidships!" With gratifying alacrity, Walker steadied, and the cant to the deck disappeared. She may be old, Matt thought with an unusual sense of proprietary satisfaction, but she still handles like a rum-runner. Nimbleness wasn't a trait usually associated with four-stackers, but Chief Gray had told him an extra three feet of depth had been added to her rudder as an experiment. It worked, but there were objections to the added draft and, as far as Gray knew, only a couple of her sisters were ever altered.
"Here they come!" someone yelled. Almost everyone in the pilothouse but the helmsman rushed to the bridgewings and looked anxiously at the water as a pair of torpedoes raced by on either side of Walker's frail hull. The one to starboard passed less than a dozen yards away. A young seaman's apprentice named Fred Reynolds, a boy who looked all of thirteen, grinned at Matt with a pallid expression and then vomited over the rail. The malicious wind made sure that most of the spew wound up in his close-cropped hair. The salvo buzzer rang again, and the number one gun fired alone. The report stirred the bridge crew from the momentary relief of having dodged the torpedoes, reminding them that they were steaming directly toward the enemy.
"Where the hell do you think you are? Watching toy boats in a duck pond?" bellowed Chief Gray as he ascended the ladder. He gave Reynolds a malevolent glare and pantomimed dumping a water bucket on the deck. The boy wiped his mouth and staggered back to his station. The rest of the bridge crew followed suit. Matt winced inwardly. He'd been as guilty as the others, but Gray just winked at him and sighed theatrically when no one was looking. Matt nodded grimly and turned.
"Left full rudder! Helm, tack us back onto the tail of the column as it re-forms!"
There was a loud clang above their heads, and Lieutenant Rogers's voice blared from the crow's nest speaking tube. "JESUS CHRIST! A shell just took a notch out of the mast about two feet under me!"
The salvo buzzer rang and three guns fired again. Matt looked down at number one and was surprised to see a young man in Army khakis carrying four-inch shells from the wardroom below to replenish the ready-lockers.
"That's Mallory," said the Chief, reading his mind. "He came aboard with that other officer. He seems a decent sort." Matt nodded his understanding and noted Gray's obvious opinion of Captain Kaufman.
The column shook itself out. But their relief over evading the torpedoes was shattered when they were brutally reminded of the one member of their group that couldn't evade anything. A towering column of water spouted directly under Exeter's aft funnel on her starboard side. She heeled hard to port and then rolled back into a pronounced starboard list. A heavy secondary explosion sent debris and smoke high in the air.
The salvo buzzer rang. Wham!
They couldn't worry about Exeter now. Waterspouts were rising around Walker again, and there was another loud noise somewhere aft.
"Damage report!"
Ellis's voice came over the intercom. "Nothing serious, Skipper. A new hole in the aft funnel. The shell didn't explode. It must've been armor-piercing—and it's not as if we have any armor."
Raaaaa! Wham! Cheers erupted from fire control when a big explosion rocked a Japanese destroyer. It veered hard out of formation, smoke obscuring the bridge. The other two enemy destroyers finally broke off their attack and retreated behind a smoke screen of their own, toward the protection of the remorselessly approaching cruisers.
"Skipper." The grim voice was Riggs. "Signal from Exeter to all ships. Captain Gordon says thanks for the help, but he'll take it from here." Matt strode to the port bridgewing and stared at the once-handsome ship that had seen so much action in this war before the United States was even involved. She'd hounded the Graf Spee to her doom, but past glory meant nothing now. Lifeboats were in the water and men were going over the side. He took a deep breath.
"Acknowledge. And send, `Good luck, Exeter. God bless.' "
Shells still pummeled the helpless cruiser as Walker, last in line, sped impotently by. Matt slapped the rail in frustration. "God help them," he muttered. God help us, he added to himself. Another huge explosion convulsed Exeter, and she rapidly rolled over onto the boats and men in the water. He could see the red paint of her bottom come up on the far side as her superstructure disappeared into the sea. And still the shells fell. The number one gun was silent now, no longer able to bear on their pursuers, and he saw the grim expressions of its crew as they watched Exeter go down.
"Skipper . . ." It was Riggs. "Signal from Pope. She says to resume line abreast and continue making smoke. She also wants to know if we can increase speed."
"Acknowledge, and tell her we'll try."
The next hours were like a feverish nightmare. They gained some distance on the cruisers, but they never moved completely out of range. Periodic savage salvos churned the sea around them, and all the destroyers were damaged, mostly by near misses. An eight-inch shell detonating close aboard made a hell of a concussion and Walker's riveted seams leaked in a dozen places. More enemy aircraft arrived, and they finally cut the smoke, figuring it just made them easier to spot from the air. Only fighters had appeared so far, but they were carrier planes and they strafed the lonely ships repeatedly. They soon decided to wait for the bombers and cruisers to finish the job after one of their number fell to the destroyers' machine guns. It narrowly missed Mahan as it plunged into the sea.