No one spoke and he shouted it again.
“I’m the son of Andrew Lawrence Keane.”
“So who the hell cares,” a corporal growled. “It’s over.”
“Like hell it is,” Abe cried, and to his amazement, tears of moisture were in his eyes, streaking down his face. “The whole goddamn army will be out looking for me. How the hell is General Hawthorne supposed to go back to my old man and say, ‘Mr. President, sir, I’m sorry we lost him. I guess he’s dead. Better luck next time, sir’.”
As he spoke Hawthorne’s words, he did a fairly good imitation of Vincent’s high tenor voice, and the sergeant major began to grin.
He stopped laughing almost as suddenly as it had come upon him.
“I tell you”-his voice dropped and self-consciously he Wiped the tears from his cheeks-“my father will not leave me out here to die. I know him. He’ll say that he won’t do anything special became I’m his son, but that won’t matter. The word will go out to do everything possible.”
He paused and then shook his head.
“No, that’s a lie. He won’t do anything special, he’ll do what he would do for any of you men, blood relative or not, Yankee or Chin, and he’ll try to pass that as an order. But those around my father, the men who love him, they’ll take special steps to find us because they do love him.” He fell silent for a long moment and the tears fell again. “That’s why we’ll live, that’s why they’ll find us. It’s because this army will never abandon its own. That was the army my father created. That is why I promise you we’ll survive this day, and the day after until they finally come and get us.”
SEVENTEEN
“To go in harm’s way.”
“Did you say something, Admiral?”
Bullfinch looked over at his young staff officer and smiled. “No, nothing.”
He stepped out of the armored cupola and, leaning forward, grabbed the railing of the open bridge. Two observers, glasses raised, struggled vainly to maintain their positions, sweeping the horizon.
A squall line of rain slashed in, driven on the thirty-knot wind, stinging as it hit. A gust swept off Bullfinch’s oilskin nor’easter hat. It spun across the bridge and went over the railing, disappearing into the foaming sea.
The bow of his flagship surged onto the crest of a fifteen-foot wave, foam spraying up, tons of water cascading over the deck as the ship corkscrewed down into a trough and then started the climb onto the next wave.
The sailor to his right lowered his glasses, leaned over the railing, unceremoniously vomited, then raised his glasses again. Bullfinch actually felt pity for the boy. In spite of the warm tropical air, he was actually trembling from sickness and most likely from fear.
“Anything, sailor?” Bullfinch shouted.
The boy lowered his glasses and looked over, features a pale shade of green. “Not since we saw that frigate, sir.”
“Well keep a sharp watch. They are out there, I can feel it, you can smell it.”
The boy nodded weakly and resumed his watch.
In fact, they actually had smelled them. A heavy line of squalls had battered the ships throughout the afternoon as they approached the Minoan Shoals. The fleet had moved in line astern of the flagship as they struggled through the Three Sisters, a mile-wide passage that cut through the middle of a chain of islands and sandbars that stretched for more than forty miles.
With his flagship Antietam leading the way, several of the lookouts had reported that they had smelled coal smoke on the wind, and several minutes later two of them claimed to have seen a frigate-size ship, with an unusual silhouette, sailing two or three miles off, and then disappeared as the next line of rain closed in.
That was a half an hour ago.
Turning his back to the wind, Bullfinch reached under his sealskin coat and pulled out his pocket watch. An hour till sunset, but already he could feel the light beginning to fade.
Five miles past the shoals to leeward, not a good position to ride out a storm at night.
He leaned over the railing and looked aft. The fleet was still running astern. The last of them had to be through the Three Sisters.
Come about? Put the Shoals between us and them during the night?
He felt a terrible loneliness. Suppose they aren’t here? Andrew said they might make a run for the Bantag coast. But nothing was there other than a bunch of savages. No, all doctrine ran toward hitting your opponent’s main base first by surprise, bottling him up, smashing him. Then they’d have the sea and could do as they pleased. If they were coming to Constantine, they would make for these shoals first, and get their bearing, rather than go blundering along an unknown coastline and then give the Republic warning.
For that matter, had they even arrived yet? Cromwell had said ten knots. Suppose, though, it was eight knots. Bullfinch thought. That would put them a good hundred miles still out. Or twelve knots, then they might very well have rounded the shoals this morning, we sailed straight past each other and even now they are closing to bombard Constantine.
He had sent scout frigates out at full steam to cover the flanks of each end of the shoals, but no reports. But then again, that could mean that they were already at the bottom of the sea, destroyed before they could return.
He knew he was tearing himself apart with all the variables and chance errors and decisions that made up a battle at sea. Make the plan as best you can, he realized, then stick to it until you get a solid fact that changes things. You figured they’d run first to the Shoals, perhaps slow there for at least a few hours to bring their fleet together, perhaps even weather the night here, then move along its length to gain a bearing, finally rounding it either to the east or west. We come in through the middle and hopefully hit them by surprise, then get the hell out.
So it’s here. But where the hell are they? In this storm they could be five miles off to port or starboard. Perhaps they’d already gained the shoals and had turned, running east or west to round them, moving cautiously to avoid running aground.
He looked back again at his own fleet, less than half of it visible. All of them were running now on engines, all sails furled as they plowed into the teeth of the storm.
What next, damn it, what next?
With the light beginning to fade, he had but two choices. Either come about, get to leeward of the shoals, and sit out the night; moving to pounce before dawn. If I do that, it will be a fifty-fifty chance-we either run east or west. Or we move straight on here into the night, gain about ten miles out, then turn either east or west and try to come in from behind.
Best possible choice, I’ve got to run with that.
He could sense that everyone inside the cupola was peeking out through the narrow view slit, watching him, knowing he was trying to sort out all the different elements, to come to a conclusion. They most likely knew his every idiosyncrasy, the way he hunched his shoulders and rubbed his scarred face and eyepatch when he was lost in thought. He realized he was doing that, and turned the gesture into wiping the rain from his face.
Another wave cascaded over the bow, sending up spray bits of spindrift flying back, sweeping the bridge.
He turned his back to it, saw the men peering at him through the viewing slit.
“Signal the fleet. Line abreast, storm formation.”
As he stepped back into the cupola, the signal flags went up. He doubted if the ships astern could see them since the wind was running almost due fore and aft so that the flags would appear edgewise to those astern.
The command, however, also went up to the signals officer in the enclosed maintop. The shutter telegraph would relay the order as well.
He felt the pounding vibration of the engines ease off slightly. Captain Nagama, who was in direct command of the ship, had passed the word to ease back to half speed. Behind them the other cruisers would surge forward, breaking in an alternating pattern to port and starboard of the flagship. Each cruiser would assume a position six hundred yards to either flank, while the frigates, running at flank speed, would cut through the line to assume a forward position half a mile farther out.