Another salvo slashed out from Amagi just as six torpedoes chuffed from their tubes and lanced in her direction. Black smoke poured from the stacks again and Garrett felt a sense of anxious elation now their torpedoes were on the way. With any luck… A thunderous crash and a fiery cloud of hot, black soot and steam swept him to the deck.
Walker heaved when a ten-inch shell on a virtually flat trajectory punched through the forward fireroom. It didn’t explode, but the sudden decompression of the compartment caused the burners to fireball. The flames didn’t kill the men, but the steam from ruptured lines did. The destroyer’s speed dropped and Matt turned to Chief Gray, but he’d already left. His gaze returned to the shattered pilothouse windows, sweeping past the speaking tube that led to the crow’s nest. Blood dripped from it to join a widening pool. Electrician’s Mate Janssen’s blood was there too, as well as Rodriguez’s. Rodriguez had been carried to the wardroom. Janssen was dead.
“Sir, forward fireroom’s out of action! Mr. McFarlane bypassed with the main deck valve. He says our speed should be restored-almost- momentarily.”
“Very well.”
Mahan emerged from the smoke and spray astern cutting a wide, looping turn to port. Back toward Amagi. Matt stifled his instinctive command to signal her when he saw the reason why. The gun on her foredeck stood vacant and exposed, the splinter shield shot away. Behind it, the entire bridge superstructure was askew, torn and shattered and gushing smoke. After a single horrified glance, he doubted a soul had survived inside it. Her port torpedo tubes were rigged out, so at least maybe she got off her salvo, but otherwise she was a wreck.
More men lost. His men now. Since Captain Blinn was lost to them with Pope, he was senior. He’d ordered the torpedo attack-it made no difference that there wasn’t any choice. Those men now steaming blind and helpless at flank speed directly toward the enemy were under his orders. But what of these men? Chances were, with Mahan headed straight for her, Amagi would concentrate on the helpless destroyer. The fire aimed at Walker had already slacked. She could almost certainly slip into the squall. He rubbed his forehead vigorously and looked into the wide-eyed, expectant faces of the men around him. They wanted him to do it: to give the order to turn back. They were willing it. Didn’t they understand it was death? They had a chance to live-all they had to do was abandon Mahan to Amagi’s fury.
No, they couldn’t live like that and neither could he. They’d run far enough. It didn’t matter anymore where they were. The fight was here and they would face it. Shades of gray no longer existed. Everything was a stark black and white once more. Was that what it all boiled down to? Had the entire Asiatic Fleet been sacrificed just because it was there? The salvo buzzer rang and numbers one, three, and four let loose, but he didn’t even hear. Finally his gaze fell upon Reynolds. The boy was the youngest and most junior crewman on the bridge. The look he returned was… pleading.
“Come about! Bring us as close alongside Mahan as she’ll bear.” He gestured at the bombers above. Three of them flew lazy circles, watching, as if afraid to descend into the line of fire. “Maybe we can at least keep them off her.”
“Skipper, the Jap cruisers behind us are out of the squall. They can see us now.”
“Good. Let ’em watch,” Matt snarled. Some of the men giggled nervously. “How much longer for the torpedoes, Mr. Sandison?”
“Ten seconds.”
Walker finished her turn and sprinted after Mahan. The sea frothed around her with the strikes of enemy shells. She staggered from another impact forward.
“Time?”
“Three… two… one…” Sandison looked up from his watch with a wretched expression. Damn! More duds-or whatever it was that had been wrong with the torpedoes since the war began. They were nearly even with Mahan now. Her speed was dropping off.
“See if-” Matt was interrupted by a bright snap of light, and he looked up in time to hear the detonation of the single massive explosion that disemboweled the Japanese destroyer. The ship hung, jackknifed, her bow in the air and her stern already slipping. The flames were bright against the dark squall beyond. Wild cheering erupted and Matt cheered too-but they’d missed Amagi. She was turning toward them in case there were more torpedoes in the water, and therefore, for a moment, she couldn’t fire. Shells fell in earnest from the cruisers behind, but Amagi suddenly blurred. The squall was moving over her. Toward them. They were a mile away.
“Skipper! Get a load of this!” shouted Flowers. He was looking to his left, at Mahan. A column of spray collapsed on her deck and a man struggled through the cascade. He pointed at them with his right hand and held that arm up. Then he patted his chest with the left and brought it from below, across the bottom of his elbow and up alongside the other. Then he vanished in more spray.
“What the hell?” muttered Sandison.
Mahan dropped back and they saw men on her wreckage-strewn deck heaving on the exposed steering cables. She sheared to the right and narrowly avoided colliding with Walker’s stern. With a burst of speed, she lanced forward along the starboard side. The same man as before stood between the two torpedo mounts, still rigged out. He pointed at them exaggeratedly.
“My God, they’re still loaded!” shouted Sandison. Matt ran onto the bridgewing and held up his own right arm. Then he took both arms and brought them up, diverging on either side of where his arm had first been. The man on Mahan’s deck held up an “OK” sign and scurried away.
“Left twenty degrees!” Matt shouted. “We’re going to run up both sides of her! We may not have any torpedoes, but the Japs don’t know that!”
Amagi had crept out of the squall, but just barely. It was almost as if the storm followed her. Now she was pointed directly at them and water peeled from her bow as she surged ahead. They were so close and the angle was such that only a couple of her secondaries would bear. They’re still plenty big, thought Matt, and as soon as we come alongside, the entire secondary broadside will come into play. It would happen in less than two minutes.
Mahan moved farther and farther to starboard. With the loss of her forward fireroom, Walker could barely make twenty-five knots. Mahan looked like a wreck, but she was keeping up. The roaring bombers swooped to attack in spite of the incoming shells. Machine guns clattered above and behind. The salvo buzzer rang. Antiaircraft rounds raked Walker’s bridge as the two four-stackers streamed past Amagi’s bow. Lieutenant Flowers spun away from the wheel and collapsed to the deck, and Matt jumped into his place. The maelstrom of fire and the kaleidoscope of images were beyond anything they’d experienced yet. Amagi’s side was alive with flashing muzzles, and Walker drummed with impacts as numerous as the raindrops of the previous squall.
Simultaneously, Walker heaved with the close impact of a pair of bombs, and the plane that had dropped them slanted unnaturally toward Amagi, trailing smoke. It impacted with a monstrous fireball directly atop her amidships turret. Two more explosions rocked Amagi from the opposite side and she heeled sharply toward Walker with the force of the blows. The salvo buzzer rang. WHAM!
Another bomb detonated and shells from the other cruisers still fell. Some even struck Amagi. Amid this tempest of fire, smoke, overpressure, and death, they were finally consumed by the squall.
CHAPTER 2
Elation surged in Matt’s chest as the green deluge- tinged with the reflection of explosions and flames- descended upon them. In spite of himself, a shout of exultation escaped. Instead of the comforting, drumming rain on the deck above, however, a shocking… silence… stunned his senses. He heard surprised shouts on the foredeck and then the confused murmuring of the bridge watch, but for a moment there was nothing else. He spun to look past the chart house. As the rest of the ship… materialized out of the greenness behind them, he began to hear it-the ship itself. The reassuring thunder of the blowers as they roared into being, the shouted obscenities of the number two gun crew amidships. On and on, until he heard the tumult as far away as the fantail. But other than the increasingly alarmed voices of his crew, the normal sounds of his ship, and the loud ringing in his ears caused by the din of battle, there was nothing.