He often reflected on the certainty he’d felt regarding an eventual war with Germany, and he admitted that before he got out here, he’d never given much thought to the Japanese. Evidently nobody had. Now his entire consciousness was devoted to preventing that underestimated foe from shredding his ship and her crew and sending them to the bottom of the Java Sea.
With a gauging glance at the stately Exeter off the port quarter to ensure that Walker was holding proper formation, he stepped into the pilothouse. The gunnery officer, Lieutenant (j.g.) Greg Garrett, looked anxiously from the port bridgewing and Matt waved him back. The tall, lanky young officer nodded solemnly and resumed scanning the sea toward the dark smudge in the north that was Borneo. A good kid, Greg. He was conscientious and industrious, if just a bit intense. They were still at general quarters, as they’d been since the morning watch, and Garrett’s battle station was normally on the fire-control platform above the pilothouse. Matt had told him to rotate himself and his team out of the wind and sun periodically. The main battery was useless against air attack, and it would be a while before they were in range of the Japanese cruiser’s eight-inch guns. Longer still before they could hope to reply. Even so, when it was Garrett’s turn to take a break, he merely descended to the pilothouse and kept doing what he’d done above-watching and waiting. Matt understood how the younger man felt. The atmosphere of anxiety and tension was thick. Everyone anticipated the cry warning of enemy ships or planes.
The stocky, broad-shouldered form of Lieutenant James Ellis clomped metallically up the ladder from the main deck below, and Matt arched an eyebrow at him. He liked Jim Ellis, and they were as close to being friends as their rank difference allowed, but Jim was much farther from his battle station at the auxiliary conn on the aft deckhouse than Garrett was from his.
“Yes, sir, I know,” Ellis said, anticipating the reprimand as he maneuvered Matt out of hearing of the others in the pilothouse. “But those nurses and their flyboy chauffeurs want to know if there’s anything they can do. That Army captain”-he tilted his nose up with unconscious disdain-“actually tried to come up here and bug you. Chief Gray said he’d have to wait your convenience.” Ellis grinned. “That wasn’t good enough and Gray offered to sit on him-physically. Then he sent for me.” Matt smiled in spite of his jitters.
Before they cleared Surabaya, they’d taken aboard a rather motley assortment of passengers. First to arrive was an unkempt and harried-looking Australian, a Mr. Bradford, a construction engineer for Royal Dutch Shell. He introduced himself as a “naturalist,” but paid his passage by intervening on their behalf with the harbor officials, who didn’t want to fill their bunkers. They’d argued that the fuel would be better used by Dutch ships, staying to defend Java. Courtney Bradford countered with the fact that there was only one Dutch ship left, a destroyer, and she was getting the hell out just as fast as she could. Perhaps it was their lingering respect for a corporate superior, or maybe just the final realization that everything really was falling apart. Whatever the motivation, Walker left Surabaya with her bunkers overflowing.
Next to come limping aboard was a sergeant from Houston’s Marine contingent. He’d been wounded by a bomb that had killed dozens and wrecked the old cruiser’s aft turret. Left ashore in a hospital with a lacerated leg, he missed her final sortie. He didn’t intend to become a guest of the Japanese. Upon his arrival, he was roundly scolded for bleeding on the deck and sent below to the surgeon.
Finally, motoring out to catch them in a “borrowed” boat just as they were preparing to get under way were six Navy nurses and two P-40 pilots who’d escaped the sinking of the old Langley the day before. Langley had been ferrying P-40 fighters in for the defense of Java, but she was caught fifty miles short. Bombed into a smoldering wreck, she was abandoned, and one of Walker’s sisters, Edsall, was forced to finish her with two precious torpedoes. The majority of Langley’s personnel shipped south on the oiler Pecos, but in the confusion, the nurses and airmen were left behind. They persuaded the driver of a Dutch army truck to take them to Surabaya, and they arrived just in time to come aboard Walker.
Matt hadn’t seen them. He’d been aboard Exeter conferring with Captain Gordon’s executive officer. When he returned, he was informed of the ship’s newest passengers by a leering Jim Ellis and a scandalized Lieutenant Brad “Spanky” McFarlane, the engineering officer, whose strict observance of Navy custom-if not always regulations-filled him with a terrible conviction that women on board would certainly doom the ship. That Army aviators accompanied them would probably send them to hell as well. Matt was inwardly amused by the diverse reactions, and it never occurred to him to set them ashore under the circumstances. He only wondered briefly where they’d be kept. Since then, he hadn’t seen them and they’d been forgotten.
“What’s his name?”
“The Army captain? Kaufman, sir.”
“Very well, send him up, but by himself. And, Exec,” he added ominously, “we don’t need the distraction of women on my bridge. Clear?”
Lieutenant Ellis grinned hugely and went to fetch their visitor. Matt stepped onto the bridgewing as the Air Corps captain clumsily appeared. He prepared to return the salute he expected, since they were technically out-of-doors. It didn’t come. His eyes narrowed slightly and the other members of the bridge crew exchanged shocked, knowing expressions.
“Lieutenant Commander Reddy? I’m David Kaufman, Captain, U.S. Army Air Corps.”
The man stuck out his hand and Matt took it briefly. His initial impression was that the lack of a salute and the use of his specific rank instead of the appropriate, if honorific, title of “Captain” were due to ignorance. A Navy lieutenant commander was equivalent to a major in the Army. But the emphasis Kaufman applied to his own rank warned Matt that his guest didn’t see it that way and might try to intimidate him if he could.
“What can I do for you, Captain Kaufman?” he asked, placing emphasis on the “Captain” as well, but in a way he’d address a subordinate. Kaufman glanced at the hostile expressions of the seamen on the bridge and modified his tone. His next words were less condescending.
“I just thought if there was anything I or Lieutenant Mallory might help you with, why, just let us know.” He smiled smugly, and the patronizing inflection returned as he spoke. He acted like he’d granted a favor.
“What can you do?” Matt asked simply. “Besides fly airplanes. I assume you can fly airplanes.”
Kaufman’s face reddened, and he realized he might have overstepped. “Yeah, I can fly airplanes,” he said with a quick, brittle smile. He held his hands out to his sides. “But I’m fresh out. You don’t have one I can borrow?” His attempted joke fell flat and he just shrugged. “I can fire a machine gun.”
Matt turned to Garrett, observing the exchange with wide eyes. “Mr. Garrett, perhaps the captain and his lieutenant might assist your crews on the thirty-cals on the fire-control platform? If we come under air attack they’ll need to be supplied with ammunition.” He grimaced. “Since we lost most of our mess attendants when we left the Philippines, it’s hard to spare men for that chore.” He looked the aviator square in the eye. “Thanks for the offer. You’re dismissed.” With that, he turned and peered out the pilothouse windows at the number one gun down on the foredeck. He sensed Kaufman’s furious presence behind him for a few moments more, but with an audible sigh and a few muted chuckles, the rest of the watch relaxed and he knew Kaufman must have left. I shouldn’t have let him rile me, he scolded himself, but he made a quiet snort of amusement anyway. Then he spun-“Exec!”