Within seconds several other rifle shots rang out.
He had no idea who the Dominicans were shooting at; although he was certain they were not shooting at him.
More searchlights began playing across the island.
Just to add to the confusion Abe shot another man a quarter-of-a-mile to his left before he ducked down again and zig-zagging through the undergrowth, careful not to leave a trail of moving brush and saplings, moved towards a position a couple of hundred yards nearer to the beach.
He needed to draw the searchers away from where he had left Ted Forest, and the only way that was going to happen was if he got close enough to the beach to snipe again at the Reina Eugenie.
From what he had seen of his enemy he reacted badly to pain and had not the first idea how to respond to surprises. So, he planned to give them as many very nasty surprises as he could!
The bayonet on the Mauser kept fouling the undergrowth.
A couple of times he contemplated ditching it; he had the hatchet, after all, uncomfortably bouncing against his lower spine, loosely slung in his back waistband.
“A qué mierda crees que vas, marinero?”
The man ahead of him was a little to Abe’s right and had stepped out of the bushes with his Mauser pointing, albeit only more or less, in his direction.
Abe did not speak Spanish.
Nevertheless, he got the gist of the question: “Where the fuck do you think you are going, sailor?”
He thought about shooting the man.
No, I need to be closer to the beach before I make a nuisance of myself!
Several seconds later he was reflecting that, in hindsight, it might have been much better to have just shot the man. Abe’s initial bayonet thrust must have skewered him; he still screamed and went on screaming as he twisted the blade, sucked it out of his guts and struck a second and a third time. Momentarily, the bayonet had got stuck…
He killed the Dominican with the hand axe.
Splitting his face and head…
By then the hue and cry had already begun.
Leaving his own bloodied, possibly damaged Mauser on the ground next to the dead man he swept up his victim’s weapon and ammunition pouch and navigated an erratic route through the scrub which he hoped would bring him close to the shore more or less opposite the gap in the reef, some three hundred yards astern of the Reina Eugenie.
There were more shots.
None passed near Abe.
Searchlights were blazing above his head, focusing on the area he had just vacated. Each time he stopped to bob half a head, periscope-like above the level of the surrounding vegetation he noted the marvellous contrast the loom of the searchlights cast far and wide. Their dazzle would make it virtually impossible, other than by a fluke of circumstance, for anybody on those ships to identify the muzzle flash of his rifle. The fools needed to switch off the big lamps, to allow the eyes of the men onshore to adjust to the darkness; presently, the Dominicans were as good as blind on those ships, and on land.
Sensing a searchlight beam sweeping his way Abe flattened himself on the sand and shut his eyes. He had always had good night vision, ‘cat’s eyes’, Kate used to tease him. He had never imagined it would come in so useful in a situation so extraordinary to defy… belief.
He waited, listening hard.
Then, satisfied that nobody was in the vicinity he scrambled forward, pausing only to discard the Mauser’s bayonet, remembering how he had seen the blades of the other sailors’ weapons glinting in the night.
Some minutes later, dripping in sweat and gasping for air, his heart pounding madly, Abe collapsed onto the ground. He knew he was close to the beach because the surf sounded loud. Presently, his heart beat and his thoughts slowed and he began to assimilate his new surroundings.
The Dominicans had stopped shooting, and shouting, at each other as they crashed around like bulls in china shops. Curiously, no further reinforcements had come ashore and there was very little visible activity on board the Reina Eugenie.
Okay, they finally got it that it was dangerous on deck!
That said, the poor chumps standing on the open searchlight platforms must be feeling like tin soldiers in a fairground shooting gallery!
The odd-looking battleship’s forward and aft turrets were trained inland. Even in the gloom Abe made out a thin plume of smoke hazing the atmosphere above her funnel. In fact, he could taste the acrid tang of coal dust in the atmosphere.
The wind had shifted after sunset…
Studying the battleship, he realised that there was a new silhouette, another big ship anchored farther out in the channel. It was hard to make out any details but this vessel had a more modern look about it than the Reina Eugenie’s two ironclad consorts.
A blocky, overlarge bridge, three stacks, two turrets fore and aft reminiscent of the layout of British heavy cruisers of the mid-century period. Ted Forest would know more about these things than he, of course. Abe had never taken any interest in things naval before he was co-opted in the RNAS; before he had joined the Navy the only waters he had ever ‘messed about on’ were those of the Mohawk River…
He needed not to be thinking about those days.
Or of Kate… it hurt too much.
He decided to shoot out the battleship’s aft searchlight first.
Chapter 26
Wednesday 12th April
Fleet Headquarters, Norfolk, Virginia
Admiral Lord Collingwood, C-in-C Atlantic Fleet was cheered by being able, for the first time in this war, to be able to report a little good news to the Governor of New England. However, his morsels of encouragement were, inevitably, somewhat over-shadowed by the grim reports pouring in from the South West Front.
Colonial forces were in retreat everywhere from West Texas to the borders of Spanish Alta California, having been struck by a tsunami of land cruisers and massed infantry, supported by thousands of cavalrymen beneath skies black with aircraft of the Fuerza Aerea de Nueva Granada – the Air Force of New Granada – mercilessly dive-bombing and strafing the fleeing Imperial formations.
It was common knowledge that the ‘Mexicans’ had obtained, courtesy of their German ‘friends’ numerous 1950’s and early 1960’s cast off from the Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches, the Imperial German Flying Corps, when that service was in the process of modernisation into its present incarnation, the Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte; what had not been appreciated was that many of the Mexicans’ front line units were, it now seemed, equipped with variants of state of the art propeller-driven bombers and fighters quite the equal of anything possessed by the massively outnumbered Colonial Air Force units in the theatre.
Enemy forces had penetrated over fifty miles behind New England lines in less than forty-eight hours. Nightmarishly, there was little to stop the all-conquering invaders driving all the way to the Mississippi Delta in the east and up into the Colorado high lands to the north; with all the territories in between now lying at the mercy of the invaders.
“That’s jolly good news, Cuthbert,” Philip De L’Isle affirmed when his friend had completed his terse report of the first operations conducted by one of the Royal Navy’s new ‘super’ carriers.
The scrambled land line between Norfolk and Government House in Philadelphia was pleasantly clear, proof positive of the efficacy of the latest digital communications systems installed at both ends of the line in recent months.