At the Midway by J. Clayton Rogers - HTML preview

XXX

 

2205 Hours

 

Oates found the first lieutenant on the quarterdeck, directing one of the gun divisions. A reeving line had been passed under the keel and now a collision mat was being hauled over the rent in the hull. Drawing the First to the side, he quietly informed him of the death of the executive officer.

"If something happens to me, you're in command."

"Aye, sir."

Oates was vaguely nonplussed by the ease with which his 'fust luff' received the news. He'd never been able to learn much about the man--one of those cold fish who emerged from the school and swam near the top throughout his career, retiring on a raft of mundane commendations. The type known at the Academy as a "greasoir." Any other time Oates might have made his annoyance evident, but right now they were too busy saving the ship. Damage control teams had reported a ten-foot gash in the bilge keel. The canvas would stop the leak for now, but would it be enough to get them to Hawaii?

 

2330 Hours

 

Later, in the wardroom, Captain Oates heard two sounds that amazed him: the bell sounding the half-hour and a yeoman typing in the sea cabin. Tolling the time of day or night was a naval habit so ingrained that Oates merely nodded in marvel. Chores continued to be performed even in the face of catastrophe. For all he knew, someone was below cleaning the heads. But with the Florida locked in mortal combat and grievously wounded, it was nothing less than incredible that bureaucracy persisted with its infernal typing.

"Stop that damn racket!"

The typist, one Yeoman Paige, never protested the contrariness of Oates' standing order to type up the ship's logs and other reports daily, even though the captain found the interminable clack-clack-clack unbearable. The typing ceased. The yeoman retreated into the passageway, where he would lurk until Oates was gone and he could resume his seat behind the cumbersome machine.

Oates desperately needed sleep. His arms and legs trembled. Flush, he could not determine if his lightheadedness was due to exhaustion or the drugs the surgeon plied him with. Worst of all, with every step he anticipated the paralyzing agony that had signaled his first attack. Pain that spelled death in no uncertain terms. Under the current stress and circumstances, he knew he would not survive such an ordeal again. The looks the surgeon and Singleton had given him said as much. Yet with Grissom dead and the First an untested commodity, he had no choice but to keep going. Bracing himself on the wash basin, he met the pale reflection in the mirror and saw all the cigarettes, brandy and food he'd ever consumed injected like angels of death into his very flesh. There was more wear and tear, but one consoled oneself for a failed marriage at one's peril. Clasping his hands, Captain Oates bowed and prayed. A knock at the door caused him to jump.

"Come!" he commanded, standing straight.

The first lieutenant entered. "I have that list you wanted."

"Very well...."

In a chilly, unemotional tone, the officer read: "Ensign Dobson, sick bay. Petty Officer Laughton, dead. Ensign Garrett, on shore. Midshipman Waters, dead. Petty Officer Bivens, missing. Petty Officer Simms, wounded by .30 caliber; only slightly, but he washed out before finishing the course. That leaves Midshipman Beck."

"Beck... yes. A good lad. Is he fit? Garrett gave him some hard hits, for all his losing."

"Bruises. That's all."

"Where is he?"

"Sacking out, sir."

"Have him ready at first light. I'm going to lie down for awhile. The deck's yours."

 

0500 Hours

 

Midshipman Beck was as exhausted as a young man could get short of coma. Curled in his hammock, he was locked behind a solid door of dreams:

A dark serpent shot through the forecastle. "Hit the deck for belly inspection!" Beck leaped high in the air, higher than the ceiling, and landed with a loud thud. He pulled up his shirt and waited for the surgeon.

Who turned out to be Ensign Garrett. He sauntered down the line of seamen, thumping their bellies and looking for measle spots. When he reached Beck, he clapped his hand to his head. "Oh Lord, you're a dead man!"

"How do you know that, sir?"

"It says so right here!"

Peering down, Beck saw Garrett was right. The measles had written "DEAD MAN" straight across his stomach.

"I'm dead! Mother will never forgive me!"

When the first lieutenant prodded him awake, Beck turned away, moaning. "Aw Fust, can't a guy get any sleep around here?"

"Mr. Beck!"

He certainly did not sound like a dream. Twisting around, Beck squinted through the dim light. "Sir? Is it really you?"

"Come on, the captain wants to see you."

"The captain? Then I need to get dressed."

"You're dressed enough."

 

0530 Hours

 

Beck raised his chin as the boatswain's mate lowered the heavy collar onto his shoulder. Then he stood so that the rear of the baggy diving suit could be sealed.

Worms of fear crawled through his heart and into his stomach. He was the only one left on board who was certified on the diving suit. That was the short and shit of it. He was not even allowed to put a good face on it by volunteering.

"Mr. Beck, you will report to the boatswain, who will assist you into diving gear. At first light you will go over the side to make certain the collision mat is secure. The starboard screw may be damaged. We want you to look at that, too. Son... this is a job that has to be done. My wholehearted desire is to see you come back unharmed. Every man who can hold a gun will be on deck to cover you. Good luck. That's all."

Might as well be tuna in a tin, he thought as he was helped to the edge of the quarterdeck, just above the diving stage. He was sluggish in his forty-pound lead shoes.

Midshipman Beck had undergone a thorough physical before being allowed to enter submarine training. No one with a short neck or high complexion was allowed in. Complaints of the head or heart, as well as poor circulation of the blood, were also grounds for refusal. Beck had checked out as a fine, healthy specimen. Which was just as well, because after the helmet was clamped on, the suit would weigh one hundred and sixty pounds.

"Sorry about Midshipman Davis," said the boatswain.

The bout with Garrett was a remote lark next to this--his bruises love-taps from the past. The two people foremost in his thoughts were his mother… and Midshipman Davis.

Fervently, he prayed that Mother Beck would never find out the way he died. Out of respect for them both, the Navy should tell her no more than, "Lost at sea." Better yet: "Died in the line of duty." But he would gladly forgo the latter honor if the Navy saw fit to add, "Eaten in the line of duty." No matter how veiled or tactfully presented, there would be bizarre comical connotations.

Then there was Davis.

How could the son of a bitch turn his back on him, then leave no hope of reconciliation? Beck found himself gritting his teeth in anger, as if by dying Davis had slapped him in the face. Go to hell and no thanks. How many chances did one get to forgive an insult? When Davis disassociated himself from his messmate, Beck's primary response was disbelief. Perhaps Davis had not really meant to turn his back on him--had let a moment's anger and frustration spin into a lengthy grudge out of false pride. After all, would Beck have wanted to share the misfortune if Garrett had singled Davis out instead of him?

Now he would never know. The soreness in his jaw was exacerbated as he ground his teeth. Regret and pain helped dispel his fear.

In the east the sky showed red tints. The old maritime ditty came to him:

 

Red sky at night,

Sailors' delight;

Red sky in morning,

Sailors take warning.

 

On the Cliffs of Time

 

The creature also sensed the approach of dawn. She pulled her red-soaked head from the body of the young male Tu-nel and downed another hunk of flesh. Fighting free of the anchor chain had burned up precious energy. Famished, she attacked the Tu-nel corpse with brute gusto. Only a third of it was left. Once gone, she would have to move on--or sink the Florida and pry her open for the morsels inside.

Because it was not only human meat that she smelled.

 

0534 Hours

 

"That'll do it," Garrett said, clambering down the side of the barge. He checked the Plimsoll lines. "The two of them'll be enough to fill a stokehold."

A blast of steam from the sea tug confirmed her repairs. Two engineers had worked on the Iroquois' pressure valves throughout the night. With help from the Japanese fishermen they were able to work up a head of steam in the hours the marines and stewards loaded coal. When they slid her into the water, she seemed lumpy, like a serene hippo. But she was powerful enough to haul the barges lashed to either side of her. Maneuvering them through the lagoon would be awkward, however. The two Commercial Pacific employees who had piloted her were dead.

Garrett lifted his binoculars and scanned the reef. While the Florida was not listing, there was something peculiar about the way she sat in the water. Faint trails of smoke rose from her funnels. Oates was burning wood just to maintain auxiliary power.

Over a hundred men would be left on the island. The rest would go with Garrett. His crew had volunteered piecemeal throughout the night and included Amos Macklin.

"Trying to show me something, Ordinary Seaman Macklin?"

Amos made an extravagant display of hitching up his trousers. "This is where I keep them," he said.

The marines and seamen remaining on the island lashed the three-inch fieldpieces in the tug, one port and one starboard, then watched as Garrett clumsily backed the tug into the lagoon. The barges seemed like monstrous water wings.

He made for the channel.

 

0550 Hours

 

Edging slowly off the diving platform, Midshipman Beck grabbed the top spar of the underwater stage. Made up of three spars measuring twenty to twenty-five feet, it was in effect a ladder weighted down with slung shot. To the top spar were attached rope ladders on roller chocks. These enabled the diver to swing the stage close to the ship while scraping barnacles off the hull, but on this occasion Beck was using the stage to slow his descent. It was only from the sea bottom that he would be able to take in the length of the Florida.

On reaching the last rung, he took several deep breaths, then looked down to make certain he wouldn't land on something painful. He pushed his feet out and let go.

The suit squeezed him like a giant hand. Nothing at all like the exquisite release from gravity usually experienced by a swimmer. He waited a few moments for his panic to subside, then swiveled slowly.

The Florida's keel was a bare twenty feet above him, hovering like a sleeping whale. Barnacles and innumerable scratches marred the red paint of the bilge keel. He could hear the moan of metal as chain links grated. The water was as clear as an April morning, but--

Where were the fish?

Here and there a silver flash. But no sign of the living shoals that usually brocaded coral reefs.

There was a methodical knocking over his head. A damage control team working on the hull from the inside. There were deeper rumblings from the ship itself, water sucking and burbling at the bilge, coughs and spectral whispers, as though death was pining for him in the distance.

His ears hurt--a result of the different air pressure on the opposite sides of the tympanum, they'd told him in diving school. The instructors had gone into gory detail about caisson disease: loss of vibratile movement and the peculiar purplish rash. Then the cramps. Then the agony. But that all began at two hundred feet and then only as you came up. Beck was in water no more than thirty-five feet deep. It was the aggregate pressure of twenty thousand pounds that made his heart flutter. Added to that was ordinary air pressure.

Forty-thousand pounds. That's what I have on my head. Enough to snap a neck, for certain.

Lifting his heavy lead shoes, he walked under the keel, amazed at how much larger yet simpler a battleship seemed from below. The bilge keel disappeared in the direction of the ram. A bleak expanse. Coming up under the collision mat, he noted whiskery bubbles where it covered the gash. Some leakage, but nothing serious.

Small clouds of sand rolled over his feet as he stepped around the coral outcrops. The suit's air valve mechanism clicked near his ear, sounding like a gull pecking at a clamshell. Silvery bubbles flanked his helmet, making peripheral vision through the small view ports on either side of it difficult. That was all right. He did not want to see the creature swooping down on him. Nothing he could do about it. Better a quick snuff and blackout....

The ocean shifted. The creature was so immense it could be sensed before seen. Beck could feel its enormous bow wave shove at his shoulders. Even before it hove into view, the middy lost control of his bladder.

"No..." he pleaded in the deadening confines of the helmet. With mincing steps he made a small circle.

It came like an underwater cathedral--with a certainty, a god-like ownership of ocean. It swam easily, surrounded by immense silence. Yet once it turned towards Beck, he lost all perspective of it. Coasting just below the surface, its belly snapped the tops off stag horn coral below. It veered away from the Florida at the last instant, swam a short distance away, returned, veered off again. Like a shark gauging its prey. Beck wished the ghostly metal hammering inside the hull would stop. He was sure the repair crew was drawing the creature's attention.

The creature glided closer. Beck had no doubt it would clip his air line. He would be suffocated or consumed. He closed his eyes as the great maw opened before him, counted the seconds, knowing there was nothing more he could do. The sea crowded into him, like the mass of young men who'd tossed their caps in the air at graduation. Well, he tried to console himself, at least I'll never have to take the officers exam.

Suddenly he heard...

...engines.

Opening his eyes, he saw no sign of the creature, but the tidal gyrations of the water tugging him this way and that told him it was still close by. He ventured another mincing minuet.

There! The tail swung away from him.

In the direction of a trio of silhouettes cutting the waves overhead. He detected the distant rattle and thud of small arms and artillery. Frantically, he took hold of the guide line and yanked three times.

Nothing happened. Was anyone paying attention to him up there? The air pump was fueled by gasoline. What would happen when the small tank went dry? Would anyone notice?

He tried to lean down to unstrap his weighted shoes, but the bulky suit would allow no more than a brief bow.

He yanked again.

And again.

 

0610 Hours

 

Holding the wheel tightly, Garrett was nearly thrown end over end by the impact. "No!" he shouted when a huge crest of water fell over the coal in one of the barges. The worst thing in a hot stokehold was wet coal, smoldering, ready to catch fire any instant.

His dismay was transformed into horror when the creature heaved the forward part of its body down like a landslide onto the barge. The creature was in a fury due to the red gash in its neck, caused by one of the three-inchers.

The tug bucked wildly. The men at the starboard gun were catapulted over the side. Garrett heard their screams even as he was flung against the wall of the pilothouse. While men were lost, the tug gained: a quarter ton of coal, raining down like black hail on the deck as the barge and tug swatted together and then apart in a geometric spasm.

"The barge is sinking!" a marine yelled as the creature slid off into the water. "We'll have to cut loose!"

"The hell we will!"

Like an omen, Amos Macklin appeared on deck. Besides the fishermen manning the engines, he and Garrett were the only sailors on board. Outside of Hart and Singleton, the rest were marines. He had refused to allow the fanatical young man from the ill-fated whaler to come along. It was bad enough hauling two civilians. When William Pegg insisted that he was fit enough to row, Garrett advised him that the only ships going back to the Florida were the Iroquois and a motor launch. There would be no rowing on the outward leg and he would be unable to help in any event. The young man's face fell and he seemed to disappear before their eyes.

"Mr. Garrett! That hit busted one of the tubes!"

Garrett slapped him on the shoulder. "Can you manage the helm? I have to go over the side."

Amos gaped.

"C'mon, lolly-banger! Can you take it?"

"I piloted a tug in Jacksonville for--"

"Good. Bring the port barge up on those collision mats fo'ard the Florida. Not those aft. Got it?"

There was no shame in Amos' fear. They were every man jack of them terrified to their bones.

"Aye, sir."

"You're a credit to your race. Hey! Jarhead! Hand me that ax. If I can't save the barge...."

The marine he was yelling at had an itch to put the ax in Garrett's head, but put it in his hand instead. Hamilton and Singleton came up and asked what they could do to help. "Stay out of my way!" Before they could protest, he was over the side.

"Goddamn!" he shouted the instant he hit the slope of coal.

"She's shipping water!" yelled a marine half-buried in the coal when he was knocked overboard. Garrett helped him finish digging out. His arm was broken. "Give us a boost here!"

Hands reached down from the tug and took hold of the marine. As he hefted the groaning man by the armpits, he noticed a slash of red on the side of the tug. The second marine had been crushed between the two vessels.

So much for him. Now for the barge.

Garrett took up the ax again and started up the hill. At least fifteen tons of coal remained on the barge. The ensign was loath to lose them. For every two steps, he slid back one as the coal shifted beneath him.

He heard the distinct ring of the engine room telegraph on the tug. Amos was stopping the engines in an attempt to keep the barge from taking on so much water.

His eyes seemed to go stark dry when he saw the whirlpool to starboard. Whenever the creature made a turn in the shallows, cyclonic galaxies appeared on the surface. He caught sight of a fin, then a snout.

"Oh!" came an involuntary shout when one of the three-inchers on the tug thumped, pummeling his ears with the abrupt concussion. From the Florida machine gun fire rained down.

Garrett was at the top of the hill of coal when the head erupted from the water and the great neck stretched out.

His body puckered like a walnut. He felt his whole being collapse. The creature appeared quickly, like a ghost popping from nowhere. It moved in like a picture screen falling over. Immediately, all his faith in the duff sauce vanished. He began burrowing into the coal. The hot fetid breath, the rank, innumerable dead, fell over him like a cerecloth. He lost coordination, legs and arms jerked spasmodically. He fell, rolling down the slope away from the tug. The creature followed his progress with an almost disinterested tilt of its neck. Looking up from the gunwale, Garrett noted a discolored patch of skin around the creature's jaw and suspected it was caused by shell-blast. The third marine was nowhere in sight. He pressed his feet against the gunwale and shoved himself head-first into the coal. He was suffocating in an instant and had to pull out.

He squinted through the coal dust pasted to his face. He could feel the barge jerk repeatedly as the serpent bumped against it.

No more gunfire from the Florida, now but fifty yards away. It surprised the ensign that the gunners should be afraid of hitting him. Maybe they thought he could still save the barge.

A sudden calm came over Garrett--a numbness like the first moment of sleep. Shifting uneasily on the coal, he stood and raised his eyes. The creature stared back at him. It struck Garrett that the men in the ship had a grandstand view of what was happening. They had seen him grovel. They had witnessed his loss against Beck. Now he would make up for it--show them what balls were all about. He recalled the boxer he'd seen as a boy dying of heart failure in the ring. A scrapper to the end. "Let's hear it, boys! Fanfare and epitaph!" Then he turned roundly on the beast and said, "Fuck you, and let's both go to hell."

The ax had fallen down the slope with him and lay half-buried near his feet. It had been his intention to hack the cables if the coal could not be saved, but the barge was no longer shipping water. The gunwale was indeed damaged, but coal had slid against it from the inside, in effect, shoring it up. He had to get out. Wishing he was already dead and free of worry, he pulled out of his hole and began climbing back the way he'd come, grabbing the ax as he went. His skin prickled. He knew the creature was still staring at him. He could smell its breath. It seemed to exhale an entire ancient catacomb from its lungs, a stench so awful Garrett retched. But he kept going.

"Okay, Mr. Pegg, let's see if your magic elixir really works." The sheer presence of the beast was like a heavy boulder on his back--a weight that suddenly increased.

A heavy thump sent Garrett sprawling. Shouting, almost screaming, he pushed up onto his knees and crawled--until a painful nudge sent him sprawling once again.

Twisting on his side, he found himself gaping at the creature's snout only inches away, saw the head flex with disgust when the creature caught a strong whiff of the duff sauce.

So William Pegg's Portuguese repellent actually worked! But how well? Dare he risk a swing of the ax? With infinite fear and caution, he rose and braced his feet as well as he could. He breathed like a man with a sack over his head.