At the Midway (56 page)

Chains clattered and men shouted warnings against things falling or things about to fall.  The sounds registered as faint echoes in Amos' mind.  He was dead from exhaustion and lack of sleep; dead in spirit after his humiliation before the marines.  The thick mesh imprisoning the electric bulbs in the passageways chopped the air with cruel shadows.  Amos would have been little surprised had a warden popped up to tell him his execution could be delayed no longer.

For so long he had contemplated rebellion against his predicament.  Burning Ensign Garrett's supper and the ambush that had ensued from that act had been but the opening shots of the war.

The abject creature that had cowered before the marines shocked him with truth.  A lone man's moral shout stood no chance of being heard in the mechanized, modern world exemplified by the Navy.  At most, it could be misinterpreted as a knock in the machinery.  Garrett's beating had been almost conversational next to what the marines could dole out.  And no one would hear.

There was a gap between the leg and body of the upright piano he was helping to carry.  Turning a sharp corner, they rested the instrument on the deck for an instant.  The gap closed on Amos' palm.  His howls rifled the corridor as he lifted his end to pull out.  But the piano leg had clamped tight against the frame, locking his skin no matter how high he raised it.

"We've no time for this!"  The petty officer stiff-armed Amos in the chest.  Blood spurted from the web of his hand as he fell back.  "Get a bandage on that.  We can't have you staining the goodies.  Then get back here!"

On his way to sick bay Amos overheard preparations for a landing party.  He could not resist the building excitement, listened eagerly for details of who was going, what was expected.

It dawned on him that the pain in his hand succeeded where self
-
loathing and secret reprimands had failed.  He felt he had awakened from a long sleep.  Not a nightmare, but a more frightening numbness.  A hundred rounds of boxing, winning or losing, could not have done the same.  Pugilistic pain was something he was familiar with and always prepared for.  This tearing out of skin and flesh between his thumb and index was nothing more nor less than an arbitrary, blind
-
stupid accident.  The very fact that anything could happen at any time hinted the possibility of things one could make happen.  The penalties were there whether you willed them or not, whether they were man
-
made or not.

Then he stepped into the infirmary and saw the men injured in the fire Gilroy had started. Amos had assumed Gilroy became an incendiary in a fit of madness.  As a consequence these men had been grievously hurt
-
-
by chance.  Did they consider their pain the key to spiritual wakefulness?  Listening to their cries and moans, he knew for a fact they did not.  He realized now he was merely lucky.  The piano had not grabbed him on a bone, or fallen on a foot.  Had it been so, he would be nearly as blind with suffering as these men were.

"Here!"  The surgeon tossed him a roll of gauze.  He was obviously too busy for Amos' minor injury.  Besides, he did not like tending blacks.  Unlike many doctors, he did not attack wounds but nursed them like feverish babies until they were healed.  He was a good doctor, but his personal and professional philosophy made him reluctant to tend like a slave someone he considered half a slave.  "Wrap some of that around your hand."

"I'm not crippled," Amos said nonsensically as he caught it with his good hand.  Turning, he unintentionally locked eyes with a young man propped on a bed.  "You're the boy they picked out of the water," he said spontaneously.

"William Pegg, aye," the young man said.

He cast a wary eye at the surgeon.  He and two surgeons' mates were peering closely at a sailor who'd inhaled opium fumes.  One of them was taking notes.  They paid no attention to Amos as he slipped over to William.

"Cut my hand open," Amos explained when the boy glanced down.

"Got mine half bit off," William boasted, lifting the bandages clumped at the end of his arm.  "Don't ever fall asleep with one arm out the boat."

"That's a damn shame."  Sitting on the edge of the cot, he spoke as he wrapped the gauze around his wound.  "Is what they say true?  You saw some kind of monsters?"

"I saw them."  William lifted his chin.  "Don't believe me if you don't."

"I guess I don't know either way."

"We've slowed down.  I feel it."

"We've reached Midway."

"Isn't that in the Aleutians?"

"Down from the chain.  Closer to Hawaii, but further west either way."

"Why are we here?"

Amos paused in his self
-
ministration.  "No one's told you?"

"I guess not."

"And I guess… no, you wouldn't hear much down in sick bay.  Tell the truth, I don't know all that much myself.  They say Midway's been attacked and we're sending a landing party to look."

William bolted up.  "They can't go out!"

"Pipe down!  No one's seen anything.  I heard them aft."

"You don't know how fast they are!  No one's listened to me!"

"We have lookouts.  They can see miles in every direction."

William was unconvinced.  He began pushing himself out of bed.  Amos glanced at the surgeon.  He did not want to be accused of agitating the patient.  "Git back down!"

"No!  Help me up!  I know something that can save their lives."

A dark coal flared in Amos' chest.  The last time he'd heard words to this effect had been when Gilroy told him about the dynamite in the bunkers.  It had been his way of extracting liquor from the steward
-
-
twisting personal greed into a shared necessity.  As difficult though it was picturing a dark purpose behind William's words, Amos warily asked, "Save whose life?"

"Anyone out there.  Anyone in an open boat."

"Ease down!  Sawbones'll kick your butt he sees you--"

"You're a cook, aren't you?  That's a cook's uniform."

Since a cook had more status than a steward, Amos nodded.

"You can help.  We can cook something that'll save the landing party."

"Say what?"  Amos was tempted to hold the boy down.  But if the surgeon looked over and saw him wrestling with his prize patient, he would lose what little rating he had left.  "You're going to get us both sunk."

"Where's the galley?"

"Take your pick."

"Take me to the nearest."

His hand throbbed with pain.  Returning to the work detail would be futile and someone had to keep an eye on this lad, so obviously distraught.  As William struggled into a pair of trousers from the ship's stores, his eyes seemed to sink for an instant.  Amos thought he was going to pass out.  Reaching around, he reluctantly helped the boy cinch up.  Neither the surgeon nor his assistants noticed as they slipped out.

The galley in the common mess was empty.

"We need to get a fire up."

"Not during battle stations you don't."

"You said the lookouts could see everything.  They'll warn us and we can douse it.  Get me a saucepan.  A big one.  I'll start the fire."

"You're not making a whole lot of sense.  You need to get back in bed."

"The serpents hate this stuff.  They hate it!  They hate it!"

Amos was tempted to hit him over the head with the kettle.  Instead, almost hypnotized by the boy's intensity, he placed it on the fire ring.

1325 Hours

The davit pulleys squeaked peevishly as the two large assault boats were lowered.  At nearly dead stop, the men on the
Florida
could hear the boom of waves against Midway's northern barrier.  They were nearly two miles out from the islands, dark wafers barely showing above the spume.  The deadly reef was much closer.  Though the weather was still with them, the swell was powerful.  Oates made sure to give the assault party a proper lee.  Everything from the bridge indicated a smooth entry through the northeast entrance to the atoll.  A smaller gap in the barrier was sketchily indicated to the south, much closer to the islands, but Oates dared not risk it.  He had no intention of entering at all until the northern breech was properly scouted and sounded.

The marines hunkered on the thwarts as the coxswain swung out.  There were two signalmen with the boats.  They tested their lamps as the launch propellers nibbled, then bit hard into the waves. 
Wink-wink, wink-wink
.  Human communication reduced to components, little better than squirrels clicking at each other in the trees.

"Ah, Grissom…?"

"Sir?"

He looked at his exec a moment, then pursed his lips.  Stepping into the pilothouse, he took up the phone to the forward mast lookout.  "Don't be afraid to sing out if you see anything out of the ordinary.  Do you understand?"

Grissom heard a voice buzz at the other end and faced away so Oates would not see his grin.  Obviously, the skipper was convinced he'd driven the lookout into a coma with his earlier gruffness.  Now, of course, if a seal popped its head out of the water a mile off, Oates would probably know about it within seconds.  Better to be over
-
informed than the victim of an abject and fatal silence.

The mild wind ruffled the smoke from the funnels, which began to roll down in gray waves over the landing party.  Oates had wanted to come to a dead stop, but the chief engineer advised him the old engines might seize up if they weren't kept idling.

"Landing force away, captain."

They look like ghosts already
, Oates thought, watching them through the smoke.  He leaned over the bridge weather rail like someone trying to fly.  He had to fight down a powerful impulse to call the mast again.

As the boats were launched, all stations returned to battle alert.  In the forward twelve
-
inch turret the gun captain tried to follow the marines and the tiny contingent of sailors accompanying them through the peep
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sight of his periscope.  All he saw was smoke bordered low with water.  Garrett, Beck, and the rest of the gun crew sweated profusely in the resealed chamber.  Silence prevailed.  Garrett turned a hawk eye on the deck.  Not a speck of powder in sight.  During his brief minutes in the open, several fresh gusts had shot over the bow, almost literally lifting his spirit--nearly taking his hat and, it seemed, his desire to let everything blow to hell.  Even after closing the hatch, returning to the electric
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brood swelter of the turret, he realized his wish to die, to erase all embarrassments, past and to come, was not as keen as before.  All the humiliation in the world could not eliminate the bizarre charm of the world.  He needed only to open his eyes and let the wind flick his cap to have his optimism reawakened.

0000 - 1338 Hours

The heavy masts that were meant to keep the creatures out had succeeded, but at the cost of trapping the men inside.  When Hart set off the gas bombs, one of the monsters had fallen back on the reinforced basement.  The thick wood spines snapped.  Screams of terror were cut short as sandbags and timber rained down.

The roar of flames, the growls of angry giants, subsided.  A strange, punctuated silence descended.  Planks creaked as though irked.  Rivulets of sand coursed through broken cement walls.  Water gurgled up through the caulking, spreading into an inch-deep pond.

Slowly, human sounds intruded on the primitive stillness.  Soft moans.  Then a whisper.

"Is anyone else alive?"

Lieber's question was answered with a racking cough.

"Is that you, Hart?"

"I'm all right.  I think.  How about you?"

"Don't know... can't move."  Then a moment later, "Ach! 
Donnerwetter
!  That hurts!  Well... at least I didn't break my neck."

As the night wore on, more of them regained consciousness.  One man screamed for an hour.  The others were not sorry when death silenced him.  It seemed an eternity before the voice they were desperate to hear bellowed, "Goddammit!  Oh shit, goddamn!  I hope to fucking hell I'm not dead.  I don't want to live eternity like this."

"Top!"

"Someone get this thing off me."

"Sorry,
Herr
Feldwebel
.  We're all pinned down.  Or dead."

"Can't see a fucking thing..." Ziolkowski mused.  "How come we aren't burned up?  Hart?  You alive, Chowderhead?"

"Hart's over here, Top," Lieber informed him.

"Sorry, Hart.  Figured you for a goner."

Up to now, Hart had not dwelled on the possibility that
he
had been given a nickname.  It fit.  Chowderhead and Bonehead--they'd been the perfect couple.  Hiding his wounded pride, he said, "The sandbags protected us from the fire.  When they collapsed they snuffed out the battle lantern.  We're lucky."

This drew morose chuckles from some of the trapped men.
 
A little later they heard new movement.