At the Midway (62 page)

"Enderfall... you ass.  What do you think you're doing?"

"Last time anyone saw you was in the boat.  So I came out to get you."

"You came out for me?"

"Sure.  You'll be out of the Corps soon enough with that leg.  So what the harm if I save your ass?"  He laughed.

"Well, you must be so busy looking at my ass you didn't see the engine on this boat."

"Those things scare me, Top.  I've seen them blow up before.  Anyway, I don't know how to start it."

"You're a fucking primitive, Enderfall."  Ziolkowski was suddenly nauseous.  "I'm sick... shit...."

"Puke away, Top."

He didn't want to.  The opium pill helped his pain.  But he felt as if it was shredding his stomach in the process.  He needed something to take his mind off it.

"Enderfall... you haven't hit the target by moving the sight-leaf up or down."

"What's that?"

"Set the sight back to the first elevation and use the wind gauge.  Now sing the song...."

"I need my wind, Top.  Can't you hear me panting up here?"

"Sing it!"

"
First shot, one point right wind; second shot, one point left wind; third shot, two points right wind; fourth shot, two points left wind
."

"Will miracles never cease?  All right, changing positions...."

"
Prone to sitting, lower one minute; sitting to kneeling, lower one minute; kneeling to standing, lower one minute
."

"Make a marksman out of you, yet.  Now--"

"Something's coming up on us."

Struggling up on both elbows, Ziolkowski looked over the gunwale.  There was a hill in the water.  Growing larger, coming closer.

"Enderfall, what a dumb ass you were, coming out here."

"I thought the
Florida
killed them all!"

"Dammit, keep rowing!  It's too late to try the engine."  He twisted sideways.  Enderfall had made very little headway towing the launch.  They were still over a hundred yards from the shore. 
Wouldn't matter if we reached it
, he thought with drugged weariness.

"Top--"

"
Yes
!"

It was one of the smaller creatures.

It was too bad the blue pill did not eliminate fear as well as pain--in Ziolkowski's case, more a fear of helplessness than of death.  The creature had emerged at high speed, water shooting up from its flanks in reverse waterfalls.

"Where's your fucking rifle, Enderfall?"

"
Top
!"

The creature bore in with hideous night in its eyes.  Ziolkowski felt the launch jerk, knew that Enderfall was trying to undo the manila rope that bound them.  "Yeah, let's see how far you get.  After me, it's you.  Enderfall!"

The crash nearly capsized the launch.  But it came too soon.  The beast--

Crash
!

Water seemed to pump from mid-air.  A hot wave blew into Ziolkowski's gaping mouth.  Blinded by salt water, he felt his way to the bow.

"Hold on, Enderfall!  It's the three-inchers!"

1706 Hours

It was Hart who spotted Enderfall rowing out to retrieve the launch and it was Hart who saw the creature hulking over the reef.  Drawing on every ounce of will to overcome the pain in his legs, he ran to the men milling around the fieldpieces in the compound.

"Will they work?" he shouted.

They looked up, startled.

"Will they work?  One of them's coming up the lagoon!"

They jumped into action.  The guns were battered.  Otherwise, the breeches opened and the sighting gear turned.  They wouldn't know for sure until they tried firing them.

There was no hesitation.  The marines were devotees of cross-training.  These men knew more than how to blow bugles.

There was no more than twenty yards between the launch and the beast when they fired.  Hart caught his breath.  The trajectory was nearly flat, the margin for error minimal.

The shells landed precisely between the beast and the stern of the boat.  Completely losing himself, Hart began clapping.  "One more right there, quick!  He'll sail right into it!"

But the recoil threw them off.  The second barrage fell wide.  The creature was unimpressed, closed the distance with the launch.

"No!" Hart moaned.

"A lousy two hundred yards, boys!" one of the gunners shouted.  "Come on, we can put it down his throat!"

This was their best opportunity.  The creature was making a beeline for the launch.  None of the evasive bobbing and weaving of the earlier attack.

"She's a clean target, lads.  Lay her on nine o'clock, range one-fifty."

Whump
!

Hart caught a brief glimpse of the dark three-inch shells streaking at the creature's chest.  He thought he saw a small eruption near the base of its neck.

The effect was instantaneous and dramatic.  The fifteen-pound shells contained two hundred and fifty half-inch lead balls.  They struck the target at three hundred feet per second.

The beast twisted in a powerful spasm as wild as a snake hoofed by a stallion.  Churned water threatened the boats.  They could see the tiny figure of Ziolkowski cower.  Enderfall had not succeeded in separating his rowboat, was flashing his oars like a bird in a snare.

"Again!" Hart cried.

Two more rounds were attempted.  But the creature's flailing was too furious.  The boats swayed perilously as its tail slapped to starboard, sending up waves three times as tall as a man and almost swamping them.  Yet its high frantic squeak was blessed music to the ears of men desperate to strike back.

Their relief was unbounded when the creature turned away from the boats, from the island.  Joyous cheers were flung like hats to the sky.  The gunners pounded each other's back.

Hamilton Hart dropped in the sand and held his head in his hands.

XXVII

1640 - 1706 Hours

The fires were out, the wounded removed below, but many of the dead had yet to be extricated.  Entombed in a long line were the bodies of five gun crews, sealed in metal caskets when the giant fell across the six-incher casemates.  The grisly task of prying them out was given to the second watch and the reserve damage control party.

It was the most indescribably awful task Amos Macklin could have imagined.  In places, the metal plates had been flattened so thoroughly that the corpses were an inch in diameter.  The machinist and shipwright were tested to the limit devising ways to get them out.  Straining at jacks and levers, Amos and the others spent the rest of the afternoon at their gruesome task.  Under the hot sun the bodies were already beginning to putrefy.  Rags soaked in vinegar water were distributed, and they covered their faces from the nose down.  They looked like bandits trying to crack an enormous safe.  Frequently, Amos had to walk away to get a grip on himself. 

Once, after prying open a hatch, he was inundated by body fluids streaming through a crack above him.  When he'd finished puking, Ensign Garrett gave him permission to scrub down and change.

Another time, hearing a familiar voice, Amos looked up to see the ship's chaplain struggling over a mountain of crumpled wood and steel.  He reached out and gave him a hand down.  Eyes glazed, the chaplain murmured, "So many missing…."

"No.  They're here," said Amos, mopping his brow.  "Most of them."

"We should be thankful it wasn't all of us."

"It still might."

The chaplain, full of prayer, seemed unwilling to wait for a memorial service.  He went to each cranny where blood oozed and offered whispered invocations.  Amos wondered why he wasn't attending the wounded.   But he was too dazed and tired to really care.  Besides, the chaplain was a white officer
-
-
not to be questioned.

No one resented Garrett's failure to work alongside them, to lead by example.  The story of his heroic action in the magazine had spread and no one could begrudge him some rest.  Hunched above the gundeck, he looked like a tar baby.  That he was alive at all seemed a miracle, and several officers hovered near him as if he was a lucky totem.

"Count your luck," Garrett commented to Amos at one point.

Amos glanced up, tears in his eyes.  "Mr. Garrett, they were just boys."  For a moment Amos was swept along by his emotions and his words went with him.  "I heard about you in the magazine.  You saved the ship.  But then you come along and talk about these boys like they was bags of coal dust.  And when you met me by the galley--"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Garrett said.

"I just can't match the two.  One day you act like the worse kind of coward, the next--"

They had not heard the three-inch guns firing on Sand Island.  As General Quarters sounded, they thought they were again under attack.  Above them, starboard crews raced to the surviving guns.  Amos watched Garrett as he clambered over the wreckage towards Number One Turret.  Though under arrest, he did not hesitate to return to his action station.

Words of hate filled Amos' head.  Furious with Garrett, the Navy, and the beast that terrified him so badly, he grasped an iron lever and jammed it into a crevice with all his might.

He could not have possibly guessed that what spilled out of the crevice had once been Midshipman Davis.

1710 Hours

"
No
!" the gun crew cried as one when Garrett swung open the hatch to the turret.  It took a moment for his eyes to grow accustomed to the semi-darkness.  When they did, he let out a gasp.

"We need a hose in here," said the gun captain laconically.

"We need to flood the fucking chamber, you mean," Garrett responded.  "Doesn't the bridge know they have a time bomb right under their nose?  How long have you been like this?"

"Over an hour."

"And Grissom doesn't have a clue," Garrett shook his head.

"The line's dead," Beck informed him.  The midshipman was a sight--as they all were.  The ensign was blackened with soot, the gun crew covered with brown explosive powder.  Demons of a new age.  The gunners terrified and isolated.

And there was Beck, nearest the hatch, knowing all Garrett had to do was slam the hatch hard, create a spark, and his nemesis would become a human bomb.

It was too tempting.

Garrett met his eyes.

And smiled.

"Let's keep the marbles rolling," he said.  Then he went to get a hose.

1706 - 1710 Hours

"They got another one!" Grissom slurred through the gap in his teeth and waved his binoculars.  "That's two of them!  That leaves--"  His eyes widened.  "Captain!"

"Two of them," Oates nodded.  "At the cost of how many of my men?"  Leaning on the arms of the ship's surgeon and Dr. Singleton, he shuffled slowly to the sea chair.  "Angina pectoris, Mr. Grissom.  Painful, but not deadly."

"I'm glad--"

"How many were lost?"

"Twenty-one known dead," Grissom swallowed.  The air reeked of culpability.  "Almost fifty wounded--mostly burns.  Twenty four missing and presumed--"

"Forty-five dead!  Forty-five!  And the landing force?"

"We don't know.  But there were enough survivors to strike back."  He related what he had seen within the last fifteen minutes.  "They badly wounded one of the serpents, if they didn't kill it."

Oates' hand shook as he reached into his tunic for his cigarette case.

"
Captain
!" came Singleton's stern warning.

Nodding miserably, his hand emerged empty.

A head popped out of the wireless telegraph booth.  "Captain!  Glad to see you back, sir!  Signal from Midway!"

1712 Hours

More survivors emerged.  They had witnessed the success of the gun crews and concluded things were reasonably safe.  Soon, they were able to count ninety-eight souls.  Eighteen men remained missing, including the lieutenant who had led the three-boat contingent.

While the remaining survivors of Lieutenant Anthony's garrison were pulled out of the bunker, Hamilton Hart searched the debris for his wireless telegraph. He found it undamaged.  All those men broken like matchsticks, while the delicate wireless and its battery survived.

Helped by several marines, he set up the wireless on Mt. Pisgah.  With the
Florida
only two miles off shore, this was all the height he needed.  However, the marines cross
-
training had not included things electrical.  They looked at the civilian dubiously.  Having survived the nightmare of the century, they did not relish the idea of holding a mysterious naked wire in their bare hands.