Maelstrom (23 page)

“What’s the matter?” she asked, apparently noticing his expression.

He smiled. “Nothing. Just woolgathering. Hoping they patched all the holes and the damn thing doesn’t sink.” Mallory sent him a scorching look.

The plane was in the water now, fully buoyant and straining against the taglines attached to each wing and held by forty ’Cats apiece. The current here could be fierce when the tide was ebbing. Another hundred were sitting back, awaiting the order to drag the plane back up the ramp. This was merely a floatation test to see if they had, indeed, patched all the bullet holes. A lot of other repairs had been “completed” as well. The fuel tanks were patched and the wings repaired. The jagged section of the port wing had been trimmed and faired where a four-foot section had been torn completely off when the Japanese scout plane rammed them. Fortunately, the float was down at the time and hadn’t been carried away, but now it was secured forever in a lowered position, as was the starboard float. Ben had decided to go ahead and cut off a corresponding length from the other wing to trim the plane and provide enough aluminum for repairs. The plane would lose some lift—and a lot of speed from the additional constant drag—but it was the best compromise he could make. Maneuverability would suffer as well, since they’d been forced to construct new, slightly abbreviated ailerons from the local, almost indestructible Borno bamboo covered with “linen” and heavily doped.

They hadn’t been able to come up with a replacement for the shattered Plexiglas yet, either for the cockpit or the observation blisters, but they were still kicking around a few ideas. Beyond that, the plane was patched and dented, and the once proud blue paint had faded and oxidized to a general blotchy gray, but Mallory said it would fly—once he and Jis-Tikkar finished with the starboard engine. Even now, the plane floated with a decided list to port, the float almost underwater, because the place where the starboard engine should be was just a tangle of mounts, hoses, and lines, covered with a bright green tarp.

“How’s she doing?” Mallory bellowed, and Ensign Palmer—formerly signalman second—poked his head out of the cockpit.

“There’s a few leaks . . .” he hedged.

“How bad?”

“Just a second, Tikker’s checking them now.” Moments later, a sable-colored ’Cat with a polished brass cartridge case thrust through a neat hole in his right ear appeared. Sandra put a hand over her mouth and giggled as he conferred with Palmer.

“Yeah,” Mallory said aside to her with a grin, “little booger doesn’t want anyone to forget his ‘noble wound.’ I wish I had a medal for him, but I guess that’ll do.” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe the two of them flew that plane back here after I passed out. Especially in the shape it was.”

“He’ll get a medal one of these days,” Ellis assured him, “and he’s already been made an ensign.” He laughed. “Of course, he’s not in the Army Air Corps. The Navy’ll get to claim the first commissioned Lemurian aviator!”

Palmer shouted at them: “She’s doing okay, mostly, but leaking pretty fast in a couple places. We’d better drag her out!”

Ben nodded and gave the command. A moment later the inactive ’Cats on the beach joined the others on the taglines. With a shout from a Guard NCO, they heaved in unison. He grunted. “We’ll have an Air Corps someday. We have to. Even when we get
that
back in the air”—he gestured at the plane—“it won’t last long.”

Letts nodded grimly. “Airpower’s the key; the Japs taught us that. But for now we have to concentrate on the Navy, I’m afraid. And, of course, there’s the problem with engines—speaking of which . . . ?”

“We’ll get it running,” Mallory promised. “It’s going to be rough as hell and sound like shit, but we’ll get it running.”

“How?” Sandra asked. They all looked at the savaged motor, hanging from a bamboo tripod nearby under an awning. Beyond was the “radio shack,” a simple, sturdy, waterproof shelter erected to house the radio they’d temporarily removed from the plane—just in case it
did
sink. The PBY’s starboard motor was surrounded by benches covered with tools and ruined engine parts.

Ben shrugged. “It’s almost back together. We had to take it completely apart.” He nodded at Alan. “Mister Letts really came through again with that weird corklike stuff!” Ellis nodded, and Letts shifted uncomfortably before he replied.

“Yeah, well, Bradford discovered it. Some sort of tree growing in the northwestern marshes where all those tar pits are. The trees draw the stuff up in their roots and deposit it in the lower, outer layers of their trunks. They creosote themselves! Bradford says it protects them from insects.”

“Whatever,” Ben muttered. “Spanky said it’s the best gasket material he’s ever had his hands on, and you’re the one who figured out the application.”

Jim nodded thoughtfully, looking at Letts. “He’s turned out pretty good, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah,” agreed Mallory, his tone turning wistful. “Married life seems to agree with him.”

“So it would seem.”

There was an awkward silence, but Mallory broke it before it stretched out. “Anyway, we had to take it apart so we could get at the connecting rods on the crank and take the two bad pistons out. Only one was really junked, but we lost two jugs.”

Sandra smiled patiently. “And what does that mean?”

“Well . . . see those round, knobby things sticking out of the main part? The things with . . . ribs on them?”

“The cylinders?” Sandra asked. “Cylinders are jugs?”

“Uh . . . yeah.” Ben smiled with relief. At least she understood that much. “Two of them we can’t do anything about; they took too much of a beating. One was even shot through. We just can’t fix them now. Maybe someday. Anyway, we’ve pulled the pistons and rods, and we’re just going to plug the holes. Like I said, it’ll run pretty rough, and it’ll lose a lot of horsepower, but it’ll run.”

Ellis winced. “I guess if there’s nothing else for it . . .”

“ ’Fraid not.”

They heard a deep, dull thump of cannon far across the bay, and turned toward the sound. Another gun followed the first, then another. A square-rigged ship, the new frigate
Donaghey
, by the distant, fuzzy look of her, had finally returned from her rescue mission and was saluting the Tree Flag of the Alliance, fluttering above the ramparts of Fort Atkinson at the mouth of the bay. The fort returned the salute, but a few minutes after the last guns fell silent, a red rocket soared into the sky and popped above the fort.

“What the hell?” Ellis breathed. A red rocket from the fort was the signal for alarm. A moment later two green rockets exploded in the air. “Okay,” he said. “That’s a little less terrifying. The ship must be flying a signal we can’t see yet, and whoever’s on duty at the fort decided we needed a heads-up.”

Mallory looked at him curiously. “I know what the red rocket means, but I must’ve missed the green rocket briefing.”

“There wasn’t one,” Letts told him. “Jim, Riggs, and I just worked the signal out a couple days ago.” He gestured at the plane, then vaguely all around. “We’ve all been a little preoccupied. The new system’s on the roster at the fort, but not here yet.”

“What’s it mean?”

“One red means alarm, like always, but it’s also an urgent attention getter now, too. The first green rocket after a red means ‘important information. ’”

“What’s a second green one mean?”

“Immediate, command staff level. Basically what we just saw was somebody sending a message that says: ‘Wake up! We’ve got important, deep-shit information. We don’t have time to tell it twice, so get everybody who can do something about anything in one place right now. Dammit.’ ”

Ben’s eyes were wide. “Those three little rockets said all that?”

“Yeah.”

Mahan
’s general alarm began to sound, its thrumming, gonging blare somewhat muffled by the humidity and a light mist that had begun to fall, even though the ship was moored less than three hundred yards away. The sound was instantly recognizable, however.

“What the hell now?” Letts demanded. Jim Ellis was already sprinting for his ship. In the distance, also muffled, they suddenly heard an engine. An airplane engine. Ben looked frantically around at the darkening sky, his eyes suddenly focusing on an object to westward.

“This is something else!” The straining Lemurians had the plane about halfway out of the water, and he ran toward them, sling flapping empty at his side. “Get it out! Get it out! Get my plane out of the goddamn water!” He grabbed one of the lines himself, insensitive to the pain. Ed and Tikker leaped down from the cockpit and joined him. “Heave!”

“What is it?” Sandra asked Alan, still standing beside her. He wasn’t wearing binoculars and his eyes were straining hard. He suddenly remembered the description of the plane that attacked the PBY, and the indistinct form didn’t snap into focus, but he knew what it was: a biplane with floats.

“Oh, God!”

“What?”

Letts snatched her arm hard and tugged her toward a covered gun emplacement some distance away. “C’mon!”

“But why are we going that way? The plane, the ship . . .”

“Right! They’re what it’s after! I’m not telling Captain Reddy I let you stand here and catch a Jap bomb!” Sandra was torn. She knew she’d be needed here if the plane inflicted any damage, but if she were dead . . . She made up her mind, and in an instant she was running beside Alan as fast as she could, the engine sound growing louder by the moment.

“Run!” Letts gasped, as the two machine guns on the starboard side of the ship opened up. Many Lemurians were just standing and staring, and Letts and Sandra screamed at them to take cover. They made it under the bombproof and turned to look just as the plane roared over the moored destroyer. Plumes of spray were subsiding where the plane’s bullets had struck the water, and a dark object was falling toward the ship. A huge geyser erupted just short of
Mahan
, and the harbor resonated with a thunderclap roar. The plane pulled up, poorly aimed tracers chasing it, and banked hard left, to the north. All they could do was watch while it slowly turned and steadied for another pass, this time clearly intending to strafe and bomb the ship from aft forward. Bullets kicked up white bushes of spray, and
whrang
ed off the steel of the motionless ship. There were a few screams.
Mahan
seemed helpless, but at the last instant the plane staggered slightly, perhaps from a hit, and steadied on a different course: toward the PBY and ultimately directly at Sandra, Letts, and the others who’d taken refuge with them.

“Get down,” Letts shouted, but he couldn’t bring himself to follow his own advice. His normally fair, freckled face was pale and drawn. Angry flashes sparkled above the cowling of the oncoming plane, and clouds of sand erupted among the people heaving on the taglines. A few Marines were shooting back with Krags, to no apparent effect, and several of the laborers pitched to the ground. Another dark object detached itself as the plane bored in, seemingly destined to land right atop the helpless flying boat. Again, miraculously, the bomb fell short, detonating close to the trees beyond the plane, and sending a greasy brown plume of smoke high in the air, along with shards of trees, timbers, and other debris that rained down on the plane and the detail still straining against its weight. A massive secondary explosion sent a roiling, orange ball of fire into the sky, consuming the barrels of ready gasoline they’d stored nearby, and more flaming debris clattered down, almost to the bombproof. Still firing its single, forward machine gun, the plane sent a fusillade into the defensive position, and bullets thunked into the heavy timbers and whirred away, showering them with splinters. Sandra clutched the dirt and burrowed even lower as the floatplane thundered overhead and pulled up, heading toward the city.

“No more bombs,” Letts surmised, then coughed. “Probably going to make a leisurely recon of our defenses and just fly away. Damn-all we can do about it.” Sandra looked up at him and saw he wasn’t injured, just coughing on the dust and gathering smoke in the air. Others around them were standing now too, but all she saw were a few superficial splinter wounds.

“Will it come back?” she asked, rising beside him.

“I don’t think so.”

In an instant she was running back toward the plane and the pall of smoke and licking flames beyond. “Get some medical help down here!” she shouted, and was gone.

“Avast heaving,” Mallory wheezed, wondering blearily why he’d used a nautical term even as he did it. ’Cats collapsed to the ground, gasping and coughing as they breathed the black and gray particles drifting down from the dense smoke above. It was raining now; soon it would become a torrent. His shoulder was killing him, and he absently began trying to stuff his arm back in the sling. There were moans among the workers too, but he couldn’t tell the wounded from the exhausted through the burning tears filling his eyes. Ed Palmer appeared, dirty and bleeding from a cut on his brow. The ensign leaned over and put his hands on his knees when a coughing spasm took him.

“Where’s Tikker?” Ben demanded. Ed gestured toward the engine, still swaying gently beneath its tripod. It seemed okay, but the awning was gone. Tikker and a dozen other ’Cats were throwing shovelfuls of sand on the burning gasoline, dangerously close to their workbenches.

“The plane?”

Ed’s fit finally passed, and he spit a gobbet of dark phlegm. “We saved her, I think. A few more holes from bomb fragments, maybe.” He shook his head wearily. “Nothing we can’t patch. Might’ve sunk her if she’d still been in the water, though, and it’d have been a bitch to drag her out then.” Mallory nodded. Just then Sandra Tucker joined them, breathing hard and beginning to cough as well.

“How many hurt?” she managed. Mallory gestured at the prostrate forms. “Damned if I know. Hey, you monkeys!” he shouted. “Off your asses! Anybody that ain’t dead, fall in!” The workers struggled to their feet, still coughing and gasping, leaving several on the ground who were either too badly wounded or would never rise again. Sandra surveyed the scene.

“Get some first aid started here!” she instructed. “Corpsmen are on the way.” With that she hurried into the smoke, closer to where the second bomb had struck, knowing there’d be more injured there. They couldn’t see
Mahan
through the smoke, but her general alarm was still echoing across the water.