Torpedo Run (6 page)

"What's the range?" Peter yelled down to the radarman.

"Six thousand."

Peter looked at the scene ahead of him—the three enormous transports, the superstructure and decks sharply lit by the muzzle flashes and searchlights. And at the three destroyers, all lights blazing, guns now firing into the cloud of smoke. Above and ahead of the destroyers the flares hung like hard white suns in the black sky.

Slewfoot
could turn now, turn away in her dark world and, engines muffled again, sneak away through the Strait and those six ships of the enemy would never find her.

Or she could go on as she was going—the exhaust a solid thunder, the crack of water against the sharp bow-like stones striking together—go on to the enemy.

The youngest man aboard
Slewfoot
was a seventeen-year-old who had lied about his age to get in the Navy. That morning he had sneaked into the jungle with a helmet full of water and the razor. He had had to pay five dollars for a 69¢ secondhand razor and to put up with a lot of noise about wiping his face with a wet towel but, in the jungle where no one could see him, he had decided he needed a razor. Putting the metal signaling mirror he had liberated from a life raft up in the fork of a bush, he had studied himself carefully and decided that what looked like fuzz to the other men was, actually, a beard. He had shaved it slowly and carefully, washed the razor, and hidden it.

His name was Bridgers, but the crew of
Slewfoot
called him Britches—or Kid, or Baby, or Mother's Boy, or worse—and now he was so scared his eyes were swimming as he stood beside his torpedo rack and looked ahead at the speeding destroyers. What he wanted now—more than anything he had ever wanted in his life—was just to talk to somebody, just to feel that he wasn't all alone out here. But Goldberg, the torpedoman, was standing beside him staring at the enemy and didn't look as though he wanted to talk.

Goldberg was a big, hulking, forbidding man whose voice sounded as though it were coming through a bucket of gravel. There were times when you could talk to Goldberg and times when you'd better not. But Britches was lonely and he decided to risk it. "Big, aren't they?" he asked, trying not to let his voice squeak, but it did anyway.

"Medium size," Goldberg graveled at him.

Talking didn't seem to help Britches' fear much—it had grown absolutely solid and alive and a lot bigger than he was. "Do you think Mr. Brent's going to attack 'em?" he asked.

"If he isn't we'd sure better get off this course."

"Do you think he should?" Britches asked. "Aren't they … I mean … well, look at 'em."

"I'm looking at 'em."

Britches asked, "Are you scared, Goldberg?"

"Scared? Who, me?" Goldberg growled, and then he looked down at Britches. "I'm too scared to be scared. You never fought a destroyer, did you? You never had one shooting right down your throat, did you? You've just been fooling around knocking off those helpless barges. Well, if he keeps on going in this way you just wait, sonny boy, just wait. It's going to be the biggest Fourth of July you ever saw. Man, I remember one time in The Slot … "

Britches had just wanted to talk to somebody, but as Goldberg went on and on he decided that this was the next best thing—to have somebody talk to him.

On the other torpedo rack the Preacher stood and looked ahead and wondered how men did it. How had Jonesy had the courage to do the things he had done? And now, how did Mr. Brent have the courage? Was there something in being an officer that gave you courage? The Preacher didn't think so. It was just something some men had. Some didn't. The Preacher knew that if he were skipper now he would turn
Slewfoot
on her screws and run. There were too many destroyers, too many guns, too many
everything
for one PT boat to take on alone.

Jason, the gunner, looked at the ships ahead of him all bathed in the brilliant light, and it seemed to him that he was alone in a dark world and those ships were sliding sideways toward him.

Jason could feel his mouth beginning to get dry, felt the shakes crawling toward him across the deck. But he knew what to do about that. He leaned in against his guns, jamming his shoulders into the curved braces, and then he swung them toward the destroyers and looked at the ships now through the ring sight of his guns. This way the ships were no longer the enemy, no longer a threat to him. They were just a target.

Stucky on the big Bofors cannon looked at the destroyers. They were shooting now with everything that would bear—sheets of tracers pouring into the rolling cloud of smoke the floating generator was still sending up. The AA guns were banging away, the long barrels pumping back and forth like pistons. The muzzles of the machine guns seemed to be on fire. The turret guns were shooting more slowly, and it interested Stucky to watch how the gout of flame would suddenly appear—flame and smoke—but the destroyers were going so fast, the wind was whipping the smoke straight back down the outside of the barrels. Stucky decided he wouldn't like to work in a turret gun, wouldn't like being cooped up inside that steel room with nothing to see except the big breech of the gun lunging back at you.

Mitch watched the destroyers and decided that there were good gunners behind all those guns—gunners who could get on target fast and clamp you in a straddle of shells you couldn't get through alive.

The radarman stuck his head out of the hatch and looked at the enemy. They were so different from the little green blips on the scope. On his radar they seemed real, now they didn't.

There wasn't a man on
Slewfoot
who wanted to press an attack on those ships, nor a man who would admit it.

The radarman called up to Peter, "Range five thousand," and went back to the scope to look at the blips again.

Murph, who was trying to take bearings, looked over at Peter. Nobody would blame the skipper, Murph decided, if he turned away now and got out of here. After all … three big destroyers …

Mitch said to Stucky on the 40-millimeter, "What's he doing? I tell you, he's out of his mind. We're going to get our heads blown off."

"What's the matter, Mitch, you want to live forever?"

"I sure do."

The radarman said, "Range four thousand."

Murphy watched Peter as he wiped the spray out of his eyes. It was now or never, Murph decided.

Peter leaned over to Goldberg on the starboard torpedo racks and said, "Give the lead destroyer both fish, Gerry. Set depth five feet, speed high."

Goldberg looked up at him. "You going to shoot from here, skipper?"

Peter hesitated for a moment. Murph couldn't decide whether it was to think, or just spit some spray out of his mouth. Then Peter said, "No. We're going all the way, Gerry." Then he leaned over to port and said to the Preacher, "Give the next two, one apiece, Preacher."

Beside the engine controls was a target data computer—elemental compared to those on submarines, but good enough to give you a collision course between the target and the torpedo. Peter studied it now as he said, "Keep the bearings coming, Murph."

The radarman called up, "Range three thousand, skipper."

Peter looked ahead at the target, now only a mile away. Apparently the transports had stopped firing flares, for no more of them were blossoming in the sky and the last of them were falling through the smoke into the sea.

Suddenly, as though done with a master switch, all the searchlights on both the destroyers and the transports went out and, at the same time, all the guns stopped firing.

It was done so suddenly and completely that the ships ahead of him seemed to Peter to have vanished, leaving nothing but a solid black wave of darkness which was rolling across the sea toward him.

Peter leaned over to Goldberg. "Set both fish right five degrees, Gerry."

"Five right," Goldberg said, and Britches jumped to the manual controls.

Peter leaned to the left. "Preacher, set number one left three, number two left six."

"One left three, two left six," the Preacher said.

"Stand by on the guns," Peter called out.

Peter could still see nothing ahead of him, his eyes still unadjusted to the sudden total darkness. "Murph," he said to the shadowy little man beside him, "if anything happens, take over and try to get the fish off as close to a thousand yards as you can. Then get the boat back into the smoke and get her into the Siassi Strait. They can't follow you through there."

"Range two thousand," the radarman called up.

Murph said, "If they spot us and start shooting, are we going to go on in to a thousand?"

"I think we should," Peter said. "I guess that's what we're here for."

"I guess so," Murph said.

And then the lights came on. They were like long thin knives stabbing you through the eyes, stabbing right on through your brain. There was nothing you could do—the knives sliced through your lids if you tried to shut them out by closing your eyes.

And this time the lights were on
Slewfoot
and she, instead of the destroyers, was in the center of the brilliant stage, the searchlights seeming to hold her as though the beams were solid and unbreakable.

Every detail on
Slewfoot
was suddenly sharp and clear and bright, every drop of water she threw, shining like a jewel.

Peter's first instinct was to put the wheel hard over and break
Slewfoot
out of the grip of those lights, or at least zigzag her; but he held her steady as she went—waiting.

The terrible game was starting now, the guessing game. Guess wrong and you died. Behind the brilliance of the searchlights he could not see the muzzle flash as the ships began firing at
Slewfoot,
so that when the first salvo hit, it startled him, the tower of bright white water rising to the left.

The guessing game. They had missed you and were correcting their aim now to hit you. If you held course, the next salvo would blow you out of the water.

Peter swung
Slewfoot
toward the falling column of water, and as her wake curved, a salvo fell squarely into it.

Guess again. He swung her back, hard.

Now the sea all around the boat was like a forest of weird white growing and dying trees as the shells struck and exploded, the gouts of water plunging upward, then falling.

"Fifteen hundred," the radarman yelled.

"Get those lights!" Peter yelled at the gunners. They were trying. Every gun on
Slewfoot
that would bear was pounding, the tracers streaking away, but fifteen hundred yards is a long way to hit a three-foot target from a boat moving at 50 miles an hour through a rain of gunfire. The six searchlights continued to blaze.

On the destroyers, the smaller caliber guns opened up so that in the air between
Slewfoot
and the target the streams of tracers coming and going looked like a cat's cradle made of blazing dotted strings.

Peter hurled the boat from side to side, twisting and turning through the forest of waterspouts. In his mind he tried to remember the turns and duration of them and the courses so that when the fatal time came he could drop her fast and surely on the base course.

That was the terrible time, and all hands were waiting for it—the time when you had to hold her on course and let her settle down to the rhythm of the sea and go straight in on the enemy until you reached the firing point and the torpedoes left the racks. And even then there would be a few more seconds of that time, while the torpedoes splashed into the sea and began to run. You had to wait until they were clear before you could turn and leave that place.

Jason was shoving against the shoulder pads trying to add his own strength to the bullets streaming from the twin barrels, trying to give them that extra inch they needed to reach the lights.

And he began to reach them. One of them stopped blazing and burned for a
few
seconds with a sick weak yellowness before going out, but Jason had already swung his guns to the next one.

Peter looked down at the flux gate and swung
Slewfoot
over onto the base course. "Base course!" he yelled at the torpedomen. "Stand by to fire torpedoes."

Gerry Goldberg looked down at Britches. The kid was just standing there, looking ahead, both hands on the rack. A searchlight beam was directly on him and he was squinting against it. Suddenly Goldberg leaned down closer, inspecting the boy, "Hey," he said, "you been shaving?"

"Doesn't everybody?" Britches asked.

It broke up Goldberg.

Peter, listening to Goldberg's laughing, wondered what was so funny and made a note to ask Goldberg, when this was over. He leaned down into the radar shack and said, "Keep 'em coming in hundreds now, Willie."

"Twelve hundred," Willie said.

The salvos were closing in on
Slewfoot
now as she settled on the base course and no longer weaved and dodged. Like two closing walls of almost solid water they were walking in toward her.

Mitch, feeding shells to the Bofors, said, "This is the longest ride I ever took."

In the engine room Sko felt the boat steady down. "Here we go," he said.

Skeeter, the motormac third, said, "Why doesn't something happen?"

The Professor reminded him, "They also serve who only stand and wait, Skeeter."

"Eleven hundred," the radarman yelled just before a tower of water fell squarely on top of the boat, drowning everything for a moment, and then flowed away, leaving the gun barrels hissing steam.

"One thousand!" Willie yelled.

"Fire! Let 'em go!"

Goldberg and Britches on the starboard side flipped the racks outboard and saw the long oily fish shoot out and forward and splash into the sea. "Run, you little babies. Run!" Goldberg yelled at them. "Run!" Britches yelled, his voice a weak little squeak.

The Preacher called up to the bridge, "Port-side fish gone away."

Peter spun the wheel hard to starboard and as
Slewfoot
leaned and turned, a savage salvo landed exactly where she would have been if she had stayed on course another second.