Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(136)
“Taar-git ahead! Mebbe . . . four thousand tails!” Rini shouted, snatching their attention back to what they were really after. Barely visible in the gloom was another huge, dark shape, not as tall, but just as long as the Grik battleship it once was. The higher freeboard and elevated deck made it seem even bigger. Washed by distant flames and the lightning still rippling in the clouds, no doubt fully alert and preparing every defense, was their primary target: Kurokawa’s last aircraft carrier. Nat looked to his right and saw that the Fifteen boat had rejoined the line as they roared southwest, perhaps fifty yards apart. “We oughta shoot now—we in range,” Rini prompted.
“We only have three fish left between us,” Nat reminded, “and I think the target’s moving.” He was right. Like the cruisers, still shooting at the rest of the squadron zooming between them, the dark apparition was gathering way. A firing solution now, with no idea how fast the thing could accelerate, would be nothing but a guess. At 2,500 yards, a pair of searchlights snapped on aboard the carrier, probing at the darkness, sweeping back and forth. One swung across them, blinding bright, then fastened on the approaching boats. The other light joined it, glaring like a pair of small suns.
“Shoot them out!” Nat yelled at his gunners, and tracers immediately arced away, reaching for the lights. More tracers from the other boats joined in, but then, at 2,000 yards, so did those of the enemy.
“Maa-sheen guns!” Rini cried indignantly, as if it wasn’t fair that the enemy had made their own.
“Their planes have them. Why not their ships?” Nat ground out. “Two points to starboard!” The enemy tracers were still wild, falling sharply as they neared, but they could reach. They felt and heard occasional thumps and clatters as bullets hit the boat. Nat tried to concentrate on his sights as two streams of bullets converged on them and one of the ’Cats on the foredeck tumbled back amid sleeting splinters and rolled over the side with a silent splash. The torpedo-’Cat on the starboard side raced to replace him, but sprawled facedown on the deck. The two Lemurians at the gun kept up a relentless fire as bullets hammered the shield, shattering on impact and cutting their exposed legs and feet with tiny, scything shards of lead and copper. The gunners in the cockpit watched in frustration. There was nothing they could shoot at until the boat turned away.
“The Fifteen boat’s fired!” Rini shouted over the gunfire, roaring engines, and pounding sea. Nat glanced to the right. The Fifteen boat was roaring away to the north, chased by a searchlight and two strings of tracers. A great waterspout—from something—erupted in her wake; then another landed in front of her, swamping her with foam. Even as the bullets settled down to the terrible work of chopping her to bits, another shell of some kind punched through her side and exploded against an engine. The boat disintegrated in a shower of flaming fragments, just as tracers from the Twenty-three boat snuffed out one of the searchlights. The sea heaved and tossed, rising in great stalks around the last two PTs, drenching the ’Cats at their stations. Explosions began ripping the air above them as well, spattering the sea with hot shards of iron. Nat stared through his sights, trying to keep the picture clear enough to estimate his lead, loudly calling corrections to Rini. At barely more than a thousand yards, bullets slammed through the coaming, and Rini reeled back. Without a thought, Nat took the wheel and shouted over the din, “Fire two!” The portside fish coughed into the sea, and Nat turned hard left. “Make smoke!” he yelled. Two of the ’Cats behind him had mounted their machine gun on the starboard side of the cockpit and began firing at the last light, even as the third twisted a lever feeding light oil into the fuel line. Almost immediately, thick, blue-white smoke gushed from the exhaust stacks and started piling up in their wake. Possibly thinking they were finished, all the fire now concentrated on the Twenty-three boat, which had also launched and turned to follow. A glare lit up behind them like a flare on the water and slowly died away. They couldn’t tell through the smoke whether it signaled the end of the Twenty-three boat or not.
? ? ?
The former prisoners and their rescuers finally emerged, gasping and spent, from the jungle trail near the northwesternmost shipyard in what Silva called Lizard Ass Bay. Explosions and cannon fire still boomed on the water, but all their attention was immediately taken by the looming, malevolent form of Savoie. Her searchlights were lending illumination to other lights on the cruisers, questing for targets on the surface, and Silva told Sandra and the others about Nat Hardee’s attack. Savoie’s alarm bell was also sounding loudly in the dark, and shapes were running aboard, up a long gangway from the pier. There was surprisingly little activity right around them, though, and the time had come to split up.
“Sure you wanna do this, Arnie? Mr. Brassey?” Dennis asked. “Bad guys catchin’ you is only half your problem. Come daylight, everything we got’s gonna be doin’ its damnedest to sink that ship yer so hot to sneak aboard. Maybe we best stick together.”
“The decision’s made, Chief Silva,” Brassey said. “If we can disable her somehow it might make all the difference. You have business of your own, and unless we merely hide and wait for events to unfold— something none of us is disposed to do—we stand a better chance if we separate. A group as large as ours can’t move unnoticed and is sure to attract attention.” He nodded at Horn, Lange, Pokey, and the five Khonashi who had volunteered to join them, and then motioned toward the ship. “If we’re going to get aboard, now is the time, while the confusion is at its height. We must be off.”