Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(155)

A tall jet of water spurted up alongside Savoie’s port quarter. An instant later, another rose high in the air almost directly under the aft flagstaff, tearing away the incongruous Rising Sun flag she flew.

“Yes!” Bernie cried. “Two hits!”

The ship was still turning and her starboard secondaries lashed at Walker. Another shell hit aft, knocking Walker’s mainmast and plane-handling boom over to crash across the starboard 25 mm mount.

“Auxiliary conn is out!” Minnie reported, “but the number-four gun’s still up.”

“Spanky?” Matt asked anxiously.

“He make the report,” Minnie assured. “He’s cut up a little. Lotsa guys are, but nobody killed.” Machine-gun fire raked the ship again, clattering off the battle shutters over the windows and the light armor they’d added to the front of the pilothouse.

“Starboard tubes?” Matt demanded.

“Ready in all respects,” Bernie reported, staring though his sights and flinching as bullet fragments and paint chips sprayed around him. “But . . . Skipper,” he shouted. “Look at Savoie!”

Matt did. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Left standard rudder. Put us back on her tail.”

“Sir?” Paddy Rosen looked at him questioningly as he spun the wheel. There was blood on his face. A bullet had shattered the glass in front of him, through the slit in the shutter. Ensign Laar was down behind the lee helm, unmoving, and another ’Cat had taken his place, tail whipping back and forth. Later, Matt thought. I’ll think about Ensign Laar—and all the rest—when this is done. Walker’s bow came left slower than before, heavier. She was getting logy with the weight of water forward. “Savoie’s still turning,” Matt said simply. He swept his view to the white sandy beach of the peninsula, marred only by the scorched wreckage of a burned-out Grik zeppelin. “If she doesn’t pull out of it in the next couple minutes, she’ll run hard aground!” He stepped outside with Bernie, oblivious to the bullets still clattering around him, and looked through his binoculars.

“I don’t think she can turn, Skipper!” Bernie said excitedly. There was blood on his face too, from spattered lead and copper. He was lucky he hadn’t lost an eye. “I bet we jammed her rudder!”

Matt nodded. “I think you’re right,” he agreed, lowering his glasses. His eyes were hard, uncompromising. It was an expression Bernie had seen before, and always made him uneasy. “She’s going aground,” Matt said. “Nothing she can do.” He stared directly at Bernie now, his teeth bared in a feral, humorless grin. “Secure torpedoes,” he snapped. “Minnie, have Ed tell the Seven boat to belay her attack. Make sure Nat understands he’s to hold his fish! Mr. Campeti!” he shouted above at the fire-control platform. “Cease firing the main battery, but I want every machine gun on board mounted to starboard, hosing that bastard down. Concentrate on the secondary gun positions, then anything that moves. Marines’ll take small arms. Everybody but the bridge watch will take small arms!”

“Sir?” Campeti shouted back, voice confused. It also sounded unnaturally loud. That was when Matt realized the shooting had all but stopped. A great cloud of white gunsmoke and the darker smoke of burning ships roiled around the distant surface action between the Grik cruisers and Des-div 2, now joined by Ellie’s precision sniping that gutted one cruiser after another. A high, broad haze drifted away over Zanzibar from the middle of the smoldering shipyard where Chack’s Brigade had advanced, blasting its way forward with the little mountain howitzers and assisted by occasional dipping planes. But Savoie and the shore batteries had stopped shooting, and everything else was too distant to be more than a dull rumble over the wind and sea. It was like everyone was steeling themselves to watch the great battleship slam ashore. It was also Matt’s first real look at the big picture for a while, and for the first time he could think about something besides fighting his ship. He could consider the future.

“I want Savoie, Mr. Campeti!” Matt snarled. “We’re going to need her. And when she grounds, we’re going to take her!”



Near Nachi

“I wish they’d hurry the hell up,” Silva murmured, watching Lawrence and the Khonashi trooper move aboard the Grik cruiser tied to the dock. He was following them through the sights of Lawrence’s rifle, and Sergeant Oolak was doing the same. “They’ve singled up lines, fixin’ to get underway, an’ our guys’re just sankoin’ along. They need to quit walkin’ so slow, actin’ like they got nothin’ to do. Sure as shit, somebody’ll try to give ’em a chore. Then where’ll they be? An’ that Jap officer just went up the gangway. I bet he’s the skipper.”

“You . . . concerned at La’rence?” Oolak asked.

“Concerned? Me? Nah. Little turd wouldn’t be worth thinkin’ about, he didn’t hang around buggin’ me all the time.”

“He hangin’ around you kill Hidoia’e Jaaphs ’ith Khonashi, ’ith King Scott.”

“You were there? Well, sure. I didn’t say he hadn’t been doin’ it awhile.”

“You let he, he let you. You . . . ’riends.”

“Maybe. So?”

Oolak bared his wicked teeth in a grin. “So nothing.”