Into the Storm (60 page)

They were quiet for a long moment, and then Sandra suddenly giggled. “That Silva and Risa sure carried on—right in front of everybody—when he came aboard! They’ll have everybody thinking they
are
married if they don’t cool it!” She looked thoughtful. “That’s probably gone far enough. They’ll run it into the ground. Besides, I never figured Silva for the type to ride a joke down in flames. He’s already got Chack’s goat. They’re just doing if for attention now.”

Matt groaned, remembering the embarrassing spectacle. “I don’t want to hear that man’s name! As far as I’m concerned, he’s restricted to the ship for the rest of his life! We’ll see how married he thinks he is then!”

There was another long silence between them, and when Sandra spoke again, her voice was softer, hesitant.

“I wonder what Chack was going to say? To Selass. I wonder if he’d made up his mind. Would he”—she looked at him, eyes questioning—“have said the same thing you told me yesterday?” Matt looked confused.

“What, that you’re an idiot?”

She snorted with laughter, but tears filled her eyes. Without even looking to see if anyone was watching, he took her in his arms.

“I don’t know what he would have said. None of my business. But I do love you, Sandra Tucker.” He kissed her on the forehead. She shuddered against him.

“I love you too,” she whispered into his chest. Her breath was warm through the tear-soaked cloth. “What will we do now?”

“What do you mean?” His voice was husky. “Will we win? Will we ever find other people? Will we even survive?” He raised her chin to look into her shimmering eyes. “Will this be all we ever have?” He kissed her lightly on the lips and she returned it—hard enough to electrify every nerve in his body. For a long while they just clung to one another, each drawing strength and courage to replenish the wells they’d gone to so often. Then he brushed the hair away from her face and wiped the tears from her cheek.

“Well,” he sighed sadly, “that’s a whole other story, isn’t it?”

 

Far across the water, nearly a dozen men leaned against the safety chain beside the number three gun on the amidships deckhouse. There were only two pairs of binoculars among them and they were making the rounds.

“It’s about damn time,” Silva grumped.

“Yeah,” agreed Felts. “Way to go, Skipper!”

Silva looked at Laney. “Fork ’em over, snipe.” Grumbling, Laney handed him two wrinkled cigarettes—careful to keep his distance so close to the rail. Cigarettes were the closest thing to money anybody had, and nobody ever smoked them anymore. Till now. Silva handed one to Felts and lit them both with his Zippo. They took long drags and exhaled contentedly.

“What are you so damn happy about?” Laney snarled, watching his wager go up in smoke. “There’s only two dames in the whole goddamn world, far’s we know, and they’re both took!”

Silva looked at Felts and rolled his eyes. “Snipes’ brains are like weeds. Not enough sunlight belowdecks for ’em to grow.” He looked at the machinist’s mate. “And some are stupider than others. It’s like this, see? The Skipper and Lieutenant Tucker are nuts about each other—which everybody knows, but nobody’s supposed to. But they ain’t gonna
do
anything about it until they find dames for the rest of us.” He shook his head. “Couple’a dopes. Anyway, that’s a mighty incentive for ’em to find us some, don’t you think?” After a moment, Laney grinned and lit a smoke of his own.

Eventually, the binoculars found their way to the Mice. No one knew why they were there. It was actually kind of cool on deck and they’d likely catch their deaths. Regardless, they waited and took their turn peering through the binoculars, one after the other. Then they shuffled off.

“I wonder,” Gilbert said at last. “Maybe we could marry us one of them monkey-cat gals like Silva did.”

Isak shook his head. “Won’t work. Silva said the Skipper had his weddin’ annealed, ’er somethin’.” Gilbert looked perplexed.

“I thought ‘annealed’ means to heat somethin’ red-hot an’ let it cool off on its own so you can bend it.”

“Yep.”

Gilbert looked at Silva and cocked his head. “Didn’t work.”

Every human naval vessel named in
Destroyermen
was real. On February 27, 1942, the old
Langley
—America’s first aircraft carrier—was mortally wounded by Japanese planes while carrying P-40 fighters to Java. On the night of February 28–March 1, 1942,
Houston
and
Perth
stumbled upon three Japanese cruisers and nine destroyers protecting a swarm of transports. Both were finally sunk after an epic fight in the Battle of the Sunda Strait.

(The only ship in the Asiatic Fleet with radar was the cruiser
Boise
, which had long since been sent to the States for repairs after striking a reef. The Japanese had no radar either, but they did have control of the air.)

On March 1, 1942,
Pope
,
Exeter,
and
Encounter
were destroyed by a combined Japanese force, including four heavy cruisers, while attempting to escape Surabaya and reach Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Barring any mistakes that I take full responsibility for, and a little dramatic license with the pace and sequence of events, everything that took place or was mentioned to have happened in
Destroyermen
up to that point is true. The only exception is that
Walker
and
Mahan
were not there. Neither was
Amagi
.

The addition of two “four-stackers” and yet another Japanese capital ship would have made absolutely no difference to the historical outcome of that lopsided struggle.
Pope, Exeter
, and
Encounter
would have been destroyed regardless; the odds against them were simply too great. The only change to the history books (minus the Squall, of course) would have been two more rusting hulks at the bottom of the Java Sea—even before
Amagi
came along. But they were real.

As designed,
Amagi
was a thing to behold. At 47,000 tons, 826 feet long, and 101 feet wide, she was larger and more powerful than most of the battleships of her time. She would have been about the same size as the much later American
Iowa
-class battleships. It’s possible she would have been converted to an aircraft carrier like her sisters, but she was never completed. Badly damaged by an earthquake in 1922 while still under construction, she was scrapped.

The story of
Walker
and
Mahan
is a little more involved. More than 270 “four-stacker” destroyers were built for the United States Navy during and immediately after World War I. They were built quickly (some being launched in as few as fourteen days) and were never intended to last more than thirty years—which some of them actually did. Already outdated, they remained in service throughout the 1920s and 1930s and ultimately fought in every theater during World War II.

Many didn’t last that long. Because of restrictions on the numbers and tonnage of warships agreed upon at the Washington Naval Conference, many “four-stackers” languished in mothballs for years. Over time, some reentered service when an active destroyer was lost or wore out. Some were used for parts. A lot were converted into damage-control hulks or just simply scrapped. A few were even sold into the merchant service. One literally became a banana boat. Fifty were given/sold/traded to the British at the outbreak of World War II. Most that survived to fight in World War II were modified to one degree or another into minesweepers, fast transports, convoy escorts, seaplane tenders, and so on.

The point is, by the time the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, even the conservative, arguably moribund United States Navy knew the old “four-stackers” were obsolete, yet they used them anyway. This is not meant as criticism of the Navy—far from it. They used what they had. It was Congress that refused to build “up” even to the restrictions imposed by the Washington Treaty. It was this policy that left antique—and, in the case of the Asiatic Fleet, WWI surplus that hadn’t even been altered or updated—ships to stand against the very cream of the Japanese Imperial Navy, the most modern and powerful in the world.

Walker
and
Mahan
are presented in
Destroyermen
as two of these unlucky stepchildren, but in reality—the reality of the universe in which we reside—they were two of the ones that didn’t make it. After sixteen years on “red lead row,”
Walker
was slated to become a damage-control hulk, but she was scuttled seventeen days after the Pearl Harbor attack.
Mahan
was scrapped in 1931. Interestingly, both ships were involved in at least one epic undertaking: They served as pickets during the Navy’s historic NC-flying-boat transatlantic flights. In any event, neither ship had a wartime record, so I felt less constrained in giving them a fictional, representative one.

If there are any old destroyermen out there who served on DD-102 or DD-163, you certainly have my respect and gratitude, and I mean no disrespect toward the honorable service of either ship. Instead, I hope you will join me in engaging in a little “what if?” As Captain Reddy said, “All historians do it, whether they admit it or not.”

A NOTE ABOUT
“BRONTOSAURUS” ETC
.

 

Obviously,
Destroyermen
is set, for the most part, within the context of an alternate universe. The fascinating possibility of one or many alternate/ parallel universes has long provided wonderful worlds for science-fiction/ fantasy writers to explore. Even more fascinating is the growing scientific speculation that they might actually exist. Unfortunately, none of these new theories, attitudes, or even popular culture perceptions could be referenced in
Destroyermen
. The characters’ perceptions of the alternate/ parallel universe must be viewed from the perspective that
they
had: a perspective prevalent in the 1940s, particularly among Asiatic Fleet destroyermen. I hope I have managed to capture that.

Unlike many stories involving a similar premise, the universe the destroyermen cross to is not just slightly skewed; it is the result of a profoundly and fundamentally altered evolutionary path. The “dinosaurs” in the story are depicted somewhat from whim, but with at least a little more modern perspective than the characters are able to perceive them. We now know so much more about dinosaurs than we did even when I was a kid—we have virtually started from scratch. Compared to those destroyerman in 1942, we live in an extremely enlightened age—at least as far as dinosaurs are concerned—so before you say, “What an idiot! Doesn’t he know brontosauruses weren’t real?” Yeah,
I
do. But the destroyermen don’t.

My childhood books depicted dinosaurs as bloated, lizard-like beasts slouching along dragging their tails, or spending most of their days bobbing about in lakes or seas because they were too fat to stand. Tyrannosaurus was cool because he had lots of teeth, but his tail was just a third leg so he could stand upright like a man. And if anybody ever mentioned a dinosaur, the first thing that popped into your mind was the brontosaurus.

We now know the brontosaurus was a myth—a hoax—an extra head bone stuck on a decapitated apatosaurus skeleton. But in 1942, brontosaurus was real. It was the symbol by which any dinosaur would be judged and identified as such.
Anything
that looked remotely like a sauropod would immediately be called or compared to a “brontosaurus”—even by someone as learned at Courtney Bradford.

In our universe, dinosaurs have been extinct for around 65 million years. In
Destroyermen
, this is not the case. Those same prehistoric creatures have not remained stagnant. Everything has evolved beyond what the fossil record teaches us—the flora, fauna, the very ecology, and, because of that, even the geography to a certain extent. The “extinction event” is the obvious diversion point between the two realities, but there have still been ice ages, droughts, floods, and other cataclysmic events that would cause other extinctions and guide evolution for 65 million years. But “brontosaurus” remains. Stunted, perhaps, but physically similar to what the destroyermen expect to see.

Brontosaurus—or whatever it is the destroyermen
call
brontosaurus—is an amazingly well-adapted creature. Nature has been trying to replace him ever since he went away, but without too much success. Crossbreed a giraffe and an elephant and we would have him, I guess. Anyway, as long as there was green, leafy stuff to eat he wouldn’t have to change. He would get smaller in the jungles of Indonesia, though, just like the elephants that live there today are smaller than their African counterparts. In fact, there’s evidence that sauropods—and those that hunted them—were actually smaller in densely forested regions.

The Grik are descended from one of the many species of “raptors,” as they’re now inclusively known. They were relatively small, aggressive, possibly even cunning creatures that may have hunted in packs. If so, that would imply cooperative and therefore social behavior. Regardless of size, this gives them a leg up, in my estimation, on the ladder to the top of the evolutionary heap.

The seas are so hostile for a lot of reasons, but mainly because the creatures that lived there 65 million years ago sure scare
me
to death, and my imagination runs rampant with how terrifying they could become if they had a little more time. Also, if they’re in the water you can’t even shoot them—usually.

Almost alone among the creatures of this different earth that remained unchanged are sharks, crocodiles—and the mythical brontosaurus. Sharks and crocs are still here, even after the ancient unpleasantness that wiped out everything else. Compared to that, I imagine they would manage to cope with a little more persistent competition.

Considering that competition, one begins to wonder how mammals might have fared. Not too well, according to some scientists. In the tropical regions in which the Grik thrive, an isolated domain—thus Madagascar—would be needed for mammals to evolve to a sentient level. Let’s face it, if humanity did spring from Africa, our ancestors wouldn’t have lasted very long in constant contact with the Grik. Let us hope they were at least thought of as “worthy prey.”