The Commodore (38 page)

 

THIRTY-SIX

The Slot

When he got to the top of the ladder leading out to the pilothouse, Sluff had to step aside as corpsmen ushered wounded men down toward the primary battle dressing station in the wardroom. He confronted a bloody scene when he finally stepped out onto the bridge. The shell that had taken out the radar had shredded much of the bridge with shrapnel, and there were still wounded men lying on the deck. He wondered why no one was attending to them and then realized it was because they were dead. He looked for the skipper.

Bob Frey was in his chair, his forearms covered in bloody bandages. The forward gun mounts were still blasting away to port into the darkness ahead of them, and the wind from their thirty-five-knot advance across the dark sea was streaming through a hundred holes in the pilothouse's bulkheads and overhead. Sluff hurried over to Frey's chair. The captain looked up at him, blinked a few times, and then passed out. Sluff saw that there was more blood seeping out from under the bottom of his life jacket and that his helmet had holes in it. Someone had fastened his seat belt, which was the only thing holding him in his chair.

Then three star shells burst in quick succession, and Sluff finally got a visual look at their enemy. A Chikuma-class heavy cruiser was off their port bow at a distance of only a few thousand yards. The ship was down by the stern and there was no bow wave visible, but the Chikumas carried all four of their twin-barreled eight-inch guns forward. Every one of them was pointed at
J. B. King.
As he stared, openmouthed in speechless horror, all eight guns fired right at them. A tornado of shells howled overhead, ripping the night sky with a hot, slashing sound. Sluff and everyone else still alive on the bridge instinctively ducked, as if that would save them.

High, he thought. They went high. He stood up.

J. B. King
's five-inch were still firing away at the Chikuma, and they were getting hits, too, as the dull red boattails of each round bore across the close distance in a hot, flat arc and buried themselves in her superstructure, each one followed by a blast of flame that tore out parts of that fearsome pagoda structure.

He looked past the Chikuma. Behind her were the remains of what looked like four Jap destroyers. One was upside down, her dark hull covered with figures climbing out of a burning oil slick. Her propellers were clearly visible, as was an enormous hole in her midsection.

A second was in two pieces, the bow upside down and partially submerged, the back half floating calmly as if nothing had happened, but smoking from every orifice. Beyond that he saw two, possibly three more wrecks, all burning brightly. The flares burned out as
King
surged past the crippled cruiser, her guns straining aft as she tried to stay on the wounded beast. Then behind them there was a gigantic explosion, which once again lit the seascape. Sluff ran out to the port bridge wing in time to see his sole remaining destroyer,
Morgan,
disappearing in the fiery throes of a magazine explosion. He looked back at the Chikuma, which was training those eight guns in
King
's direction again, even though she was paralyzed.

“Left full rudder,” Sluff yelled, and the helmsman, so scared that he was crying, spun the wheel.
King
heeled to starboard and began to turn across the cruiser's bow, even as she got off another salvo of eight-inch. All the rounds went astern, blowing up in noisy succession right behind them.
King
's guns, now given a clear field of fire, continued to blast raking shells at the cruiser. She was afire now from stem to stern, and even though
King
's five-inch could not penetrate her armored spaces, there could not be too many people still alive above her main deck. Then Sluff saw one of the Chikuma's secondary, five-inch mounts spit fire in their direction. This was followed by two hits on
King,
one along her port side, which ricocheted off into the water. The second went off in the air at about bridge-wing height, once again flailing
King
's superstructure with shrapnel. Sluff reflexively turned his head and ducked as a piece of metal smacked him right on his steel plate and made him see stars. He shook his head, stood back up, and felt the plate. There was a palpable dent. He started to laugh but then recognized incipient hysteria.

Sluff ordered the helmsman to steady up as
King
rushed through the gap between the cruiser and the two shattered destroyers. Astern, the immolation of
Morgan
subsided into a massive cloud of eerily glowing steam, which was quenching the lives of nearly three hundred officers and men.

Then they were alone, and somewhere out there in the darkness there was another ship that had managed to put a torpedo into
Morgan.

“Cease firing,” Sluff yelled to the Gun Control talker.

“Wha-a-t?” the astonished talker replied.

“God
damn
your eyes,
cease firing!
” Sluff roared, and the astonished talker relayed the message to the gunnery officer.

“Right standard rudder,” he ordered. The Jap gunners tracked their gun flashes, and if they were on the ball, torpedoes were already coming for them. “All ahead standard, turns for fifteen knots.”

The replacement helmsman, who was manning both the rudder and the engine order telegraph, repeated the order, and then
King
began to slow down as she slewed to starboard.

Now, he thought. We have to find that bastard. Standing by his chair, he picked up the sound-powered phone handset, switched to the JC circuit, and called Gun Control. He didn't recognize the voice that answered. He asked for a name.

“Chief Gonzalez,” the voice replied. “I've got the conn up here. Gun boss, director officer are gone.”

“Okay, Chief,” Sluff said. “This is the commodore. I need you to put up some star shells, on an arc between three zero zero and zero five zero true. There's another Jap out there and we need to find him. We have no radar.”

“Hell, Commodore,” the chief said. “I know that. I'm standing on the fucking antenna. Director one is out. The mounts are in local control. Lemme see what we can do.”

“Light up the sky, Chief, and then be ready to go back to work. It could be a cruiser out there.”

“Good deal, Commodore.”

For the next two minutes Sluff kept maneuvering the ship through various courses and speeds. Now that
King
wasn't shooting, the Japs should not be able to see them. The wounded cruiser was dropping farther behind them, her burning superstructure the only evidence of her presence. Sluff wondered where his own cruisers were, and whether or not they'd gotten the message that he was going to attack into the Jap formation. And where was Dragon?

Suddenly the two forward gun mounts began to fire, their barrels pointed high, as they punched out a series of parachute flare shells into the night sky. After a minute of this the sky lit up with the eye-searing glare of magnesium parachute-flares in all directions. Sluff stared out into the suddenly painful bright light, looking for—

There she was: a Hamakaze-class destroyer, four thousand yards away and coming at full speed, her bow wave so large that her entire front end was obscured. Without orders, the chief up in gun control ordered
King
's five mounts to open fire on her immediately. As Sluff watched, the Jap destroyer began turning hard to port to present her guns and torpedo tubes, but as she did so, the shells from
King
's guns hit her all along her length and she burst into flames and began to slow. She was only three thousand yards away now, but her guns were strangely silent as
King
's guns punched shell after shell into her, some hitting low along the hull, some hitting along her main decks. When he saw live steam erupting from her sides, he knew she was done for. He was amazed at how well
King
's gun crews were scoring hits because each one was firing in local control: a pointer and a trainer gripping their yokes in the gun houses, staring through 7 × 50 binoculars slaved to the yokes. At this close range, however, wherever they centered their crosshairs, that's where the shells went, and within a minute, the Hamakaze was a flaming wreck, steam roaring out of her shattered stacks and her twin-barreled guns pointed off at odd angles. Finally, a five-inch shell found one of her magazines, and the ship exploded in a white-hot blast.

Once Sluff could see again, she was gone.
King
's guns continued to fire into the glowing cloud of smoke and steam, and then, one by one, they went silent. The flares sputtered out as they fell into the sea with their parachutes on fire. With his ears ringing, Sluff ordered the helmsman to put the rudder over to port five degrees. He didn't give a course order. He wanted
King
to turn slowly in the darkness until he
knew
there were no more Japs out there readying torpedoes for him. Behind them they could hear the sinking Jap destroyer's depth charges going off. He called Combat.

“Heard anything from the flag?” he asked as he looked around the pilothouse, which was a blood-spattered mess. In the dimmed red lights it looked worse than it probably was.

“Negative, sir,” Larry said. “We can't raise anybody. I think all our antennas are gone.”

“We just sank a Jap destroyer,” Sluff said. “There's a heavy cruiser somewhere behind us, but she seemed to be out of action. We've lost both
Morgan
and
Whitfield,
I'm afraid.”

“We're still in the dark down here,” Larry said. “I've sent some people topside to see what's happened to the radar.”

“The radar antenna is physically down on the signal bridge, so we're gonna be blind for a while. I think there's one more cruiser unaccounted for.”

“Well, we've totally lost the picture down here, Commodore,” Larry said. “I've got the radio gang headed topside to see if they can get us a working antenna. Gun plot says we're about out of ammo for the five-inch and that they have a lot of shrapnel casualties topside among the AA gun crews. Recommend we come west and get the hell out of here.”

Sluff looked at the gyrocompass repeater. They were still turning left, passing 300 degrees true.

“Okay,” he said. “I'll steady up on two seven zero. Whatever exploded overhead took out a lot of the bridge and director personnel, too. The skipper is unconscious so I'm in command up here for the moment. See if you can find the ship's exec and get him up here.”

“Yes, sir, I'll get on that, although his GQ station was back aft at secondary conn,” Larry said. “Um, that's topside.”

“Well I know,” Sluff said. The exec probably would have been in Combat except for the fact that Sluff and his staff had taken up all the room. Now he was probably one of the shrapnel casualties.

“See what you can find out,” he said. “But I don't want to stay on any course for too long in case there are more torpedo shooters out there. It's darker'n a well digger's ass out here. The GQ quartermaster bled all over the chart so I don't even know where we are.”

“Combat, aye. We're reconstructing a DR plot from the DRT and our own nav charts. I'll keep the course recommendations coming to keep us weaving.”

“Very well,” Sluff said. He told the helmsman to slow to twelve knots and then began to reconstitute the bridge team.
King
's crewmen were well trained and were doing what had to be done to get the ship back together again. There were corpsmen attending to the wounded and men from a damage-control team moving the dead out to the bridge wings. The ship's chief corpsman and two other men had removed Bob Frey to his cabin down below to assess his injuries. Sluff called main control to get a status on the main plant, which was undamaged except for holes in both stacks, which were impeding airflow to the boilers. Main Control said they could give him twenty knots, tops. He heard a phone-talker say that Combat was recommending 240 as the next course.

“Helmsman, come left to two four zero,” he said, mechanically, and then went over to the unit commander's chair and sat down. He almost called for some damned coffee until he remembered that just about everyone left on the bridge had been hurt, or worse. He rested his head on the coarse canvas fabric of his life jacket collar and closed his eyes. Had they won this one, or lost? He realized he had no idea.

The ship's executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Walker, reported to the bridge. Sluff thought he had been wounded, based on all the black splotches on his life jacket and khaki trousers, but he was uninjured.

“Commodore, you sent for me, sir?”

“I did,” Sluff said. “Your skipper is unconscious with undetermined injuries. Go over to the log and make an entry that you're assuming temporary command. Then go down to Combat and get the picture, such as it is, from Larry Price. Figure out a course to get us back to the cruiser formation as soon as possible.”

Walker gulped and said, “Aye, aye, sir.”

And good luck to you, young man, Sluff thought. He closed his eyes again and wondered if he dared get some sleep. He touched the steel plate again. It felt a bit loose, as did his brain. He tried to gather his thoughts, think out what they needed to do next, but it was hard. He mostly wanted to close his eyes.

 

THIRTY-SEVEN

Ironbottom Sound

“Commodore?” a voice said in an uncertain tone.

“Yup?” Sluff said, trying to sit forward in his chair without breaking his painfully stiff neck. It was still dark but he thought he saw some gray in the distance ahead of the ship. There was a strange dazzle around the perimeter of his vision.

“We have comms with the flag,” the voice said. Sluff focused on the face. It was
King
's exec. “Lieutenant Commander Price says we'll rendezvous in about an hour.”