Rage of Battle

“Of course not — sorry, Inspector.”

Logan slowed as he neared the entrance to the tube station. “At the risk of sounding immodest, Melroad, you’ll note that this old ‘bloke’—” he pointed to himself “—wasn’t so dim that he couldn’t crack this Wilkins case.”

“No,” conceded Melrose. “You’re right there, sir.”

“Tooraloo,” said Logan heartily, heading down into the Temple underground station.

Melrose touched his cap in farewell, smiling and muttering to Perkins, “No, you silly old twit — you just nick villains instead of spies. Minor detail. I think I’ll get my name tattooed on my forehead. Think he’ll remember then?”

Perkins shook his head. “Doubt it, Melroad.”

The air raid sirens were starting up again, and people were running for the shelters. At the beginning of the war, they’d affected a traditional British calm and disdain for any panic, but this time it was very different — the rockets so fast, you had absolutely no idea where they would hit. “A bit like the old V-2s,” Logan had told him. “Only much worse.”

“Hang on!” Melrose called out to a couple of callow youths, almost running an elderly woman down in their eagerness to get below. Suddenly the underground sign vibrated, the railing below it shaking; people were falling, and in the distance, above the Mall, there was a high spume of brick and sandstone, now falling in a deafening hail.

“Bit close to the palace,” commented Perkins as they hurried, without trying to appear as such, into the shelter outside Blackfriars Station. “What do you think?”

“I think it was the palace.”

“Bloody ‘ell! They should have left London — like they were told.”

“What — and leave everyone else to take the shit while they’re nice and comfy up in Windsor? Not bloody likely. I’m no monarchist, mate, but that’s one thing I’ll say about old Charles. He’s no coward.”

Heading for Oxshott, the train Rosemary was on stopped near Wimbledon during the rocket attack. The engineers had found that the Soviet pilots always favored a moving train, assuming that because it was moving, it was carrying vitally needed supplies to try to stem the impending catastrophe in northern Germany. But Rosemary believed that the feet that the enemy pilots went after moving passenger or goods trains had less to do with strategic considerations than the fact that a moving target was more exciting to kill. The mere thought that Robert was at the center of such hazard at sea overwhelmed her, and when the conductor asked for her ticket and she discovered she’d lost it, she burst into tears. What made it even more terrible was that in that moment, she was sure she felt their baby move, which she knew was impossible so early in her pregnancy.

* * *

“Up scope,” ordered Brentwood. “Ahead one-third.”

“Scope’s breaking. Scope’s clear.”

In the scope’s circle Brentwood could see an orange speckle, one of the convoy’s screen destroyers afire, its crew abandoning ship. He swung the scope about and saw the Sarancha. At its full speed of sixty knots, its hull clear out of the water, foil-borne, the boat was obscured by a cocoon of spray, in weaving pattern, closing on the convoy. Behind it were three more.

Well, thought Brentwood, Mark-48s can weave, too. “Angle on the bow,” he said, “port, point four zero.”

“Check,” came the confirmation.

“Range?” asked Brentwood.

“Forty thousand yards.”

“Very well,” replied Brentwood. “Firing point procedures. Master four zero. Tube three.”

“Firing point procedures. Master four zero. Tube three, aye… solution ready… weapons ready… ship ready.”

“Final bearing and shoot — master four zero.”

A seaman announced, “Bearing three four one. Speed six.”

“Up scope,” ordered Brentwood. “Bearing, mark! Down scope.”

The firing control officer responded, “Stand by — shoot.”

“Fire,” came the confirmation as the shooter pushed the lever forward.

The firing control officer watched the screen, and confirmed the torpedo was running and being monitored. Roosevelt repeated the procedure three more times. One after another, the dots of the Saranchas on the screen swelled, then vanished. Because of Roosevelt’s interception, only five transports in forty were lost, the remainder safely reaching Brest.

* * *

As the gray dawn fog swirled about the Aleutians, scurrying over the spindrift like the cape of some primeval beast about to devour the islands, the fighting on Adak was confused and bloody.

Because of the natural amphitheater on the northern part of Adak Island formed by Mount Moffett and Mount Adagdak, only four hundred of the two thousand civilians and military personnel escaped injury. Those not killed outright by the blockbuster bombs used to destroy the runway, which filled the air with everything from auto- to fist-sized concrete fragments traveling at hundreds of miles an hour, fell victim to the cluster “Bee” bombs, which opened up midfall, releasing hundreds of smaller bombs, each in turn filled with thousands of razor-sharp steel darts. Filling the air with their distinctive buzzing sound like a swarm of bees, the darts sometimes would kill outright but more often than not inflicted terrible wounds. Kiril Marchenko, and others in the STAVKA responsible for efficient defense spending, favored the Bee bombs for such missions, for casualties in the field required many more support troops to transport and care for them than did corpses. And the Americans were notoriously obsessive about getting their wounded out to the nearest MASH field hospitals — all of which meant fewer troops who could actually man the front.

At first, the rugged terrain surrounding the base favored the survivors, for it was taking time for the Russian paratroopers to descend from the hillsides through the deep snow. But soon the terrain would work against the shell-shocked survivors of the Adak raid because their only means of escape was either eastward, through the six- mile valley between the mountains to Shagak Bay, or Kulak Bay immediately behind them to the west.

Only 63 of the 115-man marine company assigned to airstrip guard duty were still alive at dawn, and these moved out to intercept the paratroopers, but though the marines were superbly equipped, they had had no cause to be issued white battle coveralls. These weren’t the drill for guarding the runway at night, when the only danger had seemed to be sabotage from the sea — white coveralls on the darkened runway being perfect targets — and those they had in stock had gone up in flames in the bombing anyway.

As the sixty-three marines moved out east from Kulak’s C-shaped bay, the fighting was not yet at close hand. Indeed, most of the small-arms fire that the Adak CO had heard shortly after the bombing attack had fallen off during the night as the paratroops were presumably trying to form into a coherent force before attacking what was left of the base. Nevertheless, sniping had continued from the foggy mountainsides, and more than a dozen marines and civilians fell to this sporadic but deadly fire. In an attempt to use the thick, gray fog that was rolling down the sides of the mountains to their advantage, the sixty-three marines moved out a quarter mile west of the base to form a semicircular perimeter.

Meanwhile the CO of Adak was trying to assemble the civilian survivors as best he could down by the shore of Kulak Bay and to find enough boats that were still seaworthy enough to take them out beyond Sitkin Sound, through Asuksak Pass, and on to Atka Station a hundred miles to the east. Many of the women who had rushed out from the burning huts clad in no more than night attire were in the early throes of hypothermia, which only added to the commanding officer’s problems. As if this weren’t enough, Atka could not be raised on the radio by the communications officer, as the microwave repeaters on the island had been destroyed in the raid, along with the sea-to-shore SOSUS connections.

One of the mothers, whose children, oddly enough, were contentedly playing amid the ruins of the base, approached the commanding officer, asking him what she could do. The CO paused, not knowing what to tell her and, for want of anything helpful to say, directed her toward the MASH tent down by the bay’s edge, where dozens of casualties still lay awaiting attention from the overworked staff, many of whom were also injured.

“It’ll be a hell of a squash,” the communications officer reported to the CO after the woman had left. “I’ve done a quick check on the waterfront. Most of the fishing boats are holed.”

“We’ll just have to do the best we can. By now the boys on the Salt Lake City will