Walk in Hell

Klaxons hooted, everywhere on the Dakota. Sam Carsten threw his mop into a bucket and ran for his battle station. He’d expected the call even before the battleship fished its aeroplane out of the waters of the Pacific. Officers had been bustling around with the look that said they knew something he didn’t. The aeroplane must have spotted something out there ahead of the fleet and sent word back by wireless.

And, out here south and west of the Sandwich Islands, the only thing to spot was the enemy. “The limeys!” Carsten gasped to Hiram Kidde when he ducked into the forwardmost starboard five-inch gun sponson.

“Them or the Japs,” Kidde agreed. The gunner’s mate rubbed his chin. “Taken ’em damn near two years, but they finally figured they could come out and play with the big boys. Now we got to show ’em they made a mistake, on account of if we don’t, the Sandwich Islands are up for grabs again.” He’d been in the Navy his whole adult life. He might not have been able to order units around like an admiral, but he had no trouble figuring out the way tactics led into strategy.

Lieutenant Commander Grady stuck his head into the sponson. “All present and accounted for?” asked the commander of the starboard-side secondary armament.

“Yes, sir,” Kidde answered. “Loader”-he nodded at Carsten-“gun layers, shell jerkers, we’re all here. Uh, sir, who are we fighting?”

Grady grinned. “Looks like one hellacious fleet of British battleships over the horizon,” he answered, “along with all their smaller friends. I don’t expect they sailed out of Singapore just to pay their respects.” His face clouded. “By what the pilots say, they’re at least as big a force as we are. They’re playing for keeps, no doubt about it.”

“So are we, sir,” Kidde said. “We’ll be ready.” Grady nodded and hurried away, his shoes ringing off the steel of the deck.

“We don’t have the whole Sandwich Islands fleet out here on patrol with us,” Carsten said unhappily. “If the limeys smash us up and push past us-”

Kidde shrugged. “Chance you take when you join the Navy. If they smash us up and push past us, thing we have to make sure of is that we do some smashing of our own.”

The sponson had only small vision slits for laying the gun. Even those had armored visors to protect against shell splinters in action. The visors were up now. Carsten looked out through one of the slits as the Dakota swung into a long, sweeping turn. The patrolling fleet was going into battle formation, the line of half a dozen battleships anchoring it, with smaller, swifter cruisers and destroyers supporting and screening them.

He felt a rumble through the soles of his feet. “That’s the big turrets moving,” he said unnecessarily.

Luke Hoskins, one of the shell-jerkers, made an equally unnecessary comment: “They’ve spotted the limeys, then.” He already had his shirt off against the exertions that were to come. Even now, with him doing nothing, sweat gleamed on his muscle-etched torso.

Carsten peered through the vision slit again, looking for smoke on the horizon. He saw none, but the fire director for the main armament, up in the armored crow’s nest, enjoyed-if that was the word-a view far better than his.

All at once, a great column of water fountained up into the sky, about half a mile from the Dakota. Sam might not have been able to see the British ships, but the director surely could, because they could see him. “Hell of a big splash,” he said. That wasn’t surprising, either: at a range like this, only a battleship’s big guns had a chance of hitting.

A moment later, the Dakota’s main armament salvoed in reply. The noise was like the end of the world. “Here we go,” Hiram Kidde said. He sounded, if not happy, at peace with himself and with the world. He was getting ready to do the job he did better than anything else in the world.

“Odds are, we’re gonna sit here with our thumbs up our asses all day long, too,” Hoskins grumbled. “Anybody think we’re gonna get close enough to the limeys to really use secondary guns?”

“Listen, if we could sink ’em from a hundred miles away and they never came close to hitting us, I’d be happy as a clam,” Carsten said. Nobody in the hot, crowded sponson argued with him.

In a thoughtful voice, Kidde said, “That wasn’t a broadside we fired at the limeys, just the forward turrets. We’d better swing”-and sure enough, the Dakota was again heeling through the water in another turn-“or they’ll cross the T on us at a range short enough to hurt us bad.”

Carsten grimaced, and he wasn’t the only one. If the enemy crossed your path and fired broadsides at you while you could answer only with your forward guns, he was sending you twice the weight of metal you were giving back. Every admiral dreamt of crossing the T, and every one had nightmares about its being crossed on him.

More splashes rose, these closer to the Dakota. If somebody dropped an elephant into the Pacific from a mile up, it might make a splash like that. Shrapnel rattled off the armored sides of the battleship. Carsten whistled softly. “Wouldn’t care to be up on deck right now,” he said.

The rest of the gun crew made noises showing they agreed. “Cap’n” Kidde said, “It’s going to get worse before it gets better, too.”

Nobody argued with that, either. “Hard standing around here,” Carsten said, “waiting for something to happen or for us to get close enough to the limeys to shoot at them. I feel like I’m along for the ride, but I’m not doing anything to earn my keep.”

He looked out through the vision slit again. Some of the cruisers had started firing their main armament: guns of a range not that much longer than those he served. His turn would come before too long.

And then, as he watched, one of the cruisers, the Missoula, took a direct hit from what had to be a battleship shell. Its turrets went up one after the other, like the most spectacular Fourth of July fireworks display he’d ever imagined. When, bare seconds after the hit, flame reached the main magazine, the whole ship exploded in a spectacular fireball. One of the cruiser’s big guns hung suspended on top of the flames for what had to be close to half a minute. But when the flames and smoke finally cleared, only roiled water remained. Nothing else was left to show where six or seven hundred men had been-no boats, no wreckage, nothing.

“Jesus,” Sam said, and looked away. Imagining the same thing happening to the Dakota was all too easy.

Kidde kept peering out of his slit. “You can see the limeys, all right,” he said. “Won’t be long now”-the same thought Carsten had had a minute or so earlier.

As the main armament thundered again, Lieutenant Commander Grady stuck his head in to say, “Pick your own targets, boys. Ship’s movements will be to give the main armament the best possible firing opportunities. Us small fry down here, we have to take whatever we can find.” He hurried off again.

Not much later, Kidde whooped with glee. “Sure as hell, that’s a British cruiser out there,” he said, pointing. He stared into the rangefinder and twiddled with the controls. “I make it about twelve thousand yards,” he said, and shouted orders to the gun layers, who swung their cranks to shift the five-inch gun to bear on the foe. “Fire for effect!” the gunner’s mate yelled.

Grunting, Luke Hoskins grabbed a heavy shell and passed it to Carsten, who slammed it into the breech, dogged it shut, and nodded to Kidde. The chief of the gun crew yanked the lanyard. The cannon roared and jerked. Cordite fumes filled the sponson.

“Short,” Kidde announced, watching the splash, as Sam, coughing, got the casing out of the breech and threw it down to the deck with a clang. Pete Jonas, the other shell-jerker, passed him a new round. Ten seconds after the first one, it was on its way. No more than half a dozen rounds had gone out before Kidde whooped to announce a hit, and then another one.

And then another hit announced itself. It felt as if God had booted the Dakota right in the tail. All at once, she swerved sharply, and missed colliding with the next battleship in line, the Idaho, by what seemed bare inches. “What the hell-?” Pete Jonas burst out.

“We just lost our steering,” Hiram Kidde said matter-of-factly. “Goddamn limeys got lucky.” He looked out to see where they were headed, and his next words were much less calm: “Lord have mercy, we’re steaming straight for the British line of battle.”

Straight was not the operative word; the Dakota was swinging through an enormous circle. “Rudder must be jammed hard to port,” Carsten said. “We’ve got to keep moving best way we can, though. If we’re dead in the water, we’re dead.”

They passed a burning U.S. cruiser. Afterwards, Sam figured that did more good than harm: the fire that had been directed against the less heavily armored vessel now fell on the obviously out of control