Crusade

only beginning to learn what all you’ve managed to accomplish in Balikpapan. I mean, fuel, for Christ’s sake!» He took a deep breath. «I might be able to carry on for a time — at least I hope I could. I kind of doubt it, though. My command experience so far has been less than stellar. Or maybe Dowden or Letts could swing it for a while, or Bradford could keep things going. But if you’re lost, the unique relationship you’ve forged between Walker and the people here would be lostls of the city. «Hell, most of these people wouldn’t even talk to each other before you made them. Do you think they still would if you were gone? They see you as an honest, impartial broker. One who’s not caught up in their petty disputes. The way I see it, you’re the glue that’s holding this alliance together, and even adding to it.» Jim grunted in frustration. «Hell, when I got here with Mahan, I couldn’t even get the locals to talk to me.

«Besides,» he continued, «from a purely selfish perspective, think what it would do to the crew. You’re the last visible vestige of supreme authority they have left to cling to. The last physical connection to the world they’ve lost — to normalcy, I guess, and duty. They still follow your orders because you’re The Captain, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Even here.» Jim looked down at his feet for a moment, and then met Matt’s eyes again. «I like to think I could fill your shoes on the bridge someday, as far as seamanship is concerned. Believe me, I thought about that a lot over the last few months. Then I look at Walker, with her new paint job and fuel oil burning in her boilers and I see. guys. like Chack over there, filling out her crew. I see a ship that was whipped but has since become the most powerful ship in the world, more than likely.» He sighed. «I compare that to Mahan, which hasn’t done half of what you have since we split up, and she still looks whipped.»

«We were lucky,» Matt murmured.

«Maybe so, but that wasn’t all.» Jim stopped and rubbed his temples, but when he spoke again his expression was pained. «I don’t know if I could’ve stopped Kaufman or not. It never dawned on me that he’d try to take over the ship. Then, when he did, I never thought anyone would obey him, but they did. After what Mahan went through, it was hard to blame them, I guess. He sounded like he knew what he was doing when nobody else did, even me. But I’ve seen what happens when chaos and fear set in and a ship loses all sense of purpose and hope. I don’t want to see it again.»

Spanky McFarlane stood on Walker’s fantail, hands on his skinny hips, peering down through the portside propeller-guard tubing at the water below. Occasionally, small waves lapped against it and disrupted the almost perfect, wine-bottle blue-green clarity of the bay. That itself would prove to somebody who just woke up that this wasn’t the cloudy, oily, Surabaya/Madura Bay they remembered. Through the occasional ripples, the sandy bottom was visible about thirty feet below, and between it and the surface, the growth-encrusted propeller shaft and support protruded far out beyond the line of the deck on which McFarlane stood. The only thing glaringly wrong with the view was the decidedly queer appearance of the now two-bladed screw. That, and the malevolent silvery shapes that glided and darted hopefully about.

McFarlane was surrounded by half a dozen helpers, snipes and deck-apes together. All stared at the water as if it were fresh molten lava oozing from the ocean floor. The most persistent shark had never received as much attention as the smaller but infinitely more numerous «flashies» did. A short distance away, so close the ’guards almost touched, floated Mahan, with a similar assembly peering at the water between them with identical expressions. Noisy sounds of difficult labor and coarse shouts echoed from the other ship as repair parties worked to make her seaworthy, but on Walker—just a few yards away — men and Lemurians almost tiptoed around, ridiculously making as liay. Seconds later, there was a dull flash and the sea between the ships turned opaque white. Even as the surface heaved, they felt a jolt through the deck plates beneath their feet. A geyser of water erupted skyward and the prevailing wind carried the bulk of the spray down upon the men on Mahan’s fantail, who gestured and cursed.

Cheers and happy, good-natured jeering broke out on Walker, and even on Mahan, since the man most thoroughly inundated was Al «Jolson» Franklen. Franklen had once enjoyed a measure of celebrity throughout the squadron before the War. He did a really good Al Jolson impersonation and he wasn’t shy about performing. But even before Pearl Harbor, his act had begun to sour — for a variety of reasons — and most of his fans became distant. Then, of course, he was one of the few Mahans still alive who’d supported Kaufman’s mutiny. He only agreed to resume his duties with a full pardon — which Jim Ellis had been obliged to give because of how shorthanded his ship was. In any event, he wasn’t a celebrity anymore and the jeering continued long after he strode forward, stony-faced and soaked to the bone.

Ignoring the noise, Spanky, Laney, and Silva too were staring intently at the water. Dead flashies, belly-up, appeared at the surface. Many trailed bloody tendrils but most were unmarked. The other crewmen on both ships quickly forgot their momentary indignity or amusement and joined them in their scrutiny of the grenade’s effect. A large flashy swirled and bumped gently against the side of the ship. It twitched. It twitched again. For an instant, they thought it had resuscitated itself, but then it jerked violently and a dark cloud spread around it. Within moments, the surface of the water around and between the two destroyers’ propeller guards boiled and seethed with ravenous flashies as they gorged on the bodies of their schoolmates. Laney looked at Spanky, his face a pale, waxy green.

«Fire in the hole!» Spanky warned this time, and dropped the second grenade. The effect was similar to the first, with the exception that the Mahans had time to scramble under the aft deckhouse overhang before they were drenched again. This time, there was only the briefest calm before the roiling frenzy redoubled.

«Oh, well,» Spanky grumped, regarding Laney with deadpan remorselessness. «Back to plan A.»

«Captain, Lieutenant Mallory’s on the horn,» reported the radioman,'Clancy. «He’s crossing Madura — I mean B’mbaado — now, sir.»

«Very well,» Matt acknowledged. «Tell him to watch out for wrecks in the bay when he sets down.»

«Aye, sir,» came the reply and Clancy disappeared back down the ladder.

«Too bad we can’t just roll a depth charge over the side,» Steve Riggs said, resuming the interrupted conversation. «We still have a full load of those.»

Garrett shook his head. «A depth charge is not a hand grenade. If we did that, we’d blow the stern right off the ship.» Matt nodded agreement. He was sitting in his chair on the bridge sipping «monkey joe,» the local equivalent of coffee, which actually looked and tasted somewhat like coffee except for the greenish foam. He mostly just listened while his officers and senior NCOs brainstormed about the propeller problem.

«I can’t send a man over the side,» Spanky said. «He’d be torn to bits.»

«Maybe we could beach Mahan, take 3»>«That’s something to consider,» Jim mused. «How high do the tides run around here? The charts ought to say, but it’s awful risky this close to the equator. I doubt they run more than a couple feet. Besides, more ships than I like to think about have been lost trying to pull stranded vessels off a bank in confined waters. What was that cruiser, twenty years ago or so, that tried to pull that sub off a shoal? The line parted and the cruiser went aground. Total loss. What was her name?»

«Milwaukee,» answered Spanky.

Gray grunted. «That’s all we need. Our own little Honda Point.» He referred to the 1923 catastrophe when seven four-stackers ran hard aground on the California coast in a dense fog. «A fine stupid mess we’d be in then.»

Matt shook his head. «I have to say, that’s my least favorite option so far, gentlemen. Nobody wants to deliberately beach his ship.»

«Maybe we could build a cage of some sort,» Sandison speculated. «Lower it over the side next to the screw and let the divers take it off through the bars.»

Spanky looked at the torpedo officer with surprise. «Hey! That might work. We’ve only got the one little crane aft for handling the depth charges and it won’t lift a screw, but we could use it for the cage and then rig a boom off the main mast to raise the propeller, I bet.»

«Keep working on it. I know you’ll get it figured out,» Matt said. Then he frowned and looked at his watch. «I’m afraid Mr. Ellis and I have to leave you now. We have. a couple of funerals to attend.» He glanced at Garrett and Chief Gray. «You too. The men we lost were in your divisions. Have the burial party turned out as sharply as they can manage.» He sighed and stood carefully from his chair, groaning slightly. «I’ll meet you ashore at, say,