“I’m meeting you here at six and you’re taking me out to dinner.”
“Great. What would you like?”
“A great big thick and juicy steak cooked rare, thank you. I will eat it very slowly and have a glass of nice red California wine to go with it. Maybe two glasses if you promise not to take advantage of poor helpless little old me.”
“Anybody who sailed across the Pacific is far from helpless. But will I get to kiss you?”
“Plan on it, Commander, but just not on a park bench in front of half the fleet.”
Tim laughed. “Do I get to call you Mandy now, or should I stick with Amanda?”
“Amanda, always Amanda. Call me Mandy and you’ll suffer the excruciating pain I told you about in Honolulu a thousand years ago.”
Tim gestured to where Sandy and Grace were still talking to Merchant. “What about your good buddies?”
Amanda smiled sweetly and again patted his cheek. “Tim, I didn’t come all this way to find you so I can share you.”
Farris couldn’t sleep, so he decided to walk his platoon’s small perimeter. His little kingdom had been enlarged by the addition of a pair of 81mm mortars and another squad of soldiers to man them. They’d first been assigned to Lytle’s headquarters platoon, but he decided he didn’t want them around. Farris thought they probably looked too military for Lytle’s taste, or maybe they interfered with the decor provided by his seemingly endless rows of painted rocks.
Regardless, Farris had the mortars set up so they could fire out over the ocean, logically concluding that any attack would come from the sea and not from the land behind. He’d gotten a few dummy rounds and watched as the men operating the mortar attacked the Pacific. The mortars had a range of a little more than two miles. No one was manning them now, in the middle of the night. Only sentries and guards were awake and he was pleased to see that they were reasonably alert.
He’d gotten a phone call from his uncle with the good news that his girlfriend had made it from Hawaii to San Diego after all. He was amused at the thought of bachelor Tim Dane having a girlfriend and that he’d found her in the middle of a war. How the hell had he managed that? Damn, maybe it was true that sailors had all the luck. Once again he wondered if he was in the wrong service. He sure was having a fine time staring at the seals and sea otters, who, he was sure, were laughing at him.
He had a thought and it made him smile. Clever Steve Farris would invite Tim and his girl for a picnic or cookout and maybe this Amanda had a young woman friend of her own she could bring along. It would help if Amanda’s friend was cute, but, lord, it wasn’t all that necessary. All he wanted was a chance to talk with a real live girl and maybe wind up going a little farther than just talking. Maybe a lot farther. Excellent thought, he decided. Perhaps the world wasn’t such a bleak and lonely place after all.
Steve was still mildly concerned about how well Stecher had taken the existence of Sullivan’s wife and daughter. The sergeant was a little annoyed when he realized that Farris had known about them for quite a while, and had even chatted with them. Stecher finally admitted that the two women weren’t a threat to national security and would forget he ever saw them.
A sudden flash of light off the coast was quickly followed by the bark of what could only be a ship’s cannon. An explosion erupted down the coast near Lytle’s headquarters. The gun from the ocean fired again a few seconds later and commenced firing more rapidly, with shells pulverizing the tents and the damned white-washed rocks that beckoned like a beacon.
Steve’s platoon was stumbling in the dark as the alarm was sounded. Again he thanked his decision to place his men behind the low hill. Lytle’s position was getting creamed while his was invisible.
Stecher plopped down beside him as they looked over the hill. “Can you see anything, sir?”
Both men had binoculars. The ship fired again and for the briefest of instants, they saw it was a submarine.
“Damn it, Lieutenant, he’s killing our guys.”
Farris forced himself to stay calm. This was like the sinking of the tanker. Maybe it was the same damned sub. It had to be. This spot was just too innocuous to attract random attention, however foolish Lytle had been.
“What’s the range to the sub?” Farris snapped.
Stecher swore and said that he wasn’t certain and couldn’t tell all that well in the dark. He asked the men who were standing by the mortars and was told maybe two miles. Farris nodded. They reminded Farris that two miles was about it for an 81mm mortar.
“Shoot at the damn thing,” he ordered. “We won’t likely hit it, but maybe we’ll scare him off or at least distract the bastard.”
Seconds later, mortar rounds went arching toward the dimly seen outline of the Japanese sub. Shells splashed well away from her, and short. The mortar men made corrections and the next salvo landed much closer, but the sub was still not in range.
“That’s about as close as we can get, Lieutenant,” said the corporal in charge.
A searchlight arced out from the shore and now they could see the enemy boat. The deck gun fired again and another explosion chewed up the American base.
“We need more range,” Farris shouted. He took a sandbag and shoved it under one side of the base plate. This would lower the angle and maybe increase the range.
The mortar fired again and the shell landed over the sub. They were within range. The second mortar was similarly fixed and Farris gave the order to fire at will.
The corporal grimaced. “Just so you know, sir, we’ve only got twenty shells apiece. They’ll all be gone in a couple of minutes.”
“No point saving them, is there?” Farris said harshly. The corporal agreed.
The sub located its tormenters and the deck gun fired toward them, the shell exploding just inside the beach line. Farris realized it would take a miracle to hit the sub.
But miracles do happen and one of the last rounds they fired slammed into the conning tower. The explosion threw one of the deck gunners into the ocean and Farris’s gunners cheered their unlikely achievement. The sub’s skipper had had enough. She turned and headed out to sea but, curiously, wasn’t attempting to dive. Was the water too shallow or—Sweet Jesus, he thought—had they actually done some damage to the bastard?
A moment later, a dark shape flew low over Farris’s position. Machine-gun bullets and rockets streaked over the water to where they could still see the dark shape of the fleeing Japanese sub. They cheered as a second and a third plane raced in for the kill. The sub was doomed. She had to be too hurt to dive. The planes were shredding her hull with rockets. A bomb landed in the water near her. Then, suddenly, she rolled over on her side and bobbed lifelessly.
Farris shook himself. It was over. He was shaking and drenched with sweat. He checked his watch. The fight had lasted less than ten minutes. “Stecher, you stay here. I’m going to see what happened at HQ.”
He grabbed a jeep and raced over. By the time he got there, the fires were out and medics were treating the wounded, who were laid out on the ground. Some of the wounds were horrible and a few men were missing limbs. A trio of ambulances pulled up and men hopped out and started putting the wounded on stretchers. A couple of the wounded were moaning and one man screamed until some hastily injected morphine took over. A row of blanket- covered bodies lay a few yards away.
He found a wounded Lieutenant Sawyer trying to direct things. Sawyer’s head and left arm were wrapped in bandages. Sawyer looked grateful to see Steve arrive.
“How bad are things?” Farris asked.
“Six dead and fourteen wounded. One of the dead is Captain Lytle. I think he caught a Jap shell with his chest. Jesus, what a mess. You were right. He should never have built here.”
Steve agreed quietly. There was no changing what had been done. Lytle had paid with his life for his stupidity, and killed five others. More than a dozen men were wounded thanks to him. It was a helluva mess.
Sawyer sat down on a white rock. “You okay?” Farris asked, wondering if the young lieutenant counted himself as one of the fourteen wounded.
“I’ll be fine. It’s just starting to sink in, that’s all. These wounds are bloody cuts, nothing serious. Medic says
