CHAPTER 26
////// USS Walker
Grik fell like dominoes under the withering fire of four machine guns lining the rail, and the twin 25-mm gun tubs in the waist. A downy fuzz rose above the charging swarm, mixed with spattered muddy sand, sprays of red, shattered weapons, and gobbets of flesh. White puffs of smoke rose as well, from matchlocks, sending whirring balls over the heads of the defenders, or flurries of mattress stuffing drifting downwind.
“Riflemen, hold your fire!” Matt yelled, when a couple shots answered the Grik. Crossbow bolts were starting to thump into the mattresses too, or sleet by overhead. The 4"-50s were still firing, spitting long tongues of flame, but they were having more and more trouble engaging the closest targets. They’d keep after those farther behind when they couldn’t depress their muzzles anymore. “At one hundred yards . . . ,” Matt continued, gauging the distance. He wanted his first volley to slam them. “Take aim!” he cried, echoed by the Bosun.
“Fire!”
It was impossible to miss. At least two hundred Grik fell with that first volley, the heavy 450-grain bullets of the .50-80-caliber Allin-Silvas often plowing through one target to hit another. The Springfields and Krags had a similar effect. The mortars Laumer brought began thumping, but their baseplates tended to skate across the ship’s steel deck, leaving scars in the paint, and their crews immediately started looking for ways to wedge them in place.
“Fire at will!” Matt roared, echoed by the Bosun and others. Then he drew his 1911 Colt and moved up beside Juan Marcos, who was busily working the bolt of his Springfield and selecting targets between competent shots. The one-legged Filipino had proven himself with a rifle before. Juan cursed when his bolt locked back, and he fished another stripper clip out of his ammo belt. Inserting it in the guide with practiced ease, he slammed the five .30-06 cartridges into the magazine with his thumb, tossed the clip away, and resumed firing. Matt peered over the mattresses and saw the Grik were still getting closer. The first volley must have slowed them, but they continued surging forward in “the same old way.” Scattered Blitzer Bugs ripped into them with dull buraaaps! and bodies literally poured into the shallow water alongside the old destroyer. There were no flasher fish yet, but Matt was sure they’d come. Unfortunately, there was no way they could eat the entire causeway of flesh that was beginning to form—not nearly as fast as the Grik built it with their own bodies.
“Campeti!” Matt roared at his gunnery officer, atop the amidships deckhouse. Campeti stuck his helmeted head over his own breastwork of mattresses to look down. “Sir?”
“Shift your machine-gun fire farther back! We’re helping them build their damn bridge! Have your riflemen do the same.”
“Aye, aye, Captain!”
“Boats!” Matt called aft. “Have the twin twenties chop ’em up farther from the ship!” Gray relayed the order with a nod, but then hurried to join his captain. “It’s not gonna do any good, Skipper. Look what them devils are doin’!”
Matt peered through a gap between the mattresses and the deckhouse. At first he didn’t understand. Then he did. As fast as dead and dying Grik fell in the water, others were hurling more, those killed behind, in on top of them! “Good God!” A big musket ball slapped the steel beside his face, dishing it in like a hailstone on a car. The lead spattered, and hot fragments gouged his cheek. He reeled back.
“You okay Skipper?” Gray demanded. Matt nodded, touching his face. For the first time, he paused long enough to measure what they were taking. The tightly stuffed mattresses, at least doubled in most places, were absorbing the enemy projectiles amazingly well, and they quivered like live things under the onslaught. They couldn’t stop everything, however, and ’Cats in a steady trickle were limping or being carried forward toward the companionway to the wardroom. Half a dozen or more bodies lay where they’d fallen. Most of those had grisly head wounds, he noticed. A ball blew through and smacked against the number three funnel, reminding him that even the mattresses couldn’t hold up forever. “Cap-tan!” Juan called. “They’re nearly to the side of the ship! Right here below me!”
“Go, Boats. Round up anyone far enough aft that the Grik can’t reach and bring ’em forward! We’ve got to keep them off the ship!”
“Aye, aye, Skipper!” Gray growled, and trotted aft, keeping his head down. Matt heard a twin roar above his head and watched a pair of P-1 “Fleashooters” swoop down and scythe into the Grik mass with their own wheel pant–mounted Blitzer Bugs. The sound of their weapons was different from the handheld versions, and barely audible over their motors, but each plane left twin streaks of writhing Grik in their wakes as they pulled up and circled around for another pass. The Grik wailed in pain and terror, but aircraft didn’t have the same effect on them that they once had. Matt wondered about that. These particular Grik had probably never seen an airplane before. He shook his head. He needed Nancys right now, with their antipersonnel fragmentation firebombs! Where were the damn Nancys? A ’cat torpedoman, acting as a talker, had his headset plugged in at the mount. “Ask Mr. Palmer to find out where our air support has gone! We need bombs, not bullets. We’ve got plenty of bullets of our own!” he ordered.
Palmer must’ve been working on it already, because the talker immediately repeated what Ed replied. “Nancys is working over the Griks in front of Second Corps. They gotta fly out to Amer-i-kaa an’ rearm before they come here. We got all the Fleashooters, an’ more o’ them is rearming with bombs on Big Sal, but it take a little before the Nancys get here. They is movin’ Amer-i-kaa closer, an’ she ain’t fuelin’ an’ armin’ nothin’ right now!”
Matt ground his teeth. The Grik were almost on them, and it would soon be down to the bayonet. “Tell Mr. Palmer to inform Adar, Captain Von Melhausen, Keje, or anybody he can get ahold of, that Amerika needs to stop right now, wherever she is, regardless of whatever scheme they’re cooking up. If she doesn’t start getting our air support turned around as fast as she can, there won’t be anything left of us to support!” The ’Cat blinked wide eyes and then spoke quickly to Palmer.
The pair of Fleashooters came back, their blue paint difficult to distinguish against the darkening sky. There were none of the antiair mortars, like giant shotguns mounted on a baseplate and aimed by hand, among the mobs surging against Walker, but the incoming fusillade of musket fire paused while what must’ve been nearly every matchlock in the horde puffed smoke at the diving planes. The little pursuit ships had to get low for the short-range Blitzers to be effective, and countless crossbow bolts rose as well. It was impossible to say which weapons were responsible for savaging one of the planes so badly that it sprouted flames and spun into the burning remains of the Grik ironclad cruiser. A ball of fire roiled into the air, and flaming gasoline spattered the Grik crowding forward, closest to the beached wreck. The other P-1 clawed at the sky and staggered away, trailing a thin stream of smoke.
There remained a lull in the fire directed at the ship while the Grik reloaded, and the defenders rose up and poured it in. Rifles flashed. The 25 mm pounded with a metronomic booming, machine guns and Blitzer Bugs chattered, and the big 4"-50s roared defiance—and still the Grik came. There’d be no stopping them, Matt realized. It was as though they somehow knew that USS Walker was the heart of the Allied fleet. These warriors were mostly young and almost crestless, so maybe they actually believed that, having been taught it since birth. Their motivation hardly mattered in the grand scheme of things. What did matter was that they were about to reach the deck of Matt’s ship, over the mounded bodies of the slain, and it didn’t look like there was a thing in the world he could do to stop it.
“Marines!” Matt roared, mostly addressing those who’d come aboard from the PTs. “Take shields and move to the front!” Allied Marines had gone back and forth between using their bronze-faced shields and discarding them, but it had been shown that, in fights like this, shields still served a valuable purpose. “Riflemen, behind them! Bayonets forward!” He looked at the excited torpedo talker. “Everyone on the ship, but the seriously wounded, a minimal watch in the firerooms, and the repair party in the aft engine room will report to the point of contact, between the bridge and the port torpedo mount! Secure all hatches from the inside and keep them that way until further notice!”
“Even to the wardroom?” the ’Cat asked. “Where’ll we take the wounded?”
“Especially the companionway hatch to the wardroom!” Matt ordered. He suddenly noticed Earl Lanier standing just under the overhang, between the aft galley bulkhead and the number three ’stack. The obese cook had a Thompson, but was just looking around, wide-eyed. “Lanier! Get your mates and what corps-’Cats you can find, and set up a dressing station on the starboard side of the galley! The amidships deckhouse, the bridge, and the aft deckhouse will be our battlements, and the last places we retreat to. Spread the word!” he added for the talker.
“But Captain!” Earl finally managed. “I never got my Coke machine struck down below! It’s still sittin’ where you want the dressing station! There’ll be a buncha m’lingerin’ bastards tryin’ to get away from the fight with a scratch er scrape wallowin’ all over it, dentin’ the lid!”
Matt shook his head, struck by the weird things people thought of at times like this. The Coke machine was usually empty, but despite repeated battle damage, it still worked. It had become a kind of talisman for many of the old crew—and particularly Earl Lanier.
“If it gets in the way one little bit, you’ll heave it over the side! Is that absolutely clear? Now go!” Matt snapped at Earl’s hesitant nodding.
“You want my riflemen down there?” Campeti called from above.
“Not yet, Sonny. Use ’em to try to keep the Grik off us. Otherwise, you’re our last reserve. You can see where they’ll be needed better from up there than I can!” Matt racked the slide on his Colt, chambering a round, then flipped the thumb safety up. Releasing the magazine, he thumbed an extra .45 ACP cartridge on top of the remaining six before slamming it back in the well. “It’s about to get a bit frisky, as Silva would say,” he added to those around him, managing a slight grin despite the turmoil in his chest. It had been a long time since he’d faced the Grik at such close quarters. He was better with his sword than he’d been before, he reflected absently, but fervently hoped it wouldn’t come to that. An instant later, the first Grik began swarming up, over the mattresses, and somehow he knew it would.