Weapons of choice

Evans had been spared by his legendary clumsiness, tripping and painfully turning his ankle as he leapt from his bunk when the attack began. The delay in reaching the bridge had saved his life. Everyone in there had died, shredded from the waist up by a firestorm from some kind of hellish machine gun that occasionally popped out of the enemy vessel like an evil jack-in-the-box. Evans had tripped a second time when he charged into the ruined bridge and slipped on the bloody mess. A random stray round had shattered his forearm as he struggled to his feet, gagging in disgust.

As if watching himself from outside, he balled up a fist and drove a short, sharp punch into his wounded arm. Again. And again. By the third blow he had battered through the anesthesia of shock, replacing it with a terrible shooting pain, which had the utility, if nothing else, of jolting him out of numbness and inaction.

His first response was combative. He raised fire control for the rear gun turrets and had the barrels depressed as far as possible. Then he gave the order that would unload three shells at point-blank range into the stern of the ship that had attacked his own.

He watched from a lookout platform, which was freckled with thousands of thumb-sized holes. The barrels swung about with excruciating slowness, and he couldn't even be sure they would come to bear, given the angle at which the two ships were locked together. When the turret would turn no farther, Evans limped back inside as quickly as he could, snatched up the interphone, and snapped out the order to fire.

The roar of the great cannon filled the whole world, the bark of Satan's own hellhound. Gouts of flame leapt out into the churning V-shaped gap between the ships. A shock wave flattened the waters there. In a microsecond the three high-explosive shells covered the distance between the mouth of the guns and their target. A geyser of green flame vented out of a huge fissure in the stern of the enemy ship.

But as Lieutenant Commander Evans yelled into the interphone, demanding a full broadside by everything that could be brought to bear-the eight-inch turrets, a battery of five-inch mounts, and all of the portside machine guns and AA stations-a curious thing happened. His voice trailed off as he saw two German storm troopers emerge through a hatch on the small finlike bridge of the enemy ship.

He shook his head to clear it. After all, they weren't the weirdest thing he'd seen tonight.

"Fire!" he ordered.

USS LEYTE GULF, 2305 HOURS, JUNE 2, 1942

Lieutenant Reilly, the Leyte Gulf's met boss, was a good officer because he understood his own limits. He was a weatherman, a really excellent weatherman, if you wanted to know. Captain Anderson had learned that his forecasts often ran two or three days ahead of the bulletins coming out of Fleet, back in Pearl. On occasion, he was seemingly so prescient it was spooky. His small staff on the Leyte Gulf used to joke that he could make a butterfly flap its wings, and start a hurricane on the other side of the world.

But Lieutenant Reilly was lost when it came to small-unit counterboarding operations. It just wasn't his gig, and he was quietly very relieved when Seamen Sessions and Nix checked in on his flexipad to report that they were going topside for a quick look, after which they would report to him to commence clearing A deck forward of the chopper bays.

Reilly planned to give them very general orders when they arrived, basically reiterating anything the captain had said. After that, the two specialists would have a free hand to deploy the available forces as they saw fit. Reilly had no intention of micromanaging close-quarter combat.

Until Sessions and Nix turned up, however, there was plenty to be done. He'd collected nearly two dozen sailors on his way to the hangar, sorted them into four teams according to specialty. They were gathered in front of the Gulf's pair of Sea Comanche helicopters, spectral figures looming in the faint wine-darkness of emergency lighting. Reilly had ordered the men to switch off their flexipads, lest the glowing screens make them better targets outside the safety of the hangar. Only his still shone, and he had dulled the screen to minimum brightness. Even so, he moved about within a small pearl of dim radiance as he inspected his men and women.

They were all fitted out from the air division arsenal. Most had basic body armor, and each team could boast at least one cross-trained medic. Reilly didn't bother trying to whip them into a blood frenzy. It wasn't his style and everyone knew it. Instead he passed quietly from one sailor to the next, checking weapons loads, tightening straps, providing a little encouragement where it seemed needed. It was hard for them, sealed up in the rear of the ship, with no idea what was happening. They could all tell from the Gulf's strange motion that something more than just a firefight was under way.