Flood Tide

Yu Tien stiffened as he saw death and dishonor creeping out of the ventilators, hatches and companionways leading down to the bowels of his ship. What began as white puffs and orange flickers quickly became a torrent of red fire and black smoke from the shambles that had been an engine room but had now become a crematory of helpless men.

“Fire!” he cried out. “Destroy those deceiving dogs!”

“Reload!” Cabrillo yelled through the communications system. “Hurry and reload—”

His orders were interrupted by a tremendous roar followed by concussions reverberating all around him. The big guns on the destroyer's undamaged forward turret belched a torrent of fire as it sent its shells screaming toward the Oregon.

The first shrieked between the loading cranes and burst against the base of the aft mast, sheering it clean and sending it crashing over the cargo deck while hurling a fiery core of white-hot fragments and debris in every direction, causing several small fires but little serious damage. With a convulsive explosion, the second shell slammed into the fantail on the Oregon's stern and tore it away, leaving a gaping hole above the rudderpost. The destruction was severe but not catastrophic. Cabrillo involuntarily ducked as a storm of thirty-seven-millimeter shells from the Chengdo's lighter gun mounts began raking the Oregon from forecastle to shattered stern. Almost immediately he was hailed by Ross, who was also ma

“Sir, the Chinese light guns have knocked out the missile launcher's firing mechanisms. I hate to be the bearer of sad tidings, but our one-two punch is history.” “What about the torpedoes?” “Three more minutes before they're ready for firing.” “Tell the men loading the tubes to do it in one!” “Hanley!” Cabrillo shouted through the speakerphone to the engine room.

“I'm here, Juan,” Hanley answered with quiet calmness. “Any damage to your engines?”

“A few pipes have sprung leaks. Nothing we can't handle.” “Give me full speed, every knot you can coax out of your engines. We've got to get the hell out of here before the destroyer rips us apart.” “You got it.”

It was then Cabrillo realized his Oerlikons had gone silent. He stood still and stared at the twin guns sitting dead in the center of a large wooden shipping crate with its four walls peeled out. The barrels pointed impotently at the destroyer as if neglected, their automated electronic controls severed by thirty-seven-millimeter shells. He knew with sick certainty that without its covering fire, their chances for survival were rapidly going down the drain. Too late did he feel the Oregon's stern dip and her bow raise as Hanley's big engines kicked the ship forward. For the first time he felt fear and hopelessness as he stared down the twin throats of the destroyer's one-hundred-millimeter guns, waiting for them to destroy his dedicated crew and ship.

Having momentarily forgotten the fight raging on the deck in the midst of the destruction, he blinked and glanced downward. Bloodied bodies were heaped and scattered like a truckload of human refuse dumped in the street. He stared with bile welling up in his throat. The appalling carnage had taken less than two minutes, a gory rampage that had left no man still alive uninjured. Or so he thought.

Then, like the flicker of a camera shutter, he saw a figure sway to his feet and begin staggering drunkenly across the deck toward the Oerlikons.

Although protected by the body armor around their torsos, James and Meadows were both down with wounds in the legs. Seng had taken two bullets through his right arm. Sitting with his back against the railing, he tore off a shirtsleeve, wadded it up and calmly pressed it against his wounds to stem the flow of blood. Giordino lay beside him, barely conscious. One of the Chinese marines had clubbed him on the top of his head with the butt of an automatic rifle in almost the same instant as Giordino had savagely sunk his fist into his opponent's stomach nearly to the vertebra. Both men had toppled to the deck together, the marine withering in pain and gasping for air, Giordino knocked nearly senseless.

Pitt, seeing that his friend was not seriously wounded, threw off the coat with the ma

From his vantage point on the bridge wing, Cabrillo stood rooted in awe of the unbelievable sight of Pitt contemptuously brushing aside the air filled with the maddening clatter of the Chengdo's storm of thirty-seven-millimeter shells that scythed across the Oregon's cargo deck. The fire splattered all around him like rain, chewing up the wooden crates stacked on the deck. He heard them shriek past his head and felt their demented breeze as they passed within inches of his face and neck. Miraculously, none struck him during his harrowing journey to the Oerlikons.

Pitt's face was not pleasant to see. To Cabrillo it seemed like a mask of unholy rage, the vivid green eyes burning with furious determination. It was a face Cabrillo would never forget. He had never seen a man with such a sardonic contempt for death.

At last, after achieving what seemed the impossible, Pitt lifted the machine pistol and shot away the shredded remnants of the cable leading to the fire-control room, giving the twin barrels freedom of movement. Then he moved behind the twin guns and took manual control, his right hand clutching the trigger grip, which had been installed but never operated. It was as if the old Oregon had come to life again, like a badly battered fighter who rose from the canvas at the count of nine and began punching. His aim was not what Cabrillo expected. Instead of spraying the Chengdo's bridge and thirty-seven-millimeter-gun mounts, Pitt unleashed the Oerlikons' combined 1,400-round-per-minute firepower against the turret, whose hundred-millimeter guns were aimed at and about to devastate the freighter.

Though it seemed like a useless, defiant gesture—the hurricane of small shells merely splattered and ricocheted off the heavily armored turret—Cabrillo realized what Pitt was attempting to do. Stark madness, he thought, sheer, unfettered madness to attempt the impossible. Even with a solid support to rest the barrel of his rifle, only a superb marksman could have put a bullet down the barrel of any one of the turret's gun muzzles from a ship rising and falling on the ocean swells. But Cabrillo overlooked the awesome firepower of the Oerlikons at Pitt's command, not realizing the law of averages was on his side. Three shells, one directly behind the other, entered the muzzle of the center gun and swept down its barrel, impacting with the shell that had been freshly loaded in the breech and detonating its warhead at almost the same instant it was fired.

In a moment stolen from hell, the big one-hundred-millimeter shell burst, causing a sympathetic explosion inside that peeled the turret open like a tin can covering a Fourth of July cherry bomb, instantly turning it into a shambles of jagged steel. Then, as if on cue, the Oregon's last two torpedoes smashed into the Chengdo's hull, one of them miraculously entering through a previous hole made by one of its predecessors. The destroyer shuddered as a great thunderous roar exploded in her bowels, lifting her hull nearly clear of the water. A blossoming ball of fire bloomed around her, and then, like a great, mortally wounded animal, she shuddered and died. Three minutes later she was gone amid a great hissing sound and column of black smoke that spiraled upward and merged with the night sky, hiding the stars.