“Gun number one, fire!”
Jack, Henry, and the Russian commandos were thrown from their feet as gun number one in turret three let loose. The concussion killed two of Salkukoff’s men who were directly under the powerful warhead when the two silk-lined powder bags ignited and then in turn pushed the thousand-pound warhead through the tube and out into the blue sky. The recoil on the ship was fantastic. Simbirsk groaned against the power of the exploding fifteen-inch weaponry. Her bulk slid ten feet to the port side as the barrel flashed a fifty-foot-long trail of fire from her muzzle. Before anyone could react, another shell exploded from gun mount number two. This time, four of Salkukoff’s men were blown over the side, and Salkukoff himself was wrenched from the ladder he had been climbing and was thrown to the hard deck. Henri recovered fast as he tried to get to the downed Russian colonel, but he was hit hard in the back of the head and stilled momentarily.
Jack took a split second to recover. Even with the makeshift earplugs, he was almost knocked senseless. As he raised his head, he saw the Russian commandos were down and the regular crew was fighting with them. It seemed the Russian seamen, no matter how badly bruised they were by the blast of the big guns, were angry enough to shed off that pain and attack the men they blamed for their situation. He then saw a wondrous sight as the third and final gun was turning to the port side and the barrel was lowering. Collins quickly roused a hurt Farbeaux, and they both rolled underneath one of the lifeboats for protection.
“Jesus, Ryan is going for the sub!” Jack said as even in the directory Everett was amazed when the barrel and the turret started transiting on their own with no input from him. He hit the deck as the barrel went to its lowest attitude and the gun exploded outward. Everett quickly stood and saw the submarine. He saw the crew scrambling away in panic as the fifteen-inch shell struck just aft of the conning tower, missing the boat by only eighty feet. The submarine was inundated in violet seawater.
“Damn, Ryan, you missed!” Carl hissed.
Then he saw what no man ever wanted to see: the sub came to life and moved closer to get into position.
None of the Americans thought they would fire on their only way home, but they also knew the submarine captain had been fired on and was reacting instead of thinking. This whole operation may have just gone tits up.
The first ranks of the Wasakoo had burst up and over the rock-strewn protection the marines had thrown up. They crashed into men, and the fighting became hand to hand. They knew their time in this life was done when the rest of the thousand enemies burst through.
Jenks emptied his close-in weapon, his nine millimeter, and then grabbed the skin of one of the sickly Wasakoo as it dove into the mine. Jenks started pummeling the creature on the head and neck, but he felt the weight of the large Wasakoo as it drove him into the ground. As the master chief looked into the grinning face of the Wasakoo, it hissed at him as its strong and webbed fingers started to choke the life from him. Then the pressure eased as Charlie appeared in his vision. The white-haired professor held one of the discarded spears in his hand as he brought it down once more into the back of Jenks’s attacker.
Suddenly, a freight train sound rent the skies above them. It sounded as if the massive fifteen-inch shell was reaching right out for them and not the advancing Wasakoo. The first explosion blew the marines, Charlie, and Jenks backward as it detonated not fifty feet from the mine’s opening. Fire and smoke covered everything. None of the men could even begin to hear the second round as it came crashing down from the almost mile-high arc. Another brutal earth-shattering explosion shook the very rock strata they hid behind. More fire, rock, pieces of Wasakoo, and foliage covered them all.
There was an eerie silence that filled the world. With the exception of men coughing and their painful attempts to rise, the world was gone for them. Dust filled the cave like dense smoke as Jenks shook his head. He saw Charlie move next to him. His spear was broken into two pieces, but he was still tenaciously hanging on to it.
“Come on, Doc, you’re all right,” Jenks said as he battled to his feet, and in the blinding dust cloud, he assisted Ellenshaw to his feet. Then they started helping the marines who had been closer to the opening than they. Three of them were hard to rouse awake, but they finally opened their eyes and coughed. All was still silent.
Jenks and the lance corporal made it to the opening, and that was when they saw the devastation the ancient Russian weaponry had caused. It looked as if the world had been plowed over. There was not a tree standing within fifty yards of the mine. Wasakoo were lying dead in all directions.
“Look,” the lance corporal said, pointing.
Jenks rubbed his eyes, coughed out a mouthful of dirt, and then saw what the marine saw. Out of over a thousand Wasakoo, only fifty or so were heading for the hills. They sprinted downhill at a pace that said they wanted nothing more to do with the intruders to their world.
“Thank God! I didn’t want to buy it here,” the lance corporal said as he wiped as much of the dirt from his face as he could.
“Hate to tell you this, Lance Corporal Jarhead, but we still have to travel through time and space to get back home.”
The marine looked at Jenks as the others, including the six children they had just saved, joined them.
“As long as no one shoots them big damn guns at us, I can live with that danger. That was freakin’ brutal!”
The battle for Compton’s Reef had ended.
Jack and Henri had lost all sense of time and predicament. The recoil of the large-bore guns had sent everyone to the deck. The gunfire itself had killed at least six men of Salkukoff’s command. Still, they held the upper hand. The Russian sailors they had rounded up and disarmed were as helpless as Collins and Farbeaux. They were just rising from the deck, and the commandos, to their credit, recovered far faster than their captives. Henri assisted Jack to his feet. Farbeaux removed the makeshift earplugs and saw that his left eardrum may have been perforated as blood-covered cloth attested to.
“You’re bleeding,” Jack said as he nodded his thanks at the Frenchman.
Before they realized what was happening, they were both pushed back down onto the deck by three of Salkukoff’s men. The man himself was wiping blood from his nose and forehead as he staggered toward them. He angrily kicked out at Jack and caught the colonel in the stomach. When Henri reacted, he was slammed in the back of the head by the foldable stock of an AK-47 and sent to the steel deck next to Collins.
“What did that little display prove?” He kicked at Jack again before he could recover from the first blow. “Two worthless misses at a now uninhabited island, and one toward my boat? Very poor plan, Colonel.” He angrily and ruthlessly took an AK-47 from one of his men and aimed it down toward the two men. “Now, here’s the rest of my plan,” he said as he aimed at the back of Jack’s head. Farbeaux looked up in time to realize that this time around they would not escape that inevitable bullet Collins and men like himself always expected.
In the fire control directory high above, Everett saw what was about to happen but was powerless to stop it.
As Houston blew all air from her ballast tanks, it looked as if it would be too late. The submarine flew off the shelf of the mountain and went straight down. The weakened ballast control system was not powerful enough to provide lift to her planes until more water was ejected from her bowels. Every man aboard was thrown into their stations as Houston began a descent they would never recover from.