She smiled at him, and this time he saw her dimples in the light of the city. "My name's Karen Theimer. What's yours, Lieutenant?"
CHAPTER 6
Lieutenant Benjamin Mallory and Lieutenant (j.g.)
Perry Brister sat on chairs in Jim Ellis's cramped quarters on USSMahan waiting for him to wake.
Ellis's fever had finally broken the night before, and Pam Cross assured them he'd be fine—he just had to sleep it off. And so they waited, playing hand after hand of acey-deucey on the tiny table between them.
Eventually, a groggy groan escaped the patient and he slowly came awake.
His eyes seemed confused when he saw them, but he smacked his lips and croaked: "Thirsty."
In seconds the nurse appeared with a cup of water. "Here," she said in her brusque Brooklyn way. "Drink." Jim drank. When he spoke again, his voice was more normal.
"How long?" he asked simply.
"Almost two weeks since the fever hit. How much do you remember?"
Brister asked.
"Not much," Jim admitted and tried to rise, but his expression contorted with pain and he settled back. "But I do remember that crazy bastard Kaufman shot me!"
It all came flooding back: the dinosaurs on Bali, the mysterious contact in the strait, the urgent signal for him to take Mahan east—which he did, but not for long. What was the point? There were dinosaurs on Bali!
He didn't know what was going on, but there'd been no Japanese ships or planes since they came through the Squall, and he had a hunch there wouldn't be. He decided to turn around, to go back and rejoin Walker.
Kaufman argued with him, right there on the bridge. At first he remained reasonable, advocating that they continue to the rendezvous point off Alor. But when Jim gave the order to come about, Kaufman began to insist. He said Jim was risking all their lives and they'd die if they turned around. Jim ordered him off the bridge and that's when he just . . . lost it. He had a pistol and he took it out. Immediately, Jim and a couple of others jumped him and in the ensuing struggle, the gun went off. It probably wasn't even deliberate. Regardless, the bullet entered Jim's left leg, just below the knee, and exited the other side of his calf, right above the ankle. The men would have thrown Kaufman over the side right then, but he had the gun and time to talk. He said turning back was suicide; they'd done everything they could. The ship was a wreck and the men were exhausted. They deserved to live. Then Mr. Monroe, the only other officer besides Brister—in engineering at the time—took his side. He said they should listen to Kaufman, who was a captain, after all, and it was nuts to go back after all they'd been through. The crew began to go for it.
They were angry about Jim being shot, but it wasn't like he was their captain or anything. He was just a strange officer who'd been put in charge. Kaufman only wanted to do what they'd been told to do, so that's how it was. Before Brister or Mallory even knew what happened, Captain Kaufman had the ship.
What he did next was inexplicable. Instead of heading for Alor, which had been his original purpose, he didn't make for Perth at all. He was convinced that there were carriers between them and Australia, so that left only Ceylon. They steamed east for the day, hugging the coast, and that night they shot the Lombok Strait. They'd still seen no sign of the enemy, but that made no difference to Kaufman. He'd become obsessed with reaching Ceylon and—Jim guessed—terrified of meeting Walker. He wasn't about to go anywhere the other ship might be. Jim was in the wardroom the entire time, undergoing treatment. Not under arrest, but more or less in exile. He kept up with events as best he could, mostly through Mallory and Brister. Much of the rest of the crew seemed hesitant to look him in the eye. There were exceptions, like Bosun's Mate Frankie Steele and Torpedoman Russ Chapelle, but not nearly enough to recapture the ship. Then, in spite of the best the surgeon and nurses could do, he lapsed into a fever. His last conscious recollection was they were nearing Tjilatjap, hoping to find some fuel. He cleared his throat.
"What happened at Tjilatjap?" His voice grew soft. "Was it even there?"
Brister and Mallory looked at each other, and finally Ben shook his head.
"No, sir. You don't remember any of that? We told you about it after we came aboard."
Jim just shook his head. "Pretend I wasn't there," he said, attempting to grin. "Start over. What did you find?"
"Nothing, sir. At least nothing that looked like Tjilatjap," said Brister.
Like others who'd been there before, he pronounced it "Chilachap."
"What did you see?"
"Some strange, huge village—almost a city. I don't really know how to describe it. It was pretty big. Multistory structures, built on some kind of bamboo pilings. It was deserted, and most had been burned to the ground."
"Deserted?"
"Yes, sir. Well, sort of deserted. It wasn't abandoned willingly; it looked like there'd been a fight. Bones, sir. Bones everywhere, and a few mostly scavenged bodies off in the jungle. They were furry and had tails and . . . they weren't human."
"Sir," said Mallory stiffly, "there was nothing left alive out of a city of hundreds, easily, and it looked like whatever got them ate them. Not just scavengers either. Most of the bones were . . . piled up."
Pam Cross had left and reentered with a thermometer during the conversation. Her face was hard.
"Did you see it too?" Ellis asked.
"I did," she said simply and poked the device in his mouth.
Brister cleared his throat. "Well, sir, we got the hell out. Kaufman became even more unhinged. He insisted our only hope was Ceylon and had us pour it on. He wouldn't listen to reason. By then, almost everyone wanted to look for Walker, in spite of the consequences, but he said the next man who suggested it would be left in the whaleboat to look on his own." He wiped at the sweat beading his brow, and the nurse removed the thermometer from Jim's lips. She made a noncommittal sound. "Anyway, a storm kicked up and we shipped a lot of water. It wasn't much of a storm, but shot up like we are, we were lucky to survive. Things settled down by morning, but we had to pump out and make repairs, so we ducked into this little bay on Panaitan Island—" "That's how we found the plane!" interrupted Mallory, a grin splitting his face.
"Plane?"
"Yes, sir. A PBY Catalina! If you can look out that porthole beside you, you might be able to see her!" Ellis struggled to rise, but he was very weak.
Mallory immediately regretted the suggestion, but with a heavy sigh and rolling eyes, Nurse Cross helped him up. His head swam and his vision was blurred, but through the porthole, sure as the world, a familiar, battered seaplane was half beached on the island.
"You weren't kidding!" he exclaimed. "Where'd it come from?"
The two men shrugged. "Same place we did, I guess," said Mallory.
"We steamed into the bay and there it was on the beach, its crew nowhere in sight. The place is crawling with lizards like bit your man on Menjangan . . ." He didn't need to speculate on the air crew's likely fate.
"There were bullet holes all in it and it was full of water, but otherwise it seemed in pretty good shape—just out of gas. The radio's crapped out— we checked that right off. Salt water corroded all the connections was Signalman Palmer's guess. He's been working with us. Anyway, we figure the same thing happened to it that happened to us, and it made it as far as the Sunda Strait before it ran out of fuel."
"Maybe it was one of the PBYs that broke up the air attack on our ships when Houston took that bomb hit," speculated Jim. "Bravest thing I ever saw, three flying boats diving among fighters and bombers, trying to throw 'em off their aim." He shook his head. "Crazy."