After the briefing, the battalion was marched out by platoons to a staging area. Cold-weather gear, helmets, and winter camouflage was passed out. Then came the weapons. It looked like jungle warfare all over again. Most Marines were issued a pump-action Winchester trench gun or a Thompson submachine gun, with only a few bolt-action Springfields and Browning Automatic Rifles thrown in. After all, if they were going to be operating in a town, there wasn’t going to be much call to shoot anyone two or three hundred yards away. Everyone was also issued four grenades, and a Colt .45 sidearm, too. Clearing blocks of teetering old tenements room by room would be claustrophobic work, often without the luxury of enough space to maneuver a rifle or shotgun. It looked to Hennessey like the Brass had put some thought into the weapons mix.
Which is why the flamethrowers really scared him. Hennessey counted at least six flamethrower teams. Plus the quartermaster was handing out white-phosphorous grenades and satchel charges like it was the Battle of Beallue Wood all over again. “They wouldn’t be handing those out unless they were expecting us to have to burn the locals out their houses.”
Hearing Hennessey’s comment, Charlie Paskow looked over at the Marine sappers strapping the tanks of jellied gasoline onto their backs. Paskow’s bayonet-thin figure was practically swallowed by the heavy winter greatcoat and steel helmet. He shrugged noncommittally as he shouldered his trench gun. “I s’pect so.” Paskow turned away to join the rest of Third Company, Third Platoon by the four military trucks that would soon be bearing them north up the Ippswich road to the doomed town of Innsmouth.
The drive north was bitterly cold. Snow was fresh on the ground and shone pale in the moonlight. The sea winds blowing in along the shore cut right through the canvas-covered truck. It froze the Marines’ helmets to the tops of their ears. The draft tugged at their clothes and swept their steaming breath away like the exhaust from the rattling tailpipe. A few silently cursed the T-men, who were making the trip in a long train of big, black Packards. The others gripped their weapons upright between their knees, curled up inside their fear and adrenaline, and tried to focus. Focus on not getting killed.
As their truck crested the top of yet another hill, Lieutenant Cobb shouted a warning from the cab to the men bundled in the rear. “We just topped the last hill. We’ll hit town in three minutes! Nobody does nothing until we deploy.” The driver ground the gears as he down-shifted for the descent into town. That’s when the stench hit them.
At first Hennessey thought they’d passed some road kill, some dog or farm animal on the side of the road. But the smell was more like rotten fish than any other smell he could think of.
“Jeezus,” choked Deerborn. “What the hell is that?”
“Smells like the crack on a two-pesos whore!” Lyman gasped, holding his nose.
“Shut the hell up, Marine,” barked Sergeant Miles. The Sergeant preferred to dispense discipline with the butt of his Thompson. No one said a word after that, even though the eye-watering stink just kept getting worse.
Hennessey’s first glimpse of the town was lost in the glare of the headlights of the trucks behind his. Now and again he could see windows staring back, like the empty sockets of a skull. It just seemed incredible that any of the buildings could possibly be inhabited. They were crumbling heaps. Regardless, they were going to have to clear those heaps room by room. Clearing an intact building is hard enough, but when the walls look like Swiss cheese and you can see the attic while standing in the basement, there’s just no way to know where that next shot is coming from. No way to know if that wall to your back is going to give way to a sniper’s killing zone. It made Hennessey’s guts twist just thinking about it.
Suddenly they were crossing a large square. The Gilman Hotel leaned drunkenly to the right, on the left the First National Grocery. In the blink of an eye, the trucks were rattling across the Federal Street Bridge and into the north side of town. Just across Dock Street they sped past the columned facade of a Romanesque building. Its granite pillars and steps were fleetingly illuminated as one of the trucks from the convoy peeled off and began disgorging troops. Hennessey could just make out the building’s graven title above the door: “The Esoteric Order of Dagon.” The building was out of Hennessey’s sight even before the Marines began vaulting up the front steps, their bayonets flashing in the passing headlights.
As their trucks drove deeper into Innsmouth, the buildings along Federal Street grew even more dilapidated; some were little more than four hollow walls cradling collapsed roofs and floors. Crossing Church and Martin Streets, more trucks veered off to their targets. Hennessey’s truck and three others made a hard left onto Martin and gunned their engines. “First squad!” barked Lieutenant Cobb from the front cab. “You will move south and secure the southwest block. Round everyone up and get them ready to move to the train station. Have you got that?”
“Yes, Sir!” came the chorus. Hennessey looked across the truck to Charlie Paskow. Hennessey knew that faraway look meant that Paskow was winding his clock springs. Hennessey loved having Charlie with him in a firefight: the guy moved like a wind-up soldier. No hesitation, no frenzy, just one fluid action after another.
The truck turned right again, shot forward maybe thirty yards, and jammed on the brake, skidding slightly as snow chains bit into the icy cobblestones. “Go! Go! Go!” barked Sergeant Miles as he jumped down from the truck, hoisting his Thompson in one hand while waving the men forward with the other. Hennessey jumped down, holding the barrel of the Thompson skyward, slipping slightly in the ice. “Corporal Paskow! Take Hennessey, Lyman, and Boyle and clear that house there!” Miles indicated a sagging heap that had once been a quaint, gambrel-roofed Georgian home. In any small town in America, it might have passed as a haunted house. Here in Innsmouth, a city of haunted houses, its intact windowpanes made it look upscale.
Paskow got to the door first and began pounding with his gloved fist. “Open the door! This is the U.S. Marine Corps! Open up!” Hennessey hung back with Lyman and Boyle at the foot of the steps, keeping an eye on the windows. Boyle, a steady Tennessee farmboy, had been in Hennessey’s company for six months in Nicaragua. Hennessey had no worries about him. Lyman, on the other hand, had just gotten off the boat from Camp LeJune when the battalion was turned around and sent back to the States. He was nervous as a cat and kept dancing around, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like he had to pee.
The owner was fairly slow to come to the door, but that was to be expected. It was 2:00 A.M., after all, and his reactions were dulled from having to wrench himself out of a warm winter slumber. For a half awake fella, dressed only in his nightshirt and facing four Marines armed with bayonet-tipped shotguns and Thompson machine-guns, the man took it fairly well.
“What th’sweet Jay-sus is gowin’ ahn!” he shouted. Hennessey sincerely hoped the ol’ fella didn’t give Paskow too much trouble. Last fella who did, Paskow put out most of his teeth with the butt of his Springfield.
“Town’s being evacuated. You and anyone else you’ve got in there are going to have to go with us. Right now,” Paskow said flatly. It wasn’t much of an explanation. For a second Hennessey thought the old man was going to give Paskow an opportunity to do a little more dental work. Instead he smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile, what with more than a few teeth missing or gone gray with rot, but his face lit up like they’d just reported the end of Prohibition.