“No!” shrieked Katsakos.
“Holy shit!” groaned Neil.
“I told him to turn around!” sputtered Di Luca.
Flawlessly, the Maracaibo’s firefighting system sprang to life.
As the klaxon brayed across the Norwegian Sea, a dozen robot hoses appeared, rising from the bulwarks like moray eels slithering out of their lairs. Jets of frothy white foam shot from the nozzles.
“Oh, Christ!” screamed Katsakos as the flames gasped and died. “Oh, Lord!” he wailed. The foam subsided like an outgoing tide, leaving behind a mass of melted pipework and the fallen body of Christopher Van Horne. “Oh, God, they blew up the captain!”
When the Maracaibo went to war against Air Group Six, incinerating her torpedo planes and dive bombers with deadly guided missiles, the focus of Oliver’s terror shifted from Cassie to himself. He was not embarrassed. It was Cassandra, in fact, who liked to dismiss so-called heroism as but one step removed from theistic self-delusion, and besides, at the moment his own peril clearly outclassed hers, the Maracaibo being likely to interpret Strawberry Eleven as yet another hostile plane and attack accordingly.
True, the Gulf tanker had just sustained a direct hit from a 500-pound demolition bomb. But instead of touching off either the tanker’s cargo oil or her bunker fuel, the explosion had merely ignited her fo’c’sle deck — a localized conflagration soon brought under control by automated foam throwers — and before long she was enthusiastically targeting the two armed Devastators and three armed Dauntlesses remaining in the air.
“I can’t stand this!” shouted Oliver.
“Scared, are you?” asked Flume, who did not himself seem particularly happy.
“You bet I’m scared!”
“Don’t be ashamed if your bowels let go,” said Pembroke, likewise distraught. “During World War Two, almost a quarter of all infantrymen lost that kind of control in battle.”
“At least, that’s how many admitted to it,” added Flume, nervously winding his headset cord around his wrist. “The actual percentage was probably higher.”
Tow chains severed, the Valparaíso listed badly to starboard. Blood pooled along her hull. Even if she began to founder, Oliver reasoned, there’d be plenty of time for Cassie and her shipmates to get away in lifeboats — whereas if the Maracaibo opened fire on Strawberry Eleven, her crew and passengers would all, most probably, die.
“Van Horne must’ve been trimmin’ her with blood,” said Reid over the intercom. “Good way to lighten his load — right, Mr. Flume?”
Flume made no reply. His partner remained equally silent. As the Maracaibo took on the remnants of Air Group Six, the war reenactors sat rigidly in their machine-gun blisters and listened to the transceiver broadcasts, a radio horror show to put their beloved Inner Sanctum to shame.
“Missile at six o’clock!”
“Mayday! Mayday!”
“Bail out, everybody!”
“Help me!”
“Jump!”
“Shit!”
“Mommy! Mommy!”
“This isn’t in my contract!”
Oliver felt like praying, but it was impossible to gather the requisite energy when the decayed, frozen, violated remains of the God he didn’t believe in stretched so starkly before his eyes.
“Alby?”
“Yeah, Sid?”
“Alby, I’m not having any fun.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Alby, I want to go home.”
“Ensign Reid,” said Flume into his intercom mike, “kindly climb to nine thousand feet and set off for Point Luck.”
“You mean — withdraw?”
“Withdraw.”
“Ever walk out on one of your own shows before?” asked Reid.
“Just leave, Jack.”
“Roger,” said the pilot, pulling back on the control yoke.
“Alby?”
“Yeah, Sid?”
“Two of our actors are dead.”
“Most of ’em bailed out.”
“Two are dead.”
“I know.”
“Waldron’s dead,” said Pembroke. “His gunner too, Ensign Collins.”
“Carny Otis, right?” said Flume. “I saw him at the Helen Hayes once. Iago.”
“Alby, I think we done bad.”
“Attention, Torpedo Six!” came Ray Spruance’s portrayer’s voice from the transceiver. “Attention, Scout Bombing Six! Listen, men, no matter how you slice it, we aren’t being paid to mess with a Gulf tanker! Break off the attack and return to Enterprise! Repeat: break off attack and return! We weigh anchor at 1530 hours!”
From out of nowhere a crippled dive bomber arrived, sheets of flame flowing from her wings. The plane zoomed so close that Oliver could see the pilot’s face — or, rather, he would have seen the pilot’s face had it not been burned clear to the bone.
“It’s Ensign Gay!” cried Pembroke. “They got Ensign Gay!”
“Please, God, no!” shouted Flume.
The runaway Dauntless headed straight for the flying boat’s tail, shedding sparks and firebrands. Pembroke shrieked madly, moving his hands back and forth as if pantomiming a frenetic game of cat’s cradle. Then, as Strawberry Eleven reached nine thousand feet, the bomber collided with her, snapping off the PBY’s rudder, severing her starboard stabilizer, puncturing her fuselage, and pouring burning gasoline into the tunnel gunner’s compartment, each individual disaster unfolding so rapidly that Oliver’s single scream sufficed to cover them all. A mass of flames swept along the aft flooring and into the portside blister. Searing heat filled the cabin. Within seconds, Albert Flume’s cotton trousers, aviator’s scarf, and flak jacket were ablaze.
“Aaaiiii!”
“Alby!”
“Put me out!”
“Put him out!”
“God, put me out!”
“Here!” Charles Eaton’s portrayer shoved a glossy red cylinder into Oliver’s lap.
“What’s this?” Oliver couldn’t tell whether the tears flooding his eyes sprang from terror, pity, or the black smoke wafting through the mechanic’s station. “What? What?”
“Read the directions!”
“Oh, Jesus!” screamed Flume. “Oh, sweet Jesus!”
“I think we lost our tail!” cried Reid over the intercom.
Oliver wiped his eyes. HOLD UPRIGHT. He did. PULL PIN. Pin? What pin? He made a series of desperate grabs — please, God, please, the pin — and suddenly he was indeed gripping something that looked like a pin.
“Put me out!”
“Put him out! Oh, Alby, buddy!”
STAND BACK 10 FEET AND AIM AT BASE OF FIRE. Oliver Seized the discharge hose and pointed it toward Flume. “We lost our tail!” “Put me out!” SQUEEZE LEVER AND SWEEP SIDE TO SIDE. A thick gray mist gushed from the horn, coating the war reenactor in foul-smelling chemicals and instantly smothering the flames.
“It’s gonna hurt!” groaned Flume as the PBY careened crazily, dropping toward the ocean. “It’s really gonna hurt!”
“No tail!”
“Give me pants that entrance! It’s starting to hurt!”
Tearing off his headset, Oliver crawled past Flume’s smoking, writhing form, lurched into the tunnel gunner’s compartment, and began attacking the flames.