Java’s fate had been decided, and Japan would occupy all the key barrier islands as they had in Fedorov’s history, but something else had happened in the Sunda Strait when the mountain finally vented its wrath in that last massive detonation. It was going to change more than the weather across the globe in the months ahead, and its effect would ripple out like the shock waves and tsunami had from Java, reaching all the way to the North Pacific, where Vladimir Karpov was quietly plotting the demise of his enemies.
Chapter 18
Captain Takechi Harada stood on the bridge, still unable to believe the devastation he was seeing. All around him, the sea was frosty white, convulsing in the last throes of a great disturbance. The air itself was thick with ashfall, and the deep basso of some great thrombosis within the earth growled with an ominous persistence, a steady rumble that spoke of calamity. What in the name of all the Gods and Demons had happened here?
His ship, the destroyer Takami, was one of Japan’s newest fighting ships, state of the art for her day, but now it seemed a deaf and blind thing in the heavy oppressive airs. All of the equipment was down, though engines were still hot and running smoothly in spite of the seas being clotted with ash. They had determined that there must have been a sudden, catastrophic eruption close by, for this island archipelago was infamous for its violent geology. A quick look at his charts named the likely suspect—Krakatoa.
At the moment, all he could think of was getting his ship to safety, and trying to find a way to navigate north away from the Sunda Straits to do so. They had been steaming about 110 kilometers northeast of the suspected eruption site, after passing through the straits and rounding the northwestern tip of Java at Cape Merak. They had been in a storm, skies darkening, winds up, with heavy lightning, and the ship was struck. The bridge blackened and systems failed just as they were cruising in the lee of a small island named Pulau Tunda according to their last charted position. Then the sound came, first a strange distended hum that descended into deeper tones, finally resolving to the awful roar and rumble they had been hearing for the last ten minutes.
The darkness intensified all around them, which they soon found was caused by a massive broiling eruption cloud to their southwest. It has to be a volcano, thought Harada, yet it was completely unexpected, as there had been no warnings or alerts issued. He wondered now at the fate of the other ships he had been maneuvering with before they broke off on separate courses.
Drawing a direct line from their presumed position to the volcano, the Captain saw that it passed right through that island, and then the northwestern tip of Java, reasoning that those land masses must have shielded his destroyer from the worst effects of the eruption, particularly the heavy wave sets that he could now see rippling over the sea. Like everything else that had been happening in recent days, it had come out of nowhere, changing the sea and sky in just minutes, and now persisted with its ear thrumming roar.
“Any word from engineering,” he said to his first officer, Lt. Commander Kenji Fukada.
“They’re still working, sir,” said Fukada, tall and gaunt looking in his grey overcoat, and battle helmet. “We got hit pretty hard.”
The ship was still rolling in the last residual swells, and with ash descending, darkness pervading, it had been impossible to see through the forward view panes. The wipers only smeared the ashen slurry to a dull opaque wash. He posted a watch on every weather deck, and seconds later the watch called out: “man overboard!”
They saw something bobbing on the white sea, only 50 yards off the starboard bow, which was the outer limit of visibility in the deep ash and gloom. It was the first sign of anything else afloat and alive, yet as he stared at it in his field glasses it seemed no more than flotsam.
When the watch finally made the sighting, the Captain came to all stop, grateful that the auxiliary engine and steering controls were still functioning. They had only been on the weather deck off the bridge for a few moments, but the sheen of ash was already coating their foul weather coats and rain ponchos, dusting their shoulders and then running in pale grey streaks with the rain.
The Captain craned his neck, to see the man pointing at the very same location where he had spotted the wreckage. He looked again, adjusting his field glasses, and now he saw not one man, but two, desperately clinging to the broken remnant of an old raft. One of the two was slumped on the raft, the other with an arm over him to keep the man in place.
“Looks like somebody else made it through this alive,” said Fukada. “Shall I have KK get a boat over there?”
“At once.”
The First Officer had referred to Katsu Kimura, the Sergeant in charge of the ship’s small contingent of Naval Marines, always called KK by the officers. The word was sent down and some minutes later they watched as a small launch went over to the scene, the broad shoulders and stocky hulk of Sergeant Kimura prominent as he stood at the wheel, three helmeted Marines behind him in full gear. The word came back—two survivors, one unconscious, but both alive, and they were both in uniform.
That set the Captain to wonder what may have happened to the rest of his squadron. They had separated an hour earlier, each bound for different ports in the rising tension of those last hours. He remembered feeling that impending sense of doom. His operation had proceeded smoothly enough, but then, with a suddenness that stunned every man aboard, chaos reigned over the scene. Perhaps he could learn more from these men.
Out on the turbulent water, the one conscious survivor was elated when help arrived. They had seen the ship appear, moving slowly through the heavy ashfall and rain. It seemed a sallow grey specter, deathly still, and frosted over with the ash that clung to its mast and odd looking riggings. He did not recognize the ship, but realized it must be one of the screening force units—most likely a cruiser from its size. He thanked the Gods that they had been found, and the long ordeal, clinging to that broken raft in the choking sea, would finally be over.
Being well over 120 kilometers from the massive detonation of Krakatoa, they had been spared the wrenching pain and deafness, though their ears were still ringing from the loudness of the event, even at that distance.
“Thank god you have found us,” he gasped when the small boat reached them, still bobbing in the high swells. He could see friendly troops there, four men, one using a grapple to secure the tattered raft, two others throwing life preservers. “This is General Hitochi Imamura!” he said with the last of his strength. “Take him first…”
General Imamura… Captain Harada was quite surprised when his chief medical officer came to the bridge, a bemused look on his face, and related that information.
“A General? An Army General? Out here? Did he say what ship he was on?”
“Ryujo Maru—a cargo ship from the sound of it. God only knows what it was doing out here in this mess.” The doctor folded his arms, Lieutenant Isamu Hisakawa, coming over from the Atago when this new ship was commissioned. The Captain found him a competent, no nonsense man.
“He’s resting quietly now, but he was quite talkative for a while. He wants to know if we have any information from 16th Army General Staff—says they were operating out of Balikpapan.”
“16th Army?” The Captain scratched his head. “Japanese Army?”
“That’s what he says. They both have on military service jackets and uniforms, and the one man is well decorated. If he isn’t a General he’s something else, and fairly high and mighty. What do you make of it, sir?”