The Med by David Poyer

Author:David Poyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

V

THE STORM

18

U.S.S. Guam

During the night the wind increased. Dawn broke gray and lifeless, gradually illuminating lowering clouds over a ragged formation. Task Force 61 was no longer a unit, a uniform, compact body of steel. Instead it was scattered individuals, each struggling to maintain course into twenty-foot seas.

The rain that lashed at his face was surprisingly cold. Wind snapped at the collar of his foul-weather jacket as Lenson, on Guam’s bridge wing, raised his glasses to search for Barnstable County. He found her at last, far astern. Smallest of the amphibious ships, built shallow-draft for beaching, the LST was making heavy weather. From twelve thousand yards away he shivered to see her horned bow dip as if to gore an oncoming sea. It boarded green and leapt foaming along her foredeck, shooting spray high as her bridge. But then she lifted, shaking off the water, and his heart rose too as she steadied herself for the next line of seas that marched in from the east.

He hunched to mop water from his binoculars, and looked next for Bowen. The frigate was hidden for long seconds by the swells but at last he caught her, tossing a wavering streamer of white as she rose on a crest. It would be no fun aboard her, either. His attention moved round the ragged ring of warships. Coronado was riding well, her higher freeboard keeping her decks dry save for rain. Newport, making as heavy a time of it as her sister LST. Charleston and Spiegel Grove both looked good. The attack transport moved behind the trailing skirts of a squall as he watched, and a few minutes later the wail of her foghorn came faintly across the wind.

He turned, and searched the horizon astern for Ault, their crippled duckling. Captain Foster had reported the propulsion casualty at 0330. Sundstrom had reluctantly given him permission to slow as necessary for repairs. Since the MARG was simply maintaining station, running legs west and east while waiting for orders, they would find her again on the next westerly course, later in the day.

As he had expected, she wasn’t in sight. Christ, he thought, I hope she catches back up; we’ll need those six guns if we go in … something else about her absence gnawed at his mind. Something else was missing too … he made another quick sweep, identified all the ships. But still the feeling nagged. He rubbed salt spray into morning stubble, hard, and the sting woke him a little. He tried to squeeze whatever it was out of his brain. Nothing came. Coffee … he wanted caffeine with all his soul, but with the commodore in the state he was in he didn’t dare send a petty officer below. No, he had to stay awake by pure will, and frequent trips to the wing to lash his face with cold spray.

Was it possible, in seas like this, that they would be ordered to land? He felt divided between eagerness and fear. The eagerness, because this was their reason for being: to put the troops ashore.

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