The Commodore by P. T. Deutermann Read Free Book Online

usually show up around midnight, so that’s when I would expect action. Until then, stand easy on station while we wait to see what happens. Hopefully I’ll have time to give you a heads-up before the shooting starts. I need all hands who are topside to keep a watch out for torpedo wakes—that’s how the Japs usually start a night fight. That is all.”
    He handed the microphone back to the bosun as the echo of his voice died out on the weather decks. He wished he could have told them more, but at least his crew now knew as much as he did, which admittedly wasn’t much. He wondered what the admiral back there on the flagship knew.
    â€œBosun’s mate of the watch,” he called. “How’s the coffee supply?”
    â€œHot, black, and ready for paving, Cap’n,” the bosun responded.

 
    FOUR
    The port of Nouméa, New Caledonia
    Vice Admiral William F. Halsey looked out at the darkened anchorage and saw not very much. It was nearly midnight. The South Pacific breezes tried their best, but his cabin still reeked of cigarettes and human stress. His flagship, an elderly submarine tender called USS Argonne, had no air-conditioning, even in the flag spaces. Have to do something about that, he thought. Maybe run that arrogant Frenchman out of his expansive offices. It wasn’t like the French colonial government had anything to do these days but maintain their notorious pride.
    He’d sent his remaining operations staff officers to get some sleep. One of them had asked him, pointedly, if perhaps disrespectfully, if he was going to get some sleep. Halsey had banished him from his office with a growl and a beetling of his bushy eyebrows, followed by a small smile. His chief of staff, Captain Miles Browning, had stayed behind. He was in the outer office, reading the message traffic and nursing his many ulcers.
    It was up to Ching Lee now, Halsey thought, especially after the mauling his cruisers had taken last night. San Francisco, Portland, and Helena were still limping their way back. As the remnants of the cruiser force had started back to Nouméa, Juneau had been torpedoed with the apparent loss of all hands just below Florida Island. Atlanta had succumbed even before the retreat began. Two flag officers lost: Dan Callaghan had been Ghormley’s chief of staff right here in Nouméa, and Norm Scott—another big loss. Should’ve kept Scott back here at headquarters. In retrospect, Scott had simply been a supernumerary last night.
    He fired up the umpteenth cigarette of the evening. Sending his only two battleships up to Ironbottom Sound was most certainly a calculated risk. Chester Nimitz might not agree, but Chester was back in Pearl, while he, Halsey, was right here with a real crisis in his lap. Battleships were designed for Jutland, with great formations of huge ships blasting away at each other at eighteen miles. That’s how battleships fought. Sending Washington and South Dakota into the narrow confines of the waters around Guadalcanal defied every tenet of naval tactics. Battleships with sixteen-inch guns were practically invincible against other battleships mounting fourteen-inch guns, as long as they tried conclusions at battleship ranges. But last night, Dan Callaghan had taken a cruiser and destroyer formation into something resembling one of Nelson’s close-in melees, where destroyers set the top hampers of battleships afire from ranges of less than a quarter of a mile, and the Japs’ Long Lance torpedoes had harvested almost his entire cruiser force.
    He mentally recited the butcher’s bill again. Atlanta, gone. Juneau, her back broken by a Long Lance, vaporized by a Jap sub on the way back to Noumea. San Francisco shredded. Portland with her propellers blown off by another Long Lance. Not to mention all the destroyers lost. The only bright spot: The Jap battleship Hiei, admittedly something of an antique herself, had been rendered