Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [264]
“It’s going to hit!” Keefer and Urban threw themselves to the deck. The plane, only a few feet away, tilted sidewise. Willie caught a glimpse of the goggled pilot through the yellow cockpit bubble. “The crazy fool,” he thought, and then he was on his knees, his face to the deck plates. He thought the plane was coming right at him.
It seemed like a very long time before the Kamikaze hit, and Willie experienced a race of vivid clear thoughts as he crouched with his face to the cold blue-painted deck. The important point-the fact that changed his life-was that he felt an overpowering tearing regret at not having married May. Since jilting her he had been fairly successful in pushing thoughts of her out of his mind. When he was tired or upset they had come crowding back, but he had fought them off as products of weakness. This mighty feeling of longing for lost joy that possessed him now was different. It had the clang of truth. He thought he was done for, and above all his paralyzed terror towered the regret that he would never see May again.
The plane hit with the sound of cars colliding on a highway, and a second later there was an explosion. Willie’s teeth grated as though he had been punched in the face, and his ears rang. He staggered erect. He could see a puff of blue-gray smoke curling up from behind the galley deckhouse, where the gun crew still sprawled in individual gray lumps.
“Captain, I’ll call away GQ and then lay aft and see how it looks-”
“Okay Willie.” Keefer rose, brushing himself with trembling hands, his unhelmeted hair hanging in his eyes. He had a dazed, vacant air. Willie ran into the wheelhouse and pressed the lever of the p.a. box. The helmsman and quartermaster watched him with frightened eyes. “Now hear this,” he said loud and quick, “we have taken a Kamikaze hit amidships. Set condition Able throughout the ship. Away forward and after fire-fighting and damage-control parties-” Blue bitter smoke came wisping into the pilothouse. It stung his lungs like a dry cigarette. He coughed and went on, “Make your damage reports to the bridge. Turn on foam, sprinklers, and carbon dioxide as needed. Stand by magazine flood valves-ugh, ugh-but don’t flood until ordered-”
He jerked the red GQ handle, and went out on the wing as the clanging began. He was amazed by the billow of smoke and blast of heat that struck his face. Tall orange flames were leaping as high as the mast behind the galley deckhouse and lapping forward toward the bridge-the wind was astern. Smoke in clouds boiled from the flames and rolled over the wing. “I thought you were going aft,” Keefer shouted peevishly, his form dim in the smoke. He and the bridge gang were putting on life jackets.
“Aye aye, sir. Just going-”
Willie had to use elbows and shoulders to make his way down the well deck and the passageway through milling, yelling sailors dragging hoses, snatching life jackets, or just running. He broke through to the main deck. There was less smoke here than on the bridge; it was all blowing high and forward. Red flames, thick as oak trunks, were roaring out of an immense jagged hole in the deck over the after fireroom. Blackened sailors were stumbling out of the narrow hatch of the air lock. Pieces of the plane’s wings were scattered on the deck. The gig was on fire. Hoses were tangled around on the deck and the fire-fighting parties, white-faced, helmeted, in life jackets, were fussing with fire-main connections or dragging red toy-like handy-billies toward the hole. They uttered thin little shouts drowned by the banging of the GQ gong and the roaring from the exposed fireroom. The smell was of burning-burning oil, burning wood, burning rubber.
“What’s the dope?” the exec yelled at a sailor