March 3, 1945 just after dawn
"Keeeeyyyyy-ripes with a clutch purse, it's as big as an I-180!" Bucky hollered. The lad in blue and red hunkered hard over the Adamant's railing to take in the astounding sight of the Dragon of Death, ignoring Cap's restraining hand on his bicep. "What a shame it's an enemy sub!"
"We're in trouble," Cap said quietly enough that Nick Fury knew the words were meant to escape Bucky's eager ears. The captain of them all gestured to the sergeant at his left. "Fury, get your squad below. Let our Navy have first crack at the sub, but grab your weapons."
"It" possessed a dragon's head that appeared to spout flame. Fury hadn't a clue how the illusion worked, but it did. Days had become weeks as the Cannon Class destroyer escort Adamant earned its name APD High Speed Transport as its skipper pushed his ship to the limit pursuing the Dragon of Death from Gotenhafen.
The last people Fury saw topside was the skipper hustling over to Cap and the still-entranced Bucky. He looked up to the sky's bright blue, which he preferred as the color of a pretty girl's eyes before he met Pam, and then the hatch clanged shut. He hustled down the ladder, and the squad must have read his mind because they high-tailed it with clattering boots through the narrow corridor for their quarters. Sailors that he had gotten to know a smidgen in past weeks thundered past him to where the action was, either in the ship's guts or on top to man the guns. How did negotiations about the dame get so confused? Fury wondered. Once Okada realized that his oh-so-secret sub got tailed by a lowly destroyer escort burning after it around Africa through to the Pacific using the cutting edge LORAN-G tracker and top of the line sonar blockers in the chase, he'd surfaced to semaphore questions and answers back and forth with Cap in better English than Fury's.
The skipper of the Adamant forged an agreement to hand over the Russian spy in return for allowing the Dragon to head on her way. Or had it been too easy? Somebody got mad. Fury still wondered about the Captain America-Okada chinwag upon reaching the generous quarters given them. He suspected Captain America arranged the roomy expanse, though Cap and Bucky shared a tiny space.
M-1s formed a teepee in one corner of their quarters. Each Howler grabbed his weapon without checking closely that it belonged to him because, really, wasn't it SOP that after so long together they arranged their arms in the same compass rose position each time? Fury's was always northwest, assuming the wall - or bulkhead - was north.
He hefted his rifle, aware that all eyes rested upon him. "We'll come through fine or my middle name ain't Joltin' Joe." He expected griping.
He got it.
"All this fershlugginer crap for some dame we never even heard of before," growled Izzy.
Fury had his mouth open to reply when a kaboom! lifted him from his feet.
"Torpedo!" He adjusted to the rippling deck and so did his men, balancing on the balls of their feet while gripping their M1s as horizontally as a high-wire artiste hoists a weighted pole.
In the awful timeless time between a baby's hurt and her first scream, there comes the realization that this is just the beginning of bad. Fury felt the deck slant ever so gradually and by the looks on their faces, so did Dugan, Manelli, Cohen, Jones, Ralston and Pinkerton.
"We don't wait to take our Saturday night bath cuz we leave now. Grab your gear."
Before he could add, "Cap needs us," another kaboom! split the morning air, which was followed by cries in the corridor using Navy lingo that not one of them understood. Fire from one 3"/50 caliber deck gun answered the torpedo attack. Wait, only one gun? This sounded like more bad.
Part of his mind didn't worry about their safety because several ships lurked within call; one or two or three of them, quite close because orders stood to allow Adamant to negotiate with Okada via Cap and the skipper. Even if the Adamant sank, her crew would be picked up. The mission to secure the Russian woman proved a washout, though, and that rankled. Cap had his reasons for wanting her taken aboard.
As the slant worsened, Fury jerked a thumb upwards. As orderly as ever, the clot of Howling Commandos proceeded calmly to the ladder, but they opened the hatch to chaos.
The tail end of the ship - the, the stern, rather - wasn't the tail end anymore. The growing slant would knock them off balance if the scurrying sailors didn't do it first. What the hell were Cap and Bucky doing, not even taking cover except behind Cap's shield? The Dragon's deck guns ceased fire, the Dragon backed off the faltering Adamant, its threatening dragon head now flameless. If anything, the sub looked like a tourist taking Kodak Brownie shots of a doomed vessel for the folks back home. No one remained visible on deck, when international maritime law declared rescue efforts to an enemy ship's survivors ought to begin.
Fury wasn't holding his breath on that one.
Cap and Bucky cried out, no that was just Bucky yodeling defiance or something and then Cap grabbed his young pal to clamp his hands to the rail under his brawnier ones. The rail also slanted down as far as possible without actually being upright. The Howlers grabbed onto those cleat things studding the deck that sprouted everywhere.
"Cap!"
"Fury! Chase that sub! Get the woman!" Cap roared. "I don't care how!"
"Sir, yessir!" Fury paused. "How?"
"Ask Pinkerton!"
And then Cap darted towards the bridge, towing Bucky against the slant though it seemed impossible. Cap vaulted over an unsecured canister the size of a beer keg for a whopper promotion party to send it rolling towards his troops.
The canister unfurled partway as it rolled with paddles sticking out for legs. It reminded Fury of a gray roly poly bug, but he saw it to be a rubber raft. Everyone's footing currently resembled climbing into your bunk when you were drunk as a skunk. He slung his M1 over his shoulder and straddled the now smaller cylinder like he did a horse he had ridden once on a posh bridle path with Pam.
Since he couldn't fly over the slanting deck and he was almost sure Cap couldn't fly either, he grabbed hard onto the railing to soccer kick the raft towards his squad. The Howlers formed a chain with Gabe looping his great arms around the railing and various other Howlers anchoring onto him with their feet. Those guys, aw those guys, inflated the raft and stuck oars into oarlocks before you could say Jack Armstrong. When the sea bubbled beneath the Adamant just before Fury figured she was a goner, he and his squad hauled freight to follow the Dragon of Death.
What next?
IOIOIOIOIO
"Don't look at the wreck, I said."
"Sergeant, numerous lifeboats surround our ship."
"Noted and logged, Pinkerton. Now why would Cap say you know a tactic to stop a sub?"
Since everyone was in excellent physical shape, rowing at their top speed winded them not a whit. Pinky pulled at his oar in unison with his squad as he answered.
"I bally think he's considering our little chat about naval warfare while you Yanks played handball on deck with Bucky last evening."
To gauge their course, Fury looked over his shoulder at the Dragon of Death, whose leisurely rate of speed kept the raft's occupants busy as a jitterbug at the Roseland Ballroom and having one sixty-fourth as much fun.
"Yeah, spill it while you stroke. I need time to tacticize."
Pinky's prim tones told of a Great War battle only Fury had heard of. "Gallipoli turned out bloody awful except for - "
"Gallipoli? You pick Gallipoli as inspiration? Aussies, Kiwis and you Brits failed - "
Percy could shout when he had to. "Indubitably! Except this strategem worked!"
"Simmer down, Pinky!" Gabe could yell, too. "Sarge, what choice do we have?"
"Shut up and row, Jones. Pinkerton, out with it."
Pinky looked over his shoulder once at the enormous sub as he rowed. "Periscopes prove vulnerable to damage when sailors sneak up to it and break it. The submarine chaps won't submerge blind so they stay at surface. Subs make better speed up top, but their chief defense against ships' guns or depth charges is going down deep after attacking. I postulate arrogance from Okada when he selected to stay up top after attacking us. He's showing off, the bounder."
"And this tactic you know, how?"
"A ex-Navy chap I knew at Southsea resort told me he did just that in 1915. I believe him. He used a flogging hammer to break the periscope when his mates rowed him to a submarine."
Fury stroked harder. "And me forgetting my flogging hammer back on the Adamant!"
"Sergeant, I have just the tool." Pinky managed his oar with one hand and picked up his bumbershoot with the other. Still rowing, he passed it over his shoulder to Fury.
Fury matched Pinky's feat of rowing one-armed as he grasped the umbrella, fingered the icepick-sharp tip and then handed it back. "Hmmph. Your M1's sturdier - "
"My M1 I shan't risk dropping into the briny if I overbalance. My brolly means piffle."
"All right, all right, gimme five. I'll think it over. Row, you 4F rejects." Nobody talked for four minutes as the sub proceeded in a disciplined fashion and they trailed twenty feet behind its periscope. At the fifth minute, Reb whispered something to Pinky and Pinky nodded.
IOIOIOIOIO
Junior Juniper always smiled. That was one thing which made Sarge certain he and Junior could never be friends. The boy grew into a man's shape but not into a man's mind. This was all right with Sarge because he could think for the two of them, in fact, for the seven of them: himself as leader Sergeant Nick Fury, along with Juniper, Manelli, Dugan, Gabe, Reb, and the ever lovin' Izzy Cohen.
"I say, sergeant - " began Pinky, and that was when Fury remembered that Junior was dead. Pinky was Junior's replacement, straight from the repple depple. Pinky upheld the best traditions of his original unit and now Fury's unit. Fury jolted back to the present and an onlooker would have said the lines on his face appeared smoother following his brief excursion to the past.
An errant wave sloshed over the gunwale of the rubber dinghy. Izzy, Pinky, Dino, Reb, Gabe and Dum Dum continued to paddle with grim faces, but then Izzy's grin gave him away. Those five read him all too well, Pinky less well. They knew that cruising on waves soothed Fury in one way, and that memories surfaced whether he wanted them to or not. Well, he didn't want them to. Let Junior rest in peace because life was for the living and so was deciding.
"Yeah, yeah, go to it on my mark."
Reb and Pinky shipped their oars. Pinky, who had gripped his bumbershoot in both hands, nodded at Reb and whispered, "Yahoo."
"Yahoo, pilgrim," Reb whispered back.
"Mark."
Reb undid the lasso cinching his waist, twirled the pre-formed honda thrice and aimed perfectly for the periscope that zzzzrhsssted through the foam twenty feet away. He tied off the rope in record calf-roping time to the dinghy's front docking ring. The seven let out a breath they did not know they had been holding when ten minutes passed with no change in trajectory, speed, or depth. They upped paddles and sluiced along in a Nantucket sleigh ride, all arms and legs inside the craft, facing the sub now with all hands ready for action when word was given.
The dark steel shape beneath them could have been sharks or whales or some goofy critter straight out of the comic books, but Fury could handle those. This Dragon of Death he could handle, too, now that he had a tactic. Maybe the enemy tricked her out to scare the scareable, with a dragon's horned head, armored scales and suchlike, but she relied on a periscope like any other sub. Leave it to Pinky to crack open a battle tactic from the War Before and discover a way to disable the beast and leave it to Pinky to use a bumbershoot as a weapon. They'd been tasked by Cap to complete this mission and by George VI, they'd do that piffling thing. Their ship called the Adamant torpedoed from under them was piffle.
It couldn't be this easy. It couldn't. Fury gave the signal.
The dark shape smoothed its way through the current as six Howlers hauled themselves hand over hand on the rope to edge the dinghy closer to the periscope. The seventh clambered from his seat, jutting proudly into the sea just like an old timey figurehead on some British sailing ship bound for glory. Pinky placed one foot on the gunwale to gain height, grabbed the periscope and levered back his bumbershoot.
He stabbed the glass eye in one swift, sure stroke.
When the Dragon of Death slowed and then stopped to surface, the unmoored dinghy bobbed in place safely twenty feet away while Fury prepared to make sure that Cap's wishes regarding the Parmanova woman were carried out. It helped some that Cap had briefed him on the basics; he could make up the rest as he went along.
IOIOIOIOIO