Chapter 5: Terror in the Night.
"Leaving Shauna for the second time proved to be much harder than it had been the first time." Marcus sighed." Before, she had only been some girl that I liked and hoped that she liked me in return. I had barely known her when the fleet departed for the Philippines, but as we sailed for China, she had become my sweetheart. There wasn't a whole lot to do during the trip across the Pacific. After seven days going stir crazy and thinking about her, I decided I would have traded an entire year of my life just to have stayed with her for a few more days."
"I thought about her constantly. She was my obsession. I only hoped she missed me as much as I missed her. I lay in my bunk at night thinking about what she was doing, cursing myself for not having the freedom to be with her. But unless I decided to jump off the Enterprise's stern and swim the thousands of miles of ocean that were between us, there wasn't much I could do about it. Besides, there was the threat of Baragon that needed to be addressed." Marcus noted with a touch of contempt in his voice.
"Sir, can I ask you something?" Penwood interjected. Marcus paused, looked at the young clerk, and then nodded. "I'm just curious, why does Baragon bother you so much more then Anguirus? I mean, by the way you talk about it, you clearly feel differently about the two. I can feel your animosity towards Baragon just by the tone of your voice. What's the difference, they're both monsters, right?"
"The difference is simple Penwood." Marcus began to explain. "Anguirus was a creature that attacked ships, buildings, or vehicles. Usually only vehicles that fired upon him first. Human beings barely even registered with him. People certainly died when Anguirus attacked, but that was incidental. He was never malicious in our encounters with him. In his case, people and things usually just got in his way. Now, if you read through the reports and examine them closely, you'll find that it was the opposite with Baragon. If he destroyed a building, it was usually because he wanted to eat the people who were inside it. When he attacked, his goal was specifically to target people. That distinction might seem like splitting hairs to an outsider, people died either way after-all, but when you are on the ground and experience it firsthand, I can assure you that difference is very important."
Marcus stopped and let Penwood think on it for a moment, though he knew Penwood could never truly understand what he was getting at. It wasn't his fault. He was young and inexperienced. From what Marcus could tell, Penwood had spent a good portion of his career safely in the bowels of the records room. He couldn't begin to know what it was like to be on a battlefield and the horrors that came with it. Only personal experience could give him that understanding. Such as it was, Marcus decided to change the topic.
"Well, in any case, life aboard the Enterprise wasn't so bad." Marcus continued. "Joe was still with me, and I had made some new friends among the crew over the months. The first was Teddy Goldsmith. He was a little greener than Joe and me, the newest addition to our gun crew. We took him under our wing and showed him the ropes. He was a nice kid from the East Coast, I forget just where from, but his accent sounded vaguely New York-ish. He was kind of scrawny, even after all those weeks at boot camp. Joe and I did our best to toughen him up. After a couple of weeks, he was starting to look shipshape."
We ran drills daily at our post, honing our skills with our five-inch cannon. I wasn't sure what good it was going to do against Baragon though. There had been no reports or sightings of him ever coming within fifty miles of the Ocean. Water didn't seem to be his thing. The Navy's furthest firing battleships could only hit a target within a range of twenty-five miles with their big guns. The range of the carrier's weapons was significantly less than that. The biggest caliber guns we had at our disposal were the five-inch cannons, and they weren't really meant for shore bombardment. Mostly, they were meant to deter enemy aircraft from raiding the carrier.
Still, it couldn't hurt to be prepared. First rule of combat: be prepared for anything. Baragon had managed to surprise the Japanese a number of times, and it had cost them dearly underestimating him. I figured it would be our fighters who would be doing most of the actual fighting. They had the range to reach out a couple hundred miles inland, hit their target, and then return home. The higher-ups thought Baragon would be vulnerable to air attack if they could just pin him down long enough. But he was notoriously slippery.
Joe and I had grown pretty tight with some of the other guys on our gun crew. There were some real standout personalities like 'BIG' Jim McClaskey, he was the loader for our cannon from Texas. Then there was Nick Baker the Gun Captain, he was a little uptight, but overall, an okay guy. We managed to loosen him up over time. Next was Jamie Boggs from somewhere down south, he was the powder man and he loved chewing tobacco. He could be a bit hard to understand, but good natured. Randy Garrison was a fellow from the Midwest. Colorado, I think. He was the check-sight man, and the funniest guy on the crew. Joe was the fuse setter, he stood next to me at our station. Teddy just helped move shells into position. I was the Pointer. It was my job to set the position of the cannon as the gun director ordered, and ultimately, to fire it. We were on the second turret from the bow of the ship on the left side. There were a few other guys too, but we were less close to them.
Nick, Jim, Jamie, Teddy, Randy, Joe, and me all bunked in the same area, so we spent almost all our time together. Spending too much time in close quarters has a funny way of bonding guys together. We thought that we were the best gun crew in the fleet. We were the fastest on the Enterprise at least, which was a pretty respectable feat. It gave us a little well-needed confidence to face off with what we were up against. Out of all of the guys, only Joe and I had gotten a close up look at Anguirus, so we were a little wiser to the reality of what we were in for, but even we didn't know what we were about to sail into.
Following the battle between the Japanese and Baragon, an entire two weeks passed without any further attacks. Baragon was keeping a low profile. Either he was worn out from the fight or just full up from eating his spoils. Which of these two things it was, I could not say. For whatever reason though, he was off the map. The Japanese were hoping to catch Baragon out in the open and attack him from the sky, but flight after flight of reconnaissance aircraft came up empty.
There was a silver lining in it though. The break in the action gave the Japanese a much-needed breather to reorganize and bring over more men and machinery. Baragon had managed to cripple their ground operations in Northeast Asia. Given their losses, the Japanese had to re-evaluate their options.
Meanwhile, our fleet had arrived and was patrolling the South China Sea. We were too far away to send out scout planes to search for Baragon ourselves, but Command insisted that we stay far enough south to avoid running into any Japanese warships. With Baragon nowhere to be found, they didn't want to risk an incident. Once he resurfaced, we would be able to deploy accordingly.
As it turned out, something else was brewing to the north, something even more dangerous than Baragon. With everything on the mainland going to hell in a handbasket, the signs had gone unnoticed for some time, but a strange series of events were unfolding.
The day after Baragon disappeared, a single Japanese fighter went missing while on patrol searching for him. It was assumed that the pilot had run into some type of mechanical trouble. The only clue they had was a brief radio message about a strange whistling noise and then the signal went dead. It was theorized that his engine might have gone out. That would have explained the noise on the recording. Debris from the fighter was later found. As they investigated the wreckage, it was not clear if the plane had exploded in the air or if it had simply crashed. What was clear was the fighter was found in pieces and the pilot had been cut in half. His legs and lower torso were still in the cockpit, but despite searching for hours, the Japanese rescue party never found the rest of his body. It was a gruesome crash, but nothing compared to what was to come.
The very next day, an entire field of cattle was found dead. It was a nasty sight, a horror the local farmers had never seen before. Hundreds of carcasses torn apart and left to rot in the afternoon sun. Upon examining the scene, the investigators concluded that the bodies were in a state of decomposition which indicated the attack must have occurred a few days earlier. Baragon had still been active at that point, so they attributed the massacre to him and wrote it off. I remember listening to the radio report and thinking it didn't match Baragon's M.O. Earlier reports indicated that his ravenous hunger rarely left anything to be found and there were still plenty of pieces of the herd spread all over the field. Just as telling, was the fact that the attack had occurred much further north than any of Baragon's previous attacks. In fact, it was so far north that it was nearly at the border with Korea.
A few days after the gruesome discovery in the field, a small fishing village east of Beijing was destroyed. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that it had been flattened. There was no sign of a fire or explosions, but every single structure had been leveled to the ground. The officials who investigated put the blame on a sudden powerful storm that blew in from the Ocean. That sounded like a reasonable explanation on the surface, but there was something troubling about it. The buildings had all collapsed towards the water. What I couldn't personally wrap my mind around was the fact that all the huts had been uniformly blown over in the same direction. If there were indeed strong winds from a storm, wouldn't there have been at least a few buildings that would have fallen in the opposite direction and not in such a distinct pattern?
All the nearby trees were likewise snapped eastward towards the sea. I got the feeling something was awfully wrong. The path of destruction was also limited to a five-hundred-yard perimeter around the area of the village. I could almost be sold on the idea of a storm that hit so unilaterally, but for that same storm to also only hit such a narrow stretch of land? That was a little hard to swallow. It didn't seem scientifically possible. Still, no one could put forth a better explanation at the time and none of the villagers were left alive to tell anyone what exactly happened, so it remained a mystery.
The investigators managed to account for most of the villagers. The majority of them had been crushed inside their homes at the time of the storm. However, when family members of the deceased came to identify the bodies and prepare them for burial, they discovered something else strange. A number of the villagers were missing. A headcount was performed, and it turned out, at least a dozen people were unaccounted for. Further searches for them in the surrounding area came up empty. One additional villager was found dead floating in the ocean, but what happened to the rest of the missing people was yet another mystery.
Two days after the village was discovered, a Japanese military supply ship enroute to the port at Dalian was sunk in the Yellow Sea. There had been no distress call. The few survivors reported being hit by a sudden tidal wave that was large enough to capsize the forty-ton ship, drowning most of the crew, who had been trapped below decks. The survivors had been on the far side of the top deck when the wave hit them, so they had no idea where the wave came from. It seemed to appear out of nowhere. The sea had been calm only seconds before. The only clue they had to offer was the same strange whistling sound the pilot had reported just prior to his death. It was not clear at the time how the two incidents were connected, but it raised some eyebrows.
Later that same evening, a British cargo plane went missing on its way to Hong Kong. Unfortunately, it had no radio equipment aboard and it was over the Ocean at the time of its disappearance, so there were no clues. It was simply gone without a trace. Whatever happened to it, happened fast.
A small Chinese fishing boat did, however, report seeing a fireball in that area of the distant night sky at around the same time. They had also heard a noise, but oddly, they did not describe it as a whistle. They said it was more like something tearing the fabric of the sky, along with a low billowing rumble. It was too dark at that point for them to have seen anything beyond the light of the explosion.
As I read through the reports, I felt as though they were all somehow connected, but couldn't quite put together how. On the surface, they seemed unrelated. The only thing connecting two of the incidents was the strange whistling noise. But two instances of the noise did not constitute a pattern. The pattern I should have seen, but did not, was that the incidents were happening progressively further and further south each time.
The night after the cargo plane disappeared, the Enterprise picked up an unidentified object at the edge of our radar range. It was roughly one-hundred miles north of our position and was moving at an unheard-of speed. We assumed that it had to be some type of an electrical glitch in the machinery, because nothing on Earth was capable of moving that fast. We were only able to track it for about two minutes before the object went out of radar range.
It was later calculated that the unidentified object had been moving at speeds in excess of eight hundred miles per hour. This was shocking to say the least. Our fastest planes at the time couldn't even go half that fast, topping out just under four hundred miles per hour. We were aware of Japanese planes that could go marginally faster than ours, but nothing that could come even close to eight hundred miles per hour.
Over the next twenty-four hours, it was a hotly debated topic amongst the flight officers and bridge crew. The flyers insisted that something moving that fast wasn't possible. The bridge crew insisted that it was, at least if their instruments had been reading correctly. Just in case, the captain ordered technicians to examine every inch of the machinery. After a thorough diagnostic, they found nothing wrong. Everything checked out as operating normally. This set the whole crew abuzz with theories, but there were still doubters.
The next evening, while off duty, I requested to assist the radar officer to monitor for the strange phenomena. I wanted to be there to see it for myself if it popped up again. The captain allowed it, he figured two sets of eyes were better than one. I sat with the radar man for hours waiting for the blip to return. Around 2100 hours it finally did. It zoomed across the screen at an amazing speed. I almost fell out of my chair I was so surprised and excited.
Apparently, it had not been a malfunction or user error, the instruments were reading exactly the same as the night before and our sister carriers Yorktown and Hornet confirmed the same readings from their radar stations. There was indeed an object moving at an unbelievable eight hundred miles per hour.
Even more terrific than its speed was its size. Radar back then was pretty rudimentary, so we couldn't tell exactly how big it was, but the blip we got was bigger than anything anyone had ever seen. It was huge and moving fast. The bridge was in an uproar at first, but the excitement of the discovery died down quickly as we started to realize that the object was moving southward, directly toward us. If it maintained its projected speed and course, it would intercept the fleet in about seven minutes.
"All crew to General Quarters!" The captain barked out over the ship's intercom. The whole crew sprang into action, preparing for combat. All across the ship, watertight and fireproof doors between bulkheads were being shut and crewmen reported to their battle stations. Marines broke out their weapons and took up their posts securing the ship.
I ran from the bridge to join Joe and the others at our cannon. I had a bit of a head start, so I was the first to arrive. I strapped myself in and prepared the equipment around me as I had been trained. Joe and the others arrived shortly thereafter.
"Mark, what the hell is going on?" He shouted, huffing from running across the ship. "Is this some type of drill?"
"No, something big is coming at us!" I warned him. "Get ready, there isn't much time!" I saw the color fall from Joe's face when I said the word 'big'. He understood what that most-likely meant. Teddy was right behind Joe and didn't understand. He looked equally scared as Joe none-the-less. It was going to be his first action, and he clearly wasn't ready for it. But in truth, no one ever was.
"Teddy, just focus on your job and you'll be okay." I did my best to reassure him. Teddy managed to compose himself and snapped to. The rest of our guys arrived, and within moments, the gun was loaded and ready to fire.
On the bridge, the radar officer closely monitored his screen. The object had closed the gap to less than two hundred miles already. It was still on a course headed directly towards us. The Admiral ordered the entire fleet to turn right full rudder so that the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers could present their broadside, utilizing all of their guns at the oncoming threat.
As one, the fleet began to wheel right. At the same time, their turrets turned left, and their cannons were elevated towards the sky. It was a beautiful example of a synchronized fleet maneuver. From there, the Admiral ordered the fleet to push forward full speed ahead. Whatever was coming at us, it would have a harder time hitting moving targets. The fleet was as ready as it could be.
Within the bridge of the Enterprise, the officers continued to monitor the huge radar blip. It was closing fast and would be entering our firing range within seconds. The radar officer reported that the target had slowed and was gaining altitude rapidly. It had climbed from five-thousand feet to nine-thousand feet, and it was still climbing. This presented a serious problem. Our radar was only capable of detecting objects as high as ten-thousand feet, so if it climbed much higher, we'd lose track of it.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened. The unknown intruder crept up beyond ten-thousand feet and became invisible to our radar. No one knew exactly what to do at that point. We could have blindly opened up with our AA guns and hoped for the best, but even if we had radar guidance, it wouldn't be very accurate at that range. Firing would also reveal the fleet's position on the water. The darkness provided us with at least some cover. We also didn't know what we were firing at. There was still a slim chance whatever was above us wouldn't become hostile if we didn't provoke it. The fleet just waited, exposed on the open water.
We anxiously looked to the skies, but it was a cloudy evening, and we could not see anything higher than four-thousand feet above us. There was no noise to be heard. We sat in our positions, weapons ready, bobbing up and down as the ship pressed through the waves. The fleet had hundreds of AA guns ready, but at that point, no one knew where to aim them. Whatever was lurking in the skies that evening, it should have passed over us by then. It could have been anywhere up in the cloud cover. The tension was getting thicker by the second. The officers vainly tried to use their binoculars, but to no avail. Time went by moment by moment, seeming to get slower. So much time went by that I started to think that maybe it had already bypassed us entirely.
After a full minute of titillating waiting, the cloud cover above us began to break up near the outer edge of the fleet. A sliver of pale moonlight shined through to the water below. A destroyer near the right outer perimeter of the formation sailed directly into the light. A moment later, the entire fleet could hear a high-pitched whistling. It was coming from above and rapidly becoming more intense.
In a flash, the destroyer was cut in half. A massive object, moving too quickly to be seen clearly, had plummeted from the sky and splashed down into the Ocean. The destroyer's magazine exploded from the force of the impact and lit up the night sky and the ships around it. The explosion was intense enough that I could feel the heat from it on my face seven-hundred yards away. Whatever had hit the destroyer was already far beneath the waves. The remaining pieces of the pulverized vessel rapidly sank.
The rest of the fleet bobbed up and down violently as a strong ripple from the massive object hitting the water sent a gigantic wave cascading outward. Sailors had to cling on for life and limb as the force of the surf bucked them from their stations. A few men were lost overboard from some of the smaller ships in the fleet. Crews aboard the larger, heavier vessels fared much better.
The impact pushed many ships out of position and the fleet was in disorder as the formation crumbled. There was suddenly the danger of ship-to-ship collisions as various captains tried to regain control of their vessels and hold their courses. The Admiral called for a fleetwide full-stop in an attempt to prevent our ships from damaging each other. While there were some near misses, the maneuver paid off. The fleet slowly started to piece its formation back together and regain its cohesion, but there wasn't much time.
Before the fleet could truly reorganize, our attacker suddenly revealed itself from below the waves. It popped up in an explosive fountain of seawater that rained down on nearby ships. It appeared to be some type of gigantic flying reptile. The creature was brown and had two large horns that were jetting out of the back of its head. Its eyes were sharp and predatory like a hawks. In its beak, it was still clutching the section of the destroyer that it had torn away from the rest of the ship.
The creature must have been dissatisfied with what its attack had brought. It dropped the remains of the ship back into the water and bellowed its disappointment. The force of its roar shook the whole fleet. Meanwhile, as I watched the section of destroyer drop, I noticed the spiked and armored chest of the creature. I briefly had flashbacks to Anguirus, but this was clearly a different beast.
The fleet struggled to maintain its cohesion. Some of the ships closer to the monster steamed away from it as quickly as possible. Obviously, their captains wanted to put some distance between themselves and the monster. Under the circumstances, I think they made the right decision.
One of the cruisers closest to the creature had men running along the deck in panic. The movement seemed to grab its attention. The monster's eyes zeroed in on one of the men, and suddenly, it struck out at him. In a flash, it had the sailor in its beak. Only the man's upper torso and head were sticking out of the creature's mouth. He was there just long enough for the rest of us to hear him shriek before he disappeared down its throat.
After that, shocked sailors across the entire fleet snapped back into reality and began to retrain their guns at the monster. Most of the guns were pointed in the wrong direction though and repositioning them was taking time. As we swung our own personal cannon around on board the Enterprise, we found that we were blocked by the island of the carrier. We were ready to fire but didn't have a clean shot at it.
The ships and gunners that did have a clear line of sight opened up on the monster. Machinegun rounds and heavier ordnance began to hit the monster on the torso and wings. Enraged, the beast lashed out at the closest ship and punctured a gaping hole in the hull with its beak. Seawater began to pour in, and the ship began to heavily list in the water.
At that point, one of the battleships finally got its main cannons lined up and fired. However, in the chaos of the fight, it missed its first shot. The miss had not gone unnoticed by the monster though. The thunder of the cannons made the creature turn its head and spot the heavily armed warship. The creature seemed to understand that the battleship posed a serious threat. It began to beat its wings and take off from the water.
The monster flapped its wings so furiously that it caused a nearby destroyer to capsize. The creature took to the air and started to circle the fleet. It was rapidly gaining speed. However, now that it was in the air, it was more of a presentable target. The entire fleet opened up with their AA guns. Most of the rounds were missing, but there was such an overwhelming barrage, that a few shots were hitting home. Most rounds that found their mark hit the armored chest and wings of the creature.
The monster did not seem to care for being shot at. It sped up even more, and as its speed got faster, we heard a strange pop, followed by the whistling noise we had heard before. The creature must have quickly gotten to its full speed, because we couldn't even keep up with it with our guns anymore. Firing at it became completely pointless.
The monster rose in the air higher and higher, still circling us and eyeing our ships sharply. It appeared to be planning something. Finally, the creature came back down at us, diving right through the middle of the fleet, pressing its belly down close to the surface. Its path brought it directly over the Enterprise. A half-second after the monster passed over us, we were hit by a force of wind that was as strong as a hurricane. I was lifted clear out of my seat from the force of the wind. It was like I had jumped out of a plane and was freefalling for a couple seconds. Fortunately, I was still strapped into the gun-chair, but every other man in my gun crew was swept from the flight deck and blown away, including Joe.
As I came back down into my seat, I turned my head to see what happened to them. I looked back and saw that the metal island of the Enterprise was riddled with dozens of small indentations from were men had crashed into it. There were several red smears left over from the impact. I realized in horror that the whole section of AA guns around me was nearly empty. Only the other gunners like me, who were also strapped down, were left. The rest of their crews were gone.
Above us, the monster banked left and then disappeared back into the clouds. I don't know how long I sat there in shock. The captain on the bridge of the Enterprise eventually announced over the loudspeakers that the monster was retreating back north towards the mainland and that we were out of immediate danger. I didn't really hear him though. All my friends were gone. Little else mattered at that moment.