Though it seemed like a useless, defiant gesture—the hurricane of small shells merely splattered and ricocheted off the heavily armored turret—Cabrillo realized what Pitt was attempting to do. Stark madness, he thought, sheer, unfettered madness to attempt the impossible. Even with a solid support to rest the barrel of his rifle, only a superb marksman could have put a bullet down the barrel of any one of the turret's gun muzzles from a ship rising and falling on the ocean swells. But Cabrillo overlooked the awesome firepower of the Oerlikons at Pitt's command, not realizing the law of averages was on his side. Three shells, one directly behind the other, entered the muzzle of the center gun and swept down its barrel, impacting with the shell that had been freshly loaded in the breech and detonating its warhead at almost the same instant it was fired.

In a moment stolen from hell, the big one-hundred-millimeter shell burst, causing a sympathetic explosion inside that peeled the turret open like a tin can covering a Fourth of July cherry bomb, instantly turning it into a shambles of jagged steel. Then, as if on cue, the Oregon's last two torpedoes smashed into the Chengdo's hull, one of them miraculously entering through a previous hole made by one of its predecessors. The destroyer shuddered as a great thunderous roar exploded in her bowels, lifting her hull nearly clear of the water. A blossoming ball of fire bloomed around her, and then, like a great, mortally wounded animal, she shuddered and died. Three minutes later she was gone amid a great hissing sound and column of black smoke that spiraled upward and merged with the night sky, hiding the stars.

The shock wave swept against the Oregon, and the following tidal surge from the sinking destroyer rocked her as if she was landlocked in an earthquake. On the bridge, Cabrillo had not seen the final death throes of the Chengdo. Only seconds before Pitt's shrewdly directed fire turned her into a smoldering wreck, the destroyer's light guns had converged their fire on the bridge, pounding it into a shower of debris and shattered glass, as if struck by a thousand sledgehammers. Cabrillo felt the air tear apart around him in a concert of explosions. His arms flailed at the air as he was struck and hurled backward from the bridge into the wheelhouse. He fell to the deck, closed his eyes tightly and wrapped his arms around the brass binnacle and held on. A shell had smashed through his right leg below the knee, but Cabrillo experienced no pain. And then he heard a tremendous eruption and felt a rush of air, followed by an almost eerie silence.

On the deck below, Pitt released the trigger grip and retraced his steps through the wreckage littering the cargo deck. He reached Giordino and helped him upright. Giordino put his arm around Pitt's waist to steady himself, and then withdrew it, staring at a hand stained with red. "It appears to me that you've developed a leak."