Walk in Hell (79 page)

“Perhaps,” Abell said again. Again, he sounded anything but convinced. Since he had few emotions of his own, he didn’t seem to think anyone else had them, either. Maybe that accounted for his still being a captain.

“Never mind,” Morrell said, a little sadly. “But I’ll tell you this, Captain: anybody who’s looking defeat in the face isn’t going to fight a rational war once he figures he’s got nothing left to lose.”

“Yes, sir,” Abell said. It didn’t get through to the General Staff captain. Morrell could see as much. He wondered when Abell had last fired a Springfield. He wondered if Abell had ever had to command a platoon on maneuvers. He had his doubts. Had Abell ever done anything like that, he wouldn’t have retained such an abiding faith in rationality.

“What will you do when the war’s over?” Morrell asked.

Abell didn’t hesitate. “Help the country prepare itself for the next one, of course,” he replied. “And you?”

“The same.” For the life of him, Morrell couldn’t think of anything he’d rather do. “I think, if I get the chance, I’m going to go into barrels. That’s where we’ll see a lot of effort focused once the fighting’s done this time.”

Abell shook his head. “They’ve been a disappointment, if you ask me. Like gas, they promise more than they deliver. Now that the enemy has seen them a few times, we don’t get the panic effect we once did, and enemy barrels are starting to neutralize ours. They may have occasional uses, I grant you, but I think they’ll go down in the history of this war as curiosities, nothing more.”

“I don’t agree,” Morrell said. “They need more work; they’d be much more useful if they could move faster than a soldier can walk. And I’m not sure our doctrine for employing them is the best it could be, either.”

“How else would you use them, sir, other than all along the line?” Abell asked. “They are, as you pointed out, an adjunct to infantry. This matter has been discussed here at considerable length, both before your arrival and during your absence.”

Had Abell been wearing gloves, he might have slapped Morrell in the face with one of them. His remarks really meant,
Who do you think you are, you Johnny-come-lately, to question the gathered wisdom of the War Department and the General Staff?

“All I know is what I read in the reports that come back from the field, and what I’ve seen in the field for myself,” Morrell answered, which didn’t make Captain Abell look any happier. “They’ve done some good, and I think they could do more.”

“I suggest, then, sir, that you put your proposals in the form of a memorandum for evaluation by the appropriate committee,” Abell said.

“Maybe I will,” Morrell said, which startled John Abell.
One more memorandum no one will ever read,
Morrell thought.
Just what the war effort needs now
. Aloud, he went on, “Yes, maybe I’ll do that. And maybe I’ll do something else, too.” The gaze Abell gave him held more suspicion than any the smooth young captain had ever aimed at the Confederates and their plans.

Roger Kimball said, “You’re all volunteers here, and I’m proud of every one of you for coming along on this ride. I knew the
Bonefish
had the finest damn crew in the C.S. Navy, and you’ve gone and proved it again.”

“Sir,” Tom Brearley said, “we wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

Brearley was the executive officer, and was supposed to think like that. Kimball wanted to get a feel for how the ordinary sailors felt. Yes, they’d all volunteered, but had they really understood what they were getting into?

Then Ben Coulter said, “If we can give the damnyankees’nuts a good twist, Skipper, reckon it’ll turn out to be worth it.” The rest of the crew, some in greasy dungarees, some in black leather that was every bit as greasy but didn’t show it so much, rumbled their agreement with the veteran petty officer. A lot of them had quit shaving after they sailed out of Charleston, which made them look even more piratical than they would have otherwise.

“All right,” Kimball said, heartened. “You understand what we’re doing here. If it goes wrong, we ain’t gonna be like my old chum Ralph Briggs. Calls himself a submariner, and the Yankees have captured him
twice
.” He spat to show what he thought of that. “If it goes wrong, we’re sunk.” His eyes gleamed. “But if it goes right, there’s gonna be a lot of unhappy Yankees in New York harbor.”

That wolfish growl rose from the crew again. Rationally, Kim-ball knew the odds were he’d said his last good-byes to everybody except the crew of the
Bonefish
, and he’d probably never get the chance to say good-bye to them. But the risk was worth the candle, as far as he was concerned.

Bookish and thoughtful where Kimball was fierce and emotional, Tom Brearley said, “We’ve loaded this boat with so many extra batteries, we only need to fill our buoyancy tanks half full to go straight down to the bottom.” That was an exaggeration, but not a big one. Brearley went on, “We’ve got chemicals aboard to take some of the carbon dioxide out of the air while we’re submerged, too. What all that means is, we can submerge farther out from New York City than the Yankees think, sneak up on them, do our worst, and then get away again.”

“That’s what we can do, all right,” Kimball said. “That’s what we’re
going
to do.”

He went up the ladder to the conning tower and looked all around. The Stars and Bars flapped where the Confederate naval ensign would normally have flown. As it had been in the Chesapeake Bay, that was part of the deception scheme he’d laid on. A passing ship or aeroplane would see red, white, and blue and—he hoped—assume the boat belonged to the U.S. Navy. What made it especially delicious was that it didn’t even slightly contravene international law.

The
Bonefish
was only a couple of hundred miles southeast of New York harbor now, and ship traffic was heavy. As he’d counted on, none of the merchantmen paid any attention to a surfaced submersible sailing along on what were obviously its own lawful occasions.

An aeroplane with the U.S. eagle-and-swords emblem flew past, at first taking the
Bonefish
for granted but then sweeping back for a closer look. Cursing under his breath—if that aeroplane carried wireless and identified him as a hostile, all his preparations were wasted—Kimball took off his cap and waved it at the Yankee flying machine.

It came no closer, but waggled its wings and flew off, satisfied. He let out a sigh of relief. Five minutes later, he spotted a U.S. airship, a giant flying cigar. He cursed again, this time not at all under his breath. The airship could look him over at close range and hover above his boat, penetrating its disguise. He stayed up top, ready to order the
Bonefish
to dive if the dirigible turned his way. It didn’t, evidently taking the sub for a U.S. vessel if it noticed the boat at all.

When he was inside a hundred miles of the harbor—and also about to enter the first ring of mines around it—he went below, dogged the hatch after himself, and said, “Take her down to periscope depth, Tom. Five knots.”

“Aye aye, sir. Periscope depth. Five knots,” Brearley said. The
Bonefish
slid below the surface with remarkable alacrity; those extra batteries were heavy. Without them, though, he couldn’t have come close enough to the harbor to contemplate an attack.

Confederate Naval Intelligence had given him their best information on where the lanes through the mines lay. He was betting his boat—betting his neck, too, but he didn’t care to think of it that way—the boys in the quiet offices knew what they were talking about.

And then, as he’d hoped he would, he caught a break. Peering through the periscope, he spotted a harbor tug leading a little flotilla of fishing boats back toward New York. “We’re going to sneak up on their tails and follow ’em in,” he said to Brearley, and gave the orders to close the
Bonefish
up on the last of the fishing boats, which, in among the mines, were going no faster than he was.

He was reminded of stories about a gator swimming behind a mother duck and her ducklings and picking them off one by one. He let the ducklings swim. All of them together wouldn’t have satisfied his hunger.

The periscope kept wanting to fog up. Kimball invented ever more exotic curses and hurled them at its lenses and prisms. Down inside the steel tube with him, the sailors snickered at his extravagances. It
was
funny, too, but only to a point. If he couldn’t see where he was going, he wouldn’t get there.

He spotted Sandy Hook off to port and then, a little later, Coney Island to starboard. His lip curled. “Here we are, boys,” he said, “where all the damnyankees in New York City”—a symbol of depravity all over the Confederate States—“come to play.”

Nobody frolicked on the beaches today. The weather topside was chilly and gray and dreary. He swept the periscope around counterclockwise till he recognized Norton’s Point, the westernmost projection of Coney Island, which stuck out almost into the Narrows, the channel that led to New York’s harbors.

“There’s the lighthouse,” he said, confirming a landmark, “and there’s the fog bell next to it, for nights when a light doesn’t do any good. And—what the hell’s going on there?”

Cursing the blurry image, he stared intently into the periscope. His left hand folded into a fist and thumped softly against the side of his thigh. “What is it, sir?” Tom Brearley asked, recognizing the gesture of excitement.

“Must have had themselves a foggy night last night or somewhere not long ago,” Kimball answered. “Somebody’s aground on the mud flats by the lighthouse—sub, I think maybe. And they’ve got themselves one, two, three—Jesus, I see three, I really do—battleships sitting like broody hens around the cruiser that’s pulling her off. To hell with anything else. I’m going to get me one of those big bastards if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

“What are they doing there?” Brearley asked.

“Damned if I know,” Kimball answered. “But this is New York City, after all. They would have been in port, and some half-smart son of a bitch probably said, ‘Well, we’ve got ’em right close by. Let’s use ’em to make sure nobody gets frisky while we’re pulling our boat back into the water.’ It’s only a guess, mind you, but I’ll lay it’s a good one.”

“Bet you’re right, sir,” Brearley said.

Kimball didn’t care whether he was right or not.
Why
didn’t matter.
What
mattered, and there in front of him was the juiciest
what
this side of a fox sauntering into an unguarded henhouse. At his orders, the
Bonefish
pulled away from the fishing boats she’d been following and slid through the water toward the battleships.

They didn’t have a clue the boat was on the same planet, let alone closing toward eight hundred yards. They weren’t keeping anything like a proper antisubmersible watch, not here so close to home. All four of his forward tubes already had fish in them. He’d known from the beginning he would have to shoot fast and run.

“Five-degree spread,” he ordered. “I’m going to give two targets two fish apiece. I can’t get a clean shot at the third one. Are we ready, gentlemen?” He knew how keyed-up he was—he hadn’t called his crew a pack of bastards or anything of the sort. “Fire one! And two! And three! And four!”

Compressed air hissed as the fish leaped away. They ran straight and true. A bare instant before they reached their targets, one of the battleships began showing more smoke, as if trying to get away.

The explosions from at least two hits echoed inside the
Bonefish
. Whoops and cheers from the men drowned them out. “Right full rudder to course 130, Tom,” Kimball said exultantly. “Let’s get the hell out of here. If we don’t hit a mine, we’re all a pack of goddamn heroes—I think I nailed both those sons of bitches.”

And if we do hit a mine, it’s still a good trade for the C.S. Navy,
he thought. But that had nothing to do with the price of beer. He’d done what he’d come to do; he’d done more than he’d thought he would be able to manage. Up till then, he hadn’t cared what would happen afterwards. Now, all at once, he very much wanted to live, so he could give the damnyankees’ balls another good kick somewhere further down the line.

If the hiring clerk at the cotton mill in Greenville, South Carolina, had been any more bored, he would have fallen out of his chair. “Name?” he asked, and yawned enormously.

“Jeroboam,” Scipio answered. After his meeting with Anne Colleton, he didn’t dare keep the false name he’d borne before, any more than he’d dared stay in Columbia.

“Jero—” That got the clerk’s attention: it made him unhappy. “You able to spell it for me, nigger?” Scipio did, without any trouble. The clerk drummed his fingers up and down on the desktop. “You read and write? Sounds like it.”

“Yes, suh,” Scipio answered. He’d decided he didn’t need to lie about that. It wasn’t against the law, and wasn’t even that uncommon.

“Cipher, too?” the clerk asked. He yawned again, and scratched his cheek, just below the edge of the patch covering his left eye socket, a patch that explained why a white man in his twenties wasn’t at the front.

“Yes, suh,” Scipio said again, and cautiously added, “Some, I do.”

But the clerk just nodded and wrote something down on the form he was completing. For a moment, he almost approached briskness: “You got a passbook you can show me, Jeroboam?”

“No, suh,” Scipio said resignedly.

“Too bad,” the clerk said. “That’s gonna cost you.” Scipio had been sure it was going to cost him; now he wanted to find out just how much. He had more money now than when he’d come to Columbia; he figured he could get by till this petty crook was through shaking him down. But, to his amazement, the clerk went on, “These last couple weeks, we’ve been paying twenty-dollar hiring bonuses to bucks with their papers all in order, on account of they stay with us longer and we want to keep ’em in the plant.”

“Ain’t got no papers,” Scipio repeated, doing his best to hide how surprised he was. “Been a busy time, dese pas’ couple years.”

“Nigger, you don’t know the half of it,” the clerk said. Considering what all Scipio had been through, the clerk didn’t know what he was talking about. But then he scratched by the eye patch again, so he knew some things Scipio didn’t, too. He asked, “How old are you?”