Walk in Hell

“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.