English, then. Good.'
He handled the destroyer escort's blinker himself. WILL APPROACH FOR PICKUP, he sent back.
COME AHEAD. BE CAREFUL IN THESE SEAS, the sub signaled.
Sam wished Pat Kelly were still aboard. But his old exec had a ship of his own, a newer, faster ship than the Josephus Daniels. He was probably showing his whole crew what a demon shiphandler he was. Sam wasn't, and never would be. Neither was Zwilling. Since he wasn't, Sam kept the conn himself.
As he steered closer to the submersible, he ordered Bevacqua to keep paying close attention to any echoes that came back from his hydrophone pings. The CPO laughed mirthlessly. 'Oh, I'm on it, Skipper. Don't you worry about that,' he said. 'It's my neck, too, after all.'
'Good,' Sam said. 'Long as you remember.'
German subs weren't the only ones prowling the North Atlantic. Plenty of U.S. boats were out here, too. More to the point, so were British, French, and Confederate submarines. The odds against any one of them being in the neighborhood were long, but so were the odds against filling an inside straight, and lucky optimists did that every day.
In both the Great War and this one, U.S. admirals and their German counterparts dreamt of sweeping the British and French fleets from the North Atlantic and joining hands in the middle. It hadn't happened then, and it wouldn't happen this time around, either. The enemy kept the two allies apart, except for sneaky meetings like this one.
NEAR ENOUGH, the submersible's captain signaled. But Sam steered closer, anticipating the next swell with a small motion of the wheel. The sub's skipper waved to him then, seeing that he knew what he was doing. He lifted one hand from the wheel to wave back. THROW A LINE, came the flashes from the ugly, deadly, rust-streaked boat.
IS THE PACKAGE WATERPROOF? Sam asked.
JA, the submersible skipper answered. Sam knew more German than that; his folks had spoken it on the farm where he grew up. He ordered a line thrown. A German sailor in a greasy pea jacket and dungarees ran along the sub's wet hull to retrieve it. Sam wouldn't have cared to do that, not with the boat pitching the way it was. But the man grabbed the line, carried it back to the conning tower, and climbed the iron ladder, nimble as a Barbary ape.
The German skipper tied the package, whatever it was, to the end of the line. Then he waved to the Josephus Daniels. The sailor who'd cast the line drew it back hand over hand. When he took the package off it, he waved up to Sam Carsten on the bridge.
After waving back, Sam got on the blinker again: WE HAVE IT. THANKS AND GOOD LUCK.
LIKEWISE FOR YOU, the German answered. He lifted his battered cap in salute. Then he and the other men on the conning tower disappeared into the dark, smelly depths of the submersible. The boat slid below the surface and was gone.
A moment later, the sailor brought the package-which was indeed wrapped in oilskins and sheet rubber, and impressively sealed-up to the bridge. 'Here you go, sir,' he said, handing it to Sam and saluting.
'Thanks, Enos,' Carsten answered. The sailor hurried away.
'Now into the safe?' the exec asked.
'That's what my orders are,' Sam agreed.
'Wonder why the brass are making such a fuss about it,' said Thad Walters, the Y-ranging officer.
'Beats me,' Sam answered with a grin. 'They pay me not to ask questions like that, so I'm going to lock this baby up right now. Mr. Zwilling, come to my cabin with me so you can witness that I've done it. Mr. Walters, you have the conn.' Having a witness was in the orders, too. He'd never had anything on board before that came with such tight security requirements.
'Aye aye, sir.' The exec's voice stayed formal, but he sounded more pleased than otherwise. Red tape was meat and drink to him. He would have done better manning a desk ashore and counting turbine vanes than as second-in-command on a warship, but the Navy couldn't fit all its pegs into the perfect holes. You did the best you could in the slot they gave you-and, if you happened to be the skipper, you did the best you could with the men set under you. If they weren't all the ones you would have chosen yourself…Well, there was a war on.
Sam's cabin wasn't far from the bridge. It wasn't much wider than his own wingspan, but it gave him a tiny island of privacy when he needed one. Along with his bed-which he didn't get to use enough-he had a steel desk and a steel chair and the safe.
He shielded it with his body as he spun the combination so the exec couldn't see it: more orders. The metal door swung open. 'I am putting the package in the safe,' he intoned, and did just that. 'The seals are unbroken.'
'Sir, I have observed you doing so,' Myron Zwilling said, like a man giving responses to a preacher in church. 'And I confirm that the seals are unbroken.'
'All right, then. I'm closing up.' Sam did, and spun the lock once more to keep it from showing the last number.
'Now we go back to Boston?' the exec said.
'Just as fast as our little legs will carry us,' Sam replied. Zwilling gave him a look of faint distaste. Sam sighed silently; if the exec was born with a sense of whimsy, he'd had it surgically removed as a kid. And the Josephus Daniels' legs were indeed little. She couldn't make better than about twenty-four knots, far slower than a real destroyer. The only reason that occurred to Carsten for picking her for this mission was that she was one of the most anonymous ships in the Navy. The enemy wouldn't pay much attention to her. If he didn't command her, he wouldn't pay much attention to her himself. As they left the cabin, Sam added, 'I am locking the door behind me.'
'Yes, sir,' Zwilling said. 'You're also supposed to post two armed guards outside until you remove-whatever it is-from the safe.'
'Go get two men. Serve them out with submachine guns from the arms locker and bring them back here. I'll stand guard in the meantime,' Sam said. 'If Jake Featherston's hiding under the paint somewhere, I'll do my goddamnedest to hold him off till you get back with the reinforcements.'
'Er-yes, sir.' The exec seemed relieved to get away.
This time, Sam sighed out loud. Pat would have sassed him right back instead of taking everything so seriously. Well, what could you do?
Before long, the armed guards took their places in front of the door to the captain's quarters. Sam went back to the bridge. 'I have the conn,' he announced as he took the wheel from Walters. 'I am changing course to 255. We are on our way back to Boston.' He rang the engine room. 'All ahead full.'
'All ahead full. Aye aye, sir.' The response came back through a speaking tube. The black gang would wring every knot they could from the Josephus Daniels. The only trouble was, she didn't have many knots to wring.
Every mile Sam put between himself and the spot where he'd met the U-boat eased his mind. That it also meant he was one mile closer to his own country did nothing to make him unhappy, either. He wanted nothing more than to get…whatever it was out of his safe and off his ship. He didn't like having men with automatic weapons outside his door at all hours of the day and night. Were it up to him, he would have been much more casual about the mysterious package. But it wasn't, so he followed orders.
He also followed orders in maintaining wireless silence till he got within sight of Cape Ann, northeast of Boston. A couple of patrolling U.S. seaplanes had already spotted him by then and, he supposed, sent their own wireless signals, but nobody-especially not his exec-would be able to say he hadn't done everything the brass told him to do.
Two Coast Guard cutters steamed out from Rockport and escorted the Josephus Daniels across Massachusetts Bay as if she had royalty on board. Sam didn't think the Germans could have dehydrated the Kaiser and stuffed him into that flat package, but you never could tell.
When a pilot came aboard to steer the destroyer escort through the minefields outside of Boston harbor, Sam greeted him with, 'The powers that be won't like it if you pick the wrong time to sneeze.'
The pilot had flaming red hair, ears that stuck out like jug handles, and an engagingly homely grin. 'My wife won't like it, either, sir,' he answered, 'and that counts a hell of a lot more with me.'
'Sounds like the right attitude,' Sam allowed. Myron Zwilling clucked like a fretful mother hen. Yes, he worshipped at Authority's shrine.
