Deep Six (57 page)

Her shallow wooden hull was long and beamy, measuring 270 feet by 44. Her horizontal noncondensing engines ran at about forty revolutions per minute. She was rated at slightly over one thousand tons, yet despite her bulk, she walked the water with a draft of just thirty-two inches.

Down below on the main deck, four men, sweat-streaked and blackened with soot, furiously shoveled coal into the furnaces under four high-pressure boilers. When the pressure began to creep into the red, the chief engineer, a crusty old Scot by the name of McGeen, hung his hat over the steam gauge.

McGeen was the first man to vote for pursuit after Pitt crash-landed the helicopter in shallow water near Fort Jackson, waded ashore with Giordino and Hogan, and described the situation. At first there was undisguised disbelief, but after seeing their wounds, the bullet-riddled aircraft, and then hearing a deputy sheriff describe the dead and injured FBI agents a few miles downriver, McGeen stoked up his boilers, Belcheron rounded up his deck crew and forty men from the Sixth Louisiana Regiment tramped on board hooting and hollering and dragging along two ancient field cannon.

“Pour on the coal, boys,” McGeen pressed his black gang. He looked like the devil with his trimmed goatee and brushed-up eyebrows in the flickering glare of the open furnace doors. “If we mean to save the Vice President, we’ve got to have more steam.”

The
Stonewall Jackson
thrashed after the towboat and barge, almost as if sensing the urgency of her mission. When new, her top speed was rated at fifteen miles an hour, but in the past forty years she was never called on to provide more than twelve.
^*

 She thrust downriver with the current at fourteen, then fifteen . . . sixteen . . . eighteen miles an hour. When she burst from the South Pass Channel, she was driving through the water at twenty, smoke and sparks exploding through the flared capitals atop her stacks.

The men of the Sixth Louisiana Regiment—the dentists, plumbers, accountants who marched and refought battles of the Civil War as a hobby—grunted and sweated in the nondescript woolen gray and butternut uniforms that once clothed the Army of the Confederate States of America. Under the command of a major, they heaved huge cotton bales into place as breastworks. The two Napoleon twelve-pounder cannon from Fort Jackson were wheeled into position on the bow, their smoothbore barrels loaded with ball bearings scrounged from McGeen’s engine-room supply locker.

Pitt stared down at the growing fortress of wired bales. Cotton against steel, he mused, single-shot muskets against automatic rifles.

It was going to be an interesting fight.

Lieutenant Grant tore his eyes from the incredible sight under his wings and radioed the ship flying the British flag.

“This is Air Force Weather Recon zero-four-zero calling oceanographic research vessel. Do you read?”

“Righto, Yank. Hear you clearly,” came back a cheery voice fresh off a cricket field. “This is Her Majesty’s Ship
Pathfinder.
What can we do for you, zero-four-zero?”

“A chopper went into the drink about three miles west of you. Can you effect a rescue of survivors,
Pathfinder
?”

“We bloody well better. Can’t allow the poor chaps to drown, can we?”

“I’ll circle the crash sector,
Pathfinder.
Home in on me.”

“Jolly good. We’re on our way. Out.”

Grant took up a position over the struggling men in the water. The gulf current was warm, so there was no fear of their succumbing to exposure, but any bleeding wounds were certain to attract sharks.

“You don’t carry much influence,” said his co-pilot.

“What do you mean?” asked Grant.

“The Limey ship isn’t responding. She’s turned away.”

Grant leaned forward and banked the plane to see out the opposite cockpit window. His co-pilot was right. The
Pathfinder’s
bow had come around on a course away from the helicopter’s survivors and was aimed toward the
Stonewall Jackson.

“Pathfinder,
this is zero-four-zero,” Grant called. “What is your problem? Repeat. What is your problem?”

There was no reply.

“Unless I’m suffering one hell of a hallucination,” Metcalf said, staring in wonder at the video transmission, “that old relic from
Tom Sawyer
intends to attack the towboat.”

“She’s giving every indication,” Sandecker agreed.

“Where do you suppose she came from?”

Sandecker stood with his arms crossed in front of him, his face radiating an elated expression. “Pitt,” he muttered under his breath, “you wily, irrepressible son of a bitch.”

“You say something?”

“Just speculating to myself.”

“What can they possibly hope to accomplish?”

“I think they mean to ram and board.”

“Insanity, sheer insanity,” snorted Metcalf gloomily. “The gunners on the towboat will cut them to pieces.”

Suddenly Sandecker tensed, seeing something in the background on the screen. Metcalf didn’t catch it; no one else watching caught it either.

The admiral grasped Metcalf by the arm. “The British vessel!”

Metcalf looked up, startled. “What about it?”

“Good God, man, see for yourself. She’s going to run down the steamboat.”

Metcalf saw the distance between the two ships rapidly narrowing, saw the wake of the
Pathfinder
turn to foam as she surged ahead at full speed.

“Grant!” he bellowed.

“Here, sir.”

“The Limey ship, why isn’t she headed toward the men in the water?”

“I can’t say, General. Her skipper acknowledged my request for rescue, but chased after the old paddleboat instead. I haven’t been able to raise him again. He appears to be ignoring my transmissions.”

“Take them out!” Sandecker demanded. “Call in an air strike and take the bastards out!”

Metcalf hesitated, torn by indecision. “But she’s flying the British flag, for Christ’s sake.”

“I’ll stake my rank she’s a Bougainville ship, and the flag is a decoy.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Maybe. But I do know that if she crushes the steamboat into firewood, our last chance to save Vince Margolin is gone.”

^*
Speed on inland waterways is rated in miles per hour, never in knots.

73

IN THE PILOTHOUSE
of the towboat a burst of fire from the SEALS had shattered the inner workings of the command console, fouling the rudder controls. Captain Pujon had no option but to reduce speed and steer by jockeying the throttle levers.

Lee Tong did not spare him a glance. He was busy issuing orders over the radio to the commander of the
Pathfinder,
while keeping a wary eye on the wallowing steamboat.

Finally he turned to Pujon. “Can’t you regain our top speed?”

“Eight miles is the best I can do if we want to maintain a straight course.”

“How far?” he asked for the tenth time that hour.

“According to the depth sounder, the bottom’s beginning to drop off. Another two miles should do it.”

“Two miles,” Lee Tong repeated thoughtfully. “Time to set the detonators.”

“I’ll alert you by blowing the airhorn when we come over a hundred fathoms,” said Pujon.

Lee Tong stared across the dark sea, stained by the runoff from the Mississippi River. The masquerading research ship was only a few hundred yards away from slicing through the brittle side of the
Stonewall Jackson.
He could hear the haunting wail of the calliope drifting with the wind. He shook his head in disbelief, wondering who was responsible for the old riverboat’s sudden appearance.

He was about to leave the pilothouse and cross over to the barge when he noticed one of the milling aircraft overhead abruptly slide out of formation and dive toward the sea.

A ghost-white F/A 21 Navy strike aircraft leveled off two hundred feet above the wave tops and unleashed two anti-ship missiles. Lee Tong watched in numbed horror as the laser-controlled warheads skimmed across the water and slammed into the red-hulled decoy ship, stopping her dead in her tracks with a blast that turned the entire upper works into a grotesque tangle of shattered steel. Then came a second, even stronger explosion that enveloped the ship in a ball of flame. For an instant she seemed to hang suspended as if locked in time.

Lee Tong stood tensed in despair as the broken vessel slowly rolled over and died, falling to the floor of the gulf and sealing all hope of his escape.

Fiery fragments of the
Pathfinder
rained down around the
Stonewall Jackson,
igniting several small fires that were quickly extinguished by the crew. The sea surface over the sunken ship turned black with oily bubbles as a hissing cloud of steam and smoke spiraled into the sky.

“Christ in heaven!” Captain Belcheron gasped in astonishment. “Will you look at that. Those Navy boys mean business.”

“Somebody is watching over us,” Pitt commented thankfully. His eyes returned to the barge. His face was expressionless; but for the swaying of his body to compensate for the roll of the boat, he might have been sculpted from solid teak. The gap had closed to three quarters of a mile, and he could make out the tiny figure of a man scrambling across the bow of the towboat onto the barge before disappearing down a deck hatch.

An enormous man with the stout build of an Oliver Hardy barreled up the ladder from the texas deck and came through the door. He wore the gray uniform and gold braid of a Confederate major. The shirt under the unbuttoned coat was damp with perspiration, and he was panting from exertion. He stood there a moment, wiping his forehead with a sleeve, catching his breath.

At last he said, “Doggone, I don’t know if I’d rather die by a bullet in the head, by drowning or a heart attack.”

Leroy Laroche operated a travel agency by day, functioned as a loving husband and father by night, and acted as commander of the Sixth Louisiana Regiment of the Confederate States Army on weekends. He was popular among his men and was re-elected every year to lead the regiment in battlefield re-enactments around the country. The fact that he was about to engage in the real thing didn’t seem to faze him.

“Lucky for us you had those cotton bales on board,” he said to the captain.

Belcheron smiled. “We keep them on deck as historic examples of the sweet old darlin’s maritime heritage.”

Pitt looked at Laroche. “Your men in position, Major?”

“Loaded, primed full of Dixie beer and rarin’ to fight,” Laroche replied.

“What sort of weapons do they own?”

“Fifty-eight-caliber Springfield muskets, which most rebels carried late in the war. Shoots a minie ball five hundred yards.”

“How fast can they fire?”

“Most of my boys can get off three rounds a minute, a few can do four. But I’m putting the best shots on the barricade while the others load.”

“And the cannon? Do they actually fire?”

“You bet. They can hit a tree with a can of cement at half a mile.”

“Can of cement?”

“Cheaper to make than real cannon shot.”

Pitt considered that and grinned. “Good luck, Major. Tell your men to keep their heads down. Muzzle loaders take more time to aim than machine guns.”

“I reckon they know how to duck,” said Laroche. “When do you want us to open fire?”

“I leave that to you.”

“Excuse me, Major,” Giordino cut in. “Did any of your men happen to carry a spare weapon?”

Laroche unsnapped the leather holster on his belt and passed Giordino a large pistol. “A Le Mat revolver,” he said. “Shoots nine forty-two-caliber shells through a rifled barrel. But if you’ll notice, there’s a big smoothbore barrel underneath that holds a charge of buckshot. Take good care of it. My great-granddaddy carried it from Bull Run to Appomattox.”

Giordino was genuinely impressed. “I don’t want to leave you unarmed.”

Laroche pulled his saber from its scabbard. “This will do me just fine. Well, I best get back to my men.”

After the big jovial major left the pilothouse, Pitt bent down and opened the violin case, lifted out the Thompson and inserted a full drum. He held his side with one hand and cautiously straightened, his lips pressed tight from the pain that speared his chest.

“You be all right up here?” he asked Belcheron.

“Don’t pay no mind to me,” the captain answered. He nodded at a cast-iron potbellied stove. “I’ll have my own armor when the fireworks start.”

* * *

“Thank God for that,” exclaimed Metcalf.

“What is it?” Sandecker asked.

Metcalf held up a paper. “A reply from the British Admiralty in London. The only
Pathfinder
on duty with the Royal Navy is a missile destroyer. They have no research ship by that name, nor is there any in the gulf area.” He gave Sandecker a thankful look.

“You called a good play, Jim.”

“We had a bit of luck after all.”

“The poor bastards on that steamboat are the ones who need it now.”

“Any more we can do? Anything we’ve overlooked?”