“Hampton Ready’s boat,” Brearley answered at once. “He was in the class ahead of mine at Mobile.”
“Ready’s boat, yeah,” Kimball said: “the Bonito.”
Brearley needed a minute to take it in. When he did, he went from angry to grim in the blink of an eye. “You’re right,” he said. “Sure as hell, you’re right. And that means they really did sink him, too. Damn. He was a good sailor, and a good fellow, too.”
“Must have made it to the surface just long enough for the Yanks to get a fast look at the name, and then straight down before they could read it all. Christ.” Kimball shivered. That was a nasty way to go. There weren’t any nice ways to go, not when you jammed yourself down into a tin can and went after real ships. “You all right, Tom? You look green around the gills.”
Brearley didn’t answer, not directly. “Hamp’s wife just had a baby girl maybe six months ago. You know Katie? Little redhead; nice gal.”
“I’ve met her,” Kimball said. “Married man shouldn’t skipper a submersible. Makes you think too much.” But that didn’t solve Brearley’s problem-or Katie Ready’s now. Kimball couldn’t do anything about hers. About Brearley’s, and, he admitted to himself, his own…He waved. A swarthy waiter hurried over. “Two mojitos, pronto.”
“Dos mojitos. Si. Yes, sir,” the officers’ club waiter said. He hurried away, not seeing anything in the least unusual about a Navy officer ordering drinks with breakfast. Prohibition might have made strides on the Confederate mainland. It was only a word in Cuba, and a seldom-used word at that.
Rum and mint over crushed ice went enormously well with strong coffee and fine cigars. Tom Brearley drank half of his, looked thoughtful, and slowly nodded. “That was the medicine I needed, all right.”
“Steady you down,” Kimball agreed. He took a pull from his own mojito. “I grew up drinking whiskey, same as everybody else in Arkansas, but I’ll tell you, I could get used to rum.”
Brearley nodded. “I’m the same way. It’s got the kick, no two ways about it.” He picked up the newspaper, then threw it down on the table, shaking his head. “Hamp Ready. That does hurt. Damn fine fellow.” He poured down the rest of the drink.
Kimball picked up the paper and read further. “Says the boat was sunk by the USS Ericsson.” He stiffened. “That’s the destroyer that’s been playing cat and mouse with us, all right. Ready wasn’t ready enough, and they got him.”
“That box on the map doesn’t have a boat in it now,” Brearley said. “We were going to go back and take over for the Bonito when she finished her tour. What do you want to bet they send us back fast as they can now?”
“You’re right, goddammit.” Kimball got up, slapped coins on the table, and left. Over his shoulder, he said, “If I don’t have much time to enjoy myself, I’m going to make the most of what I’ve got.”
Instead of heading for one of the many sporting houses that catered to Confederate Navy men, he walked down San Isidro Street, away from the harbor, till he came to a telegraph office. He sent a wire to his mother and the man she’d married after his father died. He hoped they’d get it; last he’d heard, the damnyankees had been close to overrunning the farm on which he’d grown up.
He sent another wire to Anne Colleton. Both read the same: I’M NOT AS EASY TO KILL AS THE YANKEES THINK. HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON. LOVE, ROGER. To his mother, hope to see you soon was a polite sentiment, nothing more. With Anne Colleton…He hoped to see her the very soonest he could, and with the most privacy he could arrange.
Telegrams sent, he hurried back toward the Bonefish. A fat commander with the three oak leaves of Supply above the stripes on his sleeve stood on the wharf alongside Kimball’s submersible. Longshoremen, some black, some swarthy like the waiter, streamed into and out of the boat. The officer from Supply checked off items on a clipboard.
“Good to see you here, Skipper,” he said, nodding to Kimball. “We’re stepping things up-as best we can, anyhow. You’ll be going back to sea sooner than you might have hoped when you came into port.”
“Reckoned as much.” Kimball nodded back. “You all will have known about the Bonito a while before I worked it out.” He donned an exasperated expression, half genuine, half assumed for effect. “You might have been good enough to let me know my boat would be turning around in a hurry.”
“Oh, we would have gotten around to it, Commander, never fear,” the officer from Supply answered breezily. He did indeed have an impressive belly. He was smoking a cigar that made the one Kimball had enjoyed with breakfast seem a stogie made from weeds. Kimball wondered when he’d last set foot in an actual working vessel of the C.S. Navy. Probably when he’d reported to Havana, whenever that was. He didn’t come from Cuba; his accent said Alabama or Mississippi.
Fixing him with a gaze he might have sent toward a U.S. cruiser through his periscope, Kimball said, “I am like the fellow whose neighbor has a mean dog. I might put up with one bite, but sure as hell I won’t put up with two. If I need to know something, I expect to find out the minute I need to know it, not when somebody gets around to it.”
He didn’t advance on the commander from Supply. He didn’t clench his fist. He didn’t even raise his voice. The commander staggered back as if hit in that comfortable, well-upholstered belly even so. “I’m sure you won’t have any trouble like that in the future,” he said, pasting a wide, placating smile on his face and taking the fancy cigar out of his mouth to make the smile even wider.
“Good.” Kimball still didn’t raise his voice, but the officer from Supply took another couple of steps back. Kimball strode past him and climbed down into the noisome darkness that was the interior of the Bonefish.
Ben Coulter had things well in hand there. After a stretch of time with the crew out and the boat cleaned up as much as it could be, the stench had diminished. It was still enough to make most sailors in the surface Navy turn up their toes, or perhaps heave up their breakfasts. To Kimball, it was the smell of home.
“Long as we can keep things fresh, sir, we’ll live like kings,” Coulter said. “Plenty of eggs and meat and fish and greens-some of ’em are these funny Cuban vegetables that look like God forgot what he was doin’ when He was makin’ ’em, but you boil ’em long enough and they all taste the same, sure as hell. Yes, sir, like kings.”
“Crowded kings,” Kimball remarked, and the veteran first mate nodded. Kimball and Coulter both knew perfectly well that before long they’d be eating beans and salt pork and stinking sauerkraut and drinking orange juice and lemon juice to hold scurvy at bay. As a cruise wore along, fresh-caught fish became a luxury. Dwelling on better times was more enjoyable.
“We’re full up on shells again, too, sir,” Coulter said. “Armorers haven’t come with the fish yet, though.”
“We’ll get ’em. We do most of our work with ’em these days,” Kimball said. “Too damn many ships with wireless. We need to sink ’em fast and sneaky.”
“Yes, sir.” Coulter nodded again. “Damnyankees keep pulling destroyers out of their hats, too, like magicians with rabbits. It’s getting so we can’t hardly take a shot at a freighter without dodging ash cans for the next week.”
“I know. I’m getting damn tired of it, too.” Kimball slapped Coulter on the back. “By the way they’re going at this resupply business, likely you’ve guessed we’ll be going out sooner than we reckoned when we got into Habana.”
Ben Coulter’s head went up and down once more. “Sure as hell did, sir. Reckon the Yankees must have done somethin’ nasty to the Bonito.”
“They sank her,” Kimball said bluntly, adding, “They thought she was the Bonefish; the Yankee papers are reporting us sunk.” That jerked a laugh out of the mate. Kimball went on, “The Ericsson got her-same destroyer that’s given us such a hard time. When we get back into our box on the map, Ben, I’m going to kill that bastard.”