“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.”
“Oh, hell, yes,” Coulter said. “Can’t let the damnyankees own the whole damn ocean.”
“Can’t let ’em get past us, either,” Kimball said. “If they sit on England’s supply line, she’s out of the war. If England has to quit, we’ve lost, too, and so have the froggies.”
“Whole crew understands that, sir,” Coulter answered. Then he sighed. “Sure are a hell of a lot of Yankees tryin’ to get south of us these days when we’re cruising out there, though.”
Kimball didn’t reply. As far as he could see, the war was probably lost even if the U.S. Navy didn’t succeed in choking off England’s supply line to Argentina. It would take longer to lose if the British stayed in the fight, that was all.
He didn’t care. He had a job to do, and he was damn good at it. He had very little modesty, false or otherwise. He knew how good he was. He enjoyed doing what he was doing, too. As long as the CSA stayed in the fight, he’d do it as well as he could. And if the Yankees sank him…well, he’d already hurt the USA a lot worse than losing the Bonefish would hurt his own country.
When he got back to his quarters, a telegram was waiting. He wasted no time in tearing open the envelope. “If this here is from my ma,” he muttered, “I’m going to be disappointed as hell.”
But it wasn’t. Anne Colleton wrote, GLAD THE YANKS ARE BAD FISHERMEN. LET ME KNOW NEXT TIME. MAYBE WE ’ LL MEET HALFWAY. ANNE. No love, not from her. Not even a promise. Kimball had seen such fripperies were not her style. But a maybe from a woman like that was worth a lay from half a dozen of the ordinary sort. Kimball carefully tore the telegram into tiny pieces. He was smiling as he did it.
As it happened, Arthur McGregor wasn’t far from the farmhouse when two green-gray Fords turned off the road from Rosenfeld and onto the path that led to his home. He decided he wouldn’t go out to the fields after all, but turned and walked back.
The motorcars got there before he did. U.S. soldiers with bayoneted rifles piled out of one of them. More soldiers got out of the other. Instead of a Springfield in his hands, one of those men wore a pistol on his hip. Major Hannebrink was slim and quick-moving and dapper, easy to recognize from a long way off. McGregor scowled, but did not pick up his pace.
When he reached the knot of soldiers, he looked down at the American officer, who was several inches shorter than he. “You must think I’m a dangerous character,” he said slowly, “if you need to bring all these bullies along when you come to say hello.”
“I don’t know whether you’re a dangerous character or not,” Hannebrink answered coolly, “but I don’t believe in taking chances, and I do aim to find out one way or the other.”
“Barn first, sir, or the house?” one of the soldiers-a sergeant-asked.
McGregor’s eyes went to the farmhouse. Maude was watching from the kitchen window, Julia alongside her. Mary wasn’t tall enough to see out. If her mother and sister hadn’t already told her soldiers were here, though, she’d know soon enough, and then she’d call them everything she knew how to call them, and she knew a surprising amount.
“House,” Hannebrink answered. “Get the women out of there. We’ll turn it inside out, and then we’ll do the barn.” He drew the pistol and pointed it at McGregor. “This gentleman won’t be going in there to take out anything he doesn’t fancy us seeing.”
“Wasn’t going to do that anyway,” McGregor said stolidly. “You bastards have stuck your noses in there before, and you never found a thing, because there’s nothing to find. You won’t find anything this time, either-still nothing.” He’d told that lie so many times, it came out smooth as the truth, though he’d never been a man who lied easily before Alexander was marched up against a wall and shot.
If they found the explosives… If they find them, it’s over, he thought. He wasn’t ready for it to be over, not yet. He hadn’t taken nearly enough revenge yet. But the best way to keep from betraying himself was to act as if whether they found what they were looking for didn’t matter.
Out came Maude and Julia and Mary, under the Yanks’ guns. Sure enough, his younger daughter, the spitfire, was doing her best to scorch the soldiers. It didn’t work so well as she might have hoped; one or two of the Americans, instead of getting angry, were fighting laughter.
A couple of the men in green-gray stayed with Major Hannebrink to stand guard on McGregor and his family. The rest went back into the house. Occasional crashes from within said they were indeed turning the place inside out. Hannebrink might have thought Maude was calm. McGregor knew better. He set a hand on his wife’s shoulder to keep her from hurling herself at the American major. Julia looked furious, and made no effort at all to hide it.
After an hour or so, the sergeant came out and said, “Sir, the worst thing they’ve got in there is kerosene for the lamps.”
“It’s good for killing lice, too,” Mary said, looking right at Hannebrink.
His lips thinned; that got home. But he said only, “We’ll have a look in the barn, then.” He gestured with the. 45 in his hand. “Come on, McGregor. You can watch and make sure we don’t steal anything.”
“You’ve already stolen more from me than you can ever give back,” he answered. He knew why Major Hannebrink wanted him along: in the hope that he’d give something away.
Hannebrink turned to the women. “You can go clean up now,” he said. “That should give you something to do for the rest of the day.”
In the barn, the U.S. soldiers methodically went through everything, climbing up into the loft to poke their bayonets into the hay in the hope of finding hidden dynamite and also searching all the animals’ stalls. They opened every crate. They dumped the drawers set into McGregor’s workbench out onto the ground and pawed over his chisels and drill bits and screwdrivers, his twine and his carpenter’s rule.
He wondered if he’d somehow made a mistake, if he’d put one of the bomb-building tools in among the others. The low-voiced curses of the men in green-gray said he hadn’t.
He glanced toward the old wagon wheel. There it lay, rust on the iron tire, half covered with straw. One of the soldiers strode around it to get at a box by the far wall. He used a pry bar to open the box, whose lid was nailed shut. Then he turned it upside down. A couple of horseshoes that had worn thin, a broken scythe blade, and some other scrap iron spilled out onto the ground with a series of clanks.
“Thanks,” McGregor said. “Forgot I had that junk lying around. I can do something with it, I expect.”
“Go to hell, you damn murdering Canuck,” the Yankee soldier snapped. He took a long step over the wagon wheel and glared into McGregor’s face.