But he found himself now being treated very disrespectfully with a powerful arm locked around him. With his feet, Remo tried to kick some distance between himself and the boat. As long as he had the chief with him, the sailors in the boat couldn't shoot.
Then Josephson wrapped his hands tightly around Remo's neck. The two of them went under, then surfaced for air. Josephson gulped it down impulsively, like a favourite whiskey, and growled: "Donaldson, you're dead."
"Not yet, swabby," Remo said and then went down again, pulling Josephson deep into the water. Under the cover of the dark water, Remo let Josephson go. Blows were out of the question, so he dug his thumbs into the back of Josephson's hands, crippling the nerves and slowly Josephson's grip on Remo's neck weakened and then released.
Then they were up again for air and then back down under the surface. Josephson drove his head forward, trying to smash Remo's face, but Remo slid alongside it.
Remo kept his legs moving and they were moving steadily away from the small powerboat. When they surfaced again, Remo could no longer see the boat. And since its motor had not started up again, the two seamen must still be there, still searching the water. Probably, Remo thought, they would be concentrating their search toward the shore. But instead, Remo was kicking and stroking his way back toward the Alabama.
He was far enough out of range now. They came up again and Remo pivoted around behind Chief Josephson and locked a powerful forearm around his neck and treaded water to stay in place.
"You want to live?" he hissed into the sailor's ear.
"Go screw yourself, Donaldson. You're a dead man." Josephson started a shout
Deep in his throat, Remo could feel the rumble and then hear the first sounds: "Hey, men…" and then it stopped as Remo muscled his forearm and cut Josephson's air, crushing his adam's apple back deep into his throat.
"Sorry, fella," Remo said. "Anchors aweigh." He continued to apply pressure until he heard the telltale crack of bones breaking. He released his arm and the chief pitched forward, head-first in the water, began to drift away and down, his stringy, curly hair floating about his head like an inverted Portuguese man-of-war, and then slowly sinking below the surface.
Remo took a deep breath and turned, swimming strongly for the ship. It was still silent behind him; the two sailors must still be searching.
Remo reached the small boat he had tied up at the bow and untied it. He climbed in and pushed himself off from the side of the ship and, using a single oar, began to stroke powerfully toward shore.
Then, behind him, he heard a tremendous roar. His boat bobbed in the water, and through the wooden floor, Remo could feel the ocean vibrating under his feet. He turned and looked back. The battleship Alabama had started its engines. Covered now by the roar of the Alabama, Reno started his own boat with a pull on the motor cord and began to head back to shore. Halfway there, he saw the battleship's power launch, the two sailors still in it, skidding back toward the battleship, their search abandoned.
Remo shook a chill from his shoulders. So Lithia Forrester had set him up. That was one he owed her, he thought.
Behind him, the powerful engines of the Alabama were running strongly now. What was that all about, Remo wondered as he eased himself into the dock. Was the ship going someplace? Was the song that Crust had been humming about to trigger another act of death and destruction?
CHAPTER TWENTY
The sun had already risen over the Island of Manhattan, illuminating the day's supply of air pollution, when the battleship Alabama came lumbering in from the Atlantic toward New York Bay.
Outside the control room, the helmsman was trying to explain something to the Officer of the Watch.
"I think there's something wrong with him, sir."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, before he chased me out, sir, he was humming all the time."
"Humming?"
"Yes sir."
"What is wrong with humming if the admiral wants to hum?"
"Nothing, sir. But that's not all, sir."
"Oh?"
"I don't know how to say this, sir."
"Well, just say it, man."
"The admiral was… well, sir, he was playing with himself."
"What?"
"Playing with himself, sir. You know what I mean."
"You'd better go below, sailor, and check into sick bay," the first officer said. As the sailor walked slowly away, the first officer scratched his head.
Admiral James Benton Crust had indeed been playing with himself. But he had stopped now. He had decided he would rather hum. So he hummed. Sometimes, for a change of pace, he whistled…
And every so often, just so those lazy fakers who didn't really belong in this man's navy wouldn't forget, he called down to the engine room for "More Power. Full Speed Ahead." Which was odd, since the ship had been at full power since leaving Washington.
Admiral Crust looked around the room, humming, soaking up the feel and tradition of its highly polished wood. The Navy could be a life for a man, if the man were big enough for the Navy. Admiral Crust—master seaman., master diplomat, master lover—was big enough for anything.
Onward, he steamed. To his left, he saw the Kill Van Kull and beyond that, the smoky air hovering over Bayonne's oil refineries. To his right was Brooklyn.
Up ahead loomed Manhattan. The Battery. Its beautiful skyline, beautiful not because of its beauty but because of its magnitude. And up ahead, slightly port of the ship, Liberty Island. The Statue of Liberty held her torch high in the air, her copper plates greened with corrosion, her smile benign, as she looked down upon her nation. Behind her back lurked Jersey City, doing all those things that the Statue of Liberty was better off not knowing about.
Admiral Crust picked up the horn again. "More power," he shouted. "You bilge rats produce some power. This is the Navy, man, not an excursion boat. More power."
Down below, in the bowels of the ship, the technicians, who monitored the power plants of a ship of the modem Navy, looked at each other in confusion. "He must think we still have people down here shovelling coal," one said. "Wonder where we are?"
"I don't know," a lieutenant senior grade answered. "But at this speed, we're going to get wherever we're going in a pretty big damn hurry."
Alone in the control room, Admiral James Benton Crust slowly turned the wheel to the left. Gradually, the big ship began to come about toward the port side, veering left, pulling out of its own channel and crossing over the southbound channel. He straightened the wheel. The ship was now on course.
Admiral Crust continued to hum as his big ship steamed ahead toward Liberty Island. The feeling of movement in the sheltered bay was so slight it seemed as if the Statue of Liberty itself were floating on top of the water, racing forward towards his ship.
The thousands of yards separating them quickly turned into hundreds of yards. Crust kept humming. Now he began to jump up and down on the floor of the control room, slapping his hands against his thighs.
"More power," he screamed into the horn. The ship was racing now. The sailboat "Lie-By" capsized in its trail. Two city councilmen out for a ride in a canoe were overturned. An excursion boat headed for the Statute of Liberty saw the battleship Alabama bearing down on it. Wisely, the skipper goosed his boat and narrowly got out of the path of the great warship, although two passengers fell overboard in the rocking turbulence that followed the Alabama through the water. Overhead, Navy planes that had monitored the cruise of the Alabama ever since it had taken off without orders, and all through the night as it refused to respond to radio messages, excitedly relayed reports to a nearby Naval air station.
Two hundred yards now and closing fast. Then the heavy battleship crossed out of the continually-dredged deepwater channels and its prow began to bite into the mud at the bottom of the bay. But its force and impetus kept it moving forward and the motors continued to scream. Now mud was enveloping the propellers and the ship was no longer cruising, it was sliding, still at full speed, but then it began to slow down as its sharp-edged prow bit more deeply into the mud, but it kept coming and then it crashed into a stone pier, shearing it off from the body of the island like a pat of butter sliced off a warm quarter-pound stick. The ship buckled up against the compacted garbage base of the island—bit its way in, ten, fifteen, then twenty feet, and then stopped, the motors still roaring through the mud, but without effect now.