“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’sbow 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 Sawyerintends 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 Pathfinderturn 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.”
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 Pathfinderrained 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.”