Only two hundred yards separated the vessels when Laroche raised his sword again. “Firing rank, take aim. Okay, boys, give ‘em hell. Fire!”
The front of the steamboat exploded in a tremendous torrent of fire and smoke. The towboat was raked with a seemingly solid wall of minie bullets. The effect was devastating. Glass dissolved in every port and window, paint chips flew off the bulkheads and bodies began falling, deluging the decks with blood.
Before Lee Tong’s gunners could recover, Pitt stitched the towboat from bow to stern with a steady stream of fire from the Thompson. Giordino hunched against the cotton barricade, waiting for the range to close to fire the revolver, watching in rapt interest as the second and third ranks ran through the dozen cumbersome procedures of rearming a muzzle-loading musket.
The Confederates laid down a killing fire. Volley after volley followed in succession, almost every other shot striking flesh and bone. The smoke and shattering sounds were punctuated by the cries of the wounded. Laroche, swept away by the carnage and commotion, thundered and swore at the top of his lungs, prodding his sharpshooters to aim true, exhorting the loaders to move more rapidly.
One minute passed, two, then three, as the fighting reached a savage pitch. Fire broke out on the Jacksonand flames soared up her wooden sides. In the pilothouse, Captain Belcheron yanked on the whistle cord and shouted into the voice tube leading to McGeen in the engine area. The riflemen ceased their fire and everyone braced themselves for the approaching collision.
A strange, unearthly silence fell over the steamboat as the crack of the guns faded and the haunting wail of the calliope died away. She was like a boxer who had taken a fearful beating from a far stronger adversary and could take no more, but had somehow reached deep into her exhausted reserves for one last knockout punch.
She struck the towboat square amidships with a rumbling crunch that knocked over the cotton-bale barricade, crushing back her bow by six feet as planks and beams gave way like laths. Both stacks fell forward, throwing sparks and smoke over the battle that rapidly resumed its intensity. Guns fired at point-blank range. The support ropes burned through and the landing stages dropped onto the towboat’s decks like great claws gripping the two vessels fast together.
“Fix bayonets!” Laroche boomed.
Someone broke out the regiment’s battle flag and began waving it wildly in the air. Muskets were reloaded and bayonets attached. The calliope player had returned to his post and was pounding out “Dixie” once again. Pitt was amazed that no one showed any sign of fear. Instead, there was a general feeling of uncontrolled delirium. He couldn’t help thinking he’d somehow crossed a time barrier into the past.
Laroche whipped off his officer’s hat, hung it on the tip of his sword and raised it into the air. “Sixth Louisiana!” he cried. “Go git ‘em!”
Screaming the rebel yell like demons emerging from the center of the earth, the men in gray stormed on board the towboat. Laroche was struck in the chin and one knee, but hobbled and pressed on. Pitt laid down a covering fire until the last cartridge poured from the Thompson. Then he laid the gun on a cotton bale and charged after Giordino, who hopped across a landing stage, favoring his injured leg and firing the revolver like a wild man. McGeen and his boiler crew followed, wielding their shovels like clubs.
Bougainville’s men bore no resemblance to their attackers. They were hired killers, ruthless men who offered no mercy nor expected it, but they were not prepared for the incredible onslaught of the Southerners and made the mistake of leaping from the protected steel bulkheads and meeting the surge head-on.
The Stonewall Jacksonwas wreathed in fire. The artillery men fired one last volley at the towboat, aiming forward of the men fighting amidships, their shot sweeping away the cables attached to the barge. Shoved sideways by the continued momentum of the steamboat, the two steel vessels jackknifed around her crushed bow.
The Sixth Louisiana overran the decks, lunging with their bayonets, but keeping up a deadly rate of fire. There were a score of individual hand-to-hand struggles, the five-foot Springfield musket and two-foot bayonet making a nasty close-in weapon. None of the weekend soldiers paused; they fought with a strange kind of recklessness, too caught up in the unimaginable din and excitement to be afraid.
Giordino didn’t feel the blow. He was steadily advancing into the crew’s quarters, firing at any Oriental face that showed itself when suddenly he was flat on his face, a bullet breaking the calf bone of his good leg.
Pitt lifted Giordino under the arms and dragged him into an empty passageway. “You’re not armor-plated, you know.”
“Where in hell have you been?” Giordino’s voice tensed as the pain increased.
“Staying out of the way,” Pitt replied. “I’m not armed.”
Giordino handed him the Le Mat revolver. “Take this. I’m through for the day anyway.”
Pitt gave his friend a half-smile. “Sorry to leave you, but I’ve got to get inside the barge.”
Giordino opened his mouth to make an offhand reply, but Pitt was already gone. Ten seconds and he was snaking through the debris on the towboat’s bow. He was almost too late. A head and pair of shoulders raised from a hatch and fired off a burst. Pitt felt the passing bullets fan his hair and cheek. He dropped to the railing and rolled over the side into the sea.
Further aft, the Bougainville crew grimly hung on, obstinately giving way until they were finally overwhelmed by gray uniforms. The shouting and the gunfire slackened and went silent. The Confederate battle flag was run up the towboat’s radio mast and the fight was over.
The amateur soldiers of the Sixth Louisiana Regiment had handled themselves well. Surprisingly, none had been killed in the melee. Eighteen were wounded, only two seriously. Laroche staggered from the midst of his cheering men and sagged to the deck beside Giordino. He reached over and the two bleeding men solemnly shook hands.
“Congratulations, Major,” Giordino said. “You just made the playoffs.”
A big grin spread across Laroche’s bloodied face. “By God, we whipped ‘em good, didn’t we?”
Lee Tong emptied his weapon at the figure on the bow of the towboat, observing it fall into the water. Then he slumped against the edge of the hatch and watched the Confederate battle flag flutter in the gulf breeze.
With a kind of detachment, he accepted the unexpected disaster which had overtaken his carefully conceived operation. His crew was either dead or prisoner, and his escape ship was destroyed. Yet he was not ready to oblige his unknown opponents by surrendering. He was determined to carry out his grandmother’s bargain with Moran and take his chances on escaping later.
He dropped down the side ladder of the elevator shaft into the laboratory quarters and ran along the main corridor until he came to the door of the chamber that held the isolation cocoons. He entered and peered through the insulated plastic lid at the body within the first one. Vince Margolin stared back, his body too numb to respond, his mind too drugged to comprehend.
Lee Tong moved to the next cocoon and looked down at the serene, sleeping face of Loren Smith. She was heavily sedated and in a deep state of unconsciousness. Her death would be a waste, he thought. But she could not be allowed to live and testify. He leaned over and opened the cover and stroked her hair, staring at her through half-open eyes.
He had killed countless men, their features forgotten less than seconds after their death. But the faces of the women lingered. He remembered the first, so many years ago on a tramp steamer in the middle of the Pacific Ocean: her haunting expression of bewilderment as her chained nude body was dropped over the side.
“Nice place you have here,” came a voice from the doorway, “but your elevator is out of order.”
Lee Tong spun around and gaped at the man who stood wet and dripping, pointing a strange antique revolver at his chest.
“You!” he gasped.
Pitt’s face — tired, haggard and dark with beard stubble — lit up in a smile. “Lee Tong Bougainville. What a coincidence.”