“I looked at the maps, sir,” the younger man explained with a shrug. “Obviously, I’ve never walked the ground but what you said about this site, that’s God’s truth. They shouldn’t have put an aerodrome here. One big flash flood and the runoff water will cut a new arroyo straight across the field.”
The older man nodded, mildly amused.
“Do you ride, son?”
“No, sir. I’m a city boy, I guess…”
“I’ll get Connie to put you on a good horse. Her and Julio can take you up to Indian Heights. You can take a look around and report back to me. I think the place will make a good airfield; you tell me if I’m wrong.”
“Yes, sir,” Bill Fielding muttered with no little trepidation. A year ago, he had been a dead man walking, waiting for the day they put the noose around his neck. Now he was…
What am I?
I am the guy the general wants to survey ground for a new air base.
Life was full of surprises…
“Do you think Command will reinforce us, sir?” Greg Torrance asked, respectfully.
“Maybe. That rather depends on whether the high command keeps on sending us people like Chinese Forsyth, who’d rather fly off on ‘fact-finding’ jollies than actually sit down and make the hard decisions.”
George Washington sighed wearily, rubbed his jaw with the back of his right hand.
“The fact of the matter is that we’re an awful long way from the real fighting up here. I confess, this talk about scorched earth and trading territory for time would actually make sense if that had been the plan from day one; right now, it’s irresponsible, negligent because we aren’t actually using the time and space it might gain us. The only reason to waste the country as you retreat is to starve and diminish the enemy ahead of a counter attack. I don’t see anybody preparing to counter attack; all we’re doing is giving Santa Anna a free ride all the way to the Red River country when we ought to be bleeding him white. The longer we let the Mexicans call the tune the harder it will be to throw them out. Once there are Spanish troops and land cruisers on the west bank of the Red River, and their scouts and raiders are poking around in the bayous beyond it, we’re in big trouble.”
The younger men were dismissed.
At a few minutes after one that afternoon Greg Torrance coaxed his hastily repaired Fleabag off the ground and set course, very slowly – nothing happened fast in a Fleabag – to the south west.
He had been tempted to ask Washington who exactly, was actually in command down in the Delta; deciding against it because he suspected that he probably did not want to know the answer.
Chapter 30
Sunday 7th May
Imperial Concession, Guaynabo, San Juan, Santo Domingo
Commander Peter Cowdrey-Singh had talked with his men earlier that morning, establishing that he and his fellow survivors of the Achilles were of the same mind. There were still three of their number incapacitated in the Concession infirmary – they would have to be carried by their comrades – but every man was behind him. This, despite the fact he had told them he rated their chances of ‘pulling it off’, escaping, as one in ten.
If they were very lucky!
When it got dark, they would melt into the jungle and make their way down the banks of the Rio Hondo to the coast, seize a boat and probably… all get killed.
However, anything was better than waiting to be gutted by the Inquisition.
It was a counsel of despair; of the last glint of hope.
Then, a little before mid-day, Angela von Schaffhausen had walked into the camp and asked to speak to the Achilles’s former Executive Officer. The German Minister’s wife was well-liked by the Royal Navy contingent who knew that she worked tirelessly in the hospital and had been extremely solicitous about their wounded friends’ wellbeing and their own living conditions. She was also chatty, maternal, with a wicked laugh no matelot could resist.
‘Might I speak with you, Commander?’ She had inquired.
Outside the barracks she had got straight to the point.
‘Claude Wallendorf is being a perfect idiot. He refuses to discuss re-claiming the Emden. He says his honour has been impugned.’
‘I speak as I find, Frau von Schaffhausen.’
‘That’s all very well, Commander. You are right, and Claude is wrong. I know that, you know that and secretly, so does my dear husband. The problem is that unless we do something to save ourselves, we’ll all get roasted over an open fire or crucified sometime in the next few days because of two otherwise highly intelligent and able officers’ stupid pride!’
Put that way Peter Cowdrey-Singh had blown hot and cold for some seconds; and asked the obvious question.
‘Okay… So, you honestly think that’s all that’s standing in our way?’
‘I don’t know. My husband suspects that Claude is still deeply affected by the death of Kapitan Weitzman, who was his commanding officer some years ago, I believe. And of course, he has just had to hand his ship – the love of his life – over to those… barbarians!’
Peter Cowdrey-Singh had experienced a moment of burning, irreconcilable loss as he thought of Captain Jackson, the finest man he had ever served with, who had gone down with his ship in the Windward Passage.
‘I’ll speak with Kapitan-sur-Zee Wallendorf.’
He had not beaten about the bush.
‘Forgive me, sir,’ he had begun, without ado. ‘Earlier, my language to you was intemperate. I confess I am still not myself; one cannot be after losing so many of one’s shipmates and friends so recently. I apologise unreservedly to you and hope that you will do me the honour of shaking my hand.’
To his own surprise the Royal Navy man had meant it, and after a short delay, the former commanding officer of the Emden had nodded curtly, and taken his hand.
Now, as the tropical dusk closed in over the bay with a rush, the two naval officers studied the activity on the dock and the cruiser’s deck from the German Minister’s balcony.
In truth, they and their spies on the dockside had observed very little ‘activity’ that could reasonably be described as ‘purposeful’, that afternoon.
The Dominicans had succeeded in getting at least one boiler lit, a plume of grey smoke – sometimes clear, and at others far too dark for any self-respecting engineer in either the Royal Navy or the Kaiserliche Marine, or his commanding officer, to tolerate – spewed from the cruiser’s funnel.
Much of the time the two gangways, at bow and stern, were unattended and there was still a large amount of equipment, and boxes of all sizes, haphazardly strewn along the quay. Ahead of the cruiser, the Weser seemed to be listing slightly to port, away from the dock; but nobody on board seemed to care. Meanwhile, out in San Juan Bay the ironclad cruiser San Miguel had dragged her forward anchor and nobody had bothered to do anything about it. This meant that presently, the ancient ship’s bow was at an angle of about forty degrees to the Weser and because of the movement, at the nearest point, only some fifty yards distant from her stern.
It was all very sloppy, more than a little offensive to both men’s professional pride. As darkness fell a large number of men streamed off the Emden and began to wander, in gangs to the south and the nearest exit from the Concession, possibly, decamping to return to their barracks or homes ashore for the night.
“There can’t be more than a hundred or so men left on board her?” Peter Cowdrey-Singh suggested to Claude Wallendorf.
“Maybe less,” the German agreed thoughtfully. “Although, my people tell me that several dozen civilians crept onto the ship last night…”