From the bridge, Sam Carsten looked at the Josephus Daniels with a kind of fond dismay. They’d done strange things to his ship. Her paint was the wrong shade of gray. Sheet metal changed the outline of the bridge and the gun turrets. Her sailors wore whites of the wrong cut. His own uniform was dark gray, not blue, and so were the rest of the officers’.
By the name painted on both sides of her bow, the Josephus Daniels was the CSS Hot Springs, a Confederate destroyer escort operating in the North Atlantic. The main danger coming south from Boston was that she would run into a U.S. patrol aircraft or submersible and get sunk by her own side. The Confederate naval ensign, a square version of the C.S. battle flag, completed the disguise.
“If they capture us, they’ll shoot us for spies.” Lieutenant Pat Cooley didn’t sound worried. He was almost childishly excited at playing dress-up. The possibility of getting shot hardly seemed real to him.
It didn’t seem real to Sam, either, but for a different reason. “Not a whole lot of POWs off Navy ships,” he said. “If something goes wrong, they’ll just damn well sink us.” That wasn’t romantic. It had no cloak-and-dagger flavor to it. He didn’t care. It was real.
By now, barring bad luck, they were too far south for U.S. airplanes to harry them. Subs were always a risk, but Sam didn’t know what to do about it except monitor the hydrophones as closely as he could. The crew was doing that.
He had the best set of C.S. Navy recognition signals his U.S. Navy superiors could give him. He also had an ace in the hole, a deserter from the CSA named Antonio Jones. Normally, Sam would have been leery about a Confederate traitor. Anybody like that was too likely to be playing a double game. But he-and, again, his superiors-had a good reason for thinking Jones reliable.
The man was black as the ace of spades.
He came from Cuba, the only state in the CSA where Negroes had surnames. He pronounced his “Hone-ace”: he spoke English with an accent half Confederate drawl, half syrupy Cubano Spanish. He hated the homeland he’d left behind, and he burned to go back there. And so here he was, with a disguised destroyer escort for transport…among other things.
“Not the first time I’ve been in the gun-running business,” Carsten remarked.
“No?” the exec said, as he was supposed to.
“Nope. I took rifles into Ireland in the last go-round, just to help keep England busy,” Sam said. “The Irish paid us off in whiskey. Don’t expect that’ll happen in Cuba.”
“No, suh,” Antonio Jones said. He wore a mess steward’s uniform. High cheekbones and a strong nose argued for a little Indian blood in him. “But maybe you get some rum.”
“Oh, I won’t,” Sam said. “That’ll be for the fellows who do the real work. Long as they don’t get drunk and disorderly, I’ll look the other way.”
Pat Cooley raised an eyebrow, but lowered it again in a hurry. A lot of skippers would do the same thing, not just a man who was a mustang. The exec contented himself with saying, “Let’s hope they have the chance to drink it.”
“Not all these little tricks are easy,” Sam said. “We just have to do what we can and hope for the best, same as always.”
They were off the coast of South Carolina when a seaplane of unfamiliar design buzzed out to look them over. The mock Confederate sailors ran to their guns. With luck, that wouldn’t alarm the fliers in the seaplane, which also sported the Confederate battle flag on wings, fuselage, and tail.
After a couple of passes, the seaplane waggled its wings at the pseudo-Hot Springs and flew away. “Let’s just hope it didn’t fly low enough to read our name,” Pat Cooley said.
“I don’t think it did.” Sam hoped he wasn’t whistling in the dark. The people the seaplane wirelessed probably wouldn’t be surprised to find a C.S. destroyer escort in these waters. They probably would be surprised to find the Hot Springs around here. They also probably wouldn’t be very happy. The Josephus Daniels wasn’t fast enough to run away from everything they’d throw at her. She wasn’t armed well enough to fight it off, either. All she could do was go down swinging.
“Y’all are bueno?” Antonio Jones asked.
“Well, I’ll tell you-if we’re not, we’ll know pretty damn quick.” Sam went from the bridge to the wireless shack. “Any Confederate traffic for us or about us?” he asked the men with earphones.
“Nothing for us, sir,” one of the yeomen answered. “If there’s anything about us, it’s not in clear.”
“If it’s in code, chances are we’re shafted,” Sam said. “All right-thanks.” He returned to his station, at least somewhat reassured.
Another seaplane examined them when they neared the southern tip of Florida. They must have passed that inspection, too. If they hadn’t, cruisers and land-based dive bombers would have called on them. As far as Sam knew-as far as anybody in the U.S. Navy knew-the Confederates had no airplane carriers. It made sense that they wouldn’t; they didn’t need that kind of navy. Land-based air and coast-defense ships could keep the United States from mounting major operations against them, and submarines let them strike at the USA from far away.
“You know what our best chance is?” Sam said as the Josephus Daniels neared the northeastern coast of Cuba.
“Sure,” his exec answered. “Our best chance is that the Confederates won’t figure we’re crazy enough to try anything like this in the first place.”
“Just what I was thinking-maybe we ought to get married,” Sam said.
“Sorry, sir. No offense, but you’re not my type,” Cooley answered. They both laughed.
Antonio Jones looked from one of them to the other. “This ain’t funny, amigos,” he said. “What that Featherston bastard is doing to colored people in my estado, it’s a shame and a disgrace. We got to go to the mountains and fight back.”
“Sorry, Mr. Jones.” Sam didn’t think he’d ever called a Negro mister before, but orders were to treat him like a big shot. “We know your people are in trouble. We’re not laughing about that. But my crew is in trouble, too, and it will be till we get back into U.S. waters.” And even after that, he added, but only to himself. “We can laugh about that. We’d go nuts if we didn’t, chances are.”
“Ah. Now I understand.” Jones sketched a salute. “All right, Senor Capitan. We do this, too, against our worries.”
The sun sank into the sea with tropical abruptness. No long, lazy twilights in these latitudes; darkness came on in a hurry. Pat Cooley had the conn as the Josephus Daniels approached the Cuban coast. Sam didn’t want to risk the ship in any way he didn’t have to. What they were doing was already risky enough by the nature of things.
“One patrol boat where it’s not supposed to be could ruin our whole day,” Cooley remarked.
“All the guns are manned, and Y-ranging should let us see him before he sees us,” Sam said. “With luck, we’ll sink him before he gets word off about us.”
Cooley nodded. Sam wondered how much luck they’d already used up when those C.S. seaplanes believed they were what they pretended to be. Did they have enough left? He’d find out before long.
Y-ranging gear also let them spot the Cuban coast. Although it was blacked out, the darkness wasn’t so thorough as it would have been farther north. U.S. bombers weren’t likely to visit here. Eyeing what had to be two fair-sized towns, Sam said, “That’s Guardalavaca to starboard, and that has to be Banes to starboard. We are where we’re supposed to be. Nice navigating, Mr. Cooley.”
“Thank you very much, sir,” the exec said.