“Yes, sir,” Brearley said, the only thing he could say under the circumstances. After a few seconds, he went on, “It’s a shame the USA pushed down so far toward Hampton Roads.”
“You’re right about that,” Kimball said. “If we were holding onto both sides of the mouth of the Bay as tight as we ought to…Things’d look a lot better if that was so, I tell you.”
There were, at the moment, any number of ways in which the war could have looked better from the Confederate point of view. Kimball wasted little time worrying about them. They’d given him the job of penetrating as far up the Chesapeake Bay as he could and doing as much damage as he could once he got there, and he aimed to follow his orders to the letter.
Softly, under his breath, he let out a snort. “As if they’d hand this assignment to Ralph Briggs.”
“Sir?” his executive officer said.
“Never mind, Tom,” Kimball answered. “Woolgathering, that’s all. And maybe there’s more to old Ralph than I give him credit for, anyway.”
He’d never expected to see Briggs back in the CSA till the war ended, not when he’d had his submersible torpedoed out from under him and been fished out of the drink by the damnyankees who did him in. But Briggs had managed to break out of the prisoner-of-war camp where they’d stowed him and to make it through enemy lines (or rather, to make it through some country so broken, it had no real front line) and back into Confederate territory. If he could run a submarine as well as he’d run his own escape, he might yet make a captain to be reckoned with.
Tom Brearley coughed, calling Kimball’s attention back to the here-and-now. “Sir, we’re passing between Smith Island and Crisfield.”
“Thank you, Tom,” Kimball said. “I guess we’ll have to start paying attention, then, won’t we?” Even in the midnight darkness, his grin and Brearley’s answering one were broad and white.
The USA had run steel-mesh nets from Point Lookout on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay over to Smith Island, and then again from the island to Crisfield on the Bay’s eastern shore, precisely to keep Confederate raiders like the Bonefish from coming up and making nuisances of themselves in the Bay’s upper reaches. They backed up the nets with minefields and patrol boats.
From everything the Confederacy had been able to learn, though, the damnyankees had concentrated their efforts on the wider stretch of water west of Smith Island. Their ruling assumption seemed to have been that nobody was crazy enough to try to run a boat through Tangier Sound. Up at the northern end of the sound, only a mile or two of water separated the mainland from Bloodsworth Island. The nets would tangle a submersible that dove, and the guns would put paid to one that didn’t.
Kimball whistled tunelessly between his teeth. “Do I look like a crazy man to you, Tom?” he asked.
“No more so than usual-sir,” Brearley answered, which made Kimball laugh out loud.
“Best way to run through the nets,” he said, “is to take ’em on the surface and slide through halfway between two buoys.” He peered through his clandestinely imported German binoculars, trying to spot the buoys to which the nets were attached, and laughed again. “This is a trick we’ve learned from the Huns, mind: it’s how they slip through the English obstacles in the Channel.”
Brearley didn’t have binoculars, but he did have sharp eyes. “There, sir!” He pointed ahead and to starboard. Sure enough, a buoy bobbed there in the light chop.
Kimball swept the binoculars to port till he found the next buoy supporting the net. He grunted in satisfaction. “Won’t even have to change course,” he said, and then called down the hatch: “All ahead full!”
“All ahead full-aye aye, sir!” The diesels that powered the Bonefish roared as the submarine sped up. Kimball hoped they didn’t roar so loud as to draw the attention of guns and searchlights on the shore or on Smith Island. His lips pulled back from his teeth. Maybe the Yanks weren’t so far wrong when they figured only a crazy man would try Tangier Sound.
“Through!” Brearley said, his voice rising in triumph. Kim-ball felt triumphant himself, with one set of buoys behind him.
At his order, the diesels throttled back. Now that he was in the Sound, the trick, he figured, was to act as if he owned the place. “All right, we’ve got the minefield coming up next,” he said. “We have to steer along the chain of islands here, right close to shore. We’ll be in good shape then.”
If the damnyankees hadn’t done any minelaying since the CSA got their latest reports, and if no mines had come loose and drifted into her path, the Bonefish would be in good shape. Kim-ball had to take the channel slowly, though, to give himself the chance to stop and withdraw if he or a sailor at the bow spotted a spiked sphere bobbing in the sea. That meant the submersible hadn’t passed the Bloodsworth Island gap by dawn.
“Shall we dive, sir, and spend the day on the bottom?” Brearley asked. “That won’t be much fun, but-”
“We’ll do nothing of the sort,” Kimball declared. “I want you to take down the naval ensign, Mr. Brearley, and go to the flag locker for-”
“A U.S. flag, sir?” the exec said in some alarm. “Going under false colors is-”
“Technically legal, if we run up the true ones before we start to fight,” Kimball said. “But that’s not what I want, Mr. Brearley. I want you to replace the naval ensign with the national flag. And then I intend to go through the channel as if I had every right to do so. I’ll bet you a Stonewall the damnyankees see what they expect to see, not one thing more.”
He wasn’t betting a five-dollar Confederate goldpiece. He was betting his life and the lives of the boat’s complement. But Tom Brearley, once he got the idea, didn’t argue any more. Down came the naval ensign, which, like the Confederate battle flag on land, displayed St. Andrew’s cross in blue on red. Both looked as they did for the same reason: the CSA’s Stars and Bars too closely resembled the USA’s Stars and Stripes for them to be readily distinguished at any distance. Normally, that confusion was dangerous. Every once in a while, it could be exploited.
Flying the Stars and Bars, the Bonefish made for the narrow passage between Bloodsworth Island and Maryland’s eastern mainland. Kimball made no effort to avoid being seen. On the contrary. He sailed along as if he had every right in the world to be where he was. Field glasses were surely trained on him from the land. Guns could have been, at a moment’s notice.
No one fired. He crossed the net as he had the one before, but with even greater panache. “This is astonishing, sir,” Tom Brearley breathed.
Kimball shrugged. “They see a submersible out in the open. They look at the flag. They see red, white, and blue. Nobody’d be stupid enough to do what we’re doing. And so-”
He looked north, toward the mainland. He saw a few gun positions, close by the shore, and there were surely others he didn’t see farther inland, ones mounting bigger guns. The horizon dipped and swooped as he swung the field glasses around to examine Bloodsworth Island. The day was rapidly lightening. He could see men in white U.S. uniforms close by the edge of the sea. He waved in their direction. One of them was peering at him with field glasses, too. The fellow waved back.
“You know what it’s like?” Kimball said, chuckling. “It’s like seducing a woman.” He thought of Anne Colleton; for a moment, warmth tingled through his loins. Then he returned to the subject at hand: “You let her see that there’s any doubt in your mind about what you’re going to do, all that happens is, you get your face slapped for your trouble. But if she’s sure you’re sure, hell, her corset’s off and her legs are open before she worries about whether it’s right or wrong or purple.”