Стюарт Стерлинг - Down Among the Dead Men

Koski scanned the clipping as he ate. “Queer.” He read on. “About this sub commander knowing he was on the Mercede.”

“Just a stab in the dark.” There was no conviction in Joslin’s tone.

“Think so? Mention it to you?”

“Yes. Said none of the others in his lifeboat knew who he was. So he kept quiet. But it kind of... worried him.”

“Yair.” The Lieutenant drank his coffee. “Lost a lot of weight in the lifeboat, didn’t he?”

“They all did.” Joslin chewed on his lower lip, scowling. “Merrill looked bad. That’s why I thought...”

Koski set his cup down with a clatter. “You been thinking about it long enough. I’ve been thinking the same thing.” He laid a bill on the table, stood up, reached for his hat. “You going to come across with that alias he used? Or do I get it the hard way—”

“M. Stanley,” Joslin said. “That’s what he told me.”

“His grandfather’s middle name,” Ellen nodded, solemnly. “I hope you’re wrong... about what you’ve been thinking.”

Koski motioned toward the door. “The coop’s outside. You better come along. Both of you.”

They made a silent procession out to the street; there was no conversation in the car on the way to the Basin.

A burly shape in oilskins and sou’wester was huddled over the Vigilant’s transom, tinkering with a loose exhaust pipe. The Sergeant waved a strip of asbestos packing:

“Come on in. The water’s fine. It’s dripping down my back faster than it can run out my shoes.”

“Pity the sailors on a night like this.”

“And pity a poor lug misfortunate enough to be doing repair work on a rust-pot like this when by all rights I should be conducting an intimate affair in a bood-war. Hello... passengers, no less?” He grinned a greeting to the girl, let the grin flatten against his teeth as he recognized Joslin. “If it isn’t the tough turkey. Come aboard, my fine-feathered friend and we will take up where we left off.”

Koski snapped: “Forgetsis, Sarge. Get your mind on the race. We’re rolling down to Rio.”

Mulcahey groaned. “The Gowanus, God forbid?”

“No. Caulk instead of talk. We’re overdue at the Pobrico.”

“In two shakes she will be as good as new. Almost.”

“Have her ready to r’ar, Joe. I’m going inside to get off a message.”

They foamed out into the bay. Joslin crouched on the transom seat at the stern, with an arm around Ellen. Spray burst over the foredeck, showered the cockpit. Koski tossed a tarpaulin back to the two huddled aft. “No law against bundling.” He joined Mulcahey in the pilot-house.

“Any word from the detention ward, Irish?”

“As good as could be expected, coach. Schlauff pulled through the operation. He is on the critical list and will not be able to appreciate the nurses for a couple of days at the very least.” The dark bulk of the Statue of Liberty loomed up on the starboard quarter.

“What about the stenographer?”

“He sticks at the bedside; he is in the operating room; goes into a dead faint when proceedings begin. They resuscitate him and pick up his notebook. But there is practically nothing in it because Schlauff did not utter a peel all the time he is in his deliriums. Except to mumble something which is beside the point.”

“Let’s have it.”

The Sergeant delved in his slicker pocket, pulled out a fragment of damp teletype newsprint. On it were erratic capitals:

M AYBE I HAVE TAKE A XX FEW D”RTY DOLLARS SBUT I WOUDINGT WORK WITXH THAT PA CK OF WOLVXES—

“I have to take it on the typewriter,” Mulcahey apologized, “whilst the officer reads it to me over the telephone. Excuse it, please.” He squinted off to starboard where a deeper blotch of black to the southwest indicated Staten Island.

“How any periscope could be of use on a night like this, I fail to comprehend, skipper. I am doing well to keep off the Bay Ridge shore without the aid of a telescope.”

“You can spot the quarantine anchorage with your naked eye.” Koski leveled a finger a couple of points off the starboard bow. “But the pig-boats don’t depend on vision. Radio locators and sound detectors are their dish in dirty weather.”

“Speakin’ of which, I’m hoping we don’t have to go out past the lightship after your wolf. Them two cuddlers back there will be half drowned.”

Koski touched the aluminum pot over the alcohol flame. The coffee was hot enough; he poured steaming liquid into thick white cups. “First aid to the lovelorn.” He made his way back to the cockpit. “Mug up,” he called above the thunder of the exhaust. “If you’re not frozen stiff.”

Ellen said: “I need that” and “Thanks.”

Joslin muttered: “How about the net at the Narrows?”

“They’ll have it open for us.” Koski ducked a slap of spray that bobbled athwartship, moved forward as the loudspeaker began to croak.

“...St. George base calling Vigilant... come in, Vigilant...”

Mulcahey clicked the “talk” lever:

“Vigilant, here... go ahead, St. George...”

“Position one eight determined... Auxiliary at buoy fifteen main channel... acknowledge...”

Koski put his mouth to the transmitter. “ Vigilant should reach buoy fifteen in about... say ten minutes...”

“Finished ... Wynant ... St. George...”

A lance of light from the shore threw sudden illumination on a red and white striped buoy a hundred yards ahead; was extinguished before the men in the Vigilant’s pilot-house could get more than a brief, photographic impression of the nettug inshore and the control vessel just beyond the net.

The Sergeant throttled down; nosed the patrol-boat past the ominous line of jagged spikes barely showing above the water. “I would sooner go on the rocks with a full gale behind me than try to run over that guard in one of them speed-boat hulls. ’T would rip the bottom out like it was cardboard.”

“The Japanazis can do enough damage offshore without coming in this close, Irish. Check off your channel markers, now.”

They got up to speed again, roared through the night. There was a chop in the lower bay; by the time they made out the gray hull of a converted yawl at Buoy Fifteen, the Vigilant was plunging and bucking in toppling waves.

The yawl slid down Ambrose Channel; the Sergeant cut his speed to remain astern. “I trust our first-cabin passengers do not suffer from the mal de mer , coach.”

“They’ll take some tougher things than a cross-sea before the night’s over.”

Against the tapering tower of the West Bank beacon, they made out a clipper-bowed hull. Koski shone his pocket flashlight on the police flag. The yawl turned back toward the Narrows; the Mohawk glided gracefully out toward sea, with the Vigilant astern.

It was a mile farther before Koski realized they were already catching up to the convoy. The Coast Guard cutter had angled out of the main ship channel. A spot of white ahead became the foam of a propeller wash; the sound of the police-boat’s exhaust echoed back from the high, iron wall of the tanker looming up beside them.

The Santa Pobrico was the second vessel they overtook; her wheel was turning over just enough to give her steerage-way.

The Mohawk disappeared to port behind the dark bulk of the freighter. Koski reached for the megaphone on the binocular shelf. “Give me all the leeway you can, Irish. I’ll be no monkey on a stick, with this rib the way it is.” He clambered up on the forward deck.

He didn’t need the megaphone. A rope ladder was already swaying down.