by David Weber
He shook his head, his eyes sad.
"You may not believe this, but in some ways, those were the best months of my life. I didn't like combat. Some people actually do, you know. I wasn't one of them. But whether I liked it or not, I was good at it. I was . . . effective. And my people and I were . . . Well, 'family,' I guess."
He swiveled his eyes back to Mike, almost defiantly, as if he expected the other man to laugh at him. But Mike only sat there, waiting, and Simpson looked away once more, gazing back into the distance across the vista of vanished years.
"And then, one day, I found out it doesn't always matter whether or not you're good. I never did find out whether it was a communications screw-up, or an intelligence failure, or just plain stupidity, but we were ordered to move in to cover what was supposed to be the extraction of a battalion of ARVN paratroopers . . . and found out it was a battalion of North Viet regulars, instead.
"They blew the crap out of us. I lost three boats, almost a third of my people, and my right foot."
Despite himself, Mike stiffened in surprise, and Simpson chuckled mirthlessly.
"Oh, yes. I do so well with my prosthesis that no one ever guesses, but it's nylon from right about here." He leaned over and rapped his right calf just above the ankle. The sound was surprisingly loud and hollow.
"That was the end of my Vietnam tour," he went on after a moment. "Almost the end of my career, for that matter. They wanted to give me a medical retirement. Seemed surprised when I turned it down, actually. But the loss of the foot, coupled with the McNamara build-down and the general reductions in manpower after Vietnam, changed my plans. I went into engineering, instead, which is what led me to the Pentagon. And you know what? I was good at that, too. Very good. Had a promising future.
"And then, just about the time I was put on the captain's list, my older brother was killed in a plane accident. Thomas was the one who'd been going to take over from my father. That was why I'd been free to be the one to pursue a Navy career. But now Thomas was gone, and I didn't have any other brothers, which made me the only choice to manage the family business interests. So I resigned my commission, went home to Pittsburgh, and took over when my father retired."
He was silent for two or three endless minutes, then shrugged.
"Sometimes," he said softly, "I think that's where Tom and I first got into trouble. I was so pissed off with him because he didn't want the Navy or the business. He wanted to play football, from the time he was just a kid, and I never understood. Mary did. Or, at least, I think she came closer to understanding than I did. And probably it was my fault. I was never very good at putting things into words to begin with, and I never really talked to Tom. I talked at him. I told him what I expected him to do, but I never got around to explaining why I wanted him to do it. Just like I never told him about my own Navy career, or even exactly how I came to lose my foot. I wanted . . . I wanted him to be like me. To realize that sometimes you have to give up a dream because you have responsibilities. To recognize how 'silly' it was to be so focused on playing a stupid game instead of preparing himself for his 'real' career. And I was so busy wanting him to do those things that I never quite got around to recognizing the sheer determination and discipline he was showing in pursuit of what he wanted to do with his life."
He was silent again, still gazing frowningly into the past. Then he inhaled sharply and gave himself a vigorous shake.
"Anyway," he said briskly, "that's the deep, dark secret of my naval past."
He smiled tightly, a man uncomfortable with confidences settling back into his familiar armor, and Mike nodded in acceptance. He wondered how much of Simpson's willingness to reveal his past stemmed from Mike's own effort to help him find reconciliation with his son. A lot of it, he suspected. But not all. Perhaps not even the majority of it. No, the real source, Mike thought, was the two youthful lieutenants at Wismar. Lieutenants even younger than he had been on a muddy, bloodsoaked river three and a half decades before.
Lieutenants who, in many ways, had become almost replacements for the son from whom he had estranged himself so thoroughly.
Chapter 42
"Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time," muttered Jeff, peering forward from the bow of the fishing boat, desperately trying to see anything in the darkness through moisture-beaded glasses. "The damn rain doesn't help things any."
"It is a good idea," hissed Jimmy, crouched next to him. "You watch and see." Judging from the tone of his voice, Jeff's friend wasn't any too certain about the proposition himself.
Still, Jimmy—like any proper mountain boy having steeled himself for folly—pressed on, bound and determined to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. "Besides, the rain's working for us. If we can't see the Spaniards, they can't see us either. And you can bet your sweet ass any Spanish sentry standing on a deck is going to be spending most of his time trying to keep from getting soaking wet."
Insistently: "It is a good idea."
"That's what you said that time we snuck into Mr. Ferrara's lab and swiped—"
"That was your idea too," protested Jimmy.
"I know it was," grumbled Jeff, feeling another cold trickle of rain water starting down his back. "Just like this harebrained scheme was my idea. But what's the point of having friends if they don't restrain you? You're as bad as Eddie and Larry, when it comes to that."
Jimmy eyed him for a moment. Then, smirking. "Well, yeah. But look at the bright side. The most harebrained idea you ever came up with in your life was proposing to Gretchen on the same day you met her. Ha! Had to use a dictionary to do it. And we didn't restrain you then, either. In fact, we were the only ones backing you up, right at first."
That was true enough, of course. But, at the moment, Jeff didn't appreciate being reminded of Gretchen. Gretchen, and her warm and luscious body. Gretchen's smile in the morning—even better, late at night. Gretchen, when—
He yanked the thoughts away. Gretchen was back there, standing on the wharf and staring into darkness. He was here, in the bow of a thirty-foot fishing boat. And if he couldn't see any Spanish ship in that darkness, he could see the pitch-covered cask full of gunpowder sticking a few feet beyond the bow of the boat.
Spar torpedo, he thought sourly. Seems nifty as hell, reading about it in a book. Seemed nifty as hell, too, when we convinced a buncha crazy CoC volunteers to go in with us on the scheme. Now . . .
"Reminds me of that wisecrack I read once. Remember, Jimmy? You and me both thought it was funny. At the time."
A frown came over Jimmy's face. At least, Jeff thought it was a frown. It was hard to tell, between the darkness, the falling rain—not to mention the rain on his glasses—and the shapeless hat Jimmy was wearing. But he knew Jimmy well enough to guess that he was seeing a frown of puzzlement. Jimmy was a smart enough kid, but . . . not fast-thinking. Nothing at all like Eddie Cantrell, that way. Jimmy could and would slowly chew his way through to a problem's right answer, but he always took some time getting there.
"What are you talking about?"
Jeff's lips quirked. "That quote I showed you once. 'Adventure is somebody else having a miserable time someplace far away.' "
"Oh. That one. Yeah." He chuckled. "There was some British actor once—maybe Paul Newman—said kinda the same thing. His idea of adventure was carrying a mug of beer from one smoke-filled room to another."
Jeff rolled his eyes. "Paul Newman's not English. He's American. Why do you always think every classy old actor is English?"
" 'Cause most of 'em are," came the confident reply. "Take a look at Cary Grant. Or Katherine Hepburn. Get past Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Cagney, that's about it. Well . . . I'm not sure about that Olivier guy. His accent's a little much. I think he might have been faking it. Probably came from someplace in Kansas."
Jeff closed his eyes tightly. Partly to shelter them from the rain, which had suddenly turned into a driving, almost-horizontal sheet. Mostly to dispel the pain.
"There are so m
any errors in what you just said it makes my head hurt. Besides, I think it was Peter O'Toole who made the wisecrack about the smoke-filled rooms. And if I remember right, it was 'a pint of bitters,' not a mug of beer."
"Um. Yeah, that makes sense. I figure that's why he stuck with Elizabeth Taylor so long. Sure, she's too hefty, but she's English like he is. Or maybe they're Welsh."
Jeff stifled a groan. He started to snarl something, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned his head and saw one of the fishermen who'd agreed to accompany them on this harebrained scheme.
"Push it now, ha?" the man asked, nervously. He gestured toward the torpedo.
Jeff didn't blame him for being nervous. A hundred pounds of black powder perched just a few feet away would make anybody nervous. The fact that the bomb was designed to be set off by a weird American triggering device was guaranteed to make any Dutchman twice as nervous.
That's just 'cause he doesn't understand how it works. I do—which is why I'm twice as nervous as he is.
He felt a powerful urge himself to order the spar holding the torpedo to be run out to its maximum extension. But he restrained it. That extra few feet of distance wouldn't really help that much, in the event of an accidental explosion. Not Jeff and Jimmy, anyway, right in the bow of the boat. And lowering it into the water now, when they had no idea where their target was, would just be foolish.
He shook his head firmly. "Must wait until—" He groped for the words for diversionary attack for a moment. Not long, though. The sophisticated terminology was hopelessly beyond the rudimentary Dutch-German pidgin he was speaking.
"Other sailors," he managed, pointing off somewhere into the darkness to port. "Must wait them."
The Dutch sailor grimaced, but didn't press the point. Instead, he scurried back to the men laboring at the oars. Jeff suspected he'd been sent forward as their emissary. The crew manning the boat was a volunteer force, patched together from a few fishermen, seething at the destruction of their livelihood, and the boldest of the city's apprentices who'd joined the Committee of Correspondence Gretchen had set up in Amsterdam over the past two weeks.
"And that's another thing," Jeff muttered, dragging off his glasses and drying them—well, smearing the water into fresh patterns, anyway—before he jammed them back onto his nose. "In the history books, at least the screwballs pulling off this stunt all spoke the same language."
Jimmy combined a shrug with a shiver. The rain was cold. Naturally.
"What we got. They volunteered. More than you can say for those civic militia assholes."
Jeff didn't say anything. In truth, Jimmy's sour characterization of the civic militia wasn't really fair. Not, at least, as applied to the soldiers themselves. The problem was that the militia's officers were drawn mostly from the city's burghers and master craftsmen. And, like most such, were not inclined toward approving harebrained schemes.
Which is probably why they managed to get rich in the first place. No fools, they.
The only official authority Jeff had managed to convince to come in on the project was two captains of the Dutch navy. What was left of the navy, that is. In their case, both were not even regular officers. Their ships were armed merchantmen, some of the few which had managed to escape the destruction at Dunkirk. Truth to tell, Jeff didn't much like either one of them. Angry men—even nasty, he suspected. But, under the circumstances, their choleric temperaments had been turned toward the Spaniards. Which was good enough for the purpose.
Suddenly, to port, he saw flashes of light that splintered in the droplets on his glasses. They were followed, moments later, by the rolling sound of cannon fire. The sound was muted, partly by the rain and partly by the fact that the cannons involved weren't any larger than nine-pounders. But it was all Jeff needed.
The Spanish fleet in the Zuider Zee was anchored just far enough from Amsterdam to be out of range of the city's heavy artillery, but close enough to blockade the port. Under those circumstances, they were bound to be on guard against a cutting-out expedition. Judging from what he'd seen since the fleet arrived, the Spaniards would have four launches out on patrol, serving as a picket line.
That was the job of the two little Dutch warships. Just get in range and fire off a few broadsides, then scamper—hopefully—out of harm's way. But drawing off the picket boats—or at least directing their attention elsewhere—while the real strike went in.
The "real strike." Yeah, right. The harebrained scheme, cooked up by two American kids out of some books they read on the Civil War.
But he didn't have time to dwell on the sarcastic thought. Jimmy was urgently squeezing his arm and giving it a little shake.
"Look! D'you see it?"
Jeff squinted along the line of Jimmy's pointing finger. His friend had better eyesight than he did, even with his glasses on. Leaving aside the fact that Jeff's glasses were covered with rain water.
He saw nothing. Then . . . It was just a thicker darkness, at first. But, much faster than he would have expected, the darkness congealed into a shape.
"That's it, all right. A Spanish galleon, sure as shit. Good-sized one, too. Okay, Jimmy, we're on. Get the guys up here."
Jimmy motioned urgently. Four of the men left off rowing on the oars and hurried forward. Moving quickly but carefully, they slipped the heavy spar holding the torpedo forward until it had reached maximum extension. Behind them, the men remaining at the oars threw their backs into it. Again, moving a bit slowly—even with muffled oars, no one wanted any noise—but digging into the pulls with as much power as they could muster. The fishing boat began to surge forward.
Jimmy watched Jeff, waiting for the signal. Jeff was studying the distance to the enemy ship, trying to gauge the right point at which to lower the torpedo into the water. Too soon, and the boat's speed would be slowed right when speed was most important. Too late, and the splash might alert whatever sentries were on deck. Really too late, and the whole exercise would be wasted. For the torpedo to work properly, the explosion had to happen underwater.
Part of him, too, was studying himself. All through the night, and the days leading up to this event, Jeff had been . . . wondering. Hoping desperately, really. Hoping that a thing which had happened to him only three times in his life would happen again.
The first time, at the age of sixteen. When, driving his father's car on a two-lane highway through the hills, he'd suddenly seen an oncoming car in his own lane. The stupid idiot had tried to pass a truck on a curve. Jeff had saved his life and his mother's that day, calmly and steadily—not a trace of panic; his nerves like ice—steering his own vehicle onto the shoulder and narrowly missing the head-on collision.
The second time, when he'd come around another curve on his motorcycle and seen Becky Stearns sprawled on the road with Croat cavalrymen about to kill her. Again, without any thought on his part, the ice shield had come down. He'd laid down his bike—almost casually—and slain all of them, never feeling anything at the time beyond calculation.
Later that same day, it had happened again, when other Croat cavalrymen had come smashing into the gym where some of the Americans were fortified. Jeff had killed several of them as coldly as a snake. He'd not even felt anything when he saw Mr. Trout cut down in front of him. Not even, that he could remember, when he himself had been sent to the floor from another saber cut. He could remember being puzzled a little, when he saw the Croat about to kill him have his head split open by a saber in the hands of Gustav Adolf.
That he could handle himself in combat, Jeff knew already. What he didn't know, crouched in the bow of a boat on a dark and rain-swept night, was whether he could do the same thing when the danger did not come upon him by surprise. When, to the contrary, he'd had days to plan for it in advance. Days in which his fear and apprehension could slowly and steadily saturate every nerve in his body.
He was still considering the problem, with a part of his mind, when the other part said—calmly, icily—"Okay, that's it. Now, Jimmy."
/> The torpedo slid into the water. Jeff watched it disappear into the Zuider Zee until he was sure the warhead was positioned the necessary five or six feet below the surface. Then, again speaking calmly and steadily, said: "Get back, Jimmy. I'll take it from here."
Jimmy started to protest, but Jeff shook his head. "Don't be stupid. It only takes one of us to pull the trigger. You got no idea what that spar's going to do. It could sail back right through you like a spear."
The exact same risk was posed for him, of course. But his voice was so steady, so sure, that Jimmy didn't argue the point. He just nodded, whispered a quick "good luck," and scurried back to the oarsmen amidship.
Jeff hunkered himself down in the bow, getting as far away as he could from the spar holding the torpedo while still being able to see what he needed to see. The Spanish warship was very close now, almost looming above him. It was close enough that Jeff could see, even in the darkness, that the torpedo would strike below the turn of the bilge.
Perfect.
Very close, now. Still, no shouted cry of warning. He decided that Jimmy had been right. On this miserable night, Spanish sentries would be trying to get whatever shelter they could from the rain. Those few of them, that is, who weren't at the rail on the other side of the ship watching the fireworks in the distance.
Now, he closed his eyes and ducked his head. There was no doubt at all in his mind that the torpedo would strike. What remained was simply to trigger the bomb at the right instant. For that, eyesight was useless anyway (fortunately, perhaps, given the state of his glasses), so he might as well protect himself as best he could. Besides, the closed eyes would help him concentrate. It was his sense of touch that mattered now—that, and his hearing. His entire mind was focused on that. That little vibration/jolt/noise which would tell him the bomb had finally touched the hull of its target.