Nemo dropped his voice. “You don’t understand; you don’t have to.” He took hold of the steering, fit his hand into the speed controls. “Need another communication with Grant or your father?”
Sara looked to the Phono-tele-Photo’s mirrored screen. “No.”
“The coordinates from that fantasy box, they’ll eventually serve a purpose,” Nemo said. “As will you. Take the navigation station, map our course, and open your mind.”
Sara engaged the submarine’s direction trackers, brought out the sextant and charts. Beyond the glass dome, the whale circled away from the bow, and Nemo shifted the direction from the helm, a slight turning toward the animal, before pushing the steering bars forward, and announcing, “Diving, Mr. Jess!”
Jess said, “If you say so, Cap!”
He sounded the bells as the Nautilus broke the waves, bow down, following the churning underwater wake of the Humpback’s enormous tail.
* * *
The Three Draw battleglass telescoped with a sharp snap of Grant’s wrist. Looking across Norfolk Harbor, he focused with the center tube, clarifying the convoy of ships from the South Atlantic Squadron that were a quarter-mile out, the October sun showing up the war sloops and frigates to be as imposing as a steep, dark-shadowed mountain range.
Grant scanned ship after ship, adjusting to the distance and size of each craft, before settling on The Black Heel, a sister to the battle frigate Pawnee. Within moments, he’d sized up her length, beam, and cannons.
“Is it as Nemo claimed?”
Grant said to Duncan, “We’ve a half-dozen vessels, armed and ready, and I’m not spying any saboteurs swimming their edges, planting dynamite.”
“That’s not how my daughter described it.”
“Sara said exactly what Nemo wanted to hear. It’s what I’d do in her place.”
“A bright girl,” Duncan said, wiping the mist from his spectacles.
“And a natural mermaid,” Grant said.
Duncan couldn’t deny it, and laughed like a father.
A Marine Lieutenant by the docks sounded three short bugle blasts, signaling beach skiffs to the convoy. Duncan pushed his bifocals up his nose, to see divers towing the small boats from shore, duffel bags of equipment slung around their shoulders. After the harbor shallows, they leapt aboard, and rowed for the warships.
Duncan said, “Your orders. Thanks, Sam.”
“I won’t be played for a damn fool. This sabotage nonsense is Nemo’s great delay tactic.”
Grant tucked the telescope under one arm, opened his watch. “The Black Heel hoists anchor in less than an hour, leading the convoy, giving the submariner two miles. No matter what the Nautilus encounters, we can cross it with hellfire.”
“Nemo carped about more distance between the Nautilus and our guns. He’s sure we’ve tattooed a bull’s-eye on him.”
“That’s his old song. Let him worry, maybe it’ll keep him in line,” Grant said, returning the glass to The Black Heel.
The divers were at the convoy, pulling dynamite disposal boxes from their duffels. They tethered them to the skiff bows before swimming under the hulls of the warships, long blades and wire cutters to defuse any bombs on their belts.
Grant sharp-focused on the ships and said, “Lots of men on this mission, John, and you’re the architect. I know how heavy that can weigh.”
“Simpler than that. I’m worried about my daughter.”
“She’ll make you proud.”
Grant re-collapsed the Three Draw, thinking of the secret orders he’d drafted with the Secretary of the Navy, and given to the Captain of each ship in the convoy. They were executive directives for action in case of “worst-case scenarios,” with the Nautilus, and he’d downed two tumblers of Old Kentucky before signing them. What he’d never do as a General—planning for defeat—now had to be considered as President.
He took a deep drink of ocean air, clearing the ghosts, when Lime howled: “Bloody ape! I’m not to be hurled about like the dirty washing!”
Grant and Duncan turned from the harbor, and were now standing by the Pleasure House’s “Discreet Exit,” flanked by Rifle Guards, as Maston dragged Lime by his suspenders from the other end of the alley, the toes of his green Brogues scraping cobbles.
The photographer’s hands were cuffed behind him, his mouth never stopping: “Is this your ‘oh-so-famous good word’ in action? A joke, General! A blood-soaked one!”
Maston tossed Lime onto the back of his horse lashing the cuffs to the saddle horn with a leather strap. “Mouth shut, or your ankles’ll be tied behind your ears.”
Lime yanked on the strap’s knot. No use.
Maston moved to Grant. “Sir, what about this leprechaun?”
“Sew him in a sack if you have to, but get all his pictures,” Grant said, taking a match from his vest pocket. “Keep your eagle’s eye on him, son. He’s four feet of guile.”
Maston tipped his brimmed Stetson, adding a small salute, before turning from Grant, who struck the match against the House’s window sill to light his cigar.
“Where’s that damn fool with our coach?”
The match flared against the velvet-curtained glass.
Half a moment, and the tiny flame became something enormous: a reflection spreading across the window as a yellow-white tidal wave. Filling Grant’s eyes.
The match dropped.
Grant darted a look toward the waterfront. Toward the feeling of sudden, intense heat. Of fire pluming from The Black Heel.
Then, the sound. A roaring force from the harbor, pile-driving Grant and Duncan against the wall like a huge, inescapable fist.
The battle glass heat-split, house windows shattered, and bolting horses screamed from the streets as The Black Heel exploded, its hull evaporating into jags, the crew caught in a tornado of fire.
Flames taller than the masts, longer than the decks, swept over The Heel, when a second explosion tossed its heavy cannons as broken children’s toys and hurled flaming pieces across the water, snake-striking other ships in the convoy. Setting fire to sails, rigging, and men.
Another blast turned sailors to bloody mist.
Grant pulled Duncan to safe cover, as Guards ran in, keeping low, forming a barricade around them with bayoneted rifles. Bullets punched their chests, sending the Guards spinning, fingers on triggers, their Carbines firing wildly as they hit the ground, more sniper-slugs tearing backs and shoulders.
Maston fought his horse, spurs deep, and rode for Grant, who signaled him off. Burning ashes from the harbor rained, setting overhanging trees on fire as Maston galloped to a side street, Lime barely holding on behind him, screaming above the din of alarm bells and panic.
More shots sliced smoky air, pocking the ground around the horse’s hooves. Maston broke the animal into a full run, clearing the alley as the last shots followed, rapid-fire.
Grant was still tight in a doorway, the shooting paused. Then, three shots in a row. And another pause. A feeling came to him. He recognized something as the echo of the shots died, and said to no one, “Miserable son of a bitch,” before charging the alley, game leg dragging, and wrenching a Spencer repeating rifle from a dead guard’s hands.
Shavetail, Grant thought, closing the guard’s eyes.
Chambering a shell, he pressed himself against the house’s bullet-scarred wall, the girls inside still screaming, and worked to its far corner. Oily-gray, billowing from the harbor, cloaked Grant as he brought the Spencer to his shoulder, scanning for the sniper.
Leaves from the burning trees were swirling pieces of fire he swatted away as he moved, before another explosion shook the ground, splitting the cement between the cobblestones. Grant felt the blast, sledgehammering his chest and legs, but stayed braced against the house, gun ready.
Searching for his target.
Beyond his rifle sights, he saw the waterfront through breaks in the smoke: sails-in-flames spiraling to the water, the heavy canvas trapping sailors swimming for shore. Drownin
g cries.
Another bomb, deep in the harbor, went off. An eruption; wreckage tossed-twisted into the air. The last of the ships and skiffs, pulverized, as the Fire Brigade and Marines swarmed the docks, hot shrapnel coming down on them in a torrent.
Then, four horses charged through the ashes and fire.
Oliver steered the President’s Coach wide, careening to each side of the street, losing control of the team, the rear brakes sparking. The horses fought their rig, eyes wild, legs chopping at the sound of gunfire, shouts, and echoed explosions.
The coach back-tailed to one side, almost tipping, before slamming to a stop against a lamppost, as Grant made it to the front side of Pleasure House. He kept the rifle poised, infantry style, still looking for anything of the sniper.
Grant called out, “Ready to move?”
Feet from the coach, Duncan crouched by a storm cellar, knees to his concave chest; a folded scarecrow that had dropped from its cross. He grabbed his words: “L-L-Lord in Heaven, it’s all—all—just as Nemo said.”
Duncan looked up to see Grant, and stood, shaking, as the next volley of three shots tore Oliver’s shoulder and hip, knocking him from his seat. Falling hard, wounds jetting red, a slug clipping off half his ear.
The flashes from the sniper’s rifle came as darts of white. Grant dropped to a knee and fired at their origin point, his shots exploding an upper window of the abandoned building across the street. His target was actually the faceless man beyond the window’s yellowed glass: a figure holding what looked to be the rifle.
Grant re-steadied, feeling as if he was aiming at a specter, wanting to see the shooter’s eyes, or a uniform, but there was only a moving form. A shape, now farther away from the window; just dark, with no features. Grant leveled two perfect shots to its chest, hitting it. Tossing it backward, and gone.
It had been only minutes since the first bomb, the thunder of the blasts still bouncing off distant buildings and hills, but now settling into nothing, with no new explosions following.
Grant didn’t trust the quiet. He stayed his position, rifle aimed, in case this was just the pause between attack waves, the trees around him still burning.
A sea wind was clearing the smoke, as Fire brigades and more troopers swarmed the waterfront, soaking the flames, and gathering the dead washing against the pier.
“Mr. President! Sir!”
It was the voice of a young Marine, leading a patrol zigzag through the alley from the opposite side. Grant didn’t look back at them, didn’t respond, his aim still on the upper window, a dagger of broken glass dropping from its frame and shattering on the street.
Then—nothing.
At that, Grant lowered his rifle, spat out the last of his cigar, crushed it under his heel.
* * *
The Nautilus was beyond the reach of the sun at this depth, having followed the Humpback whale into an enormous chasm that split the ocean floor seventy miles from the Virginia shore, and beyond the Continental Shelf.
The animal veered for its home, and now whirlpooling currents batted the descending submarine, water challenging iron, as it propelled into the sea canyon, farther into darkness. Electric yellow escaping from the observation ports barely illuminated a few feet around the ship, before dropping into nothing.
The deeper the Nautilus went, the more useless its lights, as if it were going blind.
At the Captain’s Station, Nemo countered. Fighting the whirlpools with speed, keeping the rudders in a steady dive, and steering the black of the waterways. Anticipating every narrow turn, every outcropping of rock.
Sara, braced against the Navigator’s station, the bridge sloping with the continuing descent, charts falling, noted depth, speed, and direction. The large wall compasses spun wildly, needles jigging north to south, then back again. Never stopping.
“We’ve lost all compass—”
“Conclusion, Miss Duncan.”
“This sea canyon’s magnetic rock.”
“Correct,” Nemo said. “But I know this place better than all of my prison cells. We’re getting closer to one of the shipwrecks, even if you can’t see it.”
Something smashed the glass dome. Sara jumped.
Albino sea snakes burst from a nest in the cave wall like an exploding artery. Eels, as long as Sara was tall, swarmed the dome like they would a wounded enemy, moving flesh covering the glass, while striking with their large white skulls to kill it.
Nemo said, “Eptatretus goliath. Blind. Have never known sunlight. And when other species aren’t available, they feed on each other. Like politicians.”
He pulled back on the steering bar, shifting the rudders, braking the Nautilus’ dive. “Release tanks one and two.”
Ballast water powered from the front with an explosion of air, the bubbles foaming across the dome, driving off the swarm of snakes, and revealing nothing. A black void, as if the Nautilus were floating in space, without stars. Emptiness.
Nothing above, below, or ahead.
24
LIEUTENANT
Grant’s two shots from the street punched the bulletproof leather-and-steel vest beneath the Lieutenant’s coat. He tossed himself back from the window on impact, out of sight of the street, but still holding his sniper’s rifle, as he slammed to the floor.
He’d trained to take the bullets, building the muscles in his chest so there’d only be a lingering bruise after the slugs hit his armor. He also practiced throwing his body wild, giving the impression of kill-shots.
Lying flat, he tasted the oily, waterfront smoke that clung to the cheesecloth he’d used to mask his face. Peeling the cloth away, oil-soaked bits sticking to his mouth, the Lieutenant hacked out residue that was rough-deep in his throat, careful not to lift his head up.
He pried the smashed slugs from the vest with his left hand and flicked them aside, the fingers on his right still crooked around the trigger guard of the Vetterli Swiss rifle. Stretching, shoulders still to the floor, he dragged the weapon to him, laying it flush to his leg.
Light, despite a long barrel, he’d gotten very comfortable with the Vetterli during his training. But comfort never guarantees the oneness that the Lieutenant sought, the gun’s becoming the assassin.
The White House had been good practice. Bringing down the horses, but not the men, then laying sniper fire that sent guards scurrying in wrong directions, while making good an escape after killing the decoy shooter. He felt a twinge of pride about that work, about his skilled precision.
Today, he’d sniped as planned, complimenting each convoy time-bomb explosion with a dead soldier, the ejected brass from his rifle scattering on the floor around him like loose change falling from his pockets. The shooting behind Maston’s horse was the challenge: just missing, but striking close enough so the animal would feel the hot lead spatter from the ricochets, and keep running.
Belly-crawling, the Lieutenant’s second position in the old Confederate Post Office was a frosted, side window that overlooked the end of the street. He rolled into the window’s corner, still keeping low, checked his rifle, and listened to the echoed voices from below.
A young man called out, “Mr. President, sir!” Then Grant thundered, “Get to the damn water! Lend a hand to those that need it! Now!”
Grant’s voice gave the Lieutenant a picture of a blind dog barking from a porch; a hunting animal once, but now old, and ready to be put down. Snickering behind his teeth, rifle propped on his knees, he raised his head just enough to peer over the windowsill, catching a glimpse of the President’s coach.
Oliver was sprawled beside it, flames from the burning convoy dancing in the blood pooling around him, while the horses tugged at their rig.
He watched the Marines break from the alleyway to the docks, as Grant and Duncan moved for the coach. Easy kills. Grant’s stubborn leg was now jammed out straight, unbending, and a shoulder drooped. He untangled the coach reins, his face mapping his pain, then tossed them onto the Driver’s seat.
T
he Lieutenant pressed stock-to-shoulder, keeping the rifle barrel down so the blued steel wouldn’t catch a glint of sunlight, giving him away again. He froze in this position.
Grant, staying behind the horses, reloaded his Spencer from a dead Guard’s ammo belt, before working his way toward the lead stallions of the team. Duncan crab-walked to the rear of the coach, where Oliver was lying, his moans now flecks of blood staining the corner of his mouth.
The Lieutenant watched Grant over his rifle barrel, keeping a bead on his temple, as he struggled from behind the horses to the side of the coach. Grant looked to the window he’d obliterated, for a sign of movement, of anything. The Lieutenant didn’t even breathe. Just kept steady aim from his second position.
Grant held his rifle up, as he had before, squinting through his sights, shifting his aim from windows, to alley, to livery stable. Nothing. The street was now still, with only the last burning leaves from the trees drifting to the gutters.
At the window, the quiet was total. The Lieutenant listened to his own heartbeat, muscles tight, and straining to not pull the trigger. Not yet.
Satisfied with the silence, Grant reached for the coach door, the Spencer casual on his hip, and nodded to Duncan, who slipped long, thin arms under the Driver’s shoulders.
The Lieutenant leaned forward through the frosted window, Grant’s head perfectly in his line of fire.
He released his breath.
The first shot blasted a hole a foot wide in the wall, next to the Lieutenant’s head, almost grazing him, as Grant fired repeatedly from the street, sweeping the second floor of the post office. Firing, cocking the lever action, spent shells spinning from the Spencer’s chamber. Firing again.
The Lieutenant ducked, eyes tightly closed, slugs tearing the room, sparking off an iron radiator, pulverizing old plaster, exploding a mirror into shards. He grabbed a piece of mirror, angling it beneath the window to catch a bent-reflection of Duncan hauling the Driver to the coach.
Duncan threw open the door, then awkwardly pulled the unconscious Driver in with him, slipping, legs tangled, while Grant continuously fired, just as an infantryman keeps an enemy pinned to their trenches.
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