His movements were slow as he withdrew the razor and arched his tall frame further across the bins. The trio of troopers moved in mirror-like imitations of him. Then, with rasped sighs of relish, they matched the Captain’s speed. Their hands clawed, they folded forward, bellies and chests resting on the bins. Then the hands swung together and fastened around the exposed necks of the sleeping seaman. Each victim awoke with a gasp of alarm that became a muted, choked scream of terror and pain. Arms were flung up and bodies writhed. But sleep had taken too great a part of a second to shake off. The strangling hands of the troopers were too firmly fixed to surrender to the scratching, tearing attacks of the seamen’s fingers. As the men’s complexions turned to red and then purple and their tongues protruded from gaping mouths, their eyes swiveled up to look into the coldly grinning faces of their killers.
“Wanna get rid of a battleship?” Bell rasped.
“Hello, sailor,” Seward whispered and giggled.
“Army beats the Navy four to nothin’,” Forrest growled a moment before the men died, legs and torsos becoming still, hands falling away and eyes clouding opaque then closing.
Each trooper held his victim a few seconds more, making certain of death. Then they let go. A trio of death rattles sounded in the throats as deflating lungs expelled final breaths. Then, snatching the Confederate Colts from the holsters of the dead men and scooping up the Spencer rifles from the deck, the three troopers straightened.
“Only three to nothing, maybe,” Hedges said softly.
He was in the same, over-the-bins attitude as the others had been, but was using the razor rather than his bare hands, and the fourth seaman was still alive. He was bleeding a little, but not fatally. Hedges’ left hand was on the top of the man’s head, bunching tufts of sandy hair in a fist. The right was clasped around the handle of the razor, which was shoved two inches up the man’s nostril, honed edge angled inwards. The thin rivulet of crimson had its source in a minor nick in the tender membranes under the bridge. The man’s hands were splayed, palms down, on the deck. He didn’t move, not even breathing. His lips were pressed tight together, seemingly sealed by the sticky blood oozing over them. His eyes bulged so much they seemed on the point of popping from his head. His youth made his terror more pathetic. He could not be more than seventeen.
“He’s a cute kid, Captain,” Forrest allowed in a sour tone as he ran his hand lovingly over the Spencer. “But you’ve killed his kind before.”
Hedges ignored the sergeant and bent his head to whisper softly in the ear of the terrified boy. “When’s this tub scheduled to sail?”
“It... it ain’t,” the youngster stuttered. “Not for... for... days. Gotta have repairs.”
“What needs fixing?” Hedges demanded softly. “Engine?”
“No. Citadel plating. Don’t kill me, mister... please don’t kill me.
“Know how to run the engines, feller?”
“No, mister. I’m a gunner.”
“That’s a shame,” Hedges mocked. “You got the wrong advice from the careers officer.” He released the boy’s head and jerked the razor out of his nostril. “Gunners we’ve got. Short on engineers.”
The boy mistook the mocking tone for genuine compassion. Instead of reaching for his gun, he craned up his head to look at an upside-down view of Hedges’ impassive face. He read the look of the killer too late and the razor plunged into his exposed throat just as he began to scream. Hedges snatched the Confederate copy Colt from the holster a moment before the blood-gouting body toppled.
“Thought for a minute there you’d gone soft, Captain,” Forrest said with a grin, swinging over the bins and dragging the boy’s body off the rifle.
“Be obliged if you didn’t make any more mistakes, sergeant,” the Captain told him as Scott, Douglas and Rhett clustered around, eager to get a gun. “May not be time to make allowances for them from here on in.”
“Hey, what’s all the noise aboard?”
The troopers froze, eyes raking from the gunports overlooking the dock to the lone figure of Myron who had been left in front of the closed hatchway. As the gun muzzles swung in the same track as the eyes, Myron raised both hands to clamp over his mouth.
“Staying dumb is smart, Reb,” Forrest hissed.
“You hear me?” the gruff voice called from outside.
“What I tried to tell you awhile back, Captain,” Seward whispered. “There was this old guy comin’ along the dock.”
Holding the revolver low at his side, Hedges took long strides to the nearest gun port and peered down over the glinting cannon barrel—glinting because the rising sun had sent a first shaft of yellow light over the horizon to penetrate the mist.
The man standing on the dock, hands on hips and head cocked suspiciously to one side, was about sixty. He would have been skinny had it not been for his expansive waistline. His legs were short and bowed. His belly bulged and seemed to be sagging all the way down from beneath his scrawny neck. He had a small head, hung with a lot of loose skin, bald on top and grey-bearded at the jaw. The whites of his eyes were blood-shot around the bright grey pupils. He was dressed in oil-stained coveralls that had once been white.
“The guys were horsing around!” Hedges called, showing his face at the port, but not his sodden clothing.
“The one yelled like he wasn’t havin’ fun,” the old-timer answered, and started up the unrailed gangplank connecting the dock with the ironclad.
“Little upset is all,” Hedges told the man. “Guess something got up his nose.”
When he turned around he saw that Myron still stood with both hands to his mouth, encouraged now by the revolver Rhett pressed into his belly. The other troopers were all armed, Forrest having retained the extra weapon to hold a Colt and a Spencer. Despite their disheveled, water-dripping appearance, they looked alert, ready and willing for a fight.
“Prepare to repel boarder, sir?” Roger Bell said softly.
“This guy could earn his keep,” Hedges answered, and strode towards the hatchway.
The old-timer’s footfalls rang on the deck then halted. Hedges used a foot to thrust open the hatch. Then he sidestepped into the opening and pointed the revolver.
“Hell’s bells, what’s this?” the man said, his tone even, and showing his surprise by the merest lifting of his near hairless eyebrows.
“Don’t ask for whom they toll, feller,” Hedges said, and stepped back, motioning the newcomer to enter the citadel.
The man was older than he had looked, and Hedges re-estimated his age at seventy. For that number of years and the amount of excess weight he toted at his middle, he was remarkably well-preserved. And he moved smoothly. Unhurried, but without effort. He halted inside and eyed the troopers and Myron quizzically as Hedges closed the hatchway behind him.
Then he sniffed. “Gotta admire the gall of you guys, but you’re gonna have trouble off-loading her once you’ve stole her.”
“A friggin’ comedian,” Forrest rasped. He leveled the Spencer. “You tired of livin’, old man?”
Another sniff, with a shrug this time. “Done most of what I wanted in my life, son,” he answered, and nodded towards the sprawled bodies of the seamen. “Reckon it was tougher for them to die.”
“What you doin’ here this time in the morning?” Hedges demanded.
“Me and the rest of the repair crew don’t get on, mister. All they can talk about is women and war. And I’m too old for both. So I like to get my chores done before they start.”
“What chores?”
“Fixin’ the engines of murdered old boats like the Southern Glory” the man answered, and for the first time there was a trace of emotion in his voice—sadness.
“Was told this tub didn’t have engine trouble,” Hedges said.
“All these navy boats got engine trouble after the way they’re misused,” the old timer replied. “Weren’t built for the kind of treatment they get.”
“Can you run an engine as well as fix it?
”
The sniff was resonant with scorn. “I was captain, mate, engineer and roustabout on the Mississippi for more years than you been outta diapers, son,” he muttered. “Ain’t no chore on a sternwheeler I can’t do.”
“He ain’t ready to die yet, Captain,” Forrest growled, and showed his stained teeth in a grin.
“Captain of what?” the old-timer wanted to know.
“Union cavalry,” Hedges told him. “Fresh out of a Rebel jail and anxious to stay out.”
“Abe Lincoln’s got his points and I just happened to be visitin’ kinfolk in Florida when the shootin’ started. War don’t mean nothin’ to me except it pays me a few bucks. Sure would like to run an engine again, instead of just fixin’ it.”
“I ain’t trusting you,” Hedges warned.
“Wouldn’t expect you to, son. Union don’t make Captains from fools, I guess. I’ll need a hand anyway. Just one. Other one can hold a gun on me.”
“No fixing,” Hedges said as the old-timer moved eagerly towards a companionway leading down into the bowels of the ironclad. “Just running. How long to get up a head of steam?”
“Take a navy guy an hour at least. Reckon I can do it in thirty minutes.”
“Break a record without bursting a boiler,” Hedges urged. “Go with him, Douglas. And treat him like your Pa unless he does something stupid.”
Douglas spat. “I hated my Pa, sir. But I know what you mean.”
The corporal trailed the old timer down the companionway and Hedges glanced around his men, selecting Seward and Scott, for their builds matched those of two of the dead seamen.
“Get into dry clothes,” he ordered, and waved the Colt towards the inert bodies. “Theirs.”
There were no gripes now. No references to Forrest for his opinion about Hedges’ commands. The Captain had sprung them from Riverside Prison and secured a means of escape from Richmond. But, as Forrest had said earlier, they were still a long way from home. Until something went wrong that was in any way attributable to a mistake by the Captain, he was unquestionably in command. Like Seward and Scott, the other men listened in silence to the orders Hedges gave, and instantly complied. Even the tight-lipped Myron, who was assigned to the store bins.
Forrest and Bell were stationed at two cannons on the starboard side, overlooking the dock. Rhett went to a gun which commanded the open water of the river. Hedges took Seward and Scott outside the citadel and up into the pilothouse with him.
The controls were spartanly simple. A spoked wheel, a binnacle compass, an engine-room telegraph and a speaking tube. A brass telescope was clipped to a bulkhead. Hedges lifted the mouthpiece of the speaking tube and whistled into it.
“Chief-engineer Robert Chivers here, Captain,” the old timer answered perkily. “I reckon this old engine’ll get you to the ocean if you don’t push her too hard.”
“Just get up that steam and let me know if you think she’s going to blow,” Hedges told him, then swung around to face the two Union troopers in Confederate navy uniform. “You’re in that gear because you’ll be out in the open and there may be people around by the time we’re ready to move. When I tell you, cast off the fore and aft lines, then man two of those mortars. There’s got to be some way the shells can be passed up from below.”
“Sure thing, sir,” Seward acknowledged, checking the Colt was secure in his pants’ belt.
Scott eyed the mortars with keen anticipation, then swung his gaze ruefully out across the river and over the sunlit roofs of Richmond. “Guess we don’t have the range to lob a few shells into the Capitol, Captain?” he asked.
Hedges grinned. “Nobody’ll blame you for trying, trooper,” he said. “Except maybe the people you hit when the shells fall short.”
“All of ’em Johnnie Rebs,” Seward rasped.
There was nothing else to do or say then. Everything now depended upon the ancient Robert Chivers: and Hedges was inclined to believe the old-timer’s neutrality could be swayed by an opportunity to relive his past as a riverboat crewman. Strangely, while the sun seemed to leap with unnatural haste above the eastern horizon, each passing minute appeared to drag many times its normal length. The mist evaporated and the sky was a clear blue, marred only by the ugly smudges of smoke curling up from the city’s chimneys as the breakfast fires were lit. In the full, bright light of day, the faces of Seward and Scott were incongruous above the uniforms. Through the stubble of a day and a night, the grime of the tunneling could be seen ingrained in the pores and the lines of skin old before its time. They looked weary, but oddly not weary—this due to the glitter in their eyes. The light of wildness that was close to lunacy.
But it was a reflection of the men’s inner feelings which caused Hedges no anxiety. For he was familiar with it: had seen that look in the faces of all his men as the time for a fight grew imminent. He knew the feeling from his own experience and had no doubt his lean features also betrayed the pent-up excitement building inside him; being stoked, like the fire in the boiler below deck, for the moment of release. The fire would produce steam to power the big stern wheel of the ironclad. The excitement would be transformed into exhilaration to drive the iron men into battle. But they were not iron men, of course. They were human flesh and blood with brains, minds, feelings and emotions. Killers they had become, able to blast their enemies into eternity without a moment’s hesitation or a split-second of regret. Human beings committing inhuman atrocities which would surely send a normal man into the dark depths of insanity—unless he was protected.
And this is how Hedges regarded the pre-battle anticipation and the hell-for-leather intoxication during the unleashed savagery of war. As a defense mechanism of temporary insanity which guarded himself and his men against madness for all time.
A shout exploded from the compound behind the prison. Another answered the first and this was followed by a confused furor of sound as words poured from many lips.
“I think they’ve found their boss, sir,” Seward said with a broad grin.
From the elevated position in the pilothouse Hedges could see over the perimeter fence into the compound, but the intervening bulk of the warehouse obstructed his view of the rear cell block and the area immediately behind it.
“We’re still ahead in the game,” the Captain answered.
“Here come some new players for their team,” Scott rasped tensely.
He was looking out over the stern wheel and Hedges turned to follow the direction of his steady stare. Out along the dock to where a group of civilians in soiled dungarees were ambling through a gateway and turning towards the Southern Glory. Smart in contrast were four uniformed seamen with sidearms and ported rifles. The repair crew and the change of guard. Still two hundred yards away and apparently in no hurry to start work.
Hedges elevated his gaze and saw black wood smoke curling from the smokestack, flecked with short-lived sparks. Good as an indication of the progress made by Chivers, but bad because the men on the dock were sure to spot it and recognize it as a sign something was wrong.
“Cast off!” Hedges snapped at the troopers. “Seward forward, Scott stern. Then get on those mortars and load up.”
The order to action stations overcame Scott’s nerves and both men went out of the pilothouse fast, sliding down the iron ladder and splitting to head for their assigned positions. Hedges whistled down the speaking tube.
“Chief-Engineer Rob—” Chivers began.
“I know who you are!” Hedges snapped. “The guys you don’t like and the change of guard are on their way down the dock, feller. I’m cutting this tub loose from the dock. Sooner you can get the wheel turning, less chance we’ll have of being crunched against the pilings by the tide.”
His voice was calm but authoritative. But, as Chivers had already proved, he was not the kind of man who needed soothing in a crisis.
“Tide’s about ready to turn, son,” the old-timer replied cheerfully. “She’ll drift downstream. Keep the wheel hard to port. You’ll hav
e power soon as I can give it to you.”
Grinning at the old man’s unruffled attitude, Hedges spun the wheel to its fullest extent and then shoved the telegraph to its FULL AHEAD setting. The signal bells made a pleasant tinkling sound.
“Didn’t reckon you’d want anything else,” he heard Chivers acknowledge, his voice far off from the end of the free-hanging speaking tube.
As he saw Seward free the bow line, Hedges realized the noise of shouting from the prison had ceased. Then, as he swung around to see what progress Scott was making, whistles began to shrill and a warning bell clanged. Scott had been unable to loosen the stern line from the deck cleat. He was monkeying down the line, ankles locked over it and propelling himself with his hands.
“What the friggin’ hell?”
The shout came from the group on the dock, which had halted. They could see the bow of the boat swinging towards mid-river, stretching the stern line taut to give Scott a stable way down. Hedges cursed—at the fact of the razor being snug in the pouch instead of Scott’s hands, and at the arrival of the Rebels which negated the advantage of surprise in the river escape.
The gap between hull and dock widened and the gangplank splashed into the oil-smoothed water in between. Scott reached the dock, hauled himself up and crouched at the bollard to tug on the rope.
“Hand me up some shells, you Reb bastard?!”
This from Seward, who was squatting beside the central mortar. He had folded back a hinged plate and was reaching down into the citadel. Hedges saw him bring up two big shells, load one and rest the other. Then Seward reached down for more.
“Hey! You!”
The men on the dock were running now but Scott’s stolen uniform caused the naval guard to hold their fire. Chivers, or perhaps Douglas, shouted something into the speaking tube, but the creaking of the boat, the slap of water on her hull and the clatter of running feet deluged the words with noise. The line splashed into the river. Scott made a louder smack diving in after it. The big stern wheel began to turn.
EDGE: Blood Run (Edge series Book 14) Page 7