As Garret talked, not even Pun’kin was interrupting. Floyd and Curtis sat on the deck, their not-quite-allowed game of dice suspended.
“Was it that bad?” Floyd asked.
Garret nodded and closed his eyes. “His whole foot burned off. Burned right through the bone. And the smell… I’m still sick.”
Normally, surrounded by a group of guys his own age, Garret would have been both self-conscious and flattered by so much rapt attention. Not this time. The whole division, fifty some men were quiet, and Garret just wanted them to stop asking him questions so he could try to put it out of his head. Someone said something down at the far end of the deck. The sound was filtered and quiet. A couple hammock ropes creaked.
“God, what a way to go.” Floyd muttered.
“So Roogie is dead?” asked a guy who was standing against Nancy’s blast shield. Garret didn’t know his name.
“Yeah, I’m sure he is,” Garret said. “He looked…” Garret wished he hadn’t started that sentence, but they all stared at him.
A light winked out nearby, as if the ship herself was acquiescing to the darkness of the images in Garret’s mind. However, it was only Mr. Carr. He had removed a bulb and was disassembling the socket.
Garret’s friends were waiting.
“By the end, he looked like… like he wasn’t real. Like he was made of paper and wax, part of him burned up, and part of him melted.”
For some reason, Garret had been keenly aware of the pieces of metal in his chest since Ensign Rogers died. He could feel them now as his hammock cradled him, the small, hard pellets, especially the ones next to his lung.
“Why didn’t he just let go?” Garret wondered again.
“He couldn’t,” came an ill-sounding voice. It was Twitch, curled on his side, facing away from Garret. “Electricity takes over your body. Locks up everything. They’ll probably have to cut his hand off to get him loose.”
A deadened silence passed.
A sullen voice came from further down the deck. “We’re all gonna die on this damned ship.”
No one replied.
W
June 3rd, 1914, Twenty-five days to Vidovdan
Twitch pulled the trigger and Nancy thundered, belching smoke. Thousands of pounds worth of barrel and breech kicked back like a lightning fast pile driver. The blast rattled Garret’s teeth and shook his guts. The recoil cylinders caught Nancy’s mass and pushed it quickly back into place. Gun smoke billowed back into the ship in thick curls.
Even through the ear mufflers, Garret’s head rang from the detonation, but he was grinning.
Whooaaa!
The shot flew in a long arc, invisible except for when it bull’s eyed the floating crate, a mile away. The crate exploded and the waterflume from the round flung the fragments high. Everyone was impressed with the shot except Twitch, who’d aimed it.
Across Nancy’s barrel, Twitch shook his head like a dissatisfied Olympic coach and fiddled with his sights. “Theo, you’ve got to get faster on the breech,” he said over his shoulder.
Garret just smiled wider. Twitch was pointer, which meant he rode Nancy’s lefthand pedestal, from which he adjusted the elevation of the gun, pulled the trigger, and since he was gun captain, called out orders to keep everybody else moving quickly and smoothly.
Garret was trainer, which meant he stood on the righthand pedestal and adjusted Nancy’s traverse across the open sea before them. This was a long way of saying Garret and Twitch got to be shoulder to shoulder with the keg of dynamite every time they set it off.
At least Garret assumed he would get to stay where he was. Twitch said he’d have to run through several live fire drills before he would promise they could stay where they were, and this was the first time they’d pulled the trigger for real. Their previous drills had all been loading and unloading wooden practice shells without getting to fire.
Garret released his grip on the traverse wheel and turned around, expecting to see everyone else grinning like he was. It was more or less the case. Pun’kin and Fishy were blinking and grinning from ear to ear, still holding their powder case and shell, respectively. Theo was standing behind Garret in his proper place as plugman. Theo’s eyes were huge and round with appreciation of the deafening noise they had just made.
Burl—tiny, quiet little Burl—burst out laughing. “Ahaha ha ha! Let’s do that again!” Then he clammed up and blushed. The boom of another five inch gun reverberated further down the citadel. And another. The other crews were slower. Garret watched through the gun port. The flotilla of crates, probably broken loose from another ship in a recent storm, bobbed in the water, barely visible at the distance. Waterspouts erupted from the other shots, but they weren’t even close.
Sweet Cheeks, who had done this before, was laughing uproariously at Burl. Turning back, Garret grinned at him too. The heavy shell extractor gloves Burl was wearing were bigger than he was. Only Curtis and Floyd were quiet. Curtis was quiet because he was staring at Floyd. Floyd was quiet because he was staring at the ramrod in his hands, broken in two.
Curtis palmed the fifty pound shell he was carrying as if it weighed nothing, then took one half of the broken ramrod from Floyd for a closer look.
Twitch was still playing with his sights, growing more irritated with each passing moment. “These new telescopics aren’t worth the shitty steel they’re made of. I wonder if any of the old iron sights ended up in munition stores.” He gave up on them and turned to the rest of his crew. “Okay guys, we’ve got to improve our footwork…” Twitch’s face paled when he caught sight of Floyd.
Floyd looked up at him, also pale. The ramrod was made of oak and bigger around than Floyd’s slight wrists, but the heavy wooden shaft had been snapped clean.
Twitch looked like he was going to throw up. “Jesus… I didn’t have you standing far enough back.”
Floyd shook his head. “No, you did. I… I stepped up a little. I thought Theo was going to… I shouldn’t have stepped closer.”
Garret was just catching up. The grin fell off his face. Floyd was ramrodder, which meant he stayed as close to centerline of the breech as he could, without getting in the way of Curtis, Fishy, Pun’kin, or Sweet Cheeks, who carried the powder and shell in teams of two. Apparently, Floyd had stepped closer for some reason. He’d been holding the ramrod cross-wise in front of himself. When Twitch pulled the trigger, the breech had kicked back just far enough to slap the ramrod, snapping it like a twig.
“Give me that,” Twitch said.
Floyd and Curtis obeyed, handing over the halves of the ramrod.
Twitch motioned the whole crew in closer. When they had gathered, he held up the broken ends of the ramrod and pressed them back together.
“This is your spine,” he said to all of them, then he let the heavy oak fall apart.
Floyd was humiliated. “I’m sorry, Twitch, I—”
“Don’t apologize,” Twitch said. “This isn’t your fault. This was the first time you guys have seen a five inch gun fired. I should have made sure everyone was clear. I… I nearly got you killed, Floyd.”
Garret stared at the thick wooden shaft, snapped in two, lying on the deck. He knew what that felt like. The deadness. The terrifying lack of any feeling below the waist.
“Everyone,” Twitch said severely, “stands clear of the back of the gun.” He pointed at Theo. “That especially includes you. You’ve got one of the most dangerous jobs. If you don’t get that breech closed before I pull the trigger, it’ll kill you and probably everyone behind you when it blows open. If you get it closed but don’t step back behind Garret before I pull the trigger, the recoil of the gun will do worse to you than it did to the ramrod.”
Twitch pressed his lips and thought hard for a moment, making a decision of some sort. The rest of them waited. No one was laughing now.
“Alright,” Twitch said at last. “We’re going to do something we’re not supposed to do, but I’m not
having anyone else getting killed on my crew.” He turned to Theo. “Garret and I can’t see behind us. We have to be focused on our sights at almost all times. But if you’re behind the plug, you should be able to reach my right shoulder or at least my back from there. If anything goes wrong, or even looks like it’s about to go wrong, you tap my right side. Only my right, understand?”
Theo nodded gravely.
Twitch continued. “That’ll buy you time until the count of three to get out of the way. If something goes wrong so badly that we can’t fire the gun at all, tap me twice. Right shoulder only, got it? When we’re in a battle and all seven of these guns are firing, yelling at me won’t do the slightest bit of good.”
They all nodded at that.
Another five inch gun boomed down the deck. The shot fell a hundred yards short.
Twitch turned to the rest of them. “If any of you guys need to stop me, tap my left shoulder. Only my left, so I know who’s in trouble. One tap for a delay, two for a full stop.”
Twitch and Sweet Cheeks exchanged glances. Something passed between them, but Sweet Cheeks dropped his eyes and gave a small shake of his head.
“Alright guys, we’re gonna practice this.” Twitch smiled with half his mouth at Burl. “Glad you want to do it again, ‘cause we’re going to until you’re doing it in your sleep.”
“Floyd already does the ramrod in his sleep,” Fishy interjected.
“I do not!” Floyd protested hotly.
“Gentlemen,” Fishy came back serenely, “you can all sleep soundly tonight knowing our ramrodder uses both hands.”
Tension broken, they turned back to Nancy.
“Alright guys,” Twitch said, stepping up on his pedestal. “Who wants to be the fastest gun crew in the Navy?”
That sounded kind of dumb, so their cheers were halfhearted, and in Fishy’s case, quite sarcastic.
Twitch turned back around and gave them the evil eye. “Alright, then who wants to be the most wicked group of murdering bastards who ever roamed the ocean?”
That brought a real cheer. Garret hopped to his station.
Twitch settled in. “Then show me. Load!”
Chapter 11
June 4th, 1914. Twenty-four days to Vidovdan
“So,” came a voice out of nowhere. Garret jumped out of his skin. The rope he’d been mending fell from his hands. He was sitting on the upper deck in the shadow of a skiff. Warm sun fell in playful shafts through the boat racks above him. A pod of dolphins were flanking Kearsarge, jumping out of the water as if showing off for the men at the rails. It had been a near perfect moment until an officer had shot up between the deck planks. By his stripes, the man was a lieutenant.
Garret’s heart was pounding from his sudden appearance, but the lieutenant was as relaxed as could be. He had a pointy, rodent-like face. “Seaman,” he said. “Let me ask you a question. Do you trust the United States Navy?”
Garret faltered. “Uh, yes sir, I do.”
“Uh yes sir?” the lieutenant repeated. “You don’t sound sure, seaman.”
“I’m sure, sir.”
“How do you feel about your Captain?”
Garret tried not to pause on that question, but he did for several seconds. “Fine sir.”
“You sound even less sure now, seaman.”
Garret was immediately uncomfortable. “I’m sure sir.”
“Really?” The lieutenant managed to pack more sarcasm into that single word than Garret had probably used in his lifetime.
“I’m so glad to hear that,” the officer continued flatly. “Let me ask you another question.”
Hooray.
“Do you think the saboteur trusts our Captain?”
Saboteur? So somebody killed Rogers on purpose in the dynamo room? Wait ‘til I tell the guys.
The lieutenant was assessing him with small, glittering, rodent-like eyes.
Well shit, he’s waiting for an answer. “Uh, if he’s trying to get us all killed, then I guess not,” Garret fumbled, then realized how dumb that sounded. “I mean of course not.”
“Of course not?” the lieutenant asked, emphasizing Garret’s certainty. “You seem very sure of the motives of this person.”
“Well I don’t know what he’s thinking, I was just thinking that if he’s trying to kill us all then—”
“Who said anything about him trying to kill us all?” the lieutenant asked. “So far only one man has died, and that looked to everyone, including myself and the captain, to be an accident. Unless you know something about the saboteur that we don’t? If you do, please share.”
“No!” Garret blurted. “I mean, no sir, I don’t know anything. Maybe he thinks he can scare us into turning back.”
The lieutenant leaned closer. “Why would he want to do that? Even I am not aware of the details of our mission. Are you?”
Garret was shifting from foot to foot, even though he was supposed to hold still at attention. “No sir, I don’t have a clue why he’d want to turn us back, I just thought—”
“So you’re still certain that was his goal. You seem to know him very well.”
“No! I don’t know him at all! I’ve never met him!”
“But you’re sure it is a ‘him’?”
“No! I said ‘him’ because you said ‘him’!”
“I referred to this person only as the saboteur, you responded with ‘Uh, if he’s trying to get us all killed.’”
Garret was sweating. “Okay, maybe it’s a woman!”
The lieutenant’s rat eyes widened. “A woman? The entire crew complement of this vessel is supposed to consist of men. Are you telling me you know of a stowaway? A female stowaway?”
“No sir!”
“Then why did you bring it up?”
Garret blinked. Flapped his lips like a guppy. He was starting to sweat into his collar. He stared at the lieutenant, not having any idea what to say.
“Seaman,” the lieutenant said with a sigh, “do you realize that the first act of sabotage was to cripple the steering gear, which invalidates your entire premise that he meant to turn us back?”
“Wha… I don’t… why… then what in the hell were we just talking about?!... Sir.”
The lieutenant crossed his arms and said mildly, “Take that tone with me again, seaman, and I’ll have you in the brig.”
With that, the lieutenant turned and walked away. He had an odd way of shuffling that made it look as if he was sneaking from shadow to shadow under the boats.
Garret sagged with relief as soon as the lieutenant rounded an air intake out of sight. Garret felt light-headed.
Farther away, from the direction Lieutenant Bartram had gone, Garret thought he heard someone, possibly Commander Sharpe say, “Barty, you’re an asshole. You know that, right?”
Garret wasn’t positive he’d heard that, but he was certain he heard Lieutenant Bartram laugh.
W
Later the same evening
“Orders from Captain Maxwell,” Garret said dutifully, holding out the folded piece of paper to the master-at-arms. He was a burly man, all paunch and arms and meaty jowls. Garret was so tired that his body ached for sleep. His head felt full of cotton. He tried to remember if he could leave, now that he’d handed over the orders, or if he had to stand there until the master-at-arms dismissed him.
The day had been terribly long, and Garret had begun daydreaming of his hammock long before he’d finally gotten to lay down, but he’d only slept for a matter of minutes before Captain Maxwell had summoned him again. Garret had trailed through Kearsarge’s decks despondently. When he arrived at the Captain’s cabin, he’d found Maxwell sitting at his desk, looking exactly as Garret had left him. The man seemed to have no need for rest. Garret wondered dully if the man bothered to eat, or if he considered it a waste of time.
“Take this to the master-at-arms,” the Captain said without preamble. Only then did Garret notice the other officer
in the room. He stood against the bulkhead, so unmoving as to look like the potted plant behind the table. It was the same sly looking Lieutenant who had grilled him earlier. Garret stepped nearer to take the piece of paper and shot a sideways glance at the Lieutenant. He stood at attention, but he’d figured out how to relax in every way he could without quite looking undisciplined. He watched Garret’s motions with half-lidded eyes. Had Garret been less sleep deprived, it would have made him nervous.
Garret grasped the letter for the master-at-arms and tugged, but instead of releasing it, Maxwell turned and stood to stare down on him. “Sailor, the contents of this letter are highly sensitive, and they concern you, but you are not, nor are you to allow anyone else to read it. Not under any circumstances, not on any orders except my own. Is that understood?”
The Captain’s intensity woke Garret up a little bit. “Aye sir… I mean no sir. I mean I won’t, sir.”
He glanced down at the letter, as one might do when picking up a dead animal to suddenly discover it was alive. The lieutenant saw him do it, but made no move to speak. The slip of paper was folded, but not sealed. Orders usually weren’t.
“You’ll find the master-at-arms on the upper deck,” Maxwell said, and turned away.
As Garret stepped across the threshold from the Captain’s cabin into the passageway, the Hollow Man spoke in his head. It was so close, so thickly present that it was like feeling someone’s breath in his ear from the inside out.
Garret, read the letter.
Garret shivered at the feeling of someone else in his head, but he ignored the voice and began climbing the ship’s ladder outside the closet-like captain’s office. He stepped out onto the main deck and the smell of hundreds of sweaty guys was replaced with the tang of a salty breeze. The ladder led onto the deck immediately abaft of (behind) the thirteen inch guns. In other words, he emerged standing below and between the massive barrels. They stretched out in front and above him, pointed away into the night. The polished black arms of Hades.
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