“Sir! Commander Sharpe!”
Andrew turned. One of the two switchboard operators had just run into the engine room below him. “Sir,” the young man yelled between pants. “Twitch says this isn’t the place. He says you need to go to the hold. That’s where he’s going.”
Andrew squinted down at them. “Why would he go to the…”
Andrew swallowed. There was only one thing in the hold. Captain Maxwell had ordered him to throw it overboard, but he hadn’t done it yet. Andrew didn’t spare a breath for a word to anyone. He just ran like he’d never run before.
Commander Sharpe burst into the hold from the aft doorway. Before him stood the stacks and stacks of dull green crates, painted with black skulls and cross bones. Near the starboard bulkhead, Mr. Carr stood with feet planted, spread wide, a pistol pointed at Twitch. Twitch stood a couple paces from him, one hand outstretched in placation, the other hand behind him as if warning the surgeon back. The old surgeon stood a few feet behind Twitch, his eyes roving the room desperately for an idea.
Mr. Carr was transformed. The whining, groveling electrician was gone. He had been replaced by a straight-spined man of cold, cruel resolve. He held the pistol on Twitch with a rock-steady hand.
Andrew was pulling his pistol as he came through the door. Mr. Carr drew another pistol with his free hand and leveled it as Andrew leveled his.
“Stop,” Mr. Carr ordered in a voice that rang through the hold.
Andrew stopped, but not because of what Mr. Carr said. Andrew stopped because he suddenly remembered that his pistol was loaded with blanks.
“Another step from either of you,” Mr. Carr fixed Andrew and then Twitch with a glare. “And I’ll shoot. If you doubt, then test me. I have nothing to lose.”
He dipped his chin to indicate the item laying almost between his spread feet. It was an exploding shell for one of the five inch guns. It was rigged with a pressure switch detonator.
Twitch’s face was tight and desperate. Andrew sent him a questioning glance around Mr. Carr’s shoulders. Ever so slightly, Twitch shook his head once. He had no plan. He had nothing because they were simply too late. Twitch didn’t have a firearm, and Andrew’s was loaded with powder and cork.
Mr. Carr was steeling himself, moving his toe towards the pressure switch.
By the look on Twitch and the surgeon’s faces, they were thinking like mad, but in vain. Maybe Andrew didn’t have Twitch or Maxwell’s cunning, but Andrew was a logical man. He could see that the time of thinking was past. Mr. Carr was going to kill every man aboard the Kearsarge, and himself along with them. Andrew had to rush him. Mr. Carr would undoubtedly shoot him, but if the bullet missed Andrew’s heart, maybe he could bring the madman down.
Andrew dropped his useless pistol and braced himself for the spring. Mr. Carr raised his foot to step down on the pressure switch.
“Morgan,” came a familiar, rusty old voice. “Don’t.”
A man stepped out of the shadows behind Mr. Carr, pistol first. It was Master Chief Greely. The open starboard door into the hold was visible behind him in the shadows.
“Ira,” Mr. Carr sighed. “I’m sorry you had to see this.”
Only now did Andrew hear the edge of an Eastern European accent in Mr. Carr’s voice.
“See it?” Chief Greely asked. “I’m sorry you thought you had to do it, but you don’t. Now step away or I will put you down.”
“It’s too late,” Mr. Carr said. “The war will happen. Your captain made sure of it. All I can do now is make sure the right side wins.”
“Step away, Morgan,” Chief Greely said in a voice that made Andrew’ skin crawl.
“I’m ready to die.” Mr. Carr said quietly. “It’s my duty to my people.” Mr. Carr gathered his last breath, raised his foot over the pressure switch, and said, “Unification or Death.”
Master Chief Greely pulled the trigger. His pistol boomed and Mr. Carr jerked, the contents of his skull spraying out through a new hole in his head. Andrew watched in terror as Mr. Carr wobbled, but after what felt like an eternity of gravitational indecision, Mr. Carr fell to the side, his foot rolling away from the pressure switch.
Simple as that, it was over.
Andrew exhaled long and slow. He bent to retrieve his pistol. Chief Greely moved to the fallen man, knelt painfully, and closed his eyes. When Andrew straightened, he saw that Twitch had unplugged the pressure switch from the shell, then collapsed beside it.
Andrew went to Twitch’s side and sat him up. “Are you alright, gunner’s mate?”
“Aye sir,” Twitch said. “I’m…” he trailed off.
“Gunner’s Mate?” Andrew prompted.
“I’m fine,” Twitch said slowly, but he was staring at Mr. Carr.
“Don’t move, gunner’s mate,” Andrew said, shooting a worried glance at the bandaged bullet hole in Twitch’s chest. Andrew motioned to the surgeon, who hurried their way. Regardless of what Twitch might say about his physical condition, he was white as a sheet, emaciated, and weak as a kitten.
The surgeon knelt and began checking Twitch’s vitals, but Twitch didn’t seem to notice. He was staring at Mr. Carr as if he’d never seen him before.
“I wouldn’t have believed it either,” Andrew said quietly. “How could a man like him hide all this from us?”
“No sir,” Twitch said slowly, as if distrusting his own thoughts. “I don’t think that’s the question at all.”
“What are you talking about, son?” Chief Greely asked, standing painfully and holstering his side arm.
“Why was he still trying to stop us?” Twitch asked, mulling over his own words. His eyes began to take a thoughtful narrowness, but the answer seemed simple enough to Andrew.
“The telegraph was down.” Andrew replied. “He couldn’t communicate with whoever sent him, so there was no way for him to know it was scrubbed.”
Twitch chewed on his lip, still staring at the dead man. “The telegraph is down because he sabotaged it. That in turn would indicate he was trying to keep us from receiving Captain Maxwell’s message.”
Andrew had thought of that as far back as the engine room, but he didn’t see any further implications from it. Instead of saying so, he waited.
Greely rejoined, “The Captain got the message through, son.” He spread his hands. “We’re all still alive because of it.”
“But how did he know?” Twitch said, his train of thought beginning to pick up speed.
Chief Greely crossed his arms. “Mr. Carr, you mean? How did he know what?”
“No, not Mr. Carr. Captain Maxwell,” Twitch responded, excitement bringing a bit of color back into his face. “How did Captain Maxwell know that the saboteur would still be trying to stop us? When the Captain left, he still thought I was the saboteur, remember?” Twitch pointed at the surgeon. “And he told you keep me hidden. So how did he know that Mr. Carr would continue trying to sabotage the ship?”
Andrew had no answer for that. The surgeon postulated, “Captain Maxwell is persuasive, by any means necessary. He must have found out something from the Black Hand in Serbia. That was his mission, afterall.”
Andrew blinked in surprise at the surgeon. Andrew wouldn’t have suspected that Maxwell had trusted the man with so much. But that didn’t surprise him nearly as much as the fact that the Black Hand reference didn’t surprise Twitch. This kid knew way more than he should.
Twitch’s face began to light up as the bits fell into place. “No, that’s my point exactly, because it still doesn’t answer the question. Think about it. We sank the convoy, and we made it to Serbia and dropped off the infiltration team to deal with the Black Hand. The mission was over, right? So what reason would Mr. Carr have to try to stop us after that? But Captain Maxwell was so sure the saboteur wasn’t finished that he sent us a telegram and told you to wake me up.”
Again, Andrew had no explanation.
Twitch kept going, faster. “The Captain wou
ldn’t do that on a guess. He knew it wasn’t over.” Twitch was getting excited, almost frantic. “He knew it! That’s why Mr. Carr sabotaged the wireless! He was trying to keep Maxwell from alerting us to his last attempt. But there’s nothing worth…”
Twitch stopped, astonished, then brayed a laugh, as if he’d just been the butt end of the best practical joke in the world. “Oh my God, yes there is! That’s beautiful!” Twitch laughed again. “Somebody help me up!”
Nonplussed, Andrew heaved the young man to his feet. Twitch leaned against the nearest green cyanide box and motioned to the strap that was keeping it atop the stack. “Can you unlash that sir,” he asked excitedly.
Chief Greely looked at Andrew, who nodded. Greely untied the lashing and tossed it over the stack of crates. Neither Andrew nor Chief Greely could have stopped what Twitch did next, because neither of them would have expected him to do something so stupid. Twitch threw all his weight and what little strength he had against the stack of crates and toppled the uppermost two off into the deck. They hit with splintering thuds, the contents of the crates smashing the wooden slats as easily as an egg shell.
Andrew instinctively leaped away, covering his mouth and nose with a hand, as if that would keep poison gas from killing him. Chief Greely and the surgeon reeled away as well. Twitch, on the other hand, sat weakly down beside the nearer crate and began to root through the rubble.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re gonna like this.” He cleared away the wooden remnants, leaving the pile of packing hay that had been inside it.
Twitch didn’t seem to be having any breathing difficulty, so Andrew took a cautious breath. It seemed all right. No funny smells or tastes. As Andrew, Chief Greely, and the surgeon watched, Twitch dug through the hay. When he uncovered what the crate had contained, he burst out laughing again, this time in delight.
After struggling to his feet, Twitch bent over and used both hands to pick up the contents of the crate. It was a single bar of metal, the size of Twitch’s forearm. It was so heavy he could barely keep hold of it, but he laughed and laughed.
The metal bar shone a deep yellow in the electric lights. It was a gold ingot. Andrew knew little about precious metal, but a bar that size had to contain thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of dollars worth of gold—and it was only one bar from one box. Andrew stared up in awe at countless boxes filling the hold, piled here and there, stacked all the way up to the next deck.
Six hundred and ninety-six tons of gold. Captain Maxwell had said. The largest volume of gold that has ever traded hands in history. Enough to change the balance of power in Europe forever.
Twitch hee-hawed, “Mr. Carr wasn’t trying to scrub the mission, it was never about the mission at all! He was trying to stop us, disable the guns, kill us, whatever he had to do so he could signal his buddies could come and get this!”
There’s only one reason men ever die in war, Andrew, Maxwell had said to him.
With new eyes, Andrew stared at the gold bar in Twitch’s hands.
We die for the same reason men have killed each other since Cain was jealous of what his brother Able had, Captain Maxwell had said. He’d been holding a five dollar gold piece in his hands when he’d said it.
“It’s always about the money,” Twitch laughed. “Always! The Captain knew it, and he played them all for fools!”
But who could have sent that much gold? Andrew had asked Captain Maxwell as they stood on the flying bridge.
It doesn’t matter who sent the gold, Maxwell had replied. It only matters what they mean to do with it.
Maxwell had known exactly who had sent the gold. He had known because it had been laying beneath their feet at that very moment, but he hadn’t told a soul because he hadn’t known who to trust. It stung Andrew that Maxwell hadn’t told him the truth, but at least Andrew understood why. Maxwell’s family had been killed at a dinner attended only by Navy officers and their families—the very officers he had then brought aboard the Kearsarge so he could sift them like chaff.
“This why we’re on the Kearsarge!” Twitch crowed. “It wasn’t about the Astra at all. Kearsarge wasn’t sent to sink the gold, she was sent to deliver it!”
Captain, Andrew had begged as they approached their rendezvous with the convoy. They’ll kill us miles before we can intercept them. Dozens of ships against one. I understand a slim chance, but this is no chance at all!
There is always a chance, Andrew. Maxwell had almost smiled. Trust your captain.
Maxwell had known Kearsarge would make it within firing range of the convoy, because the convoy didn’t have the gold. Kearsarge did. The whole purpose of the convoy was to collect what Kearsarge was carrying.
No matter what happened, the commander of the convoy couldn’t risk sinking Kearsarge’s precious cargo. He had to get close enough to be certain of disabling her only. But Maxwell had known that. So he’d brought the Astra.
Twitch was apparently thinking in tandem. “That’s why he signed the delivery papers for the Astra,” Twitch said. Then he asked Andrew, “Did you see the mission orders? Did you see them with your own eyes?”
Andrew shook his head. Captains only shared the mission orders if they chose to.
“I’d bet anything we aren’t even assigned to this ship!” Twitch crowed.
At that remark, Andrew recalled a memory from farther back, all the way back to the first night. Specifically, he recalled some words which had been yelled at him by a Marine Sergeant while Andrew was leading a gaggle of seamen from the Columbia, including Twitch, across the naval yard. They had run into a group of Marines who were beating a group of Navy officers into submission.
Sir! the marine had said. Make sure your men do not speak of this to anyone on penalty of courtmartial. Captain Maxwell’s orders!
Twitch was right. They weren’t assigned to the Kearsarge. Never had been. The Marines had been subduing Kearsarge’s officer corps—her real officer corps. Captain Maxwell had used his Marines to strip Kearsarge of her assigned officers so he could subvert her mission. That was why Maxwell had cast off without half of the supplies and men they needed. He’d had no choice. He had just committed treason.
Six hundred and ninety-six tons of gold falling into the clutches of the Black Hand would have extended the coming war into an unending hell. Maxwell refused to let it happen. But no one in the Navy was able to stand with him.
So Captain Maxwell had taken the fate of the world into his own two hands.
In his mind’s eye, Andrew saw again the gravity on Maxwell’s face as he had ordered Andrew to throw the “cyanide” crates overboard. In Maxwell’s mind, the gold had been the reason for every horrible thing that had happened, and in his final act as Captain, he had made certain that no one would have it.
As Andrew at last grasped the entire picture, he was stunned, but not because it had all been so complicated. He was stunned by the simplicity of it.
The gold was aboard the Kearsarge. It had been all along. That meant that, regardless of where the gold had come from originally, it had ended up in the United States. So that meant someone highly placed in the US Navy was in collusion with the Black Hand, which in turn meant that same person had ultimately been responsible for the bomb that killed Maxwell’s family.
So Captain Maxwell had concocted one plan to do three things: avenge his family, root out the US Navy traitor, and save the world. Not bad for a month’s work.
It was at that moment Andrew realized that, despite how much he loved and respected Captain Maxwell, he really didn’t know the man at all.
Twitch was leaning against the crates, the gold ingot laying at his feet. Weak and pale though he was, Twitch laughed with pride. For Andrew, final comprehension brought a profound sense of relief, so he did not laugh, though he understood why Twitch did.
Maybe the sea was full of warmongers and monsters. Maybe even the US Navy was full of them. Perhaps so was the British Admiralty, the Black Hand, Ser
bia, Austria, Europe, and even America herself, but Twitch laughed until tears ran down his cheeks.
He laughed because, no matter how many men had risen up to steal and kill and destroy, his father, Captain David Maxwell, had outfoxed them all.
W
Three days later, on the Austrian coast…
Garret was standing in a crowd again, but unlike the crowd in Sarajevo, this one was tearful with farewells. The ocean liner on which Velvet had bought their passage was anchored before them. She was a sleek craft, as purposeful as the old Kearsarge had been, but with different intent. Instead of looking fierce and aggressive, she looked refined and comfortable. Garret was okay with the change.
Fishy, Velvet, and Pun’kin were already aboard, but Garret stood at the foot of the gangway, hand on the ropes. He was watching a half dozen hellhounds on the dock, which no one else could see, and he was talking to Joseph, whom everyone else could see just fine.
“Garret,” Joseph said, “I really don’t mind going with your friends. If you like them that much, I’m sure they’re great guys.”
Garret nodded. “They are. And I really appreciate it, but it’s not about that.”
Joseph, true to his old self, had offered to take the ten day boat ride home and let Garret go with the hellhounds back through the Pass. Using the underworld, the hellhounds could lead Garret home in less than a day.
“I know you’re worried about Molly forgiving you for leaving,” Joseph said. “I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but she will. Like I told you, Garret, she sent me after you. She wants you back as bad as you want her.”
Garret shook his head and savored the tang of the salt breeze again. During his time aboard Kearsarge, the ocean air had gotten into his blood. He doubted it would ever leave him.
The hellhounds stood around him and Joseph, and though no one could see them, the humans avoided the hounds almost as if by some sixth sense. People jostled and waved to loved ones on the boat, but they didn’t touch the hounds. It was funny to watch.
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