Mississippi Rose | Book 1 | Into Darkness

by Lopez, Rob

  Darla knew the island. It was Shreve’s Bar, and at over a mile long it was a substantial divider of the river. A lot depended on whether she could make the east channel before Eric blocked it.

  “Slow Ahead both,” she ordered Manny.

  The boat crept along the river curve until the wooded island came into view. In the far distance, at the mouth of the Lower Old River, was the Pride of Orleans, riding at anchor. Darla increased speed, but her opponent didn’t move. Gradually, the other boat disappeared out of sight behind the island.

  Carl had been watching it closely through his binoculars. “I think they weighed anchor,” he said. “I saw activity.”

  “He’ll come around the other end of the island,” said Darla, “and try and block our exit.”

  “That won’t be good.”

  “If he does, I’ll ram him.”

  “It’ll be better if we avoid that. He’s got more mass than you, and your little plow-stick won’t do anything if he comes at us head-on. He’ll just crush you.”

  Darla slowed the boat down to a crawl again and they all waited for Eric’s boat to emerge. Manny already had his instructions and Darla was ready to turn the boat smartly around, but as the minutes passed and the island slid by, there was no sign of the Pride of Orleans.

  Darla wondered if Eric was still making steam, in which case it would have made sense to speed up rather than go slow. She remained cautious, however.

  When she passed the island she saw Eric’s boat on the far side of the river, facing the same way as her and also going slow.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Carl.

  Darla wanted to ask the same question. Eric was being uncharacteristically circumspect. Did he have problems with his engine?

  Jacques poked the rifle barrel out of his bunker, but the other vessel was far out of range and he didn’t fire. Darla approached the Angola ferry dock and saw the sharpshooters lying down ready, staring down the sights of their rifles. She expected Eric to turn toward her on an interception course, but he maintained a parallel heading.

  “He’s not falling for it,” she told Carl.

  “Patience.”

  “He knows what we’re doing,” said Darla. “He’s been shot at before from the prison grounds and he’s keeping his distance. He’s waiting for us to move on.”

  “Well you can’t,” said Carl. “We’ll be sitting ducks upriver. Slow it down more. See if we can entice him to make the move.”

  Darla stopped the paddles. The boat slowly drifted back. Carl observed the other vessel through the binoculars.

  “He’s stopped as well.”

  Darla tapped her foot impatiently on the deck. “We’re wasting our time.”

  She ordered Half Ahead.

  “What are you doing?” asked Carl.

  “Ending this,” replied Darla.

  “Are you crazy?”

  Darla thought she might well be, but her stomach was tight and she knew she couldn’t play the long game. Her personality didn’t lend itself to that kind of strategy. She had a plan and now she just wanted to get it out of the way.

  Before she changed her mind.

  They passed the ferry dock and kept going.

  “Darla, you need to rethink this. You’re throwing away any advantage we might have.”

  Darla didn’t look at him. She was analyzing the shallows. “We tried it your way,” she said, “and it didn’t work. Now we do this my way. If you don’t like it, this is a good time to swim to shore.”

  Carl didn’t reply, but he also didn’t bolt out of the pilothouse.

  “Manny, get Zack to come out and take a sounding.”

  She looked back to see what Eric was doing. The Pride of Orleans didn’t appear to have moved.

  “Why isn’t he following us?” said Carl.

  “He’s toying with us,” said Darla. “He knows he can catch us. He’s waiting to see if we’re really going for it.”

  Zack swung the lead and took a reading of the depth. “Eleven feet,” he called out.

  Darla turned the helm slightly toward the bank.

  “Nine feet!”

  It was a gently sloping bank, which was what she was hoping for. She took it in a little closer still.

  “Five feet!”

  That was too close, but it gave Darla the information she needed. Easing out a touch, she left a wake of disturbed sediment.

  “He’s moving,” called Carl.

  Darla figured he would. It would take longer for the larger vessel to get up to speed, however.

  “Full Ahead both,” she ordered.

  The Mississippi Rose surged forward, her driving pistons thudding through the decks. The noise and the wash disturbed a wading flock of brown speckled plovers, causing them to take flight. A pair of ducks labored to join them, their feet trailing along the surface of the water as they hastily gained height. Everything seemed anxious to get away, as if in anticipation of the contest about to take place. In the distance, the Pride of Orleans frothed up the river to begin its pursuit.

  Darla gripped the helm and watched the pennant flap on its jackstaff. The boat coursed through the brown waters and she pulled the cord to sound the shrieking cry of the steam whistle. It occurred to her that this could be the last time she did this and she pulled the cord one more time. Doubts crept into her mind and she flung them away like water from the bow. She only had one plan and one chance to make it work.

  They were over a mile from the ferry dock when Eric ventured away from the western bank and crossed into the channel. The distance between the two vessels slowly closed. Darla watched the other boat, picking out the details as they came into focus: the gunmen with shields waiting on deck, Gene’s body still suspended between the golden antlers. Carl lifted his rifle and took aim.

  “Wait,” said Darla.

  Carl looked at her, trying to figure out what she had on her mind.

  “It’s your turn to be patient,” she said.

  “Sure, like you were,” retorted Carl.

  “You won’t hit nothing at this range.”

  “I can try to put them off.”

  “I don’t want them put off! I want them to come in hot.”

  “That’s your plan?”

  Darla didn’t bother explaining, instead focusing on Eric’s approach and estimating his closing speed.

  “Manny, Slow Ahead port wheel, maintain starboard.”

  As soon as the left paddle wheel slowed, the boat began to turn. Darla spun the helm, pulling the Mississippi Rose into a tight circle, just a few hundred yards in front of the Pride of Orleans.

  “Full Ahead both,” yelled Darla, straightening the helm. The two vessels now charged at each other.

  Darla no longer had time to think about whether it was a good idea or not. Turning toward the bank, she took her boat through the shallows, churning up the silt. The Pride of Orleans came on at ramming speed, and indeed it was on a perfect interception course to crush the smaller vessel. Caught between the bank and Eric’s boat, the Mississippi Rose had nowhere else to go, but Darla held her course. Just when it seemed there would be a collision, Eric veered away, as she knew he would.

  With his deeper draft, he’d crush his bow on the sandbank before even making contact with Darla’s boat.

  They passed parallel to each other, and the gunmen opened fire at the easy target, sending splinters flying once more, bullets crashing into the woodwork. Darla and Carl stayed low below the level of the sandbags, Darla steering blind, but Jacques was in a better protected position. Taking his time he fired a shot, picking out a gunman who’d gotten careless with his shield. The gunman staggered back, the force of the .30-06 round splattering his blood all over the white-painted bulkhead behind him. The other gunmen suddenly got a lot less enthusiastic about being aggressive, especially when the heavy rounds began penetrating the composite armor of the shields at such close range.

  The incoming fire slackened and Darla popped her head up above the sandbags, check
ing the location of the other vessel. As soon as she drew level with the large rear paddle wheel, she yelled down the voice tube.

  “Full Astern starboard wheel!”

  There was a pause as the starboard wheel was brought to a halt, and Darla spun the helm to turn the boat towards the wake of the Pride of Orleans. Then the starboard wheel ran in reverse, opposite to the port wheel, and the Mississippi Rose was forced into a wrenching turn that elicited shrieks of complaint from the timbers. Spinning on the spot, the vessel turned to face the rear of Eric’s boat, bobbing in its wake.

  “Full Ahead both!”

  Eric must have slowed the bigger vessel to maximize firing time as it passed by. Alerted to the sudden danger, he tried to increase speed again.

  Like a bulldog on a mission, the Mississippi Rose bounded forward, the ram cutting sharply through the frothed wake. Gripping the helm tight, Darla hunkered down as a hail of bullets came flying her way, ricocheting off the boiler plate angled on the front of the pilothouse. Undeterred, she urged more speed out of Manny as the distance closed. Carl emptied an entire magazine at the rear of the Pride of Orleans’ pilothouse, then held on tight when he realized what Darla was actually about to do.

  The Mississippi Rose plowed into the rear paddle wheel of the Pride of Orleans.

  Paddle boards splintered and snapped as the plow blades were driven in. The wheel continued to turn, lifting the bow of the smaller vessel up, then it locked, unable to turn any more.

  In the Pride of Orleans’ boiler room, the new crew clearly lacked the experience to deal with a stalled mechanism, were not monitoring boiler pressures adequately, and had never heard of the phenomenon known as water hammer. As the pressure and temperature differentials built up, and the pipes began to hammer, nobody in that room caught the significance, and not a single hand reached for the release valve. In the end the pressure released itself.

  Darla watched as a chunk of valve burst out through a bulkhead, looking like it had been fired from a cannon, followed immediately by white-hot steam billowing out. Scalded crewmen ran out of the boiler room and leaped into the river.

  Darla wasn’t done. Ordering Full Astern, she dragged her boat out of the paddle wheel’s loosening grip and backed away from the stricken vessel. Then she took her boat around in a loop and charged at the vessel’s flank. The plow-ram cracked the planking on the Pride of Orleans’ hull and drove a triangle-shaped hole just below the waterline.

  29

  The Mississippi Rose backed away, still being fired upon by recalcitrant gunmen. As the water rushed in through the hole, the Pride of Orleans began to list and sink at the stern. Once they realized all was lost, the gunmen discarded their heavy rifles and shields and swam to the nearby bank.

  It was an ignominious end to a once-proud boat, and any triumph Darla felt was muted by the sight of Gene still hanging on the pilothouse. It looked at first that he might indeed go down with his boat, which would have been fitting, but they were still in shallow water, and the Pride of Orleans settled its hull on the bottom, its main deck awash but the superstructure sticking out. Gene’s bloated, discolored body hung dejected, as if shamed by the fate of himself and his boat.

  “We can’t leave him there,” said Darla.

  Carl kept his rifle aimed at the boat. “Where’s your man Eric?” he said.

  The gunmen splashed to the bank, only to be met by the prison guards who’d hurried through the trees to the site of battle. The gunmen, bedraggled and bewildered, surrendered. Darla tried to see if any of them might be Eric.

  “I don’t see him,” she said.

  “He could be dead. I put about thirty rounds into that pilothouse.”

  “That might not mean anything if he had the same protection as us.”

  Jacques emerged from the sandbag bunker.

  “Stand by to board,” called Darla back to him.

  Darla maneuvered her boat alongside and Jacques jumped onto the flooded deck and tied up. Carl followed him. Once her boat was secure, Darla left the pilothouse and dashed out, leaping onto the grounded vessel. Splashing through the water, she climbed the outer steps to the upper decks.

  “Wait,” called Carl.

  Darla made it onto the Texas deck and halted. Eric was still in the pilothouse, a bloodied hand holding onto a window frame as he gave her a baleful glare, his head only half above the sill. Striding across the deck, she angrily yanked open the bullet-riddled outer door. Eric was on his knees in a pool of his own blood. In his free hand he held a rifle that pointed at Darla.

  “Surprise,” he murmured with a smirk.

  Eric was clearly weak and the rifle barrel wavered in a wide circle. Darla easily pushed it to one side.

  “You’re pathetic,” she said.

  Eric couldn’t hold the rifle up any longer and he dropped it.

  “That makes two of us, babe,” he breathed. “You cheated me. You —”

  There was a loud bang that made Darla jump. A fresh hole appeared on the pilothouse bulkhead and Eric crumpled like an empty sack, a last breath escaping his lips. Darla glanced back and saw Jacques standing on the Texas deck, lowering his smoking rifle.

  “He had nothing useful to say,” said the chef dismissively, before Darla even asked.

  “I wanted to know why he killed Gene,” she demanded.

  Jacques shook his head. “He would not have told you. He only had bitter words to hurt you. Now he has none. The silence is better.”

  Carl came running up the steps within the pilothouse. He took one look at the body, then at the discarded rifle.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” he asked her. “You could have got yourself killed.”

  “Carl,” sighed Darla, “you’re not my mother. Certainly not my sister. But it was sweet of you to ask.”

  “Sweetness has nothing to do with it. Boarding actions are meant to be coordinated operations.”

  “So we’ll practice next time,” replied Darla. She looked down at Eric’s body, measuring her reaction, but she found no trace of remorse. “Jacques, get Eric off Gene’s boat.”

  Jacques dragged the body out and tipped it over the side. The body splashed down on the river, snagged for a moment on the underwater rail, then drifted off with the current, spinning slowly like a leaf.

  Darla stepped into the pilothouse, running a finger along the polished brass ring that rimmed the helm. Carl remained nearby, still annoyed.

  “We’re going to come into conflict a lot if we don’t get one thing straight,” said Darla absently. “I don’t play by the rules and I never went to no academy. This isn’t a Coast Guard vessel, and the FEMA contract just expired. There’s only one captain on the Mississippi Rose and that’s me. If that doesn’t sit well with you, you’ve got other options.”

  Darla glanced to the shore where the prison guards escorted the ex-cons back into incarceration.

  Carl was silent for a while. “I’m not used to serving,” he said finally.

  “Me neither. Do you want me to put you ashore?”

  “No.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Carl looked at her. “Well, we could clash repeatedly as I try to put some sense in you and you refuse to listen.”

  “Works well with the rest of my crew,” said Darla blithely. “With those conditions, I think you’ll fit right in.”

  Carl shook his head, a smile creeping onto his face. “I could regret this.”

  “You could.”

  “And what do you plan to do now?”

  “With you?”

  “With the boat.”

  “Head up to Pittsburgh. Got a sister there.”

  “That’s a long voyage. Do you think the boat will make it in its present condition?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  Carl rubbed his chin and thought for a moment. “You’ll need someone level-headed to help you undertake that kind of endeavor.”

  “Got anyone in mind?”

  “I might know somebody foolish enough
to try it.”

  “And would that somebody be interested in being First Mate?”

  “Is that a formal offer?”

  “It is.”

  “I guess I accept. Do I need to sign my name in blood now?”

  “Nothing so drastic,” said Darla. “You realize I’ll still flirt with you, by the way.”

  “Not a problem if you can handle cold rejection.”

  “That,” she said, “is the story of my life.”

  “I’ll take that as my initiation. What now?”

  Darla turned to the front of the pilothouse, and she cleared her throat. Hartfield’s feet dangled in view.

  “We have a funeral to attend to,” she said. “Give me a hand cutting Gene down.”

  ***

  They salvaged what they could from the Pride of Orleans, including the cache of rifles and ammunition taken from the armory, plus the discarded ballistic shields. Darla also ordered the golden antlers to be taken down.

  “Are we fitting them to the Mississippi Rose?” asked Zack.

  “No,” replied Darla. “They belong to Gene. I never beat him in a fair race.”

  Darla took her boat over the deepest part of the channel and had Carl take over the helm while she went down to the stern.

  Gene’s body was wrapped in a canvas tarp and weighed down with the antlers. Jacques and Zack waited respectfully on either side.

  “Gene, you were too nice for this world we’ve got ourselves into,” began Darla. “I’m sorry you ever had to meet the likes of Eric Whelan. And sorry that it was because of me that you did.” Darla bowed her head. “You didn’t deserve this, and while I hated that you were a little smug about it, I have to admit you were a gentleman. You were a true riverboat captain, and the Mississippi River is where you belong. I don’t believe in God, so … let the river rest your soul. Amen.”

  Jacques and Zack took hold of the canvas and swung the body over the stern. Captain Gene Hartfield was committed to his watery grave, sinking immediately beneath the wake. The stranded Pride of Orleans fell behind as they sailed north. Darla had considered burning her as a funeral pyre, but in the end she couldn’t bring herself to do it. If the higher winter river levels didn’t dislodge her and drift her into deeper waters then maybe someone could salvage her the way Darla had her own boat. The river would decide her fate, and that was only proper and fair.