“Surface!” Condon’s voice rose to a scream.
“No.”
“I must put the conning tower in the air, sir. It doesn’t matter, Mr. O’Shay,” he pleaded. “We can shoot better on the surface. The first torpedo is already loaded. We can fire, submerge, let the current sweep us down again while we reload, and return to the surface. You’ll get what you want, sir. And if anyone sees us, they’ll see it’s a British ship. Just like we want. Please, sir. You must listen to reason or all is lost.”
O’Shay shoved him from the periscope and looked for himself.
The river surface was wild, an ever-moving crazy quilt of tumbling waves. Spray obscured the glass. Just as it cleared, a wave curled over it, blacking it out. The boat lurched violently. Suddenly the periscope stood free of the jumbled water, and O’Shay saw that they were nearly abreast of the navy yard.
The New Hampshire was just where he wanted it. He could not have positioned the long white hull better himself. But the submarine was slipping backward even though the propeller was thrashing and the electric motor smelled like it was burning up.
“All right,” O’Shay conceded. “Attack on the surface.”
“Reduce to half speed!” Condon ordered. The motor stopped straining, and the boat stopped shaking. He watched through the periscope, controlling their drift with skillful twists of the horizontal and vertical rudders. “Prepare to surface.”
“What’s that noise?”
The Royal Navy veterans exchanged puzzled glances.
“Is something wrong with the motor?” asked O’Shay.
“No, no, no. It’s in the water.”
The crew stood still, ears cocked to a strange, high-pitched whine that grew louder and shriller by the second.
“A ship?”
Condon spun the periscope, searching the river. The engineer voiced what his shipmates were thinking.
“It doesn’t sound like any ship I ever heard.”
“Down!” Condon shouted. “Take her down.”
“WHERE DID HE GO?” Lowell Falconer gasped. To Isaac Bell’s astonishment, the bloodied Navy captain had dragged himself topside, where Bell was driving Dyname toward the Brooklyn Bridge at thirty knots.
“Dead ahead,” said Isaac Bell. He had one hand on the steam lever, the other gripped the helm. “Is that tourniquet doing its job?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the river.
“I’d be dead if it weren’t,” Falconer snapped through gritted teeth. He was white from loss of blood, and Bell doubted he would be conscious much longer. The effort to climb the few steps to the bridge must have been herculean. “Who’s in the engine room?” Falconer asked.
“Uncle Darbee claims he was coal stoker on the Staten Island Ferry, and assistant engineer when the regular fellow got drunk.”
“Dyname burns oil.”
“He figured that out when he couldn’t find a shovel. We’ve got plenty of steam.”
“I don’t see the Holland.”
“It’s gone up and down. I saw the periscope a moment ago. There!”
The stubby conning tower broke the surface. The hull itself emerged briefly and rolled back under.
“Tide’s battering him,” muttered Falconer. “It’s ebbing under a full moon.”
“Good,” said Bell. “We need all the help we can get.”
Dyname streaked through the patch of roiled water. The submarine was nowhere to be seen. Falconer tugged at Bell’s sleeve, whispering urgently, “He’s some sort of A-Class Royal Navy Holland—triple our tonnage. Look out, if he surfaces. He’ll be faster on his main engine.” With that warning, the captain slid unconscious to the deck. Bell throttled back and turned the speeding yacht around until it was pointing upstream again. He was several hundred yards beyond the Brooklyn Bridge now, scanning the water in the failing light.
A ferryboat pulled abruptly from its Pine Street Pier, cut off a big Bronx-bound Pennsylvania Railroad ferry, and raced up the East River. Their wakes combined to render vast stretches of water too choppy for Bell to distinguish the periscope from breaking seas. He drove into the chop and circled. Suddenly he saw it far ahead. It had trailed behind the ferries, masked by them, and was pulling abreast of the navy yard.
The Holland submarine burst from the water, revealing her conning tower and the full hundred feet of her hull. Blue smoke spewed. Gasoline exhaust, Bell realized, from her powerful main engine. On the surface now, she was a full-fledged torpedo boat, quick and nimble.
But vulnerable.
Bell shoved the steam lever forward, seizing this precious chance to ram her. But even as the steel yacht gathered speed, the long Holland heeled into a tight turn and pointed straight at Dyname. Her bow reared. Bell saw the dark maw of an open bow tube. From it leaped a Mark 14 Wheeler torpedo.
55
THE TORPEDO SUBMERGED.
Isaac Bell could only guess whether to steer left or right. He could not see the torpedo bearing down on him underwater. Nor whether it was veering left or right. Whatever wake it trailed was erased by the heavy chop. Dyname was one hundred feet long and ten feet wide. The instant he turned, he would present a bigger target broadside. If he guessed wrong, the TNT warhead would blow the yacht to pieces. O’Shay would submerge to reload at leisure and continue his attack.
Bell steered straight ahead.
The Holland saw him coming. It began to submerge. But it was descending too slowly to escape the knife-thin steel hull bearing down on it at nearly forty knots. It turned abruptly to the right, Isaac Bell’s left. He still could not see the torpedo’s wake, nor any trail of bubbles. “Hang on, Uncle Danny!” he shouted down the voice pipe, and turned left to ram.
A flash of light and an explosion behind him told Bell he had guessed correctly. Had he not counterpunched, the torpedo would have sunk him. Instead, it had detonated against an impervious stone pier of the Brooklyn Bridge, and he was close enough to the Holland to see its rivets. He braced for the impact by pressing hard against the helm the second before she hit the submarine just behind its conning tower. At the speed Dyname was traveling, Bell expected to shear through the Holland and cut it in half. But he had miscalculated. With her sharp bow lifting from the water as her nine propellers churned, the yacht rode up onto the Holland’s hull, perched across it, then slid off with screech of tearing steel and shearing rivets.
Dyname’s propellers were still spinning, and they pushed the yacht hundreds of yards from the collision before he could stop them. The Holland had vanished, submerged or sunk, he could not tell. Then Uncle Donny poked his head up to report, “Water’s coming in.”
“Can you give me steam?”
“Not for long,” the old man answered. Bell circled the site of the collision. He could feel the water weighing down Dyname’s hull.
Seven minutes after the Holland submerged, it reappeared a short distance away.
Bell steered to ram again. The yacht resisted the helm. He could barely coax her into a turn. Suddenly the Holland’s conning-tower hatch flipped open. Four men scrambled out and jumped into the river. The tidal current swept them under the bridge. None were Eyes O’Shay, and the Holland was circling, pointing slowly but inexorably toward the four-hundred-fifty-foot hull of the New Hampshire. At a range of less than four hundred yards, the spy could not miss.
Bell wrestled with the helm and forced the stricken yacht on a course to ram. He shoved the steam lever to flank speed. There was no response. He yelled down the voice pipe. “Give me everything you can, and get out before she sinks!”
Whatever the old man managed in the engine room caused the yacht to lumber ahead fitfully. Bell steered at the Holland, which had stopped in place, low in the water, with the East River waves lapping the rim of its open hatch. The thrashing propeller held it against the tide. Its bow was completing its turn, lining its torpedo tube up with the New Hampshire.
Isaac Bell drove Dyname into the submarine. The vessels lurched together like bloodied, bare-knuckle prizefighters st
aggering through their final round. The yacht bumped the heavier submarine slightly off its course and scraped alongside. As the effect of the impact receded and the submarine resumed lining up its torpedo, Bell glimpsed through the open hatch Eyes O’Shay’s hands manipulating the rudder wheels.
He jumped down from the bridge, dove over Dyname’s rails onto the submarine, and plunged through the hatch.
56
THE DETECTIVE RAMMED THROUGH THE HATCH LIKE A pile driver. His boots smashed down on O’Shay’s shoulders. The spy lost his grip on the rudders. Hurtled into the control room below, he sprawled on the deck. Bell landed on his feet.
The stench of bleach—poisonous chlorine gas mixed from saltwater leaks and battery acid—burned his nostrils and stung his eyes. Half blinded, he caught a blurry glimpse of a cramped space, a fraction of a boxing ring, with a curved ribbed ceiling so low he had to crouch and walled in by bulkheads bristling with piping, valves, and gauges.
O’Shay leaped up and charged.
Isaac Bell met the spy with a hard right. O’Shay blocked it and counterpunched, landing a fist that knocked the tall detective sideways. Bell slammed into the bulkhead, seared his arm on a white-hot pipe, bounced off the sharp rim of a rudder indicator, raked his scalp on the compass protruding from the ceiling, and threw another right.
The spy blocked him again with a left arm as strong as it was quick and blasted back with a counterpunch deadlier than the first. It caught Bell in his ribs with the force to hurl him back against the hot pipes. His boots skidded on the wet deck, and he fell.
The stink of chlorine was much stronger low down, the gas being heavier than air, and as Bell inhaled it he felt a burning pain in his throat and the sensation that he was suffocating. He heard O’Shay grunt with effort. The spy was launching a kick at his head.
Bell dodged all but the man’s heel, which tore across his temple, and rolled to his feet. Gasping to draw breaths of marginally cleaner air, he circled the spy. They were more evenly matched than Bell had supposed. He had a longer reach, but O’Shay was easily as strong as he and as fast. Bell’s extra height was a distinct disadvantage in the confined space.
Again he threw a right, a feint this time, and when O’Shay executed another lightning-fast block and counterpunch the tall detective was ready to hit him with a powerful left that rocked the spy’s head back.
“Lucky hit,” O’Shay taunted.
“Counterpunching is all you ever learned in Hell’s Kitchen,” Bell shot back.
“Not all,” said O’Shay. He slipped his thumb into his vest and brought it out again, armed with a razor-sharp stainless-steel eye gouge.
Bell moved in, throwing combinations. He landed most, but it was like a punching a heavy workout bag. O’Shay never staggered but merely absorbed the powerhouse blows while he waited for his chance. When it came, he took it, sinking a gut-wrenching blow into Bell’s body.
It doubled the detective over. Before Bell could pull back, O’Shay closed in on him with blinding speed and circled his neck with his powerful right arm.
Isaac Bell found himself trapped in a headlock. His left arm was pinned between their bodies. With his right, he tried to reach the knife in his boot. But O’Shay’s thumb gouge was arced toward his eye. Bell surrendered all thoughts of his knife and seized O’Shay’s wrist.
He realized instantly that he had never grappled with a stronger man. Even as he held his wrist with all his might, O’Shay forced the razor-sharp gouge closer and closer to Bell’s face until it pierced the skin and began crawling cross his cheek, plowing a fine red furrow toward his eye. All the while, O’Shay’s right arm was squeezing harder and harder around his throat, cutting off air to his burning lungs and blood to his brain. He heard a roaring in his ears. White flashes stormed before his eyes. His sight began to fade, his grip on O’Shay’s wrist loosened.
He tried to free his left arm. O’Shay shifted slightly to keep it pinned.
Head trapped, bent low, Bell suddenly saw that he was now partially behind O’Shay. He slammed his knee into the back of O’Shay’s knee. It buckled. O’Shay pitched forward. Bell wedged his shoulder under him and rose like a piston.
He flipped O’Shay up and yanked down, slamming the spy to the deck with bone-shaking force. The powerful O’Shay kept hold of Bell’s head, took a deep breath of air, and pulled the detective down with him into the heavier concentration of the suffocating gas. But Bell’s left arm was no longer pinned between them. He slammed his elbow into O’Shay’s nose, cracking bone. Still O’Shay choked him, still the gouge raked at his eye.
Suddenly cold water cascaded down on the fighting men, sending fresh clouds of chlorine up from the massive battery under the deck. The submarine was heeling, the river spilling through the hatch. Bell pushed out with long legs, found a foothold, and forced O’Shay’s head against the bulkhead lined with hot pipes. O’Shay tried to writhe away. Bell held fast. Even sharper than the stench of chlorine was the stink of burning hair, and at last O’Shay’s grip loosened. Bell pulled out of it, dodged a vicious slash of the gouge, and punched out repeatedly as waves poured in.
Bell struggled to stand, kicked free of O’Shay’s grasping hands, and climbed out of the hatch. He saw lights converging. Launches were setting out from the Brooklyn Navy Yard and lowering from the New Hampshire. The submarine was sinking, engine still roaring, propeller still fighting the current. A wave tumbled over the hatch and swept Bell to the back of the submarine. He kicked off from the propeller shield, just missing the blades, and was thrown behind by its wash.
O’Shay climbed out of the hatch, retching from the chlorine. He dove after Bell, his face a mask of hatred. “I’ll kill you.”
The Holland’s propeller dragged him into its spinning blades. The river current whisked his torso past Bell. The gangster’s head raced after it, glaring at the detective, until the river yanked it under.
The Holland submarine rolled quite suddenly on its side and slid beneath the waves. Isaac Bell thought he was next. He battled to stay afloat, but he was weakened by cold and rendered breathless by the poison gas. A wave curled over him, and his mind suddenly filled with his memory of the day he met Marion and the floor had trembled beneath his feet. His eyes were playing tricks on him. Her thick, lustrous hair was piled atop her head. One long, narrow strand fell nearly to her waist. She looked dainty but strong as a willow, and she was reaching for him.
She gripped his hand. He tightened his own grip and pulled himself to the surface. He looked up into the grinning face of a bearded sailor.
THE NEXT ISAAC BELL KNEW, he was sprawled on his back in the bottom of a wooden boat. Beside him lay Captain Lowell Falconer. The Hero of Santiago looked as beat-up as Bell felt, but his eyes were bright.
“You’ll be O.K., Bell. They’re taking us into sick bay.”
It hurt to talk and was hard to breathe. His throat was burning. “Better warn the salvage boys that the Holland has a live Wheeler Mark 14 still in its tube.”
“Still in its tube, thanks to you.”
The launch bumped against a dock.
“What are those lights?” asked Bell. The sky was white with them.
“Hull 44 is going to double shifts.”
“Good.”
“ ‘Good’?” Lowell Falconer echoed. “The most you can say for yourself is ‘good’?”
Isaac Bell thought hard. Then he grinned. “Sorry about your yacht.”
ON DISTANT SERVICE
TEN YEARS LATER
NORTH SEA, GERMAN COAST
FOG BLINDED THE GERMAN SOLDIERS HUNTING THE American spy.
Oozing from the Friesland peat bogs into the morning air, it crowded under the trees and covered the flat ground. It was supposed to last until the sun burned it off midmorning. But it grew thin early when a salt wind from the North Sea roamed ashore. Isaac Bell saw the daylight penetrate, revealing fields crisscrossed by ditches, trees stationed along fence lines, and in the distance a boathouse by a canal. A boat wo
uld come in handy now.
Bell saw his own face on a wanted poster nailed to the boathouse.
He had to hand it to the Kaiser’s military intelligence. Three days after he had come ashore, the German Army had plastered his image on every tree and barn between Berlin and the coast. One thousand Marks reward, five and a half thousand dollars, a fortune on either side of the Atlantic. The grim-faced fugitive on the Steckbrief bore his general likeness. Though they had no photograph, only the account of a sentry at the Wilhelmshaven Naval Station U-boat yard, the sketch artist had captured the determined set of his chin and lips and the hard, lean look of a man more muscle than flesh. Thankfully, the written description of blond hair and mustache and blue eyes fit most men in the Saxon region. Though few stood as tall.
With the United States now fighting Germany in the World War, his clothes—a ragbag mix of uniform parts—and the crutch he carried as a wounded veteran, guaranteed he’d be shot as a spy if they caught him. Nor could he expect any mercy for the map he had drawn of the new U-boat yard that serviced the latest submarines—immensely more powerful than the old Holland, and heavily armed—that were suddenly and unexpectedly winning the war for Germany. The map that was useless until he delivered it to America’s Sixth Battle Squadron steaming offshore.
The canal was narrow, and the rushes planted on both sides to protect the banks from wakes tended to hold the fog. He rowed two miles to Wilhelmshaven, abandoning the boat to evade naval station sentries and stealing another. The fog continued cooperating, after a fashion, at the harbor, still fitful, thinning for moments, then thickened by clouds of coal smoke from a hundred warships.
It was low tide. The entrance to the harbor was shallow, and Wilhelmshaven was crowded with funnels and masts of the High Seas Fleet’s cruisers, battle cruisers, and dreadnoughts waiting for high water. But shallow-draft torpedo boats could leave, which meant that Bell’s escape vessel had to be small enough to operate by himself and very fast, which eliminated tugboats, lighters, launches, and fishing scows.