Lamson put his breakfast aside and went topside, nodding at Mr. Porter as he scanned the squadron bobbing in the sea. Most were converted merchantships like the Nansemond, meant to run down blockade-runners. There was also a handful of the purpose-built, prewar, steam-driven warships. As powerful as the squadron was, Lamson knew its strength paled compared to that assembled under Adm. John Dahlgren’s South Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Charleston. Admiral Dahlgren had command of the Navy’s new iron fist, all eight of the new iron monitors. Riding low in the water with their great double-gunned turrets, the Passaic class monitors were a marvel rushed to production after last year’s great duel on in Hampton Roads between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia, but not a one of these wonders bobbed here off Wilmington.
“What is the signal, Mr. Henderson?” Lamson asked the acting ensign. He had been lagging in his signal recognition skills, and Lamson had had him at practice in every spare moment.
Henderson blinked, read the signal flags, and then said quickly, “‘Captain Nansemond report squadron commander immediately,’ sir.”
“Very good, Mr. Henderson.”
INDIANAPOLIS RAIL YARDS, INDIANA, 3:22 AM, AUGUST 3, 1863
“Traitor!” The speaker spat out the word, a letter clutched in his hand. But it was his eyes that glowed with hate. Big Jim Smoke was a hater by nature, but now he had a cause.
The Copperhead rebellion could not succeed by merely hamstringing the war effort-it must succeed by an act as overt as the rebels firing on Fort Sumter, and for that they needed arms. Tens of thousands of small arms and tons of ammunition were siphoned off the open market to fill secret arsenals, but even that was not enough. Raids on federal arms warehouses followed.
Such as the one on this warm summer’s night.
Their target was the arms warehouse, one of many that fed the rail yards of Indianapolis, which poured arms and supplies south to the armies that had finally starved out proud and obdurate Vicksburg. Thirty men slid through the shadows. Wagons waited deeper in the gloom. Two o’clock in the morning is a dangerous time for sentries and in particular for these men who were members of the Invalid Corps, the light duty men released from the charnel house hospitals as unfit for field duty but able to do some valuable service. In these early hours a man could be seduced into the sleepy arms of Orpheus. It was burden enough to nurse a limping leg from a minié ball at Chancellorsville or Champion Hill without struggling also against leaden sleep.
The man with the letter had tucked it and his anger away. He had work to do but had to wait while others did their own work. He stepped around a corner to be out of sight and lit a match to his cigar. The guards did not stir from their sleep as shadowy forms scurried through the lamplight. A few practiced motions, and the guards slumped to the ground, cut throats gushing black blood in the pale light. The wide double doors swung open with a creak, and the gang rushed in. A lamp waved back and forth down the street to summon the wagons.
“You see,” Big Jim Smoke said to the young man who had joined him, “how easy it is.” Felix Stidger’s handsome, pale face had not even twitched when the guards were killed. Calm, self-control was the shield and buckler of a good spy, and Stidger was among the best. An ardent Unionist, Stidger had enlisted and served in the office of the Provost Marshal General of Tennessee. He had volunteered to infiltrate the Copperhead organization in Indiana and had succeeded beyond his wildest hopes. With great charm he had ingratiated himself so well with Dr. Bowles that he had been appointed the group’s corresponding secretary, and the information flowed to Washington. Now, though, beneath that placid exterior he was worried. Big Jim and his gang should have been caught in a trap.
Big Jim instead reached into his pocket and pulled out the letter. “Looking for this?” he sneered. Stidger’s eyes widened only a bit as he heard Smoke’s pistol cock and felt the muzzle stab into his belly. “You, of all people, should have known that we are everywhere, even the post office. And you mailing so many letters, and the Army making so many raids on our hidden weapons and making so many arrests.” He pressed the muzzle deeper into Stidger’s belly. “And now, if you please, we find this one, telling about this little raid of ours.” He grinned, his incisors gleaming in the lamplight, wet and wolf-like through his beard. He gave the muzzle another shove. “What gets me is how you got Bowles to trust you. But then he is too much the trusting fool. From the first, you weren’t right by me.”
“Come to your senses, Big Jim.” Stidger’s voice was about as even as Smoke had ever heard. “Of course, I wrote it. They think I work for them, and I give them just enough truth to make me believable. I am working under Vallandingham’s instructions.” Smoke was listening, he could tell. He had captured his attention by dropping the biggest name in the Copperhead movement. Now he had only to play it out and make him doubt. “Look at the date, man. I wrote that the raid would be on the twelfth not the second. Check it.” Stidger was counting on the split second distraction for Big Jim to look at the letter again in which to draw his own pistol. Instead, Big Jim pulled his trigger. The bullet’s sound muffled in the young man’s middle. It severed his spine as it spewed blood and bone out behind him in fiery tongue, and he fell like a rag doll.
“Good try, traitor. But if you had meant the twelfth, you should not have written the second.” The light had not entirely gone out of Stidger’s eyes when Big Jim kicked him in the face. He paused long enough to wipe his bloody shoes on the corpse and then crossed the street. By then, most of the five thousand new Springfield rifles had been loaded into the waiting wagons and were disappearing into the gloom.
OFF CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, 2:15 PM, AUGUST 5, 1863
The greatest of the great white sharks made the cold waters off the Cape of Good Hope their home. These primal killing machines now had competition from an even deadlier killing machine, man. The CSS Alabama was an iron-hulled steamer, 220 feet long and 32 feet across her beam, three-masted, and bark-rigged with powerful engines that sent her sleek hull through the water at thirteen knots. Six gun ports pierced each side. She was circling her helpless forty-fifth victim, a small Yankee bark, Sea Bride, close inshore. The entire population of Cape Town had decamped to the shore to watch the spectacle of death on the water. A reporter for the Cape Argus described the hunt.The Yankee came around from the southeast, and about five miles from the Bay, the steamer came down upon her. The Yankee was evidently taken by surprise.Like a cat, watching and playing with a victimized mouse, Captain Semmes permitted his prize to draw off a few yards, and then he upped steam again and pounced upon her. She first sailed around the Yankee from stem to stern, and stern to stem again. The way that fine, saucy, rakish craft was handled was worth riding a hundred miles to see. She went around the bark like a toy, making a complete circle, and leaving an even margin of water between herself and her prize.14
There was more than a little glee mixed in with the excitement. The sentiment in this colony of the British Empire, on which the sun never set, reflected the mother country’s political prejudices as closely as they parroted the latest fashions-contempt for the Yankees and admiration for the Confederates. Cape Town’s elite was already in competition to invite the Alabama’s captain, the famous Capt. Raphael Semmes, into their homes. To the rage of the U.S. consul, the city prepared to fete the captain and his officers even before the Alabama had made its kill.
The Confederate commerce raider finished toying with its prey and sent over a boat to fetch its captain and his sailing papers. The defeated captain climbed aboard stone-faced, his life in ruins. He owned his ship; it was his home as well as his livelihood. Semmes greeted him cordially before reviewing his papers. The Sea Bride’s captain observed him as he read. Semmes was a thin, wiry man, all sinew and determination. His already famous waxed mustache protruded at right angles for three inches from either side of his face.