"Start her up," said Turner. "One man forward, cast her off. Then stand by starboard side with that boat hook, fend us off. I'll cast off here." His big body became suddenly catlike as he sprang up on the counter and flipped lines free.
With a burbling rumble, the engines started.
"Where to, Johnny?"
"Put her out in the stream, Bo." Turner came forward into the boat's little cabin, a dark presence that automatically took over from the now-silent Leo.
The lights of the yacht club fell away astern. The gay sounds of the piano grew faint. Diesel fumes blew forward over them from the exhausts. "Bring her round to the right. Aim more toward Tanner Point there. Then we got a sharp left to get out into the 'Lizabeth."
"Right. Johnny… it's good to have you with us, man."
The other men nodded, reaching out to touch him, their dark talisman. Vyry stood close to him, feeling with a shiver how his silent immobility was reassuring and frightening at the same time.
"Johnny?" she whispered, touching his arm.
He grunted.
"Are you feeling more — more like yourself?"
He didn't answer, and she thought Please Lord, let him come back to what he was. I don't care about any shell, I don't care about the Railroad. Just give me my man back the way he used to be.
"Come on right and speed her up now," said Johnny Turner, his voice loud, cold, and harsh in the freshening wind of the night.
TWELVE
For Jerry Higgins it had so far been an uneventful and even a rather pleasant voyage.
Captain Higgins sipped tentatively at the mug. The coffee was too hot to drink, almost too thick to swallow. Just the way he liked it. He carried it out on the wing of President McClellan's bridge and leaned against the rail.
It was late, but he had no desire to turn in. Fair weather, mild two-to four-foot seas, and good fixes all the way down the coast had allowed him to catch up on his sleep. Lieutenant Larsson, a muscular, bullet-headed, thoroughly dependable Minnesotan, had the conn. Higgins trusted him, and that left him free to stare out into the intermittently starry night and to meditate.
To think about the land, for example — that land just beyond the horizon to the west. Only a few scattered lights marked it against the darkness of the sea. That now, he thought, is enemy land. That is Virginia.
In a way it was nice to have an enemy who, at the moment at least, wasn't shooting at you. Peace, he loved it. Higgins scratched slowly at what little a Jap armor-piercing shell had left of his right arm. Well, he had his memories, anyway.
And, by God, he'd come out of it lucky. The last year of the war, close to the home islands — that had been hell. A bloody hell of close-in naval engagements, ship to ship with the well-trained, well-armed Nip fleet. Toward the end, when they started using the suicide boats, it hadn't been all that clear who was going to win. Or might not have been… except for Dolly.
What an innocent nickname. What an awful weapon. But he recalled too his relief at hearing Admiral Moorer's voice over the Fleet Common band, announcing the destruction of Yokohama and the Emperor's surrender.
And it looked like peace now for a good long time. With the Union holding the ultimate weapon, the aggressive maneuvers of the Empire off the coast would mean little now. Once the weapon down below, and others like it, were in place, peace would be guaranteed for years to come.
A murmur nagged at his ear amid the sounds of his ship. Through the sounds of engines, pumps, the hundreds of small whirring motors and ventilators and the all-pervading thrum of the single big screw, through it all he thought for a moment he heard airship engines. He peered astern. The stars to the north were bright and clear. Scattered clouds made dark patches among them. He thought for a moment of stepping inside and getting the night glasses and searching the sky and the horizon as he would have done the year before.
On second thought, it was probably one of the commercial flights, maybe the London-Richmond run. He relaxed, tried the coffee again. Almost cool enough to drink. There was no reason to be alarmed.
After all, it was peacetime.
Quidley's mouth was so dry he couldn't swallow.
It was a fantastic sight. Below, ahead, through the slanted window of the zep, two white lights rode low on the sea. Around them was nothing, the dark wide silent circle of the sea, a pit of darkness so complete that he had to look off to the right, to the scattered lights of the sleeping peninsula, to reassure himself they weren't falling. And above them the soft brilliant summer stars, marred only by high clouds and an oval patch of darkness that rode to their left: Macon, pacing Shenandoah in its now-silent drift downwind toward their target.
"All ready?" he said to the young Marine captain, Mitchell, who stood beside him in the darkened gondola.
"Yes, sir. Men are in assault order. The descent tube's trailed—"
"About ten more minutes, gentlemen," said the aircruiser's captain, McLaws. "Wind's not as strong as we expected. We're drifting down on them from their port side at about two knots."
"We'd better get back to the debark station," said Mitchell.
Quidley blundered along after him. The dirigible's corridors were narrow and lit only by the dimmest of red lights: the slightest gleam from the sky might alert the enemy. Enemy, he repeated to himself, savoring the word. Yes, tonight they really were the enemy.
He thought of Jarrett Quidley and the first Aubrey. He too would face the hereditary enemy tonight. The damned Yankee. But not for war, though there might be fighting. No, the purpose was peace. To maintain the balance.
Because the Yankees could not be trusted. If the balance were not kept they'd interfere in Canada, in the South. So the Confederacy and Allies needed that shell. That was all and it was enough.
The tube door. He took a deep breath. "I'm going down first, sir," the captain was saying.
"Right, I'll be right behind you."
"No shooting unless you have to, boys. Use the knives," Mitchell said to his men. Quidley turned to survey them as the dozen or so men murmured agreement. It was a weird scene: They were packed together back-to-front in the narrow corridor, in dark unmarked blue denims like those sailors wore, but bulging in odd places with equipment and weapons. Their faces were blackened, and in the dim red light all he could see was their eyes.
"… uniform," Mitchell was saying.
"What's that?"
"I was surprised to see you here in uniform, sir. Our orders were not to—"
"I know. I helped write them. How much longer?"
The marine had his mouth open to answer when the buzzer sounded. He turned as the door hissed open, and stepped through without a glance back. Quidley looked at his departing back, stepped forward, and heard someone behind him shout; but it was too late, he was already falling.
The slide was a hundred times worse this time, in the dark. He thought: Oh, God, what if we're not over the ship? Then he landed, hard, on Mitchell's head, and rolled off. The fall smashed him into something jagged and very hard, and he tasted blood inside his mouth. He shook his head to clear it and found himself lying against a piece of machinery on the stern of the ship. Above him loomed the black silent bulk of the airship. Lord — how could the Yankees not see her?
"Sir, Captain Mitchell's been knocked out."
"Leave him here. Execute your orders," he whispered.
"Go. Peters, Laverette, Carter — take your men. Get going." A quick scuffle of departing feet, and he was suddenly crouched alone in the dark on a hostile ship.
Very well, his part of the mission. He had to get down to the hold. He pushed himself to his feet and ran forward, gripping his sword to keep the scabbard from clanking, looking for a door to the interior. Behind him he heard Mitchell stir and moan softly but there was no time to turn back.