The Bootlegger

Both engines started. They shut them down again and shrouded their pipes to keep them in reserve. Bell feared they’d be needed soon enough. The two engines currently pushing the boat were exhausting blue smoke, and their valves were clattering like a bowling alley. They clattered through the night, and when one of the engines began to sound as if it were approaching the end, Bell switched them both off after starting the reserves.

Bell was on watch hours past dawn the next morning, driving through heavy squalls, with Pauline huddled against him fast asleep and Tobin and Asa sleeping under the foredeck, when he heard a rumble like thunder. A flash to his left could be the lightning that caused it. Fifteen seconds later, it flashed again, and then again in another fifteen, and he saw a white flashing pinprick of light.

Cape May Light could be seen up to twenty-four nautical miles. But not in these conditions. To see the light from the low boat through the wind-whipped rain, they had to be almost on top of it. What he had thought was thunder might be surf pounding land. Then he saw enormous waves breaking on a sandbar. He could feel them gathering behind him, lifting the boat to drive them onto the beach. He swung the wheel, hit his throttles, and fled the shore.

Fighting to maintain twenty knots, he ran east for an hour, then swung north again. Two hours passed. Tobin was at the helm. Bell saw a steady white light that did not blink.

“Absecon Light,” Pauline read.

“Atlantic City,” said Tobin. “Getting close, Mr. Bell. Barnegat next.”

Asa Somers spotted the red-and-white painted Barnegat Lighthouse itself, and again the cruiser peeled away from the shore. Two hours later, limping on one engine, holding the other that was still ru

“What is going on?” asked Tobin, turning on his heel. “It’s like a miniature eye of a miniature hurricane.”

“Any idea where we are?” asked Bell.

“None.”

Pauline dragged her heavy canvas bag out of the foredeck cubby and handed it to Tobin.

“What’s this?”

“What you forgot to pack. A sextant and a Nautical Almanac. It’s noon. I recall Isaac knows how to use it. He can shoot the sun and tell us where we are.”

Bell said, “You drive, Ed. Keep her as steady as you can. On the jump. This won’t last.”

Indeed, the cloud banks were closing quickly around the strange clear patch. Bell swung the sextant to the sky and lowered the mirrored image of the sun to the horizon. From the scale, he called the angle to Pauline. She noted the time and ran her finger down the columns pertaining to the Greenwich mean angle. Asa held the chart.

“Approximately twenty miles from New York,” said Pauline. “Steer three hundred ten degrees to Ambrose Light.”

“Who taught you how to do that?” Tobin asked her.

“The captain of the Aquitania.”

Clouds and mist closed in abruptly. The visibility dropped to a quarter mile, then increased, then dropped again as squalls blew through fitfully. With twelve miles to go, they spotted a dismasted schooner. The storm-battered ship was tossing at anchor while its crew cut away ruined rigging. A bedsheet flapped from its bowsprit. An advertisement was painted on it in red:

CC

$55 CASE

“Rum Row,” said Isaac Bell.

They sped past island schooners and rusty steamers battened down for the storm.

“Look at that,” said Asa. “There’s some lunatic driving a taxi.”

“The price of booze goes up in bad weather,” Tobin explained. “They’ll get rich if they don’t drown.”

A fresh squall hit, riding a cold wind, and they were suddenly alone again on a seemingly empty sea. The squalls passed, and they could see for two or three miles that they were still alone except for a single big ship on a course similar to theirs, angling toward New York. They overtook it quickly.

“That’s her,” said Pauline.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I saw her in Bremerhaven.”

41

The tanker Sandra T. Congdon had a tall fu

“What’s that on the bow?”

“A three-inch gun,” said Pauline. “Left over from the war.”

Bell studied it in the binoculars. “Not that left over. They’ve got a heap of ammunition all ready to shoot. Pity the Harbor Squad that runs into them. Ed, keep us behind their house.”

Tobin altered course, as they caught up with the tanker, so that its wheelhouse blocked the deck gun’s line of fire.

“What are those guys on top doing?” asked Asa.

Bell focused his glasses on a wood-and-canvas flying bridge constructed on top of the wheelhouse.

“Unlimbering a Lewis gun,” he said. “Get your heads down.”

Machine-gun bullets screeched overhead and frothed the water. Tobin cut in the reserve engine and hit his throttles. A minute later, they were a half mile behind the tanker, beyond effective range of its machine gun.

Isaac Bell broke into an icy smile.

“Look who’s here… I’ll take the helm, Ed.”

Black Bird slid out from behind the tanker and sped at them, hurling spray.

Bell fired orders. “Pauline, down! Asa, foredeck gun! Tobin, stern!”

The two boats raced at each other at a combined velocity of one hundred miles an hour. Ed Tobin fired a long burst from the forward Lewis gun. Black Bird shot back. But a black boat proved a much better target than one painted as gray as rain.

Geysers of bullet-pocked water splashed around Marion.

Lead banged into Black Bird’s armor and crazed her windshield. Her gu

Another leaped to his place.

Less than fifty yards separated the speeding boats, and the new gu

Asa Somers triggered the stern Lewis, raking Black Bird’s cockpit. All three men in it fell to the sole. Only one regained his feet: Marat Zolner.

Bell saw him twirl his helm and ram his throttles in a single swift motion. But nothing happened. The black boat did not answer her helm. Nor did she speed away, but fell back in the seas, barely drifting ahead.

“Good shooting, Asa!”

The young apprentice had blasted Zolner’s controls to pieces.

Zolner jumped from the cockpit to the Lewis gun, ripped off the ammunition drum, and banged a full one into place. He tracked the Van Dorn boat, which was circling for the kill, and fired a burst.

Isaac Bell saw what appeared to be tracer bullets, trailing blue smoke. But when Zolner got the range, which he did on his third burst, raking Marion just ahead of the engines, smoke curled from the bullet holes. Marat Zolner was firing World War balloon-busting incendiary ammunition. Each phosphorus bullet laced the Van Dorn hull with flame, and the boat was suddenly on fire.

Pauline Grandzau dived for the nearest extinguisher, ripped it from its clamp, pumped up pressure, and sprayed pyrene on the flames. She sprayed until the brass container was empty and scrambled across the deck for another.

“Help her, Asa!” Bell shouted. “Ed, put out the fire! I’ll get Zolner.”

Bell stood up so he could see over the bullet-scarred windshield.

He steered into a tight turn that careened the boat half on her side. When he was facing Black Bird, he shoved his throttles wide open. Blue smoke streaked. Zolner had reloaded with incendiaries.