In at the Death by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online

closer to the submersible, he ordered Bevacqua to keep paying close attention to any echoes that came back from his hydrophone pings. The CPO laughed mirthlessly. “Oh, I’m on it, Skipper. Don’t you worry about that,” he said. “It’s my neck, too, after all.”
    “Good,” Sam said. “Long as you remember.”
    German subs weren’t the only ones prowling the North Atlantic. Plenty of U.S. boats were out here, too. More to the point, so were British, French, and Confederate submarines. The odds against any one of them being in the neighborhood were long, but so were the odds against filling an inside straight, and lucky optimists did that every day.
    In both the Great War and this one, U.S. admirals and their German counterparts dreamt of sweeping the British and French fleets from the North Atlantic and joining hands in the middle. It hadn’t happened then, and it wouldn’t happen this time around, either. The enemy kept the two allies apart, except for sneaky meetings like this one.
    NEAR ENOUGH , the submersible’s captain signaled. But Sam steered closer, anticipating the next swell with a small motion of the wheel. The sub’s skipper waved to him then, seeing that he knew what he was doing. He lifted one hand from the wheel to wave back. THROW A LINE , came the flashes from the ugly, deadly, rust-streaked boat.
    IS THE PACKAGE WATERPROOF ? Sam asked.
    J A , the submersible skipper answered. Sam knew more German than that; his folks had spoken it on the farm where he grew up. He ordered a line thrown. A German sailor in a greasy pea jacket and dungarees ran along the sub’s wet hull to retrieve it. Sam wouldn’t have cared to do that, not with the boat pitching the way it was. But the man grabbed the line, carried it back to the conning tower, and climbed the iron ladder, nimble as a Barbary ape.
    The German skipper tied the package, whatever it was, to the end of the line. Then he waved to the
Josephus Daniels
. The sailor who’d cast the line drew it back hand over hand. When he took the package off it, he waved up to Sam Carsten on the bridge.
    After waving back, Sam got on the blinker again: WE HAVE IT. THANKS AND GOOD LUCK.
    LIKEWISE FOR YOU , the German answered. He lifted his battered cap in salute. Then he and the other men on the conning tower disappeared into the dark, smelly depths of the submersible. The boat slid below the surface and was gone.
    A moment later, the sailor brought the package—which was indeed wrapped in oilskins and sheet rubber, and impressively sealed—up to the bridge. “Here you go, sir,” he said, handing it to Sam and saluting.
    “Thanks, Enos,” Carsten answered. The sailor hurried away.
    “Now into the safe?” the exec asked.
    “That’s what my orders are,” Sam agreed.
    “Wonder why the brass are making such a fuss about it,” said Thad Walters, the Y-ranging officer.
    “Beats me,” Sam answered with a grin. “They pay me
not
to ask questions like that, so I’m going to lock this baby up right now. Mr. Zwilling, come to my cabin with me so you can witness that I’ve done it. Mr. Walters, you have the conn.” Having a witness was in the orders, too. He’d never had anything on board before that came with such tight security requirements.
    “Aye aye, sir.” The exec’s voice stayed formal, but he sounded more pleased than otherwise. Red tape was meat and drink to him. He would have done better manning a desk ashore and counting turbine vanes than as second-in-command on a warship, but the Navy couldn’t fit all its pegs into the perfect holes. You did the best you could in the slot they gave you—and, if you happened to be the skipper, you did the best you could with the men set under you. If they weren’t all the ones you would have chosen yourself…Well, there was a war on.
    Sam’s cabin wasn’t far from the bridge. It wasn’t much wider than his own wingspan, but it gave him a tiny island of privacy when he needed one. Along with his