by Eric Flint
Eddie was ascending the stairs as Intrepid drew abreast of Cap de Samana. It was about an hour after dawn, so the eastern sky was still growing in brightness, but there was a persistent gray dimming the horizon in the southeast.
“You are early,” Tromp said as the up-timer finished mounting the stairs to the flying bridge. It was stripped of its usual command and control elements, naked except for the frame of the bridge itself. The wheel and speaking tubes were covered, and those covers were tied off with multiple leather straps.
Eddie glanced at all the preparations, grinned, but could feel it was rigid, forced. “Expecting a storm, Admiral?”
Tromp’s answering smile was smaller and no more an expression of mirth than Eddie’s had been. “It is said that a person who can smile in the face of force majeure is, in and of themselves, a force to be reckoned with.”
“Strange,” Eddie confessed, glancing southeast, “I can’t say I feel that way, just now.”
“Nor I,” Tromp agreed. They stood watching the sky and the unusually low, slow swells for at least a minute.
“I have some news,” Eddie offered into the suffocating silence.
“I hope it is good.”
“It is. I think. You know that ship Challenger that came to Eustatia when I was on Antigua and you were assessing the repairs on the last of the La Flota galleons?”
“Yes, I do remember that ship. The master, he was an up-timer, too. Gordon Chehab, I think his name was.”
“Yeah, him. Well, I got word from Klingl, the captain who just finished wrapping things up at Tortuga, that Challenger passed through the area again. Gordon told him that he was still hoping to airdrop those psyop leaflets you gave him to release over Havana, if he got the chance.”
Tromp smiled. “I confess, I had quite forgotten about that. It would be a grand compliment to our activities in Santo Domingo.” He grew somber. “I just hope Mr. Chehab has finished his aerial activities over Cuba and is already well beyond the path of the storm. He was most enterprising and I would have been glad if he had been able to stay and add his efforts to our own. He seemed like a nice fellow.”
Eddie smiled sideways. “But not nice enough to give him a radio to replace the one he lost.”
Tromp glanced sideways. “Now, Eddie. That is neither kind nor fair. You know very well that I had none left to give.” He sighed. “We have more ships and more detachments? We need more radios. More allied communities and more weather and observation outposts? Again, more radios. And if I had given him our last set? Well, that was the one that went to Barbados. In which case—”
“In which case, now where would we be?” Eddie nodded. “Sailing casually back home and straight into a hurricane. I know. I was just making a joke. Trying to lighten the mood.”
“Which I appreciate, Eddie, but I suppose that my mood is rather resistant to levity, just now.”
“I understand.” And like Tromp, he stared at the increasingly peculiar color of the sky in the far southeast. Another full minute passed. “Latest report puts it at eighteen miles an hour. We won’t hear any more from the last relay, St. Croix. It’s brushing alongside them right now.”
Tromp nodded.
“That means the leading edge of it is due to hit Luperón right about when we’re due to arrive there. Plus or minus thirty minutes.”
“I know, Eddie,” Tromp said quietly. He kept his eyes on the horizon behind them.
But Eddie’s eyes were on his watch, as they had been for the last two days.
Twenty-two hours left.
Bahia de Gracias, Hispaniola
Sailing into Bahia de Gracias was the most hair-raising experience Eddie Cantrell had ever had while on a boat, even more than the speedboat run at the Danish ship which had cost him part of his left leg. That had been so sudden that there wasn’t really time to be scared. And back then, he’d just been a kid in a speedboat, in way over his head. This time he knew what was happening, what was at stake, and that he was responsible for a fleet that could change the course of events in the Caribbean and Gulf for years to come. So, yep: he was still just a slightly older kid, still in a boat, and still in way over his head.
The final terror to be faced at Bahia de Gracias was the needle that the whole fleet had to thread into the bay: an S curve two miles long. And if you colored outside the lines with the hull of your ship, you were in shallows that had been the end of many ships. Although if you got stuck there in a hurricane, you really didn’t need to worry: your fate was sealed and you couldn’t do anything about it.
The growing westward winds that had been their blessing now became their curse. A strong, gusting breeze had pushed them along at four and then five knots ever since today’s lightless dawn; the sun never broke through the looming cloud bank. But as the twenty-four ships of the fleet heeled southward, giving the headland’s shallows a wide berth, they not only struggled to remain together, but to pass quickly through the narrowing passage at the middle of the S curve.
That curving passage was not much more than a hundred yards wide, so Eddie was glad that several of the Dutch mariners with more “mysterious” pasts had been here before. They had been able to give advice on how many ships could enter at once and in what order. In consequence, they had then been distributed to the most important or unwieldy ships in the fleet, tasked to function as the equivalent of bar pilots.
Nimble and sturdy Salamander led the fleet into Bahia de Gracias, followed by Relentless, whose tow ropes were at the ready; her power and size made her the best choice for a rescue vessel. But as the other ships turned to slip through that narrow neck into the anchorage beyond, they were buffeted by rising winds to port that now drove at them directly abeam. Sail handlers, still aloft to trim the canvas, fought the unpredictable gusts, the growing rain, and the increasing roll of the ships beneath them. When they failed, so did the sails. And so did their luck, when the foot ropes gapped or snapped. Eddie watched three men not fall but fly from the slick, shuddering spars: small black figures that vanished, tumbling, into the gray of the sea and the rain.
Ships were pushed as unpredictably as the bearing of the wind itself. Fighting to keep her way, cumbersome Prins Willem swayed to and fro, endangering ships on every quarter. Trying to avoid a collision likely to shatter the big ship’s rudder, Omlandia heeled sharply to port. Neptunus, not far off her port quarter and whose responsiveness was still compromised by her earlier damage, could not turn in time without risking other ships. The crash was louder than the growing thunder, which barely trailed the bright bolts that flashed between the darkening clouds. Signals being almost impossible, the other captains could only hope that neither vessel had sustained so much damage that they would sink.
What had seemed like forever turned out to have only consumed twenty minutes when finally, the last ship steered two points to starboard to exit those narrows and then slip through a slightly wider neck into the hurricane hole itself. They scattered to the sides of the protected bay, looking for the places that the bar pilots assured them were not only deep but broad enough for them to retain safe distance from other hulls.
Intrepid had just put down her third anchor when the hurricane actually hit.
* * *
The worst of the weather peaked about an hour later, and it had become no worse than a memorable squall three hours after that. There was no eye of the storm, no calm and resurgence, evidently because they had been south of its center. As many hurricanes do, it had “bounced off” the energy-diminishing land and its storm center had remained further out to sea.
But still, when Eddie and other captains could see enough to assess the damage, it was quite clear that had they not found shelter in the hurricane hole, many or possibly all of their ships would have foundered.
What had once been a forested coast was flat; whole trees, some uprooted, floated toward the small, and apparently shattered, port of Luperón. Five ships had come loose from their anchors or had chosen too shallow a mooring and were now grounded. Neptun
us’ bow looked like a pugilist’s much-broken nose. And as reports of the missing came in, ship’s boats were readied to search for survivors or the less lucky, as soon as the weather and visibility permitted. It also became clear that they were not the only ones who had headed to Bahia de Gracias for shelter. Captain Klingl’s task force had tacked across the wind and the long miles eastward from Tortuga and had, fortunately, found suitable mooring in the further corners of the anchorage just a few hours before them.
When the senior officers were finally able to convene close to the end of the day, and the condition of the fleet had been determined, Eddie raised the one remaining challenge that the others had apparently been unwilling to bring up. “Luperón is not a large settlement,” he explained, “but according to the sources from Grantville, it is a very old one. First Spanish town in the New World, although it was called La Isabela then, I think. How do we want to handle contact? From the look of it, we could be stuck here a long time, and we don’t want the inhabitants to warn the Spanish. Or come after us.”
Banckert and Tromp exchanged smiles. The latter leaned forward with folded hands. “I know this place is but a few dozen miles east of what you knew as Haiti, but I assure you that unlike what is shown in some of your most amusing up-time horror stories, you will not need to fight any zombies here.”
Eddie blinked. “Huh? What?”
Banckert guffawed. “Because the only inhabitants here are dead! Everyone at La Isabela perished within ten years of its founding. There may be some wood shippers there, but from Jol’s tales, they are seasonal and impermanent. If there are five loyal Spaniards in that wreck of a town, I would be surprised.
“Frankly, I’d be worried about having too many escaped slaves show up, and then spread the word that there are ships in this bay which, once afloat, would carry them all to freedom. We could be overrun with them.”
Eddie felt his eyebrows rise. “You know,” he said, “there just might be something to that . . . ”
Part Five
January–February 1637
An asylum in jaws of the Fates
—Herman Melville,
“The Maldive Shark”
Chapter 67
Oranjestad, St. Eustatia
It’s like a scene out of a movie, Eddie thought as the fleet sailed into Oranjestad Bay almost two months later. The fleet had learned just five days ago that the town’s fears of its destruction had been growing since the New Year. But now, given the crowds lining the shores and even slopes around Oranjestad, it seemed that any gloom had inverted and become sheer, unadulterated joy. Probably along with considerable relief.
Normally, Eddie demurred when presented with the privileges usually given or offered to officers, particularly one of his rank. The same when it came to all the folderol over his position as “Danish nobility.” Yeah, right. But this time, this one time, he literally pulled rank and was on the first boat heading to shore. And he made sure it was his longboat with the outboard motor mounted. Because, damn it, he just didn’t want to wait. He took a moment to sweep his binoculars across the crowd along the shore and then lining the dock. Not there. He almost leaped down into the longboat and told the coxswain to burn all the gas he wanted.
The one thing Eddie hadn’t taken the time to reflect on was that there were only three up-time motorboats in the New World. One was the real deal: a cherry-red 1988 180 Sportsman that Larry Quinn had been using in the bayous of Louisiana and which was still there. The other, just like Intrepid’s, had been lost along with Resolve; both cruisers had been equipped with one because it was deemed essential that the commanders of such pivotally important ships had quick means of getting around their fleet, to shore, or anywhere else they needed to go. His was the third and last, now running in toward the shore at such high speed that its bow was well out of the water.
Which meant that it was the most noticeable nautical unicorn in the whole of the Caribbean. Its fuming white rooster tail of spray and its distinctive noise drew almost every pair of eyes as it cut across the harbor, swerved around a few clueless fishing boats, and made for the shore.
He tried his binoculars again. Sweeping, sweeping, sweeping . . . “There!” he shouted at the coxswain. “Go there!”
“What? Run into the cliff beneath the fort?”
“No, no: run it up onto the beach.”
“And then?”
But Eddie wasn’t listening. He was focusing on the beach and his foot. Damn it, he was not going to stumble this time. Not here, and not now. So as the sand grated underneath the longboat’s bow, he readied himself. Sit to the right of the prow. Left hand on the gunwale to support himself as—now that the boat was stopping—he could swing out the right foot. Yeah: did it! Then, moving fast, he used that momentum to keep going—
Straight into Anne Cathrine’s arms, hugging her back as hard as she was hugging him, and—yeah, what the hell: go for it!—dipping her into a long kiss.
The reaction—other than delighted surprise from his laughing, crying, wonderful wife—was what you saw on TV ballgames when the announcer howled, “And the crowd goes wild!”
Because it really was just like that. When he broke out of the kiss and looked at his Cat, he didn’t see the rest of it, but he sorta knew it was there, anyhow. People were mobbed around them, cheering, screaming, weeping. And it spread into the others packed behind the ones right around them. Some soldier up on the fort wall started banging his bayonet loudly on the ramparts. When others joined in, Anne turned and looked, her smile as bright as the tears on her face, her eyes lit with the wonder of a child at Christmas.
Feet were stamping, a ship’s bell started ringing, then another, and it propagated, ship to ship, out into the harbor. And he and his bride were at the center of it all. Like in some impossible Hollywood musical.
Well, impossible until now.
Santo Domingo, Hispaniola
“It is impossible, simply impossible!” Generally, Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo despised people who shouted, except when it was absolutely necessary to discipline subordinates or be effective on a warship or battlefield. So he instantly regretted his outburst. He reiterated it in a calm tone, as if this version might somehow erase the first: “It is simply impossible.”
“And yet it is true,” Juan Bitrian de Viamonte said sadly. “The ships are not ours, and there is no mistaking their numbers. Or the significance of their course past Anegada and on into the Leeward Islands. And to think they were here, on Hispaniola, all along.”
“And to think their fleet survived that hurricane!” added Don Antonio de Curco y San Joan de Olacabal. Fadrique considered him effective in his areas of expertise, but still prone to breathless, not to say histrionic, declamations. And until he had proven otherwise, not to be trusted half so far as he might be thrown.
De Curco y San Joan wasn’t finished. “It is as if Our Heavenly Father means to punish us here on earth for all our sins.”
Oh, I think he’ll still reserve places for us at Satan’s table . . . as appetizers. “It can seem that way when fighting up-timer technology and the heathens who make such careful study of its use. As must we, now. Unfortunately, despite our best attempts at St. Maarten, we have not yet secured the means to that end.” And it cost us dearly in ships and men and leaders that we shall not have again. “About which, Governor de Viamonte, is there word on when de Covilla will return to us?”
De Viamonte smiled. “I am happy to say that Eugenio has almost fully convalesced from his wounds. He will be with us when we meet next week. In the meantime, I have other glad news. It seems that my old colleague and friend”—his tone was as sarcastic and spiteful as Fadrique had ever heard—“Viceroy Don Lope Díez de Aux de Armendáriz of New Spain has finally agreed to cooperate and coordinate with the initiatives that he would have gladly participated in from the first, ‘had he been made aware that Olivares had approved them.’”
De Curco y San Joan made a baffled sputtering sound. “But, but . . . Olivar
es has not approved any of these initiatives! Many of them are in direct contravention of his policies.”
“Of course,” de Viamonte agreed.
“But then how can he say that Olivares has—?”
Fadrique’s patience was not unlimited. “It is a misrepresentation that cannot be disproved when and if Olivares decides to hang all of us. De Armendáriz will point to a letter of his indicating that we implied or claimed that Olivares has given his approval to us. We would of course deny we had ever sent such a document.
“However, since he has dragged his feet for almost two years, now, it would indeed seem that he was the reluctant participant he claims to be. But us? There is no denying that we have been building new ships and deviating from approved doctrine in a host of different ways. So, since our own deeds prove us to be ‘untrustworthy,’ is anyone likely to believe that we never claimed to have Olivares’ blessing? Why would a man who lies once scruple over lying again?”
“As least,” said de Viamonte, “we have increased our capacity to build new and better ships at just the moment when we suffered such a terrible reduction in it.” He kept his eyes from looking out at the piles of rubble lining the waterfront; the broken remains of walls that were to have rivaled Cartagena’s would not be fully removed until March. “And with de Murga also committed, we shall be able to fight them on something like an even footing.”
“Except that they have four steam warships, now!” de Curco y San Joan cried. “Four! Meaning they had five until St. Maarten! I am amazed that they have not shelled our cities before now, have not hunted our fleets.”
One half of a valuable observation, de Curco. “I am similarly puzzled, but I am less amazed than I am concerned. The allies are not as bold as we are, no, but they are not lethargic and they are not foolish. My question is this: what were they doing with those ships that we did not see? That is what worries me. Now, Don de Curco y San Joan, you sent word that you had heard from your brother in the Escorial.”
