by Sarah Sundin
Cold bit at his chest, and darkness closed in. “Ready, Hadley? You’ve got to come right after me.”
“Ready.”
“Lord, you promised, ‘When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee.’ Help us all.” Jim pushed off, sliding fast down the steel hull, friction warming his back and bottom, feet held flat to clear the largest hole possible in the flames.
He plunged into the water, the cold slapping every square inch of his body, squeezing him. Every instinct told him to surface, but training kept him down, as low as he could go.
He kicked out, wrestled the shirt off his face, leveled off, pushed away from the ship.
A muffled set of splashes sounded right behind him. Jim slowed his stroke, waiting for the other men. A hand brushed his leg, and Jim fumbled for it, yanked it, grabbed under the shoulder.
He swam hard, his free arm sweeping wide, legs kicking fast and sharp.
Udell’s shoulder jerked in his grasp. Hadley must be surfacing for a breath.
Jim aimed straight up, to the flickering yellow light of the flames on the water. Turn away from the wind. Away, so the flames wouldn’t go down his throat. “When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”
He thrashed with his free arm. Wildly. Came up in a black circle of water surrounded by taunting, mocking flames. Jim turned his head away from the wind and sucked in a hot, deep breath, nasty with the taste of burning fuel oil.
He forced Udell out of the water, but the man’s head lolled back.
“Over here!” a man shouted, maybe twenty feet away. “Not much farther. You can do it.”
Over the flames, Jim caught sight of a life raft with two men inside, reaching for them.
“Ready?” Jim asked Hadley.
The man nodded, slow and thick.
Cold was getting to him, getting to Jim. They had to hurry. “One, two, three!”
Jim thrashed with his arm, then dove, kicking hard, his face and hands and legs numb. Swimming was harder now, more weight behind him. With each stroke, the weight increased, pulling him lower.
Please, Lord, keep Hadley conscious. I can’t drag both of them. I can’t. He kicked with all his might but felt like he was going nowhere.
His arms, his legs felt solid, immobile. His lungs burned for air. He needed to breathe. He kicked upward, like using tree trunks to stir a giant vat of syrup. Slow. So slow.
Jim broke the surface, drew in a breath. The flames. They were gone. He’d passed them.
“Over here! Over here!” So close, the voice. So close, yet miles away.
Splashing, splashing. A hand grasped his elbow and pulled.
Jim cried out, “Udell! Hadley!”
“Here.” Hadley’s voice came out weak beside him.
“This one first.” Jim shrugged off the hand grabbing him and used his last ounce of strength to swing Udell to the life raft. “Get him.”
The men on the raft hauled Udell up inside, then Hadley, then Jim. Like a flopping, dying fish, he lay on the netting, his back in the water, gulping giant frigid breaths.
He watched the scene from a distance, like a play on stage. The Negro sailors on the raft, paddling to the destroyer. A litter being lowered by a line, Homer Udell being rolled inside, strapped in place, and hauled to the destroyer’s deck. The lines looped around Hadley’s waist, around Jim’s waist, the two flopping fish caught and cast onto the shore of the deck.
Men descended on him, tore off his clothes, all of them, scaling him like the dead fish he was. Somehow he felt warmer naked, then someone threw a blanket around him, and someone else tipped back his chin and forced a cup of rum down his throat, hot, burning, making him cough, making him vomit seawater and fuel oil. Then more rum came down, warm and woozy.
He liked the rum, liked the blanket, liked the warmth.
“These two are fine,” a gravelly voice said, an unfamiliar voice. “Get ’em down to the wardroom to warm up.”
Two men pulled him to standing. Jim’s knees buckled, but he caught himself, forced his granite legs to walk, his naked legs.
How could he go to the wardroom? There was a protocol for how an officer dressed in the wardroom, and Jim found himself giggling like a girl, shaking, laughing at his hairy naked legs. “I’m not dressed for dinner.”
“Told you. He’s fine.”
“Sounds loopy to me.” The men helped Jim forward, down the hatch, down the passageway, and into the wardroom.
Half the room was set up like a medical ward. Homer Udell lay on a table with pharmacist’s mates working on him, and other men lay on cots receiving first aid. The rest of the room was filled with men wrapped in blankets, familiar faces.
“Jim!” Arch grasped him in a bear hug. “Jim, old boy.”
Thank God his friend made it. “You’re not dressed for dinner either.”
Arch burst out laughing. “Neither is Durant, so we’re all right.”
“I have to sit.” Jim’s legs gave way, and he sat on the deck and arranged the blanket around his legs.
Arch sat next to him, then Mitch Hadley.
“Hadley, my buddy.” Jim reached his hand out of the blanket and shook the man’s hand. “Glad you made it.”
Hadley shook his head, his wet dark hair sticking up in all directions. “Blacked out at the last minute. Don’t remember coming on board.”
“But here we are.”
“Yes, here we are.”
“There you are.” Lt. Cdr. Calvin Durant glowered down at Jim.
He would have looked more formidable if he weren’t dressed in nothing but a blanket with his hair sticking out like angel wings on either side of his balding head.
Jim saluted with his free arm. “Ensign James Avery, reporting for my court-martial.”
“I ought to, you know.” Durant’s glare didn’t dim. “I ought to have you keelhauled, run up the yardarm, and flogged for good measure.”
“I agree, sir.” Jim tucked his shivering arm back inside the cozy blanket. “But first, tell me how many of the men survived. Udell? Is he going to make it?”
The captain gazed at the operating table. “They’re amputating both feet, but he should survive.”
“And the others?” Jim glanced around, saw Mack Gillis, Hank.
Durant turned back, his gaze firm. “Nine men survived from that gun mount. Only one didn’t make it. I’m told he was already dead.”
Jim sagged back in relief. They made it. Whatever punishment he received was worth it. Even if only one man had survived, it would have been worth it. For that matter, even if he and every man in that gun mount had perished, it still would have been worth the effort.
“Mr. Avery. Mr. Hadley.” Durant lifted his chin and looked down his nose at them. “I have to write you up for disobeying my orders, but I’m also putting you in for medals. You were brave, bold, compassionate, and showed the strong independent thought I like to see in officers.”
Jim gathered his blanket tighter and nodded his chattering chin. “Thank you, sir.”
Durant walked away. “Fine officers, indeed.”
42
Boston
Mary’s heart jammed into her throat, choking off her breath and her hope. Above her, the dark scaffolding framed a figure on the wharf.
“Is that our Miss Stirling?” Mr. Fiske asked. “Didn’t I warn you to stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong? Didn’t I say I’d hate to see you hurt? It’s a shame you walked in on Winslow as he was committing sabotage. A shame he had to shoot you before he fell to his death.”
He stretched out his arm, his gun.
Mary pressed hard against the wall, pulling Bauer’s body with her.
A shot cracked the air. A bullet blasted past, pinged off the hull beside her.
She screamed and hunkered against the wet granite, sheltering beneath a beam, raising Mr. Bauer’s head out of the water. Next to her, Mr. Winslow’s eyes were white and wild.
�
�Go ahead and hide,” Mr. Fiske said. “I can wait. Eventually the water will bring you up to me. Or you’ll drown.”
“I can’t swim,” Mr. Winslow muttered.
Water soaked her to the chest, and fear and cold seized her muscles. Why had she stuck her neck out and come down here? Why? Not only had she failed to save Mr. Winslow or Mr. Bauer, but now she’d die too.
A savage sensation knifed through her. Why not just stick her neck out all the way and get it blown off? At least this nightmare would end.
No one was coming to save her. No one even knew she was here.
Except God.
The tremors slowed, the knifing dulled. God knew she was here. God was with her. God could send the FBI or the Marines or a legion of angels. And if he didn’t, she’d be home with him in heaven within the hour.
She closed her eyes. Lord, be with me. Help me. Show me what to do. And if you’d like to send the FBI or the Marines, all three of us would appreciate it.
The Marines . . .
Mary’s eyes eased open. The gunshot. The Marines must have heard it, probably wondered what it was. But now in the silence, they’d return to their evening routine in the barracks, oblivious.
Another gunshot. Or two, or three. That might get their attention.
For once, Mary Stirling needed to put herself on display.
A sense of peace and certainty flooded her faster than the waters filling the dry dock. Waters that rose to her armpits.
“Mr. Winslow?” she said in her lowest voice. “Hold Mr. Bauer, keep his face above water. I’m going to draw his fire, alert the Marines.”
“What? No. It should be me.”
Mary shifted the unconscious man over. “No time for chivalry. Besides, I can swim.”
Mr. Fiske laughed, a hard, mocking sound. “What are you plotting? You can’t escape.”
“That’s what you think!” Mary yelled. She gulped air, dove beneath the stinging-cold water and swam, scrambling between scaffold beams.
Let Fiske think she was making a break for it, abandoning the two men.
A muffled roar. A flash of light zipped through the water ahead of her. Two bullets down. Four or fewer to go.
Her numb hands found a crossbeam. She tucked her legs beneath her and popped up for a breath.
Another shot. The wood exploded in front of her. She spun her face away. Splinters slashed her cheek.
If only she could make him waste the final three bullets without getting killed. A big breath, and down she went, bumping beams, her skirt sodden and heavy about her thighs.
A shot, and a bullet churned up water beside her.
She fumbled for a beam, but it was underwater now. She’d have to expose herself to breathe. Slowly, silently, she eased toward the wall and surfaced.
The wall edged away from her. The stairs.
What once had been her goal now could mean her death. Fiske could come down the stairs and shoot her point-blank. She plunged underwater and headed back the way she came, her lungs screaming.
Up for air. Her heart thudded in her ears, every muscle shook, her hair fell in clammy streams down her cheeks. Her hat—she’d lost it somewhere.
“Miss Stirling!” Mr. Winslow cried. “He’s slipping. I—I can’t hold him much longer.”
“What do you care, Winnie?” Fiske called. “He’s a Kraut. Thought you hated them.”
“Who are you calling a Kraut?” Another voice rose, angry and male.
Who was that? Mary held her breath.
A shot, a thump, a cry, a thud.
“He’s not a Kraut. He’s a good man, unlike you. To think I trusted you, looked up to you.”
“Ira Kaplan.” A smile competed with the tremble in Mary’s lips. He must have arrived at the Bauer home for dinner and grown as suspicious as Mary had.
Mr. Fiske cried out.
“Take that,” Kaplan shouted. More thumps. “That’s for framing Bauer. That’s for putting me in jail. That’s for the Atwood and all the sailors you could’ve killed. That’s for—”
Whatever was happening, it sounded like Kaplan was winning.
Now to help Mr. Winslow. He hugged a beam with one arm and supported Bauer’s head with another.
“Hurry, Miss Stirling.”
She worked her way over, her arms and legs no longer feeling the bumps. Her feet couldn’t touch the ground, but she propped them on a beam, grabbed another overhead, and lifted Mr. Bauer. Shouldn’t the cold alone have awakened him?
“Hands up! Both of you! Now!”
Mary’s lungs expanded with joy and hope, cool and fresh. “Agent Sheffield! The FBI’s here. Thank you, God. Thank you.”
“It’s Fiske,” Kaplan shouted. “He’s the saboteur. Not me. He’s the one.”
“We know. Get off him so we can lock him up.”
The beam beneath Mary’s feet shifted and another groaned. “Agent Sheffield! We’re down here.”
“Miss Stirling?”
“Winslow’s injured and can’t swim, and Bauer’s unconscious. We need help and now.”
“You—cuff him. You two—can you swim? How about a rope? This is a stinking shipyard. Where on earth’s a rope when you need one?”
Several men ran down the stairs and splashed their way over. Marines.
The FBI, the Marines, and Mr. Kaplan as well. Mary broke out in strange, shaking, loud laughter. She couldn’t stop. When God answered a prayer, he answered it abundantly.
Tuesday, November 25, 1941
A podium. An audience. A clatter of photographers and journalists. Why did that frighten Mary more than a flooding dry dock?
In front of that dry dock, Mary sat on a chair to the side of the podium, waiting for the press conference. She clutched Quintessa’s gloved hand. “Thank you for coming with me.”
“It’s the least I could do.” Quintessa shuddered. “When you didn’t come home last night, I panicked, and then the call from the hospital . . . oh, Mary, you could have died.”
“I didn’t. God was with us.”
“You were willing to sacrifice your life for those men.” Quintessa’s voice dropped low.
“I couldn’t let them die.” She had to shake off the attention. “Speaking of sacrifice, you’re the one who took a day off work so close to Christmas just to be with me.”
“Mr. Garrett understood. I was overdue. It wasn’t a sacrifice.” She bit her lip, and her eyes looked dark, even in the frosty sunshine. “You’d sacrifice anything for me, wouldn’t you?”
Mary already had. Although giving up a man who didn’t love her hardly qualified as a sacrifice. “Why wouldn’t I? You’ve been such a good friend to me, all my life. I’d do anything for you, but I know you’d do the same for me.”
Quintessa glanced away, the same quiet distance she’d shown the past few weeks, so unlike her.
Mr. Pennington came to the microphone with Agents Sheffield and Hayes, and Rear Adm. William Tarrant, commandant of the Boston Navy Yard.
Mary gripped her purse in her lap. Please, Lord. Don’t let them call me to the stage.
However, the prayer felt futile. Mary huddled inside her red coat and shivered as Mr. Pennington introduced Agent Sheffield.
The FBI agent went to the microphone, looking as small and pale and rumpled and un-agent-like as ever. “I am pleased to announce that the sabotage case here at Boston Navy Yard is closed. Last night we arrested Mr. Frank Fiske, a leadingman here.”
Flashbulbs popped, and journalists scribbled notes.
“Mr. Fiske has pleaded guilty to multiple charges—placing gasoline in a champagne bottle at a launching ceremony, hiding a bomb on the destroyer USS Atwood, planting a crate of bomb-making equipment in the basement of Mr. Weldon Winslow, altering blueprints so as to sabotage ship construction, framing individuals, flooding this dry dock with the intent to destroy two ships under construction, and the attempted murders of Mr. Weldon Winslow, Mr. Heinrich Bauer, and Miss Mary Stirling.”
Hands shot up among the journa
lists. “Agent Sheffield—”
“Our investigation was long and complex.” The agent plowed ahead with his statement as he had with the investigation. “We are indebted to everyone at the Navy Yard, from the commandant on down, for their complete cooperation and access.”
“What about—”
“We are especially indebted to Miss Mary Stirling.” The agent motioned her up to the podium.
Prayer request denied, but how could she complain after the Lord sent the FBI, the Marines, and Mr. Kaplan too? Mary stood, her legs still wobbly after last night’s ordeal, and she coaxed her feet forward.
Good practice for the Christmas pageant, not even two weeks away. Then she’d be free to escape Boston and the attention and the humiliation of a broken heart. Rejoicing for Jim and Quintessa would be easier from a distance. Why should she torture herself watching them fall in love?
Agent Sheffield put his arm around Mary’s shoulder and pulled her behind the podium. “Over the past few months, this little lady has made herself both indispensable and annoying.”
The journalists laughed and snapped pictures.
Mary forced herself to smile. After all, she wasn’t up there due to improper pride, putting herself above others. No, this was appropriate pride in a job well done with the Lord’s guidance and help.
Agent Sheffield squeezed her shoulder. “Miss Stirling aided us with her keen sense of observation, attention to detail, and even a dose of womanly intuition. Her insight and analysis led her here last night, and her courageous deeds saved the lives of two men. We are indebted to her.”
More applause, more flashbulbs, and as soon as Agent Sheffield released her shoulder to join the applause, Mary gave everyone a gracious nod and returned to her seat.
No nausea. No mortification. No fall. She’d survived.
Quintessa took her arm. “You were wonderful. Hard to believe you’re the same girl who faked illness and stayed home from high school graduation so you wouldn’t have to cross the stage.”
Mary closed her eyes against the memory. How many good things in life had she missed due to fear?
