At last he said, “Doggone, I don’t know if I’d rather die by a bullet in the head, by drowning or a heart attack.”

Leroy Laroche operated a travel agency by day, functioned as a loving husband and father by night, and acted as commander of the Sixth Louisiana Regiment of the Confederate States Army on weekends. He was popular among his men and was re-elected every year to lead the regiment in battlefield re-enactments around the country. The fact that he was about to engage in the real thing didn’t seem to faze him.

“Lucky for us you had those cotton bales on board,” he said to the captain.

Belcheron smiled. “We keep them on deck as historic examples of the sweet old darlin’s maritime heritage.”

Pitt looked at Laroche. “Your men in position, Major?”

“Loaded, primed full of Dixie beer and rarin’ to fight,” Laroche replied.

“What sort of weapons do they own?”

“Fifty-eight-caliber Springfield muskets, which most rebels carried late in the war. Shoots a minie ball five hundred yards.”

“How fast can they fire?”

“Most of my boys can get off three rounds a minute, a few can do four. But I’m putting the best shots on the barricade while the others load.”

“And the cannon? Do they actually fire?”

“You bet. They can hit a tree with a can of cement at half a mile.”

“Can of cement?”

“Cheaper to make than real cannon shot.”

Pitt considered that and grinned. “Good luck, Major. Tell your men to keep their heads down. Muzzle loaders take more time to aim than machine guns.”

“I reckon they know how to duck,” said Laroche. “When do you want us to open fire?”

“I leave that to you.”

“Excuse me, Major,” Giordino cut in. “Did any of your men happen to carry a spare weapon?”

Laroche unsnapped the leather holster on his belt and passed Giordino a large pistol. “A Le Mat revolver,” he said. “Shoots nine forty-two-caliber shells through a rifled barrel. But if you’ll notice, there’s a big smoothbore barrel underneath that holds a charge of buckshot. Take good care of it. My great-granddaddy carried it from Bull Run to Appomattox.”

Giordino was genuinely impressed. “I don’t want to leave you unarmed.”

Laroche pulled his saber from its scabbard. “This will do me just fine. Well, I best get back to my men.”

After the big jovial major left the pilothouse, Pitt bent down and opened the violin case, lifted out the Thompson and inserted a full drum. He held his side with one hand and cautiously straightened, his lips pressed tight from the pain that speared his chest.

“You be all right up here?” he asked Belcheron.

“Don’t pay no mind to me,” the captain answered. He nodded at a cast-iron potbellied stove. “I’ll have my own armor when the fireworks start.”

“Thank God for that,” exclaimed Metcalf.

“What is it?” Sandecker asked.

Metcalf held up a paper. “A reply from the British Admiralty in London. The only Pathfinder on duty with the Royal Navy is a missile destroyer. They have no research ship by that name, nor is there any in the gulf area.” He gave Sandecker a thankful look.

“You called a good play, Jim.”

“We had a bit of luck after all.”

“The poor bastards on that steamboat are the ones who need it now.”

“Any more we can do? Anything we’ve overlooked?”

Metcalf shook his head. “Not from this end. The Coast Guard cutter is only fifteen minutes away and the nuclear sub is not far behind.”

“Neither will arrive in time.”

“Perhaps the people on the steamboat can somehow stall the tugboat until…” Metcalf didn’t finish.

“You don’t really believe in miracles, do you, Clayton?”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

74

A Maelstrom of automatic weapons fire lashed into the Stonewall Jackson as Lee Tong’s crew opened up at three hundred yards. Bullets hummed and whistled, splintering the gleaming white wood and gingerbread carvings on the rails and deck cabins, clanging and ricocheting off the ship’s bronze bell. The huge unglazed window in the pilothouse disintegrated into silvery fragments. Inside, Captain Belcheron was stunned by a shell that grazed the top of his head and turned his white hair red. His vision blurred and went double, but he hung on to the spokes of the great wheel with savage determination while hawking tobacco juice out the broken window.

The calliope player, protected by a forest of brass plumbing, began playing “Yellow Rose of Texas,” which fell on several flat tones as holes suddenly appeared in his steam whistles.

On the main deck, Major Laroche and his regiment, along with Pitt and Giordino, crouched out of sight. The cotton bales made strong defensive works, and no bullets penetrated. The open boiler area behind the main staircase caught the worst of it. Two of McGeen’s stokers were hit and the overhead tubing was penetrated, allowing steam to escape in scalding streams. McGeen took his hat off the pressure gauge. It was pegged in the red. He expelled a long sigh. A miracle nothing had burst, he thought. The rivets were straining on the boilers. He quickly began spinning relief valves to let off the immense pressure in preparation for the coming collision.

The Stonewall Jackson’s paddle wheels were still driving her at twenty miles an hour. If she had to die, she was not going to end up like her former sisters, rotting away in some forgotten bayou or broken up for wharf wood. She was going out a legend and ending her life on the water in style.

Brushing aside the waves that pounded her bow, shrugging off the frightful torrent of lead that shredded her flimsy superstructure, she forged ahead.

Lee Tong watched in bitter fascination as the steamboat came on steadily. He stood in an open hatch on the barge and poured a stream of bullets at her, hoping to hit a vital part and slow her down. But he might as well have been shooting air pellets at a rampaging elephant.

He set aside his Steyr-Mannlicher carbine and raised the binoculars. None of the crew was visible behind the barricade of cotton bales. Even the sieved pilothouse looked deserted. The gold letters of the smashed nameplate were visible, but all he could make out was the name JACKSON.

The flat bow was pointed square for the towboat’s port side. It was a stupid, futile gesture, he reasoned, a stalling technique, nothing more. In spite of its superior size, the wooden paddle steamer could not expect to damage the towboat’s steel hull.

He retrieved the Steyr-Mannlicher, inserted another ammo clip and concentrated his fire into the pilothouse in an attempt to damage the helm.

Sandecker and Metcalf watched too.

They sat captivated by the hopeless, irresistible magnificence of it all. Radio contact was attempted with the steamboat, but there was no response. Captain Belcheron had been too busy to answer, and the old river rat didn’t think he had anything worth saying anyway.

Metcalf called Lieutenant Grant. “Spiral in closer,” he ordered.

Grant acknowledged and made a series of tight banks over the vessels below. The detail of the towboat was quite sharp. They could pick out nearly thirty men blasting away across the water. The steamboat, however, was obscured by the smoke shooting from her stacks and great clouds of exhaust steam spurting out of the “scape pipes” aft of the pilothouse.

“She’ll bash herself to bits when she strikes,” said Sandecker.

“It’s glorious but meaningless,” Metcalf muttered.

“Give them credit. They’re doing more than we can.”

Metcalf nodded slowly. “Yes, we can’t take that away from them.”

Sandecker came out of his chair and pointed. “Look there, on the steamboat where the wind has blown the smoke off to the side.”