Rebel (2 page)

Dedicated

in loving memory to

“Papa,”

my father-in-law,

Alphonse Pozzessere,

who will live in our

hearts forever

May 1862

T
he night was eerie.

Indeed, more than eerie. The night seemed to be an exceptionally savage time in this strange wilderness, where every whisper in the breeze and the slightest ripple of the water could mean the stealthy, furtive movement of a deadly predator.

Human, or other.

A full moon rode the silken black sky, casting an iridescent, ivory glow over the landscape. But there were clouds that night, puffy, billowing monsters that drifted along invisibly until they covered the moon, and pitched land and sea into a darkness so deep it was like an ebony void.

The night was dark, but never silent. In the moonlight, the chirping of insects, the screech of a night owl, the subtle ripple and wave of the water, might seem natural. But when the moon pitched behind a cloud, the sounds took on a new dimension, and for the newest recruits among the Union company known as the Panther’s Men, the terror evoked by battle could be no greater than the terror evoked by a south Florida night.

Not so for their leader.

He could move imperceptibly within the dangerous forest of reptiles, darkness, and haunting screeches. In this place where the pines met the mangroves and the hammocks touched the sea, he could maneuver with the ease and grace of the powerful, prowling panthers that lurked within the strange semitropical forest, and from which he and his company had drawn their nickname.

It was rumored that his walk was silent upon the soft earth; that he could see in the stygian darkness. He respected the deadly creatures of the swamps, the hammocks, and the sea, but he didn’t fear them. He led his men through trails most men could never see, and followed
those trails to places no sane man would usually dare to tread. He could move across this savage landscape and become one with it. Silent, mercurial, subtle, he had been known to startle his own men with uncanny appearances and disappearances. Like a panther, he moved with ever-quiet care, always watching.

Stalking.

Tonight, they had left their horses a quarter of a mile back on a high hammock and he had led them on foot to this inlet far from civilization—indeed, far from all that seemed human in any way. They were south, even, of the old Seminole war outpost Fort Dallas, though he had assured his men they were still in the area designated as Dade County, so named in memory of the late commander killed in the Second Seminole War.

He knew this land well.

Word was that though he wasn’t Indian himself, he had kin among the Seminoles and had learned the swampland and the sea around it just like a red man. Rumor also had it that he had kin among the panthers and gators, and so he could run in the semitropical jungle like a cat and make his way through the brackish waters like a great streamlined lizard. At first glance, the major might have indeed been bred among the Indians, for his collar-length hair was as ebony as pitch and his long lean body was as hard-muscled and bronzed as any wild Indian’s. His eyes added to the illusion, for though they were blue, it was a blue as dark as cobalt, and upon occasion, they seemed as black as a pit in hell, and as dangerous.

It was good that he was a dangerous man.

For he led his troops into dangerous places.

And now, in the darkness, the troops of Major Ian McKenzie waited. Waited and watched—or listened, at the very least, when the clouds so covered the moon that watching became impossible. They had waited now for hours in the damp, insect-laden inlet along the extreme southeastern coast of the Florida mainland because there was a chance they might catch the Moccasin, one of the most notorious Rebel spies to work the Florida coastline.

A coastline that invited subterfuge.

A coastline most Union troops despised.

An assignment to Florida was like an assignment to hell to most men before they ever marched forward into battle and drew a weapon. The peninsula itself was a no-man’s-land, impossible for the Rebs to hold, impossible for the Union to take. Endless miles of coastline made the Union blockade laughable. Likewise, endless miles of coastline made the state vulnerable to Union attack at any time. Jacksonville had already changed hands several times. St. Augustine had been taken by Northern forces, and was still held by the Federals. Down in this arena of war, the naval base at Key West had remained firmly in Union hands, but as to the rest of the state, hostile forces were always at work. Florida had been the third state to secede from the Union. Her Confederates were staunchly loyal to what they considered their great Southern Cause, yet there were very strong pro-Union forces in Florida as well. Though Reb troops raised in Florida were most frequently pulled out of the state to engage in the heavy fighting taking place in Virginia, Tennessee, and other areas of the South, the Florida peninsula was incredibly important to the war effort. Florida provided a large portion of the beef and salt that sustained the Southern troops.

Thus it was important to the Union that this hellhole and those helping to see that supplies ran endlessly into and out of it were controlled.

Therefore, the Moccasin had to be caught. Since the hanging of the Rebs suspected of espionage in the north of the state a few weeks back, the major had determined that he and his men must be the ones to capture this particular pain in their backsides.

The Moccasin had been a scourge to the Union for some time now. Too many times, when Union ships had tried to stop blockade runners, the Reb captains had known about the Federal ships ahead of time—and backup had been waiting, lurking just within the next inlet, behind the next dune. Ships carrying firearms were breaking through the blockade and reaching Rebel troops through the Florida inlets; gold was making its way into enemy hands. Union men straying beyond the St. Johns River out of St. Augustine had fallen far too often into the hands of desperate Florida troops, and
those Rebel troops were causing great havoc harassing Federals along the waterway.

Major McKenzie had been given free rein to do what harm he could within the peninsula, with the order to destroy the actions of all spies, blackguards, traitors to the Union, and blockade runners in whatever manner he saw fit. He hadn’t been given a customary assignment, and he wasn’t compelled to bow to customary authority.

This was not a customary place, nor could he and his men possibly fight the war in a customary way. Nor had the major been his customary self since that hanging. The major never had cottoned to the military acting as the law. Men died in battle. That was a sad fact. But to him, if the Federals started taking the law into their own hands too many times they became nothing more than predators, and the whole point of the war would be lost, because they’d no longer be fighting for the unity of the country, for home, glory, and honor; they’d be nothing more than murderers themselves.

“A ship! Major, by God, you were right!” old Sam Jones whispered in the night.

Though they had seen their commander’s uncanny ability to fathom exactly when and where things were going to happen before they did, some of his men had silently doubted that a ship would actually have the audacity to risk this section of the bay.

“Steady, boys, we can’t take a ship right now, and we don’t want anyone getting wind of us and carrying off the cargo we can take,” the major warned back. His voice seemed to come out of nowhere. “We want the landing party, gentlemen.” He was silent just a moment, then his deep, soft voice seemed to ring with passion. “We’re here to seize the Moccasin.”

The spy stared at the fast-approaching coastline.
Almost home!
the Moccasin thought, and was glad, for the war was a wearying effort, more trying than ever recently, and frequently the spy was sorry he had ever, in a surge of loyalty, become the Moccasin and slipped into playing such a dangerous game.

It was just that the spy had believed, passionately, in the Southern Cause. In States’ Rights the Confederacy now was like the fledgling band of the colonies before
the Revolutionary War, fighting for the right to independence, for the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness—in their own way. If only others understood, there would be no war.

Still, the pain plagued the spy. And still, too often now, the fear.

The Moccasin had been thinking a very long while now that it might just be time to curl up like a ball python—and quit. So far, all that had been done was good. Rebel lives had been saved. The spy’s information had all been good, and the spy’s movements had been well planned.

But times were changing. Perhaps it would be possible to slither into the water now, and disappear into legend and history.

And have a life again. Bitter now, perhaps, but one touched by hope. If only…

In the small inlet, just before they might have run aground, the ship was brought to a slow, smooth halt.

“Cast dinghy!” the captain ordered. He was a good, gruff old man who had sailed the seas as a scavenger before the war and the Cause had inspired every able man with so much as a rowboat to try to best the Union forces and break the blockade. The Moccasin had sailed with this captain before. They were close; good friends. Neither had ever sought riches from the war. Although the spy’s main contraband was usually quinine, ether, chloroform, or laudanum, and the main objective was to save lives, the spy had caused serious mischief, and was well aware of it—and of the union broadsides pasted up in every possible Yankee port advising that the Moccasin was far more deadly than any regular snake, and was to be taken, dead or alive, shot or hanged without mercy at the discretion of the captor.