The Mountain: An Event Group Thriller (21 page)

“Actually, you were the one that found his family massacred in ’58. He’s been with me ever since.” He looked at Gray Dog, who had stopped praying and was watching the two old friends.

“Long time ago,” Taylor said as he tried to sit up. “My … my men?” he asked when he found he couldn’t come to a sitting position on the small bed. He lay back down and rubbed the bridge of his nose, where behind the skin and bone there was a little devil hammering his brain to pieces.

John Henry looked at his bearded old comrade. Taylor had aged since leaving Texas four years before. The gray in his beard was testament to the fact that he had seen some hard fighting in Stuart’s cavalry. Now he had to tell his friend about his murdered men, which would not sit well with Taylor, especially for what he had to tell him about his immediate future. He reached down and retrieved his coat from the floor. He produced a handwritten letter and then opened it.

“Twenty-two dead, sixteen wounded.”

“Ezra?” Taylor asked as his arm immediately covered his battered face.

Thomas looked at the notes he had hand-delivered from Lafayette only thirty minutes before.

“By Ezra, do you mean Sergeant Major McCandless?”

Taylor didn’t respond, only waited.

“Dead.”

The arm came away as Taylor’s eyes glared at his old friend. The one open eye was filled with splotches of blood from the concussion he had sustained at the hands of Major Freeman.

“Sons of bitches,” he hissed.

Thomas folded the report and then laid it beside Taylor. He nodded his head. “I suspect that we are. All of us.”

Taylor closed his eye. “What in the hell are you doing here?” Taylor asked as his chest heaved silently and his tears soaked into the muddy blue coat he was still wearing.

“The man that did this will never harm anyone again. He may have influential people backing him, but so do I. I suspect he will get off of the murder charges, but his professional career as an officer is over. Secretary Stanton said he would see to it. But to be frank, Jessy, things are only going to get worse for all prisoners, North and South, if this damnable war doesn’t end soon.”

“He’ll get away with it until I catch him and kill him,” Taylor said as he finally lowered the arm and took in Thomas.

John Henry watched Taylor closely. Even Gray Dog was interested in what was being said.

“When the time comes, I’ll hold him while you use that famous knife of yours to convince him of the errors of his ways.”

“Lost that damn knife at Fredericksburg.”

“I think we can come up with something, Colonel.”

“The rest of my men?” Taylor asked, his voice somewhat stronger than a moment before. He reached over and found the report John Henry had tossed next to him and he fought against the darkness of the room with his one good eye to see the names of the dead.

“Being fed and cleaned as we speak. The ladies’ auxiliary for Fair and Ethical Treatment of Prisoners has taken over the care of your men, at least until the army gets over their initial shock at having their little secret out in the open.”

“Now,” Taylor said as he placed the report to the side and tried to sit up once again. This time with the help of John Henry he managed to come to a sitting position. “Why are you here, just out to enjoy the wonders of prison camp treatment?” Taylor felt the swelling around his head and grimaced when he touched a sensitive spot.

“I have a letter for you.”

“You came all the way here to give me a letter?” Taylor laughed out loud and then immediately regretted it. He winced as he grabbed the side of his head. This was immensely funny to Gray Dog, who smiled from his corner. “I know that look, John Henry. It’s the same one you were wearing when we filled the commandant’s office at West Point with duck feathers as a senior prank.”

“Well, while not on that epic scale, it is pretty good. I have been laughing since one o’clock this morning. Laughed all the way from Washington. I would never have believed the creative way both of our high commands have come up with killing us.”

The blank look on Taylor’s face said in no uncertain terms that Thomas was crazier than when he was but a schoolboy.

A knock sounded on the door and John Henry opened it. A man in a blood-stained white coat with frazzled gray hair was there.

“Doctor Halverson. Are you Colonel Thomas?” he asked as he peeked into the room and saw Gray Dog sitting on the bare wooden floor. He blinked and then his eyes spied Taylor. The doctor pushed past Thomas and went to the wounded man. “I have just come from Lafayette. I am the doctor here at Fort Hamilton and I have been treating the Rebel prisoners. Malnutrition for the most part. But there has been brutality there.” He turned and with his eyes looking over his round spectacles he said to Thomas, “That should be looked into.” He turned and raised the swollen eye of Taylor and then shook his head. “Boy, they really laid into you.”

“They had their fun,” Taylor said.

The doctor straightened and then frantically felt around his white coat and the jacket underneath. He took a deep breath when he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a folded telegram and held it out to John Henry.

“A rather boorish and foul-mouthed little sergeant major asked me to relay this to you. It just arrived from the telegraph office.”

John Henry unfolded the telegram and read.

PROCEED TO THE BROOKLYN NAVY YARD IMMEDIATELY UPON FINISHING YOUR TASK AT LAFAYETTE. PIER NINETEEN, SLIP SEVEN. THERE YOU FIND YOUR COVER STORY. THIS TASK MUST BE DONE IN PERSON WITH NO, I REPEAT, NO ESCORT. IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARD YOUR TROOP OF VOLUNTEERS IS TO REPORT TO BALTIMORE FOR SHIP ASSIGNMENT AND DEPARTURE—STANTON.

“Doctor, how many of the prisoners are healthy enough for travel?” he asked as he placed the telegram in his pants pocket and then removed a watch and noted the late hour.

“None. I said they were malnourished, Colonel. If not fed a healthy diet soon they will not be able to walk, much less travel.”

“Doctor, if fed properly for three weeks will they regain their strength?”

“Possibly. I can’t say for sure. These prisoners are all former cavalrymen. They are strong, but I can make no guarantees.”

“Good enough. Please get a complete roster of Colonel Taylor’s healthiest soldiers to that foul-mouthed sergeant major you met. Tell him we move out tonight. I also need ten wagons and the marine detail that was assigned to me earlier.”

“My men aren’t traveling anywhere. What is the meaning of this, John Henry?” Taylor asked as he saw the astonished look on the doctor’s red face.

Thomas finally held out the letter he had brought in to show Taylor. He opened and then folded the note until only the bottom portion was showing. He held it close to Taylor so he could see it in the dim lamp.

“Do you recognize this signature and seal?” John Henry smiled. “You should. You probably received enough signed orders from him the last three years.”

Jessy Taylor’s eyes remained on Thomas’s for the longest time. Then his one good eye strayed to the letter and the signature that was verified by the wax seal. The good eye widened. John Henry smiled and then asked the doctor to step from the room. He then unfolded the letter and gave it to Taylor, who read it with suspicion. Thomas pulled another letter out of his uniform jacket. As he watched, Taylor’s mouth went slightly ajar. Then he looked at Thomas as if he had lost his mind.

“That’s not the only madman’s signature, Jessy. Here’s another one you know.” He held out a second letter but didn’t divulge its contents, only the name. The two names would be floating in front of Taylor’s eyes even after he closed them fifty years later.

C.G. Army of Northern Virginia

And then on the second letter’s lower half was the second signature that completed the madness:

BROOKLYN NAVY YARD,

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

The horse-drawn trolley allowed John Henry the time to think. As he stared out at the busy streets of Brooklyn and the bustling activity near the navy yard, he knew that his old friend and West Point classmate Jessup Taylor was near the end. He could see it in his face and hear it in his words. Gone was the prankster, the man who bought every round but never seemed to pay for it at the end of the night. He was not only worried about Taylor, but the men of his command. He still didn’t have any idea who was to accompany him other than the few Confederate soldiers deemed healthy enough to withstand the voyage. This was definitely an army plan.

The bell rang as the trolley pulled up to the navy yard. The guard shack was well manned as he stepped from the car. He was saluted by a naval rate and then passed through after showing his card and orders. A two-man navy escort went with him and guided him through the maze of dry docks and buildings until he reached a slip that was covered in a tarpaulin as large as the roof covering the Hippodrome in Manhattan. He looked around and saw civilian workers entering and exiting the dry-dock area.

“This is as far as we can go, sir,” the petty officer said as he and his companion spun on their heels and left the area.

“Colonel Thomas?” came the accented English from behind John Henry.

He turned and saw a small man with pure white hair. He was wearing civilian clothes and looked angry. The little man’s face seemed familiar.

“Yes, I am Thomas,” he answered finally.

“What you see before you is your cover story.” The man gestured toward the giant tarpaulin. “It is meant to give the Turks something to see as far as a railway is concerned.” They stepped up to a smaller guard shack and saw a rather large marine standing before it with a menacing Spencer carbine at port arms. He didn’t look friendly. The small man’s accent was strange, and it was one Thomas had heard recently. “It is basically a large barge, capable of seagoing travel. Very stable. It will hold several thousand tons of railway ties and rail. Even for a locomotive, however, looks can be deceiving, Colonel.”

John Henry stepped through the tarp’s opening and was stunned at what he was looking at. Yes, there were railroad ties and rails going into the hold of the giant ship-shaped vessel. But it was what the railroad equipment was hiding that made Thomas’s eyes widen.

“May I present to you, Colonel Thomas, your ace in the hole if you ever need it. This is the sail barge U.S.S.
Argo
.”

“I see you are a man of the classics, sir,” Thomas asked, referring to the name of the ship before him.

“Yes, the
Argo
was the vessel Homer listed in his classic tome about Jason and his amazing Argonauts.” He looked at John Henry and his smile widened. “Fitting name, do you not think?”

John Henry didn’t answer. Instead he looked from the barge and its amazing contents back to the man who was smiling and rocking on his heels as if he were a proud parent looking at a newborn son. He finally recognized the face with the long sideburns he had seen in the eastern newspapers. The man was famous. And it wasn’t the same accent of Professor Ollafson he had heard the night before. It was another, close but not the same. He was hearing a Swedish accent and the name he was searching for was a naval engineer’s name: John Ericsson, a name most of the world was familiar with since he’d come on the scene two years before, when a battle that changed the world took place off the Carolina coast. That little fight, if John Henry remembered correctly, was one called the battle of Hampton Roads. The man before him was the designer of the Union ironclad, U.S.S.
Monitor
.

“I wish I were going with you, sir,” Ericsson said as he continued to smile and rock on his heels.

“Believe me, sir, you do not.”

“Nonetheless, Colonel, an adventure looms in your future and I so wish…” The engineer turned toward Thomas and then smiled with mild embarrassment. “Just an old fool planning ways to beat the gods at their own game. Anyway, I will be traveling with you to Baltimore where you will see the other three ships of your armada.”

“Armada?”

Ericsson laughed and then closed the tented tarp. “The sail barge will be towed to Cape Hatteras, where the four vessels will rendezvous. From there your journey begins in earnest.”