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“Get ready!” the coxswain yells in a voice that sounds like it’s co from a twelve-year-old, but just then the boat co a sound like a chalkboard being dragged over a hundred fingernails Men fall forward and then back, staggering, grabbing for handholds The engine dies, the coxswain curses and co down to look over the side

“Goddamn sandbar!”

They are still a quarter of a mile from the beach There are no life rafts, and there is no chance of swiear

The engine is restarted and with lots of frightened cursing from the coxswain, the boat attempts to pull itself off the sandb

ar

No dice The water churns, the boards screech, but the boat does not ear and ju, waist-deep water and try to push the boat off, but the sand beneath their boots gives the and shivering

They are a set with the da just beginning to paint the sky a soft and hazy navy blue

The first shell lands fifty feet astern

11

RAINY SCHULTERMAN—ABOARD HMS TOPAZ, NORTH ATLANTIC

“Whawhawhere am I?” Cisco is suddenly awake

He thrashes in his hammock and realizes he has been lashed into it with ropes, trussed up with all the knot-bending skill of anautical knots since the days of Sir Francis Drake and the Spanish Armada Cisco is held in place by a virtual illustrated encyclopedia of knots

Cisco’s hammock is in the torpedo rooreasy space s of industrial solvents, unwashed bodies, stale tobacco, fresh tobacco smoke, farts, cheese, and oil There appears to be a thin sheen of oil on virtually every surface, including on the tan canvas of the hammock

The crew are dressed in a sort of liberal approach to uniforarees with shirttails tucked in, while others wear bulky fisherman’s sweaters or stained shirts open at the neck with sleeves rolled up The officers are only inally more formal

The subhout the entire boat every nook and cranny is stuffed with powdery loaves of fresh Portuguese bread, pineapples, cabbages, bananas, onions, butter, and wheels of pale-yellow Azorean cow’s milk cheese They have also replenished their store of torpedoes, which lie sinister in steel racks just astern of the tubes, ready to be fed in The torpedoes surprised Rainy on first sight, being , weighing 3,452 pounds, 750 pounds of which is the TNT warhead