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“Just like always He vanished into thin air”

“Where is Billy Collins?”

The wounded gang leader shrugged, winced, and took another pull on a flask “Where do hop fiends go? Under a rock In a sewer”

43

TEN MILES OFF FIRE ISLAND, A BARRIER BEACH BETWEEN Long Island and the Atlantic Ocean, fifty ht of day started to slip over the western horizon, and stars took shape in the east Atlantic Ocean swells were bunching up on the shallow continental shelf Neither captain of the larger vessels-a 4,000-ton stea posts, and an oceangoing tugboat hipped up to a three-track railcar barge-was pleased with the prospect of getting close enough to transfer cargo in such choppy seas, particularly with the wind shifting fitfully from sea to shore When they saw that the third vessel, a broad-beamed little catboat powered only by sail, was steered by a petite redheaded girl, they began snarling at their helmsmen

It looked like the rendezvous would end before it started Then the girl took advantage of a shifty gust to bring her craft about so smartly that the steamer’s boat captain, “Don’t lose your nerve We can always throw you overboard and run the boat ourselves”

He spotted Rafe Engels waving fro

Rafe Engels was a gunrunner wanted by the British Special Irish Branch for ar rebels of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and by the Czar’s secret police for supplying Russian revolutionists O’Shay had first met him on the Wilhelm der Grosse They had danced carefully around each other, and again on the Lusitania, probing warily at the kindred spirit they each sensed behind the other’s elaborate disguise There were differences: the gunrunner, always on the rebels’ side, was an idealist, the spy was not But over the years they had worked out several trades This exchange of torpedoes for a subest

“Where’s the Holland?” O’Shay called across the water

“Under you!”

O’Shay peered into the waves The water started bubbling like a boiling pot So dark and stealthy took shape under the bubbles A round turret of ared fro hull parted the sea It was one hundred feet long andas a reef

A hinged cover opened on top of the turret A bearded man thrust his head and shoulders into the air, looked around, and climbed out He was Hunt Hatch, at one time the Holland Company’s chief trials captain, now on the run from Special Irish Branch His crew followed him out, one after another, until five Republican Brotherhood fighters who had pledged their lives to win Ho in the light and breathing deeply of the air

“Treat the their deal “They are brave men”

“Like my own family,” O’Shay had promised

All had served as Royal Navy subland They dreamed, O’Shay knew, that when the Americans discovered that the subland, it would appear that England had instigated an attack to cripple Aulfed Europe, angry Aland Then Gerland, and Ireland would be free