“But if it’s that much heavier, they’d have trouble mounting it on a speedboat anyway, wouldn’t they?” Nichols asked.
“Mounting rockets on a speedboat is going to be a pain in the ass however you look at it,” Ferrara told him grimly. “We’re going to have to rig up some sort of blast shield to deflect the exhaust when they launch. And aiming them is going to be pretty much hopeless. We’ll have to go with a scattergun effect if we want to produce hits . . . and they’re going to have to run in close.”
“How close?” Mike asked.
“I can’t really say,” Ferrara admitted unhappily. “I don’t know enough about the conditions to have the foggiest idea. It’s going to have to be something they work out as they go, but, frankly, I’ll be surprised if they could hit the Titanic at much over a hundred fifty yards.”
“That close?” Mike couldn’t hide his dismay . . . and he didn’t try very hard. Cry, havoc! And set loose the dogs of war. Youngsters—whom he sent into harm’s way—were going to be dying soon.
“And this limpet mine idea of Eddie’s?” Underwood asked skeptically.
“Actually, I think the kid’s got something with that one,” Jackson replied. “I know Sam and Al, and Al was always pretty handy when it came to blowing stumps or boulders. Never did understand what the two of them saw in swimming around in old quarry pits and flooded mines—is there a sillier sport in Appalachia than scuba diving?—but, hey—man’s got to have a hobby, right?” He grinned. “Point is, they’re both used to swimming around in the dark, and Al, at least, is a good man to have gluing dynamite to the bottom of somebody else’s boat. And just happens that we’ve still got half a dozen cases of dynamite over in the armory. Been saving it for something just about like this, as a matter of fact.”
“Really?” Ferrara perked up. “You’ve got that much dynamite left?”
“Well, yeah,” Jackson said again, this time a bit defensively. “I didn’t want to make a big thing out of mentioning it, seeing as how if everybody knew we had it, we’d have people over there every day explaining why they just had to have a stick or two for some vital project or other. Just seemed simpler not to admit we had it.”
“And what else are you hoarding away over there?” Underwood inquired.
“We can worry about detailed inventories later,” Mike interrupted, to Jackson’s obvious relief. “The point Frank’s making is that we’ve got the capability to plant underwater explosives on the other side’s ships.”
“Maybe we can even do a little better than that,” Ferrara said. “A half or quarter stick of dynamite could make our rocket warheads a lot more destructive.”
“But given how many we’re going to have to launch to score a hit, we’d burn through our entire dynamite supply pretty damned quick,” Jackson pointed out.
“I wasn’t thinking so much about the rockets we’ve got now,” Ferrara told him. “I was thinking more about the long-range job we’re working on down at the shop. It’s going to be a lot more accurate, Frank. That’s one reason I’d like the best warhead I can put on it. I hate to waste a hit on anything less than that.”
“Well, we can talk about that later,” Jackson said. “For now, the important thing is that I can send a couple of cases along with Eddie.”
“What about the rest of his ‘wish list’?” Piazza asked.
“We send everything on it,” Mike said decisively. “We’re lucky Gustavus picked this particular week to go inspect his ironclad. If anybody can organize the defense of Luebeck effectively, he can. But by the same token, the fact that he’s going to be commanding the city’s defense ups the stakes all around. As soon as Richelieu and the Danes realize he’s in the city, they’re going to be more determined than ever to take it . . . and take him off the board with it.”
“The same thought had occurred to me,” Nichols said quietly. “Are you sure we want to risk him this way?”