Worse, no one had obtained sex yet. The army operated some beer halls, in which cold and virtually free brew was available, but no brothels. Someone at the top must have gotten religion. Ludwig had heard it was the kaiser’s wife, the Kaiserine Dona, who was known as a prude, who’d stopped the idea of official whorehouses. Or else they were all afraid of the clap. Ludwig had never been to a whore and had no intention of starting, but others, like poor Ulli, bemoaned their fate as celibates. In a burst of insight, Ludwig realized that, far from being sexually active as he liked to brag, Ulli had probably never had a woman.
Ludwig glanced at the sky. It was early evening and their instructions were to be back in their quarters by dark. Although the army controlled the town, it was still considered dangerous.
The sound of loud laughter and running footsteps brought him back to reality. It was two of the younger men, the brothers Klaus and Hans Schuler, all giggling and red-faced. A few moments before, Ludwig had seen them with Ulli. Now where the hell was poor, dumb Ulli?
“He’s getting fucked,” said one, laughing. The other nodded, giggling too much to speak.
Ludwig, as corporal, was their leader. The Schuler brothers were the intellectual equal of Ulli. Sergeant Major Gunther had once commented acidly that they didn’t have one full brain among the three of them. They were, however, cheerful and friendly, fit companions for each other. “He’s getting what? Where the hell did he find someone who’d screw him in this forlorn place?”
They waved. “A couple of blocks back. This woman, young and not too bad if you like them scrawny, came up and asked if we wanted to fuck her. She was white too,” he added, as if that gave her greater status.
“Just like that?”
They nodded. “Just that simple. She said she’d do it for one American dollar each. None of us had any dollars, but Ulli got her to agree for some of our money. She offered to take us all on, but Ulli said he was gonna keep her busy and we should come back in about an hour.”
Ludwig laughed. “My God, she’s probably giving him six different kinds of clap.”
“Nah, she’s clean. Ulli made her lift her dress and show him her crotch before he’d go with her.” Hans snickered. “He got so close I thought he was gonna put his nose right up her pussy.”
They all doubled over in laughter. Ulli was so horny, yet so naive and particular. “Well,” Ludwig chuckled, “we better go back and wait for him. We can’t have him wandering off alone in this town. The poor fool’ll get lost and we’ll get blamed.”
The small group of German soldiers walked casually to where they’d last seen Ulli. The area was empty. Where the hell had he gone?
“Ulli!” Ludwig yelled. Nothing. He hollered again, as did the others. It created a din, and one of the German military police walked over and asked what the matter was. Upon being told, he asked where the woman had come from, and one of the Schulers pointed to an alley. Grimly, the soldier pulled his revolver and moved slowly into the grimy passageway, littered with refuse of all kinds. Ludwig and the others followed, all suddenly aware that they were unarmed in a hostile land and that the shadows of the alley conveyed a sense of menace.
The alley turned a corner and, now thoroughly frightened, they followed. The policeman gasped, then paused and pointed. A pair of bare feet jutted from behind a barrel. Not wanting to see but knowing they had to, they moved closer. It was Ulli. He was naked and his crotch was a bloody mess. His throat had been cut. His penis was in his mouth.
Richmond Hobson watched as the train rolled slowly into the huge warehouse and dock complex on Newark Bay. When it finally stopped, the guards dropped nimbly to the ground. They were all wearing civilian clothes instead of their customary uniforms. Hobson had wanted no uniforms to attract attention to the unidentifiable, canvas-draped shapes on the flatcars.
As he walked along the train, the guards acknowledged him and moved away. Richmond Pearson Hobson had a reputation as a very different and difficult man. At thirty-one, Hobson was the youngest officer in the U.S. Navy to achieve the rank of captain. It was the result of an incredibly brave action in which he had tried to sink a coal ship, the Merrimac, in Santiago harbor during the war with Spain. If he had been successful, the Spanish fleet would have been unable to sortie. But he hadn’t been successful. Although the Merrimac had indeed sunk, he failed to block the channel and, worse, wound up as a prisoner.
It was more than ironic that he had been promoted and lionized in the press for achieving nothing. The attempt was a failure and it galled him.
Undeniably brave, Hobson was also highly intelligent, some said brilliant. He had graduated at the head of his class at Annapolis and was thought to have a magnificent future ahead of him. His specialty was naval architecture. Of course, no one could yet give him command of the fleet, but now he had been given responsibility for hurting the Germans in some manner, and that was good.
A righteous man, Hobson neither drank nor swore. He had a stern and handsome look that made women turn and stare. He was not a womanizer and scarcely noticed their existence.
A small, bearded man in a dark suit and a derby hat walked up to him. “Satisfied, Captain?” Unlike the guards, who were military men in civilian clothes, this man was very much a civilian and unawed by Hobson’s rank.
“Not until the Germans are gone, Mr. Holland. One more trainload and my men will be ready for action. They are getting nervous. Idleness does not suit them with the enemy in sight. How about your crew?” he asked, thinking of the strange vessel that bobbed helplessly alongside the dock.
“They will be ready, Captain, and they will perform well, as will my little creation.”
“Good,” Hobson said. “Just what I expected.” The two men strode outside and stood in the soft rain staring at the covered shapes in the water. To a casual observer, they looked like small craft that were out of service. There were many such covered craft in the harbor and these went totally unnoticed among them.
“Mr. Holland, do you know what I did today?”
“Can’t imagine.”
Hobson chuckled, an act that surprised the other man, since Hobson rarely smiled, much less laughed. “I took a carriage over to the East River near Hoboken and looked at the enemy through my telescope. And do you know what I saw?”
“No.”
“John, I saw German officers looking through their own telescopes at me! Their presence on American soil made me ill. They must be driven off and made to pay.”
Hobson glanced down into the water at the small boats that were his command and smiled grimly, which caused the other man to shudder. “And very soon, Mr. Holland, we shall come to collect.”
The scene at the field hospital was one of organized confusion. Several of the colored soldiers from the 10th Cavalry loitered around the tents, wondering fearfully about their comrades. Patrick pulled back the tent flap and entered. Ian Gordon, dirty and bloodied, tried to rise from his chair. Patrick pushed him down. “Ian, how badly are you hurt?”
“Mainly my pride. Except for some bruises and minor cuts, the bulk of this blood belongs to others.”
“Heinz?”
Gordon nodded grimly. “Sad to say, yes. He’s badly wounded. Possibly dying. Damnit, we did all we could to bring him and the others back.”
“I know.” At least the boy was still alive. Better this was a skirmish, not a great battle. Thus the doctors could give Heinz proper attention, and not be overwhelmed by the numbers of hurt and maimed, as had happened in the past.
Gordon continued. “He got shot in both the arm and the leg. The leg wound seems fairly simple, but his arm is all ripped up. We just stuffed a rag into the leg hole, but we had to use a tourniquet on the arm to stop the bleeding. There were bones sticking out too. Thank God he was unconscious most of the time. I just hope he hasn’t lost too much blood. Tourniquet or not, he just wouldn’t stop bleeding. The doctors have him now and are operating on him. They say it might be hours before they know whether he will make it.”
Patrick forced himself to think beyond Heinz. “How many others?”
“One of the 10th dead, and two wounded. The wounded were able to walk back under their own power.”
One dead and three wounded out of a patrol that normally consisted of ten men and had been augmented to twelve by the addition of Heinz and Ian. Not good numbers. “Okay, what happened?”