Chapter 11
When Crow arrived by himself, Tobias was concerned. When another twelve hours passed and still no sign of Gareth, Tobias was upset. The boy knew better than to waste time or delay. They were on a tight schedule if they wanted to be ready before the pirate ship found them. The Catherine had been badly damaged and they would need all the time they could get to make her seaworthy.
The Bookkeepers were some of the deadliest fighters Tobias had ever seen but with only eleven men, there was no way Tobias could hope to succeed. To capture the ship, he would have to deal with a crew that, from all accounts, exceeded 150 people. Even if the entire crew were disarmed it would be impossible. He had to come up with a way to even the odds.
He was watching some of the Bookkeepers do endurance training by running on the surf when the solution hit him. The plan was a simple one. It had one weakness, In order to capture the pirate captain, the man would have to be greedy and insist on being the center of action.
When Tobias told Martin and Captain Clark that he wanted to sacrifice the Catherine, it was obvious that they didn’t like the plan but they couldn’t offer a better one. Anchor the Catherine close to a small island and fill the hold with just enough explosive to breach two ships. With both ships sinking, the crew would have to swim ashore. The men that made it to shore would be too tired to fight.
That left the Captain. You couldn’t just kill a Royal and hope to be exonerated. Crow finally acknowledged he had been been commissioned by the King to take the pirate alive. True or not, in the case of a Royal reprisal, it shifted much of the risk from the Bookkeepers to Crow.
If the pirate captain was on board the Catherine when the explosion happened, a small group of people could take him captive. In the confusion that accompanied the sinking of the ships, they could use a small boat to get away. They would have to delay their escape long enough for the crew to be fully committed in swimming to shore.
The girl, Sarah?, yes it was Sarah, had turned out to be an excellent shot with her pistol, deadly with a dagger and an abject failure with a sword.
Her skills made her perfect for the ship’s crew. She worked so well with her father that at times it was impossible to determine who was giving orders. That made two. Crow was demanding the right to be onboard since he had the Royal commission. That made three but Tobias was leery of counting on Crow as a team member, he had been working alone too long and frankly, Tobias still did not trust him to consider his team before his mission.
It was a strange mixture of relief and guilt for Tobias when Captain Clarkson asked him if he had an opening on the Catherine’s assault crew. He had been a mercenary in his early years but acknowledged he would need some refresher training. Tobias had just the right crew for him to train with.
Way too soon the two ships left for the small island. The crew aboard the Catherine was none too happy knowing that there was enough explosive to blow the side into small splinters. Tobias wasn’t happy because Gareth was missing. Crow wasn’t happy because he felt that Tobias blamed him for Gareth. Martin wasn’t happy because he was losing money on a daily basis but at least he had an end in sight.
The explosives had been carefully packed into place by the Bookkeeper’s expert, Hank. He wasn’t exceptional in any way but one, after a lifetime of working with gunpowder, he still had his hands and feet. True, his left hand was badly scared from burns and he limped from shrapnel taken when he was too close to an explosion. That same explosion also explained why he was deaf when approached on his left side.
Hank enjoyed creating new explosives a little too much for Tobias to feel completely safe. If you looked closely at his face you could see it wasn’t acne but small burn scars that covered his face. His detailed planning made it obvious that he knew what he was doing. He had secured each keg of powder by himself in a pattern that he thought would give maximum force. He had had the workers create additional barriers, thick walls, to direct the force outward.
Hank might have been comfortable with his explosives but Tobias felt anything but comfortable standing on the deck above the explosives. Hank had promised the main blast would be outward towards the pirate ship but admitted he wasn’t sure how safe the upper deck would be and certainly wouldn’t want to be there when it went off.
The plan also called for a second ship to be anchored on the far side of the island. There was a risk that it would be sighted but this was a fishing ship and unlikely to be carrying anything of interest to the pirate. It was there to transport the Bookkeepers and surviving pirates off the island.
The Bookkeepers were to be stationed on the shore, waiting for pirates to swim ashore or land in the few small boats the pirate ship was bound to have. The exhausted pirates would be no challenge but those coming in on boats might create problems. Two small deck guns were set up a little ways from the shore for just this eventuality. Realizing that he couldn’t expect more than one shot each, Tobias had them loaded with shot and carefully ranged using precise powder measures. He just didn’t have spare manpower.
The people staying on the Catherine would be Crow, Captain Clark, Sarah and Sarah’s father. Crow, true to his name, demanded to be stationed in the crow’s nest. The other three would be nestled in a small alcove the carpenters had built into the side of the ship where she had taken major damage. Captain Clark almost cried when he saw what they had done to the smooth sleek lines of his ship.
The alcove was on the outside of the ship, impossible to see from the deck. It was barely large enough for three people to secure themselves for a short time. Assuming all went well, they would unhook after the explosion and scramble up the “carelessly” placed nets. Their weapons would have already been concealed on deck to eliminate the difficulties of climbing while holding weapons.
In preparation for the pirate ship to show up, they were to make it look as if the crew had abandoned the ship. This included leaving food rotting on plates. Tobias had always found superstitious fears to be a strong ally.
Farther up on the shore, Tobias saw the man watching the Catherine for a signal that they had been sighted. Seeing a flare of a torch on the Catherine, the man lit his own torch and waved it high in the air. He continued waving it until he saw the torch on the Catherine drop into the water in acknowledgement. They had been sighted, now all they could do was wait.
With an optimism coming from way too many campaigns like this, Tobias wondered how long the plan would hold together before something completely unexpected happened. He was hoping that the unexpected part didn’t include blowing both ship to small piles of debris. Hank was among the best but Tobias had worked with explosives before.
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