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Category:
Historical Fiction
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN-10: 1475232868
Type: Fiction
Pages: 454
Copyright: April 22. 2012
ISBN-13: 9781465875198
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Sam Carter becomes part of a fledgling spy ring based in Havana and discovers the back story to the Spanish American War.
1897. The world had changed. Spain’s iron-fisted Prime Minister was assassinated, creating a power vacuum in Europe. The United States Navy under the guidance of a brash Navy Secretary, Theodore Roosevelt, was flexing his military muscle, and desperately wanted Spain out of Cuba. Sam Carter, the son of a Confederate submariner who never returned from the sea, thought he understood the rules working for the fledgling Secret Service branch of the U.S. Treasury. When he was assigned to Havana as a foreign agent, Havana's Consul General Fitzhugh Lee coached him that in the spy business, there was only one rule — don’t get caught. Carter quickly realized he would see a different Havana than he once knew after the Spanish Prime Minister’s assassination. As he connected seemingly unrelated clues from his past and the present, he uncovered a German plot to exploit the inevitable American intervention in Cuba. As a power hungry Navy Secretary Theodore Roosevelt, drives toward a tidy little war in Cuba, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm choreographs a diversion he is convinced will leave American ports vulnerable to his navy’s incursion. When President McKinley’s administration is shaken to its core by the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana harbor, Carter’s investigation into the explosion reveals evidence contrary to the Naval experts’, and realizes the administration needs to recognize there could be unforeseen consequences when revenge on Spain is exacted.
Excerpt
Sam Carter could not believe what he had just witnessed. From the deck of the City of Washington, where he had been monitoring a group of potential counterfeiters, he heard a low rumble, followed by the explosion of the Maine. Her steel bow rose from the oily black water, exposing her cutwater and keel, and then dropped with a sickening splash back onto the harbor surface.
“Send out rescue boats,” the Washington’s Captain ordered as he stepped out onto the main deck. Carter, stunned, thinking of how he could help, watched the crew dutifully comply with their orders. Shackles squealed as line spun through pulleys. Wooden rescue boats skittered toward the water, and then splashed as they hit the surface. “Lights! This side,” the Captain barked as smoke continued pouring out from the Maine, the ship now twisting itself into grotesque wreckage. Flaming debris escaped with each ensuing explosion then rained aimlessly from the sky.
Carter watched the Washington’s calcium searchlights as they sparked to life then joined the search lights of other moored vessels, the myriad of light beams seemingly sword fighting out over the harbor. Methodical sweeps combed the surface, fixing sporadically on movement near the vessel. Some of the men flailed while others floated with a sickening stillness. Screams punctuated the night, echoing over the chaos until drowned out by additional explosions. He followed the searchlights carefully as they explored the oily black surface. Movement caught his eye in one of the light streams. Ripples. He thought he had spotted a rippled, spreading wake headed away from the wreck. He took out a small pair of binoculars he had stuffed into his jacket and scanned more closely, but by the time he focused, the disturbed surface was calm again. The searchlight moved on again, back toward the men thrashing in the water, skipping over the bodies that floated in the bay like contorted driftwood.
Chaos reigned throughout the harbor. Rescue boats from every ship moored in the harbor, military and civilian alike, splashed into the water and joined the amoeba-like flotilla whose extremities reached out ever closer to the wreckage to consume the maimed. Explosions from the swamped sections of the dismembered warship died out, leaving a macabre twisted hulk in the center of the harbor. Carter gravitated toward the boarding platform, and joined with the crew to help the first of the survivors onto the deck of the Washington. He eyed the burned and tattered men as they limped with help toward commandeered cabins for triage.
Captain Charles Sigsbee and Lieutenant Commander Richard Wainwright were the last two men to board the steamer. Sigsbee bowed his head as he walked by, his trousers soaked to his waist. An ink spot stained the belly of his white shirt. Wainwright glanced up at Carter, stopped and stared blankly for a moment. The assured expression that Carter had always seen on his face was now wiped clean and replaced with one more of astonishment. The officer nodded a nearly imperceptible acknowledgement before being skirted away for needed medical attention.
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