Shannon lowered the sextant, noted the sun angle, and stepped back into the wheelhouse to check his charts.  Yes, the ship was on course and headed back out to the fisheries claimed by Rain Island.  In fact, they’d be safely back in home waters by lunchtime tomorrow.  He smiled in satisfaction.
        “Coffee, Jack,” and the cook passed up a steaming mug.  “Should I get any for Enzo?”
        The rat chuckled.  “Nah.  He’s still out cold.”  The hare had asked for a bottle of beer as soon as the ship reached the safety of international waters. 
        One bottle of Mendenhall Lager later and the guy was out like a light.
        In fact, he’d been asleep nearly two days now; probably hadn’t slept soundly since Detroit.


May 16, 1937:

        Vice-Commodore Broome held a magnifying glass over the photographs and studied them carefully.  Brightwater Smith and two engineers from one of Rain Island’s best industrial combines studied other copies.  “Very fine work,” Broome murmured.
        “Excellent draftsmanship,” one of the engineers remarked.  “We’ll have no trouble getting these transposed onto proper blueprint paper.”
        “Time.”
        “Well, don’t be too optimistic, Vice-Commodore.  We have to redraw the plans, of course, then turn out some dummy copies to see how everything fits together.  Then we have to retool for the prototype.”
        “How much time, as a guess?”
        “Optimistically, about a month,” the other engineer chimed in. 
        “Okay, I’ll turn you loose on it,” the gray fox said, and the two engineers gathered up the photographs and left the office.
        The door closed behind them and Smith said, “If this works, it’ll put us slightly ahead of every other military force in this part of the world, Rich.”
        “And it’ll only be a matter of time before someone steals or copies it, and then everyone will want one,” Broome said.  A somber look settled on his muzzle.  “I just wish Mastny hadn’t died.  He had a good idea; how many more might he have had?”
        Smith nodded, and she left the office to get back to her office.  Broome sat down and glanced at Tucci’s report again, fingers flicking through the pages. 
        The hare had done well, and a bonus would be given to him to reflect that.  The Czech designer’s death had been an accident, and the only other casualty had been Tucci, who had required a visit to a doctor to treat a case of hemorrhoids. 
        That left the letter.
        He’d received it in the diplomatic pouch, the message arriving at about the same time as the radioed news that Tucci was aboard the Driftwood.  Again, Stagg had chosen his personal stationery for the communication, which Broome interpreted as a rebuke:
1.    II Kings 9:32-33
2.    What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? 
       Macbeth, 5:1
        Broome had had to take his Bible down from the shelf to discover that the Scripture verses alluded to the wicked Queen Jezebel being thrown out of a window to her death at the order of the usurper Jehu.
        The second needed no research, but demanded a response.  Broome had researched Stagg’s file from Spontoon, and had spoken with Allan Minkerton personally.  He knew a few things about the buck.
        He knew, for example, that like him the deer had figurative blood on his paws.
        The gray fox took out a sheet of his own personal notepaper and scrawled, "Spoke like a tall fellow that respects his reputation" as a reply.
        As he sealed the envelope he pondered the irony of sending Stagg the line from Richard III.
        After all, it was part of a dialogue between two murderers.


July 19, 1937:

        It was a cloudy day promising rain, so a tent had been set up at the Army’s main proving ground facing an array of target silhouettes at varying ranges.  The furthest was nearly a quarter-mile away, while the closest was about ten yards.  The tent was furnished with chairs, a long table and a gun rack concealed under a heavy tarp.  A coffeepot sat on a small wood burning stove in one corner, along with a barrel full of ice in which bottles of soft drinks were chilling.
        The thirty furs that filed into the tent and took their seats were a mixture of species and ranks from every part of the Military Collective, and there was some good-natured joking as the sailors and soldiers settled down.  They were all enlisted furs, from private to senior sergeant and seaman to senior petty officer.  Several got cups of coffee or bottles of cold soda before taking their seats, and all looked up as Brightwater Smith entered with the Army and Naval Syndics and a civilian, a short elderly badger in a gray suit.  The badger held something wrapped in cloth in his paws, and he placed it gently on the table before stepping back.
        Smith gestured for quiet and when she opened her mouth to speak thunder rolled in the distance.  She waited for it to pass and said jokingly, “Just like the weather, trying to steal my thunder.”
        A few of the others laughed.  “But enough of that.  Ladies and gentlemen, you thirty represent the best marksmen in the Collective, experts on every one of the small arms we have in our arsenal.  We have with us today Mr. Noah Skeffington of Skeffington Machine Works,” and the badger waved, a broad smile on his face.  “Mr. Skeffington’s factories produce most of the Mouser rifles we have, but recently we asked him to develop a design that has come into our paws.”  She refrained from saying how.  “Mr. Skeffington?”
        Skeffington stepped up to the table and drew back the cloth, revealing a weapon that none of the assembly had seen before.  The gun’s length was a shade over two feet, with the magazine set behind the trigger housing and the oddly cylindrical pistol grip.  The foregrip and pistol grip gleamed a slick gray in the wan sunlight as Smith lifted the weapon and displayed it to the onlookers. 
        A few recognized the arrangement, and the realization sparked some muttering. 
        “Okay, boys and girls, here it is,” she said.  “This is the Mastny Type 1, or MT-1 submachine gun.  It weighs about nine pounds fully loaded and as soon as we finish testing and fixing any problems with it, it’ll be replacing the Mouser rifle.  For everyone, soldier and sailor alike.”  The ewe picked up the magazine.  “It’s chambered for nine millimeter; the rounds have a bit more powder in them than the standard pistol round, and the magazines hold thirty rounds.”  She fitted the magazine into its receiver, then faced toward the closest target and pulled the bolt back.
        “Effective range is about half a mile, but that’s only if you’re throwing bullets around willy-nilly.  For talking purposes there’s our target, at ten yards.”  She seated the butt of the weapon into the hollow of her left shoulder.  A flick of her index finger took the safety off, and her thumb nudged the selector switch as she aimed.
        It was a bit loud as her finger stroked the trigger, but the gun hardly moved from the recoil.  Smith fired several more shots before her thumb flicked the selector to fully automatic.
        The target sprouted holes, and by the time she was through (firing from the hip as well as from the shoulder) the paper was in tatters.  She ejected the magazine and checked to make certain that the action was clear.  “Now,” she said, “any questions?”
        Thirty paws shot up.
        She pointed to one, a junior sergeant.  The bovine asked, “How are you keeping the barrel from riding up?  I heard that was a problem with the Thompson.”
        “Someone’s been studying,” Smith said as an aside to the others, and there were some chuckles.  “See this here?” and she pointed at the end of the muzzle.  “It’s a compensator threaded onto the barrel.  Just enough weight to counteract the gun’s tendency to ride up.  Which leads me to a little added feature we’ve been working on.”
        She drew from a pocket of her jumpsuit a black cylindrical object almost a foot long.  A couple wolf whistles and she laughed, “No, it’s not what you think.  Dirty minds.”  She unscrewed the compensator from the muzzle and replaced it with the cylinder, tightening it by paw before putting another full magazine into the weapon.
        Another target had been set up at the ten-yard stand, and she flicked the gun to fully automatic and held it at her hip as she fired.  Instead of the loud racket heard previously, all the assembly heard was a deep brrrup sound with each pull of the trigger. 
        The target was still reduced to shreds.
        “Noise suppressor,” Smith said after she cleared the weapon and removed the cylinder.  “This, like the MT-1, is a prototype.  We’ll be refining this as we refine the gun.”  She put the compensator back on.  “Suppressors will be issued to forces such as the SLF and to the Naval Syndicate for boarding actions.
        “Who wants to try it out first?”
        She had to gesture for quiet before a free-for-all broke out.  “Each of you will be issued one of these weapons,” and General Colding and Commodore O’Rourke pulled the tarp away from the gun rack, revealing thirty more MT-1s.  “Your job is to familiarize yourself with them, break them in, see if they can be broken and find any problems so they can be remedied before they go into active service.  Again, questions?”
        A sailor put her paw up.  “What are the grips made of?”
        “Glad you asked.  We eliminated wood because wood can rot, and we wanted to keep the unloaded weight down to about eight pounds.  The grips are something new as well, a product from Moloch Chemicals they’re calling ‘fibresin’ – it’s a resin strengthened with tiny glass fibers.”
        “Like Bakelite?” someone asked.
        “Much stronger than Bakelite, but again, we’re hoping that you furs can evaluate the weapon on its merits before it enters the arsenal.  Okay, step up – single file! – and get your gun, then we’ll head out to the range and get started.”


December 9, 1937:
Little Wolf Lake:

        “What do you think?” the sculptor asked.  The equine turned the plaster head a bit to the left.  “You didn’t give me much to go on, but I think I’ve done the best I could.”
        Tucci and Broome walked around the bust and inspected it carefully.  All the hare had to go on was his memory and the photograph Ford supplied the Detroit papers after his death.  Still, it was a very good likeness of the late Jakob Mastny.
        The hare smiled.  “It looks just like him, Eddie.  Great job.  How soon can you get it all done?”
        The palomino waggled a paw.  “Figure about two weeks to set the molds up.  Then the casting, and getting it down to Port de Fuca . . . I think it’ll be after the first of the year, Enzo.”
        Tucci looked at the fox, who nodded judiciously.  “Sounds great.  Take your time.  If anything comes up, let me know, okay?” Broome shook paws with the artist, and he and Tucci left the studio.
        The lepine glanced at the vulpine and asked bluntly, “Assuaging a guilty conscience, Richard?”
        Broome flicked his brush.  “Partly.  I’m sorry that he died, but accidents will happen.  And I think putting up a statue to the man who gave us the MT-1 is a fitting tribute, even if he hadn’t died.
        “Now, you.”
        “Me?”
        “Yes.  I’m sending you back to Detroit.”
        That caused Tucci to stop in his tracks.  “What?  Are you crazy?”
        “No, and I have the paperwork to prove it.”  The fox smiled thinly.  As part of his contract with the military, Broome was required to have a session with a psychiatrist and a shaman every six months.  “I’ve talked to Cloud and he tells me that although the death investigation is still open, the police have nothing to go on apart from a thin and possibly faulty description.  Besides,” and he started walking again, “everyone thinks it was union organizers who killed Mastny.  Ford called him a hero.”
        “So why send me back there?”
        “You know the area.  You were a good trade representative even before I asked you to take a job moonlighting for me.”  His smile broadened.  “And don’t you have a lady friend there?”
        “Mabel?  But – “
        “But she probably suspects nothing.  Your report stated that you sent her a wire from Chicago.”
        “Yeah, telling her my mother was sick, but – “
        “That can explain why you disappeared and haven’t spoken to her in the past few months.  So why all the ‘buts?’”
        “But isn’t my cover blown?”
        “Sure it is.”  The fox ignored the hare’s incredulous look.  “The FBI will have their eyes all over you.  Which, of course, will make it easier for our real agent – who you will never meet, by the way – to operate without surveillance.”
        “Oh.”
        The fox laughed and clapped the stocky hare on the back.  “So my advice to you, Enzo, is to show up at her door with candy and flowers.”
       

end