February 25:
       
        “Colonel Hu!” A soldier yelped as he ran up to the gate.  “That submarine’s returned!”
        “Oh, have they?” the wolf snarled, reaching for his sidearm.
        “Yes, sir, and – they’re flying a white flag.”
        “White flag?”  Hu paused as he finished buckling his gun belt.  A white flag meant either two things – they wanted to talk, or they wanted to surrender.
        Fine, then.  If they wanted to talk, they’d do so under the rifles of his men.
        If they wanted to surrender – well, he had a score to settle with a scrawny fox and his badger wife.
        As he reached a vantage point he saw the fox waving from the top of the sub’s conning tower.  “Ahoy!  Hi, Colonel Hu!  Didja miss me, sweetie?”
        Suppressing a growl the Chinese wolf asked, “What do you want, you thieving fox?”
        “Well, remember when my wife said we were getting a new motor and generator?  Just before our date?”
        Hu’s ears went back.  “Yes.”
        “See, we needed to have our engine back so we could go get yours.  We have a diesel and a generator below, just waiting for you.  Hope you don’t mind French-built stuff . . . “
        “What?  You are giving me a – “
        “Hey, we keep a deal, Buster,” Max said with a grin.  “Now, do you want it, or do we sell it up the coast?”
       
        Hu wanted it, and the sub was allowed to dock.  The engine parts were taken up the hill with a repair crew to reassemble it and get it running to Hu’s satisfaction, while a forage party bartered for fresh fruit and vegetables.
        Most of the Chinese crew of the Alouette had jumped ship almost before the sub’s engines had stopped, leaving only the yacht’s former cook.  He, an almost cadaverously thin feline, had immediately gravitated to the boat’s tiny galley and started working as if nothing had happened.       
        The quality of the meals improved markedly, both in ingredients as well as in preparation.  Sam had the impression that the cook, named Lee, had been trained by a French chef; this impression was fostered by his quiet and methodical work and his habit of threatening anyone who entered the galley without his permission.
        He didn’t have to say anything, as the cleaver he waved around said quite enough.
       
        Lefty came up on deck late one morning to feel some sun on his fur.  Long hours in the engine room made him hunger to look up at the sky once in a while, and as he stretched and looked around he heard Max say, “Good morning, sleepyhead.”
        “Good morning yourself,” the feline replied, looking around.  “Where are you?”
        “Come forward of the conning tower.  I’ve been busy with some of the paint we found when we looted that yacht’s goat locker.”
        “Oh?”  Lefty walked along the deck to face the front of the tower and his jaw dropped.  “Um . . . “
        The Catalina fox had painted a variation of the Jolly Roger on the front of the conning tower.  Emblazoned on a huge black rectangle, still gleaming wetly, was the maniacally grinning skull of a rabbit whose long ears and jagged teeth seemed incongruous, yet strangely appropriate. 
        Beneath the symbol was a series of numbers and a letter in bright blood-red:  U-666.  “Well, what do you think?” Max asked.
        “I dunno, Max,” Lefty said uneasily, his voice trailing off.  “I don’t like the looks of that bunny – the eyes follow you around.”
        “Perfect!  We want to scare the buggers to death, so we don’t have to shoot ‘em.”  Max started to put the lids back on the paint cans as Lefty shook his head, gazed back up at the grinning rabbit’s face, and retreated to the relative safety of the engine room.

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