April 3:

        “Surface!  Gun crews to their posts!” Sam said as the U-666 moved in on yet another ship, this one a small tramp steamer.  “We’ll loot this one, then sink her,” she said as furs scrambled up the ladders.

        So far the submarine and its crew had done well, sending another six ships to the bottom including one destroyer that had blundered into range after it responded to one of the sinkings.  Two more ships had been seized as prizes and sent off, one to Macao and the other to Hong Kong.
        While the bulk of the money was flowing to the government in Chungking, there was always enough to give sufficient ‘squeeze’ to the middlemen.
        Having a third of the crew off the ship made it easier to find sleeping arrangements, but some of the furs were pulling double watches.  They would continue to do so until they reached Qianshan.

        Max clambered up onto the bridge and promptly flinched as a geyser of water shot up to port.  “What the hell?”  He grabbed at his binoculars and studied the ship carefully as the sub’s crew swiftly readied their deck guns.
        The steamer had only appeared innocuous; now that the U-666 had surfaced one small deckhouse had collapsed, revealing itself to be nothing but lath and canvas and concealing a three-pounder cannon.  It fired again, and as the shell exploded closer Max hit the bridge intercom.  “Helm!  Radical evasive, at full speed!”
        “What’s going on?” Sam asked over the bellow of the diesels.
        “It’s a Decoy!” Max yelped as the sub swung to starboard.

        During the Great War, Britain was losing ships to German U-boat warfare that the Empire could ill afford to lose.  As a result, the Royal Navy developed what were known as Decoy Vessels – small and harmless-looking ships that traveled alone and would be easy targets for a hunting submarine.
        Bait, actually.  The ships were armed, the guns usually hidden until the submarine closed the range.
        The Decoys were designed to be a nasty surprise.
        Despite a few successes and much romantic drivel, the Decoys had not been particularly effective.  Submarine commanders swiftly grew wary of any ship traveling alone, and the German policy of unrestricted undersea warfare guaranteed a “shoot first” strategy.

        The U-666 moved to present her port flank to the steamer and her heavier guns joined the fight, splashes showing that the first salvo had fallen short.
        Max spotted the commander of the Japanese ship, a lean rat, and scooped up his megaphone.  “Hee hee hee, filthy rodent!” he shouted in Japanese.  “Now is the time for fun!”  A sudden hunk gouged out of the steamer’s funnel emphasized his words.
        “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,” came the reply as another deckhouse fell apart to reveal a five-inch cannon.
        Max muttered a curse and shouted down the open hatch, “I’m gonna need a firing solution on this tub, and fast!”
        “Right!” Sam yelled back.  “Hans, get cracking!  Schnell!”
        A stream of German curses came up the open hatchway as the sub continued to dodge, the gun crews firing every time their guns came to bear on the target.  For its part the Decoy kept up its own steady rate of fire, sending seawater cascading over the hull and causing shrapnel to ricochet off the conning tower with almost musical pinging noises.
        “Damn you, Max!”  Hans yelled.  “Can’t you have us hold steady so I can kill that ship?”
        “Sure!  But if I hold still too long, we’re chum, got it?”  Water was sluicing down the hatchway.  “Helm, steer two-zero-zero, then rudder amidships!  Hans, now or never!”
        “Torpedo los!” and the submarine bucked, then bucked again as a near-miss caused it to roll almost sickeningly to port. 
        The torpedo’s track went arrow straight for the Decoy, which apparently lacked the ability to get out of the way quickly at such a close range.  The weapon struck near the aft end of the ship and the U-666’s gun crews cheered as a dirty spike of smoke and seawater rocketed up, flinging debris in all directions.  An answering belch of smoke erupted from the freighter’s single smokestack.
        “Hah!  Gotcha!  And your mother’s so dumb she tried to drown a goldfish!” Max yelled in Japanese as the gunners took advantage of the chaos just inflicted to pour as many shells as they could into the Decoy’s wheelhouse.  The sub shuddered again as a second torpedo was launched, and another cheer went up when the weapon exploded amidships.
        The Decoy had already been settling by the stern, making it likely that the explosion had either ripped a major hole in its flank or had ruptured the propeller shaft’s seals.  Either way, the second torpedo was the coup de grace. 
        Another explosion, and the ship’s five-inch mount could be seen hurtling skyward in advance of the fireball.  The other gun was already silent and furs could be seen abandoning their posts and heading for the rails.
        “Max?” 
        He turned and looked down at his wife.  “Yeah, Sam?”
        “You’re bleeding.”
        “Am I?  I’ve been too busy to bleed.  May have been a splinter.”
        “Uh huh.  Too busy to duck, too.  Well, leave it under your pillow tonight and maybe the Splinter Fairy will give you a toothpick.  As soon as you finish sinking that ship, we’re leaving.”
        “Shall I leave flowers?”
        The badger looked somber, her gaze faltering momentarily.  Finally she said, “Light a candle,” and went back to the control room.
        Max frowned, then straightened up. 
        “Lookouts below,” he ordered in an uncharacteristically crisp, no-nonsense tone.  “Gun crews, get things secured then get below.”  As soon as the two felines had slipped past him and into the control room he kicked the hatch closed.
        After the gun crews had gone below he went to one of the two heavy machine guns that formed the U-666’s antiaircraft armament and made sure that it had sufficient ammunition.  This had to be done fast, before any help called by the Decoy could arrive.
        The Japanese obviously suspected by now that there was a sub operating in these waters.
        But there was no need at all to give them confirmation of that fact.
        The crew of a Decoy was not made up of the same sailors found aboard merchant ships.  They were professional sailors with the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the Rain Islanders couldn’t chance an accurate description getting back to Nippon.

        When he was done Max went below and secured the control room hatch behind him as Sam ordered the submarine to dive.  Without explanation she had ordered the sub to circle the sinking ship until she thought that her husband had finished. 
        “Candle’s lit,” he whispered in her ear before glancing at the chart.  “Why are we headed back to port?” he asked in his normal tone of voice.
        “While you were teasing that Decoy’s captain,” his wife said, “we may have taken some damage.  Lefty wants us to go back to Qianshan so he can get a closer look at the ballast tanks on the starboard side.”
        “Cracked by that last shot?”
        “May be.  Nothing major though, he hopes; we’re still keeping trim.  Fritz agrees with him.”
        “Ugh.  Anything else?”
        “One broken arm.  A fitting tore loose and caught Bob right below the shoulder.”
        “There goes his tennis game.  The medic looking after him?”
        The badger smiled.  “He did, and then Smitty took over.  She said he needed nursing.”
        They both rolled their eyes at that.  Max beckoned her to lean close and said, “I may need some nursing too, after I see the medic.”
        “Oh?”
        “Oh.”


        “So, what’s the verdict, oh Great High Priests of the Diesel?” Max asked as he climbed out on deck two days later.  Fritz and Lefty, dressed only in their fur and dripping wet, had been conferring while glancing over the starboard side of the submarine.  “Any holes in this tub?”
        “No, thank Christ,” Lefty said as he crossed himself.  “Some dents and a good-sized dish in Tank Two, but it doesn’t appear that any of the tanks are cracked and none of the valves appear to be unseated.  Looks like we were lucky.”
        “Hah!  Luck had nothing to do with it,’ Max declared.  “God is on our side – hey!  What’s that?” 
        A set of Japanese characters were stenciled on the control tower, along with a series of ship silhouettes denoting targets either destroyed, looted or taken as prizes.  “What’s that say – ‘Cootchie Coo?’”
        “Kocha Koi,” Lefty corrected.  “One of the crew thought it was a good idea to give the sub a proper name.  It’s an insult in Japanese, meaning ‘Come here and get your ass kicked.’”
        “I like it!” Max said brightly.  “The Good Ship Cootchie Coo.”
        “Do you want to go swimming, Max?”
        “Hmm, not this morning, Lefty.  We should have a formal naming ceremony, shouldn’t we?”
        The feline looked suspiciously at the Catalina fox for a long moment, then nodded.
        “Great!  I’ll get things set up.”

        Around noon the submarine’s crew stood on deck, heads bowed respectfully as Max finished chanting prayers for the continued success of their mission.  Finally he took a bottle of beer from Sam (the champagne from the Alouette was deemed too precious) and stepped forward to the wire guard that adorned the bow.  “I christen this submarine the Cootchie Coo – “
        “Kocha Koi!” several in the crew shouted.
        “ – and may the Gods bless her and all who serve in her,” and expertly shattered the bottle against the steel, sending up a spray of foam.
       

        Lt. Chang’s group and other two prize crews did their work well, disposing of the seized ships and their cargoes in the port city of Macao.
        The ships were appraised based on their insurance records and the condition of their engines and other equipment, while the cargoes were assessed at a fair market value.  Of the resulting figure, the agents (always members of the various criminal organizations in the Portuguese colony) would take a percentage of the value as their fee before arranging for a fishing boat or smuggler’s craft to take the prize crews back to Qianshan.
        The money then went overland, passing through various sets of paws until it reached the provisional capital at Chungking.  Once there deductions were made in order to pay the Rain Islanders as part of their contract with the Nationalist government.  After a final figure was decided upon, the record of the transaction was sent south, first to Bangkok, then to Singapore and finally to Saigon.
        There, in the heart of the teeming Chinese Cholon section of the city, the transaction took tangible form as gold before being loaded onto a freighter that steamed down the Mekong River, bound for Seathl.
        This was by no means the only route for the transaction; there was a northern route that sent it via the Tsarist nation of Vostok Island, and a central route that passed the gold under the Japanese’s noses via Kuo Han and Krupmark Island with a final destination on Spontoon.  The central route was not very desirable to the Generalissimo in Chungking, who felt that the ruling clique (or at least a certain ex-mandarin) on Krupmark was not to be trusted.
        The northern and southern routes were also used for communications between Rain Island, Chungking and Qianshan, where more and more native furs were being taught the fine art of submarine warfare.  Many of the Naval Infantry, uprooted from their homes and families when Shanghai fell, were more than eager to help seize ships and act as prize crews, while the sailors were eager to learn.


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