In at the Death (18 page)

Having their own airplanes along enormously extended how far they could see. A wireless call sent the flotilla steaming south after a convoy more than a hundred miles away. The enemy freighters and their escorts would have got away if the baby flattops hadn’t joined the destroyers and cruisers in the South Atlantic.

“Keep an eye peeled for subs,” Swede Jorgenson warned as the
Josephus Daniels
picked up speed. The new gun chief added, “Be just like the limeys to have a couple traveling with the convoy just to fuck us over.”

Even though the destroyer escort had its fancy new hydrophone, that struck George as good advice. He scanned the blue water for a telltale periscope. Maybe it wouldn’t help, but it sure couldn’t hurt. He didn’t want to die the way his father had. He didn’t want to die at all, but especially not that way.

Fighters and dive bombers streaked off the escort carriers. These new carriers didn’t seem to have torpedo airplanes aboard. Scuttlebutt said the brass had decided they were sitting ducks, and dive bombers could do the job better.

Reaching the enemy convoy took a while. The
Oahu
and the
Irish Sea
slowed down the rest of the U.S. ships. The baby flattops were no faster than any of their predecessors. “Snails with flight decks,” Jorgenson said scornfully.

“Yeah, but they’re
our
snails with flight decks,” George answered, and the crew chief grinned at him.

“Now hear this! Now hear this!” Lieutenant Zwilling said over the PA system. “Our aircraft report one enemy destroyer sinking and one on fire. The convoy is breaking up in flight. That is all.” That was plenty to set sailors slapping one another on the back.

They steamed on. Then the
Josephus Daniels
and another destroyer escort pulled away from the ships that still stayed with the airplane carriers. “Something’s going on,” Jorgenson said.

“Do you think so, Sherlock?” Marco Angelucci said. The new shell-jerker laughed to take any sting from the words.

“Wish the exec or the skipper would tell us what,” George said.

He’d hardly spoken before Zwilling came on the PA again. “We are in pursuit of a pair of enemy freighters that broke north from the pack of ships in the convoy. Our purpose is the capture or incapacitation of these vessels.”

“Boy, the skipper wouldn’t talk like that,” Jorgenson said.

“No kidding,” George said. “He’d say something like, ‘We’re after two of the bastards who’re trying to get away. We’ll take ’em or sink ’em.’”

The gun chief nodded. “Wonder how come the exec doesn’t talk like that.”

“’Cause he talks through his ass instead of his mouth?” Angelucci suggested.

When the ship swung farther east, George wondered why. Was a U.S. airplane shadowing the freighters and wirelessing their moves back to the
Josephus Daniels
? That was the only thing that made sense to him.

Then he let out a catamount whoop. His finger stabbed toward the horizon. “Smoke!” he yelled.

Before long, the freighter making the smoke spotted the exhaust spewing from the
Josephus Daniels
’ funnels. The other ship sheered away, trying to run. The destroyer escort was slow for a warship, but had no trouble overhauling her. The four-incher in the forward turret boomed, sending a shot across her bow. A moment later, the Argentine flag came down from the staff at the stern. Sailors along the rail waved whatever white rags and scraps of cloth they could get their hands on.

“We’ve got her!” Sam Carsten’s voice boomed from the PA. “We’re going to put a prize crew aboard her and take her back up to the USA. Whatever she’s carrying, better we have it than the damn limeys.”

“A prize crew?” Jorgenson laughed out loud. “That’s something right out of pirate-ship days. I wonder if the guys still get a share of what she’s worth.”

“Is that what they used to do?” George asked. “How do you know about that old-time stuff?”

“There’s this limey writer, or I guess maybe he’s an Irishman. Anyway, his name’s C. S. O’Brian. He writes about fighting Napoleon like you’re there. You think swabbies got it bad now, you oughta read what it was like way back when.”

“Loan me one,” George said, and Jorgenson nodded.

Lieutenant Zwilling came down from the bridge to choose the prize crew. A chief came with him, to serve out submachine guns to the men he picked. If the sailors on the freighter—her name was the
Sol del Sud
—tried getting cute, they’d be sorry.

“All old shellbacks,” George remarked as the sailors crossed to the
Sol del Sud
.

“You noticed that, too, eh?” Jorgenson said. Now George nodded. On one level, it made sense; men who’d crossed the Equator before likely had more experience than men who’d been polliwogs only a few days earlier. But wasn’t the exec taking off men who’d given him a hard time when he was getting initiated? It sure looked that way to George.

As soon as the boats came back from the captured freighter, the
Josephus Daniels
hurried off after the other ship she’d been assigned. “Damn lumbering scow couldn’t’ve got far,” George said.

She hadn’t. Before long, smoke came over the southeastern horizon. Again, the destroyer escort had no trouble running her down. Again, a shot crashed across her bow. She was the
Tierra del Fuego
, by looks a near twin to the
Sol del Sud
, but her captain seemed more stubborn. Another shot from the four-incher thundered past her, this one just in front of her bridge. “Next one we’ll hit you with!” Carsten thundered over the PA. The
Tierra del Fuego
struck her colors.

Lieutenant Zwilling pointed at George. “Enos, go aboard her,” he snapped. The CPO handed George a tommy gun and several drums of ammo.

George said the only thing he could: “Aye aye, sir.” Maybe they’d take her back to Boston. He could hope so, anyhow. But yeah, the exec was clearing the destroyer escort of the people who’d had too good a time when he suffered with the other polliwogs.

One of the rubber-breasted mermaids and King Neptune himself were also in the prize crew: the CPO held command. When George told Becker what was going on, he shrugged and said, “I bet you’re right, but I don’t care. Zwilling ain’t as smart as he thinks he is. I bring this baby in all right, maybe I go up through the hawse hole like the skipper. Only chance I got—I sure as hell can’t pass the goddamn exam. Lord knows I’ve tried.”

When George got up on the
Tierra del Fuego
’s deck, he eyed the sailors standing there. Would they give trouble, or were they just glad his ship hadn’t sunk them? “Any of you guys speak English?” he asked.

Two men raised their hands—the skipper and a fellow with a lightning-bolt patch on his sleeve.
The wireless man
, George thought. “I do,” the fellow said.

“Good. Tell your pals nobody’s gonna hurt ’em as long as they do what we say,” George said. “They’ll be POWs in the USA, and they’ll go home after the war.” The wireless man rattled off some Spanish. A moment later, one of the sailors from the
Josephus Daniels
knocked him down and yelled at him, also in Spanish.

“Any of these assholes says anything with
puto
or
chinga
or
maricón
in it, beat the shit out of him, ’cause he’s cussin’ you,” the sailor said. “They ain’t gonna dick around with us.” He spoke in Spanish to the would-be interpreter, then came back to English: “I told him to try it again, only not to get cute this time.”

A couple of men from the destroyer escort’s black gang went below to look at the engines. One of them came back up shaking his head. “They’re oil-burners—she’d make even more smoke if they weren’t,” he reported. “But they’re about as old as they can be and still burn oil. Ain’t no surprise she couldn’t outrun us.”

Chief Becker took charge of the pistol and the couple of shotguns in the
Tierra del Fuego
’s arms locker. “Don’t look like she ever had anything more,” he said. “Enough to try and put down a mutiny, and that’s about it.”

At his orders, the freighter’s sailors pointed her bow north and got her up to about eight knots. She lumbered along. George would rather have gone north aboard a fishing boat. It would have bounced worse, but it would have gone over the waves instead of trying to slice through them. He didn’t look forward to riding out a gale in this wallowing tub.

Before long, they recrossed the Equator. Nobody asked whether any of the Argentine sailors were polliwogs. George didn’t know whether the greasers talked about King Neptune. All he knew was that he had to keep an eye on them.

Day followed day. The chow on the
Tierra del Fuego
was different from what he would have eaten on the
Josephus Daniels
—not really better or worse, but different. He tried
yerba maté
tea. The stuff wasn’t bad: better than he expected. It had more kick than regular tea, not so much as coffee.

If a British or Confederate seaplane spotted them flying the Stars and Stripes, they were history. George tried not to think about that. He blessed the fogs and mists that shrouded the
Tierra del Fuego
as she got farther north. They made navigation harder, but she was going by the seat of her pants anyway. When she came closer to the U.S. coast, no doubt she’d get an escort for the last leg of her journey. She’d need one, too.

In the meantime…In the meantime, it was just the ship and the sea. For George, that wasn’t so bad.

R
ichmond. The front was Richmond. In the bunker under the ruins of the Gray House, Jake Featherston shook his fist toward the north and cursed a God Who seemed to be cursing him and the CSA.

Ever since the war started, people were saying that whoever could do two big things at once would win. The Confederacy had never managed it. Neither had the damnyankees…till now. They were still going great guns down in Georgia. And they were pushing out of the Wilderness and heading straight for the Confederate capital.

U.S. artillery hadn’t fallen on Richmond yet. The ground between the Rapidan and the capital was likely the most heavily fortified stretch on the face of the earth. If the Yankees came, they had to come that way. Both sides knew it. Whatever artifice could do to stop them, artifice had done.

But along with artifice, the Confederate States needed men—men they didn’t have. Too many soldiers had died in the Great War. Too many had died or gone off into captivity in Ohio and especially Pennsylvania this time around. And too many were doing everything they could to fight the USA farther south. That left a lot of the bunkers and gun emplacements between the Rapidan and Richmond nothing more than…what did the Bible call them? Whited sepulchers, that was it.

Featherston jumped when the telephone rang. He picked it up. “Yeah?” he said harshly.

“Lord Halifax on the line, sir,” Lulu said.

“Put him through,” Jake said at once. Was a rat deserting the sinking ship?

“Mr. President?” That plummy British accent.

“What’s up?” Jake asked the ambassador. If Halifax
was
bailing out, he’d put a flea in the bastard’s ear, all right.

“I have some papers you may perhaps be interested in seeing,” the British ambassador said.

“Well, bring ’em on over, then,” Jake told him. He was so relieved that Halifax was staying put, he couldn’t refuse him anything.

When Halifax got there, it gave Jake an excuse to throw out Nathan Bedford Forrest III. He didn’t want to listen to the chief of the General Staff anyhow; Forrest was too gloomy to be worth listening to. By the noises he made, he feared Richmond would fall. Even if that was true, Jake didn’t want to hear it. So he bundled Forrest out and brought in the ambassador instead. “What’s up?” he asked again.

Lord Halifax opened his fancy attaché case: buttery leather polished till it gleamed, with clasps that looked like real gold. He pulled out a document held together with a fat paper clip. “Here you are, Mr. President. I honestly didn’t believe they would turn these loose, but they did. You must have made an even more favorable impression on the Prime Minister than I thought. He does admire a…purposeful man, no doubt of that.”

Jake Featherston hardly heard him. He was flipping through the papers. He didn’t understand more than one word in ten, and he didn’t understand any of the math. But he knew the word uranium when he saw it. And he knew about element 94, even if the limeys were calling it churchillium and not jovium.

“Did your scientists name it after Winston because it’s supposed to make a big boom when it goes off?” he asked with a sly grin.

“Officially, it’s a compliment to his office. We call 93 mosleyium after the Minister of War,” Halifax replied. “Unofficially…well, I shouldn’t wonder if you’re right.”

“I’ll get this to our people who can use it just as quick as I can,” Jake said. “And I want you to thank Winston for me from the bottom of my heart. What he did here, it means a lot to the country and it means a lot to me personally.”

“He found your point about the need to continue the struggle against the United States by any means necessary alarmingly persuasive,” Lord Halifax said. “If you fail, Britain is most dismally surrounded by the Yankees and the Huns.”

“How close are you to getting one of these bombs?” Jake asked.

The British ambassador shrugged narrow shoulders. “Haven’t the foggiest, I’m afraid. Were I not ambassador to a country also taking part in this research, I doubt I should know there is any such thing as uranium.”

“Mm—makes sense,” Featherston allowed. That was the only reason the Confederate envoys in London and Paris knew about uranium and what you might be able to do with it. But they hadn’t been able to pry anything out of England or France. He damn well had.

“Will you be able to hold Richmond, sir?” Halifax asked.

“Hope so,” Jake said. “But even if we don’t, we’ll keep fighting. As long as we’ve got a puncher’s chance, we’ll hang on. And with this”—he tapped the document with a nicotine-stained forefinger—“we do.”

“Very good,” the British ambassador said. But he meant it the way limeys did, so it might have been
all right
. He didn’t mean it
was
very good, just that he’d heard. “I shall convey your determination to London. Bombing is picking up there, I’m afraid, though it’s not so bad as here.”