Breakthroughs (64 page)

Lieutenant Sprague turned toward Moss, and turned pink at the same time. “Sir, I don’t want to offend or—”

“Don’t worry about it, Charley,” Moss said easily. “I was good enough to bring Percy’s carcass back home when he got himself a puncture a couple of years ago, and now I’m good enough for him to insult. That’s the way the world goes, I guess.”

He made sure Stone understood he was kidding. Both Sprague and Bradley looked worried; they weren’t sure he meant it for a joke till Stone laughed and said, “Well, it’s not like I asked you to do it. I was too busy bleeding for that.”

“I know.” Thinking about what the observer’s cockpit had looked like after he and the groundcrew got Stone out of it made Moss’ stomach do a slow loop. He fought the memory with another gibe: “You gave me so much trouble, I figured you’d make yourself a nuisance to the limeys and the Canucks, too.”

“Indeed.” Charley Sprague trotted out another tag from Shakespeare: “ ‘But when the blast of war blows in our ears, / Then imitate the action of the tiger.’ ”

“I can’t do that, Charley,” Stone said. “I’m not limber enough to lick my own balls.”

All four men from the flight laughed like loons, more because they were young and alive when they could easily have died than because Percy Stone had said anything so very funny. “Come on,” Jonathan Moss said. “Let’s go tell Major Cherney what we did on our summer holiday.”

The squadron commander listened to their report, then said, “I’m glad you’re all back in one piece, but don’t go sticking your heads in the lion’s mouth like that again, and that’s an order.”

“But, sir—” Moss began.

Cherney held up a hand. “No buts, Captain. Even if that ship had no antiaircraft guns at all, you couldn’t sink her or hurt her big guns. Don’t waste yourself on targets like that, not with the war so close to won. Do what you
can
do. Fight the enemy’s aeroplanes and balloons. Shoot up his men on the ground. If you take on a Great Lakes battleship, you’re fighting out of your weight.”

“But—” Moss said again. Then he remembered Charley Sprague’s words:
some of them were better fliers than I was, but they thought they were better than they were, too.
And they’d ended up dead, and they hadn’t helped the war effort a bit. Slowly, reluctantly, Moss nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“I’ve been thinking,” George Enos said between gulps of air as he stood beside the one-pounder at the stern of the USS
Ericsson
after yet another dash to battle stations, this one a drill.

Beside him, Carl Sturtevant was panting more than a little. “Probably won’t do you any lasting harm,” he said, and then, presently, “Yeah? What were you thinking about?”

“That son of a bitch who sank the
Cushing
yesterday and almost put a fish into us,” Enos answered.

“Yeah, well, I can see how that’d be on your mind,” the veteran petty officer allowed. “So what about it?”

“Whoever the skipper of that boat is, he fights mean,” George answered, to which Sturtevant could only nod. George went on, “He comes at us, and he comes hard, and he doesn’t like to dive deep for hell.”

“That’s all true,” Sturtevant agreed. “Like I said, though, so what?”

“He fights like the skipper who almost sank us before we sank the
Bonefish
,” Enos persisted. “Whoever he is, whether he’s a limey or a Reb, I don’t think we got him when we got that boat.”

Sturtevant screwed up his face as he thought that over. “That other bastard dove deep and tried to hide after he took a shot at us, didn’t he?” He smacked his lips a couple of times, tasting an idea instead of soup. “Maybe you’ve got something there.” He glanced over toward Lieutenant Crowder, who was talking with another officer. Lowering his voice, Sturtevant said, “You ain’t gonna make him your bosom buddy if you tell him, though.”

“But if I don’t tell him, and we go on doing what we’ve been doing, and he goes on doing what he’s been doing, we’re all liable to end up dead,” Enos said.

Sturtevant didn’t answer. His expression made plain what he was thinking: that Lieutenant Crowder wouldn’t listen even if he did get told. Crowder was convinced he’d sunk the submersible that had come so close to putting the
Ericsson
on the bottom for good. Telling him otherwise would make him unhappy, which was liable to make George’s life miserable.

Not telling him, though, was liable to make George’s life short. He went over and positioned himself so Lieutenant Crowder would have to notice him sooner or later. It was later, not sooner, but George had been sure it would be. Eventually, the lieutenant said, “You wanted something, Enos?”

George saluted. “Yes, sir,” he said, and proceeded to set out for Crowder the same chain of reasoning as he’d given Carl Sturtevant. As he spoke, he watched Crowder’s face. It was not encouraging. He sighed silently. He hadn’t expected it to be.

When he was through, the officer shook his head. “I don’t believe it for a minute, sailor. That the Rebs or the limeys have put a new boat into this area—that is possible. In fact, it’s more than possible. It’s certain, as recent events have shown. That it would be the boat we battled before—no. We sent that one to the bottom, and that’s where he richly deserves to be.”

“But, sir, the way this fellow operates—” Having begun the effort, George thought he ought to see it through.

Crowder did not give him the chance. “Return to your battle station at once, Enos, or I’ll put you on report.”

“Yes, sir.” Stiff and precise as a steam-powered piece of machinery, George did an about-face and strode back to the one-pounder. Once there, he could look over at Lieutenant Crowder, who’d gone back to talking to the other officer. Enos let out another silent sigh. He really should have known better.

Carl Sturtevant caught his eye.
Told you so,
the petty officer mouthed. George shaped the beginning of an obscene gesture with a hand his body shielded from Lieutenant Crowder. Sturtevant laughed at him. In spite of that laughter, or maybe because of it, Sturtevant was a pretty good fellow. A lot of petty officers were as stuffy as real officers about ordinary seamen giving them a hard time.

After a couple of minutes to let Crowder get involved in his conversation again, Sturtevant said, “Hell, it probably won’t matter for beans, anyway. Rebs are on their last legs—they’re doing their damnedest to get out of the fight. Pretty soon, it’ll just be us and the limeys, and they won’t last long, either.”

“For all we know, it’s a limey boat we’re talking about. One we sank belonged to the Confederates, yeah, but that’s not the one with the nasty skipper no matter what Lieutenant Crowder thinks.”

“Mm, that’s true,” Sturtevant admitted, “but you’ve got to figure the odds are whoever was patrolling this stretch probably kept right on doing it. It’d be harder to work if things went back and forth between two different countries.”

George thought about that. “All right, you’ve got something there,” he said at last. “Does make sense. If we sank one Rebel boat, that means there’s probably another one prowling around—which means it’s even more likely this is the same skipper who almost got us before.”

“That sounds logical,” Sturtevant said. He nodded over toward Lieutenant Crowder. “You feel like taking another shot at convincing
him
?”

“No thanks,” Enos answered. “He already knows everything there is to know—and if you don’t believe me, just ask him.”

Without apparently moving a muscle, Sturtevant made his face into a mask of contempt. “I don’t need to ask him. I already know what he knows.” By the tiniest twitch of an eyebrow, he got across how little he thought that was.

“Well, then, shouldn’t we—?” George began.

“I don’t reckon we’ve got to worry about it, on account of it ain’t gonna matter worth a hill of beans anyway.” Sturtevant waved out across the Atlantic. “Look. The Rebs won’t bother keeping a boat around these parts that much longer anyway, because the shipping route they were guarding went to hell and gone when Dom Pedro finally figured out which side his bread was buttered on.”

As if to underscore his words, a flotilla of U.S. cruisers steamed past, heading south. They looked enormous alongside the destroyers that cruised to either side of them, protecting them from submarines as sheepdogs protected their flocks from wolves. Battleships were yet another size up; to George, who was used to going to sea aboard fishing boats, they resembled nothing so much as floating cities.

He said, “Haven’t seen so many of our freighters passing through these parts lately, especially northbound.”

“Probably won’t, either,” Sturtevant answered. “They’ll come down from the USA to supply our warships, yeah, but for a lot of things they won’t have to head back to the States any more. They can load up in one of the Brazilian ports—hell of a lot quicker trip that way.”

“Son of a bitch, you’re right.” Enos shook his head, disgusted with himself. “I should have thought of that.”

“Hey, nobody can think of everything.” Sturtevant glanced over at Lieutenant Crowder again. Crowder, still chattering away with the other officer, tapped his forefinger against his own chest, so he was talking about his favorite subject: himself. The veteran petty officer rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ, some people can’t think of anything.”

Enos snorted. “I’m not going to argue with you about that.” He made himself cheer up, almost as if a superior officer had given him an order. “And odds are you’re right about the other, too. Once the fellows with the high foreheads back in Philadelphia figure it out, too, they’ll probably call us back to port.”

Carl Sturtevant laughed in his face. “You fisherman, you! It’d be cheaper to do things that way—sure it would. But do you think the Navy gives a fart in a hurricane about cheap? In a pig’s ass they do, especially during a war. We don’t go home till the whole Quadruple Entente’s waving white flags at us—and maybe we don’t go home then, either. Maybe we go around the Horn and teach the Japs they picked the wrong side.” He eyed Enos. “You ever been on the other side of the Equator before?”

“You know damn well I haven’t,” Enos said. “This is further south than I ever figured I’d come before the war started.”

“Just a damn polliwog.” Sturtevant shook his head and clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Well, old Father Neptune will settle
your
hash.”

Enos had heard about those rituals from sailing men who’d gone through them, some in the Navy, some as merchant seamen. They’d shave his head or put him in a dress or maybe both at once, and he and the rest of the polliwogs on the
Ericsson
would have to do whatever Father Neptune told them. Something in the way Sturtevant’s eyes gleamed made George ask, “Have you ever been Father Neptune?”

“Who, me? What could have given you that idea?” The petty officer might have been the soul of innocence. Then again, he might not have.

The all-clear sounded then. Lieutenant Crowder kept right on talking with the other officer. As Enos drifted away from his battle station, he quietly asked, “Is
he
a polliwog, by any chance?”

“I don’t know,” Sturtevant said. “I really don’t know. I may have to go and ask a few questions, because that would be worth finding out. An officer polliwog is just another damn polliwog, as far as Father Neptune’s concerned.” He slapped George on the back. “That could be a lot of fun, couldn’t it?”

“Couldn’t it, though?” George said dreamily. “It’s not that he’s dumb—more that he thinks he’s so smart.”

Chipping paint was easier to take after that, somehow; instead of thinking about himself going through the antics Father Neptune would require of him, he thought about Lieutenant Crowder going through them. When someone else was the victim, the joke got a lot funnier.

The petty officer supervising the never-ending job of stopping rust stared at Enos when he strolled by. “Damn me to hell if you haven’t pulled your weight today,” he said. “Well done.”

When George looked back to see what had impressed the petty officer, he discovered he’d chipped twice as much paint as he usually would have done in so much time. Thinking about Lieutenant Crowder making an ass of himself in front of the whole crew had been so entrancing, he hadn’t kept his work pace to the usual just enough to get by. He shook his head. Now they’d expect him to work this hard all the time—and it was Lieutenant Crowder’s fault.

Everything was Lieutenant Crowder’s fault. “If I get killed, I’ll never forgive him,” George muttered.

Lieutenant Straubing paced among the big White trucks as colored roustabouts hauled supplies from the Covington wharves and loaded them into the green-gray machines for the drive south. Straubing spoke to the men, some white, some black, who would be in the cabs of those trucks: “What you’ve got to remember, boys, is that the war’s not over. Yes, there’s a cease-fire in Tennessee, and it’s still holding pretty well. But the shooting could start up again any day, and there’s still fighting in Virginia and out in the West. Besides, God only knows there are Rebel diehards loose in Kentucky. Don’t do anything stupid like dropping your guard this late in the war. It’d be a shame to get yourself killed now.”

Cincinnatus—Cincinnatus Driver, as he was learning to think of himself these days—turned to the driver nearest him and said, “The lieutenant don’t give two whoops in hell if we get ourselves killed. If the cargo don’t get through to where it’s supposed to go, that’s a different story. That ticks him off plenty.”

Herk chuckled. “You got that one right.” He was as white as Lieutenant Straubing, and Cincinnatus, despite spending a lot of time on the road with him, even getting shot up by some of those diehards with him, still had no idea what his last name was, or even if he owned one. He’d always just been Herk. Now he went on, “The lieutenant treats the cargo like he was paying for it out of his own pocket.”

“Yeah,” Cincinnatus said. He watched the roustabouts load more trucks. He’d done that work himself, before he’d convinced the U.S. forces to let him drive instead—and to pay him more money for doing it. Despite his own experience at their job, he muttered, “I wish they’d move faster, damn it.”