Drive to the East (23 page)

A day or two later, he realized that wasn’t necessarily the right question. An even more pressing one was, couldn’t the Confederate States do anything in Ohio without bleeding Virginia of men? The answer to that one looked to be no, and it wasn’t the answer Tom wanted to find. Robbing Peter to pay Paul wasn’t a good way to fight a war.

But what choice did the CSA have? None Tom could see. This was the downside of getting into a fight with a country that had a lot more manpower than you did. He called down more curses on Al Smith’s head. The whole idea of storming up through Ohio, of cutting the United States in half, had been to knock the USA out of the fight before numbers really mattered. The Confederates had tried it. They’d succeeded as well as they’d hoped to. Everything had been perfect.

Except the United States hadn’t quit.

Now the Confederate States faced the same sort of grinding struggle as they’d seen in the Great War. What should have been a one-punch KO was a no-holds-barred wrestling match now.

Airplanes droned by overhead. Tom Colleton cast a wary eye up to the heavens. He knew where he’d jump if they turned out to be U.S. airplanes. He looked for shelter as automatically as he breathed. That he looked for shelter so automatically helped keep him breathing.

But they were C.S. machines. Even when the silhouettes were tiny, he recognized them. He wondered what he’d do when his side—or the damnyankees—brought out new models. He had a pretty good notion, too: the first few times, he’d dive for cover whether he needed to or not. After that, he’d be able to tell friend from foe again.

The day was coming. It was probably coming soon. The Confederate States had new, improved barrels. Before long, they were bound to have new, improved airplanes, too. So were the United States.

Where would it end? Probably with both sides flying to the moon, with guns that could strike from five hundred miles away, and with bombs that could blow up whole counties if not whole states. Tom laughed at himself, but then he wondered why. Back in 1917, he couldn’t have imagined the weapons the CSA and the USA were using now. What
would
the state of the art be in 1967, or in 1992?

He shivered, standing there under the warm spring sunshine. Things were much deadlier now than they had been a generation earlier. If that went on for another twenty-five years, wouldn’t wars end almost before they started? And if not, why not?

“Sir?”

Tom started. He wondered how long the sergeant standing beside him had been trying to get his attention. By the exaggerated patience on the man’s face, he’d done everything but wave wigwag flags. “What is it, Meyers?” Tom asked. “I’m here—I really am.”

“That’s good, sir,” Sergeant Meyers said. “I was going to ask you if you knew when the balloon was going up. Not officially, you understand, but if you knew. It’d help the men get ready.”

“I wish to God I did, Sergeant, but whatever we’re doing, nobody has bothered to tell me about it yet. You can take that for whatever you think it’s worth.” Tom’s laugh was half rueful, half furious. “One of the drivers for those new barrels had a pretty good notion, or reckoned he did. He had to pull out before he could tell me what it was. Damned impressive barrel, though.”

“Oh, yes, sir!” Meyers was not a man given to wild enthusiasms; few sergeants were. That sort of man was much more likely to be a private or a lieutenant. But the sergeant waxed enthusiastic now. “We have enough of those critters, we’ll make the damnyankees say uncle for sure.”

“I hope you’re right, Sergeant.” Tom meant it. After what the C.S. Army had been through the year before, though, and after what it had accomplished, he took nothing for granted. That any one weapon, no matter how wonderful, could knock the USA out of the war struck him as unlikely.

He kept his mouth shut. If Sergeant Meyers thought the Yankees would fall over dead as soon as the Confederates kicked them back one more hill, fine. That made him a more cheerful soldier, a
better
soldier, at least until the damnyankees did get pushed back past that last hill, if they ever did. If they got pushed back and didn’t fall over dead . . . Well, in that case Meyers and the other men like him would have some rethinking to do. He might not be such a terrific soldier for a while after that.

Wherever we’re going, we’re going east,
Tom thought.
Right into the heart of Yankeeland. We’d better make ’em say uncle, by God.

“
S
teady as she goes, Mr. Cooley,” Sam Carsten told his executive officer.

“Steady as she goes—aye aye, sir,” Pat Cooley replied, his freckled face intent on keeping the
Josephus Daniels
as steady as she could possibly go. The destroyer escort crept through the hot, muggy night towards a shoreline that was. . . .

Carsten didn’t like to think about how very ready to receive them that Virginia shoreline probably was. Keeping anything secret in these crowded waters required a miracle beyond the power of any Navy Department functionary to provide. Sam wasn’t altogether certain the Holy Ghost could have given him one as big as he needed. Sneaking into Chesapeake Bay without getting either mined or torpedoed hadn’t been the smallest of miracles all by itself.

He spoke into the telephone that connected the bridge with the gun turrets: “Everything ready there? You have your targets?”

“Yes, sir!” the gun chiefs answered together.

“All right, then.” Sam smiled there in the darkness. Even as a rating, he’d been in charge of bigger pieces than these four-inch popguns. “At my order, and give it everything you’ve got. . . .
Fire!
”

Twin tongues of flame belched from the turrets, lighting up the night for a heartbeat with a hellish orange glow. Recoil made the ship shudder. Those tongues thrust out again, and then again and again, as each gun crew did its best to prove it was faster than the other. First the bow turret took the lead, then the stern. All told, judging a winner was next to impossible.

Splashes of fire inland told of shell hits. Sam knew where the target was, but not what it was. That evidently wasn’t necessary for the mission. He kept an eye on the luminous hands of his watch. When exactly five minutes had gone by, he said, “Cease firing,” into the telephone. An aching silence fell. He turned to the exec. “Mr. Cooley, I do believe we may have worn out our welcome. Get us out of here. All ahead full, course 010.”

“All ahead full, course 010.” Cooley rang the engine room. The
Josephus Daniels
put on as many revolutions and as much speed as she had. Sam was used to ships with a lot more dash. He felt nailed to the surface of the bay despite the phosphorescent wake streaming from the bow. Destroyer escorts were cheap and easy and fast to build. Considering their liabilities, they needed to be.

On the shore, the Confederates were waking up. First one field gun and then a whole battery started firing at where the
Josephus Daniels
had been. Those were 105s—guns of about the same caliber as the destroyer escort carried.

The bridge telephone rang. When Sam picked it up, one of the turret chiefs said, “Sir, permission to return enemy fire?”

“Permission denied,” Sam answered, in lieu of screaming,
Are you out of your frigging mind?
He went on, “We’ve done what we came to do here. Now our job is to get out in one piece so we can come back and do it again one day before long. Shooting back makes us much too visible, and they have more guns than we do. We just scoot. Got that?”

“Yes, sir,” the turret chief said sullenly. Carsten found it hard to fault a man who wanted to raise hell with the enemy, but you needed a sense of proportion.
No,
I
need a sense of proportion. That’s why I’m the Old Man.
There were times when he felt like a very old man indeed.

Pat Cooley eyed him from the wheel. Cooley was ten times the ship handler he would ever be. Sam hadn’t taken the wheel of any ship till he became the skipper here. “Your thoughts, Mr. Cooley?” Sam asked.

“Sir, I’d like to shoot back at those bastards,” the exec answered. Sam stiffened. But after a moment Cooley went on, “You’re right, though. Probably a good idea that we don’t. They’re missing us pretty bad—if I were in charge of that battery, I’d be reaming ’em out right now.”

But the man in charge of that C.S. battery—a sergeant or lieutenant tumbled from his blanket when the
Josephus Daniels
opened up—had a better idea. Two of his guns fired star shells that lit up the bay—and the destroyer escort—with a cold, clear, terrible light.

Men at the antiaircraft guns started shooting at the star shells. If they could wreck the parachutes that supported them in the air, the blazing shells would fall into the sea and sizzle out. The bow turret no longer bore on the Confederate battery. The stern turret opened up without orders. Sam only nodded to himself. With the
Josephus Daniels
out there in plain sight, a muzzle flash or three didn’t make a rat’s ass’ worth of difference.

And she
was
out there in plain sight. The Confederate guns on the coast wasted no time correcting their aim. Shells began bursting around and on the destroyer escort. Most of the ships on which Sam had served would have laughed at 105mm shells. But the
Josephus Daniels,
like any destroyer, was thin-skinned. She had no armor to protect her. Screams made Sam grind his teeth. Men serving the antiaircraft guns topside were vulnerable aboard any ship that floated. He knew that. Knowing it left it no easier to take.

“Smoke, Mr. Cooley,” he said. “We’ll see how much good it does.”

“Smoke. Aye aye, sir.”

More star shells lit up the night. Smoke blossomed around the
Josephus Daniels.
It helped less than it might have under other circumstances. Sam had feared as much. She was the only thing afloat in this part of Chesapeake Bay. If the smoke screen moved, she had to be at the front end of it. Knowing that, the Confederate gunners didn’t lose a whole lot of accuracy from not being able to see their target anymore.

Nothing to do but take the pounding and try to get away. Sam had heard Great War stories about how raiders caught between their trench line and the enemy’s hated star shells with a purple passion. Now he understood exactly how they felt. There you were, all lit up, naked as a bug on a plate.

A big boom and a flash of light from the shore said the
Daniels’
gun had hit something worthwhile—probably the ammunition store for one of the guns shooting at the ship. Before Sam could let out a whoop, a Confederate shell burst just forward of the bridge. He watched a machine-gun crew blown to cat’s meat. Fragments whistled and screeched past him. After pausing to make sure he was still in one piece, he asked, “You all right, Mr. Cooley?”

“Everything’s copacetic here, Skipper,” Cooley said, and then, “Well, almost everything.” He displayed his left sleeve, which had a brand-new gash in it. An inch farther in and he would have gone down to the sick bay with a wounded arm. Six inches farther in and they would have had to carry him to sick bay with a belly wound. Even with all the fancy drugs they had these days, belly wounds were very bad news.

“Good for you, Pat.” That sliced sleeve made Sam less formal than usual. “You don’t really want a Purple Heart, no matter how pretty the ribbon would look on your uniform.”

“Yes, sir,” Cooley said. Another shell screamed in. He and Sam both ducked automatically, not that ducking was likely to do a hell of a lot of good. The shell was a clean miss, bursting a good hundred yards to starboard. A little hesitantly, the exec asked, “Are we going to get out of this, sir?”

Sam thought of talking about the Battle of the Three Navies, when the British and the Japanese hit the
Dakota
with everything but their purse. He thought about the
Remembrance
’s last fight, when Japanese air power finally sank the tough old carrier. In the end, though, he just stuck to business: “Unless we take one in the engine room that leaves us dead in the water, we will. Otherwise, those 105s may hurt us, but they won’t be able to kill us before we get out of range.”

Cooley considered that, then nodded. He looked at his wristwatch. “At flank speed, we’ve got to stand the gaff for—what? About another fifteen minutes?”

Carsten checked his watch, too. He laughed ruefully. “Yeah, that’s about right. I didn’t think it would be so long. Aren’t we lucky?”

“Lucky. Right.” Cooley managed an answering grin, but one of a distinctly sepulchral sort. A Confederate shell burst just behind the stern. Those near misses were dangerous, because fragments still flew. Screams from that direction said some of these had struck home.

“Can you give us any more down there?” Sam yelled to the engine room through a speaking tube.

“Sir, she’s flat out,” the chief engineer said. “Shit, we’ve got the valves tied down the way they did on the old paddle-wheel riverboats.”

“All right—thanks.” Sam sighed. He shouldn’t have expected anything different. He hadn’t really, but he’d hoped for something like,
Oh, yes, sir, we’ll dreelspayl the paragore and get you two more knots easy as you please.
Two more knots? He snorted. He wanted ten more.
Well, sonny boy, you ain’t gonna get ’em.
He turned back to the exec. “Do you think we ought to throw some zigzags into the course?”

“Straight gets us out of range faster,” Cooley said doubtfully.

“Yeah, but it lets them lead us, too,” Sam answered. “Ever hunt ducks?”

“Once or twice, but I didn’t like it. It’s not all it’s quacked up to be.”

“Ouch. Don’t do that again. I think I’d rather—” Sam broke off. However bad Cooley’s occasional puns were, he didn’t prefer being under Confederate gunfire to listening to them.

The exec did start zigzagging at random. That would have been better with another ten knots, too, but you did what you could with what you had. Sam thought it helped. They took another hit and a couple of more near misses, but nothing that slowed them down. And, even though those were some of the longest fifteen minutes of Sam’s life, they finally ended.