The Grapple

by Harry Turtledove

  O’Doull decided he’d been given the glove. By Granny McDougald’s barely smothered snort, he thought the same thing. But the corporal scrupulously stayed within regulations. O’Doull cleaned out the wound and sewed it up. “Like it or not, pal, you’ve got a hometowner,” he said. “I know you’d be happier if you didn’t get shot, but you could have stopped it with your face or your chest, too.”

  “Oh, yeah. I know. I’ve seen—” He broke off, then shook his head. “I started to say, I’ve seen as much of that shit as you have, but I probably haven’t.”

  “Depends,” O’Doull answered. “We see plenty of nasty wounds, but the poor guys who get killed on the spot don’t make it back to us. Maybe it evens out.”

  “Hot damn,” the corporal said. “Tell you one thing, though—it’s a bunch of fucked-up shit any which way.”

  “Buddy, you are preaching to the choir,” Granville McDougald said solemnly. O’Doull decided he couldn’t have put it better himself.

  From the deck of the USS Townsend, George Enos watched two new escort carriers come into Pearl Harbor. Like the pair that had previously sailed from the West Coast down to the Sandwich Islands, the Tripoli and the Yorktown were as ugly as a mud fence. They were built on freighter hulls, with a flight deck and a little island slapped on topside. They had a freighter’s machinery, too, and couldn’t make better than eighteen knots unless they fell off a cliff.

  But each one of them had thirty airplanes: fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo-carriers. They weren’t fleet carriers; since the loss of the Remembrance more than a year earlier, the USA had no fleet carriers operating in the Pacific. Still, they were ever so much better than no carriers at all, which was what the United States had had in these waters for most of the time since the Remembrance went to the bottom.

  “Well, doesn’t look like the Japs are going to drive us back to San Francisco after all,” George remarked. He spoke with the flat vowels and swallowed r’s of the Boston fisherman he was before he joined the Navy to make sure the Army didn’t conscript him.

  “Damn well better not,” said Fremont Blaine Dalby, the CPO who commanded the twin 40mm antiaircraft gun for which George jerked shells.

  “Didn’t look so good when they were bringing their carriers down from Midway and knocking the snot out of us here,” George said.

  “They had their chance. Now it’s our turn.” Chief Dalby was a man who knew what he knew. Even his name showed that: it showed he came from a rock-ribbed Republican family in a country where the Republicans, caught between the Socialists and the Democrats, hadn’t amounted to a hill of beans since the 1880s.

  “About time, too.” Fritz Gustafson, the gun crew’s loader, talked as if the government charged him for every word he said.

  “If we can get Midway back…” George said.

  “That’d be pretty good,” Dalby agreed. He wasn’t shy about talking—not even a little bit. “Run the Japs out there, run ’em off Wake, too, so they don’t come back to Midway, and then we can stop worrying about the real Sandwich Islands, the ones down here, for a while.”

  “Gotta hang on to Hotel Street,” Gustafson said. George and Fremont Dalby both snorted. Hotel Street not only had more saloons and cathouses per square inch than any other street in Honolulu, it probably had more than any other street in the world. Sailors and soldiers and Marines might not give a damn about the Sandwich Islands as a whole, but they’d be bound to fight like men possessed to keep Hotel Street in American hands.

  “Think four of these baby flattops are enough to take Midway?” George asked.

  “Dunno. I ain’t no admiral,” Dalby said. As a CPO, he had a much smaller sphere of authority than a man with a broad gold stripe on his sleeve. But within that sphere, his authority was hardly less absolute. “Tell you what, though—I hope like hell there’s a couple more of those babies somewhere halfway between here and the coast.”

  “Yeah.” George nodded. There was a gap in the middle of the eastern Pacific that neither aircraft from Oahu nor those from the West Coast could cover very well. Japan had done her best to get astride the supply line between the mainland and the Sandwich Islands and starve the islands into submission. It didn’t quite work, but it came too close for comfort, both metaphorically and literally.

  Thinking of U.S. warplanes looking for enemy aircraft and ships made George notice the combat air patrol above Pearl Harbor. Fighters always buzzed overhead these days. Y-ranging gear should be able to give U.S. forces enough warning to scramble airplanes, but nobody seemed inclined to take chances.

  “Wonder how come Jap engines sound screechier than ours,” George said. Japanese carrier-based fighters had strafed the Townsend more than once. He knew the sound of those engines better than he wanted to.

  “They take ’em out of the washing machines they used to buy from us,” Dalby suggested. George laughed. Any joke a CPO made was funny because a CPO made it.

  The Townsend sailed a couple of days later, escorting the Tripoli and the Yorktown north and west toward Midway. They wouldn’t get there in a hurry, not at the escort carriers’ lackadaisical cruising speed. George wasn’t enthusiastic about getting there at all. He’d gone north and west from Oahu too many times, and sailed into danger each and every one of them.

  You always ran to your battle station like a madman when general quarters sounded. When you didn’t know if it was a drill or the real McCoy, you ran even harder.

  Run as he would, George couldn’t get to the twin 40mm mount ahead of Fremont Dalby. The gun chief seemed drawn there by magnetism instead of his legs, which were shorter than George’s.

  “What can I tell you?” he said when George asked him about it. “I know I’ve got to be here, so I damn well am.” In a way, that didn’t make any sense at all. In another way, it did.

  Up above the bridge, the Y-ranging antenna spun round and round, round and round. It would pick up incoming Japanese aircraft long before the naked eye could. How much good picking them up ahead of time would do was an open question. They weren’t any easier for guns on the destroyer to shoot down. With luck, though, fighters from the carriers could drive them off before they got within gunnery range.

  Few of the islands north and west of Kauai were inhabited; if not for its position, Midway wouldn’t have been, either. Albatrosses and other sea birds nested on the rocks and reefs rising above the Pacific. Some of the enormous birds glided past the Townsend and the other ships in the flotilla.

  Pointing to a long-winged albatross, George said, “I’m surprised Y-ranging doesn’t pick up those things. They’re damn near as big as a fighter.” He exaggerated, but not too much.

  “I hear from the guys on the hydrophones that they’ve got to be careful, or else they really can mistake a whale for a sub—and the other way round,” Fremont Dalby said.

  “That wouldn’t be good,” George said.

  “No shit!” No, Fritz Gustafson didn’t talk a lot, but he got plenty of mileage out of what he did say.

  As they got closer to Midway, tension built. George didn’t want to do anything but stick close to his gun. The Townsend had come through a couple of ferocious attacks. Blazing away with everything you had gave you a chance to come through, but the pilots in the enemy airplanes were the guys in the driver’s seat these days.

  Dive bombers and escorting fighters roared off the escort carriers and flew up toward Midway. “Still not obvious the Japs have Y-ranging,” Dalby said. “If they don’t, we can plaster their aircraft on Midway before they even know we’re on the way.”

  “Wouldn’t break my heart,” George said. “Bastards tried to do it to us at Pearl Harbor. Not like we don’t owe ’em.”

  “If they’d done it, I bet they would have followed up with a landing,” the gun chief said. “Maybe we’ll be able to do the same up here before long.”

  “That wouldn’t break my heart, either,” George said.

  The more time went by without a warning over the PA that the Y-rang
ing gear was picking up enemy airplanes, the happier he got. Maybe the American bombers really were knocking the daylights out of whatever the Japs still had on Midway.

  Then the speakers crackled to life. George groaned, and he wasn’t the only one. “May I have your attention?” the exec said, as if he didn’t know he would. “Our aircraft report the Japanese appear to have abandoned Midway…. May I have your attention? Our aircraft report the Japanese appear to have abandoned Midway.”

  “Fuck me,” Fremont Dalby said reverently.

  “Wow,” George agreed.

  “Little yellow bastards know how to cut their losses,” Dalby said. “If they can’t take the Sandwich Islands, what’s Midway worth to ’em? It’s out at the ass end of nowhere, and it’s got to be even more expensive for the Japs to supply than it is for us.”

  “What do you want to bet they’ve bailed out of Wake, too?” George said.

  “I wouldn’t mind,” the gun chief told him.

  “Beats working,” Fritz Gustafson said.

  “Oh, hell, yes,” Dalby said. “If they’re gone from Midway and Wake, what are we gonna do? Go after ’em? Charge through all their little islands and head for the Philippines? We need the Philippines like we need a hole in the head.”

  “Amen,” George said. “If they want to call this mess a draw, I don’t mind. I don’t mind a bit.” The rest of the gun crew nodded. They’d all developed a thoroughgoing respect for Japanese skill and courage. The Japs had already come too close to killing them more than once. George knew he wouldn’t be sorry never to see any more maneuverable fighters with meatballs on their wings.

  But that raised another question. George asked it: “If the Japs are pulling back here, where are they going to use their ships and airplanes?” He assumed Japan would use them somewhere. In a war, that was what you did.

  Fremont Dalby suddenly started to laugh. “Malaya. Singapore. What do you want to bet? Malaya’s got tin and rubber, and Singapore’s the best goddamn harbor in that whole part of the world.”

  “But they belong to England,” George objected. “England and Japan are on the same side.”

  “Were,” Fritz Gustafson said.

  Dalby nodded. “I think you nailed that one, Fritz. England’s busy in Europe. England’s busy in the Atlantic against us. What can the fuckin’ limeys do if Japan decides to go in there? Jack shit, far as I can see. When Churchill hears about this, I bet he craps his pants.”

  “So let’s see,” George said. “Japan’s at war with us, and England’s at war with us, but away from all that they’re at war with each other? You ask me, they’re trying to set a world record.”

  “Better them than us,” Dalby said. “Only way England’s stayed in the Far East as long as she has is that Japan’s let her. If Japan doesn’t want her around any more…Well, she may hang on to India—”

  “Her goose is really cooked if she doesn’t,” George said.

  “Yeah. That’s why she’s got to try, I expect,” the gun chief said. “But Japan’s already in Indochina. She’s already in the East Indies. Siam’s on her side, not England’s. What with all that, no way in hell the limeys keep her out of Malaya.”

  “Japan has all that stuff, she’ll be really nasty twenty, thirty years down the line,” Fritz Gustafson said.

  “Let’s worry about winning this one first,” George said, and neither of the other men chose to disagree with him.

  Even though Jefferson Pinkard had run Camp Determination since the day it started going up on the west Texas prairie, he got his news on the wireless just like everybody else in the CSA. “In heavy defensive fighting just southeast of Lubbock, Confederate troops inflicted heavy losses on the Yankee invaders,” the announcer said.

  That same bulletin probably went out all over the Confederate States. If you didn’t have a map handy and you didn’t bother working out what lay behind what actually got said, it sounded pretty good. Like a lot of people, though, Jeff knew what lay behind it, and he didn’t need a map to know where Lubbock was. Defensive fighting meant the Confederates were retreating. Just southeast of Lubbock meant the town had fallen. Heavy losses on the Yankee invaders meant…nothing, probably. And Lubbock was just up the road from Snyder—and from the camp.

  Just up the road, in Texas, meant about eighty miles. Soldiers in green-gray wouldn’t be here day after tomorrow. Jefferson Pinkard and Camp Determination were ready if the damnyankees did come close. The trucks that asphyxiated Negroes would drive away. The bathhouses that gassed them would go up in explosions that ought to leave no sign of what the buildings were for. The paperwork that touched on killings would burn. Nothing would be left except an enormous concentration camp….

  And mass graves. Jeff didn’t know what to do about those. He didn’t think he could do much of anything. Oh, bulldozers could cover over all of the trenches, but nothing could dispose of all the bodies and bones.

  He got to his feet and stared out at the camp from the window in his office. He looked like what he was: a middle-aged man who’d been a steelworker when he was younger. Yes, his belly hung over his trousers and he had a double chin. But he also had broad shoulders and a hard core of muscle under the weight he’d put on as the years went by.

  And he had the straightforward stubbornness of a man who’d worked with his hands and expected problems to go away if you put some extra muscle into them. Not all of a camp administrator’s problems disappeared so conveniently. He knew that; he’d gained guile as well as weight over the years. Still, his first impulse was to try to smash whatever got in his way.

  He couldn’t smash the damnyankees single-handed. He’d fought in west Texas during the Great War as a private soldier. Even now, he had no particular clout with local Army officers. His Freedom Party rank—group leader—was the equivalent of major general, but he had no authority over Army troops.

  No direct authority, anyhow. He did have friends, or at least associates, in high places. When he got on the phone to Richmond, he didn’t call the War Department. He called the Attorney General’s office. He didn’t love Ferdinand Koenig, who kept piling responsibility onto his back as if he were a mule. Here, though, the two of them were traveling the same road. Pinkard hoped they were, anyhow.

  “What can I do for you today?” Koenig asked when the connection went through. He assumed Pinkard wanted him to do something. And he was right.

  “Any chance you can get more soldiers on this front, sir?” Pinkard asked. “If Lubbock’s gone, we got us some real trouble.”

  “Well, now, you know that isn’t my proper place,” Koenig said cautiously. “I can’t come out and tell the Army what to do.”

  “Yes, sir. I know that. I damn well ought to. Damn soldiers won’t listen to me, neither.” Jeff spoke with the resentment of a man who’d tried to get them to move but couldn’t. “But does the President want the damnyankees to take Camp Determination away from us?”

  “You know he doesn’t.” Now Koenig spoke without hesitation.

  “Well, I sure hope he doesn’t, anyway. But if he doesn’t, we better have the men out here to keep the USA from doing it,” Jeff said.

  “We’ve got trouble other places, too,” the Attorney General reminded him.

  “Oh, yes, sir. You don’t need to tell me that,” Jeff said. “But we got trouble here, too, and we’re out in the back of fucking beyond—pardon my French—so who ever hears about it? Yankee general hasn’t got much more than a scratch force himself. Some more men, some more airplanes, some more barrels, we can run him right back over the border.”

  “I can’t promise you anything,” Ferdinand Koenig said. “I’ll talk to the President, and that’s as much as I can tell you.”

  “Thank you kindly, sir. That’s all I wanted,” Jeff lied. He wanted a couple of divisions rolling through Snyder on their way to driving the damnyankees back from Lubbock. He thought Camp Determination deserved to be protected. “Wouldn’t want the United States going on about this place if they g
rabbed it.”

  “No, we don’t want that,” Koenig agreed. “I’ll see what I can do, and that’s all I can say.”

  “All right.” Jeff knew he wouldn’t get anything more. He tried to make sure he did get something: “Doesn’t even have to be regular Confederate soldiers. Most of what we need out here is bodies, so the damnyankees can’t just go around us. Mexicans would do the trick, or Freedom Party guards.”

  “Won’t be Mexicans,” Koenig said. “The Emperor doesn’t want ’em going into combat against the USA, not any more. Only way the President talked him into giving us more was by swearing on a stack of Bibles he wouldn’t use ’em for anything but internal security. Freedom Party guards, though…” He paused thoughtfully.

  Pinkard was a fisherman from way back when. He knew he had a nibble. Trying to set the hook, he said, “This might be a good place to let the guards show what they can do. If they fight harder than soldiers…” He paused, too. The Freedom Party guards were Ferd Koenig’s own personal, private bailiwick. If they fought better than soldiers, or at least as well, then Koenig had his own personal, private army. He might not mind that. No, he might not mind that at all.

  He was nobody’s fool, either. If Jefferson Pinkard could see the possibilities, he would also be able to. But all he said was, “Well, I’ll see what the President wants to do.” He was a cool customer. He didn’t get all excited—or he didn’t show it if he did. And the odds were that somebody was tapping his telephone, too. Sure, he went back forever with Jake Featherston. All the more reason for Featherston to make sure he didn’t get out of line, wasn’t it?

  Pinkard got off the phone. When you were talking with the higher-ups, you didn’t want to waste their time. He’d done everything he reasonably could. Now he had to wait and see if the Attorney General could run with the ball.

  And he had to make sure the camp went on running smoothly, regardless of where the Yankees were. Ever since he first started taking care of prisoners during the Mexican civil war in the 1920s, he’d been convinced the only way you could keep your finger on the pulse of what was going on was by seeing for yourself. A lot of ways, his office looked like any other Confederate bureaucrat’s. Most bureaucrats, though, didn’t have a submachine gun hanging on the wall by their desk. Pinkard grabbed the weapon, attached a big snail-drum magazine, and went out to take a look around.