On an inside page was a story about a football game between guards and U.S. POWs down at Andersonville, south of Atlanta. A photo showed guards and prisoners in football togs. Dover thought the piece was a failure. So what if the guards won? If they were healthy enough to play football, why the hell weren’t they healthy enough to fight?
Maybe that wasn’t fair. And maybe the guards had pull that kept them away from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Dover knew which way he’d bet.
The story almost pissed him off enough to make him crumple up the paper and throw it away. Almost, but not quite. One thing in chronically short supply was toilet paper. Wiping his butt with the football-playing guards struck him as the best revenge he could get.
Later, he asked if Pete had seen the story about the Andersonville football game. The noncom looked disgusted. “Oh, hell, yes,” he answered. “Closest those bastards ever get to real Yankees, ain’t it?”
“Looks that way to me,” Dover said. “I wondered if you saw things the same.”
“Usually some pretty good stuff in The Armored Bear,” Pete said. “Shitheads who turn it out fucked up this time, though.”
Maybe he imagined soldiers—sergeants like himself, say—sitting around a table deciding what to put into the Army newspaper. Dover would have bet things didn’t work like that. The writers likely got their orders from somebody in the Department of Communications, maybe in a soldier’s uniform but probably in a Party one. Everything in the paper was professionally smooth. Everything made the war and the news look as good as they could, or a little better than that. No amateur production could have been so effective…most of the time.
But when the truth stared you in the face, what a paper said stopped mattering so much. “Reckon we can stop the damnyankees?” Pete asked. “If we don’t, seems like we’re in a whole peck o’ trouble.”
“Looks that way to me, too,” Dover answered. “If they take Atlanta…Well, that’s pretty bad.”
We should have stopped them in front of Chattanooga, he thought glumly. Now that they’re through the gap and into Georgia, they can go where they please. The paratroop drop that seized Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge from the Confederates and made them evacuate Chattanooga was a smart, gutsy operation. Dover admired it while wishing his side hadn’t been on the receiving end.
When night fell, he slept in a tent with a foxhole right next to it. U.S. bombers came over at night even more often than in the daytime. The heavy drone of engines overhead sent him diving into the hole even before the alarm sounded. Bombs burst with heavy thuds that reminded him of earthquakes. He’d never been in any earthquakes, but he was sure they had to be like this.
Antiaircraft guns thundered and lightninged, filling the air with the sharp stink of smokeless powder. Dover listened hopefully for the concussive thud of stricken bombers smashing into the ground, but in that he was disappointed. Fewer bombs fell close by than he expected from the number of airplanes overhead, which didn’t disappoint him a bit.
Then something fluttered down from the sky like an oversized snowflake and landed on top of his head. He grabbed the sheet of cheap pulp paper. The flash of the guns showed him a large U.S. flag, printed in full color, with text below that he couldn’t make out in the darkness and without his reading glasses.
“More propaganda,” he murmured with a sigh of relief. If the damnyankees wanted to drop their lies instead of high explosives, he didn’t mind a bit. Had that been a bomb falling on his head…
He stuck the sheet into a trouser pocket and forgot he had it till the next morning. Only when it crinkled as he moved did he remember and take it out for a look.
Confederate soldiers, your cause is lost! it shouted, and went on from there. It urged him to save his life by coming through the lines holding up the picture of the Stars and Stripes. Maybe U.S. soldiers wouldn’t shoot him if he did that, but it struck him as a damn good recipe for getting shot by his own side.
If his own side’s propaganda was bad, the enemy’s was worse. Look at the disaster Jake Featherston has led you into. Don’t you want true freedom for your country? it said. All Jerry Dover wanted—all most Confederates wanted—was to see the Yankees go away and leave his country alone. They didn’t seem to understand that. If the sheets falling from the sky meant anything, they thought they were liberators.
“My ass,” Jerry Dover said, as if he had a U.S. propaganda writer in the tent with him. The United States had invaded the Confederate States four times in the past eighty years. If they thought they’d be welcomed with anything but bayonets, they were even bigger fools than Dover gave them credit for—not easy but not, he supposed, impossible.
And if the Confederates wanted to change their government, they could take care of it on their own. All the bodyguards in the world wouldn’t keep Jake Featherston alive for long if enough people decided he needed killing. No Yankees had to help.
Dover started to chuck the propaganda sheet, then changed his mind. “My ass,” he said one more time, now happily, and put it back in his pocket. As with the story in The Armored Bear, he could treat it as it deserved.
November in the North Atlantic wasn’t so bad as January or February, but it was bad enough. The Josephus Daniels rode out one big swell after another. On the destroyer escort’s bridge, Sam Carsten felt as if he were on God’s seesaw. Up and down, up and down, up and down forever.
“You still have that hydrophone contact?” he shouted down the speaking tube to Vince Bevacqua.
“Yes, sir, sure do,” the chief petty officer answered. “Coming in as clear as you can expect with waves like this.”
“All right, then. Let’s give the submersible two ashcans,” Sam said. “That’ll bring it to the surface where we can deal with it.”
He shouted the order over the PA system. The launcher crew at the Josephus Daniels’ bow sent the depth charges flying into the ocean one at a time, well ahead of the ship. They were set to detonate not far below the surface. Sam felt the explosions through the soles of his feet.
Something rude came out of the speaking tube. “Had my earphones on when the first one burst,” Bevacqua said. “That’ll clean your sinuses from the inside out.” He paused, then went on, “The sub’s making noises like it’s blowing water out of its dive chambers. Ought to be coming to the surface.”
“We’ll be ready for anything,” Carsten promised.
And the destroyer escort was. Both four-inchers bore on the submarine when it surfaced. So did several of the the ship’s twin 40mm antiaircraft guns and her .50-caliber machine guns. A swell washed over the sub’s bow—and almost washed over the conning tower, too. This weather was tough to take in the Josephus Daniels. It had to be ten times worse in a submersible.
Sailors ran up a flag on the sub: the white, black, and red jack of the Imperial German Navy. Sam breathed a sigh of relief. “This is the one we’re supposed to meet, all right,” he said.
“So it would seem, sir,” Lieutenant Myron Zwilling agreed. Sam wished he had more use for the exec. Zwilling was brave enough and more than willing enough, but he had all the warmth and character of an old, sour-smelling rag. Men obeyed him because he wore two stripes on his sleeve, not because he made them want to.
The submersible’s signal lamp started flashing Morse. “We—have—your—package,” Sam read slowly. “He knows English, then. Good.”
He handled the destroyer escort’s blinker himself. WILL APPROACH FOR PICKUP, he sent back.
COME AHEAD. BE CAREFUL IN THESE SEAS, the sub signaled.
Sam wished Pat Kelly were still aboard. But his old exec had a ship of his own, a newer, faster ship than the Josephus Daniels. He was probably showing his whole crew what a demon shiphandler he was. Sam wasn’t, and never would be. Neither was Zwilling. Since he wasn’t, Sam kept the conn himself.
As he steered closer to the submersible, he ordered Bevacqua to keep paying close attention to any echoes that came back from his hydrophone pings. The
CPO laughed mirthlessly. “Oh, I’m on it, Skipper. Don’t you worry about that,” he said. “It’s my neck, too, after all.”
“Good,” Sam said. “Long as you remember.”
German subs weren’t the only ones prowling the North Atlantic. Plenty of U.S. boats were out here, too. More to the point, so were British, French, and Confederate submarines. The odds against any one of them being in the neighborhood were long, but so were the odds against filling an inside straight, and lucky optimists did that every day.
In both the Great War and this one, U.S. admirals and their German counterparts dreamt of sweeping the British and French fleets from the North Atlantic and joining hands in the middle. It hadn’t happened then, and it wouldn’t happen this time around, either. The enemy kept the two allies apart, except for sneaky meetings like this one.
NEAR ENOUGH, the submersible’s captain signaled. But Sam steered closer, anticipating the next swell with a small motion of the wheel. The sub’s skipper waved to him then, seeing that he knew what he was doing. He lifted one hand from the wheel to wave back. THROW A LINE, came the flashes from the ugly, deadly, rust-streaked boat.
IS THE PACKAGE WATERPROOF? Sam asked.
JA, the submersible skipper answered. Sam knew more German than that; his folks had spoken it on the farm where he grew up. He ordered a line thrown. A German sailor in a greasy pea jacket and dungarees ran along the sub’s wet hull to retrieve it. Sam wouldn’t have cared to do that, not with the boat pitching the way it was. But the man grabbed the line, carried it back to the conning tower, and climbed the iron ladder, nimble as a Barbary ape.
The German skipper tied the package, whatever it was, to the end of the line. Then he waved to the Josephus Daniels. The sailor who’d cast the line drew it back hand over hand. When he took the package off it, he waved up to Sam Carsten on the bridge.
After waving back, Sam got on the blinker again: WE HAVE IT. THANKS AND GOOD LUCK.
LIKEWISE FOR YOU, the German answered. He lifted his battered cap in salute. Then he and the other men on the conning tower disappeared into the dark, smelly depths of the submersible. The boat slid below the surface and was gone.
A moment later, the sailor brought the package—which was indeed wrapped in oilskins and sheet rubber, and impressively sealed—up to the bridge. “Here you go, sir,” he said, handing it to Sam and saluting.
“Thanks, Enos,” Carsten answered. The sailor hurried away.
“Now into the safe?” the exec asked.
“That’s what my orders are,” Sam agreed.
“Wonder why the brass are making such a fuss about it,” said Thad Walters, the Y-ranging officer.
“Beats me,” Sam answered with a grin. “They pay me not to ask questions like that, so I’m going to lock this baby up right now. Mr. Zwilling, come to my cabin with me so you can witness that I’ve done it. Mr. Walters, you have the conn.” Having a witness was in the orders, too. He’d never had anything on board before that came with such tight security requirements.
“Aye aye, sir.” The exec’s voice stayed formal, but he sounded more pleased than otherwise. Red tape was meat and drink to him. He would have done better manning a desk ashore and counting turbine vanes than as second-in-command on a warship, but the Navy couldn’t fit all its pegs into the perfect holes. You did the best you could in the slot they gave you—and, if you happened to be the skipper, you did the best you could with the men set under you. If they weren’t all the ones you would have chosen yourself…Well, there was a war on.
Sam’s cabin wasn’t far from the bridge. It wasn’t much wider than his own wingspan, but it gave him a tiny island of privacy when he needed one. Along with his bed—which he didn’t get to use enough—he had a steel desk and a steel chair and the safe.
He shielded it with his body as he spun the combination so the exec couldn’t see it: more orders. The metal door swung open. “I am putting the package in the safe,” he intoned, and did just that. “The seals are unbroken.”
“Sir, I have observed you doing so,” Myron Zwilling said, like a man giving responses to a preacher in church. “And I confirm that the seals are unbroken.”
“All right, then. I’m closing up.” Sam did, and spun the lock once more to keep it from showing the last number.
“Now we go back to Boston?” the exec said.
“Just as fast as our little legs will carry us,” Sam replied. Zwilling gave him a look of faint distaste. Sam sighed silently; if the exec was born with a sense of whimsy, he’d had it surgically removed as a kid. And the Josephus Daniels’ legs were indeed little. She couldn’t make better than about twenty-four knots, far slower than a real destroyer. The only reason that occurred to Carsten for picking her for this mission was that she was one of the most anonymous ships in the Navy. The enemy wouldn’t pay much attention to her. If he didn’t command her, he wouldn’t pay much attention to her himself. As they left the cabin, Sam added, “I am locking the door behind me.”
“Yes, sir,” Zwilling said. “You’re also supposed to post two armed guards outside until you remove—whatever it is—from the safe.”
“Go get two men. Serve them out with submachine guns from the arms locker and bring them back here. I’ll stand guard in the meantime,” Sam said. “If Jake Featherston’s hiding under the paint somewhere, I’ll do my goddamnedest to hold him off till you get back with the reinforcements.”
“Er—yes, sir.” The exec seemed relieved to get away.
This time, Sam sighed out loud. Pat would have sassed him right back instead of taking everything so seriously. Well, what could you do?
Before long, the armed guards took their places in front of the door to the captain’s quarters. Sam went back to the bridge. “I have the conn,” he announced as he took the wheel from Walters. “I am changing course to 255. We are on our way back to Boston.” He rang the engine room. “All ahead full.”
“All ahead full. Aye aye, sir.” The response came back through a speaking tube. The black gang would wring every knot they could from the Josephus Daniels. The only trouble was, she didn’t have many knots to wring.
Every mile Sam put between himself and the spot where he’d met the U-boat eased his mind. That it also meant he was one mile closer to his own country did nothing to make him unhappy, either. He wanted nothing more than to get…whatever it was out of his safe and off his ship. He didn’t like having men with automatic weapons outside his door at all hours of the day and night. Were it up to him, he would have been much more casual about the mysterious package. But it wasn’t, so he followed orders.
He also followed orders in maintaining wireless silence till he got within sight of Cape Ann, northeast of Boston. A couple of patrolling U.S. seaplanes had already spotted him by then and, he supposed, sent their own wireless signals, but nobody—especially not his exec—would be able to say he hadn’t done everything the brass told him to do.
Two Coast Guard cutters steamed out from Rockport and escorted the Josephus Daniels across Massachusetts Bay as if she had royalty on board. Sam didn’t think the Germans could have dehydrated the Kaiser and stuffed him into that flat package, but you never could tell.
When a pilot came aboard to steer the destroyer escort through the minefields outside of Boston harbor, Sam greeted him with, “The powers that be won’t like it if you pick the wrong time to sneeze.”
The pilot had flaming red hair, ears that stuck out like jug handles, and an engagingly homely grin. “My wife won’t like it, either, sir,” he answered, “and that counts a hell of a lot more with me.”
“Sounds like the right attitude,” Sam allowed. Myron Zwilling clucked like a fretful mother hen. Yes, he worshipped at Authority’s shrine.
They got through the invisible barricade and tied up in the Boston Navy Yard. As soon as they did, a swarm of Marines and high-ranking officers descended on them. One of the captains nodded when he saw the guards outside Sam’s door. “As per instructions,” he said.
<
br /> “Yes, sir,” Sam said, and when was that ever the wrong answer?
Everybody waited impatiently till he opened the safe and took out the package. He wondered what would happen if he pretended to forget the combination. Odds were the newcomers had somebody who could jigger the lock faster than he could open it with the numbers.
“Here you go, sir.” He handed the package to a vice admiral. “Any chance I’ll ever know what this is all about?”
“No,” the man said at once. But then he unbent a little: “Not officially, anyhow. If you can add two and two, you may get a hint one day.”
Even that little was more than Carsten expected. “All right, sir,” he said.
“Officially, of course, none of this ever happened,” the vice admiral went on. “We aren’t here at all.”
“How am I supposed to log that, sir? ‘Possessed by ghosts—summoned exorcist’?” Sam said. The vice admiral laughed. So did Sam, who was kidding on the square.
II
Camp Humble wasn’t perfect, but it came as close as Jefferson Pinkard could make it. The commandant probably had more experience with camps designed to get rid of people than anybody else in the business. One thing he’d learned was not to call it that or even think of it like that. Reducing population was a phrase with far fewer unpleasant associations.
That mattered. It mattered a surprising amount. Guards who brooded about the things they did had a way of eating their guns or otherwise doing themselves in. If you gave it a name that seemed innocuous, they didn’t need to brood so much.
Back at Camp Dependable, outside of Alexandria, Louisiana, guards had actually taken Negroes out into the swamps and shot them. That was hard on the men—not as hard as it was on the Negroes, but hard enough. Things got better when Jeff thought of asphyxiating trucks. Then the guards didn’t have to pull the trigger themselves. They didn’t have to deal with blood spraying everywhere and with screams and with men who weren’t quite dead. All they had to do was take out bodies and get rid of them. That was a hell of a lot easier.
In at the Death Page 4
