“Has that happened here?” George asked.
“Not here at the Yard, no, but it sure as hell did in New York City. Twice,” the guard answered.
“Jesus!” George said. “Nobody’s safe anywhere any more. I’d rather put to sea. At least out there I know who’s on my side and who isn’t.” With a nod, the guard waved him on.
Armorers were bringing crates of ammunition aboard the Josephus Daniels. They were eloquently obscene, creatively profane. George had heard that before among men with especially dangerous trades. It gave them a safety valve they couldn’t find any other way. He paused not just to give them room but also to admire their invectives. He’d thought he’d heard everything, but they showed him he was wrong.
He was almost sorry when they finished and walked down the pier. “Permission to come aboard?” he called as he set foot on the destroyer escort’s gangplank.
“Granted,” answered Thad Walters, who had officer-on-deck duty. After the formal response, he unbent enough to ask, “Liberty good?”
“Yes, sir,” George said. “Kids are growing like weeds. Connie pisses and moans about the rationing, but she’s sure keeping them fed.” He turned to salute the flag at the stern.
“Well, that’s good.” The grin on the OOD’s face said he knew George and Connie didn’t spend all their time talking about rations. He was younger than George himself. Chances were he didn’t spend all his time thinking about Y-ranging gear, either. He went on, “Well, stow your gear below and get used to the ship again. You’d better—we put to sea tomorrow morning, early and”—he looked at the cloudy sky—“not too bright.”
“Aye aye, sir.” After his own apartment, the accommodations belowdecks were a rude reminder that he was back in the Navy’s clutches. Everything was cramped and smelly. Instead of a bed to share with his wife, he had a hammock in a compartment full of snoring, farting sailors. If he tried to roll over, he’d fall out.
Some kid was bragging about how many times he’d done it in a whorehouse. Only a couple of guys were even half listening to him, and they mainly seemed interested in telling him what a liar he was. George thought the same thing. Anybody who boasted about what a great lover he was had to be lying, even if he didn’t always know it.
Chow was another disappointment: some kind of hash and lumpy mashed potatoes. Connie would have been ashamed to put slop like that on the table no matter how bad rationing got. The coffee was better than hers, though. The Navy and the Army got most of the real bean that came into the USA; civilians had to make do with ersatz.
Maybe because he’d gone without real coffee for a couple of days and it hit him harder when he drank it again, maybe because his own mattress had spoiled him, he had a hell of a time going to sleep that night. He knew he’d stagger around like a zombie in the morning, but he lay there in the hammock staring up at the steel ceiling not nearly far enough above his head.
A pilot had brought the Josephus Daniels in through the minefields shielding Boston harbor from enemy submersibles. Another one took her out again. A small patrol boat followed the destroyer escort to pick up the pilot and bring him back. George stayed at his 40mm mounts till well after the pilot was gone. The powers that be had installed the guns to shoot at airplanes, but they could also do dreadful things to subs forced to the surface.
“We have ourselves a new assignment.” Sam Carsten’s voice blared from the loudspeakers. George still thought it was bizarre that he’d met the man now his skipper when he was a kid in Boston. Carsten went on, “We’re heading for Bermuda, and then for the central Atlantic. We’re going to try to find convoys bringing food up from Argentina and Brazil to England and France. And when we do, we’ll sink ’em or capture ’em.”
Excitement tingled through George. This was the work his father had done in the last war. It was what finally made Britain decide she’d had enough. And it was the work that cost his father his life.
“Some of you poor devils are polliwogs,” the skipper boomed. “When we get to the Equator, King Neptune and the shellbacks aboard will take care of that.”
George laughed. He’d been initiated into the shellbacks when he crossed the Equator for the first time. He could hardly wait to give the new fish a taste of what he’d got.
And he had another reason for wanting to get down by the Equator. The North Atlantic was kicking up its heels. He had a strong stomach, and he’d known worse seas than this in a fishing boat that made the Josephus Daniels seem as sedate as a fleet carrier. That meant he kept down what he ate. It didn’t mean he enjoyed himself. And using the heads was rugged, because a lot of guys were desperate and weren’t neat. Some of them didn’t make it to the heads. The skipper had cleaning parties out all the time. They almost kept up with the sour stink. Almost, here as in so many places, was a word nobody really wanted to hear.
The ship approached Bermuda from the northeast. That made for more time at sea, but lessened the chance of meeting C.S. bombers or seaplanes on the way in.
“No liberty here,” Carsten announced as they tied up in the harbor. “Sorry, guys. We don’t have time. On the way back to the USA, I’ll give you the best blowout I can, and that’s a promise.”
By the way the old-timers on the destroyer escort nodded, the skipper kept promises like that. George wasn’t surprised. Keeping them seemed in character for Carsten. Being a mustang, he knew what ratings liked better than most officers with Annapolis rings did. And one of the things they liked was officers who delivered on their promises.
Because of the threat from the Confederate mainland, the crew spent the night at battle stations, four hours on, four off. A handful of bombers did come over. Bermuda had Y-ranging gear far more powerful than the set the Josephus Daniels carried; sirens started shrieking before the destroyer escort picked up the bombers.
And even after the ship did, the gunners were firing by earsight, hoping to get lucky or to nail a bomber caught by the blazing searchlights ashore. Yellow and red tracers crisscrossed the night sky.
U.S. night fighters were up over Bermuda, too. George wondered if they had their own Y-ranging sets. If they did, it didn’t seem to do them much good. He heard the harsh crump of bombs—none very close—but saw no bombers going down.
Even after the all-clear sounded, ships and land-based guns kept throwing shells around. George was glad he had a helmet on. Shrapnel clattered down from the sky like sharp-edged hail. It could kill the people who’d fired it even if it didn’t do a damn thing to its intended targets.
“Boy, I enjoyed that,” he said when the other gun crew relieved him and his comrades.
“You be able to sleep?” his opposite number asked.
“Fuck, yes. I don’t care if the Confederates come back and the noise starts up all over again. I’ll sleep.”
And, some time in the wee small hours, the Confederates did come back. They couldn’t take Bermuda away from the USA, but they could make sure the United States didn’t enjoy holding it. George opened his eyes when the shooting started again, then closed them and began to snore louder than ever.
The Josephus Daniels sailed the next morning, her tanks topped off and ammunition replenished. The Atlantic was a changed beast; as the destroyer escort steamed south, the ocean went from tiger to kitten. The sun shone warm and bright. The air turned sweet and mild. George was reminded of the weather in the Sandwich Islands. It didn’t get any better than that.
British submersibles. French submersibles. Confederate submersibles. Misguided U.S. submersibles. Confederate seaplanes. Maybe even bombers and torpedo-carriers from a prowling British carrier. This part of the Atlantic was like the Sandwich Islands in more ways than the weather: it was also full of danger. Standing by the breech of the twin 40mm, George hoped he wouldn’t follow in his father’s last footsteps, as he’d already followed in so many.
Dr. Leonard O’Doull watched Sergeant Vince Donofrio chatting up a well-fed blond Georgia farm girl with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. The seni
or medic seemed to try his luck with everything female from fourteen to fifty. This one—her name was Billie Jean—fell toward the lower end of the range, but not so low that she didn’t have everything a woman needed. She also had an inch-long cut on her left index finger, which was what brought her to the U.S. aid station in the first place.
Donofrio had given her a shot of novocaine and put a couple of stitches in the cut. In O’Doull’s professional opinion, it needed nothing but a bandage, but Donofrio had motivation beyond the purely professional.
“I never reckoned Yankees could be so kind and helpful,” Billie Jean said, which showed the sergeant had made some progress, anyhow.
“I’m a medic. We help everybody on both sides.” Donofrio turned to O’Doull for support. “Ain’t that right, Doc?”
“That’s our job.” O’Doull could hardly deny it—it was true. He said it himself, somewhere between once a day and once a week. Here, though, he wished he weren’t agreeing with the horny sergeant. He’d never sewn up a pretty girl’s wound in the hope of getting into her pants.
Then he shook his head and started to laugh. When he sutured a cut on Lucien Galtier’s leg up in Quebec, that put him in the good graces of the man who became his father-in-law. It didn’t hurt him with Nicole, either. Still, he wasn’t inclined to look at Vince Donofrio and Billie Jean Whoozis and intone, Bless you, my children.
As if Vince cared. “Can I walk you home, sweetie?” he asked.
Billie Jean frowned. O’Doull gave her points for that. “I don’t know,” she said. “Some of the guys here, they don’t like it if they see a girl walkin’ with a Yankee.” At least she didn’t say damnyankee.
“Like I said, I’m a medic,” Donofrio said. “I don’t give trouble, and I don’t want trouble.” He had a .45 on his hip, just in case. So did O’Doull.
He also had the gift of gab, even though his boss was the Irishman. He talked Billie Jean into letting him tag along. And he talked O’Doull into letting him go, which was harder. “You be back in an hour, you hear me?” O’Doull growled. “And I don’t mean an hour and one minute, either. I don’t see you here in an hour’s time, I send a search party out after you, and you won’t like it when they find you.”
“I promise, Doc.” The senior medic crossed his heart. Billie Jean laughed.
Ten minutes later, corpsmen brought a soldier with a hand wound into the aid station. He’d passed out, or he would have come in under his own power. One look at the injury told O’Doull the hand would have to go. He hated to do it, but he didn’t see any way to save the mangled remnants. He wished Vince were there to pass gas, but he could act as his own anesthetist.
“What happened to the guy, Eddie?” he asked as he put the ether cone over the wounded man’s mouth and nose. “Do you know? This is about as ugly a hand wound as I’ve ever seen.”
“I thought the same thing, Doc,” the corpsman answered. “He was by a boulder when we found him, and the boulder had blood all over it. I’m guessing, but I’d say a big old chunk of shell casing mashed his hand against the rock.”
O’Doull nodded. “Sounds reasonable. But he’ll have to make do with a hook from here on out. I hope he wasn’t left-handed, that’s all.”
“Didn’t even think of that.” Eddie looked and sounded surprised.
The amputation went as well as an operation like that could. The cutting was over in a hurry; patching things up, as usual, took longer. At last, O’Doull said, “Well, that’s about all I can do. Poor bastard won’t like it when he wakes up.”
“Any other doc would’ve done the same thing—only not as well, chances are,” Eddie said. They’d worked together a long time.
“Thanks,” O’Doull said wearily. “I’d like a drink, but I think I’ll settle for a cigarette.” He stepped outside the aid tent to light up. He’d smoked the Raleigh almost down to the butt when he happened to look at his watch. An hour and five minutes had passed since Vince Donofrio decided to walk Billie Jean home, and he wasn’t back. O’Doull swore in disgust. He didn’t care if Vince had got lucky. The medic wouldn’t think he was by the time O’Doull got through with him.
Finding soldiers for a search party was the easiest thing in the world. He waved to the first squad he saw coming up the road and told them what he needed. The Army had made him a major so he could give enlisted men orders. “Right,” said the corporal in charge of the squad. “So what do we do if we catch him laying this broad?”
“Throw cold water on him, pull him off, and haul his sorry ass back here,” O’Doull replied angrily, which made the soldiers grin. They went off with a spring in their step and a gleam in their eye.
When they weren’t back in half an hour or so—and when Donofrio, shamefaced or not, didn’t show up on his own—O’Doull started to worry. He almost welcomed a man with a leg wound. Patching it up let him think about other things besides the medic and why he might be missing. Why the devil had he let Donofrio go? But he knew the answer to that: because Vince would have sulked and fumed for days if he hadn’t, and life was too short. But if life turned out to be literally too short…
By the time another hour went by, O’Doull began to dread what would happen when the search party came back. Then they did. One look at the corporal’s face told him he hadn’t wasted his time worrying. “What happened?” he asked.
“Both dead,” the noncom said grimly. “Beaten, stomped, kicked—you name it, they got it, the guy and the gal both. We found ’em in a field not far from the side of the road. The medic’s holster was empty, so his pistol’s gone. Some goddamn Confederate’s got it now.”
“Jesus!” O’Doull felt sick. He’d never been responsible for a man’s death like this before. Plenty of wounded soldiers had died while he was working on them, but he was doing his goddamnedest to save them. Here, one word—no—would have saved Vince Donofrio. It would have, but he hadn’t said it. He forced out the next question: “What now?”
“Sir, I’ve already talked to a line officer,” the squad leader said. “We beat the bushes for the motherfuckers who did it. We take hostages. We put out the call for the guilty bastards to give themselves up. Then we blow the fuckin’ hostages’ heads off.” He sounded as if he looked forward to serving in the firing squad.
“Jesus!” O’Doull said again. “How many people are going to die because Vince thought Billie Jean was cute?”
“She wasn’t cute when we found her, sir,” the corporal said. “They…Well, shit, you don’t want to hear about that. But she wasn’t. Neither was he.”
O’Doull crossed himself. “I shouldn’t have let him go. But he liked her looks, and I didn’t think anything would happen this time, so—”
“You never think anything’ll happen this time,” the corporal said. “Only sometimes it does.”
“Yeah. Sometimes it does.” O’Doull covered his face with his hands. “Here’s one I’ll carry on my conscience the rest of my life.” Yes, this was much worse than losing a patient on the table.
“We’ll get ’em,” the corporal said. “Or if we don’t, we’ll get enough of the bastards who might have done it to make the rest of the assholes around here think twice before they try anything like that again.”
“Fat lot of good any of that will do Vince,” O’Doull said.
“Sir, I’m sorry as hell about that. It’s part of the war around these parts,” the corporal said. “Sooner or later, I expect we’ll put the fear of God into the Confederates.”
That wouldn’t do Vince Donofrio any good, either. O’Doull didn’t say so—what was the use? The noncom saluted and led his squad away. Eddie came up to O’Doull. “Not your fault, Doc,” he said. “You just did what anybody else would’ve done.”
“I guess so,” O’Doull said. “But if it went wrong when somebody else did it, it’d be his fault, right? So how come it’s not mine?”
“You couldn’t know he’d run into bushwhackers,” the corpsman said.
“No, but I could know—hell, I
did know—he might, and I let him go anyway. Shit.” O’Doull wanted to get into the medicinal brandy, but he didn’t think he deserved it. He wished a wounded man would come in so he’d be too busy to brood about what had happened—he could drown his sorrows in work as well as alcohol. But the poor slob who’d have to stop something so he could get busy didn’t deserve that.
After a while, deserving or not, a soldier with a smashed shoulder came in. Acting as his own anesthetist again, O’Doull did what he could to clean out the wound and fix it up. Eddie assisted, long on willingness but not on skill. Have to get a new senior medic, O’Doull thought. He’d worked with Granny McDougald for a couple of years, with Vince Donofrio for only about three months. Now somebody else would have to figure out his quirks and foibles.
The local commandant wasted no time. Soldiers seized hostages that afternoon. They gave the men who’d ambushed Vince and Billie Jean forty-eight hours to surrender. If not…Well, if not it was a tough war all the way around.
“Has anybody ever given himself up?” O’Doull asked Major Himmelfarb, who’d sent out the ultimatum.
“It does happen once in a blue moon,” the line officer answered. “Some of these bastards are proud of what they’ve done. They’re willing—hell, they’re eager—to die for their country.” He shrugged. “We oblige ’em.”
No one came forward to admit to killing Vince Donofrio and the girl whose finger he’d sewn up. Major Himmelfarb asked O’Doull if he wanted to watch the hostages die. He shuddered and shook his head. “No, thanks. I see enough bullet wounds every day. It won’t bring Vince back, either.”
“That’s a fact.” Major Himmelfarb looked as if he wanted to call O’Doull soft but didn’t think he could. Instead, he went on, “Maybe it will keep some other dumb, horny U.S. soldier from getting his dick cut off. We can hope so, anyway.”
“Right,” O’Doull said tightly, wishing the other officer hadn’t told him that. Sometimes you found out more than you wanted to know. He hoped the medic was dead by then.
In at the Death Page 9
