The sergeant glared at him with undisguised loathing. "I believe you. You damnyankees are all a bunch of nigger-lovers."
"I know one nigger I love right now-the kid who shot Jake Featherston," Captain Rhodes answered. "Get it straight, Sergeant. Your government's surrendered. If it hadn't, how long did you have to live? A couple of days, maybe-not much more. After that, we would've flattened you like a steamroller. If you fuck with us now, we will anyway. And you know what else? We'll enjoy doing it, too."
Chester stared. No, that wasn't Boris Lavochkin with an extra bar on each shoulder strap. Captain Rhodes was usually a pretty mild fellow. Usually, yeah, but not always. He meant every word of this.
And the C.S. sergeant knew it, too. "Well, come on, then," he said. "I'll take you to 'em. Just don't blame me if they ain't got everything you want."
"I'll blame somebody-that's for damn sure." Rhodes looked around. His eye lit on Chester. "Gather up a squad, Sergeant, and come along. We may need to do some persuading here."
"Sure will, sir." Martin rounded up a dozen men, just about all of them with automatic weapons instead of Springfields. They followed Captain Rhodes behind what had been the enemy line.
That was scary, especially with the sun sinking in the west. If somebody hadn't got the word or just didn't give a damn…Chester was sure there would be little spasms of fighting for days. He didn't want to get stuck in one, that was all. And he didn't want them to turn into a full-scale rebellion against the U.S. occupiers. If they did, the USA really might have to kill piles and piles of Confederate hostages. He didn't look forward to that. No matter what Captain Rhodes said, he didn't think it would be fun.
Not all the Confederate soldiers had put down their arms yet. The men in butternut scowled at the men in green-gray. Nobody did more than scowl, though. The enemy troops had to know about the surrender, even if they didn't like it.
"If we were as big as the United States, we would've whipped y'all," a corporal said.
"If pigs had wings, we'd all carry umbrellas," Chester answered. "You so-and-sos shot me twice. That's enough, goddammit. I don't want your kids trying to shoot my kid."
The U.S. soldiers walked past a battery of worn-looking 105s. Rhodes told off four or five men to take charge of the guns and their ammunition. "God only knows what a son of a bitch with an imagination can do with an artillery shell," he remarked. Chester could think of a few things, all of them unpleasant. He was sure real explosives people could come up with a lot more.
He chatted with the Confederate veteran, who turned out to have also fought on the Roanoke front in the Great War. "Yeah, that was pretty bad, all right," the other sergeant said. "I got hit twice-a bullet once, a shell fragment in the foot the other time."
"I got it once then and once this time around," Chester said. "Lucky, if you want to call it that. Shit, we both lived through two rounds, so we are lucky."
"Plenty who didn't-that's for damn sure." The Confederate pointed. "The people your captain's looking for are just ahead there."
As a matter of fact, they weren't-they'd bugged out. But they'd left their stock in trade behind in earthwork revetments roofed with planks and corrugated sheet iron. Captain Rhodes set a guard over the explosives and fuses and blasting caps. Shaking his head, he said, "How many setups like this are there all over the CSA? How many'll get emptied out before our guys show up? How much trouble is that gonna cost down the line?"
Lots. Quite a few. Quite a bit. Chester had no trouble finding answers for questions like that. He looked around. This wasn't good guerrilla country-too flat and too open. Other places, though…
Hearing them talking, an armed Confederate ambled up to see what was going on. His eyes widened. "Jesus!" he yipped. "You're damnyankees!"
Chester grinned at him. "Nothing gets by you, does it?"
He stopped grinning a second later, because the Confederate soldier aimed a submachine gun at his midsection. "Hold it right there! Y'all are my prisoners."
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Captain Rhodes said, though Chester noted that he kept his hands away from his.45. "Don't you know your side surrendered?"
"My ass!" the man in butternut said. "We'd never do anything like that."
"Go find some of your buddies," Chester said. "Talk to them. We aren't bullshitting you, man. How'd we get so far behind your line if we were just sneaking around?"
"Beats me." The enemy soldier gestured with the submachine gun. "You come with me. If you're lyin', you'll be sorry."
"However you want." Chester never argued with a man who could kill him. "Let's go. I won't even get mad after you find out what's what."
The other man turned out not even to know Jake Featherston was dead. He no more believed that than he believed his country had surrendered. And, no doubt to drive Chester crazy, they couldn't find anybody else in butternut. That veteran sergeant had disappeared-with luck to head for a POW camp, without it to go off and make trouble.
At last, just as the sun was setting, they found another Confederate soldier. To Chester's enormous relief, he had got the news. "'Fraid the Yankee's tellin' you the truth," he said to his countryman. "It's all over. We're licked."
"Son of a bitch bastard!" Chester's erstwhile captor said. "If that ain't the biggest crock o' crap…We weren't even losing."
"Hello-this is South Carolina. What am I doing here if you guys are winning?" Martin asked. The Confederate gaped at him as if that had never once crossed his mind. Chester got the idea not a whole lot of things had crossed the other fellow's mind. "Why don't you hand me that piece so my guys don't shoot you for having it?"
Reluctantly, the soldier in butternut gave him the submachine gun. Even more reluctantly, he raised his hands. "My pappy's gonna whup me when he finds out I quit," he said glumly.
"Not your fault," Chester said. "The whole CSA gave up."
"Pappy won't care," the soldier predicted. "He'll whup me any old way."
"Did he fight in the last war?" Chester asked.
"I hope to shit he did!"
"Then he gave up once himself. Tell him so."
"Like he'll listen. You don't know Pappy."
As far as Chester was concerned, that was just as well. "Let's go back to the explosives shed," he said. "I want my captain to know you found out we weren't pulling your leg."
"Still can't hardly believe it. And the President bought a plot?" The Confederate shook his head. "Holy fuckin' shit!"
He could cuss as much as he pleased. Chester had his weapon. He remembered the Navy guys who'd got torpedoed after the cease-fire in the Great War. Thank God he hadn't gone that way himself!
G eorge Enos, Jr., was thinking of his father as the Oregon steamed toward the surfaced Confederate submarine. That bastard of a sub skipper hadn't wanted to quit when the Great War ended, so he'd fired one last spread of torpedoes-and little George grew up without a man around.
This submersible was playing by the rules. It had surfaced and broadcast its position by wireless. Now it was flying a large blue flag in token of surrender. Men in dark gray uniforms stood on the conning tower and on the deck, though nobody went near the deck gun. Taking on a battlewagon with that little excuse for a weapon was closer to insane than anything else, but you never could tell.
A lieutenant with a bullhorn strode up to the Oregon's bow. "Ahoy, the Confederate sub!" he bawled. "Do you hear me?"
On the sub, a fellow in a dirty white officer's cap raised a loudhailer to his own lips. "I hear you," he answered. "What are your instructions?"
"Have you jettisoned your ammunition?"
"Yes," the Confederate answered.
"Have you removed the breechblock from your gun?"
"Done that, too."
"Are the pistols out of your torpedoes? Are the torpedoes rendered safe?"
"Yes. We've followed all the surrender orders." The enemy officer didn't sound happy about it.
"Do you have any mines aboard?" asked the lieutenant on the Oregon.
> "No-not a one."
"All right. We are going to send an officer and a CPO to inspect your boat before we give you your sailing instructions for Baltimore. Stand by to receive a boarding party."
"Very well," the Confederate skipper said. "But if the surrender order didn't tell us we had to do exactly what you tell us, I would have something different to say to you."
"You would be trying to sink us, and we would be dropping depth charges on your head," the U.S. lieutenant said. "Things are what they are, though, not what you wish they were."
"And ain't that the sad and sorry truth?" the sub skipper said. "We will receive your boarders-we won't repel them." That made George think of pigtailed sailors with bandannas and cutlasses, and of clouds of black-powder smoke. No more, no more.
The officer who crossed to the submersible was barely old enough to shave. The chief might have been his father, as far as years went. George knew what would happen. The ensign would write up the inspection report, and the chief would tell him what to say.
They came back after a couple of hours. The ensign was nodding and grinning, but George kept his eyes on the CPO. When he saw that the senior rating seemed satisfied, he relaxed. Nobody on that sub would give the U.S. Navy any more trouble.
After talking with the ensign (and also glancing at the chief), the lieutenant picked up his bullhorn again. "You are cleared to proceed to Baltimore. Keep flying your blue flag by day, and show your navigation lights at night."
"Understood," the C.S. skipper said.
As if he hadn't spoken, the lieutenant went on, "Remain fully surfaced at all times. Report your position, course, and speed every eight hours. All wireless transmissions must be in plain language. A pilot will take you through the minefields. Obey any instructions you may receive from U.S. authorities."
"We'll do it," the Confederate replied. "Is there anything else, Mommy, or can we go out and play now?"
Several U.S. sailors snickered, George among them. The lieutenant went brick red. "No further instructions at this time," he choked out.
The C.S. skipper doffed his cap in sardonic salute, then disappeared down the hatch into the submarine. It moved off to the northwest, in the direction of Chesapeake Bay.
The lieutenant was still steaming. "If I ever run into that son of a bitch on dry land, I'll punch him in the nose," he ground out.
"Take an even strain," said the chief, who'd gone aboard the Confederate submarine. "We won. They lost. Let him talk as big as he wants-it doesn't change what really matters."
"No, but it makes me look like a jerk. All I was doing was making sure he understood the surrender terms. We don't want the kind of trouble we had the last time around."
"I should say we don't." The CPO looked this way and that till he spotted George. "Here's Enos. He knows more about that kind of shit than you and me put together. His old man was on the Ericsson, and his ma's the gal who went down to the CSA and plugged the skunk who put her on the bottom."
"Really?" The lieutenant, unlike the chief, didn't know George by sight. At a quick gesture from the CPO, George took half a step away from the twin 40mm mount. The lieutenant said, "You're Sylvia Enos' son?"
"Yes, sir." George was always pleased when somebody remembered his mother's first name.
"I read her book," the officer said. "It was one of the things that made me decide to join the Navy. I thought I ought to help do things right, so people like her didn't have to pick up guns and take care of it themselves."
"Yes, sir," George repeated, less enthusiastically this time. Whenever he thought about I Shot Roger Kimball, he couldn't help also thinking about the hard-drinking hack who did the actual writing. His mother should have known better than to have anything to do with Ernie except for the book. She should have, but she hadn't, and so she was dead, and so was he. And if Ernie hadn't shot himself, George would gladly have killed him.
The lieutenant seemed to run out of things to say, which might have been a relief for him and George both. "Well, carry on, Enos," he said, which was strictly line-of-duty. He hurried back toward the Oregon's towering bridge. George returned to the gun mount.
Some of the men on the gun crew already knew who he was and who his mother had been. Unlike the lieutenant, they also knew better than to make a fuss about it. "Officers," one of them said sympathetically.
"Yeah, well…" George spread his hands. "What can you do?"
"Jack diddly," the other sailor said. "Put up with 'em the best way you can. Try not to let 'em fuck you over too bad."
"They're like women," a shell-jerker said. "You can't live with 'em, and you can't live without 'em, neither."
"Nope." George shook his head. "If you could get pussy from officers, they'd be good for something. Way things are, too many of 'em are-"
"Good for nothing!" Three guys on the crew said the same thing at the same time. They grinned at one another, and at George. The banter about what officers would be like if they were equipped the way women were went on and on. It got louder and more hilarious and more obscene with each succeeding joke as each sailor tried to top the fellow who'd gone before him.
George's grin stretched wider and wider. It wasn't just that the guys were funny. Everybody was all loosey-goosey. Unless some Confederate diehard hadn't got the word, nobody would be shooting at the Oregon or bombing her or trying to torpedo her. They'd made it through the war.
"Now all we got to worry about is the crappy cooks in the galley," George said.
"See? They should be broads, too," one of the other guys put in. "Then they'd know what they were doin'."
"And if they did feed us somethin' shitty, they could really show us they was sorry," somebody else said. It went on from there.
They spotted another surfaced submarine later that day. This one flew the Union Jack, not a blue surrender flag like the Confederate boat. "I have no quarrel with you gentlemen," the captain called through a loudhailer, "but I will not go to one of your ports. I have received no such orders. We have an armistice with Germany and you, but we have not surrendered."
"We can blow you out of the water," warned the U.S. officer with whom he was parleying.
"No doubt," the British sub skipper replied politely. "But we have done nothing provocative, and have no intention of doing any such thing. Are you really so eager to put the war on the boil again?"
Muttering, the young U.S. officer got on the telephone to the bridge. He was muttering louder when he hung up. "You may proceed," he told the Royal Navy officer.
"Thanks ever so." The limey actually tipped his cap. "May we meet again-and not in our professional capacities."
"We ought to blow him up anyway," the U.S. officer growled-but not through the bullhorn.
Sailors in the British submarine were bound to be thinking the same thing about the Oregon. As long as the boat stayed surfaced and didn't aim either bow or stern at the battleship, George figured he wouldn't flabble. If the submarine dove…
It didn't, not till it was out of sight. George hoped the Oregon's Y-ranging set watched it even farther than that. Since no Klaxons hooted, he supposed everything stayed hunky-dory. Thinking about women officers was a lot more fun than worrying about getting sunk.
"I bet the limeys never do surrender, not the way the Confederates did," Wally Fodor said. The gun chief went on, "I bet they just bail out of the fight on the best terms they can, same as they did in the last war. Long as they got their navy in one piece, they're still a going concern."
"Till somebody drops a superbomb on their fleet, anyway," George said.
"Yeah, but the Kaiser's got to be sweating about how big Japan's getting. Hell, so do we," Fodor persisted. "The Japs don't have the superbomb yet, so England's the only one who can give 'em a hard time-unless we want to go through the Pacific one goddamn island at a time."
Nobody at the twin 40mm mount wanted anything like that. George, who'd already had a long tour in the Sandwich Islands, really didn't want anything like that. He'
d paid all the dues against Japan he felt like paying.
"Tell you one thing," he said. "All this bullshitting is a lot better than sweating out bombs and torpedoes for real."
"Amen!" That went up from several sailors at once.
"We licked Jake Featherston, and the limeys look like they've had enough, anyway," George went on. "Pretty soon, we'll be able to get our old lives back again." Did he look forward to going after cod from T Wharf? He wasn't so sure about that, but coming home to Connie more often sounded mighty good.
XIV
D r. Leonard O'Doull donned a professional scowl and glared at the unhappy young PFC standing in front of him. "That's one of the most disgusting chancres I've ever seen," he growled. It was red and ugly, all right, but he'd run into plenty just like it. The kid didn't have to know that, though.
Quivering, the PFC said, "Sorry, sir." He looked as if he was about to cry.
"Were you sorry while you were getting it?" O'Doull asked.
"Uh, no, sir." The youngster in green-gray turned red.
"Why the hell didn't you wear a rubber?"
"On account of I didn't figure I needed to. She was a nice girl, dammit. Besides, it feels better when you're bareback."
It did. O'Doull couldn't quarrel about that. He could ask, "And how does it feel now?" The PFC hung his head. O'Doull went on, "Do you still think she was a nice girl?"
"No, sir," the kid said, and then, apprehensively, "What are you going to do to me, sir?"
"Me? I'm going to fix you up, that's what." O'Doull raised his voice: "Sergeant Lord! Let me have a VD hypo of penicillin."
"Coming up, Doc." Goodson Lord produced the requisite syringe.
The PFC stared at it with something not far from horror. "Jeez Louise! You could give an elephant a shot with that thing."
"Elephants don't get syphilis. Far as I know, they don't get the clap, either." O'Doull nodded to the kid, who wasn't far wrong there, either-it was a big needle. "Bend over."
In At the Death sa-4 Page 47
