In At the Death sa-4 Read online

  "You'd be amazed," Morrell said. "We've seen how places that look beaten to death can go right on producing till they finally change hands."

  A plaque on the bullet-pocked terra-cotta wall behind him said ATLANTA RESURGENS, 1847–1927. The city hall had gone up in the brief spell of prosperity that followed the CSA's devastating postwar inflation. Then the worldwide economic collapse sucked down the Confederacy along with almost everybody else, and paved the way for the rise of Jake Featherston.

  "What do you aim to do now, General?" another reporter inquired.

  By his earnest voice and expectant look, he really expected Morrell to answer in detail. Some reporters never did figure out that their right to a good story stopped where it began to endanger U.S. soldiers. As gently as he could, Morrell said, "Well, I don't want General Patton to read about it in tomorrow's paper, you know."

  "Will you drive west into Alabama or east toward the Atlantic?" This fellow was stubborn or stupid or both.

  "Yes," Morrell answered. The reporter blinked. Some of his colleagues, quicker on the uptake, grinned. Morrell said, "That's about all, boys. Happy New Year."

  A few more flashbulbs popped. He didn't mind that-the Confederates already knew he was in Atlanta. Bodyguards closed up around him as the press conference ended. He didn't care for the guards, but he didn't care to get killed, either. Enemy snipers would have loved to get him in their sights.

  The State Capitol wasn't far away. A lot of people on his staff had wanted him to make his headquarters there. He said no, and kept saying no till they believed him. Demolition men were still going through the building, which looked like a scaled-down version of the Confederate Capitol in Richmond-at the moment, including bomb damage. They'd already found a couple of dozen booby traps there…and how many had they missed?

  A small, none too fancy house a couple of blocks away seemed a better, safer bet. The demolition experts had swept it, too, and found it clear. The Confederates didn't have enough ordnance or time to booby-trap everything, which came as a relief.

  Morrell had other things to worry about, plenty of them. Sitting on his desk when he got back were photos of wrecked new-model C.S. barrels. By all reports, they were half a step ahead of the U.S. machines that had dominated the battlefield for most of 1943. How far could that race go? Would there be land dreadnoughts one day, with twelve-inch guns and armor thick enough to stop twelve-inch shells? You could build one now. What you couldn't build was an engine that would make it go faster than a slow walk-if it moved at all.

  He was glad the reporters hadn't asked him anything about the new enemy machines. He wouldn't have had much of an answer for them, except to note that the Confederates didn't seem to have very many. How long would that last? Hit Birmingham harder by air, he wrote. Notes helped him remember the million things he had to do. They were already dropping everything but the kitchen sink on the town. Have to throw that in, too.

  A large explosion stunned the air and his ears. He ducked, not that that would have done him any good had the blast been closer. He hauled out his notebook again. Hit Huntsville, too, he scribbled. Intelligence said the Confederates made their rockets there. Not many of them had crashed down on Atlanta yet, but how long would that last? Not long enough-he was dismally sure of it.

  He was also sure he couldn't do a damn thing about the rockets except smash the factories that made them and the launchers that sent them on their way. Once they got airborne, there was no defense.

  If Featherston had had them from the beginning…That would have been very bad. He was content to leave the thought there. Neither side had all of what it needed when the war began. Part of what the war was about was finding out what you needed. He'd heard rumors that higher-ups in Philadelphia were all excited about some fancy new explosive. Maybe that would end up meaning something, and maybe it wouldn't. They'd throw money and talent at it and see what happened next. What else could they do?

  Another big boom rattled his nerves. He didn't know if the enemy was working on super-duper explosives. The ordinary sort people had been using since the end of the last century seemed plenty good enough.

  Now he had to figure out what to do himself. The reporter had given him his two basic choices: he could keep his original plan of driving to the sea, or swing west against Birmingham and Huntsville. If the War Department ordered him to go west, he would, he decided. Otherwise, he wanted to cut the Confederacy in half. If the offensive in Virginia came to something, where would Jake Featherston run then? And could the Confederate West stand on its own for long without orders from Richmond-and without Featherston's ferocious energy available to stiffen spines? Finding out would be interesting.

  An aide stuck his head into the bedroom Morrell was using for an office. "Sir, the mayor of Atlanta would like to speak to you."

  "He would, would he?" Morrell said. "So he didn't run away with the Confederate army?"

  "I guess not, sir."

  "Well, send him in, then. Let's see what he's got to say for himself."

  The mayor had gray hair and was skinny as a rail. He introduced himself as Andrew Crowley. When Morrell asked him why he hadn't fled, he answered, "I wanted to protect my people, so I chose to remain." He threw back his head, a gesture straight out of a corny movie.

  "That's nice," Morrell said. "How many Negroes are you protecting?"

  "I was speaking of Confederate citizens, sir," the mayor answered, "not of Confederate residents." One word made all the difference in the world.

  "They all look like people to me," Morrell said.

  "You don't understand the way we do things in this country," Crowley told him.

  "Maybe I don't," Morrell allowed. "Of course, if you hadn't invaded mine I wouldn't be down here now. Since I am, I have to tell you that murder looks a lot like murder, no matter who you do it to. I haven't got a whole hell of a lot of sympathy for you, Mr. Mayor."

  "We did what the government in Richmond told us to do," Crowley insisted. "Don't see how you can go and flabble about that."

  "Yeah, sure. Now tell me you never once yelled, 'Freedom!' in all your born days."

  Andrew Crowley's hollow cheeks turned red. "I-" He stopped. Maybe he'd been about to deny it. But how many people could give him the lie-to say nothing of the horse laugh-if he tried?

  "Here's what's going on," Morrell told him. "We'll try to keep your people from starving. We'll try to keep them from coming down sick. If they stay quiet, we'll leave 'em alone. If they don't, we'll make 'em sorry. Shoot at a U.S. soldier, and we'll take twenty hostages and shoot 'em. Kill any U.S. soldier, and we'll take fifty hostages and shoot 'em. Kill a Negro, and it's the same price. Got that? Is it plain enough for you?"

  "You're as cruel and hard as the government warned us you would be," Crowley whined.

  "Tough beans, Mr. Mayor." Was Morrell enjoying himself playing the tyrant? As a matter of fact, he was. "Your soldiers were every bit as sweet in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Only difference now is, the shoe's on the other foot. Hope you like the way it feels."

  "You've got to be kidding," the mayor said. "Fifty people for a worthless nigger? If that's not a joke, it ought to be."

  "Chances are you don't need to worry about it much," Morrell said. "I bet you've taken most of yours off to be killed by now. Isn't that right?"

  "Even if it is, the idea's ridic-" Crowley broke off several words too late. He went red again, this time at what he'd admitted by letting his mouth run free.

  "Get out of my sight," Morrell said. "I don't think we've got much to say to each other. You wouldn't like it if I told you what I thought. Just get out before I chuck you in the calaboose."

  Crowley got. This probably wasn't the interview he'd wanted to have. Morrell didn't intend to lose any sleep about that. He went into the bathroom and washed his hands. He wasn't Pilate, turning his back on the truth. He knew it when he ran into it, and its touch disgusted him.

  He was glad he was only a soldier. He didn't have to try to figu
re out how to administer captured C.S. territory on any long-term basis. All he had to worry about was making sure the locals didn't give his men too much trouble. The War Department didn't care if he got rough doing it. That suited him fine, because the little he'd seen south of the Ohio inclined him to be gentle.

  A long lifetime earlier, this had been part of the country he'd grown up in, the country he served. It wasn't any more. Nothing could be plainer than that. Attitudes toward the USA, attitudes toward Negroes…

  Jake Featherston hadn't been in the saddle here for even ten years. But the hatreds he'd exploited and built on had been here long before he used them to such deadly effect. You couldn't create those out of nothing. Without them, the black rebellions during the Great War wouldn't have had such lasting and terrible aftereffects. Did whites here have guilty consciences? They had plenty to feel guilty about, that was for sure. If they didn't, the CSA's Negroes never would have launched uprisings almost surely doomed to fail.

  Will the Confederates go on fighting for the next eighty years even if we wipe their country off the map? That was Morrell's greatest dread, and the greatest dread of everyone in the USA who thought about such things at all. The Mormons were bad. Canada gave every sign of being worse. But the Confederate States? If these people stayed determined, they could be an oozing sore for a long, long time.

  If the United States didn't wipe their country off the map, wouldn't they start another big war in a generation? And wouldn't that be even worse?

  G eorge Enos, Jr., was a shellback. You couldn't get to the Sandwich Islands from Boston by sea without becoming a shellback. That gave him the privilege of harrying the poor, hapless polliwogs aboard the Josephus Daniels. The sailors who hadn't crossed the Equator before paid for the honor of swearing allegiance to King Neptune.

  The poor polliwogs got sprayed with saltwater from the hoses. Some of them were painted here and there with iodine. The cook who doubled as a barber cut their hair in strange and appalling ways. One rating who was inordinately proud of his handlebar mustache got half of it hacked off. Anyone who squawked got thumped, too.

  Sid Becker, a chief petty officer who might have been the hairiest man George had ever seen, played King Neptune. His mermaids had mop tops for wigs, inflated condoms for breasts, and some kind of padding to give them hips. They also had hellacious five o'clock shadows, no doubt to emulate their sovereign.

  Polliwogs had to kiss each stubbly mermaid and then kiss King Neptune's right big toe, which was as hairy as the rest of him. George and the other shellbacks whooped as they gave out what they'd taken when they were initiated into the fraternity of the sea.

  Sweetest of all, as far as George was concerned, was that Myron Zwilling was a polliwog. King Neptune didn't respect rank or anything else; that was a big part of what made the ceremony what it was. The exec did have the sense to know he couldn't complain about anything that happened to him.

  He didn't have the sense to know he ought to look as if he were enjoying it. He went through it with the air of a man who had no choice. George wondered if he was noting who did what to him for payback later. He wouldn't have been surprised-that seemed like Zwilling's style.

  After crossing the Equator, the ship got back to work: keeping Argentine beef and grain from getting across the Atlantic, and keeping the Royal Navy from interfering. She could do the first on her own. For the second, she had help from a pair of escort carriers: the Irish Sea and the Oahu. The limeys had carriers in these waters, too. If one side's airplanes found the other…there would be a big brawl.

  George was glad Captain Carsten gave the crews so much gunnery practice. The more time he put in as a loader, the faster he got. The more shells the twin 40mm mount threw, the better the chance it had of knocking down an enemy Swordfish or Spitfire before the airplane could perpetrate whatever atrocity its crew had in mind. Maybe even more than the other sailors in the gun crew, George liked that idea. They hadn't been attacked from the air when they couldn't shoot back. He had.

  Having their own airplanes along enormously extended how far they could see. A wireless call sent the flotilla steaming south after a convoy more than a hundred miles away. The enemy freighters and their escorts would have got away if the baby flattops hadn't joined the destroyers and cruisers in the South Atlantic.

  "Keep an eye peeled for subs," Swede Jorgenson warned as the Josephus Daniels picked up speed. The new gun chief added, "Be just like the limeys to have a couple traveling with the convoy just to fuck us over."

  Even though the destroyer escort had its fancy new hydrophone, that struck George as good advice. He scanned the blue water for a telltale periscope. Maybe it wouldn't help, but it sure couldn't hurt. He didn't want to die the way his father had. He didn't want to die at all, but especially not that way.

  Fighters and dive bombers streaked off the escort carriers. These new carriers didn't seem to have torpedo airplanes aboard. Scuttlebutt said the brass had decided they were sitting ducks, and dive bombers could do the job better.

  Reaching the enemy convoy took a while. The Oahu and the Irish Sea slowed down the rest of the U.S. ships. The baby flattops were no faster than any of their predecessors. "Snails with flight decks," Jorgenson said scornfully.

  "Yeah, but they're our snails with flight decks," George answered, and the crew chief grinned at him.

  "Now hear this! Now hear this!" Lieutenant Zwilling said over the PA system. "Our aircraft report one enemy destroyer sinking and one on fire. The convoy is breaking up in flight. That is all." That was plenty to set sailors slapping one another on the back.

  They steamed on. Then the Josephus Daniels and another destroyer escort pulled away from the ships that still stayed with the airplane carriers. "Something's going on," Jorgenson said.

  "Do you think so, Sherlock?" Marco Angelucci said. The new shell-jerker laughed to take any sting from the words.

  "Wish the exec or the skipper would tell us what," George said.

  He'd hardly spoken before Zwilling came on the PA again. "We are in pursuit of a pair of enemy freighters that broke north from the pack of ships in the convoy. Our purpose is the capture or incapacitation of these vessels."

  "Boy, the skipper wouldn't talk like that," Jorgenson said.

  "No kidding," George said. "He'd say something like, 'We're after two of the bastards who're trying to get away. We'll take 'em or sink 'em.'"

  The gun chief nodded. "Wonder how come the exec doesn't talk like that."

  "'Cause he talks through his ass instead of his mouth?" Angelucci suggested.

  When the ship swung farther east, George wondered why. Was a U.S. airplane shadowing the freighters and wirelessing their moves back to the Josephus Daniels? That was the only thing that made sense to him.

  Then he let out a catamount whoop. His finger stabbed toward the horizon. "Smoke!" he yelled.

  Before long, the freighter making the smoke spotted the exhaust spewing from the Josephus Daniels' funnels. The other ship sheered away, trying to run. The destroyer escort was slow for a warship, but had no trouble overhauling her. The four-incher in the forward turret boomed, sending a shot across her bow. A moment later, the Argentine flag came down from the staff at the stern. Sailors along the rail waved whatever white rags and scraps of cloth they could get their hands on.

  "We've got her!" Sam Carsten's voice boomed from the PA. "We're going to put a prize crew aboard her and take her back up to the USA. Whatever she's carrying, better we have it than the damn limeys."

  "A prize crew?" Jorgenson laughed out loud. "That's something right out of pirate-ship days. I wonder if the guys still get a share of what she's worth."

  "Is that what they used to do?" George asked. "How do you know about that old-time stuff?"

  "There's this limey writer, or I guess maybe he's an Irishman. Anyway, his name's C. S. O'Brian. He writes about fighting Napoleon like you're there. You think swabbies got it bad now, you oughta read what it was like way back when."


  "Loan me one," George said, and Jorgenson nodded.

  Lieutenant Zwilling came down from the bridge to choose the prize crew. A chief came with him, to serve out submachine guns to the men he picked. If the sailors on the freighter-her name was the Sol del Sud-tried getting cute, they'd be sorry.

  "All old shellbacks," George remarked as the sailors crossed to the Sol del Sud.

  "You noticed that, too, eh?" Jorgenson said. Now George nodded. On one level, it made sense; men who'd crossed the Equator before likely had more experience than men who'd been polliwogs only a few days earlier. But wasn't the exec taking off men who'd given him a hard time when he was getting initiated? It sure looked that way to George.

  As soon as the boats came back from the captured freighter, the Josephus Daniels hurried off after the other ship she'd been assigned. "Damn lumbering scow couldn't've got far," George said.

  She hadn't. Before long, smoke came over the southeastern horizon. Again, the destroyer escort had no trouble running her down. Again, a shot crashed across her bow. She was the Tierra del Fuego, by looks a near twin to the Sol del Sud, but her captain seemed more stubborn. Another shot from the four-incher thundered past her, this one just in front of her bridge. "Next one we'll hit you with!" Carsten thundered over the PA. The Tierra del Fuego struck her colors.

  Lieutenant Zwilling pointed at George. "Enos, go aboard her," he snapped. The CPO handed George a tommy gun and several drums of ammo.

  George said the only thing he could: "Aye aye, sir." Maybe they'd take her back to Boston. He could hope so, anyhow. But yeah, the exec was clearing the destroyer escort of the people who'd had too good a time when he suffered with the other polliwogs.

  One of the rubber-breasted mermaids and King Neptune himself were also in the prize crew: the CPO held command. When George told Becker what was going on, he shrugged and said, "I bet you're right, but I don't care. Zwilling ain't as smart as he thinks he is. I bring this baby in all right, maybe I go up through the hawse hole like the skipper. Only chance I got-I sure as hell can't pass the goddamn exam. Lord knows I've tried."