Joe Steele Read online

  Something like 40,000 people died when the Luftwaffe hammered it from the skies. Panzers and foot soldiers stormed across the steppe toward the shattered city. They stormed into it. But the Russians defended Trotskygrad block by block, factory by factory, house by house, room by room. Getting in, Hitler discovered, was much easier than clearing the Reds out.

  Hitler had thought he would knock Russia out of the war in a hurry. Well, General Marshall had thought the same thing. Nobody was right all the time. Now the Führer had a much bigger war on his hands than he’d wanted. He had a much bigger war than he could fight by himself, in fact. Romanians and Hungarians and Italians and Slovaks and even a division of Spaniards joined the Wehrmacht in Russia.

  Wehrmacht soldiers, though, had better gear and better training than their allies. (That the Hungarians and Romanians hated each other worse than either hated the Russians didn’t help.) That fall, the Red Army sliced through Hitler’s foreign flunkies in two places and cut off the big German force still grinding away in Trotskygrad.

  Even Joe Steele said, “I commend the Russian Army’s endurance and bravery. This stroke has dealt the Nazis a heavy blow.”

  Vince Scriabin’s comment to Charlie was more cynical: “I wonder how many generals Trotsky shot before the Red Army started doing things right. More than we have here—I guarantee you that.”

  “You’ve got to be right,” Charlie said—if he told Scriabin he was wrong, he’d get shot himself, or at least end up in a labor encampment. He wasn’t saying anything he didn’t believe. Trotsky might have been even more ruthless than Joe Steele, and he’d held on to the reins longer. Charlie added, “I wonder how many Hitler’s gonna shoot now that the Germans aren’t doing so hot.”

  He actually got a smile out of Scriabin. “I like that!” the Hammer said. “I really like that! So will the boss. And I’ll tell him you said it, too. I won’t steal it from you.”

  “I wasn’t worried about it.” Again, Charlie told the truth. If Scriabin did steal his nice line, what could he do? Nothing. Luckily, he had sense enough to see as much.

  “When the boss asked you to come to the White House, I wasn’t sure you’d work out here,” Scriabin said. A sentence like that carried any number of possibilities for disaster. Scriabin had the authority to act on his doubts. Who would miss a reporter-turned-speechwriter? Well, Esther would. Who with any power, though? The question answered itself. But the Hammer went on, “You’ve done all right since you got here. Maybe I was judging you by your brother.”

  “Glad I could be useful.” Charlie left it right there. He didn’t tell Scriabin that Mike had gone from that labor encampment to the Army. Scriabin could find out in seconds if he decided to. If he didn’t feel like finding out . . . Mike was bound to be better off.

  “Useful. Yes.” Scriabin bobbed his head on his thin neck and hurried away. If Charlie was any judge, Joe Steele’s aide had embarrassed himself by acting somewhat like a human being.

  A few days later, American troops under Omar Bradley—another man who’d sat on a tribunal or two—landed in North Africa with the British. They didn’t trap the Germans retreating out of Egypt through Libya so neatly as they planned. Grimly, the Nazis hung on in Tunisia.

  So things weren’t perfect. In his forties now, Charlie didn’t expect or even much hope for perfection. Things could have been worse. For a middle-aged man, that would do.

  XVIII

  In Washington, the war seemed like voices from another room even after more than a year. The Germans surviving in Trotskygrad threw down their guns and surrendered early in 1943. They marched off into Red captivity with their hands clasped on top of their heads. Seeing Russian photos of those glum, dirty, starving men, Charlie wondered how many of them would ever get back to the Vaterland. Precious few, unless he missed his guess.

  For a while, it looked as if the Nazis’ whole position in southern Russia would unravel. But the Führer’s generals still knew what they were doing. They let the Red Army outrun its supplies, then counterattacked. Pretty soon, the Russians, not the Germans, were the ones hoping the spring thaw that stopped operations for weeks would come early. They’d hurt Hitler, but they’d got hurt in turn.

  In the Pacific, Eisenhower’s soldiers and Nimitz’s sailors and Marines won control of the Solomons. It was neither easy nor cheap, but they did it. The Japs fell back in New Guinea, too. Like the Germans, their reach had exceeded their grasp. Now they were finding out what hell was for.

  And in Washington, people grumbled because gasoline for civilians was rationed, tires were hard to get, and you couldn’t buy all the sugar or coffee you wanted. Nobody starved. Nobody went hungry who hadn’t been hungry before the war. Fewer people were hungry these days. With factories open and humming, jobs were easy to get.

  Sarah turned five. Patrick turned one. Charlie wondered how that had happened. He hadn’t aged a day since his first child was born. Eyeing Esther, he was sure no time had passed for her, either. But Sarah would be starting kindergarten in the fall, and Patrick was saying dada and mama and connecting the noises with the people they belonged to.

  Joe Steele’s henchmen in the White House seemed contented if not happy. “A year ago, things looked terrible,” Stas Mikoian told Charlie. “The Germans were going crazy. They were smashing the Russians. They were sinking everything in sight on the Atlantic. Hell, in the Caribbean, too. It looked like they might take the Suez Canal. The Japs were running wild, too. We couldn’t slow ’em down, let alone stop ’em. Neither could England or Holland. The boss was really worried we might lose the war.”

  “It won’t happen now,” Charlie said.

  “Nope. It sure won’t,” Mikoian agreed. He and Scriabin had more gray in their hair than they did when Charlie came to work at the White House. So did Joe Steele. Lazar Kagan didn’t. Charlie suspected him of discreetly touching it up. If he did, though, only his barber knew for sure.

  “How long do you think it’ll take?” Charlie asked, and then answered his own question: “Somewhere between one year and three, I bet. Peace again in 1945 or ’46—maybe ’44 if we get lucky.”

  “That sounds about right,” Mikoian said. “I mean, unless something goes wrong somewhere. All things considered, the war may be hard on the rest of the world, but it’s good for us.”

  “Funny—I was thinking the same thing not long ago,” Charlie said. “When everything’s done, the Japs and the Nazis’ll be knocked flat. The Russians are doing all the dying against Hitler, so they’ll be a while getting back on their feet, too. England can’t fight Germany without us, ’cause we make so much of what she needs. We make what everybody needs, and Hitler and Tojo can’t get at us.”

  Mikoian nodded. He smiled. He had an inviting smile, one that urged you to come and be amused, too. “And the war lets Joe Steele finish getting the country properly disciplined without a bunch of people grousing all the time.”

  “Properly disciplined . . .” Charlie tasted the phrase. “Is that what he calls it these days?”

  “Oh, no. You’ve got to blame me for it. It’s my line,” Stas Mikoian said. “But that’s about the size of it, you know. When the boss took over, everything was a mess. Everybody was screaming at everybody else like a bunch of monkeys in a cage. The government didn’t have the power to do anything.”

  “Hey, c’mon. Only us chickens here, okay?” Charlie said. “When you say the government, you mean the President.”

  “Well, sure.” Mikoian didn’t even try to deny it. “Who else? Congress? What were they but the loudest monkeys around? The Supreme Court? If Joe Steele hadn’t taken care of the Supreme Court, we’d still be screwed up. All they ever said was no. So who does that leave? If the President doesn’t do it, nobody would.”

  “Yes, but if he goes overboard, how do you stop him?” Charlie asked—not the least dangerous question in the White House. He wouldn’t have asked it of Scriabin or K
agan. He sure as hell wouldn’t have asked it of Joe Steele. But he trusted the Armenian—a little bit, anyhow.

  Mikoian smiled again. “I know what’s eating you—your brother went to a labor encampment.”

  “That’s sure some of it,” Charlie admitted.

  “But we need labor encampments. They’re good for discipline, too. They keep people from being stupid. They keep people from being careless. My brother works with Douglas, remember. There were wreckers among the aeronautical engineers, believe it or not.”

  “You’ve said that before, but your brother didn’t get a term,” Charlie said harshly.

  “He could have. If they’d put a case together against him, he would have. Do you think being my brother would have made any difference? You don’t know Joe Steele very well if you do.”

  After Charlie did think about it, he decided Mikoian was right. Anybody could get a term, anybody at all. It was just something that happened, like getting a toothache. “How long do you suppose he’ll be President?” Charlie asked, not quite out of thin air.

  Stas Mikoian looked at him as if he’d come up with a really stupid question. “As long as he wants to be, of course,” the Armenian said. Charlie nodded. That had been a stupid question, sure as hell.

  * * *

  Mike had been in the Army for months now. He still couldn’t decide whether he’d been smart to trade the wrecker’s shabby uniform for the soldier’s sharp one. You had to keep a soldier’s uniform neat. They gave you grief if you didn’t. They gave you grief for all kinds of stuff the Jeebies didn’t give a damn about.

  The thing of it was, the Jeebies were making it up as they went along. The Army had ways of doing things that went back to George Washington’s day. Hell, the Army probably had ways of doing things that went back to Julius Caesar’s day, if not to King Tut’s. And most of those ways of doing things were designed to make sure you did exactly what your superiors told you to do, the second they told you to do it.

  Saluting. Marching. Countermarching. Going through intricate maneuvers on the parade ground, all in perfect step. Keeping your uniform, well, uniform. Making your cot just so, with the sheets tight enough so you could bounce a quarter on them.

  The cot’s mattress was softer than the sawdust-filled burlap sack he’d had in the wintertime—much softer than the bare slats he’d slept on during the summer. It still felt funny, wrong, to him after five years in the labor encampment. He wasn’t the only wrecker who bitched about that—nowhere close.

  He also wasn’t the only wrecker who bitched about the weather. The Army encampment—no, the Army just called them camps—was right outside of Lubbock, Texas. The weather came as much of a shock as the discipline. After five years in the Montana Rockies, he’d forgotten there was weather like this.

  One thing hadn’t changed a bit: they were still behind barbed wire. This was a punishment brigade. The War Department officials who’d created it figured anyone who got stuck in it might light out for the tall timber if he got half a chance.

  As a wrecker, Mike had become a good lumberjack. As a soldier, he became a good killer. He surprised himself by proving a pretty fair shot. They gave him a marksman’s badge. He wore it with more pride than he would have expected. A top sergeant a couple of years older than he was taught bayonet fighting.

  “This is what I learned last time around,” the noncom told his pupils. “I’m gonna work you guys harder than I would with most troops. Places you’re going, things you’ll do, you’ll need it.”

  A younger fellow, a limey who wore his chevrons upside down, taught them the tricks of the trade with a different toy: the entrenching tool. You could, it turned out, do some really horrible things with an entrenching tool, especially if you ground down the edges to get them sharp.

  They marched. They dug foxholes and trenches. They ran. They exercised. They trained against one another. Mike got a scar on his arm blocking a knife thrust that might have gutted him like a trout. Not at all by accident, he broke the other guy’s nose with an elbow a split second later. Then he said, “You fucking jackass.”

  “Ah, your mudder,” the other man said. He didn’t have a speech impediment—only a rearranged snoot.

  They went to the infirmary together. Mike got half a dozen stitches. A doc put the other soldier’s nose back roughly the way it had been before Mike broke it. A couple of burly attendants had to hold the fellow while the doctor attended to it.

  The one thing the punishment brigade didn’t do was go fight the Germans or the Japs. Mike bitched about it to his company CO. Captain Luther Magnusson was a gloomy Swede. He’d been brought back from North Africa in disgrace after getting his company cut up when he gave stupid orders because he was drunk.

  He still drank; Mike could smell it on him while he was complaining. Magnusson’s pale eyes were tracked with red. They could have shot him for screwing up the way he did; Joe Steele’s Army didn’t have many soft spots. Or they could have given him a sledgehammer to make big ones into little ones for the next thousand years.

  Instead, he had one more chance. He would redeem himself or die trying. That was what punishment units were all about. His mouth quirked. “Why do you think they haven’t shipped us out?”

  “I was hoping you’d know, sir,” Mike said. Military courtesy was one more thing they’d drilled into him. “You’ve been in this racket longer than the rest of us.”

  “Yeah, I have, and a hell of a lot of good it’s done me,” Magnusson said. “But I can answer that one. So can you, if you think a minute. You’re no dope, Sullivan—I’ve seen that.”

  “Thanks—I think.” Then Mike did think. He didn’t need long, once he remembered what a punishment brigade was all about. Like Luther Magnusson, they’d all redeem themselves or die trying. Odds were the stress lay on the last three words. “They still haven’t found any place that’s hot enough to make it worth their while to throw us in?” he suggested.

  “I can’t prove a thing, you know, but that’s sure as hell the way it looks to me,” Magnusson said.

  Mike shrugged. “Hey, it’s something to look forward to, right?” He won a chuckle from the dour, disgraced captain.

  * * *

  A troopship packed men together even tighter than the bunks in a labor-encampment barracks. Mike wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but there you were. And here he was, out on the Pacific. A faint whiff of vomit always hung in the air. Some guys’ stomachs couldn’t stand the motion. Mike didn’t think it was too bad, but that distant stink didn’t help his own insides settle down.

  He wore two stripes on his left sleeve, two stripes and a P that announced what kind of outfit he was in. A T under your stripes—or between chevrons and rockers if you were a senior sergeant—meant you were a technician. That P meant you were vulture bait, assuming any of the miserable islands out in the Pacific boasted vultures.

  He didn’t care about being a corporal. Oh, he was modestly pleased they didn’t think he was a screwup. He hadn’t joined the Army just to get out of the labor encampment. He’d joined because he honest to God wanted to fight for the United States in spite of the murderous tyrant infesting the White House.

  But making corporal wouldn’t help him stay alive. That was going to be a matter of luck any which way. He’d need a big dose of it to come out the other side.

  He made a few dollars more every month now, but he wasn’t jumping up and down about that, either. Were things different, he might have sent Stella some money. But things weren’t different. Part of him hoped she’d found somebody else and was happy. Part of him hoped she was sorry she’d dumped him every minute of the day and night.

  Before they’d boarded the train to San Diego, they’d gone into Lubbock for a spree. He’d had about ten minutes with a Mexican-looking gal in a nasty crib—the first time he’d laid a woman since the Jeebies grabbed him. It was—what did they say?—more a cath
arsis than a rapture. Afterwards, he’d clumsily used the pro kit they issued him. Either the hooker was clean or the kit worked. He hadn’t come down with a drippy faucet.

  Every fifteen or twenty minutes, the ship would zigzag to confuse any Jap subs that might be stalking them. More soldiers seemed to throw up when they headed straight into the swells. Waves hitting the bow tossed the ship up and down, up and down. You felt as if your stomach was going up and down, up and down, too.

  They got to Hawaii ten days after they set out. The camp where they stayed was on the island of Maui. Except for the port, it might have been the only thing on the island of Maui. It was the only part of the island the punishment brigade saw, anyhow. A couple of guys had been to Honolulu. They talked with awe in their voices about the chances for debauchery there. On Maui, nobody got so much as a beer.

  The ship took on fuel, food, and fresh water. Then it sailed on, west and south. Every passing minute took the men closer to the time and the place where Uncle Sam—or was it Uncle Joe?—would start using them up. Most of them didn’t seem to care. The poker games started up as soon as the men got back aboard. The dice started rolling, too.

  Mike didn’t gamble much. He lay in his bunk, plowing through paperbacks. He hadn’t had much chance to read in the labor encampment. He was trying to make up for lost time. These cheap little books were great for that.

  It got hotter and stickier every day. When they crossed the Equator, the sailors summoned the soldiers topside and drenched them with fire hoses. King Neptune and his court magically transformed the polliwogs to sturdy shellbacks.

  They disembarked at Guadalcanal. The scars in the jungle were already healing, but the place still looked like hell. They went into an encampment that made the one outside of Lubbock seem like a Ritz-Carlton by comparison.

  There’d been mice in the barracks in Montana. Some of the guys there, with nothing else to give their affection to, had made pets out of them. No mice scurrying over these bunks. There were cockroaches instead: cockroaches almost as big as mice. You couldn’t tame them. All you could do was squash them, and they made a mess when you did.