American Front gw-1 Read online

  As if to underscore his words, a high-pitched buzzing, as if from a gnat made suddenly bigger than any eagle, rose from the bow of the Dakota. Sam stopped what he was doing and looked that way. The buzz rose in volume, then steadied. It was followed by an enormous hiss that might have come from an outsized snake alarmed at the outsized gnat. A rattling and clattering unlike any found in nature accompanied the hiss.

  The compressed-air catapult threw the aeroplane off the deck of the Dakota. Inside a space of fifty feet, it had accelerated the flying machine up past forty miles an hour, plenty fast enough for the aeroplane to keep on flying and not fall into the Pacific.

  Carsten stood for a moment, watching the aeroplane gain altitude. He shook his head in bemusement. It was such a flimsy thing, wood and canvas and wire, a mere nothing when measured against the armour plate and great guns of a battleship. But if it spotted the enemy where the bulge of the earth still hid them from the Dakota, it made a formidable tool of war in its own right.

  Up at the bow, the catapult crew were taking their toy apart and stowing it so it wouldn't be in the way if the guns of the Dakota had to go into action. That didn't take long. They had an interesting job up there, and people seemed to fuss more about aeroplanes with every passing month.

  "People can fuss all they want," Sam said. "Let's see an aeroplane sink a ship. Then I'll sit up and take notice. In the meantime, guns are plenty good enough for me."

  He worked away for a while. Then horns blared and voices started shouting through megaphones. Sam sprinted toward the forward starboard sponson, one running sailor among hundreds. " Battle stations!" officers and senior ratings shouted, over and over again. "Battle stations!"

  When he was working out in the open, Carsten hadn't too much minded the warm, muggy air. He would have enjoyed it, had the sun not pounded down on him. Down below in the sponson, the sun wasn't baking him. In that hot, cramped place, though, he felt as if he were being steamed like a pot of beans in the galley.

  "This the real thing?" he asked Hiram Kidde.

  The gunner's mate shrugged. "Damned if I know," he answered. "Could be, though. That new wireless they've put on board the aeroplanes, it lets 'em pass on the news before they come back to us."

  "Yeah," Carsten said. "Wish we would have had a set like that last year, when we were steaming for the Sandwich Islands. Would have come in mighty handy, spying out the harbour and everything."

  Kidde nodded. "Sure would. But the new aeroplanes got bigger engines, so they can carry more'n the ones we brought with us last year, and the new wireless sets are lighter than the ones they had then, too."

  "Things keep changing all the damn time." Carsten could not have said for sure whether that was praise or complaint. "Hell, one of these days, 'Cap'n,' maybe even battleships'll be obsolete."

  "Not any time soon." Kidde set an affectionate hand on the breech of the five-inch gun whose master he was. But then he looked thoughtful. "Or maybe you're right. Who the devil can say for sure? You're just a pup; the way it looks to you, the Navy hasn't changed a whole hell of a lot since you've been in. Me, though, I joined in 1892. An armored cruiser nowadays'd run rings around what they called battleships back then, and blow 'em to hell and gone without breaking a sweat. You look back on things, they ain't the same as they used to be. Nobody ever heard of aeroplanes when I joined up, that's for damn sure. So who really does know what things'll look like twenty, thirty years from now?"

  "I was thinking about aeroplanes when we launched ours," Carsten said.

  "Probably thinking when you should have been working," Kidde said with a laugh-he'd been in the Navy a long time, all right.

  "Who, me?" Sam answered, drolly innocent. Kidde laughed again. Carsten went on, "I was thinking how good they were for spotting, but that they couldn't really do anything to a ship. What you're saying, though, makes me wonder. If their engines keep getting bigger, maybe they'll be able to haul big bombs or even torpedoes one of these days."

  "Yeah, maybe." Kidde frowned. "I wouldn't like to be on the receiving end of something like that, I tell you. Torpedoes from submersibles, they pack more punch than a twelve-inch shell, even if they don't have the range. But you can outrun a submersible. You can't outrun an aeroplane."

  "You can shoot an aeroplane down, though, a lot easier than you can get at a submersible when it's under the water," said Luke Hoskins, sticking an oar into the conversation.

  Before either Hiram Kidde or Sam could answer the other shell-heaver, the all-clear sounded. Carsten let out a sigh of relief. "Nothing but a drill," he said.

  "Got to treat it like the real thing, though," Kidde replied. "You never can tell when it's gonna be."

  Despite the all-clear, the gun crew stayed at their station till the starboard gunnery officer poked his head into the sponson and dismissed them. Carsten went back to the upper deck at about a quarter of the speed at which he'd run to his gun. When you'd just wondered whether you were about to go into battle, fighting rust didn't seem so important any more.

  A couple of hours after the all-clear was given, the aeroplane splashed down into the water not far from the Dakota. Before long, the battleship's crane hauled it out of the Pacific, only a few feet away from where Sam was working. He waved to the pilot as the fellow came level with the upper deck of the ship.

  The pilot waved back, a big grin on his face. "Always good to come home," he called. "Gets lonesome out there when all you can see is ocean."

  "I believe it." As far as Carsten was concerned, you had to be crazy to go up there in one of those contraptions in the first place. If your engine quit when you were a hundred miles from anywhere, what did you do? Oh, maybe you could send a wireless message for help, and maybe they'd find you if you did, but did you want to count on that? Not so far as Sam could see, you didn't. The ocean was a hell of a big place; five years' sailing on it had taught him that. An aeroplane bobbing in the chop wasn't even a flyspeck on its immensity.

  Not long after the aeroplane was hauled out of the ocean, one of the cruisers with the fleet, the Avenger, sent up a kite balloon. As always, the hydrogen-filled canvas bag put Sam in mind of an outsized frankfurter that had escaped its roll and floated up into the sky. From his distance, he couldn't see the cable that moored the balloon to its mother ship. He had a hard time making out the wicker basket that held the observer below the balloon and the wind cups that stabilized the gasbag as an ordinary kite's tail did for it.

  Fleet orders were to have either an aeroplane or a kite balloon aloft as nearly continuously as possible. Balloons, of course, couldn't fly away from the U.S. ships the way aeroplanes could, but, floating four thousand feet above the fleet, could see a lot farther than lookouts on even the tallest observation masts.

  The fellow up there had a telephone link to the Avenger. If he spotted any thing, he'd pass on the news and they'd haul him down as fast as they could. A kite balloon would stay up fine at cruising speed. You couldn't keep it up, though, if you needed to go flat out, the way you did when you had a battle to fight.

  Carsten was glad to watch the sausage floating up there. It felt like a life insurance policy to him. If the Royal Navy or the Japanese spotted the Americans before the U.S. fleet saw them, that meant trouble, big trouble. You wanted to be in position to do what you intended to do, and do it first. What had happened at Pearl Harbor would have taught that to anyone foolish enough to doubt it.

  Sam waved to the balloonist, as he had to the aeroplane pilot. Unlike the pilot, the balloonist didn't see him. That was all right. The balloonist had more important things to look for than one friendly sailor.

  "And you know what?" Carsten muttered to himself. "I hope to God he doesn't see any of them."

  George Enos peered out over the rail of the Mercy at the broad Atlantic all around. The Mercy flew not only the Confederate flag but also that of the Red Cross. It also had the Red Cross prominently displayed on white squares to port and starboard. Any submarine that got a good look at it
would, with luck, sheer off.

  With luck. Those were the key words. With luck, the Swamp Fox never would have spotted the Ripple in the first place, and Enos' ordeal in Confederate prison camps wouldn't have started. He hoped his luck was better now than it had been then.

  There, in the east-not a star, but a plume of smoke. He turned to Fred Butcher and said, "That's the Spanish ship-I hope."

  "Yeah, I hope so, too," the Ripple's mate answered. "If it's not a Spanish ship, then it belongs to… somebody else." In these waters, somebody else might be the USA or Germany or England or France or the Confederate States. Maybe whoever it was would let the Mercy go on its way anyhow- ships from other nations performed similar duties, and wanted to keep reciprocal good treatment-but maybe it wouldn't, too.

  "They were saying, before we set out, that ships from Argentina don't go into the open waters of the North Atlantic any more," Enos said. "They scurry across to Dakar in Africa where the ocean's narrowest, and then hug the coast the rest of the way up to England."

  " England would starve without that Argentine grain and beef," Butcher said. "I wish they would starve, but we can't get at those ships, not way the hell out there we can't."

  Charlie White came over and stood with his crewmates. George leaned across Fred Butcher and slapped him on the shoulder. "Bet that smoke looks even better to you than it does to me," he said.

  The Negro nodded. "I don't care if that's the neutral ship to take us home to the USA or a cruiser that's going to sink us," he said. "Either way, it's better off than

  being a colored fellow down in the CSA."

  He was a lot skinnier than he had been when they were captured. Somehow, his rations had never come out quite right-and the Confederates had worked him harder than any white detainee. All that was supposed to be against the rules, which didn't keep it from happening.

  In a musing voice, White went on, "Isn't a whole lot of fun being a Negro in the USA, either. But now I know the difference between bad and worse, I tell you that for a fact."

  "I believe it," Enos said. He peered across the ocean again. Now he could see a ship out there, not just smoke. It looked slow and boxy, not like a steam-powered shark. "That's a freighter-and I think that means it's the Spanish ship."

  Closer and closer came the ship to the Mercy. Not only did it fly a huge Spanish flag, it also had Spain 's red-and-gold flag painted on its flanks, the same way the Mercy bore the Red Cross. It looked gaudy, but that was better than looking like a juicy target.

  An officer in the dark gray of the Confederate Navy shouted, "Detainees, line up by the boats for exchange!"

  Along with the other crewmen from the Ripple and several dozen more U.S. sailors captured by Confederate submersibles, commerce raiders, and warships, George Enos hurried to take his place by a lifeboat. The officer, who had a list on a clipboard, went down the line of men, checking off names. He had to ask George who he was, but needed to put no such question to Charlie White, who stood behind Enos. "All right, nigger," he said, drawing a thick, black line through White's name, "we're rid of you. Got rid of your great-granddaddy a while ago, and now we're rid of you. What do you think of that?"

  "Sir," Charlie White said (even angry, he was polite), "since you ask, sir, I think that when my grandfather-that's who it was-ran away from Georgia, he knew what he was doing."

  The Confederate officer stared at him. George Enos bit his lip. Half of him wanted to cheer Charlie; the other half feared the Negro's outspokenness would queer the exchange for everyone. The officer took a deep breath, as if to shout an order. But then, reluctantly, he shook his head. "If we weren't getting our own back for you, nigger, you'd pay plenty for that," he said, and wrote something next to the name through which he'd just lined. "And you'd better get down on your black knees and pray we don't ever catch you again, you understand me?"

  "Oh, yes, sir," White answered. "I understand that real well." The officer gave him one last glare before continuing down the line.

  "Good for you, Charlie," George whispered when the Rebel was out of earshot.

  "Sometimes your mouth is smarter than your brains, that's all," the cook said.

  At the officer's command, the detainees boarded the boats-all except for poor Lucas Phelps, who was buried down in North Carolina and would never see Boston again. God damn the Rebels, George thought, even as the sailors of the Mercy lowered them to the waters of the Atlantic.

  Swinging down, ropes creaking as they ran through the pulley, Enos felt as if he were on a Ferris wheel. "One thing," he said as he and his fellow sailors started rowing toward the Spanish ship: "we all know how to handle a boat." A couple of men laughed; most just kept on rowing. A couple of Confederates sat, stolid and silent, at the stern: they would row back to the Mercy.

  The Spanish ship-her name was Padre Junipero Serra — loomed up like a gaudily painted steel cliff. Her sailors had hung nets over the side, up which the detainees could scramble. A Spanish officer in a uniform fancy enough to have come out of a comic opera took the names of the sailors as they clambered up on deck and checked them off on a list he held on a clipboard exactly like the one his Confederate counterpart had used.

  When everyone was accounted for, the Spaniard blew a whistle. A line of thin men in shabby clothes came up out of the hold and walked to the Junipero Serra's lifeboats. They look just like us, George thought, and then shook his head-why should that surprise him? Only the sailors' drawls-an accent he heartily hoped never to hear again-said they came from the CSA, not the USA.

  Their names got checked off as meticulously as those of Enos and his comrades had aboard the Mercy. Once the Spanish officer satisfied himself that the count was full, complete, and accurate, the Confederate sailors boarded the boats and were lowered to the sea. A couple of Spaniards sat in each boat, as a couple of Confederates had sat in the boat Enos had helped row here.

  No doubt the Rebels on the Mercy scrutinized their returning detainees as closely as they had the men they were releasing. Some little while went by before they ran up signal flags: ALL PROPER, THANK YOU. Black smoke poured from the Mercy's funnels. Picking up speed, she made a long, slow turn and started back toward her home port.

  "We are going to take you to Nueva Iorque," the Spanish officer said, in English that would have been very good if Enos hadn't needed a couple of seconds to realize he meant New York. That hesitation made him miss a few words: "… have a pilot to take us through the minefields around the city. The minefields of the USA, I mean to say. If we meet a Confederate mine, it is as God wills." He made the sign of the cross. Several U.S. sailors, among them Patrick O'Donnell, the captain of the Ripple, imitated the gesture.

  "I bet there's mines outside of Boston harbour, too, to keep the Rebs and the limeys from getting too close," Fred Butcher said. "World hasn't stood still while we were stuck in that camp."

  George hadn't thought much about that, past getting back to Sylvia and his children. Now he said, "Bet some poor damned fishermen got blown to hell and gone, too, when they hit a mine that wasn't supposed to be where it was."

  Everybody who heard him nodded somberly. That was the way things worked. Fishermen always ended up with the shitty end of the stick.

  A Spanish sailor, working with a few words of English and a lot of dumb show, took the exchanged detainees below decks to their cabins. Enos' would have been small and cramped with two men in it, and it held four. He didn't much care. Except for sleeping, he didn't plan on spending much time there.

  If Charlie White had turned out chow anything like what the Junipero Sena's cooks served up, the Ripple's crew would have lynched him and hung his body on T Wharf as a warning to others. Enos didn't care about that, either. He didn't think he'd starve to death before they got to New York.

  The cigar a Spaniard gave him turned out to be nasty, too. He smoked it anyway, and went up on deck to look around. The Atlantic — what a surprise! — looked the same from the Junipero Serra as it had from the Mercy. In the west,
the sun was going down toward the ocean. Most ships on most oceans these days showed no lights at night: people who noticed them were too likely to be enemies. But the Junipero Serra lit herself up like a Christmas tree. She wanted everyone on both sides of the war to know exactly what she was. The more obvious she made it, the less likely she'd become a target.

  Enos looked around again. He changed his mind. The Atlantic did seem different after all. "I'm going home," he said.

  Irving Morrell stared at the list Lieutenant Craddock had just handed him. "You know, Bill," he said mildly, "I don't have time for this." That made a pretty fair understatement. He'd been promoted to major after winkling the Rebs in south-eastern Kentucky out of their tough hilltop position, and was now heading up the battalion where he'd commanded a company till a couple of weeks before.

  "Sir, I compiled this list on orders direct from the War Department." Craddock could have spoken no more reverently of the Book of Genesis.

  "I understand that," Morrell said, trying for patience. "I handed on the orders myself, if you'll remember. But don't you think getting ready for our next move against the Rebs is more important than a witch hunt?"

  Craddock looked stubborn, sticking out his chin. It was firm as granite, and about as hard. The same, unfortunately, held for the rest of his cranium.

  "Sir, since you asked my opinion, I think rooting out disloyal elements has a very high priority. If our next move against the enemy should fail, it might be on account of"-he lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper-"subversion."

  "Oh, for Christ's sake!" Morrell exploded. "All right, you hunted through the pay records. We have in this battalion"-he glanced down at the list Craddock had given him-"four, count them, four Mormons. Has any one of them ever given the slightest sign of disloyalty?"

  "No, sir," Craddock said. "But you never can tell, not with these people you can't. They looked loyal to the USA, too, till this Deseret rebellion kicked up. They might be laying low."

  "Lying," Morrell corrected absently.