crisply, 'but we can still use the gun.'
'So I gather.' Grady looked at the bodies. His rabbity features stayed expressionless; he'd seen his share of bodies before. After a moment's thought, he nodded briskly. 'All right, Carsten, this is your gun for the time being. I'll get you shell-heavers. We'll clean up this mess and get on with the job.'
Another shell from the shore splashed into the Irish Sea, close enough to the Remembrance to send some water through the hole the hit had made in the sponson's armor. Sam said, 'Sir, if we can use a couple of aeroplanes to shoot up that gun and its crew, our life will get easier.'
Even as he spoke, one of the Wright fighting scouts buzzed off the deck of the aeroplane carrier, followed a moment later by another and then another. Commander Grady said, 'You aren't the only one with that idea, you see.'
'Never figured I would be,' Sam answered, not altogether truthfully. All his time in the Navy had taught him that officers often had trouble seeing things that should have been obvious.
Grady pointed to two of the ratings with him. 'Drinkwater, you and Jorgenson stay here and jerk shells. Carsten, can Wesley cut the mustard as a loader?'
'Sir, if we fired with a two-man crew, we'll sure as hell do a lot better with four,' Sam answered. Calvin Wesley shot him a grateful glance. Loader would be a step up for Wesley, as crew chief was a step up for Sam. Sam wished he hadn't earned it like this, but, as was the Navy way, nobody paid any attention to what he wished.
Grady pointed to the dead meat that had been Willie Moore and Joe Gilbert. 'Get these bodies out of here,' he ordered the men he hadn't appointed to the gun crew. 'We've already spent too much time here.'
As the sailors dragged the corpses out of the sponson, Sam took what had been Willie Moore's spot. The chief of a gun crew had an advantage denied the rest of the men-he could see out whenever he chose: through the vision slit, through the range-finder, and now through the hole that would, when time allowed, no doubt have a steel plate welded over it.
Sam peered southwest, toward the shore half a dozen miles away. The fighting scouts the Remembrance had launched were buzzing around something. A flash told Carsten it was the gun that had fired on his ship. The shell fell astern of the aeroplane carrier.
He twisted the calibration screw on the rangefinder and read out the exact distance to the target: 10,350 yards. Willie Moore had known without having to think how far to elevate the gun for a hit at that distance. Sam didn't. He glanced at a yellowing sheet of paper above the vision slit: a range table. Checking the elevation, he saw the gun was a little low, and adjusted it. Then he traversed it ever so slightly to the left.
'Fire!r he shouted. He'd given the order before, with only Calvin Wesley in the sponson with him, but it seemed more official now. If he fought the gun well, it might be his to keep.
Wesley let out a yelp as the shell casing just missed mashing his instep. But when one of the new shell- heavers handed him the next round, he slammed it home in good style.
'You want to mind your feet,' Sam said, traversing the gun a little farther on its track. 'You can spend some time on crutches if you don't.' He turned the screw another quarter of a revolution. 'Fire!'
He spied another flash in the same instant as his own gun spoke. The shell the pro-British rebels launched was a near miss. At the range at which he was fighting, he could not tell whether he'd hit or missed. But the gun on the shore did not fire again. Either his shell had silenced it, one from a different five-incher had done the trick, or the aeroplanes from the Remembrance had exterminated the crew.
He didn't waste time worrying over which was so. As long as the Irish rebels couldn't hurt the Remembrance any more, he was free to go back to what his gun had been doing before the ship came under fire: pounding Belfast to bits. Sooner or later, the rebels would figure out they couldn't win the war against their more numerous opponents-and against the might of Germany and the United States. If they needed help figuring that out, he would gladly lend a hand.
The shell-heavers were just hired muscle, big men with strong backs. Calvin Wesley did his new job well enough, though Sam knew he'd done it better himself. He shrugged. Willie Moore would have handled the gun better than he was doing it. Experience counted.
'Only one way to get it,' he muttered, and set about the business of acquiring as much as he could.
Roger Kimball's heart thumped with anticipation as he knocked on the hotel-room door. He'd met Anne Colleton this way whenever she'd let him. Once, she'd opened the door and greeted him naked as the day she was born. Her imagination knew no bounds. Neither did his own appetites.
With a slight squeak, the door opened. The figure in the doorway was not naked. It was not Anne Colleton, either. Kimball's heart kept pounding just the same. Vengeance was an appetite. too, as Anne would have agreed in a flash. 'Welcome to Charleston, Mr. Featherston,' Kimball said.
'Thank you kindly, Commander Kimball,' Jake Featherston answered. The words were polite enough, but he didn't sound kindly, not even a little bit. And he bore down on Kimball's title in a way that was anything but admiring. But, after he stood aside to let Kimball come in, his tone warmed a little: 'I hear tell I've got you to thank for whispering my name into Miss Colleton's ear. It's done the Party good, and I won't say anything different.'
That was probably why he'd agreed to see Kimball. Did he recall the dismissive telegram he'd sent down to Charleston? He must have; he had the look of a man who remembered everything. Kimball didn't intend to bring it up if Featherston didn't As for whispering Featherston's name into Anne Colleton's ear… well, mentioning it on the telephone was one thing, but when Anne let him get close enough to whisper in her ear, he had other things to say.
'Want a drink?' Featherston asked. When Kimball nodded, the leader of the Freedom Party pulled a bottle out of a cabinet and poured two medium-sized belts. After handing Kimball one glass, he raised the other high. 'To revenge!'
'To revenge!' Kimball echoed. That was a toast to which he'd always drink. He took a long pull at the whiskey. Warmth spread from his middle. 'Ahh! Thanks. That's fine stuff.'
'Not bad, not bad.' Jake Featherston pointed to a chair. 'Set yourself down, Kimball, and tell me what's on your mind.'
'I'll do that.' Kimball sat, crossed his legs, and balanced the whiskey glass on his higher knee. Featherston seemed as direct in his private dealings as he was on the stump. Kimball approved; nobody diffident ever commanded a submersible. 'I want to know how serious you are about going after the high mucky-mucks in the War Department.'
'I've never been more serious about anything in my life.' If Featherston was lying, he was damn good at it. 'They made a hash of the war, and they don't want to own up to it.' Something else joined the anger that filled his narrow features, something Kimball needed a moment to recognize: calculation. 'Besides, if the Freedom Party Congressmen keep asking for hearings and the Whigs and the Radical Liberals keep turning us down, who looks good and who looks bad?'
Slowly, Kimball nodded. 'Isn't that pretty?' he said. 'It keeps the Party's name in the papers, too, same as the passbook bill did.'
'That's right.' The calculation left Featherston's face. The anger stayed. Kimball got the idea that the anger never left. 'Niggers haven't gotten half of what they deserve, not yet they haven't. And even the nigger-loving Congressmen up in Richmond now won't stop us from giving it to 'em.'
'Bully.' Roger Kimball's voice was savage. 'When the uprising started, they kept my boat, the Bonefish, from going out on patrol against the damnyankees. Instead, I had to sail up the Pee Dee and pretend I was a river gunboat so I could fight the stinking Reds.'
'I knew they were going to rise up,' Featherston said. 'I knew they were going to try and kick the white race right in the balls. And when I tried to warn people, what did I get? What did the goddamn War Department give me? A pat on the head, that's what. A pat on the head and a set of stripes on my sleeve they might as well have tattooed on my arm, on account of I wouldn't get 'em off till Judgment Day. That's what I got for being right.'
His eyes blazed. Roger Kimball was impressed in spite of himself, more impressed than he'd thought he would be. He'd known how Featherston could sway crowds. He'd been swayed in a crowd himself. He'd expected the force of the Freedom Party leader's personality to be less in a personal meeting like this. If anything, though, it was greater. With all his heart, he wanted to believe everything Jake Featherston said.
Kimball had to gather himself before he could say, 'You don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, though. The War Department could do the country some good, once the dead wood got cleared out.'
'Yeah, likely tell,' Featherston jeered. 'Best thing that could happen to the War Department would be blowing
