Walk in Hell

the Dakota, Sam Carsten said, “I won’t be sorry to leave the Sandwich Islands, and that’s a fact.” As if to emphasize his words, he rubbed at the zinc-oxide ointment on his nose.

“You’re gonna bake worse before you get better,” Vic Crosetti said with a chuckle. He could afford to laugh; when he baked, he turned brown. “We’re going over the equator, and it don’t get any hotter than that. And besides, it’s heading toward summer down in Chile.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Carsten said mournfully. “Sure as hell, I forgot all about that.” He looked at his hands, which were as red as every other square inch of him exposed to the sun. “Why the devil didn’t the Chileans get into trouble with Argentina six months ago?”

Crosetti poked him in the ribs. “Far as I’m concerned, all this means is, we’re doing pretty well. If we can detach a squadron from the Sandwich Islands to give our allies a hand, we got to figure ain’t no way for the limeys and the Japs to get Honolulu and Pearl away from us.” He paused, then added, “Unless that John Liholiho item tells them exactly what we’ve got and where everything’s at.”

“You know, maybe we ought to send a letter back to the Sandwich Islands when we get to Chile,” Sam said. “About him being a spy, I mean. They’ll rake him over the coals, you bet they will.”

“Yeah, maybe we should do that,” Crosetti said. “Hell, let’s.”

“Reckon you’re right about the other, too, dammit.” Carsten scratched one of his sunburned ears. Did being happy for his country outweigh being miserable at the prospect of still more sunburn? That one was too close to call without doing some thinking.

“Right about what?” Hiram Kidde asked as he came up. Carsten and Crosetti explained. The veteran gunner’s mate nodded. “Yeah, the brass has got to think the islands are ours to keep. We’ve got enough guns and enough soldiers on ’em now that taking ’em away would cost more than the limeys can afford.”

“What about the Japs?” Sam said. “They showed better than I ever figured they could, there in the Battle of the Three Navies.”

“Yeah, I suppose the Japs are a wild card,” Kidde admitted. “But as long as we don’t fall asleep there at Pearl, I expect we’ll be able to take care of them all right.” He studied Carsten. “You’re looking a little down in the mouth. You find a gal in Honolulu you didn’t feel like leaving?”

“Nah, it’s nothing like that, ‘Cap’n,’” Carsten answered. “I was hoping I’d get out of the damn sun for a while, but Vic here just reminded me the seasons do a flip-flop down there.”

Kidde let out an undignified snort. “Old son, that ain’t gonna matter a hill of beans. How long you think we’re going to stay in Valparaiso? Not anywhere near long enough to get to know the senoritas, I bet. Once we refit and refuel there, we’re gonna head south to join the Chilean fleet. I don’t care whether it’s summer or not, your poor, miserable hide won’t burn in the Straits of Magellan.”

Sam considered that. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said happily-so happily that Kidde snorted again.

“Listen, Sam,” he said, “sunburn’s not the only thing that can go wrong with you, you know. We get down there, you’ll find out what kind of a sailor you are. The Dakota’s a good sea boat, and she’s gonna need to be. Down in the Straits, they’ve got waves that’ll toss around a ship as big as this one like she was a wooden toy in a tin tub with a rambunctious five-year-old in it. I’ve made that passage a couple-three times, and you can keep it for all of me.”

“‘Cap’n,’if I start puking, I know it’ll be over sooner or later, no matter how bad I feel while it’s going on,” Carsten said. Ever so gently, he touched his flaming face. “This here sunburn never stops.”

“I’m gonna remember you said that,” Vic Crosetti told him, “and if I ain’t too sick myself, I’m gonna throw it in your face.”

“And if you are that sick, you’ll throw somethin’ else in his face,” Hiram Kidde said. “I’ve done my share of puking down in that part of the world, I’ll tell you. You take a beating there, you and the ship both.”

That made Sam think of something else: “How’s our steering mechanism going to do if we take a pounding like that? The repairs were a pretty quick job.”

Kidde grunted. “That’s a good question.” He laughed without humor. “And we get to find out what the good answer is. Hope we don’t have to do it the hard way.”

“Can’t be any harder than the last time,” Crosetti said. “No matter what Argentina’s got, we ain’t sailin’ straight at the whole British and Japanese fleets-and a damn good thing we ain’t, too, anybody wants to know.”

“Amen,” Sam said solemnly. Hiram Kidde nodded. After a moment’s contemplation, Crosetti crossed himself.

“New York took the next biggest beating in the Battle of the Three Navies after us, now that I think about it,” Kidde said. “Looks like they’re sending what they can most afford to be rid of at the Sandwich Islands.”

“That makes sense to me,” Carsten said. “It probably means they don’t think the Argentines are very good, either.”

“Listen,” Hiram Kidde said positively, “if we fought the goddamn Royal Navy to a standstill, we ain’t gonna play against a tougher team anywhere in the whole damn world-and that includes the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet. The limeys are bastards, but they’re tough bastards.”

Vic Crosetti started to say something-maybe agreement, maybe argument-but klaxons started hooting all over the ship, summoning the sailors to battle stations. Everyone ran, and ran hard. Sam ran as hard as he could. He’d never yet beaten Hiram Kidde to the five-inch gun they both served. Since the two of them were starting from the same place, and since he was younger than Kidde and had longer legs, he thought this was going to be the time.

It wasn’t. Kidde stuck to him like a burr on the deck. Once they went below, the gunner’s mate’s broad shoulders and bulldog instincts counted for more than Sam’s inches and youth. The “Cap’n” shoved men aside, and stuck an elbow in their ribs if they didn’t move fast enough to suit him. He got to the sponson a couple of lengths ahead of Carsten.

The rest of the gun’s crew tumbled in seconds later. “All right, we’re ready,” Luke Hoskins said, his hand on a shell, ready to heave it to Sam. “What do we do now?”

Kidde was peering out of the sponson, which gave a very limited field of view through a couple of slit windows. “I don’t see anything,” he said, “not that that proves one hell of a lot. Maybe somebody here or aboard one of the destroyers heard a submersible through the hydrophones or spotted a periscope.”

“If they’d spotted a periscope,” Sam said, “we’d be making flank speed, to get the hell away from it.” Hoskins and the rest of the shell-heavers and gun-layers nodded emphatic agreement.

But Hiram Kidde spoke in thoughtful tones: “Maybe, maybe not. Remember how that aeroplane decoyed us out of Pearl and into that whole flock of subs? They might be letting us see one so we don’t think they’ve got any more waiting up ahead.”

“Mm, maybe,” Sam said. “Wouldn’t like to charge straight into a pack of ’em, and that’s the Lord’s truth.” His wave encompassed the vast empty reaches of the Pacific. “This isn’t the best place to get torpedoed.”

Hoskins spoke with great authority: “Sam, there ain’t no good place to get torpedoed.” Nobody argued with that, either.

The klaxons stopped hooting. Commander Grady stuck his head into the sponson a moment later. “Good job, men,” the commander of the starboard secondary armament said. “Only a drill this time.”

Luke Hoskins let out a sigh of relief. Sam was relieved, too: relieved and angry at the same time. “Damnation,” he said. “It’s almost like the shore patrol raiding a cheap whorehouse when you’re the next in line. I’m all pumped up and ready, and now I don’t get to do anything.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Kidde said. “Nothing wrong with shore leave in Valparaiso, no sir. Nothing wrong in Concepcion farther south, either. There’s some pretty, friendly-and pretty friendly, too,” he amended, noting his own pause, “senoritas in Chile, and that’s the truth.”

In more than twenty years in the Navy, Kidde had been to just about every port where U.S. warships were welcome-and some where they’d had to make themselves welcome. He had considerable experience in matters pertaining to senoritas, and wasn’t shy about sharing it.

Sam hadn’t been so many places. His working assumption was that he’d be able to find something or other in the female line almost anywhere, though, and he hadn’t been wrong about that very often. So, instead of asking about women, he said, “What’s Valparaiso like?”

“Last time I was there was-let me think-1907, I guess it was,” Kidde answered. “It was beat up then; they’d