Breakthroughs

“Worst of it is, they can go right on mounting more machine guns on it, too,” Moss said. “Pretty soon strafing it will be suicide, nothing else.”

“Have to bomb at high altitude, then,” Lieutenant Sprague said. “We’ll need better bombsights for that; we couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with the ones we have now. And the bombers will need more guns, to hold off the foe’s fighting scouts. Regular flying fortresses, that’s what they’ll have to be.”

Moss looked at him in admiration. “You’ve got all the angles figured, don’t you, Charley? Sounds like you’re ready for the next war right now.”

“Poppycock!” Sprague said. “What wants doing is plain enough-plain as the nose on my face, which is saying something.” He touched the member in question, which, though long and thin, was not outstandingly so. “How to get from where we are to where we need to be: ay, there’s the rub.”

“That’s Shakespeare,” Percy Stone said, and Sprague nodded. Stone slapped him on the back. He stiffened slightly, as at an undue familiarity. Either not noticing that or ignoring it, Stone went on, “Good to have you in the flight, by God. First the Bible, now this-you give us a touch of class we sure don’t get from our flight leader here.” He jerked a thumb at Jonathan Moss.

Lieutenant Sprague turned toward Moss, and turned pink at the same time. “Sir, I don’t want to offend or-”

“Don’t worry about it, Charley,” Moss said easily. “I was good enough to bring Percy’s carcass back home when he got himself a puncture a couple of years ago, and now I’m good enough for him to insult. That’s the way the world goes, I guess.”

He made sure Stone understood he was kidding. Both Sprague and Bradley looked worried; they weren’t sure he meant it for a joke till Stone laughed and said, “Well, it’s not like I asked you to do it. I was too busy bleeding for that.”

“I know.” Thinking about what the observer’s cockpit had looked like after he and the groundcrew got Stone out of it made Moss’ stomach do a slow loop. He fought the memory with another gibe: “You gave me so much trouble, I figured you’d make yourself a nuisance to the limeys and the Canucks, too.”

“Indeed.” Charley Sprague trotted out another tag from Shakespeare: “ ‘But when the blast of war blows in our ears, / Then imitate the action of the tiger.’ ”

“I can’t do that, Charley,” Stone said. “I’m not limber enough to lick my own balls.”

All four men from the flight laughed like loons, more because they were young and alive when they could easily have died than because Percy Stone had said anything so very funny. “Come on,” Jonathan Moss said. “Let’s go tell Major Cherney what we did on our summer holiday.”

The squadron commander listened to their report, then said, “I’m glad you’re all back in one piece, but don’t go sticking your heads in the lion’s mouth like that again, and that’s an order.”

“But, sir-” Moss began.

Cherney held up a hand. “No buts, Captain. Even if that ship had no antiaircraft guns at all, you couldn’t sink her or hurt her big guns. Don’t waste yourself on targets like that, not with the war so close to won. Do what you can do. Fight the enemy’s aeroplanes and balloons. Shoot up his men on the ground. If you take on a Great Lakes battleship, you’re fighting out of your weight.”

“But-” Moss said again. Then he remembered Charley Sprague’s words: some of them were better fliers than I was, but they thought they were better than they were, too. And they’d ended up dead, and they hadn’t helped the war effort a bit. Slowly, reluctantly, Moss nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“I’ve been thinking,” George Enos said between gulps of air as he stood beside the one-pounder at the stern of the USS Ericsson after yet another dash to battle stations, this one a drill.

Beside him, Carl Sturtevant was panting more than a little. “Probably won’t do you any lasting harm,” he said, and then, presently, “Yeah? What were you thinking about?”

“That son of a bitch who sank the Cushing yesterday and almost put a fish into us,” Enos answered.

“Yeah, well, I can see how that’d be on your mind,” the veteran petty officer allowed. “So what about it?”

“Whoever the skipper of that boat is, he fights mean,” George answered, to which Sturtevant could only nod. George went on, “He comes at us, and he comes hard, and he doesn’t like to dive deep for hell.”

“That’s all true,” Sturtevant agreed. “Like I said, though, so what?”

“He fights like the skipper who almost sank us before we sank the Bonefish,” Enos persisted. “Whoever he is, whether he’s a limey or a Reb, I don’t think we got him when we got that boat.”

Sturtevant screwed up his face as he thought that over. “That other bastard dove deep and tried to hide after he took a shot at us, didn’t he?” He smacked his lips a couple of times, tasting an idea instead of soup. “Maybe you’ve got something there.” He glanced over toward Lieutenant Crowder, who was talking with another officer. Lowering his voice, Sturtevant said, “You ain’t gonna make him your bosom buddy if you tell him, though.”

“But if I don’t tell him, and we go on doing what we’ve been doing, and he goes on doing what he’s been doing, we’re all liable to end up dead,” Enos said.

Sturtevant didn’t answer. His expression made plain what he was thinking: that Lieutenant Crowder wouldn’t listen even if he did get told. Crowder was convinced he’d sunk the submersible that had come so close to putting the Ericsson on the bottom for good. Telling him otherwise would make him unhappy, which was liable to make George’s life miserable.

Not telling him, though, was liable to make George’s life short. He went over and positioned himself so Lieutenant Crowder would have to notice him sooner or later. It was later, not sooner, but George had been sure it would be. Eventually, the lieutenant said, “You wanted something, Enos?”

George saluted. “Yes, sir,” he said, and proceeded to set out for Crowder the same chain of reasoning as he’d given Carl Sturtevant. As he spoke, he watched Crowder’s face. It was not encouraging. He sighed silently. He hadn’t expected it to be.

When he was through, the officer shook his head. “I don’t believe it for a minute, sailor. That the Rebs or the limeys have put a new boat into this area-that is possible. In fact, it’s more than possible. It’s certain, as recent events have shown. That it would be the boat we battled before-no. We sent that one to the bottom, and that’s where he richly deserves to be.”

“But, sir, the way this fellow operates-” Having begun the effort, George thought he ought to see it through.

Crowder did not give him the chance. “Return to your battle station at once, Enos, or I’ll put you on report.”

“Yes, sir.” Stiff and precise as a steam-powered piece of machinery, George did an about-face and strode back to the one-pounder. Once there, he could look over at Lieutenant Crowder, who’d gone back to talking to the other officer. Enos let out another silent sigh. He really should have known better.

Carl Sturtevant caught his eye. Told you so, the petty officer mouthed. George shaped the beginning of an obscene gesture with a hand his body shielded from Lieutenant Crowder. Sturtevant laughed at him. In spite of that laughter, or maybe because of it, Sturtevant was a pretty good fellow. A lot of petty officers were as stuffy as real officers about ordinary seamen giving them a hard time.

After a couple of minutes to let Crowder get involved in his conversation again, Sturtevant said, “Hell, it probably won’t matter for beans, anyway. Rebs are on their last legs-they’re doing their damnedest to get out of the fight. Pretty soon, it’ll just be us and the limeys, and they won’t last long, either.”

“For all we know, it’s a limey boat we’re talking about. One we sank belonged to the Confederates, yeah, but that’s not the one with the nasty skipper no matter what Lieutenant Crowder thinks.”

“Mm, that’s true,” Sturtevant admitted, “but you’ve got to figure the odds are whoever was patrolling this stretch probably kept right on doing it. It’d be harder to work if things went back and forth between two different countries.”

George thought about that. “All right, you’ve got something there,” he said at last. “Does make sense. If we sank one Rebel boat, that means there’s probably another one prowling around-which means it’s even more likely this is the same skipper who almost got us before.”

“That sounds logical,” Sturtevant said. He nodded over toward Lieutenant Crowder. “You feel like taking another shot at convincing him?”

“No thanks,” Enos answered. “He already knows everything there is to know-and if you don’t believe me, just