'Last week down in Providence, this shithead showed up in a lieutenant commander's uniform-he'd rolled the officer in an alley behind a bar. He blew up two guards-poor bastards-but he didn't get to the ships, and that's what counts.'
'Story didn't make the news,' George said.
'No-I guess they sat on it,' the guard replied. 'But one of the guys who bought a plot was my brother-in-law's best friend since they were kids. I knew Apple a little bit myself. He was a good guy.'
'Apple?' George had heard a lot of nicknames, but that was a new one on him.
'Like a baby's arm holding one,' the Marine explained. 'Be some sad broads around, I'll tell you. Now pass on through.'
Finding the Oregon was easy enough. George looked for the biggest damn ship tied up at any of the piers, and there she was: a mountain of steel bristling with guns of all sizes, up to the dozen fourteen-inchers of her main armament. She could smash anything that came within twenty miles of her-but, in these days of airplane carriers, how many enemy ships were likely to?
George shrugged; that wasn't his worry. He went up the gangplank and paused at the end. Catching the officer of the deck's eye, he said, 'Permission to come aboard, sir?'
The OOD was a lieutenant. George had had a two-striper for a skipper before. 'Granted,' the name said. He poised pen and clipboard. 'And you are…?'
'George Enos, sir.'
The officer checked him off the list. 'You're new, then,' he said, and George nodded. The OOD went on, 'What was your previous duty? And your battle station?'
'I was on a destroyer escort, sir-the Josephus Daniels. My battle station was loader on a 40mm mount. When they ordered me to duty here, they said that was where you'd put me.' He knew the powers that be would do whatever they damn well pleased, but he'd got his druthers in. 'I can do just about anything if I have to. I was a fisherman before the war, and I came back to the USA in the prize crew of a freighter we took in the South Atlantic.'
'Uh-huh. You realize we can check all this?'
'Yes, sir. It's all in my jacket, anyway.' George wasn't talking about clothes, but about the paperwork any sailor carried with him.
'Uh-huh,' the OOD said again. Then he turned and called, 'Caswell!'
'Yes, sir?' A petty officer materialized behind him.
'Here's Enos. Put him on the number-three 40mm mount-he's a loader. Show him where he's supposed to go for general quarters and where he can sling his hammock.'
'Aye aye, sir. Come on, Enos.' Caswell had a thin, clever face and cold gray eyes. George didn't think getting him mad was a good idea. You'd pay for it, and you'd keep on paying, maybe for years.
He didn't want to get the senior rating mad at him any which way. 'Show me where to go and what to do, and I'll go there and do it,' he said. He'd hoped for a bunk, given the size of the battlewagon, but he could live with a hammock. It wasn't as if he hadn't had one before…and the Oregon would carry a much bigger crew than the Josephus Daniels did, too.
Caswell took him to his battle station first. That he still had his duffel slung over his shoulder seemed to mean nothing to the petty officer. Caswell wasn't carrying anything himself, after all. George could see right away that the 40mm mounts on the Oregon's deck were added long after the ship was built. That was no surprise; every warship these days piled on as much AA as she could without capsizing. The number-three mount was on the port side, well forward.
George eyed the awesome bulk of the two triple fourteen-inch turrets not far away. 'What's it like when they go off?' he asked.
'Loud,' Caswell said, and said no more. No shit, George thought. That boom would probably blow the fillings out of your teeth, and maybe the hair off your head. He didn't want to think about the big guns going off when he had a hangover. If that didn't kill you, you'd wish it would.
He looked up and down the deck. Yeah, there was a lot of antiaircraft: 40mms, and.50-caliber and.30-caliber machine guns as well. And the five-inch guns of the secondary armament could fire AA rounds, too. 'Anybody bores in on us, we can make him mighty unhappy,' he remarked.
'We better,' the petty officer replied. 'We fuck up once, we're toast.' That was nothing but the truth. A well- placed bomb could sink even this floating, fighting fortress. Caswell lit a cigarette. He didn't offer George one, but he did say, 'Come on. I'll take you below.'
There were bunks on the Oregon. But there were also lots of hammocks. Since George was a new fish here, his getting one was no man-bites-dog story. The sailors on either side of him seemed good enough guys-a hell of a lot friendlier than Caswell, that was for sure.
'Give me the straight skinny,' George said to one of them, a broad-shouldered man who went by Country. 'Is she a madhouse or is she a home?'
'She's a home…mostly.' Country's harsh Midwestern accent said he hadn't grown up near the sea.
'Mostly? When do things go wrong?'
The other sailor tipped him a wink. 'You'll find out,' he said, and that was all George could get out of him.
L ieutenant-Colonel Jerry Dover looked around at the latest place his supply dump had come to rest. He looked at Pete, who'd done a hell of a lot of retreating with him. 'From Edwardsville to Albertville,' Dover said. 'Reckon that'd make a good title for my memoirs when I write 'em up?'
'For your what?' The quartermaster sergeant gave him a blank look. 'This Albertville place don't look like it's good for squat.'
'It's bigger than Edwardsville,' Dover said. Pete couldn't very well argue. Edwardsville had had only a couple of hundred people in it. Albertville, northwest of the other town-on the road to Huntsville, in other words-had three, maybe even four, thousand. It boasted a cotton gin and a cotton mill and a cottonseed-oil plant and a cornmeal mill. The local high school bragged about how it trained future farmers.
While Pete didn't argue, he didn't seem much impressed, either. 'Horseshit's bigger'n dogshit, too, but shit's still shit, you ask me.' He pulled out a pack of Raleighs. With Kentucky and Tennessee lost, with North Carolina cut off from Alabama, even good tobacco was getting scarce. Seeing Dover's longing expression, he gave his superior a smoke and a light. After his drag, he added, 'And the Confederate States are in deep shit right now, and that's the God's truth.'
'You think I'm gonna pat you on the ass and go, 'No, no, everything's fine,' you're out of your tree,' Dover answered. 'They're already knocking Birmingham flat. If we lose Huntsville, too…'
'We're fucked,' Pete finished for him. 'Without the rockets, we can't do anything against the damnyankees.'
'Yeah.' Jerry Dover smoked in quick, worried puffs. 'If Birmingham and Huntsville go, what's left? New Orleans and Little Rock and Texas. God Himself couldn't lick the USA with New Orleans and Little Rock and Texas, and I bet He wouldn't be fool enough to try. Which is more than I can say for Jake Featherston.'
Pete looked around nervously. 'Jeez, sir, careful how you talk. You seen how many soldiers they've hanged from trees with DEFEATIST around their necks?'
'They won't hang me-or you, either,' Dover said. 'We're still doing our jobs-and we're doing 'em pretty goddamn well, too. That's a hell of a lot more than most people can say-including the President. Wasn't either one of us who lost Richmond.'
'He says we'll get it back,' Pete said.
'Freedom!' Dover replied-without a doubt, the most sardonic Party salutation in the history of the CSA. In one politically safe word, he called everybody who'd ever believed anything Jake Featherston said an idiot. He'd believed some of those things himself-not all of them, but some-so he knew he was an idiot, too.
Pete cocked his head to one side, like a bird dog taking a scent. 'Firing's picking up at the front.'
Jerry Dover listened, too. 'Shit. You're right. Yankees are laying down more artillery than they've used for a while. If that doesn't mean another push is on its way…'
'Can't afford many more,' Pete said.
'Any more,' Dover corrected. 'If they start shelling Huntsville and bombing it, how's it going to keep doing what it's got to do?'
