shelf in Andersonville and then running around with the black guerrillas.'
'You ought to get some credit for that. It's not like you didn't hurt the Confederates while you were doing it.'
'The war on the ground's an ugly business.' Some of the memories that surfaced in Moss' mind made him finish his drink in a hurry. 'Our war with the CSA is ugly. The one the Negroes are fighting…No quarter on either side there. And what Featherston's fuckers would have done to me for fighting on the Negroes' side-'
'Better not to think about that,' Wyden broke in.
'Yeah. I know. Just staying alive took luck. If the Confederates hadn't had all of their regulars fighting the USA, they would've hunted us down pretty damn quick. Jake should've started in on his blacks sooner, or else left them alone till after the war. Trying to get rid of them at the same time as he was fighting us only screwed him up.'
'He figured he'd whip us quick and then take care of the smokes.' Wyden got outside the last of his drink. 'Tough shit, Eliot.'
For some reason, Moss thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. He started giggling. Nobody in the guerrilla band, not even Nick Cantarella, would have made that kind of joke. Moss hadn't known how much he missed it till he heard it again.
W hen George Enos saw land off the Oregon's port bow, he realized how much the war had changed. That was the coast of North Carolina out there. Even six months earlier, coming so close would have been asking to get blown to pieces. Now some of the big wheels back in Philadelphia thought the Navy could get away with it.
George hoped like hell they were right.
Two battleships, two heavy cruisers, two escort carriers to give them air cover, the usual destroyers and supply ships that accompanied a flotilla: now they were paying a call on the Confederate States. The gamble was that the Confederates couldn't pay a return call on them.
'Listen up, guys,' said Wally Fodor, the chief in charge of George's antiaircraft guns. 'We can put a hell of a lot of shells in the air. No goddamn Asskicker's gonna make a monkey out of us, right?'
'Right!' the gun crew shouted. George didn't know about the other guys, but he was as pumped up as he would have been if he were playing in a big football game. That was for glory and for cash, though. He was playing for his neck here.
Dive bombers roared off the baby flattops' decks. They would send a message to a state that had mostly been shielded from the war ever since it started. U.S. fighters circled overhead. Any Confederate airplanes that tried to visit the flotilla would get a warm reception.
Smoothly, almost silently, the Oregon's forward pair of triple turrets swung so the big guns bore to port. The barrels elevated a few degrees. 'Brace yourselves!' Fodor yelled. He covered his ears with his hands and opened his mouth wide to help equalize the pressure inside his head.
In the nick of time, George did the same. The guns thundered, right over his head. He staggered-he couldn't help it. He felt as if somebody'd dropped a boulder on his noggin. In spite of his precautions, his ears wanted to move to a far country where things like this didn't happen. 'Wow!' he said.
Shore had to be twenty miles away, maybe more. Some little while went by before the distant roar of bursting fourteen-inch shells came back to George's abused ears. He was amazed he heard them-or anything else.
'Good morning, Morehead City!' Wally Fodor whooped.
George imagined people going about their business, probably not even suspecting anything was wrong, when all of a sudden-wham! Fourteen hundred pounds of steel and high explosive coming down on your head could ruin your whole day.
The guns bellowed again. When George reached for his ears this time, it was to see if they were bleeding. They didn't seem to be. He couldn't imagine why not. The other battleship-she was the Maine-was firing, too. Those detonations were just loud. Or maybe his ears were so stunned that nothing this side of cataclysmic really registered.
'Well, if they didn't know we were in the neighborhood before, they damn well do now,' Tom Thomas said. People mostly called the shell-jerker Ditto; George wondered what the devil his parents were thinking of.
More booms said the latest shells were striking home-or maybe those were bombs from the carriers' airplanes. Smoke began to rise from the shore. The cruisers from the flotilla had to get closer to land than the battlewagons before opening up. Their eight-inch main armament didn't have the range of the bigger ships' heavier guns. Before long, they started firing, too.
'This is so neat!' Ditto said. 'Ever think we could get away with shore bombardment?'
'We ain't got away with it yet,' Fodor answered. George Enos was thinking the same thing. But he was the new kid on the block, so he kept his mouth shut. The gun chief went on, 'When we steam out of aircraft range, then I'll be happy. And even after that there's fuckin' subs.'
The main armament fired again. Fired was the word, too. The gouts of flame that shot from the muzzles were almost as long as the gun barrels. If God needed to light a cigar, this was where He'd do it.
Up above the bridge, the Y-ranging antenna spun round and round, round and round. It would spot enemy airplanes on the way in, anyway. How much good that would do…Well, knowing the bastards were coming was better than not knowing they were.
Inshore from the Oregon, not far from the cruisers, a tall column of water suddenly sprang into being. A moment later, another one appeared, even closer to the U.S. warships.
'What the hell?' somebody said. 'Those aren't bombs-we woulda got the word the bombers were loose.'
'They must have shore guns,' Wally Fodor said. 'Soon as we spot the flashes, they're history. And they'll have a bitch of a time hitting us. We can move, but they're stuck where they're at.'
A few more rounds fell near the cruisers. Then, as abruptly as they'd begun, they stopped. Either the Confederates had given up or U.S. gunfire put their cannon out of action. George neither knew nor cared what the right answer was. As long as those guns kept quiet, that suited him fine.
Then the PA system came to life with a crackle of static: 'Now hear this! Now hear this! Enemy aircraft approaching from the north! Expect company in five or ten minutes!'
George's stomach knotted. Here we go again, he thought. He'd had a ship sunk under him; he knew disasters could happen. He didn't want to remember that, but he didn't see how he could help it, either.
'Just like a drill,' Chief Fodor said. 'They haven't got us yet, and we aren't about to let 'em start. Right?'
'Right!' the gun crew shouted again. George was as loud as anybody. How loud he yelled made no difference in the bigger scheme of things, but it wasn't bad if it helped him feel a little better.
Some of the fighters that had been circling over the ships zipped away to see if they could meet up with the intruders before the C.S. airplanes got the chance to intrude. Others held their stations. If the enemy bombers got past the first wave of fighters, they still wouldn't have a free run at the flotilla.
'You've been through this before, right?' Fodor asked George. 'I mean for real, not just for practice.'
'Sure, Chief,' George answered. 'I've got it from the Japs and Featherston's fuckers and the limeys. I don't like it, but I can do it.'
'That's all you need,' the gun chief said. 'I thought I remembered you lost your cherry, but I wanted to make sure.'
Airplane engines scribed contrails across the sky. Their wakes, George thought. But the comparison with ships misled. It wasn't just that airplanes were so much faster. They also moved in three dimensions, not just two like surface ships.
A destroyer's antiaircraft guns started going off. So did the heavy cruisers'. Then George saw a couple of gull-winged ships that looked only too horribly familiar. 'Asskickers!' he yelled, and his wasn't the only cry that rose.
One of the slow, ungainly Confederate dive bombers went down trailing smoke a moment after he shouted. It splashed into the Atlantic a mile or so from the Oregon, and kicked up more water than the shells the coastal guns had fired.
The other C.S. Mule bored in on the battleship. The Oregon heeled in as tight a turn as she could make, but she was large and cumbersome and much less nimble than, say, the Josephus Daniels would have been. That made her action less evasive than George wished it were.
He didn't have much time to worry about it. 'Commence firing!' Wally Fodor shouted. The shell-jerkers started
