1633

by David Weber

  "Ah-huh." Jesse cleared his throat. "Lieutenant, if you're finished amusing Lieutenant Richter, will you take the stick for a minute?"

  "Certainly, sir," Woody said, as he turned a bright pink. "Copilot's aircraft."

  Jesse reached for the radio mike, considering how to tell the others. Hans will need confidence.

  "Two, this is Lead."

  Hans answered promptly enough, "Lead, Two."

  "Ah, Two, I'm going to push up the power. Pull it in a bit and stay with me."

  "Roger, Lead."

  Jesse shook the stick. "Pilot's aircraft."

  "Pilot's aircraft," came the standard acknowledgement. Jesse felt Woody staring at him. The young man was finally starting to realize that something was wrong.

  Thank God, Hans is flying the Deuce, thought Jesse, as he pushed the throttle up. More than enough power to keep up. He's gonna need it.

  With the throttle near redline, Jesse watched the airspeed climb and settle at about 110 knots. Where the hell are we? At least, Hans is hanging in there.

  "Woody?" Jesse looked over at his copilot.

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Take the stick for a minute, will you? Stay on this heading and keep your eyes peeled for Lake Schwerin, okay?"

  Jesse picked up his whiz wheel and forced himself to concentrate, to not look out to the west. Assume the wind has blown us, what? Twenty miles east. At a 110 indicated, we must be going . . . Christ, Jesse, this is just guesswork.

  Slowly, deliberately, Jesse reached up and carefully wound the clock on the instrument panel. He tapped the wheel against his teeth and stared at the white clouds below. Referring to the computer again, he made some calculations, checked them, and nodded to himself.

  "Woody, turn ten degrees left to a heading of three-four-five degrees."

  "Roger, three-four-five."

  There was no talking now and Jesse realized that Woody was staring at the wall of clouds off to the left. Probably Hans and Sharon, too. A glance in the mirror told Jesse the storm had curled behind them.

  No going back now. Time passed slowly, as they raced for the coast. The white undercast stretched endlessly before them. Curiously, Jesse felt calm, as if the bet had been made and he was just waiting for the results of the game. He spent the time thinking about how to get down.

  How deep is it? he considered. Maybe all the way down to the ground, but if that's true, who gives a shit? Okay, so there's a ceiling down there, somewhere. Can Hans fly formation in the soup? No formation lights. He's good. But how good? How good are you?

  Jesse rubbed his chin, looked up and stared at the storm, a moving juggernaut looming closer.

  Come and get us, you bastard. If you can.

  He noted the time and checked his kneeboard. Time to go down. He picked up the mike.

  "Two, Lead. Hans, bring her up the reference line into fingertip. Just keep your reference marks in place and stay with me. We're going down. One thousand feet per minute. Copy?"

  Hans answered promptly, all business. "Copy, Lead. Two's in." He had brought his plane within six feet of the other, slightly behind Jesse's right wing.

  Jesse took the stick. "Pilot's aircraft."

  The undercast looked peaceful, harmless as they slid down to it. As they neared, it became less smooth, less uniform. Jesse unconsciously braced himself and concentrated on his turn and slip. He deliberately loosened his grip on the stick, using only his fingertips, as they touched the mist.

  Darkness. Jesse felt the aircraft heave, buck, as it passed through succeeding layers of cloud. He used a light touch, didn't fight it, small corrections, sought to swim down through it.

  One thousand feet per minute. Ball centered. No bank. Keep it straight. Needle, ball, airspeed, altitude. His crosscheck became a blur, eyes darting, his mind working, not thinking. Ball. Airspeed. Bank. He couldn't tell how long it had gone on. He wasn't steering, he was the aircraft, sliding down ever deeper. Smooth, wingtips bouncing, no rudders, touch of down, now up, down elevator. Gently sinking, sinking. Airspeed. Needle. Ball.

  Jesse was surprised when he burst out. Over water at 600 feet. Made it, by God!

  His next thought: "Hans!"

  Woody was shouting beside him, "Still there, still there! God, I swear he disappeared a couple of times!"

  Jesse didn't have time to be relieved, they weren't down yet. Heading. He was shocked to see they were still on heading 345, steady as a rock. He saw land ahead, which could only be possible if . . .

  Mary, Mother of God. It was the north shore of Wismar Bay. There. The shore battery guarding the entrance to the bay. He'd hit it on the button.

  He cleared left and made a gentle turn, rolling out south toward the field. Ten minutes later they were both down.

  Jesse switched off and looked out. The first big drops of rain splashed on the Belle's windscreen. He looked over at Woody.

  "Lieutenant Woodsill, would you mind getting out the chocks? I think I'll watch the rain for a bit."

  "Colonel Wood and Captain Richter are on the ground in Wismar."

  Mike looked up quickly at the announcement. John Simpson stood in the doorway of the office Mike had appropriated here in Magdeburg with a folded piece of paper in his hand.

  "The radio room just got word from Lieutenant Wild," Simpson continued. "Apparently the weather was closing in and they just got down in time, but they made it safely. I thought you'd like to know."

  "You certainly thought correctly," Mike told him, and heaved a deep sigh of heartfelt relief. The pounding rain which had swept over Magdeburg just before sunset had made him more than a little anxious about Jesse and Hans. Wismar was over a hundred miles from Gustavus' capital, so there was a lot of room for local differences in weather. But, judging from the difficulty they'd been having with radio transmission to Holland, the rain seemed to be part of a storm front crossing over a large stretch of northern Europe.

  "Sounds like things are looking up in Wismar," he said after a moment.

  "Yes," Simpson agreed, but his own expression was much less relieved than Mike's. "At the same time, however, the situation there is scarcely what I'd call secure. Lieutenant Cantrell and Lieutenant Clements seem to have managed rather better than I'd allowed myself to hope they might where jury-rigging the speedboats is concerned. But General Aderkas is still several days from the city. And until he arrives, the prospect for Wismar's managing to stand off a serious Danish attack is hardly a favorable one."

  Mike started a quick, caustic retort about how the suggestion which had sent Eddie and Larry to Wismar had come from Simpson in the first place. But the quick comeback died unspoken before the worry in the other man's eyes. Yes, it had been Simpson's idea. But Mike had signed off on it, and he'd done that because it had also been the right idea. And if John Simpson was worried about the safety of the men his suggestion had sent into harm's way, then Mike Stearns had no intention of mocking him for it. Particularly not when it was a worry—and a responsibility—he shared in full.

  "Yeah," he agreed instead. "We're still hanging in the wind at Wismar. But the situation's getting better, even there. And Luebeck, on the other hand, looks pretty damned secure. Which," he acknowledged, "is largely due to the effort you made to get reinforcements and supplies into the city."

  "Only common sense," Simpson replied a bit gruffly. "Like I said, I'm not going to put half of our ironclads out at the end of a supply line which might not be there when they arrive."

  "Of course," Mike said.

  "And whatever the situation in Luebeck," Simpson resumed in a stronger voice, "the fact remains that we still don't know what the Danes think they're—"

  "Excuse me, Admiral. Mr. President." A lieutenant (junior grade) had trotted up behind Simpson. The stocky young German came to attention as Simpson and Mike turned toward him. "This dispatch just came in from Luebeck, sir," the jay-gee said, extending another folded slip of paper to Simpson.

  The admiral took it with a crisp nod of thanks and unfolded it q
uickly. His eyes flipped over the neatly printed lines, then stopped. He raised them to meet Mike's gaze, and his voice was flat.

  "A fishing boat just put into Luebeck, Mr. President," he said formally. "According to her crew, the Danes aren't more than an hour behind her."

  Chapter 41

  Jack Clements wished, not for the first time, that he was better at languages. Unfortunately, he wasn't. What he really needed right now was Eddie or Larry, or one of the other up-timers who'd acquired sufficient German to explain what he wanted done. He'd had Larry up until a few minutes before, but then the runner had arrived from the radio shack with the news that Larry was urgently needed to supervise an incoming message from Luebeck. Which was how Jack came to be struggling with the Outlaw's rocket launcher and ammunition stowage in the poor illumination provided by dockside torches. His two German assistants were eager enough to help; he just wasn't able to tell them what sort of help he needed, and gestures could only go so far.

  He straightened his aching back and beckoned for one of the Germans to climb back up onto the wharf. More hand gestures, and the younger German nodded enthusiastically and began dragging another rocket from the cart parked beside the mooring bollard. In fact, he was rather more enthusiastic about it than Jack might have liked, given the size and weight—and explosiveness—of the projectile. He shook his head, trying to slow the youngster down, but the message clearly wasn't getting through, and he had to jump quickly to catch the heavy rocket before his overeager assistant dropped it straight into the Outlaw's cockpit.

  He staggered as the solid weight hit his arms, but he managed to keep his footing and lower the black-powder missile in more or less controlled fashion.

  The German on the dock obviously realized, after the fact, what Jack had been trying to get across. His expression was hard to make out in the poor lighting, but what Jack could see of it was—as his wife would have put it—"covered with chagrin." The up-timer chuckled and waved one hand in a reassuring gesture, but he also beckoned for his enthusiastic assistant to give him a moment to catch his breath.

  Not as young as you used to be, Jack, he told himself, sinking down into one of the Outlaw's luxuriously upholstered seats. Not even as young as you were when you started out for Halle! He closed his eyes for a moment, one hand rubbing his chest in an effort to relieve the tightness in his lungs. Weather isn't helping any, either, he thought irritably. Cold and wet. Gets into a man's muscles and joints. Makes the bastards ache like hell, too. He rubbed his chest harder. Still, I can't just sit here all night. We've got too much—

  The pain hit like a sledgehammer. It seemed to explode through his chest like a bomb, and his grunt of anguish was that of a man who'd just been kicked in the belly by a mule. His eyes popped open, and he saw both of his German assistants turning toward him in sudden alarm even as the sledgehammer smashed him again and he felt himself sliding helplessly out of his seat.

  "Goddamn it!" Frank Jackson's left fist slammed down on his kitchen table and the knuckles of his right hand went white where it gripped the telephone. He snarled another curse before he could make himself stop, then he paused and drew in a deep breath.

  "How bad does it sound, James?" he asked in a more nearly normal voice. He listened again, lips firmly compressed. Then he closed his eyes, and his square shoulders sagged. "Okay," he said. "Okay. I understand. Just . . . let me know if you hear anything else, all right?" He listened a moment longer, then nodded as if the other man could see him. "Thanks. I'll talk to you later."

  He hung up the phone very, very carefully, and turned to his wife.

  "What is it?" Diane Jackson asked. She'd been heating water to brew tea when the telephone rang. Now she studied her husband's expression with the same eyes which had seen the fall of one homeland, the loss of a second, and the painful birth of yet a third.

  "Jack," Frank told her flatly, and his nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply. "Stubborn old bastard. Why the hell didn't he tell me he had a heart condition when I asked him to go to Wismar?"

  "Don't be foolish," she scolded, and snorted when he looked at her in surprise. "Men! All of you just alike!" She shook her head. "Would you have told you if you'd asked you to go to Wismar?" she demanded.

  Despite himself, Frank found himself smiling as she glowered at him. Diane's English sometimes got just a bit . . . convoluted, even after all these years. Not that his was always any great prize, he reminded himself, and shook his head at her.

  "Point taken," he conceded. "I'm just as stubborn and pigheaded as he is, I suppose. But, Jesus, Diane! He could've at least warned me there might be a problem instead of leaving it all up to Doc Adams!"

  "And if he had, you wouldn't have sent him," Diane pointed out inexorably. "But you needed him. So he didn't tell you." She shrugged.

  "Guess you're right," he sighed.

  "So," she said. "How bad?"

  "James couldn't really say," Frank said sadly. "Sharon was right there on the spot, thank God. But good as she is, she's not as good as her dad. And she doesn't begin to have what she really needs in the way of supplies and equipment." He sighed again and shook his head. "Sounds to me like James was trying to tell me he doesn't expect Jack to make it."

  "I must go to Alice's," Diane said.

  "I'll come along," Frank said. "After all, my fault he went."

  "You will not come along," Diane informed him. "First, Alice does not need for you to come and beat yourself in front of her. Second, you must tell Mike and Admiral Simpson. They should know."

  "Yeah." Frank nodded. "Yeah, you're right. Not that much we can do about it, of course, but I guess somebody should tell them that the only real pilot we had for Watson's Folly isn't available anymore."

  "Can you think of anything at all we can do about it?" Mike asked.

  "No." Simpson's face was drawn, and he shook his head. "There's not anything. We're here; they're there. And even if that weren't true, I doubt there's anyone else here in Magdeburg or in Grantville who's really qualified to handle that boat properly. We'll just have to hope Lieutenant Wild did pick up enough from Mr. Clements while he was available."

  "I don't like it," Mike muttered, and Simpson snorted.

  "I don't like it either," he admitted. "Unfortunately, what we like has very little to do with the situation. It never does. Especially when it's time for the shooting to start."

  Mike leaned back in his chair and cocked his head at the older man. He gazed at him for several seconds.

  "You don't have to answer this if you don't want to . . . John," he said, deliberately putting his question on a non-official basis with the use of the other's first name. "But I can't help wondering. It's obvious to me from some of the things you've said—and the way you talked to Eddie, before we sent him off—that you'd seen combat before we ever wound up here. A lot, I'd guess. Probably at least as much as Frank Jackson. But you never mentioned it until we needed you to build our navy. And to be honest, I've got the distinct impression you'd never mentioned it to Tom at all."

  Simpson looked at him steadily, and Mike gave a tiny shrug. "John, I really don't think the fact that your son hasn't answered the radio message I sent to him just before I left means anything. That storm front has scrambled all our communications with Becky—and God knows what it's done to the relay between Amsterdam and London."

  Simpson nodded once, jerkily, but his face was still tight.

  Mike sighed. "Oh, hell . . . I guess if I'm asking for confidences, I should spill one of my own. Even though Rita swore me to silence."

  Mention of Simpson's daughter-in-law caused his eyes to widen a bit.

  "When the Ring of Fire hit," Mike asked, "what did you and your wife do? Right away, I mean. You didn't have anything left except a rental car—and we nationalized all the gas within a week—and a couple of suitcases. Every credit card in the world, I'm sure, and a wallet full of cash and the world's best wristwatch. Lot of good that was."

  Simpson stared at him. "Well . . . a f
amily took us in. Very nice people. The—"

  "I know who took you in, John. The reason I know is because Rita set it up. The Wendells' son Jerry is an old friend of Rita's. Boyfriend, to be precise, back in high school. But they stayed on good terms after they broke up."

  "Your sister . . ."

  Mike snorted, half-angrily and half-wearily. "John, just because we West Virginia hillbillies like to brag about the fact that we won the Hatfield-McCoy feud doesn't mean we really think old Devil Anse Hatfield was a role model. So relax about your son, will you? My kid sister's got her faults, but spitefulness is not one of them."

  Simpson looked away. For a moment, the stiff wooden face seemed slightly embarrassed. And relieved.

  "So, to go back to my question—why?" Mike asked again.

  Simpson said nothing at all for several seconds. Then he drew a deep breath.

  "I never really wanted to go into the 'family business,' " he said. "I don't imagine that that's something you expected to hear, but it's true. There were always two traditions in my family—business, and the Navy. There's been a Simpson in the Navy in every generation since the War of 1812. Until Tom's, of course."

  He looked away, and his tone was distant, as if he were speaking of someone else entirely.

  "I loved the Navy. And I didn't start off on an engineering track, either. Not me. I was headed for a major surface command of my own one day. Sea duty—that was what I wanted, and I volunteered for river duty in Vietnam right out of the Academy. And I got it, too. I got there about the time our riverine forces were reaching their maximum size, and I fitted right in. Within six months I was the squadron XO. Another six, and I was the 'Old Man.' At the grand and glorious age of twenty-four."