Drive to the East

by Harry Turtledove

  ****

  Sometimes Sam Carsten thought the Navy didn’t know what to do with the Josephus Daniels. Other times he was sure of it. After the destroyer escort had threaded its way out through the minefields in Delaware Bay once more, he turned to Pete Cooley and said, “I swear to God they’re trying to sink us. I really do.”

  “I think we’ll be all right, sir,” the exec said. “We will as long as Confederate airplanes don’t spot us, anyhow.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “As long as.” His ship was ordered to strike at the CSA. U.S. flying boats and other aircraft constantly patrolled the United States’ coastal waters. If there was intelligence to say the Confederates didn’t do the same thing, he hadn’t seen it.

  “Mission seems simple enough,” Cooley said. “We start heading in as soon as night falls, land the raiders, pick ’em up, and get the hell out of there.” He sounded elaborately unconcerned.

  Sam snorted. “One of these days, Pat, somebody needs to explain the difference between ‘simple’ and ‘easy’ to you.”

  “I know the difference,” Cooley said with a grin. “An easy girl puts out right away. A simple girl’s just dumb, so you’ve got to snow her before she puts out.”

  “All right, dammit.” In spite of himself, Sam laughed. The exec wouldn’t take things seriously. Maybe that was as well, too. “Just so we don’t get spotted. And our navigation better be spot-on, too.”

  “I’ll get us there, sir,” Cooley promised.

  As with shiphandling, Sam was learning to use sextant and chronometer to know where the ship was and where it was going. He thought it was the hardest thing he’d ever tried to pick up. The Navy had tables that made it a lot easier than it was in the days of iron men and wooden ships, but easier and easy didn’t mean the same thing, either. Sorrowfully, Sam said, “This is the first time in a million years I wish I’d paid more attention in school.”

  “You’re doing real well, sir, for a—” Two words too late, Pat Cooley broke off. He tried again: “You’re doing real well.”

  For a mustang. He hadn’t quite swallowed enough of that. Or maybe it had been for a dumb mustang. Taking sun-sights and then trying to convert them to positions sure as hell made Sam feel like a dumb mustang. He painfully remembered the time when he’d screwed up his longitude six ways from Sunday and put the Josephus Daniels halfway between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

  The only thing the exec said then was, “Well, the infantry could use the fire support.” Sam thought that showed commendable restraint.

  For now, he swung the destroyer escort well out into the North Atlantic before steaming south. He figured that was his best chance to get where he was going undetected. He didn’t know that it was a good chance, but good and best also weren’t always synonyms. The ocean wasn’t nearly so rough as it would be when winter clapped down, but it wasn’t smooth, either. Sailors and Marine raiders spent a lot of time at the rail.

  Sam might not have been much of a navigator. He might not have been the shiphandler he wished he were. He might—he would—burn if the sun looked at him sideways. But by God he had a sailor’s stomach. Some of the youngsters in the officers’ mess and some of the Marine officers who dined with them looked distinctly green. Sam tore into the roast beef with fine appetite.

  “Be thankful the chow’s as good as it is,” he said. “When we’re on a long patrol or going around the Horn, it’s all canned stuff and beans after a while.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Lieutenant Thad Walters said. The Y-range operator bolted from the mess with a hand clapped over his mouth. Carsten hoped the J.G. got to a head before he wasted the cooks’ best efforts.

  Lieutenant Cooley brought the Josephus Daniels about 125 miles off the North Carolina coast just as the sun was sinking in flames in the direction of the Confederacy. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be, sir,” the exec said.

  “Fair enough.” Sam nodded. “All ahead full, then. Course 270.”

  “All ahead full. Course 270,” Cooley echoed. “Aye aye, sir.” He called the order for full power down to the engine room. The ship picked up speed till she was going flat out. Sam wished for the extra ten knots she could have put on if she were a real destroyer. Of course, they never would have dropped a mustang on his first command into a real destroyer. He knew damn well he was lucky to get anything fancier than a garbage scow.

  Lieutenant Walters seemed to have got rid of what ailed him. The Y-range operator was still a little pale, but kept close watch on his set. If the ship could spot an enemy airplane before the enemy spotted her, she would have a better chance of getting away. The darker it got, the happier Sam grew. He didn’t think the Confederates had aircraft with Y-ranging gear. He sure hoped they didn’t.

  “Keep an eye peeled for any sign of torpedo boats, too,” he warned. “A fish we’re not expecting will screw us as bad as a bomb.”

  “Yes, sir,” Walters said, and then, “Aye aye, sir.” We’re doing everything we know how to do, Sam thought. Now—is it enough?

  The Josephus Daniels ran on through the night. Listening to her engines pound, Sam felt she was yelling, Here I am! to the world. If she was, the world stayed deaf and blind. Every so often, Lieutenant Walters looked over at him and shrugged or gave a thumbs-up. CPO Bevacqua on the hydrophone kept hearing nothing, too.

  Shortly before 2300, the commander of the Marine detachment came onto the bridge. “About an hour away, eh, Captain?” he said.

  “That’s right, Major,” Sam answered. Mike Murphy outranked him—except that nobody on a ship outranked her skipper. Murphy understood that, fortunately. He was a black Irishman with eyes as blue as a Siamese cat’s—bluer than Sam’s, which took doing. Carsten went on, “Your men are ready?”

  “Ready as they’ll ever be.” Murphy pointed into the darkness. “They’re by the boats, and they’ll be in ’em in nothing flat.” He snapped his fingers.

  “Good enough,” Sam said, and hoped it would be.

  Not quite an hour later, the shape of the western horizon changed. It had been as smooth and flat there as in any other direction. No more. That deeper blackness was land: the coast of the Confederate States of America. “Here we are, sir,” Pat Cooley said. “If that’s not Ocracoke Island dead ahead, my career just hit a mine and sank.”

  So did mine, Sam thought. The Navy Department might blame an exec who’d been conning a ship for botched navigation. The Navy Department would without the tiniest fragment of doubt blame that ship’s skipper. And so it should. The destroyer escort was his ship. This was his responsibility. Nothing on God’s green earth this side of death or disabling injury could take it off his shoulders.

  “Send a petty officer forward with a lead and a sounding line,” Sam said, an order more often heard in the riverboat Navy than on the Atlantic. But he didn’t want the Josephus Daniels running aground, and she drew a lot more water than any river monitor. She needed some water under her keel. Cooley nodded and obeyed.

  Feet thudded on the deck. “Sir, we’ve spotted a light about half a mile south of here!” a sailor exclaimed. “Looks like it’s what we want!”

  It wouldn’t be the Ocracoke lighthouse at the southwestern tip of the island; that had gone dark at the beginning of the war. If you didn’t already know where you were in these waters, the Confederates didn’t want you here. Major Murphy quivered like a hunting hound. “I’d best join my men, I think,” he said, and left the bridge.

  “Very pretty navigation, Pat,” Sam said. “Bring us in a little closer and we’ll lower the boats and turn the Marines loose.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Cooley said, and then, to the engine room, “All ahead one third.” The Josephus Daniels crept southwest.

  After a breathless little while, Sam said, “All stop.” The executive officer relayed the order. The ship bobbed in the water. Sam sent a sailor to Major Murphy to let him know everything was ready. Murphy had no doubt figured that out for himself, but the forms needed to be observed.

 
Lines creaking in the davits, the boats went down to the ocean. For this raid, they’d been fitted with motors. One by one, they chugged toward the shore that was only a low, darker line in the night. North Carolina barrier islands were nothing but glorified sandbanks. Every time a hurricane tore through, it rearranged the landscape pretty drastically. Sometimes, after a hurricane tore through, not much landscape—or land—was left in its path.

  “Confederates at that station are going to think a hurricane hit ’em,” Sam murmured.

  He didn’t know he’d spoken aloud till Pat Cooley nodded and said, “Hell, yes—uh, sir.”

  Grinning, Sam set a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Pat. We’re on the same page.”

  Gunfire crackled across the water. Sam tensed. If something had gone wrong, if the bastards in butternut somehow knew the Marines were coming . . . In that case, the destroyer escort’s guns would have to do some talking of their own. The wireless operator looked up. “Sir, Major Murphy says everything’s under control.”

  Sure enough, the gunfire died away. Sam had nothing to do but wait. He drummed his fingers on the metalwork in front of him. Waiting was always a big part of military life. Right this minute, it was also a hard part.

  “There we go!” Pat Cooley pointed. Fire rose from the station.

  “Yeah, there we go, all right,” Sam agreed. “Other question is, did the Confederates get off an alarm call before we finished overrunning the place?” He shrugged. “Well, we’ll find out.”

  Not very much later, sailors peering over the starboard rail called, “Boats coming back!” Sam almost said something like, Stand by to repel boarders! He wondered when the skipper of a ship this size last issued an order like that. But these boarders were on his side—or they’d damned well better be.

  Raising boats was harder than lowering them. He had nets out against the sides of the ship for the Marines and their prisoners—he hoped they’d have prisoners—to climb if the crew couldn’t do it. But they managed. He went down to the deck and met Major Murphy there. “Everything go well?” he asked.

  “Well enough, Captain,” the Marine officer answered. “We lost one man dead, and we have several wounded we brought back.” The groans on deck would have told Sam that if Murphy hadn’t. The Marine went on, “But we destroyed that station, and we’ve brought back prisoners to question and samples of Confederate Y-ranging gear for the fellows with thick glasses and slide rules to look at. What they do with the stuff is up to them, but we got it. We did our job.”

  “Sounds good,” Sam said. “Now my job is to make sure we deliver the goods. Is everybody back aboard ship?”

  “I think so,” Major Murphy said.

  An indignant Confederate came up to them. “Are you the captain of this vessel?” he demanded of Sam. “I must protest this—this act of piracy!” He sounded like an angry rabbit.

  “Go ahead and protest all you please, pal,” Sam said genially. “And you can call me Long John Silver, too.” Major Murphy and several nearby Marines spluttered. Sam went to the rail to make sure no boats or Marines were unaccounted for. Satisfied, he hurried back up to the bridge.

  “Are we ready to leave town, sir?” Pat Cooley asked.

  “And then some,” Sam said. “Make our course 135. All ahead full.”

  “All ahead full,” Cooley echoed, and passed the order to the engine room. “Course is . . . 135.” He sounded slightly questioning, to let Sam change his mind without losing face if he wanted to.

  But Sam didn’t want to. “Yes, 135, Pat,” he said. “I really do want to head southeast, because that’s the last direction the Confederates will look for us. Once we get away, we can swing wide and come back. But I figure most of the search’ll be to the north, and I want to get away from land-based air the best way I know how. So—135.”

  Cooley nodded. “Aye aye, sir—135 it is.” The Josephus Daniels steamed away from the North Carolina coast at her sedate top speed.

  ****

  Brigadier General Irving Morrell did not like getting pushed around by the Confederates. They’d done it in Ohio, and now they were doing it in Pennsylvania. They had the machines they needed to go forward. He didn’t have as many machines as he needed to stop them. It was as simple as that.

  Men . . . Well, how much did men count in this new mechanized age? The United States had more of them than the Confederate States did. The question was, so what?

  A nervous-looking POW stood in front of Morrell. In the other man’s beat-up boots, Morrell would have been nervous, too. He said, “Name, rank, and pay number.”

  An interpreter turned the question into Spanish. A torrent of that language came back. The interpreter said, “His name is José María Castillo. He is a senior private—we would say a PFC. His pay number is 6492711.”

  “Thanks.” Morrell studied Senior Private Castillo. The prisoner from the Empire of Mexico was medium-sized, skinny, swarthy, with mournful black eyes and a big, bushy mustache like the ones a lot of Confederate soldiers had worn during the Great War. His mustard-yellow uniform would have given good camouflage in the deserts on Mexico’s northern border. Here in western Pennsylvania, it stood out much more. Morrell said, “Ask him what unit he’s in and what their orders were.”

  More Spanish. The POW didn’t have to answer that. Did he know he didn’t have to? Morrell wasn’t about to tell him. And he answered willingly enough. “He says he’s with the Veracruz Division, sir,” the interpreter reported. “He says that’s the best one Mexico has. Their orders are to take places the Confederates haven’t been able to capture.”

  “Are they?” Morrell carefully didn’t smile at that. He suspected any number of Confederate officers would have had apoplexy if they heard the Mexican prisoner. If the Veracruz Division was the best one Francisco José had, the Emperor of Mexico would have been well advised not to take on anything tougher than a belligerent chipmunk. The men all had rifles, but they were woefully short on machine guns, artillery, barrels, and motorized transport. The soldiers seemed brave enough, but sending them up against a modern army wouldn’t have been far from murder—if that modern army hadn’t been so busy in so many other places.

  The prisoner spoke without being asked anything. He sounded anxious. He sounded, frankly, scared out of his wits. Morrell had a hard time blaming him. Surrender was a chancy enough business even when two sides used the same language, as U.S. and C.S. soldiers did. Would-be POWs sometimes turned into casualties when their captors either wanted revenge for something that had happened to them or just lacked the time to deal with prisoners. If a captive knew no English . . . He likely thinks we’ll eat him for supper, Morrell thought, not without sympathy.

  Sure enough, the interpreter said, “He wants to know what we’re going to do with him, sir.”

  “Tell him nobody’s going to hurt him,” Morrell said. The interpreter did. José Castillo crossed himself and gabbled out what had to be thanks. Every once in a while, war made Morrell remember what a filthy business it was. That a man should be grateful for not getting killed out of hand . . . Roughly, Morrell went on, “Tell him he’ll be taken away from the fighting. Tell him he’ll be fed. If he needs a doctor, he’ll get one. Tell him we follow Geneva Convention rules, if that means anything to him.”

  The prisoner seized his hand and kissed it. That horrified him. Getting captured had, in essence, turned a man into a dog. He gestured. The interpreter led José Castillo away. Morrell wiped his hand on his trouser leg.

  “Don’t blame you, sir,” one of his guards said. “God only knows what kind of germs that damn spic’s got.”

  Germs were the last thing on Morrell’s mind. He just wanted to wipe away the touch of the desperate man’s lips. If he couldn’t feel them anymore, maybe he could forget them. He needed to forget them if he was going to do his job. “He’s out of the fighting now,” he said. “He’s luckier than a lot of people I can think of.”

  “Well, yeah, sir, since you put it that way,” the
guard said. “He’s luckier’n me, for instance.” He grinned to show Morrell not to take him too seriously, but Morrell knew he was kidding on the square. Only a few hard cases really liked war; most men endured it and tried to come through in one piece.

  From everything Morrell had heard, Jake Featherston was part of the small minority who’d enjoyed himself in the field. Morrell couldn’t have sworn that was so, but he wouldn’t have been surprised. Who but a man who enjoyed war would have loosed another one on a country—two countries—that didn’t?

  That guard shifted his feet, trying to draw Morrell’s attention. Morrell nodded to him. The soldier asked, “Sir, is it true that the Confederates are inside Pittsburgh?”

  “I think so, Wally,” Morrell answered. “That’s what it sounds like from the situation reports I’ve been getting, anyhow.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Wally said.

  “It isn’t what we had in mind when this whole mess started,” Morrell allowed. What the USA had had in mind was a victory parade through the ruined streets of Richmond, preferably with Jake Featherston’s head on a platter carried along at the front. Richmond was close to the border, which didn’t mean the United States had got there. They hadn’t in the War of Secession or the Great War, either.

  “So what are we gonna do?” Wally asked—a thoroughly reasonable question. “How come we don’t just pitch into ’em?”

  “Because if we do, we’d probably lose right now,” Morrell said unhappily. “We don’t have enough men or matériel yet. We’re getting there, though.” I hope.

  As a matter of fact, things could have been worse. The Confederates had been planning to surround Pittsburgh instead of swarming into it, but U.S. counterattacks hadn’t let them do that. Now they had to clear the Americans from a big city house by house and factory by factory. That wouldn’t come easy or cheap. Again, Morrell hoped it wouldn’t, anyhow.