When George got up on the Tierra del Fuego's deck, he eyed the sailors standing there. Would they give trouble, or were they just glad his ship hadn't sunk them? "Any of you guys speak English?" he asked.
Two men raised their hands-the skipper and a fellow with a lightning-bolt patch on his sleeve. The wireless man, George thought. "I do," the fellow said.
"Good. Tell your pals nobody's gonna hurt 'em as long as they do what we say," George said. "They'll be POWs in the USA, and they'll go home after the war." The wireless man rattled off some Spanish. A moment later, one of the sailors from the Josephus Daniels knocked him down and yelled at him, also in Spanish.
"Any of these assholes says anything with puto or chinga or maricуn in it, beat the shit out of him, 'cause he's cussin' you," the sailor said. "They ain't gonna dick around with us." He spoke in Spanish to the would-be interpreter, then came back to English: "I told him to try it again, only not to get cute this time."
A couple of men from the destroyer escort's black gang went below to look at the engines. One of them came back up shaking his head. "They're oil-burners-she'd make even more smoke if they weren't," he reported. "But they're about as old as they can be and still burn oil. Ain't no surprise she couldn't outrun us."
Chief Becker took charge of the pistol and the couple of shotguns in the Tierra del Fuego's arms locker. "Don't look like she ever had anything more," he said. "Enough to try and put down a mutiny, and that's about it."
At his orders, the freighter's sailors pointed her bow north and got her up to about eight knots. She lumbered along. George would rather have gone north aboard a fishing boat. It would have bounced worse, but it would have gone over the waves instead of trying to slice through them. He didn't look forward to riding out a gale in this wallowing tub.
Before long, they recrossed the Equator. Nobody asked whether any of the Argentine sailors were polliwogs. George didn't know whether the greasers talked about King Neptune. All he knew was that he had to keep an eye on them.
Day followed day. The chow on the Tierra del Fuego was different from what he would have eaten on the Josephus Daniels-not really better or worse, but different. He tried yerba matй tea. The stuff wasn't bad: better than he expected. It had more kick than regular tea, not so much as coffee.
If a British or Confederate seaplane spotted them flying the Stars and Stripes, they were history. George tried not to think about that. He blessed the fogs and mists that shrouded the Tierra del Fuego as she got farther north. They made navigation harder, but she was going by the seat of her pants anyway. When she came closer to the U.S. coast, no doubt she'd get an escort for the last leg of her journey. She'd need one, too.
In the meantime…In the meantime, it was just the ship and the sea. For George, that wasn't so bad.
R ichmond. The front was Richmond. In the bunker under the ruins of the Gray House, Jake Featherston shook his fist toward the north and cursed a God Who seemed to be cursing him and the CSA.
Ever since the war started, people were saying that whoever could do two big things at once would win. The Confederacy had never managed it. Neither had the damnyankees…till now. They were still going great guns down in Georgia. And they were pushing out of the Wilderness and heading straight for the Confederate capital.
U.S. artillery hadn't fallen on Richmond yet. The ground between the Rapidan and the capital was likely the most heavily fortified stretch on the face of the earth. If the Yankees came, they had to come that way. Both sides knew it. Whatever artifice could do to stop them, artifice had done.
But along with artifice, the Confederate States needed men-men they didn't have. Too many soldiers had died in the Great War. Too many had died or gone off into captivity in Ohio and especially Pennsylvania this time around. And too many were doing everything they could to fight the USA farther south. That left a lot of the bunkers and gun emplacements between the Rapidan and Richmond nothing more than…what did the Bible call them? Whited sepulchers, that was it.
Featherston jumped when the telephone rang. He picked it up. "Yeah?" he said harshly.
"Lord Halifax on the line, sir," Lulu said.
"Put him through," Jake said at once. Was a rat deserting the sinking ship?
"Mr. President?" That plummy British accent.
"What's up?" Jake asked the ambassador. If Halifax was bailing out, he'd put a flea in the bastard's ear, all right.
"I have some papers you may perhaps be interested in seeing," the British ambassador said.
"Well, bring 'em on over, then," Jake told him. He was so relieved that Halifax was staying put, he couldn't refuse him anything.
When Halifax got there, it gave Jake an excuse to throw out Nathan Bedford Forrest III. He didn't want to listen to the chief of the General Staff anyhow; Forrest was too gloomy to be worth listening to. By the noises he made, he feared Richmond would fall. Even if that was true, Jake didn't want to hear it. So he bundled Forrest out and brought in the ambassador instead. "What's up?" he asked again.
Lord Halifax opened his fancy attachй case: buttery leather polished till it gleamed, with clasps that looked like real gold. He pulled out a document held together with a fat paper clip. "Here you are, Mr. President. I honestly didn't believe they would turn these loose, but they did. You must have made an even more favorable impression on the Prime Minister than I thought. He does admire a…purposeful man, no doubt of that."
Jake Featherston hardly heard him. He was flipping through the papers. He didn't understand more than one word in ten, and he didn't understand any of the math. But he knew the word uranium when he saw it. And he knew about element 94, even if the limeys were calling it churchillium and not jovium.
"Did your scientists name it after Winston because it's supposed to make a big boom when it goes off?" he asked with a sly grin.
"Officially, it's a compliment to his office. We call 93 mosleyium after the Minister of War," Halifax replied. "Unofficially…well, I shouldn't wonder if you're right."
"I'll get this to our people who can use it just as quick as I can," Jake said. "And I want you to thank Winston for me from the bottom of my heart. What he did here, it means a lot to the country and it means a lot to me personally."
"He found your point about the need to continue the struggle against the United States by any means necessary alarmingly persuasive," Lord Halifax said. "If you fail, Britain is most dismally surrounded by the Yankees and the Huns."
"How close are you to getting one of these bombs?" Jake asked.
The British ambassador shrugged narrow shoulders. "Haven't the foggiest, I'm afraid. Were I not ambassador to a country also taking part in this research, I doubt I should know there is any such thing as uranium."
"Mm-makes sense," Featherston allowed. That was the only reason the Confederate envoys in London and Paris knew about uranium and what you might be able to do with it. But they hadn't been able to pry anything out of England or France. He damn well had.
"Will you be able to hold Richmond, sir?" Halifax asked.
"Hope so," Jake said. "But even if we don't, we'll keep fighting. As long as we've got a puncher's chance, we'll hang on. And with this"-he tapped the document with a nicotine-stained forefinger-"we do."
"Very good," the British ambassador said. But he meant it the way limeys did, so it might have been all right. He didn't mean it was very good, just that he'd heard. "I shall convey your determination to London. Bombing is picking up there, I'm afraid, though it's not so bad as here."
"Damn squareheads have airfields closer to you now," Jake said. Lord Halifax looked like a man who'd just sat on a tack but was too polite to mention it. Featherston knew why. He hadn't been…diplomatic. Well, too bad, he thought. He'd told the truth, hadn't he? He'd told the truth all the time while he rose-it looked that way to him, anyhow. He didn't see any point to stopping now.
And he was telling the truth again. The Kaiser's forces had bundled the British out of northwestern Germany, out of Hollan
d, and back into Belgium. They were threatening Ypres-universally pronounced Wipers by English-speakers-again, as they had in the Great War. When it fell then, it was a sign that the Entente couldn't hold on against the Central Powers. If it fell this time around, it would be another verse of the same song.
"We are doing everything in our power to deny them the use of those air bases," Halifax said.
"Sure, sure." Jake nodded and smiled. He probably should have kept his mouth shut even if he did tell the truth. Didn't he owe Halifax that much? The ambassador-and his government, of course-had come through for the Confederacy in a big way. "Between us, your Lordship, sir, we'll lick the bad guys yet."
"Between us, yes. And the French and the Russians will have something to say about it as well." Lord Halifax grimaced again. "I worry about the Russians. Failure the last time around cost them the Ukraine and Finland and Poland and the Baltic states and a Red insurrection at least as unpleasant as yours." He was being diplomatic; the Tsar's fight against the Reds had been bigger and bloodier than anything the CSA went through. After a pause to light a Habana, he continued, "They're wavering again, I fear. When they couldn't beat the Germans, or even the Austrians…If they go out, heaven only knows what sort of upheaval will follow."
"Hell with that," Featherston said. "If they go out now, you and France get the shaft. The Kaiser can pull everything away from the east and shoot it all at you."
"Quite." British reserve had its uses. Lord Halifax got as much mileage from one soft-spoken word as Jake would have from five minutes of cussing. He rose and held out an elegantly manicured hand. "Always a pleasure, Mr. President. I do hope the document proves valuable to you."
"I'm sure it will be." I'll know just how valuable by this time tomorrow, Jake thought as he shook it. Aloud, he went on, "England's always been the best friend the Confederacy has. We know that, and we never forget it."
One more time, the truth. English recognition in 1862, English forcing of the U.S. blockade, had ensured the Confederacy's independence. English help during the Second Mexican War made sure the CSA got to keep Chihuahua and Sonora, even if an invasion of the USA from Canada came to grief in Montana.
Well, the Confederate States of America paid their debts to the UK in 1914. This time, no debt was involved: both countries wanted revenge against the enemies who'd beaten them. And remembering alliances past didn't mean you had to do anything but remember. Jake understood that perfectly well. Did Lord Halifax? No doubt; he was twisty as a snake.
As soon as the British ambassador bowed his way out, Featherston summoned a courier. The bright young lieutenant saluted. "Freedom!"
"Freedom!" Jake echoed. He handed the man the British document. "Get these pages photographed. As soon as you've done that, haul ass to Washington University in Lexington and deliver them to Professor FitzBelmont."
"Yes, sir." The courier hesitated. "If it's such a tearing hurry, sir, why wait for the photography?"
"Because this has to get through," Jake answered. "Even if something happens to you"-even if the damnyankees roast you like a barbecued porker-"FitzBelmont has to get it. So we make a copy before we send you off."
"All right, sir. I understand."
"Good. Tell the fellow in the photo lab to call me as soon as he does what he needs to do." With this document, Jake intended to take no chances whatever.
"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said again. He saluted and hurried away. He didn't even need to leave the armored underground compartment to find a photographic technician. Anything that had to do with running a country, you could do here.
Now he would have some idea of what was going on in Lexington. So would the man who photographed the pages. That worried Jake less than it would have a few months before. If one of them reported to the damnyankees…well, so what? The United States already knew the Confederate States were working on a uranium bomb. The United States knew where, too. Otherwise, they wouldn't have started pounding the crap out of Lexington. If they knew the limeys were helping out, how did that change things? Didn't it just give them a brand-new worry? It looked that way to Jake Featherston.
The courier hadn't been gone more than a couple of minutes before the telephone on his desk jangled again. He eyed it the way a man in the woods might eye a rattler with a buzzing tail. Unlike a man in the woods, he couldn't walk away from it no matter how much he wished he could.
He picked it up. "Featherston here…What the hell do you mean, they're over the North Anna?" He'd expected bad news-that was the kind that got to the President in a hurry. He hadn't expected news this bad, though. "How the devil did they do that? Which dumb-shit general had his thumb up his ass to let 'em?…Jesus Christ, they can't have that much armor-can they?" He sounded worried even to himself. That was no good. You needed to sound calm, even-no, especially-when you weren't.
He gave orders to try to stem the green-gray tide. The damnyankees couldn't shell Richmond yet, no, but it wouldn't be long if they kept going like this.
"Over the North Anna. Son of a bitch," Jake muttered after he hung up. He started looking at the maps on his office walls in a new way. Richmond really might fall. And if it did, he needed somewhere else to go, a place from which he could keep fighting till FitzBelmont and the rest of the high foreheads came through.
He'd never thought it would come to this. He'd figured the United States would roll over and show their yellow belly when he cut them in half. When that didn't happen, he'd been sure losing Pittsburgh would make them quit. When they didn't lose Pittsburgh…About then, he realized he had a tiger by the tail.
Can't let go, he thought. And the Yankees had a tiger by the tail, too. If they didn't know that yet, they would. He nodded to himself. They sure as hell would. No matter where he had to do it from, he'd make them pay for every single thing they'd done to his country. He'd make them pay plenty.
A rmstrong Grimes was happy as a clam in a country where they'd never heard of chowder. Along with the rest of his platoon, he tramped east toward the Savannah River and the sea. They'd told Lieutenant Bassler the Confederates didn't have a whole hell of a lot in front of them. So far, they looked to be right.
"Keep your eyes peeled, though," he warned the men in his squad. "Don't want to get your nuts shot off doing something dumb."
"Shit, Sarge, I don't want to get my nuts shot off doing something smart," Squidface said.
"You've got a point," Armstrong said. "Now put a hat on it."
The PFC flipped him off. He gave back the bird. When he took over the squad, the men had been wary about him. They'd come through a lot together, and they weren't about to trust somebody from the repple-depple till they saw he deserved it. By now, Armstrong had paid his dues and then some. He was part of the life of the platoon, somebody to razz and somebody to put them through their paces. They followed his orders not just because he had three stripes but because they'd seen he had a halfway decent notion of what he was doing.
Up ahead, a Confederate machine gun chattered. That tearing-sailcloth noise sobered people in a hurry. Men kind of hunched down to make themselves into smaller targets. They moved away from one another to make a burst less likely to take out several of them at once. Armstrong did all that himself, too, before he even thought about it. He knew his trade, the same as the other guys did.
Most of them did, anyhow. A couple were new men fresh out of the replacement depot. A tall, gangly kid called Herk had taken Whitey's place. He stared around in mild surprise when the soldiers around him spread out. Then a bullet cracked past his head. He knew what that meant, all right, and awkwardly dropped to the ground.
"You gotta move faster'n that, man," Armstrong told him. "Otherwise, you'll damn well stop one, and I ain't got time to nursemaid you."
"I'll try, Sarge." Herk was willing. He was just unskilled.
"Sure." Armstrong swallowed a sigh. He'd hit it, all right-he couldn't nursemaid the replacements. In a perfect world, they would have joined the unit when it got taken out of the l
ine so the veterans got to know them a little bit. Here, it was baptism by total immersion. Experienced soldiers shied away from the new guys. Raw men didn't just get themselves maimed and killed; they also brought trouble down on their comrades, because the Confederates who aimed at them also hit guys near them.
If they made it through a couple of weeks of action, they learned the ropes and turned into decent soldiers. A lot of them didn't, though. Not too many Confederates stood in front of Armstrong's platoon right now. The ones who did knew their business. The only new Confederate soldiers were the ones who'd been too young for conscription when the war started.
From the ground, Herk asked, "We gonna go after that machine gun, Sarge?"
"Not if we can find a barrel or a mortar team to do it for us," Armstrong answered. "We want to lick these fuckers, yeah, but we don't want to pay too much while we're doing it."
"Now you hope the lieutenant feels the same way," Squidface said, his grin half sly, half resigned.
"Bet your ass I do." Armstrong could hope, anyhow. Lieutenant Bassler had pretty good sense…as far as lieutenants went. He didn't think he had an infinite supply of soldiers to do whatever he thought needed doing, and he didn't send his men anywhere he wouldn't go himself. Things could have been worse.
And they rapidly got that way. That rising howl in the air wasn't artillery. It was even worse. "Screaming meemies!" Squidface yelled while Armstrong was still sucking in wind to shout the same thing. Everybody who wasn't already on the ground threw himself flat. Armstrong got out his entrenching tool and started digging like a madman.
The salvo of rockets shrieked home before he'd thrown up more than a shovelful of red dirt. A couple of dozen of them slammed down within a few seconds. Armstrong got picked up and thrown around while chunks of jagged iron whined through the air. Whether he lived or died wasn't up to him; it was just luck one way or the other. He hated that more than anything else about combat. Sometimes whether you were a good soldier didn't matter worth a dime.
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