In at the Death (27 page)

“Just play it straight, and I expect you’ll do fine,” Carsten said, hoping he was right. “Pretty soon you’ll have a ship of your own, and then somebody else will do your dirty work for you.”

Menefee grinned. “I’ve heard ideas I like less—I’ll tell you that. But I don’t know. The war’s liable to be over before they get around to giving me my own command, and after that the Navy’ll shrink like nobody’s business. Or do you think I’m wrong, sir?”

“It worked that way the last time around—I remember,” Sam said. “This time? Well, who knows? After we get done beating the Confederates on land, we’ll still need ships to teach Argentina a lesson, and England, and Japan. One of these days, the Japs’ll have to learn they can’t screw around with the Sandwich Islands.”

“Can we go on with the little fights once the big one’s over? Will anybody care, or will people be so hot for peace that they don’t give a damn about anything else?”

“We’ll find out, that’s all,” Sam said. The questions impressed him. Plainly, Lon Menefee had an eye for what was important. That was a good asset for an executive officer—or anybody else. “All we can do is what they tell us to do,” Sam went on, and reached for the brandy bottle. “Want another knock?”

“No, thanks,” Menefee said. “One’s plenty for me. But don’t let me stop you.”

“I’m not gonna do it by myself.” Sam put the bottle back into the desk drawer. He eyed Menefee, and wasn’t astonished to find the new officer eyeing him, too. They’d both passed a test of sorts. The exec would have a friendly drink, but didn’t care to take it much further than that. And Menefee had seen that, while Sam didn’t live by the Navy’s officially dry rules, he wasn’t a closet lush, either. And neither of them had said a word about it, and neither would.

As the desk drawer closed, Menefee said, “Will you give me the tour, then, and let me meet some of the sailors who won’t be able to stand me?” He spoke without rancor, and in the tones of a man who knew how things worked—and that they would work that way no matter what he thought about it. The slightly crooked grin that accompanied the words said the same thing. Sam approved, having a similar view of the world himself.

He took Menefee to the bridge first. Thad Walters had the conn, which meant a petty officer was minding the Y-ranging screens. The
Josephus Daniels
just didn’t carry a large complement of officers. When Sam told the new exec that the chief hydrophone operator was a CPO, Menefee raised one eyebrow but then nodded, taking the news in stride.

“Lots of antiaircraft guns. I saw that when I came aboard,” Menefee remarked when they went out on deck.

“That’s right, and I wish we carried even more,” Sam said. “The only ship-to-ship action we’ve fought was with a freighter that carried a light cruiser’s guns. We whipped the bastard, too.” Sam remembered the pride—and the terror—of that North Atlantic fight. “Most of the time, though, airplanes are our number-one worry. Way things are nowadays, warships can’t get close enough to shoot at other warships. So, yeah—twin 40mm mounts all over the damn place, and the four-inchers are dual purpose, too.”

“Sure. They’ve got more reach than the smaller guns.” Lieutenant Menefee nodded. “Things look about the same to me. If we don’t find some kind of way to keep bombers off our backs, the whole surface Navy’s liable to be in trouble.”

“During the Great War, everybody flabbled about submersibles. This time around, it’s airplanes. But as long as we bring our own airplanes with us, we can fight anywhere. And the carriers need ships to help keep the bad guys’ airplanes away from them, so I figure we can keep working awhile longer, anyhow.”

“Sounds good to me, sir.” Menefee gave him another of those wry grins.

When they got to the engine room, the new exec started gabbing with the black gang in a way that showed he knew exactly what he was talking about. “So you come from engineering?” Sam said.

“Shows a little, does it?” Menefee said. “Yes, that’s what I know. How about you, sir?”

“Gunnery and damage control,” Sam answered. “We’ve got the ship covered between us—except for all the fancy new electronics, I mean.”

“Most of the guys who understand that stuff don’t understand anything else—looks that way to me, anyhow,” Menefee said.

“Me, too,” Carsten agreed. “If you can figure out all the fancy circuits, doesn’t seem likely you’ll know how people work. I wouldn’t want one of those slide-rule pushers in charge of a ship.” But then he stopped himself, holding up his right hand. “Thad’s an exception, I think. He can make the Y-ranging gear sit up and roll over and beg, but he’s a damn good officer, too. You’ll see.”

“He’s mighty young. He’s had the chance to get used to it right from the start,” Menefee said. Sam nodded, carefully holding in his smile. To his eyes, Lon Menefee was mighty damn young, too. But the new exec was right—there were degrees to everything. Young, younger, youngest. Sam couldn’t hide the smile any more. Where the hell did
old fart
fit into that scheme?

N
ot Richmond, not any more. Richmond was a battleground. Basically, everything north of the James was a battleground—except for what had already fallen. And the damnyankees had a couple of bridgeheads over the river, too. They hadn’t tried to break out of them, not yet, but the Confederates couldn’t smash them, either. And so, when Clarence Potter left Lexington to report to Jake Featherston on what the physicists at Washington University were up to, he headed for Petersburg instead of the doomed capital of the CSA.

Getting to Petersburg was an adventure. Getting anywhere in the Confederacy was an adventure these days. But the Confederate States had hung on to equality in the air in northern Virginia, Maryland, and southern Pennsylvania longer than they had anywhere else. They’d hung on, and hung on, and hung on…till they couldn’t hang on any more. That was how things stood now.

Antiaircraft guns still blazed away at strafing U.S. fighters and fighter-bombers. But antiaircraft guns were just annoyances. What really held enemy aircraft at bay were your own airplanes. And the Confederates didn’t have enough to do the job any more.

His motorcar went off the road several times. It raced for a bridge once, and hid under the concrete shelter with bullets chewing up the ground to either side till the aerial wolves decided they couldn’t get him and went off after other, easier game. Then, cautiously, the driver put the butternut Birmingham in gear.

“Some fun, huh?” Potter said.

The look the PFC at the wheel gave him told him how flat the joke fell. “Hope to Jesus whatever the hell you’re doin’ on the road is win-the-war important,” the kid said. “If it ain’t, we got no business travelin’, on account of the damnyankees’re too fuckin’ likely to shoot our dicks off. Sir.”

Potter wanted to clutch himself like a maiden surprised. The mere thought was appalling. Reality was worse. He’d seen it. He wanted no closer acquaintance with it than that. But he said, “It just may be, soldier. If anything can nowadays, it’s got a pretty fair chance.”

“Hope so,” the driver said. This time, his suspicious stare was all too familiar. “How come you talk like a Yankee yourself?”

“’Cause I went to college up there a million years ago, and I wanted to fit in,” Potter replied. “And if I had a dime for every time I’ve answered that question, I’d be too rich to worry about an Army post.”

“Reckon we’ll go through security before we get real far into Petersburg.” The driver sounded as if he was looking forward to it, which meant he didn’t completely believe Potter.
And if I had a dime for that, too…
the Intelligence officer thought.

He figured Petersburg would be something out of Dante, and he was right. Soldiers and bureaucrats and civilian refugees thrombosed the streets. People moved forward by shouting and waving fists and sometimes by shooting guns in the air. Potter saw bodies hanging from lampposts. Some said
DESERTER
. Others said
SPY
. He felt the driver’s eye on him, but pretended he didn’t.

Sure as hell, there were security checkpoints almost every block. “Papers!” the soldiers or Freedom Party Guards—more and more Guards as Potter neared the center of town—would shout. The wreathed stars on his collar meant nothing to them. Considering that Nathan Bedford Forrest III and other high-ranking officers had risen against Jake Featherston, that made more sense than Potter wished it did.

Then a Freedom Party Guard checked off his name on a clipboard. “You’re on our list,” said the man in a camouflage smock. “You come with me right now.” By the way he jerked the muzzle of his automatic rifle, Potter would be sorry if he didn’t—although perhaps not for long.

“Where are you taking me?” Potter asked.

“Never mind that. Get out of your auto and come along,” the Party Guard said.

Not seeing any other choice but starting a firefight he couldn’t hope to win, Potter got out of the Birmingham. “Good luck, sir,” the driver said.

“Thanks.” Potter hoped he wouldn’t need it, but it never hurt.

None of his escort—captors?—demanded the pistol on his belt. He wondered whether that was a good omen or simply an oversight. One way or the other, he figured he’d find out before long. “Now that we’ve got him, what the hell do we do with him?” another Party Guard asked.

The one who’d decided Potter was a wanted man checked the clipboard again. “We take him to the Lawn, that’s what,” he answered.

It meant something to the other Freedom Party Guard, if not to Clarence Potter. The security troops hustled him along. Nobody laid a finger on him, but nobody let him slow down, either: not quite a frog-march, but definitely something close.

The Lawn, on Sycamore near the corner of Liberty, turned out to be a tall red-brick house much overgrown by ivy. The grass in front of it had gone yellow-brown from winter cold. More Freedom Party Guards manned a barbed-wire perimeter outside the house. They relieved Potter of the .45 before letting him go forward. Before he could go inside, a stonefaced Army captain gave him the most thorough—and most intimate—patting down he’d ever had the displeasure to get.

“Do you want me to turn my head and cough?” he asked as the captain’s probing fingers found another sensitive spot.

“That won’t be necessary.” The young officer didn’t change expression at all.

“Necessary…
sir
?” Potter suggested. He didn’t usually stand on military ceremony, but he was sick and tired of being treated like a dangerous piece of meat.

He watched the captain think it over. The process took much longer than he thought it should have. At last, grudgingly, the man nodded. “You
are
on the list, and it looks like you’re clean. So…it won’t be necessary, sir. Are you happy…sir?”

“Dancing in the goddamn daisies,” Potter replied.

That got the ghost of a grin from the young captain. “Go on in, then, sir.” No audible pause this time. “The boss will take care of you.”

“Who—?” Clarence Potter began, but the captain had already forgotten about him. Somebody else was coming up to the Lawn, and needed frisking. Those educated hands had more work to do. Muttering, Potter went on in. When he saw Lulu typing on a card table set up in the foyer, he figured out what was going on.

She paused when she recognized him. He almost laughed at the sniff she let out. She never had liked him—she never thought he was loyal enough to the President. But it wasn’t funny any more. The way things were these days, suspicion of disloyalty was liable to be a capital offense.

“General Potter,” the President’s secretary said.

“Hello, Lulu,” Potter answered gravely. “Is he all right?”

“He’s just fine.” She got to her feet. “You stay right there”—as if he were likely to go anywhere. “I’ll tell him you’re here.” The Confederate States of America might be going down the drain, but you couldn’t tell from the way Lulu acted. She came back a moment later. “He wants to see you. This way, please.”

This way
took him through the living room, down a hall, past four more guards—any one of whom looked able to tear him in half without breaking a sweat—and into a bedroom. Jake Featherston was shouting into a telephone: “Don’t just sit there with your thumb up your ass, goddammit! Hurry!” He slammed the handset down.

Lulu’s cough said she disapproved of the bad language even more than of the man she escorted. “General Potter is here to see you, sir,” she said. She still didn’t care for Potter, though, not even a little bit.

“Thank you, darling,” Jake said. Watching him sweet-talk his secretary never failed to bemuse Potter. He wouldn’t have bet Featherston could do it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes again and again. “Come in, Potter. Sit down.” He pointed to a chair. “Lulu, hon, please close the door on your way out.”
Please!
Who would have thought it was in the President’s vocabulary?

Lulu gave Potter a fishy stare, but she did as Jake Featherston asked. “Reporting as ordered, Mr. President,” Potter said, sinking into the overstuffed chair. It was all red velvet and brass nails, and looked like something from a Victorian brothel.

“How close are they to a uranium bomb?” Featherston didn’t waste time or politeness on Potter. The President looked like hell: pale and haggard and skinny, with big dark circles under his eyes. How much did he sleep? Did he sleep at all? Potter wouldn’t have bet on it.

“They’re getting closer, sir,” he answered. “They’re talking about months now, not years—if the damnyankees’ bombs don’t set them back again.”

“Months! Jesus Christ! We can’t wait months!” Jake howled. “Haven’t they noticed? This goddamn country’s falling apart around their ears! Atlanta! Richmond! Savannah’s going, and God only knows how long Birmingham will last. We need that fucker, and we need it yesterday. Not tomorrow, not today—yesterday! Months!” He rolled his eyes up to the heavens.

“Sir, I’m just telling you what Professor FitzBelmont told me,” Potter said. “He also said that if you think you can find someone who’ll do it better and faster, you should put him in charge.”

Featherston swore. “There isn’t anybody like that, is there?”