Breakthroughs

XII

Sergeant Jake Featherston cursed a blue streak. The surviving guns of his battery, along with the rest of those belonging to the First Richmond Howitzers, perched on Sudley Mountain, a little east of Centreville, Virginia. From those low hills, they could have wreaked fearful havoc on the Yankees farther west, over near the small stream called Bull Run-if they’d had any ammunition.

A runner came up to Featherston. “Sir, uh, Sergeant, I mean, the wagons will be here in an hour or so, headquarters says.”

Could looks have killed, the messenger would have been deader than if a twelve-inch shell from a battleship had gone off under his feet. “They should have been here this morning, God damn it,” Featherston ground out. “What the fucking hell happened to them?”

The runner stared. He took a lot of abuse: a big part of his job was telling people of superior rank they couldn’t have what they wanted and what they thought they were entitled to. Featherston’s words were nothing out of the ordinary. The icy vitriol of the tone was. It might have come from an irate colonel, not a sergeant running a battered battery.

“Sergeant, they got tangled up with a division of infantry on the march, so after that they needed a good long while to get unraveled again.”

“Do you think the damnyankees don’t care that the Army of Northern Virginia doesn’t know what in Christ’s name it’s doing?” Jake snapped. “Maybe they do care-enough to send us a big thank-you bouquet.”

“I’ve given you the news I have, Sergeant,” the runner said, and went on his way. Having other duty let him escape Featherston’s fury; it wasn’t as if Jake were his commanding officer.

Out came the Gray Eagle scratch pad and Over Open Sights. The white-bearded fools in Richmond are doing their best to make sure that we lose this war, Featherston wrote, though we had victory straight ahead of us. Now they give the niggers guns to try to put their own blundering to rights, even though it was the niggers who helped stick us in this mess in the first place. And white troops would never have let themselves get fouled up with ammunition wagons like that. The messenger hadn’t said whether the troopers who’d cause his problem were white or black. He drew his own conclusions.

“When you first started keeping those notes, Sergeant,” someone said behind Featherston, “I never thought you would keep on with them. I seem to have been mistaken.”

Automatically, Jake closed the cover of the notebook. What he wrote in there was his, nobody else’s. “Major Potter, sir,” he said now, “I got nothing better to do than write, on account of I can’t go pasting the damnyankees the way I want to, on account of God may know where the ammunition is, but I sure don’t.”

Clarence Potter sighed. “I wish you could paste them, but that you can’t may matter less than you think. They are building up for another large push against us. If you have the ammunition you’ll need to help stop that, well and good. If not…” He didn’t go on.

“If not, we’re in too much trouble for anything to matter. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it, sir?”

“That’s what I’m saying.” Potter studied him. “I never have figured out exactly how smart you are, Featherston, but you’ve made it plain you’re shrewd enough and to spare. If you hadn’t made the fatal mistake of being right at the wrong time, we might have the same rank by now.”

Maybe he meant that to console Jake. It didn’t; it made him furious. “Best way to save the country I can think of, sir, would be for a Yankee bomber to put three or four heavy ones right on top of the War Department. That might do it. Can’t think of anything else that would.”

The intelligence officer shook his head. “All things considered, they’ve done about as well as anyone could have expected.”

“God help us if that’s so,” Featherston said. “We’d better make peace in a hurry, before the damn fools do something even worse than they have already. Don’t know what that could be, but I reckon they’d come up with something.”

“You are shrewd.” Behind their metal-rimmed spectacles, Major Potter’s eyes widened slightly. “There are people in the Army and people in the government beginning to say the same thing. If Britain is forced to leave the war, if we have to face not just the whole U.S. Army but the whole U.S. Navy, less whatever part keeps fighting Japan in the Pacific-if that happens, the odds against us grow very long.”

“Odds were long during the War of Secession, too,” Jake said. “We licked the Yankees twice over by Manassas Gap. We’d lick ’em again if only that damned ammunition would ever get here.”

“We had help then,” Potter said. “Without it, I think we should have lost.”

“One way or another, we’d have licked them.” Featherston didn’t know whether that was likely to be true or just his own stubbornness talking. “We’d be licking them now if the damn niggers hadn’t risen up and stabbed us in the back.”

“I wonder,” Clarence Potter said. “I do wonder. We’d be better off than we are, no doubt, but would we be winning? The last two times we fought the United States, we won fairly quickly, before they committed everything they had to the struggle. We failed to do that this time, and they are fully committed to the fight-and they have more to commit to it than we do.”

As if to underscore his words, a flight of U.S. aeroplanes buzzed by overhead. No C.S. fighting scouts rose to answer them. Aeroplanes were mere annoyances, but Jake was sick of being annoyed without having the chance to return the favor. At long last, a couple of antiaircraft guns opened up on the Yankees. They scored no hits. They hardly ever did.

Potter went on, “And speaking of our colored troops, do I hear correctly that you opened up on them with canister during the retreat from Round Hill?”

“Hell, yes, you heard that straight,” Featherston said defiantly. “If they ain’t more afraid of us than they are of the damnyankees, they won’t do us any good, will they? They were running from the enemy, sir, and it was the only way I had to make ’em stop.”

“Some of them will never run from the enemy again, that’s certain-or toward him, either,” Major Potter said. “Some of their white officers and noncoms sent complaints about what you did to Army of Northern Virginia headquarters. You might have faced a court-martial if others had not spoken out on your behalf.”

“Surprised I didn’t any which way,” Jake said. “There’s a big raft of officers who don’t love me a whole hell of a lot.”

“Really?” Potter raised an eyebrow. “I hadn’t noticed.” Featherston, who didn’t know what to make of such understated irony, started to boil till the intelligence officer raised a hand and went on, “That’s a joke, Sergeant. I am happy to be able to tell you that I was able to deflect the complaints and make sure none of them went on to Richmond.”

“Thank you for that much, sir,” Jake said. Potter was a decent sort, as far as officers went. But Featherston hated being in anyone’s debt. He especially hated being in an officer’s debt.

“You’ve had a few bad turns come your way,” Potter said. “Seems only right to even things up as we can.”

There he stood, smug and sweatless in the muggy heat. Yes, you’re a lord, Featherston thought. You can throw the poor peasant a crust of bread and never miss it. In that moment, he might have come close to understanding what had driven the Negroes of the CSA to rise up late in 1915. But he never thought-he never would have thought-to compare his situation to theirs.

Before the comparison could have occurred to him, the first ammunition wagon arrived, too late to suit him but still sooner than the runner had said. Forgetting his resentment of Potter, he took out on the wagon driver the older anger he still felt, cursing him up one side and down the other. The driver, a lowly private first class, had to sit there and take it.

Finally having ammunition in his hands, though, let Jake work out resentment with something more than words. In mere minutes, the four guns he had left were banging away at the Yankees. The range was too long to let him see individual U.S. soldiers, but he could make out the boil and stir as shells slammed down among them. A man dropping rocks on a nest of ants below his second-story window could not see any of the individual bugs, either, but he could watch the nest boil and stir.

Clarence Potter, who spent most of the war back at the Army of Northern Virginia headquarters, also looked on with benign approval. “Make them sting,” he told Jake. “The higher the price they pay, the likelier they are to let us have the sort of peace we can live with.”

“I don’t give a damn about a peace we can live with,” Featherston snarled, adjusting the elevation screw on his field gun. “Only thing I give a damn about is killing the sons of bitches.” He raised his voice to a shout: “Fire!” Michael Scott jerked the lanyard. The cannon roared. Out flew the shell casing. In went another shell.

A man dropping rocks on a nest of ants did not have to worry that the ants would try to drop rocks on him, too. The guns of Featherston’s battery enjoyed no such immunity. Before long, U.S. artillery began replying. Shells did not come in so often as he sent them out, but they came from bigger pieces-four- and six-inch guns-firing from a range he could not hope to match. Since he could not match it, he ignored the fire, and continued to pepper the closer U.S. infantry, whom he could hit.

“You’re cool about this business,” Major Potter said. For a man unused to coming under shellfire, he was pretty cool himself. He didn’t dive for cover at a couple of near misses till the crew of Jake’s gun did.

Featherston shrugged. “They can’t shoot for hell, sir.” That wasn’t true, and he knew it damn well. The Yankee artillerymen were no less skilled at their trade than their counterparts in butternut. Since the beginning of the war, they’d enjoyed an edge in heavy guns, too. Sometimes the numbers and quick firing of the Confederates’ three-inchers could make up for that. Sometimes, as when trying to cave in deep dugouts, they couldn’t.

In a lull, Potter said, “We have to hold them at Bull Run. If we can’t hold them here, Richmond itself is threatened.”

“Do my damnedest, sir,” Jake answered. He didn’t know if that would be enough. By the way Potter talked, he didn’t think it would. Jake shrugged again. Defeat wouldn’t be his fault. As far as he was concerned, the War Department and the niggers could split the blame.

Lucien Galtier had not been expecting a visit from Major Jedediah Quigley. He certainly had not been expecting a warm, cordial visit from Major Quigley. That was what he got, though. The U.S. officer even brought along a bottle of brandy far smoother and finer than the homemade applejack Galtier had grown used to drinking.

After Marie came in from the kitchen with glasses, Quigley splashed brandy into them with a generous hand. He raised his glass in salute. “To the union of our great peoples!” he declared in his elegant French.

As far as Lucien was concerned, the U.S. major was making too much of the impending marriage between Nicole and Dr. O’Doull, but the Quebecois farmer held his peace. Quigley’s job seemed to entail making too much of everything that came to his notice, for ill or for good. This, at least, was for good.

It was also a toast to which Galtier could drink, even if he found it a bit more than the occasion called for. And the brandy was good. He hardly felt it going down his throat, but it filled his belly with warmth that quickly spread outward. “Formidable!” he murmured, respect in his voice.

“Glad you like it,” Quigley said, and sloshed more into his glass. The American poured himself a fresh dollop, too. After sipping, he went on in thoughtful tones: “I will admit to you, M. Galtier, that I never expected to be paying a social call here. When we first came to Quebec, you seemed a man more in love with the past than with the future.”

What he meant was, You didn’t act like a collaborator. Lucien still didn’t feel like a collaborator, either. He said, “When young people come to know each other, one cannot always guess ahead of time how these things will turn out.”

“There you certainly have reason,” Major Quigley said. “Back in New Hampshire, where I come from, my daughter married a young fellow who makes concertinas.” He knocked back his brandy. For a moment, thinking about the choice his daughter had made, he looked not at all like an occupying official, but rather than an ordinary man, and a surprised ordinary man to boot.

Galtier found himself surprised, too: surprised Quigley could look and even act like an ordinary man. Politely, the farmer said, “I hope your son-in-law is safe in the war.”

“He is well so far, thanks,” Quigley answered. “He’s out in Sequoyah, where the fighting isn’t so heavy as it is east of the Mississippi-nor so heavy as north of the St. Lawrence or over in Ontario.”

“The United States have stubborn neighbors to the south of them,” Galtier said. “The United States have also stubborn neighbors to the north of them. I think that, before this war began, you Americans did not altogether understand how stubborn these northern neighbors of yours were.”

Some of that was the brandy talking. Here, for once, Quigley had come to his house for some reason other than doing him wrong, and now he was giving the American fresh reason to suspect him. Marie would have some sharp things to say about that. Galtier had some sharp things to say about it, too. He said them, silently but with great vigor, to himself.

But Quigley did not take the comment as he might have. Instead, he nodded soberly, or perhaps not so soberly: as he spoke, he reached for the bottle of brandy again. “Well, once more you have reason,” he said. “When we began the war, we thought it would soon be over. But, as you say, our neighbors were more stubborn than we thought, and also stronger than we thought. The fighting has proved harder than we ever imagined.”

He held out the bottle to Lucien, who let him pour. After three big glasses of brandy, the farmer would be slow-moving and achy in the morning, but the morning was a long way away. “I did not think an American would admit any such thing,” Galtier said.

Quigley tapped his long, thin nose. He had to shift his hand at the last minute to make it connect. “I admit I’ve got this here,” he said, “and the other is every bit as plain. But that doesn’t mean the United States aren’t going to win this war. It just means we’ve had to work much harder than we thought we would. We have done the work, M. Galtier, and we are at last beginning to see the results of it.”

“It could be so,” Lucien said. By everything he could learn, it was so, but he knew that what he could learn was limited. Both the United States and the new Republic of Quebec made sure of that.

“It is so.” The brandy was talking through Jedediah Quigley, too. Normally as smooth and polished as a new pair of shoes, he made a fist and thumped it against his thigh to emphasize his words.

He also spoke louder than usual. Marie stuck her head out of the kitchen to make sure no quarrel was brewing. When she’d reassured herself, she disappeared again. Galtier didn’t think Quigley saw her.

The farmer said, “I will be glad when the war is over.” He did not think anyone could disagree with that, or with the way he continued: “Everyone will be glad when the war is over.”

And, sure enough, the American officer nodded vigorously. “The only people who love a war are those who have never fought in one,” he declared, to which Lucien could but incline his head; he had not thought Major Quigley could say anything so wise. And then Quigley spoiled it: “But you, M. Galtier, you will have come out of the war having done pretty well for yourself. Without it, you would not have gained a doctor as a fiance for your daughter.”

Even without brandy in him, Galtier would not have let that go unchallenged. With brandy in him, he let fly, saying, “Without the war, Major Quigley, I would not have had part of my patrimony…alienated”-even with brandy in him, he had sense enough not to say stolen-“from me so that the United States Army could build on it a hospital.”

Major Quigley coughed a couple of times. The brandy had turned him a little ruddy. Now he went red as a brick. “I will speak frankly,” he said. “I already told you that, when the war was new, I did not think you were a man the United States could trust.”

“Yes, you said that,” Galtier agreed. And you were right to think what you thought. He had sense enough to keep that to himself, too.

After coughing once more, Quigley said, “I also told you I seem to have been wrong. I do not deny I chose your land on which to build this hospital in part because I did not believe you were reliable.”

“And now you know differently?” Lucien asked. He had to make it a question, not least because he remained unsure of the answer himself.

But Quigley nodded. “Now I know better,” he echoed, and coughed yet again. When he went on, he seemed to be talking as much to himself as to Galtier: “Since I know better, it could be that what I did might not have been the wisest thing to do.”

“Perhaps, then, you should think about how you might make amends.” Galtier stared down at the little bit of brandy left in his glass. Had what he’d drunk really made him bold enough to say that?

Evidently it had. Major Quigley rubbed his nose. He fiddled with a cuff on his green-gray tunic. At last, he said, “Perhaps I should. What would you say a fair rent for the piece of ground on which the hospital was built would be?”

Galtier had all he could do not to ask if he had heard correctly. Quigley still assumed he’d had the right to use the land regardless of whether Lucien approved or not, but an offer to pay back rent was ever so much more than the farmer had expected to hear. He scratched his chin, named the most outrageous amount he could think of-“Fifty dollars a month”-and braced himself for the haggle to come. If I end up with half that, he thought, I shall be well ahead of the game.

But Major Quigley, instead of haggling, simply said, “Very well, M. Galtier, we have a bargain.” He stuck out his hand.

In a daze, Lucien Galtier took it. The daze had nothing to do with the brandy he had drunk. He did not know whether to be delighted Quigley had met his price or disappointed he hadn’t tried to gouge the American officer out of more. In the end, he was delighted and disappointed at the same time.

Quigley said, “Here, I will leave the bottle with you. If I drink any more from it tonight, I shall be unable to drive back to Riviere-du-Loup.”

“Here is an advantage of a wagon or a buggy over a motorcar,” Galtier said. “A horse would be able to get you back to town if only you pointed him in the right direction. A motorcar is not so accommodating.”

“C’est vrai, et quelle dommage,” the American replied, in tones that made it a truly pitiful pity. He got to his feet and walked-steadily but very slowly-to the doorway. “Bonsoir, Monsieur Galtier.”

“Bonsoir,” Lucien said. Major Quigley went outside and cranked his Ford to life. Lucien stood in the doorway and watched him drive-steadily but, again, very slowly-north toward Riviere-du-Loup.

Marie came out of the kitchen. Nicole followed her. Astonished disbelief filled both their faces. Almost whispering, Marie said, “Did my ears tell me the truth? Can it be that the Americans will pay us rent for the land they stole for their hospital?”

“If they pay rent, we can no longer say they stole the land from us,” Galtier replied. “It becomes then a matter of business. And what business!” The full weight of what he’d done began to sink in. “Not only rent, but back rent. Not only back rent, but fifty dollars a month.”

“We shall be rich!” Nicole exclaimed.

Her mother shook her head, denying even the possibility of such a thing. “No, we shall not be rich. Rich is not for the likes of us. It could be…it could be that, for a little while, we may have almost enough.” Saying even so much took a distinct effort of will from her.

“That would be fine,” Lucien said. “Even of itself, that would be very fine.” Acid returned to his voice: “It might even let us make up for the robbery the Americans committed against us during the first winter of the war.”

In a worried voice, Marie said, “But taking this money…I pray it shall not be as it was when Judas took his thirty pieces of silver.”

“Nonsense,” Galtier said. “Judas took silver for betraying our Lord. We shall take this money in exchange for what is rightfully ours, in exchange for the Americans’ use of my patrimony.”

“Father is right,” said Nicole, who had her own reasons to want things to go smoothly between her family and the Americans.

“I suppose so.” But Marie still did not sound convinced.

Lucien was not altogether convinced, either, but he had made the offer and Major Quigley accepted it. What could he do now? Like Nicole’s engagement to Dr. O’Doull, the rent tied him ever closer to the United States and the interests of the United States. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. In 1914, he never would have, never could have, imagined any such thing.

Night was slowly lifting over northern Virginia. Sergeant Chester Martin hadn’t got much in the way of sleep even while darkness hung over the land. Ever since midnight, U.S. machine guns had been hammering away at the Confederate line to the east and south, and the guns of the Army of Northern Virginia hadn’t been shy about replying, either. The din had kept most of Martin’s section awake, though Corporal Bob Reinholdt still lay wrapped in his blanket, sleeping the sleep of a man more innocent than he was likely to be.

But the din had also kept the Rebs from noticing the noise of a whole great whacking lot of barrels moving toward the front line-or so the brass hoped. So Chester Martin devoutly hoped, too.

He turned to David Hamburger. “Next time you write to your sister, tell her thanks,” he bawled in the kid’s ear. “Looks likely they’ve got a really big force of barrels here, like they’ve been doing it in Tennessee.”

“I don’t know how much she had to do with any of that,” Hamburger shouted-in effect, whispered-back. “You’ve got to remember, Sarge, she hates the war and anything that has anything to do with it.”

“Hey, she’s not the only one,” Martin said. “You think I like getting shot, you’re crazy. But if we’ve got to have the goddamn thing, we’d better win it. The only thing worse than having a war is losing one. The United States know all about that.”

Before Hamburger could reply, U.S. artillery, which had been pretty quiet, opened up with a thunderous roar. Short and sweet-that was how they did it these days. None of the week-long bombardments that Martin had seen on the Roanoke front, enormous cannonadings that did more to tell the Rebs where the attack was going in than anything else.

Artillery or no artillery, Bob Reinholdt kept right on sleeping. Martin went over and shook him, then had to leap back as Reinholdt lashed out with a trench knife. “Naughty,” Martin said; the corporal always woke up at maximum combat alertness. “Show’s about to start.”

“Yeah?” Reinholdt said. “All right.” He grunted, rolled up his blanket, and got to his feet. He hadn’t given Martin any trouble since absorbing both fist and steel reinforcement with his chin. Maybe he’d learned his lesson. Maybe he was biding his time. Martin still kept an eye on him, in case he was.

Captain Cremony strode along the trench. “All right, boys,” he said. “Now we’re driving nails in their coffin. We’ve cleared ’em out of Washington. We need a buffer, so they can’t shell it whenever they choose. Our granddads fought on this ground. They won some fights in Virginia, too, even if they didn’t win the war. We get to make up for what they couldn’t quite manage.”

“My grandfather didn’t fight here,” David Hamburger said after Cremony was out of earshot, which didn’t take long. “He was still on the other side of the Atlantic, wondering if the Czar would put him in the Russian Army for twenty-five or thirty years. When the Czar said go, he went-here.”

“Conscription-dodger, eh?” Martin grinned. “Somewhere down at the roots of my family tree is a poacher who got out of England a short hop ahead of the sheriff. That’s what my old man says, anyway. How about you, Bob?”

“Me?” Reinholdt seemed surprised at the question. “I’m a son of a bitch from a long line of sons of bitches. You don’t believe me, ask anybody.”

Martin wouldn’t have argued with him for the world. He didn’t get the chance, anyhow. When the barrels’ engines went from low power to high, not all the machine-gun fire and artillery in the world could have concealed the racket. The traveling fortresses clanked and rumbled toward the Confederate line, their own machine guns blazing away at the enemy positions ahead.

All along the front lines of the U.S. works, officers blew whistles to urge their men over the top. Cremony tweeted away till his face turned red. U.S. soldiers scrambled up ladders and sandbag stairways and followed the barrels toward the Confederate trenches.

“Stay close!” Captain Cremony shouted.

“Stay close!” Martin echoed. “Those big iron critters may be ugly, but they’re our best friends.” Even as he spoke, the barrel behind which he advanced began smashing its way over and through the wire the Rebels had strung to protect their position. Between the last wire belt and their forwardmost trenches, the Confederates’ Negro laborers had dug a great ditch, too wide for the barrels to cross and deep enough to be sure to bog them down.

But U.S. observation aeroplanes or balloonists must have spotted the digging, for some of the barrels bore on their forward decks great bundles of sticks and logs bound with chains and ropes. They dumped them into the ditch, then ground their way across over them.

Captain Cremony, who was fond of Shakespeare, shouted out in high glee: “Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane!”

Martin didn’t know about that. He did know the bundles of wood made it easier for him and his men to cross the ditch, too, though some of them used bites the artillery had taken out of its front and rear walls to scramble down and then up. “Stay close to your barrel!” Martin yelled again. “Stay close!”

The barrels were bludgeoning the Army of Northern Virginia into submission. These were new positions for the Rebs, hastily run up after the retreat from Aldie. They lacked much of the reinforced concrete of lines built more slowly and held longer. Machine-gun nests of sandbags could not stand up to the barrels’ nose cannons. One after another, the barrels cleared them out.

Tilden Russell shouted something into Martin’s ear. Martin had trouble making out what he said amidst the rattle of gunfire, the thunder of artillery, and the dyspeptic roar of the barrels. Obligingly, the private shouted it again: “Breakthrough!” He stuffed a cigar into his mouth, got it going with a bronze-cased flint-and-steel lighter, and puffed out happy clouds of smoke.

Was it a breakthrough? Martin wasn’t sure, not here, not now, though on the Roanoke front he would have been ecstatic at the ground he and his comrades were gaining. A day’s advance here could be measured in miles, not yards. If that wasn’t a breakthrough, what was it?

But, if a breakthrough required the Rebs to throw down their rifles and quit in carload lots, that didn’t happen. Soldiers in butternut, white and colored, kept fighting till the barrels and the U.S. infantry rolled over them. If anything, the colored Confederate soldiers fought harder than they had when the U.S. troops broke out of their bridgeheads south of the Potomac. Maybe that was because the whites had given them dire warnings about what would happen to them if they didn’t fight. Maybe, too, and more likely, the Negro soldiers were steadier now simply because they’d seen some action.

East of the infantry trenches and the village of Centreville, the ground rose. The Rebel batteries on those hills-maps called them mountains-hadn’t given up and gone home, either. Shells from U.S. guns kept falling among them, but they went right on giving the advancing men in green-gray a hell of a hard time. They reserved their chiefest fury for the barrels. The traveling forts were not easy targets, principally because they could travel, but every so often a shell would slam home with the noise of a man beating an iron pot with a pick handle.

Worse noises commonly followed-ammunition cooking off, engines and gas tanks going up in flames, men screaming as they cooked. Barrels’ armor plate held out machine-gun bullets, but three-inch shells, when they hit, pierced it like so much pasteboard.

And the CSA had barrels of their own in the field. They were fewer and more widely scattered than those of the USA, but they were there, and some of them gave a good account of themselves. When not fighting for his own life, Martin watched in fascination as barrel battled barrel. The fights put him in mind of the dinosaurs struggling in swamps he’d read about in the Sunday supplements.

One particular Confederate barrel-tanks, the Rebs called them, aping the British as they so often did-was altogether too good at making its U.S. opponents extinct. It set two green-gray barrels afire in quick succession. The second victory let it bear down on Martin and his section.

“Hit the dirt!” he shouted, and dove behind a pile of rubble that had been a Rebel’s chimney once upon a time. Machine-gun bullets from the Confederate barrel chewed up the dirt around him and snarled off the bricks in front of him. If the barrel kept coming straight ahead, it would squash him into a redder smear in the red-brown dirt. Shouts and screams from around him said only too plainly that some of his men hadn’t been so lucky in finding cover as he had.

Clang! The machine-gun fire from the Confederate barrel abruptly stopped. Wary as a wild animal, Chester Martin raised his head. The barrel was burning. Hatches flew open as crewmen tried to escape. With a fierce glee, Martin and his comrades shot them down. Out of their steel snail shell, they were easy meat.

Martin looked around and grimaced. “Stretcher-bearers!” he shouted, his voice cracking with urgency. “Stretcher-bearers!”

He ran over to David Hamburger, the closest wounded soldier. The kid was clutching his left thigh and howling like a wolf. Martin didn’t think he knew he was doing it. Bright red blood trickled out between his fingers. When he saw Martin, he stopped howling and said, “I’m going to write my congresswoman about this.” His voice was amazingly calm.

“Yeah, you do that,” Martin said. “Let’s have a look at what you caught there.” Reluctantly, Hamburger took his hands away. The wound was in the middle of the thigh. Martin whistled in a minor key. A bullet to the inside, and the kid would have bled out in short order. This was better news, but it wasn’t what you’d call good.

“Here, we’ll take him, Sarge.” A couple of stretcher-bearers paused beside the wounded man.

“Do your best. He’s a good fellow, and his sister’s in Congress.” With the stretcher-bearers there, Martin couldn’t wait around. He awkwardly patted David Hamburger on the shoulder, then hurried past the blazing hulk of the Confederate barrel and on through Centreville.

Confederate artillerymen were made to quit the high ground east of the little Virginia town only with the greatest reluctance. Some of the gun crews stayed till they could fire at the advancing barrels over open sights. They took heavy casualties, though; splinter shields were no match for the firepower bearing down on them.

A Rebel gunner, one of the last on the field, shook his fist at the oncoming U.S. soldiers as his crew limbered up their field piece. He shook it again as they galloped away. Martin shot at him, but missed. He shrugged. One man didn’t much matter. The high ground belonged to the USA.

Joe Conroy was about the last man in the world Cincinnatus wanted to see. By the look on the fat, white storekeeper’s face, Cincinnatus was about the last man in the world he wanted to see, too. “Come to gloat, I reckon,” Conroy said, shifting a plug of tobacco from one cheek to the other.

“Got nothin’ to gloat about, suh,” Cincinnatus answered. With Kentucky a state in the USA these days, he didn’t have to be so deferential to a white man as he would have before the war, when the state still belonged to the CSA. But Conroy was a Confederate diehard. Cincinnatus figured using the old ways was a good idea if he hoped to learn anything.

He might not learn anything anyhow. Conroy sneered at him. “Yeah, a likely story. You go on and tell me you don’t know what the hell happened to my store after me and Tom Kennedy, God rest his soul, taught you how to make those little firebombs that ain’t no bigger’n cigars.”

“Mr. Conroy, suh, I don’t know what the hell happened to your store,” Cincinnatus said evenly. “I didn’t have nothin’ to do with burnin’ it down. That there is the truth, and you can take it to the bank.”

That there was a lie, and his mother would have boxed his ears for telling a lie had she been here to listen to it. But his mother wasn’t anywhere around, and he told the lie with great aplomb. “Huh,” Conroy grunted, as if to say he didn’t believe it for a minute. But then he went on, “If you don’t know about it, who the hell does?”

Cincinnatus shrugged. “Who the hell knows about how Tom Kennedy got hisself killed, suh?”

He didn’t think he’d made the question too obvious. Conroy had offered him another question on which to hang it, so he didn’t seem to be pulling it in from out of the blue. The storekeeper looked down at the park bench on which they sat at opposite ends before giving an answer more oblique than useful: “Never could figure out what the hell Tom saw in you.”

“Swear to Jesus, suh, never did figure out what he was doin’ there outside my door,” Cincinnatus said.

Conroy’s eyes were narrow slits, almost hidden in folds of fat. Cincinnatus still couldn’t decide whether he was clever or just sly. Now he said, “They were after him-what do you think?”

Only a lifetime of disguising his feelings toward whites and the stupid things that came out of their mouths let Cincinnatus keep from barking scornful laughter at that. Had nobody been after Kennedy, nobody would have shot him. “Who’s ‘they,’ Mr. Conroy?” he asked. “That’s what I’m tryin’ to find out.”

“Well, now,” the storekeeper said slowly, “I don’t rightly know. Could have been a whole bunch of different folks.”

Cincinnatus wanted to grab him by the neck and shake him till his narrow eyes popped. “You got any notion who?” he asked, as gently as he could. “Been a lot o’ different folks comin’ round askin’ me questions I ain’t got no good answers for, ’less I talk way too much.”

Unless I tell them who Tom Kennedy’s friends are, was what he meant. Would Conroy be bright enough to figure that out, or would he need a more direct hint? The only more direct hint Cincinnatus could think of was a whack in the teeth. That would be satisfying, but…

Conroy got what he was talking about. The white man’s absurd little rosebud mouth puckered up as if he’d bitten into the world’s sourest pickled tomato. “Who?” he repeated, sounding like an unhappy owl. “Could have been one of those Kentucky State Police bastards. Could have been some of the Red niggers, too. You’d know more about that than I would, I reckon.”

He gave Cincinnatus a stare that meant, I can talk, too. Cincinnatus hid a grimace. Everybody could talk about him to somebody. He said, “From what I seen, Mr. Kennedy and the Reds didn’t get on too bad.”

“I told him to watch out for ’em just the same,” Conroy said. “Can’t trust a Red. He’ll yell ‘Popular Front!’ today and kick you in the nuts tomorrow. Tom thought he could handle it. He always thought he could handle everything.”

That did sound like the Kennedy Cincinnatus had known. Conroy’s characterization of the Reds wasn’t far wrong, either, though Cincinnatus wouldn’t have admitted it to the storekeeper.

And Conroy wasn’t through, either. He continued, “Could even have been some of our own boys. I’ve heard this one and that one go on about how Tom was selling us all down the river.”

“That a fact?” Cincinnatus pricked up his ears. “You got names for any o’ those fellows?”

Conroy looked down at his shoes, which were every bit as scuffed and battered as Cincinnatus’. He didn’t say anything. After a while, Cincinnatus realized he wasn’t going to say anything. Everybody played his cards close to his vest in this game. Kennedy and Conroy were the only two Confederate holdouts Cincinnatus had ever met. Conroy didn’t care to give him the key to more.

In casual tones, Cincinnatus said, “Luther Bliss’d ask a lot more questions than I do, and he’d ask ’em a lot harder, too. I been down to the Covington city hall. I know what I’m talkin’ about.”

“Yeah, and he gave you money out of his own pocket, the cold-blooded son of a bitch,” Conroy snapped.

Cincinnatus sighed. Teddy Roosevelt had done him a good turn, but Bliss had put barbs in it. Still casually, Cincinnatus said, “Maybe he’d listen if I was to tell him somethin’, then.”

“Maybe he would. And if you was to tell him somethin’, maybe some smart nigger who wasn’t quite as smart as he reckoned he was would get a bullet through the ear one day when he’s drivin’ that big ugly old White truck o’ his that’s plumb full o’ shit the damnyankees’re shootin’ at his countrymen. Or maybe his wife’d have a little accident. Or maybe his kid.”

“I ain’t the only one accidents can happen to, Conroy.” Cincinnatus had to work to hold his voice steady. Plenty of people had threatened him. Threatening his family was an alarming departure.

Conroy leaned back against the park bench, looking like a fat cat with canary feathers on his whiskers. “Reckon I know a bluff when I hear one.”

“Reckon you don’t,” Cincinnatus said. “Got me a little Gray Eagle notebook. I been writin’ things in it for a long time. Anything happen to me or mine, it’ll get to the right place. I’ve made sure o’ that.”

The storekeeper stared at him in undisguised loathing. He was running a bluff, but he wouldn’t be for long; the idea of having such protection was irresistibly appealing. Conroy said, “We was a pack o’ damn fools to ever let any niggers learn their letters.”

“Maybe so, maybe not,” Cincinnatus answered with a shrug. “Too late to worry about it now, one way or the other.” The USA had fewer laws against educating Negroes than did the CSA; he hoped Achilles would get more in the way of learning than he’d ever been able to acquire. But it was too early to worry about that now. He fixed Conroy with a stare that had flint in it. “Which of your pals didn’t take to Kennedy dealin’ with the Reds?”

“None o’ your damn business,” Conroy ground out. He glared back at Cincinnatus. “You want to talk to Luther Bliss, go talk to Luther goddamn Bliss. We’ll see which one of us ends up happier afterwards.”

Cincinnatus didn’t want to talk to Luther Bliss. He never wanted anything to do with the chief of the Kentucky State Police for the rest of his life. Getting his wish there, though, struck him as unlikely. He and Conroy had reached an impasse.

He could, he supposed, ask Apicius if he knew the names of some of the other Confederate diehards. But Apicius’ Reds were as likely to have killed Tom Kennedy as anyone else. And Apicius would not take kindly to questions from Cincinnatus any which way. The cook would wonder for whom he was asking them, and would never believe he was asking them for himself alone.

Conroy heaved himself to his feet. “I reckon we’re done,” he said, and Cincinnatus did not disagree. The storekeeper shook his finger in Cincinnatus’ face. “Don’t you come around there askin’ after me no more, neither. I ain’t got nothin’ more to say to you, and I ain’t gonna be-” He shook his head. His jowls wobbled like gelatin. Off he stomped.

I ain’t gonna be-what? Cincinnatus wondered. I ain’t gonna be there, was the likeliest guess. Cincinnatus wouldn’t have wanted to live in the dingy roominghouse where Conroy made his home, but didn’t expect the storekeeper to head on to much better lodgings. Cincinnatus sighed. He’d got something to think about, but where could he go with it? Nowhere he could see.

With another sigh, he got up and headed toward the nearest trolley stop. Elizabeth would have something sharp to say about his wasting so much of a Sunday afternoon, and she’d be right. But he hadn’t known it would be a waste till he’d gone and done it, which was too late.

The trolley stop was across the street from a saloon with a plate-glass window. As Cincinnatus came to the stop and dug in his pocket for a nickel, a man in a black homburg came out of the saloon and strode across the street to the stop. He seemed as certain the motorcars would stop for him as Moses had been that the Red Sea would part for him. The sea had parted; the motorcars did stop.

“Afternoon, Cincinnatus.” Luther Bliss’ pale brown eyes looked at Cincinnatus and, the Negro would have sworn, through him as well. “That damn diehard know who parted Tom Kennedy’s hair with a.30 caliber slug?”

Cincinnatus was glad he was black. Had he been white, Bliss could have watched him turn pale. “How the devil did you know what we was talking about?” he demanded with almost superstitious awe.

Bliss’ laugh didn’t quite reach those hunting-hound eyes. “You could have been talking about a lot of things,” he answered. “All the others are worse. Let’s just hope that was the only one.”

“If you know all the people you don’t fancy in this here town, Mr. Bliss,” Cincinnatus said, “why don’t you throw ’em all in jail so you don’t have to worry about ’em no more, ’stead of leavin’ ’em run loose and raise trouble?”

“I know all the people I don’t fancy in this here state,” Luther Bliss answered, “and the reason I don’t throw ’em all in jail is simple as hell: there aren’t near enough jails to hold the bastards.” He laughed again, but Cincinnatus didn’t think he was kidding. After a moment, he dug in his pocket, continuing, “You got a hundred dollars from me on account of the president. This here is from me personal, you might say.”

He handed Cincinnatus a nickel. Looking down at the coin that sat in the pale palm of his hand, Cincinnatus said, “Sure as hell you won’t go broke spendin’ your money like this here, Mr. Bliss.”

“You’re a funny one,” Bliss said. “You better get on home now-here comes the trolley. And if I ever figure out how you got to be so funny, I’ll come round again and see if you’re still that way after I take you to pieces.” He tipped his hat and went on his way, smooth as a snake. Cincinnatus threw the nickel in the trolley car’s fare box. He didn’t want it in his pocket. It might have been listening to him.

The SS Pocahontas, Arkansas lay alongside the USS Ericsson. Staring at the supply ship, George Enos said, “If that’s not the stupidest name for a steamboat I ever saw in all my born days, I don’t know what is.”

Carl Sturtevant looked sly and smug. “I know why it’s got that name.”

“All right, I’ll bite,” George said. “Somebody doesn’t know that Pocahontas ended up marrying a Pilgrim?”

“Hell, till this minute I didn’t know she ended up marrying a Pilgrim,” Sturtevant answered. “Nah, that hasn’t got anything to do with it.”

“Come on, then-cough it up,” George said.

“Pocahontas, Arkansas, is this little no-account town a few miles south of the U.S. border,” the petty officer said. “During the Second Mexican War, the Army took the place and held it for a little while. Outside of Montana, there wasn’t much glory for our side in that war. Whatever there was, they pasted onto whatever would take it, and so we’ve got a freighter named for a Rebel whistle stop.”

“All right.” Enos waved a hand. “You got me there. I knew about the real Pocahontas, but not about that town down there named for her. I’ll tell you something else I know, too.” He looked around nervously. “I know I don’t like sitting here in the middle of the goddamn Atlantic while we take on supplies. I don’t like it for hell.”

Sturtevant raised a mocking eyebrow. “You don’t like us to have fuel so we can keep on patrolling? You don’t like fresh vittles? I don’t know about you, but I’m damn sick of kraut and beans. You don’t like getting mail? You got a wife, ain’t that right?”

“Yeah, I got a wife,” George Enos answered. “Mail’s fine, but I want to get home to Boston in one piece when the war’s finally over, too, and if I’m sitting here not moving, that damn Rebel submarine’s going to put a torpedo into our side somewhere right between the number two and number three stacks.”

“We sank that damn Rebel submarine,” Sturtevant said. “Wasn’t one of Lieutenant Crowder’s pipe dreams that time, neither. You blew the captain to pieces when he was pitching their secret papers, and then the Bonefish went under again, and she ain’t never comin’ up no more.”

Enos exhaled angrily through his nose. “You should have been a lawyer, not a sailor. You figure the Confederate Navy’s got only that one submersible in it? They build those bastards by the netful. If there isn’t already another one out here to take the place of that boat, there will be in a few days.”

Like George, Carl Sturtevant looked older than he was; sun and wind and spray had tanned his skin, turned it leather, and wrinkled it, too. He looked older still as he contemplated Enos’ words. “Well, you’re right, God damn it,” he said at last. “Now I’m going to worry, too.”

Sailors hauled sides of beef and hams and sacks of potatoes and endless cans from the Pocahontas, Arkansas to the Ericsson. They chattered at one another in English and a variety of foreign languages that seemed to consist mostly of consonants. Fuel oil gurgled through a hose connecting the hold of the Pocahontas, Arkansas to the Ericsson’s engine room.

As Sturtevant had said, it all promised that the destroyer would be able to keep on steaming and keep on feeding the crew for the next couple of weeks-provided she lived through the next couple of hours. Somewhere out there, a submersible-all right, not the submersible, but a submersible, sure as hell-was cruising along looking for something to send to the bottom. Maybe that sub was fifty miles away. On the other hand, maybe it was somewhere under the surface, trying to sneak in from a mile to half a mile to make sure it sank the Ericsson, which was as sitting a duck as had ever been hatched.

You couldn’t outrun a torpedo. You couldn’t outrun a torpedo at flank speed. A fish had at least ten knots on a destroyer. But, if you were cruising along when one of those bastards tried to shoot you in the back, you did have a chance to dodge.

How in God’s name were you supposed to dodge when you weren’t even moving? The answer was depressingly simple: you couldn’t. Finishing this resupply depended on not being spotted while it was going on.

George stared out over the tropical Atlantic, looking for a periscope or its wake. Odds were against him. He knew it. Even if he did spot one, it was all too likely to be too late. He knew that, too.

Light chop made the surface dance. In a dead calm sea, the wake from a periscope would have stood out against the background. Here, the background helped hide or mislead, as it did with a camouflaged ship. He wished he were down in the engine room. The only way the black gang found out about a torpedo was when one exploded in their laps.

Finally, after what seemed like forever but couldn’t have been more than the couple of hours Carl Sturtevant had talked about, the Pocahontas, Arkansas disconnected the hose and reeled it back in, leaving a dark smear of fuel oil across the deck for an officer to have conniptions about any minute now. All the freighter’s sailors were back aboard her, too.

The deck began to thrum and vibrate under George’s feet. He let out a long, heartfelt sigh of relief no doubt being echoed all over the Ericsson. They’d got away with it. Danger didn’t disappear now-danger, from everything George had seen, never disappeared-but it diminished.

Coal smoke poured from the Pocahontas, Arkansas’ stack, too, as the freighter’s wheezy powerplant also began to work harder. The only way the beamy old ship would go faster than about ten knots, Enos thought, was if someone threw her over a cliff. Sooner or later, though, she’d get where she was going. In the end, that was what mattered.

But the Pocahontas, Arkansas did not get where she was going. The notion that she would had hardly crossed George’s mind before her bow blew off right in front of his horrified eyes. A moment later, another torpedo struck her amidships. She might as well have been a bull in a slaughterhouse hit over the head with a sledgehammer. She stopped dead in the water and started to sink.

The Ericsson stopped dead in the water, too, or so it seemed to George. Then he wondered if he’d lost his mind: the hulk of the freighter seemed to be moving forward once more.

While Enos was scratching his head, Carl Sturtevant let out an admiring whistle. “Skipper must have been eating his fish lately,” he said. “You know-brain food. Slam us over to full power astern and we can keep the Pocahontas between us and whoever that son of a bitch out there is. And speaking of which-” He turned and ran toward the depth-charge projector at the stern.

George ran that way, too, toward the one-pounder by the projector. “Hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “It is pretty sly, I guess. There’s only one thing wrong with it that I can think of.”

Sturtevant, who wasn’t young and wasn’t skinny, wheezed to a stop by his post. “Yeah,” he said, panting. “We ain’t gonna have a shield much longer.”

“That’s it,” George agreed. The Pocahontas, Arkansas was sinking fast, going down by the bow. Even as Enos watched, another torpedo hit shook the freighter. He shivered. “That one was meant for us.”

“You bet it was,” Sturtevant said. The Pocahontas, Arkansas rolled over and sank. Only a handful of men from her were bobbing in the water when she did, and the undertow she generated when she went down pulled a couple of them with her.

“What do we do now?” George asked. “If we hang around here and pick those guys up, that submersible is liable to put the next one into us. But if we don’t…Hell, I wouldn’t want to be one of those poor bastards.”

“Me, neither,” Sturtevant said. He lowered his voice so Lieutenant Crowder couldn’t hear him before continuing, “Every once in a while-times like this, mostly-I’m glad I’m not an officer. Between you, me, and the bulkhead, I don’t want to have to play God.” Enos nodded without hesitation.

Up on the bridge, the Ericsson’s skipper made his choice, also without hesitation. Sailors hurled cork life rings toward the men still struggling in the ocean as the destroyer steamed past them. The ship did not stop or even slow to pick up survivors; as Sturtevant had said, the submarine that had torpedoed the Pocahontas, Arkansas was sure to be waiting, its own skipper hopefully licking his chops, for any such move.

A runner came back from the bridge to Lieutenant Crowder. “Sir, captain’s orders are for you to lay down as many depth charges as you can, set for widely different depths, when we reach the position where we reckon the submersible is at. We may not sink the bastard, but we’ll make him keep his head down while we pick up the men from the supply ship.”

“Aye aye,” Crowder said crisply. He turned to the depth-charge crew and started giving orders. Sturtevant ignored some of them as he gave his own instructions to the men who served the projector. When a signal flag waved from the bridge, the crew methodically pumped one depth charge after another into the blue water of the Atlantic. The water soon began boiling and seething from the force of the explosions under the surface.

George Enos eagerly peered astern, looking for leaking oil or a trail of air bubbles that might mark a damaged submersible. He spied nothing of the sort. Neither did anyone else. “We ought to be operating in a flotilla,” Lieutenant Crowder grumbled. “If we had three destroyers after that submersible instead of just our one, we’d sink him for sure.”

If I had a million dollars…, Enos thought.

Abruptly, the Ericsson broke off the attack on the submarine and raced back toward the survivors from the Pocahontas, Arkansas. After hauling the four or five of them aboard with lines, the destroyer hurried away from the spot where the supply ship had gone down.

Carl Sturtevant sighed. “Well, the limey or the Reb down there under the water won that one, damn him to hell and gone.”

“Yeah,” Enos said, his Boston accent making the word come out as Ayuh. “Didn’t get us, though, so I reckon he’s not as happy as he might be. A destroyer is worth a hell of a lot of freighters.”

“I ain’t gonna tell you you’re wrong,” Sturtevant said, “but the game’s not over yet, either. He’s still down there. He’s trying to get us, we’re trying to get him. Wonder if we’ll lock horns again.”

“How will we even know whether we ever fight the same boat again or some different one?” George asked.

Sturtevant chewed on that for a moment before he shrugged. “What difference does it make? Any time one of those bastards shows himself, we’ll go after him, whether he’s this boat or a different one.”

George considered, then nodded. “I won’t tell you you’re wrong,” he said.

Seawater from a new leak dripped down onto Commander Roger Kimball’s cap. The electric motors were running on very low power, just enough to keep the prop turning over and give the Bonefish steering way. The roars of exploding depth charges, some well removed from the submersible, others terrifyingly close, put Kimball in mind of a summer thunderstorm back home.

Then the rain of depth charges stopped. Kimball pulled out his watch. He let one minute tick by, two, and then, reluctantly, three. When the third quiet minute had passed, he turned to his exec and said, “Take us up to periscope depth, Tom.”

“Are you sure, sir?” Lieutenant Brearley said. “God only knows where the damnyankees are up there. They’re liable to be waiting around to spot us so they can drop the other shoe.”

Kimball growled discontentedly, deep in his throat. Tom Brearley had a point. But every instinct in Kimball cried out for attack. “I’m blind down here, dammit,” he muttered. “Only way to find out where the damnyankees are is to go looking for ’em.” He pulled out his watch again. After the small second hand went round its dial twice more, he spoke again, this time in tones that brooked no disagreement: “Periscope depth!”

“Aye aye, sir,” Brearley said, though he sent Kimball another reproachful look. The skipper of the Bonefish generously failed to let himself notice it. The boat climbed out of the depths in which it had taken shelter from the pounding the Yankee destroyer had given it.

As soon as the periscope lifted above the surface of the Atlantic, Kimball started to curse. “He’s hightailing it out of here,” he snarled in disgust. “Might have got the lousy bastard if I’d surfaced a little faster.” He glowered at his executive officer. “Some people are afraid of their own shadows.”

“Sir,” Brearley said stiffly, and the fetid atmosphere inside the Bonefish got nasty in a different way.

“Be a cold day in hell before I listen to somebody else’s jimjams again, instead of my own plain good sense,” Kimball said. He was growling at Brearley, but was angrier at himself. He hadn’t obeyed his own instincts, and had lost a chance to take out the Yankee destroyer.

Trying to spread oil over troubled waters, Ben Coulter said, “That Yankee four-stacker has a right smart skipper. Way he slid behind the freighter we nailed-who would have reckoned he’d be so sneaky? Never came close to giving us a good shot at him.”

“All the more reason to wish the son of a bitch was down at the bottom of the ocean,” Kimball said. “If that wasn’t the Ericsson, it was another one from the same class. They still think they sank us. One day soon, I’m going to think I sank them, too. Only difference is, I’m going to be right.”

He rotated the periscope through a complete circle. No other Yankee surface ships besides the destroyer were above the horizon, and she wouldn’t be for long, not the way she was scooting. The Bonefish would be able to surface soon. Kimball shook his head. He should have surfaced after a double triumph, the freighter and the warship both.

Presently, the Ericsson or whoever she was vanished from periscope view. Kimball stayed submerged a while longer all the same: the destroyer had a higher observation point and therefore a wider horizon than he did. When he judged the U.S. ship could no longer spot him, he grudged a few words toward Tom Brearley: “Bring us to the surface.”

“Aye aye, sir,” the exec answered. He tried to add a light note: “Time to get some fresh air, anyhow.”

Kimball didn’t answer. He told off Ben Coulter to hold his legs while he opened the hatch at the top of the conning tower. As always, the pressurized air rushing out seemed particularly foul. Kimball already felt like throwing up, but was too stubborn to do it.

He climbed out onto the conning tower and looked around. Nothing but ocean, as far as the eye could see. No smoke on the horizon; the wind had dispersed the plume from the Ericsson or her twin, and no other ship was close enough to be showing. He might have had the whole Atlantic to himself.

And then Tom Brearley came clanking up the steel rungs of the ladder. The executive officer inhaled deeply, then chuckled. “Feels good to breathe in something you can’t taste.”

Kimball didn’t answer. He turned his back so that he stared out at a different quadrant of the ocean. Behind him, he heard Brearley shift his feet on the conning-tower roof. He pretended he didn’t hear. He pretended the exec didn’t exist. He wished the pretense were true.

Brearley was young and earnest and lousy at taking hints. Instead of going below, he cleared his throat. Kimball kept right on ignoring him. But when Brearley began, “Sir, I just wanted to say that-” Kimball couldn’t ignore him any more.

He whirled, so fast and fierce that he plainly startled the exec, and might have frightened him, too. “You jogged my elbow,” he said in a soft, deadly voice. “Because you jogged my elbow, that damn destroyer got away. If you think I am very happy about that, Mr. Brearley, you had better think again.”

“But, sir,” Brearley said, “if he had been sitting there waiting for us, he could have dropped half a dozen ash cans in our lap.”

“Yeah, he could have.” Kimball’s head jerked up and down in a single short, sharp nod. “But he didn’t, on account of he wasn’t sitting there. I didn’t think he’d be sitting there. But you got the whimwhams, and you put my back up, too, and so we stayed down longer than we should have, and so the son of a bitch got away. If you reckon I am very happy with you, you’re wrong.”

Brearley got a stubborn, martyred look on his face. “Sir, it is my duty to advise you on matters concerning the welfare of the boat,” he said stiffly. “I would be failing in my duty if I kept silent. If you choose not to take my advice, that is your privilege as captain. If you do take it, though, the responsibility becomes yours, not mine.”

He was right. By the book, he was right. By everything Kimball had learned at the Naval Academy at Mobile, he was right. But the way things really worked, especially on a boat as cramped as a submarine, wasn’t exactly the way the book said it was. Kimball snarled something sulfurous under his breath. “You think twice before you open your mouth out of turn again,” he said aloud. “Do you hear me, Mr. Brearley?”

“Yes, sir,” Brearley said in a voice much colder than the weather.

A low buzzing filled Kimball’s ears. For a moment, he thought it was the sound of his own rage. Then he realized it was real, and coming from outside himself. He looked around, as he might have for a mosquito, till he spotted the aeroplane approaching from the northeast. Coming from that direction, it was unlikely to be off a Confederate cruiser or battleship. For as long as he could, he hoped it had been launched from a Royal Navy vessel. That hope vanished when he saw the eagle’s heads on the undersides of the wings and on the fuselage.

The aeroplane had spotted the Bonefish, too, and came in for a closer look at her. Kimball understood that; he’d come to the surface too recently to have run up a Confederate naval jack on the conning tower or at the stern.

Kimball waved to the pilot. The fellow waved back. He was close enough for Kimball to see-and to distrust-his smile. Kimball smiled, too, as he would have at a poker table. Through that smile, he said, “Mr. Brearley, go below, but don’t make a big fuss about doing it. Order the machine-gun crew topside. Tell them to act as friendly toward that goddamn aeroplane as they can-and if he gives them half a chance, even a quarter of a chance, I want them to shoot his ass off.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Brearley said. “Shall I have some other men come up on deck, too, to gawk at the aeroplane and keep the pilot from paying attention to the gunners?”

“Yeah, do that, Tom.” Kimball nodded. Without noticing, he slipped back into the informal address common aboard submersibles. Now that the exec had made a good suggestion, he tacitly forgave him.

Brearley slipped below. If the pilot of that aeroplane didn’t like it, all he had to do was turn around and fly away. He didn’t. He came around for another pass close by the Bonefish: he was still trying to figure out to whose navy she belonged.

Out came the sailors. They pointed at the aeroplane and waved to the pilot and generally acted as much like damn fools as they could. Some of them were alarmingly good at the role. The pilot waved back. He was spiraling higher into the sky now. Maybe he’d satisfied himself that the Bonefish was a U.S. boat. In that case, he was a damn fool. Or maybe, like everybody else in this little charade, he was sandbagging.

Nobody had fired the machine gun aft of the conning tower at a real target since the Bonefish went up the Congaree River to help put down the Red uprising among the Negroes almost a year and a half before. It burst into noisy, staccato life now, tracers drawing hot orange lines in the direction of the U.S. flying machine.

Something fell from between the aeroplane’s floats. Kimball yipped with triumphant glee, thinking the gunners had damaged the Yankee aircraft. A couple of his men cheered, too.

But someone yelled “That’s a bomb!” an instant before it smashed down into the sea and exploded a few yards in front of the Bonefish’s bow. A great column of water and spray rose and then fell, drenching the sailors farthest up the hull and even splashing a little water into Kimball’s face.

He swiped a sleeve across his eyes, then stared up toward the U.S. aeroplane with a new and startled respect. If it had another bomb…He was about to shout orders for a crash dive when the aeroplane flew off in the direction from which it had come.

“That son of a bitch,” he said indignantly. “That son of a bitch. He’d hit us square there, he’d have sunk us.” He shook his fist at the receding aeroplane. “I didn’t know the damnyankees were putting bombs aboard those things these days. Can’t trust anybody any more.”

“I expect we gave him a nasty surprise, too,” Tom Brearley said.

“Hope to Jesus we did,” Kimball said. “But putting a bomb on one of those scout aeroplanes-war just got a little tougher. Having ’em flying around and spying on us is bad enough. If they can hurt us once they spot us instead of sending for their pals on the wireless-well, hell, if they can do that, how are we supposed to do what we’re supposed to do?”

“We need a proper antiaircraft gun, sir, a one-pounder, not just the machine gun,” Brearley said.

Kimball nodded. That might help. It wasn’t the answer, though. For the life of him, he didn’t know what the answer was.