Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

Some of the bodyguards smiled. Their chief remained severe. “Sir, you’ve got a proper shelter there, not a, a-hole in the ground.” He slapped at the knees of his trousers. Not much mud came away. He fumed. He didn’t like to get dirty.

“Hell of a lot of good a proper shelter did Al Smith,” Jake said. That made all the guards unhappy again. They didn’t like remembering all the things that could go wrong. Jake didn’t like remembering those things, either, but he would do it if he could score points off men who liked it even less.

The guard chief changed the subject, at least a little: “Sir, couldn’t you just stay somewhere safe and follow the war with reports and things?”

“No way in hell,” Jake replied at once. “No place’d stay safe for long. Soon as the Yankees found out where I was at, they’d send bombers after me. I don’t care if I went to Habana-they’d still send ’em. But that’s beside the point. Point is, you can’t trust reports all the goddamn time. Sometimes you’ve got to, yeah. You can’t keep up with everything by your lonesome. But if you don’t get your ass out there and see for yourself every so often, people’ll start lying to you. You won’t know any better, either, ’cause you haven’t been out to look. And then you’re screwed. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” the bodyguard said mournfully. He knew what that meant. It meant he and his men would have to keep worrying, because Jake would go on sticking his nose where the damnyankees could shoot it off.

Airplanes droned by overhead. Jake looked for the closest hole in the ground. So did most of the guards. They weren’t combat troops, no, but a trip to the field taught lessons in a hurry. The airplanes flew from west to east. They had familiar silhouettes. Jake relaxed-they were on his side.

None of the bodyguards relaxed. They weren’t supposed to, not while they were on duty. Their leader said, “Mr. President, can we please take you someplace where you’re not in quite so much danger?”

“Gonna fly me to the Empire of Brazil?” Jake quipped. A few guards gave him another round of dutiful smiles. Most stayed somber. He supposed that was just as well. Like sheep dogs, they had to be serious about protecting him. Trouble was, he made a piss-poor sheep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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