Robert Conroy - 1920 - America's Great War

Amelia had managed to get fairly close to the visitor and concluded that he was fairly cute but not her type. Too bookish, she thought and laughed silently. She lived for the adventure of flying.

Amelia had been flying planes for more than a year. She’d fallen in love with the freedom of flight and had taken lessons. She’d proven an apt pupil. Her family lived in Long Beach; thus, she was able to join the strange force created by General Billy Mitchell and called the “Fireflies.”

She sometimes wondered if Mitchell was aware that she and several other pilots were women. The female pilots dressed like men and didn’t flaunt their femininity. Maybe Mitchell was kept ignorant of the gender of some of his pilots, or maybe he was just desperate for qualified pilots.

Either way, she had a plane, a Curtiss JN4 biplane. As a warplane in the 1916 campaign in Mexico, it had been a failure. It was now only used as a trainer. Some had even been sold to civilians which is how she got hers.

Fully loaded with five hundred pounds of cargo, its ninety horsepower in-line engine could barely get the plane off the ground. The plane was a two seater, but Amelia liked flying alone.

Amelia also thought she’d heard the colonel say something about women pilots not going into combat. The comment made her laugh. She would do what she bloody well wished.

Sometimes the prisoners would ignore Martina Flores when she walked by the compound, except, of course, to stare at her ripe femininity. The day before she’d signaled that she wanted a distraction. She said throw stones at her.

“ Puta ! Whore! Bitch!” yelled the men as she strolled by. She made an obscene gesture. The men behind the wire hurled rocks, being careful to make sure none hit her.

Martina screamed back at them and threw her own rock over the fence. None of the guards noticed that it wasn’t one that had been thrown at her, and none of them noticed it really wasn’t a rock.

Joe Sullivan picked it up and tucked it in his sleeve. It was a small package. When Martina ran away, the uproar ended. As instructed, he waited a few minutes and then delivered it to Captain Rice, who took it and walked away. When Rice was in the collection of rags he called his tent, he carefully opened the package. His eyes widened. Two keys lay snug in the box. One was labeled “Main Gate,” and the other said “Armory.”

Well, well, Rice thought and smiled. The captive Americans had been in their prison near Raleigh for a couple of months and, by now, all had sharp objects they could use as knives. But a key to the German’s armory? That meant rifles. Well, well indeed.

“General Marshall, I really think you should come and look at the river.”

Marshall stood and stretched. He’d been working on yet another response to Washington outlining the futility of it all. “Thank you, Sergeant,” he said grumpily and walked the hundred yards to the ice-filled torrent.

What torrent? What river? His eyes widened as he took in the scene. Scores of soldiers were standing by the edge of the river. “Sir, it’s just like someone turned off a faucet.”

Indeed, it was. Marshall’s mind raced. The river was placid and calm and the depth was dropping rapidly. What the hell had Hoover done? Had he actually found a faucet? But the strange man had said to get ready. So Marshall’s men were ready.

“Barges and bridges,” Marshall yelled. “I want barges in the water and I want them stuffed with everything we’ve got. And get those pontoons across now!”

Everything had been loaded and waiting for several days. Preassembled pontoons were run out and connected, followed by planking for men and vehicles. The river did not complain. It continued to drop and was now only a few feet deep and moving very slowly. Barges pushed out like a Biblical horde, delivering men and supplies to the other side and then returning for more.

In only a few hours, the first bridge was finished, and then the second. A third and fourth would follow shortly. One bridge was for vehicles, and trucks began to move carefully across the bobbing structures. Infantry started their trek across the second bridge.

Hoover materialized beside Marshall. His face was grim, but there was a satisfied glint in his eyes. “What the devil did you do, Mr. Hoover?”

“Blew up a couple of mountains and choked the gorges. That created rough dams.”

“How long will they last?”

Hoover shrugged. “No idea. I would hurry, however. We are trying to ease pressure on the dams by allowing some water to run through, but the dams can’t last long.”

Marshall saw infantry moving slowly. “Double time, damn it,” he yelled.

“No!” Hoover said softly. “Vibrations will damage the bridges. Have them walk normally.”

Damn it, Marshall thought. I knew that. He was too anxious to get men across. Still, they could and did hurry with no gaps between the men.

Marshall had a horrible thought. He visualized a tidal wave rushing downstream when the dams gave up the ghost. “How much warning will we have and will the water rise quickly or gradually?”

“I have no idea. I do have men ready to signal if the dams collapse. Just keep your people moving.”

A truck stalled on the vehicle bridge and some men started to work on it. “Push it in the river,” Marshall yelled. “Nothing delays the crossing.” Men heaved and the truck fell off the shaking pontoons and into the river.

“I wonder if this is like Moses crossing the Red Sea,” Marshall said. “The Bible said the sea parted but never said the land was perfectly dry. Was it was something like this, with everybody running like the devil to get across in time?” He laughed harshly. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve an army to get across and it still might not get to San Francisco in time.”

Hoover didn’t reply. His mind was already someplace else.

The joint Army-Navy headquarters complex at the Presidio was a madhouse of activity as armed soldiers and sailors either took up stationary positions or patrolled the extensive grounds. The command and communications system had broken down and there was fear that the headquarters was in grave danger.

Civilian employees like Elise were either shuffled out of the compound or denied entry. Inside, Luke Martel strapped on a .45 automatic and wondered just what the hell had gone wrong.

General Nolan stormed into the conference room and took charge as more senior officers deferred to him. “Gentlemen, let’s review. At approximately three this morning, a boat containing eight men was spotted by one of our shore patrols as it was attempting to come ashore. The patrol and the people in the boat exchanged fire. Two of our men were killed and a couple more wounded. The occupants of the boat jumped out and ran inland. They were the survivors of the fight. We found four dead bodies and they were all German Navy Marines.”

Nolan took a sip of water and continued. “Several things bother the hell out of me; first, the fact that it then took several hours for us to be notified that as many as four armed Germans were now loose in San Francisco. The fact that the officer leading the shore patrol was killed is an obvious mitigating factor, but someone dropped the ball. It took far too long for us to be informed.”

There were nods all around. The timing issue was inexcusable.

“More important,” Nolan went on, “is the question of why they landed in the first place. Even if they all had made it, eight Germans aren’t going to cause that much harm to the war effort. They could blow up some ammunition, but we don’t have a central depot. Start fires? I just don’t think so. Therefore, we have come to the only remaining conclusion, and that is that the German’s target is us.”