"If the Tsar tries to go on fighting and the Germans drop one of those on Moscow, say, don't you think all the Reds who've gone underground will rise up again?" the captain asked. "Wouldn't you?"
"How many Reds are left?" Flora asked. "Didn't the Tsar's secret police kill off as many as they could after the last civil war?"
"They sure did," Franklin Roosevelt said, and the captain nodded. Roosevelt went on, "We know the secret police didn't get everybody, though. And the Reds are masters at going underground and staying there."
"They have to be, if they want to keep breathing," the captain added.
"So the short answer is, nobody-nobody on this side of the Atlantic, that's for sure-knows how many Reds there are," Roosevelt said. "Something like a uranium bomb will bring them out, though, if anything will."
"And if it doesn't kill them," the captain said. "Chances are, there are a lot of them close to Petrograd and Moscow."
Flora nodded. Those were the two most important Russian cities, and the Reds were like anybody else-they'd want to stay as close to the center of things as they could. Her thoughts went west. "England and France have to be shaking in their boots right now," she said. "Unless they've got bombs of their own, I mean."
"If they had them, they would use them," Roosevelt said. "The war in the west has turned against them-not as much as the war here has turned against the CSA, but enough. If the Kaiser's barrels really get rolling across Holland and Belgium and northern France, it won't be easy to stop them this side of Paris."
"Paris," Flora echoed. The Germans hadn't got there in 1917; the French asked for an armistice before they could. Kaiser Wilhelm granted it, too. Looking back, that was probably a mistake. Like the Confederates, the French weren't really convinced they'd been beaten. "This time, the Germans ought to parade through the streets, the way they did in 1871."
"Sounds good to me," Roosevelt said. "Keep it under your hat, but I've heard Charlie La Follette's going to go to Richmond."
"Is it safe?" Flora asked.
"Not even a little bit, but he's going to do it anyhow," Roosevelt answered. "Abe Lincoln couldn't, God knows James G. Blaine couldn't, even my Democratic cousin Theodore couldn't, but La Follette can. And there's an election this November."
"Good point," Flora agreed. How many votes would each photo of President La Follette in the ravaged and captured capital of the Confederacy be worth? Maybe as many as the uranium bomb had killed, and that was bound to be a lot.
VIII
I n! In! In!" Sergeant Hugo Blackledge bellowed. "Move your sorry asses before you get 'em shot off!"
Corporal Jorge Rodriguez hurried aboard the little coastal freighter. Fires in Savannah lit up the docks almost bright as day. Every so often, a flash and a boom would mark another ammo dump or cache of shells going up in smoke. The port was falling. Anybody who stayed to try to hold up the damnyankees would end up dead or a POW. Orders were to get out as many soldiers as could escape.
Nervously, Rodriguez looked up into the sky. If any fighters came over right now, they could chew his company to pieces. But they mostly stayed on the runways after dark. With a little luck, this ship-the Dixie Princess, her name was-would be far away from Savannah by the time the sun came up.
"Ever been on a boat before?" Gabe Medwick asked.
"No," Jorge admitted. "You?"
"A little rowboat, fishin' for bluegill an' catfish," his friend said. "This ain't the same thing, is it? Not hardly." He answered his own question.
Soldiers from eight or ten regiments-not all of them even from the same division-jammed the Dixie Princess. They eyed one another like dogs uncertain whether to fight. Sailors in gray dungarees elbowed their way through the butternut crush. They knew where they were going and what they were doing, which gave them a big edge on the troops they were carrying.
The rumble of the engines got deeper. Rodriguez felt the deck vibrate under his boots. The freighter pulled away from the pier and down the Savannah River toward the sea.
Only gradually did Jorge realize there were antiaircraft guns on deck. More sailors manned them. Some wore helmets painted gray. Others stayed bareheaded, as if to say a helmet wouldn't make any difference in what they did. A soldier near Jorge lit a cigarette.
"Kill that, you dumb dipshit!" Sergeant Blackledge yelled. "Kill it, you hear me? You want some damnyankee to spot your match or your coal? Jesus God, how fuckin' stupid are you, anyways?"
"All right, all right," the offender muttered. Down to the deck went the smoke. A boot mournfully crushed it out.
"Now, when it gets light y'all got to keep your eyes peeled for damnyankee submarines," Blackledge went on. "One of them fuckers puts a torpedo in our guts, it's a hell of a long swim to land, you know what I mean?"
"Boy," Gabriel Medwick muttered, "he sure knows how to make a guy feel safe."
Jorge laughed. That was so far wrong, it was funny. It would have been funny, anyway, if he weren't aboard this floating coffin. How many men were with him? He wasn't sure, but it had to be a couple of thousand. A damnyankee submersible skipper who sank the Dixie Princess would probably get the biggest, fanciest medal the USA could give out.
"You reckon it's true, what happened to that town in Russia?" somebody not far away from him asked.
"It's bullshit, you ask me," another soldier answered. "Damn Kaiser's just runnin' his mouth. Stands to reason-a city's too fuckin' big for one bomb to take out."
"You hear about that?" Medwick asked Jorge.
He nodded. "I hear, sн, but I don't know what to believe. What do you think?"
"I hope like anything it's bullshit," his buddy said. "If it ain't…If it ain't, we all got more trouble than we know what to do with. If the Germans have a bomb like that, if it's really real, how long before the Yankees do, too?"
"ЎMadre de Dios!" Jorge crossed himself. "One bomb, one city? You couldn't fight back against something like that, not unless…Maybe we get those bombs, too."
"Maybe." Gabe seemed doubtful. "If we get 'em, we better get 'em pretty damn quick, that's all I got to say. Otherwise, it's gonna be too late."
He wasn't wrong, however much Jorge wished he were. The fall of Savannah meant the Confederate States were cut in half. People were saying that Richmond had fallen, too, and that Jake Featherston had got out one jump ahead of the U.S. soldiers coming in. Some people said he hadn't got out, but that didn't seem to be true, because he was still on the wireless.
What can I do about any of that? Jorge wondered. The only answer that occurred to him was, Not much. He yawned; it had to be somewhere not long after midnight. He couldn't even lie down and go to sleep: no room to lie down. He dozed a little standing up, the way only a tired veteran could.
Dawn was just painting the eastern horizon-all ocean, flat out to the edge of the world-with pink when he saw another ship ahead. No, it was a boat, much smaller than the Dixie Princess. It had a blinker that flashed Morse at the freighter. Up on the bridge, where no soldiers were allowed, a sailor-maybe an officer-answered back.
"What's going on?" Gabe Medwick asked around a yawn.
"Beats me," Jorge answered. "We just gotta wait and find out." If that didn't sum up a lot of soldiering, what did?
The Dixie Princess changed course and followed the smaller craft toward the low-lying coast ahead. Her guide zigged and zagged in a way that made no sense to Jorge. And whatever the guide did, the Dixie Princess did, too.
Then somebody said, "We better not hit one of them damn mines, that's all I got to say. That'd be worse'n getting torpedoed."
A light went on in Jorge's head. They had to be heading towards a port, one warded by mines to keep out U.S. warships. And the small boat knew the way through the floating death traps. Jorge hoped like hell it did, anyhow.