But there were Edith and Frank and Willie. His wife was bandaging a neighbor lady who looked to have been cut by flying glass. His stepsons watched with more interest than horror. They’d seen things like this before. Kids got used to war and other disasters faster than grownups did. For them, it soon became routine.
For Jeff…“Thank God you’re all right!” he called as he sprang from the motorcar and ran over to Edith.
“This was a bad one, but we made it into the cellar quick as we could. The windows are already cardboard and plywood, so we didn’t lose any glass. I don’t smell gas. The power’s out, but it’ll come back.” As Edith talked, she went on bandaging the neighbor lady’s head. “There you go, Vera. It’s not too deep, and I don’t think the scar will be bad.”
“Thank you, Edith.” With middle-class politeness, Vera nodded to Jeff. “Hello, Mr. Pinkard. Sorry we have to run into each other like this. It’s a miserable war, isn’t it?”
“It sure is, ma’am.” Jeff coughed on the smoke in the air. He shook his fist toward the west. “It’s a miserable war, but by God we’ll win it.”
Cabo San Lucas wasn’t quite the ass end of nowhere, but you could see it from there. George Enos knew damn well he wasn’t any place he wanted to be. As usual, nobody in the Navy bothered asking his opinion. The Marines had taken the place away from the Empire of Mexico. U.S. Army troops were pushing down from San Diego to occupy the rest of Baja California. The godawful terrain and the heat and the lack of water were giving them more trouble than Francisco Jose’s soldiers were.
Also annoying, or worse than annoying, to the men in green-gray and forest green were air raids across the Gulf of California from Confederate Sonora. C.S. bombers struck by night, when they were harder for U.S. fighters to find and shoot down. The Confederacy didn’t keep a lot of airplanes in Sonora, but the ones they had did what any small force was supposed to do: they made the other side hate their guts.
And they were the reason the Townsend lingered by Cabo San Lucas. More and more escort carriers came down the coast of Baja California. Sooner or later, they’d try to force their way into the Gulf of California and put C.S. air power in Sonora out of business. When they did, they would need escorts to deal with Confederate and Mexican surface raiders and submersibles. That was what destroyers were for.
“This would go quicker if we got a couple of fleet carriers instead of all these chickenshit little baby flattops,” George grumbled. “An escort carrier isn’t big enough to hold many airplanes, and the damn things can’t make twenty knots if you throw ’em off a cliff.”
Fremont Dalby gave him the horselaugh. “Now tell me another one,” he said. “Like they’re gonna waste fleet carriers down here. Fast as we build more of ’em, they go into the Atlantic. It’s just like last time: we cut off England’s lifeline to Argentina and Brazil, we screw her to the wall.”
“Yeah,” George said. That was what the father he barely remembered was doing in 1917, and how the senior George Enos died after the CSA threw in the sponge.
Dalby didn’t notice George was feeling subdued. “Maybe-maybe-the Sandwich Islands get one,” he said. “Depends on how serious we are about going after the Japs.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” George said. “If it’s up to me, though, we wait till we’re done with the really important stuff, and then we kick their scrawny yellow asses.”
“That’s how I’d do it, too,” Dalby agreed. “’Course, that doesn’t mean it’s how the admirals will want to handle it. Expecting the brass to do shit that makes sense is like expecting a broad to understand if you screw around on her. You can expect it, yeah, but that don’t mean it’s gonna happen. Like for instance, you know what I heard?”
“I’m all ears,” George said.
“You’d look even funnier than you do now if you were, and that’s saying something,” Dalby told him, altogether without malice. George flipped the gun chief the bird. Since Dalby was ribbing him personally, he could get away with that. Had the conversation had anything to do with duty or the ship, he would have had to take whatever abuse the older man dished out. Dalby went on, “Anyway, scuttlebutt is they’re keeping a flotilla bigger’n this one off the northwest coast, near where the Columbia lets out into the Pacific. Carriers, escorts, subs, the whole nine yards.”
“That’s pretty crazy,” George said. “Why would they put so many ships up where they don’t do any good?”
Fremont Dalby shrugged and lit a cigarette. He held out the pack to George, who took one, too. After a couple of puffs, Dalby said, “It’s almost like they’re guarding that whole stretch of coast, like there’s something up there they don’t want the Japs to hit no matter what.”
“What could there be?” George asked. “They think the Japs’ll bomb the salmon-canning plants, or what?”
“Beats me,” Dalby said. “Like I told you, this is all scuttlebutt. Maybe it’s just a cloud of stack gas, but the guys I heard it from say it’s the straight skinny.”
“Something’s going on that we don’t know about,” George said.
Dalby gave him exaggerated, silent applause. “No kidding, Sherlock,” he said. George laughed. Maybe it would all make sense after the war was over. Maybe it would never make sense. Some of the dumb stunts the brass pulled were like that, too.
The Townsend was one of the lead escorts when a flotilla centered on three escort carriers steamed into the Gulf of California. The flotilla had minesweepers along, too, in case the Confederates and Mexicans had surprises waiting for any newcomers. George would have if he were waiting for trouble from the USA.
“Tell me about it,” Dalby said when he worried out loud. “Mines are simple, mines are cheap, mines’ll blow your sorry ass sky-high if you hit one. What more could anybody want from the fuckers?”
They didn’t hit any mines the first day inside the gulf. On the second morning, klaxons hooted the men to general quarters. “Now hear this! Now hear this! Aircraft approaching from the northeast! Aircraft approaching from the northeast!”
Fighters zoomed off the baby flattops’ decks. From what George had heard, Confederate Asskicker dive bombers were great when they operated unopposed, but they were sitting ducks for fighters. He didn’t know if what he’d heard was the gospel, but had the feeling he’d find out pretty damn quick.
Confederate fighters escorted the dive bombers. Up till recently, land-based aircraft were always hotter than their carrier counterparts, which needed heavier airframes to stand up to the stresses of catapult-aided takeoffs and landings cut short by tailhooks and arrester wires. But the latest U.S. carrier-based fighters were supposed to be as tough and fast as anything in the air.
An airplane tumbled down toward the sea. Fremont Dalby had a pair of binoculars. “That’s an Asskicker!” he said. “Got the fixed landing gear and flies with its wings going up on either side like a goddamn turkey buzzard.”
Another airplane plummeted. “Who’s that?” Fritz Gustafson asked.
“Dunno,” Dalby answered. “I think it was one of ours, though. They’ve got blunter noses than C.S. Hound Dogs do.”
Two more machines fell out of the sky, both burning. Keeping track of who was doing what to whom got harder and harder. The rolling, roiling fight drew ever closer to the flotilla.
“Here we go.” At Fremont Dalby’s orders, the gun layers swung the twin 40mm mount toward the closest Confederate airplane. George Enos passed Fritz Gustafson two shells and got ready to give him more. Dalby put the guns exactly where he wanted them and opened fire.
Casings leaped from the breeches. George fed shells as fast as he could. Thanks to Gustafson’s steady hands, the twin 40mms devoured them just as fast. Black puffs of smoke appeared all around the oncoming C.S. bombers and fighters. All the other guns on the Townsend were blasting away, too: not just the 40mm mounts but the dual-purpose five-inch main armament and the.50-caliber machine guns that were stationed wherever the deck offered a few feet of space. The noise was terrific, impossible, overwhelming.