“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.
“Got one!” Everybody at George’s mount yelled the same thing at the same time. George couldn’t be sure a shell from one of his guns hit the Hound Dog, but he thought so. The fighter pilot tried to crash his airplane into the destroyer, but fell short-he went into the drink about a quarter of a mile off the port bow.
George never saw the Asskicker that hit the Townsend till too late.
One second, he was passing shells as fast as he could. The next, altogether without knowing what had happened, he was flying through the air with the greatest of ease, like the daring young man on the flying trapeze. Unlike the daring young man, he didn’t have a trapeze. He didn’t have a net, either. The Gulf of California reached up and smacked him in the face and in the gut. If his wasn’t the worst bellyflop of all time, he surely got no lower than the bronze medal.
At least the water was warm. He didn’t swallow too much of it. His life vest kept him from sinking. He looked up just in time to watch a C.S. Mule zoom off not far above the waves. Dalby was right-with those uptilted wings, the damn thing was as ugly as a turkey vulture.
It made a much better killing machine, though.
He didn’t realize what had happened to the Townsend till he looked back at his ship. Before that, he thought whatever happened to him was some sort of private accident-though how a private accident could have hurled him close to a hundred yards was anything but obvious. He slowly decided he wasn’t thinking very well at all.
But he didn’t need to be a genius to see the destroyer was history. Her back was broken. Smoke billowed from her. The Gulf of California all around her was full of sailors, some with their heads out of the water and paddling, others facedown and still and dead.
“Holy Jesus!” George blurted. “We got nailed.” That was, if anything, an understatement. Even as he watched, the Townsend settled lower in the water. She wouldn’t stay afloat much longer.
But George only thought he was afraid till he saw gray dorsal fins knifing through the water. He’d watched sharks from the destroyer’s deck. That was fine. Watching them from the sea with a free-lunch course spread out all around…George crossed himself. The Ave Maria he blurted out might not help, but it sure couldn’t hurt.
He looked around not just for sharks but also for his buddies. He didn’t see Fremont Dalby anywhere. A big blond body floated not far away. Was that Fritz? George didn’t paddle over to see. He didn’t want to know that bad.
Fuel oil spread from the stricken destroyer. George swam away from it. That stuff would kill you if you swallowed it. He’d seen as much in the Sandwich Islands. His voice rose with others, calling for nearby ships to pick them up.
The minesweeper that had led the flotilla swung back toward the Townsend, whose deck was almost awash now. When the destroyer went down, her undertow dragged luckless sailors too close by under with her. George had got too far away for that to happen to him. But someone not nearly far enough from him screamed. Dorsal fins converged as red spread through the deep blue. George rattled off more Hail Marys, and an Our Father for good measure.
A life ring attached to a line splashed into the sea maybe fifty yards off. He swam over and put it on. Sailors aboard the minesweeper hauled him in like a big tuna. The ship had nets down. They helped him scramble up the side.
“Well, well-look what the cat drug in,” Fremont Dalby said. He was soaked, of course, but he already had a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Drop Dalby in horseshit and he’d come out with a pony. But his sardonic grin slipped as he asked, “Spot any of the other guys?”
“Maybe Gustafson.” George pointed his thumb down at the deck.
“Fuck.” The gun chief looked at the oil slick and the bobbing men and debris that were the sole remains of the Townsend. “That Asskicker sure kicked our ass, didn’t he? Hit us right where it did him the most good, the son of a bitch.”
Airplanes were still mixing it up overhead. George Enos hardly noticed. He was luxuriating-rejoicing-in being alive. “We just got ourselves some leave,” he said. ”And you know what? I wish to God we didn’t.” Dalby nodded.
XV
Jorge Rodriguez and Gabriel Medwick made unlikely friends. Jorge was skinny and swarthy and spoke with a Spanish accent. Medwick was big and blond and handsome in a jut-jawed way. If not for the war, they never would have met. But they’d shared in the grinding Confederate retreat through Tennessee. Now, just outside of Chattanooga, the powers that be were saying C.S. troops wouldn’t fall back another yard. Jorge didn’t know if they were right, but they were saying it.