Everybody in the USA had good cause to blame Jake Featherston for something or other. A telegram delayed was small change. Ohio’s being torn to pieces badly enough to delay the telegram was rather larger. George didn’t dwell on Ohio. The telegram ticked him off. Like politics, grievances were personal.
Sure enough, he got a twenty-four-hour liberty. He wished it were forty-eight, but anything was better than nothing. With the rest of the 40mm gun crew, he drank and roistered and got his ashes hauled. He felt bad about that afterwards-what was he doing going to bed with a whore with saggy tits right after sending his wife a wire? He felt bad afterwards, but it felt great while it was happening…and that was what he was doing lying down with the chippy.
He also got a tattoo on his left biceps-a big anchor. That didn’t feel good while it was happening, even though he was drunk. But Fritz Gustafson was getting a naked woman on his right biceps, so George sat still for it. He wasn’t about to flinch in front of his buddy. Only later did he wonder if Fritz took the pricking in silence because he was there getting tattooed, too.
His arm felt worse the next morning. He wasn’t drunk then; he was hungover. All of him felt worse, but his arm especially. “It’ll get easier in a day or two,” Fremont Dalby said. That was rough sympathy, not hardheartedness: Dalby had ornaments on both arms and a small tiger on his right buttock.
He turned out to know what he was talking about. By the time the Townsend sailed a week later, George almost forgot about the tattoo except when he looked down and saw the blue marks under his skin. He also liked Gustafson’s ornament, but Connie would clout him if he came home with a floozy on his arm. Fritz was a bachelor, and could get away with stuff like that.
The Townsend sailed south, toward the not very distant border with the Empire of Mexico. She was part of a flotilla that included three more destroyers, two light cruisers, a heavy cruiser, and two escort carriers. The baby flattops were just like the ones that helped make sure the Japs wouldn’t take the Sandwich Islands away from the USA. They were built on freighter hulls, and had a freighter’s engines inside. Going flat out, they could make eighteen knots. But each one carried thirty airplanes. That gave them ten or twenty times the reach of even the heavy cruiser’s guns.
Although the flotilla stood well out to sea, it wasn’t very long before Y-ranging gear picked up a couple of airplanes outbound from Baja California to look things over. “Goddamn Mexicans,” Dalby said as George ran up to the antiaircraft gun.
“What did you expect, a big kiss?” George asked.
Dalby told him what Francisco Jose could kiss, and why. The CPO might have embroidered on that theme for quite a while, but Fritz Gustafson said, “Next to what the Japs threw at us, this is all chickenshit. Take an even strain.”
Fighters roared east off the flight decks of the Monitor and the Bonhomme Richard. They came back in less than half an hour. A couple of them waggled their wings as they flew over the carriers’ escorts. No Mexican airplanes appeared over the flotilla.
“Score one-I mean two-for the good guys,” George said.
“Yeah.” Fremont Dalby nodded. “But now the greasers will start screaming to the Confederates. Gotta figure we’re in business to yank Jake Featherston’s tail feathers, anyway. So pretty soon we’ll be playing against the first team.”
“Confederates don’t have any carriers in Guaymas,” George said.
“No, but they’ve got land-based air, and they’ve got subs, and who knows what all shit they do have in the Gulf of California?” Dalby said. “I guess that’s what we’re doing-finding out what kind of shit they’ve got there.”
“Such a thing as finding out the hard way,” George said.
When the flotilla got near the southern end of Baja California, bombers and fighter escorts left the escort carriers’ decks to pummel the Mexican installations at Cabo San Lucas. Scuttlebutt said the installations weren’t just Mexican but also Confederate. George wouldn’t have been surprised. Cabo San Lucas warded the Gulf of California, which led to Confederate Sonora. And the place was isolated enough-which was putting it mildly-to keep word of Confederate soldiers doing Mexicans’ jobs from spreading too far or too fast.
Cabo San Lucas lay at about the same latitude as Honolulu. Even lying well offshore, the Townsend got much hotter weather than she did in the Sandwich Islands. George wondered why. Maybe the North American continent screwed up the winds or something. That was all he could think of.
Then he stopped worrying about the weather. “Now hear this! Now hear this!” the loudspeakers blared. “We have two damaged aircraft returning from the raid on the Mexicans. They will come as far as they can before ditching, and we are going to go out after them. We don’t want to strand anybody if we can help it.”
“Roger that!” George exclaimed. He imagined floating in a life raft, or maybe just in a life jacket, praying somebody would pluck him out of the Pacific before the sharks or the glaring sun did him in. He shuddered. It was worse than going into the drink after your ship sank, because you’d be all alone out there.
The Townsend, two other destroyers, and a light cruiser peeled off and raced toward the Mexican coast. Up there in the sky, the pilots would be nursing everything they could from their shot-up airplanes. Every mile west they made bumped up their chances of getting rescued.
A swarm of intact aircraft flew over the ships. They were heading home to the carriers. Their pilots had to be thanking God they could get home. Then George spotted a dive bomber low in the sky and trailing smoke. Even as he watched, the airplane went into the Pacific. The pilot put it down as well as anybody could hope to. It skidded across the surface-it didn’t nose in.
Did he ditch well enough? Only one way to find out. The Townsend was closer to the downed airplane than any of the other ships. She sped toward where it went down. By the time she got there, the dive bomber had already sunk. But George joined in the cheers on deck: an inflatable life raft bobbed in the blue, blue water. Two men crouched inside. A third, in a life jacket, floated nearby. They all waved frantically. One of them fired a flare pistol, though daylight overwhelmed the red glow.
Lines with life rings attached flew over the ship’s side. The downed fliers put them on. Eager sailors hauled the men up on deck. “God bless you guys,” said the one whom George helped rescue. “You’re prettier than my wife right now.”
He had a nasty cut over one eye and burns on his face and hands. All things considered, he was lucky. The fellow who wore the life jacket couldn’t stand. “Broken leg,” somebody by him said. “Get him down to sick bay.”
“I don’t mind,” the injured man said as they laid him on a stretcher. “I figured I’d be holding a lily. But Jack there, he did a fuck of a job.”
“I hear somebody else was in trouble, too,” said the flier with the cuts and burns-Jack? “I hope some of you sailor fellows find him, too.”
“We’ll look for him, pal. That’s what we’re here for,” a sailor said. “Ought to get you down to sick bay, too. I bet you need stitches.”
“For what?” Jack didn’t even seem to know he was hurt. They took him below anyway.
A fighter was flying slow circles over where the other airplane went down, about forty miles east of the Townsend’s rescue. But all the destroyers and cruiser found when they got there was an oil slick and a little floating wreckage-no sign of the crew.
“Too bad,” George said.
“Can’t win ’em all,” Fremont Dalby said. “We broke even. Way things usually work out, that puts us ahead of the game.”