Hipper continued his analysis. “As to our current operations, we will drastically curtail them until the additional fuel arrives. We will continue to blockade Puget Sound and San Francisco, but the ships will be instructed to conserve fuel and not go chasing after shadows. Unfortunately, that will include American surface raiders should they emerge. We will also take oil from the smaller ships and give them to the larger. This means that some American ships might slip out through our blockade, but so be it.”
Hipper laughed without mirth. He had no choice but to curtail operations until he could arrange for fuel from other sources. The Dutch should have some in their Pacific colonies, he thought, but simply acquiring oil was not the solution. Oil existed in abundance almost everywhere, but it was useless gunk as it came out of the ground. It had to be refined, and the damned refineries had been destroyed.
“Still, it should not change things. You’ve got the American Army on the run and I’ve got the United States Navy bottled up. It doesn’t matter that things aren’t going perfectly, highness, they never do.”
Wilhelm recovered his aplomb. “Speaking of which, are you aware that the British have sent a squadron to Puget Sound?”
Again von Hipper was surprised. “What on earth for?”
“Apparently they are concerned for the neutrality of the Sound. They sent two battleships and a number of lighter ships as a reminder that the northern half of Puget Sound is theirs and we should not intrude. I understand they are sending a similar squadron to the St. Lawrence on the Atlantic side of this damned continent.”
Hipper was anxious to get back to his ships and make the appropriate arrangements to save fuel in hostile waters. Damn the fools who hadn’t informed the crown prince of the fleet’s needs.
The United States Army west of the Rockies and south of San Francisco was beginning to take tentative steps to move forward and away from the initial chaos. Liggett had organized disparate groups into two divisions, grandly named the First Infantry and the Second Infantry. The First was commanded by Luke’s old mentor, Fox Connor, and the Second by Major General James Harbord. They consisted of four understrength regiments each, totaling about fifteen thousand men per division. While larger than their German counterparts, they were still smaller than the American Army’s table of organization specifications which called for divisions of about twenty thousand men. They were poorly equipped, having little in the way of artillery, machine guns, and ammunition, but at least they existed. For the time being each division operated independently and reported directly to Liggett, a relationship that would change as the army grew.
The Seventh Cavalry Regiment was now part of the First Division and very few of the remaining soldiers still had horses. Patton was delighted to receive the fifty mounted Mexicans under Montoya and voiced thoughts about recruiting a Mexican brigade. Patton had come to the conclusion that many thousands of Mexicans were either refugees who hated the brutal Carranza government, or Americans of Mexican descent who hated the Carranza government as well. Either way, they were a source of eager manpower.
Thus relieved of the obligation of protecting Montoya from wrathful Californians, Martel found himself in yet another biplane headed for San Francisco. Corporal Flower informed Luke he’d rather die than go up in one of those things and took a train.
There were numerous changes to San Francisco since Luke had departed. It now had the appearance of a city under siege. The German warships had made several moves toward the city and bombarded her again. More buildings were damaged and many of the remainder were protected by piles of sandbags. Much of the civilian population had departed and the rest were packing for the inevitable day when the German Army arrived. However, refugees were streaming in from the south and had more than replaced the people who’d fled north.
As promised by Admiral Sims, many of the twelve-inch guns from the sunk or damaged ships at Mare Island had been removed and now faced out towards the Pacific or covered the entrance to the Bay. A number of six-inch and four-inch guns had been mounted on Alcatraz Island, which covered the mouth of the entrance to the bay. That giant rock was now an unsinkable battleship.
South and east of the city, work was progressing on trenches and fortifications that would both protect the city and extend into the mountains. As Harbord’s and Connor’s divisions slowly retreated, they did their best to nibble at the Germans and delay them. Every day they delayed the invaders meant more fortifications constructed and more recruits trained in the camps outside Sacramento.
General Liggett and Admiral Sims had combined their headquarters and Luke found himself working alongside naval personnel who were as bemused with him as he was with them. The war was eliminating the historic rivalries between the two services.
Luke had told Kirsten where he could be found and she said she would look him up when she finally made it to San Francisco. Thus, he was stunned and sickened when it was reported that the train she’d been traveling on had been attacked by German planes. The official report said more than fifty dead and a hundred injured, many of them badly. The injured were identified and Kirsten wasn’t among them, but the list of the dead was incomplete. He recognized her cousin Ella’s name, but many of the dead had been unidentifiable. He prayed that Kirsten wasn’t one of them, or, if she was, that her death had been painless. That is, he thought bitterly, if violent death could ever be painless.
Even though they’d only known each other for a few days, Luke had felt a sense of kinship with her. His own relations with ladies, and not just women, had been limited at best, and the young widow had fascinated him. She was bright, pretty, intelligent, and self-reliant, not a vapid shadow like so many woman were, even in this relatively enlightened age. And now maybe she was dead.
Most maddeningly, there was nothing he could do. If she was wandering her way up north, she’d arrive when she did. If she was dead, he’d never hear anything about it. Women should not be casualties in a war, he thought. But, of course, they had been since time immemorial.
Elise was furious as she stood at the foot of the hospital bed. “How dare you go and get yourself wounded again! Wasn’t once enough to satisfy you?”
Ensign Josh Cornell lay back on the pillows and tried to grin, but the pain from his infected shoulder wouldn’t let him. By the time the Shark had gotten back to San Francisco, the splinters that he’d thought were so trivial had become infected. Doctors at the tent hospital on the grounds of the Presidio had worked to pull the tiny pieces of wood out of his flesh and clean the wounds with iodine and alcohol. They were of the opinion that his shoulder and arm would never fully recover and he wondered what impact that would have on a Navy career.
Elise was not done scolding. “First you hurt your leg and now you hurt your arm. What is it going to be next, your thick empty skull?”
She huffed and sat down beside his bed and Josh could see tears welling in her eyes. She was so lovely and her concern so real, he thought he would melt.
“Elise, it’s not like I went looking to get shot up. It just happened. I’m in the Navy and I can’t just stand back when other people are out fighting the Krauts. My job is to fight them, too.”
“I know,” she said softly. “This may seem very bold of me to tell you, but you are a special person in my life, and I didn’t want to lose you just when I’ve found you.”
She laughed. “Close your mouth, Ensign, your jaw is dropping.”
He grinned. “It’s just that I’m stunned, and very, very pleased. You are special to me too.”
A nurse came and glared at Elise. Women were not supposed to be in the men’s ward, even though Josh was an officer and supposedly a gentleman. A word from Admiral Sims had gotten her entry but she would not abuse the privilege.