Under two minutes to the target. The minelayer showed sudden, urgent smoke-someone aboard her must have spotted the wakes. But you couldn't do much, not in that little bit of time. And Lemp had aimed one of the torpedoes on the assumption that the enemy vessel would speed up.
Boom! "Hit!" Lemp shouted exultantly. The U-30's crew cheered. Then a much bigger Boom! followed. The exploding torpedo must have touched off the mines the enemy ship carried. The minelayer went up in a fireball-and the U-boat might have been under the worst depth-charge attack in the world. It staggered in the water. Light bulbs blew from bow to stern, plunging the boat into darkness. Several leaks started.
With matter-of-fact competence, the crew went to work setting things to rights. Torches flashed on. Sailors began stopping the leaks. Lemp ordered U-30 to the surface. If there were survivors, he'd pick them up. He didn't expect trouble, anyhow.
And he didn't get any. Bodies floated in the chilly water. He saw no British sailors still alive. With that stunning blast, he was hardly surprised. A little disappointed, maybe, but not surprised. The minelayer had already gone to the bottom.
"Resume our previous course," he told the helmsman. "We'll celebrate properly when we're clear."
"Resuming previous course." The petty officer grinned. Schnapps was against regulations-which didn't mean people wouldn't get a knock after a triumph like this.
These days, the British Expeditionary Force was mechanized. That meant Staff Sergeant Alistair Walsh got to ride a lorry from Calais to this piddlepot hole in the ground somewhere right next to the Belgian border. Then he jumped down out of the lorry…and he was back in the mud again. Twenty years unwound as if they had never been.
If anything, this was worse than what he'd known in 1918. He'd fought through the spring and summer then, and got wounded early in fall. Guys who'd been through the mill talked about how miserable trenches got when it was cold and wet. Guys who'd been through the mill always talked. This time, they were right.
He squelched when he walked. So did everybody else. People screamed "Keep your feet dry!" the same way they screamed "Always wear a rubber!" Not too many people listened-and wasn't that a surprise? The first cases of trench foot meant rockets went up from the people with red stripes on their caps.
Walsh remembered a trick he'd heard about in the last war. "Rub your feet with Vaseline, thick as you can," he told the men in his company. "Do your damnedest to keep your socks dry, but greasing's better than nothing."
Only one man came down with trench foot, and he didn't follow instructions. "Good job, Sergeant," said Captain Ted Peters.
"Thank you, sir," Walsh answered. He was old enough to be the company commander's father, but he would have had to start mighty young. "Some of these buggers haven't got the sense God gave a Frenchman."
"Or a Belgian." Peters scratched at his skinny little mustache. Walsh didn't think much of the modern fashion. If he was going to grow hair on his upper lip, he wanted a proper mustache, not one that looked put on with a burnt match. But he couldn't deny that the captain was a clever bloke. Peters went on, "You know why we haven't crossed the border and taken up positions where we might do some good?"
"Belgians haven't invited us in, like," Walsh answered.
"That's right. They're neutral, don't you know?" The way Captain Peters rolled his eyes told what he thought of that. "They think they'll offend the Boches if they get ready to defend themselves. Much good that kind of thing did them in 1914."
Maybe he'd been born in 1914. Maybe not, too. Either way, he was right. "The Germans jumped them then. They'll jump them again. Hitler's a bigger liar than the damned Kaiser ever was," Walsh said.
"Too bloody right he is," Captain Peters agreed. "You can see that. I can, too. So why can't King Leopold?"
"Because he's a bleeding idiot…sir?" Walsh suggested. "Like one of those ostriches, with its head in the sand?"
"He's got his head up his arse," Peters said. Walsh goggled; he hadn't thought the captain talked like that. "Thinks the French are as bad as the Germans. Thinks we are, for Christ's sake."
"What can you expect from a wog?" Walsh said. As far as he was concerned, wogs started on the far side of the Channel. The French were wogs on his side, which meant he cut them some slack. The Belgians weren't, and he didn't.
He had genuine respect for the bastards in the field-gray uniforms and the coal-scuttle helmets. The Germans fought hard, and in the last war they'd fought as clean as anyone else. What more could you want from the enemy?
Patiently, Captain Peters answered the question he'd meant as rhetoricaclass="underline" "I would expect an ounce of sense. If the balloon goes up-no, when it goes up-we're going to have to rush forward to reach the positions we should already have. So will the French. That will give the Germans extra time to advance and consolidate, time they simply shouldn't have."
"What can we do about it, sir?" Walsh said.
"Damn all," the company commander replied, which was about what the sergeant had expected. "Leopold won't listen to reason."
"Maybe something ought to happen to him-an accident, like," Walsh said. "Not cricket, I know, but…Got to be some Belgians what can add two and two, right?"
"You'd think so. But if we try something like that and muck it up, what happens then?" This time, Peters answered his own question: "We throw Leopold into Hitler's arms, that's what. If the Belgians line up with Germany, we're buggered for fair."
Sergeant Walsh only grunted. He didn't worry about Belgian soldiers. Who in his right mind would? But a Belgium leaning toward Hitler gave the Germans a red carpet for invading France. As soon as he called up a map in his mind, he saw as much. "We'd best not muck it up, then," he said.
Peters lit a cigarette. Then he offered Walsh the packet, which an officer didn't have to do. Walsh took a coffin nail and sketched a salute. Peters' cheeks hollowed as he sucked in smoke. "Don't get your hopes up for anything like that, Sergeant," he said. "Not bloody likely, no matter how much sense it makes. The Belgies like Leopold, same as we like our King. That's what he's there for-to be liked."
"Edward's gone," Walsh pointed out.
Now Captain Peters grunted. "You like to argue, don't you?" he said, but a chuckle told the sergeant he wasn't really angry. "If you could arrange for Leopold to fall in love with a popsy…"
"Could I have a couple of months' leave to set it up, sir?"
"Why would you need so bloody long?"
"Well, sir, I've got to try out the popsies, don't I, to see which one he'd like best," Walsh answered innocently.
That won him a snort from the company commander. "Sorry, Walsh." He looked east, across the Belgian frontier. "I'm not at all sure we've got two months." ONCE UPON A TIME, U.S. MARINES swaggered through the streets of Peking. People got out of the way for them. They had to be careful nowadays, though. They still counted for more than the Chinese did. But when Japanese soldiers came through, the leathernecks had to be the ones who stepped aside. Orders said so.
Pete McGill hated the orders, even though he understood the need for them. One Marine could wipe the floor with one Japanese soldier. Four or five Marines could lick four or five Japanese soldiers. The little men were plenty tough, but they were little.
And a platoon of Japanese soldiers could beat and stomp four or five Marines if they found any excuse to do it. They had, once or twice. U.S. military authorities protested when it happened. The Japs ignored the protests. As far as they were concerned, Peking was theirs now. All the other foreign troops stayed there on sufferance.