"Wow!" Sam said. "Too bad he's not one of the good guys-he gives a hell of a speech."
"Yes, sir." Van Duyk turned the dial on the shortwave set. "Sounds like the Germans are going to get hit right about now. Let's see what they have to say."
He found the English-language German wireless. "There is a report of what may have been a superbomb explosion between Bruges and Ghent, in Belgium," the announcer said, only the slightest guttural accent betraying his homeland. "One of our turbo-engined night fighters brought down a British bomber in approximately the same location. If the Angel of Death sought to spread his wings over Germany tonight, he fell short by a good many kilometers."
Van Duyk whooped. "Up yours, Winston!" Sam said. He hurried up to the bridge to spread the news.
"Oh, my," Lon Menefee said. "Well, how many more cards do the limeys have?"
"We'll find out," Sam said. "Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of 'As the World Goes up in Smoke,' brought to you by the Jameson Casket and Mortuary Company. Our slogan is 'You're going to die sometime-why not now?'"
"Ouch!" Lieutenant Walters said.
"Lord, it's the way things look," Carsten said wearily. "This can't go on much longer-can it?" He sounded as if he was pleading-and he was.
"Ask Featherston. Ask Churchill," Lieutenant Menefee said. "They're the ones who have to quit."
"Can't happen soon enough," Sam said. "It's pretty much pointless now. We know who won. We know who lost. Only thing we don't know is how many dead there are." He paused. "Well, maybe Churchill has enough bombs left to force a draw. Doesn't look like Featherston does."
"I just don't want to see a bomber coming over us at thirty thousand feet, that's all," Walters said.
"Yipes!" Ice walked up Sam's spine. "I didn't even think of that." He made as if to look at the sky. No CAP at night. It wouldn't be flying anywhere near so high, anyway. Who'd ever imagined you might need to? But a superbomb didn't need to score a direct hit to ruin a warship. He wanted to turn around and run for home. But he couldn't, and the Josephus Daniels steamed on.
T his is going to hurt a little."
Michael Pound had come to hate those words, because a little always turned into a lot. He'd never imagined changing dressings on his burned legs could hurt so much. And, at that, there were plenty of guys who had it worse than he did. Some of the badly burned men-pilots and other aircrew, most of them, and a few soldiers from barrels with them-needed morphine every time they got fresh bandages. He didn't, not any more.
He missed the stuff now that he wasn't getting it, but not enough to make him think he'd turned into a junkie. It did do more against pain than whatever else they had; codeine wasn't much stronger than aspirin by comparison. He could bear what he had to live with, though. When he heard other men howling, he understood the meaning of the phrase it could be worse.
The military hospital was somewhere near Chattanooga. Formidable defenses kept snipers and auto bombs at bay. From what everybody said, holding the CSA down was proving almost as expensive as conquering the damn place had been. That wasn't good, but Pound couldn't do anything about it.
He got his Purple Heart. He got a Bronze Star to go with his Silver Star. He didn't particularly think he deserved one, but nobody asked him. He got promoted to first lieutenant, which thrilled him less than the brass who gave him a silver bar on each shoulder strap probably thought it would. And he got a letter from General Morrell. Morrell wasn't just an old acquaintance-he was a friend, despite differences in rank. And he'd been wounded, too. A letter from him really did mean something.
"You should do very well, Lieutenant," a doctor told Pound one day. "A lot of third-degree burns are much deeper, and impair function even when they heal well. You'll have some nasty scars, but I don't think you'll even limp."
"Terrific," Pound said. "How would you like it if somebody said something like that about your legs? Especially when you were hurting like a son of a bitch while he did it?"
The doctor pulled up the left sleeve of his white coat. His arm had scars that made nasty look like an understatement. "I was in a motorcar crash ten years ago," he said. "I know what I'm talking about-and now we can do things for burns they didn't dream of back then."
"Can you use your hand?" Pound asked.
"Thumb and first two fingers," the doctor replied. "The tendons and nerves to the others are pretty much shot, but I've got the important ones, anyhow. You don't have that worry-I know your toes work."
"Uh-huh," Pound said unenthusiastically. He knew they worked, too; the therapists made him wiggle them. That made him forget about the rest of his pain-it felt as if a flamethrower were toasting them.
"Just hang on," the doctor said. "It's a bitch while it's going on, but it gets better. You have to give it time, that's all."
Pound couldn't even tell him to go to hell, because the other man had been through what he was in the middle of now and had come out the other side. "It is a bitch," was as much as he thought he could say.
"Oh, I know," the doctor answered quietly. "I still miss the needle sometimes, but I'll be damned if I go back to it…and you can take that any way you please." He nodded and walked on to the next patient.
He looked like such a mild little fellow, too: the kind who slid through life without anything much ever happening to him. Which only proved you never could tell. Michael Pound had seen that plenty of times with soldiers he got to know. He wondered why he was so surprised now.
He wished he could get up and do things, but he was stuck on his back-or sometimes, to stave off bedsores, on his stomach. The therapists said he could put weight on his feet in a couple of weeks. He looked forward to that, and then again he didn't. Till you'd been through a lot of pain, you didn't understand how much you wanted to stay away from more.
In the meantime, he had magazines and newspapers and the handful of books in the hospital library. He voraciously devoured them. He also had the wireless. He would have listened to news almost all the time. The other guys in the ward plumped for music and comedies and dramas. Pound endured their programs-he couldn't try throwing his weight around, not unless he wanted everybody else to hate him. But the news was all that really mattered to him.
Sometimes the other burned men gave in to him, too, especially in the middle of the night when they were all too likely to be awake and when the regular programs were even crappier than they were the rest of the time. And so he was listening to a news program when a flash came in.
"We interrupt this broadcast," said the man behind the mike. "This just in from the BBC-the Churchill government has fallen. Parliament voted no confidence in the Churchill-Mosley regime that has run the United Kingdom for more than ten years. Pending elections, a caretaker government under Sir Horace Wilson has been formed. Wilson has announced that his first action as Prime Minister will be to seek an armistice from the Kaiser."
The room erupted. A nurse rushed in to quiet the whoops and cheers. When she found out what had happened, she let out a whoop herself.
"They only had two!" Pound said.
"Two what?" the nurse asked.
"Two bombs," Pound and two other guys said at the same time. Pound went on, "They had two, and the second one didn't go off where they wanted it to, and that was it. Now the Germans can blow up their cities one at a time, and they can't hit back."
"Wow," the nurse said. "Are you a general? You talk like a general."
"I'm a lieutenant," he answered. "I've got gray hair 'cause I was a sergeant for years and years. They finally promoted me, and they've been regretting it ever since."
She laughed. "You're funny, too! I like that."
He wished he had a private room. Maybe something interesting would have happened. The ward didn't even boast curtains around the beds. Whatever they did to you, everybody else got to watch. After a while, you mostly didn't care. This once, Pound might have.