Lots. Quite a few. Quite a bit. Chester had no trouble finding answers for questions like that. He looked around. This wasn't good guerrilla country-too flat and too open. Other places, though…
Hearing them talking, an armed Confederate ambled up to see what was going on. His eyes widened. "Jesus!" he yipped. "You're damnyankees!"
Chester grinned at him. "Nothing gets by you, does it?"
He stopped grinning a second later, because the Confederate soldier aimed a submachine gun at his midsection. "Hold it right there! Y'all are my prisoners."
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Captain Rhodes said, though Chester noted that he kept his hands away from his.45. "Don't you know your side surrendered?"
"My ass!" the man in butternut said. "We'd never do anything like that."
"Go find some of your buddies," Chester said. "Talk to them. We aren't bullshitting you, man. How'd we get so far behind your line if we were just sneaking around?"
"Beats me." The enemy soldier gestured with the submachine gun. "You come with me. If you're lyin', you'll be sorry."
"However you want." Chester never argued with a man who could kill him. "Let's go. I won't even get mad after you find out what's what."
The other man turned out not even to know Jake Featherston was dead. He no more believed that than he believed his country had surrendered. And, no doubt to drive Chester crazy, they couldn't find anybody else in butternut. That veteran sergeant had disappeared-with luck to head for a POW camp, without it to go off and make trouble.
At last, just as the sun was setting, they found another Confederate soldier. To Chester's enormous relief, he had got the news. "'Fraid the Yankee's tellin' you the truth," he said to his countryman. "It's all over. We're licked."
"Son of a bitch bastard!" Chester's erstwhile captor said. "If that ain't the biggest crock o' crap…We weren't even losing."
"Hello-this is South Carolina. What am I doing here if you guys are winning?" Martin asked. The Confederate gaped at him as if that had never once crossed his mind. Chester got the idea not a whole lot of things had crossed the other fellow's mind. "Why don't you hand me that piece so my guys don't shoot you for having it?"
Reluctantly, the soldier in butternut gave him the submachine gun. Even more reluctantly, he raised his hands. "My pappy's gonna whup me when he finds out I quit," he said glumly.
"Not your fault," Chester said. "The whole CSA gave up."
"Pappy won't care," the soldier predicted. "He'll whup me any old way."
"Did he fight in the last war?" Chester asked.
"I hope to shit he did!"
"Then he gave up once himself. Tell him so."
"Like he'll listen. You don't know Pappy."
As far as Chester was concerned, that was just as well. "Let's go back to the explosives shed," he said. "I want my captain to know you found out we weren't pulling your leg."
"Still can't hardly believe it. And the President bought a plot?" The Confederate shook his head. "Holy fuckin' shit!"
He could cuss as much as he pleased. Chester had his weapon. He remembered the Navy guys who'd got torpedoed after the cease-fire in the Great War. Thank God he hadn't gone that way himself!
G eorge Enos, Jr., was thinking of his father as the Oregon steamed toward the surfaced Confederate submarine. That bastard of a sub skipper hadn't wanted to quit when the Great War ended, so he'd fired one last spread of torpedoes-and little George grew up without a man around.
This submersible was playing by the rules. It had surfaced and broadcast its position by wireless. Now it was flying a large blue flag in token of surrender. Men in dark gray uniforms stood on the conning tower and on the deck, though nobody went near the deck gun. Taking on a battlewagon with that little excuse for a weapon was closer to insane than anything else, but you never could tell.
A lieutenant with a bullhorn strode up to the Oregon's bow. "Ahoy, the Confederate sub!" he bawled. "Do you hear me?"
On the sub, a fellow in a dirty white officer's cap raised a loudhailer to his own lips. "I hear you," he answered. "What are your instructions?"
"Have you jettisoned your ammunition?"
"Yes," the Confederate answered.
"Have you removed the breechblock from your gun?"
"Done that, too."
"Are the pistols out of your torpedoes? Are the torpedoes rendered safe?"
"Yes. We've followed all the surrender orders." The enemy officer didn't sound happy about it.
"Do you have any mines aboard?" asked the lieutenant on the Oregon.
"No-not a one."
"All right. We are going to send an officer and a CPO to inspect your boat before we give you your sailing instructions for Baltimore. Stand by to receive a boarding party."
"Very well," the Confederate skipper said. "But if the surrender order didn't tell us we had to do exactly what you tell us, I would have something different to say to you."
"You would be trying to sink us, and we would be dropping depth charges on your head," the U.S. lieutenant said. "Things are what they are, though, not what you wish they were."
"And ain't that the sad and sorry truth?" the sub skipper said. "We will receive your boarders-we won't repel them." That made George think of pigtailed sailors with bandannas and cutlasses, and of clouds of black-powder smoke. No more, no more.
The officer who crossed to the submersible was barely old enough to shave. The chief might have been his father, as far as years went. George knew what would happen. The ensign would write up the inspection report, and the chief would tell him what to say.
They came back after a couple of hours. The ensign was nodding and grinning, but George kept his eyes on the CPO. When he saw that the senior rating seemed satisfied, he relaxed. Nobody on that sub would give the U.S. Navy any more trouble.
After talking with the ensign (and also glancing at the chief), the lieutenant picked up his bullhorn again. "You are cleared to proceed to Baltimore. Keep flying your blue flag by day, and show your navigation lights at night."
"Understood," the C.S. skipper said.
As if he hadn't spoken, the lieutenant went on, "Remain fully surfaced at all times. Report your position, course, and speed every eight hours. All wireless transmissions must be in plain language. A pilot will take you through the minefields. Obey any instructions you may receive from U.S. authorities."
"We'll do it," the Confederate replied. "Is there anything else, Mommy, or can we go out and play now?"
Several U.S. sailors snickered, George among them. The lieutenant went brick red. "No further instructions at this time," he choked out.
The C.S. skipper doffed his cap in sardonic salute, then disappeared down the hatch into the submarine. It moved off to the northwest, in the direction of Chesapeake Bay.
The lieutenant was still steaming. "If I ever run into that son of a bitch on dry land, I'll punch him in the nose," he ground out.
"Take an even strain," said the chief, who'd gone aboard the Confederate submarine. "We won. They lost. Let him talk as big as he wants-it doesn't change what really matters."
"No, but it makes me look like a jerk. All I was doing was making sure he understood the surrender terms. We don't want the kind of trouble we had the last time around."
"I should say we don't." The CPO looked this way and that till he spotted George. "Here's Enos. He knows more about that kind of shit than you and me put together. His old man was on the Ericsson, and his ma's the gal who went down to the CSA and plugged the skunk who put her on the bottom."
"Really?" The lieutenant, unlike the chief, didn't know George by sight. At a quick gesture from the CPO, George took half a step away from the twin 40mm mount. The lieutenant said, "You're Sylvia Enos' son?"