“How badly are you hurting the British?” Captain Moultrie asked.
“Sir, you would know better than I do,” Sam said. Moultrie raised an eyebrow and waited. Sam went on, “I know what we stop. I’ve got an idea of what the other ships in the squadron stop. But I don’t think any of us knows how much gets through in spite of us.”
“Good answer,” said Ken Davenport, the captain at Sam’s far left.
“Seems to be worthwhile, what we’re doing,” McClintock said. He eyed Carsten from across the table. “Anything special you’d like to tell us, Lieutenant? Anything you’ve found out that other skippers ought to know?”
“Not to trust the limeys as far as you can throw them,” Sam said at once. “That freighter with the big guns, the catapult-launched fighter…They’re sneaky bastards.”
McClintock’s grin startled Sam. He hadn’t thought the rugged badlands of that face could rearrange themselves so. “Then what does that make you?” the senior officer asked. “Whatever they threw at you, you beat.”
“I don’t know that for a fact, sir,” Carsten answered. “I wish I did, but I don’t. If they were sneaky enough, they slid on by me, and I never knew the difference.”
“Not too likely, not with Y-ranging gear,” Captain Davenport said, which only proved he didn’t know much about the North Atlantic in dirty weather. By the way Captain McClintock stirred, he was thinking the same thing. Before he could say anything, Davenport went on, “I will say that recognizing the possibility does you credit.”
“Well, that’s true enough,” McClintock said. “We’ve got ourselves a raft of officers who think they’re smarter than they really are. Finding one who thinks he’s dumber than he really is makes for a refreshing change.” He eyed Sam. “Well, Lieutenant, do you want to go back on patrol when your refit’s finished?”
“Sir, I’ll go wherever you send me,” Sam said. “Real destroyers are probably better suited to that job than escorts like my ship, though. They’ve got more legs, so they can cover more ocean. Fewer things are likely to get past them.”
“He is a smart one,” Captain Moultrie remarked.
“So he is. Good for him,” McClintock said placidly. He turned back to Sam. “You aren’t wrong. The only trouble is, we haven’t got enough real destroyers to go around. We’re gaining on it, but we aren’t there yet. And the ones we do have in the North Atlantic, we need farther east. Speed counts for even more there than it does on patrol duty.”
“All right, sir.” Where to send ships wasn’t Sam’s decision. “If you want the Josephus Daniels back out there, that’s where she’ll go.”
“You’re the fellow who landed those Marines on that Confederate coastal island, aren’t you?” Moultrie asked.
“Yes, sir, I did that.” Sam wondered if he should have said he was panting to go back out on patrol. Coastal raiding made for exciting films, but if you were doing it for real you kept all your sphincters puckered tight till you got out of range of Confederate land-based air.
“We have anything like that in the hopper?” Davenport asked.
“Well, we could, if we had an experienced skipper to handle it,” Moultrie answered. They talked as if Sam weren’t there. He wished he weren’t. He wasn’t eager to volunteer for a dangerous mission, but he knew he wouldn’t turn it down if they gave it to him. You didn’t do that, not if you were an officer. You didn’t if you were a rating, either.
“Gives us something else to think about.” Captain McClintock sounded pleased. Of course he did-he’d be giving somebody else the shitty end of the stick. But the ribbons on his chest said he’d done warm work himself. He nodded to Sam. “We need to talk to some people ourselves, Lieutenant. If you stay in port an extra day or two, I’m sure it’ll break your crew’s hearts, won’t it?”
“Sir, you’ll probably hear them crying all the way over in Providence,” Sam said.
That made two or three of the captains snort. McClintock said, “I’m sure I will. All right, Carsten-you’ll hear from us one way or the other before long. You have anything to say before we let you go?”
“Whatever you give me, whatever you give my ship, we’ll take a swing at it,” Sam said. “I guess that’s it. Oh-and my exec is ready for a command of his own. Past ready. I hate to say it because I hate to lose him, but it’s true.”
“We know about Lieutenant Cooley-indeed we do,” the senior captain replied. The others nodded. Just how fast a track was Pat on? McClintock continued, “As for the other-well, plenty of worse things you could tell us. All right-dismissed for now.”
When Sam got back to the Josephus Daniels, Lieutenant Cooley asked, “What’s up, Skipper?”
“Well, I don’t exactly know,” Sam answered. He didn’t say anything about the senior officers’ regard for Cooley. That would come out in its own time, if it did. “Maybe they’ll send us out on patrol again, or maybe they’ll give us something else to do.”
“Something hush-hush and sneaky?” Cooley said. “Something where our ass is grass if the bad guys find out about it?”
“They didn’t say that in so many words,” Sam said. “It sounded that way to me, though. They remembered that time we carried the leathernecks.”
“They would,” the exec said darkly. “They didn’t tell you what, huh?”
“Nope.” Sam shook his head.
“Doesn’t sound good.”
“Nope,” Sam repeated. “Sure doesn’t. Way I figure it, we’ll sail up the James to Richmond, land our Marines to scoop up Jake Featherston, and shell the Tredegar Iron Works while we wait for them to bring the son of a bitch back.”
Cooley looked at him. “I hope you didn’t tell the brass anything like that. They’d take you up on it in a red-hot minute-and if they did, we wouldn’t sail up the James. We’d go up that other creek instead-without a paddle, too.”
“Don’t I know it!” Sam said. “No, I didn’t give them any fancy ideas. I may be dumb, but I’m not that dumb. Besides, they can come up with all kinds of fancy ideas all by themselves. They don’t need any help from me.”
“Maybe they’ll shift the whole crew to a river monitor so we can help when our guys go over the Ohio,” Cooley suggested.
“There’s a cheery thought.” Carsten shivered. During the Great War, both sides put monitors on the Ohio and the Mississippi. Some of them carried guns worthy of a battleship. They gave heavy cannon mobility the big guns couldn’t get any other way, but even then they were vulnerable to mines, which both sides sowed broadcast in the rivers. And monitors were even more vulnerable these days. They were slow and they had little room to maneuver, which meant dive bombers cleaned up on them. Sam supposed he would rather command a river monitor than try to defuse unexploded bombs, but neither job was his idea of fun.
While waiting for orders, Sam did some discreet roistering at places where officers could roister discreetly. He enjoyed himself. He would have had more fun at the raucous joints where he went before he became an officer, but he kept that to himself. A mustang who still behaved like a petty officer wasn’t a good officer. Sam had seen enough men who proved the point.
Pat Cooley plainly had a good time at those discreet establishments. But then, he was an up-and-comer with an Annapolis ring. He was supposed to know how to enjoy himself like a gentleman.
They both happened to be aboard the Josephus Daniels when the orders arrived, as if from On High. Sam read them. Without a word, he passed them on to Cooley. “Well, well,” the exec said brightly when he finished going through them. “Doesn’t this look like fun?”