Drive to the East (sa-2) by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy
ISBN: 0-345-48462-2
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2005-10-24T04:00:00+00:00

XII

All ahead one-third,” Sam Carsten called down to the engine room from the Josephus Daniels’ bridge.

“All ahead one-third, sir, aye aye.” The answer came back at once. The destroyer escort picked up a little speed.

Sam read the chart by the dim glow of a flashlight with red cellophane taped over the bulb. That didn’t spoil his night vision and wouldn’t be visible from any great distance. Getting out of Philadelphia Harbor and Delaware Bay was going to be even more fun than escaping Chesapeake Bay.

If the clouds overhead broke… If they did, moonlight would pour down on the U.S. warship while she was still sneaking through the minefields that protected the harbor. That, to put it mildly, wouldn’t be good. Confederate subs lurked just outside, hungry for anything they could catch.

“I wish they would have given us a pilot who really knows these minefields,” Pat Cooley said.

“Me, too,” Sam told his exec. “I asked for one at the Navy yard. Hell, I screamed for one. They wouldn’t give him to me. They said we’d have to stop and lower a boat to let him come back, and that that would make the mission even more dangerous. They said they didn’t have enough pilots like that for us to just go on and take him with us.”

“Well, I can sort of see their point,” Cooley said reluctantly. “Sort of.” In the light of that cellophane-covered flashlight, he looked like a pink, angry ghost. “If we were a battleship or a carrier, though, we would have got one.”

“Now that you mention it, yes.” Carsten gave the younger officer a crooked smile. “Didn’t you figure out we were expendable the first time they gave us a shore-bombardment mission?”

“Sorry, sir. I guess I’m just naive,” Cooley answered. “But I’ll tell you something-I’m sure as hell convinced now.”

“That’s, uh, swell.” Sam had almost said it was bully. To someone the executive officer’s age, that would have smacked of the nineteenth century, if not the Middle Ages. Since Sam was only middle-aged himself-and not always reconciled to that-he didn’t want Cooley to think of him as one with Nineveh and Tyre. Then he stopped flabbling about changing tastes in American slang and went back to worrying about getting blown out of the water if he screwed up. “Come left to 150. I say again, come left to 150.”

“Coming left to one-five-oh: aye aye, sir.” Cooley changed course without question or comment. He was still the best shiphandler on the Josephus Daniels. In a nasty spot like this, the best shiphandler belonged at the wheel. He had to make his course corrections on the basis of what Sam told him, and had to hope Sam was telling him the right thing. If that wasn’t enough to give you an ulcer before you hit thirty, Sam didn’t know what would be.

Even if I do everything right, we still may go sky-high, Sam thought unhappily. Not all Confederate submersibles carried torpedoes. Some laid mines. If they’d laid some that U.

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