The boy seemed to be settling down, a bit. Rebecca began wiping the gore from him, using her own dress for a rag. The garment would need to be cleaned anyway, and very thoroughly.
Jeff and Jimmy found her there, some time later. The sight of her, ashen-faced and clutching an orphan to her chest, stripped away every trace of warrior self-satisfaction.
“Aw, shit,” said Jimmy. He looked away, his eyes bleak beyond his years.
Jeff’s eyes were not bleak so much as simply grim. Nor did he look away. “Next time,” he said softly, almost hissing the words, “let’s make sure we’ve got some real torpedoes.”
Chapter 43
“I’m sure glad you’re here, Jesse—I mean, Colonel.”
Eddie corrected himself quickly, but not quite quickly enough to keep him from blushing.
“That’s all right, Lieutenant,” Jesse assured him gravely. “But I remind you that, as I understand it, the Navy’s been designated the senior service here in Wismar. That makes sense to me, too. The Air Force—such as it is, and what there is of it—is very much a clear-weather-only force just now. Your surface units are going to have a lot better round-the-clock capability than we are, so it’s only sensible to put a Navy officer in overall command.”
“It may seem sensible to you,” Eddie said, grimacing, “but I sure as hell don’t feel like an officer in overall command of anything!”
“It’ll grow on you,” Jesse assured him. “Besides, it comes with the territory, I’m afraid.”
“Always seemed a lot easier than this in war games,” Eddie muttered, but his voice was just low enough that Jesse decided he could pretend not to have heard it.
“Now that I am here, and more or less for good this time,” he said instead, “what can I do for you?”
“Larry just copied a message from Magdeburg,” Eddie told him. “The Danes are landing troops in Luebeck Bay.”
“I see.” Jesse was surprised that his own voice sounded so calm. Or perhaps he wasn’t. On one level, at least, the news was almost a relief. It certainly wasn’t unexpected, and at least the Danes’ arrival brought an end to the drawn-out anticipation.
Unfortunately, it also meant enemy troops were coming ashore no more than thirty miles from Wismar, as well.
“Well,” he went on after a moment, “what does Colonel Holtzmüller have to say about it?”
“Not a lot,” Eddie admitted with a crooked smile. “According to our latest reports, General Aderkas is still at least four days out from Wismar. Larry handed Colonel Holtzmüller the same dispatch first, and he headed out to check his pickets immediately.”
“And Captain Stecher?”
“I’ve already passed the warning on to him,” Eddie said, and Jesse nodded. Jochaim Stecher was a German Lutheran fishing boat skipper. Actually, he owned no fewer than six small fishing vessels operating out of Wismar and Rostock. Eddie had entrusted one of his precious citizens-band radios to him, along with a German-born U.S. Navy sailor trained in its use. At the moment, Stecher was somewhere out on Wismar Bay, looking as innocent as possible while he kept a sharp lookout for the first sign of the Danish fleet. The chance of his seeing anything in the middle of a rainy fall night wasn’t particularly great, but in this pre-radar era, invasion fleets were going to want at least minimal daylight before they tried to put any troops ashore. And as long as his boat showed no signs of trying to run past the Danes toward shore, they were likely to leave it alone . . . since there was no way for them to know it had a radio aboard.
“I guess what I really need to know,” Eddie went on after a moment, “is how likely it is that you and Hans can get into the air tomorrow, Colonel.”
“That’s the sixty-four-dollar question,” Jesse said with a humorless smile. “Right this minute, I’d say the chances were at least a little better than even. Judging from the way the rain’s slacked off, it looks like the front’s pretty much passed through, and while I was walking over here from the field, it looked to me like the cloud cover was breaking up. Of course, this time of the year in the Baltic, the only thing anyone can say for sure is that no one can be sure what the weather is going to do. Damn, what I wouldn’t give for a decent weather service!”