The Baltic War(219)

On the other hand . . .



"Things are going to get messy when we reach Luebeck, Franz," he said after moment, still gazing into the north. "You saw what we did to Railleuse with only two hits. Well, it's going to be a lot worse than that when we engage Admiral Overgaard's squadron in the Bay of Luebeck. What happened to Railleuse isn't going to have much effect on what happens at Luebeck, but after this is all over, the word will get around."



" 'The word,' sir."



"The word that we blew the piss out of her with only two hits—and that as soon as we did, we went alongside and helped put out her fires. We're about to teach the world a new kind of sea warfare, Captain, one with weapons that are going to be more destructive than anything anyone's ever seen before. So, when we teach that to everyone else, I intend to teach them something about the Navy of the United States of Europe, as well."



"What, sir?" Halberstat asked, when the admiral paused.



"Something Winston Churchill once said. I always did admire that old dinosaur. It went, 'In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity.' We may have to knock them down and stomp on them, from time to time, but when it's finished, it's finished, and it's time to remember that they're human beings, too."



He watched Halberstat's lips move as the flagship's captain repeated the phrases to himself. Then Halberstat nodded in approval.



"I like that, sir," he said simply.



"Good. Because that's the navy we're going to build, Franz. That's the kind of navy we're going to build."





Chapter 49





The Wietze oil fields

A few miles northwest of Hannover


Like everyone at the Wietze oil facility since Quentin Underwood had arrived on an inspection tour three days earlier, the site manager was walking around on figurative tiptoes. Underwood was a hard taskmaster at any time. When he was in a bad mood because he felt production wasn't going as well as it should be, his treatment of subordinates was caustic and abrasive.



"What does he expect?" complained one of the refinery workers to the manager. "With the equipment we've got?"



The manager didn't bother to respond. By now, that was an old refrain whenever Underwood wasn't around to hear. There was no point saying it to him directly—again—because that would just elicit another hot-tempered tirade on the subject of "making do with what we've got." A tirade that was every bit as pointless, because the workers at the refinery were making do with what they had.



The manager straightened up from the schlaemmbock they'd been examining. The extraction pipe was so badly corroded there was no longer any point in repairing it. "We'll have to—"



A shout in the distance made him break off. Looking up, he saw that one of the soldiers in the nearest watch-tower on the guard perimeter was pointing at something in the distance. The manager couldn't tell what it what was, but the guard seemed quite agitated.



There was a separating pot nearby, much closer than the watch-tower. The manager hurried over and climbed up the metal rungs welded to the side of the pot. From the top, he'd have a good view.



Two seconds after he got that view, he started shouting himself.





"All right, all right, everybody calm down," said Quentin Underwood. "They're just cavalrymen. They can't possibly do more than harass us, armed with nothing more than lances and wheel-lock pistols. We've got five hundred men in the garrison here. Plenty to drive them off if they try anything really aggressive."



A babble rose in the refinery's operations center.



"Calm down, I said!" Underwood bellowed. "Friedrich, stop prattling about 'thousands of them.' That's bullshit. How would the Ostenders get thousands of men this far south of Luebeck? The air force maintains regular reconnaissance all around the area."



Actually, that wasn't true, but Underwood figured he had to settle everyone's nerves. The USE's air force had been concentrating lately on getting a new airfield in place near Hamburg, using the planes to shuttle equipment and supplies instead of doing what they should be doing, which was protecting the nation's assets. Not to Underwood's surprise, Mike Stearns' regime had proven to be every bit as shortsighted and reckless when it came to war as it was with regard to everything else.



That said, Quentin still didn't think there was any chance that a large enemy force could have gotten this far south of the Elbe. Even without aerial reconnaissance, there was simply too much traffic on the river for a major crossing to have gone unreported.



One of the refinery workers started babbling about the French.



"Just shut up, will you!" Quentin hollered. "That's got to be the stupidest thing I've heard anybody say yet. How the hell would the French get all the way over here?"