The Baltic War(223)

And, second—the truly cunning aspect—was that Stearns understood something that Europe's rulers were only beginning to grasp. This part of what Servien had told Turenne, he'd said quite ruefully. Just as was true in many legends and folk tales, supping from a demon's broth was a dangerous business. Much of that American knowledge came with consequences attached. There was a political, social and economic reality lying beneath those alluring devices. It was impossible, often enough, to simply take the device and leave the reality behind. Willy-nilly, using those same untold number of pathways, Stearns was steadily forcing his opponents to cede ground. Not physical terrain, but the more insubstantial terrain of law and custom that was the ultimate battlefield.



It would be interesting to see how it all turned out. Turenne was still a very young man, so he'd have decades to observe the process—assuming, of course, he didn't get killed in one of the wars that were sure to accompany it. The truth was, although he generally kept it to himself, he didn't really care much any longer exactly what might result, so long as France was still there at the end.



Hearing a peculiar noise, he looked up. As the sound grew louder, his eyes looked for the source and soon found it.



He'd never seen one before, but it was what he'd been expecting. Had feared most, in fact, until the final moments when they launched the attack on the oil field.





Chapter 50


"They're trashing the whole place, Mike," Jesse's voice came over the speaker. "There's a good two thousand of them. I think they're starting to pull out now. There's smoke everywhere. They're burning everything they can."



Sighing, Mike lowered his head. "Can you get any sense of the casualties?"



"That's not too bad, from what I can tell. I think most people just ran off, rather than trying to put up a fight."



Mike didn't bother asking about Underwood. There was no way, even from a slow, low-flying Belle, that Jesse could see faces well enough to recognize anyone. He'd just have to hope that Quentin's stubbornness had given way soon enough to get him out of danger. Mike didn't like Underwood personally, but he didn't wish him any ill beyond political failure in the next election.



"Okay, Jesse, you may as well come on back."



"Give me a minute. They're all staring up at me, but I can't see any signs that anyone's getting ready to shoot. I want to take one really low pass, to see some more details."



"Jesse . . ." But Mike broke off the rest. Colonel Wood wasn't reckless. If Jesse thought it was safe to get within musket range, Mike wasn't going to second-guess him.





Seeing how low the airplane was coming this time, Turenne realized abruptly that he'd been so fascinated by watching the flying machine that he'd overlooked a simple duty. That was an enemy machine, after all.



But when he looked around, he saw at once that it was too late. All of his cavalrymen were mounted, and all of them were doing exactly what their commander had been doing: sitting in their saddles, staring up, their mouths half-open. Not more than one out of three even had a rifle in their hands any longer, most of them having scabbarded their Cardinals in preparation for the march.



On the other hand, Turenne's carelessness probably didn't matter anyway. Now that he'd finally had a chance to observe one of the fabled American aircraft in person, Turenne could see how much luck had been involved when the Danes shot down one of them in the battle at Wismar.



Luck—and the recklessness of the pilot himself, who'd flown directly at a warship with a company of marines mustered on deck and ready to fire a volley.



But this pilot had never given Turenne that chance, even if the marshal had been ready to take advantage of it. He'd stayed too high for muskets, and, even then, had never flown a straight path long enough for men on the ground to have been able to predict where his course might be intersected with a volley of musket balls.



And the thing was so fast. Turenne hadn't realized that, at first, because of the airplane's altitude. But now that the pilot was bringing it very low, the machine's real speed was evident. Turenne had hunted birds with a shotgun. He knew how difficult it was to track the creatures and bring them down—and this plane was coming faster than almost any bird could fly.



It swooped by, almost right over Turenne's head. The marshal watched it go, off toward the Elbe.





"Mike, we've got a real problem on our hands."



Mike winced. "Yeah, no kidding. Our small petroleum industry just got a really big monkey wrench tossed into it."



"Worse than that, Mike. They couldn't really have done that much damage to the oil field. We'll lose a few weeks' production, that's all. Two months, tops."