“I know what you guys will do,” Sam said, holding in a smile. “Remember, I’ve done it myself. If you don’t ride the guy too hard, everything’ll be jake.”

“Sometimes we forget you’re a mustang, sir,” the first chief said sheepishly. “You just act like an officer, you know?”

Was that a compliment or an insult? Sam didn’t try to parse it. With a snort, he said, “Yeah, like the oldest goddamn lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. If I’m not a mustang, I’m a screwup. Better for the ship if I came up the hawser.”

Those were the magic words. If something was good for the ship, nobody would say a word about it. The two chiefs didn’t hang around, though. They went off someplace where they could slander the outgoing and incoming execs-and probably the skipper, too-without getting overheard.

As for Sam, he walked back to his cramped cabin and wrestled with the ship’s accounts. After a spell in combat, you could always write some things off as lost in action, which simplified your life. He thought about keeping accounts for an airplane carrier. That almost made him decide not to touch the job with an eleven-foot bohunk, which was what you used when a ten-foot Pole wouldn’t reach. But if he ever got the chance, he knew he would leap at it.

He laughed, but he was angry, too. Pat Cooley had given him a new itch, even if it was one he didn’t think he’d ever be able to scratch.

More shells and small-arms ammunition came aboard. So did all kinds of galley supplies. The ship got refueled, too, and he had to sign off on everything. One of these days, if the Josephus Daniels didn’t get sunk under him, he’d have to turn her over to somebody else, and he wanted the books to balance, or at least get within shouting distance of balancing, when he did.

The new exec came aboard the next day. Lieutenant Myron Zwilling couldn’t have been more different from Pat Cooley had he tried for a week. He was short and squat and dark. He was also fussily precise; if he had a sense of humor, he kept it so well hidden, even he didn’t know where it was. He stared at Sam’s right hand.

A glance at Zwilling’s hand told the skipper what he was looking for: an Annapolis ring. Zwilling’s was lovingly displayed, and couldn’t have been polished any brighter. “Reporting as ordered, sir,” he said, trying to hold in his disappointment at not finding Sam a Naval Academy graduate. When he saluted, the ring flashed in the sun.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Zwilling,” Sam said, reflecting that the new exec was either an optimist or a jerk, one. How could a two-striper in his mid-fifties possibly be anything but a mustang? “We’ll give ’em hell, won’t we?”

“I hope to aid in making this ship an efficient fighting unit, sir,” Zwilling said, and Sam’s heart sank. He had nothing against efficiency. But he didn’t want to sing hymns to it, and Zwilling plainly did.

“Have you ever served on a D.E. before?” Sam asked.

“No, sir,” Zwilling replied. “My last tour of duty was aboard a fleet oiler, and before that I was a junior officer on the Idaho. I have my personnel records with me for your review.”

Of course you do, Sam thought. That wasn’t fair, but he couldn’t help it. Trying not to show what he was feeling, he said, “Well, let’s give you the quick tour, then. There’ll be places where you want to watch your head-not a lot of room in one of these babies.”

“I’ll be careful, sir,” Zwilling said, and Sam believed him. He was unimpressed with the pair of 4.5-inch guns that made up the Josephus Daniels’ main armarment. “The secondary weapons on a battleship are bigger than these,” he sniffed.

“Tell me about it. I fought a five-incher on the Dakota,” Carsten said.

“As battery chief?” Zwilling asked with his first show of interest in his new skipper as a human being.

“Nope.” Sam shook his head. “I was a loader when the Great War started, and ended up running a gun.”

“A loader. I see.” Zwilling looked as uncomfortable as if Sam had admitted to eating with his fingers when he was a kid. There wouldn’t be any talk about professors or courses, not on this ship there wouldn’t.

Sam took him through the destroyer escort: galley, bunkrooms, engines, and all. Finally, he said, “What do you think?”

“Everything seems orderly enough,” the new exec allowed. “Still, I’m sure there’s room for improvement.”

“There always is,” Sam said, not liking the way the commonplace sounded in Zwilling’s mouth. “Do you think you can find your way back to your cabin from here?”

“I do.” Zwilling didn’t lack for confidence, anyhow.

“Well, ask a sailor if you get lost.” Sam inserted the needle with a smile. “I’ll let you get settled, and we’ll talk some more in the wardroom tonight.”

“Yes, sir.” Zwilling saluted again and strode off.

After Sam went up on deck, he watched a sailor standing on the pier kissing a redheaded woman good-bye. A couple of sniffling little boys in dungarees stood by her, so she was probably the sailor’s wife. After a last embrace, he slung his duffel bag and asked the officer of the deck for permission to come aboard.

“Welcome to the Josephus Daniels,” Sam said. “Who are you, and what do you do?”

“I’m George Enos, Junior, sir,” the sailor answered. “I jerked shells on a 40mm on the Townsend. Goddamn Confederate Asskicker sank her in the Gulf of California.”

“Well, we can use you.” Carsten paused. Enos? The name rang a bell. He snapped his fingers. “Wasn’t your mother the one who…?”

“She sure was,” Enos said proudly. “My father was a fisherman before he went into the Navy, and so was I.”

“Good to have you aboard,” Sam said. “Good to meet you, too, by God.”

“Thank you, sir.” The sailor cocked his head to one side. “Have we ever met before? You look kind of familiar.”

With his very blond hair and pink skin, Sam sometimes got mistaken for other fair men. He shook his head. “Not that I know of, anyway. You live around here?” After Enos nodded, Sam went on, “I’ve been through more times than I can count, so you may have seen me somewhere, but I’ve got to tell you I don’t remember.”

“Maybe it’ll come to me.” Enos grinned like a kid. “Or maybe I’m talking through my hat. Who knows? Will I go on a 40mm here, sir?”

“Have to see how everything shakes down, but I’d say your chances are pretty darn good,” Sam answered. “Go below for now and sling your duffel somewhere. The chiefs will take charge of you.”

“Aye aye, sir.” With a crisp salute, George Enos headed for a hatch.

He could have been a kid when we bumped into each other, Sam realized. But if he was, why would he remember me? He shrugged. He had no way of knowing. Maybe it would come back to Enos. And maybe it wouldn’t. The world wouldn’t end either way.

Orders came the next day: join up with a task force heading east across the Atlantic to raid Ireland. This is where I came in, Carsten thought. He’d run guns to the micks during the Great War, and shelled-and been shelled by-British positions in Ireland afterwards. The difference this time around was an abundance of British land-based air. He wondered how much the Navy Department brass down in Philly had thought about that.

When he showed Myron Zwilling the orders, the new exec just nodded and said, “That’s what we’ll do, then.”

“Well, yeah,” Sam said. “I’d like to have some kind of hope of coming back afterwards, though.”

“If they need to expend us, sir-” Zwilling began.

“Hold your horses.” Sam held up a hand. “If they need to expend us on something important, then sure. We needed to take Bermuda back if we could-I guess we did, anyhow. I’ve pulled some raids on the Confederates that I think really hurt those bastards. But this? This looks chickenshit to me.”

“You don’t know the big picture, sir,” Zwilling said.

He was right. Sam didn’t. “What I do know, I don’t like.”