Three other destroyer escorts and a light cruiser made up the flotilla that would pay a call on Baja California. Sam could have wished they had some air support. Hell, he did wish it. He’d heard that a swarm of light carriers-converted from merchantman hulls-were abuilding. He hoped like anything that was true. True or not, though, the light carriers weren’t in action yet.

He smeared zinc-oxide ointment on his nose, his cheeks, and the backs of his hands. Freckled Pat Cooley didn’t laugh at all. Sam was very blond and very fair. Even this early impression of San Diego spring was plenty to make him burn. He offered Cooley the tinfoil tube.

“No, thank you, sir,” the exec said. “I’ve got my own.” He’d start to bake just about as fast as Carsten did.

The long swells of the Pacific, swells all the way down from the Gulf of Alaska, raised the destroyer escort and then lowered her. She rolled a few degrees in the process. Here and there, a sailor ran for the rail and gave back his breakfast. Sam smiled at that. His hide was weak, but he had a strong stomach.

He took the wheel when they were out on the open sea. Feeling the whole ship not just through the soles of his feet but also through his hands was quite something. He frowned in concentration, the tip of his tongue peeping out, as he kept station, zigzagging with his companions.

“You’re doing fine, sir,” Cooley said encouragingly. “Ask you something?”

“Go ahead.” Sam watched the compass as he changed course.

“Ease it back just a little-you don’t want to overcorrect,” Cooley said, and then, “How bad are things over in the Sandwich Islands?”

“Well, they sure as hell aren’t good.” Sam did ease it back. “With no carriers over there right now, we’re in a bad way.” He remembered swimming from the mortally damaged Remembrance to the destroyer that plucked him from the warm Pacific, remembered watching the airplane carrier on which he’d served so long slide beneath the waves, and remembered the tears streaming down his face when she did.

Cooley frowned. “We’ve got plenty of our own airplanes on the main islands. We should be able to make the Japs sorry if they come poking their noses down there, right?”

“As long as we can keep ’em in fuel and such, sure,” Carsten answered. “But the islands-Oahu, mostly-just sit there, and the Japs’ carriers can go wherever they want. There’s a gap about halfway between here and the islands that we can’t cover very well from the mainland or from Honolulu. If the Japs start smashing up our supply convoys, we’ve got big trouble, because the Sandwich Islands get damn near everything from the West Coast.”

“We ought to have airplanes with longer range,” the exec said.

“Yeah.” Sam couldn’t say the same thing hadn’t occurred to him. It had probably occurred to every Navy man who’d ever thought about the question. “Only trouble is, that’s the one place where we need ’em. The Confederate States are right next door, so the designers concentrated on guns and bomb load instead. Before the war, I don’t think anybody figured we’d lose Midway and give the Japs a base that far east.”

Cooley’s laugh was anything but amused. “Surprise!” He cocked his head to one side and studied Sam. “You think about this stuff, don’t you?”

Commander Cressy had said almost the same thing in almost the same bemused tone of voice. Like Cressy-who was now a captain-Cooley came out of the Naval Academy. Finding a mustang with a working brain seemed to have perplexed both of them. Cooley had to be more careful about how he showed it: Sam outranked him.

Shrugging, Sam said, “If you guess along, you’re less likely to get caught with your skivvies down. Oh, you will some of the time-it comes with the territory-but you’re less likely to. The more you know, the better off you are.”

“Uh-huh,” Cooley said. It wasn’t disagreement. It was more on the order of, Well, you’re not what I thought you were going to be.

The first Mexican town below the border had a name that translated as Aunt Jane. In peacetime, it was a popular liberty port. The handful of Mexican police didn’t give a damn what American sailors did-this side of arson or gunplay, anyhow. If you couldn’t come back to your ship with a hangover and a dose of the clap, you weren’t half trying.

But it wasn’t peacetime now. The Mexicans hadn’t built a proper coast-defense battery to try to protect poor old Aunt Jane’s honor. What point, when overwhelming U.S. firepower from across the border could smash up almost any prepared position? The greasers had brought in a few three-inch pieces to tell the U.S. Navy to keep its distance. Some of them opened up on the flotilla.

Sam called the Josephus Daniels to general quarters. He laughed to himself as the klaxons hooted. This was the first time he hadn’t had to run like hell to take his battle station. Here he was on the bridge, right where he belonged.

The Mexicans’ fire fell at least half a mile short. Columns of water leaped into the air as shells splashed into the Pacific. Sailors seeing their first action exclaimed at how big those columns were. That made Sam want to laugh again. He’d seen the great gouts of water near misses from fourteen-inch shells kicked up. Next to those, these might have been mice pissing beside elephants.

“Let’s return fire, Mr. Cooley,” Sam said.

“Aye aye, sir.” The exec relayed the order to the gun turrets. Both four-inchers-nothing even slightly fancy themselves: not even secondary armament on a capital ship-swung toward the shore. They fired almost together. At the recoil, the Josephus Daniels heeled slightly to starboard. She recovered almost at once. The guns roared again and again.

Shells began bursting around the places where muzzle flashes revealed the Mexican guns. The other members of the flotilla were firing, too. The bigger cannons on the ships could reach the shore, even if the guns on shore couldn’t touch the ships. Through binoculars, Sam could easily tell the difference between bursts from the four-inch guns on the destroyer escorts and the light cruiser’s six-inchers.

Plucky if outranged, the Mexicans defiantly shot back. “I wouldn’t do that,” Cooley said. “It just tells us we haven’t knocked ’em out. Now more’ll come down on their heads.”

“They’re making a point, I suppose.” Sam peered through the binoculars again. “Our gunnery needs work. I’d say that’s true for every ship here. I can’t do anything about the others, but by God I can fix things on this one.”

“Uh, yes, sir.” Cooley looked at him, plainly wondering whether he knew any more about that than he did about conning a ship.

Sam grinned back. “Son, I was handling a five-inch gun on the Dakota about the time you were a gleam in your old man’s eye.”

“Oh.” The exec blushed between his freckles. “All right, sir.” He grinned, too. “Teach me to keep my mouth shut-and I hardly even opened it.”

One of the bursts on shore was conspicuously bigger than the others had been. “There we go!” Sam said. “Some of their ammo just went up. I don’t know whether they’ve got real dumps there or we hit a limber, but we nailed ’em pretty good either way.”

“Blew some gunners to hell and gone either way, too,” Cooley said.

“That’s the point of it,” Carsten agreed. “They won’t care if we rearrange the landscape. After they bury Jose and Pedro-if they can find enough of ’em left to bury-they’ll get the idea that we can hurt them worse than they can hurt us. It’s about people, Pat. It’s always about people.”

“Uh, yes, sir,” Pat Cooley said again. This time, it wasn’t doubt in his eyes as he looked Sam over: it was bemusement again. Sam laughed inside himself. No, the mustang isn’t quite what you figured on, eh, kid?

The light cruiser’s skipper didn’t choose to linger to continue the one-sided gun duel. The flotilla steamed south. Sam hoped the Mexicans didn’t have anything more up their sleeves than what they’d already shown.