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Jake Featherston has led you into. Don’t you want true freedom for your country?
it said. All Jerry Dover wanted—all most Confederates wanted—was to see the Yankees go away and leave his country alone. They didn’t seem to understand that. If the sheets falling from the sky meant anything, they thought they were liberators.
    “My ass,” Jerry Dover said, as if he had a U.S. propaganda writer in the tent with him. The United States had invaded the Confederate States four times in the past eighty years. If they thought they’d be welcomed with anything but bayonets, they were even bigger fools than Dover gave them credit for—not easy but not, he supposed, impossible.
    And if the Confederates wanted to change their government, they could take care of it on their own. All the bodyguards in the world wouldn’t keep Jake Featherston alive for long if enough people decided he needed killing. No Yankees had to help.
    Dover started to chuck the propaganda sheet, then changed his mind. “My ass,” he said one more time, now happily, and put it back in his pocket. As with the story in
The Armored Bear
, he could treat it as it deserved.
             
    N ovember in the North Atlantic wasn’t so bad as January or February, but it was bad enough. The
Josephus Daniels
rode out one big swell after another. On the destroyer escort’s bridge, Sam Carsten felt as if he were on God’s seesaw. Up and down, up and down, up and down forever.
    “You still have that hydrophone contact?” he shouted down the speaking tube to Vince Bevacqua.
    “Yes, sir, sure do,” the chief petty officer answered. “Coming in as clear as you can expect with waves like this.”
    “All right, then. Let’s give the submersible two ashcans,” Sam said. “That’ll bring it to the surface where we can deal with it.”
    He shouted the order over the PA system. The launcher crew at the
Josephus Daniels
’ bow sent the depth charges flying into the ocean one at a time, well ahead of the ship. They were set to detonate not far below the surface. Sam felt the explosions through the soles of his feet.
    Something rude came out of the speaking tube. “Had my earphones on when the first one burst,” Bevacqua said. “That’ll clean your sinuses from the inside out.” He paused, then went on, “The sub’s making noises like it’s blowing water out of its dive chambers. Ought to be coming to the surface.”
    “We’ll be ready for anything,” Carsten promised.
    And the destroyer escort was. Both four-inchers bore on the submarine when it surfaced. So did several of the the ship’s twin 40mm antiaircraft guns and her .50-caliber machine guns. A swell washed over the sub’s bow—and almost washed over the conning tower, too. This weather was tough to take in the
Josephus Daniels
. It had to be ten times worse in a submersible.
    Sailors ran up a flag on the sub: the white, black, and red jack of the Imperial German Navy. Sam breathed a sigh of relief. “This is the one we’re supposed to meet, all right,” he said.
    “So it would seem, sir,” Lieutenant Myron Zwilling agreed. Sam wished he had more use for the exec. Zwilling was brave enough and more than willing enough, but he had all the warmth and character of an old, sour-smelling rag. Men obeyed him because he wore two stripes on his sleeve, not because he made them want to.
    The submersible’s signal lamp started flashing Morse. “We—have—your—package,” Sam read slowly. “He knows English, then. Good.”
    He handled the destroyer escort’s blinker himself. WILL APPROACH FOR PICKUP , he sent back.
    COME AHEAD. BE CAREFUL IN THESE SEAS , the sub signaled.
    Sam wished Pat Kelly were still aboard. But his old exec had a ship of his own, a newer, faster ship than the
Josephus Daniels
. He was probably showing his whole crew what a demon shiphandler he was. Sam wasn’t, and never would be. Neither was Zwilling. Since he wasn’t, Sam kept the conn himself.
    As he steered