Free 1920: America's Great War-eARC by Robert Conroy Page B

entered, closing the door behind him. Let the damn clerk wonder, he thought. He’d find out soon enough. Nolan and Liggett looked up at him in mild surprise.
    “You have a good reason for this, I presume,” Nolan said, not ungently.
    “General, Colonel, I think it’s beginning.”
    Liggett gestured him to sit. “Go on.”
    “Sir, there’s a pattern developing. Telegraph and telephone lines are down between here and the east. Also, there are reports that railroad bridges are down on at least three of the tracks connecting us to the rest of the country. My bet is the rest will report they’re out before the day is finished.”
    “Conclusion, Luke,” ordered Nolan.
    “Sir, I’m sadly confident that German saboteurs are striking as we talk and that they are isolating us from the rest of the United States by destroying the rail lines running eastward. They are also severing communications by cutting telegraph and phone lines. It’s a logical immediate precursor to an actual invasion.”
    “Are you certain telegraph lines are down?” Liggett asked.
    “Sir, before coming here I checked with our telegraph office and they said they can’t get through to the east. Of course, they said it has happened before and could be the result of the weather, but, coupled with the rail problems, makes me believe the Germans are finally on the move.”
    They looked at the map of California that was pinned on the wall. Only six rail lines connected California to the east and two were so close together that they might as well be one. In the south, there was a line running from Yuma, Arizona, but it was so close to the border with Mexico that it would never be of use and would be quickly overrun if the Germans crossed the border.
    Farther north, lines ran from Albuquerque and Salt Lake City to San Francisco, and other lines ran from Salt Lake City and Spokane and over to Portland and Seattle.
    There was silence. Liggett finally spoke. “I agree, Lieutenant. It is now time to notify Governor Stephens that his state of California is in terrible jeopardy and that he should call out the Guard.”
    “General, will you be informing the naval stations and coastal batteries?” Luke asked.
    Liggett chuckled bitterly. “It may be a little too late, Luke. What we were discussing before you barged in was reports that saboteurs have already struck at the Army’s coastal batteries and done a marvelous job of destroying them. Quite a welcoming for Admiral Sims, I dare say.”
    Rear Admiral William S. Sims had arrived only the last week as the newly appointed commander of the United States Pacific Fleet, replacing Admiral Hugh Rodman. The sixty-two year old Sims was considered by many to be a genius for his part in developing an electronic range finder that had vastly improved the accuracy of American gunnery. Prior to its development, accuracy had been a joke in the Navy. Ninety-eight per cent of shots fired in the Spanish American War missed their targets entirely. It was even more humiliating when it was realized that the Spanish ships in the Battle of Manila Bay had been anchored. The electronic range finder had greatly resolved the issue. Some people were beginning to call the calculating device a “computer.”
    It was also rumored that Sims had angered his superiors for making disparaging comments about draconian cost cutting and the future of battleships, and had been sent away from Washington as a form of penance. It was also understood that this would be Sims last posting before his retirement.
    “Yes, I will do that as a matter of courtesy. Of course, Sims doesn’t report to me nor I to him, so we’ll see what good that does. But you are right again, Lieutenant, if the German Army is out, one can only wonder what the German Navy is up to.”
    * * *
    The U.S.S. Fox was a very new destroyer, launched only a year earlier in 1919. At just under twelve hundred tons, she carried a crew of one hundred and twenty-two men. Swift, she could