In at the Death Read online

  Flora Blackford found a place to sit on the Socialists’ side of the aisle. Congressional Hall was always crowded during a joint session. President La Follette hadn’t called many. He seemed to think actions spoke louder than words. Oddly, that made his words resonate more when he did choose to use them.

  The Speaker of the House introduced him: “Ladies and gentlemen, I have the distinct honor and high privilege of presenting to you the President of the United States!”

  Charlie La Follette took his place behind the lectern. The lights gleamed off his silver hair. Along with everybody else in the hall, Flora applauded till her hands were sore. La Follette was an accidental President, but he was turning out to be a pretty good one.

  “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you,” he said. “I come before you today—I come before the people of the United States today—to help right a wrong that has continued in our country for too long.

  “We do not have a large number of Negro citizens in the United States. Most Negroes in North America have always lived in the Confederacy. This is partly our own fault, as we have been slow to accept refugees from the oppression that has long existed there.

  “Not caring for a man because of the color of his skin is one thing. Leaving him to die in a country that hates him is something else again. It is a mistake, a reprehensible mistake, and not one we will continue to make. Any human being, regardless of color, is entitled to live free. I will ask that legislation be introduced in Congress to make sure this comes true.

  “And, I fear, we have committed another injustice. For too long, we have believed that Negro men lack the courage to fight for their country. We have never conscripted them into the Army or even let them volunteer. In the Navy, we let them cook food and tend engines, but no more. This is not right, not if they are men like any others, citizens like any others.

  “As if further proof were needed, colored guerrilla fighters in the Confederate States have shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that courage is not a question of black and white. Without their brave efforts, our war against Jake Featherston’s vicious tyranny would be even harder and more perilous than it is.

  “No law prevents the enlistment and conscription of Negroes into the armed forces of the United States. We have relied on long-standing custom instead. I say to you that this custom will stand no longer. By its dreadful example, the Confederacy shows us how evil prejudice of any sort is. This being so, I have today issued an executive order forbidding discrimination on the basis of race in the recruitment, training, and promotion of all U.S. military forces.”

  He paused there, perhaps wondering what kind of applause he would get. Flora clapped hard. So did almost all the Socialists and Republicans listening to President La Follette. And so did most of the Democrats in Congressional Hall. Flora was sure Robert Taft would have if a people bomb hadn’t killed him; he was a conservative, yes, but one with a strong sense of justice. Only a few reactionaries, men who harked back to the days when their party dominated the states that became the CSA and the attitudes that went with those days, sat on their hands.

  President La Follette beamed out at Congress. He must have got a better hand than he expected. Sounding relieved, he continued, “Under the terms of the executive order, Negro men from the ages of eighteen to forty-eight will have sixty days to register for conscription at the center nearest their homes. Once registered, they will be selected at random on the same basis as whites—and, for that matter, on the same basis as Orientals and Indians. Failure to register within sixty days will lead to the same penalties for them as for anyone else who tries to evade conscription.”

  Flora wouldn’t have talked about penalties right after lifting the bar of discrimination. She didn’t think Al Smith would have. Charlie La Follette didn’t have such sure political instincts. If he did, he might have got elected on his own hook instead of being chosen to balance the Socialist ticket. Instincts or not, though, he was getting the job done.

  If a bomb blew Jake Featherston to hell, how would the Confederate States fare under Don Partridge? As far as Flora could see, the Vice President of the CSA was a handsome, smiling, brainless twit. She suspected Featherston chose him as a running mate because he was a nobody: not a rival, not a threat. The previous Confederate Vice President had tried to murder his boss, and by all accounts damn near succeeded. Nonentities near the center of things were safer. As long as Jake Featherston survived, it didn’t matter. His ferocious energy drove the CSA. But if he died…

  Wishing he would made Flora miss a few words of President La Follette’s speech. When she started paying attention again, he was saying, “…and 1944 is only two weeks away. It will be the fourth year of the war. But I pledge to you, people of the United States, it will also be the last! This is our year of victory!”

  A great roar went up from the assembled Senators and Representatives. They sprang to their feet, clapping and cheering. No one hung back, not the most ardently revolutionary Socialists and not the most hidebound Democrats. The only alternative to beating Jake Featherston was losing to him, and he seemed to have gone out of his way to show the United States how horrid that would be.

  “The birthday of the Prince of Peace is almost here,” La Follette said after the Congressmen and -women reluctantly took their seats again, “and we shall have peace. That is my pledge to you. We shall have peace—and on our terms.”

  He got another stormy round of applause. If the United States won the war by this coming November, he would get more than that: he likely would get elected President on his own hook. And he would have earned it, too.

  Flora wondered whether he would threaten to rain a new destruction on the Confederate States if they didn’t give up, the way the Kaiser had warned Britain and France. But he kept silent there. Thinking about it, Flora decided it made sense. Jake Featherston knew what the United States was working on. He was working on the same thing himself. If he got it first, he might win yet. Every U.S. bombing raid on the C.S. uranium project made that less likely, but you never could tell. The Confederacy’s rockets warned that its scientists and engineers were not to be despised, even if its leaders were.

  “North America must have peace,” was the way Charlie La Follette chose to finish. “Four times now, during one long lifetime, war has ravaged our continent. It must never come again—never, I say! Before the War of Secession, the United States stood off England in the fight that gave us our national anthem and defeated Mexico to plant our flag on the Pacific coast. We dominated the continent, being the sole power at its heart. And, when this cruel war ends at last, we shall do the same again!”

  There! He’d said it! That was probably more important than obliquely warning the Confederates about uranium bombs. Charlie La Follette had declared there would be no more Confederates, no more CSA, when the war was over. If he could go down in history as the Great Reuniter, wouldn’t he make people forget about Abraham Lincoln and the way the United States fell to pieces during his luckless term in office?

  Senators and Representatives contemplating the end of the Confederate States cheered even louder than they had before. It wasn’t given to many men to be in at the birth of something wonderful. If you couldn’t do that, being in at the death of something foul was almost as good.

  Congressmen and -women crowded up to congratulate the President as he stepped down from the rostrum. Flora started to, but then changed her mind. Charlie La Follette would know how she felt. And she wanted to find out what Jake Featherston had to say about his opposite number’s speech. She didn’t think she would need to wait very long.

  But when she got to her office, Bertha waved a message form at her. “Mr. Roosevelt would like to see you as soon as you can see him, Congresswoman,” she said.

  “Is he coming here, or does he want me to go to the War Department?” Flora asked.

  “He called right when the President finished. When I told him I expected you back soon, he said he was on his way,” her secretary answered.<
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  Roosevelt got there about fifteen minutes later. He wheeled himself into Flora’s inner office and closed the door behind him. “What’s going on, Franklin?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m afraid I have bad news, and I wanted you to hear it straight from me,” the Assistant Secretary of War said. “The Confederates landed raiders in Washington State—we think by submersible—and they fired a good many mortar rounds at the uranium project.”

  “Gevalt!” she exclaimed. “How bad is it?”

  “They did some damage, damn them. We’re still trying to figure out just how much,” Roosevelt replied. “Two or three mortar bombs hit one of the dormitories, too. We lost some talented people, and they won’t be easy shoes to fill.”

  “How close are we? Can we go on without them?”

  Franklin Roosevelt shrugged broad shoulders. “We have to. And we’re getting very close. I don’t know how much this will delay us. I’m not sure it’ll delay us at all. But I’m not sure it won’t, either.” He spread his hands. “We just have to see.”

  “What about the Confederate project? Are we delaying it?”

  “If we’re not, it isn’t from lack of effort. That town will never be the same, and neither will that university. But they’re burrowing like moles, putting as much as they can underground. That’s delaying them all by itself. They haven’t quit, though. I don’t think that bastard Featherston knows what the word means.”

  “They won’t get another chance to do this to us. They’ve already had too many,” Flora said.

  “Charlie made a good speech there,” Roosevelt agreed. “I bet Jake Featherston’s mad enough to spit rivets.”

  “Shall we see?” Flora reached for the knob on her wireless set. Even after it warmed up, static stuttered and farted as she turned the tuner to a frequency Featherston often used. The USA and CSA kept jamming each other’s stations as hard as they could. Richmond’s main transmitter, though, punched through the jamming more often than not.

  Sure enough, the Confederate President came on the air right away. “I don’t need to tell you the truth, on account of Charlie La Follette just did it for me,” Featherston snarled. “The truth is, he aims to wipe the Confederate States clean off the map. Charlie La Follette thinks he’s Abe Lincoln. Turned out Lincoln couldn’t wipe us out. Old Charlie’ll find out the hard way he can’t, either. I know the Confederate people won’t let the country down. They never have. They never will. And Charlie La Follette will hear from us real soon now. You bet he will. So long.”

  He wasn’t kidding. At least a dozen long-range rockets slammed into Philadelphia in the next few minutes. One of them missed Congressional Hall by alarmingly little. Flora felt the jolt in the soles of her feet. The rockets didn’t announce themselves. They flew faster than sound, so the boom! when they went off was the first and only sign they were on the way.

  After the salvo ended, Roosevelt said, “He can annoy us doing that, but he can’t beat us. And we can beat him on the ground. And we are. And we will.”

  “But how much will be left of us by the time we do?” Flora asked.

  The Assistant Secretary of War stuck out his chin. “As long as we have one man standing after he goes down, nothing else matters.”

  As long as the one man we have standing is my son, nothing else matters, Flora thought. But Franklin Roosevelt had a son in the Navy. Maybe he was thinking the same thing.

  IV

  Major Toricelli stuck his head into Abner Dowling’s office. “Sir, you’ve got a call from Philadelphia.”

  “Do I?” Dowling viewed the prospect without delight. “What do they think I’ve gone and done now?” Calls from the War Department, in his copious experience, seldom brought good news.

  But his adjutant said, “I don’t think it’s that kind of call, sir. It’s General Abell. Shall I transfer it in here?”

  “You’d throw a fit if I said no. So would he,” Dowling said. A moment later, the telephone on his desk rang. He picked it up. “Abner Dowling here.”

  “John Abell, sir,” said the voice on the other end of the line, and Dowling recognized the brainy General Staff officer’s cool, cerebral tones. “I hope you’re well?”

  “Tolerable, General, tolerable,” Dowling replied. “Yourself?”

  “I’ll last out the war,” Abell said, which might have meant anything or nothing. “I have a question for you: how would you like to come back to the East and command an army in what we hope will be one of the decisive attacks of the war?”

  How would you like to go to bed with a beautiful blonde who’s passionately in love with you? Yes, there were dumber questions, but not many. “What’s not to like?” Dowling asked.

  And John Abell told him what there was not to like: “Your army-group commander would be General MacArthur.”

  “Oh,” Dowling said. MacArthur had commanded a division in George Custer’s army in the Great War while Dowling was Custer’s adjutant general. When MacArthur led an army in northern Virginia this time around, Dowling had commanded a corps under him for a while. The two men didn’t get along well—which was, if anything, an understatement.

  “We could use you back in Virginia, sir,” Abell said. “You have experience with aggressive offensive action, and you have experience fighting Freedom Party Guards. You’d do the country a service if you came back.”

  “And what would I do to myself?” Dowling asked. Brigadier General Abell didn’t answer; he had to figure that out on his own. “Who would take over for me here if I left?” he inquired. “Still lots of work that needs doing.”

  “We were looking at giving Colonel DeFrancis a star and putting him in charge of Eleventh Army,” Abell said. “He should handle it, and his coming from the air-operations side of things would be an advantage on such a broad front. Or do you think I’m wrong?” Is there anything about Terry DeFrancis we don’t know? he meant.

  “No, I’m sure he’ll do a bang-up job.” Dowling had to answer that quickly and firmly, so Abell would have no doubts. “He’s a fine officer, and he knows the situation here, so he won’t have to waste any time figuring out what’s going on. He’s young to make general, but wars do that.”

  “So they do,” said Abell, who, like Dowling, had waited a long time for stars. “I’ll see you here in Philadelphia, then, as fast as you can come. Orders will be cut by the time you get to the airstrip outside of Snyder. Take care.” He hung up without waiting for Dowling’s good-bye.

  “Pack a duffel, Angelo,” Dowling called to his adjutant. “We’re on our way to Philly, and then to Virginia.”

  “Who takes over here?” Toricelli asked.

  “Terry DeFrancis,” Dowling replied. “My guess is, his telephone’s ringing right about now.”

  Sure enough, DeFrancis’ auto pulled up in front of Eleventh Army headquarters just as Dowling and Toricelli were ready to leave for the airstrip. “Congratulations on getting back to the real war, sir!” DeFrancis called as he jumped out.

  “Congratulations to you, General,” Dowling said. They shook hands.

  “I’ve got a hot transport waiting for you at the field,” DeFrancis said. “It’ll take you up to Wichita. I don’t know what they’ve got laid on for you after that, but General Abell sure sounded like he wants you in Philadelphia fast as you can get there.”

  Dowling and Toricelli threw duffel bags with enough personal belongings to keep them going for a little while into a command car. After one more handshake with DeFrancis, Dowling told the driver, “Step on it!”

  “Yes, sir!” The corporal needed no further encouragement. He drove like a bat out of hell—perhaps like a bat a little too eager to go back there.

  The two-engined transport took off with an escort of four fighters. Terry DeFrancis hadn’t mentioned that. Dowling was grateful all the same. U.S. air power dominated the skies in west Texas, but the Confederates still got fighters up in the air every now and then. Even a hot transport was no match for a Hound Dog.

  Neithe
r the Texas Panhandle nor western Sequoyah had suffered too badly in the war. The fighting in Sequoyah was mostly farther east, where the oil wells were. Where the oil wells had been, rather. The oil fields had changed hands several times during the war. Whenever they did, the side pulling out blew them up to deny them to the enemy. The conquerors would start making repairs and then have to retreat themselves—and carry out their own demolitions. By now, Sequoyah’s oil wells were some of the most thoroughly liberated real estate on the face of the globe.

  In the last war, Sequoyah had started out as Confederate territory. C.S. cavalry raids terrorized Kansas till the USA slowly and painfully overran that state’s southern neighbor. These days, though, Wichita was a backwater. The arrival of a major general, even if he was only passing through on his way somewhere else, made airport personnel flabble.

  “Your airplane is ready and waiting, sir!” said the major in command of the field.

  “Thanks,” Dowling said. “Where do I go from here?”

  “Uh, St. Louis, sir,” the major said. “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “If they had, would I be asking?” Dowling asked reasonably.

  He got into St. Louis just as the sun was setting. That was a relief: he wasn’t sure they would have turned on landing lights for his airplane. Confederate bombers from Arkansas came up often enough to leave blackout regulations tightly in place.

  At the airport there, they offered him the choice of a Pullman berth on a fast train east or a layover and the first flight out in the morning. He chose the layover. A bed that didn’t bounce and shake had its attractions.

  He spent less time in it than he would have liked. The Confederates came over at eleven and then again at two. Instead of a bed that didn’t bounce, Dowling got two doses of a chilly trench. Bombs whistled down and burst too close for comfort. He wondered if he would be able to fly out the next morning.

  He did. The raid left the airport with a working runway, and didn’t hit the airplane waiting to take him east. On the way, he got a bird’s-eye view of what the war had done to the United States.