In At the Death sa-4 Read online

  "We don't have enough," Dover answered. That had been true ever since the front lay up in Tennessee. It was more obviously, more painfully, true now. U.S. factories were outproducing their C.S. counterparts. Dover supposed U.S. pilot-training programs were outpacing their Confederate counterparts, too.

  "How're we supposed to lick 'em if we can't go up there and shoot 'em down?" Pete wailed.

  Jerry Dover didn't answer. The only thing he could have said was, We can't. While that was liable to be so, it didn't do anybody any good. If the writing was on the wall, Pete would be able to see it as well as anybody else.

  The bombers didn't come back by the same route they'd taken going in. When Dover realized they weren't going to, he nodded in grudging respect. The Yankees weren't so dumb, dammit. C.S. antiaircraft guns would be waiting here for the returning airplanes. So would whatever night fighters the local Confederates could scrape up. Maybe Y-ranging gear could send the fighters after the U.S. bombers anyway. Dover hoped so. He was far from sure of it, though.

  He wasn't sorry to climb out of the muddy trench. If chiggers didn't start gnawing on him, it would be nothing but dumb luck. Pete came out of his hole at about the same time. "Ain't this a fun war?" the sergeant said.

  "Well, I could think of a lot of words for it, but I'd probably have to think a long time before I came up with that one," Dover answered.

  "They knocked the shit out of Birmingham," Pete said.

  "Can't argue with you."

  Pete looked west, as if he could see the damage from where he stood. "You reckon the place can keep going after they hit it like that?"

  "Probably," Dover replied. His eyes were well enough adapted to the dark to let him see Pete start. He went on, "Why not? We bombed plenty of Yankee towns harder than that, and they kept going. The USA hit Atlanta day after day, week after week, and it kept making things and shipping them out till just a little while before we finally lost it. Hard to bomb places back to the Stone Age, no matter how much you wish you could."

  "Well, I sure as hell hope you're right." Pete pulled a pack of cigarettes from a breast pocket. He stuck one in his mouth and bent his head to light it. The brief flare of the match showed his hollow, unshaven cheeks. Remembering his manners, he held out the pack. "Want a butt, sir?"

  "Don't mind if I do. Thanks." Dover flicked a lighter to get the proffered cigarette going. After a couple of drags, he said, "If they flatten Birmingham and Huntsville and maybe Selma, not many factory towns left between here and New Orleans."

  "Yeah." Pete grunted. "Whole state of Mississippi's nothin' but farms, near enough. Farms and rednecks, I mean. Used to be farms and rednecks and niggers, but I reckon we took care o' most of the coons there. That's one good thing, anyways."

  "Let me guess-you're not from Mississippi." Dover's voice was dry.

  "Hope to shit I'm not, sir," Pete said fervently. "I came off a farm about twenty miles outside of Montgomery, right near the edge of the Black Belt. Well, it was the Black Belt then. Likely ain't no more."

  "No, I wouldn't think so." Jerry Dover left it there. He thought the Confederacy had more urgent things to do than hunt down its Negroes. Jake Featherston thought otherwise, and his opinion carried a lot more weight than a jumped-up restaurant manager's. But if he'd put those coons into factories instead of getting rid of them, how many more white men could he have put into uniform? Enough to make a difference?

  We'll never know now, Dover thought.

  "You know how many Mississippians it takes to screw in a light bulb?" Pete asked out of the blue.

  "Tell me," Dover urged.

  "Twenty-seven-one to hold the bulb, and twenty-six to turn the house round and round."

  Dover laughed his ass off-that one did take him by surprise. Here he was, his country crashing down around his ears, and he laughed like a loon at a stupid joke. If that wasn't crazy, he didn't know what would be. He didn't stop laughing, either.

  W hen Jonathan Moss heard barrels clanking toward him, he feared it was all over. If the Confederates wanted to put that kind of effort into hunting down Spartacus' guerrilla band, they could do it. Moss knew that all too well. So did all the survivors in the band.

  "Got us some Featherston Fizzes?" Spartacus called.

  "We'd do better trying to hide," Nick Cantarella said.

  "Ain't gonna hide from that many machines," the chieftain said, and Moss feared he was right. He went on, "We headin' fo' heaven, might as well send some o' them motherfuckers down to hell."

  Moss wasn't so sure of his own destination, but he'd been living on borrowed time long enough that he didn't worry too much about paying it back. An old bolt-action Tredegar wasn't much use against a barrel, but he hoped a driver or a commander would be rash enough to stick his head out for a look around. If one of them did, Moss hoped to make it the last rash thing he ever tried.

  There came one of the big, snorting monsters. Moss swore under his breath. The barrel was buttoned up tight. Just his luck to spot a crew who knew what they were doing. He also saw that barrel design had come a long way while he was on the shelf here in Georgia. This green-gray machine was different from any he'd seen before.

  Green-gray…His eyes saw it, but his brain needed several seconds to process it, to realize what it meant.

  His jaw had just dropped open when Nick Cantarella, a little quicker on the uptake, let out a joyously obscene and blasphemous whoop: "Jesus fuckin' Christ, they're ours!"

  "Them's Yankee barrels?" Spartacus sounded as if he hardly dared believe it. Jonathan Moss knew how the guerrilla leader felt-he hardly dared believe it himself.

  "Sure as shit aren't Confederate," Cantarella answered as two more machines rumbled down the road. The ground-pounder took a long look at them. "Wow," he breathed. "They've really pumped up the design, haven't they?"

  "I was thinking the same thing. These look like they're twenty years ahead of the ones we were used to," Moss said. War gave engineering a boot in the butt. Moss thought of the airplanes he'd flown in 1914, and of the ones he'd piloted three years later. No comparison between them-and no comparison between these barrels and their predecessors, either.

  If he walked out in front of them with a rifle in his hands, he'd get killed. The Negroes in Spartacus' band didn't have that worry. U.S. barrelmen, seeing black faces, would know they were among friends.

  Again, the guerrillas figured that out at least as fast as he did. Several of them broke cover, smiling and waving at the oncoming barrels. The lead machine stopped. The cupola lid on top of the smooth rounded turret flipped up. "Boy, are we glad to see youse guys!" the barrel commander said in purest Brooklynese, his accent even stronger than Cantarella's.

  "We's mighty glad to see you Yankees, too," Spartacus answered. "We gots a couple o' friends o' yours here." He waved for Moss and Cantarella to show themselves.

  Cautiously, Jonathan Moss came out from behind the bush that had hidden him. The barrel's bow machine gun swung toward his belly button. A burst would cut him in half. He set down the Tredegar and half raised his hands.

  "Who the hell are you?" the barrel commander asked. "Who the hell're both of youse?"

  "I'm Jonathan Moss, major, U.S. Army-I'm a pilot," Moss answered. In scruffy denim, he looked more like a farmer-or a bum.

  "Nick Cantarella, captain, U.S. Army-infantry," Cantarella added. "We got out of Andersonville, and we've been with the guerrillas ever since."

  "Well, fuck me," the barrel commander said. "We heard there might be guys like you around, but I never figured I'd run into any. How about that? Just goes to show you. How long you been stuck here?"

  "Since 1942." By the way Moss said it, it might as well have been forever. That was how he felt, too.

  "Fuck me," the kid in the barrel said again. He looked around. "Gonna be some foot soldiers along any minute. We'll give you to them guys, and they'll do…whatever the hell they do with you. Clean youse up, anyway." That confirmed Moss' impression of himself. Cantarella looked ev
en more sinister, because he had a thicker growth of stubble.

  Sure enough, infantrymen trotted up a couple of minutes later. At least half of them carried captured Confederate automatic rifles and submachine guns. The lieutenant in charge probably wasn't old enough to vote. "Where are the closest Confederates?" he demanded, sticking to business.

  "Down in Oglethorpe, other side o' the river," Spartacus answered. "They got some sojers there, anyways."

  "You lead us to 'em?" the young officer asked.

  Spartacus nodded. "It'd be my pleasure."

  "All right. We'll clean 'em out-or if we can't, we'll call for the guys who damn well can." The lieutenant took a couple of steps towards Oglethorpe before he remembered he hadn't dealt with Moss and Cantarella. He pointed to one of his men. "Hanratty!"

  "Yes, sir?" Hanratty said.

  "Take these Robinson Crusoes back to Division HQ. Let the clerks deal with 'em." The lieutenant raised his voice: "The rest of you lazy lugs, c'mon! We still got a war to fight."

  "Robinson Crusoes?" Moss said plaintively. The infantrymen tramped south, boots squelching through the mud. The barrels rumbled along with them. The Confederates in Oglethorpe were in for a hard time. Nobody paid any attention to the newly liberated POWs, not even the blacks with whom they'd marched and fought with for so long.

  Well, there was Hanratty. "You guys were officers?" he said. Jonathan Moss managed a nod. So did Cantarella, who looked as stricken as Moss felt. Hanratty just shrugged. "Well, come on, sirs."

  Still dazed, Moss and Cantarella followed. Moss had known the ropes with the guerrillas, and before that in Andersonville, and before that as a flier. Before long, he'd probably be in a situation where he knew them again. For now, he was in limbo.

  Division HQ was a forest of tents a couple of miles to the north. Hanratty turned his charges over to the sentries there, saying, "My outfit scraped up these two Crusoes running with the niggers. One's a major, the other one's a captain. They're all yours. I gotta get back to it-can't let my guys down." With a nod, he headed south again.

  "Crusoes?" Moss said once more. Not even Robinson Crusoes this time.

  "That's what we call escaped POWs who've been on their own for a while, sir," the sentry said. Maybe he was trying to be kind, but he sounded patronizing, at least to Moss' ears. He went on, "You guys come with me, uh, please. I'll take you to the doc first, get you checked and cleaned up, and then they'll start figuring out what to do with you next."

  "Oh, boy," Cantarella said in a hollow voice. Moss couldn't have put it better himself.

  The doctor wore a major's gold oak leaves, but he didn't look much older than that kid lieutenant. He poked and prodded and peered. "Fleas, lice, chiggers, ticks," he said cheerfully. "You're scrawny as all get-out, too, both of you. Do a lot of walking barefoot?"

  "Some, after our boots wore out and before we could, uh, liberate some more," Moss admitted.

  "Hookworm, too, chances are. And some other worms, I bet." Yes, the doctor sounded like somebody in hog heaven. "We'll spray you and give you some medicine you won't like-nobody in his right mind does, anyway-and in a few days you'll be a lot better than you are now, anyhow. And we'll feed you as much as you can hold, too. How does that sound?"

  "Better than the worm medicine, anyway," Moss said. "You make me feel like a sick puppy."

  "You are a sick puppy," the doctor assured him. "But we'll make you better. We've learned a few things the last couple of years."

  "When do we get back to the war?" Nick Cantarella asked. "If the United States are down here, Featherston's fuckers have to be on their last legs. I want to be in at the death, goddammit."

  "Me, too," Moss said.

  "When you're well enough-and when we make sure you are who you say you are." The doctor produced two cards and what looked like an ordinary stamp pad. "Let me have your right index fingers, gentlemen. We'll make sure you're really you, all right. And if you're not, you'll see a blindfold and a cigarette, and that's about it."

  "If you think the Confederates would let somebody get as raggedyassed as we are just to infiltrate, you're crazy as a bedbug, Doc," Cantarella said.

  "Well, you aren't the first man to wonder," the doctor said easily.

  For the next few days, Moss felt as if he'd gone back to Andersonville. He and Cantarella were under guard all the time. The food came from ration cans. The worm medicine flushed it out almost as fast as it went in. That was no fun. Neither was the idea that his own country mistrusted him.

  At last, though, a bespectacled captain said, "All right, gentlemen-your IDs check out. Welcome back to the U.S. Army."

  "Gee, thanks." Moss had trouble sounding anywhere close to enthusiastic.

  The captain took his sarcasm in stride. "I also have the pleasure of letting you know that you're now a lieutenant colonel, sir-and you, Mr. Cantarella, are a major. You would have reached those ranks had you not been captured, and so they're yours. They have been for some time, which is reflected in the pay accruing to your accounts."

  "That's nice." Moss remained hard to please. Nobody got rich on an officer's pay, and the difference between what a major and a light colonel collected every month wasn't enough to get excited about.

  "When can we start fighting again?" Cantarella demanded, as he had before.

  "You'll both need some refresher training to get you back up to speed," said the captain with the glasses. "Things have changed over the past couple of years, as I'm sure you'll understand."

  "How much hotter are the new fighters?" Moss asked.

  "Considerably," the captain said. "That's why you'll need the refresher work."

  "Will I get back into action before the Confederates throw in the sponge?"

  "Part of that will be up to you," the captain answered. "Part of it will be up to the Army as a whole, and part of it will be up to Jake Featherston. My own opinion is that you shouldn't waste any time, but that's only an opinion."

  "We are going to lick those bastards?" Nick Cantarella said.

  "Yes, sir. We are." The captain with the specs sounded very sure.

  "What'll happen to Spartacus and his gang?" Moss asked, adding, "They're damn good fighters. They wouldn't have stayed alive as long as they did if they weren't."

  "We've started accepting colored U.S. citizens into the Army," the captain said, which made Moss and Cantarella both exclaim in surprise. The captain continued, "Since your companions are Confederates, though, they'll probably stay auxiliaries. They'll work with us, but they won't be part of us."

  "And if they get out of line, you won't have to take the blame for anything they do." As a lawyer, Moss saw all the cynical possibilities in the captain's words.

  The other officer didn't even blink. "That's right. But, considering everything the enemy has done to them, not much blame sticks to Negroes acting as auxiliaries in the Confederate States."

  "Is it really as bad as that?" Having been away from even Confederate newspapers and wireless broadcasts since his escape, Moss had trouble believing it.

  "No, sir," the captain said. "It's worse."

  S omewhere ahead lay the Atlantic. Cincinnatus Driver had never seen the ocean. He looked forward to it for all kinds of reasons. He wanted to be able to say he had-a man shouldn't live out his whole life without seeing something like that. More important, though, was what seeing the ocean would mean: that the United States had cut the Confederate States in half.

  He hadn't been sure it would happen. This thrust east across Georgia had started out in a tentative way. The United States was trying to find out how strong the Confederates in front of them were. When they discovered the enemy wasn't very strong, the push took on a life of its own.

  And anywhere soldiers went, supplies had to go with them. They needed ammo. They needed rations. They needed gasoline and motor oil. Cincinnatus didn't like carrying fuel. If an antibarrel rocket-or even a bullet-touched it off…

  "Hell, it's no worse than carrying artillery rounds," Hal
Williamson said when he groused about it. "That shit goes up, you go with it."

  He had a point. Even so, Cincinnatus said, "Artillery rounds blow, they take you out fast. You get caught in a gasoline fire, maybe you got time to know how bad things is."

  "Well, maybe," the white driver said. "They give you a truckload, though, I figure it'll go off like a bomb if it goes."

  "Mmm…maybe." Cincinnatus paused to light a cigarette. "Got us plenty o' cheerful stuff to talk about, don't we?"

  "You wanted cheerful, you shoulda stayed home," Williamson said.

  Cincinnatus grunted. That held more truth than he wished it did. But he said, "I tell you one cheerful thing-we're beatin' the livin' shit outa Featherston's fuckers. That'll do for me. Only thing that'd do better'd be beatin' the shit outa Featherston."

  "Could happen," the other driver said. "You believe even half of what Stars and Stripes says, he won't be able to stay in Richmond much longer. Where's he gonna run to then?"

  With another grunt, Cincinnatus replied, "You believe half o' what Stars and Stripes says, we won the goddamn war last year."

  Hal Williamson laughed. "Yeah, well, there is that. Those guys lie like they're selling old jalopies."

  "They got a tougher sell than that," Cincinnatus said. "They got to sell the war."

  "Soon as the Confederates jumped into Ohio, I was sold," Williamson said. "Bastards tried to knock us flat and steal the war before we could get back on our feet again. Damn near did it, too-damn near."

  He was right about that. "Same here," Cincinnatus said. "'Course, they ain't as likely to shoot our asses off as they are with the kids in the front line."

  "Still happens, though. You know that as well as I do. We've lost more drivers than I like to think about," Williamson said.

  "Oh, yeah. I won't try to tell you anything different. All I said was, it ain't as likely, and it ain't," Cincinnatus said. He waited to see if the other driver would keep arguing. When Williamson didn't, Cincinnatus decided he'd made his point.

  The next morning, he picked up a load of canned rations and headed for the front. He liked carrying those just fine. The soldiers needed them, and they wouldn't blow up no matter what happened. He couldn't think of a better combination.