In at the Death Read online

  When he woke up, his legs hurt so bad, he wasn’t sure he’d really been anesthetized. But he lay in a bed somewhere that wasn’t the aid station. His groan brought a real, live female nurse. She wasn’t beautiful or anything, but she was the first woman from the USA Pound had seen in a devil of a long time. “In pain?” she asked briskly.

  “Yes,” he said, thinking, What the hell do you expect?

  Even though she’d asked a dumb question, she had the right answer: “I’ll give you a shot.” As she injected him, she went on, “The tannic-acid dressings do hurt, I know, but you’ll heal much better because of them. Your burns won’t weep so much, and you’re less likely to get infected.”

  “Oh, boy,” Pound said. Everything else seemed secondary to the way he felt. He tried to look around, but his eyes weren’t tracking real well yet. “Is Mel Scullard here?” he asked, adding, “He’s my gunner.”

  “Yes, he’s three beds down,” the nurse said. “He hasn’t regained consciousness yet.”

  Poor Mel. He did get it worse than I did, Pound thought. Then the morphine started to kick in. It struck faster now than it had right after he got burned. Maybe that meant he wasn’t fighting so much pain. He could hope so, anyhow. “Ahh,” he said.

  “We have to be careful with this stuff,” the nurse told him. “We don’t want you getting hooked.”

  Right then, Pound couldn’t have cared less if he had to stick a needle in his arm every hour on the hour for the rest of his life. If it made him stop hurting, that struck him as a good deal. Down underneath, there wasn’t much difference between people and animals. War brought that out all kinds of ways. Pound wished like anything he hadn’t found out about this one at firsthand.

  The officers’ POW camp to which the Yankees took Jerry Dover was somewhere not far from Indianapolis. The train trip that brought him there wasn’t much fun, but it was instructive just the same. Confederate wireless went on and on about all the sabotage that raiders behind U.S. lines were still perpetrating in Georgia and Tennessee and Kentucky.

  Well, maybe they were. Even so, the train didn’t have to stop once. It didn’t even have to slow down. As far as Dover could tell, it didn’t make any detours. Yes, bridges and overpasses were guarded. Yes, concrete blockhouses with machine guns sticking out of them protected some stretches of track. But trains seemed to get wherever they needed to go, and to get there on time.

  Jerry Dover’s train also had no trouble crossing the Ohio. All the bridges across what had been the C.S.–U.S. border should have been prime targets. They probably were. If this one, near Evansville, had ever been hit, it had also been efficiently repaired.

  Evansville itself had been bombed. But it hadn’t been flattened, the way so many Confederate cities were. It lay in the western part of Indiana, well away from the early thrust north that almost won the war for the CSA.

  “They should have done a better job here,” complained the artillery captain sitting next to Dover.

  “It’s a big country,” Dover said. “They couldn’t get all of it.”

  “Well, they should have,” the younger man repeated glumly.

  He wasn’t wrong. But if the United States turned out to be too big to let the Confederacy smash them all up, didn’t that go a long way toward explaining why the war was going as it was? It sure looked that way to Dover.

  Actually reaching the camp also told Dover his country was fighting out of its weight. He knew how the CSA housed prisoners of war. The Confederacy’s camps were no sturdier than they had to be, because his country had nothing to spare. They probably didn’t break Geneva Convention rules—you didn’t want to give the enemy an excuse to take it out on POWs from your side—but he would have been amazed if they didn’t bend them.

  Camp Liberty! (with the exclamation point—a sardonic name if ever there was one) wasn’t like that. Dover wouldn’t have wanted to assault it with anything less than an armored brigade. It didn’t just have a barbed-wire perimeter: it had a wall and a moat, with barbed wire on top of the wall and outside the machine-gun towers beyond the water. You got in there, you weren’t going anywhere.

  Inside, the buildings were as solid as if they were meant to last a hundred years. Yes, Indiana had harder winters than Georgia, but even so…. The lumber and the brickwork and the labor the United Statescould afford to lavish on a place like this were daunting.

  If the military clerk who signed him in were twenty-two years old and fit, Jerry Dover really would have been alarmed. But the man had to be at least sixty-five, with a white Kaiser Bill mustache the likes of which Dover hadn’t seen since he quit fighting the damnyankees in 1917. Didn’t this guy know they were as out of fashion as bustles? Evidently not; he seemed proud of his.

  “You’re in Barracks Twelve, and you’ll sleep on cot seventeen,” the clerk declared in harsh Midwestern tones. “Numbers are large. I don’t think you can miss ’em.”

  After that, Dover felt he ought to get lost on general principles. He couldn’t, though, because the Yankee was right. Directional signs told you just where everything was. Barracks 12 was a brick building with a poured-concrete floor. Starting a tunnel and keeping it hidden would be a bitch, or more likely impossible.

  Two stout coal-burning stoves sat there to heat the hall in winter. A wireless set was playing an insipid Yankee tune when Dover walked in. The Confederates punished POWs for clandestine wirelesses. U.S. authorities equipped the halls with them. That was daunting, too.

  A colonel in his late thirties ambled up to Dover. “Howdy. I’m Kirby Smith Telford,” he said, Texas in his voice and in his name. “I’m the senior officer hereabouts. They caught me outside of Chattanooga late in ’43.”

  Jerry Dover introduced himself. “They shot up my command car and got me in front of Huntsville,” he said. “I was up near Chattanooga, too. Had to clear out my supply dump quick as I could when the damnyankees’ paratroops came down.”

  “Yeah, that screwed everything up, all right.” Telford watched him with a blue-eyed directness that looked friendly but, Dover realized, wasn’t. “You sound like you’ve been around. I reckon somebody in here’ll be able to vouch for you.”

  “Vouch for me?” Dover echoed. “I’m a POW, for crying out loud. What the hell else am I gonna be?”

  He didn’t think the colonel would have an answer for him, but Kirby Smith Telford did: “Maybe a Yankee plant. They try it every now and then, see what they can find out about us. Pretty soon you’ll find out who you can talk in front of and who you’ve got to watch yourself with. I don’t mean any offense, Colonel—don’t get me wrong—but right now I don’t know you from Adam, so I’ll be careful what I say around you.”

  “However you please. I don’t mean any offense, either, but right now I don’t know how much difference it’s gonna make,” Dover said.

  Telford’s face clouded. “That’s defeatist talk,” he said stiffly.

  “I’ve got news for you, Colonel. The damnyankees didn’t capture me outside of Huntsville because we’re winning.”

  The senior officer turned away from him without another word. Dover contemplated winning friends. He’d just lost one. Even if somebody did vouch for him now, Telford wouldn’t want much to do with him. Well, too goddamn bad, Dover thought. If he doesn’t like the truth, he can read a novel.

  He found cot 17. It was a better bed than the one he’d had in his own tent. It had a footlocker underneath. Dover didn’t have much to stick in there, not after the soldiers who caught him relieved him of his chattels personal. They hadn’t shot him, and they could have. Next to that, robbery was a detail.

  He stretched out on the cot. He’d been sitting up ever since he got on the train somewhere near the Alabama–Georgia border. Two minutes later, he was snoring.

  What might have been the voice of God—if God talked like a Yankee—blasted him awake: “Supper call! Supper call!” The camp had a PA system! He was sure the Confederates had never thought of that.

  Supper
wasn’t fancy, but it wasn’t bad: fried chicken, green beans (overcooked, of course—the ex-restaurateur did notice that), and French fries. You could take seconds. The apple pie for dessert was actually pretty good. Dover turned to the captain sitting next to him and said, “Hell of a note when the enemy feeds us better than our own side did.”

  “Yeah.” The younger officer—except for some other obvious retreads, all the men in here were younger than Dover—looked surprised. “Hadn’t thought about it like that, but you’re right.”

  If I am, what does it mean? Dover didn’t like any of the answers that occurred to him. The most obvious one was the one that was probably true. The United States were enough richer than the Confederacy that they didn’t have to worry about pennies and dimes. They could afford to do little things like build sturdy POW camps and give enemy soldiers decent rations. The CSA couldn’t. The Confederates had enough trouble taking care of their own men.

  Nothing to do after supper but troop back to the barracks hall. A couple of card games got started. Two officers bent over a chess set. By the way they shot pieces back and forth as the game opened, they’d already played each other a great many times.

  Dover played a fair game of checkers, but chess had never interested him. He figured he’d play poker or bridge one of these days, but he didn’t feel like it now. He went up to Kirby Smith Telford, who was reading a news magazine and shaking his head every now and then. “Can I get some paper and a pencil?” Dover asked. “I’d like to let my family know I’m in one piece.”

  “They’ll have a Red Cross wire by now,” Telford said, which was likely true, but he handed Dover a sheet of cheap stationery imprinted CAMP LIBERTY!, an envelope, and a pencil. “Don’t seal it when you’re done,” he warned. “Censors look over everything you write.”

  “I reckoned they would,” Dover said. After more than ten years of Freedom Party rule in the CSA, he took censorship for granted. No reason the damnyankees wouldn’t have it, too. “Thanks,” he added, and went back to his own cot.

  As he went, he felt Colonel Telford’s eyes boring into his back. Did the other officer think he hadn’t been respectful enough? Did they worry about that crap here? If they did, why, for God’s sake? What difference did it make now? As for Dover, he’d cussed out generals. He was damned if he’d get all hot and bothered about somebody whose three stars didn’t even have a wreath around them.

  He wished he could have grabbed some table space. Writing at the cot was awkward, but he managed. Dear Sally, he wrote, I bet you will have heard by now that I’m a POW. I’m up here in the USA, in Indiana. I’m not hurt. They’re treating me all right. I love you and the kids. I’ll see you when the war is over, I guess. XOXOXOX—Jerry.

  He looked at the letter. After a shrug, he nodded. It said everything he needed to say. He couldn’t see anything the censor would flabble about. He folded the paper, put it in the envelope, and wrote his home address on the outside. No matter what Telford had said, he started to lick the glue on the flap, but caught himself in time. I’m a creature of habit, all right, he thought.

  Somebody turned on the wireless. Women sang about war bonds in yapping Yankee accents. They wouldn’t have made Dover want to buy. When the advertisement ended, an announcer said, “And now the news.”

  None of the news was good, not if you were a Confederate POW. Dover assumed U.S. broadcasts bent things the same way his side did. But you could bend them only so far before you started looking ridiculous. When the newsman said Birmingham was surrounded, it probably was. When he said U.S. soldiers had freed more starving political prisoners from rocket factories on the outskirts of Huntsville, they probably had. Using politicals for work like that sounded like something the Freedom Party would do. So did starving them.

  And when the fellow said the Tsar was asking the Kaiser for an armistice, how could you doubt him? After Petrograd went up in smoke, Russia had hung on longer than Jerry Dover thought it could. But all good things came to an end. England and France would be in even more trouble now that Germany didn’t have to fight on two fronts.

  Two Confederate cities had already gone up in smoke. So had a big part of Philadelphia. The war on this side of the Atlantic sounded like a game of last man standing. Who could make superbombs faster? Who could get them where they needed to go? How long could the poor bastards on the other side stand getting pulverized?

  Odds were the United States could make bombs faster. They made everything else faster. Odds were the USA could deliver the goods, too. How long could even Jake Featherston stay stubborn when death rained down on his country from the skies?

  Camp Liberty! Dover winced. Odds were he’d get his liberty back when his country finished losing the war.

  XI

  Jonathan Moss savored the feeling of being at a forward air base again. He was a little southwest of Atlanta—not too far from where he’d pounded the ground with Gracchus’ guerrillas. Comparing what he could do now with what he’d done then was funny, in a macabre way. The new turbo fighter could take him as far in an hour as he could march in a month.

  Every time he flew off towards Alabama, he hoped to pay the Confederates back for all the time away from his specialty they’d cost him. The pilot who’d shot him down might have killed him instead. So might the soldiers who’d taken him prisoner. He didn’t dwell on that. Resenting them for turning him into a guerrilla helped keep and hone his fighting edge.

  His biggest trouble these days was finding someone to fight. The Confederates didn’t—couldn’t—put up many fighters any more. He had a pretty good notion of what his Screaming Eagle could do, but he wanted to put it through its paces against the best opposition the enemy could throw at it.

  If the turbo wasn’t going after the latest souped-up Hound Dogs or Razorbacks or Mules, it didn’t have much point. It carried enough firepower to make a fair ground-attack aircraft, but only a fair one: it went so fast and covered so much ground, it couldn’t linger and really work over a target. It had bomb racks, but using it as a fighter-bomber struck Moss as the equivalent of using a thoroughbred to pull a brewery wagon. Sure, you could do it, but other critters were better suited to the job.

  And so he wished the United States had come up with it a year and a half earlier. It would have swept Confederate aircraft from the skies. As things worked out, enemy airplanes were few and far between anyhow, but getting them that way had taken a lot longer and cost a lot more.

  His pulse quickened when he spotted a pair of Hound Dogs well below him. The newest Confederate aircraft got a performance boost by squirting wood alcohol into the fuel mix. They were a match for any U.S. piston-engined fighter. They weren’t a match for a turbo—not even close.

  He gave the fighter more throttle and pushed the stick forward. As he dove, he wondered what kind of pilots sat in those cockpits. These days, the Confederates had two types left: kids just out of flight school who might be good once they got some experience but didn’t have it yet, and veterans who’d lived through everything the USA could throw at them and who’d be dangerous flying a two-decker left over from the last war.

  The way these guys stuck together, leader and wingman, told him right away that they’d been through the mill. So did the speed with which they spotted him. And so did the tight turns into which they threw their aircraft. The one thing a turbo couldn’t do was dogfight a Hound Dog. You’d get in trouble if you tried. They’d turn inside you and get on your tail in nothing flat.

  Even if they did, they wouldn’t stay there long. In a turbo, you could run away from anything in the world except another turbo.

  Moss climbed again for a new pass. The Hound Dogs dove for the deck. He followed them down, smiling when his airspeed indicator climbed over 500. No piston job could touch that, not even diving for all it was worth.

  They knew he was after them, all right. They stuck together all the same. Yes, they’d been flying together awhile, or more than awhile. He had to guess which way they’d break when he
got close. He chose right, and that was right. They started to turn so they could shoot back at him, but his thumb had already come down on the firing button atop the stick.

  When the cannon boomed, pieces flew from the C.S. wingman’s Hound Dog. The pilot struggled for control and lost. The fighter spun toward the ground. The pilot wouldn’t have an easy time bailing out.

  Meanwhile, though, the leader was shooting at Moss. Well, he was trying to: your sights wouldn’t let you lead a turbo airplane. It just flew too fast. The leader’s tracers went behind the turbo as it zipped past him.

  Swinging through as tight a turn as he could make, Moss came back at the C.S. fighter. The Hound Dog didn’t want any more of him. Its pilot wanted nothing more than to escape. And he did, too, getting down to treetop height and dodging and jinking in a way Moss couldn’t hope to match.

  “All right, buddy—I’ll see you some other time.” Inside his cockpit, Moss sketched a salute. That was a good flyer over there on the other side. Yeah, he was a Confederate son of a bitch, but he made one hell of a pilot.

  Time to break off, then. When Moss pulled back on the stick, the turbo seemed to climb hand over hand. No prop job could come close to matching that performance. You had to trade speed for height, but the turbo had so much speed that it sacrificed much less than a Hound Dog or similar U.S. fighter. If Moss could have seen this in 1914…

  He’d flown a two-decker pusher when the Great War broke out. That was the only way anyone had figured out to get a machine gun firing straight ahead. No interrupter gear to fire through the spinning prop, not yet. Moss laughed. That technology was turning obsolete right before his eyes.

  He hadn’t had a wireless in his pusher, either. He hadn’t had an enclosed cockpit, let alone oxygen. He hadn’t worn a parachute. If he went down, he was a dead duck. And, with an airplane made of wood and canvas and glue and wire, with an engine almost aggressively unreliable, plenty of those early airplanes did go down, even with no enemies within miles.