The Grapple Read online

  Then something different happened. A projectile trailing smoke and flame seemed to come out of nowhere. It slammed into a U.S. barrel and set it afire. Morrell couldn’t see if any of the men got out. He didn’t think so.

  “What the fuck was that?” Bergeron must have seen it through the gunsight.

  “I’ll be goddamned if I know,” Morrell answered.

  He didn’t have to wait long. A couple of minutes later, another one of those darts of fire lanced out to incinerate a U.S. barrel. “It’s some kind of rocket, like on the Fourth of July,” Frenchy Bergeron said. “How the hell did they come up with that?”

  “How? I don’t know, but they sure did.” Morrell ducked down into the turret. “Did you see where they’re shooting it from?”

  “Yes, sir,” the gunner answered. “Behind that stone fence there near the road.”

  “All right. If they pop up again, try and shoot them before they can let go with it. I’ve got to get on the horn to my people.” He flipped to the circuit that would connect him to senior armor officers. “The Confederates have a portable antibarrel device, something an infantryman can use to knock out a machine at a couple of hundred yards. I say again, a foot soldier can use this thing to knock out a barrel at a couple of hundred yards.”

  Life suddenly got more complicated. If foot soldiers really could fight back against armor without the suicidal impulse required to fling a Featherston Fizz…We need something like that ourselves, Morrell thought.

  The coaxial machine gun chattered. “Got the son of a bitch!” Bergeron said.

  Plainly, the C.S. rocket was new. Plainly, the Confederates here didn’t have many rounds. Just as plainly, the damn thing worked. And how many factories would start turning it out as fast as they could? Morrell swore. Yes, life was a lot more complicated all at once.

  When Jake Featherston wanted to fly into Nashville, his bodyguards didn’t just have kittens. They had puppies and lambs and probably baby elephants, too. Their chief was a group leader—the Freedom Party guards’ equivalent of a major general—named Hiram McCullough. “Mr. President,” he said, “your airplane could crash.”

  Featherston scowled at him. “My train could derail, too, if I go that way,” he growled.

  “Yes, sir,” Group Leader McCullough agreed stolidly. That gave Featherston’s ever-ready anger no good place to light. McCullough went on, “The other thing that could happen is, the damnyankees could shoot you down. The country needs you too much to let you take the chance.”

  Without false modesty, Jake knew the country needed him, too. He couldn’t think of anyone else with the driving will to hold the CSA together if anything did happen to him. That was only the second half of what McCullough said, though. As for the first…“How could the damnyankees shoot me down? They won’t know I’m in the air till I’ve landed.”

  “Sir, you don’t know that for sure. Neither do I.” McCullough had a round, red face pitted with acne scars. He was good at looking worried, as a bodyguard should be. He looked very worried now. “We don’t know for a fact how many of our codes the Yankees can read. We don’t know for a fact that they don’t have spies who’d pass on where you’re going and when. If you give the orders, I’ll follow ’em. But do you want to take a chance you don’t have to?”

  Damn you, Jake thought. Since turning fifty—and since surviving two assassination tries, one by his own guards—he was more careful about his own safety. No one could question his courage, not after the record he’d racked up in the Great War. However much he wanted to, he couldn’t deny that Group Leader McCullough had a point.

  “All right, Hiram,” he said. “I’ll take the goddamn train.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President!” McCullough said in glad surprise. Those doleful features hardly seemed able to contain the smile that lit them now.

  Featherston held up a bony hand. “Don’t thank me yet. We’ll keep the train real quiet—I mean real quiet. What you put out through the regular secure channels is that I am going to fly. Send my regular pilot, send my regular airplane, give it the regular fighter escort. Put somebody who looks like me on it. If the Yankees jump it, you win. If they don’t, I’ll damn well fly when I feel like it. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir,” McCullough said. “I’ll take care of it, just like you want me to.” Just about everyone said that to the President of the CSA. It was what he liked to hear most. McCullough got to his feet. “Freedom!”

  “Freedom!” Jake echoed.

  Two days later, an armored limousine took someone who looked like him from the ruins of the Gray House to the airport outside Richmond. Escorted by Hound Dogs, his personal transport took off for Nashville. With no ceremony at all, Jake went to the train station and headed west in a Pullman car.

  He got to the capital of Tennessee six hours later than he expected to; U.S. bombs had knocked out a bridge. He was glad he wasn’t scheduled to speak till that evening. Delaying his talk because of what the enemy did would be embarrassing.

  Hiram McCullough went to Nashville a day ahead of him to make sure security was tight. The group leader met Jake at the train station. As soon as he could, he took Featherston aside. In a low voice, he said, “Mr. President, two squadrons of Yankee fighters jumped your airplane before it got out of Virginia. They shot it down, and they shot down three of the Hound Dogs with it, too.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Jake exploded.

  “Yes, sir,” McCullough said. “I’m mighty glad you stayed on the ground, Mr. President.” That was I told you so, but Jake didn’t care. He was glad, too.

  He said so. He didn’t see how he could avoid it. Then he asked, “How the hell are those bastards picking up our codes?”

  “Don’t know, sir,” McCullough answered. “I’m going to be looking at that, though—you better believe I will. And I’ll tell you something else, too: I won’t be the only one, either.”

  “Better not be,” Featherston said. “Dammit, I’m gonna have to do more talking with Clarence Potter.” Potter was smart—sometimes too damn smart for his own good, but smart. And a breach like this would make him focus all of his formidable brainpower on it.

  Unless he’s the one who fed the damnyankees the codes in the first place. In Jake Featherston’s shoes, you worried about everybody all the time, and for every possible reason. But Featherston couldn’t make himself believe Clarence Potter would sell the CSA down the river. Potter didn’t love him; he’d known that for many years. But the Intelligence officer was a Confederate patriot. If you didn’t understand that, you didn’t understand anything about him.

  “I brought an armored car to the station, sir, to take you to the hotel,” McCullough said. “Just in case.”

  “Thanks.” Featherston couldn’t deny that that made sense. If the Yankees knew he was on the way to Nashville, they might have people here who would try to strike at him. Of course, they might also be thinking they’d just killed him—in which case they were all probably out getting drunk and trying to lay their secretaries. He let out a nasty chuckle. Before long, they’d know he was still alive and kicking, all right.

  The armored car looked impressive as hell. It had six big tires with cleated treads. Its angles were harsh and military. It sported a barrel-like turret with a cannon and a coaxial machine gun. But factories weren’t making very many of them these days, and most of the ones that did get made were used against rebellious Negroes, not against the damnyankees. Armored cars made tolerable scout vehicles. Their steel sides kept out small-arms fire. But they were horribly vulnerable to any kind of cannon, and even with six wheels and all-wheel drive they weren’t as good away from roads as tracked machines were.

  This one, though, was fine to get him to the Hermitage Hotel. He peered out at Nashville through firing slits and periscopes. The city hadn’t been bombed nearly so hard as Richmond had. It was farther from U.S. airstrips than the capital, and not so vital a target. But it had suffered, too.

  So much to rebuild when this is over,
Jake thought. A scowl made his rawboned features even harsher than they were already. As long as the United States needed to put more back together, it didn’t matter.

  Everybody at the Hermitage Hotel was nervous, though Featherston had stayed there on earlier visits to Nashville. The manager said, “I hope the suite will be satisfactory,” about three times in the space of two minutes.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine,” Jake told him. The manager had to be scared he’d get skinned alive if the rooms weren’t fancy enough. That only proved he didn’t know the President of the CSA. Jake liked Habana cigars and good whiskey, but that was as far as he went along those lines. He hadn’t got into politics hoping for riches and luxury. Power drove him, nothing else.

  He didn’t stay at the Hermitage very long: just long enough to freshen up after the train trip. Then he went across the street to the Nashville Memorial Auditorium, a ponderous concrete building that went up after the Great War.

  He didn’t have a full house in the auditorium, but he didn’t care. This speech was for the wireless and the newsreels, not for the people actually in the hall. When it was filmed, the place would look full whether it was or not. Saul Goldman didn’t hire cameramen who didn’t know what they were doing.

  “I’m Jake Featherston, and I’m here to tell you the truth.” He’d been opening with that line ever since he discovered the wireless. That was twenty years ago now. He found it hard to believe, but it was true. When he said it, he believed it. His speeches wouldn’t have worked half as well if he didn’t.

  “The truth is, we are going to win this war!” When he said that, the Party stalwarts and fat cats in the Memorial Auditorium started yelling as if it were going out of style. Maybe he inspired them. Maybe they were scared shitless and needed a pat on the fanny to make ’em feel better. If they did, he would give them one.

  “We are going to win,” he repeated. “They can’t beat us, because we damn well won’t quit! We’ll never quit, not while we’ve got one free white man who can stand on his own two feet and aim a rifle at the enemy.” More applause came echoing back from the ceiling. The noise made Jake’s heart beat faster. Talking in a wireless studio was one thing. Talking in front of a living, breathing, sweating crowd was something else, something better, something hotter.

  “Truth is, the Freedom Party’s had the right idea for twenty-five years now,” Jake went on. “And if an idea’s right to begin with, it will take up arms and struggle in this world. And once it does, nobody can beat it. Nobody, you hear? Every time someone persecutes it, that only makes it stronger!”

  “Freedom!” somebody in the audience yelled. An instant later, everyone took up the cry. It washed over Jake Featherston. He scowled toward the north. If the damnyankees thought the Confederate States would fold up and die because things hadn’t gone perfectly in Pennsylvania and Ohio, they could damn well think again.

  “We’re in this for the long haul!” he shouted. “This isn’t any ordinary war, and everybody needs to remember it. This is the kind of fight that will shape the new millennium. A war like this doesn’t come along every day. It shakes the world once in a thousand years. We’re on a crusade here, a crusade for—”

  “Freedom!” The roar was louder this time.

  Featherston nodded. “That’s right, friends. We can’t quit now. We won’t quit now, either. If the Confederate people give up, they won’t deserve anything better than what they get. If they give up, I won’t be sorry for them if God lets them down.” He paused to let that sink in, then softly asked, “But we won’t give up, will we? We’ll never give up, will we?”

  “No!” No hesitation, no backsliding. If they were there, he would hear them. As always, the Confederate States were going where he took them. And he knew where that was.

  “We’ll buckle down, then,” he said. “We’ll work hard at home. We’ll whip the damnyankees yet. For every ton of bombs they drop on us, we’ll drop ten tons on their heads, same as we’ve been doing all along. And we’ll never get stabbed in the back again, on account of we’re putting our own house in order, by God!”

  That drew more frantic applause. Most of Nashville’s Negroes were already in camps. Lots of Negroes went into camps in Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Texas. They went in, but they didn’t come out. That suited most of the whites in the CSA just fine. And if the Confederate States of America weren’t a white man’s country, then there was no such thing, not anywhere in the world.

  Since the war started, wireless broadcasting was a tricky business. The USA and the CSA jammed each other’s stations as hard as they could. As often as not, snarls of static strangled and distorted music and comedies as well as news.

  But that wasn’t the only reason the tune coming out of the wireless set in Flora Blackford’s office sounded strange to her. Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces weren’t an ordinary U.S. combo. They were colored men who’d escaped to the USA after being sent north into Ohio to entertain Confederate troops. Nobody in the United States played music like “New Orleans Jump.” If the Negroes weren’t minor heroes because of their daring getaway, they never would have got airtime for anything with such peculiar syncopations. As things were, they had a minor hit on their hands.

  Congresswoman Blackford was happy for them. She’d met Satchmo and his less memorable bandmates. They were talented men. To her, they were a symbol of everything the Confederate States were wasting with their constant war against the Negro.

  She clucked unhappily. To her countrymen, Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces were a curiosity, nothing more. Most people in the USA didn’t want to hear about Negroes, didn’t want anything to do with them, and didn’t want to be told what the Confederates were doing to them. She’d tried her best to make her countrymen pay attention. Her best wasn’t good enough.

  “New Orleans Jump” struck her as fitting background music for what she was reading: the transcript of Jake Featherston’s recent speech in Nashville. She’d got it from the War Department. The captain who gave it to her seemed angry that he had to.

  Flora wondered what that was all about. She didn’t think the young officer had any reason to be angry at her personally. She’d never set eyes on him before. She wasn’t trying to cut off funding—who would, these days? You gave the Army and the Navy what they said they needed, and you hoped they found ways to shoot all the money at the enemy.

  So why was the captain steaming, then? She picked up the telephone and called the Assistant Secretary of War, who was somewhere between a conspirator and a friend. “Hello, Flora,” Franklin Roosevelt said genially. “What can I do for you today?”

  “A captain just brought me a copy of Featherston’s latest speech,” Flora said.

  “Jake’s a son of a bitch, isn’t he?” Roosevelt said. “Pardon my French.”

  “There’s certainly no give in him—as if we didn’t know that,” Flora said. “But that isn’t why I’m calling, or not exactly, anyhow. This captain seemed to be doing a slow burn, and I wondered why. It’s not like I ever met him before.”

  “Oh. I think I can tell you that on the telephone,” Roosevelt said. “It’s not as if the Confederates don’t already know it. Dear Jake gave that speech in Nashville, right?”

  “Yes.” Flora found herself nodding, though of course Franklin Roosevelt couldn’t see her. He had a gift for inspiring intimacy. If infantile paralysis hadn’t left him in a wheelchair, he might have tried to follow his cousin Theodore into the White House. And he was a solid Socialist, too, unlike Theodore the Democrat. “What about it?” Flora went on.

  “This about it: we knew Featherston was going to Nashville. We hoped we’d arranged things so he wouldn’t get there.” Roosevelt sighed. “Obviously, we didn’t. He’s a suspicious so-and-so, and he dodged the bullet. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why your captain was steaming. I’m steaming, too, to tell you the truth.”

  “Oh.” Flora nodded again. “Well, now that I know, so am I. If we could bump him off…”r />
  “Wouldn’t it be lovely?” Franklin Roosevelt said.

  “It sure would.” Flora was sure she and the Assistant Secretary of War shared the same beatific vision: the Confederate States of America thrashing around like a headless snake if Jake Featherston got it in the neck. She had no idea who would or could replace Featherston if he got it in the neck. She doubted the Confederates had any more idea than she did. Jake Featherston made the CSA tick. If he wasn’t there, wouldn’t the country stop ticking?

  “The other bad thing about it is, now they know we’ve broken some of their codes,” Roosevelt said. “They’ll change them, and that will complicate our lives for a while.”

  Till we break them again, he had to mean. “Too bad,” Flora said. “Too bad all the way around, in fact. Thanks for letting me know. That does make me pretty sure the captain wasn’t mad at me personally, anyhow.”

  “Always a relief,” Roosevelt agreed. “The last thing anybody wants or needs is a secret unadmirer.”

  “Er—yes.” Flora tasted the phrase. “But it’s a shame Featherston’s unadmirers here didn’t stay secret enough.”

  “Well, so it is,” the Assistant Secretary of War said. “The Confederates didn’t break off the flight because they’re reading our codes. I think they put a decoy on it because one of their security people got jumpy. The good ones do, from everything I’ve heard, and Lord knows Featherston needs good ones.”

  “Plenty of people on both sides of the border who want to kill him, all right,” Flora said. “Did you notice inflation is coming back to the Confederate States?”

  “No.” Roosevelt was suddenly and sharply interested. After the Great War, the Confederate dollar collapsed; when things were at their worst, enjoying a beer took billions. “What do you mean? It would be wonderful if their economy went down the drain again.”