“Did I say anything like that, sir?” Toricelli looked and sounded so innocent, Dowling wouldn’t have been surprised to see a halo suddenly start glowing above his head. The general commanding Eleventh Army chuckled under his breath. If his adjutant had started thinking like him, he could also start thinking like his adjutant. He’d been an adjutant for years, while Toricelli would have to wait for the next war against the Confederates for his turn as a CO.
The next war against the Confederates . . . The noises Dowling made under his breath when that thought crossed his mind weren’t nearly so amused. When the Great War ended, he’d hoped the USA would never have to worry about the CSA again. He’d been too optimistic once. He would be a fool to make the same mistake twice. Nothing kept a man from making a fool of himself now and again. Dowling did try not to make a fool of himself that way too often.
Half a dozen artillery rounds came down a few hundred yards short of Sudan. “They’re probably after you, sir,” Major Toricelli said.
“They’re a pack of idiots if they are,” Dowling replied. “This attack doesn’t need Julius Caesar or Napoleon at the top. As long as I keep the boys in butternut too busy to head east, I’m a hero.”
“A regular Robert E. Lee,” Toricelli said with malice aforethought. Dowling scowled, his severity more or less real. If his Confederate opposite number talked about officers to emulate, Lee’s name would likely be the first one in his mouth. Why not? Lee trounced every U.S. general he faced in the War of Secession.
When the War of Secession was new, just as Virginia was going from the USA to the CSA, Abe Lincoln offered Lee command of U.S. forces. Had Lee said yes, the USA might well be one country now. Lincoln might not share with James G. Blaine the dubious distinction of being the only Republican Presidents. They also shared the even more dubious distinction of starting wars—and losing them.
Dowling tried to remember. Wasn’t it during Blaine’s term that Lincoln had pulled out of the Republican Party and gone over to the Socialists? He thought so. The Republicans had never been the same since. Now Dowling, a thoroughgoing Democrat, had to hope the Socialists hadn’t started a war they were going to lose. He had to do whatever he could to help make sure they didn’t lose it, too.
More shells crashed down southeast of Sudan. These were closer. Dowling and Major Toricelli both raised eyebrows. Toricelli said, “Sir, I move we adjourn to the storm cellar. You may not think you’re important, but it looks like they do.”
“Damn nuisance,” Dowling grumbled, but he didn’t say no. An unlit kerosene lantern hung on the wall by the trap door to the cellar. Tornadoes tore across the West Texas prairie every now and again. Most houses in these parts—and on the U.S. side of the line in New Mexico, too—had shelters that could save lives . . . if you were lucky enough or quick enough to get into them fast enough.
Toricelli ceremoniously lifted the trap door. “After you, sir.” A couple of the wooden stairs creaked under Dowling’s weight, but they held. Toricelli followed him down and closed the door behind them. “I’ve got a match, sir,” he said, and lit one.
Dowling hadn’t checked to see if the lamp held fuel. “Just my luck if it’s dry,” he said. But it wasn’t. Buttery light pushed back shadows. It wasn’t very bright, but it would do. Four milking stools comprised the cellar’s furniture. He set the lamp on one and perched himself on another. It also creaked.
“We’ve done what we can do, sir,” Major Toricelli said. One more set of booms came in, some of them very loud and close. “I’m glad we did, too,” he added.
“Well, now that you mention it, so am I,” Dowling allowed. His adjutant smiled. Dowling didn’t think of himself as particularly brave. General Custer, now, had been as brave a man as any ever born, even up into his seventies and eighties. Dowling admired that without being convinced it made Custer a better commander. It might have made him a worse one: since he didn’t worry about his own safety, he also didn’t worry much about his men’s. Daniel MacArthur also had as much courage as any four ordinary people needed, which didn’t make him any less a vain blowhard or any more a commanding general in command of himself. If you weren’t a hopeless coward—more to the point, if the soldiers you led didn’t know you were a hopeless coward—you could function as a commanding officer.
More shells crashed down in Sudan. “I hope the sentries outside the house are all right,” Toricelli said. “They’ve got foxholes, but even so . . .”
“Yes, even so,” Dowling said. “We ought to be going after the Confederates’ guns. They must have pushed them well forward to land shells this far back of the line. Our own artillery should be able to pound on them.”
“Here’s hoping,” his adjutant said. “Do you want me to go up and get on the telephone with our batteries?”
“No, no, no.” Dowling shook his head. “If the people in charge of them can’t figure that out for themselves, they don’t deserve to have their jobs.”
“That’s always a possibility, too.” Toricelli had seen enough incompetents in shoulder straps to know what a real possibility it was.
So had Abner Dowling. “If they just sit around and waste the chance, that will tell us what we need to know about them,” he said. “And if they do just sit around, we’ll have some new officers in those slots by this time tomorrow, by God.”
“What do we do with the clodhoppers, then?” Toricelli asked. “Not always simple or neat to court-martial a man for moving slower than he should.”
“You’re right—a lot of the time, it’s more trouble than it’s worth,” Dowling agreed. “But somebody who can’t do what he needs to when the chips are down shouldn’t be face-to-face with the enemy. We damn well can transfer people like that out of here. As long as they’re in charge of the coast-defense batteries of Montana, they don’t do much harm.”
“The—” Major Toricelli broke off and sent him a reproachful stare. “Every so often, the devil inside you comes out, doesn’t he?”
“Who, me?” Dowling said, innocent as a mustachioed baby. His adjutant laughed out loud.
About ten minutes later, the Confederate shelling suddenly stopped. “Maybe some of our people had a rush of brains to the head,” Toricelli said.
“Here’s hoping.” Dowling’s devil must still have been loose, for he went on, “ ‘Hmm. They’re shooting at us. What should I do? Why, I’ll—I’ll shoot back!’ ” He snapped his fingers as if that were a brilliant idea arrived at after weeks or maybe months of research. In tones more like the ones he usually used, he went on, “If we need to send people to West Point or Harvard to figure that out, Lord help us.”
“No, sir,” Toricelli said. “If we sent people to West Point or Harvard and they
can’t
figure that out, Lord help us. And some of them can’t. That’s probably why we’ve got coast-defense batteries in Montana.”
“Wouldn’t be a bit surprised.” Dowling picked up the lantern and started up the stairs. “Let’s see if they’ve blown Sudan to hell and gone. I don’t suppose many people will miss it if they have.”
No shells had landed on the house. When Dowling went outside, he found the sentries just coming out of their holes in the ground. They saluted him and then went back to brushing themselves off.
An irate local shouted at him: “You damnyankee son of a bitch, you trying to get me killed?”
“I don’t know why you’re blaming me. I didn’t shoot at you. Jake Featherston’s men did,” Dowling answered.
“The hell you say!” The Texan wouldn’t believe a word of it. “We used to have to belong to the USA when y’all called this place Houston. Jake Featherston done gave us back our freedom.” The last word wasn’t quite the Party howl, but it came close.
“Watch how you talk to the general, buddy,” one of the sentries warned, swinging his Springfield toward the local.
“It’s all right, Hopkins,” Dowling said. By the look on the sentry’s face, it wasn’t even close to all right. Dowling turned back to the Texan. “Jake Featherston gave you
this
—all of it. If he was as tough and smart as he said he was, it never could have happened, right? Since it
has
happened, he’s not so tough and he’s not so smart, right?”
Somehow, that didn’t make the unhappy civilian any happier. Somehow, Abner Dowling hadn’t thought it would. And somehow, he couldn’t have cared less.
A
bout one day in three, the skies above central Ohio cleared. Those were the days when Confederate dive bombers and fighters struck savagely at the U.S. soldiers in and around Lafayette. Chester Martin liked being strafed and bombed no better than anyone else in his right mind.
But the U.S. position was a lot stronger than it had been when troops moving southwest out of Pennsylvania joined hands with men coming up from West Virginia. Antiaircraft guns followed close on the heels of barrels and hard-driving soldiers. They weren’t much use against Hound Dogs; the C.S. fighters more often than not struck and then vanished. But Asskickers, slower and clumsier, paid a high price for screaming down on U.S. entrenchments.
And fighters with the U.S. eagle in front of crossed swords came overhead as often as their C.S. counterparts did. They were a match for Hound Dogs and more than a match for Asskickers. Confederate aircraft hurt the men in green-gray down on the ground, but the Confederates hurt themselves, too, and badly.
“How many airplanes can they throw away to soften us up?” Chester asked, scooping hash out of a ration can with a spoon. He sat by a campfire with several other men from the platoon. Banks of earth shielded the fire from any lurking C.S. snipers.
“That’s only part of the question.” Lieutenant Delbert Wheat lit a cigarette. It smelled good, which meant it was Confederate. After taking a drag, he went on, “The other part is, when do they counterattack on the ground? That’s got to be what they’re softening us up for.”
Chester nodded. He’d been thinking the same thing ever since the linkup here. “I would have looked for them to try it already, sir,” he said. “I wonder why they haven’t.”
“Only one answer I can think of,” Lieutenant Wheat said. “They aren’t strong enough to bring it off.”
“They’ll be sorry if they wait around much longer,” Chester said. “They may be getting stronger, but so are we.” Not far away from the fire lay the wreckage of a downed Asskicker, the crumpled tail pointing pathetically toward the sky.
Del Wheat’s smile made his mouth crooked. “And you’re sorry for this because . . . ?”
Chester laughed. “Not me, sir. Not even a little bit. But this is the first time I’ve seen ’em where it doesn’t look like they know what they want to do. Makes me suspicious—know what I mean?” He’d seen in the last war that the Confederates could be beaten, that their plans didn’t always work. But to find them without any plans . . . That struck him as a more typical U.S. failing.
“They were taking a chance when they struck at Pittsburgh,” Wheat said. “Taking it away or even wrecking it hurts the USA. Maybe they’ve gone and wrecked themselves, too, though.”
“Here’s hoping,” Chester said.
Rain and a little sleet came in the next morning. That meant the Mules and the Asskickers would stay away till the weather got better. It didn’t mean the throb of airplane engines left the sky. Up above the clouds, Confederate transports were doing what they could to keep Jake Featherston’s surrounded army supplied.
The antiaircraft guns near Lafayette boomed, firing by what one gunner called earsight. It would take a lot of luck to knock down any airplanes that way. As long as the guns had plenty of ammo, though, why not put it in the air? Shoot off enough and you were bound to hit something sooner or later.
Besides, the ring around the Confederates trapped in Pittsburgh was getting thicker as the USA rushed more troops through the gaps the men and barrels in green-gray had torn in the C.S. flank defenses. These weren’t the only antiaircraft guns that would be shooting at the cargo planes on their way to Pennsylvania—far from it. If they didn’t go down in flames here, they might yet farther east.
And U.S. fighters also prowled above the clouds. Transports weren’t made to go fast and be nimble, any more than buses were. If fighters attacked them, their best hope lay in how much damage they could take before they fell out of the sky.
Sometimes the Confederate transports had Hound Dogs of their own to escort them to the target and drive off U.S. Wright fighters. Sometimes they didn’t. When they didn’t, they paid for it.
“Why don’t the Confederates send escorts along all the time?” Chester asked when a burning transport crashed less than half a mile from his foxhole.
“Well, I don’t know for sure, but I think I can make a pretty fair guess,” Lieutenant Wheat answered.
“Sir?” Chester said. He’d served under a couple of platoon commanders whose opinions he didn’t want, but who insisted on giving them anyhow. Del Wheat wasn’t like that. Some of the things he had to say were worth hearing, but he didn’t make a big deal out of them. Those other guys seemed to think they were the Pope speaking
ex cathedra.
“Well, my guess is that the Confederate States don’t have enough airplanes—or maybe enough pilots—to be able to do all the things they’d like to do,” Wheat said. “Now they can do this, now they can do that—but it doesn’t look like they can do this
and
that at the same time.”
Chester thought about it. After a moment, he nodded. “That does make sense, yes, sir.” He paused again, then resumed: “Getting that cargo into Pittsburgh is pretty important for them right now. If they can’t take care of that because of everything else they’ve got going on, maybe they bit off more than they can chew.”
“That’s true. Sergeant. Maybe they did.” Lieutenant Wheat looked like a cat contemplating a saucer of cream.
Civilians came from C.S.-occupied territory farther west. They claimed the Confederates there were building up for an attack on the U.S. ring. Lieutenant Wheat listened to them and sent them on to Intelligence officers back at division HQ. “You’re not flabbling much about this,” Chester remarked.
“Nope, not me,” the platoon commander said. “If the enemy does try to come through here, we’ll do our damnedest to stop him. That’s all we can do. But what do you want to bet that some of those so-called civilians are really Confederate plants, and they’re trying to make us jump at shadows?”