In At the Death

III

George Enos, Jr., liked being back on the East Coast. When the Josephus Daniels came in to the Boston Navy Yard for refit or resupply-or even to deliver a package-he had a chance for liberty, a chance to see his wife and kids. Unlike a lot of sailors, he preferred getting it at home to laying down money in some sleazy whorehouse and lying down with a girl who was probably more interested in the current crossword puzzle than in him.

That didn't stop him from lying down with a whore every once in a while. It did leave him feeling guilty whenever he did. That, in turn, meant he drank more on liberty than he would have otherwise. He couldn't get drunk enough to stop feeling guilty, which didn't keep him from trying.

When he came into Boston, he didn't have to worry about it. He could go to bed with Connie with a clear conscience. And, being away so much, he felt like a newlywed whenever he did. Most of his married buddies weren't lucky enough to have caught a warm, willing, pretty redhead, either.

"I wish you didn't have to leave," she said, clinging to him with arms and legs the night before he was due back aboard his ship. When she kissed him, he tasted tears on her lipstick.

"Wish I didn't have to go, too," he answered. "But it'd be the Shore Patrol and then the brig if I tried to duck out. They'd bust me down to seaman third, too. You fight the Navy, you're fighting out of your weight."

"I know," she said. "But-" She didn't go on, or need to. But covered bombs and torpedoes and mines and everything else that could mean this was the last liberty George ever got. She clung to him tighter than ever.

He found himself rising to the occasion once more, which told how long it had been since his last liberty. In his thirties, he didn't do that as automatically as he had once upon a time. "Hey, babe," he said. "Hey."

"Ohh," Connie said when he went into her-more a sigh than a word. He wasn't sure he could come again so soon after the last time, but he did, a moment after she gasped and quivered beneath him. But then she started crying all over again. "I don't want you to go!"

"I don't want to, either. But I've got to." He stroked her hair and kissed her in the hollow of her shoulder, all of which made things worse instead of better.

Finally, after she cried herself out, she reached for a tissue and blew her nose. "Good thing the lights are out," she said. "I must look like hell."

"You always look good to me," he said, and that started her crying again.

He wasn't very far from blubbering himself, but he didn't. He did fall asleep a few minutes later. Connie couldn't tease him about that, because she'd already started to breathe deeply and slowly herself.

She fed him an enormous plate of bacon and eggs the next morning. The way the boys stared at it said how unusual it was. They ate oatmeal as they got ready for school. Connie ate oatmeal, too, and drank coffee that smelled like burnt roots. "Rationing that bad?" George asked.

"Well, it's not good-that's for sure," his wife answered. "Better for us than for a lot of folks. I know people at T Wharf, so I can get fish for us. We're tired of it, but it's better than going without."

"Sure." George remembered his mother talking about doing the same thing during the last war. All over the country, no doubt, people were doing what they could to get along.

What George could do was shoulder his duffel bag, kiss Connie and the kids good-bye, and head for the closest subway station. When he came up again, he was on the other side of the Charles, half a block from the Boston Navy Yard.

He and the duffel got searched before the guards let him in. "All right-you're not a people bomb," one of the men said.

"Has that happened here?" George asked.

"Not here at the Yard, no, but it sure as hell did in New York City. Twice," the guard answered.

"Jesus!" George said. "Nobody's safe anywhere any more. I'd rather put to sea. At least out there I know who's on my side and who isn't." With a nod, the guard waved him on.

Armorers were bringing crates of ammunition aboard the Josephus Daniels. They were eloquently obscene, creatively profane. George had heard that before among men with especially dangerous trades. It gave them a safety valve they couldn't find any other way. He paused not just to give them room but also to admire their invectives. He'd thought he'd heard everything, but they showed him he was wrong.

He was almost sorry when they finished and walked down the pier. "Permission to come aboard?" he called as he set foot on the destroyer escort's gangplank.

"Granted," answered Thad Walters, who had officer-on-deck duty. After the formal response, he unbent enough to ask, "Liberty good?"

"Yes, sir," George said. "Kids are growing like weeds. Connie pisses and moans about the rationing, but she's sure keeping them fed." He turned to salute the flag at the stern.

"Well, that's good." The grin on the OOD's face said he knew George and Connie didn't spend all their time talking about rations. He was younger than George himself. Chances were he didn't spend all his time thinking about Y-ranging gear, either. He went on, "Well, stow your gear below and get used to the ship again. You'd better-we put to sea tomorrow morning, early and"-he looked at the cloudy sky-"not too bright."

"Aye aye, sir." After his own apartment, the accommodations belowdecks were a rude reminder that he was back in the Navy's clutches. Everything was cramped and smelly. Instead of a bed to share with his wife, he had a hammock in a compartment full of snoring, farting sailors. If he tried to roll over, he'd fall out.

Some kid was bragging about how many times he'd done it in a whorehouse. Only a couple of guys were even half listening to him, and they mainly seemed interested in telling him what a liar he was. George thought the same thing. Anybody who boasted about what a great lover he was had to be lying, even if he didn't always know it.

Chow was another disappointment: some kind of hash and lumpy mashed potatoes. Connie would have been ashamed to put slop like that on the table no matter how bad rationing got. The coffee was better than hers, though. The Navy and the Army got most of the real bean that came into the USA; civilians had to make do with ersatz.

Maybe because he'd gone without real coffee for a couple of days and it hit him harder when he drank it again, maybe because his own mattress had spoiled him, he had a hell of a time going to sleep that night. He knew he'd stagger around like a zombie in the morning, but he lay there in the hammock staring up at the steel ceiling not nearly far enough above his head.

A pilot had brought the Josephus Daniels in through the minefields shielding Boston harbor from enemy submersibles. Another one took her out again. A small patrol boat followed the destroyer escort to pick up the pilot and bring him back. George stayed at his 40mm mounts till well after the pilot was gone. The powers that be had installed the guns to shoot at airplanes, but they could also do dreadful things to subs forced to the surface.

"We have ourselves a new assignment." Sam Carsten's voice blared from the loudspeakers. George still thought it was bizarre that he'd met the man now his skipper when he was a kid in Boston. Carsten went on, "We're heading for Bermuda, and then for the central Atlantic. We're going to try to find convoys bringing food up from Argentina and Brazil to England and France. And when we do, we'll sink 'em or capture 'em."

Excitement tingled through George. This was the work his father had done in the last war. It was what finally made Britain decide she'd had enough. And it was the work that cost his father his life.

"Some of you poor devils are polliwogs," the skipper boomed. "When we get to the Equator, King Neptune and the shellbacks aboard will take care of that."

George laughed. He'd been initiated into the shellbacks when he crossed the Equator for the first time. He could hardly wait to give the new fish a taste of what he'd got.

And he had another reason for wanting to get down by the Equator. The North Atlantic was kicking up its heels. He had a strong stomach, and he'd known worse seas than this in a fishing boat that made the Josephus Daniels seem as sedate as a fleet carrier. That meant he kept down what he ate. It didn't mean he enjoyed himself. And using the heads was rugged, because a lot of guys were desperate and weren't neat. Some of them didn't make it to the heads. The skipper had cleaning parties out all the time. They almost kept up with the sour stink. Almost, here as in so many places, was a word nobody really wanted to hear.

The ship approached Bermuda from the northeast. That made for more time at sea, but lessened the chance of meeting C.S. bombers or seaplanes on the way in.

"No liberty here," Carsten announced as they tied up in the harbor. "Sorry, guys. We don't have time. On the way back to the USA, I'll give you the best blowout I can, and that's a promise."

By the way the old-timers on the destroyer escort nodded, the skipper kept promises like that. George wasn't surprised. Keeping them seemed in character for Carsten. Being a mustang, he knew what ratings liked better than most officers with Annapolis rings did. And one of the things they liked was officers who delivered on their promises.

Because of the threat from the Confederate mainland, the crew spent the night at battle stations, four hours on, four off. A handful of bombers did come over. Bermuda had Y-ranging gear far more powerful than the set the Josephus Daniels carried; sirens started shrieking before the destroyer escort picked up the bombers.

And even after the ship did, the gunners were firing by earsight, hoping to get lucky or to nail a bomber caught by the blazing searchlights ashore. Yellow and red tracers crisscrossed the night sky.

U.S. night fighters were up over Bermuda, too. George wondered if they had their own Y-ranging sets. If they did, it didn't seem to do them much good. He heard the harsh crump of bombs-none very close-but saw no bombers going down.

Even after the all-clear sounded, ships and land-based guns kept throwing shells around. George was glad he had a helmet on. Shrapnel clattered down from the sky like sharp-edged hail. It could kill the people who'd fired it even if it didn't do a damn thing to its intended targets.

"Boy, I enjoyed that," he said when the other gun crew relieved him and his comrades.

"You be able to sleep?" his opposite number asked.

"Fuck, yes. I don't care if the Confederates come back and the noise starts up all over again. I'll sleep."

And, some time in the wee small hours, the Confederates did come back. They couldn't take Bermuda away from the USA, but they could make sure the United States didn't enjoy holding it. George opened his eyes when the shooting started again, then closed them and began to snore louder than ever.

The Josephus Daniels sailed the next morning, her tanks topped off and ammunition replenished. The Atlantic was a changed beast; as the destroyer escort steamed south, the ocean went from tiger to kitten. The sun shone warm and bright. The air turned sweet and mild. George was reminded of the weather in the Sandwich Islands. It didn't get any better than that.

British submersibles. French submersibles. Confederate submersibles. Misguided U.S. submersibles. Confederate seaplanes. Maybe even bombers and torpedo-carriers from a prowling British carrier. This part of the Atlantic was like the Sandwich Islands in more ways than the weather: it was also full of danger. Standing by the breech of the twin 40mm, George hoped he wouldn't follow in his father's last footsteps, as he'd already followed in so many.

D r. Leonard O'Doull watched Sergeant Vince Donofrio chatting up a well-fed blond Georgia farm girl with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. The senior medic seemed to try his luck with everything female from fourteen to fifty. This one-her name was Billie Jean-fell toward the lower end of the range, but not so low that she didn't have everything a woman needed. She also had an inch-long cut on her left index finger, which was what brought her to the U.S. aid station in the first place.

Donofrio had given her a shot of novocaine and put a couple of stitches in the cut. In O'Doull's professional opinion, it needed nothing but a bandage, but Donofrio had motivation beyond the purely professional.

"I never reckoned Yankees could be so kind and helpful," Billie Jean said, which showed the sergeant had made some progress, anyhow.

"I'm a medic. We help everybody on both sides." Donofrio turned to O'Doull for support. "Ain't that right, Doc?"

"That's our job." O'Doull could hardly deny it-it was true. He said it himself, somewhere between once a day and once a week. Here, though, he wished he weren't agreeing with the horny sergeant. He'd never sewn up a pretty girl's wound in the hope of getting into her pants.

Then he shook his head and started to laugh. When he sutured a cut on Lucien Galtier's leg up in Quebec, that put him in the good graces of the man who became his father-in-law. It didn't hurt him with Nicole, either. Still, he wasn't inclined to look at Vince Donofrio and Billie Jean Whoozis and intone, Bless you, my children.

As if Vince cared. "Can I walk you home, sweetie?" he asked.

Billie Jean frowned. O'Doull gave her points for that. "I don't know," she said. "Some of the guys here, they don't like it if they see a girl walkin' with a Yankee." At least she didn't say damnyankee.

"Like I said, I'm a medic," Donofrio said. "I don't give trouble, and I don't want trouble." He had a.45 on his hip, just in case. So did O'Doull.

He also had the gift of gab, even though his boss was the Irishman. He talked Billie Jean into letting him tag along. And he talked O'Doull into letting him go, which was harder. "You be back in an hour, you hear me?" O'Doull growled. "And I don't mean an hour and one minute, either. I don't see you here in an hour's time, I send a search party out after you, and you won't like it when they find you."

"I promise, Doc." The senior medic crossed his heart. Billie Jean laughed.

Ten minutes later, corpsmen brought a soldier with a hand wound into the aid station. He'd passed out, or he would have come in under his own power. One look at the injury told O'Doull the hand would have to go. He hated to do it, but he didn't see any way to save the mangled remnants. He wished Vince were there to pass gas, but he could act as his own anesthetist.

"What happened to the guy, Eddie?" he asked as he put the ether cone over the wounded man's mouth and nose. "Do you know? This is about as ugly a hand wound as I've ever seen."

"I thought the same thing, Doc," the corpsman answered. "He was by a boulder when we found him, and the boulder had blood all over it. I'm guessing, but I'd say a big old chunk of shell casing mashed his hand against the rock."

O'Doull nodded. "Sounds reasonable. But he'll have to make do with a hook from here on out. I hope he wasn't left-handed, that's all."

"Didn't even think of that." Eddie looked and sounded surprised.

The amputation went as well as an operation like that could. The cutting was over in a hurry; patching things up, as usual, took longer. At last, O'Doull said, "Well, that's about all I can do. Poor bastard won't like it when he wakes up."

"Any other doc would've done the same thing-only not as well, chances are," Eddie said. They'd worked together a long time.

"Thanks," O'Doull said wearily. "I'd like a drink, but I think I'll settle for a cigarette." He stepped outside the aid tent to light up. He'd smoked the Raleigh almost down to the butt when he happened to look at his watch. An hour and five minutes had passed since Vince Donofrio decided to walk Billie Jean home, and he wasn't back. O'Doull swore in disgust. He didn't care if Vince had got lucky. The medic wouldn't think he was by the time O'Doull got through with him.

Finding soldiers for a search party was the easiest thing in the world. He waved to the first squad he saw coming up the road and told them what he needed. The Army had made him a major so he could give enlisted men orders. "Right," said the corporal in charge of the squad. "So what do we do if we catch him laying this broad?"

"Throw cold water on him, pull him off, and haul his sorry ass back here," O'Doull replied angrily, which made the soldiers grin. They went off with a spring in their step and a gleam in their eye.

When they weren't back in half an hour or so-and when Donofrio, shamefaced or not, didn't show up on his own-O'Doull started to worry. He almost welcomed a man with a leg wound. Patching it up let him think about other things besides the medic and why he might be missing. Why the devil had he let Donofrio go? But he knew the answer to that: because Vince would have sulked and fumed for days if he hadn't, and life was too short. But if life turned out to be literally too short…

By the time another hour went by, O'Doull began to dread what would happen when the search party came back. Then they did. One look at the corporal's face told him he hadn't wasted his time worrying. "What happened?" he asked.

"Both dead," the noncom said grimly. "Beaten, stomped, kicked-you name it, they got it, the guy and the gal both. We found 'em in a field not far from the side of the road. The medic's holster was empty, so his pistol's gone. Some goddamn Confederate's got it now."

"Jesus!" O'Doull felt sick. He'd never been responsible for a man's death like this before. Plenty of wounded soldiers had died while he was working on them, but he was doing his goddamnedest to save them. Here, one word-no-would have saved Vince Donofrio. It would have, but he hadn't said it. He forced out the next question: "What now?"

"Sir, I've already talked to a line officer," the squad leader said. "We beat the bushes for the motherfuckers who did it. We take hostages. We put out the call for the guilty bastards to give themselves up. Then we blow the fuckin' hostages' heads off." He sounded as if he looked forward to serving in the firing squad.

"Jesus!" O'Doull said again. "How many people are going to die because Vince thought Billie Jean was cute?"

"She wasn't cute when we found her, sir," the corporal said. "They…Well, shit, you don't want to hear about that. But she wasn't. Neither was he."

O'Doull crossed himself. "I shouldn't have let him go. But he liked her looks, and I didn't think anything would happen this time, so-"

"You never think anything'll happen this time," the corporal said. "Only sometimes it does."

"Yeah. Sometimes it does." O'Doull covered his face with his hands. "Here's one I'll carry on my conscience the rest of my life." Yes, this was much worse than losing a patient on the table.

"We'll get 'em," the corporal said. "Or if we don't, we'll get enough of the bastards who might have done it to make the rest of the assholes around here think twice before they try anything like that again."

"Fat lot of good any of that will do Vince," O'Doull said.

"Sir, I'm sorry as hell about that. It's part of the war around these parts," the corporal said. "Sooner or later, I expect we'll put the fear of God into the Confederates."

That wouldn't do Vince Donofrio any good, either. O'Doull didn't say so-what was the use? The noncom saluted and led his squad away. Eddie came up to O'Doull. "Not your fault, Doc," he said. "You just did what anybody else would've done."

"I guess so," O'Doull said. "But if it went wrong when somebody else did it, it'd be his fault, right? So how come it's not mine?"

"You couldn't know he'd run into bushwhackers," the corpsman said.

"No, but I could know-hell, I did know-he might, and I let him go anyway. Shit." O'Doull wanted to get into the medicinal brandy, but he didn't think he deserved it. He wished a wounded man would come in so he'd be too busy to brood about what had happened-he could drown his sorrows in work as well as alcohol. But the poor slob who'd have to stop something so he could get busy didn't deserve that.

After a while, deserving or not, a soldier with a smashed shoulder came in. Acting as his own anesthetist again, O'Doull did what he could to clean out the wound and fix it up. Eddie assisted, long on willingness but not on skill. Have to get a new senior medic, O'Doull thought. He'd worked with Granny McDougald for a couple of years, with Vince Donofrio for only about three months. Now somebody else would have to figure out his quirks and foibles.

The local commandant wasted no time. Soldiers seized hostages that afternoon. They gave the men who'd ambushed Vince and Billie Jean forty-eight hours to surrender. If not…Well, if not it was a tough war all the way around.

"Has anybody ever given himself up?" O'Doull asked Major Himmelfarb, who'd sent out the ultimatum.

"It does happen once in a blue moon," the line officer answered. "Some of these bastards are proud of what they've done. They're willing-hell, they're eager-to die for their country." He shrugged. "We oblige 'em."

No one came forward to admit to killing Vince Donofrio and the girl whose finger he'd sewn up. Major Himmelfarb asked O'Doull if he wanted to watch the hostages die. He shuddered and shook his head. "No, thanks. I see enough bullet wounds every day. It won't bring Vince back, either."

"That's a fact." Major Himmelfarb looked as if he wanted to call O'Doull soft but didn't think he could. Instead, he went on, "Maybe it will keep some other dumb, horny U.S. soldier from getting his dick cut off. We can hope so, anyway."

"Right," O'Doull said tightly, wishing the other officer hadn't told him that. Sometimes you found out more than you wanted to know. He hoped the medic was dead by then.

U.S. custom was to assemble the people from the nearest town-here, it was Loganville, Georgia-to witness hostage executions and, with luck, to learn from them. Nobody in the CSA seemed to have learned much from them yet. O'Doull listened to one flat, sharp volley of rifle fire after another in the middle distance: twenty-five in all. Before they got to the last one, he did dip into the brandy. It didn't do a damn bit of good.

He kept wondering if Billie Jean's father or brothers or maybe even husband (had she worn a wedding ring? — he didn't remember, and Vince wouldn't have cared) would show up at the aid station. Then he wondered if those people were part of the crowd that had got the girl and the medic. Would they have lulled them into a false sense of security before springing the trap? He never found out.

Eddie stayed in the aid tent as his first assistant for three days. Then the replacement depot coughed up a new senior medic, a sergeant named, of all things, Goodson Lord. He was tall and blond and handsome-he really might have been God's gift to women, unlike poor Donofrio, who only thought he was.

O'Doull greeted him with a fishy stare. "How hard do you chase skirt?" he demanded.

"Not very much, sir," Lord answered. Something in his voice made O'Doull give him a different kind of fishy look: did he chase men instead? Well, if he did, he'd damn well know he had to be careful about that. Queers didn't have an easy time of it anywhere.

"Make sure you don't, not around here," was all O'Doull thought he could say. "The guy you're replacing did, and they murdered him for it." Sergeant Lord nodded without another word of his own.

When a U.S. soldier came in with a bullet in the hip, Lord proved plenty capable. He knew much more than Eddie, and probably more than poor Vince had. The aid station would run just fine. That was O'Doull's biggest concern. Everything else took second place, and a distant second to boot.

A rmstrong Grimes and his platoon leader crouched-sprawled, really-in a shell hole northeast of Covington, Georgia. Armstrong was wet and cold. A hard, nasty rain had started in the middle of the night and showed no signs of letting up. The Confederates had a machine gun in a barn half a mile ahead. Every so often, it would fire a burst and make the U.S. soldiers keep their heads down.

"Wish we had a couple of barrels in the neighborhood," Armstrong said. "They'd quiet that fucker down in a hurry. Even a mortar team would do the trick."

"Well, it's not that you're wrong, Sergeant," Lieutenant Bassler replied. "But what we've got is-us. We're going to have to take that gun out, too. We leave it there, it stalls a battalion's worth of men."

"Yes, sir," Armstrong said resignedly. It wasn't that Bassler was wrong, either. But approaching a machine gun wasn't one of the more enjoyable jobs infantry got.

"For once, the rain helps," Bassler said. "Bastards in there won't be able to see us coming so well."

"Yes, sir," Armstrong said again. He knew what that meant. They'd be able to get closer to the gun before it knocked them down.

"You take your squad around toward the back of the barn," Bassler said. "I'll lead another group toward the front. We ought to be able to work our way in pretty close, and then we'll play it by ear."

"Yes, sir," Armstrong said one more time. He didn't have anything else to say, not here. Bassler wasn't just coming along. He'd given himself the more dangerous half of the mission. You wanted to follow an officer who did things like that.

"All right, then. I'll give you ten minutes to gather your men. We'll move out at"-Bassler checked his watch-"at 0850, and I'll see you by the barn."

"0850. Yes, sir. See you there." Armstrong scrambled out of the hole and wiggled off toward the men he led. The machine gun opened up on him, but halfheartedly, as if the crew wasn't sure it was really shooting at anything. He dove into another hole, then came out and kept going.

"Password!" That was a U.S. accent.

"Remembrance," Armstrong said, and then, "It's me, Squidface."

"Yeah, I guess it is, Sarge," the PFC answered. "Come on. What's up? We goin' after that fuckin' gun?"

"Is the Pope Catholic?" Armstrong said. "Our guys go to the right, the lieutenant goes to the left, and when we get close whoever sees the chance knocks it out. Will you take point?"

Squidface was little and skinny and nervous-he made a good point man, and a good point man made everybody else likely to live longer. But even the best point man was more likely to get shot than his buddies. He was there to sniff out trouble, sometimes by running into it.

"Yeah, I'll do it." Squidface didn't sound enthusiastic, but he didn't say no. "Who you gonna put in behind me?"

"I'll go myself," Armstrong said. "Zeb the Hat after me, then the rest of the guys. Or do you have some other setup you like better?"

"No, that oughta work," Squidface said. "If anything works, I mean. If the guys at the gun decide to go after us-"

"Yeah, we're screwed in that case," Armstrong agreed. "You got plenty of grenades? Need 'em for a job like this."

"I got 'em," Squidface said. "Don't worry about that."

"Good. We move at 0850."

Armstrong gathered up the rest of his squad. Nobody was thrilled about going after the machine gun, but nobody hung back, either. At 0850 on the dot, they trotted toward the barn. The rain had got heavier. Armstrong liked that. Not only would it veil them from the gunners, the drum and drip would mask the noise they made splashing through puddles.

Somewhere off to the left, Lieutenant Bassler's men were moving, too. Maybe it'll be easy, Armstrong thought hopefully. Maybe the guys at the gun won't know we're around till we get right on top of them. Maybe-

The gun started hammering. Despite the rain, Armstrong had no trouble seeing the muzzle flashes. They all seemed to be aimed right at him. He yipped and hit the dirt-hit the mud, rather.

Nobody behind him screamed, so he dared hope the burst missed the men he led, too. He peered ahead. He didn't see Squidface on his feet, but nobody with his head on straight would have stayed upright when the machine gun cut loose.

He hoped the platoon commander and his guys were taking advantage of all this. They could be getting close…

Then the hateful gun started up again. This time, it was aimed away from Armstrong and his squad. "Up!" he shouted. "Get cracking!" He splashed forward. And there was Squidface, up and running, too. Armstrong breathed a silent sigh of relief. He'd feared he would lope past the point man's corpse.

They'd got within a couple of hundred yards when the machine gun cut off once more. "Down!" Squidface yelled, and suited action to word.

Armstrong threw himself flat, too. Three seconds later, a bullet snarled through the place where he'd been standing. That made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Somebody behind him yowled like a cat with its tail in a rocking chair-Whitey, he thought. His mouth shaped the word Fuck.

Three or four guys from Lieutenant Bassler's group opened up on the machine-gun crew-they could see the Confederates better than Armstrong and his squad could. Then another machine gun farther back opened up on them.

This time, Armstrong said, "Fuck," out loud. He might have known-and Bassler might have known, too-that the Confederates would have one gun covering another. Once the men in green-gray knocked out this one, they would have to stalk the next. And if they didn't take more casualties doing it, God would have doled out a miracle, and He was as niggardly with them as a quartermaster sergeant was with new boots.

As soon as the gun in the barn swung back to Lieutenant Bassler's men, Armstrong and his squad rushed it. They hadn't given themselves away by firing, so the gun farther back didn't know they were around-and the men they were attacking didn't realize how much trouble they were in till too late.

Squidface threw the first grenade. Armstrong's first flew at the same time as the PFC's second. The Confederate machine gunners howled. The gun got off a short burst. This time, two bullets came closer to Armstrong than they had any business doing. Another grenade knocked the machine gun sideways. The soldiers in butternut who could still fight grabbed for their personal weapons. None of them fired a shot. Armstrong's men made sure of that.

"Turn the gun around," Armstrong said. "We'll let the assholes at the next position farther back know their turn's coming up."

None of his men was a regular machine gunner. But if you could use a rifle, you could use a machine gun after a fashion. They'd all practiced with them in basic training. And the C.S. weapon was about as simple to use as a machine gun could be. Squidface aimed the gun while Zeb the Hat gathered fresh belts of ammunition.

"You know," Squidface said as he squeezed off a burst, "this goddamn thing has a bipod, too. We could take it off the tripod mount and bring it along with us."

"Are you volunteering?" Armstrong asked.

"Yeah, I'll do it," Squidface said. "Why the hell not? We sure get a lot of extra firepower, and we can probably liberate enough ammo to keep it fed."

"It's yours, then." Armstrong was all for extra firepower. If Squidface wanted to carry the machine gun instead of a lighter rifle, that was fine with him.

The Confederates back closer to Covington realized what machine-gun fire coming their way was bound to mean. They returned it. Armstrong flattened out like a nightcrawler under a barrel. The Confederates shot a little high, so nobody got hit.

"Way to go!" Lieutenant Bassler's voice came out of the rain. "Shall we stalk these next assholes, too?"

A gung-ho lieutenant was good. A lieutenant who got too gung-ho wasn't, because he'd get people killed. "Sir, I have one man wounded, maybe two," Armstrong answered. "Let's round up a mortar team and see if we can drop shit on the bastards instead."

When Bassler didn't say yes right away, Armstrong got a sinking feeling. The platoon commander was going to tell him no. That machine-gun crew up ahead would be waiting for the U.S. soldiers to come at them-not a chance in hell for surprise. Armstrong didn't want an oak-leaf cluster for his Purple Heart.

But before Lieutenant Bassler could issue what might literally have been a fatal order, a couple of Confederates fired short bursts from their automatic rifles in the direction of the gun Armstrong's squad had just captured. Nobody got hurt, but the U.S. soldiers hit the dirt again. Armstrong jammed an index finger up against the bottom of his nose to kill a sneeze. Wouldn't get a Purple Heart for pneumonia, he thought, but I'd sure as hell end up in the hospital with it.

The extra gunfire convinced Bassler he'd had a bad idea. "They've got a regular line up there," he said. "That gun's not just an outpost, the way this one was. No point slamming our faces into it-a mortar team's probably a better plan. Good thinking, Sergeant."

"Uh-thank you, sir," Armstrong answered. When was the last time an officer told him something like that? Had an officer ever told him anything like that? Damned if he could remember.

Squidface winked at him. "Teacher's pet."

"Yeah, well, up yours, Charlie," Armstrong replied. "You want to charge a machine-gun nest when Featherston's fuckers are waiting for you, go ahead. Don't let me stop you."

"No, thanks," Squidface said. "Already got my asshole puckered once today. That's plenty. Hell, that's once too many."

"Twice too many," Zeb the Hat said. "Why ain't we twenty miles back of the line, eatin' offa tablecloths an' screwin' nurses?"

"'Cause we're lucky," Armstrong said, which drew a chorus of derisive howls. "And 'cause no nurse ever born'd be desperate enough to screw you, Zeb."

"Huh! Shows what you know, Sarge." Zeb the Hat launched into a story that was highly obscene and even more highly unlikely. It was entertaining, though, almost entertaining enough to make Armstrong forget he lay sprawled in cold mud with an enemy machine gun not nearly far enough away.

A few minutes later, mortar bombs started bursting somewhere near that C.S. gun. Through the driving rain, Armstrong couldn't tell how close they were coming. "Hey, you guys at the gun, fire off a burst," Lieutenant Bassler said. "Let's see if they answer."

"I'll do it if you want, sir," Squidface said, "but if I was a Confederate I'd sandbag and see if I could lure us in."

"Fuck me," Bassler said. "Yeah, you're right. Maybe we'd better sit tight for a while, wait till reinforcements come up."

Armstrong liked that order just fine. He drew back into the barn and lit a cigarette. It wasn't so bad in here. It was dry-though the roof dripped-and nobody was shooting at him right this minute. What more could you want? A horny nurse, he thought, and then, Yeah, wish for the moon while you're at it.

Jorge Rodriguez had a stripe on his sleeve. Making PFC meant he got another six dollars each and every month. It meant he got to tell buck privates what to do. And it meant the Confederate Army didn't care that he was a greaser from Sonora. He'd convinced the people above him that he made a pretty decent soldier.

Sergeant Blackledge treated him no different on account of his promotion. Blackledge treated everybody under him like dirt all the time. And not just people under him-the sergeant had threatened to shoot General Patton if he didn't quit slapping a soldier with combat fatigue. As far as Jorge was concerned, that took more guts than bravery against the damnyankees.

"Hey, Sarge!" Gabriel Medwick called as Jorge sewed on his stripe. "How come I don't get promoted, too?" He sounded more than half joking-he and Jorge were buddies. He was tall and blond and handsome: the Freedom Party ideal. Jorge was none of the above. They got on well anyhow.

"Next time we need a guy, I reckon you will," Blackledge answered. "In the meantime, don't get your balls in an uproar. You can't buy more'n a couple of extra fucks on a PFC's pay, so if you get too horny to stand it in the meantime, just pull it out of your pants and beat it."

That made Jorge snicker, but it shut Gabe up like a gag-and turned him sunset-red, too. He was as innocent as if he'd been born into the previous century; Jorge wondered if he'd heard about the facts of life before the Army grabbed him. Girls would have fallen all over him, too. Hardly any of the girls in Georgia wanted to look at Jorge, much less do anything else. He wasn't a nigger, but he wasn't exactly white, either.

Georgia girls might not think he was good enough to lay them, but they thought he was plenty good enough to keep the damnyankees away. He crouched in a muddy foxhole on Floyd Street, in front of what had been the Usher House. He gathered it had been a local landmark before the war came this way. But U.S. artillery and air strikes had accomplished its fall. Half a dozen columns had stretched across its front. Now they-and the house timbers-were knocked every which way, like God's game of pick-up-sticks.

Orders were to defend Covington to the last man. Sergeant Blackledge had some lewd remarks about orders like that. Jorge understood why, too. The veteran noncom had no problems about killing Yankees. He'd done a lot of it. He was much less happy about the prospect of getting killed himself. Who wasn't?

But Jorge could also see why the powers that be issued those orders. U.S. forces were curling down from the northeast. Every town they took cut off one more route into and out of Atlanta. Every advance they made brought more roads and railroad lines into artillery range. If they kept coming, Atlanta would fall-or else they would just strangle it and let it wither on the vine. The Confederacy had to stop them somewhere. Why not Covington?

Rising screams in the air made Jorge duck down low and fold himself up as small as he could. He didn't need the shouts of "Incoming!" to know artillery was on the way.

Most of it came down in back of the positions his squad was holding. In a way, that was a relief. It meant there was less risk of a round's butchering him right this minute. But it left him worried about what was coming next. Were the damnyankees trying to cut the town off from reinforcements? If they were, did that mean they'd try to smash through soon?

"Barrels!" somebody shouted. Jorge could have done without such a prompt answer to his question.

If the U.S. soldiers thought they could waltz into Covington, they had to change their minds in a hurry. A rocket took out the lead U.S. barrel, and an antibarrel cannon set two more on fire. Confederate artillery pounded the poor damned infantrymen loping along with the barrels. The rain kept Jorge from seeing them, but he knew they'd be there. U.S. attacks worked about the same as the ones his side used.

Enemy fire eased. "Taught 'em a lesson that time," Gabe Medwick said.

"Sн." Jorge nodded. "Now what kind of lesson they gonna try and teach us?" He had a Sonoran accent, but his English was good.

"They've gotta know they can't drive us outa here as easy as they want to," his pal said.

"Sн," Jorge repeated, and he nodded again. "But they don't always gotta drive us out to make us move."

"Huh?" Medwick might be blond and brave and handsome, but there were good and cogent reasons why nobody had ever accused him of being bright. That was probably a big part of why Jorge had a stripe and he didn't.

Jorge didn't try to explain things to Gabe. Life was too short. If he was lucky, he was wrong, in which case the explanation would only be a waste of time anyhow. He just said, "Well, we find out," and let it go at that.

More U.S. artillery came down on Covington. A lot of it landed up toward the front line. Yes, the Yankees were annoyed that the defenders didn't lie down and quit. Before long, the shelling eased up again and a U.S. officer approached under a flag of truce. "What the hell you want?" Sergeant Blackledge yelled.

"You fought well," the lieutenant answered. "Your honor is satisfied. Throw down your weapons and surrender and you'll be treated well. If you keep fighting, though, you don't have a chance. We can't answer for what will happen to you then."

Blackledge had to wait for a Confederate officer to answer that; it wasn't his place. After a couple of minutes, somebody did: "We're ordered to hold this position. We don't reckon you can drive us out. If you want to try, come ahead."

The lieutenant in green-gray saluted. "You asked for it. Now you'll get it." He turned around and went back to his own lines.

"Hunker down, boys! Hunker down tight!" Sergeant Blackledge yelled. "We went and pissed the damnyankees off, an' they're gonna try and make us pay for it."

Jorge pulled his entrenching tool off his belt and went to work with it. What he could do to improve his foxhole wasn't much, though. What U.S. guns could do to wreck it was liable to be a lot more. And the enemy's cannon wasted little time before they started trying to knock Covington flat again. Jorge swore in English and Spanish when he heard gas shells gurgling in and people shouting out warnings. Gas wouldn't do as much in the rain as it would on a clear day, but he still had to put on his mask. Raindrops on the glass in front of his eyes made him seem to peer through streaked and splattered windows. Could he shoot straight? If he had to, he had to, that was all.

"Barrels!" That shout filled him with fear, because even with an automatic rifle he couldn't do anything about a barrel. He had to depend on others to take care of that part of the job-and if they didn't, he was dead even though he hadn't made any mistakes.

But they did. That antibarrel cannon knocked out two more U.S. machines in quick succession. The rest pulled back instead of charging into Covington.

"You can't answer," Sergeant Blackledge jeered. "You ain't got the balls to answer, you stinking Yankee cocksuckers." Talking through the mask, he sounded as if his voice came from the far side of the moon. That made him seem more scornful, not less.

No more barrels drew within range of the gun. U.S. infantry didn't swarm forward, either. Machine gunners and riflemen-and the artillery-made the Confederates keep their heads down. Some of the machine guns were captured C.S. weapons. Jorge knew the difference when they fired. His own side's guns spat far more rounds per minute than the ones the USA made.

Like Blackledge, he thought the U.S. lieutenant was trying to bluff the defenders of Covington out of a position from which they couldn't be forced. The truth turned out to be less simple. With all those shells landing close by, he didn't want to stick up his head and look around. But before long he had to-he could hear something going on to the south.

Because of what the rain was doing to the lenses on his gas mask, he couldn't see very far. But things weren't going well outside of town, though his ears told him more about that than his eyes could. Barrels were moving forward there-forward from the U.S. point of view, that is. They had plenty of artillery and small-arms support, too.

What kind of line did the CSA have south of Covington? Jorge didn't know. Up till now, he hadn't worried about it. He realized that maybe he should have. Heavy fire came from a little east of due south. After a while, it came from due south. After another little while, it came from west of due south.

You didn't have to be a professor with frizzy, uncombed hair and thick glasses to figure out what that meant. The damnyankees had tried to force a breakthrough there, and it looked as if they'd done it. The next interesting question was what they would do with it. They didn't keep anybody waiting long for an answer. Shells and machine-gun bullets came into Covington from the south as well as from the east and north. There was also firing from southwest of town, which wasn't good. If the defenders held their ground much longer, they'd be hanging on to a surrounded town. Those stories didn't have happy endings.

Other soldiers saw the same thing. They must have-otherwise, why would they start slipping out of Covington to the west? And why would Sergeant Blackledge watch them slip away without ordering them to stop or, just as likely, shooting them in the back?

"We gonna get orders to pull out, Sarge?" Gabriel Medwick asked.

"Beats the shit out of me," Blackledge answered. "If we don't, though, we'll spend the rest of the war in a POW camp…if the Yankees bother taking prisoners. If they don't, we'll be lucky if they waste the time to bury us."

Jorge didn't worry much about what happened to his body once he was done using it. But he wasn't-nowhere close. And dying to keep a third-rate town out of U.S. hands for a few extra minutes struck him as a waste of his precious and irreplaceable life. "When you gonna go, Sarge?" he called.

"Pretty damn quick," Blackledge said. "This place ain't worth throwin' myself down the crapper for. Unless somebody orders me to stay, I'm gone." And if somebody did order him, he might suddenly become hard of listening. It wouldn't surprise Jorge at all.

Before long, a worried-sounding lieutenant said, "We'd better pull back. If we don't, they're liable to cut us off."

"Would you believe it?" Sergeant Blackledge said. "Boy, if the officers can see it, you know it must be obvious."

Despite the noncom's sarcasm, Jorge felt better about pulling back with the lieutenant's permission. U.S. forces didn't make it easy. As soon as they realized the Confederates were withdrawing from Covington, men in green-gray pushed into the town from the northeast. Two mortar bombs burst closer to Jorge than he cared to think about. Fragments hissed and snarled past him. He felt a ghostly tug at his trouser leg, and looked down to discover a new tear. But he wasn't bleeding.

Things got more dangerous, not less, when he left Covington behind. The Yankees who'd broken through to the south lashed the fields with gunfire. Jorge was glad to scramble into a truck and get out of there much faster than he could have hoofed it.

Gabe Medwick sat across from him. "We got to hold 'em somewheres, or else we ain't gonna keep Atlanta," he said. He might not be bright, but he had no trouble seeing that. Who would?

"How can we hold, they keep pounding on us like this?" Jorge asked.

"Beats me." His buddy shrugged. "But if we don't, we won't just lose Atlanta. We'll lose the damn war."

You also didn't need to be bright to see that. Neither Jorge nor any of the other wet, weary soldiers in the truck tried to argue with him. They'd got out of Covington alive. Right now, that seemed more than enough.

F irst Sergeant Chester Martin looked at his company's new transport with a raised eyebrow. Command cars, halftracks, guerrilla-style pickup trucks with a machine gun mounted in the bed…anything that could move pretty fast and shoot up whatever got in the way. They were going to head east from Monroe, Georgia, till they ran into something tough enough to stop them…if they did. The Great War hadn't been like this at all. In those days, both sides measured advances in yards, not miles.

Lieutenant Boris Lavochkin, Martin's platoon commander, didn't remember the Great War or give a damn about it. Chester was supposed to ride herd on him, as he had with other young lieutenants. It wasn't easy with Lavochkin, who had a mind and a cold, hard will of his own.

Chester suspected Lavochkin wouldn't stay a second lieutenant long. He had higher rank written all over him-if he didn't stop a Confederate bullet. But one of the things that marked him for higher rank was a propensity for going where enemy bullets were thickest. Chester would have minded less had he not needed to go along.

"My platoon-listen up!" Lavochkin said. And it was his platoon, which surprised Chester Martin more than a little. "We're going to go out there, and we're going to smash up every goddamn thing we bump into. We're going to show these sorry clowns that their government and their troops aren't worth the paper they're printed on. And we're going to show them what war is like. If they wanted one so bad, let's see how much they want it when it's in their own backyard."

A savage baying rose from the men. Lavochkin was an unusual leader. He didn't make his soldiers love him. He made them hate the other side instead. And he left them no doubt that he felt the same way-or that he'd make them sorry if they were soft or hung back.

"Nobody's going to mind if you bring back goodies, either," he finished. "Lavochkin's Looters, that's us! They'll be howling from New Orleans to Richmond by the time we get through with 'em!"

That got another fierce cheer from the men. They liked the idea of making the CSA pay for the war. They liked the idea of lining their own pockets while they did it, too. Chester caught Captain Rhodes' eye. They shared bemused grins. Captain Rhodes was a pretty damn good company CO, but he didn't know what to make of the tiger now under his command, either.

The soldiers piled into their motley assortment of transport. Martin would have liked to get into a command car with Lieutenant Lavochkin, but Lavochkin didn't want him that close at hand. He climbed into a halftrack instead. Yes, it was the lieutenant's show, all right.

Nobody seemed to expect a U.S. force to head east from Monroe. Morrell's troops had been using the town as a pivot point for the move to isolate Atlanta. They held off C.S. attacks from the north and, that done, wheeled around Atlanta instead of trying to break in. But with the main city in Georgia still in Confederate hands, no one in butternut was ready for raiders to strike in any other direction.

Every time the U.S. soldiers spotted an auto or truck on the road, they opened up with their machine guns. What.50-caliber slugs did to soft-skinned vehicles wasn't pretty. What they did to softer-skinned human beings was even uglier. The shock from one of those thumb-sized bullets could kill even if the wound wouldn't have otherwise.

And when Lavochkin's Looters and the rest of Captain Rhodes' company rolled into High Shoals, the first hamlet east of Monroe…It would have been funny if it weren't so grim. The locals greeted them with waves and smiles. It didn't occur to them that soldiers from the other side could appear in their midst without warning.

Lieutenant Lavochkin showed them what a mistake they'd made. He sprayed bullets around as if afraid he'd have to pay for any he brought back to Monroe. Women and children and old men ran screaming, those who didn't fall. Glass exploded from the front windows of the block-long business district. And Lavochkin howled like a coyote.

When he opened up, everybody else followed his lead. Grenades flew. A soldier with a flamethrower leaped out of a halftrack and shot a jet of blazing jellied gasoline at the closest frame house. It went up right away.

High Shoals had to be too small to have a militia of its own. There were probably as many U.S. soldiers as locals in the little town. In moments, though, two or three people found old Tredegars or squirrel guns and started shooting back. Chester spotted a muzzle flash. "There!" he yelled, and pointed toward the window from which it came. A machine gun and several rifles answered, and no more bullets came from that direction.

The raiders hardly even slowed down. Leaving ruin and death and fire behind them, they went on along the road toward Good Hope, a town that was about to see its name turn into a lie. Good Hope might have been a little larger than High Shoals, but the people there were no more ready for an irruption of damnyankees than their fellow Georgians farther west had been.

In Good Hope, all the U.S. machine guns opened fire at once. People fell, shrieking and writhing and kicking. They looked like civilians anywhere in the USA. One of the women who caught a bullet was a nice-looking blonde. Waste of a natural resource, Chester thought, and fired his rifle at a man with a big belly and a bald head with a white fringe of hair. Another round caught him at the same time as Chester's. He didn't seem to know which way to fall, but fall he did.

When the shooting started, some people came rushing out of houses and shops to see what was going on. People always reacted like that. It was the worst thing they could do, but a good many did. They paid the price for mistimed curiosity, too.

Lavochkin shot up the filling station. That got a good blaze going in nothing flat. He whooped as flames shot skyward from the pumps. "See how you like it, you bastards!" he yelled. "Hope your whole town burns in hell!"

As in High Shoals, a few determined people in Good Hope tried to fight back. Bullets came from upstairs windows and from behind fences. Overwhelming U.S. firepower soon silenced the locals' rifles and pistols. But one alert and determined man drove his auto sideways across the street to try to keep the green-gray vehicles from going any deeper into Georgia. He paid for his courage with his life. A fusillade of bullets not only killed him but flattened three of the tires on the motorcar.

And in the end he delayed the U.S. column only a few minutes. A halftrack rumbled forward and shoved the hulk out of the way. "Good thing we didn't set the son of a bitch on fire," Chester said. "Then we would've had to look for a way around."

"Screw it," said the soldier sitting next to him. "We would've found one. C'mon, Sarge. You think these sorry civilian assholes can stop us?"

"Doesn't look like it-that's for sure," Chester answered.

East of Good Hope, the column bumped into a platoon of short, swarthy soldiers in uniforms of a khaki yellower than the usual Confederate butternut. Mexicans, Chester realized, probably out chasing Negro guerrillas.

Like the locals, the Mexican troops took a few fatal seconds too long to realize the approaching soldiers weren't on their side. Some of Francisco Josй's men waved and took a few steps toward the command cars and halftracks.

"Let 'em have it, boys!" Captain Rhodes sang out. Everybody who could get off a shot without endangering U.S. soldiers in front of him opened up. The Mexicans went down like wheat before the harvester. A few tried to run. A few tried to shoot back. They got off only a handful of rounds before they were mowed down, too. A U.S. corporal yowled and swore and clutched his shoulder. Chester thought he was the first U.S. casualty of the day.

Southeast of Good Hope lay Apalachee. Rhodes ordered the U.S. vehicles to stop about a mile outside of town. Lieutenant Lavochkin's broad features clouded over. "You're not going to let this place off easy, are you, sir?" he demanded. "That's not what we're here for."

"I know what we're here for, Lieutenant. Keep your shirt on." The company commander seemed to enjoy putting Lavochkin in his place. Chester Martin would have, too, but it wasn't always easy for a noncom. Rhodes went on, "Mortar crews-out! Let's give them a few rounds from nowhere before we pay our respects. That should make them good and glad to see us when we roll into town."

As the men with the light mortars set up and started lobbing bombs towards Apalachee, Lieutenant Lavochkin smiled a smile Chester wouldn't have wanted to see aimed at him. Lavochkin pointed it toward the enemy, where it belonged. He gave Rhodes the most respectful salute Martin had ever seen from him.

Apalachee might have been an ants' nest that somebody had kicked when Captain Rhodes' company came in. People were running every which way. Wounded men and women screamed. A few buildings had chunks bitten out of them.

A middle-aged man in a business suit ran toward the lead command car. The left arm of his jacket was pinned up: he had no arm to fill it. "Thank God you're here!" he yelled. "We got a call from Good Hope that there were Yankees loose, and then they went and mortared us."

"How about that?" Boris Lavochkin took aim with the command car's machine gun.

"Uh-oh," the Georgian said: the last phrase that ever passed his lips. He started to turn away, which did no good at all. Lavochkin's burst almost cut him in half.

People shrieked and fled. Bullets and grenades made sure they didn't get far. Wails filled the streets. Chester shot a man who was reaching into the waistband of his trousers. Did he have a pistol stashed there? Nobody except him would ever know now. The bullet from the Springfield blew off the top of his head.

"This hardly seems fair," said the private next to Chester. "Not like we're fighting soldiers or anything."

"They're all the enemy," Chester answered, working the bolt and chambering a new round. "If they can't find enough soldiers to keep us from getting at civilians, what does that say?"

"I bet it says we're winning." The private grinned. He had a captured C.S. automatic rifle, and lots of magazines for it. Unlike Chester, he hardly bothered aiming. He just sprayed bullets around. Some of them were bound to hit something.

"I bet you're right." Chester Martin shot a man who drove his auto into range at exactly the wrong time. The fellow might not even have known U.S. soldiers were loose in Apalachee. He didn't get much of a chance to find out, either.

Lieutenant Lavochkin shot up another gas station-he seemed to enjoy that. This one rewarded him with a spectacular fireball. Had he been closer when he opened up, the flames might have swallowed his command car.

"Whoa!" shouted the kid next to Chester. "Hot stuff!"

"Yeah," Chester said. "We're hot stuff, and the Confederates can't do much about it, doesn't look like. If we had enough gas, I bet we could make it damn near to the ocean."

"That'd be something," the private said.

But things stopped being so much fun not long after they got out of Apalachee. An enemy barrel blew a command car into twisted, burning sheet metal. U.S. soldiers leaped out of the vehicles that carried them and stalked the metal monster. It wasn't a new model, but it was plenty tough enough. It wrecked another couple of vehicles and shot several soldiers before somebody clambered up on top of it and threw grenades into the turret. That settled that: the barrel brewed up.

"Fools," Boris Lavochkin said scornfully. "They didn't have infantry along to protect it."

"They probably didn't have any to spare," Chester said. Lavochkin thought that over. Then he smiled again. Any soldier in butternut who saw that smile would have wanted to surrender on the spot.

F lora 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.

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.