In At the Death

V

Irving Morrell posed for U.S. photographers in front of the Atlanta city hall. New Year's Day for 1944 was chilly and overcast, with the wet-dust smell of rain in the air. Morrell didn't care. He would have posed for these pictures in the middle of a deluge.

"A year ago, we were still mopping up in Pittsburgh," he said. "Now we're here. We've done pretty damn well for ourselves, by God."

"Did you expect the Confederates to evacuate the city?" a reporter asked.

"They were going to lose it either way," Morrell answered. "The question was, would they lose Atlanta, or would they lose Atlanta and the army that was holding it? They saved a good part of the army by pulling out."

They'd saved more than he wished they would have. They'd started the evacuation at night, and bad weather had kept U.S. fighter-bombers on the ground, so their columns hadn't got the pounding they should have. Patton's army was still a going concern, somewhere over near the Alabama border. Morrell didn't know what his C.S. opposite number would do with the men he had left, but he figured Patton would think of something.

A rifle banged, not too far away. Holdouts and snipers still prowled Atlanta. The Confederates had planted lots of mines. They'd attached booby traps to everything from fountain pens to toilet seats. The Stars and Stripes might fly here, but the town wasn't safe, and wouldn't be for quite a while.

"How much does this victory mean?" another reporter called.

"Well, the enemy will have a lot tougher time fighting the war without Atlanta than he would have with it," Morrell said. "It was a factory town and a transport hub, and now he'll have to do without all that."

The reporter waved at the wreckage. "Doesn't look like he could have done too much with it even when he had it."

"You'd be amazed," Morrell said. "We've seen how places that look beaten to death can go right on producing till they finally change hands."

A plaque on the bullet-pocked terra-cotta wall behind him said ATLANTA RESURGENS, 1847–1927. The city hall had gone up in the brief spell of prosperity that followed the CSA's devastating postwar inflation. Then the worldwide economic collapse sucked down the Confederacy along with almost everybody else, and paved the way for the rise of Jake Featherston.

"What do you aim to do now, General?" another reporter inquired.

By his earnest voice and expectant look, he really expected Morrell to answer in detail. Some reporters never did figure out that their right to a good story stopped where it began to endanger U.S. soldiers. As gently as he could, Morrell said, "Well, I don't want General Patton to read about it in tomorrow's paper, you know."

"Will you drive west into Alabama or east toward the Atlantic?" This fellow was stubborn or stupid or both.

"Yes," Morrell answered. The reporter blinked. Some of his colleagues, quicker on the uptake, grinned. Morrell said, "That's about all, boys. Happy New Year."

A few more flashbulbs popped. He didn't mind that-the Confederates already knew he was in Atlanta. Bodyguards closed up around him as the press conference ended. He didn't care for the guards, but he didn't care to get killed, either. Enemy snipers would have loved to get him in their sights.

The State Capitol wasn't far away. A lot of people on his staff had wanted him to make his headquarters there. He said no, and kept saying no till they believed him. Demolition men were still going through the building, which looked like a scaled-down version of the Confederate Capitol in Richmond-at the moment, including bomb damage. They'd already found a couple of dozen booby traps there…and how many had they missed?

A small, none too fancy house a couple of blocks away seemed a better, safer bet. The demolition experts had swept it, too, and found it clear. The Confederates didn't have enough ordnance or time to booby-trap everything, which came as a relief.

Morrell had other things to worry about, plenty of them. Sitting on his desk when he got back were photos of wrecked new-model C.S. barrels. By all reports, they were half a step ahead of the U.S. machines that had dominated the battlefield for most of 1943. How far could that race go? Would there be land dreadnoughts one day, with twelve-inch guns and armor thick enough to stop twelve-inch shells? You could build one now. What you couldn't build was an engine that would make it go faster than a slow walk-if it moved at all.

He was glad the reporters hadn't asked him anything about the new enemy machines. He wouldn't have had much of an answer for them, except to note that the Confederates didn't seem to have very many. How long would that last? Hit Birmingham harder by air, he wrote. Notes helped him remember the million things he had to do. They were already dropping everything but the kitchen sink on the town. Have to throw that in, too.

A large explosion stunned the air and his ears. He ducked, not that that would have done him any good had the blast been closer. He hauled out his notebook again. Hit Huntsville, too, he scribbled. Intelligence said the Confederates made their rockets there. Not many of them had crashed down on Atlanta yet, but how long would that last? Not long enough-he was dismally sure of it.

He was also sure he couldn't do a damn thing about the rockets except smash the factories that made them and the launchers that sent them on their way. Once they got airborne, there was no defense.

If Featherston had had them from the beginning…That would have been very bad. He was content to leave the thought there. Neither side had all of what it needed when the war began. Part of what the war was about was finding out what you needed. He'd heard rumors that higher-ups in Philadelphia were all excited about some fancy new explosive. Maybe that would end up meaning something, and maybe it wouldn't. They'd throw money and talent at it and see what happened next. What else could they do?

Another big boom rattled his nerves. He didn't know if the enemy was working on super-duper explosives. The ordinary sort people had been using since the end of the last century seemed plenty good enough.

Now he had to figure out what to do himself. The reporter had given him his two basic choices: he could keep his original plan of driving to the sea, or swing west against Birmingham and Huntsville. If the War Department ordered him to go west, he would, he decided. Otherwise, he wanted to cut the Confederacy in half. If the offensive in Virginia came to something, where would Jake Featherston run then? And could the Confederate West stand on its own for long without orders from Richmond-and without Featherston's ferocious energy available to stiffen spines? Finding out would be interesting.

An aide stuck his head into the bedroom Morrell was using for an office. "Sir, the mayor of Atlanta would like to speak to you."

"He would, would he?" Morrell said. "So he didn't run away with the Confederate army?"

"I guess not, sir."

"Well, send him in, then. Let's see what he's got to say for himself."

The mayor had gray hair and was skinny as a rail. He introduced himself as Andrew Crowley. When Morrell asked him why he hadn't fled, he answered, "I wanted to protect my people, so I chose to remain." He threw back his head, a gesture straight out of a corny movie.

"That's nice," Morrell said. "How many Negroes are you protecting?"

"I was speaking of Confederate citizens, sir," the mayor answered, "not of Confederate residents." One word made all the difference in the world.

"They all look like people to me," Morrell said.

"You don't understand the way we do things in this country," Crowley told him.

"Maybe I don't," Morrell allowed. "Of course, if you hadn't invaded mine I wouldn't be down here now. Since I am, I have to tell you that murder looks a lot like murder, no matter who you do it to. I haven't got a whole hell of a lot of sympathy for you, Mr. Mayor."

"We did what the government in Richmond told us to do," Crowley insisted. "Don't see how you can go and flabble about that."

"Yeah, sure. Now tell me you never once yelled, 'Freedom!' in all your born days."

Andrew Crowley's hollow cheeks turned red. "I-" He stopped. Maybe he'd been about to deny it. But how many people could give him the lie-to say nothing of the horse laugh-if he tried?

"Here's what's going on," Morrell told him. "We'll try to keep your people from starving. We'll try to keep them from coming down sick. If they stay quiet, we'll leave 'em alone. If they don't, we'll make 'em sorry. Shoot at a U.S. soldier, and we'll take twenty hostages and shoot 'em. Kill any U.S. soldier, and we'll take fifty hostages and shoot 'em. Kill a Negro, and it's the same price. Got that? Is it plain enough for you?"

"You're as cruel and hard as the government warned us you would be," Crowley whined.

"Tough beans, Mr. Mayor." Was Morrell enjoying himself playing the tyrant? As a matter of fact, he was. "Your soldiers were every bit as sweet in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Only difference now is, the shoe's on the other foot. Hope you like the way it feels."

"You've got to be kidding," the mayor said. "Fifty people for a worthless nigger? If that's not a joke, it ought to be."

"Chances are you don't need to worry about it much," Morrell said. "I bet you've taken most of yours off to be killed by now. Isn't that right?"

"Even if it is, the idea's ridic-" Crowley broke off several words too late. He went red again, this time at what he'd admitted by letting his mouth run free.

"Get out of my sight," Morrell said. "I don't think we've got much to say to each other. You wouldn't like it if I told you what I thought. Just get out before I chuck you in the calaboose."

Crowley got. This probably wasn't the interview he'd wanted to have. Morrell didn't intend to lose any sleep about that. He went into the bathroom and washed his hands. He wasn't Pilate, turning his back on the truth. He knew it when he ran into it, and its touch disgusted him.

He was glad he was only a soldier. He didn't have to try to figure out how to administer captured C.S. territory on any long-term basis. All he had to worry about was making sure the locals didn't give his men too much trouble. The War Department didn't care if he got rough doing it. That suited him fine, because the little he'd seen south of the Ohio inclined him to be gentle.

A long lifetime earlier, this had been part of the country he'd grown up in, the country he served. It wasn't any more. Nothing could be plainer than that. Attitudes toward the USA, attitudes toward Negroes…

Jake Featherston hadn't been in the saddle here for even ten years. But the hatreds he'd exploited and built on had been here long before he used them to such deadly effect. You couldn't create those out of nothing. Without them, the black rebellions during the Great War wouldn't have had such lasting and terrible aftereffects. Did whites here have guilty consciences? They had plenty to feel guilty about, that was for sure. If they didn't, the CSA's Negroes never would have launched uprisings almost surely doomed to fail.

Will the Confederates go on fighting for the next eighty years even if we wipe their country off the map? That was Morrell's greatest dread, and the greatest dread of everyone in the USA who thought about such things at all. The Mormons were bad. Canada gave every sign of being worse. But the Confederate States? If these people stayed determined, they could be an oozing sore for a long, long time.

If the United States didn't wipe their country off the map, wouldn't they start another big war in a generation? And wouldn't that be even worse?

G eorge Enos, Jr., was a shellback. You couldn't get to the Sandwich Islands from Boston by sea without becoming a shellback. That gave him the privilege of harrying the poor, hapless polliwogs aboard the Josephus Daniels. The sailors who hadn't crossed the Equator before paid for the honor of swearing allegiance to King Neptune.

The poor polliwogs got sprayed with saltwater from the hoses. Some of them were painted here and there with iodine. The cook who doubled as a barber cut their hair in strange and appalling ways. One rating who was inordinately proud of his handlebar mustache got half of it hacked off. Anyone who squawked got thumped, too.

Sid Becker, a chief petty officer who might have been the hairiest man George had ever seen, played King Neptune. His mermaids had mop tops for wigs, inflated condoms for breasts, and some kind of padding to give them hips. They also had hellacious five o'clock shadows, no doubt to emulate their sovereign.

Polliwogs had to kiss each stubbly mermaid and then kiss King Neptune's right big toe, which was as hairy as the rest of him. George and the other shellbacks whooped as they gave out what they'd taken when they were initiated into the fraternity of the sea.

Sweetest of all, as far as George was concerned, was that Myron Zwilling was a polliwog. King Neptune didn't respect rank or anything else; that was a big part of what made the ceremony what it was. The exec did have the sense to know he couldn't complain about anything that happened to him.

He didn't have the sense to know he ought to look as if he were enjoying it. He went through it with the air of a man who had no choice. George wondered if he was noting who did what to him for payback later. He wouldn't have been surprised-that seemed like Zwilling's style.

After crossing the Equator, the ship got back to work: keeping Argentine beef and grain from getting across the Atlantic, and keeping the Royal Navy from interfering. She could do the first on her own. For the second, she had help from a pair of escort carriers: the Irish Sea and the Oahu. The limeys had carriers in these waters, too. If one side's airplanes found the other…there would be a big brawl.

George was glad Captain Carsten gave the crews so much gunnery practice. The more time he put in as a loader, the faster he got. The more shells the twin 40mm mount threw, the better the chance it had of knocking down an enemy Swordfish or Spitfire before the airplane could perpetrate whatever atrocity its crew had in mind. Maybe even more than the other sailors in the gun crew, George liked that idea. They hadn't been attacked from the air when they couldn't shoot back. He had.

Having their own airplanes along enormously extended how far they could see. A wireless call sent the flotilla steaming south after a convoy more than a hundred miles away. The enemy freighters and their escorts would have got away if the baby flattops hadn't joined the destroyers and cruisers in the South Atlantic.

"Keep an eye peeled for subs," Swede Jorgenson warned as the Josephus Daniels picked up speed. The new gun chief added, "Be just like the limeys to have a couple traveling with the convoy just to fuck us over."

Even though the destroyer escort had its fancy new hydrophone, that struck George as good advice. He scanned the blue water for a telltale periscope. Maybe it wouldn't help, but it sure couldn't hurt. He didn't want to die the way his father had. He didn't want to die at all, but especially not that way.

Fighters and dive bombers streaked off the escort carriers. These new carriers didn't seem to have torpedo airplanes aboard. Scuttlebutt said the brass had decided they were sitting ducks, and dive bombers could do the job better.

Reaching the enemy convoy took a while. The Oahu and the Irish Sea slowed down the rest of the U.S. ships. The baby flattops were no faster than any of their predecessors. "Snails with flight decks," Jorgenson said scornfully.

"Yeah, but they're our snails with flight decks," George answered, and the crew chief grinned at him.

"Now hear this! Now hear this!" Lieutenant Zwilling said over the PA system. "Our aircraft report one enemy destroyer sinking and one on fire. The convoy is breaking up in flight. That is all." That was plenty to set sailors slapping one another on the back.

They steamed on. Then the Josephus Daniels and another destroyer escort pulled away from the ships that still stayed with the airplane carriers. "Something's going on," Jorgenson said.

"Do you think so, Sherlock?" Marco Angelucci said. The new shell-jerker laughed to take any sting from the words.

"Wish the exec or the skipper would tell us what," George said.

He'd hardly spoken before Zwilling came on the PA again. "We are in pursuit of a pair of enemy freighters that broke north from the pack of ships in the convoy. Our purpose is the capture or incapacitation of these vessels."

"Boy, the skipper wouldn't talk like that," Jorgenson said.

"No kidding," George said. "He'd say something like, 'We're after two of the bastards who're trying to get away. We'll take 'em or sink 'em.'"

The gun chief nodded. "Wonder how come the exec doesn't talk like that."

"'Cause he talks through his ass instead of his mouth?" Angelucci suggested.

When the ship swung farther east, George wondered why. Was a U.S. airplane shadowing the freighters and wirelessing their moves back to the Josephus Daniels? That was the only thing that made sense to him.

Then he let out a catamount whoop. His finger stabbed toward the horizon. "Smoke!" he yelled.

Before long, the freighter making the smoke spotted the exhaust spewing from the Josephus Daniels' funnels. The other ship sheered away, trying to run. The destroyer escort was slow for a warship, but had no trouble overhauling her. The four-incher in the forward turret boomed, sending a shot across her bow. A moment later, the Argentine flag came down from the staff at the stern. Sailors along the rail waved whatever white rags and scraps of cloth they could get their hands on.

"We've got her!" Sam Carsten's voice boomed from the PA. "We're going to put a prize crew aboard her and take her back up to the USA. Whatever she's carrying, better we have it than the damn limeys."

"A prize crew?" Jorgenson laughed out loud. "That's something right out of pirate-ship days. I wonder if the guys still get a share of what she's worth."

"Is that what they used to do?" George asked. "How do you know about that old-time stuff?"

"There's this limey writer, or I guess maybe he's an Irishman. Anyway, his name's C. S. O'Brian. He writes about fighting Napoleon like you're there. You think swabbies got it bad now, you oughta read what it was like way back when."

"Loan me one," George said, and Jorgenson nodded.

Lieutenant Zwilling came down from the bridge to choose the prize crew. A chief came with him, to serve out submachine guns to the men he picked. If the sailors on the freighter-her name was the Sol del Sud-tried getting cute, they'd be sorry.

"All old shellbacks," George remarked as the sailors crossed to the Sol del Sud.

"You noticed that, too, eh?" Jorgenson said. Now George nodded. On one level, it made sense; men who'd crossed the Equator before likely had more experience than men who'd been polliwogs only a few days earlier. But wasn't the exec taking off men who'd given him a hard time when he was getting initiated? It sure looked that way to George.

As soon as the boats came back from the captured freighter, the Josephus Daniels hurried off after the other ship she'd been assigned. "Damn lumbering scow couldn't've got far," George said.

She hadn't. Before long, smoke came over the southeastern horizon. Again, the destroyer escort had no trouble running her down. Again, a shot crashed across her bow. She was the Tierra del Fuego, by looks a near twin to the Sol del Sud, but her captain seemed more stubborn. Another shot from the four-incher thundered past her, this one just in front of her bridge. "Next one we'll hit you with!" Carsten thundered over the PA. The Tierra del Fuego struck her colors.

Lieutenant Zwilling pointed at George. "Enos, go aboard her," he snapped. The CPO handed George a tommy gun and several drums of ammo.

George said the only thing he could: "Aye aye, sir." Maybe they'd take her back to Boston. He could hope so, anyhow. But yeah, the exec was clearing the destroyer escort of the people who'd had too good a time when he suffered with the other polliwogs.

One of the rubber-breasted mermaids and King Neptune himself were also in the prize crew: the CPO held command. When George told Becker what was going on, he shrugged and said, "I bet you're right, but I don't care. Zwilling ain't as smart as he thinks he is. I bring this baby in all right, maybe I go up through the hawse hole like the skipper. Only chance I got-I sure as hell can't pass the goddamn exam. Lord knows I've tried."

When George got up on the Tierra del Fuego's deck, he eyed the sailors standing there. Would they give trouble, or were they just glad his ship hadn't sunk them? "Any of you guys speak English?" he asked.

Two men raised their hands-the skipper and a fellow with a lightning-bolt patch on his sleeve. The wireless man, George thought. "I do," the fellow said.

"Good. Tell your pals nobody's gonna hurt 'em as long as they do what we say," George said. "They'll be POWs in the USA, and they'll go home after the war." The wireless man rattled off some Spanish. A moment later, one of the sailors from the Josephus Daniels knocked him down and yelled at him, also in Spanish.

"Any of these assholes says anything with puto or chinga or maricуn in it, beat the shit out of him, 'cause he's cussin' you," the sailor said. "They ain't gonna dick around with us." He spoke in Spanish to the would-be interpreter, then came back to English: "I told him to try it again, only not to get cute this time."

A couple of men from the destroyer escort's black gang went below to look at the engines. One of them came back up shaking his head. "They're oil-burners-she'd make even more smoke if they weren't," he reported. "But they're about as old as they can be and still burn oil. Ain't no surprise she couldn't outrun us."

Chief Becker took charge of the pistol and the couple of shotguns in the Tierra del Fuego's arms locker. "Don't look like she ever had anything more," he said. "Enough to try and put down a mutiny, and that's about it."

At his orders, the freighter's sailors pointed her bow north and got her up to about eight knots. She lumbered along. George would rather have gone north aboard a fishing boat. It would have bounced worse, but it would have gone over the waves instead of trying to slice through them. He didn't look forward to riding out a gale in this wallowing tub.

Before long, they recrossed the Equator. Nobody asked whether any of the Argentine sailors were polliwogs. George didn't know whether the greasers talked about King Neptune. All he knew was that he had to keep an eye on them.

Day followed day. The chow on the Tierra del Fuego was different from what he would have eaten on the Josephus Daniels-not really better or worse, but different. He tried yerba matй tea. The stuff wasn't bad: better than he expected. It had more kick than regular tea, not so much as coffee.

If a British or Confederate seaplane spotted them flying the Stars and Stripes, they were history. George tried not to think about that. He blessed the fogs and mists that shrouded the Tierra del Fuego as she got farther north. They made navigation harder, but she was going by the seat of her pants anyway. When she came closer to the U.S. coast, no doubt she'd get an escort for the last leg of her journey. She'd need one, too.

In the meantime…In the meantime, it was just the ship and the sea. For George, that wasn't so bad.

R ichmond. The front was Richmond. In the bunker under the ruins of the Gray House, Jake Featherston shook his fist toward the north and cursed a God Who seemed to be cursing him and the CSA.

Ever since the war started, people were saying that whoever could do two big things at once would win. The Confederacy had never managed it. Neither had the damnyankees…till now. They were still going great guns down in Georgia. And they were pushing out of the Wilderness and heading straight for the Confederate capital.

U.S. artillery hadn't fallen on Richmond yet. The ground between the Rapidan and the capital was likely the most heavily fortified stretch on the face of the earth. If the Yankees came, they had to come that way. Both sides knew it. Whatever artifice could do to stop them, artifice had done.

But along with artifice, the Confederate States needed men-men they didn't have. Too many soldiers had died in the Great War. Too many had died or gone off into captivity in Ohio and especially Pennsylvania this time around. And too many were doing everything they could to fight the USA farther south. That left a lot of the bunkers and gun emplacements between the Rapidan and Richmond nothing more than…what did the Bible call them? Whited sepulchers, that was it.

Featherston jumped when the telephone rang. He picked it up. "Yeah?" he said harshly.

"Lord Halifax on the line, sir," Lulu said.

"Put him through," Jake said at once. Was a rat deserting the sinking ship?

"Mr. President?" That plummy British accent.

"What's up?" Jake asked the ambassador. If Halifax was bailing out, he'd put a flea in the bastard's ear, all right.

"I have some papers you may perhaps be interested in seeing," the British ambassador said.

"Well, bring 'em on over, then," Jake told him. He was so relieved that Halifax was staying put, he couldn't refuse him anything.

When Halifax got there, it gave Jake an excuse to throw out Nathan Bedford Forrest III. He didn't want to listen to the chief of the General Staff anyhow; Forrest was too gloomy to be worth listening to. By the noises he made, he feared Richmond would fall. Even if that was true, Jake didn't want to hear it. So he bundled Forrest out and brought in the ambassador instead. "What's up?" he asked again.

Lord Halifax opened his fancy attachй case: buttery leather polished till it gleamed, with clasps that looked like real gold. He pulled out a document held together with a fat paper clip. "Here you are, Mr. President. I honestly didn't believe they would turn these loose, but they did. You must have made an even more favorable impression on the Prime Minister than I thought. He does admire a…purposeful man, no doubt of that."

Jake Featherston hardly heard him. He was flipping through the papers. He didn't understand more than one word in ten, and he didn't understand any of the math. But he knew the word uranium when he saw it. And he knew about element 94, even if the limeys were calling it churchillium and not jovium.

"Did your scientists name it after Winston because it's supposed to make a big boom when it goes off?" he asked with a sly grin.

"Officially, it's a compliment to his office. We call 93 mosleyium after the Minister of War," Halifax replied. "Unofficially…well, I shouldn't wonder if you're right."

"I'll get this to our people who can use it just as quick as I can," Jake said. "And I want you to thank Winston for me from the bottom of my heart. What he did here, it means a lot to the country and it means a lot to me personally."

"He found your point about the need to continue the struggle against the United States by any means necessary alarmingly persuasive," Lord Halifax said. "If you fail, Britain is most dismally surrounded by the Yankees and the Huns."

"How close are you to getting one of these bombs?" Jake asked.

The British ambassador shrugged narrow shoulders. "Haven't the foggiest, I'm afraid. Were I not ambassador to a country also taking part in this research, I doubt I should know there is any such thing as uranium."

"Mm-makes sense," Featherston allowed. That was the only reason the Confederate envoys in London and Paris knew about uranium and what you might be able to do with it. But they hadn't been able to pry anything out of England or France. He damn well had.

"Will you be able to hold Richmond, sir?" Halifax asked.

"Hope so," Jake said. "But even if we don't, we'll keep fighting. As long as we've got a puncher's chance, we'll hang on. And with this"-he tapped the document with a nicotine-stained forefinger-"we do."

"Very good," the British ambassador said. But he meant it the way limeys did, so it might have been all right. He didn't mean it was very good, just that he'd heard. "I shall convey your determination to London. Bombing is picking up there, I'm afraid, though it's not so bad as here."

"Damn squareheads have airfields closer to you now," Jake said. Lord Halifax looked like a man who'd just sat on a tack but was too polite to mention it. Featherston knew why. He hadn't been…diplomatic. Well, too bad, he thought. He'd told the truth, hadn't he? He'd told the truth all the time while he rose-it looked that way to him, anyhow. He didn't see any point to stopping now.

And he was telling the truth again. The Kaiser's forces had bundled the British out of northwestern Germany, out of Holland, and back into Belgium. They were threatening Ypres-universally pronounced Wipers by English-speakers-again, as they had in the Great War. When it fell then, it was a sign that the Entente couldn't hold on against the Central Powers. If it fell this time around, it would be another verse of the same song.

"We are doing everything in our power to deny them the use of those air bases," Halifax said.

"Sure, sure." Jake nodded and smiled. He probably should have kept his mouth shut even if he did tell the truth. Didn't he owe Halifax that much? The ambassador-and his government, of course-had come through for the Confederacy in a big way. "Between us, your Lordship, sir, we'll lick the bad guys yet."

"Between us, yes. And the French and the Russians will have something to say about it as well." Lord Halifax grimaced again. "I worry about the Russians. Failure the last time around cost them the Ukraine and Finland and Poland and the Baltic states and a Red insurrection at least as unpleasant as yours." He was being diplomatic; the Tsar's fight against the Reds had been bigger and bloodier than anything the CSA went through. After a pause to light a Habana, he continued, "They're wavering again, I fear. When they couldn't beat the Germans, or even the Austrians…If they go out, heaven only knows what sort of upheaval will follow."

"Hell with that," Featherston said. "If they go out now, you and France get the shaft. The Kaiser can pull everything away from the east and shoot it all at you."

"Quite." British reserve had its uses. Lord Halifax got as much mileage from one soft-spoken word as Jake would have from five minutes of cussing. He rose and held out an elegantly manicured hand. "Always a pleasure, Mr. President. I do hope the document proves valuable to you."

"I'm sure it will be." I'll know just how valuable by this time tomorrow, Jake thought as he shook it. Aloud, he went on, "England's always been the best friend the Confederacy has. We know that, and we never forget it."

One more time, the truth. English recognition in 1862, English forcing of the U.S. blockade, had ensured the Confederacy's independence. English help during the Second Mexican War made sure the CSA got to keep Chihuahua and Sonora, even if an invasion of the USA from Canada came to grief in Montana.

Well, the Confederate States of America paid their debts to the UK in 1914. This time, no debt was involved: both countries wanted revenge against the enemies who'd beaten them. And remembering alliances past didn't mean you had to do anything but remember. Jake understood that perfectly well. Did Lord Halifax? No doubt; he was twisty as a snake.

As soon as the British ambassador bowed his way out, Featherston summoned a courier. The bright young lieutenant saluted. "Freedom!"

"Freedom!" Jake echoed. He handed the man the British document. "Get these pages photographed. As soon as you've done that, haul ass to Washington University in Lexington and deliver them to Professor FitzBelmont."

"Yes, sir." The courier hesitated. "If it's such a tearing hurry, sir, why wait for the photography?"

"Because this has to get through," Jake answered. "Even if something happens to you"-even if the damnyankees roast you like a barbecued porker-"FitzBelmont has to get it. So we make a copy before we send you off."

"All right, sir. I understand."

"Good. Tell the fellow in the photo lab to call me as soon as he does what he needs to do." With this document, Jake intended to take no chances whatever.

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said again. He saluted and hurried away. He didn't even need to leave the armored underground compartment to find a photographic technician. Anything that had to do with running a country, you could do here.

Now he would have some idea of what was going on in Lexington. So would the man who photographed the pages. That worried Jake less than it would have a few months before. If one of them reported to the damnyankees…well, so what? The United States already knew the Confederate States were working on a uranium bomb. The United States knew where, too. Otherwise, they wouldn't have started pounding the crap out of Lexington. If they knew the limeys were helping out, how did that change things? Didn't it just give them a brand-new worry? It looked that way to Jake Featherston.

The courier hadn't been gone more than a couple of minutes before the telephone on his desk jangled again. He eyed it the way a man in the woods might eye a rattler with a buzzing tail. Unlike a man in the woods, he couldn't walk away from it no matter how much he wished he could.

He picked it up. "Featherston here…What the hell do you mean, they're over the North Anna?" He'd expected bad news-that was the kind that got to the President in a hurry. He hadn't expected news this bad, though. "How the devil did they do that? Which dumb-shit general had his thumb up his ass to let 'em?…Jesus Christ, they can't have that much armor-can they?" He sounded worried even to himself. That was no good. You needed to sound calm, even-no, especially-when you weren't.

He gave orders to try to stem the green-gray tide. The damnyankees couldn't shell Richmond yet, no, but it wouldn't be long if they kept going like this.

"Over the North Anna. Son of a bitch," Jake muttered after he hung up. He started looking at the maps on his office walls in a new way. Richmond really might fall. And if it did, he needed somewhere else to go, a place from which he could keep fighting till FitzBelmont and the rest of the high foreheads came through.

He'd never thought it would come to this. He'd figured the United States would roll over and show their yellow belly when he cut them in half. When that didn't happen, he'd been sure losing Pittsburgh would make them quit. When they didn't lose Pittsburgh…About then, he realized he had a tiger by the tail.

Can't let go, he thought. And the Yankees had a tiger by the tail, too. If they didn't know that yet, they would. He nodded to himself. They sure as hell would. No matter where he had to do it from, he'd make them pay for every single thing they'd done to his country. He'd make them pay plenty.

A rmstrong Grimes was happy as a clam in a country where they'd never heard of chowder. Along with the rest of his platoon, he tramped east toward the Savannah River and the sea. They'd told Lieutenant Bassler the Confederates didn't have a whole hell of a lot in front of them. So far, they looked to be right.

"Keep your eyes peeled, though," he warned the men in his squad. "Don't want to get your nuts shot off doing something dumb."

"Shit, Sarge, I don't want to get my nuts shot off doing something smart," Squidface said.

"You've got a point," Armstrong said. "Now put a hat on it."

The PFC flipped him off. He gave back the bird. When he took over the squad, the men had been wary about him. They'd come through a lot together, and they weren't about to trust somebody from the repple-depple till they saw he deserved it. By now, Armstrong had paid his dues and then some. He was part of the life of the platoon, somebody to razz and somebody to put them through their paces. They followed his orders not just because he had three stripes but because they'd seen he had a halfway decent notion of what he was doing.

Up ahead, a Confederate machine gun chattered. That tearing-sailcloth noise sobered people in a hurry. Men kind of hunched down to make themselves into smaller targets. They moved away from one another to make a burst less likely to take out several of them at once. Armstrong did all that himself, too, before he even thought about it. He knew his trade, the same as the other guys did.

Most of them did, anyhow. A couple were new men fresh out of the replacement depot. A tall, gangly kid called Herk had taken Whitey's place. He stared around in mild surprise when the soldiers around him spread out. Then a bullet cracked past his head. He knew what that meant, all right, and awkwardly dropped to the ground.

"You gotta move faster'n that, man," Armstrong told him. "Otherwise, you'll damn well stop one, and I ain't got time to nursemaid you."

"I'll try, Sarge." Herk was willing. He was just unskilled.

"Sure." Armstrong swallowed a sigh. He'd hit it, all right-he couldn't nursemaid the replacements. In a perfect world, they would have joined the unit when it got taken out of the line so the veterans got to know them a little bit. Here, it was baptism by total immersion. Experienced soldiers shied away from the new guys. Raw men didn't just get themselves maimed and killed; they also brought trouble down on their comrades, because the Confederates who aimed at them also hit guys near them.

If they made it through a couple of weeks of action, they learned the ropes and turned into decent soldiers. A lot of them didn't, though. Not too many Confederates stood in front of Armstrong's platoon right now. The ones who did knew their business. The only new Confederate soldiers were the ones who'd been too young for conscription when the war started.

From the ground, Herk asked, "We gonna go after that machine gun, Sarge?"

"Not if we can find a barrel or a mortar team to do it for us," Armstrong answered. "We want to lick these fuckers, yeah, but we don't want to pay too much while we're doing it."

"Now you hope the lieutenant feels the same way," Squidface said, his grin half sly, half resigned.

"Bet your ass I do." Armstrong could hope, anyhow. Lieutenant Bassler had pretty good sense…as far as lieutenants went. He didn't think he had an infinite supply of soldiers to do whatever he thought needed doing, and he didn't send his men anywhere he wouldn't go himself. Things could have been worse.

And they rapidly got that way. That rising howl in the air wasn't artillery. It was even worse. "Screaming meemies!" Squidface yelled while Armstrong was still sucking in wind to shout the same thing. Everybody who wasn't already on the ground threw himself flat. Armstrong got out his entrenching tool and started digging like a madman.

The salvo of rockets shrieked home before he'd thrown up more than a shovelful of red dirt. A couple of dozen of them slammed down within a few seconds. Armstrong got picked up and thrown around while chunks of jagged iron whined through the air. Whether he lived or died wasn't up to him; it was just luck one way or the other. He hated that more than anything else about combat. Sometimes whether you were a good soldier didn't matter worth a dime.

When he came down and stopped rolling, he looked around. There was Herk, blood running from his nose but otherwise seeming all right. There was Squidface, who hadn't even lost his cigarette. And…there was Zeb the Hat's head, attached to one shoulder and not much else. The rest of what was probably his body lay thirty yards away.

Herk got a good look at that and lost his breakfast. Armstrong had already seen a lot of bad things, but his stomach wanted to empty out, too. Squidface's lips silently shaped the word Fuck. Or maybe he said it out loud; Armstrong slowly realized he wasn't hearing very much.

Squidface said something else. Armstrong shrugged and pointed to his ears. The PFC nodded. He came over and bellowed, "He was a hell of a good guy."

"Yeah," Armstrong shouted back. "He was."

That was about as much of a memorial as Zeb the Hat got. Armstrong dragged his two pieces together so Graves Registration would know they went with each other. The surviving soldiers helped themselves to Zeb's ammunition and ration cans-he didn't need them any more. Armstrong took out his wallet and found his real name was Zebulon Fischer, and that he was from Beloit, Wisconsin. The billfold held only a couple of bucks. Had he had a real roll, Armstrong would have sent that to his next of kin.

More shrieks in the air announced another salvo of rockets. Armstrong went flat again. These screaming meemies came down off to the left, not all around him. He had more of a chance to dig in, and used it. The Confederates in this part of Georgia didn't seem inclined to let U.S. soldiers come any farther.

After the rockets slammed down, Armstrong breathed a sigh of relief: nothing bad had happened to him or his men. Then shouts came from the left. He needed a little while to make out what people were saying. The first salvo really had pounded the crap out of his hearing. After a while, though, he got the message: Lieutenant Bassler was wounded.

He swore. God only knew what kind of half-assed new man the repple-depple would cough up. Then somebody said, "Looks like you're in charge of the platoon, Sergeant."

"What the hell?" Armstrong said. Two of the other three sergeants were senior to him.

"Yeah, you are," the soldier insisted. "Same goddamn rocket got Borkowski and Wise. One of 'em's dead-looks like the other one'll lose a foot."

"Shit." Armstrong had got a platoon before, and the same way-everybody above him got wounded or killed. That was the only way a three-striper could command a platoon…or, if enough things went wrong, a company. He didn't really want the honor. As usual, nobody cared what he wanted.

"What are we gonna do?" the news bringer asked, something not far from panic in his voice. "We stay here, Featherston's fuckers'll just keep pounding the shit out of us."

"Tell me about it," Armstrong said unhappily. The Confederates would be loading up more screaming meemies right this minute. If he ordered a retreat, his own superiors would tear the stripes off his sleeve. They'd call him a coward, and he wouldn't be able to prove them wrong. Which left…"We gotta move up."

They would have to take out that machine gun now, like it or not. He didn't, but he was stuck. Squidface came to the same unwelcome conclusion: "That goddamn gun's gonna have to go."

"Uh-huh." Armstrong nodded. "You've got the squad for now."

"Fuck of a way to get it," Squidface said, but then he nodded, too. "You don't want the platoon, either, do you?"

"Not like this," Armstrong answered. "Keep the guys spread out. And watch that Herk, for Chrissake. He'll get his ass shot off before he knows what's what."

"I ain't his goddamn babysitter, for cryin' out loud." After a moment, Squidface nodded again. "Well, I'll try."

Armstrong hadn't gone very far before he realized the machine-gun emplacement could murder the whole platoon. It had an unobstructed field of fire to the west. No way in hell would they be able to sneak up on it. He yelled for the wireless man and got on the horn to regimental HQ: "This is Grimes, in charge of Gold Platoon, Charlie Company. We need a couple of barrels to knock out a nest at square, uh, B-9."

Some uniformed clerk well back of the line asked, "What happened to what's-his-name? Uh, Bassler?"

"He's down. I've got it," Armstrong growled. "You gonna get me what I need, or do I have to come back there and tear you a new asshole?"

"Keep your hair on, buddy," replied the fellow back at headquarters. "We'll see what we can do."

That wasn't enough to keep Armstrong happy-not even close. Yet another barrage of screaming meemies roared in. They were mostly long, but not very long. Armstrong damn near pissed himself. He knew plenty of guys who had. You didn't rag on them much, not if you had any sense. It could happen to you.

Half an hour later, after still more rockets-again, mostly long-the barrels showed up. Without getting out of the foxhole he'd dug, Armstrong pointed them toward the machine-gun nest. They clattered forward. The machine gun opened up on them, which did exactly no good. There was no place for advancing U.S. soldiers to hide. That also meant there was no place for C.S. soldiers with stovepipe antibarrel rockets to hide. The barrels shelled the machine-gun nest into silence.

"Let's go." Armstrong hustled to catch up with the barrels. So did his men. Anyone who'd been in action for even a little while knew armor made a hell of a life-insurance policy for infantrymen. It could take care of things that stymied foot soldiers-and it drew fire that would otherwise come down on their heads.

And the ground pounders were good for barrel crews' life expectancy, too. They kept bad guys with stovepipes and Featherston Fizzes from sneaking close enough to be dangerous. Barrels that got too far out in front of the infantry often had bad things happen to them before anybody could do anything about it.

"Come on, Herk!" Armstrong yelled, looking back over his shoulder and seeing that the new guy wasn't moving fast enough. "Shake a leg, goddammit!"

"I'm coming, Sarge." Yeah, Herk was willing. But he didn't understand why Armstrong wanted him to hurry up. He wasn't urgent and he wasn't alert. With the best will in the world, he was asking for trouble. Armstrong figured he'd buy a piece of a plot-or maybe a whole one-before he figured out what was what. Too damn bad, really, but what could you do?

Meanwhile, the Confederates with the screaming meemies were still lobbing them where the U.S. soldiers had been, not where they were now. Before long, the rocketeers would find out they'd goofed-with luck, when the barrels put shells or machine-gun bullets through them.

Armstrong trotted on. He heard a few bursts from up ahead, but nothing really bad. The bastards in butternut all carried automatic weapons. Nothing you could do about that. But if there weren't enough of them, what they carried didn't matter. And, right here, there weren't.

W hen Sam Carsten thought of prize crews, he thought about pigtailed sailors with cutlasses boarding sailing ships: wooden ships and iron men. But the Josephus Daniels was shorthanded because a couple of freighters that would have gone to England or France were bound for the USA instead.

Sam gave Lieutenant Zwilling the conn so he could straighten out some of the complications detaching men had caused. He was talking with a damage-control party-damage control being something about which he knew more than he'd ever wanted to learn-when Wally Eastlake, a CPO who'd played one of King Neptune's mermaids when the destroyer escort crossed the Equator, sidled up to him and said, "Talk to you for a second, Skipper?"

When a chief wanted to talk, listening was a good idea. "Sure," Sam said. "What's on your mind?"

Instead of answering right away, Eastlake drew himself out of earshot of the damage-control party. A couple of snoopy sailors started to follow, but the chief 's basilisk stare made them keep their distance. In a low voice, Eastlake said, "Notice anything funny about the prize crews the exec took for those Argentine pigs?"

"Not a whole lot," Sam answered. "Mostly guys who've been in for a while, but that's more good than bad, you ask me. You need men with some experience when they go off on their own."

"If that was all, sure," Eastlake said. "But the guys who're gone, they're the ones who busted a gut laughing when he stopped being a polliwog. I'd be gone myself, I bet, except I was holding it in and busting up where it didn't show. Swelp me, Skipper, it's the God's truth." He drew a cross on his chest.

"Oh, yeah?" Sam said.

"Swelp me," the chief said again.

Carsten thought about it. He hadn't had much to do with the festivities. They were designed to let ratings get their own back. Even if the captain just watched, it dampened the fun. But he also had a pretty good notion of who'd enjoyed themselves most at Myron Zwilling's expense-and who'd had reasons for enjoying themselves. Eastlake was right-an awful lot of those people weren't on the ship any more. "Son of a bitch," Sam said softly.

"Yeah," Eastlake said. "I didn't think you noticed-you got bigger shit to worry about. But I figured you oughta know."

"Thanks-I guess." Now Sam had to decide what to do about it, or whether to do anything at all. Zwilling could deny everything and say he hadn't done it consciously. How would you prove he was lying? For that matter, maybe he wasn't. Or he could say he damn well had done it, and so what?

"You think I shoulda kept my big trap shut?" Eastlake asked.

"No. I'd rather know what's going on," Sam answered. "I'll take care of it." The CPO nodded. He didn't ask Sam how he'd take care of it, which was a good thing, because Sam still didn't know.

When he got back to the bridge, the exec was keeping station with the other warships in the flotilla. Zwilling was competent, precise, painstaking. The tip of his tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth, as if he were a grade-schooler working on a big paper. He'd never be the shiphandler Pat Cooley was. He was plenty good enough to get the job done, though. Chances were he was better than Sam, who'd come to the wheel late. Whether he'd be better in an emergency, when instinct and balls could count for more than carefully acquired skill, was a different question.

"Anything interesting going on?" Sam asked.

"No, sir. All routine," Zwilling answered.

"All right. In that case, why don't you let Thad have it for a bit?" Sam nodded toward the Y-ranging officer. "He can use the practice. You never know what could happen if a British fighter or bomber chews up the bridge."

"Aye aye, sir." Zwilling stepped away from the wheel. Lieutenant Walters took it, a wide grin making him look even younger than he did most of the time.

Carsten gestured to the exec. "Come to my cabin, why don't you?" Yes, he was going to take the bull by the horns. He didn't know what else to do.

"Of course, sir." Zwilling's eyes narrowed. He knew something was up, but he couldn't very well say no.

The cabin, small for one man, was crowded with two. But, with the door closed, it was about the only place on the destroyer escort that offered reasonable privacy. Sam sat down on the bed and waved the exec to the metal chair, saying, "I've got a question for you."

"Sir?" Zwilling didn't show much. Well, with a superior getting ready to grill him, Sam would have shown as little as he could, too.

"When you picked prize crews for those freighters we nabbed, how did you go about it?"

Zwilling still didn't show much. He would have made a pretty fair poker player, and probably did. "I mostly chose men with above-average experience, sir. They'll be on their own going north. They'll need to be extra alert for enemy action, and for trouble from the sailors. New fish are less likely to do well in a situation like that."

"I see." Sam would have said the same thing. It was even likely to be true. But it wasn't likely to be the whole truth. With a sigh, Sam went on, "Did you also choose men who gave you a hard time when we crossed the Equator?"

Now the exec knew which way the wind was blowing. His mouth tightened. He hunched in on himself, just a little. But his answer was forthright: "Yes, sir. We're better off without some of those troublemakers on board. That was a criterion of mine, too."

Thinking about the men who were gone, Sam shook his head. "They mostly aren't troublemakers, Mr. Zwilling. They have good records. They may not love you, but that's not the same thing."

By Zwilling's scowl, it was to him. "They're bad for discipline, sir. I'm not sorry to be rid of them."

"I'm sorry you used personal dislikes to influence what you did," Carsten said. "If I were you, I wouldn't do that again. I'm disappointed you did it once."

"If you're unhappy with me, sir, may I request a transfer off this ship?" Zwilling asked. "You need to have confidence in your executive officer."

He didn't say anything about his needing to have confidence in Sam. That would have been insubordinate, and he was a stickler for the proprieties. But it hovered in his tone and in the way he eyed Carsten.

With another sigh, Sam nodded. "Yes, I think that'll be best for everyone. This won't go in your papers. You didn't do anything against regulations. But you did something I don't fancy, and I won't try to tell you any different."

"Is that all, sir?" The exec's voice might have come from a machine.

"Yes, that's all. Go take the conn back." As far as the ship was concerned, Zwilling was fine. With the sailors, on the other hand…And with me, too, Sam thought sadly. There were skippers for whom Myron Zwilling would have been the perfect exec. Men who did things strictly by the book themselves would have been wild for him. But Sam flew by the seat of his pants. That drove Zwilling nuts, and the exec's insistence on routine grated on the mustang just as much.

Sam followed Zwilling back to the bridge. When the exec said, "I have the conn, Mr. Walters," the Y-ranging officer almost jumped out of his skin. Sam didn't blame him. Zwilling didn't sound like a machine any more. He sounded like a voice from beyond the grave.

Christ! Sam thought, now alarmed. I hope he doesn't go hang himself from the first pipe fitting he finds. He didn't want the exec dead, only off his ship and onto one where he fit better.

Thad Walters retreated in a hurry. His eyes asked Sam what had happened in the cabin. Sam couldn't tell him, even in private; that would have been monstrously unfair to Zwilling.

Then Sam shook his head. It wouldn't be so simple after all. Even now, people would be buzzing that Chief Eastlake had talked with him. And they would know all too soon that he and the exec had talked in his cabin. They would add two and two, sure as hell. And when Zwilling left the ship, Eastlake would be a power to reckon with indeed.

That wasn't good. You didn't want the crew thinking a CPO could hang an officer out to dry. Even more to the point, you didn't want a CPO thinking he could hang an officer out to dry. In this particular case, it happened to be true, which only made things worse. Sam shook his head again. Eastlake would have to go, too. That wasn't fair, but he didn't see that he had any other choice.

He wished for word of an enemy convoy. He almost wished for word of enemy aircraft on the way in. Anything that took his mind off the ship's internal politics would have been nice. But no enemy freighters came into sight. The sky remained clear of everything but the sun. The only thing he had to worry about was Myron Zwilling steering the Josephus Daniels with a face that looked as if he were watching his family tortured and killed.

Was I too hard on him? Sam wondered. He played back the conversation in his cabin inside his head. He really didn't think so. The only other thing he could have done was pretend he didn't know anything about what Zwilling had pulled. And that wouldn't fly, because Chief Eastlake would let the crew know he'd told Sam what was going on. Their respect would get flushed right down the head.

And so would Sam's self-respect. He'd never been any damn good at pretending. Oh, sometimes you had to. If you were dealing with a superior you couldn't stand, a little constructive hypocrisy didn't hurt. But that was about as far as he could make himself go. Ignoring this would have felt like ignoring a bank robbery right under his nose.

Lieutenant Walters took a long look at his Y-ranging gear. The screens must have been blank, for he stepped away from them and over to Sam. In a low, almost inaudible voice, he asked, "Sir, what's going on?"

Sam glanced at Lieutenant Zwilling. The exec didn't turn around. Did his back stiffen, though? Was he listening? It didn't matter any which way. Sam said what he would have said if Zwilling were down in the engine room: "Nothing that's got anything to do with you."

"Yes, sir." The Y-ranging officer nodded, but he didn't go back to his post. Instead, he asked, "Is it anything that will hurt the ship?"

Zwilling's ravaged voice and face made that query much too reasonable. But Sam didn't think he was lying when he shook his head. "No, we'll be all right," he said. "It's…" He stopped. Even saying something like It's a personnel matter went too far. Were he in the exec's place, he wouldn't want anybody running his mouth about him. "Just let it go, Thad. It'll sort itself out."

"I hope so, sir." Walters returned to his post. He'd needed nerve to make even that much protest.

Muttering to himself, Sam turned away. He didn't like the idea of blighting Zwilling's career. He hadn't liked it back in New York City, and he liked it even less here. But try as he would, he didn't see what else he could do. Zwilling had made his bed; now he had to lie in it.

And what will the fancy-pants officers back in the USA think about me when they get wind of this? Sam wondered. Now that he'd been a lieutenant for a while, he wanted to make lieutenant commander. That would be pretty damn good for somebody who started out an ordinary seaman. Would the men who judged such things decide he could have handled this better?

After worrying at it and worrying about it for a couple of minutes, he shrugged. The ship had to come first. If the brass hats didn't care for what he'd done, he'd retire a lieutenant, and the world wouldn't end. When he first signed up, even CPO had seemed a mountain taller than the Rockies, but he'd climbed a lot higher than that.

So he'd go on doing things the way he thought he needed to. And if anybody away from the Josephus Daniels didn't like it, too damn bad.

T he telephone on Jefferson Pinkard's desk jangled. He picked it up. "This is Pinkard."

"Hello, Pinkard," said the voice on the other end of the line. "This is Ferd Koenig, in Richmond."

"What can I do for you, sir?" Jeff asked the Attorney General, adding, "Glad to hear you still are in Richmond." From some of the things the papers were saying, the capital was in trouble. Since the papers always told less than what was really going on, he'd worried.

"We're still here. We aren't going anywhere, either," Koenig said. As if to contradict him, something in the background blew up with a roar loud enough to be easily audible even over the telephone. He went on, "We'll lick the damnyankees yet. You see if we don't."

"Yes, sir," Jeff said, though he'd already seen all the war he wanted and more besides in Snyder. Coming east to Humble was a wonderful escape. U.S. warplanes hardly ever appeared over the city of Houston (far, far away from the damnyankee abortion of a state that carried the same name) and had never been seen over this peaceful town twenty miles north of it.

"Wait till we get all our secret weapons into the fight," Koenig said. "We're already throwing those rockets at the USA, and we've finally got new barrels that'll make their best ones say uncle. Bigger and better things in the works, too."

"Sure hope so." From everything Pinkard could see, the Confederate States needed bigger and better things if they stood a chance of winning.

"Believe it. The President's promised we'll have 'em, and he keeps his word." Ferdinand Koenig sounded absolutely convinced, despite yet another big boom in the distance. He went on, "But there's something I need from you."

Of course there is. You wouldn't have called me if there wasn't, Jeff thought. Aloud, all he said was, "Tell me what."

"I want you to go through your guards. Anybody who's fit enough to fight, put him on a train for Little Rock. We'll take it from there," the Attorney General said.

"Everybody who's fit enough to fight?" Pinkard asked in dismay.

"That's what I said."

"Sir, you know a lot of my guys are from the Confederate Veterans' Brigades," Jeff said. Those were men the C.S. Army had already judged not fit to fight, mostly because of wounds from the Great War.

"Yes, I understand that. Sort through them, too. Some of 'em'll probably do-we aren't as fussy as we used to be," Koenig said. "But you've got plenty of Congressmen's nephews and Party officials' brothers-in-law. Come on, Pinkard-we both know how that shit works. But we can't afford it any more."

"Shall I get on the train myself, then?" Jeff asked. "Reckon I still know which end of a rifle's which."

"Don't be dumb," Koenig told him. "We've got to keep the camp running. That's damn important, too. Way things are, though, we need every warm body we can get our hands on at the front."

"Well, I'll do what I can, sir," Jeff said.

"I reckoned you would," the Attorney General replied. "Freedom!" The line went dead.

"Freedom," Jeff echoed as he hung up, too. Once the handpiece was back in the cradle, he added one more word: "Shit."

He wondered how few guards he could get away with sending. The men on the women's side, sure. They wouldn't be a problem. He could always replace them with dykes. Plenty of tough broads ready to send Negro women to the bathhouses. Plenty of tough broads eager to do it. And if some of them ate pussy in the meantime…well, hell, as long as the colored gals got what was coming to them sooner or later, Jeff supposed he could look the other way in the meantime. Yeah, lezzies were disgusting, but there was a war on, and you had to take the bad with the good.

Losing guards from the men's side would hurt more. He couldn't bring female guards over here. Some of them, the butch ones, would have liked it. But it would stir up trouble among the coons if he tried it, and it would stir up more trouble among his men. So he'd have to do some pruning, and then live with personnel being gone.

Congressmen's nephews. Party bigwigs' brothers-in-law. Sure, he had some guys like that. He didn't want to get rid of all of them. They were the young, the healthy, the quick here. You couldn't run a camp with a bunch of old farts who couldn't get out of their own way…could you? He hoped he wouldn't have to find out, and feared he would.

He got on the intercom, and then on the PA system, to summon Vern Green to his office. The guard chief got there about fifteen minutes later. "What's up, sir?" Pinkard told him what was up. He looked disgusted when he heard. "Well, for God's sake! They reckon our boys gonna win the damn war all by their lonesome?"

"Beats me," Jeff answered. "But when the Attorney General tells you you got to do this and that, you can't very well say no."

Green looked more disgusted yet, but he nodded. "I'll ask around," he said. "Maybe we can fix it." He had his own back channels to Richmond. Someone in the capital would be keeping an eye on Jeff for the government or the Party or both. Usually, that made the guard chief the camp commandant's rival. They both wanted to pull in the same direction today, though.

"Yeah, you do that," Jeff said. "But don't hold your breath. War news is bad enough, they'll be grabbing anybody they can get their hands on."

"Uh-huh," Green said. They both had to be careful when they talked about how things were going. Either could report the other for defeatism. But they couldn't afford to pretend they were blind, either. If the news were better, Richmond wouldn't be prying men loose wherever it could. The guard chief went on, "You got a roster handy?"

"Sure do." Jeff spread papers out on his desk. "I've made some marks already."

Green looked at them. He nodded. "What you've got makes sense. We can always come up with guards in skirts for the women's side."

"Just what I was thinkin'," Pinkard agreed. "The ones over here, though…That's gonna be a bastard. Bastard and a half, even."

"Yeah." The guard chief nodded again. "Some of these guys'll bawl like castrated colts when you tell 'em they got to go and fight the damnyankees. Some of their fathers'll bawl even louder."

"Tell me about it," Jeff said with a wry grin. "But I know what to do about that, damned if I don't. I'll just say, 'You want to squawk, don't you come squawkin' to me. Go squawk to Ferd Koenig, on account of he gave the orders. Me, I'm only doin' like he said.'"

Vern Green smiled a slow, conspiratorial smile. "Ain't gonna be a whole lot o' folks with the brass to try that."

"Hell, I wouldn't," Jeff said. "I know when I'm fightin' out of my weight. Anybody who wants to take a swing at it, well, good luck." He peered through his reading glasses at the roster. "Let's see how we can finish this off and still have enough left to do our jobs here."

Neither of them ended up happy about what they came up with. But they both agreed Camp Humble could go on reducing population without the guards they'd ship to Little Rock. Then they wrangled about who would announce the transfers. Jeff wanted the guard chief to do it. Green insisted the words had to come out of the commandant's mouth. In they end, they split the difference. Pinkard would announce the Attorney General's order, while Green read the names of the men who would go to Little Rock.

Even assembling the guards was tricky. Like any soldiers or bureaucrats, the men knew a break in routine was suspicious. To them, change was anything but good. And they started yelling their heads off when Jeff announced that Ferd Koenig required some of them to go to the front.

"Shut up!" Pinkard yelled, and his bellow was enough to rock them back on their heels and make sure they damn well did shut up, at least for a little while. Into that sudden, startled silence, he went on, "Y'all reckon I want to do this? You're out of your goddamn minds if you do. You reckon I've got any choice? You're just as crazy if you think so, and a lot stupider'n I figured you were."

"We won't go!" somebody yelled, and other guards took up the cry.

"Oh, yes, you will," Jeff said grimly. "I don't believe you catch on. You ain't just fuckin' with me, people. Y'all are fuckin' with Ferd Koenig and Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party and the Confederate government. You'll end up in the stockade, and then they'll ship your sorry asses to the front any which way. And if you don't end up in a penal battalion for raising a ruckus, then I don't know shit about how things work. And I damn well do."

A shudder ran through the guards. They didn't want to go to the front as soldiers. That was nasty and dangerous. But if you went to the front in a penal battalion, you were nothing but dead meat that hadn't got cooked yet. And they threw you straight into the fire.

"You still talkin' about not goin'?" Jeff asked. Nobody said anything this time. He nodded in something approaching satisfaction. "That's more like it. Maybe y'all ain't as dumb as you look after all. Hell, you go and mutiny, maybe they don't send you to the front at all. Maybe they just line you up and shoot you." He waited for another shudder, and got it. Then he went on, "Vern here'll read out the names of the men who're going to Little Rock. You hear your name, be ready to ship out tomorrow at 0600. You ain't ready, you got more trouble'n you know what to do with, I promise. Vern?"

One by one, the guard commander read the list of names. Some men who got called jerked as if shot. For a few, or more than a few, that was bound to be anticipation. Others cursed Green or the Freedom Party. And still others reacted with complete disbelief. "You can't do this to me!" one of them cried. "Do you know whose cousin I am?"

"You ain't Ferd Koenig's cousin, and you ain't Jake Featherston's cousin, either," Jefferson Pinkard said in a voice like iron. "And as long as you ain't, it don't matter for shit whose cousin you are. You got it?"

"You can't talk to me that way!" exclaimed the guard with the prominent-but not prominent enough-cousin.

"No? Seems like I just did," Jeff answered. "You can get on the train tomorrow morning, or you can go to the stockade now and get on another train after that. You just bet your ass you won't be happy if you do, though."

The cousin said not another word. Green went back to reading names. He got more howls of protest. Some guards did some virtuoso cussing. But nobody else said he wouldn't go. Nobody else said he had a relative important enough to keep him from going, either. As far as Jeff was concerned, that was progress.

He waited with the shivering guards the next morning. All but two of them were there. Those two had skipped camp. They'd be the military police's worry from now on. He figured the MPs would track them down and make them sorry. The train pulled in right on time, snorting up in the beginnings of morning twilight-sunup was still a ways away.

Doors opened. Glumly, the guards climbed up and into the passenger cars. When they'd all boarded, the train chugged off. Its light was dim. Even here, lights could draw U.S. airplanes. You didn't want to take chances you didn't have to.

After the train pulled away, Jeff went to the kitchen for fried eggs, biscuits and gravy, and coffee. He'd done his duty. He wasn't happy about it, but he'd done it. Pretty soon, Camp Humble would start doing its duty again, too. Even with a reduced guard contingent, the camp would keep on working toward making the Confederate States Negro-free.

That was damned important work. Jeff was proud to have a part in it. He just wished the damnyankees and the war wouldn't keep interfering.