In at the Death (35 page)

“A reasonable estimate,” Abell agreed. “And in the east?”

“I’m shifting most of the effort there up into South Carolina,” Morrell replied. “Charleston, Columbia…If the General Staff has a different idea, I expect you’ll let me know.” He wondered if that was part of the reason he’d been summoned to Philadelphia. What did they think he would do if he stayed down in the Confederacy and got orders he didn’t like? Set up on his own? He admired Napoleon as a soldier, but not as a politician.

“At present, no. That seems adequate, or more than adequate,” John Abell said. He acted nervous, though.

For a moment, that made no sense at all to Morrell. The United States was manifestly winning the war. They’d cut the CSA in half. The campaign in Virginia was going well at last. Even the minor struggles in Arkansas and Sequoyah and west Texas all inclined toward the USA. So why wasn’t Abell even happier?

Morrell didn’t expect hosannas and backflips from the General Staff officer. He’d known Abell too long and too well for that. But still…Then a light went on, a light as bright and terrible as the sun. “That goddamn superbomb!” Morrell exclaimed. “How close is Featherston?” He didn’t ask how close his own country was. That, he assumed, would be a secret more tightly held than the other.

“Ah. Good. You do understand the basic difficulty under which we labor,” Abell said. “The answer is, we just don’t know—and that is our principal area of concern at this point in time.”

“I can see how it might be,” Morrell said dryly. If the Confederates could blow a city off the map with one bomb, they hadn’t lost yet, not by a long chalk. “We are trying to do something about this?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” John Abell said. “Before too much longer, the question may be moot, but at the moment it remains relevant.”

And what was
that
supposed to mean? Were the United States about to capture the CSA’s superbomb works? Or was his country close to getting a superduperbomb of its own? “Anything you can tell me without bringing the wrath of the great god Security down on your head?” Morrell inquired.

“Our own research along those lines is making good progress,” Abell said, and not another word.

Even that much was more than Morrell expected. “Well, all right,” he said, and took out two packs of Dukes. He pulled a cigarette from one and stuck it in his mouth; the other he tossed on Abell’s desk. “Here you go. Spoils of war.”

“Thanks.” Abell opened the pack and held out a cigarette. Morrell gave him a light. The General Staff officer never went near the front. He probably got sick of the nasty U.S. tobacco—unless other officers who wanted to stay on his good side kept him in smokes. Maybe his desk was full of them. You never could tell.

“Those bombs are going to change the way we fight. They’ll change the way everybody fights,” Morrell said.

“We are commencing studies on that topic,” Abell said.

“How? We don’t know enough yet,” Morrell said. “And that reminds me—how come the Kaiser hasn’t flattened London or Paris? Did he only have the one bomb? How long till he gets another one?”

“I don’t know the answer to
that
,” Abell replied, “but I do have an idea why Petrograd went up in smoke and the Western capitals haven’t.”

“I’m all ears,” Morrell said.

“Prevailing winds,” Abell told him. “These bombs spew poison into the air, and the wind can carry it a long way. From Petrograd, the stuff goes deeper into Russia. From London or Paris, the Germans could give themselves a present.”

“A present they want like a hole in the head,” Morrell said. John Abell nodded. Morrell stubbed out his cigarette and shuddered. “That makes these damn things even worse than I thought.”

“The only thing worse than using them on somebody is somebody else using them on you,” Abell said.

“Have we stopped the Confederates from using one on us?”

“We hope so.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Morrell asked.

“They’re working on this thing in a Virginia mountain town. We have bombed it so heavily, next to nothing is left aboveground,” the General Staff officer replied.

Morrell had listened to a lot of presentations. He could hear what wasn’t said as well as what was. “What are they doing underground?”

“Well, we don’t precisely know.” Abell sounded as uncomfortable as he ever did. “They’ve burrowed like moles since the bombing started. That’s why I hope we’ve kept their program from producing a uranium bomb, but I can’t be sure we have.”

“Terrific,” Morrell said. “How do we find out for sure?”

“If they use one on us, we failed,” Abell said. “It’s as simple as that, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, boy,” Morrell said in distinctly hollow tones. “That’s encouraging.” He looked up at God only knew how many feet of steel and concrete over his head. “If they drop one on Philadelphia, will it get us all the way down here?”

“I don’t think they can do that, anyhow,” Abell replied. “I’m told a uranium bomb is too heavy for any airplane they have. We’re having to modify our bombers to carry the load.”

“Mm. Well, I guess that’s good news. So they’ve got to wait till their rockets get out of short pants, then? Or do they have an extra-special rocket ready to go?”

“We don’t believe so,” John Abell said. “But then, we didn’t know about the ones they do have till they started firing them at us.”

“Tell you one thing,” Morrell said as he lit another cigarette. Abell made a questioning noise. Morrell explained: “You sure know how to cheer a guy up.”

Y
ankee bombers still didn’t come over Lexington, Virginia, very often in the daytime. C.S. fighters and heavy flak made that an expensive proposition. Clarence Potter thanked God for small favors. He would have thanked God more for big ones, but the Deity didn’t seem inclined to give the Confederate States any of those nowadays.

A crane swayed a crate into the cargo bed of a truck that looked ordinary but wasn’t. This machine had a very special suspension. Even so, the springs groaned as the crate came down.

Potter watched the loading process with Professor Henderson FitzBelmont. “You’re sure this damn thing will work?” Potter said.

FitzBelmont looked at him. “No.”

“Thanks a lot, Professor,” Potter said. “You sure know how to cheer a guy up.”

“Would you rather have me lie to you?” FitzBelmont asked.

“Right now, I really think I would,” Clarence Potter told him. “I hate to try this if there’s an even-money chance we’ll get nothing but a squib.”

FitzBelmont shrugged. “It’s untested. Ideally, we would have more time and more weapons. Things being as they are…”

“Well, yes. There is that,” Potter said. Just getting back to Lexington from Petersburg had been nightmare enough. “All right. We’ll try it, and we’ll see what happens, that’s all. Wish us luck.”

“I do,” Professor FitzBelmont said. “In my own way, I’m a patriot, too.” His way wasn’t so different from Potter’s. Neither man went around shouting,
Freedom!
They both loved the Confederate States all the same.

Potter climbed into the cab of the truck next to the driver, a sergeant. “We ready, sir?” the noncom asked in accents not much different from Potter’s own.

“If we’re not, we never will be—which is, of course, always a possibility,” the Intelligence officer said. The sergeant looked confused. “We’re ready, Wilton,” Potter assured him. “Now we see what happens.”

Several command cars and armored cars rolled north and slightly east with the special truck. Everybody in them spoke the same kind of English as Clarence Potter: all the men could pass for Yankees, in other words. Both sides had used that trick during the war whenever they thought they could get away with it.
One more time
, Potter thought.
It’s coming down toward the end, but we’re going to try it one more time
.

In the War of Secession, Stonewall Jackson had played the Shenandoah Valley like a master violinist. In his hands, it turned into a dagger, an invasion route aimed straight at the USA’s heart. The same thing happened again during the Great War, with the Confederate charge that almost got to Philadelphia. After 1917, the United States occupied the northern end of the Valley and fortified it so the Confederate States couldn’t try that again. And Jake Featherston didn’t; he drove up through Ohio instead.

The Shenandoah Valley was also the CSA’s granary. The United States, busy elsewhere and fighting for survival, hadn’t tried to take the Valley away from the Confederacy. They had dropped a hell of a lot of incendiaries on it. One U.S. wag was supposed to have said that a crow flying up the Shenandoah Valley would have to carry its own provisions.

Things weren’t quite so bad as that—but they sure weren’t good. Potter drove past too many fields whose main crops were ash and charcoal, past too many barns and farmhouses that were nothing but burnt-out skeletons of their old selves. Even after a wet winter, the air smelled smoky.

He had bigger worries than the way the air smelled. The first time they came to a bridge, he said, “This is what they call a moment of truth.”

“Sir?” Sergeant Wilton said. “They’re supposed to have strengthened it.”

“I know.” Potter left it right there. The Confederate States were in their death agony. He knew it, even if Wilton didn’t. Things that were supposed to get done might…or they might not. You never could tell. And if they didn’t…
I’m screwed
, Potter thought. Only one way to find out. “Take it across,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” The driver did. The bridge held. Potter breathed a sigh of relief. Now—how many more bridges across the winding Shenandoah before they got to the head of the Valley? How many bridges beyond that? Again, only one way to find out.

They made it over, again and again. The truck’s transmission and engine weren’t happy; they’d been beefed up, too, but they were even more overstrained than the suspension. If the damn thing crapped out…well, they had some spare parts, but it wouldn’t be good news.

Potter tensed again—for the millionth time—when they came into Luray, the northernmost town in the Valley the CSA held, just as the sun was setting. If things there weren’t ready, they were screwed again. But the stuff they needed was waiting for them. Potter let out one more sigh of relief.

But for the caves outside of town and a nitrates plant that had drawn its share of U.S. bombs, Luray’s chief claim to fame was a two-and-a-half-story brick courthouse near the center of town. Potter’s convoy stopped there. A work crew dashed out and spread canvas over the truck and the vehicles accompanying it. Then, under that cover, they got to work, slapping green-gray paint over the butternut that had identified them. As soon as the paint was even close to dry, they put U.S. markings all over the machines. Those couldn’t hide their Confederate lines, of course, but after almost three years of war both sides were using lots of captured equipment.

And the disguise didn’t end with the truck and the armored cars and command cars. Potter and his comrades put on U.S. uniforms. He became a major, which suited him well enough. If the damnyankees captured him in their togs, they’d shoot him. He shrugged. At the moment, that was the least of his worries.

“You have the passwords and countersigns?” he asked the veteran first sergeant in charge of the unit there.

“Yes, sir, sure do. We went out and took a couple of prisoners less than an hour ago,” the noncom answered. He was of about Potter’s vintage, a man who’d been through the Great War and didn’t flabble about anything. He gave Potter what he needed.

Potter wrote it down to be sure. “Thanks,” he said. The retread sergeant nodded. The patch over his left eye and the hook sticking out of his left tunic cuff told why he was in a backwater like this. Despite them, he was a better man than most at the front.

The chameleon convoy rolled out of Luray before sunup. Potter wanted to get into U.S.-held territory while it was still dark. That would help keep his vehicles from giving themselves away right where people were most likely to get antsy about them.

Yankee country started just a couple of miles north of Luray. If somebody’d spilled the beans—not impossible with the CSA visibly coming to pieces—a couple of companies of real U.S. soldiers could have swooped down and ended a lovely scheme before it really got rolling.

But no. The sergeant’s raid for prisoners hadn’t even made the U.S. forces jumpy. Potter and his merry band got several miles into Yankeeland before they came to a checkpoint. The passwords he’d picked up in Luray worked fine. A kid second lieutenant asked, “What is all this crap, uh, sir?”

“Matériel captured from Featherston’s fuckers,” Potter answered crisply—he knew what the enemy called his side. “We’re taking it north for evaluation.”

“Nobody told me,” the shavetail complained.

“It’s a war,” Potter said with more patience than he felt. “They wouldn’t tell you your name if you hadn’t had it issued ahead of time.”

“No shit!” the lieutenant said, laughing. “All right, sir—pass on.”

On they passed. The sun came up. They crossed over the Shenandoah again at Front Royal. Nobody on their side had specially reinforced that bridge. “Think it’ll take the strain, sir?” Wilton asked.

“If they ever sent a barrel over it, it will,” Potter said. “Barrels are a hell of a lot heavier than this baby.”

They made it. They stopped at a fuel dump and gassed up, then went on. The farther they got from the front line, the less attention U.S. soldiers paid them. They just seemed to be men doing a job. One nine-year-old kid by the side of the road gaped, though. He knew they were driving C.S. vehicles—Potter could tell. He probably knew every machine and weapon on both sides better than the guys who used them did. Plenty of kids like that down in the CSA, too. It was a game to them. It wasn’t a game to Clarence Potter.

Harpers Ferry. John Brown had come here, trying to start a slave uprising. Robert E. Lee led the men who captured him. And, three years later, Lee came through again on the campaign that won the Confederate States their independence. Maybe this trip north would help them keep it.

Over the Potomac. Into Maryland. Into the USA proper. Potter had come this way almost exactly thirty years earlier, with the Army of Northern Virginia’s thrust toward Philadelphia. They’d fallen short then. Had they taken the de facto capital, they might have had a triumphant six weeks’ war. Jake Featherston had hoped for the same thing this time around. What you hoped for and what you got weren’t always the same, dammit.