In at the Death (4 page)

“Was he as much of an old Tartar as everybody says?” DeFrancis had already heard something, then.

“Well…yes.” Dowling couldn’t say no without making himself into a bigger liar than he wanted to be.

“But he won the war, pretty much. He got the job done. Morrell was under his orders when he used that armored thrust to roll up the Confederates and take Nashville.”

“That’s true.” Dowling gave a reminiscent shiver. Custer and Morrell had gone against War Department orders to mass their barrels. Dowling himself had lied like Ananias, writing reports that denied they were doing any such thing. Had Philadelphia found out he was lying, or had the attack failed…The aftermath wouldn’t have been pretty.

And it wasn’t a sure thing, not ahead of time. A lot of Custer’s straight-ahead charges at the enemy failed, and failed gruesomely. Dowling knew how nervous he was before the barrels crossed the Cumberland. If Custer had any doubts, he never showed them.

“You know, Colonel, he really is the hero of the last war. In an odd way, he’s the hero of the whole first part of this century,” Dowling said. “He knew what he wanted to do, and he found a way to make it work.”

“We just have to go and do the same thing, then,” DeFrancis said. “I expect we can.” He saluted and hurried off.

Abner Dowling stubbed out his cigarette. He didn’t have George Armstrong Custer’s relentless drive, or even Terry DeFrancis’. He was a sane man in a business where the crazy and the obsessed often prospered. He hoped his ability to see all sides of a problem gave him an edge over commanders with tunnel vision. He hoped so, but he was a long way from sure it did.

Major Toricelli stuck his head into the office. “Sir, there’s a local who wants to see you. His name is Jeffries, Falstaff Jeffries. He runs the big grocery on the edge of town.”

“Has he been searched?” Dowling didn’t want to talk to a people bomb, or even a fellow with a pistol in his pocket. But his adjutant nodded. So did Dowling. “All right. Send him in. You know what’s eating him?”

“No, sir. But I expect he’ll tell you.”

Falstaff Jeffries didn’t live up to his name. He was short and skinny and somber, nothing like Shakespeare’s magnificent clown. He did have the virtue of coming straight to the point: “Where am I going to get more food, General?”

“Where were you getting it?” Dowling asked.

“From farther east. That’s where everything comes from out here,” Jeffries answered. “Except now I’m on the wrong side of the line. Folks’re gonna start getting hungry pretty damn quick unless somebody does something about it.”

“I don’t think anyone will starve,” Dowling said. “Plenty of rations, if it comes to that.”

The storekeeper looked at him as if he’d just ordered no presents at Christmastime. “Rations.” Jeffries made it into a swear word. “How in blazes am I supposed to run a business if you go around handing out free rations?”

“A minute ago, you were talking about people going hungry,” Dowling reminded him. “Now you’re flabbling about where your money’s coming from. That’s a different story, and it’s not one I care much about.”

“That’s on account of you don’t have to worry about feeding your family.” Falstaff Jeffries eyed Dowling’s expanse of belly. “You don’t worry about feeding at all, do you?”

“I told you—nobody’ll starve,” Dowling said tightly. “Not you, not your family, and not me, either.”

“But my store’ll go under!” Jeffries wailed.

“There’s a war on, in case you didn’t notice,” Dowling said. “You’re alive, you’re in one piece, your family’s all right. Count your blessings.”

Jeffries muttered something under his breath. Dowling wouldn’t have sworn it was “Damnyankee,” but he thought so. The grocer rose. “Well, I can see I won’t get any help here.”

“If you think I’ll open our lines so your supplies can get through, you’re even crazier than I give you credit for, and that’s not easy,” Dowling said.

Jeffries took a deep breath, then seemed to remember where he was and to whom he was talking. He left without another word, which was no doubt wise of him. Abner Dowling hadn’t acted like a military tyrant in the west Texas territory Eleventh Army had conquered, but the temptation was always there. And, if he felt like it, so was the power.

L
ieutenant-Colonel Jerry Dover was not a happy man. The Confederate supply officer had had to pull back again and again, and he’d had to wreck or burn too much that he couldn’t take with him. His dealings with the higher-ups from whom he got his supplies, always touchy, approached the vitriolic now.

“What do you mean, you can’t get me any more antibarrel rounds?” he shouted into a field telephone. Coming out of the restaurant business in Augusta, he was much too used to dealing with suppliers who welshed at the worst possible time. “What are the guns supposed to shoot at the Yankees? Aspirins? I got plenty of those.”

“I can’t give you what I don’t have,” replied the officer at the other end of the line. “Not as much getting into Atlanta as there ought to be these days.”

Dover laughed a nasty, sarcastic laugh. “Well, when the U.S. soldiers come marching in, buddy, you’ll know why. Have fun in prison camp.”

“This is nothing to joke about, goddammit!” the other officer said indignantly.

“Who’s joking?” Dover said. “Only reason they haven’t gone in yet is, they don’t want to have to fight us house to house. But if you don’t get out pretty damn quick, they’ll surround the place—and then you won’t get out.”

“General Patton says that won’t happen,” the other officer told him, as if Patton had a crystal ball and could see the future.

“Yeah, well, when a guy wants to lay a girl, he’ll say he’ll only stick it in halfway. You know what that’s worth,” Dover said. “You want to keep the Yankees away from your door, get me those shells.”

“I don’t have any I can release.”

“Aha!” Jerry Dover pounced. “A minute ago you didn’t have any at all. Cough up some of what you’re holding out on me, or you’ll be sorry—will you ever.”

“If I do that, they’ll put my tit in a wringer,” the officer in Atlanta whined.

“If you don’t, you’ll get your ass shot off,” Dover said. “
And
I’ll tell all the front-line soldiers you’re holding out on me. You can find out if our guys or the Yankees get you first. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

“You wouldn’t!” The other officer sounded horrified.

“Damn right I would. I was in the trenches myself the last time around. I know how much real soldiers hate it when the quartermasters don’t give ’em what they need to fight the war.”

“I’ll report your threats to General Patton’s staff!”

“Yeah? And so?” Dover said cheerfully. “If they put me in the line, maybe I’m a little worse off than I am here, but not fuckin’ much. If they throw me in the stockade or send me home, I’m safer than you are. Why don’t you just send me the ammo instead? Don’t you reckon it’s easier all the way around?”

Instead of answering, the supply officer in Atlanta hung up on him. But Dover got the antibarrel ammunition. As far as he was concerned, nothing else really mattered. If the other man had to tell his superiors some lies about where it went, well, that was his problem, not Dover’s.

Even with that shipment, the Confederates east of Atlanta kept getting driven back. Too many U.S. soldiers, too many green-gray barrels, too many airplanes with the eagle and crossed swords. If something didn’t change in a hurry…
If something doesn’t change in a hurry, we’ve got another losing war on our hands
, Dover thought.

He’d never been one who screamed, “Freedom!” at the top of his lungs and got a bulge in his pants whenever Jake Featherston started ranting. He’d voted Whig at every election where he could without putting himself in danger. But he had some idea what losing a second war to the USA would do to his country. He didn’t want to see that happen—who in his right mind did? Following Featherston was bad. Not following him right now, Jerry Dover figured, would be worse.

He stepped away from the field telephone, shaking his head, not liking the tenor of his thoughts. How could anybody in the Confederacy have thoughts he liked right now? You had to be smoking cigarettes the Quartermaster Department didn’t issue to believe things were going well.

Or you had to read the official C.S. Army newspaper. A quartermaster sergeant named Pete handed Dover a copy of the latest issue. It was fresh from the press; he could still smell the ink, and it smudged his fingers as he flipped through
The Armored Bear
.

If you looked at what the reporters there said, everything was wonderful. Enemy troops were about to get blasted out of Georgia.
A shattering defeat that will pave the way for the liberation of Tennessee and Kentucky
, the paper called it.
The Armored Bear
didn’t say how or when it would happen, though. Soldiers who weren’t in Georgia might buy that. Jerry Dover would believe it when he saw it.

The Armored Bear
spent half a column laughing at the idea that the damnyankees could threaten Birmingham.
This industrial center continues to turn out arms for victory
, some uniformed reporter wrote. A year earlier, the idea of U.S. soldiers anywhere near Birmingham really would have been laughable. C.S. troops were battering their way into Pittsburgh. They went in, yes, but they didn’t come out. Now the story sounded more as if the writer were whistling his way past the graveyard. Had the Yankees wanted to turn on Birmingham, it would have fallen. Dover was sure of that. They thought Atlanta was more important, and they had the sense not to try to do two things at the same time when they could make sure of one.

Photos of night-fighter pilots with gaudy new medals on their chests adorned the front page. The story under the photos bragged of air victories over Richmond, Atlanta, Birmingham, Vicksburg, and Little Rock. That was all very well, but why were U.S. bombers over all those towns?

And another story bragged of long-range rockets hitting Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh (not a word about the great battle there the year before), and Nashville (not a word that Nashville was a Confederate city, either).

There is no defense against these weapons of vengeance. Traveling thousands of miles an hour, they strike powerful blows against the Yankee aggressors
, the paper said.
Soon improved models will reach New York, Boston, Indianapolis, and other U.S. centers that imagine themselves to be safe. Confederate science in the cause of freedom is irresistible
.

Jerry Dover thoughtfully read that story over again. Unlike some of the others, it told no obvious lies. He hoped it was true. If the Confederates could pound the crap out of U.S. targets without wasting precious pilots and bombers, they might make the enemy say uncle. It struck him as the best chance they had, anyway.

On an inside page was a story about a football game between guards and U.S. POWs down at Andersonville, south of Atlanta. A photo showed guards and prisoners in football togs. Dover thought the piece was a failure. So what if the guards won? If they were healthy enough to play football, why the hell weren’t they healthy enough to fight?

Maybe that wasn’t fair. And maybe the guards had pull that kept them away from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Dover knew which way he’d bet.

The story almost pissed him off enough to make him crumple up the paper and throw it away. Almost, but not quite. One thing in chronically short supply was toilet paper. Wiping his butt with the football-playing guards struck him as the best revenge he could get.

Later, he asked if Pete had seen the story about the Andersonville football game. The noncom looked disgusted. “Oh, hell, yes,” he answered. “Closest those bastards ever get to real Yankees, ain’t it?”

“Looks that way to me,” Dover said. “I wondered if you saw things the same.”

“Usually some pretty good stuff in
The Armored Bear
,” Pete said. “Shitheads who turn it out fucked up this time, though.”

Maybe he imagined soldiers—sergeants like himself, say—sitting around a table deciding what to put into the Army newspaper. Dover would have bet things didn’t work like that. The writers likely got their orders from somebody in the Department of Communications, maybe in a soldier’s uniform but probably in a Party one. Everything in the paper was professionally smooth. Everything made the war and the news look as good as they could, or a little better than that. No amateur production could have been so effective…most of the time.

But when the truth stared you in the face, what a paper said stopped mattering so much. “Reckon we can stop the damnyankees?” Pete asked. “If we don’t, seems like we’re in a whole peck o’ trouble.”

“Looks that way to me, too,” Dover answered. “If they take Atlanta…Well, that’s pretty bad.”

We should have stopped them in front of Chattanooga
, he thought glumly.
Now that they’re through the gap and into Georgia, they can go where they please
. The paratroop drop that seized Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge from the Confederates and made them evacuate Chattanooga was a smart, gutsy operation. Dover admired it while wishing his side hadn’t been on the receiving end.

When night fell, he slept in a tent with a foxhole right next to it. U.S. bombers came over at night even more often than in the daytime. The heavy drone of engines overhead sent him diving into the hole even before the alarm sounded. Bombs burst with heavy thuds that reminded him of earthquakes. He’d never been in any earthquakes, but he was sure they had to be like this.

Antiaircraft guns thundered and lightninged, filling the air with the sharp stink of smokeless powder. Dover listened hopefully for the concussive thud of stricken bombers smashing into the ground, but in that he was disappointed. Fewer bombs fell close by than he expected from the number of airplanes overhead, which didn’t disappoint him a bit.

Then something fluttered down from the sky like an oversized snowflake and landed on top of his head. He grabbed the sheet of cheap pulp paper. The flash of the guns showed him a large U.S. flag, printed in full color, with text below that he couldn’t make out in the darkness and without his reading glasses.