The Grapple (33 page)

The U.S. soldiers who unloaded the truck didn’t seem so happy. “We’ve got our own canned goods, dammit,” one of them said. “We don’t want this Confederate shit.” His pals nodded.

“Don’t blame me, friends,” Cincinnatus said. “I just brung what they told me to bring.”

“Why didn’t they tell you to bring us a shitload of Confederate cigarettes?” the soldier said. “That woulda been worth somethin’.”

“Fuck it,” said another young man in green-gray. “We’re heading down into tobacco country. We’ll get our own smokes before long.”

“Yeah!” Two or three U.S. soldiers liked the sound of that. So did Cincinnatus, for different reasons. They weren’t more than ten or twelve miles south of Covington, but they thought they could go a lot farther. He’d seen that arrogance in Confederate soldiers before, but rarely in their U.S. counterparts. If they thought going into a fight that they could lick the enemy, that made them more likely to be right.

“General Morrell, he knows what the hell he’s doing,” the first soldier said. Again, he got nothing but agreement from his buddies. Again, Cincinnatus wondered if he was hearing straight. U.S. soldiers usually thought of their generals as bungling idiots—and usually had good, solid reasons for thinking of them that way.

Up ahead, Confederate guns boomed. A few shells came down not too far away. The soldiers laughed. “If that’s the best those bastards can do, they won’t even slow us down,” one of them said.

“They pulled this shit on us two years ago,” another one added. “Hell, I was in Ohio then. They caught me, but I slipped off before they took me very far. We didn’t know how to stop ’em. And you know what? I bet they don’t know how to stop us, either.”

No sooner had he spoken than several rocket salvos screamed down out of the sky. They didn’t land on the trucks, but half a mile or so to the east. Where the artillery hadn’t, they sobered the U.S. soldiers. “Well, maybe it won’t be quite so easy,” the first one said. “But I bet we can do it.”

L
ieutenant Michael Pound thought he was getting the hang of commanding four other barrels instead of doing the gunning for one. He hoped he was, anyhow. None of the other barrel commanders in the platoon was complaining. They’d plunged deep into Kentucky, and all five machines were still intact.

He studied the map. The next town ahead, on the north bank of the Green River, was called Calhoun. The hamlet on the south side of the river, Rumsey, was even smaller. They probably didn’t have a thousand people put together.

John Calhoun, Pound remembered, was a Southern politician before the War of Secession—and, therefore, a son of a bitch by definition. A town named after him deserved whatever happened to it. Pound didn’t know who Rumsey was. Nobody good, probably.

Calhoun and Rumsey together wouldn’t have mattered if not for the bridge between them. The James Bethel Gresham Memorial Bridge, the map called it, and noted that it was named for a Kentuckian who was one of the first Confederate soldiers to die in the Great War.
He had it coming,
Pound thought unkindly.

He eyed the bridge from the edge of the woods that encroached on Calhoun from the north. Binoculars made it seem to leap almost to within arm’s length. Some Confederate soldiers milled around in Calhoun, but not many, and they didn’t seem very well organized.

As usual, Pound didn’t need long to make up his mind. He got on the all-platoon circuit of his wireless: “Men, we are going to take that bridge away from the enemy.”

“How, sir?” That was Sergeant Frank Blakey, the next most senior barrel commander. “Won’t they just blow it when they see us coming?”

“Sure—if they recognize us,” Pound answered. “But if they don’t…” He explained what he had in mind.

When he finished, Sergeant Blakey whistled. “You’ve got the balls of a burglar, sir. If we try it, though, we just have to hope you don’t get ’em draped over a doorknob.”

“If you think it won’t work, sing out,” Pound said. “I spent years telling officers they were a bunch of damn fools—and they mostly were, too. My ears won’t fall off if you tell me the same thing.”

Despite reassurances, none of the noncoms under him spoke up right away. At last, Blakey said, “I think we’ve got a chance, sir. Like you say, they sure as hell won’t be expecting it.” He laughed. “I wouldn’t—you better believe that.”

“Let’s go, then.” When an idea struck Pound, it struck hard. This one was no exception. He threw open the cupola lid and climbed out of the barrel. “Come on,” he called to his gunner and loader. “Time’s a-wasting.”

They descended from the machine, too. They both looked faintly dubious, or more than faintly, but they went along. Crewmen also got out of the other four barrels. Like Michael Pound and his men, they started cutting down bushes and leafy branches and tying them to the decking and turrets of their machines, breaking up their silhouettes and hiding a lot of the green-gray paint that covered them.

An infantry lieutenant came up to Pound. “What the hell are you guys doing?” he asked. “Playing Queen of the May?”

“I hope not.” Pound pointed to the span between Calhoun and Rumsey. “I aim to take that bridge. I’ll probably need your help to do it.” He told the other officer—who was at least twenty years younger than he was—his plan.

“You got your nerve, don’t you?” The infantry lieutenant echoed Sergeant Blakey. But he nodded. “Yeah, we can do that. Keep quiet till you make it onto the bridge or you get in trouble, then open up with everything we got.” He had a tough-guy, big-city accent—Pound guessed he was from Chicago. He added, “You know that’s liable to be kinda too late, don’t you?”

“Chance you take.” Pound’s broad shoulders went up and down in a shrug. “If we go down, we’ll go down swinging.”

“Hope you don’t. We’ll back your play.” The other lieutenant stuck out his hand. “Luck.” He didn’t say,
You’ll need it,
but it was written all over his face.

Pound shook hands with him anyway. “Thanks. If this does work, come on down once we’re where we need to be and help us take charge of things.”

“Right,” the infantry lieutenant said.
Fat chance,
his face declared.

When the barrels were camouflaged to Pound’s satisfaction, he led the parade down into Calhoun. The other four machines stayed buttoned up. He couldn’t stand that. He wanted to see everything that was going on—and he thought he might need to talk his way past some of the men in butternut.

Along State Highway 81 they rumbled, past Seventh, Sixth, Fifth, Fourth. Calhoun didn’t seem to have any street with a number bigger than Seventh. They got down to Mayberry, four blocks past the county seat and only a block away from the river, before anybody thought to challenge them. A Confederate sergeant stepped out into the narrow road and called, “What do y’all reckon you’re doin’?”

“Securing the bridge, of course.” As usual, Michael Pound acted as if he had not a doubt in the world.

Frowning, the sergeant hefted his automatic rifle. The barrel’s bow machine gun could cut him in half before he started shooting…Pound hoped. “You talk funny,” the noncom said. “Where you from?”

“New Orleans,” Pound answered. The Crescent City’s half-Southern, half-Brooklyn speech pattern was different from anything else in the CSA. His own accent was much closer to Canadian than anything else; he’d grown up not far from the border. It didn’t sound much like that of a native Louisianan, but if this Confederate wasn’t expecting anybody from the USA….

And he wasn’t. He stepped aside, saying, “Wish to God somebody woulda told us we were getting barrels sent in.”

Life is full of surprises,
Pound thought, but he didn’t say anything out loud—the less he opened his mouth where Confederates could hear, the better. The barrel turned right on First and rumbled west toward the bridge to Rumsey. The bridge was about a quarter of a mile away. Pound’s machine had covered a little more than half the distance when somebody shouted, “Holy Jesus! They’re Yankees!”

“Shit!” Pound said, without originality but with great sincerity. A burst of submachine-gun fire clanged off the side of the barrel. He dove down into the turret. “Gun it for the bridge!” he yelled to the driver. To the bow gunner, he added, “Shoot anybody who gets in our way or tries to blow the bridge!”

“Yes, sir,” both men answered. The barrel’s engine went from rumble to roar. The ponderous machine couldn’t leap, but it could scoot pretty fast. It could—and it did.

“What if they can blow the damn thing from the Rumsey side, sir?” the gunner asked.

“There’s a technical term for that, Sergeant,” Pound answered. “In that case, we’re screwed.” He startled a laugh out of Mel Scullard. A moment later, he added, “Once we’re
on
the bridge, I want you to make sure nothing alive has the chance to come up from Rumsey and blow it. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, sir,” Scullard said, which was the right answer. He gave the loader a one-word order: “Canister!”

“Canister,” Private Joe Mouradian echoed. The shell went into the breech. Barrels carried only three or four rounds of canister in their racks because they needed it so seldom. When they did need it, though, they were liable to need it bad. It turned the main armament into an enormous shotgun. Anybody who came within a hundred yards or so was asking to get blown to bits.

The driver turned left onto the bridge so sharply, Pound thanked the God in Whom he only sporadically believed for not letting the barrel throw a track. One of the machines behind him fired a round from its main armament. He couldn’t see what it was shooting at—he had his eyes on the forward-facing periscopes that showed the far end of the bridge and the village of Rumsey beyond.

“Stop just at the end of the bridge,” he told the driver.

“At the end of the bridge—yes, sir.” No sooner had the driver stopped than soldiers in butternut started running toward the barrel. The bow machine gun chattered. The Confederate soldiers went down, some dead or wounded, others diving for cover. Civilians appeared in the streets, too, but they were running for cover.

After the first impromptu charge from Rumsey failed, the Confederates paused to put together a proper attack. Whoever led it was plenty smart. He had plenty of people with automatic rifles and submachine guns going forward in front of the men with Featherston Fizzes and the Confederates’ newfangled antibarrel rockets. If the troops making the racket with the small arms could distract the barrel crew…

But the Confederate commander reckoned without canister. Pound waited till the closest enemy soldiers were very close indeed before he shouted, “Fire!”

Even he was awed by the carnage a 3½-inch canister shell could cause. Men and pieces of men lay and writhed, broken, in front of the barrel. Several dropped Featherston Fizzes added flames to the horror. “Shall I give ’em another round, sir?” Scullard asked.

“By all means,” Pound answered.

The second round of canister, when added to the steady rattle of death from the bow machine gun, convinced the handful of Confederates still on their feet to get away if they could. “Give me one more round,” the gunner told the loader.

“Hold up on that.” Pound overrode him. “Use HE instead, and start knocking down the houses closest to us. I don’t want one of those bastards with a rocket to be able to get off an easy shot at us.”

“I’ll do it, sir,” Scullard said, and he did, with the peculiar gusto a man has when destroying property that belongs to the other side. A secondary explosion from inside one of those houses in Rumsey made Pound think he’d barely beaten the Confederates to the punch: if that wasn’t a rocket blowing up, what was it?

Sergeant Blakey’s barrel came up alongside Pound’s. The other three in the platoon held the north end of the bridge against the Confederates in Calhoun. Their cannon and machine guns thundered and barked. Pound hoped the U.S. foot soldiers in the woods north of Calhoun were pressing down into the town. Squeezed between them and the barrels on the bridge, what could Featherston’s men do but get out?

The Confederates inside Rumsey had an antibarrel cannon: an inch-and-a-halfer from the days when the war first started. It had two virtues—it was easy to haul around, and it fired rapidly. Against one of the new U.S. barrels, though, it was hardly more than a doorknocker. Its shells had no hope of penetrating that thick, well-sloped armor.

“There it is, sir!” Scullard said. “In the bushes by that big house.”

“You’re right,” Pound said. “Do the honors, then.”

“Yes, sir,” the gunner said, and then, to the loader, “HE!” Two shells sufficed to upend the gun and send a couple of the men who served it flying. Pound nodded to himself in somber satisfaction. If the other side wanted to play the game but didn’t have good cards…well, too bad for them.

He looked through the periscopes facing back toward Calhoun. Alarm tingled through him. Soldiers were on the bridge. Could he traverse the turret fast enough to fire at them before they reached the barrel? But then he relaxed—they wore green-gray, not butternut.

“We have Calhoun,” he said happily. “And we have the bridge—intact, by God. We can keep rolling right on through Kentucky. Let’s see Featherston stop us. Let’s see anybody stop us.”