They marched him down the corridor to the front desk. The Confederate officer signed whatever paperwork he had to sign to take Cincinnatus farther than that. Then he and two of the guards took Cincinnatus out of the city jail altogether (the third one, the one with the key, stayed behind). They bundled him into a motorcar and took him up to the docks on the Ohio. Another auto pulled up beside his. To his surprise, his father got out of that one. Seneca Driver had his own contingent of guards. “What’s goin’ on, Son?” he asked.
“Beats me,” Cincinnatus answered.
“Shut up, both of you,” the major said. “Into the boat.” He pointed. It was a smallish motorboat with, at the moment, a Red Cross flag draped across what had to be a machine-gun mount up near the bow. Awkwardly, Cincinnatus obeyed. Then he helped his father into the boat, though the older man was probably sprier than he was.
The engine roared to life. The motorboat arrowed across the river to the Cincinnati side. More guards waited at a pier there. One of them condescended to give Cincinnatus a hand as he struggled out of the boat. “Thank you, suh,” he said softly.
“Shut up! No talking!” The major had strong opinions and what seemed to be a one-track mind. He pointed to a waiting motorcar painted C.S. butternut. “Get in.”
Soldiers stood near the motorcar. The automatic rifles they carried made the submachine guns he’d seen before seem children’s toys by comparison. Their expressions said they would just as soon shoot him as look at him. He got into the auto. One of them got in beside him. “Don’t fuck with me, Sambo,” the Confederate said casually, “or you’ll never find out how the serial down at the Bijou turns out.”
“I ain’t done nothin’,” Cincinnatus said. “I ain’t gonna do nothin’, neither.” The soldier only grunted. He didn’t believe a word of it. Another heavily armed man sat in the front seat next to the driver.
Away went the motorcar. Cincinnatus looked out the window. Cincinnati had taken more battle damage than Covington. The people on the streets looked shabby and unhappy. He never saw Confederate soldiers in parties smaller than four. That told him a lot about what the occupied thought of their occupiers.
“Can I look out the back window, suh, without you shootin’ me?” he asked the soldier.
After considering, the man nodded. “Hand me your stick first,” he said. “Move slow and careful. Don’t get cute, or you’ll be sorry-but not for long.”
Cincinnatus obeyed in every particular. He saw what he’d hoped to see: another motorcar full of soldiers right behind this one. With any luck at all, that one also held his father. He swung around so he was sitting straight ahead again. “Thank you kindly, suh.”
“Huh,” the Confederate soldier said, and then, “Looks like we’re here.”
Here was the Cincinnati city jail. Cincinnatus wondered if he’d just traded one cell for another. Nobody told him to get out of the auto, though. In fact, three more motorcars joined the ones he and his father were in. The procession headed west and north through occupied Ohio.
Most of the countryside looked normal, as if war had never touched it. Here and there, usually around towns, were patches of devastation. You could see where U.S. soldiers had stood and fought and where they’d been outflanked, outmaneuvered, and forced from their positions.
The little convoy passed through checkpoint after checkpoint. At one of them, a soldier put something on the wireless aerial to Cincinnatus’ auto. He couldn’t see what it was. He asked permission to look back at the motorcar behind him again. The soldier with the automatic rifle looked disgusted but nodded. He didn’t get any less alert. He also showed no sign of needing to take a leak, though they’d been traveling for quite a while. Cincinnatus didn’t know how much longer he could go on before asking for a stop. He didn’t know if he’d get one, though, even if he asked.
A white flag flew from the other auto’s aerial. He supposed his motorcar carried the same flag of truce. But when he asked about it, the soldier stared through him and said, “Shut up.” He didn’t argue with an armed man.
Just before he had to ask for a stop-and just after they’d rolled through a small town called Oxford-the convoy halted on its own. “Where the hell are they?” the driver grumbled.
“They’ll be here,” said the other man in the front seat. “Ain’t like we never done this before.”
Sure enough, five minutes later another convoy of motorcars approached from the west. Those also had white flags on their wireless antennas. They were painted green-gray, not butternut. The soldier next to Cincinnatus nudged him with the muzzle of his rifle. “Get out.” He obeyed. The soldier passed him his cane. His father left the auto behind him. Three skinny white men who needed shaves emerged from the other motorcars.
Along with U.S. soldiers, five whites got out of the green-gray autos. Cincinnatus’ dour major went up to confer with a U.S. officer who might have been his long-lost twin. They signed some papers for each other. The C.S. major turned back. “You are exchanged!” he shouted to Cincinnatus and the others. “You’re the damnyankees’ worry now. Far as I’m concerned, they’re welcome to you. Go on-git!”
“Do Jesus!” Cincinnatus whispered as he limped forward into U.S. custody. That cop in Covington hadn’t lied to him after all. “Do Jesus!” He looked back to his father. “Come on, Pa. I think we’re goin’ home.”
Sergeant Michael Pound had a new barrel. Considering what had happened to the old one, that was anything but a surprise. But this wasn’t a new barrel of the same old style. U.S. engineers had rapidly figured out they needed to do something about the fearsome new machine the Confederates had introduced. Their answer was… not everything it might have been, but a damn sight better than no change at all.
The chassis hadn’t changed much. The engine was of similar design to the old one, but put out an extra fifty horsepower. That was all to the good, because the new barrel was heavier, and needed the extra muscle to shove it around.
Almost all the weight gain came from the new turret. It was bigger than the old one. Its armor was thicker and better sloped. And it had been upgunned. Instead of a 37mm gun-an inch and a half to a gunner-it now carried a 60mm piece-a little less than two and a half inches. That still didn’t match the three-inch monster the new Confederate barrels used, but it was big enough to make any enemy barrel say uncle, where you had to be damn good or damn lucky to hurt the new C.S. machine with the 37mm cannon.
And the 60mm gun was absolutely the biggest one that would fit on the turret ring of the old chassis. A new, improved body took a lot longer to turn out than a reworked turret. The Confederates must have been planning their Mark 2 while the Mark 1 was just starting production. The USA hadn’t done that. And so, instead of a proper Mark 2, the United States had to make do with Mark 1.5, more or less.
“Ugly beast,” Pound said, laying a hand on its armored flank. He didn’t see how anybody could argue with that. The new turret went with the old chassis about the way a rhino’s head went with a cow’s body. Everything on the Confederates’ new barrels fit together with everything else. They had a grim, functional beauty. The Mark 1.5 was just grim.
“Well, Sergeant, Featherston’s fuckers will think it’s ugly, too, especially after it bites them a few times.” That was Cecil Bergman, Pound’s new loader. He was a skinny little guy, which helped him do his job-even though the new turret was bigger on the outside, it had even less room within than the old one.
“That’s a fact. The new gun will make them sit up and take notice. About time, too,” Pound said. “Maybe we have a chance of holding them out of Pittsburgh now. Maybe.” He sounded anything but convinced.
He sounded that way because he was unconvinced. The U.S. Army hadn’t been able to stop the latest Confederate push, any more than it had been able to stop the Confederate drive up through Ohio the summer before. If you couldn’t stop the enemy, how the devil were you supposed to win the war? Pound saw no way.