There came one of the big, snorting monsters. Moss swore under his breath. The barrel was buttoned up tight. Just his luck to spot a crew who knew what they were doing. He also saw that barrel design had come a long way while he was on the shelf here in Georgia. This green-gray machine was different from any he'd seen before.
Green-gray…His eyes saw it, but his brain needed several seconds to process it, to realize what it meant.
His jaw had just dropped open when Nick Cantarella, a little quicker on the uptake, let out a joyously obscene and blasphemous whoop: "Jesus fuckin' Christ, they're ours!"
"Them's Yankee barrels?" Spartacus sounded as if he hardly dared believe it. Jonathan Moss knew how the guerrilla leader felt-he hardly dared believe it himself.
"Sure as shit aren't Confederate," Cantarella answered as two more machines rumbled down the road. The ground-pounder took a long look at them. "Wow," he breathed. "They've really pumped up the design, haven't they?"
"I was thinking the same thing. These look like they're twenty years ahead of the ones we were used to," Moss said. War gave engineering a boot in the butt. Moss thought of the airplanes he'd flown in 1914, and of the ones he'd piloted three years later. No comparison between them-and no comparison between these barrels and their predecessors, either.
If he walked out in front of them with a rifle in his hands, he'd get killed. The Negroes in Spartacus' band didn't have that worry. U.S. barrelmen, seeing black faces, would know they were among friends.
Again, the guerrillas figured that out at least as fast as he did. Several of them broke cover, smiling and waving at the oncoming barrels. The lead machine stopped. The cupola lid on top of the smooth rounded turret flipped up. "Boy, are we glad to see youse guys!" the barrel commander said in purest Brooklynese, his accent even stronger than Cantarella's.
"We's mighty glad to see you Yankees, too," Spartacus answered. "We gots a couple o' friends o' yours here." He waved for Moss and Cantarella to show themselves.
Cautiously, Jonathan Moss came out from behind the bush that had hidden him. The barrel's bow machine gun swung toward his belly button. A burst would cut him in half. He set down the Tredegar and half raised his hands.
"Who the hell are you?" the barrel commander asked. "Who the hell're both of youse?"
"I'm Jonathan Moss, major, U.S. Army-I'm a pilot," Moss answered. In scruffy denim, he looked more like a farmer-or a bum.
"Nick Cantarella, captain, U.S. Army-infantry," Cantarella added. "We got out of Andersonville, and we've been with the guerrillas ever since."
"Well, fuck me," the barrel commander said. "We heard there might be guys like you around, but I never figured I'd run into any. How about that? Just goes to show you. How long you been stuck here?"
"Since 1942." By the way Moss said it, it might as well have been forever. That was how he felt, too.
"Fuck me," the kid in the barrel said again. He looked around. "Gonna be some foot soldiers along any minute. We'll give you to them guys, and they'll do…whatever the hell they do with you. Clean youse up, anyway." That confirmed Moss' impression of himself. Cantarella looked even more sinister, because he had a thicker growth of stubble.
Sure enough, infantrymen trotted up a couple of minutes later. At least half of them carried captured Confederate automatic rifles and submachine guns. The lieutenant in charge probably wasn't old enough to vote. "Where are the closest Confederates?" he demanded, sticking to business.
"Down in Oglethorpe, other side o' the river," Spartacus answered. "They got some sojers there, anyways."
"You lead us to 'em?" the young officer asked.
Spartacus nodded. "It'd be my pleasure."
"All right. We'll clean 'em out-or if we can't, we'll call for the guys who damn well can." The lieutenant took a couple of steps towards Oglethorpe before he remembered he hadn't dealt with Moss and Cantarella. He pointed to one of his men. "Hanratty!"
"Yes, sir?" Hanratty said.
"Take these Robinson Crusoes back to Division HQ. Let the clerks deal with 'em." The lieutenant raised his voice: "The rest of you lazy lugs, c'mon! We still got a war to fight."
"Robinson Crusoes?" Moss said plaintively. The infantrymen tramped south, boots squelching through the mud. The barrels rumbled along with them. The Confederates in Oglethorpe were in for a hard time. Nobody paid any attention to the newly liberated POWs, not even the blacks with whom they'd marched and fought with for so long.
Well, there was Hanratty. "You guys were officers?" he said. Jonathan Moss managed a nod. So did Cantarella, who looked as stricken as Moss felt. Hanratty just shrugged. "Well, come on, sirs."
Still dazed, Moss and Cantarella followed. Moss had known the ropes with the guerrillas, and before that in Andersonville, and before that as a flier. Before long, he'd probably be in a situation where he knew them again. For now, he was in limbo.
Division HQ was a forest of tents a couple of miles to the north. Hanratty turned his charges over to the sentries there, saying, "My outfit scraped up these two Crusoes running with the niggers. One's a major, the other one's a captain. They're all yours. I gotta get back to it-can't let my guys down." With a nod, he headed south again.
"Crusoes?" Moss said once more. Not even Robinson Crusoes this time.
"That's what we call escaped POWs who've been on their own for a while, sir," the sentry said. Maybe he was trying to be kind, but he sounded patronizing, at least to Moss' ears. He went on, "You guys come with me, uh, please. I'll take you to the doc first, get you checked and cleaned up, and then they'll start figuring out what to do with you next."
"Oh, boy," Cantarella said in a hollow voice. Moss couldn't have put it better himself.
The doctor wore a major's gold oak leaves, but he didn't look much older than that kid lieutenant. He poked and prodded and peered. "Fleas, lice, chiggers, ticks," he said cheerfully. "You're scrawny as all get-out, too, both of you. Do a lot of walking barefoot?"
"Some, after our boots wore out and before we could, uh, liberate some more," Moss admitted.
"Hookworm, too, chances are. And some other worms, I bet." Yes, the doctor sounded like somebody in hog heaven. "We'll spray you and give you some medicine you won't like-nobody in his right mind does, anyway-and in a few days you'll be a lot better than you are now, anyhow. And we'll feed you as much as you can hold, too. How does that sound?"
"Better than the worm medicine, anyway," Moss said. "You make me feel like a sick puppy."
"You are a sick puppy," the doctor assured him. "But we'll make you better. We've learned a few things the last couple of years."
"When do we get back to the war?" Nick Cantarella asked. "If the United States are down here, Featherston's fuckers have to be on their last legs. I want to be in at the death, goddammit."
"Me, too," Moss said.
"When you're well enough-and when we make sure you are who you say you are." The doctor produced two cards and what looked like an ordinary stamp pad. "Let me have your right index fingers, gentlemen. We'll make sure you're really you, all right. And if you're not, you'll see a blindfold and a cigarette, and that's about it."
"If you think the Confederates would let somebody get as raggedyassed as we are just to infiltrate, you're crazy as a bedbug, Doc," Cantarella said.
"Well, you aren't the first man to wonder," the doctor said easily.
For the next few days, Moss felt as if he'd gone back to Andersonville. He and Cantarella were under guard all the time. The food came from ration cans. The worm medicine flushed it out almost as fast as it went in. That was no fun. Neither was the idea that his own country mistrusted him.