"She's a home…mostly." Country's harsh Midwestern accent said he hadn't grown up near the sea.
"Mostly? When do things go wrong?"
The other sailor tipped him a wink. "You'll find out," he said, and that was all George could get out of him.
L ieutenant-Colonel Jerry Dover looked around at the latest place his supply dump had come to rest. He looked at Pete, who'd done a hell of a lot of retreating with him. "From Edwardsville to Albertville," Dover said. "Reckon that'd make a good title for my memoirs when I write 'em up?"
"For your what?" The quartermaster sergeant gave him a blank look. "This Albertville place don't look like it's good for squat."
"It's bigger than Edwardsville," Dover said. Pete couldn't very well argue. Edwardsville had had only a couple of hundred people in it. Albertville, northwest of the other town-on the road to Huntsville, in other words-had three, maybe even four, thousand. It boasted a cotton gin and a cotton mill and a cottonseed-oil plant and a cornmeal mill. The local high school bragged about how it trained future farmers.
While Pete didn't argue, he didn't seem much impressed, either. "Horseshit's bigger'n dogshit, too, but shit's still shit, you ask me." He pulled out a pack of Raleighs. With Kentucky and Tennessee lost, with North Carolina cut off from Alabama, even good tobacco was getting scarce. Seeing Dover's longing expression, he gave his superior a smoke and a light. After his drag, he added, "And the Confederate States are in deep shit right now, and that's the God's truth."
"You think I'm gonna pat you on the ass and go, 'No, no, everything's fine,' you're out of your tree," Dover answered. "They're already knocking Birmingham flat. If we lose Huntsville, too…"
"We're fucked," Pete finished for him. "Without the rockets, we can't do anything against the damnyankees."
"Yeah." Jerry Dover smoked in quick, worried puffs. "If Birmingham and Huntsville go, what's left? New Orleans and Little Rock and Texas. God Himself couldn't lick the USA with New Orleans and Little Rock and Texas, and I bet He wouldn't be fool enough to try. Which is more than I can say for Jake Featherston."
Pete looked around nervously. "Jeez, sir, careful how you talk. You seen how many soldiers they've hanged from trees with DEFEATIST around their necks?"
"They won't hang me-or you, either," Dover said. "We're still doing our jobs-and we're doing 'em pretty goddamn well, too. That's a hell of a lot more than most people can say-including the President. Wasn't either one of us who lost Richmond."
"He says we'll get it back," Pete said.
"Freedom!" Dover replied-without a doubt, the most sardonic Party salutation in the history of the CSA. In one politically safe word, he called everybody who'd ever believed anything Jake Featherston said an idiot. He'd believed some of those things himself-not all of them, but some-so he knew he was an idiot, too.
Pete cocked his head to one side, like a bird dog taking a scent. "Firing's picking up at the front."
Jerry Dover listened, too. "Shit. You're right. Yankees are laying down more artillery than they've used for a while. If that doesn't mean another push is on its way…"
"Can't afford many more," Pete said.
"Any more," Dover corrected. "If they start shelling Huntsville and bombing it, how's it going to keep doing what it's got to do?"
Before Pete could answer, Dover's field telephone jangled. The noncom sketched a salute and ducked out of Dover's tent. "Albertville supply depot here," Dover said as he picked up the telephone. He listened, then answered, "I'm light on 105 shells, but I'll send you what I've got." He yelled for Pete to come back. Would Cicero Sawyer be able to get him more artillery rounds after he sent off what he had here? He had to hope so.
"I'll get 'em moving," Pete promised when Dover told him what he needed. "We don't have as many as I wish we did, though."
"Yeah, I know. I said the same thing," Dover answered. "Anything is better than nothing, though."
Was anything enough better than nothing? Dover didn't know. Once more, he had to hope. The telephone rang again, and then again. The soldiers farther forward sounded more and more desperate. "Things are falling apart up here!" one of them yelled.
"We can't hold!" another cried.
"I'll send what I can," Dover said, and rang up Huntsville. "Whatever you've got," he told Sawyer. "They're taking it on the chin here."
"I'll do what I can," Cicero Sawyer answered, sounding much like Dover himself. "We aren't getting stuff as fast as I wish we would, either."
"Great." Dover meant anything but what he said. "How are we supposed to fight a war if we don't have anything to fight with?"
"Good question," Sawyer said. "If you don't have any other good questions, class is dismissed." He hung up.
Swearing, so did Jerry Dover. After he finished cussing, he checked to see how many clips he had for his automatic rifle. He had the bad feeling he might need it before long.
The next time he saw Pete, he noticed the noncom was carrying a submachine gun. Pete's eyes went to his weapon, too. Neither of them said anything. If you didn't talk about what worried you, maybe it would go away and leave you alone.
Or maybe it wouldn't.
As he'd learned to do in the last war, Dover tracked the battle with his ears. He didn't like what he was hearing. The Yankees seemed to be pushing forward, straight toward his dump. And they seemed to be outflanking it on both sides.
A corporal came up to him. "Sir, shouldn't we be getting ready to pull out of here?"
"Yeah, I guess maybe we should." He'd had to move or abandon a lot of dumps in the Confederacy's grinding retreat. He wondered why he was dicking around with this one.
A staff car-a butternut Birmingham packed to the gills with officers and men-rattled up to the supply dump. "Get the hell out while you still can!" somebody yelled from inside. "The damnyankees're right on our ass!" The auto jounced away. The load it carried was too much for its springs.
Maybe the load Dover carried was too much for his. But he started shouting the orders he'd used so often before: "Set the time charges in the ammo! Start blowing up the supplies! Come on, dammit! We've got to get out of here, see where else we can make a stand."
Shells started landing close by. Then machine-gun bullets snapped and whined past his head-not aimed fire, not yet, but they meant U.S. soldiers sure as hell were too damn close. Before long, the Yankees would see what they were aiming at, and that wouldn't be good. And the rounds were coming in from three sides, not just from the front.
"Fuck," Dover muttered. He really had waited too long this time. He raised his voice to a shout: "Get out, men! Save yourselves!"
He'd just gotten in a truckload of new-model field telephones, lighter and better all around than the ones that had soldiered through the war. They still sat in their crates; he hadn't had a chance to send any of them forward yet. He shot them up, one short burst at a time. If his own side couldn't use them, he was damned if he'd let the bastards in green-gray get them.
"Come on, sir! Let's get out of here!" Pete sat behind the wheel of another military Birmingham. The irony of the auto's name struck home for the first time, here much too close to the city where it was made. Dover hopped in. Pete headed northwest, toward Huntsville.
They got maybe a quarter of a mile up one of the most godawful roads Dover's kidneys had ever met when a burst of machine-gun fire off to one side made the quartermaster sergeant grunt. Pete slumped over, half his head blown off. The Birmingham started limping as if it had a flat-later, Dover found out it had two. With no one controlling it, it slewed off the bumpy asphalt and hit a pine tree. Luckily, it wasn't going very fast. Dover was bruised and shaken, but not hurt. He bailed out.