The noise inside the cockpit was different. He felt it all through his body instead of just hearing it. He gave the turbo some throttle. It raced down the runway-it needed half again as much tarmac as a prop job. As he came up to takeoff speed, the instructor said, "Ease the stick back. Not too much, now. You do everything by little bits with this baby."
"Right," Moss said, and then he was airborne. He gunned the turbo a little. When he felt what happened, he whispered, "Ohh." Sure as hell, the murmur wasn't much different from the one he'd made as he first slid into Beth Sullivan when he was seventeen. He'd forgotten you could mix so much delight and awe and astonishment.
The instructor chuckled. How many other pilots had made that same sound in his earphones? "It's something, isn't it?" he said.
"Wow," Moss answered, which wasn't a hell of a lot more articulate. After a moment, he tried again: "It's like angels are pushing."
"It is, isn't it?" Now the instructor sounded thoughtful; he hadn't heard that before, anyway. He paused for a moment, then said, "Remember, they can turn into devils in nothing flat if you screw up-or even if you don't. Sometimes only God knows why the engines flame out or throw a rotor or just up and quit. And if you don't want to be asking Him face-to-face, you've got to get out of the bird in a hurry."
"I understand," Moss said. The single-seat Screaming Eagle had one of the nicest cockpit canopies he'd ever seen, a sleekly streamlined armor-glass bubble. The trainer's canopy was longer and more bulbous, to accommodate the longer cockpit with two men. Could you yank it back quick enough to bail out? He hoped so.
At the instructor's command, he swung the turbo into a turn. You couldn't come close to turning as tight as you could in a prop job. But you wouldn't want to dogfight in a Screaming Eagle anyway, not when you could outdive, outclimb, and just plain outrun anything else in the air.
Landing with a nosewheel as the first flight ended felt strange, but he did it. He couldn't stop smiling when he got out of the fighter. If this wasn't love, what was it?
IX
G eorgia. Now Alabama. Cincinnatus Driver didn't care where they sent him. That he could drive through states which didn't come close to bordering the USA shouted louder than any words that the Confederacy was cracking up.
Enemy wireless programs still denied the obvious. They promised vengeance on the United States and swore C.S. victory lay right around the corner. "Those bastards are so full of bullshit, no fuckin' wonder their eyes are brown," Hal Williamson said. He paused to drag on a cigarette. The smoke, like the battery-powered wireless set, was loot from a captured Confederate supply dump. The enemy had destroyed what he could, but he'd had to retreat too fast to get rid of everything.
"We will take our revenge on the damnyankees!" the announcer brayed. "Our rockets will drop from the skies and punish them as they only dream of punishing us! We will wipe their corrupt and filthy cities off the map one after another!"
Cincinnatus lit up a Raleigh of his own. "Turn him off," he said. "Screechin' like that'll ruin my digestion."
"I hear you," Williamson said, and turned the power knob till it clicked. The ranting Confederate broadcaster-he must have studied at the Jake Featherston school of drama-fell silent. Williamson made as if to throw a rock at the set. "Goddamn lying cocksucker."
"Yeah," Cincinnatus said, and hoped he was right. U.S. newscasters went on and on about the German bomb that leveled Petrograd. If the Germans could do something like that, could the Confederates match them? You didn't want to think so, but was it impossible?
Hal's thoughts ran along a different train track: "Besides, where'll the dickheads get their rockets once we're done with Huntsville?"
"Yeah!" This time, Cincinnatus sounded much happier. Everybody knew the enemy rockets came from there. If the Confederates couldn't throw their superbomb at the USA, what good would it do them?
And, even before Huntsville got overrun, it was catching holy hell. Battery upon battery of 105s pounded away at the town. Their muzzle flashes brightened the horizon from the north all the way around to the southeast. The deeper crump! of bursting bombs said U.S. airplanes came over Huntsville, too. How anybody could go on working while high explosives were knocking his city flat was beyond Cincinnatus. The Confederates seemed intent on trying, though.
Before the drivers settled down for the night, they cut cards to see who would stand sentry when. Cincinnatus got a three-hour shift right at the start. That was good news and bad mixed together. He would have to stay awake longer when he was hungrier for sleep than for a good steak. But when he did climb into the cabin of his truck and roll up in blankets, he wouldn't have his sleep interrupted…unless Confederate raiders hit.
And they might. He knew that too well, which was why he carried his submachine gun with the safety off. C.S. regulars were thin on the ground. Raiders, damn them, popped out of nowhere. Some were bypassed soldiers, others civilians with a chip on their shoulder. If they could throw a few grenades or stitch a burst of automatic-weapons fire through a truck park, the damage they did more than paid for itself even if they got scragged.
A lot of the time, they didn't. They disappeared into the darkness and were never seen again. "Bastards," Cincinnatus muttered. His leg hurt. So did his shoulder. They did a lot of the time, even though he took enough aspirins to give himself a perpetual sour stomach. Run out in front of a motorcar and you weren't the same again afterwards.
He prowled around the parked trucks, doing his best to move quietly. Not far away, he heard a sound like crazy screeching. He froze for a second before realizing it was a raccoon. Those unearthly noises could get you going.
His wristwatch had numbers and hands that glowed in the dark. When his stretch on patrol ended, he shook his replacement awake and curled up on the seat of his truck. Whatever happened from then till sunup happened without him.
Somebody had liberated a ham. Toasted over a fire, a thick slab of it was delicious, and beat the hell out of the canned scrambled eggs Cincinnatus also ate. The coffee tasted as if it was at least half chicory. He'd had blends like that when he lived in Covington. He was used to it; he even kind of liked it. Some of the white drivers grumbled.
Hal Williamson put things in perspective: "Shit, guys, it's better than no coffee at all." Nobody found any easy way to argue with that.
The drivers headed for the closest dump to load up with whatever the troops might need today (or whatever the quartermaster had, which wasn't always the same thing). Before they got there, a bird colonel in a command car waved them down. "You men have empty trucks, right?"
"Yeah? So?" the lead driver asked. Being technically a civilian, he could get away with things that would have put a soldier in the stockade. Cincinnatus was only two trucks behind, and could hear everything that went on between the driver and the officer.
That worthy didn't even blink at the near-insubordination. "So you're going to come with me instead of going wherever the hell you were going."
"We can't do that!" the lead driver exclaimed. "They'll have our heads."
"No, they won't," the colonel said. "Whatever you were doing, what I've got for you is more important. Unless you're on your way to pick up a bunch of those kraut superbombs, this trumps everything. And I will have your guts for garters if you fuck with me, buddy-I promise you that."
The lead driver considered, but not for long. "Colonel, you talked me into it," he said. Cincinnatus would have said the same thing; he didn't think the colonel was bluffing.
All the man said after that was, "Follow me." He got into the command car, nudged the driver, and took off. The truck convoy rumbled after him.