When the soldiers got outside, Armstrong said, “Sir, you mind if I load my weapon? Never can tell what’s waiting out here.”
The question wasn’t just practical, though it was that. It would also show him something about how Lieutenant Bassler thought. The officer nodded right away. “You’d all better do that,” he said, and pulled his own.45 from its holster.
Armstrong put a clip in his Springfield and chambered a round. All but one of the other men also had Springfields. The odd man out-his name, Armstrong remembered, was Kurowski-carried a submachine gun: not a Confederate model, but a big, brutal Thompson, made in the USA.
The lieutenant had a couple of command cars waiting to take his new men down to the front. He said, “I’ll handle the machine gun on one of these. Who wants to take the other one?”
“I’ll do it, sir,” Cal Henderson said. “I’ve used a.30-caliber gun before. Haven’t fired one of these big mothers, but they work the same way, right?”
“Near enough,” Lieutenant Bassler said. “A.50-caliber gun shoots farther and flatter and harder, that’s all.”
“Sounds good to me,” Henderson said. It sounded good to Armstrong, too.
But Lieutenant Bassler didn’t put him in with the kid. The officer stuck Armstrong in his own command car, and grilled him as they thumped down the battered road. He got more out of Armstrong about where he’d fought and what he’d done. He probably also learned a bit about how Armstrong thought, but that didn’t occur to Armstrong till later.
When they came into Chattanooga-luckily, without needing to use the machine guns on the way-Bassler said, “Ever see anything this torn up?”
“Sir, this isn’t a patch on Ogden and Salt Lake City,” Armstrong answered. “The Mormons hung on till they couldn’t hang on any more. Then they pulled back a block and did it again.”
An old man picking through ruins with a stick glared at the command cars as they went by. If he had a rifle…But he didn’t-not here, anyway-so he could only hate.
“What do we do with them-what do we do to them-once we lick them?” Bassler said. “How do we keep from fighting another round twenty, twenty-five, thirty years from now? How do we keep them from putting bombs under their shirts and blowing themselves up when they walk into a crowd of our soldiers?”
Armstrong remembered that woman in Utah, when he was heading for R and R. He shivered despite the humid heat. “Sir, I wish to hell I knew,” he said. “I’m just a dumbass sergeant. What do you think? How do we do it?”
“Either we make them like us-”
“Good luck!” Armstrong broke in. “Uh, sir.”
“Yeah. I know.” Bassler wasn’t more than a few years older than Armstrong. When he grinned, the difference hardly showed. “Fat chance. But if we could do that, it would sure save us a lot of trouble down the road. If we can’t, maybe we can make them too scared of us to turn terrorist very often.”
“That’s what they tried in Utah,” Armstrong said. “It sort of worked, but only sort of. You start shooting hostages and stuff, you just make people hate you worse.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” Bassler said sourly. “And the Confederate States are a lot bigger than Utah. We occupy them all, there are bound to be lots of places where we’re too thin on the ground to do it right. And those are the places where trouble starts.”
“I know one thing we could do,” Armstrong said. Bassler raised a questioning eyebrow. Armstrong went on, “We could give what’s left of the nigger’s guns. If half the shit they say about what Featherston’s fuckers are doing to them is true, they’ll want payback like you wouldn’t believe. They may not love us, but they sure as hell have to hate the bastards who’ve been screwing ’em over for so long.”
Lieutenant Bassler stayed quiet for so long, Armstrong wondered if he’d said something dumb. Well, too bad if he had. Bassler shouldn’t have asked him if he didn’t want to know what he thought. Then the young officer said, “You know, Grimes, I’m going to pass that up the line. We don’t think about the Negroes in the CSA as much as we should. I’m sure we’re doing some things to help them, same as the Confederates did what they could to help the Mormons in Utah.”
“Mostly the Mormons used our weapons, sir,” Armstrong said. “That way, they could get ammo from us. Sometimes they took our guns, too. But they already had a lot when we got there, yeah.”
“Uh-huh,” Bassler said. “But that’s not my point. My point is that we ought to be using the Negroes systematically, and we aren’t. Somebody with stars on his shoulder straps needs to think about that. Maybe the President does, too.”
Armstrong was convinced they wouldn’t think about it on the suggestion of a no-account noncom. Then they drove through the gap between Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, the gap U.S. forces now held. Bare-chested gun bunnies fed 105s that sent death down into Georgia. Eyeing the high ground to either side, Armstrong said, “My hat’s off to those paratroopers. They saved us a world of grief.”
“You can sing that in church, Sergeant,” Bassler said. “We got over the Tennessee with a ruse, and we took the mountains with a trick. Makes you wonder what we’ll have to do to go forward from here.”
“Well, the country looks easier, anyway,” Armstrong said. “If we start banging barrels through the gap, can those butternut bastards stop us?”
“Good question. I think we’ll find out before too long, once the logistics buildup gets done,” Bassler said. They were close enough to the front to watch incoming artillery burst less than a quarter of a mile away. Bassler tapped the driver on the shoulder. “This’ll do. We’ll hoof it from here. They’ll start aiming at the command cars if we come much closer.” Looking grateful, the driver hit the brakes.
Armstrong ended up with Cal Henderson in his new squad. He was introduced to Whitey and Woody and Alf and Rocco and Hy and Squidface and Zeb the Hat. When he said, “Let’s try not to get each other killed, all right?” they all nodded.
“You’ve been through some shit,” Squidface opined. “That’s good.”
“A little bit,” Armstrong allowed. “You guys look like you have, too.”
“Hell, we’re here,” Squidface said. He was a PFC, skinny and dark and needing a shave. He didn’t have tentacles or even particularly buggy eyes. One of these days, Armstrong figured he’d find out how the nickname happened. Till then, he didn’t need to flabble about it.
The Confederates threw a little more artillery at the U.S. positions. Nobody in Armstrong’s new squad even moved. These guys were veterans, all right; they could tell by listening when falling shells were liable to be dangerous. They watched Armstrong as the shells burst, too. They wanted to see if he got all hot and bothered. When he lit up a Duke and went on talking as if nothing were happening, they relaxed a little.
“You guys think we can break out?” he asked. He’d heard what Lieutenant Bassler had to say. These men would have to do the bleeding. So will I, Armstrong thought. (So would Bassler-second lieutenants were expendable, too. But Armstrong didn’t worry about him.)
They all loudly and profanely insisted they could. Armstrong figured that meant they’d get the chance to try before real long.
Jonathan Moss counted himself lucky to be alive. He didn’t think what was left of Spartacus’ band would attack another airstrip any time soon. Doing it once had cost the black guerrillas too much.
“They was layin’ for us,” Spartacus said. He, Moss, Nick Cantarella, and a dozen or so Negro fighters sat around a couple of small campfires. “Was they layin’ for anybody who come by, or did somebody rat on us?”
That was an ugly thought. A Negro would have to be crazy or desperate to betray his comrades to whites in the CSA, but it could happen. If a man knew his loved ones were in a camp, could he make a bargain with the Devil? Of course he could. Moss could find other reasons that might make a black turn traitor-simple jealousy of Spartacus came to mind-but saving kin stood highest on the list of likely ones.