Custer wouldn’t wait, he thought. Custer would charge ahead regardless. And no doubt he was right, because Custer always aimed to get the bit between his teeth and charge ahead regardless. About four times out of five, he ended up wishing he hadn’t. The fifth time…The fifth time left him with his reputation as a great general, because the fifth time he charged the other side shattered instead of his own.
Dowling knew he wouldn’t go down in the history books as a great general. The two likeliest candidates this time around were Irving Morrell and George Patton. Patton got off to a fast start in Ohio, but Morrell was making up ground-literally as well as metaphorically-in Kentucky and Tennessee. Who held higher honors in the books would probably depend on who won the war.
Some men who realized they weren’t going to be great generals turned into failures instead. They drank too much, or they became sour martinets, or they forgot about discipline for themselves and everybody under them. Dowling tried not to commit those particular sins. If he couldn’t be a great general, he could be a pretty good one, and that was what he aimed at.
He awaited developments, then. A great general probably would have forced them. A pretty good general could decide he was in no position to force them, which seemed plain as a punch in the nose to Dowling. He consoled himself by deciding it would take a great general to beat him, and so far his Confederate counterpart had shown no signs of greatness. If anything, the fellow on the other side seemed to have more trouble making up his mind than Dowling did.
The awaited developments…didn’t develop. No column full of Freedom Party Guards and enemy armor crashed into Dowling’s flank from the wide open spaces to the north or south. Dowling briefly wondered whether his opposite number had had his imagination surgically removed when he was only a lad.
Then the aerial reconnaissance photos came in. Terry DeFrancis came in with them-and with a spring in his step and a cigar in his mouth. “Will you look at these, sir?” he said. “Will you just look at them?”
“If you quit waving them around, I will,” Dowling said.
“Sorry, sir.” DeFrancis set them on his desk.
Dowling spread them out so he could look at several at once. They all seemed to feature vehicles on fire and pillars of smoke mounting up to the sky. Some of the burning vehicles were trucks, but quite a few were barrels. “You hit them hard,” Dowling said.
“Sir, we fucking pulverized them, pardon my French,” DeFrancis said. “They were driving along without a care in the world, right out in the open, and we caught ’em naked with their legs spread. We screwed ’em, too. We screwed ’em to the wall.”
“With news like that, you can speak French to me any old day,” Dowling said.
“Thank you, sir.” Colonel DeFrancis grinned around the cigar. He grew a little more serious as he went on, “Air power matters here. It really matters. We’ve got it, and the other guys don’t. That gives them just as much trouble approaching us as a fleet of battleships has approaching an airplane carrier.”
“Don’t get carried away,” Dowling warned. “They can do things battleships can’t. They can camouflage themselves. They can spread out, so you don’t catch so many of them together. I suppose they can even use dummies and hit with their real force while you attack those.”
DeFrancis eyed him. “Sir, I’m glad we’re on the same side. You’ve got an evil, nasty, sneaky mind.”
“You say the sweetest things, Colonel.” Dowling batted his eyelashes at the younger man. Watching a portly, sixtyish general simper and flirt was almost enough to make DeFrancis swallow his stogie. As his air commander had before, Dowling quickly sobered. “You’re doing a terrific job, Terry. I just don’t want you to get too confident.”
“Fair enough, sir,” DeFrancis said. Dowling hoped he meant it. When you were winning, when things were going your way, it was easy to think victory was meant to be. Custer always did. Hell, Custer thought victory was meant to be even when he’d just taken a shellacking. His confidence made his troops pay a fearful butcher’s bill.
In the end, Custer made his vision of victory real. Dowling wanted DeFrancis to do that without causing his own side the misery Custer had. “What’s the next thing you can do that would hurt the enemy most?” Dowling asked.
“Catch another column flatfooted,” DeFrancis replied at once.
Dowling tried again: “What’s the next thing you can do that would hurt the enemy most, assuming he’s not an idiot?”
Colonel DeFrancis took longer to answer this time. At last, he said, “Well, the more we pound his supply lines, the more trouble he’ll have hitting us.”
“Fine,” Dowling said. “Do it. Even if the War Department won’t send us more men, they don’t seem constipated about shipping us ordnance. As long as we’ve got it, we might as well drop it on the Confederates’ heads.”
“I like the way you think, sir,” DeFrancis said.
“I just hope the bastards in butternut don’t,” Dowling answered. “Keep hammering them. If we can soften ’em up enough, we will drive on Camp Determination.” He spoke with no small determination of his own.
“Hey, Sarge!” one of the soldiers in Chester Martin’s platoon called to him.
“What’s up, Frankie?” Martin asked.
“Found this out on patrol. Figured I better bring it in so you could see.” Frankie held out a piece of paper.
“Thanks-I think.” Chester took it. It was cheap pulp, not much better than newspaper grade. The printing was cheap, too: letters blurred, ink smeary. The message, though, was something else again. YANKEE MURDERERS! it began, and went downhill from there.
The gist was that U.S. soldiers who’d shot hostages couldn’t expect to be treated as prisoners of war. We shoot mad dogs, it read, and anyone who slaughters innocent Confederate civilians puts himself forever beyond the pale of civilized warfare.
“What do you think, Sarge?” Frankie asked.
“Me? I think there’s no such thing as an innocent Confederate civilian, except maybe in his left ear,” Chester answered. “You tell anybody else about this little love letter?”
Frankie shook his head. “No, Sarge. Not me.”
“Don’t flabble about it if you did-bound to be lots more copies out there,” Martin said. “But don’t go yelling it from the housetops, either. You did good, bringing it to me. I’m going to let Captain Rhodes have a look at it.”
Rhodes studied the flyer, then looked up at Chester. “Thanks for showing this to me, Sergeant. I’ll kick it up to Intelligence, let the boys there check it out. I’d say we hit a nerve.”
“Sir?” Chester said. “How do you mean?”
“Looks to me like the Confederates are saying they can’t protect their own, and they’re trying to scare us into being nice little boys and girls,” Rhodes answered. “Or do you think I’m wrong? You’ve been around the block a few times-you know what’s what.”
“I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground half the time.” Chester thought about it. “You may be right. I don’t know that you are, but you may be.”
“Fair enough,” Captain Rhodes said. “We’ll see what the Intelligence johnnies think. Hell, they won’t pay any attention to me-I’m just a dumb line officer, so what the fuck can I know?”
“You’re a damn good company commander, sir,” Martin said. “I’ve been around that block-I ought to know.”
“Thanks. When you say something like that, I know you’re not blowing smoke up my ass, ’cause you don’t need to,” Rhodes said. “I know damn well we’ve got more good company-level officers than first sergeants.”
He wasn’t wrong. The worst thing he could do to Chester was take away his platoon. And if he did, if some baby-faced shavetail started commanding it instead, who would really be running things any which way? Chester and Hubert Rhodes both knew the answer to that one.