Crossing the Ohio took about fifteen minutes. A few Confederate shells splashed into the river not far away. Fragments clanged off the landing craft’s sides. Nothing got through. Up front, the barrel driver said, “Thank you, Jesus!” He still believed in what he’d learned in Sunday school.
Then, with a jolt that clicked Morrell’s teeth together, the barrel wallowed up onto dry land again. The ramp thudded down. Morrell hadn’t felt the boat turn in the water, but it faced away from the Ohio. The barrel went into reverse and left its steel nest. Morrell felt like cheering when the tracks bit into soft ground. Here he was, on Confederate soil at last after spending most of the two years trying to defend his own country.
“Forward!” he told the driver. “Toward the fighting!” Then he played with the dials on the big, bulky wireless set that cramped the turret. “Nest, this is Robin,” he said, wondering who’d picked such idiotic code names. “Nest, this is Robin. Do you read?”
“Read you five by five, Robin.” The answer resounded in his earphones. He was back in touch, back in command. After fifteen or twenty minutes of glory-and responsibility-Harlan Parsons could go back to being number two.
“What is the situation?” Morrell asked. “Any changes?”
“Negative, sir,” the wireless man replied. “Everything’s on schedule, or maybe a little ahead of schedule.”
“Sounds good to me,” Morrell said. Before the Nest could answer, a noise like a giant frying bacon filled his earphones. Swearing, he yanked them off his head. The Confederates were starting to jam signals. That was a sign they were getting their wits about them and seriously starting to fight back. Morrell swore some more. He would have liked the enemy to stay stunned a while longer. You didn’t always get everything you wanted. As long as the USA had enough…
The barrel jounced past the burning ruin of a C.S. machine. Four soldiers in blood-soaked butternut coveralls-the barrel crew-sprawled close by in death. Maybe the fifth man got away. Or maybe he never got out, and was nothing but charred meat inside the barrel.
Morrell rode toward the front standing up in the turret, head and shoulders out of the cupola. He wanted to see what was going on. Enemy fire was light. Machine guns and other small arms farther forward chattered. Every Confederate foot soldier carried either an automatic rifle or a submachine gun. The bastards in butternut had plenty of firepower. Did they have enough big guns, enough barrels, enough airplanes, enough men? Morrell and the United States were betting they didn’t.
A salvo of those newfangled rockets screamed in from the south. Morrell just had time to duck down into the turret and slam the cupola hatch shut before the rockets burst. Blast rocked the barrel. It could flip even one of these heavy machines right over. It could, but it didn’t this time. Fragments clanged off armor.
“Son of a bitch!” Frenchy Bergeron said. “Those fuckers are no fun at all.”
“Right the first time,” Morrell told the gunner. Yes, the Confederates were fighting back. No reason to expect they wouldn’t, no matter how much Morrell would have liked it if they rolled over onto their backs like whipped dogs.
Another salvo of rockets came down, this one a little farther away. “God help the poor infantry,” Bergeron remarked. Morrell nodded. For plastering a wide area with firepower, those rockets were world-beaters. Bergeron went on, “How many of them have they got, anyway?”
“Good question,” Morrell said. “Best answer I’ve got is, not enough to stop us.” He hoped he was telling the truth. Somewhere in Alabama or Texas or Georgia, the CSA had factories working overtime to turn out the rockets and their launchers, though the latter were simplicity itself: just iron tubing and sheet metal. But the more rockets the Confederates made, the less of something else they turned out. Bullets? Automatic rifles? Barrel tracks? Canned corn? Something-that was for sure. Keep the pressure on them and they couldn’t make enough of everything they needed and keep an army in the field at the same time, not when they were fighting a country more than twice their size.
Things had worked that way in the Great War, anyhow. The United States ought to have a bigger edge this time, because the Confederates were persecuting their Negroes instead of using them. But industrialized agriculture and factory efficiency were both a lot further along than they were a generation earlier. Farms and factories kept fewer men away from the field than they had.
The bow machine gun on Morrell’s barrel fired a quick burst. “Scratch one!” the gunner said. A Confederate who did make it to the battlefield wouldn’t go home again. Morrell nodded to himself. Now-how many more would it take before Jake Featherston said uncle?
Cincinnatus Driver sat in a tent north of Cincinnati, hoping the other shoe would drop here. U.S. forces were already over the river farther west, driving from Indiana into western Kentucky. Meanwhile, Cincinnatus shoved money into the pot. “See you an’ raise you a dollar,” he said. He was holding three jacks, so he thought his chances were pretty good.
One of the other truck drivers still in the hand dropped out. The last driver raised a dollar himself. Cincinnatus eyed him. He’d drawn two. If he’d filled a straight or a flush, he’d done it by accident. Odds against that were pretty steep. Cincinnatus bumped it up another dollar.
Now the other man-a white-eyed him. He tossed in one more dollar of his own. “Call,” he said.
“Three jacks.” Cincinnatus showed them. The other driver swore-he had three eights. Cincinnatus scooped up the pot. The other driver, still muttering darkly, grabbed the cards and shuffled them for the next hand.
He’d just started to deal when artillery, a lot of artillery, roared not far away. All the men in the card game cocked their heads to one side, listening. “Ours,” one of them said. The rest nodded, Cincinnatus included.
“Don’t sound like they’re dicking around,” said the fellow who’d held three eights. He was a wiry little guy named Izzy Saperstein. He had a beard so thick he shaved twice a day and the most hair in his nose and ears Cincinnatus had ever seen.
“Put on a bigger barrage earlier,” another driver said. “Made the bastards in butternut keep their heads down and made sure they wouldn’t move soldiers west. Chances are this is more of the same.”
“Maybe.” Saperstein scratched his ear. With that tuft sprouting from it, he likely itched all the time. Cincinnatus wondered if he couldn’t cut the hair or pluck it or something. It was just this side of disgusting.
They played for another couple of hours, while the guns boomed and bellowed. None of them got excited about that. They’d all heard plenty of gunfire before. As long as nothing was coming down on their heads, they didn’t flabble. Cincinnatus won a little, lost a little, won a little more.
He was up about fifteen bucks when a U.S. captain stuck his head into the tent. “Go to your trucks now, men,” he said. “Head for the depot and load up. We’ve crossed the Ohio, and our boys’ll need everything we can bring ’em.”
“Crossed the Ohio? Here?” Izzy Saperstein sounded amazed.
Cincinnatus was surprised, too. He hadn’t really believed the USA would try to force a crossing here. He didn’t know many people who had, either. If folks on this side were caught by surprise, maybe the Confederates would be, too. “We fighting in Covington, sir?” he asked. “I was born there. I know my way around good. I can lead and show folks the way.”
“Thanks, Driver, but no,” the captain answered. “We’re going to skirt the town, pen up the enemy garrison inside, and clean it out at our leisure. Now get moving.”
Only one possible answer to that. Cincinnatus gave it: “Yes, sir.” Along with the other men, he headed for his truck as fast as he could go.
A self-starter was so handy. A touch of a button and the motor came to life. He remembered cranking trucks in the Great War. That was even more fun in the rain-and if your hand slipped, the crank would spin backwards and maybe break your arm. He didn’t have to worry about that now. No-all he needed to worry about was getting shot or incinerated or blown sky-high. Happy day, he thought.