And the United States hadn't. Even with all the unrest-hell, the out-and-out rebellion-in Houston, the United States hadn't. Morrell understood why. It would have cost too much, in money and in men. The USA would have had to put up barbed-wire emplacements the whole length of the border, and would have had to man them with an army. It would have been almost like a trench line from the Great War. No government, Democrat or Socialist, had been willing to do the work or deploy the manpower. And so the border remained porous, and so rebellion went right on simmering.
All that unhappy musing flew out of Morrell's head the moment he spotted a plume of dust not much different from the one his command car was kicking up. This one, though, was coming from the east and heading west: heading straight into Houston. He had every reason to be where he was and doing what he was doing. Did that other auto? Fat chance, he thought.
He tapped Charlie Satcher on the shoulder. "You see that?" he said, pointing.
The driver nodded. "Sure as hell do, Colonel. What do you want to do about it?"
"Stop the son of a bitch," Morrell answered.
"He may not want to stop," Satcher observed.
"I know." Morrell reached for the machine-gun triggers. "We have to persuade him he does want to after all-he just doesn't know it quite yet."
"Persuade him." The driver's grin showed a broken front tooth. "Right you are, sir." He turned toward the motorcar that was raising the other dust trail.
Excitement flowered in Morrell. He was going into action, all on his own. He'd seen plenty of action in Houston, much of it brutal and unpleasant. Armored warfare against people who flung Featherston fizzes couldn't very well be anything but brutal and unpleasant. This, though, this seemed different. This was fox and hound, cat and mouse. It was out in the open, too. Nobody could fling a bottle of flaming gasoline from a window and then disappear.
Before long, whoever was in the other motorcar spotted the one that held Morrell and his driver. Whoever he was, he kept on coming. Maybe that meant he was an innocent, though what an innocent would be doing sneaking over the border was beyond Morrell. More likely, it meant he hadn't recognized the command car for what it was.
As the two machines got closer, Morrell's driver said, "They've got a lot of people in there-and what's that one bastard sticking out the window?"
A muzzle flash said it was a rifle. Nothing hit the command car-not for lack of effort, Morrell was sure. "Which side of the border is he on, do you think?" he asked.
"If he's shooting at me, he's on the side where I can shoot back," Satcher answered without hesitation.
"I like the way you think," Morrell said. The fellow with the rifle in the other motorcar fired again. This time, a bullet slammed into the command car. It must not have hit anything vital, because the machine kept running, and no steam or smoke or flame burst from its innards.
Morrell squeezed the machine gun's triggers. Brass cartridge cases flew from the breech and clattered down around his feet. Tracers guided the stream of bullets towards and then into the other motorcar. Smoke immediately poured from its engine compartment. It skidded to a stop. The doors on the far side flew open. Several men got out and ran. A bullet knocked one of them down. Another man shot at Morrell from behind the automobile. Morrell hosed bullets back at him. The motorcar caught fire. The rifleman had to pull away from it. That made him an easier target. Down he went, too.
And once the auto started burning, it didn't want to stop. As soon as the flames reached the passenger compartment, ammunition started cooking off. Some of the rounds were tracers. They gave the fire a Fourth of July feel.
"Ha!" Charlie Satcher said. "They were running guns."
"Did you expect anything different?" Morrell asked. The driver shook his head.
A bullet cracked past Morrell's head. That wasn't one from the fireworks display in the motorcar-it had been deliberately aimed. He ducked, not that that would have done him any good had the round been on target. He'd known only a handful of men who could go through a fire fight without that involuntary reaction. It wasn't cowardice, just human nature.
He tapped the driver on the back and pointed. "Go around there and give me a better shot at that fellow."
"Right." Satcher steered the car in the direction Morrell indicated. The rifleman from the auto coming out of Texas scrambled away, trying to keep the burning vehicle between the command car and himself.
That scramble proved his undoing. He was behind the trunk when either the fire or one of the rounds going off in the passenger compartment reached what the men from Texas had been carrying there. The explosion sent flaming chunks of motorcar flying in all directions. One slammed down about a hundred feet in front of the command car; Satcher almost rolled it steering clear.
No more aimed shots came, though Morrell needed a little while to be sure of that, because rounds did keep cooking off every now and then with a pop-pop-pop that would have been merry if he hadn't known what caused it. He got a look at the Texan who'd been shooting at him, and wished he hadn't. The rear bumper had torn off the man's head and his left arm.
The grim sight didn't unduly upset his driver. "For all I care, they can bury the bastard in a jam tin," Satcher said, "either that or leave him out for the buzzards. If I was a buzzard, I'd sooner eat skunk any day of the week."
His words seemed to come from a long way off. Firing the machine gun left Morrell's ears temporarily stunned. He hoped the stunning was temporary, anyhow. Some of it probably wasn't. He knew he didn't hear as well as he had when he was younger. Would he go altogether deaf in another ten or twenty years? He shrugged. Not much he could do about that. It wasn't the rarest ailment among soldiers.
"Sir?" Charlie Satcher said.
"What is it?" Morrell's own voice seemed distant, too.
"I heard you had balls," the driver answered. "The guy who told me, though, he didn't know the half of it."
Morrell shrugged. The motion told him how tense his shoulders had got in the fire fight. He didn't think of himself as particularly brave. When the shooting started, he didn't think much at all. Reaction took over. "They started it, Charlie," he answered.
"Yeah," Satcher said admiringly. "And you sure as hell finished it."
"I wonder which side of the border we're on." Morrell shrugged again. "Doesn't matter much, not when their auto went up like that. Nobody can say they weren't running guns into Houston."
"Damn well better not try," the driver said. "Me, I thought I was gonna shit myself when that goddamn back seat landed in front of us."
"Back seat? Is that what it was?" Morrell said. Charlie Satcher nodded. Morrell managed a laugh. "I've got to tell you, I didn't notice. I was busy just then. You did a hell of a job getting around it. I noticed that."
"Neither one of us would've been real happy if I hit it," Satcher said. Morrell couldn't very well argue with that. The driver asked, "Shall we head on back to Lubbock, sir?"
"I think we'd better," Morrell replied. "I want to report to General MacArthur, and he'll want to report to the War Department. I suppose they'll report to the president, or maybe to the State Department. Somebody will have to figure out how loud we squawk."
"Squawk, hell," Satcher said. "We don't scream our heads off, they deserve to roll like that last Confederate fucker's."
Morrell only shrugged. "I won't tell you you're wrong, but the people in Philly are liable to. Because I can tell you what Richmond's going to say. Richmond's going to say they didn't know anything about these fellows, they didn't have anything to do with them, and they aren't responsible for them."