Drive to the East (51 page)

The engine roared to life. The motorboat arrowed across the river to the Cincinnati side. More guards waited at a pier there. One of them condescended to give Cincinnatus a hand as he struggled out of the boat. “Thank you, suh,” he said softly.

“Shut up! No talking!” The major had strong opinions and what seemed to be a one-track mind. He pointed to a waiting motorcar painted C.S. butternut. “Get in.”

Soldiers stood near the motorcar. The automatic rifles they carried made the submachine guns he’d seen before seem children’s toys by comparison. Their expressions said they would just as soon shoot him as look at him. He got into the auto. One of them got in beside him. “Don’t fuck with me, Sambo,” the Confederate said casually, “or you’ll never find out how the serial down at the Bijou turns out.”

“I ain’t done nothin’,” Cincinnatus said. “I ain’t gonna do nothin’, neither.” The soldier only grunted. He didn’t believe a word of it. Another heavily armed man sat in the front seat next to the driver.

Away went the motorcar. Cincinnatus looked out the window. Cincinnati had taken more battle damage than Covington. The people on the streets looked shabby and unhappy. He never saw Confederate soldiers in parties smaller than four. That told him a lot about what the occupied thought of their occupiers.

“Can I look out the back window, suh, without you shootin’ me?” he asked the soldier.

After considering, the man nodded. “Hand me your stick first,” he said. “Move slow and careful. Don’t get cute, or you’ll be sorry—but not for long.”

Cincinnatus obeyed in every particular. He saw what he’d hoped to see: another motorcar full of soldiers right behind this one. With any luck at all, that one also held his father. He swung around so he was sitting straight ahead again. “Thank you kindly, suh.”

“Huh,” the Confederate soldier said, and then, “Looks like we’re here.”

Here
was the Cincinnati city jail. Cincinnatus wondered if he’d just traded one cell for another. Nobody told him to get out of the auto, though. In fact, three more motorcars joined the ones he and his father were in. The procession headed west and north through occupied Ohio.

Most of the countryside looked normal, as if war had never touched it. Here and there, usually around towns, were patches of devastation. You could see where U.S. soldiers had stood and fought and where they’d been outflanked, outmaneuvered, and forced from their positions.

The little convoy passed through checkpoint after checkpoint. At one of them, a soldier put something on the wireless aerial to Cincinnatus’ auto. He couldn’t see what it was. He asked permission to look back at the motorcar behind him again. The soldier with the automatic rifle looked disgusted but nodded. He didn’t get any less alert. He also showed no sign of needing to take a leak, though they’d been traveling for quite a while. Cincinnatus didn’t know how much longer
he
could go on before asking for a stop. He didn’t know if he’d get one, though, even if he asked.

A white flag flew from the other auto’s aerial. He supposed his motorcar carried the same flag of truce. But when he asked about it, the soldier stared through him and said, “Shut up.” He didn’t argue with an armed man.

Just before he had to ask for a stop—and just after they’d rolled through a small town called Oxford—the convoy halted on its own. “Where the hell are they?” the driver grumbled.

“They’ll be here,” said the other man in the front seat. “Ain’t like we never done this before.”

Sure enough, five minutes later another convoy of motorcars approached from the west. Those also had white flags on their wireless antennas. They were painted green-gray, not butternut. The soldier next to Cincinnatus nudged him with the muzzle of his rifle. “Get out.” He obeyed. The soldier passed him his cane. His father left the auto behind him. Three skinny white men who needed shaves emerged from the other motorcars.

Along with U.S. soldiers, five whites got out of the green-gray autos. Cincinnatus’ dour major went up to confer with a U.S. officer who might have been his long-lost twin. They signed some papers for each other. The C.S. major turned back. “You are exchanged!” he shouted to Cincinnatus and the others. “You’re the damnyankees’ worry now. Far as I’m concerned, they’re welcome to you. Go on—git!”

“Do Jesus!” Cincinnatus whispered as he limped forward into U.S. custody. That cop in Covington hadn’t lied to him after all. “Do Jesus!” He looked back to his father. “Come on, Pa. I think we’re goin’ home.”

S
ergeant Michael Pound had a new barrel. Considering what had happened to the old one, that was anything but a surprise. But this wasn’t a new barrel of the same old style. U.S. engineers had rapidly figured out they needed to do something about the fearsome new machine the Confederates had introduced. Their answer was . . . not everything it might have been, but a damn sight better than no change at all.

The chassis hadn’t changed much. The engine was of similar design to the old one, but put out an extra fifty horsepower. That was all to the good, because the new barrel was heavier, and needed the extra muscle to shove it around.

Almost all the weight gain came from the new turret. It was bigger than the old one. Its armor was thicker and better sloped. And it had been upgunned. Instead of a 37mm gun—an inch and a half to a gunner—it now carried a 60mm piece—a little less than two and a half inches. That still didn’t match the three-inch monster the new Confederate barrels used, but it was big enough to make any enemy barrel say uncle, where you had to be damn good or damn lucky to hurt the new C.S. machine with the 37mm cannon.

And the 60mm gun was absolutely the biggest one that would fit on the turret ring of the old chassis. A new, improved body took a lot longer to turn out than a reworked turret. The Confederates must have been planning their Mark 2 while the Mark 1 was just starting production. The USA hadn’t done that. And so, instead of a proper Mark 2, the United States had to make do with Mark 1.5, more or less.

“Ugly beast,” Pound said, laying a hand on its armored flank. He didn’t see how anybody could argue with that. The new turret went with the old chassis about the way a rhino’s head went with a cow’s body. Everything on the Confederates’ new barrels fit together with everything else. They had a grim, functional beauty. The Mark 1.5 was just grim.

“Well, Sergeant, Featherston’s fuckers will think it’s ugly, too, especially after it bites them a few times.” That was Cecil Bergman, Pound’s new loader. He was a skinny little guy, which helped him do his job—even though the new turret was bigger on the outside, it had even less room within than the old one.

“That’s a fact. The new gun will make them sit up and take notice. About time, too,” Pound said. “Maybe we have a chance of holding them out of Pittsburgh now. Maybe.” He sounded anything but convinced.

He sounded that way because he
was
unconvinced. The U.S. Army hadn’t been able to stop the latest Confederate push, any more than it had been able to stop the Confederate drive up through Ohio the summer before. If you couldn’t stop the enemy, how the devil were you supposed to win the war? Pound saw no way.

He could have elaborated on the many failings of the U.S. War Department, but Bergman hissed at him and jerked a thumb off to the left. “Here comes the lieutenant,” he warned.

Second Lieutenant Don Griffiths was typical of the breed. He was young, he didn’t know much, and one of the things he didn’t know was how much he didn’t know. He had blond hair and freckles and couldn’t possibly have bought a drink without proving to the bartender that he was over twenty-one.

Sergeant Pound and PFC Bergman saluted him. He returned the gesture. “Men, we have our orders,” he said.

He sounded full of enthusiasm. It was too early in the morning for Pound to feel enthusiasm or much of anything else except a deep longing for another cup of coffee. But Griffiths stood there waiting expectantly, so Pound did what he was supposed to do: he asked, “What are they, sir?”

“We are going to drive the enemy out of Pennsylvania,” the lieutenant said grandly.

“What? All by ourselves?” Pound said.

Don Griffiths wagged a finger in his face. “I’ve heard about you, Sergeant—don’t think I haven’t,” he said. “You haven’t got the right attitude.”

“Probably not, sir,” Pound agreed politely. “I do object to being killed for no good reason.”

“Don’t get smart with me, either.” Griffiths’ voice didn’t break the way the late Lieutenant Poffenberger’s had, but he still sounded like a kid. “I’ll bust you down to private faster than you can say Jack Robinson.”

“Go ahead, sir,” Pound answered, politely still. “I’ll never get rich on Army pay no matter what my rank is, and if I’m a private again I’ll get out from under you. Besides, how likely is either one of us to live through the war? Why should I get excited about whether my sleeve has stripes on it?”

Lieutenant Griffiths gaped at him. The gold bar Griffiths wore on each shoulder strap was the only thing he had going for him. He couldn’t imagine anybody who didn’t care about rank. In fact, Pound did, very much, but the best way to hang on to what he had and be able to mouth off the way he wanted to was to pretend indifference. “You are insubordinate,” Griffiths spluttered.

“Not me, sir. Bergman is my witness,” Pound said. “Have I been disrespectful? Have I been discourteous? Have I been disobedient?” He knew he hadn’t. He could be much more annoying when he stayed within the rules.

Griffiths proved it by spinning on his heel and storming away. PFC Bergman chuckled nervously. “He’s gonna get you in Dutch, Sarge,” Bergman predicted.

“What can he do to me? Throw me in the stockade?” Pound laughed at the idea. “I hope he does. I’ll be warm and safe in a nice cell back of the line, three square meals a day, while he’s stuck up here with unfriendly strangers trying to shoot his ass off. The worst thing he could do to me is leave me right where I am.”

Bergman shook his head. “Worst he could do is bust you
and
leave you where you’re at.”

Pound grunted. That, unfortunately, was true. He didn’t think Lieutenant Griffiths had the imagination to see it; if he’d had that kind of imagination, he would have been a real officer, not a lowly shavetail. Pound proved right. The next time Griffiths had anything to do with him, the barrel commander pretended their last exchange hadn’t happened. Pound played along. He watched the way Griffiths eyed him: like a man watching a bear that might or might not be ready to charge.

Their barrel moved out the next morning. Several platoons of the new machines rumbled north and west from the classically named town of Tarentum. Tarentum lay northeast of Pittsburgh; the barrels wanted to knock in the head of the Confederate column sweeping past the industrial center. Another enemy column was pushing up from the southwest. If they met, they would put Pittsburgh in a pocket. That had happened to Columbus the summer before. If the Confederates brought it off here, they could smash up the U.S. defenders in the pocket at their leisure.

Pittsburgh was the most important iron and steel town in the United States. If it fell, how could the country go on with the war? If it fell, would the country have the heart to go on with the war? Those were interesting questions. Michael Pound hoped he—and the USA—didn’t find out the answers to them.

“This is pretty good barrel country, sir,” he remarked to Lieutenant Griffiths after they’d been rolling along for a while.

“It is?” Griffiths sounded suspicious, as if he feared Pound was pulling his leg. “I thought you wanted wide-open spaces for barrels, not all these trees and houses and other obstructions.”

Anyone who used a word like
obstructions
in a sentence was bound to have other things wrong with him, too. “You do, sir, if you’re on the attack,” Pound said patiently. “But if you want to defend, if the enemy’s coming at you, having enough cover to shoot from ambush is nice.”

“Oh.” The lieutenant weighed that. “Yes, I see what you mean.”

“I’m glad, sir.” Now Pound sounded—and was—dead serious. “Because the point of the whole business is to kill the other guys and not get killed ourselves. That’s the long and short of it.”

Griffiths didn’t disagree with him. The young officer opened the cupola and stood up in the turret to see what he could see. Pound just got glimpses through the gunsight—which was also improved from the one in the earlier turret. The Confederates hadn’t got here yet, so the landscape wasn’t too badly battered. That didn’t mean he would have wanted to live here even if no one had ever heard of war. Coal mines, tailings from coal mines—he’d heard the locals call the stuff red dog—and factories dealing with coal and steel and aluminum dotted the landscape. Some of the factories belched white or gray or black or yellowish smoke into the sky even though the enemy was only a few miles away. They were going to keep operating till the Confederates overran them.

Michael Pound scowled. When they shut down, all the workers would try to get away at once. He’d seen that before. They’d clog the roads, U.S. troops would have trouble going around them or through them, and the Confederates would have a high old time bombing them and shooting them from the air.

Not five minutes after that thought crossed his mind, the barrel slowed and then stopped. Lieutenant Griffiths shouted from the cupola: “You people! Clear the road at once! At once, I tell you! You’re impeding the war effort!” Pound wouldn’t have moved for anybody who told him he was impeding anything. This crowd didn’t, either.

And they paid for not moving. No Asskickers screamed down out of the sky to pummel them, but they were in range of Confederate artillery. So were the advancing U.S. barrels. That didn’t worry Pound very much—except for the rare unlucky direct hit, long-range bombardment wouldn’t hurt them. He did tug on Griffiths’ trouser leg and call, “Better get down, sir. Fragments aren’t healthy.”

“Oh. Right.” The lieutenant even remembered to close the cupola hatch after himself. He was faintly green, or more than faintly. “My God!” He gulped. “What shellfire does to civilians out in the open . . . It’s a slaughterhouse out there.”