The Grapple (61 page)

“Steer left a little,” Morrell called to his driver. “Follow that platoon up ahead of us. They look like they’re going places.”

“Yes, sir,” the driver said, and he did.

Sweat rivered off Morrell. He wished he were on the cool north German plain, pushing the British back through Holland. You could stand staying buttoned up in a barrel in weather like that. Doing it in late summer in southern Tennessee was a recipe for hell on earth, or possibly a New England boiled dinner. Barrelmen poured down water by the gallon and gulped salt tablets like popcorn. It helped…some.

Michael Pound’s barrel—if that was Pound in the cupola—fired again. Something else blew up. Morrell mentally apologized to that gunner. He was good enough to meet anybody’s standards.

A shell clanged off another barrel in the platoon. The round didn’t penetrate; the sparks that flashed as it ricocheted away made a pretty fair lightning bolt. The barrel kept moving forward. That hit would have wrecked one of the early models, and probably would have killed a second-generation machine, too. But these babies didn’t just dish it out. They could take it, too.

“I’ll be goddamned,” Morrell said: one of the more reverent curses he’d ever used. “There’s the river.”

“The Tennessee, sir?” Bergeron said.

“Damn straight. Maybe half a mile ahead,” Morrell answered.

“Let’s go grab the bank.” Yes, Frenchy’s promotion was way overdue—he had plenty of aggressive spirit.

And Morrell nodded. “Yeah. Let’s. Then we see what happens next.”

Getting there wasn’t easy. An antibarrel round disabled one of the machines from the platoon ahead. The barrel lost a track; the crew, safer than they would have been if they bailed out, stayed inside and fired back. Machine-gun rounds clattered off Morrell’s barrel. He had an advantage over junior officers: he could call in air strikes and artillery and get what he wanted when he wanted it. He could also summon reinforcements. He did all those things, and resistance faded.

“Careful, sir,” Frenchy Bergeron said when he opened the hatch and stood up in the cupola. He
was
being careful—or he thought he was, anyhow.

The loop of the Tennessee River protecting Chattanooga was summer-narrow, but still too broad and swift to be easy to cross. Beyond lay the city. Smoke from the pounding it had taken partly veiled Lookout Mountain to the south. Morrell wasn’t sorry to see that, not in the least. The Confederates would have observation posts and gun emplacements up there. If they had trouble seeing his men, they would also have trouble hitting them.

He cupped his hands and shouted to the platoon commander whose barrel idled not far away: “That
is
you, Michael! You did a good job getting here.”

“Thanks, sir. I was hoping to see you again.” Pound patted the top of his turret. “We’ve finally got what you could have given us twenty years ago. They should have listened then.”

“Ifs and buts,” Morrell said with a shrug. He wasn’t done being angry, but he was done thinking being angry made any difference.

Pound pointed south, toward Chattanooga. “How do we get over the river?” Even more than Frenchy, he had a grasp of the essential.

Morrell shrugged again. “I don’t know yet, but I expect we’ll think of something.”

“G
eorgia,” Jerry Dover muttered “I’m back in fucking Georgia.”

He wasn’t very far inside of Georgia, but he was south of the Tennessee line. There was no place in southeastern Tennessee Yankee artillery couldn’t reach. Bombers were bad enough. But you couldn’t keep a major supply depot in range of the enemy’s guns. They would ruin you.

As Dover had farther north, he built another dump, a dummy, not far from the genuine article. Experience made him sneakier. Instead of leaving this one out in the open, he camouflaged it…not too well. Instead of leaving it empty, he stored things he could afford to lose there: umbrellas, condoms, a good many cigarettes, cornmeal. He put more noncoms at the dummy depot, too, though he made sure they had the best bomb shelters they could. The more realistic the dummy seemed, the better its chance of fooling spies and reconnaissance aircraft.

It got bombed, but not too heavily. The real depot also got bombed—again, not too heavily. The damnyankees dropped explosives on anything that looked as if it might be dangerous, even a little bit. Dover wished his own side could use bombs—and bombers—with such reckless abandon.

One reason the depots didn’t get hit harder was that the United States seemed to have decided the most dangerous things in northwestern Georgia were the highway and railroads up from Atlanta. In their place, Jerry Dover probably would have decided the same thing. If reinforcements and ammunition and rations couldn’t get close to Chattanooga, supply dumps didn’t matter.

Dover felt sorry for whoever was in charge of keeping the railroad line supplied with rails and crossties and switches and whatever the hell else a railroad line needed. That included everything you needed to fix bridges and reopen tunnels, too. He laughed to himself, imagining that harried officer requisitioning a new tunnel from somewhere, waiting till he got it, and then driving it through a mountain.

When he told the joke to Pete, the quartermaster sergeant laughed fit to bust a gut. Then he said, “You know, sir, nobody who ain’t in the business would reckon that was funny.”

“Yeah, that crossed my mind, too,” Dover answered. “But what the hell? There are doctor jokes and lawyer jokes. Why not supply jokes?”

“Beats me,” Pete said. “Just having anything to laugh about feels pretty goddamn good right now, you know?”

“Tell me about it,” Dover said.

The more antibarrel cartridges and rockets he sent to the front, the more trouble he figured Confederate forces were in. Gunboats had almost stopped going up the Tennessee to shell U.S. positions. Fighter-bombers descended on them like hawks on chickens when they tried. The gunboats couldn’t steam far enough south by daybreak to get out of danger. Several lay on the bottom of the river. The day of the river warship had come and gone.

A field-post truck brought the mail to Dover’s depot. That kicked most people’s morale higher than any jokes could. Men who heard from home glowed like lightbulbs. The handful who didn’t seemed all the gloomier by contrast.

Jerry Dover had two letters from his wife. He also had one from Savannah. He put that one aside. His family came first. He read the letters from home in order of postmark. Everything back in Augusta was fine. His son and daughter were flourishing. He wasn’t sorry that Jethro, at thirteen, was too young to worry about conscription. No, he wasn’t one bit sorry, not the way things were going.

But he read Sally’s letters with only half his attention. His eye kept going back to the envelope from Savannah. At last, having gone through the news from home three times, he picked up the other envelope. It looked no different from the ones from Augusta, not on the outside: same cheap, coarse paper on the envelope, same four-cent stamp with a barrel and the word
FREEDOM
printed across it. No matter how it looked, he picked it up as warily as an Army engineer dug up a land mine.

Yes, it was from Melanie. He’d known that as soon as he saw the handwriting, let alone the postmark. It wasn’t so much that he’d once had a lady friend his wife didn’t known about. If that were all…If that were all, he wouldn’t have opened the envelope with so much trepidation.

It wasn’t even that she wanted money every now and then. She never asked for more than he could afford—and she seemed to know just how much that was. He’d sent Xerxes down to Savannah with cash one time when he couldn’t get away himself.

Sometimes, though, Melanie didn’t want money. When he was managing the Huntsman’s Lodge, she’d sometimes been interested in knowing who came to eat there and what they had to say. She’d made it much too plain that she would talk to Sally if he didn’t tell her. So he did. Why not? If she was blackmailing other people besides him, he wouldn’t lose much sleep over it.

But what could she want now that he was back in uniform? If it was only money, he’d pay off. If it was anything besides money…In that case, he had a problem. If she wasn’t just a homegrown blackmailer, if she was looking for things another government—say, the USA’s (yes, say it—say it loud)—might find interesting, then having Sally find out about her was the least of his worries.

She knew where to find him. He hadn’t told her. He didn’t know anyone who would have told her. She knew, though. He didn’t think that was a good omen.

The faintest whiff of perfume came from the stationery she used. Unlike the envelope, the paper was of excellent quality. It had to date back to before the war. He unfolded the letter and apprehensively began to read.

Her script was fine and feminine.
Dearest Jerry,
she wrote,
I hope this finds you well and safe. I know you are doing all you can to keep our beloved country strong. Freedom!

He muttered under his breath. Did she mean that, or was it window dressing to lull any censors? He didn’t think the envelope was opened before he saw it, but he could have been wrong. Only one way to find out: he kept reading.

Things here haven’t changed much since the last time I wrote,
she went on.
Prices have gone up some, though, and the stores don’t have as much as I wish they did. If you could send me a hundred dollars, it would help a lot.

He breathed a sigh of relief. He had a hundred dollars in his wallet. He’d had good luck and a good partner at the bridge table two nights before. If that was all…

But it wasn’t. He might have known it wouldn’t be. Hell, he had known.
You ought to tell me about your friends,
she wrote.
I never hear about how things really are at the front. Where are you exactly?
Dover snorted. As if she didn’t know!
What are you doing? How are you going to lick the damnyankees?

Jerry Dover didn’t snort this time. He sighed. He feared he knew what she was asking for. He’d wondered if she would. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, but here it was.

And he was liable to end up in trouble on account of it. He’d end up in worse trouble if he told her the things she wanted to know, though. He sent a soldier after his second-in-command here, a bright, eager captain named Rodney Chesbro. “Don’t let them steal this place while I’m gone,” he said. “I’ve got to talk to the Intelligence people.”

“Find out how we’re going to kick the damnyankees in the slats?” Chesbro asked—yes, he
was
eager. “If they tell you, will you tell me, too?”

“If they say I can,” Dover answered, which was less of a promise than it sounded like.

He drove a beat-up Birmingham north toward Chattanooga. The road was in bad shape. He was glad no U.S. fighter-bombers showed up to strafe him or drop explosives on his head. It was only a few miles to Division HQ, but getting there took twice as long as he’d thought it would.

As always, the tent where the G-2 men worked was inconspicuous. Intelligence didn’t advertise what it was up to. If you didn’t need to talk to those people, they didn’t want you around. Dover wished he didn’t. But he did. A few words to a scholarly-looking noncom got him sent over to a Major Claude Nevers. “What can I do for you, Colonel?” Nevers asked.

“I have a problem, Major,” Dover answered. “I’ve got a lady friend who’s been quietly squeezing me for money for quite a while. I wouldn’t waste your time if that were all, but now she’s trying to get information out of me, too.” He showed the Intelligence officer the letter.

Nevers read it and nodded. “I think you’re right. She’s smooth, but that’s the way it looks to me.” He eyed Dover. “You realize we’re going to have to look at you, too?”

“Yeah,” Dover said without enthusiasm. “But you’d look a lot harder, and you’d have some nastier tools, if I kept mum and you found out about this anyway. So do whatever you need to do, and I’ll worry about that later.”

“All right, Colonel.” Nevers didn’t call him
sir.
“Most of the time, I’d remove you from active duty, too. But we’re strapped for men now, and I’ve heard more than a few people who ought to know talk about what a good job you’re doing. So give me the particulars about this, ah, Melanie.”

“Melanie Leigh.” Dover spelled the last name. “Brunette. Blue eyes. Maybe thirty-five, maybe forty. About five feet four. Nice figure. You’ve got the address there. I’ve been sending her cash now and then for years so my wife wouldn’t hear about her. She can’t live on what I give her, though. I have no idea if she has other guys on the string, or how many. I don’t know how she’d get word out, either—but she likely has a way.”

“Uh-huh,” Nevers said. “Send her this hundred she wants. Write her a chatty letter about the kind of stuff you do. Tell her funny stories, nothing she can really use. With luck, we’ll drop on her before she can write back saying that isn’t what she wants.”

“Tunnel requisitions,” Dover murmured. Major Nevers looked blank. “I understand what you’re talking about, Major,” Dover told him. “I’ll do it. Maybe I’m seeing shadows where nothing’s casting them, but….”

“Yes. But,” Nevers said. “Go tend to it, Colonel. We’ll be in touch.”

“Right,” Dover said unhappily.

When he got back to the dump, he had to explain to Captain Chesbro that he didn’t know how the Confederate States were going to drive the Yankees back to the Ohio by Wednesday next. Writing a cheery, chatty letter to a woman he feared was a spy wasn’t easy, but he managed. He let Major Nevers vet it before he sent it out; he didn’t want the G-2 man thinking he was warning Melanie. He left it and the money and an envelope with the major to mail. Then he tried to worry about logistics.

He got a call from the major that night—in the middle of the night, in fact. A noncom woke him to go to the telephone. Without preamble, the Intelligence officer said, “She flew the coop, dammit.”

Dover said the first thing that came into his mind: “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“I know that,” the Intelligence officer answered. “We’ve had you under surveillance since you came to me earlier today.”