The Grapple

by Harry Turtledove

  “Soon,” Abell said. “Immediately, as a matter of fact. They’re coming off the lines in Pontiac—and in Denver—even as we speak. Whatever you do this summer, you’ll be able to use them.”

  “That’s the best news I’ve had in quite a while,” Morrell said. “Quite a while. We’ve always had to play catch-up to Confederate armor. If we’ve got better barrels for a change, that just makes it more likely we can give them a good sickle slice and cut ’em off at the roots.”

  “Depending on what they’re doing themselves along these lines,” Abell said. “Our intelligence isn’t perfect.”

  “Really? I never would have guessed,” Morrell said. Abell gave him a sour stare. But with that piece of paper in his hand, with the idea for that campaign in his head, Irving Morrell wasn’t inclined to pick a fight with his own side. “Perfect or not, General,” he went on, “we’ll manage. I really think we will.”

  Confederate shells crashed down outside of Lubbock. Inside the Texas town, Major General Abner Dowling was not a happy man. After Lubbock fell to his Eleventh Army, he’d hoped he could go on biting chunks out of west Texas, but it didn’t work out like that. The Confederates, to his surprise—to everybody’s surprise—threw fresh troops into the fight, and those men didn’t seem to care whether they lived or died. They weren’t here in more than brigade strength, but that was plenty to stabilize the line and even to push U.S. forces back toward Lubbock.

  Major Angelo Toricelli stuck his head into Dowling’s office. It did belong to a bank manager, but he took a powder before U.S. troops occupied Lubbock. “Sir, you said you wanted to question one of those Confederate fanatics,” Toricelli said. “We’ve got one for you.”

  “Do you?” Dowling brightened fractionally. “Well, bring him in. Maybe we’ll have a better notion of what we’re up against.”

  His adjutant saluted. “Yes, sir.”

  In came a large, burly Confederate soldier, escorted by three large, burly U.S. soldiers with submachine guns. The Confederate had two stripes on his tunic sleeve. Tunic and trousers weren’t the usual C.S. butternut, but a splotchy fabric in shades of tan and brown ranging from sand to mud. “Who are you?” Dowling asked.

  “Sir, I am Assistant Troop Leader Lee Rodgers, Freedom Party Guards,” the prisoner said proudly. He recited his pay number.

  “Assistant Troop Leader?” Dowling pointed to Rodgers’ chevrons. “You look like a corporal to me.”

  “Sir, they are equivalent ranks,” Rodgers said. “The Freedom Party Guards have their own rank structure. This is to show that they are an elite.” He still sounded proud. He also sounded as if he was rattling off something he’d had to learn by rote.

  Dowling had heard that before, though he didn’t know the guards actually went into combat. He thought they were just prison warders and secret policemen and Freedom Party muscle. But they fought, all right, and they fought well. Their tactics left something to be desired, but not their pluck.

  “What’s your unit?” Dowling asked.

  “Sir, I am Assistant Troop Leader Lee Rodgers, Freedom Party Guards.” Rodgers gave Dowling his pay number again. “Under the Geneva Convention, I don’t have to tell you anything else.”

  He was right, of course. Sometimes that mattered more than it did other times. Had Dowling thought Rodgers held vital information, he might have squeezed him. There were ways to do it that technically didn’t violate the Convention. As things were, though, Dowling only asked, “Do you tell the Negroes in that prison camp down the road about their rights under the Geneva Convention?”

  “No, sir,” Rodgers answered without hesitation. “They aren’t foreign prisoners. They’re internal enemies of the state. We have the right to do whatever we need to do with them.” He eyed Dowling. “They might as well be Mormons.”

  He was sharper than the average corporal. If the Freedom Party Guards really were an elite, Dowling supposed that made sense. “We follow the Geneva Convention with the Mormons we capture,” Dowling said, which was—mostly—true. Then again, the Mormons had more than a few female fighters. They generally fought to the death. When they didn’t, U.S. soldiers often avenged themselves in a way they wouldn’t with Mormon men. That was against regulations and officially discouraged, which didn’t mean it didn’t happen.

  Assistant Troop Leader Lee Rodgers only snorted. “If you do, it just means you’re weak and degenerate. Enemies of the state deserve whatever happens to them.” That sounded like another lesson learned by heart.

  “How many Freedom Party Guards units are in combat?” Dowling asked.

  “More every day,” Rodgers said, which gave the U.S. general something to worry about without giving him any real information. The prisoner folded his right hand into a fist and set it on his heart. “Freedom!” he shouted.

  The U.S. soldiers guarding him growled and hefted their weapons. Rodgers seemed unafraid, or else more trusting than most new POWs. Dowling scowled. “Take him away,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” one of the men in green-gray said. “Shall we teach him not to mouth off, too?”

  “Never mind,” Dowling said. “We’ll see how mouthy he is when we start advancing again.” That seemed to satisfy the soldiers. They weren’t more than ordinarily rough with the Freedom Party Guard, at least where Dowling could see them. The general commanding Eleventh Army sighed. “He’s a charmer, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir,” Major Toricelli said. “That’s why you wanted to see him, isn’t it?”

  “I wonder if they’re all like that. All the Party Guards, I mean,” Dowling said.

  “Well, they sure fight like it’s going out of style,” his adjutant answered. “Those people are fanatics, and the Freedom Party is taking advantage of it.”

  “Huzzah,” Dowling said sourly. “Do you suppose we have to worry about them turning into people bombs? That’s what fanatics do these days, it seems like.”

  Toricelli looked startled. “Hadn’t thought of that, sir. They haven’t done it yet, if they’re going to.”

  “Well, that’s good. I suppose it is, anyhow,” Dowling said. “Of course, maybe they just haven’t thought of it yet. Or maybe they’re going to put on civilian clothes instead of those silly-looking camouflage outfits and start looking for the biggest crowds of our soldiers they can find.”

  “Or maybe they’ll start looking for you, sir,” Toricelli said. “The Confederates like to assassinate our commanders.”

  “I know I’m not irreplaceable.” Dowling’s voice was dry. “I suspect the Confederates can figure it out, too. Besides, how would they get me? I’m not about to go strolling the streets of Lubbock.” He yawned. “I’d bore myself to death if I did.”

  Lubbock held many more people than the other west Texas towns Dowling’s troops held for the USA. It wasn’t much more exciting. And the people here were as stubbornly pro-Confederate as in those small towns. When this part of Texas was the U.S. state of Houston, there were collaborators hereabouts. But they’d had the sense to get out when Jake Featherston conned Al Smith into a plebescite that returned Houston to Texas and the CSA. The ones who didn’t have that kind of sense ended up in camps themselves.

  Under both the Stars and Stripes and the Stars and Bars (whose display now violated martial law), Lubbock had been a dry town. Dowling tried to win some popularity among local drinkers by declaring it wet. A couple of saloons opened up—and a minister promptly petitioned him to close them down.

  The Reverend Humphrey Selfe looked as if he’d never had a happy thought in his life. He was long and lean, all vertical lines. He wore stark white and funereal black. His voice sounded like that of a bullfrog that had just lost its mother. “Wine is a mocker,” he told Dowling, aiming a long, skinny forefinger at him like the barrel of an automatic rifle. “Strong drink is raging.”

  “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” Dowling answered—he’d loaded up with his own set of quotations ahead of time.

  Reverend Selfe glowered. He was good at glowerin
g. His physiognomy gave him a head start, but he had talent, too. “Do you make sport of me?” he demanded, as if he’d take Dowling out behind the woodshed if the answer was yes.

  Dowling, however, declined to be intimidated by a west Texas preacher skinny enough to dive down a soda straw. “Not at all,” he lied. “But you need something more than fire and brimstone to tell me why a man shouldn’t be able to buy a shot or a bottle of beer if he feels like it.”

  “Because God says drinking is a sin,” Selfe said. “I was trying to illustrate that for you.”

  “But He also says things like, ‘And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly,’” Dowling said—sweetly. “How do you pick and choose? Remember, ‘Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.’”

  Humphrey Selfe looked like a man who needed wine for his stomach’s sake. He certainly looked like a man whose stomach pained him. “You are a sinner!” he thundered.

  “I shouldn’t wonder if you’re right,” Dowling answered, fondly recalling a certain sporting house in Salt Lake City. “But then, who isn’t? I have at least as many quotations that say it’s all right to drink as you do to say it’s wrong. Shall we go on, sir? I’ll show you.”

  “Sinner!” Selfe said again. “Even the Devil can quote Scripture for his purposes.”

  “No doubt,” Dowling said. “Which of us do you suppose he’s speaking through? And how do you aim to prove it one way or the other?”

  “You do mock me!” the pastor said.

  Dowling shook his head. He was enjoying himself, even if the Reverend Selfe wasn’t. “No, you said wine was a mocker,” he said. “I haven’t had any wine for weeks.” He didn’t mention strong drink, lest Selfe start raging. “Shall we go on with our discussion? It was getting interesting, don’t you think?”

  Humphrey Selfe wasn’t interested in discussing. Like a lot of people, he wanted to lay down what he saw as the law. “I shall denounce you from the pulpit!” he said furiously.

  “Remember the line about rendering unto Caesar, too, your Reverence,” Dowling said. “Lubbock is under martial law. If you try to incite riot, rebellion, or uprising, I promise you’ll be sorry.”

  “I shall preach on the subject of saloons,” Selfe said.

  “You do that,” Dowling told him. “I’m sure they can use the advertising. It will be fascinating to see how many of your congregants—is that the word?—decide to wet their whistles once you let them know where they can.”

  The Reverend Selfe left most abruptly. The way he slammed the door, a large shell might have gone off. Major Toricelli opened the door again—to Dowling’s surprise, it was still on its hinges—and asked, “What did you do to him?”

  “Talked about the Scriptures,” Dowling answered. “Really, there’s no making some people happy.”

  “Uh-huh,” Angelo Toricelli said. “Why do I think you made a nuisance of yourself…sir?”

  “Because you know me?” Dowling suggested. Then he added, “Sunday, we’ll need people listening to the quarrelsome fool’s sermon. If he goes overboard, we’ll make sure he pays for it.”

  “That will be a pleasure,” Toricelli said.

  After his adjutant withdrew once more, Dowling cursed. He’d wanted to ask the Reverend Humphrey Selfe what he thought of that camp for Negroes down by Snyder. Then he shrugged. Odds were the preacher would have said he’d never heard of the place. Odds were that would be a big, juicy lie, but Dowling wouldn’t be able to prove it.

  More C.S. artillery came in. Some of those rounds sounded as if they were hitting in town, not just on the southern outskirts. Maybe, Dowling thought hopefully, they’ll knock Reverend Selfe’s church flat. He laughed. Who said he wasn’t an optimist?

  Another downstate Ohio town. Having grown up in Toledo, First Sergeant Chester Martin looked on the southern part of his own state with almost as much scorn as a Chicagoan viewed downstate Illinois. Maybe people down here didn’t marry their cousins, but they were liable to fool around with them—so he uncharitably thought, anyhow.

  Hillsboro had a couple of foundries and a couple of dairy plants. It sat on a plateau in the middle of Highland County. Because it lay on high ground, the Confederates were hanging on to it as an artillery base to shell the U.S. forces advancing from the north and east.

  Martin was frustrated at the way the war in southern Ohio was going. “We should have trapped all the Confederates in the state,” he grumbled as he waited for water to boil for his instant coffee. “We should have given them the same business we gave the butternut bastards in Pittsburgh.”

  “Isn’t there a difference, Sarge?” asked one of the privates huddled around the little campfire.

  “Like what?” Chester said. What was the younger generation coming to? When he was a buck private, he wouldn’t have dared talk back to a first sergeant.

  “When they were in Pittsburgh, they had orders not to pull back till after it was too late and they couldn’t,” the kid answered. “Here, they are falling back—looks like they’ll try and make the fight on their side of the Ohio.”

  “Everybody thinks he belongs on the damn General Staff,” Chester said. But that wouldn’t quite do. “Well, Rohe, when you’re right, you’re right. I forgot they had those orders, and it does make a difference.”

  Somewhere off to the left and ahead, a Confederate fired a short burst from one of their submachine guns. A U.S. machine gun answered. So did a couple of shots from the guys with the Springfields who helped protect the machine-gun crew. Another Confederate fired, this one with an automatic rifle. The machine gun answered again. Silence fell.

  By then, Chester and the rest of the soldiers around the fire had their weapons in their hands, ready to hurry to help the machine-gun position if they had to. The Confederates in front of Hillsboro defended aggressively, probing as if they intended to go over to the attack any minute now. Martin didn’t think they would, but you never could tell.

  “Gotta hand it to those bastards,” said one of the privates by the fire. “They still have their peckers up.” That wasn’t far from what Chester was thinking.

  But brash Private Rohe said, “Yeah, well, I wish I did.”

  That got a laugh. One of the other men said, “Hey, you can’t get laid around here, you ain’t tryin’. These Ohio broads are mighty glad—I mean mighty glad—we ran off those butternut bastards.”

  Several men nodded. From what Chester had seen, the private wasn’t wrong. Some of the local women seemed convinced they had a patriotic duty to celebrate the return of the Stars and Stripes. “Do your prophylaxis, just like they’re whores,” he said: a sergeantly growl.

  “They aren’t, though, Sarge. That’s what makes ’em so much fun—they’re nice gals,” Rohe said. More nods.

  “You think you can’t come down venereal from laying a nice gal, you better think twice,” Chester said. “Remember, some of those ‘nice’ gals were probably screwing Featherston’s boys while they were here. They’re laying you to take the whammy off.”

  “They wouldn’t do that!” Two young men spoke in identical dismay.

  Chester laughed. “Hell they wouldn’t. There are collaborators on both sides. Always have been. Always will be.” He looked at his men. “You may be handsomer than the bastards in butternut—but if you are, the Confederacy’s got more trouble than it knows what to do with.”

  The infantrymen jeered at him. He sassed them back. If they were laughing and loose, they’d fight better. They didn’t worry about anything like that, but he did. That was why he had those stripes, and the rockers under them.

  Airplanes droned by overhead. Chester and the rest of the men looked for the nearest hole, in case those airplanes carried the Confederate battle flag. But they unloaded their ordnance on Hillsboro. Great clouds of smoke and dust rose above the town.

  “Hope our people got out of there,” Rohe said, eyeing the devastation a couple of miles away.

  Some o
f the locals probably—no, certainly—hadn’t. War worked that way. U.S. soldiers and armored vehicles started moving toward Hillsboro. Chester Martin sighed. He knew what would happen next. And it did. Lieutenant Wheat called, “Come on, men! Now that we’ve got the Confederates softened up, it’s time to drive them out of there once and for all!”

  Chester heaved himself to his feet. “You heard the man,” he said. “Let’s get moving. Stay on your toes as we move forward. The Confederates may not be as beat up as we hope they are.”

  He feared they wouldn’t be. He’d seen too many massive bombardments in the Great War yield little or nothing. He wouldn’t be surprised to see the same thing all over again here.

  Rohe took point as the platoon moved up. He was small and skinny and sly, a good man to spot trouble before he tripped over it. The guys Chester had lugging the platoon’s machine guns were the ones who would have played the line in a football game. He would have been the sort to lug one himself in the last war.

  He also had four or five men carrying captured C.S. automatic rifles. He blessed the extra firepower they gave. The whole platoon kept its eyes open for dead Confederates. Scrounging ammo never ceased—they didn’t want to run dry just when they needed it most.

  They’d got about halfway to Hillsboro when mortar rounds started falling out of the sky. “Down!” Chester yelled. “Dig in!” There were plenty of shell holes that needed only minimal improvement to become foxholes. Some of them were already pretty good. Chester dove into one of those. Dirt flew as if he were part mole. Pretty good wasn’t good enough. He wanted outstanding.

  The veterans in the platoon all dug in as fast as he did. New replacements stood around gaping and wondering what the hell was going on. Nobody’d had time to show them the ropes, and they didn’t own enough combat experience to do what needed doing without having to think about it. The extra few seconds they stayed upright cost them.