Return Engagement

by Harry Turtledove

  That held more truth than Tom wished it did. "Somebody has to," he said. "They're as good a bet as any, and better than most. Come on, get on the horn with them."

  "Right." The wireless man got busy. Before he could raise Sandusky, though, an antibarrel cannon went off in the direction the Confederate barrels had taken. It fired several rounds. Those weren't big guns; a crew could serve them lickety-split. A machine gun started to answer, undoubtedly trying to shoot down the gunners, but fell silent all at once. A moment later, Tom heard ammunition start to cook off. At least one of those barrels was history.

  He muttered a curse and set a hand on the wireless man's shoulder. "Never mind. I just got my answer." Pulling his pistol from its holster, he ran forward to see what he could do for the luckless barrel men.

  Some of them came running or staggering back toward him. Most were wounded. A couple of the soldiers in butternut coveralls turned around and went with him. The others kept going. Tom didn't suppose he could blame them, not after what had just happened.

  And it turned out not to matter any which way. All three barrels were burning. Tom couldn't get close to any of them. Several men, including the commander of that first barrel, lay dead near the dead machines. Tom swore again. They'd walked into a buzzsaw. He hoped the end had come quickly for them. Sometimes, in war, that was as much as you could hope for.

  A burst of machine-gun fire chewed up the fallen leaves not far from his feet. He dove for cover and swore one more time, now at himself. He hadn't come up here to be a target. Of course, the poor bastards in the barrels hadn't, either, and what had happened to them?

  The damnyankee behind the machine gun squeezed off another burst. Hunting me, the son of a bitch, Tom thought as he rolled and scrambled toward and then behind the thickest tree he could find. The U.S gunner's fire went a little wide. Tom lay there panting for a couple of minutes. In the last war, he might have laughed at himself for getting into and out of a scrape like that. He didn't feel like laughing any more.

  Careful not to draw the machine gunner's notice again, he crawled off to the west, putting as many trees between himself and the enemy as he could. Only when he was sure he could do it without getting shot did he climb to his feet. By then, he was so wet, he might as well not have bothered with the rain slicker. He felt like a cat that had fallen into a pond.

  To add insult to injury–or, here, almost to add injury to insult–some Confederate soldiers hurrying into the woods came close to shooting him for a Yankee. No good deed goes unpunished, he thought as he finally made it back out into open country.

  His wireless man looked him over. "Sir, you're a mess."

  "Thanks. Thanks a hell of a lot, Rick," Tom said. "I never would have figured that out without you."

  Rick took his canteen off his belt. "Here you go, sir. Have a knock of this." This turned out to be a good deal more potent than water. Tom swigged gratefully.

  "Ahhh," he said when the fire in his gullet had faded a little. "That hit the spot. Now get on the horn to divisional headquarters. They need to know the damnyankees have got antibarrel guns and all sorts of other little delights lurking in those woods."

  "I'll do it, sir," the wireless man said, and he did. Tom spoke with heat perhaps partly inspired by the liquid flames he'd just drunk.

  "Well, we'll see what we can do about it." The staff officer back in Sandusky didn't sound very worried. Why should he be? He was far enough behind the lines that nobody was shooting at him. He went on, "Can't really send out the Mules in weather like this, you know."

  He was bound to be dry and under a roof, too. More cold water trickled down the back of Tom Colleton's neck. He was amazed his anger didn't turn it to steam. "Have you ever heard of artillery?" he growled.

  "Oh, yes, sir," the staff officer said brightly. "I told you, sir–we'll see what we can do. Things are spread a little thin right now."

  "What's left of three crews' worth of barrels is spread pretty thin right now, too," Tom said. "They didn't know what they were walking into. Now they've found out the hard way. The Yankees need to pay for that."

  "Yes, sir," the staff officer said. That wasn't agreement; Tom had listened to too many polite but unyielding staff officers to mistake it for any such thing. The man was just saying that he heard Tom. He went on, "I'm afraid I can't make you any promises, but I'll do what I can."

  "Right. Thanks. Out." Tom's thanks wasn't gratitude, either. It was rage. He turned away from the wireless set before he said something worse.

  Rick understood that perfectly. "Don't worry, sir," he said. "I broke the link as soon as you said,, ‘Out." "

  "Thanks." This time, Tom did mean it. "I won't say you saved me a court-martial, but I won't say you didn't, either. Those goddamn behind-the-lines types are all the same. No skin off their nose what happens up here, because it isn't happening to them."

  The wireless man looked at him with real surprise. "You sound like a noncom grousing about officers, sir. Uh, no offense."

  Tom laughed. "You think we don't know what noncoms say about us? It's the same as privates say about noncoms."

  Rick looked surprised again, this time in a different way. "You know what? I reckon you're right. I know what I called sergeants before I got stripes on my sleeve."

  Artillery did start falling on the forest. The bombardment wasn't as hard as Tom would have liked to see it, but it was heavy enough to let division HQ think they'd taken care of the problem–and to say so if the people who gave them orders ever asked about it. Tom could have called Sandusky again and complained, but he didn't see the point. He was getting what Division had to give. If the Confederates had planned a big push through those woods, that would have been a different story. He would have squawked then no matter what. Now? No.

  Before long, U.S. artillery started shooting back at the C.S. guns. The counterbattery fire also seemed halfhearted. How much had the United States moved from Ohio to Virginia? Would the Confederate defenders there be able to hold on? From where Tom was, he could only hope so.

  ****

  AS HE always did when he went to the front, Jake Featherston was having the time of his life. He often wished he could chuck the presidency, put on his old sergeant's uniform, and go back to blowing up the damnyankees. Of course, that would leave Don Partridge in charge of the country, which was a truly scary thought.

  But what could be better than yanking the lanyard, hearing the gun roar, and watching another shell fly off to come down on some U.S. soldiers' heads? This was what Jake had been made for. Everything that came after he took off the uniform . . . There were times when it might have happened to somebody else.

  And he loved the automatic rifles Confederate soldiers carried. He had a hell of a time filling the air with lead when Yankee fighters shot up the gun pits. He hadn't hit anything yet, but he kept trying. It drove his bodyguards nuts.

  He wished the Confederates had thrown back the U.S. attack without letting it get across the Rappahannock. In a perfect world, things would have worked out like that. If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, Featherston thought. The damnyankees were over the Rappahannock, and driving for the Rapidan. They weren't slicing through the C.S. defenders the way the Confederates had sliced through the Yankees in Ohio, but they were still going forward. And they didn't have to go all that far before they got to Richmond.

  "Sir? Mr. President?" somebody shouted right next to Jake.

  He jumped. What with the bellowing guns of the battery and his own thoughts, he hadn't even realized this crisp-looking young captain of barrels had come up. "Sorry, sonny," he said. "Afraid I've got a case of artilleryman's ear. What's up?" Too much time by the guns had left him a little hard of hearing, especially in the range of sounds in which people spoke. But he was also selectively deaf. When he didn't feel like listening to somebody, he damn well didn't, regardless of whether he heard him.

  "Sir, General Patton's come up to talk with you," the captain answered.

  "H
as he, by God?" Featherston said. The young officer nodded. Jake slapped him on the back, hard enough to stagger him. "Well, lead the way, then. I'm always interested in what General Patton has to say."

  Again, he wasn't lying. He'd picked George Patton as a winner before the barrel commander helped put the Confederates in Sandusky. Patton's driving aggressiveness reminded him of his own. The general always had his eye on the main chance. You wouldn't go anywhere in this world if you didn't.

  A butternut Birmingham with Red Crosses prominent on the roof and sides waited for Featherston. He felt not the least bit guilty about the ruse. If anything happened to him, the whole Confederacy would suffer. He knew that. Remembering it while he was blazing away with an automatic rifle was a different story.

  Patton's camouflage-netted tent stood with several others in among some trees not far south of Culpeper, Virginia. The deception would have been better in the summertime. With leaves gone from trees, the tents were noticeable in spite of the netting. With luck, though, the Red Crosses on the auto would make Yankee pilots think they made up a field hospital.

  "Mr. President!" Patton jumped out of a folding chair, sprang to stiff attention, and saluted. "Freedom!" he added.

  "Freedom!" Jake echoed automatically. "At ease, General. Are we ready to twist the damnyankees' tail?"

  "Just about, sir," Patton answered. He had some of the palest, coldest eyes Featherston had ever seen. They lit up now with a glow like the northern lights shining on Greenland ice. "Then we don't just twist it. We land on it with both feet."

  "And won't they yowl when we do!" Featherston said.

  "That's the idea." Patton pointed north toward the din of battle. "These head-on attacks–all they prove is that General MacArthur hasn't figured out what to do with all the tools his War Department gave him."

  "Well, General, if you think I mind, you can damn well think again," Jake said. "When you're ready, I want you to do just what you said. We'll bundle these bastards out of your country with their jumped-on tails between their legs."

  "We'll do it, Mr. President. We're better men than they are. We always have been," Patton said. "And while wars may be fought with weapons, they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory."

  When he spoke of the man who led, he thought of himself. When Jake Featherston heard it, he thought of himself. He nodded. "You've got that right, General. The triumph of the will is going to take us where we want to go, and the United States won't be able to do a thing about it."

  "In war nothing is impossible, provided you use audacity," Patton said. "We have it. The Yankees don't. To win battles you do not beat weapons–you beat the soul of man of the enemy first."

  "Damn right!" Jake said enthusiastically. "When the Freedom Party was down in the, ‘20s, we could have folded up our tents and packed it in. But I hung tough, and that made people stick with me. I knew our time would come around."

  "That is the way it works, Mr. President," Patton said. "And I hope the way things work in our counterattack will be to your satisfaction. My only concern is that the U.S. forces have General Dowling commanding their right wing."

  "Why worry about him?" Featherston said. "You beat him in Ohio. You can do it again."

  "Well, sir, I hope so. But he was sensitive to his flanks there," Patton replied. "He didn't fight a bad campaign, given what he had to work with. Of course, Colonel Morrell commanded his armor then, and Morrell is still in the West, for which I am glad."

  "You're not the first officer I've heard who talks about Morrell like that," Jake observed. "Maybe something ought to happen to him."

  "Maybe something should," Patton agreed. "It's not what you would call sporting, but war is not a sporting business. I don't give a damn about good losers. I want the tough bastards who go out there and win, no matter how."

  "That sure as hell sounds right to me. When I get back to Richmond, I'll see what we can do about it." Jake made a sour face. He didn't want to go back to the Confederate capital. In a lot of ways, he really would rather have been an artilleryman than President. But he talked about duty to other people. He couldn't go on pretending it didn't matter for him.

  He motored back to Richmond in the Birmingham with the prominent Red Crosses. No Yankee airplanes attacked it, though a couple of flights of fighters roared by at not much above treetop height, looking for things to shoot up. He got out of the auto at the foot of Shockoe Hill, and rode to the Presidential mansion near the top in his armored limousine. He didn't want the auto with the Red Crosses seen near the Gray House. That might give the damnyankees ideas they would be better off not having.

  "Good to have you back, Mr. President," Lulu said.

  He smiled at his secretary. "Thank you kindly, sweetheart. It's good to be back." He was lying through his teeth, but he didn't want Lulu to know it. He didn't care to hurt her feelings by making her think he would sooner have been away from her.

  His desk was piled high with papers. He swore under his breath, even though he'd known it would be. He wished he could aim a 105 at it and blow it to hell and gone. If he'd known how much paperwork being President of the CSA entailed, he wouldn't have wanted the job so much. Despite hating it, he had to keep up with it. If he gave it all to flunkies, he wouldn't be able to watch what went on. Nobody was going to get away with any private empire-building, not if he could help it.

  He sifted through things as fast as he could, writing Yes–J.F. on some and No–J.F. on others and setting still others aside for consultation before he decided what to do about them. You had to use experts–you couldn't know everything yourself. But you had to watch them, too; otherwise they'd spend you out of house and home. Jake chuckled wryly, remembering the professor who'd wanted a fortune to play around with uranium. There were plenty more like him, too.

  Every once in a while, something interested Featherston enough to make him slow down and read carefully instead of skimming. England was doing something new with airplane engines, something that didn't use a propeller but that promised a better turn of speed than anyone had managed with props. We need to find out everything we can about this, Jake wrote.

  That might not be easy. In the last war, both sides had had a rough time crossing the Atlantic. Even submersibles had had trouble. The Yankees had been ready to copy a German fighting scout, but the sub carrying an example of the airplane got sunk. That set the USA back for months. The same thing could happen to any ship leaving the UK for the CSA. It could–but it had better not.

  A note from Ferdinand Koenig also drew Jake's full attention. Things at Camp Dependable and some of the others were going the way everybody'd hoped they would. Featherston nodded to himself. That was good news.

  Fewer bombers than usual came over Richmond that night; the ones that did seemed to strike mainly at the railroad yards. Most of the U.S. bombers dropped their loads farther north, at the Confederates defending against the Yankee onslaught. Jake hoped antiaircraft guns and night fighters knocked down a lot of them. No matter what he hoped, he knew better than to be too optimistic. U.S. gunfire hadn't badly hurt the Confederate airplanes that struck at Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and other cities north of the border.

  At dawn the next morning, the distant crashing of guns announced General Patton's counterattack out of the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Telephones in the Gray House started ringing right away. Aides brought Featherston notes on how things were going. As soon as he finished breakfast, the notes stopped satisfying. He had the calls routed to his own line, and started tracing progress on a map of Virginia that had gone up on his office wall next to the map of Ohio.

  Before long, he was muttering to himself. Things weren't going as well as he'd hoped they would. Things never went as well as he hoped they would. In his mind, every campaign was a walkover till it turned out not to be. But reports of heavy enemy resistance all along the U.S. right flank did nothing to improve his temper. He barked at everyone
who came in to see him except Lulu, and he never barked at her.

  He tried to talk directly to Patton. He found out he couldn't; the general commanding the barrels was in one himself. There was another way in which the two men were very much alike: they both wanted to get out there and fight. Most people didn't have the stomach–or the balls–for it. Even a lot of officers were happier well back of the line. But Jake and Patton both enjoyed mixing it up with the enemy–and if he shot back, well, so what?

  As the day wore along, the news gradually got better. The Yankees began falling back from positions they'd tenaciously defended all morning. But Jake's vision of cutting off their salient looked more like a pipe dream with each passing hour.

  On the other hand, it didn't look as if U.S. forces were driving so hard for the Rapidan. Some units that had been spearheading the U.S. attack turned back to help deal with Patton's counterblow. Featherston nodded to himself. In war, you rarely got everything you wanted. He hadn't smashed the Yankees, or he didn't think he had, but he'd slowed them down, maybe even stopped them. That would do. It would definitely do.

  ****

  JEFFERSON PINKARD felt awkward in a civilian suit. He could hardly remember the last time he'd worn one. Lately, he'd just about lived in his uniform. The gray flannel suit smelled of mothballs. It didn't fit too well, either. His shirt collar was tight around his neck. He'd added a few pounds since the last time he got into ordinary civvies.

  But he didn't think he ought to call on Edith Blades in his camp commandant's uniform. It would only remind her that her husband had worn one like it, if less fancy. That didn't seem to be the right thing to do, not after Chick Blades had killed himself.

  Before going on to Edith's house, Jeff stopped at a florist's in Alexandria and picked up a bouquet of daisies and chrysanthemums. He felt callow as he carried it up the walk and knocked at her front door. That made him want to laugh. There was a feeling he hadn't had in a hell of a long time–not since before the Great War. He had it again, though.