Drive to the East

by Harry Turtledove

  Confederate Mules—U.S. soldiers more often called them Asskickers—swooped down on the bridges. These days, the gull-winged dive bombers weren’t the symbol of terror they had been when the war was new. They were slow and ungainly; U.S. fighters hacked them out of the sky with ease when they ventured into airspace where the CSA didn’t have superiority. But they still had a role to play. They screamed down, put bombs on three bridges, and zoomed away at just above treetop level.

  “I hate those bastards, but they’ve got balls.” Because of Corporal Baumgartner’s mask, his voice sounded distant and otherworldly.

  “You want to know what I think, I think we have to be nuts to try to cross here at all,” Martin said. Baumgartner didn’t argue with him. He wished the other noncom would have.

  U.S. raiders in rubber boats tried crossing the Rappahannock to quiet the mortar crews and machine gunners and riflemen on the other side. Despite smoke screens and heavy U.S. fire, a lot of the boats got sunk before they made it to the south bank of the river. The raiders who managed to cross no doubt did their best, but Chester couldn’t see that Confederate fire diminished even a little.

  About every half hour, Lieutenant Monroe would say, “We’ll get the order to cross any minute now, men,” or, “It won’t be long!” or, “Be ready!” Knowing how stubborn the high brass could be, Chester feared the platoon leader was right, but kept hoping he was wrong.

  The order never came. Towards evening, the units that had been pushed forward drew back out of enemy artillery range. Martin wondered how many casualties they’d taken, and how many they’d inflicted on the Confederates. He would have bet the first number was a lot bigger than the second one.

  “Don’t worry, men,” Thayer Monroe said, invincibly optimistic. “We’ll get them soon, even if we didn’t get them today.”

  Chester had never known a common soldier who worried about not going into battle. No doubt such men existed. You heard stories about them, stories often prefaced, There was this crazy bastard who . . . But he’d never run into one himself.

  Like other lower forms of life, second lieutenants were too dumb to know better. Martin thought some more about telling this particular lieutenant to put a sock in it, but refrained. Monroe had a job, too. He was supposed to make soldiers enthusiastic about going out there and getting maimed. Having led that company in the Great War, Chester knew what a nasty job it could be.

  At the moment, he worried more about whether the regiment would get its field kitchens set up after all the marching and countermarching it had done. He wasn’t especially surprised when it didn’t. “Canned rations,” he told the men in his platoon. (Thayer Monroe had a different opinion about whose it was, but what did second lieutenants know?)

  “That shit again?” somebody said. It wasn’t the only grumble sullying the sweetness of the evening air. Canned rations ranged from boring to actively nasty. The labels usually peeled off, too, so you didn’t know ahead of time whether you were getting spaghetti and meatballs—tolerable—or chicken with stewed prunes—disgusting. As with men who liked combat, there were a few who liked the chicken concoction and would trade for it, but Chester didn’t think any were in his platoon.

  Charlie Baumgartner plopped down beside him. “How’s that gonna look in the newspapers, Sarge? ‘U.S. Army Pulls Back from Fredericksburg! Does Not Cross!’ ” He made the headline very convincing.

  Chester opened his can. It was hash—not very good, not very bad. He dug in. After the first mouthful, he said, “They can print that if they want to. I don’t care. As long as they don’t say, ‘U.S. Army Massacred at Fredericksburg!’ I’m not going to worry about it.”

  “You got a good way of looking at things,” Baumgartner said. “Better’n some people I could name—that’s for damn sure.”

  “He’s nothing but a puppy,” Martin said, identifying one of those unnamed people without undue difficulty.

  “You know what a puppy is?” the corporal said. He waited for Chester to shake his head, then answered the rhetorical question: “Just a little son of a bitch.”

  “Ouch,” Martin said. To his own surprise, he found himself defending Lieutenant Monroe: “He’s not so bad. He just needs experience.”

  “He needs a good, swift kick in the ass,” Baumgartner said.

  “Odds are he’ll get one. Let’s just hope he lives through it,” Chester said.

  “Yeah.” Baumgartner nodded. “Let’s hope we do, too.”

  ****

  Armstrong Grimes didn’t know where the Mormons got all their machine guns. He supposed the Confederates had sneaked some to them and they’d taken others from U.S. arsenals when they started their latest uprising. Or, for all he knew, maybe they had secret machine shops out in the desert somewhere, and men with green eyeshades working lathes to turn out their own.

  Wherever the machine guns came from, they had a hell of a lot of them.

  The one in front of Armstrong and his companions now was firing from the window of a house in Orem, Utah; U.S. forces had finally managed to drive the Mormons out of Provo. An enormous canning plant dominated Orem. The rebels were holed up inside the factory, too, but the Americans were going to have to clear them out of the buildings in front of the place before they could even think about attacking it.

  Clearing them wouldn’t be easy. Nothing that had to do with Mormons ever was. The machine gun spitting death in front of Armstrong, for instance, hadn’t just been set in that window. As soon as it started up, Sergeant Stowe called artillery fire in on it. The guns had turned the house to rubble. They hadn’t bothered the machine gun or its crew one bit.

  Crouched in a hole that didn’t feel nearly deep enough with bullets cracking past just overhead, Armstrong turned to Yossel Reisen and said, “Bastards have that thing all sandbagged.”

  “Either that or there’s a real cement bunker inside the place,” Reisen answered. “Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.”

  “Me, neither,” Armstrong agreed with a sour sigh. “They were probably getting ready here while they were still fighting down in Provo.”

  “I bet you’re right,” Reisen said. They both swore: part of the automatic obscenity that made up the small change of any conversation between military men. To Armstrong, the idea of preparing a position long before you fell back into it felt like cheating.

  A runner scrambled into the hole with the two of them. “When the whistle blows, pop up and start shooting at that machine gun as hard as you can,” he said, and then climbed out to pass the word to the next few U.S. soldiers.

  “What’s going on?” Armstrong called after him. The runner didn’t answer. Armstrong did some more swearing, this time in earnest. He didn’t like orders he didn’t understand, especially when they were liable to get him killed.

  Like them or not, he had them. About fifteen minutes later, an officer’s whistle shrilled. He popped up and fired a shot, then ducked down again to work the Springfield’s bolt. He felt like a jack-in-the-box after a while, or maybe like a jackass. But everybody else in front of the machine gun was doing the same thing, so the Mormons manning the piece didn’t aim all their attention—to say nothing of all their fire—at him.

  “Ha!” Yossel Reisen spoke with a certain somber satisfaction. “I see what’s going on.”

  “Yeah?” said Armstrong, who didn’t. “What?”

  “Guy with a flamethrower sneaking up on that house,” Reisen answered.

  “Is that what it is?” Armstrong said. “Well, no wonder we’re supposed to keep ’em busy, then.”

  The only drawback to a flamethrower was that the fellow who used it had to get close to his target before opening up—and had to get close while he was lugging a tank of jellied gasoline on his back. Armstrong’s opinion was that the men who carried flamethrowers had to be nuts. If, say a tracer round hit that tank of fuel . . .

  And one did, just when Armstrong was squeezing off a round. The fireball made him blink. “Oh, fuck,” he said softly. Nobody would e
ver bury that soldier, because there wouldn’t be much left of him. Armstrong hoped it was over in a hurry. He’d got hardened to a lot of war, but that was a nasty way to go. The poor bastard hadn’t had time to scream, anyhow. Maybe his silence meant something.

  After the flamethrower man’s untimely demise, firing at the Mormon strongpoint eased off. That made perfect sense, as far as Armstrong was concerned. Why take a chance on getting killed when you wouldn’t accomplish anything doing it?

  Yossel Reisen summed it up in four words: “So much for that.”

  “Yeah. You said it.” Armstrong sagged back down into the hole they shared. “You got a cigarette?” As Reisen gave him one, the enemy machine gun cut loose with a defiant burst to tell the world its crew was alive, well, and sassy.

  That machine-gun position had to go if U.S. troops were to advance. Armstrong hoped a barrel would waddle up and blast the nest to kingdom come. But barrels, even the old-fashioned waddling kind, were in short supply in Utah these days. A lot of them had gone up in flames in the house-to-house fighting in Provo. Without them, the soldiers still might have been stuck down there. But none seemed to be close by right now.

  “What would you do if you were a general?” Yossel Reisen asked.

  “Me? Find another line of work,” Armstrong answered. Reisen laughed but waved to show he’d really meant the question. Armstrong thought about it, then said, “Probably another guy with a flamethrower. Cheapest way there is to make those fuckers say uncle if we don’t have a barrel ready, and it doesn’t look like we do.”

  He guessed wrong, which didn’t much surprise him—he’d never wanted to be a general. The powers that be decided to try shelling the machine-gun nest out of existence again. As soon as Armstrong heard the first couple of shells gurgle by overhead, he knew they weren’t just counting on explosive power to do the job this time. “Gas!” he shouted. “Gas!” He jammed the mask over his head as fast as he could. Some of those shells were bound to fall short, the artillery being what it was. And even if they didn’t, the breeze, what there was of it, came from the north, and would blow some of the poison back towards U.S. lines.

  A big stretch of the world disappeared with the pig-snouted mask over his face. What was left he saw through two portholes of none too clean glass. The air tasted of rubber. He didn’t feel as if he could get quite enough of it. That was an illusion; he’d proved as much plenty of times. But he did have to work harder to suck breaths through the activated-charcoal filter cartridge, so the illusion persisted.

  Sure as hell, a couple of rounds were short, which meant they came down among the soldiers stuck in front of the machine gun. Armstrong hoped they weren’t carrying what people called nerve agents. That crap could kill you if it got on your skin. Everybody had rubberized coveralls. Nobody wanted to wear them. They were unbearably hot.

  With infinite caution, Armstrong stuck up his head. The machine-gun nest was catching hell, no doubt about it. With a little luck . . .

  That officer’s whistle squealed again. “Forward!” he shouted.

  “Aw, shit,” Armstrong muttered. They were going to find out if they’d got rid of the Mormons, all right. Armstrong thought of spraying Flit all over an ants’ nest. Mormons stung even harder than red ants, though.

  They were harder to kill, too. The U.S. soldiers ran toward the machine-gun nest in little scuttles from one bit of cover to the next. The gun that had held them up stayed silent. Some of them, the green ones, whooped and got a little less cautious, figuring the rebel gunners were dead.

  Armstrong kept his belly on the dirt and the snout of his gas mask banging the ground. He trusted Mormons no farther than he could throw them. They were as sneaky a bunch of bastards as you could imagine. He tried not to show himself as he scooted up toward that battered house.

  Beside him, Yossel Reisen took no chances, either. He snaked ahead. He didn’t walk. He didn’t even crawl. He snaked on his belly, pulling himself along with his elbows.

  And their wariness and distrust paid off, for the Mormons inside the machine-gun nest must have had masks and must have got them on in time. The gunners waited till they found good targets, then opened up with a savage burst that cut down half a dozen American soldiers. After that, the advance congealed. Everybody knew you couldn’t charge a well-served machine-gun nest. If armor or artillery didn’t take it out, infantry would just keep piling up corpses in front of it.

  Quite suddenly, the Mormon machine gunners ceased fire. Armstrong didn’t even twitch; he suspected another nasty trick. Then somebody behind him shouted, “Flag of truce! Flag of truce coming forward!”

  That didn’t make Armstrong move, either. Mormons sounded just like anybody else. They looked just like anybody else, too. And they had no trouble getting green-gray uniforms from dead or captured U.S. soldiers. They often pretended to be ordinary Americans, and they caused a lot of trouble when they did.

  But a flag of truce was coming forward. The U.S. captain who carried it shouted to the men in the machine-gun nest: “I have a message for your leaders.” He had trouble being as loud as he wanted through his mask, but he managed.

  “Come ahead.” The Mormon who answered was also yelling through a gas mask. “We won’t shoot as long as nobody in front of us tries moving forward.”

  “Agreed,” the captain said. Waving the white flag so the rebels could see who he was, he picked his way through the wreckage, towards and then past the machine-gun nest. Other Mormons emerged from concealment that didn’t look big enough to hide a cat. One of them blindfolded the U.S. officer, which struck Armstrong as a sensible precaution. Then they led him north.

  “Wonder what that’s all about,” Yossel Reisen said. “Are they flabbling so much about this one strongpoint? They wouldn’t call a truce just on account of it . . . would they?”

  “Christ, I hope not,” Armstrong said. “Wish I had a cigarette.” No matter how much he wished he did, he didn’t take off his mask and light up. There was bound to be gas still floating in the air. If he saw somebody else smoking and getting away with it, he’d try. Till then, no. He went on, “Most of the damn Mormons don’t smoke. Makes ’em harder to spot.”

  He didn’t stick his head up or expose himself unduly. The rebels were good about honoring cease-fires, but they weren’t perfect—and they’d said they would open up if anybody on the American side got frisky.

  After the truce had stretched for a couple of hours, Americans got up and stretched and began to move around. The Mormons let them. When someone was dumb enough to start to go toward the machine-gun nest, the gunners fired a warning burst well over his head. He got the message and drew back in a hurry.

  A little before sunset, the captain returned. This time, he waved the flag of truce so his own side wouldn’t shoot him. With him came a little old man in a somber black suit. He looked like a grandfather who was having a tough day. Nimble as a mountain goat, he followed the captain through the rubble of what had been Orem.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” Armstrong asked. Neither Yossel Reisen nor anybody else had a good answer for him.

  ****

  “What the hell’s going on here?” Senator Robert Taft demanded. He was a thoroughly reactionary Democrat who’d run against Al Smith in 1940. Flora Blackford didn’t think along with him very often when they met together with the rest of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. She didn’t very often, but she did now.

  The chairman rapped loudly for order. “You were not recognized, Senator,” he said in tones of bureaucratic severity.

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Chairman.” Taft sounded anything but. “I must say that I have trouble recognizing what the present administration is up to.”

  Bang! The chairman rapped again. “You are out of order, sir. Your remarks will be stricken from the record.” He pointed to Flora. “Congresswoman Blackford!”

  “Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” Flora said. George Norris smiled in relief. Like her, the Senator from Nebrask
a was a Socialist; he judged she was likely to go easy on President La Follette and his henchmen. Not today, though; she continued, “Mr. Chairman, I would also like to know what the hell is going on here.”

  Several people exclaimed in surprise in the Philadelphia meeting room. “Thank you, Mrs. Blackford!” Senator Taft said in glad surprise. Senator Norris looked as if he’d stepped on a land mine.

  “I didn’t do it for you, Senator. I did it for me,” Flora replied. That made the chairman no happier. She’d hoped it would—Norris was an old man, and a Party warhorse—but hadn’t really expected it to. Turning to him, she went on, “What is the administration doing by negotiating with the Mormons? What have they done that makes them deserve negotiation?”

  “I couldn’t have put that better myself,” Taft said.

  “Congresswoman, I am not the right person to answer your question, as I trust you are aware,” the chairman said.

  “Certainly,” Flora said. “That is why I move that we call the Secretary of the Interior to come before the committee and explain this extraordinary action.”

  “Second!” Robert Taft wasn’t the only one to call out the word; it came from half a dozen throats. Some were Democrats, some Socialists; here, people were breaking party lines.

  Seeing as much, Senator Norris looked even more pained than he had before. “With talks in progress, I am not sure the Secretary would respond to such a summons,” he replied. “I am not sure he should respond to such a summons.”

  “There, Mr. Chairman, I must respectfully disagree,” Flora said. The language of Congress was marvelously polite. Anywhere else, she would have said something like, My God, you’re an idiot! Polite language or no, the message came through. Norris turned a dull red. Flora went on, “If the Secretary does not respond to an invitation to come before us, I will move that we subpoena him. We need to know why the administration thinks it can offer concessions to a group now rebelling against the U.S. government not for the first, not for the second, but for the third time.”