Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

“I have this for you, sir.” Levitt set a sealed envelope on Dowling’s desk. “Major Toricelli didn’t find anything obviously lethal about it.”

“I’m so relieved,” Dowling murmured, not about to let the officer from Philadelphia show more sangfroid than he did himself. Levitt smiled. When he did, his whole face lit up. He looked like a human being, and a nice one, instead of a cog in the military machine. Dowling opened the envelope, unfolded the papers inside, and began to read. He suddenly looked up. “Jesus Christ!” he said, and then, “You know what’s in these orders?”

“Yes, sir,” Levitt said. “You’re allowed to discuss them with me.”

“Oh, joy.” Dowling went on reading. When he finished, he looked up again. “I understand what I’m supposed to do. But why on earth am I supposed to concentrate my forces and launch an attack? There’s nothing in West Texas worth having.”

“I know.” Major Levitt smiled another of his charming smiles. “I served there for a while between the wars, when it was Houston.”

“These”-Dowling tapped the orders with the nail of his index finger-“are very strange. When I was sent here, they told me that as long as the Confederates didn’t steal Albuquerque and Santa Fe while we weren’t looking, I’d be doing my job. And now this. What’s going on?”

Levitt told him exactly what was going on, in about half a dozen sentences. “Any questions, sir?” he finished.

“No,” Dowling said. “You’re absolutely right. I can see the need. Just the same, though, Major, and no offense to you, I’m going to keep you here for a while, till Philadelphia confirms that it really did send these orders. They look authentic-but then, they would if they were phony, too. Featherston’s bound to have some good forgers in Richmond, same as we’re bound to be forging Confederate papers.”

“No offense taken, sir,” Levitt said. “As long as your force gets rolling by that date, what happens beforehand doesn’t matter.”

“Ha!” Dowling muttered. Major Levitt was a General Staff officer. To them, logistics was an abstract science like calculus. They didn’t have to worry about moving actual men and guns and munitions and fuel and food. Abner Dowling did, and knew his supply train was as flimsy as the rest of the alleged Eleventh Army. “Major Toricelli!” he called. “Can I see you for a moment?”

“Yes, sir?” Toricelli was in the office in nothing flat, sending Levitt a suspicious look. “What is it?”

Dowling handed him the orders. “Please get confirmation of these from Philadelphia. Until we have it, Major Levitt is not to leave this building.”

“Yes, sir !” Toricelli gave Levitt a real glare this time.

“Highest security,” Dowling added. “Don’t compromise the orders to verify them.” Toricelli saluted and hurried away. Dowling nodded to Levitt. “Care for a cigarette?”

“No, thank you, sir. I never got the habit. I ran track at West Point, and they’re bad for your wind.”

“Ah. I was a football man myself-a tackle,” Dowling said. “Even back in those days, I was built more like a brick than a greyhound.” He lit up. He wasn’t running anywhere.

Not quite half an hour later, the telephone on his desk rang. He picked it up. “Dowling here.”

“Hello, sir. This is John Abell. Do you recognize my voice?”

Even across two-thirds of the country and an indifferent connection, Dowling did. “Yes, indeed, General,” he said.

“Good. That makes things easier,” the General Staff officer said. “I can confirm those orders for you. We did send Major Levitt west with them. Please follow them precisely.”

“I’ll do it,” Dowling promised. “Anything else?”

“No, sir. That covers it,” Abell answered. The line went dead.

Dowling nodded to Levitt. “All right, Major. You are what you say you are, and these”-he tapped the orders again-“are what they say they are. I’ll carry them out.”

“Thank you, sir.” Levitt grinned. “Would you be kind enough to let your adjutant know I don’t have horns and fangs and a spiked tail?”

Dowling smiled, too. “If he frisked you, he should already know that.” But he did get up and let Major Toricelli know the courier was neither a devil nor, worse, a Confederate.

“I didn’t think he was, sir, but you never can tell,” his adjutant said. “I wondered if he was a Mormon in disguise, too, to tell you the truth.”

“Gark,” said Dowling, who hadn’t thought of that. “No wonder you checked to see if he was loaded with explosives.”

“It’s a rum old world, sir,” Toricelli said.

“Ain’t it the truth?” Dowling agreed. “And we’re going to be the busiest people in it the next few days. The Eleventh Army is strung out from the border with Chihuahua to the border with Sequoyah. I want to concentrate here, but I want to leave enough of a screen behind so the Confederates don’t notice we’re concentrating till we go over the border.”

“That would be easier if we had more men,” Major Toricelli said.

“Of course it would. And if pigs had wings we’d all carry umbrellas,” Dowling said, which made his adjutant send him a quizzical look. He ignored it and went on, “Let’s go to the map room and see what we can work out.”

The more he studied the situation, the less happy he got. Major Toricelli had it right: if he left enough men behind to fool the foe, he wouldn’t be able to mount the kind of attack the War Department had in mind. He grumbled and fumed, thinking about bricks without straw. His adjutant seemed sunk as deep in gloom-till Toricelli suddenly started to laugh.

Now Dowling had the quizzical stare. “What’s so funny, Major? Nice to think something is.”

“Sir, I don’t think we need the screening force,” Toricelli said. “If the Confederates see what we’re doing and attack us somewhere else along the line-well, so what? Aren’t they doing exactly what we want them to do?”

Dowling eyed the map a little while longer. Then he laughed, too. “Damned if they aren’t, Major,” he said. “Damned if they aren’t, by God. All right. We’ll keep it just secret enough so Featherston’s fuckers think we’re trying to but we aren’t very good at it. We can’t be too open, or they’ll start wondering what’s up.”

Toricelli nodded. “Got you, sir. I like that.”

“So do I,” Dowling said. “Let’s start drafting orders, then.”

The orders went out. The U.S. Eleventh Army started concentrating on Clovis. U.S. air strength in New Mexico started concentrating on Clovis, too. The fighters would help keep the Confederates from breaking up the concentration with bombers when they noticed it. They didn’t take long. Urgent signals started heading east from the C.S. Army of West Texas. Dowling’s cryptographers couldn’t make sense of all of them, but what they could read suggested the enemy was alarmed.

“If I were in West Texas, I’d be alarmed, too,” Dowling told Angelo Toricelli. “I’d think the U.S. general on the other side of the border had gone clear around the bend. Why stir things up here?”

“Because the USA can fart and chew gum at the same time?” his adjutant suggested.

“That’s what we’re doing, all right.” Dowling had to stop, because he was laughing too hard to go on. “If we had a real army here…” He shrugged. “But we don’t, so we do the best we can with what we’ve got.”

He was ready on the appointed day. He was less than an hour away from issuing the order to start the opening barrage when he got another phone call from John Abell. “Please hold up for three days, sir,” Abell said. Please made the order more polite, but no less an order.