Harry Turtledove - Return engagement

If Luther Bliss wanted a fight, Cincinnatus was ready. He didn't even worry about being a cripple. He intended to use his cane to knock the white man ass over elbow. He didn't figure Bliss would fight fair, so why should he?

"You reckon you can drive a truck?" Lucullus asked him.

"Can I? Hell, yes," Cincinnatus answered. "Why do I want anything to do with this ofay bastard, though?" He pointed across the table at Bliss.

"Because it'll heap coals of fire on Jake Featherston's head." Lucullus could quote Scripture for his purpose, too. "Next to that, what else matters?"

That was a potent argument with any Negro, but not necessarily potent enough with Cincinnatus. "Jake Featherston never lured me down here so he could throw me in jail," he snarled. "This here asshole did."

Bliss didn't deny it. How could he, when it was true? He said, "Featherston's killing spades by the tens of thousands-hell, maybe by the hundreds of thousands now. You gonna piss and moan about a jail cell next to that?"

He had an odd way of arguing, which didn't mean it wasn't effective. He didn't care what Cincinnatus thought of him. He just worried about what the black man did. Cincinnatus didn't look at him or speak to him. Instead, he turned to Lucullus. "Where's this truck at? Where do I got to drive it to?"

"It's by the train station," Lucullus answered. "You got to bring it over to the river."

"The Ohio?" Cincinnatus asked. You could almost spit from the station to the Ohio.

Lucullus shook his head. The soft flesh under his chin wobbled. That made Cincinnatus think of the barbecue chef's father. Apicius Wood's flesh had been the only soft thing about him. Lucullus said, "No, not the Ohio. The Licking, here in the colored part o' town."

That made sense. Cincinnatus wasn't sure a colored truck driver could get near the Ohio without challenge. The tributary was bound to be a different story. "What's the truck got in it?" Cincinnatus asked.

"Something I arranged," Luther Bliss said. "You don't need to know what."

Cincinnatus started to get to his feet. "Obliged for the ribs," he told Lucullus. "Reckon you don't need me for no driver."

"Git down off your high horse. You are the proudest damn nigger," Lucullus said querulously. Cincinnatus didn't deny it. He didn't leave, either. He waited. If he got an answer, that was one thing. If he didn't… He could always leave then. Lucullus muttered under his breath. Then he stopped muttering and spoke in that same low, breathy voice: "Got us some mines to dump in the river."

"Do Jesus!" Cincinnatus said. Luther Bliss doubtless had connections with the U.S. War Department. Even so, smuggling infernal devices like that across the border couldn't have been easy. Since Bliss had managed to do it, or somebody had managed to do it for him… "When you want me there?" Cincinnatus asked.

Two days later, wearing a pair of overalls and a cloth cap furnished by Lucullus, he made his way toward the truck. A gray-uniformed cop checked his passbook and let him go on without asking exactly where he was going and why. The Confederates thought everything in Covington was under control. Cincinnatus' carnivorous smile said otherwise.

He found the truck right where Lucullus said it would be. One of the keys in his pocket opened the door. Another fit the ignition. The motor roared to life when he turned that key and stamped the starter.

Releasing the hand brake and putting the truck in gear felt good. He'd been driving for more than thirty years. He'd taken his surname because of what he did. Driving was a big part of his life, and he hadn't been able to do it since coming down to Covington. Now he could.

He shook his head and clucked sadly as he went through the colored quarter. A lot of houses stood empty; their owners had been sensible enough to get across the Ohio to the USA when the CSA won the plebiscite. Cincinnatus sighed. He'd been sensible himself. Fat lot of good it had done him.

The derelict garage where Lucullus had told him to pull in was hard by the river. The building faced away from the Licking, but had a back door that opened on it. Even before Cincinnatus killed the engine, half a dozen black men stepped out from the gloom and darkness inside the garage.

"You brung 'em?" one of them asked.

"Yeah," Cincinnatus answered. The men took half a dozen crates out of the back of the truck. They pried up the tops and carefully removed the mines, one after another. Two men on each mine, they carried them down to the river. Cincinnatus didn't see how they placed them: whether they dropped them in, had a rowboat waiting, or what. As soon as the last mine was gone, he fired up the truck again and drove off. Lucullus' crew of men with strong backs also broke up in a hurry.

The truck went back where he'd found it. He returned the keys to Lucullus. The barbecue chef gave him a conspiratorial wink. He returned it, then limped out of the barbecue shack and headed home.

Jake Featherston scowled as he read the report from Kentucky. A Confederate gunboat on the Licking River had blown sky-high when it hit a mine. Two dozen men dead, another eight or ten badly hurt, an expensive piece of machinery gone to hell… He cursed under his breath, and then out loud.

After he'd thought for a few seconds, his curses got nastier. The Licking ran into the Ohio. You couldn't drop a mine into the Ohio and expect it to go up the Licking. Sure as hell, the damnyankees had sneaked people and at least one mine from the USA into the CSA. Either that or they'd sneaked in the explosives and then used white traitors or niggers to do their dirty work for them.

After a few more seconds, Jake swore even louder. That at least one mine stuck in his head. How much time and money and manpower would the authorities in Covington have to spend before they made sure there weren't any others-or before they got rid of the ones they found? Too much, too much, and too much, respectively.

Back before Kentucky and the abortion called Houston came home to the CSA, pro-Confederate demonstrators had been as nasty and as noisy as they could. Yankee backers in the redeemed states were quieter. If they showed what they thought, the police and Freedom Party stalwarts and guards would land on them with both feet. The Yankees had been soft-headed and let their enemies shelter under the protection of the Constitution. In the CSA, the Whigs had made the same mistake-and they'd paid for it, too.

Unfortunately, the damnyankees had wised up. They'd figured out how to play nasty, and they'd turned out to be pretty good at it. Featherston swore once more, this time at himself. He'd misread Al Smith. The man-and the country Smith led-turned out to have more backbone than he'd expected. He'd been so sure the Yankees would go for his peace offer after the CSA's smashing victories in Ohio. He'd been sure, and he'd been wrong.

"Well, if the bastards won't lay down on their own, we'll just have to knock 'em flat, that's all," he muttered. "And we goddamn well will." The telephone rang. He picked it up. "Yeah? What is it, Lulu?"

"General Potter is here to see you, sir," his secretary answered.

"Send him in," Jake said, and hung up. When Clarence Potter walked into the President's office, Featherston fixed him with a glare. "You know about the goddamn mess in Covington?"

"Yes, sir, I do," Potter answered. Jake's glare, which reduced a lot of men to quivering jelly, had disappointingly little effect on the Intelligence officer. Potter went on, "That's one of the things I was coming to talk to you about. We've got reports Luther Bliss has been seen in Covington. Does that name mean anything to you?"

"I hope to shit it does!" Featherston burst out. "That cold-blooded bastard was nothing but trouble for us while the USA held on to Kentucky."