Harry Turtledove - Return engagement

Morrell used several variations on the theme Dowling had set on the telephone. The Confederates were doing everything they could with saboteurs this time around. That looked to be paying off, too. Anything that added to the disarray of U.S. forces in Ohio paid off for the CSA.

"I'm sorry, Colonel," Dowling said. "Believe me, I'm sorry. We're doing everything we can. Right now, it isn't enough."

"I've got an idea." Morrell snapped his fingers. He pointed at the fat general. "Once the barrels come off the line in Michigan, let 'em drive here. It'll cost us fuel, but fuel we've got. I'd like to see one of those Confederate bastards try to sabotage all the roads between Pontiac and here, by Jesus."

Dowling scribbled a note to himself. He grunted when he finished. "There. I've written it down. I'd forget my own head these days if I didn't write down where I kept it. That's not a bad idea, actually. It'll tear up the roads-they aren't made for that kind of traffic-but-"

"Yes. But," Morrell said. "The damned Confederates can already plaster Sandusky. But what they plaster, we can repair. If they break through again, if they reach the lake, they cut us in half. I saw this coming. That doesn't make me any happier now that it's here."

If the Confederates broke through to Lake Erie, the War Department would probably put General Dowling out to pasture. Someone, after all, had to take the blame for failure. Morrell realized the War Department might put him out to pasture, too. That was the chance he took. They were asking him to make bricks without straw. They'd deliberately withheld the straw from him, withheld it for years. And now they could blame him for not having enough of it. Some people back in Philadelphia would leap at the chance.

"Sorry I haven't got better news for you, Colonel," Dowling said.

"So am I," Morrell told him. "I think I've wasted my trip here. The way things are, we can't afford to waste anything."

Before Dowling could answer, the field telephone jangled again. Looking apprehensive, the general picked it up. "Dowling speaking-what now?" He listened for a few seconds. His face turned purple. "What? You idiot, how did you let them get through?… What do you mean, they fooled you?… Oh, for Christ's sake! Well, you'd better try and stop them." He hung up, then glowered at Morrell. "Goddamn Confederates got a couple of our damaged barrels running again and put them at the head of their column. Our men didn't challenge till too late, and now they're making us sorry."

"Damn!" Morrell said. At the same time, he filed away the ploy in the back of his mind. Whoever'd thought it up was one sneaky son of a bitch. Morrell would have loved to return the favor. But the Confederates were advancing. His side wasn't. The enemy had more access to knocked-out U.S. barrels then he did to C.S. machines. He saluted. "If you'll excuse me, sir, I'm going to get back to the front." As he left, General Dowling's field telephone rang once more.

Out in front of the house, Morrell's driver was smoking a cigarette, his hands cupped around it to hide the coal in the darkness. "Get what you wanted, sir?" he asked.

"No." Morrell shook his head. "The commanding general tells me it's unavailable. So we'll just have to do the best we can without it." He climbed into the command car. "Take me back to our encampment. Try not to run over anything on the way."

"Do my best, sir," the driver answered. Only the narrowest of slits let light escape from his headlamps. He might as well have done without for all the good it did. But if he showed enough to light the road, he invited attack from the air. Blackout was a serious business on both sides of the border.

Off they went. They'd just left Norwalk when Morrell heard bombers droning far overhead. The airplanes were coming up from the south and heading northwest. Morrell swore under his breath. If that didn't mean Pontiac was about to get another pounding…

The driver almost took him straight into a Confederate position. They'd gone past there without any trouble on the way to Norwalk. Whatever Abner Dowling was yelling about on the field telephone must have happened in these parts. Morrell fired a few bursts from the machine gun at the Confederate pickets, who were at least as surprised to see him as he was to encounter them. They shot back wildly. Tracers lit the night. Bouncing along little country roads, the driver made his getaway.

"You know where you're going?" Morrell asked after a while.

"Sure as hell hope so, sir," the driver answered, which could have inspired more confidence. He added, "If those bastards have come farther than I thought, though, getting back to where we were at is liable to take some doing."

"If they've come that far, the barrels won't be where they were, either," Morrell pointed out. The driver thought that over, then nodded. He was going much too fast for the meager light the headlamps threw. Morrell said not a word. Had he been behind the wheel, he would have driven the same way.

The next time they got challenged, Morrell couldn't tell what sort of accent the sentry had. The driver zoomed past before he could exchange recognition signals. A couple of shots followed. Neither hit. Then the driver rounded a corner he noticed barely in time.

"That was one of ours," Morrell said mildly.

"How do you know?" The driver paused. His brain started to work. "Oh-single shots. A Springfield. Yeah, I guess you're right." He paused again. "Wish to God I had one of those automatic rifles Featherston's fuckers carry. That's a hell of a nice piece."

"Wouldn't do you as much good as you think," Morrell said. "Caliber's different from ours, so we can't use our own ammo in it. That was smart." He scowled in the darkness. Too much of what the Confederates had done in this fast-moving war was smart.

If I were trying to whip a country twice the size of mine, what would I do? Morrell scowled again. Jake Featherston's blueprint looked alarmingly good. That remained true, even though in effective manpower the USA's lead was closer to three to one than two to one. If you got the Negroes doing production work, if you mechanized your farming so it used the fewest possible people, if you went straight for the throat… If you did all that stuff, why then, goddammit, you had a chance.

"Hold it right there, or you're fucking dead." That challenge came from a sandbagged machine-gun nest blocking the narrow road. Morrell set a hand on the driver's shoulder to make sure they did stop. He thought those were U.S. forces behind the sandbags. He also doubted the command car could get away.

Cautiously, he exchanged password and countersign with the soldiers. They were as wary about him as he was about them. As usual, nobody wanted to say anything very loud. "Never can tell if those butternut bastards are listening," a sentry said. And he was right, too. But Morrell worried all the same. If U.S. soldiers spent more time thinking about the enemy than about what they were going to do next, didn't that give the Confederates an edge?

He got past the machine-gun nest. What should have been a half-hour ride to his own position outside the hamlet of Steuben ended up taking close to three hours. To his relief, he found the barrels still there. The Confederate penetration farther east hadn't made them pull back-yet.

Sergeant Michael Pound handed him the roasted leg of what was probably an unofficial chicken. "Here you are, sir," the gunner said. "We figured you'd be back sooner or later. Any good news from the general?"

He assumed he had the right to know-a very American thing to do. And Morrell, after gnawing the meat off the drumstick and thigh, told him: "Not a bit of it. We get to go right on meeting what Patton's got with whatever we can scrape together."

"Happy day," Sergeant Pound said. "Hasn't it occurred to anybody back in Philadelphia that that's a recipe for getting whipped?"