U.S. pilot-training programs were outpacing their Confederate counterparts, too.
'How're we supposed to lick 'em if we can't go up there and shoot 'em down?' Pete wailed.
Jerry Dover didn't answer. The only thing he could have said was, We can't. While that was liable to be so, it didn't do anybody any good. If the writing was on the wall, Pete would be able to see it as well as anybody else.
The bombers didn't come back by the same route they'd taken going in. When Dover realized they weren't going to, he nodded in grudging respect. The Yankees weren't so dumb, dammit. C.S. antiaircraft guns would be waiting here for the returning airplanes. So would whatever night fighters the local Confederates could scrape up. Maybe Y-ranging gear could send the fighters after the U.S. bombers anyway. Dover hoped so. He was far from sure of it, though.
He wasn't sorry to climb out of the muddy trench. If chiggers didn't start gnawing on him, it would be nothing but dumb luck. Pete came out of his hole at about the same time. 'Ain't this a fun war?' the sergeant said.
'Well, I could think of a lot of words for it, but I'd probably have to think a long time before I came up with that one,' Dover answered.
'They knocked the shit out of Birmingham,' Pete said.
'Can't argue with you.'
Pete looked west, as if he could see the damage from where he stood. 'You reckon the place can keep going after they hit it like that?'
'Probably,' Dover replied. His eyes were well enough adapted to the dark to let him see Pete start. He went on, 'Why not? We bombed plenty of Yankee towns harder than that, and they kept going. The USA hit Atlanta day after day, week after week, and it kept making things and shipping them out till just a little while before we finally lost it. Hard to bomb places back to the Stone Age, no matter how much you wish you could.'
'Well, I sure as hell hope you're right.' Pete pulled a pack of cigarettes from a breast pocket. He stuck one in his mouth and bent his head to light it. The brief flare of the match showed his hollow, unshaven cheeks. Remembering his manners, he held out the pack. 'Want a butt, sir?'
'Don't mind if I do. Thanks.' Dover flicked a lighter to get the proffered cigarette going. After a couple of drags, he said, 'If they flatten Birmingham and Huntsville and maybe Selma, not many factory towns left between here and New Orleans.'
'Yeah.' Pete grunted. 'Whole state of Mississippi's nothin' but farms, near enough. Farms and rednecks, I mean. Used to be farms and rednecks and niggers, but I reckon we took care o' most of the coons there. That's one good thing, anyways.'
'Let me guess-you're not from Mississippi.' Dover's voice was dry.
'Hope to shit I'm not, sir,' Pete said fervently. 'I came off a farm about twenty miles outside of Montgomery, right near the edge of the Black Belt. Well, it was the Black Belt then. Likely ain't no more.'
'No, I wouldn't think so.' Jerry Dover left it there. He thought the Confederacy had more urgent things to do than hunt down its Negroes. Jake Featherston thought otherwise, and his opinion carried a lot more weight than a jumped-up restaurant manager's. But if he'd put those coons into factories instead of getting rid of them, how many more white men could he have put into uniform? Enough to make a difference?
We'll never know now, Dover thought.
'You know how many Mississippians it takes to screw in a light bulb?' Pete asked out of the blue.
'Tell me,' Dover urged.
'Twenty-seven-one to hold the bulb, and twenty-six to turn the house round and round.'
Dover laughed his ass off-that one did take him by surprise. Here he was, his country crashing down around his ears, and he laughed like a loon at a stupid joke. If that wasn't crazy, he didn't know what would be. He didn't stop laughing, either.
W hen Jonathan Moss heard barrels clanking toward him, he feared it was all over. If the Confederates wanted to put that kind of effort into hunting down Spartacus' guerrilla band, they could do it. Moss knew that all too well. So did all the survivors in the band.
'Got us some Featherston Fizzes?' Spartacus called.
'We'd do better trying to hide,' Nick Cantarella said.
'Ain't gonna hide from that many machines,' the chieftain said, and Moss feared he was right. He went on, 'We headin' fo' heaven, might as well send some o' them motherfuckers down to hell.'
Moss wasn't so sure of his own destination, but he'd been living on borrowed time long enough that he didn't worry too much about paying it back. An old bolt-action Tredegar wasn't much use against a barrel, but he hoped a driver or a commander would be rash enough to stick his head out for a look around. If one of them did, Moss hoped to make it the last rash thing he ever tried.
There came one of the big, snorting monsters. Moss swore under his breath. The barrel was buttoned up tight. Just his luck to spot a crew who knew what they were doing. He also saw that barrel design had come a long way while he was on the shelf here in Georgia. This green-gray machine was different from any he'd seen before.
Green-gray…His eyes saw it, but his brain needed several seconds to process it, to realize what it meant.
His jaw had just dropped open when Nick Cantarella, a little quicker on the uptake, let out a joyously obscene and blasphemous whoop: 'Jesus fuckin' Christ, they're ours!'
'Them's Yankee barrels?' Spartacus sounded as if he hardly dared believe it. Jonathan Moss knew how the guerrilla leader felt-he hardly dared believe it himself.
'Sure as shit aren't Confederate,' Cantarella answered as two more machines rumbled down the road. The ground-pounder took a long look at them. 'Wow,' he breathed. 'They've really pumped up the design, haven't they?'
'I was thinking the same thing. These look like they're twenty years ahead of the ones we were used to,' Moss said. War gave engineering a boot in the butt. Moss thought of the airplanes he'd flown in 1914, and of the ones he'd piloted three years later. No comparison between them-and no comparison between these barrels and their predecessors, either.
If he walked out in front of them with a rifle in his hands, he'd get killed. The Negroes in Spartacus' band didn't have that worry. U.S. barrelmen, seeing black faces, would know they were among friends.
Again, the guerrillas figured that out at least as fast as he did. Several of them broke cover, smiling and waving at the oncoming barrels. The lead machine stopped. The cupola lid on top of the smooth rounded turret flipped up. 'Boy, are we glad to see youse guys!' the barrel commander said in purest Brooklynese, his accent even stronger than Cantarella's.
'We's mighty glad to see you Yankees, too,' Spartacus answered. 'We gots a couple o' friends o' yours here.' He waved for Moss and Cantarella to show themselves.
Cautiously, Jonathan Moss came out from behind the bush that had hidden him. The barrel's bow machine gun swung toward his belly button. A burst would cut him in half. He set down the Tredegar and half raised his hands.
'Who the hell are you?' the barrel commander asked. 'Who the hell're both of youse?'
'I'm Jonathan Moss, major, U.S. Army-I'm a pilot,' Moss answered. In scruffy denim, he looked more like a farmer-or a bum.
'Nick Cantarella, captain, U.S. Army-infantry,' Cantarella added. 'We got out of Andersonville, and we've been with the guerrillas ever since.'
'Well, fuck me,' the barrel commander said. 'We heard there might be guys like you around, but I never figured I'd run into any. How about that? Just goes to show you. How long you been stuck here?'
'Since 1942.' By the way Moss said it, it might as well have been forever. That was how he felt, too.
'Fuck me,' the kid in the barrel said again. He looked around. 'Gonna be some foot soldiers along any minute. We'll give you to them guys, and they'll do…whatever the hell they do with you. Clean youse up, anyway.' That confirmed Moss' impression of himself. Cantarella looked even more sinister, because he had a thicker growth of stubble.
Sure enough, infantrymen trotted up a couple of minutes later. At least half of them carried captured Confederate automatic rifles and submachine guns. The lieutenant in charge probably wasn't old enough to vote. 'Where are the closest Confederates?' he demanded, sticking to business.
