He wasn't the only pilot giving the new airplanes a once-over. 'Fly one yet?' he asked a much-decorated major.
'Yeah,' the younger man answered.
'What's it like?'
'Like your first girl after you've been jacking off too goddamn long.'
Moss laughed. That wasn't what he'd expected, but he liked the way it sounded. He went into the building to hear about the care and feeding of the Boeing-71, as the new turbo was officially known. The major doing the lecturing had some fresh and nasty burn scars on his left arm, and walked with a limp. Moss wondered if he'd got hurt in a turbo, but didn't ask. He didn't really want to know. Nobody else seemed curious, either.
He learned about the instruments, about the guns (four 30mm cannon in the nose-one hell of a punch), about the strange and temperamental landing gear, about what to do if an engine quit or caught fire, about what to do if both engines went out (not the most encouraging bit of instruction he'd ever had), about tactics against the Confederates' hottest prop-driven Hound Dogs, about everything he needed to know before he plopped his butt down in the cramped-looking cockpit.
He had to make himself listen. He knew he was hearing all kinds of stuff that would help keep him alive. He was a pro; he understood that. Even so, all he wanted to do was get in there and find out what the bird could do.
After what seemed forever and was only a week, he got his chance in a two-seat trainer. U.S. armies had driven the Confederates out of Petersburg. Birmingham and Huntsville were under artillery assault. Moss wondered if there'd be any enemy airplanes left for him to face when he finally went on duty in the new turbo-people were calling them Screaming Eagles, and the brass didn't seem to mind too much.
The noise inside the cockpit was different. He felt it all through his body instead of just hearing it. He gave the turbo some throttle. It raced down the runway-it needed half again as much tarmac as a prop job. As he came up to takeoff speed, the instructor said, 'Ease the stick back. Not too much, now. You do everything by little bits with this baby.'
'Right,' Moss said, and then he was airborne. He gunned the turbo a little. When he felt what happened, he whispered, 'Ohh.' Sure as hell, the murmur wasn't much different from the one he'd made as he first slid into Beth Sullivan when he was seventeen. He'd forgotten you could mix so much delight and awe and astonishment.
The instructor chuckled. How many other pilots had made that same sound in his earphones? 'It's something, isn't it?' he said.
'Wow,' Moss answered, which wasn't a hell of a lot more articulate. After a moment, he tried again: 'It's like angels are pushing.'
'It is, isn't it?' Now the instructor sounded thoughtful; he hadn't heard that before, anyway. He paused for a moment, then said, 'Remember, they can turn into devils in nothing flat if you screw up-or even if you don't. Sometimes only God knows why the engines flame out or throw a rotor or just up and quit. And if you don't want to be asking Him face-to-face, you've got to get out of the bird in a hurry.'
'I understand,' Moss said. The single-seat Screaming Eagle had one of the nicest cockpit canopies he'd ever seen, a sleekly streamlined armor-glass bubble. The trainer's canopy was longer and more bulbous, to accommodate the longer cockpit with two men. Could you yank it back quick enough to bail out? He hoped so.
At the instructor's command, he swung the turbo into a turn. You couldn't come close to turning as tight as you could in a prop job. But you wouldn't want to dogfight in a Screaming Eagle anyway, not when you could outdive, outclimb, and just plain outrun anything else in the air.
Landing with a nosewheel as the first flight ended felt strange, but he did it. He couldn't stop smiling when he got out of the fighter. If this wasn't love, what was it?
IX
G eorgia. Now Alabama. Cincinnatus Driver didn't care where they sent him. That he could drive through states which didn't come close to bordering the USA shouted louder than any words that the Confederacy was cracking up.
Enemy wireless programs still denied the obvious. They promised vengeance on the United States and swore C.S. victory lay right around the corner. 'Those bastards are so full of bullshit, no fuckin' wonder their eyes are brown,' Hal Williamson said. He paused to drag on a cigarette. The smoke, like the battery-powered wireless set, was loot from a captured Confederate supply dump. The enemy had destroyed what he could, but he'd had to retreat too fast to get rid of everything.
'We will take our revenge on the damnyankees!' the announcer brayed. 'Our rockets will drop from the skies and punish them as they only dream of punishing us! We will wipe their corrupt and filthy cities off the map one after another!'
Cincinnatus lit up a Raleigh of his own. 'Turn him off,' he said. 'Screechin' like that'll ruin my digestion.'
'I hear you,' Williamson said, and turned the power knob till it clicked. The ranting Confederate broadcaster- he must have studied at the Jake Featherston school of drama-fell silent. Williamson made as if to throw a rock at the set. 'Goddamn lying cocksucker.'
'Yeah,' Cincinnatus said, and hoped he was right. U.S. newscasters went on and on about the German bomb that leveled Petrograd. If the Germans could do something like that, could the Confederates match them? You didn't want to think so, but was it impossible?
Hal's thoughts ran along a different train track: 'Besides, where'll the dickheads get their rockets once we're done with Huntsville?'
'Yeah!' This time, Cincinnatus sounded much happier. Everybody knew the enemy rockets came from there. If the Confederates couldn't throw their superbomb at the USA, what good would it do them?
And, even before Huntsville got overrun, it was catching holy hell. Battery upon battery of 105s pounded away at the town. Their muzzle flashes brightened the horizon from the north all the way around to the southeast. The deeper crump! of bursting bombs said U.S. airplanes came over Huntsville, too. How anybody could go on working while high explosives were knocking his city flat was beyond Cincinnatus. The Confederates seemed intent on trying, though.
Before the drivers settled down for the night, they cut cards to see who would stand sentry when. Cincinnatus got a three-hour shift right at the start. That was good news and bad mixed together. He would have to stay awake longer when he was hungrier for sleep than for a good steak. But when he did climb into the cabin of his truck and roll up in blankets, he wouldn't have his sleep interrupted…unless Confederate raiders hit.
And they might. He knew that too well, which was why he carried his submachine gun with the safety off. C.S. regulars were thin on the ground. Raiders, damn them, popped out of nowhere. Some were bypassed soldiers, others civilians with a chip on their shoulder. If they could throw a few grenades or stitch a burst of automatic- weapons fire through a truck park, the damage they did more than paid for itself even if they got scragged.
A lot of the time, they didn't. They disappeared into the darkness and were never seen again. 'Bastards,' Cincinnatus muttered. His leg hurt. So did his shoulder. They did a lot of the time, even though he took enough aspirins to give himself a perpetual sour stomach. Run out in front of a motorcar and you weren't the same again afterwards.
He prowled around the parked trucks, doing his best to move quietly. Not far away, he heard a sound like crazy screeching. He froze for a second before realizing it was a raccoon. Those unearthly noises could get you going.
His wristwatch had numbers and hands that glowed in the dark. When his stretch on patrol ended, he shook his replacement awake and curled up on the seat of his truck. Whatever happened from then till sunup happened without him.
Somebody had liberated a ham. Toasted over a fire, a thick slab of it was delicious, and beat the hell out of the canned scrambled eggs Cincinnatus also ate. The coffee tasted as if it was at least half chicory. He'd had blends like that when he lived in Covington. He was used to it; he even kind of liked it. Some of the white drivers grumbled.
Hal Williamson put things in perspective: 'Shit, guys, it's better than no coffee at all.' Nobody found any easy
