him?'
'Raymond,' Jeff answered at once-drunk or sober, he knew. 'Raymond Longstreet Pinkard.' He knew where he stood, too, even now.
E very time Irving Morrell came into Philadelphia, the city looked worse. The Confederates kept finding new ways to hit the de facto capital of the USA. U.S. forces had driven the Confederates from their own capital and held bridgeheads across the James. The rocket factories in Huntsville were history. But Jake Featherston's forces kept launching their damn birds. Not all of them had been driven out of range of Philly, not yet. Their bombers still managed to sneak up here by night, too. Fresh craters and wrecked buildings loudly insisted the war wasn't over yet.
But the people in Philadelphia had a jaunty spring in their step that wasn't there the last time Morrell came into town. Maybe it was all the general's imagination, but he didn't think so. Folks figured things were on the downhill slope. And, by God, they had plenty of good reasons to think so.
Not without pride, Morrell knew he'd given them more than a few of those good reasons himself.
His driver, a sergeant with a Purple Heart and three oak-leaf clusters-not the kind of decoration anybody in his right mind would want to win-said, 'We've got those cocksuckers whipped, don't we, sir?'
'Well, we'd have to screw up pretty good to blow things now,' Morrell allowed. 'Are you on permanent light duty, Sergeant, or will you go back to the front? You're two wounds ahead of me, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.'
'I'll be at it again in a couple of weeks, sir,' the noncom answered. 'None of 'em's been real bad. I limp a little from the latest one, and I've lost a finger, but the other two…hell, I don't even notice 'em if I don't see the scars. For a guy who's not real lucky, I'm pretty lucky, you know?'
'Yeah,' Morrell said, and he did. The way the sergeant put it was kind of loopy, but it made sense anyway. The Ford rolled past a wall with a few bomb scars and a big splash of dried blood. Morrell was afraid he knew what that meant: 'People bomb?'
'Afraid so, sir. They think this one was a diehard Mormon. He took out four or five soldiers when he went.'
'Damn,' Morrell said. How long would the USA-and other countries all over the world-have to worry about people willing, even eager, to die for their cause? Get some dynamite, some nails or scrap metal, and there you were: your own artillery shell. And you could aim yourself better than the best gunner in the world. The assumption in war had always been that the other guy didn't want to die. How were you supposed to protect yourself against somebody who did?
'Mormons. Canucks. Confederates,' the sergeant said mournfully. 'Even what they call peace won't be the same.'
'I was just thinking the same thing,' Morrell said. 'I don't know what to do about it. If you get any brainstorms, for Christ's sake tell the War Department. You'll be a captain faster than you can blink.'
'No offense, sir, but I don't know if I want to be an officer.' With some relief, the noncom hit the brakes in front of the War Department. 'Here you go. You don't even have to tip me.'
'Heh,' Morrell said. He stepped between concrete barriers that kept autos from getting too close: they could carry a lot more explosives than mere people could. The War Department building had a big chunk bitten out of a corner. Those C.S. rockets weren't supposed to be real accurate, but one seemed to have landed right on the money.
Not even stars on his shoulder straps kept him from having to show his ID, or from getting patted down after he did. He submitted without a murmur; times were still dangerous. Once he'd placated the entrance dragons, an escort took him down to General Staff headquarters.
It hadn't been buried so deep the last time he came to the War Department. Of course, if it weren't now, it might have gone sky high when that rocket came down. 'Here's General Abell's office, sir,' the escort said. 'Telephone when you need to come up again, and somebody will take you.'
'Thanks,' Morrell said. The kid gave him a crisp salute and hurried down the corridor. Morrell was much less eager to enter John Abell's sanctum, but he did.
'Welcome,' the General Staff officer said with what passed for warmth from him. Brigadier General Abell sometimes reminded Morrell of a ghost mostly congealed into the real world. He was tall and thin and pale, and so cool of manner that he sometimes hardly seemed there at all. The General Staff suited him perfectly; he was a dab hand at moving divisions around, but would have been hopeless with dirty, smelly, wisecracking, foul-mouthed soldiers.
'Thanks,' Morrell answered, and couldn't help adding, 'See? It wasn't a two-year campaign after all.'
'So it wasn't. Congratulations.' Yes, Abell was in a gracious mood. 'We managed to attrit the enemy so he couldn't resist with as much persistence as I thought he might utilize when we first broached the issue early last year.'
Morrell distrusted officers who said utilize when they meant use. As for attrit…Well, obviously it came from attrition, but that didn't mean he ever wanted to hear it again. He managed a nod.
That seemed to satisfy John Abell. 'The question now, of course, is, Where do we go from here?'
He could speak clear English when he wanted to. Why didn't he want to more often? 'On the western flank, Birmingham and Huntsville are pretty much in the bag,' Morrell said. 'We're hitting Selma and Mobile hard from the air. We'll get to 'em before too long. New Orleans…Well, we can bomb it. If we smash the levees, we can flood a lot of it. But we won't get soldiers there any time soon.'
'A reasonable estimate,' Abell agreed. 'And in the east?'
'I'm shifting most of the effort there up into South Carolina,' Morrell replied. 'Charleston, Columbia…If the General Staff has a different idea, I expect you'll let me know.' He wondered if that was part of the reason he'd been summoned to Philadelphia. What did they think he would do if he stayed down in the Confederacy and got orders he didn't like? Set up on his own? He admired Napoleon as a soldier, but not as a politician.
'At present, no. That seems adequate, or more than adequate,' John Abell said. He acted nervous, though.
For a moment, that made no sense at all to Morrell. The United States was manifestly winning the war. They'd cut the CSA in half. The campaign in Virginia was going well at last. Even the minor struggles in Arkansas and Sequoyah and west Texas all inclined toward the USA. So why wasn't Abell even happier?
Morrell didn't expect hosannas and backflips from the General Staff officer. He'd known Abell too long and too well for that. But still…Then a light went on, a light as bright and terrible as the sun. 'That goddamn superbomb!' Morrell exclaimed. 'How close is Featherston?' He didn't ask how close his own country was. That, he assumed, would be a secret more tightly held than the other.
'Ah. Good. You do understand the basic difficulty under which we labor,' Abell said. 'The answer is, we just don't know-and that is our principal area of concern at this point in time.'
'I can see how it might be,' Morrell said dryly. If the Confederates could blow a city off the map with one bomb, they hadn't lost yet, not by a long chalk. 'We are trying to do something about this?'
'As a matter of fact, yes,' John Abell said. 'Before too much longer, the question may be moot, but at the moment it remains relevant.'
And what was that supposed to mean? Were the United States about to capture the CSA's superbomb works? Or was his country close to getting a superduperbomb of its own? 'Anything you can tell me without bringing the wrath of the great god Security down on your head?' Morrell inquired.
'Our own research along those lines is making good progress,' Abell said, and not another word.
Even that much was more than Morrell expected. 'Well, all right,' he said, and took out two packs of Dukes. He pulled a cigarette from one and stuck it in his mouth; the other he tossed on Abell's desk. 'Here you go. Spoils of war.'
'Thanks.' Abell opened the pack and held out a cigarette. Morrell gave him a light. The General Staff officer never went near the front. He probably got sick of the nasty U.S. tobacco-unless other officers who wanted to stay on his good side kept him in smokes. Maybe his desk was full of them. You never could tell.
'Those bombs are going to change the way we fight. They'll change the way everybody fights,' Morrell said.
'We are commencing studies on that topic,' Abell said.
