anyhow. Why shouldn't rockets shoot down rockets…some of the time, anyhow? Would that be enough? Pound had no idea, which left him in the same leaky boat as everybody else in the world.
XIII
J ake Featherston felt trapped. The skies over North Carolina had been lousy with damnyankee fighter- bombers coming down from the north. Now that he'd crossed into South Carolina, the skies were lousy with damnyankee fighter-bombers coming up from the south. He and the handful of loyalists who clung to him through thick and thin moved by night and lay up by day, like any hunted animals.
Only chunks of the Confederate States still answered to the Confederate government: pieces of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina; the part of Cuba that wasn't in revolt; most of Florida; most of Sonora and Chihuahua (which, cut off by the goddamn treasonous Republic of Texas, might as well have been on the far side of the moon); and a core of Mississippi, Louisiana, and most of Arkansas. If the war would go on, if the war could go on, it would have to go on there.
One thing wrong: Jake hadn't the faintest idea how to reach his alleged redoubt. 'What are we going to do?' he demanded of Clarence Potter. 'Jesus H. Christ, what can we do? They're squeezing us tighter every day, the bastards.'
'O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams,' Potter answered.
'What the hell is that?' Jake said.
'Shakespeare. Hamlet.'
'Hot damn! I don't need to go back to school now, thank you kindly.' Featherston glared at the longtime foe who'd done him so much good. 'What are you doing here, anyway? Why don't you give yourself up to the USA? You can tell 'em you've hated my guts since dirt.'
'If things were different, I might,' Potter said calmly. 'But I'm the guy who blew up Philadelphia, remember. And I did it wearing a Yankee uniform, too.'
'I'm not likely to forget.' Jake's laugh was a hoarse, harsh bark. 'You got out again, too, in spite of everything. I bet those sons of bitches are shitting rivets on account of it.'
'Bad security,' Potter said. 'If we had another superbomb, we could get it up there.'
That made Featherston cuss. They would have another bomb in a few months-if the United States didn't overrun Lexington first, which seemed unlikely. Henderson FitzBelmont had moved heaven and earth to make one superbomb. Now, when the CSA needed lots of them, he got constipated. You couldn't count on anybody-except yourself. Always yourself.
'But now the United States want to kill me worse than you ever did,' Potter went on. 'And they've got an excuse, because I wore their uniform. So in case they find out who I am, I expect I'm dead. Which means I'm all yours, Mr. President.'
'All mine, huh? Then why the devil ain't you a redheaded gal with legs up to here?'
'You can't have everything, sir. You've still got Ferd Koenig along for the ride, and you've still got Lulu.'
She sat in a different motorcar, parked under some trees not far away. Jake looked over in that direction to make sure she couldn't overhear before he said, 'She's a wonderful woman in all kinds of ways, but not that one. I do believe I'd sooner hump me a sheep.'
'Well, she doesn't do anything for me, either, but she worships the ground you walk on,' Potter said. 'God knows why.'
'Fuck you, too,' Featherston said without rancor. 'She's a good gal. I don't want to make her unhappy or anything, so she better not hear that from you.'
'She won't. I don't play those kinds of games,' Potter said, and Jake decided to believe him. The Intelligence officer wasn't usually nasty in any petty way. After a moment, Potter went on, 'You know, you're right-you are nice to Lulu. You go out of your way to be nice to Lulu. How come you don't do that with anybody else?'
There was a question Jake had never asked himself. Now he did, but he only shrugged. 'Damned if I know, Potter. It's just how things worked out, that's all. I like Lulu. Rest of the world's full of assholes.'
'I wish I could tell you you were wrong,' Potter said. Airplanes droned by overhead-Yankee airplanes. They were going to hit something farther north. Columbia was already in U.S. hands, so they could drop their load on North Carolina and then land in Virginia. With a sigh, Potter asked, 'How are we going to make it out West? Do you think we can get an Alligator to land anywhere near here? Do you think it could fly across Georgia and Alabama without getting shot down?'
'Wouldn't bet on it,' Jake answered mournfully. 'What I was thinking was, if we put on civvies and make like we're a bunch of guys who gave up, we can say we're going home and sneak across what the damnyankees are holding, and they won't be any wiser. How do you like it?'
Potter pursed his lips. 'If we can't get an Alligator, maybe. If we can, I believe I'd sooner fly at night and take the chance of getting blown out of the sky.'
Jake scowled at him. Potter looked back unperturbed, as if to say, Well, you asked me. He was one of the few men who never sugarcoated their opinions around the President of the CSA. Reluctantly, Featherston respected him for that. And he was too likely to be right, damn him. 'I'll see what we can come up with,' the President said.
When his shrunken entourage drove into Spartanburg, South Carolina, he found the colonel in charge of the town's defenses lost in gloom. 'Damnyankees are on the way, and to hell with me if I know how to stop 'em,' the officer said.
'Do your best,' Jake answered. 'Now let me get on the horn to Charlotte.' That was the closest place where he thought he was likely to find a transport. And he did. And, after some choice bad language, he persuaded the authorities there to fly it down to Spartanburg.
'If it gets shot down-' some officious fool in Charlotte said.
'If it doesn't get here, you'll get shot down.' Jake wasn't sure he could bring off the threat. But the jerk up in Charlotte couldn't be sure he couldn't.
The Alligator landed late in the afternoon. Ground crew personnel swarmed out with camouflage nets to make it as invisible as they could. 'Do we really want to do this?' Ferd Koenig asked.
'If you don't, then stay here,' Featherston answered. 'Say hello to the U.S. soldiers when they catch you.' The Attorney General bit his lip. He got on the airplane with everybody else.
'Don't know exactly how we'll land if we have to do it in the dark,' the pilot said.
'You'll work something out,' Jake told him.
'Well, I sure as hell hope so.' But the pilot didn't sound too worried. 'One thing-if I think this is crazy, chances are the damnyankees will, too. Maybe we'll surprise 'em so much, we'll get through 'em just like shit through a goose.'
'Now you're talking. You take off in the wee small hours,' Jake said. 'Fly low-stay under the Y-ranging if you can. Goddammit, we aren't licked yet. If we can just make the enemy see that occupying our country is more expensive than it's worth, we'll get their soldiers out of here and we'll get a peace we can live with. May take a while, but we'll do it.'
He believed every word of it. He'd been fighting his whole life. He didn't know anything else. If he had to lead guerrillas out of the hills for the next twenty years, he was ready to do it. After so many fights, what was one more? Nothing to faze him-that was for sure.
After they got airborne, the pilot asked, 'Want me to put on my wing lights?'
'Yeah, do it,' Jake answered. 'If the Yankees see 'em, they'll reckon we're one of theirs. I hope like hell they will, anyway.'
'Me, too,' the pilot said with feeling, but he flicked the switch. The red and green lights went on.
The Alligator droned south and west-more nearly south than west at first, because neither the pilot nor Jake wanted to come too close to Atlanta. If U.S. forces would be especially alert anywhere, they both figured that was the place.
Looking out of one of the transport's small side windows, Jake had no trouble figuring out when they passed from C.S.-to U.S.-held territory. The blackout in the occupied lands was a lot less stringent. The Yankees didn't
