Drive to the East (18 page)

And one did, just when Armstrong was squeezing off a round. The fireball made him blink. “Oh, fuck,” he said softly. Nobody would ever bury that soldier, because there wouldn’t be much left of him. Armstrong hoped it was over in a hurry. He’d got hardened to a lot of war, but that was a nasty way to go. The poor bastard hadn’t had time to scream, anyhow. Maybe his silence meant something.

After the flamethrower man’s untimely demise, firing at the Mormon strongpoint eased off. That made perfect sense, as far as Armstrong was concerned. Why take a chance on getting killed when you wouldn’t accomplish anything doing it?

Yossel Reisen summed it up in four words: “So much for that.”

“Yeah. You said it.” Armstrong sagged back down into the hole they shared. “You got a cigarette?” As Reisen gave him one, the enemy machine gun cut loose with a defiant burst to tell the world its crew was alive, well, and sassy.

That machine-gun position had to go if U.S. troops were to advance. Armstrong hoped a barrel would waddle up and blast the nest to kingdom come. But barrels, even the old-fashioned waddling kind, were in short supply in Utah these days. A lot of them had gone up in flames in the house-to-house fighting in Provo. Without them, the soldiers still might have been stuck down there. But none seemed to be close by right now.

“What would you do if you were a general?” Yossel Reisen asked.

“Me? Find another line of work,” Armstrong answered. Reisen laughed but waved to show he’d really meant the question. Armstrong thought about it, then said, “Probably another guy with a flamethrower. Cheapest way there is to make those fuckers say uncle if we don’t have a barrel ready, and it doesn’t look like we do.”

He guessed wrong, which didn’t much surprise him—he’d never wanted to be a general. The powers that be decided to try shelling the machine-gun nest out of existence again. As soon as Armstrong heard the first couple of shells gurgle by overhead, he knew they weren’t just counting on explosive power to do the job this time. “Gas!” he shouted. “Gas!” He jammed the mask over his head as fast as he could. Some of those shells were bound to fall short, the artillery being what it was. And even if they didn’t, the breeze, what there was of it, came from the north, and would blow some of the poison back towards U.S. lines.

A big stretch of the world disappeared with the pig-snouted mask over his face. What was left he saw through two portholes of none too clean glass. The air tasted of rubber. He didn’t feel as if he could get quite enough of it. That was an illusion; he’d proved as much plenty of times. But he did have to work harder to suck breaths through the activated-charcoal filter cartridge, so the illusion persisted.

Sure as hell, a couple of rounds were short, which meant they came down among the soldiers stuck in front of the machine gun. Armstrong hoped they weren’t carrying what people called nerve agents. That crap could kill you if it got on your skin. Everybody had rubberized coveralls. Nobody wanted to wear them. They were unbearably hot.

With infinite caution, Armstrong stuck up his head. The machine-gun nest was catching hell, no doubt about it. With a little luck . . .

That officer’s whistle squealed again. “Forward!” he shouted.

“Aw, shit,” Armstrong muttered. They were going to find out if they’d got rid of the Mormons, all right. Armstrong thought of spraying Flit all over an ants’ nest. Mormons stung even harder than red ants, though.

They were harder to kill, too. The U.S. soldiers ran toward the machine-gun nest in little scuttles from one bit of cover to the next. The gun that had held them up stayed silent. Some of them, the green ones, whooped and got a little less cautious, figuring the rebel gunners were dead.

Armstrong kept his belly on the dirt and the snout of his gas mask banging the ground. He trusted Mormons no farther than he could throw them. They were as sneaky a bunch of bastards as you could imagine. He tried not to show himself as he scooted up toward that battered house.

Beside him, Yossel Reisen took no chances, either. He snaked ahead. He didn’t walk. He didn’t even crawl. He snaked on his belly, pulling himself along with his elbows.

And their wariness and distrust paid off, for the Mormons inside the machine-gun nest must have had masks and must have got them on in time. The gunners waited till they found good targets, then opened up with a savage burst that cut down half a dozen American soldiers. After that, the advance congealed. Everybody knew you couldn’t charge a well-served machine-gun nest. If armor or artillery didn’t take it out, infantry would just keep piling up corpses in front of it.

Quite suddenly, the Mormon machine gunners ceased fire. Armstrong didn’t even twitch; he suspected another nasty trick. Then somebody behind him shouted, “Flag of truce! Flag of truce coming forward!”

That didn’t make Armstrong move, either. Mormons sounded just like anybody else. They looked just like anybody else, too. And they had no trouble getting green-gray uniforms from dead or captured U.S. soldiers. They often pretended to be ordinary Americans, and they caused a lot of trouble when they did.

But a flag of truce
was
coming forward. The U.S. captain who carried it shouted to the men in the machine-gun nest: “I have a message for your leaders.” He had trouble being as loud as he wanted through his mask, but he managed.

“Come ahead.” The Mormon who answered was also yelling through a gas mask. “We won’t shoot as long as nobody in front of us tries moving forward.”

“Agreed,” the captain said. Waving the white flag so the rebels could see who he was, he picked his way through the wreckage, towards and then past the machine-gun nest. Other Mormons emerged from concealment that didn’t look big enough to hide a cat. One of them blindfolded the U.S. officer, which struck Armstrong as a sensible precaution. Then they led him north.

“Wonder what that’s all about,” Yossel Reisen said. “Are they flabbling so much about this one strongpoint? They wouldn’t call a truce just on account of it . . . would they?”

“Christ, I hope not,” Armstrong said. “Wish I had a cigarette.” No matter how much he wished he did, he didn’t take off his mask and light up. There was bound to be gas still floating in the air. If he saw somebody else smoking and getting away with it, he’d try. Till then, no. He went on, “Most of the damn Mormons don’t smoke. Makes ’em harder to spot.”

He didn’t stick his head up or expose himself unduly. The rebels were good about honoring cease-fires, but they weren’t perfect—and they’d said they would open up if anybody on the American side got frisky.

After the truce had stretched for a couple of hours, Americans got up and stretched and began to move around. The Mormons let them. When someone was dumb enough to start to go toward the machine-gun nest, the gunners fired a warning burst well over his head. He got the message and drew back in a hurry.

A little before sunset, the captain returned. This time, he waved the flag of truce so his own side wouldn’t shoot him. With him came a little old man in a somber black suit. He looked like a grandfather who was having a tough day. Nimble as a mountain goat, he followed the captain through the rubble of what had been Orem.

“What the hell’s going on here?” Armstrong asked. Neither Yossel Reisen nor anybody else had a good answer for him.

“
W
hat the hell’s going on here?” Senator Robert Taft demanded. He was a thoroughly reactionary Democrat who’d run against Al Smith in 1940. Flora Blackford didn’t think along with him very often when they met together with the rest of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. She didn’t very often, but she did now.

The chairman rapped loudly for order. “You were not recognized, Senator,” he said in tones of bureaucratic severity.

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Chairman.” Taft sounded anything but. “I must say that I have trouble recognizing what the present administration is up to.”

Bang!
The chairman rapped again. “You are out of order, sir. Your remarks will be stricken from the record.” He pointed to Flora. “Congresswoman Blackford!”

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” Flora said. George Norris smiled in relief. Like her, the Senator from Nebraska was a Socialist; he judged she was likely to go easy on President La Follette and his henchmen. Not today, though; she continued, “Mr. Chairman, I would also like to know what the hell is going on here.”

Several people exclaimed in surprise in the Philadelphia meeting room. “
Thank
you, Mrs. Blackford!” Senator Taft said in glad surprise. Senator Norris looked as if he’d stepped on a land mine.

“I didn’t do it for you, Senator. I did it for me,” Flora replied. That made the chairman no happier. She’d hoped it would—Norris was an old man, and a Party warhorse—but hadn’t really expected it to. Turning to him, she went on, “What
is
the administration doing by negotiating with the Mormons? What have they done that makes them deserve negotiation?”

“I couldn’t have put that better myself,” Taft said.

“Congresswoman, I am not the right person to answer your question, as I trust you are aware,” the chairman said.

“Certainly,” Flora said. “That is why I move that we call the Secretary of the Interior to come before the committee and explain this extraordinary action.”

“Second!” Robert Taft wasn’t the only one to call out the word; it came from half a dozen throats. Some were Democrats, some Socialists; here, people were breaking party lines.

Seeing as much, Senator Norris looked even more pained than he had before. “With talks in progress, I am not sure the Secretary would respond to such a summons,” he replied. “I am not sure he
should
respond to such a summons.”

“There, Mr. Chairman, I must respectfully disagree,” Flora said. The language of Congress was marvelously polite. Anywhere else, she would have said something like,
My God, you’re an idiot!
Polite language or no, the message came through. Norris turned a dull red. Flora went on, “If the Secretary does not respond to an invitation to come before us, I will move that we subpoena him. We need to know why the administration thinks it can offer concessions to a group now rebelling against the U.S. government not for the first, not for the second, but for the third time.”

“You will not need to look far to find a second for that motion, either, Congresswoman,” Senator Taft said. Flora nodded back to him. He was only half the man his father had been; he was on the lean side, where William Howard Taft had been as round as the golf balls he’d loved to whack. William Howard Taft had also had the fat man’s gift of being, or at least seeming, good-natured most of the time. His son was far more acerbic—which had probably helped him lose the last election.

George Norris coughed. “You do realize that publicizing disagreements over policy may give aid and comfort to the Confederate States?”

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Flora said sharply. “I’m sorry, sir, but no one is going to get away with that. You can’t say I’m not a proper patriot if I don’t agree with everything this administration does. That’s Jake Featherston’s way of doing things, and he’s welcome to it. Why have we got a Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War if we can’t ask questions that have to do with the way we’re conducting the war?”

Several Senators and Representatives clapped their hands. The chairman licked his papery lips. He spoke carefully: “We are at war with the Confederate States, Congresswoman, and with the Empire of Mexico, and with Britain, France, Japan, and Russia. We are not at war with the state of Utah.”

Flora curtsied. “Thank you for informing me of that, Mr. Chairman. You might do better to inform the state of Utah, which seems unaware of the fact.” She got a laugh loud enough to make Norris ply his gavel with might and main. She continued, “By all precedent, it is a war. Congress established a Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War during the War of Secession, long before we had to recognize the CSA as an independent nation. Will you tell me I’m wrong, sir?”

By his expression, George Norris would have liked nothing better, but knew he couldn’t. “Call the question on the motion!” someone yelled. Looking even more unhappy, the chairman did. It passed with only a couple of dissenting votes.

When Flora walked into to her office, her secretary said, “Mr. Roosevelt called a little while ago, Congresswoman. He’d like you to call him back.”

“Thanks, Bertha. I’ll bet he would,” Flora said. How angry would the Assistant Secretary of War be? Only one way to find out. She went into the inner office and made the call.

“This is Franklin Roosevelt.” As always, his voice conceded nothing to the illness that left him in a wheelchair. When Flora gave her name, Roosevelt started to laugh. “You’ve been naughty today, haven’t you?” he said.

“I don’t think so. I think the administration has,” Flora said. “Talking with the Mormons? It’s madness.”

“Is it? President La Follette doesn’t think so. Neither do I,” Roosevelt said.
If he did, you would, too,
Flora thought. But a lot of politics worked that way. Roosevelt went on, “Don’t you think the Confederate States would be better off if Jake Featherston tried talking with his colored rebels instead of doing his best to put them all six feet under?”

“I don’t want the Confederate States better off,” Flora said.

Roosevelt’s laugh invited everyone who heard it to share the joke. “You can’t duck me like that and expect me not to quack,” he said. “You’re too smart not to know what I’m talking about.”

“We can talk to the Mormons till we’re blue in the face,” Flora said. “What good will it do if they don’t want to listen?”

“That’s what Ferdinand Koenig would say, all right.” Roosevelt was being as exasperating as he could.

“What can we possibly give the Mormons that would satisfy them and us?” Flora asked.

“I don’t know,” Roosevelt admitted. “But the President thinks we ought to find out and not go on till everyone who could fight us is dead.” Pointedly, he added, “And he thinks his own party ought to back him while he’s doing it.”

“I will happily back the President when I think he’s right, or even when I’m not sure—I haven’t said a word about whatever is going on in western Washington, and I don’t intend to,” Flora said. “But when I think he’s wrong . . . I’m sorry, Franklin, but party loyalty doesn’t go that far.”