Drive to the East (81 page)
A lot of the Confederates looked miserably cold. Their issue greatcoats were thinner than U.S. models. Some of the men were all lumpy and bumpy, because they’d stuffed crumpled newspapers under the greatcoats for a little extra warmth. Others wore a variety of captured civilian coats on top of or instead of their greatcoats. They didn’t have good winter boots, either. Those needed to be oversized, to allow for extra padding. They needed to be, but the Confederates’ weren’t.
“There they are,” Lieutenant Griffiths said. “Jake Featherston’s supermen. They don’t look so tough, do they?”
“Sir, if they aren’t tough, what have we been doing here since November?” Pound asked. Griffiths didn’t answer.
A newsreel crew cranked away, filming the enemy soldiers’ trudge into captivity. Maybe the Confederates would look like beaten men on the Bijou screen in St. Paul. Well, they
were
beaten men—now. If Michael Pound knew the way propagandists’ minds worked, the newsreels would make the Confederates out to be weaklings and cowards. If they were, though, how had they fought their way into Pittsburgh in the first place? The newsreels wouldn’t talk about that. And most people, unless Pound was wildly wrong, would never think to ask.
“I wonder where we’ll go from here,” Griffiths said.
“Wherever it is, I don’t think it’ll be as tough as this,” Pound answered.
It had better not be, or there’s no way in hell I’ll live through it.
How many Confederates were holed up in that pocket? More than he’d figured. Some of them helped wounded men along. Others carried stretchers. How many unburied dead lay in the pocket?
“Good thing we fought through the winter,” Griffiths said, thinking along with him. “Can you imagine what this battlefield would be like in August?”
“Yes, sir, I can,” Pound answered. That probably wasn’t what the barrel commander expected to hear. But Pound had gone through the Great War. The stench of those fields soaked into your clothes, soaked into your lungs, soaked into your skin. You thought you’d never be rid of it. Pound still sometimes smelled it in his nightmares, so maybe he wasn’t even now.
The young barrel commander sighed. “I sometimes forget you’re on your second go-round.”
“Wish I could, sir,” Pound said. Was that strictly true? A lot of what he’d learned the last time around helped keep him alive here. Some of it helped keep Lieutenant Griffiths alive, too, whether Griffiths knew it or not. That wasn’t the main thing on the gunner’s mind, though. “Those damned foot soldiers will plunder the bodies. We won’t get a crack at ’em, and we’ll have to pay through the nose for good tobacco and whatever else they’ve got.”
“Won’t be much of that stuff left,” Griffiths said. “They weren’t quite eating their boots when they gave up, but they weren’t far from it, either.”
Michael Pound grunted, more in annoyance than anything else. The shavetail saw something he’d missed. It was supposed to be the other way around. Most of the time, it was—most of the time, but not always. “Well, sir, you’re right,” Pound said.
“You’re a strange man, Sergeant,” Griffiths said.
“Me, sir? How come?” Pound thought himself normal enough, or as normal as anyone could be after close to thirty years in the Army.
“Well, for starters, you just say, ‘Well, you’re right,’ ” Griffiths answered. “Most people would want to argue and fuss.”
“What’s the point?” Pound said, genuinely puzzled. “You
are
right. I said something silly, and you called me on it. You should have. If I tried to tell you it wasn’t silly, I’d just make a bigger fool of myself.” Clinging to a position that was bound to fall seemed as senseless to him as Jake Featherston’s failure to pull his troops out of Pittsburgh while he still had the chance. Being stubborn just cost you more in the long run.
At last, the stream of Confederates slowed up. There were bound to be stragglers heading west and south, hoping to link up with other units in butternut or simply to get away. But for them, though, Pennsylvania was clear of Confederates. And if half of what people said on the wireless was true, Confederate control in Ohio was crumbling, too.
“He’s not going to win, not anymore,” Pound said, thinking aloud.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” Lieutenant Griffiths said. “What was that?”
“Jake Featherston,” Pound answered. “He’s not going to win the war. I don’t see how he can now. Only question left is, can he still get a draw?”
“Nice to know you’ve got it all worked out,” Griffiths said dryly. “Takes a lot of the strain off Philadelphia.”
Pound laughed. “Good shot, sir. But I still think it’s true.”
“Well, I hope you’re right,” the barrel commander said. “With this damn war, though, you never can tell. They’ve done some awfully surprising things. And so have we, now. The move that pinched off Pittsburgh was as pretty as you’d ever want to see.”
“General Morrell knows what’s what,” Pound said.
Griffiths started to rise to that, then caught himself. “No, wait. You were his personal gunner for a while. How did that stop?”
“He got wounded, sir,” Michael Pound answered, remembering Morrell’s weight on his back when he carried the armor commander general to cover after a Confederate sniper hit him. “They didn’t think I deserved that long a vacation.”
“And so now you’re stuck with me,” Griffiths said, his voice still dry.
“You’ve got a pretty good idea of what you’re doing, sir.” From Michael Pound, that was highest praise. By the barrel commander’s quiet snort, he realized as much. Pound went on, “I hope we get a vacation after this. We’re way, way overdue for rest and refit.”
“I know,” Griffiths said. “I haven’t got any more say over that than you do, though. We’ll go where they tell us to go and we’ll do what they tell us to do.”
“Anybody would think we were in the Army or something,” Pound said.
“Wonder why that is.” Lieutenant Griffiths grew intense. “Here come their big shots.”
Pound peered through the gunsight. A few days earlier, he would have loved to put a couple of rounds of HE—or, better yet, shrapnel—on that group of eight or ten Confederate officers. All the men had three stars on the collar tabs of their greatcoats. All but two or three had those stars enclosed in wreaths, which meant they were generals, not colonels. They all looked to be in their late thirties or early forties, younger than most U.S. officers of similar grade.
And they all looked as if they’d just watched a bulldozer run over their kitten. “They really didn’t think this could happen to them,” Pound said. “They’ve been whipping us for a year and a half. They figured it would go on forever.”
“Too damn bad,” Griffiths said.
One of the U.S. soldiers guarding the high-ranking Confederate officers carried an automatic Tredegar rifle, another a captured C.S. submachine gun. Pound wondered whether the colonels and generals in butternut appreciated the compliment. He was inclined to doubt it.
“They get off easy,” Griffiths said. “They stay in a camp away from the fighting for the rest of the war, and the U.S. government pays their salary. The rest of us still have to go on out here.”
Some of the C.S. officers looked as if they would rather be dead. If they were smart, though, they wouldn’t say anything about that to the men in green-gray who herded them along. The U.S. soldiers might oblige them.
“If we get a refit, where do you suppose we’ll go next?” Pound asked.
Lieutenant Griffiths ducked down into the turret to favor him with a wry grin. “I said that before, Sergeant. I thought you’d have a better idea than I did.”
“Not me, not now.” Pound shook his head. “General Morrell would tell me what was up sometimes. Far as everybody else is concerned, I’m just a damn noncom.” He spoke without heat.
“Can’t imagine why that would be,” Griffiths said, and Pound chuckled. The young lieutenant went on, “Well, all I can tell you is, we’ll go wherever they need us most once we get our refit—if we get our refit.”
“Sounds about right.” Pound pictured a map. He pictured what was likely to happen over the next few weeks. “Virginia or Ohio,” he said. “Whichever heats up fastest, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t bet against either one of them,” Lieutenant Griffiths said. “I hope it’s Ohio, to tell you the truth.”
“Me, too—we have a better chance of hurting them bad there, I think,” Pound said. “But wherever it is, by God, we’ll get the job done.”
About the Author
H
ARRY
T
URTLEDOVE
is a Hugo Award–winning and critically acclaimed writer of science fiction, fantasy, and alternate history. His novels include
The Guns of the South; How Few Remain
(winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Novel); the Great War epics
American Front, Walk in Hell,
and
Breakthroughs;
the World War series:
In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Upsetting the Balance,
and
Striking the Balance;
the Colonization books:
Second Contact, Down to Earth,
and
Aftershocks;
the American Empire novels
Blood & Iron, The Center Cannot Hold,
and
Victorious Opposition; Settling Accounts: Return Engagement; Homeward Bound; Ruled Britannia
(also a Sidewise winner), and many others. He is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos. They have three daughters: Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca.
BOOKS BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE
The Guns of the South
THE WORLDWAR SAGA
Worldwar: In the Balance
Worldwar: Tilting the Balance
Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance
Worldwar: Striking the Balance
COLONIZATION
Colonization: Second Contact
Colonization: Down to Earth
Colonization: Aftershocks
Homeward Bound
THE VIDESSOS CYCLE
The Misplaced Legion
An Emperor for the Legion
The Legion of Videssos
Swords of the Legion
THE TALE OF KRISPOS
Krispos Rising
Krispos of Videssos
Krispos the Emperor
THE TIME OF TROUBLES SERIES
The Stolen Throne
Hammer and Anvil
The Thousand Cities
Videssos Besieged
Noninterference
Kaleidoscope
A World of Difference
Earthgrip
Departures
How Few Remain
THE GREAT WAR
The Great War: American Front
The Great War: Walk in Hell
The Great War: Breakthroughs
American Empire: Blood and Iron
American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold
American Empire: The Victorious Opposition
Settling Accounts: Return Engagement
Settling Accounts: Drive to the East
Settling Accounts: Drive to the East
is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by Harry Turtledove
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
D
EL
R
EY
is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Turtledove, Harry.
Drive to the east / Harry Turtledove.
p. cm.—(Settling accouts; 2)
1. World War, 1939–1945—Fiction. 2. Confederate States of America—Fiction. 3. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3570.U76D75 2005
813′.6—dc22 2004062488
eISBN: 978-0-345-48462-8
v3.0