The Eternal War (33 page)

He twisted his hand out of her grasp. ‘Understand, they are products. That’s all! Machines. More importantly, they are broken machines … and that makes them unreliable. Unpredictable.’ He raised his gun. ‘Dangerous.’

‘Please!’ cried Sal. ‘Stop!’ She saw Samuel … his scrawny arms folded in front of his face. McManus fingered the safety catch on his sidearm and filled his lungs with a breath.

‘TAKE AIM!’

The ape standing behind Samuel quickly moved a thick arm down and wrapped it round Samuel’s small torso protectively, as if the bulk of his muscle was going to be enough to shield him.

‘FIRE!’

CHAPTER 60

2001, New York

Colonel Wainwright regarded his men gathered together in the rough ground between their main command bunker and the trench facing out across the East River. Just short of three hundred men left in his regiment. The last time the 38th Virginia had been at a full strength of six hundred was many decades ago, long before his time.

It seemed the Southern command was adopting the Northern habit of letting regiments run down and then completely disbanding them when their troop’s number hit a critical minimum. He shook his head. Foolish … a regiment’s fighting spirit lay in its history. The 38th had been raised back in 1861, had been commanded by General Lee, had fought under Pickett and charged the Union troops at Gettysburg. They’d taken Cemetery Ridge and sent Meade’s men packing. That kind of a legacy bonded men, made them commit that little bit more to the
esprit de corps
.

They stood watching him now. Uncertain faces. He knew rumours were already spreading among the men. They knew something serious had happened in the command bunker earlier today. They knew a dozen British soldiers had been arrested, disarmed and locked up. Tongues were wagging with the increasingly persistent rumours that something big was imminent. The news the British officer had brought that a new offensive was about to be launched was hardly a big surprise to Wainwright. He, along with every Joe Huckabee in the trenches, knew the British had been pulling in units from all over the empire. Talk of that and other half-truths, Chinese-whispered rumours, had managed to filter their way along the entire length of the Sheridan line.

That young officer had merely confirmed the truth of it.

‘The British
are
massing their resources for an offensive, men. And the spearhead of that offensive will be none other than this very sector.’

The men stirred; a wave of unease rippled across them.

‘The 38th Virginia will be in the first wave.’ The men shook their heads incredulously. They all knew what that meant. Appalling losses. As the landing boats spilled them out on the shingle on the far side, the enemy would be pouring a withering wall of gunfire on them from their entrenched positions. Enfilade fire on the right from the shattered end of the Williamsburg Bridge, on the left from the ruins of the factory. It would be a massacre.

He could see they were all making the same silent assessment. Wholesale slaughter.

But that isn’t the worst of it … boys.

‘The second wave …’ said Wainwright. He paused, waiting for the men’s murmuring to die down. They needed to hear this, hear this
clearly
.

‘The second wave … will include eugenics.’

His voice was drowned out by the roar of the men. Nearly three hundred voices raised in alarm, disbelief, anger and mostly … fear. He raised his arms to hush them. Despite the fact that these men trusted, obeyed and respected their colonel, the noise continued unabated.

He pulled his sidearm out of its holster and fired a shot for the second time in as many days.

The men’s voices quietened until all that could be heard was the uneasy shuffling of feet on gravel.

‘I believe …’ he began.
Make this good, James … make this very good.
‘For a long time … for many years now, I have believed that we are no longer fighting for a
Confederate
cause. That we have become no more than cannon-fodder – meat for the grinder – in service of
British interests
.’

This time the men did roar in unison. A roar of support for someone who had dared to say what every man privately thought. Dared to say a thing that would guarantee an undignified traitor’s execution against a brick wall.

‘There!’ Wainwright stroked his chin. ‘It is said … and for that I am now a dead man!’

Across the river, Devereau’s men filled the bottom floor of the factory, and half filled the bomb-damaged floor above, rows of booted legs dangling over the rough edge where the floor had collapsed long ago.

‘… they will not allow us to retreat,’ he continued. He and the men gathered here knew exactly what that meant. Directly behind the front line, units of the French Foreign Legion patrolled. Federal troops falling back without approval from High Command would be considered deserters and shot on the spot.

Still, many of them must be considering that option
 … he mused. Far better to run and hope to evade the execution squads than stay and face those eugenic monsters from the South.

The factory echoed with the men’s response, clamouring voices that beat around the empty pockmarked walls of the building.

‘I …’ His voice was lost in the noise. ‘I do not believe …’ He stopped. The men weren’t going to hear him.

‘SILENCE FOR THE COLONEL!’ bellowed Sergeant Freeman.

The effect was almost instantaneous if not complete. Freeman glared at the few men still muttering to each other. They hushed quickly under his withering gaze.

Devereau tried again. ‘I do not believe we should fight in this war any more!’

Now
the factory was silent.

‘No … I do not believe in it any more.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I do not have faith in our generals and I no longer have faith in our government of the Union of Northern American States.’

A lone voice towards the back of the factory
whooped
.

‘Ya say it, Colonel!’ shouted another.

‘Our home towns … our cities … our states … our
nation
, is a nation under foreign occupation. Make no mistake, men, we are
already
a conquered people. Conquered not by the Anglo-Confederacy but by France and their allies: Austria, Prussia, Switzerland … and a dozen other nations that I’m sure many of you have never even heard of!’

He laughed. A hollow laugh. ‘We weren’t beaten on some battlefield. We didn’t fight the good fight and lose … no. We did far worse, we
invited
our conquerors in!’

The factory echoed with angry raised voices. Devereau hushed them again by raising his hands.

‘This is the time, men … I believe this is the real fight. Not brother against brother. Not American against American. But men of America against the British and …’ Devereau paused. There was going to be no un-saying this. He glanced at Maddy, standing back and to one side of him, giving him the space on the small podium of ammo crates. She nodded slightly. She knew what he was going to say. ‘… and men of America against the French.’

The men stirred uneasily. Whispered.

‘We once shared a nation with those lads on the other side of the river. We could fight for that nation again …’

CHAPTER 61

2001, New York

Wainwright nodded. ‘That’s what I said, gentlemen! A joining of forces! An uprising! Goddammit!’ He balled his fist and punched his own thigh angrily. ‘I’ll call this exactly what it damn well is! … A
mutiny
!’

The word hung heavy in the open air; it bounced off the far wall of a collapsed building, ricocheting like a gunshot.

‘Mutiny!’ he said again. ‘And it starts here with the 38th Virginia.’

The men roared support for that.

‘More than that, boys … more than that, we’re not going to stand alone. We shall be joined by others! The 11th Alabama to the north of us will join us … and next to them the 7th Maryland … and every other regiment along the Sheridan!’

The men roared jubilantly. Several forage caps catapulted into the air out of the huddled mass of shabby grey uniforms.

Wainwright smiled triumphantly, punching the air with his men. Of course only he knew that was a lie. He’d made no contact with their fellow regiments up the line. Not yet, at least. He was counting on their support. Banking on it, in fact. Surely they were going to follow the example set by the 38th?

‘But hear this, men!’ He raised his gun again to fire, to quieten them down, but they hushed anyway. ‘Hear this, men! We will be supported by regiments on the far side of the East River … by Federal troops from the Union of Northern American States!’

A mixed response from the men. Perhaps that announcement was a step too far for some of them to take. After all, for every man standing in front of him, the men across the river – the North – had always been The Enemy.

Wainwright realized he was committed now. He had to rally these lads, make them see they needed each other, needed those lads of the 54th Massachusetts.

‘They’re men no different to you or I. Americans … no different to us. You know, we shared a dream once! A language! A heritage! A belief … in a land of the free!’

He saw some heads nodding. He heard voices raised in ones and twos.

‘Once … a hundred and forty years back, we foolishly chose separate destinies. But now, do you see? Do you see? We can share a common goal once more! We can have one American nation again … be masters of our own destiny!’

He stopped and realized his words bouncing back at him from the far wall were doing so across a sombre, heavy … expectant silence.

My God, maybe I misjudged the mood of my men.

‘Who’s with me?’

The ground between the command bunker and trench suddenly erupted with a deafening roar of whooping, ragged voices he was sure must have been heard by Devereau’s men on the far side of the river.

He fired his sidearm into the sky, again and again, until the magazine was empty and its click was lost in the deafening cacophony. All the while as he grinned and cheered, he desperately hoped he could make good on his promise that the Alabama boys of the 11th at the north end of Manhattan and the 7th beyond were already signed up to the idea of this rebellion and ready to stand together with them.

Whether they were or not, though, he realized there was no turning back now.

Devereau nodded. Smiled. The men’s cheering voices reverberated through the ruins of the factory. He hadn’t been certain his men were ready to take such a drastic step as this … to extend a hand of kinship across the river to the Confederates. He had only suspected, perhaps even hoped, that they might feel the same way as him.

But looking at them now, jubilant faces, every man roaring a huzzah of support.

We could actually do this.

He turned to look at Maddy and Becks. Maddy was grinning and giving him a big thumbs-up.

Really … we could actually do this.

Perhaps this mutiny could achieve so much more than merely buying time for these two mysterious young time travellers to fix their machine. Devereau was still not entirely sure he could believe what they’d told him. Despite all the images and gadgets they’d shown him, it felt too unreal. Too much like a wish or a dream that would vanish the moment you reached out for it. Regardless … the wheel was turning. The die already cast. Time travel and alternative histories, whether that really existed or not, here was a very real chance for everything to be changed.

Perhaps this rebellion might really spread along the entire length of the front line like a virus: tens … 
hundreds
of thousands of soldiers, North and South turning round and confronting their foreign puppet-masters. Even if Miss Carter’s assurance that she could rewrite this unhappy history was to come to nothing, the mutiny by itself might just bring this eternal war to an end.

Devereau found himself joining in. A cry roared from his throat in unison with his men. The noise filled his ears, made them ring. And what a wonderful deafening roaring noise it was; it sounded like the cascade of water, a dam crumbling beneath the weight of millions of tons, energy unleashed. A dreadnought train approaching … a storm front descending. It sounded like walls tumbling, liberty bells chiming, government buildings being stormed.

It sounded like a revolution.

It sounded like hope.

CHAPTER 62

2001, New York

‘Ma’am, you are but a lady! My men are perfectly capable of attacking and taking that communications bunker.’

‘Negative,’ cut in Becks. ‘The communications bunker will contain sensitive equipment that could be damaged by a conventional assault. We cannot allow that risk. I suggest an alternative strategy.’

Wainwright was rather taken aback by the young lady’s somewhat forthright manner.

‘What, then?’

‘How many British troops garrison the structure?’ she asked.

Wainwright shrugged. ‘Usually it is two sections: twenty … thirty men, no more.’

Becks turned to Maddy. ‘That is acceptable.’

The pair of them had only just crossed the river on Devereau’s motor launch. Off the back of the boat a couple of Northern soldiers had been unspooling a big drum of insulated communications cable and, as they stood now just outside Wainwright’s command bunker, communications officers from each side were debating how best to feed the cable inside and wire it up to permit a direct line between both colonels. As Maddy had been quick to say, their uprising was going to live or die on the strength of how effectively the two colonels communicated.

‘You think you can take it on your own?’ asked Maddy.

‘Affirmative. I calculate a higher probability of success without significant equipment damage than –’ she cast a gaze at the half-strength company of soldiers Wainwright had assembled for the job – ‘than these –’