The Eternal War (41 page)

He turned round to tell Bob they were going to find somewhere on the edge of this town to stop for the day. Even though it was still only mid-afternoon, they all needed a rest and there was more than enough time for one.

But Bob had stopped in his tracks. He was a dozen yards behind them, frozen like a statue and staring listlessly up at the clear blue sky.

‘Uh … Bob? You all right?’

‘I think he’s
receiving
,’ said Sal.

Liam looked around.
Could have picked a better bleedin’ place
. His odd behaviour was attracting yet more curious stares from the townsfolk crossing the narrow main street. He sauntered casually back and tugged on Bob’s sleeve.

‘Hey, big fella … you’re spookin’ the locals, so you are.’

Bob ignored him, busy catching and collating the tachyon particles winking invisibly into sub-atomic existence in the air around them.

‘Your friend all right there, young man?’ asked a lady, clutching a basket. She stopped mid-stride and peered out from her bonnet, shading her eyes from the afternoon sun.

‘Oh, he’s fine,’ said Liam. ‘Just a little tired, ma’am.’

She nodded and passed by, casting one more curious glance back at them before crossing the high street.

‘Uh, Bob …? How about we just walk a little while you’re doing the message thing? You’re attracting attention.’

Bob remained rooted to the spot.

‘Bob?’

Finally he blinked awareness back into his glazed eyes and looked down at Liam.

‘Liam,’ he said. ‘I have just received a message from Madelaine.’

Liam’s eyes widened. ‘Well?’

Bob frowned at his flippancy. ‘Negative. The message does not indicate she is well.’

The other two joined them now. ‘Was it Maddy?’ asked Sal.

‘Affirmative. A partial message. The signal has been corrupted slightly. Message content is as follows:
archway is un … tack … roceed to coordinates as fast as … freakin’ well can. Will watch for … with p … hole probe. Will ope … oon as … ee you.
’

Liam looked at the others. ‘She sounds stressed. That’s never a good sign.’

‘Un … Tack …?’ Sal frowned. ‘Well, that’s
under attack
, clearly.’ She looked around at the others. ‘Right?’

Liam cursed.

‘Recommendation: we should –’

‘I know, I know,’ cut in Liam. ‘We can forget about a rest!’ He looked around, up and down the main street. He could see a couple of horses tethered to a rail outside one of the stores. Further along, a flatbed wagon pulled by a pair of huffaloes was slowly rolling up along dusty tracks carved in the street.

Too slow.

They were not following any road map to get to the rendezvous point; they were merely going as the crow flies, a straight beeline over fields, over hedges, through woods, streams. They needed something that didn’t require a road. He looked the other way up the street.

He saw the delivery vehicle still laden with bales of cattle feed: a long flatbed hooked up to a motorized tractor. Above a small driver’s cabin a chimney pot was impatiently puffing clouds of exhaust into the sky.

‘You, sir … are thinking of stealing that vehicle?’ asked Lincoln.

Liam nodded. ‘It may not be the fastest thing on the road … but faster than walking, right?’

Sal and Lincoln nodded.

‘All right, then,’ said Liam, ‘I suppose we better go and, uh,
borrow
it.’

CHAPTER 78

2001, New York

Devereau counted thirty seconds of almost continuous volley fire from his men before the crackle of gunshots began to wane as empty ammo clips were expelled with the telltale
ping
of their carbine’s ejector springs.

A new bank of gunpowder smoke was slowly drifting down the slope from their trench. As it thinned and cleared, he could see that the shingle and the shallow water around the ramps were littered with the bodies of the dead and wounded. A devastating opening salvo that at first appeared to have decimated the British. But they were now starting to return fire and he could see that a lot of the crimson tunics lying half in and out of the lapping water were men who had instinctively ducked to the ground and were now picking themselves up and levelling their carbines.

Divots of soil began to erupt along the top of the trench. Devereau found himself ducking down like his men as the British organized their covering fire.

His men were now firing independently as they replaced their clips, firing opportunistic shots, in singles and doubles over the sandbags.

Devereau chanced another long glance, his head foolishly above the line of sandbags for another half a minute. He speed-counted forty – maybe fifty – British casualties. Not bad for their opening salvo. But that was the best chance they were ever going to get to even the numbers. Now the British were dispersed across the shingle, making use of the new craters and the grooves and dents of old building foundations and exposed basements, of the small ruined humps of corner walls, little more than resilient piles of old masonry still managing to hold together after so many decades of punishment.

A shot whistled past his left ear. He cursed and ducked back down again. Devereau reloaded his revolver, struggling with shaking hands to slide each bullet successfully into its chamber.

Their best, their
only
tactic would be to hold the British there on the slope, keep them from organizing a cohesive advance on the trench. And try to whittle them down one lucky shot at a time.

Pick out the officers first
. He knew the British soldiers would be doing exactly the same – targeting the sergeants, corporal, captains, lieutenants – in an attempt to leave their opponents leaderless.

He chanced his head above the sandbags again and quickly aimed his revolver, firing all six rounds at the bull-shouldered figure of a bearded sergeant gesturing frantically at his men. The ground spat six clouds of dust and the sergeant ducked lower in the dirt, most probably thanking his lucky stars for Devereau’s poor aim.

He stepped back down again into the trench and reloaded his revolver, this time with a steadier hand.

‘Sir!’

Freeman’s voice.

‘What is it, Sergeant?’

‘They’re groupin’ up for a push! Thirty yards left of the stack, sir!’

There was an oven smokestack midway along the landing area, the last remnant of a brick factory that had been here half a century ago, little more than a ring of bricks shoulder-high. Devereau peeked over the top. Freeman was quite right. He could see the tops of white pith helmets coalescing behind the stack, waiting for the command.

And the command would be answered by an eager roar from the men getting to their feet, and the percussive rattle of covering fire from further along the shingle.

With one hasty assessment he could see this first go at storming the borderline was probably going to be successful. Some of them were likely to make it into the trench, and then it was going to be down to hand-to-hand fighting.

‘Fix bayonets!’ he shouted. The Confederate soldier standing next to him nodded and passed the order on as he fumbled his bayonet out of its scabbard.

‘Aim your fire at the officers as they come up!’ he added. ‘Pass it on!’

He tucked his revolver back in its holster and pulled out his ceremonial sabre.

This is how this war was fought in the beginning
, he told himself.
Muskets and sabres and nerves of steel
.

‘Ready for it, sir?’ asked the Confederate.

Devereau stroked his chin and nodded. ‘How about you?’

The man slotted the bayonet home beneath the muzzle-lock of his carbine. ‘Reckon I see ’em like you do, now we on the same side now, sir.’

He heard a chorus of voices from downhill: the British troops hyping up their adrenaline. The chanting of three
huzzah
s, each louder than the last, the third ending with a roar that peeled along the entire length of the landing area.

Here they come.

‘Fire at will!’ screamed Devereau.

Southern and Northern soldiers stepped up together as one, their carbines thudding down on the sandbags – a ragged line of several hundred wavering muzzles tipped with glinting bayonets. A wall of muzzle flash and smoke erupted as they lay down a withering barrage of fire at the British as they sprinted up the slope.

CHAPTER 79

2001, en route to New Chelmsford

‘What in the name of the Lord are you doing, sir?’ cried Lincoln.

‘I’m trying to flippin’ steer the bleedin’ thing!’

Liam had two control sticks to work with. After zigzagging back and forth across the narrow main street, spilling giant bales of feed from the trailer behind them, Liam had the gist of how the control sticks worked – nearly. The left stick controlled the large tractor wheel on the left, and the right stick, the right wheel. To turn right, for example, he realized he had to pull back on the right and forward on the left. To go straight forward – both sticks forward.

By the time he’d finally figured this out, the small town of East Farnham was behind them, littered with the chaos, damage and debris of Liam’s learning curve. The tractor rolled down the dirt road out of the town, flanked on either side by orchards of plum trees.

‘Jay-zus, we did it!’ gasped Liam.

Lincoln and Sal clung on uncomfortably to the bucket seat inside the driver’s cabin. Bob was standing outside on the now-empty flatbed. Liam thrashed the tractor as fast as it would go – little more than the speed of an asthmatic jogger – for a half a mile before finally pulling over to one side of the dirt track.

Five minutes later they were on the move again, a great deal faster now that they’d detached the trailer.

‘So, which way?’ Liam shouted above the din of the rattling engine.

Bob pointed off the dirt track they were running along, across a paddock full of what looked like eugenically modified shire horses. ‘That way.’

‘Hold on!’ said Liam, pulling the left stick back a little. The tractor’s gigantic fat wheels rolled effortlessly over a wooden picket fence and across the paddock, scattering horses that seemed to stand almost as tall at the shoulder as Indian elephants.

‘Information: fifteen miles, one hundred and seventy-six yards in this direction.’

‘Right,’ said Liam, gripping both control sticks with white-knuckled concentration. ‘OK … fifteen miles.’

The tractor was romping along now, bouncing alarmingly on the uneven ground, swerving every now and then to avoid the unpredictable panicked movements of the shire horses flocking alongside it.

‘Whoa!’ Sal pointed through the cabin’s mud-spattered windscreen. ‘Mind the –’ The tractor rolled over a long wooden feeding trough, sending splinters of wood and cobs of maize into the air.

‘Never mind,’ said Sal.

Liam crashed out of the far side of the paddock and swerved right to avoid running into an open barn. A moment later they were rolling across a courtyard criss-crossed with laundry lines.

‘Watch out, look … kids!’

Several children playing amid fluttering bed sheets scattered in panic before them.

‘Oh Jay-zus! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ Liam bellowed through the open side window as they rumbled out of the far side, across someone’s vegetable garden and over a cheerfully coloured timber playhouse.

They were rolling across a vineyard a moment later, flattening row after row of budding grapevines. Sal pointed out a long line of greenhouses nestled between rows of vines. She noted the look of shock on an old man’s face as he stood in the doorway, watering can in one hand and pruning shears in the other. The tractor’s huge wheels churned a lane of soil mere inches away from him and the fragile framework of timber and glass.

‘Hey, Liam … you actually managed to
miss
something.’

His face was rigid with desperate concentration. ‘I’ve never driven anything before in me life!’

Branches of a vine thrashed against the windscreen, smearing it with grape juice.

‘Liam!’ said Sal.

He was squinting through the slime of juice and grime on the glass; too focused on seeing through it all to take heed of Sal.

‘LIAM!’

‘
WHAT?
’

Sal squeezed his shoulder gently. ‘Maybe someone else should be driving instead? Huh?’

‘Good God, yes!’ barked Lincoln, holding his head where he’d whacked it against the cabin’s low roof.

Liam nodded. ‘Uh … OK, yeah. That’s … probably … a good idea.’

He eased both throttle sticks back slowly, evenly, to prevent the tractor lurching one way or the other. Finally it came to a rest, the tractor’s idling engine grumbling irritably at the way it had just been treated.

Bob leaned over Liam’s shoulder. ‘Recommendation: I should drive this vehicle.’

Liam nodded eagerly, slowly easing his vice-like grip of the throttle sticks. ‘Uh, yeah … I think that might be best.’

CHAPTER 80

2001, New York

Devereau looked around him, for the moment not facing an adversary. The floor of the trench was already a squirming carpet of bodies, the dying and the dead, red, grey and blue tunics tangled with each other.

More British were dropping down into the trench, swinging the balance of numbers against Devereau’s men, a hundred different one-on-one duels becoming two-on-one.

We’re going to lose this trench … quickly.

Down the trench he could see Sergeant Freeman parrying and lunging with calm machine-like certainty. Behind the man a British soldier was getting ready to spike Freeman in the back. Devereau reached for his revolver, raised, aimed and fired it empty. Through the drifting smoke he saw the soldier drop and Freeman turn to see the fate he’d just narrowly escaped.

Devereau waved to join him and Freeman began to pick his way over the bodies, roughly shoving a couple of struggling men to one side before finally joining him. ‘Sir?’