The Grapple sa-2

by Harry Turtledove

  No matter what Moss wanted to do now, his desires ran up against reality in the shape of Spartacus. “Tennessee line still a hell of a long ways from here,” the guerrilla leader said. “Got to git around Atlanta some kinda way if we heads up there. That ain’t country I know.”

  “Could you pass us on to an outfit that operates north of you?” Moss asked. “You know, like the Underground Railroad in the old days?”

  Spartacus only shook his grizzled head. “Yankee sojers come down here, fine. Till then, I needs you an’ Nick too much to turn loose of you.”

  And that was that. The two white men might slip away on their own, but what could they do next? They would be all alone in a country that hated them, all alone in a country where their accents gave them away whenever they opened their mouths. Could they get up to Chattanooga on their own? It seemed unlikely. The only hope for help they had came from other bands of black guerrillas. And would some other band’s chieftain be any more willing to let them go than Spartacus was? One more unlikelihood.

  And if Moss and Cantarella got caught trying to slip away, they would forfeit Spartacus’ trust. That wouldn’t be good. That would be about as bad as it could get, in fact. So they didn’t go north. They went east with the guerrillas instead.

  They moved mostly by night. More and more often, Confederate authorities-or maybe it was just the locals on their own-put up a barnstormer’s review of antique airplanes during the day to keep an eye out for guerrilla bands. Moss watched the two-deckers from the cover of pine woods with a fierce and terrible longing.

  “You could fly one of those fuckers, couldn’t you?” Nick Cantarella asked one day, first making sure no blacks were in earshot.

  “In my sleep,” Moss answered at once. “I flew worse junk than that in the Great War-not a lot worse, some of the time, but worse.”

  Cantarella looked around again and dropped his voice even lower. “You think we could steal one?”

  “You’re reading my mind-you know that?” Moss spoke hardly above a whisper. “I only see one hitch.”

  “Yeah? Walking up to the damn thing, hopping in, and flying off?”

  Moss paused. “Well, two hitches,” he said sheepishly.

  “What’s the other one?”

  “From here, we need a full tank of gas to get up to the U.S. line. We run low, we can’t stop at the local Esso station and tank up.”

  “Not hardly.” The younger man laughed. Then he sobered again. “So how do we know how much gas is in the son of a bitch we take?”

  “I fire up the engine and look at what the fuel gauge says,” Moss answered. “No matter what it says, though, I’ve got to take off after that. This isn’t one of those deals where you can try again if you don’t like what you see.”

  “Suits me,” Cantarella said. “Suits me fine. Far as I can tell, we’ve done our duty by these people and then some. Time to do our duty for the US of A, too. And you know what else?”

  “Tell me,” Moss urged.

  “We got one great big thing going for us when we waltz up to that airplane.” Cantarella waited till Moss made a questioning noise. Then he said, “We’re white. They won’t be looking for ofays”-he grinned when he used the word-“to up and steal a flying machine, not in a month of Sundays they won’t.”

  Moss didn’t need to think about that very long before he nodded. “Well, you’re right. Too bad we won’t be able to see the looks on their faces after we take off.”

  It sounded so good, so easy, so inevitable, that they overlooked something: they weren’t anywhere near an airstrip. They didn’t come anywhere near one for quite a while, either. Their sole relationship with airplanes was hiding from them.

  After a few days, Moss told Cantarella, “You ought to suggest to Spartacus that we go hit an airport so they can’t spy on us so well.”

  “I ought to?” The Army officer pointed at him. “What about you?”

  “No.” Moss shook his head. “If it comes from you, it’s strategy. He’s used to that. If it comes from me, it’s The pilot wants to get his hands on an airplane. And he’d be right, ’cause I do. Better the other way.”

  Whiskers rasped under Cantarella’s fingers as he scratched his chin. “Yeah, that makes sense. I’ll do it,” he said at last. “Don’t know whether he’ll listen to me, but it’s a pretty good shot.”

  “A lot depends on how well they guard their airstrips,” Moss said. “If they’re locked up tight, Spartacus won’t want anything to do with them, and how do you blame him? But if he knows one where the locals are asleep at the switch…”

  If there was an airstrip like that, Spartacus would know about it. The grapevine worked. Not all Negroes had disappeared from Confederate society-just most of them. There were still cooks and maids and janitors. They heard things. They knew things. And what they heard, what they knew, they managed to pass to guerrilla leaders like Spartacus.

  Nick Cantarella planted the seed. He and Moss waited to see if it would bear fruit. While they waited, they tramped along. They couldn’t stay anywhere for more than a couple of days; if they did, they started eating the countryside bare. It seemed bare enough to Moss as things were.

  “Got a question,” Spartacus said as they marched through a weary night. “You git your hands on an airplane with machine guns in it, could you shoot at the Confederates with it?”

  “As long as I have fuel. As long as I have ammo. As long as the motor keeps working the way it’s supposed to,” Moss said.

  “You do it in the nighttime, or you have to wait fo’ daylight?”

  “Daylight would be better,” Moss answered. “A lot better. I wouldn’t want to try to land in the dark without good airport lights and without somebody on the wireless talking me down. Night flying’s a whole different ballgame.”

  “All right.” Spartacus nodded. “Reckon that means we gots to hit at daybreak, so you kin git the airplane up an’ shoot up the town before you lands it somewhere an’ we gits you out.”

  “What town?” Moss asked.

  “Name o’ the place is Pineview,” Spartacus said. “We’s about ten miles from there now. They got an airstrip outside-reckon we could swoop down on it.”

  “Do you want to do that?”

  The guerrilla chieftain nodded. “Any way I kin hurt the ofays, I wants to do it. Strips won’t be guarded much. I’s sure of dat. Ofays don’t know we got us a pilot. They reckon we ain’t nothin’ but a bunch o’ dumb fuckin’ niggers. We show ’em. We fuck ’em good-you’d best believe it.”

  Later that day, Nick Cantarella tipped Moss a wink. If Moss hadn’t been looking for it, he never would have noticed. He gave back a discreet thumbs-up.

  Spartacus didn’t charge ahead without checking. He sent scouts out under cover of darkness to give the airstrip a once-over. They reported a few strands of barbed wire and some sleepy guards ambling around the perimeter. “We kin take ’em out, then?” Spartacus said.

  “Oh, hell, yes, boss,” one of the scouts said. The other black man nodded.

  Spartacus smacked his right fist into his cupped left palm. “Let’s go do it, then,” he declared. “We gonna make the ofays shit.” All the colored guerrillas who heard that grinned and clapped and whooped. So did Jonathan Moss and Nick Cantarella. If they had reasons of their own that the Negroes knew nothing about…then they did, that was all.

  Since the attack on the airstrip outside of Pineview wouldn’t go in till morning twilight brightened the sky, the guerrillas had plenty of time to grab some sleep early in the evening and deploy as soon as the moon went down. Moss had trouble getting any rest. He was always nervous before missions. Cantarella snored like a buzz saw biting into a knot. If he worried ahead of time, he didn’t show it that way.

  Flopped down in the dirt, mud smeared on his face so it wouldn’t show, Moss peered hungrily at the airstrip. There wasn’t much to see: a couple of runways flattened with steamrollers, a couple of old-fashioned airplanes at the end of one of them, a sentry with
a limp who patrolled this stretch of barbed wire. Moss knew what wire was supposed to be like. This barely counted for a token effort.

  “Let’s go,” Spartacus said. Three men with wire cutters slid forward. The strands of barbed wire parted with soft twangs. The men waved. The rest of the guerrillas loped toward the gaps. Someone shone a flashlight toward the rear. The prize pickup with the machine gun in the bed would be coming, too.

  “Halt! Who goes there?” A white man spoke in peremptory tones. When he didn’t get the answer he liked, his rifle barked. Moss saw the muzzle flash. Half a dozen answering shots rang out. The sentry screamed and toppled.

  “Come on!” Spartacus shouted. “Ain’t got much time now.”

  He was wrong. They had no time at all.

  Electric lights blazed on, illuminating the advancing raiders much too well. “Get down!” Nick Cantarella yelled. “It’s a-!” Before he could say trap or ambush or whatever he was going to say, three machine guns opened up and said it for him.

  Spartacus’ men were caught out in the open on flat ground at short range. The pickup went up in flames before it even got to the barbed-wire perimeter. Maybe some of the Negroes who’d fed Spartacus information did the same thing for their white bosses. Maybe the whites told them what to feed him. However that worked, the result was a massacre.

  Moss hugged the dirt. Bullets cracked past hardly more than a foot over his head. The gunners were shooting low, trying to pick off anything that moved. He couldn’t stay where he was, not if he wanted to stay alive. He crawled toward the pine woods from which the guerrillas had come.

  Was somebody with binoculars watching them all the time while they advanced? Moss wouldn’t have been surprised. They’d trusted too much, and they’d walked right into the meat grinder. Somebody behind him screamed. Would anyone get away?

  “Spartacus still alive?” Nick Cantarella asked.

  “Beats me,” Moss answered. “I’m amazed I’m alive myself.”

  “Tell me about it,” Cantarella said. “They fucked us good, the bastards. Talk about a sucker punch…”

  “I know,” Moss said mournfully. “I was just thinking that. Are we far enough away so we can get up and run?”

  “Go ahead if you want to. Me, I’m staying flat a while longer.”

  Moss stayed flat, too. Cantarella knew more about this business than he did. Of course, he’d thought Spartacus knew more about it than he did, too. And he’d been right. But Spartacus didn’t know enough to keep from making a disastrous mistake. Even if the leader survived, his band was a shambles.

  By the time Moss reached the woods, his knees and elbows were bloody. But he didn’t get shot, so he was one of the lucky ones. Spartacus made it back, too. “Do Jesus!” he said over and over again, his voice and his face stunned. “Do Jesus! What do we do now?”

  “Keep on fighting or try and disappear,” Cantarella said. “Those are your only two choices.”

  “How can I fight after this?” Spartacus said. “How? Do Jesus!” Neither white man had any answer for him.

  The first thing Flora Blackford did when she got up in the morning was turn on the wireless to find out how the war had gone while she slept. The wireless didn’t always tell the truth; she knew that. In the black days of 1941 and 1942, news reports of Confederate advances often ran days behind what really happened. Losses to enemy bombs were minimized, as were U.S. casualties. The uprisings in Utah and Canada had got short shrift-the one in Canada still did.

  But, if you knew how to listen, you could get a pretty good notion of what was going on. Today, for instance, the broadcaster declared, “Confederate air raids over Bermuda are of nuisance value only. The enemy has suffered severe losses in terms of bombers and trained crewmen.”

  That was true, but, like a lot of true things, didn’t tell the whole story or even most of it. The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War had had some pungent things to say to the generals and admirals in charge of the reconquest of Bermuda. It was back in U.S. hands, but the whole business had proved much more expensive than anyone expected.

  Why hadn’t the generals and admirals figured Confederate bombers would keep paying nighttime visits? It wasn’t stupidity, not exactly. As far as Flora could see, it was more like the blind certainty everything would go fine, and an unwillingness to examine ways in which things might not go fine.

  To the men on the low-lying ground who had to put up with bombs coming down on their heads, it probably looked a lot like stupidity even if it wasn’t.

  Flora made coffee and scrambled a couple of eggs. They were the only ones she would eat this week. She made a point of sticking to the limits rationing imposed on everybody else. Not all Representatives and Senators did, but she didn’t see how government could force such things on the country without observing them itself. Tomorrow it would be corn flakes or toast and jam. She was low on butter, too, but she couldn’t get more till after the first of the month.

  “In Europe,” the newscaster went on, “German wireless reports that the Kaiser’s armored units have driven British forces over the Dutch border. For the first time since the outbreak of war, Germany is free of invaders. British Prime Minister Churchill denies the German claim and insists that strong British counterattacks are imminent.”

  How can he do both at once? Flora wondered. But Churchill was formidable, no doubt about it. He’d overshadowed Mosley in the British government, and Britain was overshadowing France in the anti-German alliance, though Action Francaise had held power longer.

  “Russia claims the German assault column aimed at Petrograd has been turned back with heavy losses,” the broadcaster continued. “More weight would attach to this claim if the Tsar’s government hadn’t made it repeatedly over the past few weeks, each time without its being true. The situation in the Ukraine, however, remains as confused and chaotic as it has been since the beginning of the war.

  “Serbian terrorists have taken credit for the people bomb that exploded in Budapest day before yesterday and killed several prominent Hungarian military officials. The Austro-Hungarian Empire has vowed reprisals.”

  Flora sighed as she put salt on her eggs. The cycle of revenge and reprisal was lurching forward another couple of cogs. She saw no end to it. Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Albanians, Macedonians, Bulgarians…Austria-Hungary had security worries that made the USA’s seem simple by comparison.

  “In sports…” Flora got up and poured herself another cup of mostly ersatz coffee. She didn’t care about the football scores. Joshua would have, and no doubt still did. But he was off doing his basic training. The apartment seemed empty without him.

  Somewhere out in Washington State, scientists were trying to build a bomb that might make soldiers obsolete. With Joshua in uniform, Flora had one more reason to hope they succeeded soon.

  And somewhere down in the CSA, other scientists were trying just as hard to build the same damn thing. Flora didn’t think the Confederates could win the war as a slugging match, not any more. But if they got that bomb ahead of the USA…Roosevelt thought the enemy was running behind. Was he right?

  The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War couldn’t hold hearings to find out. As far as Flora knew, she was the only committee member who’d ever heard of uranium bombs or understood the difference between U-235 and U-238. There, though, she didn’t know how far she knew. Robert Taft might share the secret. So might any other member. The only way to find out was to ask, and asking meant breaching security. She kept quiet. So did any other members who knew. Maybe it would all come out after the war.

  She went downstairs and flagged a cab. They were easy to get on this block, where so many Congressmen and Senators lived. “Where to, ma’am?” the driver asked. In most of Philadelphia, Flora would have been lady, the same as in New York City. This fellow remembered where he was, and took no chances.

  “Congressional Hall,” Flora said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He probably thought she was a secretary, but politene
ss could still be good for his tip.

  He had to detour from the shortest route a couple of times. Sawhorses and ropes blocked the street. Signs said, BOMB DAMAGE. “Do you know what’s going on?” Flora asked. “I didn’t hear any bombers overhead last night.”

  “Neither did I, ma’am,” the cabby agreed. “But I heard one of ’em was an auto bomb and the other one was a people bomb.”

  “Oy!” Flora said. “Has anyone claimed responsibility? Confederates? Mormons who don’t want to give up? Canadians?”

  “God only knows,” he said. “You can walk along minding your own…darn business, and out of the blue-kaboom!”

  “Out of the blue makes it worse,” Flora said, and the driver nodded. When someone said he’d planted an auto bomb, when a group proclaimed that one of its members hated you enough to blow himself to red mist to hurt you, at least you knew why you’d been injured. When the question hung in the air…When the question hung in the air, what could you do but stay afraid all the time? Flora didn’t think the cabby had several hundred pounds of TNT in the trunk of his beat-up Packard or under the floorboards, but she couldn’t prove he didn’t. And he couldn’t know she hadn’t strapped an explosive belt around her waist. Scary times, all the way around.

  As if to prove as much, concrete barricades kept motorcars from getting too close to Congressional Hall. Flora paid the driver. The Packard wheezed away. She approached the building. Despite her status, despite her Congressional ID, security guards went through her handbag and attache case. A hard-faced policewoman patted her down. She’d got complaints that some of the women who frisked other women enjoyed themselves as much as men would have. She didn’t know what anyone could do about that. This one seemed all business. “You can go on,” she said when she finished.