Return engagement sa-1

by Harry Turtledove

  Colonel Irving Morrell rode along with his head and shoulders out of the cupola on his barrel's turret. He'd been doing that since the Great War, when he'd had a machine gun mounted in front of the barrel commander's hatch. Most good barrel commanders rode that way whenever they could. You could see so much more when you were actually out there looking. Riding buttoned up and peering through periscopes wasn't the same.

  Of course, the better you could see, the better the enemy could see you. Barrel commanders who exposed themselves too much turned into casualties in short order. Morrell didn't want to be a casualty. He had Agnes and Mildred at home, and he hoped to come back to them. He couldn't let that get in the way of doing his job, though. Unless things improved in a hurry, the United States were in trouble.

  Here, at least, he didn't have to worry so much about getting picked off. He wasn't trying to keep the Confederates from reaching the Great Lakes any more. They'd already done it. His guessing they would try that crippling stroke consoled him only a little. I should have been more ready to stop them, dammit.

  Given what he'd had to work with, he supposed he'd done about as well as he could. The CSA had got serious about fighting before the USA had, and the United States were paying the price.

  A green-gray barrel had pulled off the road under the shade of a spreading elm. Two men were attacking the engine with wrench and pliers. One of them aimed an obscene gesture into the air as Morrell's barrel clattered by. The rest of the crew sprawled on the grass in the shade, smoking cigarettes and probably thanking God they were out of the war-if only for a little while.

  Barrels broke down more often than Morrell wished they did. They were large, heavy, complicated machines often forced to go as hard as they possibly could. In the Great War, breakdowns had put far more of them out of action than enemy fire had. Things weren't quite so bad so far in this fight, but they weren't good. From what Morrell had seen, C.S. barrels needed repair about as often as their U.S. counterparts. That was something, anyhow.

  The highway leading from Martins Ferry, Ohio, down toward Round Bottom would need repair, too, after the column of barrels finished going by. Pavement plenty good enough for motorcars crumbled when caterpillar treads supporting fifteen or twenty times the weight of a motorcar dug into it. Morrell's barrel took newly gouged potholes and chunks of asphalt gouged out of the surface in stride.

  Several barrels ahead of Morrell's had halted at a stream called-he checked the map-Sunfish Creek. "What the hell?" Morrell said, or perhaps something a little more pungent than that. He ducked down into his barrel to get on the wireless to the leading machine. "Why aren't you moving forward?" he demanded.

  "Sir, the bridge is out," answered the lieutenant commanding that barrel.

  "What the hell?" Morrell said again-or, again, words to that effect. "How did that happen? I hadn't heard anything about it."

  "It looks blown, sir," the lieutenant said.

  This time, Morrell's profanity drew a glance of wonder and admiration from Sergeant Michael Pound. Morrell tore the earphones off his head, climbed out of his halted barrel, and trotted south toward Sunfish Creek. He'd been wounded in the leg not long after the Great War started. Even after all these years, the thigh muscle twinged painfully when he exerted himself. That pain was as much a part of him as the thud of his heartbeat. He paid it no more mind.

  Sun dapples sparkled across the surface of the stream. Oaks and willows grew down close to the bank. Thrushes hopped beneath them, careless of man's killing tools close by. Midges droned. Morrell smelled engine exhaust, hot iron, his own sweat, and, under them, the cool green odors of vegetation and running water.

  Sunfish Creek flowed swiftly. That meant it was probably more than three feet deep: the depth a barrel could ford without special preparation. And someone had dropped the bridge across the creek right into it. The concrete span had a good fifteen-foot gap blown from the center. If it wasn't a professional job, the amateur who'd done it sure had promise.

  "You see, sir," said the lieutenant in the lead barrel.

  "I see, all right," Morrell agreed grimly. "I see sabotage, that's what I see. Somebody ought to dance at the end of a rope for this."

  "Er-yes, sir." That didn't seem to have occurred to the young officer. "But who?"

  "We'll set the constables or county sheriffs or whatever they've got at Round Bottom trying to figure that out," Morrell answered. "Have you sent men into the creek to find a ford?"

  "Not yet, sir," the lieutenant said.

  "Then do that, by God," Morrell told him. "I'll be damned if I'm going to sit around here with my thumb up my ass waiting for Army engineers to repair this span."

  Two crews' worth of barrel men emerged from their machines. They seemed glad to strip off their coveralls and plunge, naked, into Sunfish Creek. The day was hot and sticky, and they'd been cooped up inside iron bake ovens since sunrise. In fact, the men seemed more inclined to swim and splash one another than to do what needed doing. "Quit skylarking, you sorry bastards!" the lieutenant shouted. "Do you want to keep Colonel Morrell waiting?"

  Morrell was gratified to find that the question did get the men moving. If it hadn't, he would have jumped into the creek himself. The water looked mighty inviting. "Here you go!" a man shouted from downstream, his voice thin across perhaps a hundred yards of distance. "I can keep my balls dry all the way across-there's a little sandbar or something right here."

  How badly would a column of barrels tear up that sandbar? Enough to flood the machines that came at the end? Some officers would have hesitated. Morrell didn't, not for an instant. "Well done!" he yelled to the soldier. "Go on over to the far side and mark the ford. We'll cross to you."

  "Can't I get my clothes back first?" the man asked.

  "No. One of your buddies will bring them. You can dress on the other side," Morrell told him. He turned to the lieutenant and added two words: "Get moving."

  "Uh, yes, sir," the youngster said. He didn't get moving quite so fast as Morrell would have liked; one of the crews looking for a ford was his. They reluctantly emerged, all dripping and cool-looking, and even more reluctantly dressed again. Still, less than five minutes went by before the barrel's engine came to flatulent life. As soon as it did, Morrell jogged back to his own machine.

  "A ford, sir?" Sergeant Pound asked when he got in again. Unlike that lieutenant, Pound seemed capable of independent thought. Morrell didn't have to provide the brains for him.

  "That's right," the officer answered. "A ford-but a sabotaged bridge."

  "We ought to take hostages," Pound said. "If there's any more trouble, we ought to execute them." Everything seemed simple to him.

  "Unfortunately, this is our own country," Morrell pointed out.

  "Well, sir, in that case the people around here ought to act like it," Pound said. "If they don't, they don't deserve our protection, do they?" He was calm, reasonable, and altogether bloodthirsty.

  Here, Morrell was inclined to agree with him. Wasn't helping armed enemies of the United States treason? Weren't they shooting and hanging Mormons out in Utah for doing things like blowing bridges? Why shouldn't the same rules apply here in Ohio? Morrell had no answers, only questions. Setting policy wasn't his job. Carrying it out was.

  He found no help in Round Bottom, Ohio, which turned out to be nothing but a wide spot in the road-and not a very wide spot, at that. It had neither policemen nor sheriff. It had a general store, a saloon, and eight or ten houses. A sign in front of the general store said WELCOME TO ROUND BOTTOM. POPULATION 29. The census-takers had been there before the war. If half that many people lived in the hamlet now, Morrell would have been astonished.

  He had to check the map to find the closest real town: Woodsfield, the seat-such as it was-of Monroe County. He sent a barrel west to inform the local sheriff of the sabotage. It didn't get there as fast as he would have liked. A wireless message came crackling: "Sir, the road goes over something called Sandingstone Run."

  Morrell h
ad to look at the map again to find out where Sandingstone Run was. He discovered it was, of all things, a tributary to Sunfish Creek. "Well?" he said ominously.

  "Sir, the bridge is blown," the barrel commander said.

  That disgusted Morrell without surprising him. "Find a ford," he growled. "Don't waste time doing it, either. By the look of that run on the map, if you piss in it you'll send it over its banks."

  He got a burst of startled laughter. "It's a little bigger than that, sir, but not a hell of a lot," the barrel commander said. "All right. We'll take care of it."

  Fifteen minutes later, the barrel commander reported he was over the stream. Another delay, Morrell thought unhappily. And how many more bridges in eastern Ohio had gone splashing into the streams they crossed? More than a few, unless he missed his guess.

  Maybe I should have gone to Woodsfield myself, he thought. A sheriff would pay more attention to a bird colonel than he would to Joe Blow in a barrel. Then Morrell laughed at himself. Anybody in a barrel could command attention. All he had to do was aim his cannon at the sheriff's station and threaten to start blowing things up unless he got what he wanted. Civilians couldn't do much about that except knuckle under.

  And then Morrell remembered Featherston Fizzes. Somebody in what had been the state of Houston had figured out that a bottle of gasoline with a lit wick would set a barrel on fire easy as you please. Barrels were inflammable things any which way, what with paint and grease all over them. Spill burning gasoline down through the engine-decking louvers onto the motor and you really had yourself a problem.

  "Sir?" The barrel commander's voice sounded in his earphones.

  "I'm here," Morrell said.

  "Yes, sir. Well, truth is, this town got bombed to hell and gone back I don't know when-not too long ago. Sheriff's dead. Nobody's sent out a replacement yet."

  "Oh, for Christ's sake," Morrell said. But it wasn't that surprising. A replacement for a county sheriff would have been chosen in Columbus. Columbus had had other things to worry about than sending somebody with a badge out to a place where nothing ever happened anyway. These days, the Stars and Bars, damn them, flew over the capital of Ohio. Nobody there would care about Monroe County now.

  "What do you want me to do, sir?" the barrel commander asked.

  "Hold your position. We'll move up and join you. Describe where the ford is relative to the bridge," Morrell said. He got the column moving again. They rumbled through forest country. A sniper could have had a field day picking off barrel commanders. But there were no snipers. The things I'm grateful for these days, Morrell thought sourly. How much delay would the blown bridges between here and the start of the counteroffensive impose? And what would that do to the attack when it did get going? Nothing good. He shook his head. No, nothing good at all.

  XI

  Mary Pomeroy didn't like going to the post office in Rosenfeld any more. Wilf Rokeby knew too much. He never said anything, not after the first time, but he knew. Sooner or later, she was going to have to do something about that. She hadn't figured out what yet. Whatever it was, it had to be something that didn't draw suspicion down on her.

  She wished she didn't see the need. But he had a hold on her. He could use it to blackmail her, or he could go to the occupying authorities. He'd got along with them ever since 1914. He'd had to get along with them if he wanted to stay postmaster-and, as far as Mary could tell, being postmaster had been his whole life, even if he was finally retiring at the end of the year. He'd never married. He lived by himself. Maybe because he was so fussy and precise, some people wondered if he was a pansy, but nobody had anything even resembling proof of that. It was just something to gossip about when folks were in a more scandalous mood than usual.

  A bomb? Bombs were always Mary's first thought. She was, after all, her father's daughter. Arthur McGregor had hit back hard at the Yanks for years till his luck ran out. But Wilf would surely be alert to anything that came in the post. As far as Mary could see, the only thing worse than not trying to get rid of him was trying and failing. That would surely send him off to the authorities.

  Poison? Similar objection. She could bake an apple pie, lace it with rat poison, and smile sweetly while she gave it to him. No matter how sweetly she smiled, though, would he eat any of the pie? Would he eat more than one bite if it tasted even the least bit funny? Not likely.

  Pretending the brakes on the auto failed and running him down in the street? She could do it, but she didn't see how she could keep from going to jail once she did. That wasn't what she had in mind.

  Frustration gnawed at her. What she really wanted was to plant bombs on the railroad tracks outside of town. Canadian railroads were suddenly a lot more important to the USA than they had been before the war. The Yanks couldn't ship through their own country, because the Confederates had split it in two (and the Mormons were also sitting astride one of their transcontinental routes). If they wanted to move things from west to east or from east to west, they had to go through Canada. Damaging the railroads could really hurt them now.

  But damaging the railroads would also make Wilf Rokeby sit up and take notice. And what would he do if he did take notice? Mary couldn't tell. She couldn't very well ask him, either. He wouldn't give her a straight answer, and the question would only put his wind up.

  That left… waiting and seeing what happened next. Mary didn't like that. It meant the ball was in Wilf's hands. What happened next might be U.S. soldiers-or, worse, Quebecois soldiers-banging on her door in the middle of the night. If they searched the apartment building, they would find her bomb-making tools. Everything would be all over then. She wondered if she could die as bravely as her brother, Alexander, had during the Great War. She had her doubts. Alexander hadn't been old enough to believe death could really happen to him. Mary knew better.

  The irony was, Canada had started seething like a pot coming to the boil since the war broke out. Fresh signs had gone up in the post office, warning not just of Japanese spies (a ridiculous notion in Rosenfeld) but also of British agents (perhaps not so ridiculous after all). The Rosenfeld Register trumpeted out the same warnings.

  Pointing to one of those stories in the weekly, Mary said, "Seems some of us remember the mother country after all."

  "Does look that way." Mort Pomeroy eyed her from across the dining-room table. "You don't want to say that kind of thing outside the apartment, though, or to anybody but me."

  Such were the lessons of occupation. Mary had learned them, too. She nodded. "I know, Mort. You didn't marry a fool." You married a bomber's daughter. You knew that. You still don't know you married a bomber, too.

  He smiled. "I wouldn't have married a fool. That's not what I was looking for."

  And Mary found what she was looking for a few days later, in Karamanlides' general store. She didn't realize what she'd found, not at first. It was a folded piece of cheap pulp paper stuck between cans of tomatoes. She pulled it out, wondering why anyone would have wasted time sticking an advertising circular there.

  When she unfolded it, she found it wasn't an advertising circular-not one of the usual sort, anyway. A cartoon at the top showed a Satanic-looking Uncle Sam with a scantily clad maiden labeled canada slung over his shoulder. He was heading up a stairway, plainly intending to visit a fate worse than death upon her when he got to the room at the top. A nasty little dog with a Frenchman's face-labeled quebec-bounded along behind him. God only knew what the dog would do up there. Whatever it was, it wouldn't be pretty.

  FIGHT FOR YOUR COUNTRY! FIGHT FOR THE MOTHER COUNTRY! shouted the headline below the cartoon. The text under that was as vicious a denunciation of the USA as Mary had seen since the Yanks came into Rosenfeld in the first place.

  Automatically, she tucked the flyer into her handbag. She had no idea what she'd do with it, not right then. But it encouraged her even so. Somebody in town besides her couldn't stand the Yanks. That was plenty to make her feel good all by itself. British agents, indeed!

 
She got what she needed and brought it up to the counter. Karamanlides added it up. "Eight dollars and eighteen cents," he said, his accent part Yank and part Greek. She gave him a ten and waited for her change. The storekeeper had come up from the USA and brought out Henry Gibbon, who'd run this place for years and years. No wonder the person with the flyer had stuck it here-this was one place where what had happened to Canada was obvious. It was the same reason Mary had planted a bomb here.

  Karamanlides wasn't a bad fellow, not as an individual. He was honest enough. He carried a wide variety of goods, probably even more than Henry Gibbon had. He didn't give anybody any trouble. But he was a Yank. If Canada were a free country, he never would have come up here. That made all the difference in the world.

  Mary carried the groceries and sundries back to her apartment building and up the stairs. Alec was still busy with the fortress of blocks and toy soldiers he'd been playing with when she went to the general store. He was getting bigger; she didn't need to keep an eye on him every minute of every day.

  After she'd put things away, she pulled the delicious flyer out of her purse and reread it. It was just as wonderful the second time through. The Yanks and the Frenchies would have kittens if they saw it. She suspected it did come from Britain. A couple of turns of phrase weren't quite Canadian. It was good to see that the British hadn't forgotten their colony, even if it lay in enemy hands.

  And then, all at once, Mary started to laugh. "What's so funny, Mommy?" Alec called from the front room. "Tell me the joke."

  "It's for grownups, sweetheart," Mary answered. Alec made a disappointed noise. A minute later, though, he was blowing things up again. He had quite a war going on here. Mary decided to take advantage of that. She said, "I'm going over to the post office. Do you want to come along?"

  Had he said yes, she would have had to bring him. But he shook his head. She'd hoped he would, and thought so, too. He didn't like it there; he always fidgeted. And he really was engrossed in the lead-soldier war.