He heard Jake Featherston's obscene astonishment from not far away. It summed up how he felt, too. He'd scrambled away from the burning Alligator right after the President of the CSA. Was everybody out? He looked at the pyre that had been a transport. Anybody who wasn't out now never would make it, that was for damn sure.
"Where the hell are we?" Ferdinand Koenig's deep voice came from over to the right.
"Somewhere in Georgia-I can't tell you anything else." That was the pilot. Nobody would have to deliver his message to Beckie…yet.
But they weren't free and clear, not by a long shot. "Let's get out of here," Potter said. "This field will be swarming with Yankees in nothing flat."
Some of the Confederate big shots weren't going anywhere. "I think my leg is busted," said the general who'd replaced Nathan Bedford Forrest III as chief of the General Staff. Potter couldn't remember his name; as far as Potter was concerned, the officer wasn't worth remembering. "I'm not going anywhere quick."
"You can surrender, Willard. Don't reckon they're shooting soldiers-only politicians," Jake Featherston said. "Just don't tell 'em I'm around."
"I wouldn't do that, sir," Willard said. First name or last? Potter wondered. Hell, it didn't matter to anybody but Willard any more.
"General Potter is right," Saul Goldman said. Potter blinked. He hadn't even known the Director of Communications got on the Alligator. Goldman was so quiet and self-effacing, he could disappear in plain sight.
Lulu was hurt, too, hurt badly. "I don't want the Yankees to get me, Mr. President," she told Jake. "Will you please shoot me and put me out of my misery?"
"I don't want to do that!" Featherston exclaimed.
"Please," Lulu said. "I can't go on. It's the last thing you can do for me, since…Oh, never mind. You didn't care about that, not with me."
She knew what she was talking about. Jake had put it more pungently the afternoon before, but it amounted to the same thing. The President of the CSA muttered to himself. He started to turn away, then turned back. Potter had rarely seen him indecisive-wrong often, sometimes disastrously so, but hardly ever at a loss. "Christ," he said under his breath.
"Hurry," Lulu said. "You can't stay here."
Potter hadn't imagined he would find Lulu agreeing with him, either. "Christ," Jake said again, a little louder this time. Then he yanked the.45 out of the holster he always wore. He fired, and whispered, "Sorry, Lulu," as he did. "Come on!" Now he almost shouted. "Let's get the fuck away from here."
They stumbled and limped through the field. The only light came from the burning Alligator, and they were trying to put it behind them as fast as they could. "That must have been hard, sir," Potter said after a while: cold comfort, he realized as soon as he spoke, if any at all.
"Feels like I just shot my own luck," Featherston answered, his voice rough with-tears? "That make any sense at all to you?"
"Sense? No," Potter answered. As the President glared at him, he added, "I understand what you mean, though. Let's hope you're wrong, that's all."
"Yeah. Let's." Jake's voice stayed harsh. "You know what? You're liable to be our ace in the hole. We do run into damnyankees, you can talk for us, make 'em think we're on their side."
"I hope I can, anyhow," Potter said. He'd done it up in the USA. If he couldn't do it again-they were up the well-known creek, that was all. "I hope I don't have to. I hope there aren't any Yankees within miles."
"That'd be nice." Featherston didn't sound as if he believed it was likely. Since Potter didn't, either, he would have let it rest there. But Featherston went on, "Best thing we can do is get into some town the Yankees didn't bother garrisoning. We borrow a couple of motorcars from loyal people, we can head west… Wish to hell I knew just where we were at."
Potter did. They were in trouble, that was where. Jake Featherston yelled for the pilot and asked him. "Somewhere east of Atlanta-can't tell you closer," he replied. "I was going to fly south a little while longer, then swing west. That's about as good as I can do right now. Beg your pardon, sir, but I'm fuckin' surprised I'm in one piece."
"You did good, son," Jake said-he was never shy about patting small fry on the back. That was probably one of the things that had helped him rise and kept him on top. "Yeah, you did good. So where's a town?"
"Let's find a road," Potter said. "Sooner or later, a road's got to take us into a town." He didn't say what kind of town a road would take them into. They just had to trust to luck on that. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than Featherston's mournful comment followed it.
He found the road by the simple expedient of stepping down into it. He came closer to hurting himself then, than he had in the Alligator's crash-landing. "Which way?" Ferdinand Koenig asked. North or south, east or west? was supposed to follow that question, but Potter had no idea which direction was which. Evidently, neither did anyone else.
But there was the moon, a thin waning crescent, so that had to be the east. Which meant the North Star should be about…there. And there it was, with the rest of the Little Dipper curling from it.
Jake Featherston worked it out at the same time as Potter did. "This way," he said, pointing. "We'll keep on heading south, see what the hell happens." He'd most likely spent more time in the field than anybody else here. He would be able to figure out which way was which as soon as he set his mind to it.
Down the road they went, a ragged squad, some hale enough, others limping. Most of them had pistols; one officer carried an automatic Tredegar. If Yankee soldiers came on them, they wouldn't last long. Potter understood that perfectly well. He wondered how many of the others did.
He also wondered how long they could keep going. Sooner or later, their minor injuries would catch up to them. And more than a few of them were, to put it politely, not men accustomed to taking much exercise. Ferd Koenig, in particular, resembled nothing so much as a suet pudding in a gray Freedom Party uniform.
Potter realized they should have changed into civilian clothes before they got on the Alligator. Too late to worry about that now. Too late to worry about lots of things now. Would I be here if I'd managed to shoot Jake at the Olympics? No, of course he wouldn't; the President's bodyguards would have gunned him down. But maybe the country wouldn't have been in the mess it was in.
Or maybe it would have-how could you tell? The Vice President in those days hadn't been an amiable nonentity like Don Partridge. Willy Knight of the Redemption League wanted to do a lot of the same things Jake Featherston did. The only reason he didn't get a chance was that the Freedom Party grew bigger faster. A couple of years later, he came close to assassinating Jake himself.
And close counted in…? Horseshoes and hand grenades, was the soldiers' joke. Knight disappeared off the face of the earth after that. Potter supposed he'd died in one camp or another. Or maybe he just got summarily killed and dumped in the James. Any which way, he was gone.
"Can we get away?" somebody asked.
"Believe it," Jake Featherston said instantly. "If you believe it, you can do it. That's what life's all about. Believe it hard enough, work for it with everything you've got, and you'll get it. Look at me."
He was right-and he was wrong. He'd climbed from nowhere to the top of the heap in the CSA. He'd run the country for ten years. And now the Confederate States of America-are getting it, all right, Clarence Potter thought. Nice to know I can still make stupid jokes at a time like this.
Off in the distance, like the roar of faraway lions, he heard the rumble of truck motors. They neared far faster than lions would have, and they were likely to be far more dangerous. "Hit the dirt!" Potter sang out.