The gunner didn't need long to figure out what was what. "You talked us into it," he said after a barely perceptible pause. "Show us where to set up."
He and his crew had just positioned the gun when U.S. 105s started landing on Buckingham. The first few fell short, but the rest came down right in the middle of town. Huddling in a foxhole, Jorge knew what that meant: the Yankees had a forward artillery observer hidden in the trees somewhere, and he was wirelessing the fall of the shot back to the batteries that were firing. Killing him would have been nice, but who could guess where he lurked?
Fighter-bombers worked Buckingham over next. They dropped bombs. They fired rockets. And they dropped fish-shaped pods of jellied gasoline, as if the town were under attack by flamethrowers from the sky. Some burned men screamed. Some, Jorge feared, never got the chance. One of the fine hotels from before the days of the War of Secession went up in flames. It had lasted for a century, but no longer.
After the damnyankees softened up the town, infantry and armor came forward. Why do things the hard way when you could take it easy? That was what the U.S. officer in charge must have thought, anyhow.
But nothing turned out to be easy for the men in green-gray. That antiaircraft gun knocked out two barrels in quick succession. The others pulled back in a hurry. Machine-gun and automatic-weapons fire sent U.S. foot soldiers diving for cover. The Confederates in Buckingham raised a defiant cheer.
If they'd had barrels of their own, if they'd had air support, if they'd had more ground-pounders, they could have driven the enemy back toward the James. If they'd had all those things here, they also would have had them lots of other places. The war would have looked very different.
Since they didn't have any reinforcements, they had to wait for the U.S. forces to regroup and take another crack at Buckingham. "Pull back into the woods south of town!" Sergeant Blackledge called. "We'll let them beat on the place while it's empty, then move back into our old holes and give 'em a surprise."
Smoke from the burning buildings in Buckingham helped screen the withdrawal from Yankee observers. And Blackledge knew just what was coming. More shells, more bombs, more rockets, and more napalm descended on Buckingham. Jorge crossed himself. He was glad to crouch half a mile away from all that destruction.
As soon as the last fighter-bombers roared off to the north, Sergeant Blackledge yelled, "C'mon! Hustle up! We gotta get back to our places before the enemy infantry starts moving up!"
Trotting forward, Jorge saw that the antiaircraft gun wouldn't stop any barrels this time around. It lay upside down, the tires on the gun carriage all burnt and melted and stinking. How many stovepipes did the company have? He swore under his breath. The cannon could kill from much farther away than one of those rockets.
At least no jellied gasoline smoldered in his foxhole. He slid down into it and waited for the push that was bound to come. He felt more resigned than afraid. He wondered why. Probably because he'd been in lots of other bad spots. What was one more? My grave, it could be.
Not far away, Gabe Medwick was praying. His version of the Lord's Prayer had words a little different from Jorge's. Protestant, the Sonoran thought condescendingly. But both versions meant the same thing, so how much did the words really matter?
"Hang in there, boys," Hugo Blackledge said. "We been screwin' so long with a limber dick, why the fuck can't we row the damn boat with a rope?" In spite of himself, Jorge laughed. Sometimes obscenity wasn't so far from prayer.
Here came the damnyankees again. They were more cautious this time-they didn't want another bloody nose. The Confederates in Buckingham held their fire till the enemy soldiers and fighting vehicles got very close. Then they all opened up at once. Howls of dismay from the U.S. soldiers said they'd hoped it would be easy this time. No matter what they hoped, it wasn't.
A lancehead riding a shaft of fire, a stovepipe rocket incinerated a green-gray barrel. But other U.S. machines sensibly stayed out of stovepipe range. They raked Buckingham with high-explosive rounds and machine-gun bullets. That let Yankee infantry grab a toehold on the north side of town-not enough Confederates could put their heads up to stop the enemy.
And the Yankees pushed forward to either side of Buckingham, too. There weren't enough men in butternut to hold them back. "Hey, Sarge!" Jorge called urgently. "We done what we could do here, sн?"
"Bet your ass." Blackledge raised his voice to a formidable roar: "Back! Back, goddammit! We'll make another stand at the next town south, wherever the fuck it is!"
Disengaging under fire wasn't easy, either. A less experienced outfit might not have been able to bring it off so neatly. But Jorge had plenty of practice making a getaway from overwhelming U.S. strength. So did his buddies. They left the wounded behind for the Yankees to take care of. That gave the hurt soldiers a better chance than they would have had if they got dragged along. The men in green-gray mostly fought fair.
The ground rose south of Buckingham. No roads led south, only tracks and game trails. The soldiers trudged past a couple of farms carved out of the forest. A woman in homespun stared at them from a cornfield. Was that a pipe in her mouth? Damned if it wasn't. Jorge hoped the Yankees wouldn't shell her farm trying to kill the retreating C.S. soldiers.
On he went. Armor wouldn't have an easy time coming after him, anyhow. Artillery started probing for the Confederates. Suddenly, Jorge hated the trees. Air bursts were deadly, and the only thing you could do to protect yourself was dig in with a roof over your head. Any hanging branch might touch off a shell and rain fragments down on you.
A hundred yards away from him, Gabe Medwick fell with a wail, clutching his arm. "No!" Jorge yelled, and rushed over to his friend. When he got there, he saw Gabe had a leg wound, too. With the best will in the world, the kid from Alabama couldn't go on.
"Hurts," Gabe got out through clenched teeth.
"I bet it does." Jorge clumsily injected him with morphine, then bandaged the wounds. The leg wasn't too bad. The arm…Jorge hoped Gabe would keep it, but it looked pretty chewed up. "The Yankees, they take care of you," Jorge said, feeling helpless.
"Don't want nothin' to do with no damnyankees." Gabe sounded like a petulant child.
"Here." Jorge gave him his canteen and some rations. "You sit tight and yell for them when they get close. Buena suerte, amigo." He hurried away, not knowing what else to say.
Before long, Jorge got to pick up a canteen from a man an air burst had shredded. There were worse things than getting wounded. The flies were just starting to gather on one of those things.
Jorge stumbled up to the top of the line of hills and then down the other side. The company, what was left of it, was hopelessly scattered. Through a break in the trees, Jorge caught a glimpse of a town down below. "That place is where we're going!" Hugo Blackledge yelled. "We'll form up there and figure out what the hell to do next."
What could they do? Jorge had no idea. But he had a target now, somewhere to go. As he picked his way through thicker stands of timber, the town disappeared, but he could always find it again. It looked bigger than Buckingham, not that that was saying much.
When he drew closer, he got a glimpse of armor in the town. He'd wondered when he would see more of it. Hell, he'd wondered if the Confederates had any armor left in central Virginia. There were already soldiers in the streets, too. Maybe the CSA could throw one more rally together. Even after you thought your side had done everything it could, it kept surprising you.
The first few men from the company, Jorge among them, had come out onto open ground within a quarter of a mile of the town when Sergeant Blackledge let out a theatrical wail of despair: "They're Yankees!"