“When he is well into the Peninsula, with the ocean on his left and the Bay on his right, we will outflank him and attack from the rear. The Esper adepts will be there to help. Suddenly he’ll be caught, between us and the capital’s land defenses. What the adepts don’t wipe out, we will. Nothing will remain of the Sierra Command but a few garrisons. The rest of the war will be a mopping-up operation.
“It’s a brilliant piece of strategy. Like all such, it’s damn difficult to execute. Are you prepared to do the job?”
Danielis didn’t raise his voice with the others. He was thinking too hard of Laura.
Northward and to the right there was some fighting. Cannon spoke occasionally, or a drumfire of rifles; smoke lay thin over the grassland and the wind-gnarled live oaks which covered those hills. But down along the seacoast was only surf, blowing air, a hiss of sand across the dunes.
Mackenzie rode on the beach, where the footing was easiest and the view wildest. Most of his regiment were inland. But that was a wilderness: rough ground, woods, the snags of ancient homes, making travel slow and hard. Once this area had been densely peopled, but the firestorm after the Hell-bomb scrubbed it clean and today’s reduced population could not make a go on such infertile soil. There didn’t even seem to be any foremen near this left wing of the army.
The Rolling Stones had certainly not been given it for that reason. They could have borne the brunt at the center as well as those outfits which actually were there, driving the enemy back toward San Francisco. They had been blooded often enough in this war, when they operated out of Calistoga to help expel the Fallonites from northern California. So thoroughly had that job been done that now only a skeleton force need remain in charge. Nearly the whole Sierra Command had gathered at Modesto, met the northward-moving opposition army that struck at them out of San Jose, and sent it in a shooting retreat. Another day or so, and the white, city should appear before their eyes.
And there the enemy will be sure to make a stand, Mackenzie thought, with the garrison to reinforce him. And his positions will have to be shelled: maybe we’ll have to take the place street by street. Laura, kid, will you be alive at the end?
Of course, maybe it won’t happen that way. Maybe my scheme’ll work and we’ll win easy—What a horrible word “maybe” is! He slapped his hands together with a pistol sound.
Speyer threw him a glance. The major’s people were safe; he’d even been able to visit them at Mount Lassen, after the northern campaign was over. “Rough,” he said.
“Rough on everybody,” Mackenzie said with a thick anger. “This is a filthy war.”
Speyer shrugged. “No different from most, except that this time Pacificans are on the receiving as well as the giving end.”
“You know damn well I never liked the business, anyplace.”
“What man in his right mind does?”
“When I want a sermon I’ll ask for one.”
“Sorry,” said Speyer, and.meant it.
“I’m sorry too,” said Mackenzie, instantlycontrite, “Nerves on edge. Damnation! I could almost wish for some action.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised if we got some. This whole affair smells wrong to me.”
Mackenzie looked around him. On the right horizon was bounded by hills, beyond which the low but massive San Bruno range lifted. Here and there he spied one of his own squads, afoot or ahorse. Overhead sputtered a plane. But there was plenty of concealment for a redoubt. Hell could erupt at any minute ... though necessarily a small hell, quickly reduced by howitzer or bayonet, casualties light. (Huh! Every one of those light casualties was a man dead, with women and children to weep for him, or a man staring at the fragment of his arm, or a man with eyes and face gone in a burst of shot, and what kind of unsoldierly thoughts were these?)
Seeking comfort, Mackenzie glanced left. The ocean rolled greenish-gray, glittering far out, rising and breaking in a roar of white combers closer to land. He smelted salt and kelp. A few gulls mewed above dazzling sands. There was no sail or smoke-puff—only emptiness. The convoys from Puget Sound to San Francisco and the lean swift ships of the coastal bossmen were miles beyond the curve of the world.
Which was as it should be. Maybe things were working out okay on the high waters. One could only try, and hope. And ... it had been his suggestion, James Mackenzie speaking at the conference General Cruikshank held between the battles of Mariposa and San Jose; the same James Mackenzie who had first proposed that the Sierra Command come down out of the mountains, and who had exposed the gigantic fraud of Esperdom, and succeeded in playing down for his men the fact that behind the fraud lay a mystery one hardly dared think about. He would endure in the chronicles, that colonel, they would sing ballads about him for half a thousand years.
Only it didn’t feel that way, James Mackenzie knew he was not much more than average bright under the best of conditions, now dull-minded with weariness and terrified of his daughter’s fate. For himself he was haunted by the fear of certain crippling wounds. Often he had to drink himself to sleep. He was shaved, because an officer must maintain appearances, but realized very well that if he hadn’t had an orderly to do the job for him he would be as shaggy as any buck private. His uniform was faded and threadbare, his body stank and itched, his mouth yearned for tobacco but there had been some trouble in the commissariat and they were lucky to eat. His achievements amounted to patchwork jobs carried out in utter confusion, or to slogging like this and wishing only for an end to the whole mess. One day, win or lose, his body would give out on him—he could feel the machinery wearing to pieces, arthritic twinges, shortness of breath, dozing off in the middle of things, and the termination of himself would be as undignified and lonely as that of every other human slob. Hero? What an all-time laugh!
He yanked his mind back to the unmediate situation. Behind him a core of the regiment accompanied the artillery along the beach, a thousand men with motorized gun carriages, caissons, mule-drawn wagons, a few trucks, one precious armored car. They were a dun mass topped with helmets, in loose formation, rifles or bows to hand. The sand deadened their footfalls, so that only the surf and wind could be heard. But whenever the wind sank, Mackenzie caught the tune of the hex corps: a dozen leathery older men, mostly Indians, carrying the wands of power and whistling together the Song Against Witches. He took no stock in magic himself, yet when that sound came to him the skin crawled along his backbone.
Everything’s in good order, he insisted. We’re doing fine.
Then: But Phil’s right. The enemy should have fought through to a southward line of retreat, not let themselves be boxed.
Captain Hulse galloped close. Sand spurted when he checked his horse. “Patrol report, sir.”
“Well?” Mackenae realized he had almost shouted. “Go ahead.”
“Considerable activity observed about five miles northeast.”
Mackenzie stiffened. “Haven’t you anything more definite than that?”
“Not so far, with the ground so broken.”
“Get some aerial reconnaissance there, for Pete’s sake!”
“Yes, sir. I’ll throw out more scouts, too.”
“Carry on here, Phil.” Mackenzie headed-toward the radio truck. He carried a minicom in his saddlebag, of course, but San Francisco had been continuously jamming on all bands and you needed a powerful set to punch a signal even a few miles. Patrols must communicate by messenger.
He noticed that the firing inland had slaked off. There were decent roads in the interior Peninsula a ways further north, where some resettlement had taken place. The enemy, still in possession of that area, could use them to effect rapid movements.