Flora said something that would have shocked her secretary. It amounted to, The nerve of the man! He couldn’t have bombers that close to Philadelphia. U.S. Y-ranging gear would have picked them up. And there was bound to be a heavy combat air patrol above the de facto capital of the USA. Bombers-even captured U.S. bombers or C.S. warplanes painted in U.S. colors-might not get through. But Jake Featherston had sounded devilishly sure of himself.
Terrorists inside the city? People bombers waiting to press their buttons? Flora’s mouth tightened. She knew those were both possibilities. Could Featherston be so sure they’d do their job on short notice? Maybe that was why he hadn’t answered right after President La Follette’s speech. Or…
A loud explosion rattled Flora’s teeth and put ripples in the coffee in her half-full cup. Long experience told her that was a one-ton bomb going off not nearly far enough away. No air-raid sirens howled. It hadn’t fallen from an enemy bomber. Flora was sure of that.
Maybe three minutes later, another blast echoed through Philadelphia, this one a little farther from her office. “Vey iz mir!” she exclaimed. She didn’t know what Featherston and his minions had done, but no denying he’d kept his promise.
After about a quarter of an hour, he came back on the wireless. “I’m Jake Featherston, and I’m here to say I told you the truth,” he crowed. He must have waited till he got word his plan, whatever it was, had worked. “See how you like it, Philadelphia. Plenty more where those came from, and we’ll spread ’em around, too. Surrender? Nuts! We just started fighting.”
If anyone in Philadelphia knew what the Confederates had done, Franklin Roosevelt was likely to be the man. What point to having connections if you didn’t use them? Flora dialed his number, hoping she’d get through.
She did. “Hello, Flora!” Roosevelt still sounded chipper. As far as she could tell, he always did. But he went on, “Can’t talk long. Busy as the Devil after a fire at an atheists’ convention right now.”
“Heh,” Flora said uneasily. “You must know why I’m calling, though. What did the Confederates just do to us?”
“Well, it looks like a rocket,” the Assistant Secretary of War answered. “Two rockets, I should say.”
“Rockets? You mean they had them set up somewhere outside of town and fired them off when Featherston told them to?”
“No, I don’t think that’s what happened, not from the first look we’ve had at what’s left of them.” Franklin Roosevelt kept that jaunty air, but he sounded serious, too. And he wasted no time explaining why: “Our best guess is, they shot them up here from Virginia.”
“From Virginia? Gevalt!” Flora said. “That’s got to be-what? A couple of hundred miles? I didn’t know you could make rockets fly that far.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t. But Jake Featherston can, damn his black heart,” Roosevelt said.
“What can we do to stop them?” Flora asked.
“At this end, nothing. They get here too fast,” he said. “If they’ve got bases or launchers or whatever you call them, maybe we can bomb those. I hope so, anyway. But I don’t know that for a fact, you understand.”
“How much damage did they do?” Flora found one bad question after another.
“One blew a big hole in a vacant lot. The other one hit in front of an apartment building.” Now Roosevelt was thoroughly grim. “Quite a few casualties. But it would have been worse at night, with more people at home and fewer out working.”
“Do they aim them at Philadelphia? Or do they aim them, say, at the corner of Chestnut and Broad?” Yes, all kinds of nasty questions to ask.
“Right now, your guess is as good as mine. If I had to bet, I’d say they just aim them at Philadelphia. A rocket can’t be that accurate…can it? But that’s only a wild-ass guess-excuse the technical term.”
In spite of everything, Flora smiled. “Thanks, Franklin. I needed that. What are we going to do? If we can’t stop these rockets and we can’t even warn against them, how do we go on?”
“As best we can,” Roosevelt answered. “Stick a rabbit’s foot in your purse if you don’t already have one. Remember that every time the Confederates build one of these, they don’t build something else. And some will be duds, and some will go boom without doing much damage. As much as anything else, they’re trying to scare us.”
“They’re pretty good at it, aren’t they?” Flora said. Roosevelt laughed merrily, as if she were joking. What he hadn’t said was that some of the rockets would blow houses and apartments and factories to kingdom come. Then something even worse than that occurred to her. “Can they load anything besides ordinary explosives onto these…things?”
“You mean like gas? I think explosives would hurt us more,” Roosevelt said.
Flora had no doubt he was being dense on purpose. “Gas, maybe,” she said. “Or other things.” She didn’t want to say too much on the telephone.
Obviously, neither did he. “Not right away,” he answered. “I’ve already talked with some people. They need a bigger rocket or a smaller thing. So that’s all right for a while, anyhow.”
“For a while. How long is a while?”
“I have no idea. If it’s not till we finish licking them, it doesn’t matter. And now I’ve got to go. Other people to talk to. Stay safe.”
“How?” Flora asked, but she was talking to a dead line. Sighing, she hung up, too. She heard no more bangs out of the blue. That was something. Maybe Featherston had only two ready, and more would have to wait a while. Again, though, how long was a while? Not nearly so long as the Confederates would need to load a uranium bomb on a rocket-Flora was all too sure of that.
Her secretary looked into the inner office. “Were those booms the Confederates or the Mormons, Congresswoman?”
“Mr. Roosevelt says they were the Confederates, Bertha,” Flora answered.
Bertha nodded. “Figured you’d be talking to him. How did they sneak the bombs in? Can’t we stop stuff like that?”
Were the rockets secret? The War Department would probably like to keep them that way, but it would be like trying to classify the sunrise. Like it or not, everybody would know about them before long. Flora told Bertha what she’d heard.
“All the way up from Virginia? How do they do that?” Bertha said.
“If we knew, we’d do it, too,” Flora said dryly. “I bet like anything we’re trying to figure it out, though.”
“Oh, boy.” Bertha didn’t sound impressed, for which Flora could hardly blame her. “What’s to keep us all from getting murdered in our beds without even any warning?”
Nothing, Flora thought. “We’re going to take Atlanta pretty soon. If we smash the Confederate States to pieces, they won’t be able to go on with the war.”
“Oh, boy,” her secretary repeated. “How long will that take?”
“I don’t know. Not too long, I hope.” Please, God, let it be before they send Joshua into action. I haven’t asked You for much, but give me that.
“They’ll be shooting off these skyrocket things all the time till then?” Bertha asked.
“Not if we can bomb the places where they shoot them from,” Flora said.
“Hmp.” Bertha made a noise redolent of skepticism. “Did anybody know what a nasty war this would be before they went and started it?”
“Does anybody ever?”
“What are we going to do?” Bertha asked.
“What can we do? We’re stuck in it. We’ve got to win,” Flora said. Bertha didn’t say no, but she didn’t say yes, either.