But that raised another question. George asked it: “If the Japs are pulling back here, where are they going to use their ships and airplanes?” He assumed Japan would use them somewhere. In a war, that was what you did.
Fremont Dalby suddenly started to laugh. “Malaya. Singapore. What do you want to bet? Malaya’s got tin and rubber, and Singapore’s the best goddamn harbor in that whole part of the world.”
“But they belong to England,” George objected. “England and Japan are on the same side.”
“Were,” Fritz Gustafson said.
Dalby nodded. “I think you nailed that one, Fritz. England’s busy in Europe. England’s busy in the Atlantic against us. What can the fuckin’ limeys do if Japan decides to go in there? Jack shit, far as I can see. When Churchill hears about this, I bet he craps his pants.”
“So let’s see,” George said. “Japan’s at war with us, and England’s at war with us, but away from all that they’re at war with each other? You ask me, they’re trying to set a world record.”
“Better them than us,” Dalby said. “Only way England’s stayed in the Far East as long as she has is that Japan’s let her. If Japan doesn’t want her around any more…Well, she may hang on to India-”
“Her goose is really cooked if she doesn’t,” George said.
“Yeah. That’s why she’s got to try, I expect,” the gun chief said. “But Japan’s already in Indochina. She’s already in the East Indies. Siam’s on her side, not England’s. What with all that, no way in hell the limeys keep her out of Malaya.”
“Japan has all that stuff, she’ll be really nasty twenty, thirty years down the line,” Fritz Gustafson said.
“Let’s worry about winning this one first,” George said, and neither of the other men chose to disagree with him.
Even though Jefferson Pinkard had run Camp Determination since the day it started going up on the west Texas prairie, he got his news on the wireless just like everybody else in the CSA. “In heavy defensive fighting just southeast of Lubbock, Confederate troops inflicted heavy losses on the Yankee invaders,” the announcer said.
That same bulletin probably went out all over the Confederate States. If you didn’t have a map handy and you didn’t bother working out what lay behind what actually got said, it sounded pretty good. Like a lot of people, though, Jeff knew what lay behind it, and he didn’t need a map to know where Lubbock was. Defensive fighting meant the Confederates were retreating. Just southeast of Lubbock meant the town had fallen. Heavy losses on the Yankee invaders meant…nothing, probably. And Lubbock was just up the road from Snyder-and from the camp.
Just up the road, in Texas, meant about eighty miles. Soldiers in green-gray wouldn’t be here day after tomorrow. Jefferson Pinkard and Camp Determination were ready if the damnyankees did come close. The trucks that asphyxiated Negroes would drive away. The bathhouses that gassed them would go up in explosions that ought to leave no sign of what the buildings were for. The paperwork that touched on killings would burn. Nothing would be left except an enormous concentration camp…
And mass graves. Jeff didn’t know what to do about those. He didn’t think he could do much of anything. Oh, bulldozers could cover over all of the trenches, but nothing could dispose of all the bodies and bones.
He got to his feet and stared out at the camp from the window in his office. He looked like what he was: a middle-aged man who’d been a steelworker when he was younger. Yes, his belly hung over his trousers and he had a double chin. But he also had broad shoulders and a hard core of muscle under the weight he’d put on as the years went by.
And he had the straightforward stubbornness of a man who’d worked with his hands and expected problems to go away if you put some extra muscle into them. Not all of a camp administrator’s problems disappeared so conveniently. He knew that; he’d gained guile as well as weight over the years. Still, his first impulse was to try to smash whatever got in his way.
He couldn’t smash the damnyankees single-handed. He’d fought in west Texas during the Great War as a private soldier. Even now, he had no particular clout with local Army officers. His Freedom Party rank-group leader-was the equivalent of major general, but he had no authority over Army troops.
No direct authority, anyhow. He did have friends, or at least associates, in high places. When he got on the phone to Richmond, he didn’t call the War Department. He called the Attorney General’s office. He didn’t love Ferdinand Koenig, who kept piling responsibility onto his back as if he were a mule. Here, though, the two of them were traveling the same road. Pinkard hoped they were, anyhow.
“What can I do for you today?” Koenig asked when the connection went through. He assumed Pinkard wanted him to do something. And he was right.
“Any chance you can get more soldiers on this front, sir?” Pinkard asked. “If Lubbock’s gone, we got us some real trouble.”
“Well, now, you know that isn’t my proper place,” Koenig said cautiously. “I can’t come out and tell the Army what to do.”
“Yes, sir. I know that. I damn well ought to. Damn soldiers won’t listen to me, neither.” Jeff spoke with the resentment of a man who’d tried to get them to move but couldn’t. “But does the President want the damnyankees to take Camp Determination away from us?”
“You know he doesn’t.” Now Koenig spoke without hesitation.
“Well, I sure hope he doesn’t, anyway. But if he doesn’t, we better have the men out here to keep the USA from doing it,” Jeff said.
“We’ve got trouble other places, too,” the Attorney General reminded him.
“Oh, yes, sir. You don’t need to tell me that,” Jeff said. “But we got trouble here, too, and we’re out in the back of fucking beyond-pardon my French-so who ever hears about it? Yankee general hasn’t got much more than a scratch force himself. Some more men, some more airplanes, some more barrels, we can run him right back over the border.”
“I can’t promise you anything,” Ferdinand Koenig said. “I’ll talk to the President, and that’s as much as I can tell you.”
“Thank you kindly, sir. That’s all I wanted,” Jeff lied. He wanted a couple of divisions rolling through Snyder on their way to driving the damnyankees back from Lubbock. He thought Camp Determination deserved to be protected. “Wouldn’t want the United States going on about this place if they grabbed it.”
“No, we don’t want that,” Koenig agreed. “I’ll see what I can do, and that’s all I can say.”
“All right.” Jeff knew he wouldn’t get anything more. He tried to make sure he did get something: “Doesn’t even have to be regular Confederate soldiers. Most of what we need out here is bodies, so the damnyankees can’t just go around us. Mexicans would do the trick, or Freedom Party guards.”
“Won’t be Mexicans,” Koenig said. “The Emperor doesn’t want ’em going into combat against the USA, not any more. Only way the President talked him into giving us more was by swearing on a stack of Bibles he wouldn’t use ’em for anything but internal security. Freedom Party guards, though…” He paused thoughtfully.
Pinkard was a fisherman from way back when. He knew he had a nibble. Trying to set the hook, he said, “This might be a good place to let the guards show what they can do. If they fight harder than soldiers…” He paused, too. The Freedom Party guards were Ferd Koenig’s own personal, private bailiwick. If they fought better than soldiers, or at least as well, then Koenig had his own personal, private army. He might not mind that. No, he might not mind that at all.
He was nobody’s fool, either. If Jefferson Pinkard could see the possibilities, he would also be able to. But all he said was, “Well, I’ll see what the President wants to do.” He was a cool customer. He didn’t get all excited-or he didn’t show it if he did. And the odds were that somebody was tapping his telephone, too. Sure, he went back forever with Jake Featherston. All the more reason for Featherston to make sure he didn’t get out of line, wasn’t it?