As soon as they got into the outskirts of Salt Lake City, the sniping started. Armstrong swore as he hit the dirt. This was supposed to be territory the USA controlled. Civilians here were supposed to be disarmed. With Utah under martial law, the penalty for keeping firearms was death. So was the penalty for harboring Mormon fighters. No one seemed to worry about that.
After a few minutes and a burst of machine-gun fire, the sniping stopped. The soldiers got to their feet again and tramped on. “Nice to be back at the same old stand, isn’t it?” Armstrong said.
“Lovely.” Yossel Reisen modified the word with a participle that brought a sour smile to Armstrong’s face.
The Mormons still held the military compound northeast of downtown Salt Lake City that the United States, with the tact that made the central government so beloved in Utah, called Fort Custer. Before becoming a national hero in the Second Mexican War, George Armstrong Custer hanged John Taylor-Brigham Young’s successor-and several other prominent Mormons on the grounds of that fort. Afterwards, Custer said his biggest regret was not hanging Abe Lincoln, too.
U.S. artillery and aircraft pounded the Mormon garrison up there. The Mormons replied with mortars and screaming meemies and whatever else they could get their hands on.
A lieutenant led the platoon Armstrong and his men were replacing. The officer showed no particular surprise at briefing a noncom. “A sergeant’s got the other platoon in this company, too,” he said. “Just dumb luck I haven’t stopped anything myself.” A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. He looked beat to hell. But for the gold bars on his shoulders, he might have been a noncom, too.
Because he’d been through the mill, Armstrong gave him more respect than he would have otherwise. “Hope you stay safe, sir,” he said. “They got anything special up ahead of us I ought to know about? Places where they like to put mortars? Sniper spots? Infiltration routes?”
“Ha! You’re no virgin, sure as hell,” the lieutenant said.
“Bet your ass,” Armstrong told him, and then, “Uh, yes, sir.”
“‘Bet your ass’ will do fine.” The lieutenant laughed. “Don’t slip and say it back of the line, that’s all, or it’ll be your ass.” He pointed out the trouble spots on the other side of the line, and the places where U.S. soldiers had to keep their heads down if they didn’t want to turn into sniper bait. And he added, “Brigham’s bastards have some kind of headquarters about half a mile ahead of us. That’s what I figure, anyhow. More foot traffic up there”-he pointed-carefully-to show where-“than anything else is likely to account for.”
“You put snipers on ’em?” Armstrong asked.
“Oh, hell, yes,” the lieutenant said. “They’re sneaky as snakes about it now, but the traffic won’t go away.”
“Maybe some mortars’ll shift ’em,” Armstrong said. “Maybe they’ll go away and be somebody else’s headache. Hell, that’d do.” The lieutenant laughed again, for all the world as if he were kidding.
After the other platoon pulled back, Armstrong put his own snipers into some likely looking spots. He told them to pick off the first few Mormons they spotted. One of the snipers said, “I got it, Sarge. You don’t want those shitheels figuring we’re a bunch of damn greenhorns.”
“Right the first time, Urban,” Armstrong answered. “As soon as they know we know what the hell we’re doing, they’ll find somebody easier to pick on. Hell, I would.”
One of the Mormons took a shot at him as he left that nest. The bullet cracked past his head. He flattened out and crawled for a while after that. Yes, the guys on the other side were seeing what they were up against.
They tried a trench raid that night. Having acquired a nastily suspicious mind in the course of almost two years of fighting, Armstrong was waiting for it. He sited a couple of machine guns to cover the route he thought the enemy most likely to take, and he guessed right. The Mormons retreated as fast as they could-from the cries that rose, some of them were wounded. His platoon didn’t lose a man.
They left him and his men severely alone for the next two days. That suited him fine, even if it did make him wonder what they were up to. He assumed they were up to something. They usually were.
On the third morning, a Mormon approached under flag of truce. Armstrong shouted for his men to stop shooting. One thing the Mormons didn’t do was violate a cease-fire. They were scrupulous about that kind of thing. They always played fair, even if they played hard.
Armstrong stared at the Mormon. “You!” he said.
“You!” the Mormon-a major-echoed. They’d met before. Armstrong had made him strip to his drawers to prove he wasn’t a people bomb. The Mormons did their best to pay him back by turning him into a casualty. They didn’t quite manage, but not for lack of effort. The officer went on, “You’d better let me through this time.”
“Oh, yeah?” That automatically made Armstrong suspicious. “How come?”
“Because-” The Mormon choked on his answer and had to try again: “Because I’m coming to try to work out a surrender, that’s why.” He looked like a man who badly, desperately, wanted to scream, God damn it! He didn’t, though. In all too many ways, the Mormons were made of stern stuff.
“Oh, yeah?” In spite of himself, Armstrong didn’t sound so hostile this time. The Mormon major’s fury and frustration embittered his face as well as his voice.
“Yeah.” Again, the Mormon’s fastidiousness seemed to handicap him. “If we don’t, you people will murder all of us, the same as the Confederates are murdering their colored people.”
“Why should you piss and moan about Featherston’s fuckers?” Armstrong said. “You’re in bed with ’em, for Christ’s sake!”
He got a look full of hatred from the Mormon major. “‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend,’” the Mormon quoted. “You ever hear that one? You people send guns to the Negroes. The Confederates give us a hand when they can. It evens out.”
“Oh, boy. It evens out,” Armstrong said in a hollow voice. “How do we know you guys won’t keep using people bombs even after you say you’ve given up?”
“Because we’ll be hostages, that’s how.” The Mormon major looked and sounded like death warmed over. “How many of us will you murder every time anything like that happens? You’ll set the number high-and you know it.”
“Like you won’t deserve it,” Armstrong said.
“I don’t have to dicker with you, and I thank God for that,” the Mormon said. “Will you please pass me through to your officers? They’re the ones who can say whether they’ll let any of us live.”
Armstrong thought about making him strip again. He didn’t do it this time. He wanted nothing more than getting out of Utah in one piece. A truce or a surrender or whatever you called it made that more likely. He did say, “Come forward so I can pat you down. You still may be a people bomb.”
“Do whatever you think you need to,” the Mormon said. By itself, that went a long way toward convincing Armstrong he wasn’t loaded with explosives. The man came up to him, lowered the white flag, and raised his hands. Armstrong frisked him and found the nothing he expected.
“Yeah, you’re clean,” Armstrong said when he was satisfied. “Come on with me. I’ll take you back.”
“You’re not gloating as much as I thought you would,” the Mormon major remarked.
“Sorry,” Armstrong said. “I just want to get this over with so we can go on with the real war, you know what I mean?”