He kept his main force farther back in Ohio than the old plans recommended. Again, the airplane was the main reason why. He also wanted to get some notion of what the Confederates were doing before he committed his men.
Custer would have charged right at them, wherever they first showed themselves, he thought. The way he rolled his eyes showed his opinion of that. Custer would have charged, sure as the devil. Maybe he would have smashed everything in his way. Maybe he would have blundered straight into an ambush. But he could no more keep from charging than a bull could when a matador waved his cape. Sword? What sword? Custer would have thought, bullishly.
For better or worse-for better and worse-Dowling was more cautious. If the Confederate Army crossed into the USA, he wanted to slow it down. The way he looked at things, if the Confederates didn't win quick victories, they'd be in trouble. In a long, drawn-out grapple, the USA had the edge. Dowling didn't think that had changed since the Great War.
He raised the field glasses again. Kentucky seemed to leap toward him. Jake Featherston had lied about keeping soldiers out of the state. He'd lied about not asking for more land. How was anybody in the United States supposed to trust him now? You couldn't. It was as simple as that.
Even Al Smith had seen the light. The president of the USA had said he would fight back if the CSA tried to take land by force. Dowling was all for that. But so much more could have been done. It could have, but it hadn't. Everybody'd known the Confederates were rearming. If the USA had been serious about showing Featherston who was boss, the country could have done it quickly and easily in 1935. Nothing would be quick or easy now.
And the United States weren't so ready as they should have been. Dowling thought about all the time wasted in the 1920s. The Confederates had been on the ropes then, either on the ropes or smiling and saying how friendly they were. Why build better barrels when you'd never have to use them? As happened too often in politics, never turned out not to be so very long after all.
"Sir?" said an aide at Dowling's elbow. "Sir?"
Dowling had been lost in his own gloom. He wondered how long the younger man had been trying to draw his notice. However long it was, he'd finally succeeded. "Yes, Major Chandler? What is it?"
"Sir, Captain Litvinoff from the Special Weapons Section in Philadelphia has come down from Columbus to confer with you," Chandler answered.
"Has he?" Dowling was damned if he wanted to confer with anybody from what was euphemistically called the Special Weapons Section. Regardless of what he wanted, he had little choice. "All right. Let's get it over with." He might have been talking about a trip to the dentist.
"Max Litvinoff, sir," the captain said, saluting.
Dowling returned the salute. "Pleased to meet you," he lied. Litvinoff looked even more like a brain than he'd expected. The captain with the cobalt blue and golden yellow arm-of-service piping on his collar couldn't have been more than thirty. He was about five feet four, skinny, and homely, with thick steel-rimmed glasses and a thin, dark mustache that looked as if he'd drawn it on with a burnt match for an amateur theatrical.
However he looked, he was all business. "This will be good terrain for the application of our special agents," he said briskly.
He might have been talking about spies. He might have been, but he wasn't. Dowling knew too well what he was talking about. Dowling also had a pretty good idea why Litvinoff didn't come right out and say what he meant. People who ended up in the Special Weapons Section often didn't. It was magic of a sort: if they didn't say the real name, they didn't have to think about what they were doing.
"You're talking about poison gas." Dowling had no such inhibitions.
Max Litvinoff coughed. His sallow cheeks turned red. "Well… yes, sir," he mumbled. He was only a captain. He couldn't reprove a man with a star on each shoulder. Every line of his body, though, shouted out that he wanted to.
Too bad, Dowling thought. He'd been up at the front with General Custer the first time the USA turned chlorine loose on the Confederates in 1915. "Gas is a filthy business," he said, and Captain Litvinoff's cheeks got redder yet. "We use it, the Confederates use it, some soldiers on both sides end up dead, and nobody's much better off. What's the point?"
"The point, sir, is very simple," Litvinoff answered stiffly. "If the enemy uses the special agent"-he still wouldn't say gas-"and we don't, then our men end up dead and his don't. Therefore…"
What Dowling wanted to do was yell, Fuck you! and kick the captain in the ass. Unfortunately, he couldn't. Litvinoff was right. Handing the CSA an edge like that would be stupid, maybe suicidal. "Go on," Dowling growled.
"Yes, sir. You will be familiar with the agents utilized in the last war?" Captain Litvinoff sounded as if he didn't believe it. When Dowling nodded, Litvinoff shrugged. He went on, "You may perhaps be less familiar with those developed at the close of hostilities and subsequently."
So I am, Dowling thought. And thank God for small favors. But he couldn't say that to Litvinoff. He was, heaven help him, going to have to work with the man. What he did say was, "I'm all ears."
"Good." Captain Litvinoff looked pleased. He liked talking about his toys, showing them off, explaining-in bloodless-seeming terms-what they could do. If that wasn't a measure of his damnation, Dowling couldn't imagine what would be. Litvinoff continued, "First, there's nitrogen mustard. We did use some of this in 1917. It's a vesicant."
"A what?" Dowling asked. The Special Weapons Section man might have his vocabulary of euphemisms, but that didn't even sound like a proper English word.
Reluctantly, Litvinoff translated: "A blistering agent. Mucus membranes and skin. It does not have to be inhaled to be effective, thought it will produce more and more severe casualties if the lungs are involved. And it is a persistent agent. In the absence of strong direct sunlight or rain, it can remain in place and active for months. An excellent way to deny access to an area to the enemy."
"And to us," Dowling said.
Captain Litvinoff looked wounded. "By no means, sir. Troops with proper protective gear and an awareness the agent is in the area can function quite well."
"All right," Dowling said, though it was anything but. "What other little toys have you got?"
"Walk with me, sir, if you'd be so kind," Litvinoff said, and led him away from the officers and men in his entourage. When the young captain was sure they were out of earshot, he went on, "We also have what we are terming nerve agents. They are a step up in lethality from other agents we have been utilizing."
Dowling needed a second or two to figure out what lethality meant. When he did, he wished he hadn't. "Nerve agents?" he echoed queasily.
"That's right." Litvinoff nodded. "Again, these are effective both by inhalation and through cutaneous contact. They prevent nerve impulses from initiating muscular activity." That didn't sound like anything much. But his next sentence told what it meant: "Lethality occurs through cardiopulmonary failure. Onset is quite rapid, and the amount of agent required to induce it is astonishingly small."
"How nice," Dowling said. Captain Litvinoff beamed. Dowling muttered, "I wonder why we bother with bullets any more."
"So do I, sir. So do I." Litvinoff was dead serious-under the circumstances, the exact right phrase. But then, as grudging as a spinster talking about the facts of life, he admitted, "These nerve agents do have an antidote. But it must be administered by injection, and if it is administered in error, it is in itself toxic."