"You gonna make us throw her back, then?" Kimball demanded.

"No, sir," the exec answered. "Hell no, sir." He didn't ask how Kimball planned to extricate the Bonefish from Chesapeake Bay now that, belatedly, the Yankees knew she was there. He might have done that before, but not now. He figured Kimball would find a way.

I figure I will, too, Kimball thought. Getting it in is the tough part. Once you manage that, pulling out afterwards is easy.

Major Irving Morrell wondered why he in particular had been saddled with two officers from America's allies. Maybe someone on the General Staff back in Philadelphia remembered his service there and reckoned he could show visiting firemen how the war was fought on this side of the Atlantic. And maybe, too, someone on the General Staff-Captain Abell came to mind, among other candidates-remembered his work there and hoped he would wreck his career once and for all by botching this assignment.

If Abell or someone like him had had that in mind, Morrell thought he would be disappointed. Though the German officer belonged to the Imperial General Staff, both he and his Austrian counterpart gave every sign of being good combat soldiers. They seemed very much at home squatting by a campfire, sketching lines in the dirt with a stick to improvise a map.

"I'm glad both of you understand my German," Morrell said in that language. "We all study it at West Point, of course, but I've used it more for reading than speaking since."

"It is not so bad, not so bad at all," said Major Eduard Dietl, the Austrian of the duo: a dark man, thin to scrawniness, with an impressive beak of a nose. "Your teacher was a Bavarian, I would say."

"Yes, that's so," Morrell agreed. "Captain Steinhart was born in Munich."

"Here in the United States, I feel surrounded by Bavarians," said the German officer, Captain Heinz Guderian. He was shorter and squatter than Dietl, with a round, clever face. He went on, "The U.S. uniform is almost the exact color of those the Bavarians wear." His own tunic and trousers were standard German Imperial Army field-gray, a close match for Dietl's pike-gray Austrian uniform. Neither differed much in cut from that which Morrell wore; the German uniform had served as the model for those of the other two leading Alliance powers.

Dietl sipped coffee from a tin cup. "This is such a-spacious land," he said, waving his hand. "Oh, I know I think any land spacious after Heinz and I crossed the Atlantic by submersible, but the train ride across the USA and up into Canada to reach the front here…amazing."

"He is right," Guderian agreed. "West of Russia, Europe has no such vast, uncrowded sweeps of territory."

"And these mountains." Dietl waved again, now at the Canadian Rockies. "The Carpathians are as nothing beside them." He spoke with the air of a man accustomed to comparing peaks one to another: unsurprising, since he wore the Edelweiss badge of a mountain soldier himself. Sighing, he went on, "Almost I wish the Italians had thrown away their neutrality. They've always wanted to; everyone knows it. But they never have dared. No nerve, damn them. Fighting in the Alps would be like this, I think."

"Fighting is not a sport. Fighting is for a purpose," Guderian said seriously. "The idea would be to break out of the mountains and into Venetia and Lombardy below-if there were a war, of course."

Morrell thought that would be more than Austria-Hungary could manage, still fighting the Russians and the Serbs as she was. But he held his peace. Dietl struck him as a man like himself, happiest in the field. Maybe Guderian had worn red stripes on his trousers a little too long.

And then the German officer said, "Besides, you can't conduct a proper pursuit in the mountains. Get around the enemy and smash him up-that's what the whole business is about." Morrell revised his earlier assessment.

Dietl said, "The problem of pursuit is the basic problem of this entire war. The foe retreats through territory not yet devastated, and toward his own railheads, while you advance over country that has been fought in, and away from your own sources of supply. No wonder we measure most advances in meters, not kilometers."

"Barrels help this problem by making breakthroughs possible once more," Guderian said.

"Barrels help, but they're not enough, not by themselves," Morrell said. "They're too slow-how can you have a breakthrough at a slow walk? How can you outrun the retreating enemy when you're not running? Once the barrels force a hole in the enemy's defenses, we need something faster to go through the hole and create the confusion that really kills."

Guderian smiled. "Some people would say cavalry is the answer."

"Some people will say the earth is flat, too," Morrell said. He made a quick sketch of a sailing ship falling off the edge. The German and Austrian observers laughed. He went on, "With machine guns and rifles, cavalry's no answer at all. We need better machines, faster machines."

"I can see why they called you to Philadelphia, Major," Guderian said. "You have the mind of a General Staff officer. You impose yourself on the conditions around you; you do not let them impose themselves on you."

"Is that what I do?" Morrell said, faintly bemused. He was a man without strong philosophical bent; his chief concern was to hit the enemy as hard as he could and as often as he could, until he didn't need to hit him any more.

Someone on the Canuck side of the line had the same idea. Canadian artillery, which had been quiet for the previous several days, suddenly sprang to life. Morrell threw himself flat on the ground. So did Dietl. So did Guderian; he might have spent most of his time in amongst the maps, but he knew how to handle himself in the open air, too.

Along with the bombardment came a great crackle of rifle fire off to Morrell's right. Trained on the British model, the Canucks made formidable riflemen. They were quick and accurate, and every shot of theirs counted. And, by the sound of what was going on over there, they had found the weak spot in Morrell's line. He'd posted one company rather thinly over a long stretch of woods he'd reckoned almost impassable. The Canadians seemed intent on showing why almost was a word that didn't belong in war-planners' dictionaries.

Guderian and Dietl were both looking at him. All right, we have come into the field to observe the American Army and to observe this man: he could all but hear what they were thinking. He now finds himself in difficulty. How does he respond?

"Runners!" Morrell shouted, and the men came over to him: some running, some crawling along the ground, for shells were still dropping thick and fast. An American machine gun started banging away, there on the right, and he let out the briefest sigh of relief. That was where he'd posted Sergeant Finkel's squad, and the Canadians would have a devil of a time shifting him if he didn't feel like being shifted. And sure enough, shouts of dismay said the Canuck advance had suddenly run into a roadblock.

Morrell snapped orders: "Half of Captain Spadinger's company to pull out of line and contain the damage. The same for the machine-gun company from Captain Hall's company. The rest of the units not under immediate assault will counterattack, aiming to pinch off the neck of the Canadian advance. I will lead this counterattack personally." The runners hurried away. Morrell smiled gaily at the observers. "Will you join me, gentlemen?"

Neither of them hesitated. Running doubled-over, ignoring his bad leg, Morrell got to Hall's company bare moments after the runner he'd sent. The machine-gun men were already on their way off to the east, to shoot up any Canadians who burst out of those not quite impassable woods. Dietl and Guderian, both breathing hard, flopped into foxholes.

Captain Hall said, "I don't think we'll have any trouble holding them, sir. They can't come too far."