"Barrels!" That shout filled him with fear, because even with an automatic rifle he couldn't do anything about a barrel. He had to depend on others to take care of that part of the job-and if they didn't, he was dead even though he hadn't made any mistakes.

But they did. That antibarrel cannon knocked out two more U.S. machines in quick succession. The rest pulled back instead of charging into Covington.

"You can't answer," Sergeant Blackledge jeered. "You ain't got the balls to answer, you stinking Yankee cocksuckers." Talking through the mask, he sounded as if his voice came from the far side of the moon. That made him seem more scornful, not less.

No more barrels drew within range of the gun. U.S. infantry didn't swarm forward, either. Machine gunners and riflemen-and the artillery-made the Confederates keep their heads down. Some of the machine guns were captured C.S. weapons. Jorge knew the difference when they fired. His own side's guns spat far more rounds per minute than the ones the USA made.

Like Blackledge, he thought the U.S. lieutenant was trying to bluff the defenders of Covington out of a position from which they couldn't be forced. The truth turned out to be less simple. With all those shells landing close by, he didn't want to stick up his head and look around. But before long he had to-he could hear something going on to the south.

Because of what the rain was doing to the lenses on his gas mask, he couldn't see very far. But things weren't going well outside of town, though his ears told him more about that than his eyes could. Barrels were moving forward there-forward from the U.S. point of view, that is. They had plenty of artillery and small-arms support, too.

What kind of line did the CSA have south of Covington? Jorge didn't know. Up till now, he hadn't worried about it. He realized that maybe he should have. Heavy fire came from a little east of due south. After a while, it came from due south. After another little while, it came from west of due south.

You didn't have to be a professor with frizzy, uncombed hair and thick glasses to figure out what that meant. The damnyankees had tried to force a breakthrough there, and it looked as if they'd done it. The next interesting question was what they would do with it. They didn't keep anybody waiting long for an answer. Shells and machine-gun bullets came into Covington from the south as well as from the east and north. There was also firing from southwest of town, which wasn't good. If the defenders held their ground much longer, they'd be hanging on to a surrounded town. Those stories didn't have happy endings.

Other soldiers saw the same thing. They must have-otherwise, why would they start slipping out of Covington to the west? And why would Sergeant Blackledge watch them slip away without ordering them to stop or, just as likely, shooting them in the back?

"We gonna get orders to pull out, Sarge?" Gabriel Medwick asked.

"Beats the shit out of me," Blackledge answered. "If we don't, though, we'll spend the rest of the war in a POW camp…if the Yankees bother taking prisoners. If they don't, we'll be lucky if they waste the time to bury us."

Jorge didn't worry much about what happened to his body once he was done using it. But he wasn't-nowhere close. And dying to keep a third-rate town out of U.S. hands for a few extra minutes struck him as a waste of his precious and irreplaceable life. "When you gonna go, Sarge?" he called.

"Pretty damn quick," Blackledge said. "This place ain't worth throwin' myself down the crapper for. Unless somebody orders me to stay, I'm gone." And if somebody did order him, he might suddenly become hard of listening. It wouldn't surprise Jorge at all.

Before long, a worried-sounding lieutenant said, "We'd better pull back. If we don't, they're liable to cut us off."

"Would you believe it?" Sergeant Blackledge said. "Boy, if the officers can see it, you know it must be obvious."

Despite the noncom's sarcasm, Jorge felt better about pulling back with the lieutenant's permission. U.S. forces didn't make it easy. As soon as they realized the Confederates were withdrawing from Covington, men in green-gray pushed into the town from the northeast. Two mortar bombs burst closer to Jorge than he cared to think about. Fragments hissed and snarled past him. He felt a ghostly tug at his trouser leg, and looked down to discover a new tear. But he wasn't bleeding.

Things got more dangerous, not less, when he left Covington behind. The Yankees who'd broken through to the south lashed the fields with gunfire. Jorge was glad to scramble into a truck and get out of there much faster than he could have hoofed it.

Gabe Medwick sat across from him. "We got to hold 'em somewheres, or else we ain't gonna keep Atlanta," he said. He might not be bright, but he had no trouble seeing that. Who would?

"How can we hold, they keep pounding on us like this?" Jorge asked.

"Beats me." His buddy shrugged. "But if we don't, we won't just lose Atlanta. We'll lose the damn war."

You also didn't need to be bright to see that. Neither Jorge nor any of the other wet, weary soldiers in the truck tried to argue with him. They'd got out of Covington alive. Right now, that seemed more than enough.

F irst Sergeant Chester Martin looked at his company's new transport with a raised eyebrow. Command cars, halftracks, guerrilla-style pickup trucks with a machine gun mounted in the bed…anything that could move pretty fast and shoot up whatever got in the way. They were going to head east from Monroe, Georgia, till they ran into something tough enough to stop them…if they did. The Great War hadn't been like this at all. In those days, both sides measured advances in yards, not miles.

Lieutenant Boris Lavochkin, Martin's platoon commander, didn't remember the Great War or give a damn about it. Chester was supposed to ride herd on him, as he had with other young lieutenants. It wasn't easy with Lavochkin, who had a mind and a cold, hard will of his own.

Chester suspected Lavochkin wouldn't stay a second lieutenant long. He had higher rank written all over him-if he didn't stop a Confederate bullet. But one of the things that marked him for higher rank was a propensity for going where enemy bullets were thickest. Chester would have minded less had he not needed to go along.

"My platoon-listen up!" Lavochkin said. And it was his platoon, which surprised Chester Martin more than a little. "We're going to go out there, and we're going to smash up every goddamn thing we bump into. We're going to show these sorry clowns that their government and their troops aren't worth the paper they're printed on. And we're going to show them what war is like. If they wanted one so bad, let's see how much they want it when it's in their own backyard."

A savage baying rose from the men. Lavochkin was an unusual leader. He didn't make his soldiers love him. He made them hate the other side instead. And he left them no doubt that he felt the same way-or that he'd make them sorry if they were soft or hung back.

"Nobody's going to mind if you bring back goodies, either," he finished. "Lavochkin's Looters, that's us! They'll be howling from New Orleans to Richmond by the time we get through with 'em!"

That got another fierce cheer from the men. They liked the idea of making the CSA pay for the war. They liked the idea of lining their own pockets while they did it, too. Chester caught Captain Rhodes' eye. They shared bemused grins. Captain Rhodes was a pretty damn good company CO, but he didn't know what to make of the tiger now under his command, either.

The soldiers piled into their motley assortment of transport. Martin would have liked to get into a command car with Lieutenant Lavochkin, but Lavochkin didn't want him that close at hand. He climbed into a halftrack instead. Yes, it was the lieutenant's show, all right.