He wirelessed the news to the other four barrels in his platoon. By what their commanders said, they felt the same way. "We'll take care of it," one of the sergeants promised. "Those butternut bastards can kiss their butts good-bye."

"Damn straight!" Pound said. He led a bunch of hard-charging pirates, men who thought the same way he did. "Let's go get 'em. Follow me."

He led the platoon west and a little south, to come in where the luckless Marquard had got in trouble. He hadn't got far before realizing the trouble might not be what he thought. There sat a dead U.S. barrel in a field-not just dead but decapitated, for the turret lay upside down, about ten feet from the chassis.

"Fuck," Sergeant Scullard said. "Where'd they get a gun that could do that?"

"Good question," Pound said, which didn't answer the gunner. He got on the platoon circuit again: "Be careful, guys. Use all the cover you can. I think Featherston's fuckers just came up with something new."

For most of a year, the latest U.S. barrels had dominated the battlefield. If they couldn't do that any more…then everything got harder. Michael Pound approved of easy, not that the enemy cared.

He flipped up the lid to the cupola and stood up in the turret. He needed to be able to see; the periscopes built into the cupola just didn't do the job. There wasn't a lot of small-arms fire. If the C.S. gunners who nailed that U.S. barrel opened up on him with an automatic rifle or a machine gun…that was better than having them shoot at his barrel with whatever monster gun they had.

One of the other barrels in his platoon was about a hundred yards to his left. He saw a blast of flame burst from a thick stand of bushes, heard a thunderous roar, and a moment later watched the other U.S. barrel brew up. The men inside couldn't have had a chance-and that gun, whatever it was, would be aiming at him next.

"Front!" he bawled as he tumbled back into the turret.

"Identified," Scullard answered. "I'm going to give it AP. I think a hull's hiding in there."

"I don't know. I didn't see one." But Pound added, "If you got a better look, go with what you think."

Mouradian had already slammed the round into the breech. The gunner fired the piece. The cannon's bellow was slightly muffled inside the turret. Smoke and fire spurted from the heart of the bushes. Michael Pound whooped and thumped Sergeant Scullard on the back. "Gimme another round!" Scullard told the loader. He fired again. More flames burst from the bushes. Shame Moses isn't here, Pound thought.

"Sir, I think that son of a bitch is history," Scullard said.

"I think you're right," Pound said. "And if you weren't so quick-and if you weren't so sure about what was hiding there-we would be instead." He spoke into the intercom: "Move forward-carefully. I want to see what the hell we killed."

"Yes, sir," the driver answered.

By the time Pound's barrel drew near, the bushes were burning briskly. Through them, he got a pretty good look at a low hull, a turret as smoothly curved as a turtle's carapace, and a gun that looked as if it came off a destroyer.

"Fuck," Scullard said again. "Gonna be a ton of work killing these babies."

"We can do it. You did it," Pound said.

"I know," the gunner said. "But they can kill us, too, easy as you please. I hope the Confederates don't have a lot of 'em."

"Me, too," Pound admitted. "We can't go marching around like no gun can touch us any more-that's for sure." Sometimes U.S. new-model barrels, confident in their armor, would almost dare C.S. machines to shoot at them. If you did that against one of these barrels, they'd bury your ashes in a tobacco pouch.

He got on the wireless to pass what he'd found to division HQ. "Roger that," came the reply. "We've had a couple of other reports about them."

The soldier on the other end of the connection sounded calm and relaxed. Why not? He was well behind the line. "Why the devil didn't you pass the word along?" Pound yelled. "You damn near got me killed!"

"We said the losses were due to enemy barrels," the wireless man answered, as if that were enough. He probably thought it was.

Pound took off the earphones. "We can beat the enemy," he said to nobody in particular, "but God help us against our own side."

"Headquarters being stupid again?" Scullard asked sympathetically.

"They'd have to wise up to get to stupid." Warming to his theme, Pound added, "They've got their headquarters in their hindquarters."

"And we're the ones who'll end up paying for it," the gunner predicted.

"Guy in one of our uniforms coming up," Mouradian said.

That sent Pound out of the cupola again, a captured Confederate submachine gun at the ready. Just because somebody wore a U.S. uniform, he wasn't necessarily a U.S. soldier. But he stopped by himself before Pound could tell him not to come any closer. "You nailed that fucker," he said. His harsh accent claimed he was from Kansas or Nebraska, but that didn't prove anything, either.

"Yeah," Pound answered. "And so?"

"More of 'em around-bound to be," said the U.S. soldier-Pound supposed he was a U.S. soldier, anyhow. "Can you clear 'em out?"

"Who knows?" Pound didn't just look at the monstrous machine his barrel had just wrecked. He looked back at the U.S. barrel the Confederates had killed. Those were five men of his, five friends of his, gone in the wink of an eye. He hadn't had even a moment to grieve. He still didn't, not really.

"Those other guys, they walked into a buzz saw," the infantryman in green-gray said. "Bam! Bam! Bam! They went out one after another. I don't think they ever knew what got 'em."

Pound hoped the men in the barrel from his platoon didn't know what got 'em. Was that a 4Ѕ-inch gun on the C.S. machine? A fiveincher? Whatever it was, it was devastating.

A Confederate machine gun started snarling. The foot soldier threw himself flat. Pound ducked down into the turret. He got on the platoon circuit with the survivors: "We're moving up. For God's sake, watch it. We aren't the biggest cats in the jungle any more."

How many of those big barrels did Featherston's men have? How fast were they? How maneuverable? How well did they do on bad ground? A barrel's engine could be as important a weapon as its gun. But the gun in that bastard…

"Kinda revs up the pucker factor, doesn't it, sir?" Scullard said, which came unpleasantly close to echoing Pound's thoughts.

"Maybe a little," he answered, his voice as dry as he could make it. He didn't want to admit he was scared, but he couldn't very well deny it, either. He got on the wireless: "Any chance of sending up some more armor to G-5? We don't know what's ahead of us, and it feels pretty naked around here."

"Well, we'll see what we can do," said the wireless operator on the other end of the line. He was sitting in a chair under canvas somewhere. For all Michael Pound knew, he was eating bonbons and patting a cute nurse on the ass to hear her giggle. He wasn't up here at the sharp end of the wedge, wondering if he'd cook like a pot roast in the next few seconds.

Two rounds of HE silenced that chattering machine gun. The country was pine woods and little clearings. Pound stayed away from the clearings when he could and dashed across when he couldn't. Somewhere ahead lay the Georgia Southern line, somewhere ahead and to the right the unreduced town of Fayetteville. If everything worked, the enemy would have to abandon it along with Atlanta. Pound had been confident. He wished he still were.

He also wished the enemy were still counterattacking. That would have made things easier. Then those big honking barrels would have had to show themselves. As things were, they lurked in ambush. The only way to find one was…the hard way.

Having foot soldiers along came in handy. Pound waited in the woods while the men in green-gray trotted across a field. A big round of HE slammed into the poor bloody infantry. Some U.S. soldiers went flying, while others flattened out and dug in.