“Jesus!” George said.

One of the aimers, a guy named Jorgenson, stepped up to take over the twin 40mm. The loader took his place. And George stepped into the loader’s slot. Jorgenson screamed at a sailor running by to jerk shells. The man started to squawk, but then settled down and started doing it.

The British fighter got away anyhow.

George had practiced as loader, both here and on the Townsend. He knew what to do, and he did it. It kept him too busy to see what was going on, which might have been a blessing in disguise. After a while, Jorgenson said, “Hold up.” George did. That gave him his first chance in several minutes to raise his head.

No more airplanes. He looked around in dull wonder. Where did they go? Back toward Ireland, he supposed. He didn’t think they’d come off a British carrier. A couple of U.S. ships had fires, but they were all still moving. With luck, they’d get out of range before the next limey strike-if there was one-could come this far. With more luck, the speedboats had landed their weapons without getting spotted. To the brass in the Navy Department, that was the only thing that mattered.

In a way, getting out of Richmond was a relief for Jake Featherston. He felt stifled in the concrete bunker under the Gray House, and in the Confederate capital as a whole. The damnyankees were clobbering the city with everything they had, and they had more than Jake ever dreamt they would. He’d done his best to flatten Philadelphia, and his best was pretty good, but the United States were doing worse in and to Richmond.

In another way, though, leaving the bunker, leaving the capital, made him sweat bullets. As long as he stayed in the bunker, he was safe. All the reinforced concrete above his head laughed off even direct hits. It had taken several, without any damage to speak of. Once he got down to Georgia, he felt secure enough. But getting there…

The trouble was, you never could tell who was reading your signals, even the ones in the codes your cryptographers swore were unbreakable. Those codes might not be such an ultra enigma to the USA. Maybe traitors had delivered cipher machines to the enemy. Maybe the Yankees were just better codebreakers than anybody in the CSA figured.

And if they were, and if their fighters bounced Jake’s transport airplane or their bombers hit his train…Well, in that case Don Partridge became President, and the Confederate States went straight down the crapper.

But it hadn’t happened, not this time. He was down here talking things over with General Patton. And the Yankees were in Georgia. Not much of Georgia, but they were over the state line. Not Kentucky. Not Virginia. Not Tennessee. Georgia. They’d never got into Georgia in the last war. He hated their being here now.

“You want my head, sir? You can have it. I won’t say boo,” Patton told him, as he had up in Richmond. “I promised I’d hold Chattanooga, and I didn’t do it. It’s my fault, no one else’s. If you need a head to roll, here’s mine.”

Not without a certain reluctance, Featherston shook his own head. “Nah. Who would I get that was better? Besides, could they have run you out unless the paratroopers dropped on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge?”

“No way in hell-uh, Mr. President,” Patton said.

“Well, I didn’t reckon so myself,” Jake said. “All right-they fooled us once, damn them. Can they do it again?”

“Not that way, anyhow,” the general answered.

“I didn’t think so, either,” Jake said. If they can, we’re in even worse shape than I figured. “So your job now is to hold ’em where they’re at, not let ’em break loose into Georgia.”

“I understand the need, sir,” Patton said. “I know how important Atlanta’s industry and rail junctions are. I’ll do everything I know how to do with the men I’ve got. I wish I had more.”

“You’ve got everything we can give you. Tell you the truth, you’ve got more than I can afford to give you,” Featherston said. “Manpower…Well, we’re moving more women into factories and onto farms. That frees up some new soldiers, anyhow. And we’ve got some new weapons we’ll be trying out here.”

“New barrels?” Patton asked eagerly. “You have no idea how galling it is to see the Yankees outgunning and outarmoring us. Barrels are supposed to be our strength, not theirs.”

“The new ones are on the drawing boards,” Jake said. “They’ll go into production as soon as we iron out the kinks. It would’ve happened sooner, but U.S. bombers pounded the crap out of the factories in Birmingham, and that set us back.” If the United States weren’t able to base bombers in Kentucky and Tennessee, they would have had a much harder time bombing a town in Alabama. Featherston couldn’t growl too loud about that, not when Patton had offered his head and he’d declined to take it.

“Well, all right, Mr. President.” By the way Patton said it, it wasn’t. It didn’t come close. Gathering himself, the general asked, “What have you got for us, then?”

“New rockets. These babies can reach way the hell up into Tennessee from here, maybe even into Kentucky,” Jake said. “They aren’t real accurate yet, but they’ll let us shoot at things we haven’t been able to touch for a while. They’re better than bombers, that’s for sure-we don’t lose a whole crew of trained men whenever one fails.”

“I hope they help.” Patton sounded less delighted than Featherston hoped he would. Most generals-most officers, come to that-were stick-in-the-muds. Jake had seen as much during the Great War. After he took over, he’d tried to get rid of as much dead wood as he could. But he couldn’t retire or shoot the whole Confederate officer corps, no matter how tempting the idea was.

He could put Patton in his place, though. “What’s this I hear about you slapping an enlisted man around?”

“Yes, sir, I did that, and I’d damn well do it again.” Patton had the courage of his convictions, anyhow. “The yellow coward wouldn’t go forward after a direct order. He blathered about combat fatigue. What nonsense!” He spat with magnificent contempt. “I would have got him moving, too-hell with me if I wouldn’t-if not for some near-mutineers. I hope the Yankees killed the lot of them when they overran Chattanooga. Some good would come from the loss in that case.”

“General, I don’t like slackers. Nobody does. But I’ve seen shellshock. Some men do break,” Jake said. “When I took the oath in 1934, I promised that soldiers would get a square deal from their officers. Christ knows I didn’t last time around. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt-once. But if I hear about anything like this again, you’ll have dug yourself one goddamn deep hole. You got that?”

“You always make yourself very plain, Mr. President.” Patton plainly didn’t like it.

Too bad, Jake thought. Had they promoted him to lieutenant for scenting the Negro uprising of 1915, he probably never would have become President of the CSA. The boiling resentment he still felt at being passed over fueled his rise to power.

A young officer came up to the President and the general. Saluting nervously, the kid said, “Sir-uh, sirs-Y-ranging reports Yankee airplanes on the way. You might want to think about getting under cover, in case they decide to unload on us up here near the front.”

“Y-ranging,” Jake muttered. That was one more place where the USA had the jump on the CSA. If not for some quiet help from Britain, the Confederacy might still be without it. But he nodded to the kid and to Patton. “Come on, General. No phony heroics today. The country needs us, and we’d better stay alive.”

“What do you mean, ‘phony heroics’?” Patton asked as the junior officer led them to a well-reinforced bombproof. “Some men even of high rank are fond of fighting at the front. In my opinion, that is as it should be.”