“That’s not what I said.” Brigadier General McCleave sounded prim.

“It’s what you meant, though,” Morrell said, and McCleave didn’t deny it. Morrell went on, “Do you want me to take over the barrels down there and see what I can shake loose?”

“MacArthur has not requested your presence,” McCleave said. “If, however, the War Department were to order you to the Virginia front…” He waited. Morrell nodded. The two men exchanged smiles that were downright conspiratorial. And so much for staying behind the lines, Morrell thought.

Lieutenant-Colonel Tom Colleton knew his regiment helped hold an important position. His soldiers defended Confederate positions east of Sandusky, Ohio, on the southern shore of Lake Erie. As long as the Confederate States held a corridor from the Ohio River to the lake, they cut the United States in half. The damnyankees couldn’t ship anything or anybody by rail or road from east to west or west to east within their own territory. They had to take the long way around, through occupied Canada-and Canada didn’t have nearly so many lines or roads as the USA did.

No matter how true that was, though, Tom Colleton wasn’t happy. He didn’t like standing on the defensive. He’d reveled in the push north from the border. That was what war was supposed to be about. He’d fought in Virginia the last time, and hated stalemates with the grim and bitter passion of a man who’d seen too many of them. Barrels meant soldiers didn’t have to huddle in trenches this time around. They didn’t have to, no-but too often they did anyway.

Fortunately, the Yankees were as preoccupied with Virginia these days as the Confederates had been with Ohio and Indiana at the start of the war. Even more fortunately, U.S. forces weren’t doing as well in Virginia as the Confederates had here farther west. In Sandusky, Tom couldn’t help hearing both C.S. and U.S. wireless reports. When both sides told the same story, it was probably true. When they diverged, he had to try to figure out who was lying and who wasn’t.

No matter what his sister had thought about Jake Featherston, Tom had no great love or admiration for him. His mouth tightened. Anne had died in the opening days of the war. If she hadn’t been down in Charleston when that damnyankee carrier raid hit the town… But she had, and nobody could do anything about it now.

His own wife and boys were safe in St. Matthews, not far from Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. The last of the Colletons, he thought. He’d never felt that way while Anne was alive, even though she’d been childless. She’d bossed the family ever since their parents died. Now everything rode on his shoulders.

He laughed as he looked east toward the damnyankees’ lines. The Colletons were a family with a fine future behind them. Before the Great War, Marshlands was one of the leading plantations in South Carolina, with hundreds of colored hands working in the cotton fields. The mansion went up in flames in the Negro uprising in 1915, and not even Anne could make a go of cotton after the war.

Up ahead, the Yankees and some of Tom’s men started banging away at one another. Telling which side was which by ear was easy. The U.S. soldiers used bolt-action Springfields, rifles much like the Tredegars C.S. troops had carried in the last war. In this fight, soldiers in butternut had either automatic rifles or submachine guns. The damnyankees were always going to outnumber them, so each Confederate soldier needed to have more firepower than his U.S. counterpart.

The only trouble was, rifles and submachine guns weren’t the sole weapons involved. U.S. and C.S. machine guns were as near identical as made no difference. So were the two sides’ artillery, barrels, and aircraft. Add all that in and what had been a good-sized edge for the Confederate foot soldier shrank considerably.

Sure as hell, machine guns from both sides joined the conversation within a couple of minutes. Mortar rounds didn’t make much noise leaving their tubes-soldiers on both sides called them stove pipes-but the harsh, flat crump! of the bursting bombs was unmistakable.

Colleton shouted for his wireless man. When the small soldier with the large pack on his back came up, Tom said, “What the hell’s going on there? This was a pretty quiet sector up until a few minutes ago. Get me one of the forward company command posts.”

“Yes, sir.” The wireless man did his job without fuss or feathers. “Here’s Captain Dinwiddie, sir-A Company, First Battalion.”

“Dinwiddie!” Tom called into the mouthpiece. “Who went and pulled on the damnyankees’ tails?”

“Other way round, sir,” the captain answered. “Yankee sniper potted Lieutenant Jenks. He’s not dead, but he’s hurt pretty bad. Some of our boys spotted the muzzle flash up in a tree. They started shooting at him, and some of those green-gray fuckers shot back, and now it’s hell’s half acre up here.”

“You want artillery? You want gas?” Tom asked. He hated gas, as every Great War veteran did, which didn’t mean he wouldn’t use it in a red-hot minute. God only knew the damnyankees weren’t shy about throwing it around.

“Not right now, sir,” Dinwiddie said. “They’re just shooting. There’s no real attack coming in. If we stir ’em up, though, Lord only knows what they might try.”

“All right.” Colleton wasn’t particularly sorry about the response. His job now was to keep the USA out of Sandusky, no matter what. If that meant not stirring up the enemy, he didn’t mind. He didn’t much feel like getting stirred up himself. It was a cold, miserable day, and he would sooner have stayed inside by a nice, hot fire.

The firefight lasted about half an hour. Well before then, Confederate medics with Red Cross armbands and Red Crosses on their helmets went up to the front to bring back the wounded. A couple of medics came back on stretchers themselves. Tom swore, but without particular fury. He’d never yet seen the Yankees make a habit of picking off medics, any more than the Confederates did. But neither machine-gun bursts nor mortar bombs were fussy about whom they maimed.

After the shooting eased, a U.S. captain came across the line under flag of truce. An officer at the front sent him back to Tom. The Yankee gave him a stiff little nod. “I’d like to ask you for a two-hour truce, Lieutenant-Colonel, so the corpsmen on both sides can bring in the dead and wounded.”

“Do you think they’ll need that long?” Tom asked.

“Been a lot of shooting going on up there,” the U.S. captain answered. He had a flat, harsh Midwestern accent, far removed from Colleton’s South Carolina drawl. They spoke the same language-they had no trouble understanding each other-but they plainly weren’t from the same country.

Tom considered, then nodded. “All right, Captain. Two hours, commencing at”-he looked at his watch-“at 0945. That gives you half an hour to get back to your own line and pass the word that we’ve agreed. Suit you all right?”

“Down to the ground. Two hours, starting at 0945. Thank you, Lieutenant-Colonel. You’re a gentleman.” The captain stuck out his hand. Tom hesitated, but shook it. The man was an enemy, but he was playing by the rules-was, in fact, making a point of playing by the rules.

As the U.S. officer left, Tom had his wireless man tell the forward positions that the truce was coming. He sent runners up to the front, too, to make sure no platoon with a busted wireless set failed to get the word. Once the truce started, his men would probably swap cigarettes with the damnyankees for some of the ration cans the U.S. Army issued. Tom didn’t intend to issue an order forbidding it: less than no point in issuing an order bound to be ignored. Like everybody on both sides of the front, he knew the USA made horseshit cigarettes but had rations better than their C.S. counterparts.

It won’t make a dime’s worth of difference who wins the war, he consoled himself. That same sort of illicit trading had gone on in the Great War and in the War of Secession, too. Then it was tobacco for coffee. That wasn’t a problem these days, not with the Caribbean a Confederate lake.