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"Right, that's what I thought."
He paused, weighing options. Silence lengthened as everyone looked at him.
And it's all up to me, he thought.
When he'd been a Marine in the Gulf it had been just him. Well, a Force Recon corporal had a fire team, but his biggest worry had been what was in the wadi and where to put the SAW. Semper Fi, slip in, find the position, report, maybe do some demolition, GOPLAT, VBBS, playing a deadly game with the ragheads, sometimes down to knives in the dark. Sure, they'd cut your balls off with a blunt knife if they caught you, but that went with the territory, and anyway they were such total half-hards and dipshits it was usually just dangerous enough to let you show your sisu. And let them go to Allah and the seventy-two virgin white raisins.
Fight for the Corps, yeah, fight for your buddies. For the goddamn country, too, show them nobody fucks with the US of A without ending up sorry and sore, all right and proper. But nobody was going to invade Michigan, burn down the Havel home-place and kill my family if I screwed up. Shit, I'm scared. I don't want to fight. I'm thirty-eight and a father, not nineteen and a killing-mean dick-on-legs the way I was then. I want to stay home and watch my kids play and enjoy a steak di
He smiled, hard and confident. "Arminger's an armchair general," he said. "He likes to draw pretty lines on maps and think he's Bobbie Lee. Actually it's my guess he's more on the order of John Pope. You know, the guy who said 'my headquarters are in the saddle'?"
"Headquarters in his hindquarters," Ken said, and his laugh boomed out. He'd gotten them all interested in the Civil War over the past decade; it was one of his hobbies, and damned useful.
Grant, though. Grant was always my favorite general. Havel turned his head. "OK, Will. That force they've got up around McMi
He looked at Signe, who kept track of the intel. She answered without hesitation. "A hundred A-listers ready for duty in the steadings there."
That was the point of having an A-list; they were fully trained and always ready to muster. The militia took longer, and they couldn't be kept away from the fields forever, and the spring planting was underway: Christ Jesus, thank You this isn't harvest time!
"Collect up fifty lances from the A-list, and say two hundred infantry from the strategic hamlets, and screen the area between the Coast Range and the Amity Hills with em, send the rest east to me. Make it obvious you're there, and if you can make them think there are more of you than there really are, all the better."
Damn, that's not much of a force for the job, Havel thought, as the weathered brown face of the ex-cowboy nodded, hard and grim. He fought back the temptation to send more. I've got four drains in this bathtub and only one plug. Gotta remember to keep focused and put the troops at the point of maximum effort.
"You don't think they'll make a serious attack thataway, son?" Hutton asked.
"No. Not if they're trying to do everything else at once. Like I said, armchair general." His grin grew wolfish. "Now, if I had his ten thousand men, you'd bet I'd throw every one of them in, and all on the same front. Finish up one of us, then concentrate on the others. We couldn't move around as freely to match him, bridges or no, we're all defending our homes, but he's trying to do it all at the same time. The result is he's not overwhelmingly strong in any one place."
Ken Larsson nodded. "If you try to be strong everywhere, you are weak everywhere," he quoted. "Frederick the Great."
"I'll snort and paw the ground some up there, like a mean bull out to hook you." Hutton nodded, satisfied. "I'll keep 'em occupied. Maybe raid a bit, get 'em hot and bothered."
Havel nodded back. And I can rely on you to do just that, thank God, and not get a hair up your ass and decide you're going to win the whole damned war, he thought. Which is why your mad Swedish bull of a son-in-law is going to be kept right under my eye. He's a wonder when you can point him right at something that needs smashing, but a bit short on the self-restraint thing.
"Just so you don't try to fight any big engagements," he said. He looked at his mental map again. "Damn, but I wish we could have put a garrison in on those bridges at Salem. It's going to be close even if we leave tonight."
"We didn't have enough troops," Signe said. "Not in the spring planting season."
Havel nodded. Well, shit. Four drains, one plug. That was Arminger's advantage; his troops were full-timers, paid men or landholders with bond-tenants and peons working their fiefs and fiefs-in-sergeantry. The Association's leadership wasn't getting as much out of it as he would have in the Protectors position, but the advantage hadn't gone away, either.
"Right, everything's ready to roll at Rickreall?" he asked his father-in-law.
Ken nodded. "I'll leave right away, and get the stuff started by midnight. We got that whole section of the old Southern Pacific line reconditioned last year when we cleared the bridge piers at Salem. I checked it over a little after Christmas and nothing's washed out since then. Shouldn't be any problem to get to Salem by dawn if we push the horses, and once I get those beauties on the railroad bridge, I defy anything built since the Change to sail past."
"Whoa, Ken. You personally?"
"I bossed the shops that made the damn things, didn't I? For exactly this contingency. Damned if I'm not going to boss them when they're going into action."
Havel pursed his lips. Yeah, he did. And the crews did the work with him. They're not A-listers. They'll do better with him there to steady them. He's not much with a sword and he's too old for a forced march, hut he's got guts to spare and he's smart.
"OK, but Pam, you take ten lances and go with him. Your job is to see he's not distracted by nasty men killing him while he's doing his job. They may try to slip some commando types past us to the bridges."
"Will do, bossman," she said, gri
"Ken, tell your guy Sarducci to get the field artillery here ready to go-"
"It's ready to go on one hour's notice anyway. All we need to do is get the horses and crews together. He's the most punctual Italian I ever met. Glad we got him to move up from Corvallis; he was wasted as a university professor."
"Good; tell him to fall the engines in outside the gate. When you get to Rickreall, commandeer anything you need in the way of horses to pull the trains with the heavy stuff for the bridge, and get the militia mobilizing and following you as fast as they can, Rickreall and Dallas both."
"What about me?" Eric Larsson said plaintively.
"Oh, you and Lua
Eric gri
"We'll take the two Field Force companies of infantry from here at Lars-dalen," Havel went on.
That was everyone fit to march and fight; pretty much everyone who wasn't lactating, pregnant, too old, too young, or not big enough to carry a crossbow or strong enough to work the lever that spa
"Plus all the A-Listers here, and all the ones we can sweep up on the way. We'll muster by Walker Creek. Lieutenant Smythe!"
The scout had been waiting by the head of his horse; he looked tired, but not knocked out the way the Ranger- oh, hell, if they want to be the Dunedain, they're the Dunedain, and I'll buy 'em their rubber ears -was. He would be just that tired before long, though.