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Brigadier General Abner Dowling stood by the side of Highway 62, watching U.S. soldiers fall back from the south and into Columbus. Dowling didn't think he had ever seen beaten troops before. In the Great War, he'd watched George Custer throw divisions into the meat grinder, sending them forward to take positions that couldn't possibly be taken. Where divisions went forward, regiments would come back. Before barrels changed the way the war was fought, machine guns and artillery made headlong attacks impossibly, insanely, expensive-which hadn't stopped Custer from making them, or even slowed him down.

Those who lived through his folly had been defeated, yes. By the nature of things, what else could have happened to them? But they hadn't been beaten, not the way these soldiers were. They'd been ready to go back into the fight as soon as the trains disgorged some more newly minted, shiny troops to go in with them.

Looking at the men trudging up the asphalt towards and then past him, Dowling knew they weren't going to be ready for battle again any time soon. They weren't ru

Beside Dowling stood Captain Max Litvinoff, a short, ski

"If we are to hold this city, sir, we need a wider application of the special weapons." Litvinoff's voice was high and thin, as if it hadn't quite finished changing. He wouldn't call poison gas poison gas, from which Dowling concluded his conscience bothered him. If he used an i

"We've already used enough gas to kill everything between the Ohio and here, haven't we, Captain?" Dowling growled.

Behind the lenses of his spectacles, Litvinoff's eyes registered hurt. "Obviously not, sir, or the opposing forces would not have succeeded in advancing this far," he replied.

"Right," Dowling said tightly. "Have we really accomplished anything by using gas? Except to make sure that Featherston's bastards are using it, too, I mean?"

"Sir, don't you think it likely that we would be in an even worse situation if we were not using gas?" Litvinoff replied. "The Confederates would be under any circumstances, would you not agree?"

Dowling muttered under his breath. However much he didn't want to, he did agree with that. Jake Featherston's main goal in life was to kill as many U.S. soldiers as he could, and he wasn't fussy about how he did it. As for Litvinoff's other comment, though… Dowling asked, "Captain, how in damnation could we be in a worse situation than we are now? If you can tell me that one, you take the prize."

You Take the Prize was the name of a popular quiz show on the wireless. Dowling listened to it every once in a while. Part of the attraction, for him, was finding out just how ignorant the American people really were. By the way Max Litvinoff blinked, he'd not only never listened to the show, he'd never heard of it.

"What do you recommend, sir?" he asked.

"How about going back in time about five years and building three times as many barrels as we really did?" Dowling said. Captain Litvinoff only shrugged. However good that sounded, they couldn't do it. What could they do? Dowling wished he knew.

Soldiers weren't the only people retreating into Columbus. Civilian refugees kept right on clogging the roads. Naturally, nobody in his right mind wanted to hang around where bullets and shells were flying. And a good many people didn't want to live where the Stars and Bars flew. Three generations of enmity between USA and CSA had drilled that into citizens of the United States. What nobody had told them before the war was that ru

Had they sat tight, the fighting would have passed them by. On the road, they kept blundering into it again and again. And Confederate pilots had quickly discovered that the only thing that blocked a highway better than a swarm of refugees was a shot-up, bombed-out swarm of refugees. U.S. propaganda claimed they attacked refugee columns for the fun of it. Maybe they had fun doing it, but it was definitely business, too.

Dowling wished he hadn't thought of air attacks just then. Sirens began yowling, which meant the Y-range gear had picked up Confederate airplanes heading for Columbus. Those rising and falling electrified wails were enough to galvanize soldiers where nothing else had been able to. They scrambled off the road, looking for any cover they could find.

Civilians, by contrast, stood around staring stupidly. To them, the air-raid sirens were just one more part of the catastrophe that had overwhelmed their lives. Maybe this bunch had never been attacked from the air before. If not, they were about to lose their collective cherry.

Captain Litvinoff nudged Dowling. "Excuse me, sir," he said politely, "but shouldn't we think about finding shelter for ourselves?"

Dowling could already hear airplane engines. Overeager antiaircraft gu

Litvinoff flattened out beside him. "What will the United States do if we are killed on account of this incaution?" he asked.

By the way he said it, the USA would have a tough time going on if the two of them got hit. Also by the way he said it, he was the one the country would particularly miss. Dowling didn't blame him for that. Any officer who didn't think he was indispensable was too modest for his own good.

On the other hand, reality needed to puncture egotism every once in a while. "What will the United States do?" Dowling echoed. "Promote a colonel and a first lieutenant and get on with the goddamn war."

Captain Litvinoff sent him a wounded look. That was the least of his worries. As he answered, his voice had risen to a shout to make itself heard above the rapidly rising roar of the Confederate bombers. Mules, Dowling thought as the airplanes screamed down. No other machines made that horrible screech or had those graceful gull wings.

They seemed to be diving straight down. Dowling knew they weren't, knew they couldn't be, but that was how it seemed just the same. "Crash, you bastards!" he shouted. "Fly it right into the ground!"

The Mules didn't, of course, but that bellowed defiance made him feel better. He pulled his.45 out of its holster and banged away at the Confederate dive bombers. That also did no good at all. He consoled himself by thinking that it might. He wasn't the only one shooting at the airplanes. Several other soldiers were doing the same. Every once in a while, he supposed they might bring one down by dumb luck. Most of the time, they didn't.

Then the bombs fell from the Mules' bellies. The airplanes leveled off and zoomed away. Blast picked Dowling up and slammed him down on the dirt as if it were a professional wrestler with the strength of a demon. "Oof!" he said. He tasted blood. It ran down his face, too. When he raised a hand, he discovered it came from a bloody nose. It could have been worse.

A few feet away, Max Litvinoff was trying to get his feet under him. By his dazed expression, he might have taken a right to the kisser. Missing glasses accounted for some of that. Without them, he looked even more confused than he was. He also had a bloody nose, and a cut on one ear that dripped more blood down onto the shoulder of his uniform tunic.