The Grapple

The jubilation didn’t last. It never did. Infiltrators or holdouts started shooting at the trucks. A deuce-and-a-half lurched off the road with a driver wounded or dead. Another coughed to a stop when it took a bullet through the engine block. A couple had tires flattened and had to change them. An armored car stayed behind with them to obstruct the snipers and to shoot at them if they broke cover. Along with most of the other drivers, Cinci

Night was falling when they got to the supply dump. Soldiers holding dim red flashlights guided them to the unloading point. More men waited there with wheelbarrows and dollies. Off in the distance, artillery rumbled.

“Come on, youse guys! Move it!” a familiar voice shouted. Cinci

Telling him where to go and how to get there was bound to be more trouble than it was worth. Cinci

“Here you go, Jack.” Somebody handed him a sandwich through the open window.

“Why, thank you kindly,” Cinci

He wished for a bottle of beer to go with it. No sooner had he wished than another soldier came along and gave him a bottle of…Dr. Hopper. Soda pop wasn’t the same, but it wasn’t bad, either. It had to be plunder, same as the ham. The taste reminded him he was back in the CSA. Dr. Hopper didn’t come over the border-at least, he’d never seen it up in Des Moines. He hoped they dropped a bomb on the factory that made the stuff…maybe after he’d got hold of a couple of cases for himself for old time’s sake.

Swearing soldiers unloaded his truck. He thought the cussing in this war was even worse than it had been the last time around. People then sometimes seemed faintly embarrassed at what came out of their mouths. Nowadays, men didn’t even notice they were turning the air blue. They swore as automatically as they breathed-and profanity seemed as necessary as air.

“Hey, Sergeant!” somebody called. “You got beds for us?”

“What? You ain’t goin’ back right away?” Ca

A volley of curses-purposeful, not automatic-washed over him. Cinci

Sergeant Ca

Cinci

He came back to himself the next morning when somebody gave him a shake and said, “You fuckin’ die under there, Pop?”

“I was restin’,” Cinci

“Yeah, well, you’ll be arrested if you don’t get your ass in gear,” the other soldier said, and he went off to torment somebody else.

Breakfast was scrambled eggs and more slices of that terrific ham. Wherever it came from, Ca

“Yeah, well, what the hell?” Most of the time, Cinci

He wasn’t jumping up and down at the idea of going back up north to get more supplies. Oh, the Army needed them-no doubt about it. But ru

That hardly crossed his mind before Donovan said, “To think I volunteered for this shit.” Cinci

The convoy hadn’t gone far before it had to stop. The Confederates must have sent bombers over in the night, and a couple of them had scored direct hits on the highway. The bombs must have been big ones, too-the craters were thirty or forty feet wide and at least half that deep. Nobody was going anywhere on that road, not for a while, especially since similar craters pocked the fields to either side.

Army engineers with bulldozers were busy repairing the damage. Soldiers in green-gray went through the bushes to clear out snipers so the engineers could work without harassing fire. That made Cinci

More engineers were stretching lengths of steel matting-the kind used to make emergency airstrips-across the field to serve as a makeshift road while the real one was getting fixed. After about half an hour, the job was done well enough to suit them. They waved the lead truck forward.

Cinci

Everybody stepped on the gas once he got back onto the paved highway. Cinci

Nobody got hurt on the run north from Delphi, which made it a good one. Only three or four shots were fired at the column. They sounded like.22 rounds to Cinci

Halfway to Camp Determination. That was how Abner Dowling looked at it. He wished he’d come farther. He wished his men could have moved faster. But he’d been stalled in front of Lubbock too damn long. The Eleventh Army-such as it was-was moving again. How much anybody back East cared…might be a different story.

He hadn’t got the reinforcements he hoped for. Everything the U.S. Army could lay its hands on was going into the drive toward Chattanooga. Dowling didn’t much like that, but he understood it.