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He had a point. Even so, Cinci
"Well, maybe," the white driver said. "They give you a truckload, though, I figure it'll go off like a bomb if it goes."
"Mmm…maybe." Cinci
"You wanted cheerful, you shoulda stayed home," Williamson said.
Cinci
"Could happen," the other driver said. "You believe even half of what Stars and Stripes says, he won't be able to stay in Richmond much longer. Where's he go
With another grunt, Cinci
Hal Williamson laughed. "Yeah, well, there is that. Those guys lie like they're selling old jalopies."
"They got a tougher sell than that," Cinci
"Soon as the Confederates jumped into Ohio, I was sold," Williamson said. "Bastards tried to knock us flat and steal the war before we could get back on our feet again. Damn near did it, too-damn near."
He was right about that. "Same here," Cinci
"Still happens, though. You know that as well as I do. We've lost more drivers than I like to think about," Williamson said.
"Oh, yeah. I won't try to tell you anything different. All I said was, it ain't as likely, and it ain't," Cinci
The next morning, he picked up a load of ca
About every third Georgia town had Negro guerrillas patrolling the streets along with U.S. soldiers. Whenever Cinci
"I'm from Kentucky," he would answer as he rolled past. Let them figure that out. Yes, he'd grown up in the CSA, but he'd spent most of the second half of his life under the Stars and Stripes. His children were Yankees-no doubt about it. They even sounded as if they came from the Midwest…except when they got upset or angry. Then an accent more like his own would come out. But he was more betwixt and between than any one thing. He probably would be for the rest of his life.
U.S. authorities here took no chances. Bodies hung in almost every town square. That was supposed to make the living think twice about giving the USA any trouble. Seeing how much trouble the living gave the USA, Cinci
Would the United States need to kill every white male in the Confederate States above the age of twelve? If they did need to, would they have the will to do it? Cinci
"Damn ofays have it coming, though," Cinci
Reluctantly, he shook his head. You couldn't play God like that, no matter how much you wanted to. Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party really and truly believed blacks had it coming, too. Nothing Cinci
"We got to stop killing each other. We got to," Cinci
The roads here didn't seem to be mined, the way so many had been in Te
Every so often, snipers would take pot shots at the trucks from the woods. When they did, U.S. armored cars and halftracks lashed the pines with bullets. That took care of that…till the halftracks and armored cars drove on. Then, more often than not, the unharmed bushwhackers would climb out of their holes and start banging away at U.S. trucks again.
Cinci
He wondered how many movies he'd seen where the bad guy snarled, You'll never take me alive, flatfoot! He didn't think he was the bad guy in this particular melodrama, but the Confederate skulkers wouldn't feel the same way about him.
Everything went fine till the convoy got to Swainsboro, Georgia, not far from where the trucks would unload. The woods around Swainsboro were particularly thick. The town itself had a turpentine plant, a couple of planing mills, and a furniture factory to deal with the timber. In the cleared areas, farmers raised chickens and turkeys, hogs and goats. All in all, it was a typical enough backwoods Georgia town-or so Cinci
The poor driver never knew what hit him. His truck went up in a fireball that would have been even bigger had he carried anything inflammable. Chunks of metal and asphalt rained down around Cinci
No sooner had he stopped-just past the last buildings on the outskirts of town-than he grabbed for the submachine gun. He'd been through bombings before. Usually, the bomb was intended to stall the convoy so bushwhackers could hit it from the sides. His head swiveled. He didn't hear any gunfire, and wondered why not.
As the trucks ahead of him moved forward, he put his back in gear. An armored car went off the road to one side, a halftrack to the other. The light ca
He ground his teeth when he had to leave the paving and go off into the mud to the side. The truck's all-wheel drive kept him from bogging down, but getting stuck was the least of his worries. If those bastards had planted more explosives next to the road…He'd seen that before, too.
He'd just got back up onto the road-and breathed a sigh of relief because he'd made it-when an antibarrel rocket trailing fire streaked out of the woods and slammed into the armored car's side. Those rockets were made to pierce much thicker armor than that. The armored car burst into flames.