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He had to make himself listen. He knew he was hearing all kinds of stuff that would help keep him alive. He was a pro; he understood that. Even so, all he wanted to do was get in there and find out what the bird could do.
After what seemed forever and was only a week, he got his chance in a two-seat trainer. U.S. armies had driven the Confederates out of Petersburg. Birmingham and Huntsville were under artillery assault. Moss wondered if there'd be any enemy airplanes left for him to face when he finally went on duty in the new turbo-people were calling them Screaming Eagles, and the brass didn't seem to mind too much.
The noise inside the cockpit was different. He felt it all through his body instead of just hearing it. He gave the turbo some throttle. It raced down the runway-it needed half again as much tarmac as a prop job. As he came up to takeoff speed, the instructor said, "Ease the stick back. Not too much, now. You do everything by little bits with this baby."
"Right," Moss said, and then he was airborne. He gu
The instructor chuckled. How many other pilots had made that same sound in his earphones? "It's something, isn't it?" he said.
"Wow," Moss answered, which wasn't a hell of a lot more articulate. After a moment, he tried again: "It's like angels are pushing."
"It is, isn't it?" Now the instructor sounded thoughtful; he hadn't heard that before, anyway. He paused for a moment, then said, "Remember, they can turn into devils in nothing flat if you screw up-or even if you don't. Sometimes only God knows why the engines flame out or throw a rotor or just up and quit. And if you don't want to be asking Him face-to-face, you've got to get out of the bird in a hurry."
"I understand," Moss said. The single-seat Screaming Eagle had one of the nicest cockpit canopies he'd ever seen, a sleekly streamlined armor-glass bubble. The trainer's canopy was longer and more bulbous, to accommodate the longer cockpit with two men. Could you yank it back quick enough to bail out? He hoped so.
At the instructor's command, he swung the turbo into a turn. You couldn't come close to turning as tight as you could in a prop job. But you wouldn't want to dogfight in a Screaming Eagle anyway, not when you could outdive, outclimb, and just plain outrun anything else in the air.
Landing with a nosewheel as the first flight ended felt strange, but he did it. He couldn't stop smiling when he got out of the fighter. If this wasn't love, what was it?
IX
G eorgia. Now Alabama. Cinci
Enemy wireless programs still denied the obvious. They promised vengeance on the United States and swore C.S. victory lay right around the corner. "Those bastards are so full of bullshit, no fuckin' wonder their eyes are brown," Hal Williamson said. He paused to drag on a cigarette. The smoke, like the battery-powered wireless set, was loot from a captured Confederate supply dump. The enemy had destroyed what he could, but he'd had to retreat too fast to get rid of everything.
"We will take our revenge on the damnyankees!" the a
Cinci
"I hear you," Williamson said, and turned the power knob till it clicked. The ranting Confederate broadcaster-he must have studied at the Jake Featherston school of drama-fell silent. Williamson made as if to throw a rock at the set. "Goddamn lying cocksucker."
"Yeah," Cinci
Hal's thoughts ran along a different train track: "Besides, where'll the dickheads get their rockets once we're done with Huntsville?"
"Yeah!" This time, Cinci
And, even before Huntsville got overrun, it was catching holy hell. Battery upon battery of 105s pounded away at the town. Their muzzle flashes brightened the horizon from the north all the way around to the southeast. The deeper crump! of bursting bombs said U.S. airplanes came over Huntsville, too. How anybody could go on working while high explosives were knocking his city flat was beyond Cinci
Before the drivers settled down for the night, they cut cards to see who would stand sentry when. Cinci
And they might. He knew that too well, which was why he carried his submachine gun with the safety off. C.S. regulars were thin on the ground. Raiders, damn them, popped out of nowhere. Some were bypassed soldiers, others civilians with a chip on their shoulder. If they could throw a few grenades or stitch a burst of automatic-weapons fire through a truck park, the damage they did more than paid for itself even if they got scragged.
A lot of the time, they didn't. They disappeared into the darkness and were never seen again. "Bastards," Cinci
He prowled around the parked trucks, doing his best to move quietly. Not far away, he heard a sound like crazy screeching. He froze for a second before realizing it was a raccoon. Those unearthly noises could get you going.
His wristwatch had numbers and hands that glowed in the dark. When his stretch on patrol ended, he shook his replacement awake and curled up on the seat of his truck. Whatever happened from then till sunup happened without him.
Somebody had liberated a ham. Toasted over a fire, a thick slab of it was delicious, and beat the hell out of the ca
Hal Williamson put things in perspective: "Shit, guys, it's better than no coffee at all." Nobody found any easy way to argue with that.
The drivers headed for the closest dump to load up with whatever the troops might need today (or whatever the quartermaster had, which wasn't always the same thing). Before they got there, a bird colonel in a command car waved them down. "You men have empty trucks, right?"
"Yeah? So?" the lead driver asked. Being technically a civilian, he could get away with things that would have put a soldier in the stockade. Cinci