His adjutant stuck his head into the map room. “I’ve got some new aerial recon photos, sir,” Major Angelo Toricelli said. Toricelli was young and handsome and spry. Dowling was in his sixties, built like a breakfront, and wore a large, unstylish gray mustache. Even when he was young, he hadn’t been spry. He’d played in the line at West Point just before the turn of the century. No, he hadn’t been spry, but he’d been tough.

Several chins wobbled as he nodded to Toricelli. “Let’s see ’em,” he said. Both sides here were short on airplanes, too. Both sides here were short on everything under the sun, as a matter of fact.

“These are the deep-penetration photos, sir,” Toricelli said as he spread out the prints on top of the map. “They go all the way down to Snyder, and to that…thing outside it.”

Snyder lay southeast of Lubbock. It was a bigger town than Littlefield, but not a whole lot bigger. Normally, Dowling wouldn’t have worried about it, not where he was now. It was too small, and too far away.

Snyder was too small, yes. The…thing was another story altogether. It was called Camp Determination-so Intelligence said, anyhow. And it was not small at all. “How many niggers have they got crammed in there?” Dowling asked.

“Many, many thousands. That’s the best Intelligence is willing to do, sir,” Toricelli said. Dowling thought he put it an interesting way, but didn’t push him. The younger officer went on, “There’s a lot of incoming train traffic, too.”

“If there is, then this place must get fuller all the time, right?” Dowling said. Toricelli shook his head. Dowling raised an eyebrow. “Not right?”

“No, sir.” His adjutant pointed to another photo. “Looks like the overflow goes here.”

Dowling studied the picture. Trucks-they looked like ordinary C.S. Army trucks-stood next to a long, wide trench. The scale they provided gave him some notion of just how long and wide the trench was. It seemed to be full of bodies. Dowling couldn’t gauge its depth, but would have bet it wasn’t shallow.