Dover wanted to tell him where to go and how to get there, too. He feared he’d be wasting his breath. Instead, he glowered at the convicts. “You are going to work like mad sons of bitches, or else.”

“Or else what?” one of them said scornfully.

“Or else I will personally shoot your worthless ass off, and I’ll laugh while I do it, too,” Dover replied. “You reckon I’m funnin’ with you, you go ahead and try me.” He waited. The convicts worked. He’d expected nothing else.

Sergeant Michael Pound had been in the U.S. Army a long time. He’d spent a lot of that time getting barrels to do what he needed them to do. He wasn’t just one of the better gunners who wore green-gray coveralls, though he was that. He was also a damn good jackleg mechanic. A lot of barrel men were. The more repairs you could make yourself, the less time you had to spend in the motor pool. The less time you were out of action, the more trouble you could give the Confederates.

“Distributor cap, I bet,” he said when the mechanical monster wouldn’t start up one rainy morning east of Columbus, Ohio. “Damn thing gets wet inside too easy. It’s a design flaw-it really is.”

“Can you fix it?” asked Second Lieutenant Don Griffiths, the barrel commander. He was perhaps half Pound’s age: a puppy, like most second lieutenants. Unlike a lot of shavetails, he had a fair notion of what he was doing. He also didn’t seem to think asking questions threatened his manhood.

“Yes, sir.” Along with a.45, Pound carried a formidable set of tools on his belt and in his pockets. He had the engine louvers off in nothing flat, and got the distributor cap off the engine almost as fast. One glance inside made him nod. “Condensation, sure as hell.” The loader, Cecil Bergman, held a shelter half over his hands while he worked. The rain would only make things worse.