lucky shot at a time.
Pick out the officers first. He knew the British soldiers would be doing exactly the same – targeting the sergeants, corporal, captains, lieutenants – in an attempt to leave their opponents leaderless.
He chanced his head above the sandbags again and quickly aimed his revolver, firing all six rounds at the bull-shouldered figure of a bearded sergeant gesturing frantically at his men. The ground spat six clouds of dust and the sergeant ducked lower in the dirt, most probably thanking his lucky stars for Devereau’s poor aim.
He stepped back down again into the trench and reloaded his revolver, this time with a steadier hand.
‘Sir!’
Freeman’s voice.
‘What is it, Sergeant?’
‘They’re groupin’ up for a push! Thirty yards left of the stack, sir!’
There was an oven smokestack midway along the landing area, the last remnant of a brick factory that had been here half a century ago, little more than a ring of bricks shoulder-high. Devereau peeked over the top. Freeman was quite right. He could see the tops of white pith helmets coalescing behind the stack, waiting for the command.
And the command would be answered by an eager roar from the men getting to their feet, and the percussive rattle of covering fire from further along the shingle.
With one hasty assessment he could see this first go at storming the borderline was probably going to be successful. Some of them were likely to make it into the trench, and then it was going to be down to hand-to-hand fighting.
‘Fix bayonets!’ he shouted. The Confederate soldier standing next to him nodded and passed the order on as he fumbled his bayonet out of its scabbard.
‘Aim your fire at the officers as they come up!’ he added. ‘Pass it on!’
He tucked his revolver back in its holster and pulled out his ceremonial sabre.
This is how this war was fought in the beginning, he told himself. Muskets and sabres and nerves of steel.
‘Ready for it, sir?’ asked the Confederate.
Devereau stroked his chin and nodded. ‘How about you?’
The man slotted the bayonet home beneath the muzzle-lock of his carbine. ‘Reckon I see ’em like you do, now we on the same side now, sir.’
He heard a chorus of voices from downhill: the British troops hyping up their adrenaline. The chanting of three huzzahs, each louder than the last, the third ending with a roar that peeled along the entire length of the landing area.
Here they come.
‘Fire at will!’ screamed Devereau.
Southern and Northern soldiers stepped up together as one, their carbines thudding down on the sandbags – a ragged line of several hundred wavering muzzles tipped with glinting bayonets. A wall of muzzle flash and smoke erupted as they lay down a withering barrage of fire at the British as they sprinted up the slope.
CHAPTER 79
2001, en route to New Chelmsford
‘What in the name of the Lord are you doing, sir?’ cried Lincoln.
‘I’m trying to flippin’ steer the bleedin’ thing!’
Liam had two control sticks to work with. After zigzagging back and forth across the narrow main street, spilling giant bales of feed from the trailer behind them, Liam had the gist of how the control sticks worked – nearly. The left stick controlled the large tractor wheel on the left, and the right stick, the right wheel. To turn right, for example, he realized he had to pull back on the right and forward on the left. To go straight forward – both sticks forward.
By the time he’d finally figured this out, the small town of East Farnham was behind them, littered with the chaos, damage and debris of Liam’s learning curve. The tractor rolled down the dirt road out of the town, flanked on either side by orchards of plum trees.
‘Jay-zus, we did it!’ gasped Liam.
Lincoln and Sal clung on uncomfortably to the bucket seat inside the driver’s cabin. Bob was standing outside on the now-empty flatbed. Liam thrashed the tractor as fast as it would go – little more than the speed of an asthmatic jogger – for a half a mile before finally pulling over to one side of the dirt track.
Five minutes later they were on the move again, a great deal faster now that they’d detached the trailer.
‘So, which way?’ Liam shouted above the din of the rattling engine.
Bob pointed off the dirt track they were running along, across a paddock full of what looked like eugenically modified shire horses. ‘That way.’
‘Hold on!’ said Liam, pulling the left stick back a little. The tractor’s gigantic fat wheels rolled effortlessly