The skies over North Carolina had been lousy with damnyankee fighter-bombers coming down from the north. Now that he’d crossed into South Carolina, the skies were lousy with damnyankee fighter-bombers coming up from the south. He and the handful of loyalists who clung to him through thick and thin moved by night and lay up by day, like any hunted animals. Only chunks of the Confederate States still answered to the Confederate government: pieces of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina; the part of Cuba that wasn’t in revolt; most of Florida; most of Sonora and Chihuahua (which, cut off by the goddamn treasonous Republic of Texas, might as well have been on the far side of the moon); and a core of Mississippi, Louisiana, and most of Arkansas. If the war would go on, if the war could go on, it would have to go on there. One thing wrong: Jake hadn’t the faintest idea how to reach his alleged redoubt. “What are we going to do?” he demanded of Clarence Potter. “Jesus H. Christ, what can we do?
