to direct this battle personally, giving his orders over the car radio.

A great pall of smoke hung over the battlefield. Then the attack came, wave after wave of blue-clad infantry, pouring down from the north. Tanks and planes supported them, and atomic artillery shells burst in the Southern trenches. The grey lines began to crumble.

"Colonel, throw in the 112th and the armored reserve, and let's try to get an orderly withdrawal to the Alabama line," Beauregard ordered into his microphone. He turned to his driver. "Sergeant, I think you're right. We'd better get out of here."

The staff car swung around and headed back toward Winchester over the bumpy highway. As it left the rise, Beauregard swore fervently and reached for the microphone. From the west came a great cloud of dust and a mass of rumbling tanks. The Federals had broken through the left flank at Lynchburg.

Jet planes streaked overhead from the north, flying low. The flash of exploding bombs and rockets was visible in Winchester, ahead of them.

Speaking swiftly into the microphone, Beauregard glanced out of the car's back window.

"Sergeant!" he yelled. "Strafers!"

The driver twisted the wheel so quickly Beauregard was thrown against the door. The speeding car leaped a ditch and bounced into the fields.

Out the window, Beauregard saw the jet swooping down at them like a hawk. It was a speck in the sky, and almost instantly it was on them in a terrifying rush.

He saw the flare of the rockets leaving the plane's wings, he felt the shock of a thunderous explosion, and the blackness engulfed him.

Beauregard opened his eyes painfully. His head ached, and his left arm hurt horribly.

He was lying on a rumpled bed in his torn uniform. Piquette and a wizened, very black Negro man were standing beside the bed, looking down at him anxiously. He recognized that he was in the house in Winchester, in the room where he had spent last night ... or was it last night?

"Quette!" he croaked, trying to sit up. He couldn't make it, and he gasped at the pain in his arm. "I thought I told you to leave Winchester."

"I didn't want to leave you, Gard," she answered softly. "And it's lucky I didn't. Some men on an ammunition 

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