2
Atlanta – June 1864
The night grew hot and muggy. Dark storm clouds filled the sky.
A lone man walked beside a long narrow stretch of railway tracks. A thunder like rumble far off, in the distance, made the darkened figure stop and look anxiously towards the ever-encroaching Federal lines. He peered wearily into the darkness; something made him uneasy, was there someone else out there? A cold sweat broke out down his spine. He was barely twenty years old, but after three years of war, he looked twice his age. His dirty and bearded face was in need of a good long bath. Shaking his head at his foolishness, the man decided that it was only the sound of an approaching early summer storm, nothing else. With his pistol clasped tightly in his hand, he edged forward along the railroad track. Seeing an abandoned train station begin to emerge out of the night, the man smiled to himself - they were here. Turning about he opened the closed shutter on his lantern and rocked it back and forth a couple of times, before closing the shutter, plunging himself back into darkness.
Further, down the track towards the Confederate lines, a signal flashed back.
Letting out a deep sigh, the bearded youth stepped the tracks. The man, a Confederate soldier who had once been a railroad worker before the war, gripped his pistol tight in his hand.
The feeling was back. Something was not right.
An eerie silence suddenly gripped the countryside. The loud croaking from dozens of frogs in the nearby swamp all at once stopped, plunging the night into unbearable silence.
A terrible thought suddenly gripped the soldier’s mind…he was being hunted.
The sound of a train’s engine moving ever so slowly down the tracks towards him broke the silence, the noise startling. His heart hammered away in his chest. Taking a deep breath to calm his frayed nerves, the man tried to swallow but found that his mouth had turned cottony dry. He wanted to run, to flee, but he had to stay and guide the train, and its massive 32-pounder cannon encased in steel like an ironclad on land past the train station and into a firing position another half-mile down the tracks.
A splinter of wood cracked in the dark.
Spinning about on his heels, the man aimed his pistol into the darkness and fired. The flash of the flame escaping from his pistol momentarily blinded him.
In a blur, the doomed man was pulled straight back off his feet. A hand placed over his mouth as a blade dug into his side. The man’s feet buckled under him. Swiftly, the blade flew from his side and then plunged into the hapless soldier’s heart.
Major Alexander Scott knelt there for a moment, holding onto the body of the slain man. He felt no remorse for his actions. The Confederates had been shelling the Union lines for the past several nights, causing fearful casualties among the men jammed into the open trenches. It had taken Scott three days of moving around the Confederate lines at night to discover where they were moving their powerful cannon to each night.
His tall athletic fame was hidden under a mix of Confederate and civilian attire. He was under no illusions; if he were caught, he would be shot out of hand as a spy. With a quick glance behind, Scott decided to drag the lifeless body behind the abandoned train station and then leave the body there. Dashing back to the tracks, Scott checked that the charges he had placed under the tracks were still ready. Looking down the tracks, Scott could just make out the mighty steel behemoth slowly making its way towards him. Judging the speed of the train combined with the distance still left to go, Scott decided to cut off several inches from the fuse.
Ever so slowly, the train grew larger.
Striking a match underneath his hat to hide the flame, Scott lit the fuse and then crawled back from the train tracks. Taking cover in the nearby wood line, Scott dropped to one knee and watched as the iron encased gun carriage rumbled down the tracks. Scott crossed his fingers and hoped that he had timed it right.
The ground began to tremble as the massive beast approached.
Unexpectedly from up on the tracks another voice called out.
Scott cursed. Another sentry must have been walking in front of the train. The man was no doubt looking for his missing comrade. He was bound to find the slow-burning fuse. Stepping out from the woods, Scott took a breath to calm his racing heart, drew his knife, and then walked straight towards the soldier.
The Confederate soldier stopped on the tracks. Something wasn’t right. His friend never wandered off when he had a job to do. Pulling back the hammer on his rifle, he saw a man coming down the tracks towards him, a lantern in his hands.
Relief replaced fear. It could only be his friend. As quiet as he could, he called out.
“Where you been Billy?” asked the soldier. “The sergeant will have your hide if you were smoking at night again.”
Scott didn’t respond. He waited until he was less than a few yards from the soldier, before in one swift move he dropped onto one knee throwing his knife straight into the shocked man’s chest.
With a wet-sounding thud, the blade struck home.
Instantly, Scott was up on his feet. He ran over to the dying soldier still standing there staring wide eyed, struggling to breathe. Reaching over, Scott pulled the man off the tracks, and then as quick as he could, he finished the man off. There was no time life for subtlety. Leaving the body just off the tracks, Scott ran back to his hiding spot, praying that there were no more sentries walking down the line ahead of the train.
He barely made it back under cover when the outline of the iron-encased cannon placed in on a flat car directly in front of the train’s engine rumbled into view. In all the confusion, Scott realized that he had lost count in his head, but was certain that the fuse could only be seconds away from detonating.
The train slowly moved down the track.
Scott bit his lip. He began to fear that he had not timed it right, that perhaps the train was going to make it by unscathed. Doubt gnawed at him, when suddenly in a bright flash night turned to day, and hell broke loose. The charges laid under the track exploded, a wall of flame and destruction tore out from the ground beneath the train and soared into the night sky. The gun carriage had passed over the charge, but the train’s engine had not. With an ear-splitting boom, the engine pitched up off the tracks and then spilled over onto its side, pulling the heavy iron gun carriage off the tracks with it. Scott saw men blasted apart by the explosion or crushed to death under tons of steel as the train and the gun carriage rolled over onto their sides.
There was no time to admire his handiwork. Soldiers would be coming to see what had just happened. Scott had to leave. Walking back deeper into the woods, retracing his path, he came to a clearing, where his dark chestnut horse waited patiently for him under a tall fir tree. Quickly changing back into this blue Union uniform, Scott looked around to make sure he was not being followed, and then like a ghost, he disappeared into the night.
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