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 truck found your car. Your driver was killed and your arm blown half off. They brought you here."
"Dammit," he complained, "why didn't they take me to the base hospital?"
"Because the base hospital took a direct hit from a bomb."
That startled Beauregard into the realization that there was no sound of firing, no crash of bombs, outside. There were men's shouts and the normal sounds of a town occupied by the military. Had the Union forces been repulsed by some miracle?