Tale of The Thunderbolt

by E. E. Knight

  Post shook his head. "That's a maybe. I'd rather deal in certainties, and those bodies floating in the diesel fuel were real, not supposition." He turned away.

  "Will, if you're going to hate me, hate me for a good reason. Ask me sometime how I became a captain in the Coastal Marines."

  Post would not, or could not, see that Valentine would have preferred to rescue the Sharkfin's survivors. But the risk to the mission, to losing all their lives and even more time in the quest to get the quickwood into the hands of Southern Command required him to act as he did. Valentine had learned long ago not to second-guess himself where matters of life and death were concerned, or he would never be able to make a decision again. He had made right decisions and wrong decisions, and sometimes had to bury the bodies of those who died for no other reason than his bad judgment. Like Gabriella Cho, the night he left her alone and wounded in the confusion of a battle, or his old company's Master Sergeant Gator, lying in a hilltop grave in eastern Oklahoma.

  Struggling with his own memories as much as he had with the Kurians, David Valentine went to bed.

  Carrasca, Valentine, and the Chief decided the ship should be refitted before exploring a potentially hostile coastline, and two months in drydock at Jayport would allow the Chief to consummate a long-desired overhaul. There was the added incentive of replacing the losses from the encounter with the Sharkfin, so in the end Valentine agreed with yet another delay in his return to El Norte.

  They returned to the harbor to a mixture of cheers and curiosity over their topiary. There were the inevitable problems with safely storing their precious cargo and finding living space for the crew during the refit, hampered by the occasional tropical storms and hurricanes brushing the island.

  Valentine, Post, Narcisse, and Ahn-Kha were left with the leisure to recruit Jamaicans to join his marines, reduced to a bare handful in the fight against the Reapers. Valentine was shocked to see a soccer field filled with Jamaicans who wished to follow the Crying Man to sea, off their sunny island and into peril. In the end, he selected fifty for the short run to the coast; the Thunderbolt would be cramped, but it gave him a core of willing men to accompany him on the long trip back to the Ozarks.

  There was also time with Carrasca as the Chief worked on the bow. Long rides into the countryside, talks with me locals, trips to sporting events and lunches made of market-square purchases filled the mornings. In the afternoon when the rains came, they talked or laughed or made love as the mood struck, and waited for the cool of the evening to walk back to the ship. Sometimes they spent the night at the commodore's house, joining him for mah-jongg or cribbage depending on the availability of players. The weeks passed like a dream. Valentine had never known so many idle days in all his years serving Southern Command. There was time to know another person, not as a comrade, superior, or underling, but as a friend and lover.

  He learned her moods, and in turn she learned his. They pretended that the respite would never end by not discussing it, talking instead of the perfect hillock for a beach house or whether Valentine would make a better fisherman or planter.

  Valentine was more than half-willing to take these conversations at face value.

  Reality intruded when the Chief refloated the ship, and they had to make ready for the last voyage. Then the idyll was over.

  "You're a wanderer, too," she said as they lay together.

  "What's that?" Sex always made him wool-brained.

  "You wander. Is it so you don't have to put down roots?"

  He rubbed his eyes. "I'm not blown around. It's more like a current."

  "Even coconuts wash up, by and by. What keeps you at sea?"

  "Same as you. Duty." He would have added something about his dreams of a better future, dreams made almost realistic-sounding thanks to the quickwood, but his lover sighed.

  Valentine turned on his elbow. The whites of her eyes caught the night sky coming through the window. They looked wet.

  "Are you saying I should wash up here?" He half hoped she'd say yes. He'd get the quickwood back to the Ozarks and return.

  She didn't say anything for a moment, but her mouth twitched.

  "What then?" he insisted.

  "Nothing. Nothing important. Important as our duty."

  Chapter Ten

  The Texas Coast, October: South of Corpus Christi, the southernmost Kurian city in what had been the United States, the coastline is a collection of fishing villages hiding among ancient concrete resorts, suffering under the depredations of both the Kurian Alcaldes of Mexico and the Texas variety farther north and inland. The long stretches of the thin, sandy island running the coast of Texas provide a protected inland waterway that sees little commerce under Kur other than smuggling. Stopping this was one of the gunboat's principal duties in her cruises under Captain Saunders, when her crew spent years losing fugitives in the thornbushes and grassy hummocks of the half-mile-wide, seemingly endless coastal sandbar where once vacationing college students lost their underwear along with their virginity.

  This part of Texas is typical of most of the state not under the direct eye of the Kurians: independent and isolated, asking nothing from the outside world and trusting no one.

  The Thunderbolt followed her new prow into South Bay on a rainy dawn. A few open shrimp boats bobbed in the bay, and beyond them, some beach fisherman could be seen, their oversize rods hanging out over the lapping surf of the bay.

  Valentine had never seen this part of Texas in his time on the Thunderbolt, though Torres had visited this coast on occasion in his days with the Corpus Christi Kur. Torres was the sole surviving crewman who knew Brownsville, so he stood on the bridge with Carrasca and Valentine.

  Valentine fingered the leaves on a quickwood sapling; Carrasca had taken a fancy to one and installed it on the bridge. A few others had been planted near Kingsport, bordering the graves of the Jamaicans and Louisiana Thunderbolt crew who had died defending the ship from the Reapers. After explaining to the commodore the importance of the quickwood saplings, Valentine had placed further seeds in the dirt covering the bodies as they lay in their graves. He hoped one day trees would sprout and be used as weapons against the slayers of the sailors.

  "Why no Kurians around here, Torres?" Valentine asked.

  "Can't say. Seems that they never managed to get installed here. Not really free territory, so to speak, but there's a resistance here. I've heard of a Kurian or two coming to the area, but anyone going to work for them winds up with their throats slit pretty soon. Their Reapers can't travel much either, the resistance assembles and smokes them out of anywhere they hold up. Every now and then a bunch sweep up from Mexico, or down from San Antonio or Corpus Christi, but when they're gone, the resistance pops up again."

  "What did the resistance think of the Coastal Patrol?"

  "We never did much inshore except try to chase down smugglers so the resistance didn't object to us, I guess. But that's just what we heard when we came into the bay. There were only one or two safe places to visit, right up against the shore where the Thunderbolt's guns could cover. The old hands told us to sleep on board if we knew what was good for us."

  Valentine looked at the overgrown ruins. Palms stood up through roofs, bougainvillea sprouted everywhere, covering the ruins along the bay further.

  "Looks like the work of hurricanes," Carrasca said, examining the coast through a pair of binoculars. While on Jamaica she'd dyed and recut one of Saunders's uniform coats, adding shoulder padding so she could fill it. The middle still hung a little loose thanks to the dead man's potbelly. "What now, Captain?"

  "According to plan, I'm supposed to be contacted here, and failing that I need to go inland to Harland. Southern Command has a liaison officer here. He was supposed to stay around the bay, but I'm so overdue, he might have gone back to his base. That's where I need to get to if I'm not met here."

  "Anything special we're supposed to do?"

  "Act as if this were an ordinary patrol," Valentine said.

/>   "Very well," Carrasca said, turning to the old hand. "Torres, what was the procedure? Do they have pilots?"

  "No."

  "So how would Saunders handle it?"

  "Cruise the bay. Anything that looked oceangoing, we were to sink, unless we could board it and were satisfied it belonged to the Corpus Christi Kurians. Their signet was a crane over a sunrise, I think Asian-looking, only with Mexican colors. Stood out like a sore thumb in Texas. But if there was any doubt, we'd seize it and bring it back to New Orleans, and let the Kurians haggle it out."

  "Then that's what we'll do. Helm, let's take a look at that inlet to starboard. After the check?"

  "If the captain felt like it, he'd let us dock. There's a concrete wharf by the old Brownsville channel, and some of the harbor joints traded with us. Good place to pick up crabs, lice, and the drip from the whores. We were always under orders to go in groups of four at least, armed with rifles and sidearms. Don't try the chow-they give coasties rat meat."

  "Shall we dine on board tonight, Captain Valentine?"

  Valentine found himself smiling. "I've eaten rat any number of times. I'm sure Narcisse could spice it up into a state dinner, if she had to, Captain."

  'Torres, what would the Captain do if he didn't want to give the men liberty in the port?"

  "We'd raid a shrimp boat for food and leave, sir."

  "It would be best if the captain decides to grant liberty. It can buy us some time."

  They wasted the morning cruising the bay, but saw nothing larger than open fishing boats. Valentine was relieved. He didn't want to arrive at a strange port and start burning local shipping; especially when the success of his mission could depend on the aid, or at least noninterference, of the natives. With that out of the way, the Thunderbolt tied up at the pier near the stagnant channel. A few blocks of cracked concrete buildings leered out at them, garish-and misspelled-advertisements painted over doorways in a mixture of Spanish and English.

  An afternoon rain soaked the men tying her up, and the gangway guard took shelter under the stairs to the top deck.

  Carrasca, her new lieutenant, Valentine, and Post decided to dine one last time in the wardroom. With their combined coaxing, they got the Chief to join them. The Chief sat uncomfortably at the cramped table, awkward in his civilian clothes.

  "They're the only ones that weren't oil stained," he explained.

  They heard Narcisse's voice shout orders from the galley. With the crew now mostly Jamaican, the dishes reflected that island's preference for spiced chicken and pork dishes, leavened with rice, vegetables, and fresh fruits.

  "Captain," Valentine began, as the eating slowed, "you, your officers, and the men have more than carried out your part of the bargain. I'm happy to leave the Thunderbolt in the Commodore's Flotilla. I know Mr. Post and the Chief will serve you ably."

  Post elbowed the Chief. The Chief had met a woman in Jamaica, a beauty who could have appeared in one of the old tourism posters in her yellow two-piece bikini, and had decided to stay with the ship.

  "Happily ever afters," Post said, lifting a glass of lemonade to the Chief.

  Carrasca shifted in her seat and rearranged the rice on her plate.

  Valentine's stomach did flip-flops as he looked at her. "Just see me and the cargo into the hands of my contacts here. You'll take my promise to do anything I can to help you in our common Cause. I'll never forget the Thunderbolt and her captain."

  The object of his thoughts and memories smiled. "You'll always have a berth on any of our ships and a bed in Jay-port."

  Carrasca stared levelly into his eyes as she spoke, but he saw her jaw tighten after the last sentence. Valentine felt his throat go thick.

  "Ah-thank you for the offer."

  The table sensed a tension and covered it with technical talk about improvements in the ship since the overhaul. It lasted until the Chief and the two lieutenants excused themselves. Post closed the cabin door behind him.

  Carrasca reached out and took Valentine's hand.

  "Sorry," she said. "I've been preoccupied since we refloated. We've had no time alone."

  "We're not the first couple sacrificed to the Cause."

  "I'll miss the sound of your heartbeat." Her skin lost some of its usual glow.

  "I wish we could say a proper good-bye."

  "I know, and I agree. Discipline. It'll be lonely without you."

  "You have your grandfather. The Caribbean, this ship."

  "And you have your duty. We're both married, in a way, to both of them."

  He lowered his voice. "It was a wonderful time, Malia."

  "You'll always be a part of me, David."

  Discipline or no, he kissed her, long and hard. It was agonizing to let her go, knowing that his lips might never meet hers again.

  "Forgive me," he said, stepping away.

  * * *

  A full day passed, and no one from the shore tried to make contact with the Thunderbolt. A few idlers gathered to watch the sailors on the Thunderbolt go about their daily duties, but no one requested permission to come on board, and the men who went in groups off the ship claimed no one spoke to them but bar touts.

  "I'll have to go inland after all," Valentine decided at the end of the second day. Carrasca looked at him from beneath her black brows, pulling a wet bang out of her eye to do so. They both were plastered with sweat. Even with the windows wide open, the bridge was stifling in the windless harbor. The afternoon rain had succeeded only in dampening the heat.

  "Have the Chief send some people in to look for a critical part," Valentine said. "Claim we have a breakdown. Maybe that won't incite too much comment. I don't like the idea of her sitting here, tied up to a dock, with the cargo on board. The people on shore have got to be wondering why the ship looks like a topiary."

  "You're not leaving tonight."

  "I have to. I've got a better chance moving at night."

  "Alone? Can you pass as a native? From what Torres says, they don't like strangers poking around here. You don't want to be strung up in a tree by your own allies."

  "They're only allies in the 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' sense. Southern Command never had any luck getting Texas guerrillas to work with us, except right on the borderlands, where we could arm them-and shelter them if they had to run. Not that a Texan ever called it running."

  She nodded. "Any orders while you're gone?"

  "I hope to be back, or at least send word, in a couple days. If you don't hear from me in five, go back to Jamaica, plant the trees, and wait for the next Southern Command agent to head south."

  "Somehow I don't think there are too many David Valentines to be found. Some woman needs to make more."

  Valentine squeezed her arm as he passed out of the bridge and went to his cabin. He smelled the musty odor of wet

  Grog and found Ahn-Kha waiting, cleaning out his pointed ears with a delicate wooden implement that was part spoon and part chopstick.

  "I needed a wash," Ahn-Kha said. "I've put out your things."

  Valentine looked at his bunk. His dyed-to-black fatigue pants lay spread on the bed with matching moccasin boots (he'd made them last month of Jamaican calfskin) and topped by his combat vest and pistol. A canvas knapsack was already loaded with food and water flasks. A felt-brimmed hat with a beadwork band stood atop the pile.

  "I don't wear hats," Valentine said. "Unless it's winter, and even then I like the stocking kind, or a coonskin."

  "Start, my David. You'll blend in better. You want your drum-gun?"

  "No, I'm going to travel light and fast."

  "Then I cannot accompany you?"

  "Sorry, old horse. I will take one of those pike-points though. Just in case."

  Valentine went down the gangway with a group of sailors going to one of the wharf-side cantinas. He wore a rain poncho to conceal his lack of uniform, a borrowed gold earring pinching his ear and the hat rolled up in a pocket.

  The men, under Carrasca's lieutenant, pushed two tabl
es together and ordered the inevitable chicken, rice, bean, and tortilla meal. The cantina provided an outhouse for the comfort of its braver-or desperate-guests, and after a light meal and a lot of boiled water, Valentine excused himself. Feeling a bit like Superman from the old comic books, he exited the outhouse wearing a light leather vest, the knapsack, his weapons belt, and the hat. The poncho was in his knapsack and the sailor's earring in his pocket.

  He hiked down what used to be a main street, walking just off the nearly worn away center line of the road and trying to look like he knew where he was going. Once clear of the harborside, he turned west out of town, coming to a line of shacks bordering the marshy flats, picturing a map of the Brownsville area in his head.

  There were many palms above, some delicate limbed trees, and groves of thick kunai grasses and palmettos. His nose picked up the faint salt smell of the ocean, but the moist, just-overturned-rock smell of the marsh was far stronger. In the interest of speed, he stayed to the road, hoping that he would sense trouble before it found him. He fell into a steady jog. When his body warmed to the pace he fell into his old wolf lope, with hardly a twinge from his leg wound.

  He stopped when he hit the old interstate, crawled into a thick stand of grass and napped after emptying one of his flasks and eating some dried fruit and fried bread. He took in the landscape as he rested. The sea had its beauty, but it was refreshing to be on land again with its confused breezes and variety of bird and animal life.

  Valentine woke himself when the moon rose. He knew little about this area beyond the large scale map, and even Torres had been no help. According to his orders, the center of this part of Texas's guerrilla activity was supposedly near the old airport at Harlingen and somewhere called Rio Hondo.

  The guerrillas saved him the trouble of finding them by finding him. As he trotted up the overgrown interstate running northwest, two men on horseback pulled up on a little rise above him. They had rifles pointed at the stars above out and on their hips, and reins in the other hand, ready to shoot him down or ride him down as circumstances warranted.