by EE Knight
“Still,” Valentine said. “Might be worth a closer look. I wonder if the joyhouse lets in Kentucky men, or if they’re river rat only.”
Valentine noticed a ring of expectant faces. “What, you don’t know?” Lambert asked.
“Why are you all looking at me? Am I supposed to be an expert on brothels?”
“You keep finding your way into them,” Duvalier said. “I thought you might have patronized it. Just once I’d like to hear that you met this contact or that one at a dentist’s, or a smokehouse. No, you’re always emerging from a brothel, beat and bloody.”
“Still, it’s a possible excuse to bring a small team in. Even Bears carrying wrenches from toolboxes could probably take that place.”
“There’s a flaw in your plan, Val,” Lambert said. “I’ve looked at that same location. Sure, that depot is lightly guarded. But even if we seize some boats, we’d never get them downriver. The River Patrol has a fort at Gilbertsville—a fort they’ve reinforced, lately, by the way, to try and cut off the Western Kentucky trails. There’s a boom blocking the Tennessee at the old interstate pylons. A double boom everywhere but the gate as a matter of fact. Plus wire to stop hotshots in speedboats from doing any fancy jumps.
“It would take the whole Army of Kentucky to take that fort,” Lambert continued. “And we’d probably have to haul our guns to support, and I’m not sure we have enough shells left to wreck the boom or rubble the fort.”
“Do we have a sketch of the place?” Valentine asked.
“Pretty good one,” Frat said.
“Put some coffee on,” Valentine said. “Let’s have a look.”
Getting into the River Patrol base had been simple enough. It wasn’t really a base. There were two lookout points and fencing built more for livestock than keeping people out. A dog patrol wandered the fence.
After spotting the dog, Valentine pulled Gamecock and his six Bears back another hundred yards.
He exhibited ID and a broken, chain-free bicycle, claimed to be a hungry communications “local support” staff working the lines running south from Cadiz, looking for a hot meal and somewhere out of the woods to sleep. And hopefully a new chain for his bike.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” the corporal patting him down said.
They found no weapons. They let him keep the tool belt after flashing their lights in all his pouches and feeling around. They even opened the battery shaft on his flashlight and inspected the cells within.
“You’re under River Patrol jurisdiction on base,” he warned Valentine. “Cause any trouble, try to steal, and we’ll weigh you down with scrap and sink you in the Tennessee mud.”
“Understood,” Valentine said. His stomach gave a fortuitous growl.
The serious part of the security was at the dock itself, where a pair of barges were tied up next to a long dock branching out like plant roots into the river from some broken concrete steps down to the Tennessee. Above the concrete steps was a nest of fencing and barbed wire, with alert-looking RPs on anchor watch at their riverine weapons. A few more stood at the gap of the wire, smoking and talking to a sentry. A squat emplacement on the highest point of the bank with a two-barrelled antiaircraft cannon had a commanding view of all. Odd that there wasn’t someone at the gun; it was in a great position to cover the river.
Have to do something about that gun.
Valentine smelled gasoline and followed it to a sort of wharf a little way downstream with a pump under a lonely light. From one of the barges he heard a machine tool whirring away and metal-on-metal tamping, with the occasional rustle of chains being shifted.
The spring flow of the Tennessee filled the riverbed bank to bank, covering the usual washup of garbage and driftwood.
Lovely night. Valentine felt oddly relaxed, now that he was finally here. He had a bit of a headache from hunger, but it sharpened his already tuned-up senses.
Presumably, if they were attacked, the River Patrol could fire up their engines and escape. But the craft could throw a tremendous amount of what Jackson had called “shit on target” in the form of machine gun bullets and cannon—anyone wanting to take the docks would pay a heavy price.
Valentine wandered through the corpse of the older, larger base. Everything of value had obviously been moved into the barges. A few heavy old engine blocks remained, well chewed by rust, and the black-rimmed doorways smelled of rats and cats.
Rats and cats. Something to think about.
Typical Kurian disorganization. A partially shut-down base, but still functioning as a service point for river sailors coming off of their weeklong patrols. Too small for a Kurian to take up residence, too big for a couple of locals to slit any throats. Up the estuary in Cadiz, a ruin of a town with some Kentuckians scraping a living one way or another, smuggling, trading, repairing, laundering—in a way it wasn’t that different from the townlet growing up outside Fort Seng’s gates. Men off duty liked short travel times to their services, rest, and recreation.
He evaluated the anchor watches as he walked his bike in. At least two men in each armed river patrol craft. A few more unarmed craft, probably for ferrying men and supplies. A permanent garrison at the supply barges of technical and support staff. Maybe sixty uniformed River Patrol soldiers, plus a few older men making themselves useful while hiding from both river duty and the Reapers.
About the right size to support a decent bar, eatery, and brothel, as long as the nomadic nature of the River Patrol meant they didn’t get too sick of the taste of the old grease in the fryers.
THE INLET the sign read. Sort of. It was illuminated by three orangeish LED spotlights, one of which had been stolen—unfortunately the center, so Valentine played with the idea that it was “To let” or perhaps named “The Toilet.”
The bar was half built up on pylons, set into the side of the hill sloping down to the river, about the size of a ranch home. A roomy second floor above. Chain-link fence guarded storage beneath. A cross between a porch and a patio was empty, even in the easy air of the night.
Valentine parked his bicycle. Despite its nonfunctional condition, he chained it to an old water meter.
He walked up the short flight of steps, tried the door. It was locked.
He rapped on the door.
After a moment, a scratchy woman’s voice shouted, “Yeah?”
“You open?” Valentine called.
“This is a private club. You know the password?”
“I’m hungry, thirsty, and lonely.”
The door opened. A squat woman, who might be a New Universal Church informative poster on the danger of too much fried food, smiled. She had impossibly blue-black hair piled high atop her head, not really making up for her four-feet-eleven. “That ain’t the password, but I’ve got a soft spot for anyone that broke-dick.”
“Thanks. I’m Rice.”
“My name’s Dirty Nel. This is my establishment. My job’s to make sure you have a really good time, at least until I have most of your money. You okay with that?”
Valentine glanced inside. Bright red shag carpet, gleaming pine paneling, and brassy nautical gewgaws pounded themselves into his eyeballs.
“Great,” he said, entering.
The interior was a long, low-ceilinged, shaggy red bar, dimly lit, and hung with fishnets and twinkle lights. A bar with a kitchen behind communicated through the usual order window of stained stainless. The nets seemed to press down from the ceiling, anyone over six three would have to watch himself. He felt like he was inside a giant whale that had swallowed the Pequod with a strip club chaser.
Meaty, tired-looking blondes arranged their lips into imitation smiles. One blew him a kiss.
Judging from the smells coming from behind the kitchen door, he’d better keep to liquids.
“Bottle of beer?” he told the girl behind the bar. She was dressed like the working girls, only her choice of animal print varied. Perhaps she filled in if they became busy.
“Sure thing, brown eyes,” she sa
id, showing a nice set of what were probably false teeth.
“Want to bump that up?” Nel asked. “Kentucky bourbon. Only two dollars extra, Nashville, or three bucks Ordnance.”
“I’ve got Control bucks,” Valentine said.
“Then it’s one lonely dollar, my friend,” Nel said. “Control’s scrip is really worth something.”
Valentine tapped the bar and the bartender poured him something from a Maker’s Mark bottle. It tasted like nitric acid.
He wondered what The Inlet had been, formerly. Perhaps an officers’ housing complex with the diner and lounge conveniently attached. The River Patrol was famous for its accommodations for boat captains and their lieutenants—probably to keep the lower ranks serving in hopes of promotion to an officer’s splendor, and to prevent the officers themselves from simply steering their craft to a much less luxurious lifestyle up an enemy river.
The only customers were two river patrolmen playing cards, separated by a hedge of amber Nashville’s Best empties and a petty officer reading his Bulletin. Valentine wondered if he was sending away for any merchandise.
“My name’s Randy. Want to go upstairs?” one of the blondes asked. She had a painted-on dimple, a practice Valentine never understood.
“My thought precisely,” Valentine said.
“What do you have in mind?”
“I was just thinking you had a very nicely shaped mouth.”
“Thirty, if it’s Control,” Randy said.
Valentine showed the cash.
“Pay Nel,” she said, flashing a hand signal to the madam.
Valentine handed over the captured bills and took her callused hand—did Nel put all her girls to scrubbing the floors every morning?—and led her up the world’s shortest staircase.
“Watch it, man, that’s the loosest slip on the Tennessee you’re going into there!” one of the card players guffawed.
“Check for crabs, meat!” his partner said.
“Don’t worry about crabs,” Randy said. “Or anything else. I’m clean. I get to the doc in Cadiz really regular. He fucks me too, so I know he’s not lying.”
The room smelled like someone had spilled a gallon of perfume and tried to clean it up with pine cleanser. It depressed Valentine that she entertained in her own living quarters, but since everything else in this hair trap was cheap and functional, the girls’ business rooms would be too.
It had a window big enough to climb through—unusual for a brothel. He tested the locks holding it on.
“Mind turning off the light?”
She flicked a switch at her bedside. A soft red night-light went on, tucked somewhere behind her slat headboard.
“So, you want to listen to some music, have a little massage first, or—hey, careful with those screens, bugs’ll get in.”
Valentine carefully set the screen next to the window.
“You ever do it on a rooftop?” Valentine asked.
“What, are you kidding?”
He squeezed out her window, felt for the edge of the roof, tested his grip. He got a leg up, and briefly hung head down, looking in on her room.
“You aren’t paying me enough for this!” she said.
“Just having a smoke. I’ll be right back in.”
Valentine shucked the handle so the reflector went wide, flicked off three flashes, then three again, then a final three toward the woods where Gamecock waited.
A brief red flicker answered.
The Bears wouldn’t attack yet, but the signal would get them close enough to the fencing for the dog to smell. Valentine would send up a flare, or they’d go in when the shooting started.
“Yeah, they’re out there,” Valentine said, coming back through the window.
“Maybe you should leave,” Randy said. “Wait. What do you mean, they’re out there?”
“I work in a competitive field,” Valentine said. “High skill, lots of pay, not many openings. You need to be trustworthy. I’m gay, and that’s a big black mark. There’s a man who wants my job, and he’s paying a couple of stiffs to follow me and get evidence.”
“What are you paying me for, then?”
“Oh, a little camouflage. My boyfriend’s in the River Patrol. I’m trying to kill two birds with one stone here—I want you to act like you had a good time with me, while I nip out and see him.”
“Don’t I know it. Odd trade on the river. Which boat’s he on, Red Forty-Five?”
“Best not to spread gossip,” Valentine said. He checked the drop to the ground. “I’m going to leave a little safety line. You relax. I’ll be back in less than an hour. If you look a little exhausted when you go back downstairs, there’s an extra hundred in it for you.”
“What I do ain’t usually that exhausting. I save that for my boyfriend.”
“Speaking of boyfriends . . .” Valentine said.
“Hey, have fun. I’ll make sure no one comes through that door until you get back. It’s a slow night, Nel won’t mind.”
“You’re sweet,” Valentine said, dropping out the window.
Valentine slipped off his shoes and tied the laces together.
He looked up at the sky. It was a night of danger. This was always both the best and the worst moment, right before you started. The best, because everything came alive. You could swear you could feel your toenails growing. The air was suddenly full of life, not only the smell of diesel oil and river rot.
Working quickly in the shadows, Valentine marveled at how easily this forgotten corner of the Kurian Zone could be defanged. Working quickly, he wedged every door he could find, and cut the wires to the radio antenna. He would have had a harder time with a fueling station in Little Rock. The employees guarding gas pumps were armed to the teeth and alert as Dobermans.
Evidently the “neutrality” of the Kentucky locals here, neither supporting nor resisting the Kurian Order, was still intact. The few personnel on base must have figured that the legworm ranchers wouldn’t have need for riverboats anyway. And they were largely right. A legworm could go anywhere, a boat had to stick to easily choked-off river routes.
Valentine turned his collar up and pulled his cap down low. He dug around in his tool kit, came up with two cylinders. He dumped the screws inside out, made sure the heavy-duty spring inside was clean. Then he cut open the lining at the bottom of his tool kit, and took out two razor-tipped darts.
The dart launchers belonged to one of Gamecock’s Bears. Valentine had experimented with them. They could bury the dart halfway into an oak tree from twenty feet. The problem was aiming them. You needed to be very close, or very lucky against a man-sized target, especially if he was moving.
Valentine had yet another weapon, a plain old pipe wrench. Five pounds of cast iron, properly swung, was as deadly as his old parang.
He slipped into a gun emplacement covering the river and docks, carefully unrolled the waterproofed canvas covering the 20mm cannons there.
He almost tsk-tsk’ed. There was visible rust on the action. It would be more of a threat to the firer than anyone in its sights. He might as well take one of the guns out of its mount and use it as a club.
He evaluated the anchor watches on the river patrol craft: two men in each of the long cabin cruisers, with guns at the stern and on the flying bridge, one on watch while the other rested. Each boat had one gun ready for action, a machine gun with an armored shield at the back of the boat where it had the widest field of fire. The River Patrol had followed procedure and parked their boats like two horses in a field facing opposite directions, so each one’s tail could swat the other’s flies.
Nothing to do but start it.
Mouth dry, he walked down to the docks, a spring-loaded dart in each coat sleeve. As he approached the boat, he tapped his utility-worker’s hat.
“Dumbledore watermelon hopscotch juice on?” Valentine called, stomping hard on the weather-beaten old boards of the river dock.
“Pfwat’s that?” one of the men at the guns said, coming awake.
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Valentine shined his flashlight right in the other’s face.
“Hey!” he shouted.
Valentine knelt and fired his first dart. He heard a clatter. The second twanged off toward the gunner, and he heard a wet impact.
The man let out an awful sucking sound.
He dropped the now-empty tubes and grabbed for the wrench in his pocket. Naturally, it decided to catch as he ran.
Valentine took one long stride and launched off his good leg, giving up on the wrench for now. He went over the gun and managed a head tackle, spilling them both into the boat to the sound of cartilage snapping.
“What the hell,” the other anchor watch said, from the dim light of the armored wheelhouse.
Valentine managed to free the wrench, rose, and struck as the other drew his pistol.
And struck again. This one was even wetter.
Now he had a bloody wrench and a Browning-model 9mm automatic.
The anchor watch at the stern gun was being held up by the machine gun’s steel harness. “Fuuuck! I’m—yak! I’m hit, Grantski,” he wretched. “Somebod—yak! Put an arrow in myak!”
Valentine heard shooting up the riverbank. Gamecock’s Bears must be at the wire.
Red, white, and blue lights flashed on the attention bar of the patrol craft. A siren sounded.
Valentine saw the other anchor watch peering from the armored cabin. He didn’t want to chance running out for the stern mount, it seemed, not with his fellow sailor screaming out his bloody death throes.
“Better hit the river, you,” Valentine called to the other boat. “That’s Southern Command come calling.”
The man he’d knocked out of the gun groaned and moved. Valentine tested the Browning model on him. It worked.
The anchor watch at the other boat’s gun slumped out of his harness. Valentine saw two dark patches on his white shirt. He hadn’t missed after all.