by E. E. Knight
There was nothing to do but hand them out.
"They've got to be kidding," one of the former Quislings in line said. Valentine recognized him as one of the men he'd seen training the militia back at Liberty.
"Mebbe these are just to carry for practice weight, like the shells," another said.
"We should take a trip over to the river patrol reserve armory between the Tennessee and the Mississippi. They don't hardly guard that. Get us some real guns."
Valentine dredged up that last man's name: Robbins—no, Rollings. "Private Rollings. What's that?"
"Sorry, sir."
"No, you're not in trouble. Come over here."
Rollings gave his pants a subtle hitch up as he approached, his sergeant falling in beside like a protective dog. "The major wants something?"
"What did you say about an armory?"
"You're not in any trouble, Rollings," his sergeant said.
Rollings kept his gaze on Valentine's feet. "River patrol armory and motor pool, sir. The old western Kentucky number four. We used to gas up there when I was with the River Road Light Artillery of the Tennessee Troop. It's a crap—err CRP,—um, that's Combined River Patrol, sir. Reserve armory and warehouse for patrol and artillery boats on the Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi. Creepy place. There's those flappy gargoyles quartered in town and nests of harpies in the hills up by the Ohio."
"Explain what you meant about unguarded."
The man gulped. "Not unguarded. There's usually six or seven men about. It's just that the armory's for the river patrol, so the Tennessee Troop, they don't see it as their job to garrison it. The river patrol figures that since it's inland, it's the Troop's job to secure it. Nobody wants to be stationed there, exactly, with the harpies in the hills and the gargoyles in the empty town. Not much to do but play cards and come up with better nose plugs."
Rollings had five more uncomfortable minutes as Valentine quizzed him about the roads in the area, the terrain, the location of KZ settlements. . . .
When he finished the poor private was sweating.
Valentine gripped him on the shoulder. "Thank you, Rollings. You're the kind of complainer I like."
Rollings' eyes finally came up. "How's that, sir?"
"The kind that offers a solution."
Chapter Five
The wilderness of eastern Kentucky, New Years Eve, the Fifty-fourth Year of the Kurian Order: With the sun an orange-and-purple bruise along the western skyline, harpy country wakes up.
There's something odd about this particular Grog territory. Bird and animal life seems more furtive, the insects tougher and more numerous—even in the winter chill big black flies drone by like thrown pebbles. The kudzu on old utility poles and lines grows thick on every sunstruck prominence in a twisted-tendril game of king of the hill that dares you to contest its ownership. Thicker stands of wood have a bat-cave smell with nothing thriving in the shade but thistle and thorn and tree-hugging fungus looking like suppurating wounds.
The few highways cutting through harpy lands are barely open, the vegetation kept back only by big machines clawing through the potholed roads. The devastation from the New Madrid quake has never been repaired. Whole communities are nothing but heaps of rubble with a vine-covered wall or chimney still standing.
* * * *
Binoculars just made the warehouse and truck yard look worse. In the dark from a distance, Valentine could see the armory was only three buildings, two of cinder block linked by a nicer brick office forming an uneven U lit at the doors by tired bulbs that looked like they wanted to surrender to the night. With the aid of the binoculars, Valentine's night eyes picked out peeling paint, the tires and blocks holding down plastic sheeting on the roofs, and the plywood nailed over the windows.
Patel and Hoboken, the youngest of Patel's Shepherds, looked at it with him.
The ad-hoc raid had come together as though it were a natural, expected event, like a birth. When Valentine proposed the operation at a scheduled meeting, he met initial resistance in the form of a frown and a shake of Colonel Seng's head, but Moytana and the Bear lieutenant Gamecock both came to assistance, claiming that their men were fretting, wanting either leave or an operation. They could have both by joining in the raid, as Hunters back from the KZ traditionally enjoyed at least a three-day pass, if not a twenty-one, in Southern Command's vernacular.
Valentine argued that the rest of the brigade might be reassured by a quick successful strike into the Kurian Zone and a return across the Mississippi, and Seng gave his approval.
Valentine turned in his written plan that very evening and started on the orders for the company the next morning.
As Rand organized transport, Valentine received an unexpected visitor. The Bear lieutenant knocked on the open door of the command shack. Dust fell from the ceiling and the spiders hunkered down in their webs.
"Morning, Major," Gamecock said. He had thick hair on the arms projecting from his sleeveless shirt, and wore the first legworm leather pants Valentine had seen since he lost his rig in Pacific Command. Most officers in Southern Command knew better than to lecture Bears on proper attire. He had an ear of roasted corn in hand and a flour sack over his shoulder. He gave Valentine a casual salute with the roasted ear as he looked around the command shack. "Okay to talk about the op?"
"In here," Valentine said. The command shack had a divider now, so Valentine enjoyed the luxury and status of a knothole-windowed office.
They went into the back room.
Gamecock finished off the roasted ear and tossed it in the waste-basket. The basket wobbled briefly. "Sorry about that, suh. Had to eat breakfast on foot this morning. This scheme of yours: You're going to be a Quisling Grog officer."
"Yes," Valentine said.
He tossed the flour sack on Valentine's table-desk. "I was going to trade this to a sorry excuse of a Guard captain for a case of Canadian scotch, but it's turning my stomach to see the guy who held at Big Rock walking around with an old single shot militia rifle.
"Go on, suh," Gamecock said. "Got it off a Quisling lieutenant colonel with matching tooling on his belt, hat, and boots. Even dead, he looked like a show-night fag but he knew his hardware."
Valentine extracted a gleaming submachine gun and a screw-on tube as long as the gun itself. It had odd lines; the barrel was pitched on a bias different from the frame. He picked it up and extended the handle just under the muzzle.
"That's an Atlanta buzzsaw," Gamecock said. "Model 18 Select entry model. Limited production run, elites and officers only. That cockeyed barrel's there for a purpose. The bolt's at an angle so recoil keeps the muzzle from climbing off target. Pretty accurate one handed, even on full auto. No selector switch—you can tap them out single shot with light pulls. Goin' over to full auto, you just pull the trigger all the way. She'll group under a meter at a hundred paces. That silencer there is something I rigged."
Valentine looked at the magazines—two short and four long—and the twenty- and forty-round boxes. "Nine millimeter Parabellum."
"I know—a little light for stopping a Reaper in full charge," Gamecock said. "I threw in some boxes of silverpoints. Team Fumarole's had good results with them. They don't flatten out against Reaper cloth so much."
"I don't suppose you've got any Quickwood bullets."
"We got a box of 7.62 for the whole team, suh. One lousy box. Production problems. Wish they'd tell me where the trees were. I'd make myself some friggin' stakes."
"I'll show you one personally when we get back. Assuming some farmer hasn't cut it down for tomato stakes. By the way, where's the accent from?"
"South Carolina born. First name's Scottie, suh."
"Val will do from now on, when things are less formal. Grateful to you, Scottie."
"Grateful to you, suh. My boys are ready to kill each other. Only three things will keep a Bear quiet if there's no fighting going on: sleeping, eating, and . . . well—"
"Screwing," Valentine finished. "Lieutenant Nai
l in the old Razors put it a little more colorfully."
"Any case, suh, we've all put on ten pounds and everyone's caught up on sack time. I got all I can do to keep the women and chickens round here safe."
* * * *
Pizzaro at Rally Base greased the entire operation, even setting up an escort by a contingent of the "Skeeter Fleet," Southern Command's own force of low-draft vessels that were employed in riverine combat. The SF's airboats and fast motorboats weren't a match for the bigger, cannon-mounted craft of the Quisling river patrol, but they could cause enough trouble somewhere else to draw off the forces guarding one set of loops in the twisting Mississippi.
Valentine practiced entry drills with the Bears and ran short patrols with the Wolves, always taking a few of the company with him. It did a little for their confidence and it was good to see the men getting over some of their wariness when it came to the Bears. Most of the men thought Bears would just as soon kill a man as look at him, and the day might come when members of the company would have to guide a Bear team to a target.
Valentine expensed three hundred rounds training with the new gun while Bee worked on sawing off the barrels and smoothing down the stocks on the old shotguns she'd been converting to pistol grip. Valentine practiced changing magazines until he could do it without thinking about it. Then he cleaned the weapon and test fired a couple more rounds to make sure he didn't foul something up.
The Bears and most of the Wolves were employed in a strike at a collection of river patrol docks and blockhouses on Island Ten, while a short platoon of Valentine's company, escorted by a striking team of Wolves, made for the armory. The rest of his command remained at either side of the Mississippi under Rand, blowing up rubber boats and improvised rafts called "Ping-Pong ball miracles" in preparation for the trip back.
The trip across and the movement to the armory had gone off well, with the Skeeter Fleet bringing them across just before dawn on New Year's Eve, their camouflage-painted twin-outboard boats growling into the muddy Mississippi waters like dogs giving the angry warning that comes before the leap.
Valentine's picked team of twenty, Bee, and the Wolves paralleled the east-west highway heading into Mayfield, Kentucky, and then turned north into the Grog country, the Wolves out front and behind and flanking, continually restoring contact like sheepdogs with a flock.
They took advantage of a chilling rain to make good time down the road, which had deteriorated into a rutted trail. According to Rollings no one "who counted" lived up this way, in a region of low, sandy hills and scrub forest. River patrol supply trucks and Grog recruiters were all that used the roads meeting at the armory.
They rested, ate, and observed while the skies cleared and the sun went down. Valentine taped a thin commando dagger to his forearm—it never hurt to have something in reserve. After giving everyone inside a chance to get deep into REM sleep, Valentine decided the time was ripe.
He, Rollings, and Bee approached from the east down the tree-throttled road, three Wolves trailing through cover behind. Valentine carried his 18 Select in a battered leather courier pouch filled with a meaningless assortment of captured paperwork. Valentine smelled harpies on the cold wind blowing down from the northwest.
As they approached the gate, he slipped on the brass ring he'd won in Seattle. He didn't like to wear the thing.
"No Kurian towers around here, right?" he asked Rollings, nervous as he felt the warmth of the ring when it contacted his skin.
The armory had old-fashioned bars around it, linking cement columns. Valentine wondered if something more ostentatious had once stood on the other side of the fence. This was like garlanding a turd.
"No, sir. Well, none that I know about. Never went into the harpy woods, though, or met any Reapers on the river road that way. Is that what I think it is, Major?"
"Yes."
"You take it off a—"
"It's a long story."
A dog barked as they approached, a mud-splattered, hungry-looking thing that seemed to be a mix of a German shepherd and a long-haired camel. It jumped atop its shelter to better sound the alarm.
Behind its house was a line of trucks and a wrecker. The trucks looked rusted and worn, though they had hedge-cutting blades fixed below the front bumper and iron bars welded across the windshield and windows.
Valentine approached the buzz box on the post outside the gate and opened the dirty glass door covering the buttons.
"Anything here indicate there's more men here than usual?" Valentine asked.
"No, sir."
Rollings nodded and Valentine hit the button marked "call."
When Valentine didn't get a response in ten seconds, he pressed again, long and hard, the way an impatient Quisling ringwearer would when he wasn't getting service to his liking.
It took a full minute for a crackly voice to answer.
"Yes?" the voice crackled through the tarnished, oil-smeared speaker.
"This is Colonel Sanity Marks, Combat Tech Service. I've got a wiring team broken down three miles west of here and I need transport. I'll require one of your trucks and a motorcycle for at least forty-eight hours."
"Tell it to the Coastal Marines, sapper."
Valentine raised his eyebrows to Rollings.
"Is Sergeant Nelson in there?" Rollings said.
"Who wants to know?"
"Tell him it's Rollings, late of the River Road Light. This colonel is steamed, I shit you not, and he's got a brass ring and a crapped-out truck full of guys with computers and fiberoptic line."
"Someone will be out in a moment."
Valentine snapped: "I had a harpy swoop overhead not five minutes ago. Get out here before the damn thing comes back and shits on me. I hate those fucking things."
A corporal and a private appeared, looking like they'd just yanked their uniform shirts off of hangers: The shoulders were riding ridged and high.
"Sir," the corporal said. "I'm going to need to see some orders and identification."
Valentine shoved his ring fist through the bars. "I've got a broken-down truck and a wiring team that's six hours late now. Get us the hell inside."
The corporal bussed the ring with his lips. Valentine had made the obeisance often enough during his sojourn as a Coastal Marine in the Gulf. On a ring belonging to the proper wearer, it gave off a slight tingle.
"Not the Grog," the corporal protested.
If he folded once, he'd fold again. Valentine turned his gaze to the silent armsman.
"Private, you want to speed things up for me? You can have this corporal's stripes. I think by the time I've written my evaluation, he won't need them anymore."
"Sir, no disrespect, but I'll get into more trouble by not following procedures than you could ever bring down."
"I wonder. You know anything about distributed secure networks?"
"Uh—no, sir."
Which was just as well. Valentine didn't know anything about it either. The corporal silently allowed the group inside.
uGas up two trucks. Put batteries in or whatever you have to do to get them going."
"Thought you said—"
"I'm going to listen to the engines of both," Valentine said. "I'll take the truck that sounds healthier."
Valentine didn't wait for an answer and headed toward the main office door between the two bigger buildings. Bee trailed behind.
He opened the door and wiped his feet. Two men in undershirts were lacing boots up. There was a duty desk, a mail sorter, and a long bureau with an electric coffeepot and pieces of weaponry, lighting, and com gear wearing yellow toe tags atop it beneath silvery letters reading:
Happy New Year
—Look Alive In ‘Fifty-Five
"Where's Sergeant Nelson?"
"Celebrating in Paclucah, sir."
"They're having fireworks," the other added, gaping at Bee. She sniffed the warm, stale air. Valentine smelled a grilled cheese sandwich and coffee.
"Rollings!" Valentine called over his
shoulder. He used the opportunity to scan the little office. There was a sort of wooden loft above with a water tank and boxes of supplies. He had a moment's startle—a shadow above pointed at him with an accusing finger. . . .
It turned out to be a mannequin of a nude female with a feather boa.
"Right here, Major."
Valentine thought quickly. "That's 'Colonel,' son. I'm not your old CO. You keep forgetting."
"Sorry, Colonel."
"You know any of these fellas? Who's in charge?"
"That would be me," a gruff voice came from the doorway to what looked like a residence room. A sergeant with a beer gut partially covering a pistol belt stood in the doorway. "What's the emergency, Colonel?"
"Worse than you know, Sergeant," Valentine said. He reached into his attache and began extracting paperwork and placing it on the duty desk. He took out the gun and pointed it at the NCO.
"I'm sorry to inform you all that you're my prisoners. Rollings, that's a nice looking .45 the sergeant has on his belt. Relive him of it."
Bee stiffened and drew her own shotguns from her waistband. "Watch the door, Bee. Door," Valentine said.
"Turn your backs, gentlemen, and place your hands on the back of your head, fingers interlaced. Kneel."
Valentine made sure they complied, listening for other sounds of life in the dark warehouse next door. Out in the motor yard, he heard a truck turn over. "Now, if you're cooperative for the next hour or so, you'll be taken prisoner and brought back to a Southern Command base. You'll be surprised how nice the day-release POW camps are. If you give us any trouble, I'll leave you tied here for the Reapers. Decision time."
* * * *
Valentine called the other two in. They gaped at their comrades kneeling with faces to the wall.
"What's with all this?"
That was the kind of quality manpower that pulled duty on New Year's Eve. Only after Valentine prodded the corporal with his barrel did the Quisling realize what was going on. He made them the same offer he did the others.