by E. E. Knight
They walked out to the edge of the gorge, and Crow pointed to the pilings at the base of the bridge. A couple of the idling workers fiddled with the pile of shovels and picks at the edge of the road; another went back to a captured pickup with a freshly painted logo the platoon had been using, avoiding the officer.
A perfectly natural move.
Captain LeHavre always told him not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. This would be as good an opportunity as they would get with this train.
Valentine looked again at the young officer, wondered why someone hardened by experience wasn't on this trip. Maybe he was fresh out of some New Universal Church leadership academy, telling himself that this winnowing, distasteful in the particular, helped the species in general.
Tough luck kid.
"Give the strike signal," Valentine said. "Glass, have the Grogs hit the engine first, then the caboose."
Patel rose and made a noise like a startled wild turkey.
Rutherford and DuSable shoved the newspapers in their vests, reaching for the small, cylindrical grenades that hung within.
Glass made a face, but patted Ford on the shoulder and pointed at the engine. He and Chevy swung their .50 and aimed.
"Open fire," Valentine said.
The .50 chattered out its lethal chukka-chukka-chukka rattle. The glass of the cupola turned to spiderwebbing and blood.
Crow froze up. One good shove and he could have sent the young officer headfirst into the gorge. Valentine silently implored him to move, but he ducked down at the gunfire.
Another of Valentine's men in gray denim, a thick-armed ex-motorcycle cavalry named Salazar, raised a shovel and bashed the adjutant with it as Crow still gaped. The soldier didn't have time to make sure of the adjutant, for the lieutenant had his pistol out. The flat of the shovel caught the lieutenant under the chin, tumbling him into the gorge.
Two hammering bangs, less than a second apart, sounded from the armored caboose. Plumes of dust spouted up from the ventilators on the roof of the caboose. Rutherford and DuSable crawled like fast-moving snakes toward the front of the train, sheltering next to the wheels of the boxcars, where the men in the caboose couldn't bring their mounted weapons to bear.
The Grogs shifted their .50 to the armored caboose, emptying the rest of the box of ammunition, punching holes around the firing slits.
"Third platoon, covering positions," Valentine told signals, who spoke into his walkie-talkie, shielding the receiver with his palm. "Second platoon: Forward!" Valentine shouted over the firing.
They'd done it, and done it well, dozens of times in training. Now it was for keeps.
"Check fire," Patel roared, as a soldier paused to blast the caboose. "Check before you shoot. There are friendlies down there."
They did it well, moving all at once at a rush. Third platoon, higher on the hillside, moved forward to the prepared positions.
Valentine, half sliding down the steep hillside nearest the cut, landed and glanced at the front of the train. One of his men was already inside the engine compartment, waving off additional fire. At the bridge, there was nothing to see but Crow, kneeling beside the soldier who'd clobbered the lieutenant with the shovel, a bloody pistol in his hand.
Bee loped after him, one of her sawed-off shotguns in one hand and an assault rifle in the other, moving forward like a fencer with the assault rifle pointed at the caboose, the shotgun held up and back.
"Get Cabbage over to Crow," Valentine ordered as he approached the caboose. "He's not calling man down but I think Salazar is hurt."
Cabbage was the company medic, when he wasn't assisting the cook. Formerly a demi-doc in the KZ, he'd gotten sick of signing unfitness certifications.
"Cover the cars until we know for sure what's inside," Valentine told Patel.
People were shouting for help from inside the boxcars. Valentine looked beneath the cars, searching for explosives. He'd heard of the Kurians sending decoy trains lined with plastic explosive and claymore mines to take out guerrillas when someone hit the kill switch. This didn't look to be that kind of train, but it was best to make sure.
No sign of strange wiring leading from the caboose.
Valentine looked through one of the bullet holes into the armored caboose, saw a twitching foot. Rutherford slunk up beside him.
"I'm going in," Valentine said.
"Let me go first, sir," Rutherford said.
Valentine noticed blood running down from his forehead, already-caking into cherry flakes.
"Rutherford, you wounded?"
"It ain't mine, Major. I got some on me when DuSable and I were checking for booby traps. It was dripping out of the caboose. The cars look clear. DuSable's checking the rest forward."
He was a cool head.
Second platoon had taken up firing positions, covering the caboose and the rest of the cars up to the engine.
There was some trouble with the caboose's metal door; it was either jammed good or latched from the inside. Valentine pointed to the hinge rivets and the second platoon entry man employed a monstrous four-gauge shotgun on the door. Then Bee smashed it open with her shoulder.
Rutherford slipped in, pistol held in a Weaver stance.
Nothing but blood and body parts awaited them.
Valentine checked the radio log. The set itself was as dead as the gunners inside the caboose, but there was a notation that an unscheduled stop had happed, with approximate location, and that the message had been acknowledged by LEX.
Lexington, Valentine guessed.
* * * *
They opened up the boxcars, giving in to the pleading and pounding from within.
"Liberators," an old man in a black coat shouted. "They're liberators."
"That's better than 'shit detail,'" Ediyak commented.
They thronged around the soldiers, some in blue and yellow and pink clothing that looked like hospital scrubs woven out of paper fiber. In some Kurian Zones, they even begrudged you the clothes on your back when selected for harvesting.
"Please, stay close to the train. Don't wander off," Valentine repeated, walking up the line to check on Salazar.
Salazar had two bullets in him, or rather through him. The Quisling adjutant had opened up on him at point-blank, and Salazar still managed to half decapitate the Quisling before Crow finally fired his pistol.
Crow looked miserable, rubbing at Salazar's blood on his hands like Lady Macbeth.
"I think he'll live, sir," Cabbage reported. "Four neat little holes, two coming in and two going out. His left lung is deflated and he may have lost a big chunk of kidney, but that's just a guess without X-rays."
"Nearest machine is probably in Nashville," someone said.
They held an impromptu officers conference while second platoon distributed food from the stores in the forward-most boxcar to the "fodder."
Valentine had to snap Crow out of his misery.
"Crow, forget it. I need you in the here and now, okay?"
"Yes, sir," Crow said.
"Salazar's either going to make it or not. You poured iodoform into the wound and applied pressure. The rest is up to him and the medics. Worrying about fifteen minutes ago won't cause him to draw one breath more. Answer a few questions for me, and then you can go back to him."
Crow took a breath. "Yes, sir."
"They got off a message to Lexington. What happens if guerrillas hit a train?"
"It depends on if the train is just reported overdue or if they called in that they were being attacked," Crow said, his pupils gradually settling on the group of men around him.
"Let's assume the worst," Valentine said.
"They'll send out an armored train and motorbike and horse cavalry, backed up by at least a few companies of infantry and some light artillery in gunwagons. There's never been more than a few dozen guerrillas here. Too many Kurian-friendly legworm clans."
"How do they track the guerrillas?"
"Reapers, usually. I've seen them get off trai
ns myself."
"Reapers mean there has to be a Kurian controlling them," Valentine said. Or the strange organization known as the Twisted Cross, but ever since the Nebraska Golden Ones smashed their facility south of Omaha, there were only a few odd units of them scattered around.
"I was told there's a Kurian in charge of rail security who goes around in an armored train," Crow said. "I never saw him though, just his Reapers."
"Brave of him to venture out," Patel put in.
"Yes," Valentine said absently. He was wondering how Gamecock's Bears would like a chance at a Kurian on the loose.
"What about the fodder?" Patel asked. "We can't take these people over ridges."
"No, we'll have to use the train," Valentine said. "We've crossed over enough old tracks this week. Is there a line we could use?"
Crow scratched his chin. "Lessee, sir. There's an old spur that heads off east at first, hooks around more south. Skirts the south end of the Boonwoods. It fed some mines that went dry. That'll get us back toward brigade maybe even a little ahead of them."
By "Boonwoods" Crow meant the Daniel Boone National Forest, according to the legworm ranchers' description of Kentucky's regions.
"Yes," Valentine said, reading the doubt on Crow's face. "What's the problem?"
"Major, it's really overgrown," Crow said. "The engine has a brush cutter on it, but we'll have to go slow, move fallen logs and whatnot ourselves. They'll catch up to us easy, especially since it's obvious where the trail is leading."
"We'll blow track at the cutoff," Valentine said.
"That'll only slow them up for an hour or so," Crow said. "Their rail gangs can do anything but build a bridge in just a few minutes."
"I don't suppose there are any bridges."
"Lots, but they'll dismount and follow. If we even get that far. Somebody might have torn up track for scrap steel or used ties to build a cabin. You never know."
"We'll risk it," Valentine said. "At the very least these people will be no worse off than they were before."
* * * *
Valentine joined Preville up at the ridgeline at company HQ, where he talked to Seng over a scrambler. Seng didn't sound happy about it. Valentine had been assigned to conduct logistical raids, not start small-scale guerrilla warfare on the Cumberland a week before they were due in Virginia, but Seng was too good an officer not to see a chance to bag a bunch of railroad security troops more adept at flushing guerrillas out of the tall timber than facing combined arms attacks.
"I've only got a few Wolves left at HQ. Most of them are elsewhere," Seng said, his voice crackly thanks to the scrambler.
"I'll try to keep the Reapers homing in on lifesign," Valentine said.
Then he broadcast in the clear to "Allegheny HQ" that they'd intercepted the train carrying "Doctor Faustus" and he was safely on the way back. Some lonely slob, probably working the transmitter out of some shack near Mount Eagle and creating nonsensical chatter between Seng's HQ and the mythical operations' headquarters, acknowledged.
That would give the Kurian intelligence services something to chew on for a while as they examined the manifests of those shipped north as aura fodder. Hopefully some selection officer would be chopped for a screwup that existed only in Valentine's imagination.
It also might give the impression of a quick, fast-moving raid. If half the pursuit forces headed into the Kentucky hills following their foot trail, that many less would be left to pursue the train.
The toughest part of getting going again was convincing the transportees to climb back into the boxcars. Valentine didn't blame them; the Kurians hadn't bothered to provide much in the way of food or sanitary services. They refilled the cars' big yellow freshwater jugs from a handy stream, and his troops shared out what rations they had handy.
Valentine sent Rand with the carts that would have carried off whatever goodies they could have raided from the train, plus the small amount of supplies they'd bartered or scavenged on this trip, back east toward headquarters. He put Crow up front and the wounded Salazar with company headquarters in the caboose, now freed of bodies but not the sticky, coppery smell of blood despite a quick swilling-out. Cabbage already had an IV going, with Salazar as comfortable as doping could make him.
Even better, the intercom with the engine still worked.
The train bumped into motion. Bee didn't like being in the train, for whatever reason. She clapped her hand over her head and made nervous noises.
Valentine had nightmares of meeting a high-speed relief train coming south head-on and had to make plans for the abandonment of their charges. But they made Crow's turnoff, and the rocking and clattering increased as they moved down the old spur line.
The terrain around here was too hilly for good legworm ranching, but herds of sheep and goats grazed on the slopes. They passed signage for old coal mines, saw the rusting, vine-covered remains of old conveyors and towers frowning down on slag piles tufted with weeds and bracken fighting for a precarious existence on soil that had accumulated in nooks and crannies. In some places more recent strip mining scarred the hills, leaving the Kentucky ridges looking like an abandoned, opened-up cadaver on an autopsy table.
They set up watches, allowing most of his men to rest. There was little enough left to eat.
Valentine didn't think much of their guide, a rather slow man in his thirties who thought that by "guide," his duties required telling old family stories about who got married in which valley, the hunting abilities of his preacher's astonishing coon dogs, and the time Len Partridge got his index finger blown off by Old Murphy for sneak-visiting Mrs. Murphy while he was off gathering legworm egg skin. Valentine did manage to glean that the Kurians still sent trains into this region in the fall to trade for legworm meat, though it was sandwiched into a story about a wounded hawk his cousin Brady nursed back to health and trained for duck hunting.
Luckily there were only brief delays due to downed trees on the tracks. The men moved—or in one case dynamited—the trees with high-spirited enthusiasm. The audacity of a theft of an entire train had been the highlight of the march across Kentucky.
But the sinking sun set him nervously pacing the caboose until he realized he was making the rest of the occupants nervous, and he distracted himself by discussing Salazar's condition with Cabbage.
They came to a small river and stopped to check the bridge's soundness, with Valentine thanking his lucky star that he had such a diverse group of ex-Quislings in his company. He consulted his map and saw that the river arced up into the hills where Seng was headquartered. Sheep and goats and several legworms grazed in the valley.
"The bridge'll hold, sir," came the report over the intercom. "We can take a span out with dynamite and slow up the pursuit."
Not the Reapers. They'd come hot and hard with men on horses, or motorbikes, or bicycles, homing in on the crowded lifesign in the railcars—
Valentine tapped the intercom thoughtfully. "I want a conference with all officers," Valentine said. "Give the refugees fifteen minutes out of the cars."
* * * *
They traded the captured rifles and shotguns and boxes of ammunition with the shepherd families for a generous supply of sheep and goats. The shepherds and goatherds thought him a madman: He was willing to take kids, tough old billies, sick sheep, lamed lambs. Valentine was interested more in quantity than future breeding potential. He warned them that there'd be some angry Reapers coming up the tracks shortly, and they'd better clear out and play dumb.
Then he had his men load the animals onto the boxcars.
The toughest part was convincing Patel to leave the train with a squad of men to guide the hundreds of refugees into the hills.
"Do I have to make it an order, Sergeant Major?" Valentine asked. Valentine hated to fall back on rank.
"It'll come to a fight when they catch up to you, sir. The men will need me."
"I know the job now. I was lucky as a junior lieutenant. My captain put me with his best sergeant on
my first operation in the Kurian Zone."
Patel relented and walked around to the remaining NCOs, giving tips and hurrying up the loading of the livestock.
"Give 'em hell, billy goat legion," Patel said as he walked off with the crowds from the boxcars and into a hillside defile on the far side of the river. Patel wanted to put at least a ridge between the tracks and the lifesign he was giving off before nightfall.
David Valentine watched them go, silently wishing them luck.
The animals he'd purchased but couldn't fit into the train, he left behind to muddle the tracks. They'd fuzz up the Reaper's sensing abilities for a few moments, anway. The smell of goats reminded him of his induction into the Wolves. Valentine wondered what he'd say if he could have a talk with that kid he'd been.
He thought of a young couple he'd noticed, clinging to each other in doubt as they looked back at the boxcars as Patel led them into the defile. How did they get selected for harvesting? Sterile? Passing out anti-Kurian pamphlets printed in some basement? The woman had mouthed "thank you" at him. That goat-sniffing kid would have written Father Max a long letter about those two words.
"It's worth it," Valentine muttered.
Valentine still had a few refugees: the old unable to make a long walk, the sick, and a few devoted souls who stayed behind to tend to them. He gave them a boxcar of their own just in front of the caboose.
Then they pulled across the bridge and dynamited the center span in a frosty twilight.
Valentine didn't hear any cheers as ties spun like blown dandelion tufts into the river. He had too many engineers in the attenuated company who'd sweated over the calculations and effort required to build a bridge.
The train squealed into motion again. Now the clatter of the wheels passing over points was accompanied by the bleating of goats and bawling of sheep.
Now the question was whether they'd make enough of a lifesign signal to draw the Reapers. He had what was left of his company, plus the refugees, plus whatever signal the sheep and goats would send.