March in Country (14 page)
Authors: EE Knight
Valentine tried to relax. It would be easier to be at the point of the spear, in a way. Gamecock knew exactly where he was and how things were going. Valentine’s first excursion into the Kurian Zone as a junior Wolf lieutenant was on an operation very similar to the one he planned with Gamecock and Frat. Bears to create a diversion, Wolves to get some families out. After it was all over, when he trudged into camp after meeting some loosed ravies and a Reaper in combat, he’d wondered why the colonel back at rally base had looked as exhausted as he.
Now he knew. Waiting was bad. Waiting and not knowing was worse.
With the rest of the Wolves as a reserve, backing up Patel’s A company and Glass’s heavy weapons teams from the Seng battalion, Valentine would attack the construction site in an effort to break out Champers’s crew.
Valentine, Duvalier, Bee, and Brother Mark, plus some communications staff, would be the Operational HQ. Valentine felt guilty dragging Brother Mark into the country like this, but he had a sensitivity to Kurians that surpassed the indistinct tingle Valentine felt when Reapers were on the prowl nearby.
He’d done all he could, in his few days, to get the team ready. Using poles, clothesline, tentage, and some barbed wire, Valentine built a rough model of the construction site and two attendant camps based on his observations. He had the men run practice attacks, day and night.
The journey south went easily enough. They took pickups and trailers, fully half Fort Seng’s motor pool, south along roads they were pretty sure to be safe. The last ten miles had to be covered on foot and legworm. Their vehicles retreated halfway to Fort Seng, where they waited for the pickup broadcast.
He passed the time by talking to Major Grace.
“If you don’t mind me asking, sir, why all the note taking?”
“I’m The General’s eyes and ears in Kentucky. He wants my opinion of you all. I want to make sure my eyes and ears have it right.”
Grace’s use of The General, with an intonation that suggested capitalization of the adjective, reminded Valentine of the man he always thought of as “The General,” the leader of the Twisted Cross.
“Is this an opinion you can share with the subjects?”
Duvalier, having heard the beginning of the conversation, pulled her arms into the confines of her coat and settled down to sleep, pillowed by Valentine’s pack.
“The General said he wants all the backwoods barons and perfumed princes run out of Southern Command.”
“Backwoods barons and perfumed princes?”
“By that he means,” Grace said tiredly, as though he’d explained this innumerable times to thickheaded subordinates, “that there won’t be any more comfortable niches in Southern Command. For too long there have been officers who built themselves little domains, skimming what can be skimmed, tasting what can be tasted, and nobody dares challenge them because they’re irreplaceable. Nobody’s irreplaceable, and The General’s determined to prove it, or he expects to be replaced.”
“Is that a direct quote, sir?”
Grace looked at him afresh through his glasses, held as though they were a magnifying glass. “As a matter of fact, it is.”
“Have you found any barons or princes at Fort Seng?”
“You do live in style. I haven’t seen so much silver barware in one place.”
“We inherited it, it’s not a collection. The last six months have been too busy to do much antiquing.”
“But plenty of recruiting. Tell me, Major Valentine, how do you choose which volunteers to take? Your command could be easily infiltrated this way.”
“Could be,” Valentine said. “Hope the infiltrators don’t mind grading road and slapping some paint up, because that’s what most of the men spend their time doing.”
“You really expect to build a brigade out of a bunch of Quislings?”
“Not right away, we don’t. It takes time to adapt to Free Territory. Have you met Ediyak?”
“She’s one of the brighter lights in your command. Good breeding. Springfield College ROTC?”
“You wouldn’t have thought that two or three years ago. Fresh out of the Kurian Zone, scared to ever make a decision or sign her name to anything. She’s been promoted twice in the last year.”
Grace closed his book, tucked it into his camouflage fatigue coat.
“Poking sticks into a hornet’s nest will keep one busy,” Grace said.
“Or you might call it killing Kurians, but I’m equable. Six of one, half a dozen of the other . . .”
Grace’s mouth tightened. “Did it occur to you that this may be a trap?”
“If it is, it’s working perfectly,” Valentine said. “There’s no sign of a trap.”
“Experience has shown the Kurians tempt us into rashness, throwing away our best and brightest on these wild ventures. They are like cats, luring the mice out of their holes where they can be swatted.”
“Be sure to call Gamecock’s Bears a bunch of mice, next time you see them,” Valentine said. “But give me some warning, so I can watch.”
“Now, Major,” Brother Mark put in. “Rashness or boldness, by your definition, depends on the outcome.”
“For two men who’ve left bodies from here to the Appalachians, you’re both rather cocky,” Grace said. “I’d expect a little more humility from people who’d killed off half a brigade.”
“I notice you’re still around, Grace,” Valentine said. “Never made it on any of the lists for best and brightest?”
Grace purpled about the face. “That’s a court-martial—”
“We run things a little different out here, Major. Anyone can talk about anything off their feet and out from beneath cover.”
“I’ve never once seen you in a hat, on or off base,” Grace said. “Seems very unmilitary.”
“I’ve never seen you off base. Stealthy for a big guy.”
“Sir,” the communication tech reported. “Observation D reports two scout cars moving south on highway D. Georgia markings.”
“D,” Valentine said. That was the overgrown highway going back north, to their transport and the Gunslingers.
Duvalier was up and alert, Brother Mark puffing up behind.
“Well, they discovered us,” Valentine said. “Just not when we wanted them to.”
The radio chirped again.
“Handshake,” said the communications corporal, giving a clear connection password. He listened.
“Sir, we’ve got word from transport hitch,” the tech said. “They were spotted by some armored cars.”
“That settles it,” Valentine said. “This could work to our advantage. We’ve got to get our hands on those cars.”
“Val, I can do it,” Duvalier said.
“I’m coming with.”
“With that bum leg of yours? And you’re the shittiest driver under eighty I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ll land on the good one. I want to capture the car, not drive it.”
“I’ll take the first,” Duvalier said. “That way, when you fall off, I won’t have to hang on while they swerve to run you over.”
“Do you let your civilians talk to you that way?”
Valentine turned over command of Vendetta to Frat. If things went south with the cars, the camp might very well turn out anyway to hunt the road. He gave a nod to Pellwell and reached to clap her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, your critters will get their chance, but not with these.”
They hurried to the old highway. It was so overgrown it was practically a tunnel, but vehicles with toothy brush cutters had cleared the worst of it recently, exposing a broken-up roadbed like coral. The worst holes had been filled with sand and gravel.
They climbed trees with big branches hanging over the road, and waited.
They heard the armored cars long before they saw them.
The noise resolved itself into humps of metal kicking up the dust of crushed Kentucky limestone used for evening out the broken old highway.
Valentine brought up his binoculars.
They were a pair of armored cars—armored farm equipment, more like. They weren’t designed like urban armored cars, built to rush to a trouble spot and survive the cinder blocks and kerosene of rioters. These were serious off-road brush-crushers, with wedgelike fronts and six fat tires. Towed trailers, a little higher than the armored cars, made them look like ants at a distance. Blue-black paint, chipped here and there, alternately caught and absorbed the sun.
The drivers were enjoying the spring weather. Their heads could be seen atop the vehicles.
“Drop on the gunner first,” Valentine said. “Otherwise he’ll sweep me off with the machine gun.”
The first armored car looked rather festive, like a bull exhibited in a livestock parade. Young branches and flowering stems had been caught in mud guards, headlamp grilles, and the brush-cutting teeth at the front of the sloped armored nose, giving each a leafy, woody beard. The car behind had been turned a chalky pale yellow by road dust.
Duvalier dropped first. Valentine’s request about dealing with the gunner quickly was solved by her hanging upside down by her linked ankles. Her blackened sword didn’t flash in the sun, but descended clean and rose again from the slash bright red. A wet divot, possibly a hairy patch of neck.
The gunner’s head dropped forward as though he’d fallen asleep. Blood had splattered on the bulletproof plastic that shielded the gunner.
Duvalier released her ankles, and managed to drop onto the first car. Valentine held his breath while she arrested herself with a single outflung hand, the other still around the sword hilt.
The first armored car passed under him. The gunner was watchful and alert, but looking down his machine-gun barrel at the road ahead. Valentine, concealed in the foliage ahead, timed a mental practice jump.
The second car approached. The driver had a big, creamy white cowboy hat with the high crown favored by some Texans. A pair of sunglasses and a scarf kept the dust off his face. Valentine would have to act quickly. All he had to do to remove himself from danger was duck down.
Valentine checked the wrist loop on his legworm pick, tightening it.
Five, four, three ...
He dropped.
Landed on the good leg in a three-point stance, solid hickory in his right hand.
The gunner turned his head and got a brief look at his own death before the claw end of the legworm pick did its work.
The terrible exhilaration took over.
Valentine shoved the body aside with one hard pull. He scooted forward and tried to ignore the twitches of the dying man.
The driver turned, perhaps to point to Duvalier, hanging off the side of the front armored car’s spotlight by one thin hand, the other unwilling to relinquish its grip on her sword hilt.
Valentine smashed him hard with the hammer end of the legworm pick. A reflex, perhaps, but the driver stood on the brakes. Valentine would have gone off without the claw end of the pick, which latched on to the driver’s hatch.
He pushed the mess aside and sat in the driver’s seat.
David Valentine wasn’t comfortable behind any wheel. Machines bothered him, and the bigger and faster they were the more likely it seemed they’d get out from under his control and strike something. He pressed a pedal and the armored car slowed, another one sped it up.
The armored car slalomed as Valentine oversteered, heart pounding and the scent of blood in his nostrils.
His eye caught a reflected glint from the vehicle ahead. The driver there knew his job, and had set up some kind of safety mirror to keep an eye on the following vehicle.
He cranked his vehicle to the side of the road, into the thick brush. Duvalier was torn free as though by a dozen grasping hands.
Valentine found the brake and slowed the vehicle, but he still felt a thump as he struck Duvalier.
Heart pounding high and hard, Valentine halted the armored car and raised himself out of the seat.
Duvalier, her face a road map of scratches and wounds, grinned from behind a torn lip.
“You brake for redheads?” she asked.
“Thank God,” Valentine managed.
“For inventing traction,” Duvalier said.
Valentine pushed the vehicle into gear. “Get in the gunner—”
“No, I’ll drive. You shoot.”
“Catch up to him!” Valentine shouted, glancing through the armored glass. No wonder the driver was driving from the higher seat, the thin slits didn’t give much visibility, and what there was had leaves and branches latticed across it.
Valentine went under to reach the gunner’s seat in the armored car, noting that you could fit perhaps four men in the compartment between the driver and gunner positions. There were firing slots for them. Bags of gear were netted on the floor and against the ceiling.
Valentine saw a box of grenades and took a couple. He sat in the bloodstained seat and evaluated the weapon.
You pivoted it with a pair of pedals, and once pointed in the right direction, the gimbal allowed the gunner about a twenty-degree field of fire.
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