March in Country (21 page)
Authors: EE Knight
“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?”
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
?”
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.
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 m
yak!”
yak!”
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.
“Don’t you shoot, I’m leaving,” the man in the wheelhouse said. He scuttled up a ladder to the flying bridge, butt and head tucked, and used the first two rungs to throw himself into the river.
Lights appeared around the bend in the downstream Tennessee. Another River Patrol craft was coming in, hot and ready for action.
Valentine went to the wheelhouse of the vacated boat, the one with the lights flashing. It was a smaller boat approaching, no flying bridge but what looked like a big damn multibarreled gun in front of the wheelhouse. Two oval ammo drums hung off it like testicles.
Probably a crew of three.
Valentine waited. It approached the dock, slowing, those gun barrels aimed up the riverbank, where Valentine saw scattered gun flashes. The Bears were sensibly using single shots. Nothing drew fire like long bursts of automatic.
Valentine was busy looking at the boat’s spotlight. Seemed simple to operate, a smaller version of the cannon he’d known on the old
Thunderbolt
in the Gulf.
Thunderbolt
in the Gulf.
“For fuck’s sake, they’re in the gun emplacement on the hill,” he shouted to the other boat. “Lay down some fire on it or they’ll blow you out of the water.”
That didn’t work. The gunner wouldn’t be goaded into firing.
He lit up the other boat, zeroed the spotlight in on the gunner. A face gleamed whitely before it threw up an arm to ward off the blinding light. Valentine tightened the spotlight beam as best as he could and then ran to the gun mount. He was chambering the first round of the belt when another spotlight struck, blinding him and shooting white pain through his head.
Here it comes
.
.
Blindly, Valentine fell backward out of the boat and into the Tennessee. Bullets ripped up the cabin of the craft, killing the spotlight, then clanging off and through the armored shield on the rear mount.
His head broke water behind the bulk of the tied-up boat.
Fire poured down from the gun emplacement. Valentine saw two of Gamecock’s Bears, faces full of war paint and toothy helmets on, lighting the night with tracer from their miniguns. He could see the brass casings dancing off into the night.
The boat swerved, headed for shore, the man at the wheel dead.
Valentine raised the Browning knockoff, pointed it at a bleeding crewman who was attempting to return to his feet.
“Okay, riverman, this is either the luckiest day of your life or the unluckiest. Take your pick.”
The scuffed-up river patroller decided to be lucky.
“That’s why I’m on the water. Can’t stand them hissing no-dicks,” he said, cheerfully taking the oath that would swear him into the battalion after hearing the terms.
“Likewise,” a suspicious Bear agreed.
“Can’t get away from ’em,” the sailor said. “Even when I’m upriver, still show up in bad dreams. Yellow-eyed bastards.” Valentine’s two Bears herded the survivors, hands clasped atop their heads, into the beer cooler.
“Have a drink on us,” Gamecock suggested.
“It’s safe-locked,” Dirty Nel said. “You can unscrew the latch from inside—even if we put a padlock on it.”
Other books
The Prometheus Deception by Robert Ludlum
Informed Consent by Saorise Roghan
Driving Heat by Day, Zuri
A Man for the Summer by Ruby Laska
Love & Marry by Campbell, L.K.
Never Steal a Cockatiel (Leigh Koslow Mystery Series Book 9) by Edie Claire
Wish Upon a Star by Jim Cangany
A Memory of Wind by Rachel Swirsky, Sam Weber
Pietr el Letón by Georges Simenon
The Mommy Mystery by Delores Fossen