Valentine's Rising (17 page)

“Red bandannas. Okay.”

“One more thing.” Valentine reached into his AOT officer's winter coat, a hanging mass of leather and canvas covered with bellows pockets. “Here's a report . . . well, several reports. Send a couple of good, and I mean real good, Wolves out to the Boston Mountains. They're to find whoever's in charge there and hand them over. A Lifeweaver would be ideal.”

“I've got eight men who've run courier for Martinez up north. They know where to go.”

“Keep those uniforms handy. You may need them again.”

“Very well, sir.”

“More responsibility than you wanted, I'm sure.”

Finner rocked back and forth on his heels, keeping time to the music, fighting a smile. “I'm getting used to it. I think I'm better at this than I thought. Hope you didn't think I was accusing . . .” Finner let the sentence trail off.

“No. Stay suspicious, Finner. If I'd been more suspicious when we hit the Free Territory—oh, never mind. I want to pay this Consul Solon back with some of his own coin.”

Finner and his Wolves left them while they were still in the hills. The road sloped down into the Ruins. It began to rain again. Valentine put an old green towel over his shaven head so the ends hung down like a bloodhound's ears and seated an old Kevlar helmet over it.

“This cover my scar?” he asked Post. “I'm worried I've made Solon's Most Wanted.”

“Pretty much,“ Post said, tilting his head to see the thin white line descending Valentine's right cheek. “It's shaded off, anyway. You can still see the bit by your eye. It's the haircut that makes the real difference.”

“That wasn't a haircut, that was clear-cutting.”

“Your teeth could use some coffee stains to complete the disguise. I've never known anyone who spends so much time brushing his teeth in the field.”

“Every meal, the way my momma taught me.” That memory caused a brief stab: the last time he'd seen them in Minnesota he was eleven and she'd—
stop it
. “If you'd ever seen a nice, runny oral infection you'd join me,” he finished, a little lamely.

The column passed shells of buildings. Empty gas stations, strip malls with their glass fronts blasted out, foundations of homes that had burned and died grew closer and closer together as they came into the city limits. Gutted two-story structures gave way to piles of rubble, though the highway they walked on had been cleared. The debris lined either side of the road like snowdrifts.

The column sighted a guard post.

“Okay, Post, I'm going to talk to them. They'll probably take me to the CO of this scrapheap. If I'm not back in two hours, or if you hear shooting, just fade into the hills. Split up if you have to.”

“Told me that, sir.”

“I'm repeating it. Nobody, not even Ahn-Kha, goes in after me. We want them confused; fighting will unconfuse them faster than anything.”

A sergeant with a corporal trailing behind like a heeled dog stepped from a little shelter at the spectacle of a quarter mile of humanity waking down the road toward his post. They wore tiger-striped cammies, with AOT yellow insignia at the shoulder. Valentine kicked his horse on and trotted forward. Ahn-Kha stepped in front of his horse and took the reigns.

“I heard you speaking to Post. If this turns, we're not to go in after you?”

“Not even you, old horse.”

“If I can't go in after you, my David, I'm coming in with you.”

“Post will need you if—”

“You'll need me more.”

Ahn-Kha's ears went flat and the Grog took a stance a little wider than a riverside oak, four hundred pounds of road-block.

“You'll be my bodyguard then,” Valentine said, knowing when he was beaten, and not wanting to look like there was a crisis in his command.

They approached the guard station. Valentine hailed the sergeant from horseback.

“We're a day late, I know. Bad weather,” Valentine said.

“A day late for what?” the sergeant said. He looked more at Ahn-Kha than at either Valentine or the unarmed column far behind. Valentine was suddenly glad Ahn-Kha had insisted on accompanying him.

Valentine glared, and turned his chin so the three pips on his collar showed.

“Colonel,” the sergeant added, saluting.

“For outfit and transport, Sergeant. Recruits up from Station 26, District Commander Frum's HQ.”

The corporal checked a nearly blank clipboard. “You're Colonel Le Sain.”

“From Louisiana,” Valentine said, opening a satchel. He passed down a wad of paperwork in an expandable waterproof envelope. “Route Orders are near the top. You'll see supply, transport, OI for each recruit and the roster's in the back, not that you need to concern yourself with the rest. Don't think you have to check off every name that passes; my officers are responsible for everyone getting on the barge. I take the heat if anyone deserts.”

The sergeant took another look at the ID card dangling from Valentine's breast pocket. “Didn't they have transport for you on the road, uhhh, Colonel Le Sain?”

“Too cheap. Besides, it toughens 'em up.”

“I'll let the general know you've arrived.”

“When you do, mention that weather held us up. Hell, I'd better come along in case they have questions.”

“Yes, sir. Corp, let the colonel and his stoop pass.” The sergeant disappeared into his guardhouse.

Valentine dismounted and stepped over the chain hung between two concrete dragon's teeth blocking the road. “Up from Louisiana, sir? I used to serve in Texas, myself. Can't wait to get back.” The corporal's face showed curiosity, not suspicion.

“I'm here permanently.”

The guardhouse consisted of the remains of some concrete-and-steel professional building. Men in loose dungarees were rebuilding exterior walls from the rubble, fitting together more or less intact cinder blocks around electrical conduit already laid. Others worked on a superstructure to the building, building something that looked like a miniature aircraft control tower. The workers all had bright orange zipper pockets sewn on the breasts of their overalls.

“Forced labor?” Valentine asked the corporal.

“You know it, sir. At first it was lots of force and not much labor, but they've settled down.”

“Good.”

Valentine smelled the wet cement and waited while the sergeant passed responsibility up to lieutenant, and lieutenant to a radio. The lieutenant, a thirtyish man missing an earlobe, hung up the field phone and approached Valentine.

The Cat tried not to look relieved when he saluted. “Howdy, sir,” he said, revealing a mouth full of black-rimmed teeth. “I apologize for taking so long. I'm sorry, but there's some confusion. They know about the men, but Brigadier Xray-Tango doesn't know you, sir.” Valentine felt a cold sweat emerge on his back.

“I got my orders a month ago. Only thing to happen since then was a last-minute change; they had me set out from Fort Scott instead of Hot Springs. That got countermanded the next day; turned out they wanted me at Station 26 to command these recruits.”

“Looks like when you got switched back, someone didn't follow up, sir.”

“Order, Counter-Order, Disorder. Hot Springs had some confusion, too.”

The lieutenant shrugged. He looked as if he was going to say something to Ahn-Kha, and thought better of it. “Brigadier Xray-Tango wants to see you and your orders before your men get billeted, sir. I suppose your Grog can go with you.”

“Excuse me, son. ‘Xray-Tango?' That an acronym you use up here?”

“No, it's a name. He's CO for this whole New Columbia area. He's new, too.”

“I see. Wish they'd tell me these things.”

“If you'll follow me, sir.”

Valentine smiled. “I look forward to meeting the brigadier.”

 

Little Rock's collection of warehouses and piers was Station 3, according to the sign over the entrance. Station 3 also had a motto: “Crossroads of the Future.” Or so Valentine read as he stepped up the stairs and under a pre-2022 post and lintel in the neoclassical style. The rest of the headquarters building was a cobbled-together mix of wood floors, brick walls and beam roof. Communications passed from the radio room upstairs through old-fashioned air-pressure tubes. There was an audible
shoomp
as a new message arrived at the desk of an officer. Another wrote outgoing messages in block letters on square-lined paper and sent them shooting back upstairs.

“The general will see you now, sir; your assistant can wait outside,” a corporal said. He had the self-assured look of a ranker who was used to having officers at his beck and call. Ahn-Kha waited for a nod from Valentine, then went back outside.

The brigadier general had a corner office with narrow windows filled with the first unbroken glass Valentine had seen in the Ruins. What wall space wasn't taken up by windows had maps and bulletin boards on it. A liquor sideboard held trophies of figures in various martial arts poses instead of bottles. The desk smelled of recently applied varnish.

“Coffee?” Brigadier Xray-Tango asked. He had a neat uniform, with the same yellow star on the shoulder, and a hearty manner, under a haircut so close it resembled peach fuzz. Friendly but harassed eyes looked out from under bushy brows. There was something wrong with the face, though, and it took Valentine a moment to see it. Xray-Tango's left eye was open wider than the right; it wasn't that the right was squinting, it was more that the left lid stayed a little farther open. Valentine liked to look at a man's hands after his face, and as he poured the coffee Valentine looked at the work-roughened fingers. The nails were rimmed with a stain that matched that on the new desk, which was topped by a stenciled desk plate that read BGDR GENERAL S. XRAY-TANGO.

“Thank you, sir.” Valentine sniffed the aroma from the thermos. “The real thing?”

“Privileges of rank.”

“What's all the hardware for? Boxing?”

“Some. Ever heard of Tae Kwon Do?”

“That's like kickboxing, right?”

“A little. It's a martial art. I fought for my old brigade out west. Retired undefeated.” He held out his left hand; on the finger next to a wedding ring Valentine saw a ruby red championship ring with “S X T” engraved beneath the “Single Combat Champion” title. “Can I see your orders, Colonel?”

Valentine sorted them and placed them in three piles on his desk. “Marching orders. Supply requisitions. Organization Inventory for the recruits. Y'all like your paperwork up here.”

“That's a weak-looking OI,” Xray-Tango said, glancing through the pages.

“Farm kids and men in from the borderland boonies. But they're good woodsmen. They know about moving through country and shooting.”

“That territory organized?”

“Not as well as it should be. Most of them are the usual assortment of malcontents who chose carrying a gun over using a shovel in a labor camp.”

General Xray-Tango's left eye twitched; a quick three-blink spasm, the third slower than the first two.

“You're moving kind of stiff, Colonel. Injury?”

“I came off a horse a couple weeks ago and broke a rib. I just got the cast off.”

The eye twitched again and Xray-Tango took in Ahn-Kha's formidable frame.

“Why the bodyguard?” he asked Valentine.

“The Grog? SOP down there for anyone above captain, sir. Bodyguard. Master-at-arms. I don't know what you'd call it up here. He shakes up soldier and civilian alike.”

“Kind of like your own personal Hood, eh? Not sure if I like that. A good leader shouldn't have to dole out summary justice. How often you use it?”

“I lost one on the way. I had to shoot a deserter. Just a homesick kid. I didn't know what kind of paperwork I had to fill out so I just made a report, countersigned by my second in command and the dead man's sergeant. We don't have dog tags but his work card's attached. That's how we did things in Natchez.”

“That's the least of my worries, Le Sain.”

“Why's that, sir?”

“To be honest, we've no record of you coming here. By Kur, I need you, that's for sure. All this rain with the spring thaw; I've got a command and a bunch of warehouses that might be underwater in a day or two. Consul Solon has zero, and I mean zero, tolerance for wheeling and dealing. So I'm going to have to do some checking. No offense to how they do things in Louisiana.” The eye twitched again;
blink-blink-bliiink
.

“Don't follow your meaning, sir.”

“I started out in the Okalahoma High Plains, Colonel. Not the most exciting place for duty. We had a captain out there, got bored with his duties and got himself a transfer to Lake Meredith. And when I say got himself a transfer, I mean he wrote one up, signed it and moved his troops a hundred miles just for a change of scenery. He figured he'd earned it after a lot of dusty years watching railways and cattle wallows. So happens he was a good officer and the Higher Ups let him get away with it. We've been after Frum at Post 26 for months to meet his recruitment quota for the year—and all of the sudden he's not just met it, he's overfilled it, with a Louisiana colonel to boot.”