Valentine's Rising (35 page)

The knife traveled the circle, the men holding it out across to each other over the flames, until Valentine's own arm began to hurt in sympathy. The blade traveled from Rain, the one with the most scars, to Nail, and then to the others, each solemnly dusting the wound with the powder from their own shell casings. Valentine found himself wondering about hepatitis rates among the Bears.

When it was done Nail rose, a little drunkenly, and came up to Valentine.

“We're ready. They through the wire?” he said. Nail was enunciating a little thickly.

“Yes, men are starting to slip out. Someone's keeping them together at the edge of camp, though. Let's go meet them.”

The Bears took up their assortment of weapons and the steel door. They ran, hunched over, up to the gathering point of the escapees.

“Someone's—” a tattered lookout said, before a Bear came from the shadows to clamp a hand over his mouth.

“Easy, men,” Valentine said, holding out a hand as a couple of the prisoners took up rocks. “There's a Bear team here. Nice work on the wire. If you don't mind, we'd like to use it to get in. Who's in command, here?”

“I am. You've got a familiar voice, Bea—is that you, Valentine?” said Captain Beck, former commander of Foxtrot Company, and the officer who had Valentine drummed out of the Wolves.

“How's the arm, Captain?” was all Valentine could think to say. Beck had his right arm tucked into his shirt, Napoleon-style.

“Nerve damage. You back from Minnesota? What the hell's going on?”

“Long story, Captain. Gather the men here—”

“The women—”

“Please don't interrupt me, Captain. The team's going in for the women.”

“Thank God for that. You wouldn't have a spare rifle or two, Lieutenant?”

Valentine didn't bother to correct him. “Nail?”

“We're light enough as is,” Nail said. “Let us at those guards, we'll get you some guns, sir.”

Beck nodded. “I like the sound of that. I'll take you into the men.”

Valentine led the Bears through the wire, past an astonished line of men waiting their turn. “Keep it moving, men. There's going to be shooting, the more of you outside the wire the better.”

“Gimme one o' them auto pistols an' I'll give—” one began.

“You'll get your chance soon enough, Corporal,” Valentine said, looking at what was left of his uniform. “Move along, men.”

They passed into a tent. The stench of the dark tent was palpable, a warm, cloying shroud enveloping them. The men didn't even have cots to lie on, there was just bedding on mats on the ground and some hammocks. “This and the barrack next to it are the only ones they can't see too well from the guards' hut.” Beck said. “We were going to open some more holes in the wire from the outside so the others could get out.”

The men gaped at the Bears.

“Do you have a signal system between the tents?”

“Yeah, we whistle,” Beck said.

“Whistle them to keep their heads down, Captain, if you please.”

“Johnson, do the ‘watch out' tune. Alert for all barracks,” Beck said. A rag-and-bone private let loose with three hacking coughs that could be heard a mile away and began a querulous whistling.

“Nail?” Valentine asked, looking through the tent flap. “What do you think?”

The guards were still piling sandbags around each end of the Quonset hut. Valentine could see a machine gun at the pile opposite the main gate, covering the back of the camp.
Too late, guys, we're already in
. The other Bears, at a signal from Nail, were opening window-sized gaps in the tenting.

“It's up to you, Lieutenant,” Valentine said to Nail.

“They're worried about the prisoners storming the wire,” Nail said. “We'll go in through the middle. Two grenades to each end of the hut. Hack, try and get yours behind the sandbags this time.”

“Five seconds,” Nail said, nodding to Valentine. The Bears pulled the pins on their grenades. He squatted, and motioned for Beck to get down. The men left in the tent fell to the floor. Two Bears threw, the others held the tent flaps open. Everyone covered their ears.

The cry of, “Grenade!” never came; the prison guards must have been some combination of inattentive and poorly trained. Just four explosions, less than a second apart.

“Blitz! Blitz! Blitz!” Nail shouted, tearing open the tent.

The Bears charged the wire. Rain went first. He threw himself at the wire like a breaching dolphin and crashed down on the concertina. He pivoted, holding the wire apart with gloved hand and boot as the other Bears stampeded over him. Valentine brought up the rear, pistol ready, but only smoke and pained cries came from behind the piled footlockers and sandbags. A severed arm had been flung into the wire—its fingers still moved. Groshen threw himself down in the space between the Quonset hut and the wire, his unwieldy Grog gun on a bipod and pointed at the tower. Hack covered the other end of the building. “Mother-fucker!” Lost&Found shouted. He made a tight fist and drove his leather-gloved hand through the aluminum in the side of the hut. Brass stuck the Dragon's snake-head muzzle through as soon as Lost&Found pulled his bleeding hand out and the grenade launcher hissed as he swiveled the muzzle:
fssssssh fssssssh fssssssh.

Groschen saw a shot and took it, but Valentine ignored the .50 caliber report and its effect.

The grenades roared within the hut, blowing ventilators off the arced roof. Rain got to his feet and grabbed the aluminum in his chain-mail gloves. He planted a foot against the wall. Muscles on his back strained and he peeled open the aluminum side of the hut.

Valentine heard scattered gunfire; Zhao's company was shooting at the tower. He upbraided himself for not giving strict orders to only shoot the tower. The soldiers might start firing at his Bears in the confusion.

Rain extracted himself from the wire and pulled his knife and hooked ax. He plunged into the smoke boiling out of his improvised door. The other Bears followed drawing blades, hatchets and, in Brass' case, a folding shovel.

Nail followed his men in, machine pistol held tight against his shoulder.

Groschen shot again. “That'll teach you to peek,” he muttered as he chambered another round.

Valentine heard screams from within the Quonset hut. A Quisling, blood running from his eyes and ears, stumbled blindly out the back door. He hit the sandbags and went over head-down-feet-up like a teeter-totter changing balance. Hack put a single shot into his armpit.

“We surrender. Surrender,” a voice from the tower yelled faintly across the yard.

A pained scream bounced off the corrugated walls of the hut. He noticed Captain Beck at his side. “Helluva Bear team you have, Valentine.”

Valentine had no time for him. “Throw your guns outta there,” he shouted at the tower, his voice dry and hoarse in the smoke and cold night air.

The machine gun and some rifles flew out of the tower. One discharged as it hit the ground.

“Stop shooting, we surrender,” the invisible Quisling shouted.

“Idiots,” Groschen said. He picked up his Grog gun, holding it with the aid of a sling. “Let's go get them.”

Valentine looked to Beck. “Wait here, Captain,” he said. He shuffled crabwise to the sandbags covering the front of the hut. He followed his gun muzzle over the side. Two bodies and a third guard, whimpering out his confusion, lay there. The man must have been in shock, otherwise he'd be screaming, judging from the absence of his foot.

The man's pain still triggered instincts not wholly lost.

“Groschen, help this man.”

“Sure thing, sir.” Groshen drew a palm-sized automatic from his vest and shot the man through the ear. It was carried out with the same smooth, careless motion that he might use to toss away a gum wrapper.

“That's not what I meant,” Valentine sputtered.

“Sorry, sir, but it's just a Kurpee.”

Who are you to judge?
Valentine had killed helpless men in anger, in desperation, in fear. He'd machine-gunned helpless sailors and murdered men in their sleep—and been giddy and sickened by the act. Maybe Groschen was better than Valentine after all; he didn't look like he'd enjoyed it.

“Coming out, Gross,” Brass said from the doowary.

“Come ahead.”

Brass came out, splattered with blood. “Even dozen. Rain's taking the heads now.”

“You two, get the prisoners out of the tower. I'm going to see about getting the women out.”

Groschen and Brass walked toward the tower, Groschen keeping his gun pointed up, holding it from the hip like a Haitian erotic fetish Valentine had seen in the Caribbean. He took one more look at the executed Quisling—he'd seen the man's face before, standing watch over prisoner labor. Whatever thoughts, ideas, dreams, or regrets had lived within that bloody head were forever lost.

Bullets flew. Shots from outside the camp made Brass and Groschen throw themselves to the ground. Valentine vaulted over the sandbag wall and landed on one of the splayed bodies.

“What the hell?” Nail said from the doorway.

“It's Zhao's company,” Valentine said. “They're shooting at us.”

“Fuck!” Lost&Found swore. For a man with “Born Again to Kill” written on his helmet, he had a distinctly unChristian way of expressing himself. Brass and Groschen both hollered “Cease fire” as best as they could with their faces planted in the common yard's dirt.

“Doesn't that hurt?” Valentine asked, looking at Lost&Found's swollen hand.

“It will tomorrow. Don't worry, sir. She'll heal up.”

Valentine caught motion out of the corner of his eye; a figure ran out to the gate of the camp.

“What's that idiot doing?” Nail said.

Valentine peeped over the edge of the sandbags. Beck stood in the open, waving a white rag with his remaining active arm. “Hold your fire!”

“My former captain,” Valentine said. “Never short of guts.”

There was another shot from the darkness. Beck didn't even flinch. He kept shouting and signaling.

“Boy's wiring is definitely not grounded,” Nail observed.

 

Fifteen minutes later some order had been restored to the camp, now darkened by the destruction of the generator. Zhao's men were in a screen around it, their guns pointed in a less dangerous direction while Valentine organized his prisoners. Some blocks away a building burned; Valentine guessed it to by Xray-Tango's headquarters.

A quick headcount gave him five hundred twenty-seven men and sixty women. All were in this particular camp because they had been captured in Southern Command uniforms. Beck explained the half-assembled nature of their accommodations in a few terse sentences.

“The expected us to just be here a couple days. Then they found work for us, the flood started—a few days turned into weeks. Men were scheduled to ship to Texas, women to Memphis, by rail or water, whichever opened up first.”

“Solon owes his neighbors for the loan of troops,” Valentine said.

“Yes. We're the only currency the Kurians accept. During our captivity, their investment accrued interest.”

This last was with a jerk of the chin toward the women. About one in four were visibly pregnant. Fertility drugs in the feed, perhaps.

“Don't let the expectants fool you,” a woman who introduced herself as Lieutenant Colonel Kessey said, when Valentine waked over to the crowd of women wrapping up their belongings in bundles. “Most have combat experience.” Kessey had an eyepatch and some burn tissue across her scalp, but put up a hard-nosed front as she organized her rescued women. “The guards used us like their common harem. They used to laugh and say we should thank them—pregnancy keeps you off work detail, saves you from the Last Dance.”

“Can't say that I blame them,” Valentine said.

She lowered her voice. “All the women get the lecture in basic. Rape Survival Strategy, given by women who've been there and made it back. I used to joke about it. ‘In case of capture, break his balls.' Not so easy when there are six of them.”

“How many can walk as far as the river?” Valentine asked.

“All of them, sir,” Kessey said. “We have litters, just in—”

A scream from the Quonset hut cut her off. It was followed by another.

“Excuse me, would you?” Valentine said, hurrying off to investigate. Shouts blended in with the screams.

It was what he dreaded. The two guards captured in the tower had been strung up by their heels inside the hut. One had blood pouring down his body. Amid the bustle of Beck's prisoners grabbing weapons and anything else remotely useful, some of the vengeful prisoners had taken matters into their own hands. Two women, thin and hollow-eyed, stood in a circle of hooting men. Both had knives; one held the wounded guard's severed genitals before the other's eyes. Some of the male prisoners were tying together the legs of another man with a bloody wound in his leg, ready to string him to the ceiling fixture when the castrated man died.