Valentine's Rising (37 page)

“Armored cars,” Valentine said. “Snowplows, I think. Two of them. Pickups behind, double axles with light armor tacked on.”

“Snowplows” was Southern Command shorthand for long, heavy armored cars with pointed prows for pushing through roadblocks. Armored cupolas with machine guns, or sometimes a 20mm gun nicknamed a “Bushwhacker” stood high and gave the gunner a towerlike view. They were built on the skeletons of garbage-truck-sized vehicles.

“They're in for a shock,” Nail said.

“As long as our heavy-weapons guys know what they're doing.”

“Two minutes,” Valentine said. “I'll be right back.”

Valentine gave his men, squatting next to their stovepipelike recoilless rifles, a thumbs-up and ran back to the train platform.

“Styachowski! Roll, roll, have everything roll!”

She nodded and signaled to the man working the engine, a Quisling officer's machine gun bumping at her hip. A soldier helped her into the back boxcar. “The rest of you, fall back to the barge. The barge! Follow the women!”

Styachowski had used the female POWs after all. They stood along the road holding emergency candles. The lights weren't bright enough to be seen by the distant snipers, let alone the mortars on Pulaski Heights, especially with the warehouses beginning to burn. The men began to pull out, some carrying a last load between them, guided to safety by the candle-holding women.

Valentine pulled the flare gun from his shoulder bag and broke it open. He fired it. Before its parachute opened, he was already running back to the Bears. He glanced up and the white glare traced an angry scrawl on his retinas.

“Here they come!” Nail called, the growl of motors growing louder. Valentine could see the turreted tops of the armored cars above the rubble, coming toward them like the dorsal fin of an attacking shark. The Bears had arranged rubble to cover their heads and shoulders.

Valentine joined one of the teams with the light artillery. A box of forearm-sized shells was laid out, ready for loading, and a soldier knelt next to the tube, looking down a crosshairs bracket as he adjusted the barrel with levers.

“Let them have it as soon as you can,” he told the gunner.

“Yes, Colonel,” the man said. “Err . . . Cap—”

“Don't worry about it. Just put a shell into them.”

The first armored car rounded the corner, the pointed prow on it filling the street.

“Clear!” the gunner yelled, but the other two in the crew were already well away from the back of the weapon.

It fired with a
whoosh
, more like a rocket than a shell. The backblast kicked up a shroud of dust, blinding Valentine for a moment. He heard an explosion somewhere down the road. The loaders opened the crossbars at the back and slid in a brassy new shell.

Valentine heard the Bears shooting. The front snowplow had been stopped, and smoke poured from the front. It was firing back; tracers arced from the turret, their brightness leaving strange echoes on his retinas. He saw vague shapes of troops exiting the armored car behind it before the recoilless rifle fired again.

“That's it. Wreck the tube,” Valentine said.

“One more shell, sir,” the gunner said, as the others loaded.

“Shoot and fall back.” He raised his voice. “Nail, get out of it!”

More tracer streaks lit up the street. The gunner fired again, blindly. Valentine waited to see Nail and his Bears run for the burning warehouses, and pulled the gunner out by his collar. The loaders put another shell in the tube, and placed the spares beneath its massive tripod.

Tracer fire began to seek the recoilless weapon like a probing finger. “Better get going, sir,” the gunner said, throwing a bag over his shoulder. He pulled out a shining new grenade.

Valentine looked up the street and made his dash. He gestured to the gunners, trying to encourage them to hurry. The gunner nodded to the other two and tossed the grenade in with the shells under the tube. The three of them ran.

From the platform Valentine looked at the rail bridge. He saw the tailgate of a pickup, bumping as the tires negotiated the ties. Men walked single file on the pedestrian walkway, crossing over to the north side. Others were setting charges.

“Nail,” Valentine said, as the Bears came up behind him with the recoilless gunners. “It'll have to be the boat. They're getting set to blow the bridge.”

Nail nodded, and they turned for the riverbank. A few members of the rearguard were hurrying for the dock. Mortar shells were dropping around the train station.

Nail clapped Valentine on the back. “We really—”

An explosion boiled all around them. Valentine felt a warm hand give him a gentle nudge. He realized he was on the ground. Nail lay facing him, his leg on top of Valentine's, like two lovers in bed.

“You okay?”

“Sure,” Nail gasped. He started to pick himself up. Neither of his legs moved.

Valentine tried to help him up. “Rain, anyone . . . help!” His voice sounded like a far-off whisper.

“Legs . . .” Nail said, looking up at Valentine. He'd never seen fear in the Bear's eyes before.

Valentine picked him up in a fireman's carry and trotted down toward the pier. The barge waited, huge and comforting.

“Cast off, cast off,” the sergeant handling the loading called. Zhao was running between little groups, clapping them on the shoulder and pointing toward the barge. Valentine saw his old marines from the
Thunderbolt
leave the piled sandbags around the dock—sandbags were easily found around the riverbank—and run up the gangplank to the barge. There was a hint of light in the sky; by it Valentine saw the main deck of the barge piled high with sandbags. The cargo carrier in front was filled with people, mostly prisoners from the camp, and Zhao's company.

“Bandages!” the sergeant called, looking at Nail and Valentine. “Take him to the foredeck, sir. The wounded are there.”

Valentine boarded, and went forward. Just below the pilot house a man in splints and one of the women lay under blankets next to Beck's two wounded. Field medics helped Valentine lay Nail out.

“Sorry about this, Nail.” The inadequate words made him want to bite his tongue.

“Don't feel a thing, sir. Hardly hurts.”

“Shrapnel,” the medic said. “His back's kind of tore up. I've stopped the bleeding—most of it.”

Valentine heard the muttering boat engines gun, and the barge moved away from the dock, heading upriver.

“Can I get you anything, Nail?”

“I want to see.”

“You want to see?”

“The bridge go.”

Valentine looked at the medic, who shrugged. “Let me get this dressing finished. Then we'll see,” he said. Valentine couldn't remember giving orders about having an aid station set up on the boat. One of Styachowski or Post's additions. He heard bullets plinking off the old scow. The side of the boat was an irresistible target for any Quisling with a rifle and a view.

They passed under the old pilings of the railroad span. Valentine heard the distinctive clatter of a Kalashnikov fired from the River Rats' town.

When the medic finished with Nail's dressing Valentine pulled a soldier and they carried his stretcher to the back of the tug. The screws were churning the muddy waters of the Arkansas. Behind them they could see the bridge framed against a pink sky. The warehouses were going up, a ground-level fireworks explosion.

“We fucked with them good,” Nail said, his eyes bright and excited. “That sight's worth getting all tore up over.” The sky was growing brighter by the second.

“C'mon, guys, don't wait and try and take a few with the bridge,” Valentine said. “Just—”

Explosions ripped across the bridge, and wood and rails spun into the sky.

“What the hell?” Nail said.

The bridge still stood.

“Shit. Didn't they use enough C-big?” Nail said.

“It's not that,” Valentine waited, hoping for the structural integrity to fail. The bridge still stood. “They used plenty. They just used it all at the bottom of the bridge, where it meets the pilings. Spread it out too much, too. They tore up the track good, that's all. On a truss bridge the load is all borne by the joints at the top. If they'd just blown out the tops of the span we passed under, it'd be in the river.”

A mortar shell landed in the water astern of them.

“This boat trip's gonna get cut short,” Nail predicted.

The barge edged toward Big Rock Mountain. Valentine felt it shudder. The soldiers went to the rail, concerned.

“We're aground!” someone shouted.

“Shit!” Nail said.

“Okay, just wade, swim, whatever,” Valentine shouted. He ran forward, leaving Nail for the moment.

“Out of here. Over the side . . . just go!” he yelled. “Man-fred, help the women. We need stretcher-bearers. Who wants to carry?”

Part evacuation, part shipwreck, they got the soldiers and some of the supplies overboard. Valentine stayed with the wounded until the stretchers were ashore. The water helped deaden the effect of the mortars; they did little more than create brief fountains of water as they exploded.

“There's still a lot of cargo on the barge,” Zhao said, dripping from the armpits down.

“Forget it. We need to get up the hill.”

It was easier said than done. The hillside rose two hundred feet at a 3:1 grade, where it wasn't a cliff. There was an old switchback road going up the side. Valentine sent up the stretcher-bearers in groups so they could replace each other. He stood among the trees at the base of the hill, watching the mortars drop shells into the barge. The Quislings seemed to be taking strange pleasure in wasting shells on the wreck, rather than dropping them on the hillside where they might do some damage.

He heard a heavy tread, and looked up to see a mountain of muscle.

“Good morning, Ahn-Kha,” he said.

“I'm glad to see you, my David. It's been a long night.”

“For both of us.”

“Post and Styachowski arrive?”

“Styachowski is at the Residence now. Post is still unloading the second run.”

“What's the TMCC doing about it?”

“At first light I heard some shooting, far to the north. My guess is two patrols ran into each other.”

“So you don't think they've figured out where we are?”

“They'll know soon, my David.”

“What do you think they'll do?”

“I leave outthinking them to you. I just try to outfight them.”

“If you had to outfight me right now?” Valentine asked, looking across the river. He could just see the tip of the crane building the Kurian Tower, though he supposed the construction schedule had been set back.

“I'd try you soon, before you could organize. Today, tonight.”

“Wouldn't hurt to pretend you're giving the orders across the river. Let's get up the hill.”

 

It was full light by the time he approached Solon's Residence across the bulldozed hilltop. A bulldozer was at work, digging pits into the ground in front of the house beyond the turnaroud. Post stood in front of the entrance, giving orders. A truck pulled up and a team of men hurried to take the crates out and manhandle them inside. With the bed emptied, the pickup turned around and drove back down the road to the station.

Post looked up as Valentine approached.

“The hill is secure, sir. Ella, Daltry and Pollock have their companies north, east and southeast. We've got observers watching the river. Styachowski is holding the station until we get the rest up here, unless they come in force. This is a choice piece of ground. I can see why Solon picked it. Great view.”

“Where are the wounded?”

Post pointed to one of the building shells. “Lower level of that one, sir. The doctors are getting set up in there. There was already a little dispensary for the construction workers, and they're expanding it. They could use some trained nurses. Dr. Brough's already bitching.”

“I know of one. Get Narcisse in there as soon as you can.”

“She's with the wounded at the station,” Post said, shrugging his shoulders the way some men do at a heavy rain that can't be helped. “Nothing serious, but you know her. If someone's in pain—”

“I'm glad you had the sense not to stop her. Let's get the prisoners organized, Colonel Kessey—she's got an eyepatch, easy to spot—said she had some doctors.”

“I saw her come over the hill,” Post said. “She's talking to the men placing the guns now.”

“Every company has Quickwood spears, right?”

“Having them is one thing. Getting them to use them is another.”

“We've got today, at least. They won't hit us with Reapers until dark. Carry on, Will. Lieutenant Nail's been badly wounded by shrapnel. Hit in the back.”

“Damn. You know, I don't think anyone's been killed yet? On our side, anyway. Who ever heard of that?”

“Maybe our luck's finally turned,” Valentine said.

 

To the extent that there were still MDs, Major Brough deserved her title. She was a field surgeon with ten years experience in the Guards, and had seen everything metal could do to the human body.

“I'm not hopeful, sir,” Dr. Brough said, when Valentine asked her about Nail. “Tore open his back. One kidney's gone, the other's probably damaged enough so it might as well be gone, too. His back's broken, and there's massive nerve damage. I'm surprised he was even coherent when they brought him in.”