Tale of the Thunderbolt (33 page)

The Santo Domingans did not wait to meet them. The sight and sound of charging Grogs amidst the
Thunderbolt
's shell-fire proved too much for the thin line of riflemen. The cheering sight of knapsacks bobbing in the tall grass of the hillside as the Santo Domingans ran brought a victorious whoop from Valentine. The horse gathered itself to leap the roadblock, and Valentine gripped the mane. He saw dead men heaped by the machine gun as the horse jumped the felled tree.

Valentine heard shots from the fishing village at the base of the hill and saw the
Thunderbolt
's marines deployed in a skirmish line advancing up the hill. Post, evidently trapped with his little contingent in the seaside fishing village, had heard the firing and acted.

The Santo Domingan soldiers surrendered or scattered, and the rout was complete.

Valentine swore to himself that he would see Post made into an officer in Southern Command if they ever made it back to the Free Territory.

As the column got moving again, Valentine reproached himself for jumping his horse into the most likely spot for another shell from the
Thunderbolt.
But in his later years that was forgotten when he remembered the pure glory of that moment, his first battlefield victory in eight years of soldiering.

 

Valentine saw boats drawn up on the beach, to either side of the village, under the guard of a sailor or two. Valentine had dispatched Post to the rendezvous with orders to gather every available craft, using the
Thunderbolt
's forbidding bulk if necessary to confiscate a flotilla of fishing boats. Using all the
Thunderbolt
's deck space, and a few large boats in tow, he hoped to get his charges along the coast.

It would be another long day while they loaded and supplied all the boats, but he had learned to expect nothing less.

 

By sunset, after an endless afternoon spent turning chaos into order, he stood on the
Thunderbolt
's bridge in clean clothes with a hot meal inside him. The Santo Domingan refugees were crowded on board every seaworthy vessel. Monte-Cristi's rear guard had tumbled down from the hills into the
Thunderbolt
's motorized boats, covered by cannon and Oerlikon. Last of all came Post's marines, setting fire to the huts of the village to add covering smoke to the debarkation.

But new worries replaced the old. Their cockleshell flotilla could fit the Haitian soldiers and Santo Domingans, just, but any kind of bad weather would lead to the possible loss of the boats, and perhaps the overcrowded
Thunderbolt
. The Kurians in Santo Domingo had a few ships, as well, mostly armed merchantmen that ran sugar and rubber and ore north. Any exchange of gunfire would be fatal to many of those crowding on the
Thunderbolt
's decks. Waiting in the bay while they captured better vessels from other villages was out of the question. The Kurian forces had already gathered, lobbing mortar shells into the water as the
Thunderbolt
towed the boats out to sea.

Two single-masted fishing ships plodded alongside, reeking holds filled with mobs of huddled people. Dozens more stood forlornly on the shoreline.

He unburdened his concerns on the one who knew the waters best.

“Don't worry about the weather,” Carrasca said, her hair blowing out in the fresh Caribbean breeze, just as it had that first morning taking the captured ship into Jamaica. The helmsman ignored them. “We have a few weeks left before worrying about real storms.”

Valentine took the sea air into his nostrils like a drug. “We have to get farther off the coast. Two or three miles at least. They might have guns mounted.”

“Let it go, David. We're at sea. My element, remember? Let me do the thinking for a while. You've done brilliantly. Maybe not what you set out to do, but it was the right choice in the end.”

“I should — ”

“Sleep. That's an order.”

“Captain's word at sea is law,” he said, turning up a corner of his mouth.

Her mock-serious attitude vanished. She glanced onto the bridge and stepped into his arms. He couldn't tell who started it, but they were kissing. “Sleep with me,” she whispered. “Soon. When we get back to Jamaica. After we see this through.” She broke off the embrace, leaving his body tingling. “Enough. You see, I take my duty as seriously as you. Tempting as the thought is,” she added, looking at his crotch and then returning her eyes to his. She no longer watched him with that wary hint of fear that his pupils might be glowing.

Valentine, too aroused to feel embarrassed, saluted. “It's a date,” he said, moving past her to leave the bridge. “I'll be in my cabin, if there's room to sleep between Post and Ahn-Kha, that is.” He allowed his hand to trace the firm course of her buttock and thigh as he passed, puckishly wanting her to be as aroused as he.

Sure enough, Ahn-Kha lay on the floor, still smelling of gunsmoke. Post occupied his cot, having fallen into bed still in uniform. Post reeked of sweat and woodsmoke, blood and gun oil, tidewater and pig fat. Valentine did not even have to hypersensitize his nose to smell the story of his lieutenant's day. Valentine stepped over Ahn-Kha and managed to get his boots off before falling into a dreamless sleep.

 

A hand shook him awake. Valentine's nose told him it was Cercado before he was even partly awake.

“Captain, it is Monte-Cristi. Come, please.”

Valentine rose out of bed, wide awake, but with the weighed-down feeling of a rushed awakening. Post and Ahn-Kha picked up on the alarm and stirred.

He followed Cercado out the door and down the short companionway to the officer's mess. Monte-Cristi sat up, held in the arms of one of his chieftans, some of his soldiers clustered in the doorway.

“Make a hole, dammit,” Valentine growled, pushing into the compartment.

Monte-Cristi's breathing was labored.

“Jacques, what is it, a seizure?” Valentine asked.

Monte-Cristi looked up, wincing. “My heart, I think, David.”

“He fainted away twice,” the chieftan holding him elaborated. “We gave him some wine to ease the pain.”

Valentine dashed back to his cabin, forcing his way past Ahn-Kha's companionway-filling bulk. He tore through his footlocker and came up with a bottle of white tablets. He rushed back to the mess.

“Water, someone,” Valentine said, putting four white tablets into Monte-Cristi's mouth.

“It is ironic, David,” Monte-Cristi said, after swallowing a drink of water to wash down the aspirin. “Hours of bullets flying around me, shells even. I've been on the run all day, and the moment I get to rest” — he shrugged, forcing a smile — “my heart chooses to kill me.” He shut his eyes, and Valentine patted his hand until he opened them again. “We fooled them, going to sea like that.”

“The Kurians forgot that the ocean is also a road.”

“A good joke,” Monte-Cristi managed.

“Yes, and we'll be laughing about it for weeks, over rum in your mountains.”

“I — ,” Monte-Cristi began, but he simply faded. Valentine thought he had gone to sleep, but when he felt for a pulse there was nothing.

“Fuck!” Valentine said. He lowered Monte-Cristi to the deck. “It's a good heart, Jacques. It just needs some help. Ahn-Kha!” he shouted. “Get out of here, everyone, clear the floor,” he yelled, forgetting to speak French, but his gestures served. Ahn-Kha entered. Valentine pounded on Monte-Cristi's chest and put an ear to his breast, listening for a beat. Nothing.

“Push on his chest, like this,” Valentine said, demonstrating.

Ahn-Kha's thick shoulders went to work, the Grog's four-fingered hands on Monte-Cristi's breastbone. Valentine pinched off his nose and breathed as Ahn-Kha worked. A long, long minute went by, and Monte-Cristi heaved and gasped on his own.

“ . . . think . . . perhaps . . . ,” Monte-Cristi said. His eyes fluttered, and he looked more alert. “Why am I on the floor?”

“Relax,” Valentine said. “Don't try to talk.”

The rest of the voyage, Monte-Cristi's health consumed Valentine's attention to the point where he actually forgot about the
Thunderbolt
, Carrasca, the Santo Domingans in their flimsy boats, and the weather. He knew time passed only from the growth of his beard, and an occasional look out the window. He fed Monte-Cristi aspirin at each small meal and watched a little of his strength return.

“I feel . . . used up,” Monte-Cristi confided, sitting in a canvas chair on the shady side of the deck as the coast slid by. “More so than before. But I will say this: Life is sweet now. It wasn't before. The past died the other day. Now I make my own future free of it.”

“Your days carrying a rifle are over. Sit on a beach from now on, learn to fish,” Valentine suggested.

“Why all this concern for a worn-out old man?” Monte-Cristi asked.

“Perhaps . . .” Valentine struggled for the right words, and would have struggled no matter what language he was using.

“Perhaps what?”

The man was beyond pretense, in himself or others. “Perhaps because I see you as one possible me in thirty years. Also, I didn't want an old enemy to lay his hands on you.”

“Who? I thought you had not been to our land before.”

“Death. The Grim Reaper, chief of all the others. When we got on board, I figured we left Death back on shore. Turned out He followed. The bastard's never satisfied. He wants more every chance he gets. So every chance I get, I kick him in the teeth. Sooner or later one of us is going to give up. It won't be me.”

 

The Roots rejoiced at the return of her warriors in sacred ceremony and profane revelry.

Valentine watched the sacred portion from a moss-hided rock, dew-dusted ferns brushing at his frame. Soldiers and civilians gathered at a waterfall in the forested hills, led in singing by their priests. Narcisse sat on a rock in the swirling waters at the base of the waterfall, like the statue of the little mermaid, calling the men to her one at a time to receive a cleansing dip in the river. Other voudouists escorted the supplicants into the water, or sang hosannas in the background. Part baptism, part absolution, and part bath, the ritual moved Valentine. There was none of the solemnity of Father Max's traditional Catholic ceremonies: the participants and audience laughed and encouraged each other through catcalls.

The Grogs sat high on the hillside, chewing fruit and watching the human performance below as if from balcony seating. Further above, Ahn-Kha stood sentinel with crossbow and gun, a watchful set of eyes allowing the humans to relax below.

Valentine, by nature an observer rather than a participant at this sort of display, sat on his rock with Carrasca resting on a patch of grass beside him, dappled sun setting her hair agleam. By nature scientifically minded, a few years ago he might have thought the whole performance silly animism; but he had seen too much of the inexplicable since beginning his journeys to laugh anything off. He applauded when Monte-Cristi waded into the stream. Narcisse took extra time over him, either through concern over his frailty or giving the spirits ample opportunity to work their magic. The aged hero was the last of the spiritual bathers. Some of the
Thunderbolt
's sailors and marines shuffled forward, and finally Post went through the ceremony. He emerged from his dunking and beckoned Valentine to join him.

“C'mon, Val,” his friend said. “It's cooler than the jungle.”

Valentine and Carrasca exchanged shrugs, and he stripped to applause from all. A few pointed at the white pock left by the old bullet wound on his leg.

Narcisse laid her hands on him, reciting something that sounded like mixed French and Latin. He lowered himself at her command to hoots of approval.

“I knew you had a strong
ti-bon-ange
, my boy. Ogun himself told me so just now,” Narcisse affirmed. Valentine felt refreshed, if not strengthened or healed. He waded back to the shore. He reached for his clothes, but Carrasca snatched them up.

“I don't think you're through yet. Do you see anyone else getting dressed?”

There were more singsong chants, and the returning warriors lined up to walk naked back to the village. Valentine joined in the lines. The Grogs scrambled down from their rocky balconies to follow.

“How'd you get the leg wound?” Carrasca asked, falling into step next to him.

“Up in Nebraska. Acting like a damn fool.”

“A damn fool who saved my people,” Ahn-Kha added from behind.

“Your people saved themselves,” Valentine demurred. “But it was years ago. I'll take sea duty any time. Fewer forty-mile days.”

“You'd cover forty miles in a day? On horseback?” Carrasca asked.