Tale of the Thunderbolt (38 page)

“Yo down thar,” a dry throat called. “You're the damnedest runner I ever saw. You'd think the devil himself was chasing you, but there's nothing behind you but empty.”

“Keep your hands away from that gun, stranger,” the other said. Like Valentine, he wore only a vest and had a gleaming Western tie at his throat.

Valentine was too tired for the good cop-bad cop routine. “I hope you're Texas Rangers.”

“You do?” Dry Throat said. “Well, there's some that say that, and it turns out they hoped the opposite.”

Valentine walked up the man-made hillside, hands above his head. “You'll find out if you give me a chance to talk. My name's Ghost, out of Southern Command in the Ouachitas. I'm looking for a place called ‘the Academy,' and your colonel. I don't know his name, but I know the man I'm looking for, a friend of his. Patrick Fields.”

“Seems to me if that were the case, you'd be well north of here, heading south.”

“I came by sea.”

“Haw!” Western Tie said.

“Handcuff me, hog-tie me, whatever, just bring me to either Fields or your CO.”

“I'm Sergeant Ranson,” Dry Throat said. “This is Corporal Colorado. Colorado, climb down and take his weapons, pad him down. We're on patrol, and we can't just quit whenever we feel like it. I'll send Colorado back for a guard, and they'll take you north.” Valentine warmed to Ranson as a man who made up his mind quickly and correctly.

“Should I get out the irons, Gil?” Colorado asked as the young man unbuckled Valentine's weapon harness.

“No, man seems straight enough. If his story isn't true and he is a spy, he's going about this a mite odd.”

Colorado rode off north. Ranson had Valentine walk ahead of him to an old roadside stop on the southbound side of the interstate. It seemed like any other decayed husk of the Old World, save for a ladder up to an empty platform where a gasoline sign once stood. Valentine decided it must give a commanding view, day or night — if the moon was out. He smelled water.

“Colorado will be back in a couple hours. Let me go up and take a look around. Do me a favor and walk my horse, would you? A few times around the building will be fine.”

Valentine complied, as Ranson made a slow climb to the perch for a long look-round. When the Ranger returned Valentine handed the reins over.

“In the mood for some coffee, Sergeant?”

Ranson's lean face lit up. “You have coffee out of Mexico?”

“Better. Jamaican.”

“Holy Moses, why didn't you say so? I ain't had coffee from anywhere east of Padre Island in years. There's a mortar and pestle we use for corn inside, and a coffeepot.”

In three-quarters of an hour, they were sharing the coffee, the Jamaican beans campfire-toasted and stone-ground.

“Lord, that's good,” Ranson said, sipping appreciatively. He was lean as a winter wolf and sat in an old wooden chair with long legs stretched across a pile of cordwood.

“You aren't worried I drugged it?”

“Naw. I'd kill you before it got me. Besides, you drank first, and I poured. So you've been to sea.”

“Yes.”

“I didn't want to say anything to Colorado, but a few of us have been told to keep an eye out for a stranger calling himself Ghost. Seems to me you're mighty overdue.”

“It wasn't a pleasure cruise.”

“Delays beyond your control. I know what you mean. I was on a patrol once on the Rio Grande. It was supposed to last a month. They ended up chasing us west — we didn't make it back till Christmas, five months overdue. My wife was collecting death pension already.”

“So the Kurians have the river?” Valentine asked.

“The whole damned valley. Mexican Kurians, they call 'em the Alcaldes, like they was old aristocracy or something. Good farm land, some of the best in the world. The folks there smuggle us out what they can. How are things up north? We don't get news unless it comes roundabout.”

“Hard, but Southern Command is holding out.”

“And what were you out for? Intelligence?”

“I'll be happy to tell you if your colonel or Mr. Fields okays it.”

Ranson winked with one whole side of his face. “ ‘Loose lips,' whatever that means. My dad used to say it when he was playing his cards close to the chest. Personally, I like a set of loose lips. 'Specially if they're attached to a genuine redhead.”

 

Two more riders arrived with Colorado at the dawn. “Sergeant Hughes says we're supposed to cut our patrol short and see this man back to the Academy.”

“Kind of him,” Ranson said. “Switch to the relief horse. I expect they want him there pronto. Wish we had a spare for you, young man.”

“I expect he can run some more,” Colorado said. “He did pretty well there at the end on the road. I'd like to see that trick again.”

While the sergeant passed on his report on the patrol, Colorado readied the horses, placing the saddlebags and rifle sheaths on the patient animals. Ranson mounted, still chewing on a snatched breakfast.

They set off, Colorado in the lead and moving his horse at a brisk walk, quickly enough so Valentine had to force himself to hurry at a pace just below a jog, which he found increasingly annoying.

“I'm going to run, it's easier than walking like this,” he said, breaking into a trot.

Colorado kicked his horse to a trot, and Ranson followed. The sergeant smiled at some inner joke. Valentine set his jaw, and ran faster, passing the trotting horse at a steady lope.

“What the hell?” Colorado said. He touched his heels to the horse's flanks, and it broke into a canter.

Valentine had to pour it on to keep up with the cantering horse, but he did so. His whole body seemed suffused in warmth, a warmth that slowly grew uncomfortable. Even a Wolf couldn't move at this rate for long. His legs filled with a fiery ache, and his heart beat like a duck's wings. The sweating horse tired of the race, as well, and kept trying to break into a gallop.

“Cut it out, Colorado,” Ranson yelled from the dust-trail. “You'll kill the damn horse or our friend.”

Perspiration crusted with dust coated Valentine's face, but he kept pace until Colorado halted, fighting the urge to lean forward to catch his wind. He slowed back down to a walk matching the horse's, controlling his breath as best he could.

“Sheeet,” Colorado said. “They shouldn'ta called you Ghost, it shoulda been Shanks. I never seen — hell, never heard of a man able to run like that.”

Valentine concentrated on breathing.

“You done treating our ally like a bastard?” Ranson asked.

“Ally? We're taking him under guard, ain't we?”

“If them Reapers showed up, he'd be guarding us, not the other way around. Don't you know a Hunter when you meet one, you damned fool?”

“Ha! My pa used to say those Hunters were just good liars, is all. There's nothing to that story.”

“Apple didn't fall far from the tree.” Ranson said under his breath. But his eyes shared the joke with Valentine, knowing the Cat heard.

 

The Academy was easy to find. It bordered on a defunct airport whose runways now served as a rifle range. The airport's concourses and some of the hangars had been demolished, but the control tower still dominated the camp, reinforced with a pyramid of sandbags and timber all the way to the top. On the other side of the old military education campus there was a cemetery, graves arranged facing a giant statue that seemed familiar yet out of place to Valentine. “It's the model of the one that stood in Washington, Marines raising the flag at the top of Mount Surabachi on Iwo Jima,” Ranson explained, and Valentine realized he had seen the photo it was based on. “It was a helluva fight in the Pacific in 1945. The men who finally got up there and planted that flag were from Texas.”

Valentine remembered it differently, but he was in no mood to discuss military history minutiae at the moment. Ranson brought him through the rows of barracks, one lot vacant like a missing tooth, and took him to the brick headquarters. Like the control tower, it was layered in sandbags and barbed wire, with hard-points guarding both entrances.

“Don't worry about washing up,” Colorado said as Valentine retied his hair when they moved through the door past a sentry. “The colonel likes to hear news first. Everything else waits, unless you're bleeding. Bleeding badly, that is.”

Spurs clattering in the wood-floored hallway, they approached a reception desk. It was a beautifully carven piece of wood, like many of the items decorating the entrance hallway. Valentine got the impression every square foot of wall space was covered by a painted portrait or photograph. The only ones he recognized were Sam Houston and the Texas United States Presidents. The woman at the desk wore a cheerful Mexican print blouse and a ready smile, but Valentine saw a pistol lying right next to the phone.

“Courier for the colonel,” Ranson said. “Tell him it's Longbow Resolution. The Ghost is finally haunting us.”

Another Ranger walked down the hall and out the door, saddlebags hung over uniformed shoulders. Valentine found the contrast between the rough, tanned, mustachioed men and the ornate furnishings interesting.

“Map room, second floor,” the receptionist drawled, looking at Valentine from under curled eyelashes.

“Colorado, you can go get yourself fed,” Ranson said. “I'll see things through from here.”

The younger man took the dismissal well. He hesitated only a moment before saying, “I'll see if I can snag us some bottles of beer for when you're finished, Sarge.”

“You do that, Colorado. Thanks.”

“Good luck with the colonel, Shanks,” Colorado said, offering his hand. “Hope there's no hard feelings over our little race.”

Valentine shook it and thanked him. Ranson lead him to a white-painted staircase, and they ascended past photographs of cities filled with pavement, glass, and steel.

Valentine loved maps, and the map room captivated him. A four-foot globe stood by one wall-spanning bookcase, but the other walls were covered with maps. A long library table dominated the center of the room, placed on an oriental rug spread on the polished wooden floor. Tall windows lighted the room. Chairs stood beneath the mounted maps on the walls. One of the maps, showing the Rio Grande region of Texas, was festooned with pins and colored ribbons. Valentine walked up to an older, glassed-in map of the state, which looked to date from Texas's earliest days.

A handsomely dressed Latino opened the door and held it open for the colonel. The Colonel of the Texas Rangers, Officer Commanding the Academy, had undoubtedly been a tall man in the days before his confinement to a wheelchair. Valentine guessed he must have stood close to six five at one time, judging from how high he sat in the wood-and-metal contraption he wheeled himself around in. He was gray haired and clear eyed, and gave the impression of lively vitality from the waist up, like an alert prairie dog whose hind legs are hidden in his burrow. He wore a bronze star enclosed by a circle, pinned over a frilly white-and-blue ribbon.

“Col. Steven Hibbert, Texas Rangers,” the colonel said, extending his hand. “Glad to meet you.”

The Texans were devoted hand-shakers. “Thank you for your hospitality, Colonel Hibbert. My name's Valentine, but I'd prefer if you just referred to me as Smith, or Ghost, in your paperwork, if I end up being mentioned.”

“We generally call him ‘the colonel,' ” Ranson said.

“Whatever you're comfortable with, young man. This is my chief of staff, Major Zacharias.”

After another handshake, the colonel moved on to business. They sat at one end of the long library table, so all eyes could be at the same level.

“Well, Ghost, your contact here went back north a month or so ago on a courier run. He didn't have much choice — he told us about you and asked for our assistance. Fields is a good man, about all he ever asked us for in the past was information about the state of things in Texas and on the Mexican border, and a couple of times he brought us warning of troop movements that saved lives. I'm willing to do whatever I can to help Southern Command. He said you'd have something needing to get north.”

“Yes, sir,” Valentine said, relieved at their accommodating attitude. “I'm to give you part of my cargo in exchange for your assistance. It's a weapon. Deadliest thing I've ever seen used on a Reaper.” Valentine showed the colonel the quickwood pike point he'd brought, and explained the catalytic action the wood had in a Reaper's bloodstream.

The colonel and his chief of staff exchanged looks. “Well, now,” Zacharias said. “That's good news. Some kind of silver bullet, huh?”

The colonel shifted his weight in his chair. “And you've seen this work with your own two eyes.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“Because I've heard tales of big medicine against the Kurians before, and every one of them turned out about as effective as the bulletproof vests made out of old sticks and beads the Indians wore.”

“Not just me. Others, too — you don't have to wonder if I'm crazy. I'll leave you with what I can spare, some saplings you can plant and some lumber you can turn into weapons. We've found that crossbow bolts and spear-points work best.”

“Our armorer will take a look at what you've done,” the colonel said.

“It's a lot easier than trying to go in and behead them, that's for sure. Time is important, Colonel. Every day the ship waits in harbor — ”

“Easy, now, son. South Bay isn't really our ground — not that it's Kurian. If we ride in armed for Reapers and offload you, someone will talk. If this stuff is important as you say it is, we might want to keep it as a surprise for the blood-suckers. Major, let's put Harbormaster into effect.”