Tale of the Thunderbolt (44 page)

“Southern Command has grown into something that's like an egg. It can resist pressure as long as it's evenly distributed from all around. But if you rap it too hard in any one spot, it cracks. Your plan would mean all yolk and no shell for us in Missouri and Arkansas. I'll tell the brass — the Lifeweavers, even — everything I can about the state of things in Texas. I'll let them know you're ready. Napoléon once made a comment that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Maybe they'll follow his advice.”

“Yeah, I heard about that guy. Confederate general from out East, right? Rode under Bobby Lee?”

Valentine just chuckled again.

The scouts came back, signaling that the road was clear. The men of the convoy went about hooking up the oxen to the wagons one more time.

Valentine would always associate his return to the Free Territory with the old Shell Oil emblem. Three busted-up tankers were parked in a triangle blocking the road a few miles out from the Red River. The tankers had been turned into hollow forts, firing slits carved into the sides and sandbags mounted on the top. It was a typical forward post for Southern Command: easily created, transported, defended, and abandoned.

The watchpost stood on the reverse slope of a hill in the old highway. The road cut across the countryside; a long, straight ribbon placed over the hills and hollows as a testament to the days when engineers treated the topography as if it did not exist. The garrison must have thought them a column of Quislings, for they did not wait to greet them, but promptly retreated out, hustling down a culvert running along the road. Valentine watched five or six men run, with the bent-over stride of men keeping their heads down, appearing and then disappearing in gaps of the brush running along the road.

“So much for the valor of Southern Command,” Valentine said dryly. Baltz coughed up something from deep in her chest and spat.

“If only the rest of our meetings were so simple,” Zacharias said. “It would have been a faster trip. Perhaps your tall companion frightened them off. Shall I run them down?”

“No, spare the horses,” Valentine decided. “They'll be off calling on higher authority. Suits us either way. But I'd better ride ahead from here with just one or two. I hope they don't shoot before trying to identify us. Interested in meeting some animals from Arkansas, Baltz? They're a unique brand of razorbacks.”

“Sure, son. I've done my job: got you across most of Texas. If I catch a bullet, it's no loss.”

“Ahn-Kha,” Valentine said, “better take your Gray Ones and sit in the wagons. They might take a shot if they see you.”

“Understood, my David. Be cautious, I am more worried about you. Frightened soldiers do strange things. It would be ironic, but undesirable, to have all your efforts end with one of Southern Command's bullets.”

The vanguard of the column reorganized itself. Valentine and Baltz, with Ranson a horse-length behind, holding a white flag, rode a half-mile ahead of the wagons. Groups of Texans rode before, interspersed with, and following the teams, with long files of Valentine's soldiers marching alongside the rattling wagon wheels, all moving at the patient pace of the plodding oxen.

Valentine looked at the rusting monument to the Texas oil industry. Weeds grew in the rotted tires; rust ran down the marred sides like red icicles. He smelled a fire smoldering inside the fort — they had caught the men at dinner, something even crackled in a pan —

“Ride. Ride like hell!” Valentine shouted, thumping his spurs into the horse's flanks. His horse leapt down the road, and the others caught its panic and joined in the flight.

A flash lit up the Texas countryside, followed by a boom that came up through the horses' legs and shivered him in his saddle. Valentine looked over his shoulder and saw one of the tankers rear up on its back axles, and another rolled forward into the ditch at the edge of the highway. The base of the triangle, facing the rear of the fort, stood intact.

“They fired whatever they had in their arms locker,” Valentine said.

“Must have been underground. Looks like most of the blast went up. Dynamite, I'll bet.”

“Handy for engineering or sabotage. Just as well we weren't in the fort at the time,” Valentine said. “That's not like the Wolves. Usually they're cleverer with booby traps.”

“New standing orders, maybe,” Ranson said. “Destroy whatever's going to fall in the enemy's hands.”

They camped that night next to an old marker that indicated the state-line border was a mere two miles away. A chilling drizzle began just after sundown. Valentine sat underneath a tarp in front of the shielded cooking fire just off the road, part of the farthest-forward pickets with the convoy. He listened to the drops evaporate against the flaming wood. He felt drained, utterly and completely empty. Just a few more days, he told himself, and he could finally lay down his responsibilities and rest. His young body seemed as old and battered as the faded mile-marker.

“They are taking their time on the other side of the river,” Ahn-Kha said. The Golden One had wrapped himself into a horse blanket. When wet, Ahn-Kha's fawn-colored hair matted down into a rain slicker, still keeping a precious layer of air in between the wet hair and his skin.

“They're watching us. There are two men with their horses about five hundred yards off, just east of here. I heard them come up once it got dark while I was circling the camp. Wind's blowing the other way, or you could smell them. I'll go out again with the white flag tomorrow — maybe they'll have worked up the nerve to talk.”

The rain grew heavier. Valentine considered returning to the wagons, but it would be crowded enough under the beds. He had slept out in the wet before. It wouldn't hurt him to do so again. He threw a blanket over his head and did his best to ignore the rain.

He awoke with a sneeze. A Texas-size cold had come upon him in the night, and he blinked the gum out of his eyes. One of the pickets had a fire with a pot of hickory-nut coffee going under a piece of corrugated tin. The ranger handed him a cup without a word. Valentine drank, nodding gratefully and passing another cup to a second ranger on watch, and looked down the road. It was a sunless dawn. A sea-gray sky washed the landscape of its color.

Two men approached the picket line, keeping out in the open, guns across their shoulders like yokes. A few Texans recognized the attitude. In this part of the country, that meant parley. They wore charcoal-gray uniforms, mottled with streaks of pale yellow and brown, the winter camo of the Southern Command's Guards. One had a set of sergeant's stripes on his arm.

“You with Southern Command?” Valentine called when he felt they were close enough. His throat felt like it had a rough ball of twine lodged in it.

The sergeant narrowed his eyes. “You all smugglers?”

“No. Identify yourselves, and I'll do the same.”

They exchanged looks. “Third East Texas Regiment, Noyes Brigade, out of Texarkana.”

“I'm a Cat coming in with priority cargo.”

“That so?”

“You call me
sir,
Sergeant.”

Valentine cocked his head, and the man with the stripes added, “Sir.”

“Code name's Ghost, requesting immediate radio or telegraph contact with Southern Command GHQ. Can you assist?”

“That'll be for Captain Murphy to say . . . sir. He's on the other side of the river. What's this cargo? Hadn't heard logistics were out on a raid hereabouts.”

“I've got a dozen wagons back there that need guarding once we're over the Red. What's Captain Murphy's command?”

“We'll let him talk to you, sir, once your bona fides clear.”

“Are there any Wolves around?”

“Not for us to say, sir. Even if we knew, asking your pardon.”

“I hope you have more to say when your captain tells you to talk. Please inform him I need rations for a hundred eighty men when we get across the river. Thank you, Sergeant.”

Valentine went back to the fire and let the Guards return to their command. He could get the wagon-train to the river, at least, and turn it over to Captain Murphy and his Guards. He had asked for a lot of supplies, but filling the Rangers' saddlebags was the least he could do before they parted. He took his shivering horse from its place beneath a pine tree and rode back to the wagon train, saddle-sore muscles protesting at the effort.

The crossing went slowly. Every bridge on the Red was down for miles, according to the Guards. Without a swing south to Texarkana that would eat precious days, they would have to cross at Two-Skunk ferry.

Valentine was sure there was an amusing story behind the ferry's name, but he was in no mood for fireside yarns. He wanted the psychological safety of the river behind him, and a warm drink in his belly. Then he would quit seeing Reapers moving between the trees at night and imagining converging columns of Quislings racing to cut his convoy off from the Ouachitas. The ferry was a small one pulled across by rope strung along the ruined pilings of an old bridge, and it could manage only one wagon and unhitched team at a time. At the rate the ferrymen — Guards doing labor they had little enthusiasm for — progressed, it would take all day to get the column across. He went over to Major Zacharias, who was sharing a cold meal with his men as they waited to push the next wagon onto the timber float.

“Zacharias, you've helped work a miracle. I can't ask you to do more, so feel free to go back south once we've crossed.”

“Texas is as grateful to you as you are to her, Captain Valentine. Mission accomplished once you are across the river?”

“Yes. I'm told the captain of this company is finally arrived. Let me speak to him first, but I'm sure we don't need to bring you much farther. I'll arrange to have feed for the horses and rations for the men sent back on the ferry. There should be some supplies available here.”

“Thank you, Valentine. I'd be grateful.”

Valentine stood, idly scratching the ears of one of the oxen as the ferry pulled him across the Red River. The winter rains had raised its level.

“What kind of priority-one cargo is this, suh?” the ferryman asked, shifting his quid to a sagging cheek. “All's I sees is plants.”

Valentine tightened his jaws in frustration. If a laboring ferryman knew there was important cargo in the wagons, then word would spread to every housewife and postman in thirty miles in a day or two.

“New kind of food crop. Like the heartroot.”

“Heartroot?” The ferryman looked at one of the Guards.

“That mushroom stuff. Not too popular around here, sir,” the Guard said.

Three years ago, Valentine and Ahn-Kha had brought the Grog-staple from Omaha, and Valentine was surprised Southern Command wasn't still distributing the mushroom-like growth. It grew a breadloaf-big hunk of protein, fats, and carbohydrates out of any wet garbage from a pile of leaves to a slop pail, and it preserved well if properly dried.

Valentine stepped onto the east bank, nursing a headache that spoiled what should be a feeling of triumph. He had done it. He was finally to the Free Territory with what he set out to get nearly two years ago. He looked around. A few Guards stood at their posts around the ferry, watching the teams get rehitched.

Ahn-Kha joined him. “My David, I made a promise to Captain Carrasca. When we were back in the Ozarks, I was to give you this.” Ahn-Kha extracted the flute she had given him from between his football-size pectorals and untied the leather thong that kept it around his neck. He upended it and gave it two vigorous taps. A waxy envelope appeared. “It is a letter for you.”

Valentine trembled at the memories brought by her handwriting.

Ahn-Kha withdrew and left him alone under a riverside sycamore. With rain running down the back of his neck and soaking his shirt, he could hear the creaks and groans of the ferry ropes in their wheels, the calls of the rivermen, and the wet pot-iron smell of the Red was in his nostrils. And he'd remember it all for the rest of his life.

He opened the seal and took out the sheet of Captain Saunders's stationery.