Winter Duty (30 page)

“And now we’re in a fort where Southern Command rules on down-chain, up-chain, and cross-chain fraternization will be strictly observed. And not ‘strictly’ in the fun, blindfold and handcuffs sense, either.”

“Dirty Bird Colonel,” Valentine laughed. “Hands off.”

“That goes for your captain, too, Major.”

“Nilay Patel and I share a love that cannot—”

“You know who I mean. I don’t want Boelnitz returning to his paper with an episode of
Noonside Passions
ready for action.”

“Yes, ma’am. But rest easy: Ediyak didn’t earn that rapid rise the hard way.”

Duvalier waited a beat. “You’re impossible, Valentine. Anyway, let’s keep it zipped up for once, shall we?”

“As long as you restrain yourself with Boelnitz. You’ve made time for how many interviews?”

“I don’t recall him being in the chain of command,” Lambert said. “And if he were, I’d just have my clerk make a new page minus his name. But point taken, Valentine. Honestly, the only thing I want to get intimate with is that hot tub, if Prist and To yonikka get if functional again.”

CHAPTER NINE

He met O’Coombe’s team on a warm December day. Valentine hadn’t seen vehicles like these since the drive on Dallas, and these specimens were in much better condition.

They sat there, not exactly gleaming in the sun but looking formidable in their grit and mud streaks.

Mrs. O’Coombe introduced him to her right-hand man, an ex-Bear named Stuck. Valentine hadn’t met many ex-Bears. It seemed you were either a Bear or you were a deceased Bear; the ex-Bears he’d met were all so badly damaged they couldn’t stand up or hold a gun.

Stuck had all his arms and legs and sensory organs intact. All that seemed to be missing was the bristling, grouchy Bear attitude. He was a big, meaty, soft-spoken man with a wide, angular mustache.

Stuck took Valentine down the line. He introduced Valentine to the wagon master, Habanero, a tough older man, thin and dry and leathery as a piece of jerky. He had a combination hearing aid-radio communicator that he used to issue orders to the drivers in the column.

“Ex-artillery in the Guards,” Stuck explained as they left to inspect the vehicles. “Used to haul around guns. Deaf as a post but knows engines and suspensions and transmissions.”

First, there was Rover, the command car. It was a high-clearance model that looked like something out of an African safari, right down to a heavy cage around the cabin. Extra jerricans of water and gasoline festooned the back and sides, spare tires were mounted on the front and hood, packs were tied to the cage, and up top a pair of radio antennae bent from the rear bumpers and were tied forward like scorpion tails. The command car had a turret ring—empty for now.

Stuck said there was an automatic grenade launcher and two bins of grenades in the bay.

Then there was the Bushmaster. The vehicle was a beautiful, rust-free armored personnel carrier, long bodied with a toothy grin up front thanks to heavy brush breakers. An armored cupola sat at the top, and firing slits lined the side. Valentine saw canvas-covered barrels sprouting like antennae.

“Teeth as false as Grandpa’s,” Stuck said.

Stuck glanced around before opening the armored car’s back.

The vehicle was under command of a thickset homunculus. The man looked like he’d been folded and imperfectly unfolded again. Scarred, with a squint eye and an upturned mouth, his face looked as though someone had given his unformed face a vigorous stir with wooden spoon. Even his ears were uneven.

Valentine recognized him. “I know you, don’t I?”

“Yes, sir, thanks, sir,” he said as they shook hands. “March south to Dallas. We was just ahead of your Razorbacks in column with the old One hundred fifteenth. I drove a rocket sled.”

A vicious-looking dog that seemed mostly Doberman sniffed Valentine from next to the driver.

Hazardous duty, since the rockets had a tendency to blow up in the crew’s face. Southern Command had any number of improvised artillery units. Crude rocketry was popular because the howling, crashing projectiles unnerved even the most dug-in Grogs. Someone said it was because the rockets made a noise that sounded like the Grog word for lightning strikes.

Valentine suspected it might be the other way around—that the Grogs started calling lightning strikes after the sound effect from the rockets.

“Dover—no, Drake. Your crew pulled my command car out of a mud hole outside Sulphur Springs.”

“That we did, sir.”

“Serves me right for taking the wheel. I never was much of a driver.”

Stuck spoke up. “Drake here is on her ladyship’s—Well, we call them the ranch’s sheriff’s deputies. He keeps law and order among the hands and their families.”

“Not popular work, sir, but it pays well,” Drake said.

“Quite a dog you have there,” Valentine said, looking at the beast’s scarred muscle. “Can I pet it?”

“You can, sir, but I wouldn’t advise it. I don’t even pet him.”

“How’s she drive, Drake?” Valentine asked.

“Like steering a pig with handlebars shoved up its ass, but it’ll get there and back,” Drake said.

“Riot control platform, isn’t it? I’ve seen these in Illinois.”

“That it is, sir.”

Stuck opened the small access hatch in the larger back door. “We’ve got it rigged out to carry injured in comfort.”

The tunnellike inside was full of twelve folding bunks attached to the walls of the vehicle, as well as seats along the walls: cushioned lockers. The bunks blocked some of the firing slits but not the cupola.

The machine guns looked more frightening from the outside, thanks to the big barrels. Inside, they were revealed to be assault rifles rigged out with box magazines. Still, firepower is firepower.

“What’s up top? A broomstick?” Valentine asked.

“Oh, the gun’s real enough,” Drake said. “Twenty millimeters of lead that’ll turn any breathing target into dog meat, from a Reaper to a legworm.”

“Dogs know better than to eat off a dead Reaper,” Stuck said.

Next in line was the Chuckwagon. It was a standard military truck with an armored-up cabin, a mounted machine gun at the back, and a twin-tank trailer dragging behind. The paint job and new tires made Javelin’s venerable and road-worn Comanche look like the tired old army mule she was. The Chuckwagon towed a trailer with two big black tanks on it.

The hood was up on this one, and a plump behind wiggled as a woman in overalls inspected the engine.

“Ma,” Stuck shouted. “There’s someone needs meeting.”

“Busy here.”

“You’re never that busy. Come out of there.”

A plump, graying woman hopped down from the front bumper. She wiped her hands and gave a wave Valentine decided to interpret as friendly gesture instead of sloppy contempt.

“This is Ma, one of the ranch’s roving cooks. Ex-Southern Command and ex-Logistics Commando, she’s our expert on Tennessee and Kentucky.”

“Really only know it to the Tennessee River, but from the Goat Shack to Church Dump, I’ve been up and down her. My specialty was likker, of course, but I traded in parts and guns too.”

Valentine nodded. “I’ll put you to work on this trip. We need medical supplies and—”

“ ’Scuse me, sir, but I don’t know medicinals; never had much of a mind for ’em. Too easy to get stock-shuffled or wheezed or lose it all in the old Bayou flush. Easier to spot a true rifle barrel or bourbon from busthead.”

Finally, there was the Boneyard, a military ambulance truck. It had the same basic frame as the Rover, with a longer back end and higher payload bay. A bright red cross against a white background decorated its hood and flanks.

“Doc and the nurse are helping out in your hospital,” Stuck said. “The driver’s name is Big Gustauf, old Missouri German. My guess is he’s eating. Never was a Bear as far as I know, but he’s got the appetite of one.”

Valentine paced back up the column and found the matriarch who’d assembled all this to bring her boy home. “I’d like to congratulate you on your column, Mrs. O’Coombe.”

She offered a friendly tip of the head in return for the compliment. “When we were young my husband and I ranched right into Nomansland,” she said. “Hard years. Dangerous years. I knew what to bring on such an expedition.”

“I hope your care obtains results.”

“That’s in God’s hands, Mister Valentine. All I can do is my best.”

“God usually fights on the side of the better prepared,” Valentine said.

“I don’t care for your sense of humor, Mister Valentine, but as an experienced soldier I suspect you’ve earned your cynicism.”

“Your son didn’t serve under the name O’Coombe, did he?” Valentine asked.

“No, he didn’t want to be pestered for money or jobs for relatives,” Mrs. O’Coombe said. “He served under my maiden name, Rockaway. Sweet of him, was it not, Mister Valentine?”

Valentine made a note of that. He’d have to check the roll call records and medical lists to learn which legworm clan ended up taking care of him. They had left only a handful of wounded behind who seemed likely to survive, and even then only in areas controlled by their allied clans.

“How much do you know about Kentucky?” Valentine asked.

“My sources say there are many off-road trails thanks to the feeding habits of the legworms. I wanted vehicles that could use poorly serviced roads and even those trails.”

“How did you get vehicles like these together?” Valentine asked. When he’d first seen her, he wondered if she’d hired mer cenaries. They knew about moving off-road with a column of vehicles. They had plenty of tow chains and cables ready to offer assistance to the next in line or the previous. He noticed the various trucks’ engines had cloth cowlings stitched and strapped over them. The cloth had an interesting sheen. Valentine suspected it was Reaper cloth from their robes.

“Get them? Sir, they’re from our ranch. We control property that covers hundreds of square miles. The ranch wouldn’t function without range-capable wheels.”

“Where do you ride?” Valentine asked Stuck.

He lifted a muscular, hairy arm and pointed to a pair of heavy motorcycles with leather saddlebags and rifle clips on the handlebars. “Me and Longshot are the bikers.”

“Where’s Longshot?” Valentine asked.

“Up here,” he heard a female voice say.

Valentine looked up and saw a woman in old-fashioned biker leathers sunning herself atop the Bushmaster. She zipped up her jacket. “I’m the scout sniper.”

She had strong Indian features, dirtied from riding her motorcycle. There was a clean pattern around where she presumably wore her goggles. You wouldn’t necessarily call her “pretty” or “beautiful.” Striking was more like it, with strong features and long black hair that put Valentine’s to shame. “Comanche?” Valentine asked.