Winter Duty (9 page)

According to Southern Command tradition, Backwater Pete’s served the best tequila on chipped ice in the Trans-Mississippi Free Republics. Not being an expert on tequila, Valentine opted for rum and tea, a concoction he’d grown used to during his sojourn in a Kurian uniform with the Coastal Marines.

The rum was of good quality, all the way from Jamaica. Valentine reread his accumulated mail over it while his mind subconsciously absorbed the rhythms of Backwater Pete’s. A man in a bar had a choice to be alone, even if he could smell the sweat and engine oil on the man next to him, and he’d dumped his six new companions at a Southern Command billet-flop.

They were all the reinforcements he was getting, and he didn’t like the look of them. Hatchet men sent to decide what was worth saving and what was worth discarding, plus one young doctor and an ancient nurse.

He savored his mail like a gourmet meal. The aches and pains from last week’s wounds were forgotten in the excitement of mail.

He opened the one all the way from Jamaica first, wondering what tortured route it had taken to get to the UFR. Probably landed by some friendly smugglers on the shore of Texas, probably on the same boat that brought in rum, coffee, and fabric dyes. The Dutchmen from the Southern Caribbean were good about that sort of thing.

There was a picture of Amalee, dated six months ago and stamped by Southern Command’s mails in mid-October, probably on the same boat that made the rum runs. She had deep copper skin and her mother’s wide, bright eyes. She would be seven now.

Seven.

Nice of Malita to write. The letter was mostly of Amalee’s do ings and development and included a clipping from the Kings-ton
Current
, describing the exploits of Jamaica’s “Corsairs” off the coast of Cuba.

Nothing from Hank in school—Valentine had made a call to make sure he still was in school. He was just getting to be that age where a boy notices all the interesting ways nature arranges for girls to be put together.

Molly wrote him as well. He had three letters from her, increasingly worried as the months of last summer went by.

He found a dry piece of bar and penned her a reassuring reply.

There was one more letter to write. It had to be carefully phrased. Narcisse up in St. Louis would have to tell Blake that there wouldn’t be a visit this year. He’d have to see about sending a Christmas present.

It was hard to read Blake. Valentine still didn’t know if Blake had strong feelings about him one way or another. Blake was always interested in new stuff. Was a visit from “Papa” a break from his usual routine and therefore a source of happiness, or was it more?

Valentine shouldn’t have been this tired. Maybe he was slowing down with age. He hadn’t bounced back from the beating he took outside Ladyfair’s little cooperative. Served him right for continuing to wander from office to office and warehouse to warehouse, hunting up help for Kentucky and his old stored gear and their resident ghosts and memories.

David Valentine even had the dubious honor of a trip back to Southern Command’s new GHQ at Consul Solon’s old executive mansion atop Big Rock Hill to plead Kentucky’s case with the outgoing commander in chief. One way or another, much of Solon’s late-model communications gear survived or could be easily repaired, and old “Post One” didn’t lack for office space and conference rooms.

The southern half of the hilltop, the old final trenches and dugouts, had filled in and greened over since being churned to mud by big-caliber rounds. The consular golf course was back in operation, and the red brick of the former college a beehive of clerks and radio techs. New, giant radio masts had sprouted both on Big Rock Hill.

They had stared at his cuts and bruises and listened politely but briefly. A few made noises about thanking him for his efforts in Kentucky. He endured another quick debriefing where he told the same story he told in Jonesboro with the same outcome.

It was time to take them back to Kentucky.

His efforts in Jonesboro and Little Rock hadn’t been completely in vain. They’d given him the hatchet man team of “replacement” NCOs and a shipping manifest of matériel being loaded on a barge, though how Southern Command thought he’d get a barge all the way up the Ohio to Evansville was the sort of detail they had been vague on. When he asked, they said someone was “working the problem” and he could meet the barge at Backwater Pete’s.

The manifest looked promising. Uniforms, or at least fabric to make uniforms. Cases of weapons. Explosives. Even recreational and educational materials for the new recruits.

Even more reassuring was the vessel and captain listed on the manifest. Whichever logistics officer they’d put in charge of “working the problem” knew his or her business.

Valentine had last seen the barge tied up on the Arkansas when Consul Solon was still running the Trans-Mississippi from his network of numbered posts. Valentine led his six new charges to the foot of the gangway and called up to the anchor watch.

“Permission to book a travel warrant?” Valentine asked the rumpled deckhand on watch, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The deckhand sauntered off to get the captain.

Captain Mantilla may have changed since Valentine last met him during Solon’s brief hold on the Ozarks and Ouachitas. Valentine’s memory of the man had diffused like a rewetted watercolor. But as the captain approached, Valentine noted the mat of hair and the quick, flashing glances that weren’t suspicious, just indicative of a busy man with a lot on his mind—yes, it was him.

He stood there in gray overalls bearing a camouflage moiré of grease stains and a formerly white but now weather-beaten ivory skipper hat riding the back of his head as though bored with the job. Thick bodied with a bit of a pot, he still looked like a fireplug with a seven-day beard and a couple arms hanging off it.

“Have to ask my passenger,” Mantilla said. “I expect she won’t mind.”

“Passenger? Since when do passengers give orders to captains?”

“Her charter.” Mantilla jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

Valentine was shocked to see Dots—Colonel Lambert, officially—looking lost in a big patrol coat and a hat with the earflaps turned down, and fiddling with her dunnage as if deciding what to have handy and what to store below.

Valentine wondered if she was traveling not so much incognito as low-key, a simple officer looking for transport. Probably on her way to meet a Cat and a Bear team looking to raise hell in Mississippi.

“Sir,” Valentine said, saluting. “I’m told this boat’s headed for the Mississippi.”

“Valentine!” Lambert said, brightening. “Not going back already?”

“Afraid so. Javelin needs these replacements. You’ll take priority, of course. I’ll go on once he’s dropped you downriver.”

Lambert cocked her head. Her usual brisk manner was gone; she looked like a traveler who’d missed a bus. Little fissures explored her formerly vital, cheerleader-smooth skin from the corners of her eyes and mouth.

“I think we’re at cross purposes, Major. I’m joining your command. I’m headed to Evansville as well.”

“Is there a new . . . operation?” Stupid words—she no doubt had to keep quiet.

“No, I’m joining up with what’s left of Javelin. I suppose you haven’t heard. My whole command was moved under one of Martinez’s staffers. They were going to stick me in an office routing communications where the only decision I’d ever make is what to have for lunch. So . . . I volunteered to go to Kentucky.”

“As what? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“I don’t mind at all. They need a new full colonel out there to act as CO. No bright young officer wanted the job—Javelin’s a dead end as far as Southern Command is concerned. I’m not so sure. Thought I’d be the one to be out there for a change.”

Lambert had run a sort of special forces unit dedicated to helping allies in the Cause. Kentucky was the second trip she’d sent him on, and whatever had gone wrong in the wooded passes of the Appalachians wasn’t her fault. “You’ve nothing to prove to any of us.”

“The coffee on this tub’s surprisingly good,” she said. “I think the good captain has connections in every trading port on the river. Let’s hit the galley and get some. Tell me more about these Quisling volunteers you recruited.”

“I have some support staff looking for passage too. And mail, of course,” he said, patting his oversized shoulder bag.

“That bag’s a heavy responsibility,” she said. “If the captain doesn’t mind cramming a few more in, I won’t object.”

They asked Mantilla, who shrugged. “Fuck it. Cook will be busier, is all. I’m fine with it, ma’am,” Mantilla said. “Your people do their own laundry and use their own bedding. I’m not running a cruise ship.”

Valentine joined the chorus of “thank you, Captain’s” from his charges.

“All you headed up to Evansville?” the sleepy mate asked.

“Looks that way,” Valentine said.

“Tough run. Not many friends on the Ohio.”

“Maybe I’ll make some new ones,” Mantilla said.

Last-minute stores of fresh vegetables came on board, and with no more ceremony than it took to undo mooring lines, the tug pushed the barge downriver into the narrow, dredged channel.

Valentine now knew why Mantilla’s crew were somnambulists when they tied up. They worked like furies when the boat was in motion: throwing sacks of mail and unloading crates to shore boats along the run practically without stopping, nursing the engines, hosing windblown fall leaves off the decks, cooking and snatching food, and, most important, checking depth with a pole on the doubtful river. Mantilla’s barge and tug was big for the Arkansas. Most of the river traffic was in long, narrow flatboats with farting little motors that sounded like fishing trollers compared to the tug’s hearty diesels.