Valentine's Rising (20 page)

 

The form read:

A lined-off empty space in the lower right-hand corner waited for a cheap foil seal.

Valentine sat at his field desk, a slightly warped office table resting unsteadily on the plywood floor of his tent, hating himself for what he was about to do. This bit of playacting was the only alternative, and if it went wrong—

Cross that bridge when you come to it
. The form, placed with a dozen others like it on a clipboard complete with tied-on ballpoint pen, rested next to an oversized shot glass.

The POW, his eyes shaded from the single bulb by his thick brow, stood before him. Abica stood behind, his sergeant just outside the tent. Ahn-Kha rested on his knuckles, a little stooped over in the confines of the wood frame and canvas. The drizzle outside grew heavier and lighter in fits, reminding Valentine of the sound of gentle surf on the Texas coast.

“Scotch?” Valentine asked, pouring some amber fluid from an unmarked bottle. He'd been told it was his whiskey ration, the designation just sounded better. “Cold work out there.”

“You signed this?” Clipton Abica asked his brother. The skin was tight against his face, and Valentine saw his brow twitch.

“Had to. It was that or the boxcars, and I wasn't getting shipped to Dallas on a last ride. This is good duty, bro. Food's better—”

Valentine tapped the clipboard. “Son, the war's over here. We're reorganizing. It's better to be reorganizing than reorganized. I'm at full complement, but your brother asked very nicely. He's a smart man, and I always have room for another smart man.”

Clipton Abica shook his head, looking at his brother rather than Valentine.

“Six years in and you'll get an allotment if you want. I'm about to make your brother a corporal, and I'm sure you'd rise too. Find a nice gal, or you can have your pick out of the pens waiting to go. It's hard but it's life. Any POWs we don't assimilate—” Valentine waved his hand out at the dripping water.

Abica broke in on the rain. “Do it, bro. Don't forget about Ma and Sinse and our cousins. They're caught up in this somewhere. Us being dead won't help them.”

Clipton Abica picked up the brimming shot glass and smelled the whiskey appreciatively. “Better than strained brake fluid.”

“You know it,” Abica said.

The parolee tipped it into his mouth, put down the glass next to the clipboard, then with a lunge spat it at his brother and Valentine. He sent the clipboard skittering across the table at Valentine, who blocked it with his palm.

“Fuck both of you! Throw me—”

Ahn-Kha grabbed the man in a bear hug and dragged him out of the tent screaming and kicking. Valentine heard a few faint obscenities as Roybesson put him in handcuffs.

Abica looked out at the sight of his brother thrust into the mud, Ahn-Kha's sheep-sized thigh pressing into the small of his brother's back.

Ahn-Kha and Roybesson dragged him off.

“Why didn't we just tell him—”

“The truth?” Valentine asked. He refilled the glass and pushed it toward Abica. “We could have. But your brother's doing more for us back behind barbed wire.”

“How's that?”

“They have spies among the prisoners. I'm sure of it. Your brother talking about what a rotten, traitorous, son of a bitch he's related to backs up all our stories.”

Abica smelled the whiskey, looking more morose than his brother. Valentine thought he'd be sprayed a second time, but Abica drank it with a grimace. He shook his head. “I'm proud of Clip, sir. I'm proud of him. Dunno if I'd've done the same. I'm damn proud.”

“How do you feel about yourself?”

“Like a shit.”

“Welcome to the Cats, Abica.”

 

“You don't owe me an explanation, sir,” Post said later, in Valentine's tent. Valentine sighed, exhausted and wrung out. The faint smell of his whiskey shower made him feel like a barfly at last call. “But why didn't you just let the levee breach?”

The river was under control; the water level had stabilized. Reports from upriver said within a day it should fall. The rest of the struggle would be a holding action. Valentine wanted to be on his back in his bunk, but he couldn't be that discourteous to a subordinate, friend or no. He sat on the edge of his cot, rubbing the prickly growth on his skull. Ahn-Kha made a clattering noise outside as he fashioned an oil-drum cook-stove that could double as a water heater.

“We're being watched. No, it's not one of my feelings, it's logic. It may be Xray-Tango, or the bat-winged bastards in the tower. I don't know if they're suspicious, or just trying to figure out what kind of officer I am. But I had to go above and beyond. Xray-Tango said he liked initiative; he's getting it. Not that I'm going to cry another river if the levee falls; it's just not going to happen on my watch, or in my view.”

Post looked out the tent flap. The drizzle had finally stopped. “Back on the old
Thunderbolt
I swore I'd never wear their uniform, or help them, again. But I'm killing myself to save racks of shells so they can be fired on my new side. It gets stuck in my craw, Val.”

“Have the men said anything?”

“Not even jokes, at least in my hearing. They're scared of giving anything away. I would be too, surrounded by an army and minus a gun.”

“They're working as hard as they would have if they'd been captured and put in a labor camp.”

“They're better fed. I've been over to the prison camp.”

Valentine shot a glance up at Post, who looked like someone had just stepped on his corns. “When were you there?”

“Day after we got here. I asked for a review of female prisoners.”

Post was easier to read than a billboard at ten feet. “Your wife?”

“I always figured she headed here. It was the nearest Freehold to Mississippi.”

“Will, you'll drive yourself crazy if you start searching every face for her. I've had a . . . person in my life. Was in my life. She's caught up in this somewhere, but if I start thinking about her, I won't be able to concentrate. I have responsibilities now.”

Post looked at him sidelong. “Where was she last?”

“A village called Weening, just west of Crowley's . . .” Valentine stopped.

“Only human to hope,” Post said.

“Being human is a luxury, at least these days. Feelings. Attachments. They stop you from doing what's . . . what's necessary. Someone called Amu told me I wouldn't be one anymore when I became a Wolf. I must have misunderstood what he was talking about.”

“How long have we known each other, Val?”

“What, a year and a half? Since I came on board the
Thunderbolt
.”

“You're the most human person I've known since my wife. Except when you do what's ‘necessary.' ” Post meant by this the wild night when the Reapers came up from the old Kurian submarine, and after sinking it Valentine had shot the submarines sailors struggling in the oily water. His emotions turned gray and cold whenever he remembered.

Valentine wondered if he could unburden himself. Confessing to not just the things he'd done, but worse, that he'd enjoyed, even reveled in—

“Colonel! Colonel!”

The shout even overcame Ahn-Kha's metalwork.

Valentine cast a regretful look at his bunk.

“Come in. What is it, Lieutenant Purcel?”

The company officer saluted, gasping. “Overheard on the radio, sir . . . Blue Mountain dam's gone.”

“Oh, Christ,” Post said.

“Guerillas blow it?” Valentine asked.

“Just went.”

“Mr. Post, get everyone up. I don't care if they've just spent twelve hours shoring sandbags. Everyone to the levee. If Mrs. Smalls's had her baby, I want her holding sandbags open. If it's a boy, I want him shoveling. Mr. Purcell, if the general doesn't know it, pass the word along. I respectfully suggest that he empty the prison compound, and get those buckets of lard at the wire—wait, strike the last.”

“Pass the word to the general—” Purcell began.

“Don't bother, Mister Purcell. Just run.”

Valentine looked around the little tent, touching the leather sack at his chest
. It might as well all be swept away, but what about the Quickwood?

“Ahn-Kha,” he called, pulling on his tunic.

“Yes, my David?”

“Have the men bring the Quickwood to the levy. We'll use it to shore up. If it gives way, have everyone grab on.”

Valentine and Ahn-Kha raced up and down the camp, gathering the men and deflating the tents by pulling out the Quickwood center poles. He and the men ran to the levy, carrying the four-by-four beams in earnest rather than for exercise.

Styachowski was already putting the men to work. At other parts of the levee men were gathering, and Valentine walked the length, giving orders regardless of whose section it was. Farther back General Xray-Tango was organizing troops and prisoners alike, directing the flow of manpower to the dike.

The levee was already a sandbag sieve. Even Hank stood in the water, helping maneuver shoring timber against the sandbag wall. Farther down the levee a camouflage-painted bulldozer growled as it battled with the river, pushing walls of dirt against the drainage channel.

Valentine's men worked for hours, taking only handfuls of cold water from the river for refreshment. It was a blur of sandbagging and shoring for Valentine, all the while watching the debris-filled river as he slogged through the water on the other side of the levee. Darkness came, and still the river ran mad. Men began to drop to their knees in the water in exhaustion.

“We're losing it,” Post said, watching Styachowski, up to her waist in water, direct shoring efforts. “I think it's going to go.”

Valentine felt a personal animosity toward the river. It was like a living thing, determined to overcome him no matter how hard he drove himself and his men. “We're not beat yet.”

Shouts and a scream. He spun to see a crowd jumping back from the levee, where part of a sandbag wall had collapsed.

“Get the bulldozer over here,” Post yelled.

Valentine rushed to the site, Ahn-Kha joining him from the other side of the breach. A waterfall was coming through a notch in the levee; something had given way at the bottom and it had subsided.

“She's trapped, sir,” one of the Jamaicans shouted. “It caught her on the legs as she fell.”

“Who?” Valentine shouted.

“Styachowski,” another said, forgetting to use her false name. “Captain Styachowski.”

“It started to bulge and she jumped in with a shoring timber,” Smalls said. “She was trying to place it—”

Valentine plunged into the swirling waters at the base of the fall, and began to feel around for her. He submerged. Under the water he felt a frantic hand grasp his. He pulled, but her body didn't yield. He felt around, and touched her face. Keeping a grip on her hand, he surfaced. Through cascading water, he looked up at the worried faces.

“Christ, get some of these bags away. I can feel her down there.”

“That'll open the breach,” a Quisling sergeant said.

“It's already opening.”

Ahn-Kha plunged in next to him as Valentine shifted his back to protect Styachowski from the sandbags sliding off the pile. He felt her hand spasm in his.

The Golden One tore into the pile, hurling sandbags right and left. Others jumped in beside.

“No, Warren, more to your right, she's under here. Ahn-Kha, pull away just above my elbow. Watch your feet, you!”

The bulldozer approached, digging in and pushing a wall of dirt toward the rescuers.

“Hold that machine, dammit, I've got a man trapped!”

“Out of the way, sir, or when the breach caves you'll be trapped too,” the Quisling sergeant shouted.

Valentine felt Styachowski's hand go limp in his. He screamed through the water falling all around him.

“What's going on?” Xray-Tango called, coming around the mound of dirt pushed by the bulldozer.”

“She's trapped,” Ahn-Kha said. “Officer Wagner,” he added, remembering to use her false name.

“How long's she been under?”
Blink-blink-bliiink
.

“Five minutes, maybe,” someone said.

“She's dead then,” the Quisling sergeant said. “Bring that bulldozer forward.”

“No! I've got her hand.”

“Wait, Sergeant,” Xray-Tango said. Valentine met his eyes, pleading with him. Xray-Tango shifted his gaze to the bulldozer, held up a hand. Then to Valentine: “Hurry, Le Sain.”

Ahn-Kha plunged into the water and found the shoring timber Styachowski had been maneuvering. Valentine watched the Grog's back, matted fur shedding water, and saw muscles heave. The pile shifted. Knotted shoulders breached, and Ahn-Kha took a breath.