Water Rites (24 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

G
lad I could pry you away from The Dalles.” Johnny lifted his glass of wine in a toast. “I don’t think I dare take a uniform out to lunch up there. I could get lynched.”

“It’s not funny.” Carter sipped at his own wine, then set it down. “I’ve had to declare the town off limits to all Corps personnel.” He poked at the slices of cooling meat on his plate. This Bonneville restaurant was as good as any in Portland. He hadn’t eaten real beef in weeks. He set his fork down.

“It’s that bad?” Johnny asked quietly.

“You’re my boss. You see the reports.” He picked up his wineglass and glowered into its ruby depths. “You tell me.”

“By the reports, you’re doing a great job. I came out here to find out what wasn’t included.”

“I’m sorry.” Carter dredged up a smile. Even in the dim light of the restaurant, Johnny’s face looked thin and strained. “I’m growling at you like you’re Water Policy incarnate. There’s not much to tell.” He sighed. “Corps people hate locals; locals hate the Corps. It can blow any time. Any more cuts coming down?” he asked bitterly.

“Of course. But not soon.” Johnny speared a leaf of blanched endive.

Of course.
Of course more water cuts would happen, unless the rain came back and the whole global warming freight train reversed. Carter watched Johnny finish his salad. People around The Dalles ate mostly the high protein soybean clones. That’s what they grew. And a few kitchen veggies watered with what came out of the house too dirty to reuse. A lot of ‘em ended up with chronic vitamin deficiencies. The battalion’s surgeon had told him it was endemic, out in the Dry. It caused a lot of birth defects, she had said. “So how are you doing?” he asked Johnny.

“Everybody loves us since Mexico backed down.” Johnny grinned. “Your water-cut blues weren’t in vain. Listen, I didn’t come out here just to visit,” he said slowly. “I heard a little . . . tidbit from my senator buddy, Paul Targass.” He wiped his mouth and tossed his napkin onto his empty plate. “There’s a rumor going around that Pacific Bio’s in bed with the Corps.”

Carter opened his mouth to protest, but closed it without speaking. “Who?” he asked softly. “Someone at the top?”

“Don’t know.” Johnny shrugged. “But Pacific Bio’s concentrating on their West Coast operations, so keep your eyes open.” He finished his wine and emptied the bottle into his glass.

“I’m not sure I’d catch it unless someone yelled in my ear.” Carter grimaced. “You’re good at politics. I’m not.”

“Yes, I am good at it. That’s partly how I ended up where I am, and we both know it.”

Yeah, Johnny had always been on top — no one had ever doubted that he belonged there. “What does Morissy have on you?” Carter asked abruptly.

“What kind of crack is that?” Johnny flushed. ‘Whatever you thought you picked up at that party, you didn’t. That was a matter of bedroom politics and nothing more.”

“I’m sorry. I was out of line.” Carter leaned back, uneasy. Johnny was drunk. He’d had most of that bottle of wine. “Take it easy. I’m on your side, remember?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Good old Carter, always there to back me up. Until you decided that the damn Corps was more important.”

“Oh come on, Johnny.” Carter shook his head. “I wouldn’t have been any use to you in politics. Moral support I can give you from inside a uniform.”

“You’d have been there to watch my back.” Johnny drained his glass. “It used to bug you, didn’t it? When I made fun of how you hated to break the rules.”

He couldn’t afford to break rules. His had known that without a pricey education you went nowhere. She had paid for it on her back, never mind that old man Warrington had written the checks.

“I’m on top, Carter.” The naked hunger in Johnny’s eyes made Carter look away. “No one’s bigger than Water Policy. And no one is going to fuck that up for me. No one.”

“I don’t see how they can.” Carter flinched as his cell phone went off. The food he had eaten turned to stone in his belly. “Yes?”

“Colonel?” The voice on the phone sounded tinny and distant. “This is Captain Moreno, in Communications. I’ve got Chief of Police Durer on the line. He says it’s an emergency and he won’t talk to anyone but you, sir.” The captain sounded nervous. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, sir but you said . . .”

“It’s all right.” Carter sat on his irritation. God, what now? “Patch him through.”

“Hello?” A new voice boomed in Carter’s ear. “This is Chief of Police Durer calling from The Dalles. It seems that I have a couple of your boys locked up down here.”

“On what charges?” Carter growled. “And why didn’t you talk to Major Delgado?”

“The charge is assault. And we both know there’s no point in a local talking to Robert Delgado. We picked up your boys on the interstate, Colonel. They busted a kid’s head with a tire iron. I think you’d better send a batch of MPs down here to collect these guys and do it quick. Before word gets around.”

A kid. Great. Carter clenched his teeth. If the soldiers had committed a crime in town, they were Durer’s meat. If he wanted them out of his jail, the situation was bad. “I’ll send some people down right away,” he snapped.

“You do that, son.” Durer hung up.

Shit. Carter called Security and ordered a detail of MPs out to pick up the soldiers. By the time he got off the phone, the table had been cleared. “You sound so good when you’re giving orders.” Johnny grinned. “Very official.”

“I’m sorry.” Carter ignored the needling edge to Johnny’s tone. “I’ve got to get back.” Durer didn’t like uniforms much. It might be a good idea for him to talk to the police chief in person.

“So go be an officer.” Johnny flashed him a mock salute and rose. “I’ll call you next time I’m in town.

Carter looked after him as Johnny walked away. Johnny was pissed. Carter stood. The restaurant had kept their water glasses filled during the meal — a touch of old-days custom that had doubtless been reflected on the bill. Carter touched the rim of Johnny’s full glass. That small amount of water would matter to a lot of people. He wondered what the waiter would do with it.

*

From Durer’s tone, Carter had half expected a mob at City Hall, but it was quiet. Carter saw to the transfer of the two bruised and sullen NCOs. They claimed that the kids had started it — that it was the bunch who hung out near the truck plaza. They’d had baseball bats, the men claimed, and they looked battered enough for it to be true.

Carter could believe it. He sent them back with Security and went inside to do his talking.

“The kid’s thirteen.” Durer hunched his thick shoulders, elbows planted firmly on his desk. “Look, Colonel, I’ll level with you — he’s one of those highway kids, yes. Anyone else could probably shoot him in broad daylight, and only a few of our upstanding citizens would give a damn. But a uniform did it. Do you get my drift?”

Durer didn’t like uniforms much, but he liked the prospect of facing a lynch mob even less. “Is the kid going to live?” Carter asked.

“He’s got a concussion.” Durer shrugged. “I don’t think the doc’s too worried. You keep your tough-guys out of town, Colonel. We don’t need this.”

“We have to use the highway,” Carter snapped. “Caught any of those rock-throwers who’ve been busting our windshields yet? They’re using powerful homemade slingshots.”

“Hey, I’m doing my best.” Durer shoved a handful of papers into a battered metal filing cabinet. “I’m real short-handed.”

“Yeah.” Like hell. Carter turned on his heel and left the stifling office, remembering the blond kid’s feral eyes in the culvert.

There was blame enough to go around here. More than enough. Carter paused outside, breathing deeply, struggling with anger. By tonight, everyone in The Dalles would know that uniforms had tried to kill a thirteen-year-old kid. And when he had the company CO Article 15 the NCOs for the tire iron, his own people would bitch because he was being soft on the locals. And Johnny was pissed at him.

He was damn tired of being everyone’s enemy. Carter yanked the Chevy’s door open.

“Hello, Carter.” Greely sat in the passenger seat. “How come you won’t see me?”

Carter hesitated for a moment, half tempted to tell Greely to get the hell out of his car and drive away. With a jerky shrug, he dropped onto the seat. “Hastings ordered me to break off all relations with the Coalition.”

“Crap on that.” Greely shook his head. “We need to talk, orders or no orders. It’s getting worse, Carter.”

“Tell me about it.” Carter stared through the windshield, seeing Nita’s face in the reflection of the sun on the glass.
Is Nita Montoya your lover?
“I don’t think I can talk to you,” he said out loud. “Even if I was willing to disobey Hastings’ direct order. I keep wondering about that protest. Nice, that it happened in one place. Convenient for the media. It was convenient for whoever holed the Pipe while it was going on. We were all busy, and that leak cost me an official reprimand.”

“So you think I set you up.” Greely sighed. “Why?”

“Let’s just say that I don’t know that you didn’t.” Carter pounded his clenched fist very lightly on the steering wheel. “I can’t stick my neck out for you any more.”

“You’re not sticking it out for me, damn it.” Greely was angry now, too. “I thought
we
were doing it to keep people from dying around here —uniforms and locals.”

“Did you ever find out the name of that red-haired agitator?”

“Bill, with no last name.” Greely frowned. “He disappeared after the Shunt and no one’s seen him since. I never did catch up with him. Maybe a troublemaker moving through.”

“I want to believe you,” Carter said softly. “I can’t afford to.”

“You can’t afford not to.”

Carter twisted the key and pumped the gas as the engine stuttered and caught. “I’m keeping an open mind. That’s all I can do right now.”

Greely looked at him for a long moment, then climbed stiffly out of the car. “You’re shooting yourself in the foot. We need to work together more than ever. If you change your mind, leave a message with Bob, at the government store.”

Carter slammed the car door and gunned the engine. Part of him agreed with Dan — it would be a hell of a lot easier if he had some kind of local cooperation. Nita might not even be there anymore. She might have moved on. What the hell did it matter anyway? Teeth clenched, Carter took the corner onto the street too fast. A middle-aged woman carrying a plastic pail had to jump for the curb and the pail tilted, spilling dark-red beet roots across the sidewalk. Carter caught her raised fist and shouting mouth in the rearview as he turned onto Second. Guiltily, he slowed the car. At the next intersection he braked to let a teenage kid push a rusty wheelbarrow across the intersection. It was full of firewood — salvaged bits of weathered lumber from some ruined building or other.

The kid looked at Carter, scowled, and spat. Carter’s lips tightened and he stepped on the gas as the kid bounced the barrow up onto the sidewalk. The engine stuttered again, hesitated, then roared. Carter frowned, uneasy. The car had been fine on the trip down to Bonneville and back. He drove down two more blocks, past empty storefronts and the bar that still did business. A block farther north, the street ended in warehouses and the railroad tracks. Three blocks to his right, the weekday market filled the parking lot of the boarded-up supermarket. As Carter turned the corner, the engine coughed and died. Cursing, he reached for his cell to call Security back.

It wasn’t on the seat where he had left it. Swearing softly, Carter climbed out of the car and lifted the hood.

“Hey, look who’s here. One of the uniforms.”

Carter let the hood fall closed with a bang. The half dozen men in the shade beneath the star-spangled marquee of the town’s single theater hadn’t been there a moment ago. They were young, all of them, their expressions expectant, like leashed dogs. The skin tightened between Carter’s shoulder blades.

Neat setup. This was the shortest route back to the base.

Without a word, they started toward him, moving easily, hands loose at their sides. Carter looked up and down the block. The market was too far away. And he hadn’t come armed. They expected him to break for the market, had fanned out to cut him off.

He ran the other way, his feet pounding on the concrete as he dodged around the corner. They followed him, silently. He didn’t dare look back to see how close, his salt-burned lungs already blazing with fire. To his left, the ruins of an ancient wooden building had sagged onto the street. Carter leaped a splintered beam, looking frantically for something he could use as a weapon. They’d be armed. He cut toward an abandoned warehouse at the end of the block.

Oregon Cherry Growers
the faded letters proclaimed. Carter raced across abandoned railroad tracks, his feet sliding in roadbed gravel. He could hear them pounding across the asphalt lot behind him. Gasping for breath, he flung himself around the corner of the warehouse, dodging between a rusting forklift and the peeling wall.

“This way,” a voice hissed. “In here. Quick.”

Carter caught a glimpse of denim blue and a man’s face in a crack of darkness. He slithered between two warped sheets of metal siding. A hand closed on his wrist, guiding him into darkness. Momentarily blind, Carter bumped into something that felt like a pile of stacked cardboard. He leaned against it, his knees shaky, trying to smother the labored rasp of his breathing. Footsteps thudded outside.

“You check that side,” someone rapped out. “He probably went through that hole in the fence. We’ll take that. Check those doors.”

Metal rattled close by and Carter tensed.

“Chained shut,” the shadowy figure whispered. “The crack’s hard to spot.”

He knew that voice. As the sounds of pursuit faded, he squinted at the man standing beside him, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. “Jeremy?”

“I told you I might see you around.” Jeremy gave him a lopsided grin. “Good thing I did. You sure can’t run much.”

“Good thing . . . yeah.” Carter sat down hard, still gasping. “I . . . can’t run . . . worked on the Michigan lakebed.” He was getting his breath back at last. “Salt dust messes . . . up your lungs. I owe you.”