Winter Duty (11 page)

Valentine looked at the serial number on Lambert’s gun. Something about the stock struck him as familiar. An extra layer of leather had been wrapped around the stock for a better fit on a big man. He’d last seen this gun outside Dallas—

“This belonged to Moira Styachowski,” Valentine said.

“Yes,” Lambert said flatly.

“She gave you her old Number Three?”

“No. Colonel Post gave it to me. I wanted his advice on a good field rifle. He said something about Kentuckians knowing a good long rifle for three hundred years and counting, and that if I got desperate I could probably trade it for a working truck, optics being precious in the borderlands. I am thinking about trading it, though. It’s a great heavy thing.”

Post knew his guns. Odd of him to give Lambert too much gun. He’d made a present to Valentine of his first .45 automatic. Valentine had lost it, of course, but had replaced it with a similar version at the first opportunity.

Lambert fired off a few bursts with the entry gun, ripping up a blackened old post for a dock missing its planking.

“That’s more my size,” she said.

Valentine considered a lewd comment about a small size having its advantages in ease of handling, but decided against it. Lambert wasn’t a flirt and had been his superior too long for it to feel right, even as a joke.

They each fired off a pair of magazines. The Number Three wasn’t quite as handy as the Steyr Scout Valentine had gone west with, but the optics were better and it had another hundred meters on the carbine. It was a weapon that could serve equally well as a sniper rifle and a battle rifle. Valentine wouldn’t care to use it for house-to-house street fighting, but for the woods and hills of Kentucky it was ideal.

“Want to switch permanently?” Valentine asked. “I’d love to get my hands on an old Number Three.”

“Will said to sleep with it, or you’d steal it,” Lambert said.

“Unless it has sentimental—”

“I’m teasing, Valentine. Will said I should trade it if I found something better. I like your gun more. But are you willing to—”

“Only if I’m not breaking up a love triangle between you two and the rifle.” Valentine instantly regretted the words. Stupid thing to say.

“I think he’d be pleased as anything if you carried it,” Lambert said. “He thinks you hang the moon, you know.”

“Only by standing on his shoulders. While he bled,” Valentine said.

The cheery intimacy evaporated.

“Let’s shoot,” Lambert said.

“Ever fired a gun in battle?” Valentine asked.

“During Archangel,” Lambert said. “But I don’t know if it counts. Our column came under fire at night. I bailed out and started blasting away at the gun flashes with everyone else. Turned out we were shooting at our own men. No one was killed, but two of our men ended up in the hospital.”

“It happens,” Valentine said.

“Post said when you were young, you lost someone close by accident like that.”

“True,” Valentine said.

“I’m sorry; was he not supposed to talk about it? He only told me to make me feel better about that night.”

“I didn’t know you two were that close.”

“Oh, I might as well tell you. I facilitated his adoption of Moira’s daughter after her plane went down. ‘Facilitated’ isn’t quite the word. Stole, maybe. She was supposed to go to that special school where they’re bringing up trans-human children.”

“Trans-human?”

“It’s just an official designation for people enhanced by the Lifeweavers. You never ran into it?”

“I’ve been out of the communication loop for a while now.”

“Of course.”

“Well, it’s better than subhuman,” Valentine said. “I’ve met a few civilians who’d use that word.”

He decided to change the subject.

“When did Styachowski and Post get so close? During the fight at Big Rock Hill?”

“You mean Valentine’s Stand?”

“The history books don’t call it that.”

“She knew him from that, obviously. She met him again when he was assigned to the assessment staff. He gave a very thorough report, and . . . Moira said she had a thing for the older, fatherly-looking guys. I was a little surprised: She never said anything about an interest—Well, that’s neither here nor there. But I understand the appeal. He is good-looking. I got to know Post better through her. He told me some interesting details about life in camp with General Martinez, by the way. He knew Moira and I had been close and he said he wanted me to have her gun the last time we—I mean, the last time we met.”

Valentine didn’t know the extent of Post’s injuries that confined him to his chair, didn’t know how his marriage had been put back together or under what terms. None of his business.

Lambert was blushing. Valentine couldn’t ever remember seeing her blush before.

“Does Gail know . . . about Will’s connection with Jenny’s real mother?”

“No. Moira said they ended it after you brought Gail back. It took them a while to figure out who each of them was and who the other was in the marriage. Will told me Gail had changed a lot out there, through her experiences. But he was determined to take care of her.”

Valentine decided to pry. “Who’s Jenny’s father?”

“I—I . . . Moira said it was a man she met after the Razors broke up.”

“None of my business. I wonder if Jenny’s got a little Bear in her—or a lot. Some of the Bears get very randy after a fight.”

“I’ve heard that,” Lambert said.

“Whatever Moira had in her blood might have been passed to her daughter.”

Lambert opened a little gear bag and began to clean the submachine gun. Valentine did the same with his rifle.

“But Bear parents don’t always pass on their tendencies, I’m told,” Lambert said. “Sometimes the kid’s just a little feistier than most or heals bumps and bruises faster. Also, she’s a girl. Don’t female Bear fetuses miscarry?”

“I was told that it’s adult women who tend to have heart attacks or strokes when the Lifeweavers try to turn them Bear,” Valentine said. “I don’t know about the children.”

“Southern Command is still doing that breeding program. Because there are so few Lifeweavers.”

Valentine nodded. He’d been part of that breeding program. Strange stuff. “I haven’t spoken to one in ages.”

“Knowingly, anyway. They’re operating in secret these days, with so many Kurian agents around.”

Boat trips leave you a lot of time to think. As Valentine played with his new rifle’s butt and balance, trying to decide if he should add another inch to the butt, he thought about his friend.

Old Will. Well, not that old; he had a decade on Valentine at most, whatever his personnel file said. In the Kurian Zone you always falsified your birth date whenever you had the chance. Valentine pictured Styachowski running her quick fingers through Post’s salt-and-pepper hair. So there was some hot blood beneath that cool countenance.

“Patrol boat signaling to board,” the ship’s speaker announced, breaking in on his thoughts.

Mantilla had warned all of them to expect this. The Southern Command soldiers were to go down and wait in the engine room.

Valentine filed down behind the rest of the hatchet men, new rifle and an ammunition vest ready—just in case.

Lambert hurried to catch up to him. “Mantilla wants us ready to go up top. He says he doesn’t know this patrol boat. There may be a problem.”

Valentine wished there was time to go forward into the cargo barge and get some of the explosives. No time.

He warned the young doctor and the old nurse to be ready, just in case, and had the hatchet men arm themselves and wait in the engine room. Orders given, he went up to the cabin deck just under the bridge. The portholes were a good size for shooting.

Valentine took a look at the patrol boat. Valentine didn’t see the usual blue-white streamer of the Mississippi’s river patrol, so he suspected it was from one of the Kurian towns. Maybe they were in search of bribes. But the craft had official-looking lights. It was a low, boxy craft and looked like it had a crew of three—sort of a brown-water tow truck.

He had a height advantage from the cabin deck.

The patrol craft suddenly sprouted a machine gun from its roof. The barrel turned to cover the bridge.

Valentine tipped a bunk and shoved it against the porthole wall. He didn’t do anything as stupid as shoving the barrel out the window; he just kept watch.

The boat pulled up and lines were passed.

Valentine, flattening himself against the wall beside the porthole, watched two men and a dog come on board. The senior officer, judging from the stars on his shoulders, kept his hand on his pistol as he came aboard. He had a squinty, suspicious look about him, like an old storekeeper watching kids pick over candy tubs.

Captain Mantilla came down to greet them. The older of the two men looked shocked, perhaps at the captain’s slovenly appearance. Suddenly, the officer threw out his arms and embraced Mantilla like a long-lost brother.

Valentine couldn’t understand it, but it seemed like the crisis had passed. He watched the search team go forward.

He wrapped the gun in a blanket and stowed it and the ammunition vest in a locker. He didn’t need to change clothes; like the rest of the passengers, he’d been wearing crew overalls so he could move around on deck freely without drawing attention from the riverbank.

Curious, he went out to the rail on the port side and watched Mantilla with the search team. They were doing a good deal of animated talking and very little searching. Even the dog looked bored and relaxed, sitting and gazing up at the humans, panting.

The patrolmen debarked. Valentine waited for the inevitable bribe to pass down to the senior officer, but a square bottle full of amber-colored liquor passed up to Mantilla instead.

The patrol craft untied and proceeded downriver. Mantilla’s tug gunned into life.

As it turned out, they were boarded from the other side of the river an hour’s slow progress from where they had met the patrol boat.

Valentine saw some soldiers, probably out of Rally Base, signal with a portable electric lantern and wave them in. By the time anchors had fixed their drift, a little red-and-white rowboat set out from a backwash, fighting its way through some riverside growth.

Two men were in it, a big muscular fellow at the oars who had the look of a river drifter who made a little spare money watching for enemy activity, and a magazine cover of a man with slicked-back hair.

“Permission to come aboard, Captain?” slicked-back hair called.

“Granted.”

The baggage came first. A big military-issue duffel hit the deck with a whump, tossed up by the muscular man in the rowboat. It was followed by the would-be passenger. On closer inspection Valentine saw that he had a pencil-thin mustache, precisely trimmed to the edges of his mouth.

Which was smiling, at the moment.

“Good God, I was afraid I’d missed you. My river rat swore to me that your tug had passed yesterday. I thought a very bumpy ride had been in vain. Broke records getting to Rally Base.

“Let’s see. Transport warrant. Letter of introduction, and permission to be on Southern Command military property. That’s the lot. I was hoping to hitch a ride.”

“This trip is chartered by Colonel Lambert,” Mantilla said. “You’ll have to ask her.”

“Who are you?” Lambert asked from her spot at the rail.

“Rollo A. Boelnitz, but my friends call me Pencil. I’m a free-lancer with
The Bulletin
. My specialty is actually Missouri but I’m eager to learn about Kentucky.”

The Bulletin
was a minor paper published near the skeleton of the old Wal-Mart complex in Arkansas. It was new—post Archangel and the UFR anyway. Valentine had never read it.

“Why Pencil, Mr. Boelnitz? Because of the mustache?” Lambert asked.

“No, at school. I always lost my pencil and had to borrow. It just stuck.”

Lambert glanced at Valentine. “You wanted reinforcements. One pen a mighty army makes.”

Valentine disliked him, maybe simply because of the way Lambert had perked up and thrown her chest out since this young icon came aboard.

“General Lehman suggested I join you,” Boelnitz offered. “I was talking to him to get a retrospective on his tenure. He said a bit of publicity might help your cause in Kentucky, and the Cause on top of it.”

Lambert examined his paperwork. “That’s Lehman’s signature. The permission to be on Southern Command property might have been overkill. Kentucky’s neither fish nor fowl at the moment.”

“Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?” Valentine asked. “There’s no regular mails between Kentucky and the UFR. No banks to cash expense vouchers.”

“I was hoping for the traditional hospitality of Southern Command to members of the press. As to my stories, one of your men can transmit via radio. General Lehman said you are in radio contact twice daily.”