Winter Duty (31 page)

“Hell if I know. Tucumcari mutt: little bit of everything. You?”

“North Minnesota mix,” Valentine said.

“Hey, want to see me feed these beasts?” Stuck asked.

Valentine nodded.

He walked over to the Chuckwagon’s trailer. It had big twin tanks that Valentine had assumed were powered by gasoline or diesel or vegetable oil.

Longshot hopped down, and Stuck opened a latched cooler strapped on a little platform between the tanks. Two buckets rested inside. A ripe fecal smell came out, so powerful it almost billowed. Valentine watched Stuck and Longshot, apparently oblivious to the odor, each lift a bucket and pour it into one of the tanks.

“Everyone pisses and shits in the old honeybucket,” Stuck said. “Food scraps are good too, especially carbohydrates.”

Stuck took a leather lanyard from around his neck. Valentine noticed a Reaper thumb on it, interesting only thanks to an overlarge, pointed nail capping it. The lanyard also had two keys. Stuck used one of them to open a locked box on the tanker trailer and took out a plastic jug of blue-white crystals with a metal scoop sunk in.

“This is my job. I check the test strips and seed.”

He extracted a long dipstick from the fragrant tank, wiped it on a piece of paper about the size of a Band-Aid, carefully placed the test paper in a clip, and held it up to a color-coded, plasticized sheet. Nodding, he made a notation on a clipboard that rested on the box’s hinged cover.

“The Kurians guard this stuff like the Reaper cloth factories,” Stuck said, leveling and dumping three roughly teaspoon-sized portions of the granules into the larger scoop.

“I’ve seen those factories,” Valentine said. “Or one of them, anyway, in the Southwest.”

“This tank’s just about done,” Stuck said. “Takes about thirty-six hours to do three hundred fifty gallons. Then we refill off this tank while we fill the other with waste, or pig corn, or melon rinds, or what have you. In a pinch, these engines can run off of kerosene, regular diesel, or even waste cooking oil, but this stuff’s easier on ’em, and Habby doesn’t bitch about changing gunked-up fuel filters.”

Valentine watched him dump the crystals into the conversion tank.

“Always makes me wish I’d learned more science and chemistry and stuff, instead of just getting good at taking Reapers and Grogs apart,” Stuck said.

“So where did you get that stuff? I’ve never even heard of it,” Valentine said.

“The Great Dame is friends with some big bug in Santa Fe. He’s playing both sides of the border, scared there’ll be a reckoning if Denver Freehold and Southern Command pair up and hit the Southwest. He’s a honcho in transport. Keeps trying to propose, but she shoots him down.”

“What’s your story, Stuck?”

“I was never cut out for military life, even as a Bear. Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. Drove me crazy. Stand here, look there, turn your head and cough, bend over and pull ’em apart. Not my lifestyle at all. Mrs. O’Coombe keeps me busy out in the open where I’m alone, riding from post to post checking security. No one to piss me off that way.”

He looked up from the mix. “Longshot, get over here,” Stuck said. “What do you think of this color?”

“More water,” she said.

“That’s what I thought. Thanks.”

She hopped down and bumped into Valentine.

Valentine found himself looking into the reversed-raccoon eyes of the girl. The face mask had left an odd pattern on her features. Dusky and dark, she reminded him a little of Malita, save that Longshot was a good deal shorter.

“You must love your bike,” Valentine said.

“I was out scouting east of here this morning,” she said.

“Longshot gets bored easily,” Stuck said, watching her grab a washcloth and towel and head for the camp’s showers. “She’s a retired guerrilla from down Mexico way. Met her during Operation Snakebite. She’s ridden at my side ever since.”

“Full partnership, or limited liability?” Valentine asked.

“Nah. A Reaper yanked my gear off when I was captured in ’sixty-six. Didn’t hurt as much as you’d think, but about all she does is keep me warm.”

Valentine had a hard decision to make, and after consulting Lambert, he presented it to Mrs. O’Coombe the night before their scheduled departure.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to commandeer your doctor for Fort Seng, Mrs. O’Coombe. Our remaining doctor is exhausted. He’s worked seven days a week for over a month now.”

“And just who do you suggest will look after my son or any wounded we recover?”

“We’ll take our nurse. If they’ve lived this long, I doubt they’ll need any more care than that.”

“I’m sorry, Mister Valentine, but this is one time I must tell you no. I don’t like the idea of traveling with wounded without a doctor.”

“A nurse should be sufficient for travel,” Valentine said. And that was that. He had rank, after all, and it would take months for Mrs O’Coombe to get her friends to exert their influence for or against him. And by then he hoped to have her son back.

Valentine passed the word and names for an officers’ call and then arranged for food to be sent up to what was now being called the map room. Next to the communications center, it had formerly been a game room. Lambert had altered it so it featured everything from a large-scale map of Kentucky to an updated map of the Evansville area, river charts, and even a globe Lambert had colored with crayons to reflect resistance hot spots against the Kurian Order.

Lambert was a whirlwind. Somebody had a screw loose if they had just cast this woman aside as part of a political housecleaning.

Gamecock was there representing his Bears, Frat for the Wolves, and Duvalier just because she saw the others gathering and wanted to grab a comfortable armchair. Patel was present, of course, and Colonel Bloom’s new executive officer, a Guard lieutenant who’d distinguished himself at the bridge where Bloom had been wounded on Javelin’s retreat.

“You looking forward to your trip, suh?” Gamecock said.

“We won’t be touring. I don’t care how well equipped and crewed she is. If she’s recovering Southern Command forces, we need Southern Command along. I think she’s sailing into trouble.”

“Isn’t she a bit old for you, Val?” Duvalier asked.

“You can come along and keep an eye on me,” Valentine said. He hadn’t yet told her that he wanted her to as part of his command.

“No walking, I hope,” Duvalier said, with a light laugh that did Valentine’s spirits good. She’d been so moody lately. “Twice back and forth across the state is enough for me.”

“Who would you like to bring, sir?” Patel asked.

Valentine looked at his notes. “I’d like to take two Bears—Chieftain and Silvertip—four Wolves, and a nurse.”

“Who’s bringing the beer and barbecue?” Duvalier asked.

“Do I have to remind you that this is an officers’ call, Captain?” Valentine said, using her titular rank.

“Then I’ll join the tour,” Duvalier said.

“Call it a survey, call it a reconnaissance in force, call it a recovery operation. Call it anything you like. It’s my intent to have a mobile force of some strength who knows how to deal with Reapers. With the legworm clans encamped for the winter, they’ll be so many sitting ducks for whatever vengeance Missionary Doughnut is talking about.”

“Goodwill tour it is,” Lambert said. “Our friend out front has never made much sense. Seeing some Southern Command forces in Kentucky’s heartland will do the Cause some good, in any case. And let’s not forget our outgoing president’s letter. If I go myself, I’ll consider my duties discharged.”

“Can I go with my Wolves, sir?” Frat asked. “I’d like to see a little more of Kentucky.”

Valentine looked at Lambert, who nodded. “Glad to have you along, Lieutenant. Thanks for volunteering. You’ll save me a lot of legwork.”

Duvalier snickered at that. Valentine wondered why she was so merry this morning.

Alarm.

Valentine came out of his sleep, heart pounding, a terrible sense that death stood over his pillow.

The Valentingle
.

He hadn’t called it that at first. If he thought about it, he might have remembered that he once called it “the willies” or “the creeps.” The name came from his companions in the Wolves, who learned to trust his judgment about when they were safe to take refuge for the night—what hamlets might be visited quietly, whispering to the inhabitants through back porch screens.

Whether it was sixth sense, the kind of natural instinct that makes a rabbit freeze when a hawk’s shadow passes overhead, or some strange gift of the Lifeweavers, Valentine couldn’t say.

But he did trust it. A Reaper was prowling.

Valentine slipped into his trousers and boots almost at the same time, tying them in the dark.

He grabbed the pistol belt hanging on his bedpost. Next came the rifle. Valentine checked his ammunition by touch, inserted a magazine, chambered a shot. He slung on his sword. Oddly enough, the blade was more comforting than even the guns. There was something atavistic in having a good handle grip at the end of an implement you can wave about.

Duvalier would say that it wasn’t atavism. . . .

Valentine hand-cranked his field phone. “Operations.”

“Operations,” they answered.

“This is Major Valentine. Any alerts?” He swapped hands with the receiver so he could pull on his uniform shirt.

“Negative, Major Valentine.”

“Well, I’m calling one. Pass the word: alert alert alert. I want to hear from the sentries by the time I get down there.”

The communications center lay snug in the basement.

Valentine looked out the window. The alarm klaxon went off, sending black birds flapping off the garbage dump and a raccoon scuttling. Emergency lights tripped on in quick succession. They were perhaps not as bright as Southern Command’s sodium lights that illuminated woods on the other side of the parking lot, but they had precise coverage that left no concealing shadows on the concentric rings of decorative patio stones. The old estate house had quite a security system.

A shadow whipped across the lawn, bounding like a decidedly unjolly black giant, covering three meters at a stride, a dark cloak flapping like wings.

Reaper!

Could it be their old friend from the Ohio? The clothing was different, it seemed. The other one hadn’t even had a cloak and cowl when he’d last seen it, and it seemed doubtful that a wild Reaper could attain one.

Valentine, in more of a hurry to throw off the shutters and open the sash than ever any St. Nick-chasing father, fumbled with the window. He knocked it open at the cost of a painful pinch to his finger when the rising pane caught him. He swung his legs out and sat briefly on the sill like a child working up the nerve to jump, rifle heavy across his thighs.

Valentine had no need to nerve himself, but he did want one last look at the Reaper’s track from the advantage of height. Would it angle toward the soldiers’ tents or the munitions dugout? Kurians had been known to sacrifice a Reaper, if it meant blowing up half a base.