March in Country (20 page)
Authors: EE Knight
Lambert sat with them on an airy, upper-floor balcony of the mansion, resting in the quiet after their day on the river. Her bedroom connected with it. It had a nice view to the north.
Duvalier and Frat had joined them for the very informal meeting, as they were talking about the Kurian River Patrol on the Tennessee, who had the nearest brown-water combat craft.
Lambert started off: “Okay, to sum up, crews will be difficult but doable. It’s motors and hulls that are the problem. We can’t build boats, at least not in time, and we can’t buy them and Southern Command, when I asked, said that all forces were allocated.”
“Then we’ll have to steal them,” Valentine said.
Duvalier and Frat’s Wolves knew the ground along the Tennessee best. Ediyak had already assembled their observations into a concise report.
“There’s a cute little rest stop on the river right off the Cadiz inlet,” Duvalier said.
“I think it used to be a training base, before they moved it upriver to Tennessee,” Ediyak said. “According to this week-old Wolf report, there’s a couple of dry-dock ships, a machine tool workshop, a little dispensary still in operation. Respite Point, they call it now. There’s a couple of bars and a brothel in the old base. Very popular with the River Patrol. Not big enough for a Kurian and plenty of fun for the crew while their boats are out of the water being refitted.”
“Hulls, engines, weaponry, that sort of thing?” Valentine asked.
“You bet,” Frat said.
“Garrison?”
“Platoon strength, not even,” Frat said. “Plus whatever of the River Patrol is in camp. The locals are very friendly to the River Patrol and would give warning of a large force.”
“But a small team could make it.”
“Maybe, sir. Doubt if they could hold it for long, though. Respite Point is well guarded,” Frat said. “Upriver, near the Tennessee border, there’s a big River Patrol base. Even if we were able to surprise them and hit it, I doubt we’d get many boats, as they’d scream off into the water as soon as the attack got rolling. Then, even nearer downriver, there’s a big gun fort supporting Cadiz on the other side. Lots of mean ordnance sighted on the river, and three booms you have to weave around. The cables to pull them out of the way lead right into the fort.”
“Still,” Valentine said. “Might be worth a closer look. I wonder if the joyhouse lets in Kentucky men, or if they’re river rat only.”
Valentine noticed a ring of expectant faces. “What, you don’t know?” Lambert asked.
“Why are you all looking at me? Am I supposed to be an expert on brothels?”
“You keep finding your way into them,” Duvalier said. “I thought you might have patronized it. Just once I’d like to hear that you met this contact or that one at a dentist’s, or a smokehouse. No, you’re always emerging from a brothel, beat and bloody.”
“Still, it’s a possible excuse to bring a small team in. Even Bears carrying wrenches from toolboxes could probably take that place.”
“There’s a flaw in your plan, Val,” Lambert said. “I’ve looked at that same location. Sure, that depot is lightly guarded. But even if we seize some boats, we’d never get them downriver. The River Patrol has a fort at Gilbertsville—a fort they’ve reinforced, lately, by the way, to try and cut off the Western Kentucky trails. There’s a boom blocking the Tennessee at the old interstate pylons. A double boom everywhere but the gate as a matter of fact. Plus wire to stop hotshots in speedboats from doing any fancy jumps.
“It would take the whole Army of Kentucky to take that fort,” Lambert continued. “And we’d probably have to haul our guns to support, and I’m not sure we have enough shells left to wreck the boom or rubble the fort.”
“Do we have a sketch of the place?” Valentine asked.
“Pretty good one,” Frat said.
“Put some coffee on,” Valentine said. “Let’s have a look.”
Getting into the River Patrol base had been simple enough. It wasn’t really a base. There were two lookout points and fencing built more for livestock than keeping people out. A dog patrol wandered the fence.
After spotting the dog, Valentine pulled Gamecock and his six Bears back another hundred yards.
He exhibited ID and a broken, chain-free bicycle, claimed to be a hungry communications “local support” staff working the lines running south from Cadiz, looking for a hot meal and somewhere out of the woods to sleep. And hopefully a new chain for his bike.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” the corporal patting him down said.
They found no weapons. They let him keep the tool belt after flashing their lights in all his pouches and feeling around. They even opened the battery shaft on his flashlight and inspected the cells within.
“You’re under River Patrol jurisdiction on base,” he warned Valentine. “Cause any trouble, try to steal, and we’ll weigh you down with scrap and sink you in the Tennessee mud.”
“Understood,” Valentine said. His stomach gave a fortuitous growl.
The serious part of the security was at the dock itself, where a pair of barges were tied up next to a long dock branching out like plant roots into the river from some broken concrete steps down to the Tennessee. Above the concrete steps was a nest of fencing and barbed wire, with alert-looking RPs on anchor watch at their riverine weapons. A few more stood at the gap of the wire, smoking and talking to a sentry. A squat emplacement on the highest point of the bank with a two-barrelled antiaircraft cannon had a commanding view of all. Odd that there wasn’t someone at the gun; it was in a great position to cover the river.
Have to do something about that gun.
Valentine smelled gasoline and followed it to a sort of wharf a little way downstream with a pump under a lonely light. From one of the barges he heard a machine tool whirring away and metal-on-metal tamping, with the occasional rustle of chains being shifted.
The spring flow of the Tennessee filled the riverbed bank to bank, covering the usual washup of garbage and driftwood.
Lovely night. Valentine felt oddly relaxed, now that he was finally here. He had a bit of a headache from hunger, but it sharpened his already tuned-up senses.
Presumably, if they were attacked, the River Patrol could fire up their engines and escape. But the craft could throw a tremendous amount of what Jackson had called “shit on target” in the form of machine gun bullets and cannon—anyone wanting to take the docks would pay a heavy price.
Valentine wandered through the corpse of the older, larger base. Everything of value had obviously been moved into the barges. A few heavy old engine blocks remained, well chewed by rust, and the black-rimmed doorways smelled of rats and cats.
Rats and cats. Something to think about.
Typical Kurian disorganization. A partially shut-down base, but still functioning as a service point for river sailors coming off of their weeklong patrols. Too small for a Kurian to take up residence, too big for a couple of locals to slit any throats. Up the estuary in Cadiz, a ruin of a town with some Kentuckians scraping a living one way or another, smuggling, trading, repairing, laundering—in a way it wasn’t that different from the townlet growing up outside Fort Seng’s gates. Men off duty liked short travel times to their services, rest, and recreation.
He evaluated the anchor watches as he walked his bike in. At least two men in each armed river patrol craft. A few more unarmed craft, probably for ferrying men and supplies. A permanent garrison at the supply barges of technical and support staff. Maybe sixty uniformed River Patrol soldiers, plus a few older men making themselves useful while hiding from both river duty and the Reapers.
About the right size to support a decent bar, eatery, and brothel, as long as the nomadic nature of the River Patrol meant they didn’t get too sick of the taste of the old grease in the fryers.
THE INLET the sign read. Sort of. It was illuminated by three orangeish LED spotlights, one of which had been stolen—unfortunately the center, so Valentine played with the idea that it was “To let” or perhaps named “The Toilet.”
The bar was half built up on pylons, set into the side of the hill sloping down to the river, about the size of a ranch home. A roomy second floor above. Chain-link fence guarded storage beneath. A cross between a porch and a patio was empty, even in the easy air of the night.
Valentine parked his bicycle. Despite its nonfunctional condition, he chained it to an old water meter.
He walked up the short flight of steps, tried the door. It was locked.
He rapped on the door.
After a moment, a scratchy woman’s voice shouted, “Yeah?”
“You open?” Valentine called.
“This is a private club. You know the password?”
“I’m hungry, thirsty, and lonely.”
The door opened. A squat woman, who might be a New Universal Church informative poster on the danger of too much fried food, smiled. She had impossibly blue-black hair piled high atop her head, not really making up for her four-feet-eleven. “That ain’t the password, but I’ve got a soft spot for anyone that broke-dick.”
“Thanks. I’m Rice.”
“My name’s Dirty Nel. This is my establishment. My job’s to make sure you have a really good time, at least until I have most of your money. You okay with that?”
Valentine glanced inside. Bright red shag carpet, gleaming pine paneling, and brassy nautical gewgaws pounded themselves into his eyeballs.
“Great,” he said, entering.
The interior was a long, low-ceilinged, shaggy red bar, dimly lit, and hung with fishnets and twinkle lights. A bar with a kitchen behind communicated through the usual order window of stained stainless. The nets seemed to press down from the ceiling, anyone over six three would have to watch himself. He felt like he was inside a giant whale that had swallowed the
Pequod
with a strip club chaser.
Pequod
with a strip club chaser.
Meaty, tired-looking blondes arranged their lips into imitation smiles. One blew him a kiss.
Judging from the smells coming from behind the kitchen door, he’d better keep to liquids.
“Bottle of beer?” he told the girl behind the bar. She was dressed like the working girls, only her choice of animal print varied. Perhaps she filled in if they became busy.
“Sure thing, brown eyes,” she said, showing a nice set of what were probably false teeth.
“Want to bump that up?” Nel asked. “Kentucky bourbon. Only two dollars extra, Nashville, or three bucks Ordnance.”
“I’ve got Control bucks,” Valentine said.
“Then it’s one lonely dollar, my friend,” Nel said. “Control’s scrip is really worth something.”
Valentine tapped the bar and the bartender poured him something from a Maker’s Mark bottle. It tasted like nitric acid.
He wondered what The Inlet had been, formerly. Perhaps an officers’ housing complex with the diner and lounge conveniently attached. The River Patrol was famous for its accommodations for boat captains and their lieutenants—probably to keep the lower ranks serving in hopes of promotion to an officer’s splendor, and to prevent the officers themselves from simply steering their craft to a much less luxurious lifestyle up an enemy river.
The only customers were two river patrolmen playing cards, separated by a hedge of amber Nashville’s Best empties and a petty officer reading his
Bulletin
. Valentine wondered if he was sending away for any merchandise.
Bulletin
. Valentine wondered if he was sending away for any merchandise.
“My name’s Randy. Want to go upstairs?” one of the blondes asked. She had a painted-on dimple, a practice Valentine never understood.
“My thought precisely,” Valentine said.
“What do you have in mind?”
“I was just thinking you had a very nicely shaped mouth.”
“Thirty, if it’s Control,” Randy said.
Valentine showed the cash.
“Pay Nel,” she said, flashing a hand signal to the madam.
Valentine handed over the captured bills and took her callused hand—did Nel put all her girls to scrubbing the floors every morning?—and led her up the world’s shortest staircase.
“Watch it, man, that’s the loosest slip on the Tennessee you’re going into there!” one of the card players guffawed.
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