Winter Duty (20 page)

“What are their demands to the Evansville people?”

“An exchange, they call it. Evacuation of Evansville. Anyone who wants to leave will be free to go into Kentucky. Then the south Illinois Kurians move in.”

“I thought Evansville belonged to the Ordnance Kur,” Lambert said.

“Must be some kind of deal they worked out,” Valentine said.

“I don’t know politics,” Nicholas said. “I just wanted out of there.”

They spent a few more minutes questioning him about numbers, and then they had him sketch out a map of the plant to the best of his ability. With that, they sent him to the small base hospital to be examined.

Lambert called her first staff meeting in the dining room of the big house. Moytana was there for the Wolves, waiting with the remaining platoon until Southern Command could send a replacement, Gamecock represented the Bears, and Captain Ediyak the rank and file of Valentine’s battalion. Patel had charge of the base in the operations room. There seemed no getting rid of his former sergeant, for which Valentine would be everlastingly grateful. The door opened, and Brother Mark slipped in, looking tired and a little wild-haired. Valentine wondered if he’d been sleeping the previous night’s party off.

“I was hoping to make this a friendly get-together,” she began, ignoring Brother Mark, who was neither fish nor fowl in Southern Command but knew more about the Kurian Order than even the experts in the Miskatonic. “But the Kurians had other ideas. Word’s probably gotten around the camp that they’ve moved against us already.”

“Yes, terrible bombing,” Brother Mark said.

“Bombing?” Valentine asked.

“The conference in Elizabethtown,” Brother Mark said. “All the legworm clans sent representatives from the big towns to work out which way Kentucky’s going to go. Franklin, Lexington, and Paducah aren’t represented there, except by members of their underground. The town’s been hit twice already, so you might say Kur is being represented after all. We’re not sure if the planes should be part of quorum call or not.”

“There wouldn’t be a flying rattlesnake on the planes, would there?” Valentine asked.

“How did you know?”

“I ran into them in Dallas and again when I was out west. They’re a remarkable organization. They can fly everything they need to a location, set up a small airport, and operate for as long as you can feed them fuel and munitions. They even can build simple bombs and so on if you give them high explosives and scrap for bomb casings.”

“Brother Mark,” Lambert said, “we’re dealing with a separate event. The Kurians have seized the power plant that supplies Evansville.”

“Which Kurians?” Brother Mark asked.

“Illinois, south of Chicago,” Valentine said.

“Why should that matter?” Gamecock asked.

“I’m surprised you don’t—,” Brother Mark began.

“It’s a binary problem with me, suh. Kurians are either dead, and therefore not a problem, or alive, in which case I try to make them dead.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Brother Mark said. “To the Ordnance Kur, their Illinois cousins are practically enemies of the same degree as the people in Kentucky. To their minds, they’re handing the city over to some ‘neutrals.’ The Ordnance wants the traffic on the river flowing free again. The Ordnance doesn’t have much in the way of brown-water craft on the Ohio. They have boats from the Great Lakes, but they couldn’t bring such substantial vessels to the Ohio without cutting them up into sections and reassembling them. And the rivermen in Memphis and Louisiana don’t feel like raking the Ordnance’s nuts out of the fire.”

“Who’s dumb enough to stick their nuts in a fire, I want to know,” Moytana said.

Brother Mark harrumphed. “
Chest
nuts. It’s a phrase going back to—”

Lambert rapped the table. “Let’s get back to the situation at hand.”

“Southern Illinois’s no threat,” Moytana said. “What forces they have are busy guarding against Grog raids out of the hills between the Ohio and the Mississippi, and the rest keep an eye on St. Louis. We could do worse. If the Ordnance decides to send that armored column that redhead wildcat claims is assembling and training there into Evansville, we wouldn’t be able to stop them any more than the local leek cutters.”

“Evansville has a hospital, workshops, manufacturers, horse farms, refineries for both ethanol and coal oil, factories even, never mind the agriculture—we need all that,” Valentine said. “I’m not inclined to give it up.”

“All those hospitals and factories and whatnot won’t be much good if they blow up the power plant,” Gamecock said. “You don’t just pick up megawatt generators, you know.”

“All the more reason to get them back,” Valentine said.

“How do we do that against dug-in Reapers?” Moytana said.

“With enough covering fire, we can blow them out,” Gamecock said, looking at the map.

“No, my guess is, despite wherever the hostages are, most of the Reapers will settle in near the generators or electronics—something we can’t replace easily,” Moytana said. Moytana’s gray hair had turned a little whiter in the year Valentine had known him. “According to your vol, they’re holding all the hostages in the workers’ cafeteria.”

“Logical.” Gamecock put in. “Easy to feed them. Big enough for everyone to stay in one room, under observation. Warm and cozy.”

“Packed in like that, a Reaper or two could kill them all in under a minute,” Valentine said, remembering a “sporting event” he’d once attending in Memphis where a single Reaper executed ten men before a basketball shot-clock expired. Without the use of its arms.

“One problem. All those windows. We could put six Bears in that room in less than a second through those windows.”

“Wolves can keep the gargoyles and harpies off of our backs. Bears take care of the Reapers. Power plant is back in our hands.”

“If we can trust the map,” Moytana said. “Someone needs to make a close reconnaissance before we plan anything. For all we know this is an elaborate trap—get all the Bears inside the place and blow it to hell. I think they want us to hit it,” he continued. “They’ve probably got the whole place rigged. A ton of dead technicians, lights out in Evansville and Owensboro, and the resistance takes the fall.”

“They’re not that clever,” Ediyak said.

“It doesn’t hurt to act as though they are,” Valentine said. “I’ll ask Smoke about getting over there and taking a look tonight. She’ll need transport.”

“Better get her over here,” Lambert said. “Where is she?”

“My quarters,” Valentine said.

Lambert picked up the phone atop the table and gave instructions.

Most of those at the table found something interesting in the woodwork.

“My Wolves will drive her,” Moytana said. “Light-duty truck, something inconspicuous.”

“Any way we can get a twist on them?” Gamecock asked.

“Put the Whirlpool plant to work making generators,” Brother Mark said.

“Something more immediate.”

“There might be an easier way than assault,” Valentine said.

“Head back to the Mississippi with the rest of the brigade?” Ediyak asked.

“No. Who’s running those Reapers? We need to find the Kurian. Take the mastermind out of the equation and the whole thing will fall apart.”

“He could be anywhere,” Gamecock said. “We know there’s no tower around, so it’s probably hiding. When a Kurian wants to stay hidden, they’re next to impossible to find.”

“I don’t think so,” Valentine said. “He has to be near enough to the plant so he can control his Reapers day or night. Their range is limited to a dozen or so miles by day, maybe less. Kentucky is thickly wooded and hilly. He needs a high perch for good transmission.”

“And one well guarded. Let’s not forget what chickenshits they are, suh,” Gamecock said.

Duvalier knocked and entered the room. She was wrapped up in one of Valentine’s field coats. The table greeted her and she plopped down in a corner.

“Where on the river on the Ohio side is there a garrison?” Valentine asked the table.

Duvalier spoke up. “That’s a pretty empty stretch, especially with Evansville in revolt.”

“I say it’s in a boat,” Moytana said. “All it has to do is go over the side.”

“In this weather?” Lambert said. “Kurians don’t like cold. I think it would kill ’em. No, it’s holed up. Brother Mark, could it be in the river somewhere? They look aquatic.”

“That I don’t know,” Brother Mark said.

Lambert continued. “I was in a sort of a park that re-created their home planet—not Kur, which I think is warmer. It was quite warm, with shallow water.”

“Boat still seems likely,” Moytana said. “Mobile.”

“No, it’s high up,” Ediyak said. “If it gets in trouble, it just launches itself into the air. They can glide for miles.”

“How do you know?” Lambert said.

“I heard . . . before I defected over,” she replied. “A friend in the underground told me he’d seen one glide away from a fire they’d started in his tower. He sailed off like he was in a glider.”

Moytana was studying a map on the wall. “The bridge,” Moytana said.

“Bridge?” Lambert said.

“New Bridge, the people in Owensboro call it. Just east of the city. Suspension bridge with two high pylons.”

Lambert shook her head. “Too easy for us to get to.”

“Not necessarily. Both ends are guarded.”

“I’ve crossed it, a couple weeks back,” Duvalier said. “North to south. I had a picture of a Moondagger and some letters, claimed I was looking for him. Smugglers bribe their way across all the time. One of the smugglers told me that it’s actually harder to go north to south than the other way. Going north, they just check to make sure you aren’t bringing weapons and ask about your business.”

Moytana nodded. “The Kurians don’t want their Ohio populace slipping across the river any more than they want Kentuckians visiting Ohio. That Kurian can get high enough so it’s got a clear view of the power plant. The bridge and power plant can’t be more than ten miles apart, I don’t think. Clear line of sight, that is—not by road. Escape by air. Escape by boat. Escape by highway. It’s perfect.”

“Just guesswork,” Gamecock said. “You know how many old cracking towers and water tanks and cell towers we’ve hit because somebody theorized that a Kurian just had to be there? All we came away with was a lot of rust on our gloves and birds’ nests. I still say we wait for good, strong daylight and take out the Reapers. A Kurian’s just a big bucket of ugly without his walking teeth.”

“Not guesswork,” Moytana said. “Our scouts have seen some new uniforms on that bridge recently. We’ve been paying attention because of this armored column reputed to be up from Bloomington way and it’s the only intact bridge within sixty miles of Evansville. We keep a close watch on it through a telescope. There are some troops in big woolly overcoats that have showed up. All tall men in winter duty hats. They don’t do anything; they just keep an eye on the Ordnance regulars. They look like high-level security types. Be easy for a Reaper to look like one from a distance, especially at night. He’d just pull his hat down and turn his collar up. We thought they might be there to clamp down on desertions or make sure smugglers aren’t bringing necessities into Kentucky. But maybe not.”

They worked out the details of Duvalier’s reconnaissance, and Moytana took her out to find a pair of Wolf drivers for her. The nights were coming earlier and earlier, and they wanted to get her to the power plant by nightfall.

While Duvalier was off scouting the plant, Valentine spent an hour with his rifle and a weighted satchel on his back, training in an old grain elevator in Evansville. It had a similar-loading escalator that Valentine thought similar to the suspension cabling on the bridge, though the bridge’s was larger and more graceful looking. He did a good deal of climbing on the inside of the elevator in the dark, getting used to the feel of hanging and climbing and resting. Then, when his muscles couldn’t take the load anymore, he practiced balance work, using the gun as a balancing pole.

Duvalier returned the next morning while Valentine was sleeping. She was exhausted and smeared with coal dust and rust streaks. After everyone had gathered again, she gave a somnam- bulistic report, correcting a few details on the vol’s map and delivering the unwelcome news that a platoon of Moondaggers now occupied the power plant as well.

“How do we get at the Kurian without it getting away?” Gamecock said. “In the time it takes my Bears to fight their way onto the bridge, it could escape.”

“We don’t even know it’s there,” Brother Mark said. “And even if it is there, it will in all likelihood be presenting itself as a garbage can or a loose wire hanging from a floodlight.”

“Not in this weather, I don’t think,” Valentine said. “It’ll be inside where it’s warm.”

“I might be able to find it,” Brother Mark said. “There’s just one difficulty, however. It would have to be communicating with its Reapers. Or even better, feeding.”