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"Colonel! Colonel!"
The shout even overcame Ahn-Kha's metalwork.
Valentine cast a regretful look at his bunk.
"Come in. What is it, Lieutenant Purcel?"
The company officer saluted, gasping. "Overheard on the radio, sir... Blue Mountain dam's gone."
"Oh, Christ," Post said.
"Guerillas blow it?" Valentine asked.
"Just went."
"Mr. Post, get everyone up. I don't care if they've just spent twelve hours shoring sandbags. Everyone to the levee. If Mrs. Smalls's had her baby, I want her holding sandbags open. If it's a boy, I want him shoveling. Mr. Purcell, if the general doesn't know it, pass the word along. I respectfully suggest that he empty the prison compound, and get those buckets of lard at the wire-wait, strike the last."
"Pass the word to the general-" Purcell began.
"Don't bother, Mister Purcell. Just run."
Valentine looked around the little tent, touching the leather sack at his chest It might as well all be swept away, but what about the Quickwood?
"Ahn-Kha," he called, pulling on his tunic.
"Yes, my David?"
"Have the men bring the Quickwood to the levy. We'll use it to shore up. If it gives way, have everyone grab on."
Valentine and Ahn-Kha raced up and down the camp, gathering the men and deflating the tents by pulling out the Quickwood center poles. He and the men ran to the levy, carrying the four-by-four beams in earnest rather than for exercise.
Styachowski was already putting the men to work. At other parts of the levee men were gathering, and Valentine walked the length, giving orders regardless of whose section it was. Farther back General Xray-Tango was organizing troops and prisoners alike, directing the flow of manpower to the dike.
The levee was already a sandbag sieve. Even Hank stood in the water, helping maneuver shoring timber against the sandbag wall. Farther down the levee a camouflage-painted bulldozer growled as it battled with the river, pushing walls of dirt against the drainage channel.
Valentine's men worked for hours, taking only handfuls of cold water from the river for refreshment. It was a blur of sandbagging and shoring for Valentine, all the while watching the debris-filled river as he slogged through the water on the other side of the levee. Darkness came, and still the river ran mad. Men began to drop to their knees in the water in exhaustion.
"We're losing it," Post said, watching Styachowski, up to her waist in water, direct shoring efforts. "I think it's going to go."
Valentine felt a personal animosity toward the river. It was like a living thing, determined to overcome him no matter how hard he drove himself and his men. "We're not beat yet."
Shouts and a scream. He spun to see a crowd jumping back from the levee, where part of a sandbag wall had collapsed.
"Get the bulldozer over here," Post yelled.
Valentine rushed to the site, Ahn-Kha joining him from the other side of the breach. A waterfall was coming through a notch in the levee; something had given way at the bottom and it had subsided.
"She's trapped, sir," one of the Jamaicans shouted. "It caught her on the legs as she fell."
"Who?" Valentine shouted.
"Styachowski," another said, forgetting to use her false name. "Captain Styachowski."
"It started to bulge and she jumped in with a shoring timber," Smalls said. "She was trying to place it-"
Valentine plunged into the swirling waters at the base of the fall, and began to feel around for her. He submerged. Under the water he felt a frantic hand grasp his. He pulled, but her body didn't yield. He felt around, and touched her face. Keeping a grip on her hand, he surfaced. Through cascading water, he looked up at the worried faces.
"Christ, get some of these bags away. I can feel her down there."
