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"I can put the word in the Lifeweaver's ear, but whether Southern Command'll listen ..." Mantilla said, shrugging. The night made his eyesockets black wells, unfathomable.
"One more thing, please."
"How can I refuse anything to the Cat who would dare challenge such a lion in his own den? What is it, monfrere?
"I won't ask, but if you have contacts further downriver, especially near Pine Bluff, tell them to be ready to hit hard when I move. Civilian and militia uprising."
"Such an order can only be given by Southern Command's General Staff."
"Then Southern Command's General Staff can take it up with me."
"If you live. It is a forlorn hope, my friend."
"You know my orders; you passed them on to Smoke. 'Raise a ruckus.' The more widespread it is, the better."
"You are exceeding your orders, I think."
Valentine looked at the lights strung on the bridge like holiday decorations. "I think so too. It's still the right thing to do."
* * * *
"We've got our orders to pack up and join the rest of the division," Valentine said to his assembled officers the next night.
The meeting was held in his NCO bar and recreation room, formerly a basement gym in one of Little Rock's office buildings. The crowd of sergeants, lieutenants, Bears and company officers kept Narcisse busy at the coffee urn. Everyone was eating dinner off of trays around a Ping-Pong table. The green surface was thick with three colors of chalk.
Nail and Ahn-Kha were lounging in wooden chairs outside the club, charged with preventing any interruptions for three hours. Post, the other officer with detailed knowledge of Valentine's plan, at least since last night when he'd gone over it with his select circle, was keeping an eye on things along with Hanson, the gunnery sergeant Valentine had also brought into the plan in its formative stages. Hanson had given the operation its name: Double Boxcars. The crap pit slang described Hanson's estimation of the scheme's chances of coming off as planned, rolling two sixes with two dice. Twice in a row.
"But even if it's a cluster fuck, we'll cause a hell of a lot of damage."
Styachowski had spent hours with Valentine writing on the Ping-Pong table that afternoon. She'd taken to wearing baggy cargo shorts because of her cast, and she'd loosened her shirt to give her more freedom of movement as she reached across the table to draw, fighting an occasional sniffle. Valentine couldn't help but admire her splendid body, though it seemed that her gymnast's legs and swimmer's shoulders had sucked all the vitality from the rest of her: she was still as pale and bloodless as ever, even on the hearty, well-balanced meals issued by Xray-Tango's commissary.
Her constant questions as she wrote out orders helped sort his own ideas. The men would have to get rid of their TMCC uniform tops; the rules of war, such as they were, allowed ruses in enemy uniform as long as the uniforms were changed before taking hostile action. The men would dispose of their tunics. Narcisse was already dyeing their undershirts black. To further distinguish friend from foe in the dark Ahn-Kha had suggested bandoliers of red demolition tape. There were rolls of it lying around, used to mark off areas known to contain mines, unexploded munitions or construction blasting.
Each quadrant of the table had a sketch of a critical zone in the plan: the wharf and supply warehouses, the train line running through New Columbia, the prison camp, and the Kurian Tower.
The last was the result of a cryptic comment from Mantilla as they'd loaded the beams onto the foredeck of his aged barge, after his faked grounding had been ended. "Good luck, Colonel. Be sure you hit the tower. Go down. Not up. The rat's in the cellar. Here's a little gift from the Redhead. You'll need it soon, I think." He'd given Valentine a bag with two bottles of bourbon. It had a false bottom. When Valentine found the hidden zipper he came up with his pair of Cat "fighting claws," and a little box with five flash-bangs inside. They were about the size of yo-yos, and each had a lacquered picture from a matchbook on it. Valentine recognized the matchbooks; they were bars and restaurants he and Duvalier had dined in while posing as husband and wife in New Orleans. A note from Duvalier rolled up in the box read:
G-The Good captain kept these for me, for you.
Luck-S
A second, rolling, blackboard stood against the wall, where Valentine had drawn the fail line running north from New Columbia, adding times for the trip up to Third Division's position.
If there were an unexpected visit from Xray-Tango, Styachowski's Ping-Pong table would be covered with plastic and a tablecloth, then heaped with food. Hopefully the visiting general wouldn't notice the detailed drawing of the Consular Residence along the way, and Valentine could look like he was giving a simple briefing about their shift north to join the TMCC's lines south of the Boston Mountains.
There were the usual questions. Dumb ones from officers who'd already had their role explained to them, and just wanted to hear it repeated again. Smart ones about what to do if there were a disaster at another component of the plan. Styachowski answered all questions, never once needing an assist from Valentine. She'd absorbed the details of Boxcars like a sponge taking in water, but had chafed at not having a more active roll in the operation.
"If the train's SNAFU, go to the barge," Styachowski said in answer to a question about failure in one part of the operation. "If the barge is underwater, go to the train. If they're both impossible, we'll get what we can across on the ferry."
Then there were the inevitable what-ifs. Valentine finally called a halt to it.
"Things are going to go wrong. Improvise. This plan boils down to getting to Objective Omega with everything you can haul. Supplies. Medicine. Prisoners. The tubes. But getting the men there comes first. I'd rather have you alive on the hill than dead trying to haul another mortar up there."
"But there's bound to be fighting," a sergeant said.
"At the docks and warehouses it'll be supply sergeants and clipboard-holders. Everything else, save the Kurian Tower, are sentries and police. Other than the guards at the prison camp, they're not used to carrying weapons every day. You'll outnumber and outgun them. The nearest real troops are watching the river and the roads from Pulaski Heights. If they move, their orders will probably be to go secure the Kurian Tower. They can't hurt us with anything but their mortars, and I don't think they'll fire into the town. If they do, they'll just help us do our job."
"As we said at the beginning," Post added, "we're like bank robbers. Scare everyone shitless, grab the money and haul ass before the cops arrive. And that's all." The men chortled at that. "How you scare 'em, how much you take and how soon the cops show up are variables we can't know until we're in the middle of the robbery. So you're going to have to do some thinking."
