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A trio of men were working at the concertina wire behind their tent in the tower's blind spot. Someone among the prisoners had been waiting for this moment; two men were working at widening the hole with pieces of wood as the first crawled through, cutting.
Valentine spoke: "Saves us the trouble. Nail, go back and tell Lieutenant Zhao to spread for skirmishing. Meet up with us there, at those concrete pilings that look like tree trunks. See them?"
"Sure, sir."
"Zhao should just demonstrate. It's not a real attack. I want them to shoot at the tower, once we start. If they kill them all the better. I just don't want that gun aimed at us. Oh, be sure to call out before you come up on them. They're nervous."
"Yes, sir," Nail said, disappearing into the darkness.
"Groschen, Rain, let's work our way around to the north side of the camp. Try and find something we can throw down on that wire."
By the time Nail caught up with them in a skeleton of reinforced concrete, the Bears had found an old metal fire door and pried it off its rusted hinges. It was a heavy, awkward burden, but Rain managed to get it up on his back.
"They're almost through the wire. What the hell are you doing?"
Nail looked up from the pile of TMCC uniforms he was lighting. "We're going Red, sir. It's a ritual. Haven't you ever seen Bears go into action before?"
"Not up close. The tower might see some of the light from that fire."
"Let 'em. Nothing makes the Quislings shit like Bearfire."
Valentine tried to keep his attention on the camp, but the little circle of Hunters going through their ritual distracted him. It was something out of another time and place, when men in animal skins nerved themselves for action through tribal custom.
They stared into the fire for a few minutes, sitting cross-legged and silently contemplating the blue-bottomed flames. First Nail began to sway; in a moment the others joined in, until they were moving in synch like seven metronomes, first right, then left, then right, all the while staring into the fire. When they were all moving in unison, exchanging grunts that meant nothing to Valentine, Nail rose onto his haunches and the others followed suit. Rain took out the knife he had sterilized, raised his Reaper-robe sleeve, and revealed a long line of little brown scars, hash marks running up to his triceps. He reached up with the blade and added another cut, parallel to all the others. He passed the blade to the next man, then sprinkled gunpowder out of a shell casing into the wound.
The knife traveled the circle, the men holding it out across to each other over the flames, until Valentine's own arm began to hurt in sympathy. The blade traveled from Rain, the one with the most scars, to Nail, and then to the others, each solemnly dusting the wound with the powder from their own shell casings. Valentine found himself wondering about hepatitis rates among the Bears.
When it was done Nail rose, a little drunkenly, and came up to Valentine.
"We're ready. They through the wire?" he said. Nail was enunciating a little thickly.
"Yes, men are starting to slip out. Someone's keeping them together at the edge of camp, though. Let's go meet them."
The Bears took up their assortment of weapons and the steel door. They ran, hunched over, up to the garnering point of the escapees.
"Someone's-" a tattered lookout said, before a Bear came from the shadows to clamp a hand over his mouth.
"Easy, men," Valentine said, holding out a hand as a couple of the prisoners took up rocks. "There's a Bear team here. Nice work on the wire. If you don't mind, we'd like to use it to get in. Who's in command, here?"
"I am. You've got a familiar voice, Bea-is that you, Valentine?" said Captain Beck, former commander of Foxtrot Company, and the officer who had Valentine drummed out of the Wolves.
* * * *
"How's the arm, Captain?" was all Valentine could think to say. Beck had his right arm tucked into his shirt, Napoleon-style.
"Nerve damage. You back from Minnesota? What the hell's going on?"
"Long story, Captain. Gather the men here-"
"The women-"
"Please don't interrupt me, Captain. The team's going in for the women."
"Thank God for that. You wouldn't have a spare rifle or two, Lieutenant?"
Valentine didn't bother to correct him. "Nail?"
"We're light enough as is," Nail said. "Let us at those guards, we'll get you some guns, sir."
