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In this he was blessed, as Southern Command had a tradition of rotating men between front line and support duties, allowing the freehold to rapidly convert support units to combat operations. All of them had heard bullets fly and shells land in dreadful earnest. He wished he had more time to get to know them. Post and Beck would have to rely on volunteers to put together an NCO grid.
The four big guns were spaced out like the bases on an oversized baseball diamond in the open ground in front of Solon's Residence, each in its own pit, dug by the bulldozer, and ringed with sandbags. The backhoe was still making trenches to the ammunition dump, buried deep beneath a layer of sandbags, dirt, railroad ties and rail beams. This last came from the dismantled rail line the now-destroyed train had run on to the station near the old interstate.
Apart from the occasional shell from Pulaski Heights, the only military action to take place in the last forty-eight hours was a skirmish already going into the Free Territory folklore as the Great Howling Grog Chicken Raid. Ahn-Kha had led two platoons into the outskirts of North Arkansas and snatched up every chicken, goose, goat, piglet, calf, sheep and domestic rabbit they could run down and stuff in a sack-at the cost of the commanding officer getting a buttock full of birdshot from a twenty-gauge-while a third platoon blasted away at the men guarding the partially blown bridge from a thousand yards. Ahn-Kha had been running from a henhouse with a pair of chickens in each hand when the birdkeeper peppered him with shot that had to be dug out by a medic named Hiekeda with sterilized tweezers. In tall-tale fashion, the circumstances of Ahn-Kha's wounding and subsequent extraction of the pellets were exaggerated until, in one version already being told over the radio, Ahn-Kha was sneaking past a window with a sow under each arm and six chickens in each hand when an eighty-year-old woman stuck a gun out the window and gave him both barrels as he bent to tie his shoe. The shot, in that particular version, had to be dug out by a Chinese tailor working with knitting needles used as chopsticks. But the raid was the Big Rock Mountain garrison's first offensive success of the campaign. As a bonus, a baker's dozen of forgotten milkers were rustled from their riverside pasture and driven up the two hairpins of the switchback road on the south side of the Big Rock Mountain.
"Men," Valentine said. "You've been following orders that haven't made much sense for three days straight. You've done your duty without questions, or answers that made any sense. I'm going to try to straighten you out now. Please pass on what I say to everyone who is on watch at the skyline."
The "skyline" was the men's name for the edge of the hillside, where a series of foxholes and felled trees traced the military crest: the point where the slope could be covered by gunfire. They didn't have a quarter of the trained men they needed to man the extended line; by using three companies he could place a soldier about every fifteen yards along the line, if he didn't cover the cliffs above the quarry with more than sentries.
"We were the first move in an effort to take back the Ozarks from Kur."
He couldn't get any farther; the men broke into cheers and the corkscrew yip of the Southern Command Guards. Valentine let the cheers stop. He said a silent prayer of gratitude for the high spirits of the men, tired as they were.
"We're about as far behind the lines as we can be. There are divisions of Quislings between us and the forces north and south, which will soon be driving for us."
Valentine knew he'd be roundly damned for what he was telling them; by the men if they found out he was lying, by his conscience if it was successfully kept from them. It was a guess at best. For all he knew, Southern Command was going to move toward Fort Scott or Pine Bluff. Since the men holding the Boston Mountains were a charade of an army, there wasn't a snowflake's chance in hell of being relieved from the north, and as for the south ...
"We're in radio contact with Southern Command. They know about the blow we struck the night before last. We threw a wrench into the gears of the TMCC. You know it, I know it and the Quislings will know it when they start going hungry and running out of bullets to shoot at your comrades."
All that was true enough. With only Post in the basement radio room, he'd made a report to Southern Command, and after an hour's pause they contacted him only to say that he'd been promoted to major and was now part of "Operations Group Center" under the titular command of General Martinez. They told him that he was to tie down as many troops as possible and be prepared to operate without the direct support of Southern Command for an "indeterminate time frame." Valentine didn't think that clumsy phrase, or the mention of Martinez, would bring cheers.
"From this hill, with the guns and mortars taken in our raid, we command a vital rail, road and river crossing. Consul Solon had to give up his old headquarters at Fort Scott to the Kurians of Oklahoma. He was in the process of transferring it here. Now we've taken his new one, right down to his personal foam-cushioned toilet seat, which I placed under new management this morning." The men laughed.
"We're in a strong position with plenty to eat and shoot. I hope you like the view; you're going to be enjoying it for a long time. But the work has just begun. I'm going to put every man in this command under the temporary command of Captain Beck, the officer commanding the prisoners we brought out of Little Rock. I served, and chopped, and dug, under him. He's been in two corners as tight as this one, outside Hazlett and commanding me at Little Timber Hill, and I'm still breathing because he knows how to fortify. He's going to work you until you drop. Then he'll wake you up and work you some more, but you'll be alive at the end of this because of it."
Liar.
* * * *
Beck pulled Valentine aside as Lieutenant Colonel Kessey took over the assembly.
"Major Valentine needed a trained artillery officer," she said, "and I, for my sins, happen to be one. I need more crews. The one I put together to set up the guns won't help me much to shoot the other three. Anyone who's got experience as a gun-bunny, cannon-cocker, or ammo-humper, please raise your hand. Not enough. Anyone who knows what those words mean, raise your hands ... anyone who thinks they might know. Finally. Good news, you're all in the artillery now."
"What are the latest regs on friendly fire casualties?" Beck asked sotto voce.
"Be thankful they don't have to counterbattery the mortars on Pulsaki Heights just yet."
"We won't hear from them for a while. They shot their ready reserve and we've got the rest. That, or they're saving it for a charge up our hill."
"What do you need, Captain?" Valentine asked.
"Valentine, what happened after Little Timber... I'm sorry. This arm meant no more duty in the Wolves."
"It meant no more duty in the Wolves for me, too, Captain."
"That's my fault."
"Doesn't matter now. You're a helluva fortification engineer. The best officer I ever served with was Le Havre in Zulu Company, but if I had my choice of him or anyone else in Southern Command for this job, I'd want you."
Beck swallowed. "Thank you ... sir."
"It won't be easy. We don't have anything like the men we should have to defend this position. You've got to make it look like we do. Sooner or later they're going to get around to trying us."
"The firepower we have is better than what we had in the Wolves. Supports, heavy weapons, mines. That counts for a lot."
"When the construction equipment is done with the artillery, it's all yours."
Beck nodded. Valentine saw his jaws tighten. Back in his days as senior in Foxtrot Company he'd known that meant Beck was thinking. Valentine reminded himself to give Beck
