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"Day after we got here. I asked for a review of female prisoners."
Post was easier to read than a billboard at ten feet. "Your wife?"
"I always figured she headed here. It was the nearest Freehold to Mississippi."
"Will, you'll drive yourself crazy if you start searching every face for her. I've had a... person in my life. Was in my life. She's caught up in this somewhere, but if I start thinking about her, I won't be able to concentrate. I have responsibilities now."
Post looked at him sidelong. "Where was she last?"
"A village called Weening, just west of Crowley's ..." Valentine stopped.
"Only human to hope," Post said.
"Being human is a luxury, at least these days. Feelings. Attachments. They stop you from doing what's ... what's necessary. Someone called Amu told me I wouldn't be one anymore when I became a Wolf. I must have misunderstood what he was talking about."
"How long have we known each other, Val?"
"What, a year and a half? Since I came on board the Thunderbolt."
"You're the most human person I've known since my wife. Except when you do what's necessary." Post meant by this the wild night when the Reapers came up from the old Kurian submarine, and after sinking it Valentine had shot the submarines sailors struggling in the oily water. His emotions turned gray and cold whenever he remembered.
Valentine wondered if he could unburden himself. Confessing to not just the things he'd done, but worse, that he'd enjoyed, even reveled in-
"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.
