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"No. We've been out of their territory for days. I don't think we even talked to any."
"Well, the Church is blaming it on you. Also some kidnappings in Glasgow."
"We never even saw the town. The Moondaggers had it occupied before we even got there. The kidnappings-they wouldn't be young women, by any chance?"
"Yes. They're kinda worked up about it."
Worked up. What would it take to push them beyond worked up?
He got an idea. An ugly, hurtful idea.
Are you a doer or a shirker, Valentine? What's the price of your honor? Is it worth more than the survival of your comrades?
Within an hour he was where the medical staff had un-hammocked the patients and unburdened their worms.
Valentine looked at the three fresh bodies, good Southern Command men who'd traded in all their tomorrows for the Cause, hating himself. They gave up their lives for their comrades in the brigade. Would they object to their bodies being of further use?
"Doctor, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you for the use of three bodies."
"What do you have in mind, Major?"
"Nothing you want to know about, Doctor. They'll be treated respectfully, don't worry."
* * * *
The Moondagger patrol never had a chance.
Reports from the legworm liaison said they were being supplied by the Green River clan.
Valentine chose the spot for the ambush well. He used legworm pasture along the most open stretch of road he could find, just east of a crossroads where other patrols might see and investigate smoke from three directions. A collapsed barn and an intact aluminum chicken coop stood opposite his position, off the road by about fifty yards.
His company, armed with the weapons meant for trade, backed up by Glass' pair with their machine guns, lay under piles of brush taken from legworm deposits, using the tiny hummocks of the snakelike legworm trails to rest their rifles.
With one squad left guarding his escape and evasion trail, he set up three parallel kill zones, anchoring their flanks with the .50s.
Once the men were in position, barrels down and hidden, he and Rand hurried around, laying brush across the groups of prone men.
The three-truck, one-car patrol was heading east, which struck him as strange. Better for him. They were coming off the rise six miles to the southeast, a good place to observe a long stretch of the Green River Valley.
They had a single antiaircraft cannon as armament mounted in the bed of a heavy-duty pickup. Just behind the cannon truck, the rest oi: the men rode in the beds of the armored double-axel trucks. Old mattresses and spare tires hung from aluminum skirting as improvised armor.
Valentine waited to detonate the mine until the cannon truck was over the old soda can that served as a marker. The mine, simple TNT under gravel in the potholed road, luckily went off right under one of the wheels and sprang the truck onto its side.
His men held their fire while the other vehicles turned off the road, facing the buildings at an angle. As the men dismounted to the side facing Valentine's line, he gave the order to fire.
"Antenna!" Valentine shouted.
The platoon fired on the command car. Valentine saw blood splatter the windows as the glass cracked and fell.
The .50 calibers completed the execution begun by rifle fire. The Grogs employed their guns like tripod-mounted rifles, firing single, precise shots, sniping over open sights.
Valentine went forward with his machine pistol, leading a maneuver team with Patel offering support fire. A shielded machine gun sprang up from the bed of the foremost of the trucks, almost like a jack-in-the-box as it unfolded, the gunner cocking it smoothly. Valen-tine fell sideways, shooting as he fell. The gunner made the mistake of swinging his weapon to shoot back, exposing himself to the riflemen.
Valentine watched invisible hands tug at the gunner's clothes and the gunner went down, shooting in the air as he fell. Through the gap under the truck Valentine saw two figures running for the old, half-collapsed barn. He took careful aim and planted bursts in one back and then the other.
The firing died down to single shots as the platoons made sure from a distance that the enemy was down. Valentine waved Rutherford and DuSable forward. They put their autoloading shotguns to their shoulders and stepped out. They took turns covering each other as they checked the cabins of the vehicles.
Valentine heard a shotgun blast, turned around.
