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From what he understood of the Moondaggers, their retribution would be swift and merciless.
Valentine could picture the local reprisals easily enough. Moytana's description of their tactics had plenty of historical precedent. People herded into old church buildings and burned.
Executions against town square walls worthy of Goya.
Who bore the responsibility? The agent provocateur or the troops? The Moondaggers would claim that if there had been no attack, there would be no reprisal.
Valentine took off another beard. Easier than skinning rabbits. No legs to deal with, just a long circular cut of the knife from one corner of the mouth, down the throat, and then back up to the other corner of the mouth. The bodies were still warm and he could smell their dried sweat. The cloying aroma of death wouldn't begin to rise for some hours yet.
For now they smelled like blood and diapers.
Rand was at the door of the barn, blocking the daylight coming through the gap between the truck and the post. "Sir, there's a radio in the command car that's still working."
Valentine stepped over to another body. "Put Preville on it. Have him listen to chatter and see if they know about the ambush."
Rand kept his eyes well above Valentine's waistline and the flash-ing knife.
"Will do, sir." Mercifully, he left without saying anything more.
Valentine's sense of honor wasn't taken word for word from the Southern Command Officers Epitome. It was instead like a jigsaw collage from three or for different puzzles, all half-formed but recognizable pictures. Some came from his parents, others from Father Max, more from his training, a few from his experiences in the Kurian Zone.
Of course he'd done despicable things in the past. He'd bled men who had no more of a chance of fighting back than bound pigs, Twisted Cross lying in their tanks in a basement in Omaha. He'd tor-tured. He'd acted as judge, jury, and executioner over Mary Carlson's killers.
He'd helped the overlord Kurian in Seattle wipe out Adler and his staff.
Each time one bit of his conscience or another had plucked at him, he'd burned with regret later thinking back on what he'd done, but necessity compelled and partially excused him.
But this time all of the jigsaw pieces agreed. This setup of the Green River clan stripped him of whatever scarecrow of his honor had remained.
He'd decided that the brigade's survival required a sacrifice. Of his honor. More important, of some members of the Green River clan. Wide-eyed children would be fed into war's furnace as a result of a ploy that couldn't even promise victory.
Or was it really for the brigade? Do you need to be proven right this badly, David Stuart Valentine? Tip over the first domino in what you hope will be a series of massacres followed by ambush followed by another massacre, until these beautiful green hills run with blood?
He'd have to shave with his eyes shut from now on.
"Maybe they were right about that shit detail stuff," a woman outside the barn said.
Valentine made an effort not to place the voice to a face.
"I think I've gone crazy, Patel."
His sergeant major tossed a length of strong nylon binding cord over a still-sound rafter and hoisted a corpse by its ankles. Rigor was just beginning to set in.
"You remember Lugger, from LeHavre's old company?" Yes.
Patel fixed the other end of the line to the bare-beam wall. "She was on the Kansas operation. She saw what the Moondaggers did there- entire towns herded out into athletic fields and machine-gunned. She was on a scout and came into one of those ghost towns after.
Saw Kurian cameras viding the bodies as guys posing as Southern Command POWs confessed to the killings. Sometimes they took out towns that weren't even in the fight-just did it to make a point."
"And?"
"These guys earned their killing. This," he said, looping a running hitch around another set of ankles, "is just interest on their deposit."
"What about the Green River Clan?"
"David, worrying now will not alter the future. We must wait and see what happens."
Red Dog took the opportunity to relieve himself on a Moondagger tire.
