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"We should take a trip over to the river patrol reserve armory between the Tennessee and the Mississippi. They don't hardly guard that. Get us some real guns."
Valentine dredged up that last man's name: Robbins-no, Rollings. "Private Rollings.
What's that?"
"Sorry, sir."
"No, you're not in trouble. Come over here."
Rollings gave his pants a subtle hitch up as he approached, his sergeant falling in beside like a protective dog. "The major wants something?"
"What did you say about an armory?"
"You're not in any trouble, Rollings," his sergeant said.
Rollings kept his gaze on Valentine's feet. "River patrol armory and motor pool, sir. The old western Kentucky number four. We used to gas up there when I was with the River Road Light Artillery of the Tennessee Troop. It's a crap-err CRP,-um, that's Combined River Patrol, sir. Reserve armory and warehouse for patrol and artillery boats on the Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi. Creepy place. There's those flappy gargoyles quartered in town and nests of harpies in the hills up by the Ohio."
"Explain what you meant about unguarded."
The man gulped. "Not unguarded. There's usually six or seven men about. It's just that the armory's for the river patrol, so the Tennessee Troop, they don't see it as their job to garrison it. The river patrol figures that since it's inland, it's the Troop's job to secure it. Nobody wants to be stationed there, exactly, with the harpies in the hills and the gargoyles in the empty town. Not much to do but play cards and come up with better nose plugs."
Rollings had five more uncomfortable minutes as Valentine quizzed him about the roads in the area, the terrain, the location of KZ settlements. . . .
When he finished the poor private was sweating.
Valentine gripped him on the shoulder. "Thank you, Rollings. You're the kind of complainer I like."
Rollings' eyes finally came up. "How's that, sir?"
"The kind that offers a solution."
The wilderness of eastern Kentucky, New Years Eve, the Fifty-fourth Year of the Kurian Order: With the sun an orange-and-purple bruise along the western skyline, harpy country wakes up.
There's something odd about this particular Grog territory. Bird and animal life seems more furtive, the insects tougher and more numerous-even in the winter chill big black flies drone by like thrown pebbles. The kudzu on old utility poles and lines grows thick on every sunstruck prominence in a twisted-tendril game of king of the hill that dares you to contest its ownership. Thicker stands of wood have a bat-cave smell with nothing thriving in the shade but thistle and thorn and tree-hugging fungus looking like suppurating wounds.
The few highways cutting through harpy lands are barely open, the vegetation kept back only by big machines clawing through the potholed roads. The devastation from the New Madrid quake has never been repaired. Whole communities are nothing but heaps of rubble with a vine-covered wall or chimney still standing.
* * * *
Binoculars just made the warehouse and truck yard look worse. In the dark from a distance, Valentine could see the armory was only three buildings, two of cinder block linked by a nicer brick office forming an uneven U lit at the doors by tired bulbs that looked like they wanted to surrender to the night. With the aid of the binoculars, Valentine's night eyes picked out peeling paint, the tires and blocks holding down plastic sheeting on the roofs, and the plywood nailed over the windows.
Patel and Hoboken, the youngest of Patel's Shepherds, looked at it with him.
The ad-hoc raid had come together as though it were a natural, expected event, like a birth.
When Valentine proposed the operation at a scheduled meeting, he met initial resistance in the form of a frown and a shake of Colonel Seng's head, but Moytana and the Bear lieutenant Gamecock both came to assistance, claiming that their men were fretting, wanting either leave or an operation. They could have both by joining in the raid, as Hunters back from the KZ traditionally enjoyed at least a three-day pass, if not a twenty-one, in Southern Command's vernacular.
Valentine argued that the rest of the brigade might be reassured by a quick successful strike into the Kurian Zone and a return across the Mississippi, and Seng gave his approval.
Valentine turned in his written plan that very evening and started on the orders for the company the next morning.
As Rand organized transport, Valentine received an unexpected visitor. The Bear lieutenant knocked on the open door of the command shack. Dust fell from the ceiling and the spiders hunkered down in their webs.
"Morning, Major," Gamecock said. He had thick hair on the arms projecting from his sleeveless shirt, and wore the first legworm leather pants Valentine had seen since he lost his rig in Pacific Command. Most officers in Southern Command knew better than to lecture Bears on proper attire. He had an ear of roasted corn in hand and a flour sack over his shoulder. He gave Valentine a casual salute with the roasted ear as he looked around the command shack. "Okay to talk about the op?"
"In here," Valentine said. The command shack had a divider now, so Valentine enjoyed the luxury and status of a knothole-windowed office.
They went into the back room.
