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He had a height advantage from the cabin deck.
The patrol craft suddenly sprouted a machine gun from its roof. The barrel turned to cover the bridge.
Valentine tipped a bunk and shoved it against the porthole wall. He didn't do anything as stupid as shoving the barrel out the window; he just kept watch.
The boat pulled up and lines were passed.
Valentine, flattening himself against the wall beside the porthole, watched two men and a dog come on board. The senior officer, judging from the stars on his shoulders, kept his hand on his pistol as he came aboard. He had a squinty, suspicious look about him, like an old storekeeper watching kids pick over candy tubs.
Captain Mantilla came down to greet them. The older of the two men looked shocked, perhaps at the captain's slovenly appearance. Suddenly, the officer threw out his arms and embraced Mantilla like a long-lost brother.
Valentine couldn't understand it, but it seemed like the crisis had passed. He watched the search team go forward.
He wrapped the gun in a blanket and stowed it and the ammunition vest in a locker. He didn't need to change clothes; like the rest of the passengers, he'd been wearing crew overalls so he could move around on deck freely without drawing attention from the riverbank.
Curious, he went out to the rail on the port side and watched Mantilla with the search team. They were doing a good deal of animated talking and very little searching. Even the dog looked bored and relaxed, sitting and gazing up at the humans, panting.
The patrolmen debarked. Valentine waited for the inevitable bribe to pass down to the senior officer, but a square bottle full of amber-colored liquor passed up to Mantilla instead.
The patrol craft untied and proceeded downriver. Mantilla's tug gunned into life.
As it turned out, they were boarded from the other side of the river an hour's slow progress from where they had met the patrol boat.
Valentine saw some soldiers, probably out of Rally Base, signal with a portable electric lantern and wave them in. By the time anchors had fixed their drift, a little red-and-white rowboat set out from a backwash, fighting its way through some riverside growth.
Two men were in it, a big muscular fellow at the oars who had the look of a river drifter who made a little spare money watching for enemy activity, and a magazine cover of a man with slicked-back hair.
"Permission to come aboard, Captain?" slicked-back hair called.
"Granted."
The baggage came first. A big military-issue duffel hit the deck with a whump, tossed up by the muscular man in the rowboat. It was followed by the would-be passenger. On closer inspection Valentine saw that he had a pencil-thin mustache, precisely trimmed to the edges of his mouth.
Which was smiling, at the moment.
"Good God, I was afraid I'd missed you. My river rat swore to me that your tug had passed yesterday. I thought a very bumpy ride had been in vain. Broke records getting to Rally Base.
"Let's see. Transport warrant. Letter of introduction, and permission to be on Southern Command military property. That's the lot. I was hoping to hitch a ride."
"This trip is chartered by Colonel Lambert," Mantilla said. "You'll have to ask her."
"Who are you?" Lambert asked from her spot at the rail.
"Rollo A. Boelnitz, but my friends call me Pencil. I'm a free-lancer with The Bulletin. My specialty is actually Missouri but I'm eager to learn about Kentucky."
The Bulletin was a minor paper published near the skeleton of the old Wal-Mart complex in Arkansas. It was new-post Archangel and the UFR anyway. Valentine had never read it.
"Why Pencil, Mr. Boelnitz? Because of the mustache?" Lambert asked.
"No, at school. I always lost my pencil and had to borrow. It just stuck."
Lambert glanced at Valentine. "You wanted reinforcements. One pen a mighty army makes."
Valentine disliked him, maybe simply because of the way Lambert had perked up and thrown her chest out since this young icon came aboard.
"General Lehman suggested I join you," Boelnitz offered. "I was talking to him to get a retrospective on his tenure. He said a bit of publicity might help your cause in Kentucky, and the Cause on top of it."
Lambert examined his paperwork. "That's Lehman's signature. The permission to be on Southern Command property might have been overkill. Kentucky's neither fish nor fowl at the moment."
