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"All that way. By yourself?"
"I hitched a ride with a good old boy who trains fighting dogs. He was on the way to a match in Indianapolis. His truck got me there and back."
"You went to a dogfight?" Valentine asked.
"No, I skipped it. So did the dogs. But they weren't in fighting shape anyway. They'd just eaten about two hundred sixty pounds of asshole after I took the wheel."
"Why Bloomington?"
"We received an underground report that the Northwest Ordnance moved into a new headquarters, and I went to check it out."
"How did it go?"
"Maybe nothing; maybe not. Headquarters was for the Grand Guard Corps' Spearhead Brigade from Striker Division. From what my old Ohio boyfriend told me, that's the best of their best, unless you count their marine raiders on the Great Lakes. Armored stuff that usually is deployed at the Turnpike Gap in Pennsylvania against the East Coast Kurians. They may just be training, from what I could pick up in the bars. It may just be exercises to impress the Illinois Kurians and the Grogs."
"Where did you get the idea to go up there?"
"Brother Mark," she said, referring to the ex-New Universal churchman who was the UFR's main diplomat, more or less, east of the Mississippi. "The underground got word to him, Kur knows how."
"Where is he now?"
"Oh, back at Elizabethtown. The wintering clans are all sending delegates to this big conference to decide what to do next. There's talk that they might declare against the Kurians; others say they're listening to a peace delegation."
Valentine retrieved his mailbag and passed out a few precious gifts he'd picked up in the UFR for his officers and senior NCOs. He couldn't bring much, considering all the personal mail he'd had to carry for Javelin's survivors, but he had a new lipstick for Ediyak, aspirin for Patel, a clever chessboard with folding cardboard pieces for one of his corporals who was a chess enthusiast, and matching Grog scar-pins for Glass and his two gunners, Ford and Chevy. And, of course, the tin of talcum powder for Duvalier and her boot-sore feet.
"Where'd you pick up the diaper bag?" Duvalier asked.
"This?" Valentine asked, looking down at the bag as though he'd never seen it before. "They said it was a mail pouch."
"It is, but even Southern Command doesn't take nine months to deliver," Patel said.
"Val, that's a diaper bag. I've seen plenty of them," Ediyak said.
"Diaper bag?"
"Southern Command, for use of," Duvalier said. "They gave one to Jules when she got out of the hospital after you inflated her."
"It's a messenger bag, Ali."
"No, sir, she's right," Ediyak said. "I saw plenty of them back at Liberty. It's a diaper bag. They came in cute pink and baby blue. You got green if you had twins."
"Doesn't say anything on the inside about diapers," Valentine said stubbornly. "Just a pattern number."
"Well, look it up in a supply catalog. It's a diaper bag."
"It's not a diaper bag," Valentine grumbled.
The women exchanged a glance and a smile.
Valentine continued to see Fort Seng's fixtures and equipment dribble away, allocated for return to Southern Command by the hatchet men, who were loading up the trucks as though they were Vikings loading their ships on an English beach for the trip back to the fjords.
He decided to make his stand at the artillery park when a little redheaded bird he'd put in charge of keeping track of their activities told him that was on the agenda for the next day. Valentine dressed in a mixture of military uniform and legworm leathers, complete with Cat claws, sidearm, and sword.
Bee, seeing how he dressed, took the precaution of adding a trio of double-barreled sawed-off shotguns to her array, thrust through her belt like a brace of pirate pistols.
With that, he headed over to the artillery park. Duvalier, who'd been lounging around headquarters on an old club chair in a warm, quiet corner, threw on her overcoat and followed him out the door.
Valentine fought yawns. He'd had a long night.
