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"Do you want the good news, or the bad news?" Lambert asked, straightening a manila file on her desk that had somehow gone a couple of degrees out of alignment.
"Is there good news?" Valentine asked.
"Precious little."
"So far, it's still psychological warfare," Lambert said. "But damn effective psychological warfare. The Ordnance is floating bodies down the Ohio."
"Floating?"
"Rafting, sending them drifting. When there's a big pile they put them on pallets supported by plastic water bottles, Ping-Pong balls mostly. It looks like the usual Reaper victims. The sick, crippled, and old. Dead a few days, as best as we can tell."
"Cute. We get to dispose of their bodies."
"It's attracting the usual birds, rats, and flies. It's depressing for the fishermen and boatmen too. Nobody likes hauling up bodies. They've been burning them east of the city. Want to take a look?"
"Not really," Valentine said. He'd seen enough Reaper leftovers in the New Orleans bayou country, where the Kurian order left matters of corpse disposal to gars and crayfish.
"At least we've accumulated quite a supply of Ping-Pong balls. We can grind them up with some match heads and make smoke grenades. Have you met Major Grace yet? He's here from GHQ, 'estimating the situation.' "
Valentine leaned forward. "I think I saw him reading personnel files."
"He's on General Martinez's staff. I think he's here to decide whether to pull us out of Kentucky."
"They wouldn't," Valentine said. "We're the only success Southern Command has had since Archangel." Archangel was the operation that reclaimed the Ozark Free Territory from Consul Solon. The collapse was so quick and far reaching that Texas and parts of Oklahoma were added to the freehold, turning it into the United Free Republics.
Lambert leaned back in her chair. "You and I might think it's a success, but back across the Mississippi, it's being played in the newspapers as another failure. Though now that the wheel turned in the elections and Martinez is running the show, they'll be on the lookout for good news. Just a few successful small ops, written up and sent off by our friend Bolenitz and his magic pen, might win us a few more visits from the logistics commandos."
"Then I have the perfect op for you, sir. My extraction."
"I'll make you a deal, Valentine. You get Major Grace out of my hair for a few days by taking him along. Do your best to keep him alive and impressed with us, and I'll try and fit that Miskatonic egghead into the Fort's TOE."
"I can start working out the operational staff now, if you'll give the order."
She took a deep breath. "Very well, Valentine. If you want to put the future of matters in Kentucky on an operation to get a couple dozen hard hats away from the Georgia Control, I wish us all the luck in the world."
"More good news: I'm going to put Frat Carlson in charge of the extraction."
Lambert shifted in her chair. "You think he's ready?" Valentine thought she might as well have said you trust him?
"The whole camp is on eggshells about him," Valentine said. Frat Carlson had been responsible for the Ravies outbreak during the winter. While only the senior officers, and Brother Mark, knew he was a Kurian agent, the men knew that he'd done something disastrous for the Cause. They'd tried to keep the full story secret, not even reporting it to Southern Command. If the Kentuckians found out the whole story, they'd string Frat up and kick the entire Southern Command operation back across the Mississippi.
And there'd go a burgeoning alliance.
Perhaps they'd be right to do it.
"No such thing as secrets," Lambert said. "Well, if your op's a disaster, it'll be a well-rounded disaster. Maybe all the bad karma accumulated since last spring will get expunged in one bad night."
"Or we'll have a bit of luck and start to turn it around," Valentine said.
"Got a name for your op?"
"I was thinking 'Vendetta,' " Valentine said. He'd intentionally avoided anything that was evocative of destruction or a rescue. "Maybe it'll make a couple of Quislings nervous, if word gets out."
"Well, go make us some luck, Major," she said. She signed the order for Vendetta to go live and handed it to him.
Valentine decided to eat dinner in his room that night. The generously sized bedroom always made him feel a little guilty as a place to only sleep and get dressed, so he usually did some work at the old vanity table there as well.
Duvalier was cutting her toenails. She had gnarled, beaten-up feet thanks to the countless miles she'd walked in her exploits.
