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"Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that, sir. Duvalier may be due for a rest. A year or two back in the Ozarks with good food-"
"My permission isn't the problem. She's not about to leave you any more than Bee. Nice dodge on that question, by the way."
He sat in silence, hoping she wouldn't take it for dumb insolence. Lambert neither liked him nor disliked him when they were both on duty. When she looked at him she might have been examining a rack full of tires for wear.
"No one knows what to make of you, Valentine. You're capable of looking someone right in the eyes and sticking the knife in, but you've half killed yourself fighting for people you didn't know ten minutes earlier."
"It's in the Southern Command oath, sir. Render aid and comfort to our people."
"You're open-ended in your definition of 'our people.' Kurian Zone folks, Grogs ..."
"I reckon it only makes sense if you go through life looking for friends or looking for enemies, sir," Valentine said. "I picked friends."
"In any case, I'm glad to have you. The Valentine fame adds a touch of dangerous glamour to this endeavor. We had two more recruits join while you were out, brothers who shared a cousin who served with you in the old Razorbacks. I hope you'll keep taking those trips into KZ country."
"Duty, honor, country," Valentine said. "I think they're in that order for a reason, sir."
"And coming back," Lambert said. "I like it when you head out. I love it when you come back." She went to work with a bent paper clip on the burnt-out plug in her pipe.
Odd phrase coming from someone as squared away and get-to-the-point as Colonel Lambert. Well, they did go back a long way. Come to think of it, she was his oldest friend in the service, he'd known her longer than even Captain Patel, who'd been his sergeant in the Wolves, trying to keep the young, fresh-from-the-mint lieutenant he'd been from killing his platoon.
He'd learned to exult in surviving. Every time he passed through the jaws of the bureaucratized temple of Moloch that was the Kurian Order, he felt reborn and relished birdsong, a quiet hour with a book under the shade of a tree, or the feel of clean skin after a good shave, lather, and rinse. The person who knifed sentries and sniped from cover was the entity Southern Command and the Lifeweavers had created to do the dirty work of cleaning the Earth of the Kurian stain. The man who checked up his nostrils while he shaved liked to read and observe and fish quiet lakes and poke around for telling remainders of the early twenty-first century. That man was strangely untroubled by all the bodies left in the wake of the Other.
She was wrong about one thing, though. He did feel worn down. He wasn't that old, barely past thirty.
"I'll see about forcing a leave on Duvalier. As to the other member of the old Thunderbolt Triumvirate, I have to warn you about Uncle-or Ahn-Kha. I hate to part you two again so soon after the happy reunion, but he's needed in Missouri."
"I'd heard they were hard-pressed in Omaha, sir."
"Yet another front in the war where it could be going a lot better. I understand they've been forced out of Omaha. Southern Command will probably try to form what's left into a guerilla band."
"Guerilla band? That's like saying 'form Dallas into a guerilla band.' It's a town, there are the old, the sick, the young. Pregnant females."
"I didn't think they hatched from a turtle hole, Major."
"Of course, sir."
"Let's get on with the work," she said, taking up one of the smoke-dried sandwiches. "I wanted your opinion on some NCOs for the 'A' Company Patel thinks we should form . . ."
Valentine spent much of the night finishing Ahn-Kha's notes. He dropped exhausted into an untroubled sleep.
Ahn-Kha had his hard-boiled eggs soaking in salt water the next morning. He reached into them while drinking his pomegranate-colored juiceless "juice."
"I'm almost done with your diary," Valentine said. "There's not much at the end, once the ravies overran everything."
"We broke out. It was fairly simple. Each man wired himself with a bomb timed to go off in twenty-four hours. Fairly easy to deactivate, if in full possession of your faculties."
"But if not?"
Ahn-Kha spread his fingers wide.
"That's harsh," Valentine said.
"None of them much wanted to stagger around the woods until they starved to death or ran down a child."
"Not much of an end for ... what did you call it . . . 'the gallant rebellion'?"
"One cannot see the future," Ahn-Kha said. "I'd heard of bridges burning, maintenance garages burnt down. Not our doing. I think the Virginias people wound up the courage to do what we'd been doing, thinking that it would get blamed on the mine revolt. It may continue."
