"As long as our bags get delivered," Valentine said, trying not to breathe too hard under his awkward burden.
"This trade will make getting your bags through a lot easier," Doss said.
The building seemed hollow and dead as a shucked oyster. Valentine surmised that the clientele liked to do their drinking in dark and quiet, when he realized that music, too loud to be the product of any instrument, was filtering up from somewhere beneath the building. He switched to hard ears and listened to the beat of ancient rock and roll and the gabble of voices echo up from a stairwell. Captain Doss turned to a set of narrow concrete steps that disappeared along the side of the building down into the earth. A knobless metal door opened out onto a small landing. Doss squatted down and said something into the hole. It swung open.
As he descended the stairs, Valentine plastered a drunken smile across his face, trying to live up to his role of eager sailor. The captain entered, nodding to someone. Valentine looked at Harper, and the two Wolves exchanged shrugs. Sil-vertongue turned to the men. "Don't worry, they're going to frisk you for weapons and smokes. Just put your hands on the wall and read the sign."
A Grog roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle barred their way. Over its yard-wide shoulder Valentine watched the captain and then her mate being frisked and sniffed by a dog-man right out of an H. G. Wells nightmare. When it finished with Silvertongue, the smelly roadblock at the door stepped aside and Valentine passed into the noise of the Bunker.
He mimicked Silvertongue's stance, placing his feet twice his shoulder width apart and putting his hands to either side of a sign, stenciled in paint onto another concrete wall just inside the door. To Valentine's left, a sumo-size man sat inside a wire cage, idly scratching his stubble with a Saturday night submachine gun.
As the dog-man gave him the once over, Valentine read the stenciled letters: the rules adolph's word is law no smoking anything we didn't sell you no drinking, unless it's ours you're only as good as your barter you're only as bad as we let you be VISIT OUR GIFT SHOP CONFUSED? SEE RULE 1
Valentine retrieved his keg and joined the women. He looked around the bar, trying to avoid staring like a corn-fed hick fresh off the back forty. Electric light and noise overwhelmed him. Prerecorded music played by machine was a rare treat to Valentine, and he gaped at the source. A box of neon and chrome against one cinderblock wall blared CD Selection & Sound, as the reflective lettering on the glass proclaimed. A bar almost filled the wall opposite the jukebox, and a mismatched assortment of tables, booths, and benches stood about the sawdust-covered floor. The base of a flush toilet peeped from beneath a curtain in the corner farthest from the bar. A sour-smelling urinal next to it trickled water down the wall and into the soggy shavings beneath. An alcove, separated from the rest of the room by a layer of wire netting similar to the guard-cage at the door, advertised itself as CURRENCY EXCHANGE-GIFT SHOP-MANAGEMENT.
He was relieved to see the rest of the occupants of the Bunker were human, albeit a poor genetic cross section. Two bartenders stood only a hair shorter and slimmer than the Grog at the door, stuffed like a pair of pointy-headed sausages into red T-shirts with black lettering reading the bunker. A desiccated weed of a man in a green visor sat behind a desk in the alcove-cage, smoking a cigarette from a long black holder. Gliding between the tables, laden tray miraculously balanced as she dodged and weaved, a nimble barhop waited on the customers. Clad only in a Bunker logoed baseball cap, bikini top, and a thong, she looked the happiest of anyone in the room. Valentine ran a quick estimate in his head and decided her hat contained more material, and covered a higher percentage of her body, than everything else she wore com-bined-high heels included. The patrons, dressed in ill-fitting black-and-tan fatigues or blue merchant marine overalls, drank, talked, and smoked in huddled groups.
The captain led her little party in single file to the Currency Exchange-Gift Shop-Management cage.
"Why, if it isn't the White Lightning herself come to pay me a visit," the gnome croaked, cigarette clenched between yellowed teeth. "And Teri Silvertongue! Ahhh, missy, what I wouldn't give to be young again! Any time you get sick of high seas and low wages, you just come see me."
"Thanks for the offer, Ade," Silvertongue said, exposing her rack of teeth in a forced smile. "But I catch cold kind of easy."
Captain Doss stepped up to the slot midway up the cage and placed a small leather pouch on the owner's desk. "Brought you some makings for your coffin nails, Ade. Do me a favor and die quick, would you?"
Til outlive you, Dossie. You got a couple new hands?" The owner ran his eyes quickly up and down Harper and Valentine, perhaps assessing their creditworthiness or potential as troublemakers.
"Just a little extra muscle for this run. Speaking of which, has the Duke arrived yet?"
"Take my advice, Cap. Slow down and enjoy life a little. But yeah, his party is in the card room. You buyin' for your crew, or are you gonna pull another Captain Bligh like last time?"
Doss shook her head. "After the deal, Ade, after the deal." She gestured to the other three, and they filed toward a door next to the long wooden bar. Valentine counted three casks and some thirty-odd bottles of assorted poison, all unlabeled. He watched one Quisling, crossed rifles of a captain on his epaulets, purchase a shot and a beer chaser by placing a pair of bullets on the bar. The Quisling tossed off the shot, face contorted as though he had poured an ounce of nitric acid down his throat.
Valentine tried not to think about the fact that he stood in a room with thirty people, each of whom could win a brass ring by turning him over alive to the Reapers.
Doss knocked on the door marked private. It opened a crack, and half of an ebony face looked at her through a narrowed eye. The door shut again, but just for a moment.
The guard opened the door, and the crew entered a spacious, well-ventilated room. Three men and a woman sat around a felt-covered table. Cards and chips lay before three of the players; the fourth, a man, only watched. Valentine's eyes were drawn to him by his outlandish clothing if for no other reason.
The Duke of Rush wore a red uniform heavily trimmed with gold braid. Half high school marching band outfit and half toreador costume, it gaudily set off his pale skin and black hair. A brass ring, the first Valentine had ever seen, hung from a golden chain around his neck. Bored blue eyes stared up at the crew of the White Lightning.
The Duke's male henchmen wore the simple navy-blue battle dress of Chicago Quislings, and the card-playing woman an elegant blue cocktail dress glittering with real gemstones. No guns were evident, but the black man who opened the door toyed with a butterfly knife, opening and shutting it with quick flicks of the wrist.
"Captain, we expected you hours ago," the Duke said in an educated accent. "You know how I hate it when my own parties start late. What were you up to, running guns to insurgents?"
Doss let a simper mask her face. "No, trying to find some-thing to wear. You always make such an entrance. I decided it would be better to let you enter first."
"You don't need to dress for this dive, Captain. The only reason I'm wearing my best is that the purported reason for this trip is social. I spent the day calling on the Kur here and arranging beer trucks for Chicago. But our business is going to be much more lucrative. May we see the merchandise?"
The black man put aside his butterfly knife long enough to push a chair forward for Doss. She sat. "Put the bills on the table, and you'll see it," she said.
The Duke gestured to a lieutenant, who opened a leather satchel and drew out a sheaf of papers. Captain Doss pulled out a magnifying glass and went through the pages one at a time, examining the wax seals covering printed red-and-blue tape.
"Eight firearm permits, good," she counted to herself. "Five labor vouchers... twelve supply vouchers, sixteen... eighteen... twenty passports. Three dockyard releases... Hey, wait a second. The dockyard releases aren't signed and sealed, my friend!"
The Duke smiled. "Sorry, Captain. An oversight on my part. I'll make it up to you next time, okay?"
"Afraid not. We're keeping a bag. You want it, get these filled out properly, and you can have it," she said firmly.