Duvalier returned his rifle, a restored version of the old M-16 battle rifles of the U.S. Armed Forces. "What are you doing so far from home? I've never seen a Denver regular this far out on the frontier before," she observed.
"I probably shouldn't say," Parkston said. "Maybe the sarge can tell you more-he's leading this patrol."
The patrol in question chose this moment to reveal themselves. A line of men came over the top of the hill from the same direction Duvalier had appeared with the boy. Valentine heard others moving at the crest of this hill, staying hidden from sight but not being quiet enough to fool either him or the dogs, who at this moment were startled out of making themselves agreeable to Parker by the new arrivals.
The sergeant and a small team approached, rifles ready but pointed down.
"Howdy, folks," said the thirty-something man with the stripes. He exuded calm confidence, which was just as well since none of his team looked over twenty, and nervous boys with guns in a potentially hostile situation needed a lot of reassurance. "What are you doing this far into the DPZ?"
Mrs. Cortez ended up doing the introductions, her nasal western twang being similar to the sergeant's own. "My-name is Cortez, and I'm looking for my husband, a pack trader last on his way to Fort Rowling. These two are with me-you might say they're helping a nervous old woman."
One of his men opened his mouth to say something, but the sergeant cut in. "Seen anything unusual west of here?"
"Two vehicles a couple hours back, moving south," Valentine spoke up.
"They were too far away to tell who they belonged to, you or someone else," Duvalier spoke up. "Sergeant, I'm no stranger to the Protective Zone. I've been to the South Platte Trading Post before on a cattle drive. None of us are friends of the New Order."
The sergeant lit a cigarette, and Valentine recognized the noxious smell of clove tobacco. "The jeeps were ours. But whether you're friends of Kur or no, it won't hurt you to know that Fort Rowling's gone. Burned right to the foundation. Done from the inside too, not artillery or any kind of heavy weapon as far as we know."
"What?" Mrs. Cortez and Duvalier said, nearly simultaneously.
Valentine rooted in his pocket and came up with a pack of cigarettes. He passed out two or three each to the sergeant and his men. The youths hooted, and the sergeant lit his and threw away the homemade smoke.
"Only bodies left to tell.the tale," the sergeant continued. Valentine saw that the sergeant still held his gun in a way that wasn't threatening, but the barrel had to rise just thirty degrees to put a bullet through his chest. "Never saw anything like it before. They must have been surprised; there's a secret bunker in the gulch well back of the fort where the dependents are supposed to go if trouble's coming. Not a soul in there, or any sign of a fight, for that matter, at least at the refugee bunker. Fort Rowling put up a struggle, judging from the shell casings. They were at the walls for a bit. The gate was blown to bits. Some officers say a rocket, but I think demolition charge. The blast was just too big for anything else that you wouldn't need railcars to haul. Whoever planted the charge must not have minded machine-gun bullets."
"What was the garrison?" Valentine asked.
"Full complement is around eight hundred, but about half that is almost always on patrol or doing escort duty. Arming the camp casuals would mean six hundred men available for the defense. Fort Rowling wasn't just some little hole in the wall either. It was our strongest Frontier post. Mortar pits, two howitzers, I don't know how many support weapons. There's even a rail line that goes out to within ten miles of the fort, a project that don't look like it's going to be completed now."
"Tell them about the dependents," one of the sergeant's men said.
"Mrs. Cortez doesn't want to hear that."
"No, go ahead-I need to know. Please, Sergeant," she implored.
The sergeant tossed away his butt. "I've seen plenty of death, but not like this. Heads stuck on the ends of sticks, babies flung against walls and left on the ground like some sparrow that hit a window, houses burned with the people handcuffed inside them . . . I'm gonna be thinking about what I saw there till the day I die now, and I thought I was a hardcase." He paused to take a gulp of air and to swallow. "Mrs. Cortez, I'm sure your husband died on the walls if he was in there-if he could have carried a gun, they would have armed him."
Mrs. Cortez let out a deep breath, blinking back tears. "Maybe he ran for Denver. Oh, I do hope so."
"We'll get you there and you can find out, ma'am," the sergeant said. Valentine met his eyes and gave the NCO a tiny bow of his head in gratitude.
"Don't make sense," Parkston said. "I mean, whenever the Reapers hit somewhere, they take prisoners. It's the whole point. If people go dying on them in the fight, they're no use for ... for food."
"I'll tell you what really doesn't make sense," the sergeant said, recovering from his memories somewhat. "The tracker's report. He said that his best guess was three two-and-a-half-ton trucks carrying about fifty men. Fifty men. Fifty Reapers couldn't have taken that fort, I don't think, not that I've ever heard of that many Reapers all together anywhere but a big city. What fifty men could wipe out six hundred in a defensive position?"
"I think you'd better take us to whoever is in command now at Fort Rowling," Duvalier said.
Valentine saw what was left of the fort up close. It had been in a good defensive location, with water for man and livestock and stands of timber nearby. The wooden parts of the walls were burned, the blockhouses and bunkers demolished. The first order of business of the troops on the scene had been to decently tend to the bodies; long rows of fresh graves stood a little distance from the fort, looking out over a gully through which a sluggish stream still flowed in this, the hottest month of the year.
After surveying the burnt ruin, Duvalier asked for a chance to speak privately with Colonel Wilson and his adjutant, Major Zwiecki, of the Denver Free Colorado Corps. They left Mrs. Cortez hunting through the personal effects of the dead, looking for evidence of her husband. The colonel obligingly gave them his time. He was as desperate for an answer as any of the Denver soldiers or what was left of the Fort Rowling garrison, now returning from the patrols and convoys that had preserved their lives.
Rather than reoccupying the fort, he had pitched his men's tents on some high ground a half-mile from the fort, so the men didn't have to spend the night among the bloodstains and burned timber. Night had fallen, and the tent was lit by electric light provided by a mobile generator.
"Gasoline we got," the major said when Valentine asked about the logistics that allowed mobile electricity. "There's a lot of shale oil in Colorado. We make it in blasting furnaces; you get the shale hot enough, and it bleeds oil. I've got a brother-in-law there. He says the refinery is really something. Up in the mountains. They call it Hell's Penthouse. The name comes from the huge slag heaps everywhere, and the furnaces that run over nine hundred degrees."
Duvalier cut in. "We're here to find out what happened-let's stick to the subject at hand."
"If you've got an answer, or even a good guess, I'd like to hear it," Colonel Wilson said as the major turned* to pour coffee.