With dinner finished, the marines broke off to leave the galley to the sailors, and Valentine retired to his shared cabin.
He looked around the close, bare room. A single locker held all his clothes, and a footlocker, the rest of his belongings. He spent an hour in a long shower and shave, and changed into his heavy cotton battle-dress. The combat fatigues, acquired from a tailor in Mobile when he first entered the Coastal Marines, were a tiger-stripe mix of black and dark green, spotted here and there with blotches of dark gray. Heavy pockets hung like saddlebags from the side of each thigh on the pants, but the short officers' tunic held only insignia and an expanding map pocket and a pencil-holder on one sleeve. He unlocked his chest and began to take out his equipment. He laced up his boots, traditional black service models, the leather softened and oiled by a year's wear and care. His final wardrobe item was a nylon equipment vest with heavy bullet-stopping pads slipped into the liner and compass, flares, first-aid kit, matches, and whistle distributed amongst the pockets. Post's .45 pistol went to his hip holster. He sank a machete into the sheath strapped across his back hanging over two canteens. Finally, he extracted the one item he brought out of the Ozarks, his old Soviet Russian PPD model submachine gun with the drum clip. It was a heavy-barreled, formidable-looking gun, restored by an old friend and given to him the summer he became a Cat three years ago.
Slinging the gun and drawing comfort from its familiar weight, he made a slow circuit of the Thunderbolt's central superstructure. Ahn-Kha had the Grogs gathered on the well deck, talking to them. The Golden One looked up at Valentine and cocked his ears up and forward, giving his broad head the momentary aspect of a bull: his friend's equivalent of a thumbs-up. The gesture went to Valentine's nerves like a fast-acting sedative. He looked out at the nearly empty aft decks and turned the last corner on the rectangular walkway. Post stood at the foot of one of the stairways going up to the bridge deck, idling next to the arms locker holding the machine gun for the forward mount.
Valentine squeezed past and gave him a nod. "Ready?" Valentine asked.
"Getting there. Sure makes you feel alive, doesn't it. Like the whole world's been turned up. Sounds, smells, everything. I never noticed all the waves before. A million of them-"
"Just take it easy, Will. Wait for me to go up the stairs- then get the gun. You checked it, right?"
"Yes, it's fine."
"Just a few minutes longer. Ahn-Kha's still talking to his team. They haven't gone below yet."
Post gripped the rail, the tendons in his forearms rising up under his tan skin. "You know why my wife lit out, Rowan-er, Dave?"
"I might be able to guess. The system?"
"The system," Post said. "She and I had a difference of opinion about it. She left. I eventually came round to her side, but only after her stuff had two years' worth of dust on it."
Post looked out at the ocean and the sinking moon. Valentine thought he saw the man's lower lip tremble.
Valentine leaned over, knocked his shoulder against Post's. "One way or another, you'll be clear of it soon."
"First, got to get rid of this shit," Post said, tearing off his tunic. Buttons flew, clattering to the deck and falling with barely audible plops into the ocean. Post stood in his stained undershirt for a moment, as if coming to a decision. He wadded up his uniform coat and fed it to the all-consuming sea.
"If I'm going to buy it, I don't want to go in their colors."
"I'll get you a different one when we get back to free soil, if you'd like," Valentine said. "Just try to live to claim it. I hope the exec doesn't come down those stairs and see you like that. He might have a few questions about your tunic."
"I'll pick him up and send him to look for it. He's a bottom-feeder if there ever was one.
"Could you do me a favor, Dave? If I don't make it, maybe you can look up Gail in the Free Territory. She would have headed that way-it's an easier trip than going across Texas. She's probably using her maiden name, Gail Stark. Tell her... just tell her about this."
"Can do, Will."
"Thanks, sir."
"See you at lights out."
"Good luck, Dave," Post said, offering his hand.
Valentine shook it and went forward to look down at the well deck. It was empty. Ahn-Kha and his Grogs were already on their way to the arms locker and engine room. A nervous thrill sparked up his spine, bristling the hair at the back of his neck.
He chambered the first round in his gun and lightly ascended the stairs to the open deck just behind the wheel-house. As his head broke the level of the upper deck, he listened with "hard ears" to voices from the bridge.
"And when is this supposed to happen?" the captain said from somewhere on the bridge.
"Early in the morning, sir. The ship's power will be cut off, and that's when they'll take the ship," Valentine heard a high-pitched voice say.
"It makes no sense," Worthington's voice exclaimed.
"They will be ashore by then, Grogs and marines, and Rowan will be with them."
"Can't argue it, there's something afoot, that's for certain," Saunders said. "Damn, there always was something about Rowan I didn't like. Haven't I said so time and again, Lieutenant?"
Worthington changed the subject. "I've already alerted the master-at-arms," he said. "I didn't know which marines to trust. Dortmund is bringing an armed guard up now, and he's-"