The Golden One let loose with a battle bellow, a blood-freezing sound. His Grogs answered, and went up and over the edge of the gully, their shotguns and rifles flaring in the half-light. There were no bayonets to glint in the rising sun, but the ivory in their oversize teeth shone.
The trucks gunned their engines and kicked up gravel from the road. Valentine passed Ahn-Kha. His friend sprayed the roadblock ahead with bullets from the PPD. The charging Grogs to either side made for an odd sight, going forward with two legs and an arm, almost like horses cantering. Valentine considered drawing his blade for effect, but the Haitians and Grogs needed no urging. He pulled his Colt automatic instead and briefly wondered how he would work the slide and keep atop of the galloping horse....
The Santo Domingans did not wait to meet them. The sight and sound of charging Grogs amidst the Thunderbolt's shell-fire proved too much for the thin line of riflemen. The cheering sight of knapsacks bobbing in the tall grass of the hillside as the Santo Domingans ran brought a victorious whoop from Valentine. The horse gathered itself to leap the roadblock, and Valentine gripped the mane. He saw dead men heaped by the machine gun as the horse jumped the felled tree.
Valentine heard shots from the fishing village at the base of the hill and saw the Thunderbolt's marines deployed in a skirmish line advancing up the hill. Post, evidently trapped with his little contingent in the seaside fishing village, had heard the firing and acted.
The Santo Domingan soldiers surrendered or scattered, and the rout was complete.
Valentine swore to himself that he would see Post made into an officer in Southern Command if they ever made it back to the Free Territory.
As the column got moving again, Valentine reproached himself for jumping his horse into the most likely spot for another shell from the Thunderbolt. But in his later years that was forgotten when he remembered the pure glory of
that moment, his first battlefield victory in eight years of soldiering.
Valentine saw boats drawn up on the beach, to either side of the village, under the guard of a sailor or two. Valentine had dispatched Post to the rendezvous with orders to gather every available craft, using the Thunderbolt's forbidding bulk if necessary to confiscate a flotilla of fishing boats. Using all the Thunderbolt's deck space, and a few large boats in tow, he hoped to get his charges along the coast.
It would be another long day while they loaded and supplied all the boats, but he had learned to expect nothing less.
By sunset, after an endless afternoon spent turning chaos into order, he stood on the Thunderbolt's bridge in clean clothes with a hot meal inside him. The Santo Domingan refugees were crowded on board every seaworthy vessel. Monte-Cristi's rear guard had tumbled down from the hills into the Thunderbolt's motorized boats, covered by cannon and Oerlikon. Last of all came Post's marines, setting fire to the huts of the village to add covering smoke to the debarkation.
But new worries replaced the old. Their cockleshell flotilla could fit the Haitian soldiers and Santo Domingans, just, but any kind of bad weather would lead to the possible loss of the boats, and perhaps the overcrowded Thunderbolt. The Kurians in Santo Domingo had a few ships, as well, mostly armed merchantmen that ran sugar and rubber and ore north. Any exchange of gunfire would be fatal to many of those crowding on the Thunderbolt's decks. Waiting in the bay while they captured better vessels from other villages was out of the question. The Kurian forces had already gathered, lobbing mortar shells into the water as the Thunderbolt towed the boats out to sea.
Two single-masted fishing ships plodded alongside, reeking holds filled with mobs of huddled people. Dozens more stood forlornly on the shoreline.
He unburdened his concerns on the one who knew the waters best.
"Don't worry about the weather," Carrasca said, her hair blowing out in the fresh Caribbean breeze, just as it had that first morning taking the captured ship into Jamaica. The helmsman ignored them. "We have a few weeks left before worrying about real storms."
Valentine took the sea air into his nostrils like a drug. "We have to get farther off the coast. Two or three miles at least. They might have guns mounted."
"Let it go, David. We're at sea. My element, remember? Let me do the thinking for a while. You've done brilliantly. Maybe not what you set out to do, but it was the right choice in the end."
"I should-"
"Sleep. That's an order."
"Captain's word at sea is law," he said, turning up a corner of his mouth.
Her mock-serious attitude vanished. She glanced onto the bridge and stepped into his arms. He couldn't tell who started it, but they were kissing. "Sleep with me," she whispered. "Soon. When we get back to Jamaica. After we see this through." She broke off the embrace, leaving his body tingling. "Enough. You see, I take my duty as seriously as you. Tempting as the thought is," she added, looking at his crotch and then returning her eyes to his. She no longer watched him with that wary hint of fear that his pupils might be glowing.
Valentine, too aroused to feel embarrassed, saluted. "It's a date," he said, moving past her to leave the bridge. "I'll be in my cabin, if there's room to sleep between Post and Ahn-Kha, that is." He allowed his hand to trace the firm course of her buttock and thigh as he passed, puckishly wanting her to be as aroused as he.
Sure enough, Ahn-Kha lay on the floor, still smelling of gunsmoke. Post occupied his cot, having fallen into bed still in uniform. Post reeked of sweat and woodsmoke, blood and
gun oil, tidewater and pig fat. Valentine did not even have to hypersensitize his nose to smell the story of his lieutenant's day. Valentine stepped over Ahn-Kha and managed to get his boots off before falling into a dreamless sleep.
A hand shook him awake. Valentine's nose told him it was Cercado before he was even partly awake.
"Captain, it is Monte-Cristi. Come, please."
Valentine rose out of bed, wide awake, but with the weighed-down feeling of a rushed awakening. Post and Ahn-Kha picked up on the alarm and stirred.
He followed Cercado out the door and down the short companionway to the officer's mess. Monte-Cristi sat up, held in the arms of one of his chieftans, some of his soldiers clustered in the doorway.
"Make a hole, dammit," Valentine growled, pushing into the compartment.
Monte-Cristi's breathing was labored.