Valentine's Resolve (Vampire Earth 6)

"How secure is Vashon Island?" Valentine asked.

"No one hangs out there if they know what's good for them".

"Good. I'd like to use that old airfield there. It's about the right size for the target. I was poking around in it the other day to check the interior. With a little fixing here and there, block one door and put in

another, we could get the corridors right. We need to rig some lighting and get some interiors. Can you ask Silas about some drywall and some workmen?"

"Jeez, Valentine, these are BMs, not commandos".

"The less left to doubt, the better. Now, the last thing I need is a moon chart..."

While construction went on, Valentine spent his mornings on endurance swims with the Big Mouths. He practiced "driving" paired BMs behind a sea kayak, mile after mile, first up and down the coast of the sound, then up the White River.

Troyd worked out the logistics of the overland part of the raid. The BMs were used to short hauls in tractor-trailers, but the OXFs had to get them worked up to an hour or two.

Valentine agonized over the timetable with the man Troyd decided on as second-in-command, Lieutenant Burlington, another Canadian down from Vancouver. They started making test swims at night, taking forty Big Mouths up the lower end of the White, then camping on the old mudslide damage from Mount Rainier, then spending the day in a lake, then traveling overland a couple of miles more.

"What about getting them back ?"

"If they get back, they get back", Burlington said. "They're basically expendable".

That simplified matters. Valentine had a hard time feeling much sympathy for the fish-frogs. At the first sign of injury to a fellow, the others ate it. A military operation deep behind the opposing lines became a good deal more practicable if one didn't have to worry about returning the troops.

"We've got to think about our getting back. I say we go downstream on the Green River...".

On Troyd's recommendation they added a third officer to the team in case illness or injury removed Valentine or Burlington. Holly Nageezi, a tight little bundle of muscle who never seemed to feel the chill of the sound, had been an athlete for, of all things, a women's Roller Derby team. She'd been away from her quad on a night when

one of the Action Groups hit, slaughtering every neighbor and friend she had.

Bad luck struck just before the jump-off. They lost three Big Mouths from the ones trained to go into the mock Outlook, when on a trial run in, Valentine forgot and pulled his flare pistol too early as they approached. The BMs became, in Troyd's words, "idgitated", and started attacking one another when he didn't release them right away.

Valentine talked with Burlington about replacing them with Big Mouths from the pool. "Fresh ones would probably just do what all the others do. I think it would be safe to bring them".

"But these have gotten used to going a couple days without feeding. Maybe inexperienced isn't the way to go. They might lead the others astray".

In the end, after talking it over with Troyd, Valentine made the decision to go with just the twenty-seven.

Then Burlington deserted on a dark, late January night, three days before the new-moon weekend. Nobody could say how he had slipped away.

He left a note. Troyd showed it to Valentine but kept it a secret from Nageezi. Burlington had suggested that the whole operation was a one-way trip for the human handlers as well as the Grogs.

Troyd and Valentine informed Nageezi of her rise to second-in-command and she seemed oddly pleased. "Doing's easy. Having someone notice, that's difficult", she said.

They inspected the gear together at a vacant Tacoma dockside warehouse that served as their jumping-off point, and saw that their team of twenty-seven BMs had a heavy breakfast of sheep-with-hooves-removed. Valentine had his carbine, a silenced .22 automatic he'd picked up at the downtown armory, and a heavy diving knife with a built-in wire snip, sharp enough to cut the leather leads between his kayak and the Big Mouths in case of trouble. He oiled everything and placed the guns in waterproof bags.

"Nap?" Nageezi said as the hours counted down to when the

trucks would be loaded. She pulled her silenced .45 out of its holster and patted a spot next to her. "We're going to be doing it in the field".

"So get used to it now".

They nodded against each other, but it seemed to Valentine that neither really slept.

Loading the Big Mouths into their covered livestock trucks was comforting in its routine, indistinguishable from the dozens of times they'd done it on long training runs. Valentine rode in the first truck with a pair of experienced drivers, Nageezi in the second. A third truck followed, there in case of mechanical failure, carrying one more meal for the Big Mouths in the form of a heap of dead, mangy dogs. Valentine watched the soldiers in the guard truck sway along - for all the drivers and the guards knew, this was just another training run.

The weather turned nasty at the riverbank, a cold, lashing rain that turned everything dark three hours ahead of schedule. It came down hard enough that Valentine thought it would blow itself out quickly. The Big Mouths hopped into the river eagerly enough.

The drivers of the third truck, anxious at the sight of the snapping jaws, refused to toss the dogs to the waiting Big Mouths until Nageezi drew her automatic and promised the fish-frogs dog or driver.