“Frank Jackson? Can I talk to you after lunch? Alone?”
Frank looked up, annoyed. “And you are…?” His tone said “Who the hell are you?”
“Paul Santee. Tunnel rat. We ate some of the same bananas.” He kept his tone flat, almost careless.
One of the miners next to him started to say something blustery, “Well, you can just…” but stopped when Frank interrupted. “Sure. I’ll be with you in, say, five minutes?” Santee nodded and moved away to wait.
Frank held up a hand to the questions that came from all sides. “Vietnam. The tunnel rats went down into those little VC tunnels with just a knife and a flashlight, maybe a small pistol. There were booby traps, and spiders and scorpions and snakes, and a bunch of gooks who wanted them dead. Anyone who did it has twice the guts I ever had, and anyone who made it back has twice the luck I have, and was very, very good at it. Think about it.” He wolfed down the last of his food. “I’ve got to go talk to this guy. Keep on trying to figure out what sort of problems we’ll have once we open the second shaft, and then figure out what to do about it. I’ll talk to you when I get back.” Still chewing, he walked away from the miners, who were buzzing in low tones.
He and Santee stepped outside. Frank said, “Before yesterday I thought I knew all the vets around here. And you being a Rat, well, if this was a bar I’d buy you a drink. So what can I do for you?” His tone was affable and open; Santee relaxed a little.
“Oh, I’ve lived here for years; up in the hills west off of Butterchurn Road. I guess my mailbox is still back in West Virginia, but my cabin’s on this side. I haven’t been to this town in five or six years, because my road used to go off toward Fairmont.”
“And now it doesn’t go anywhere?”
“Right. The kid you sent to hunt for me told me what happened, so I came to see what’s going on here—since it looks like we’re all in the same little boat together.”
“Yeah, Eddie told me he’d found you yesterday. We’d be glad to have you join us. We’re putting together an army of self-defense, or the nearest thing to it we can manage. We need everybody we can get, and it would really help a lot to have somebody else with combat experience.” He looked at Santee expectantly.
He thinks I’m going to re-up right here on the spot! Fuck him. “I’ll think about it. I need to know more. What are the chances, what are the plans, who’s supposed to be in charge, who’s really in charge.”
Frank nodded. “Sure. Sensible questions. Listen, I’ve got to get back to my Mine Workers committee right now, but I want to talk to you some more. And to get your questions answered, you probably need to see Mike Stearns—he’s the guy we elected to run things for now. Mike’s easy to talk to. How about if I make you an appointment with him this afternoon, and then I meet you for a beer after work?”
Santee nodded warily. Frank seemed decent, he thought, but so what. He’d go meet Stearns, and then talk to Frank again, and then maybe decide what to do. He followed Frank back toward the building.
* * *
That evening, working on their third beer, Santee and Frank had gotten through discussing Grantville’s defenses and started talking about the war—the old one. Frank had talked about what he’d done in Vietnam, and Santee closed his eyes and let some of the memories flood back. “Let’s see,” he said, “I got out in ’79. Twelve years and I was back at corporal, and lucky not to be in the fucking stir. We cleaned out some tunnels out by Dim Noc, then just sat there for three days while the surface troops tore us up. After a while, I just melted into the jungle. I don’t know if I was the only one alive at that point or not, and I’ve still got shrapnel in my hip. I sat there and watched my buddies get shot, and there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do about it. I got back to our camp two weeks later. I found the motherfucking full-bird who ordered the choppers away from the pickup area and busted his jaw and both elbows.”