“Aye, that’s right,” Crais said; her voice calm but the look in her eyes as she gazed at the administrator . . . less calm. “A family, still working their plantings from a cave-in in the wall of a ravine. Pretty well hid, too. I wouldn’t have found them, I guess, without the smell of wood smoke to draw me. That’s why I pack in block alcohol for our fire, you see.”
Janni didn’t speak again, but neither could he draw his eyes away from the wizened trophies. Crais grinned more broadly and went on, “I hid at the treeline for three hours till I got the woman and the older girl, she was maybe twelve, together. Nailed them both with one round. The grampa came out of the house with a rifle and I shot him too. Thought I could use his ammo belt, but he had an old single-shot Berdan, so I was out another round. Cartridges cost money in the Zone, Lieutenant.”
Janni stood iron-faced. It was hard to tell whether he even heard what the woman was saying.
Vaguely disappointed at the lack of response, Crais continued, “I tossed a smoke bomb into the dugout and waited to see if anybody more come out. I use sulphur and tar and enough gunpowder to keep it going if they try to douse it, but nobody did this time. They all choked. I went in when it aired out and found a girl of eight and a boy of six. And a baby, but I didn’t bother to sex that one.”
Her left index finger, as delicate as carved ivory, indicated the tiny last lump on the string.
Crais looked directly at Janni again. “You may wonder why I used a smoke bomb instead of a grenade, Lieutenant,” she said. “I’m a working girl and can’t afford to lose a trophy. Your uncle wouldn’t have paid me for the baby if all I’d been able to bring him back was the foot and a few toes. Would you, Colonel?”
“Good Christ, woman!” Evertsen said. “We have to do this; we don’t have to like it.”
“Some of us have to do this, Colonel,” Crais said. “Some of us don’t have estates we could retire to if we felt like it.”
“Ashkenazy’s band brought twenty units to Fort Schaydin last week,” Kuyper said. “All of them were real guerrillas, too.”
Crais turned to the administrator like a weasel preparing to spring. “Real, were they? Aye, I suppose they were—if you want to call people who get drunk around an open fire in the Zone real guerrillas. They were under a political officer from Berlin who was going to show the locals how to do it.”
The woman stood like an ice pick stuck into soft flesh, looking disdainfully at the three men. “You know the real danger’s locals from the Zone who filter back and hide with stay-behinds till they’re ready to cut throats, Kuyper,” she said. “Ain’t that so, Colonel?”
Evertsen nodded curtly. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose it is.”
Kuyper peered toward the viewslit. “There’s a lone truck following the convoy,” he said. “I think it’s Bruchinsky’s lot.”
Colonel Evertsen stood and looked, in part because it gave him a chance to turn away from Bettina Crais. A 6×6 truck had caught up with the convoy just as the last armored car grunted through the gates. It was originally a German Horch, Evertsen thought, but with a wood-burning gasogene adapter and repairs which used parts from many other vehicles. At least twenty Ralliers filled it, already whooping with anticipation of their next few days.
One man jumped out of the cab and started purposefully toward the TOC, however. Unfortunately.
“Yes, that’s Bruchinsky,” Evertsen said heavily. “I’d have appreciated some time to untie the knot Capetown’s bound us with; but if there’s any luck, it doesn’t come to poor bastards with gimp legs that keep them out of field commands.”
“I’m not holding you up, Colonel,” Crais said, misunderstanding the comment. “I’ll take my pay now and leave, so you needn’t to share your pretty office with me and Bruchinsky both.”
Evertsen turned. “Explain the new situation to Mistress Crais, Kuyper,” he said.