Bruchinsky laughed uproariously as Crais left the room.
Kuyper began stacking coins with unobtrusive precision. The administrator made a show of every payout. Partly that was because the Slavs generally liked a bit of ceremony, but Kuyper himself was the sort of man who wanted order and dependability in all things. It was difficult for Kuyper to be stuck in this wilderness with Capetown’s whimsies grinding him from one side against the flint realities of the Zone on the other, but he served the State as well as humanly possible.
So did Colonel Evertsen; but it was hard to remember that as he read the disgust under his nephew’s blankness.
“Shit on Capetown,” the Rallier said cheerfully. “We still richer than I think when we start in. We break down and get lucky.”
“A breakdown in the Zone lucky?” Evertsen said, frowning slightly. “Lucky you survived, you mean.”
“Aw, our fucking shitpot motor, you know,” Bruchinsky said. “Still, she not fancy but she get the job done okay. Just like me and the boys, that’s right?”
He laughed and fumbled a bottle out of a side pouch. It was empty, as Bruchinsky decided after frowning at it for some moments. He cursed and deliberately shattered it on the floor.
Evertsen said nothing. His batman would sweep up the glass. It was the colonel’s duty to the State to deal with the irregulars. . . .
“Naw, the luck’s good because we walk around while Oleg fixes the motor,” Bruchinsky resumed, sunny following the momentary squall of the empty bottle. “Pedr thinks he sees a track. I don’t see shit, but Pedr, he good tracker. Near as good as your blond bitch-dog, Colonel, that’s right?”
Evertsen offered a thinly noncommittal smile. He didn’t like to hear a Slav animal refer that way to a Draka, but more than policy might have kept him from reprimanding Bruchinsky in this particular case.
“We go a little ways in and I think ‘a rag,’ but we look at it and it’s a doll,” the Rallier continued. “So Pedr’s right, and six of us we follow up fast while the rest stays with the truck.”
Kuyper broke another roll of aurics with a golden tinkle. There were five adults and three children in the string. The latter were very fresh.
“We find the place three miles, maybe, off the road,” Bruchinsky said. “It’s hid good, but a kid’s crying before we see anything and we crawl up close. There’s a man hoeing squash and corn planted together, but he’s patting a kid who’s bit on the neck by a big fucker horsefly. One burst—” he slapped the sub-machine gun “—and I get them both. Not bad, hey, even though the boy wiggles till we twist his neck.”
Kuyper set six coins behind the first of the small ears, then looked at the Rallier with an expression Evertsen couldn’t read. The administrator resumed counting, his fingers moving a little slower than before.
“There’s two girls in the dugout,” Bruchinsky said. “They got good gun like this—”
He pumped his sub-machine gun in the air for an example.
“—but they little girl, they cry and cry but they can’t cock it, you see?”
Bruchinsky racked back his charging handle. His weapon was already cocked, so it spun a loaded round out onto the floor.
Evertsen managed not to wince. He supposed being shot by accident in his office by a drunken Slav would be a fitting end to his career.
“Pedr finish them with his knife after he have a little fun, you know?” the Rallier said. “So we run back with four more kills, the truck fixed, and we drive like hell to catch up with the convoy almost. Lucky, not so?”
“That completes the count, Captain Bruchinsky,” Kuyper said, closing the lid of the strongbox. “Six hundred and eighty aurics.”
“Shitload of money,” the Rallier said admiringly. “It all be shit gone soon, but we party tonight!”
“If that’s all . . . ,” Evertsen said. It had gone better than he’d dreamed a few minutes before. Not that his superiors would care about the skill with which he and Kuyper had covered Capetown’s idiocy. . . .