Shadows of Annihilation Read online

  “First, thanks for getting us those Navy airboats, ma’am,” York said. “We thought that must be the Chamber, and it was a true help.”

  He pronounced the last word as he’p.

  “You’re welcome, Captain. It seemed efficient.”

  “My boys can move fast through rough country, none better, but it was purely a relief to be able to get our provender from above. And our men on them saw a good deal from up there too; with the eyes of eagles, as the Good Book says. And it kept some of our hurt alive to get them to the doctors fast, I reckon.”

  He’d been carrying a light haversack, one of greased leather that repelled water almost as well as rubber. Now he put it before them on the table and undid the straps; his long battered fingers were deft on the buckles.

  “Them we were chasing, the ones the Air Corps johnnies bombed to start the whole thing, they moved pretty fast, ’specially considering they had wounded,” he said. “They didn’t leave much sign, which slowed us down, and they laid false trails—did it well, too, which slowed us more. We caught up with them when an airboat came at ’em from the west, over the pass they were heading for. If I were doing it again I’d have the boat drop a blocking party ahead of ’em. Live and learn in this here modern age. ’A course, some jest dies in it afore they can learn.”

  He took a rough pine box out of the haversack, about the size of those used for shipping cigars.

  “So, we mopped up the ones we caught. No prisoners, I’m afraid, though we . . . well, really I . . . tried. My boys are crackerjack fighters and they can track a ghost over bare rock, even better than my folk back to home, but they’re not really soldiers . . . more warriors . . . or hunters, in a way. Man-hunters. They see an enemy, they kill as long as the enemy’s fighting back . . .”

  Or if they want the head to show off at home whether they’re begging for mercy or not, Luz thought.

  “. . . and this bunch of bandits were pretty determined. The holdouts are, now, mostly. Them as had any givin’ up in ’em have already done give up.”

  The box was filled with wadded cloth, apparently used bandages; a faint scent of pine sap and old blood rose from it. Two irregular flattish lumps of dried plaster of Paris nestled in the improvised padding.

  “I had a sort of feelin’ the ones we caught weren’t all of ’em, so after we got our wounded out I had the boys search the mountains to each side. Up-and-down and rocky, even compared to Fentress County—”

  Which confirmed her guess as to where he came from; that was on the Tennessee-Kentucky border, bloody ground since the Long Hunters came through before the Revolution and blood-feudist territory during the Civil War and the generations since.

  “—but there are game trails, and old man-sign; campfires, the odd rusty buckle or spoon or a dropped coin. Just about gave up on it when we didn’t find anything at first, but I knew we weren’t going to have to walk out anyways, thanks again for the airboats, so I kept us all at it an extra day. All I got was these, from the south side of the valley, up a couple-two thousand feet above the stream.”

  He lifted the cloth padding with the plaster lumps carefully out onto the surface of the table. Both had been made by pouring liquid plaster into depressions in the ground, waiting for them to set, and then very carefully lifting them out and removing the dirt with a soft brush.

  “Heel prints,” Luz said thoughtfully. “Boot heels, not huaraches, not sandals.”

  “Right,” York said. “Now, not all Mexicans wear huaraches—”

  He pronounced the word correctly, even the initial h . . . wwh sound and the trilled r, both of which most English speakers found difficult.

  “—but most of the country folk do. I couldn’t say exactly when the man with the boots went through, but it’s been raining a fair bit around there—”

  He jerked a thumb at the drizzle outside; it was the right time of year, and the mountains got more than the upland basins like this.

  “—and the prints were mighty sharp, so it couldn’t have been much before we had our fight. I can’t absolutely swear it was the same day, but that’s what my belly tells me about the way they looked, though I couldn’t prove it to a judge.”

  “It’s lucky we’re not trying to prove anything in court, then,” Julie said thoughtfully, her fingers toying with the hilt of the epée she’d laid on the table, smells of sweat fresh and stale coming from the padded white fencer’s plastron she still wore.

  Luz looked at the heel prints, then drew a black ebony rectangle about four inches by two out of a pocket. She pulled open the telescoping action; one end held a magnifying lens, and she went over the plaster cast slowly and in detail. Then she handed it to Ciara, who did likewise.

  “Pad, please,” Ciara said, her voice with that odd inward-turned remoteness it had when she was concentrating.

  Henrietta slid her pad and mechanical pencil over. Ciara did a sketch of each heel on separate pieces of paper, with a side view of each as well, and used the ruler marks notched into the side of the sliding case to get the precise measurements. She listed those with arrows indicating reference points, and then filled in dots to mark the places where the boot’s hobnails had dug into the soil.

  She slid it over to Luz, who used little crosses to show some hobnails that weren’t there, completing the pattern. Luz could sketch fairly well, but it was an acquired taste and Ciara did it much better—native talent and correspondence courses in mechanical draftsmanship had made her machine-accurate. Beside the drawings Luz made quick printed notes, principally about the missing dots in the pattern and the shallowness of the marks.

  “Check on this, please,” she said.

  The drawing was handed around; each of the five seated at the table studied it and then the plaster casts again.

  “Seems right,” York said last, after a long intent look at the sketches.

  He had the patient attention to detail of a man who’d hunted for his family’s food since before his voice broke.

  And probably got the hickory switch on his back from Paw if he came back with a turkey where he’d spoiled the meat by shooting it in the body instead of taking off the head, Luz thought. And another switching if he used more than one bullet.

  Aloud she went on: “How deep were the prints? Your notion on the man who made them?”

  “Pretty deep, an’ the dirt was some damp but not what I’d call soft,” York said. “Those were the best marks I could find, but I could follow where he’d walked for mebbe a hunert, hunert ’n’ fifty paces easy enough, ’nuff to match strides. My guess . . . man about as tall as me, mebbe a hair shorter—”

  He held out his thumb horizontally to indicate how much by its width, the habit of a deeply rural man not used to working in formal measurements unless he thought about it.

  “—an’ mebbe just a trifle heavier-set. I put my own boots to that ground, and the prints waren’t as deep by about this—”

  He held out his right fist, with the little finger extended to show he meant about a quarter of an inch.

  “—even when I walked heel-heavy a’ purpose. Stepped about as long as me, hard to tell exactly ’cause there was so much rock there, but not more than, oh, two inches or so different.”

  There were raised brows around the table. He was describing a six-footer, heavy enough to be muscular but not massive. Mexicans who stood six feet tall weren’t unknown but weren’t common either, most especially among the badly nourished peasantry; at five-six, Luz was tall for a woman in the United States, but around average for a man here. The sort of height York was describing was much more common among North Europeans.

  And to be sure, among their overseas descendants. Or people of African blood, but I don’t think a Negro wearing German boots among Mexican guerillas is very likely.

  Her eye estimated York’s weight at about a hundred seventy-five or eighty pounds; he looked slen
der, but it was all muscle and sinew and he moved with a loose-jointed grace. The same on a man two inches shorter suggested . . .

  Suggests someone I know.

  “Whoever this feller is, he walks heel-down and toe-out, too, even more than most low-country men do—sort of a stompin’ way of walking, I reckon. Not much like the folks hereabouts, either.”

  Luz had noted that the Ranger had a light, smooth, and even walk, with the weight put on the ball of the foot and the heel touching lightly and the toes pointed almost directly ahead; many country folk from his part of the Appalachians did, especially hunters from the real backwoods. Their ancestors had picked up that and a good deal else from their Indian predecessors, in the merciless generations-long wars that had ground and hacked the moving line of the frontier westward through the mountains and valleys, and in trade and occasional intermarriage between the spasms of slaughter.

  “There was others with him, but the sign wasn’t as good. Not more than three, I’d say, though. And they got out of there fast, a lot faster even than the big bunch we caught had been movin’. Four men total, all fit and movin’ quick and not leaving much in the way of tracks.”

  “Right,” Luz said, adding the estimate of height and weight to the notes. “Miss Colmer, have this transmitted to HQ, and get their forensics people on it, por favor,” Luz said—they were speaking English, though she had the impression the Ranger had fair Spanish. “I expect they’ll confirm my estimate, though. That’s a German Marschstiefel—marching boot. The pattern of the hobnails is distinctive.”

  I will not say it is him.

  Though her gut was convinced that it was Horst von Dückler indeed, and out for blood.

  That’s emotion speaking. Stay with the facts.

  She pointed with Henrietta’s mechanical pencil. “And see around the heel, like a reversed horseshoe? That’s the iron heel plate. I think but I’m not sure that these are of the officer’s pattern; I’m not sure because they’re quite worn, and because there’s some variation—German officers buy their own, and they’re usually handmade. Some of the hobnails are missing and the rest are just barely dimpling the soil, they’ve been ground down; and there are gaps in the heelplate, where parts have snapped and worked free. These boots have been used hard and repaired locally. The heel-first walking style is German, too, especially their military men.”

  “Ah, now that’s good trackin’, ma’am, even if you’re doing it at a table with coffee an’ cakes,” York said, finishing an apricot empanada in two bites and dusting his hands. “Happy to have been of service to our friends in the Chamber.”

  “Thank you, Captain York,” Luz said. “And check with your battalion commander in Fresnillo. I’ve been given authority to draw on your company as needed, and you may very well be needed. Heads may have to be removed at some point, without too many questions asked or excessive formalities.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” York said after they exchanged a verbal code for that, raising a finger to his brow in salute. “Ladies,” he added to the others with a nod as he left.

  Luz looked around the table. “I’m going to operate on the assumption that there was at least one German with the bandits in the Sierra,” she said thoughtfully. “One who survived both the initial air attack and then the brush with the Rangers that got most of the survivors. He’s definitely not among the dead; he certainly still has Mexican accomplices, and possibly there’s more than one German.”

  “Henrietta,” Julie said. “You have that incident report we discussed this morning?”

  The secretary nodded, and reached into the attaché case she’d kept within arm’s reach even when fencing.

  “Here, ma’am.”

  It was the standard record circulated to relevant persons—military commanders, governors, and FBS field leaders and Black Chamber station chiefs—in a given area. It also included the contact digests for the whole Protectorate, usually covering some time back, easy enough to do since there weren’t very many anymore. Julie flipped through it and tapped an item, turning it around so Luz and Ciara could see it.

  It was from the Navy and recorded a U-boat contact by a Naval Aviation airship, north of Tampico and quite close to shore. The semirigid had done a depth-charge run, but the submarine had escaped . . . and more to the point, hadn’t been spotted again. Luz frowned; the Kaiserliche Marine’s commerce raiders were always trying for the tanker convoys into and out of the great oil port. If the submarine had been heavily damaged, it would have run for home . . . but it would have attacked otherwise, unless that wasn’t its tasking.

  “The thing is, this was three weeks ago, and there haven’t been any attacks since,” Julie said, showing she’d been thinking along. “And while sinking merchantmen is their main occupation, U-boats are very useful for getting agents in and out—the flying boat spotted this one just after dawn. Now, was it going in . . . or going out, mission accomplished, let’s head for Wilhelmshaven and beer and barmaids?”

  “They have cargo submarines that can transport hundreds of tons, too,” Ciara pointed out. “The ones they used for the Projekt Loki attacks were that model, with batteries of rocket-mortars in place of the cargo holds. They’re not armed; they use them for resupply at sea, fuel and torpedoes and food and spare parts and so forth.”

  “And smuggling agents and gear into enemy territory when they need large tonnage capacity,” Luz said grimly. “But it’s risky bringing them close to shore in heavily patrolled shallow water, so they don’t do it without a very good reason. Ordinary commerce raiders lurk in groups farther out.”

  Luz frowned more deeply and looked at the plaster casts again.

  “That’s an awful lot of wear on a boot for three weeks’ walking,” she said thoughtfully. “Whoever was wearing it didn’t come in on a U-boat recently. Is there a connection, or are we seeing something that’s not there? Is A connected to B, or are we being insanely suspicious about plots? Which is an occupational hazard in this line of work.”

  Henrietta spoke unexpectedly: “Remember the parable of the three blind men tryin’ to describe an elephant? Seems to me we’re in that position. We’ve got three pieces, but are they A, B, and C, or are they A, J, and X?”

  They all smiled ruefully. You could fool yourself quite comprehensively when you tried to fill in the blanks from very little knowledge, but you had to do it anyway.

  “True, it’s important not to get too wedded to one explanation . . . I need more information!” Luz said.

  Julie chuckled as she folded the remaining pan dulce into the cloth.

  “Well, that’s our business, now, isn’t it?” she said. “We’ll be seeing the pilots this afternoon and no doubt after that we’ll be even more at sea.”

  “On to the airfield, then. ¡Ándale!” Luz replied.

  * * *

  —

  The Army Air Corps base outside Jerez was a dose of undiluted twentieth-century modernity, like something out of the 1920s or 1930s rather than their own decade, blazing with electric lights through the dimness of a rainy afternoon. It was also much bigger than it really needed to be, built to work as a training base as well as an operational one, in a place where land close to railroads and towns was cheaper than in the north and opportunities to drop explosives easier to come by.

  Luz found it bracing and strange at the same time; it was odd to remember that not more than a mile away men were tilling fields with wooden plows drawn by oxen, and planting their corn and beans with pointed sticks and the soles of their feet. The runways were rolled concrete rather than the more usual graded dirt—to ensure that they were usable in wet weather like this—and so were the roadways. The concrete, plywood, two-by-four, and sheet-metal buildings were blocky and boxlike, painted the Army’s uniform greenish-brownish wolf-gray, each one looking like a slight variation on the others, even the big hangars with their sideways-sliding doors and curved roofs.
/>   There had been a school of avant-garde European painting just before the war that looked a little like this; the problem was that Luz had never liked that school.

  “Everything prefabricated, everything standardized, everything electrified!” Ciara enthused behind her in the rear seat, speaking a little loudly to be heard over the hum of tires on wet pavement and the drum of the rain on the canvas roof above and the mechanical racket of the four-cylinder engine. “All factory-made and you just assemble the sections! Think of the possibilities for new low-cost housing after the war!”

  “Lord, yes!” Henrietta agreed enthusiastically from beside her.

  Luz caught a sideways glance from Julie Durán. She shrugged slightly; neither of them found that prospect at all appealing.

  We aren’t as Progressive as the youngsters! she thought ironically.

  But then, both of them had spent most of their lives living in the sort of building that required architects and skilled craftsmen and monied parents. Ciara’s roots were in a part of Boston that ranged from the Whelan family’s painfully achieved lace-curtain respectability to outright slum tenements stinking of piss and garbage and cabbage, and in between the majority of cold-water walk-ups where even skilled workmen usually took in paying lodgers to help with the rent. Henrietta Colmer had been born to Savannah’s tiny Negro petite bourgeois, who’d even more painfully pulled themselves out of even worse squalor than any in South Boston, out among the worn-out, mosquito-swarming Low Country cotton fields.

  A weathertight prefab with enough rooms that there were three bedrooms—one each for the boys, girls, and parents of a family—could look very appealing from either standpoint.

  Nobody paid them much attention at the base perimeter apart from checking their documents and using the usual mirror-on-a-stick to look underneath the Guvvie.

  Inside it was a bit before evening mess call, and everyone they saw was hurrying along through the rain. The hangar they passed had a wavering brightness through it, the big 33-A lettered above the half-open doors barely visible. They were probably left that way to help the fumes from solvents and cleaning fluids disperse; inside Luz glimpsed teams of men in overalls using overhead hoists to lift the engines free of a Falcon and lower them onto pallets. Others did maintenance in place, taking advantage of the weather that pinned the aeroplanes to the ground to play catch-up.