Baltic Gambit: A Novel of the Vampire Earth Read Online Free PDF Page B

knotted line, wearing what the Bears called her “scalp.” One of the garbage workers had been a stocky female with short brown hair hanging out of her hat. Duvalier decided she must have long ago given up on the appearance of her hair, or it would have been in some kind of protective bandanna under her cap. As it was, she knife-cut it off the prisoner when the Wolves presented the garbage haulers and taped it in her hair after the clothing strip. She didn’t quite fill the bulky woman’s overall, but a towel doubled and draped across her shoulders gave her the appearance of more heft. Her garrison belt with its assorted components filled out the waistline nicely.
    As for the men in the farm tractor, it had a cracked-up vintage windshield polarized against the glare of the sun. Between the tinting, ample dirt, tiny cracks, and accumulations of grease that might have something to do with the loads it hauled, it was a wonderValentine and the other Bear in the cab could see to drive, never mind being recognized.
    Two Bear teams, twenty Bears in all, rode in the garbage. They’d rigged camouflage netting above themselves and tossed a few of the larger, lighter pieces of garbage onto the netting, allowing for a more comfortable, but still smelly, ride underneath. Most of them sat or knelt or squatted on pieces of cardboard or trash can liners.
    If they were stopped and searched, the poor bastard Indiana Patrol or Ordnance Guard would be in for a dreadful surprise, she thought. With luck they’d be taken prisoner quietly; they were now near enough for the outer hotel guards to hear shooting.
    A rough-looking bunch, the Bears. They’d immigrated to Fort Seng when the fighting dried up around the Ozark Free Republics. Most veteran Bears, she’d been told, grew addicted, in a fashion, to the fighting madness that seized them in action. “Going Red” was one of the many phrases for it.
    Their attire could be called a uniform only in the sense that it had the classic insignia pinned on it. And a name badge somewhere on the left breast. Otherwise, it was a mass of Reaper cloth, bulletproof armoring, legworm leather (popular thanks to its availability in Kentucky and the fact that it combined the ruggedness of leather with a breathable, insulative quality like layers of denim and athletic gear), regular fatigues, and in a few cases, painted plate steel or Kevlar. Some wore heavy helms with combat masks that made them look like samurai or old comic book superheroes; others liked to fight in nothing but a headband and tinted safety glasses. Their weapons were equally varied: short machine guns handy for room entry, combat rifles, sniper gear, grenade launchers, and fullyautomatic shotguns, plus sidearms and blades that gave them a piratical aspect.
    One thing they all had on this job was demolition gear, satchel charges, bags of grenades, and incendiary devices. The Bears had learned through long experience that slippery Kurians tended to retreat up or down, and the best way to deal with that was just to blow the hell out of their refuge—soft-skinned, boneless Kurians were notoriously sensitive to explosive fragments and concussions.

    Duvalier double-checked the connections on her headset. She heard a low crackle in her ear. The short-range communicator was working.
    “We’re counting on you,” Valentine said. “Two beeps for go ahead.”
    They had light headset field radios captured from the Ordnance. They’d been modified by the electronics guys to send beeps using the Ordnance’s own communications gear. The beeps were so brief and used the edge of some “wavelength” that the Ordnance network ignored it as static, but a rewired sender-receiver could get Morse code out of the beeps. They worked through most of Northern Kentucky, and here in the sprawling Hoosier forest, the network sent and received perfectly.
    He winked at her from his scarred eye. “Thirty minutes. It’s less than a mile cross-country.” He