“So I have been told.” Boats shook his head ruefully.
They took turns keeping watch and catching catnaps in the shade of the trees. The country here reminded them all of parts of the Helmand in Afghanistan, a rocky place with clumps of pine forest dotted around. And like that other place, the space between villages was unpopulated. Even if there were bandits wandering around, they’d steer well clear of the Romans toiling away below. Like remora on a shark, proximity to the legion fort was giving the Rangers’ camp cover.
What troubled Lee and Chaz was, if bandits and rebels were no real threat to a large force, then what the hell were the Romans forting up for? Was it possible they were warned about the team’s arrival? It was the only explanation. If Harnesh’s influence could cause a change in the local imperial wonk’s policy, then it stood to reason Sir Neal had agents on the ground in this time and place.
There was no movement in the trees except for some spotted deer plucking berries off the juniper branches with their lips. Chaz was awake and watched them moving along silent as ghosts. It always amazed him how animals that big could move so noiselessly even over a floor of needles. That was what it was like to be prey.
A big buck eyed Chaz while placidly munching the purple fruit. It raised its head at a crack of sudden thunder. A soft snort from its nostrils, and it moved off with its coterie of does following.
That thunder was a gunshot. Chaz went to rouse the other two, but Lee and Boats were already on their feet. They moved from the trees and spotted Jimbo and Bat walking their mounts along the floor of a gulch below them. They looked like something out of time, a mishmash of the Old West and a Hercules flick. Except it was Bat Jaffe cradling the rifle as she walked. No squaw she.
Chaz let out a low whistle, and the riders found him in the tree line. They turned their reins and followed a trail up the slope toward the camp.
“Find water?” Jimbo asked as he slid the saddle from his mount.
“Not yet,” Lee said. “You two slow down that other force?”
“We bought us some time,” Bat said as she ran a brush over her mount’s back. “But those are some tough monkeys. They’ll keep coming on.”
“You find the slave caravan?” Jimbo asked.
Lee filled them in on what they’d discovered at long range.
“We leave at sundown to recon in force to check out the quarry,” he told them. “Both of you get some rest until then.”
“Not until I find us water,” Jimbo said. “These horses aren’t going to be worth shit without it. And we might need them if we have to make a run for it.”
He pulled his rifle from its boot and picked up some empty CamelBaks and walked into the trees.
“Speaking of tough monkeys,” Bat said, watching the Pima recede into the gloom.
“You kept up with him,” Lee said, cupping her chin.
“But I can’t take one more step. I need sleep and badly,” she said, shaking her head slowly and regarding him through heavy lids.
Lee took the watch and sat with his M4 across his knees while the rest bedded down to recharge. Bat was as good as her word. Her head propped on her saddle at the head of a groundsheet, she was sound asleep in seconds.
Jimbo returned within an hour with the CamelBaks bloated with fresh water. He insisted on watering the horses before lying down. Soon, Lee Hammond was the only one awake. Even the horses dozed deeply where they stood on the running line strung between the trees.
29
Déjeuner Pour Un
Caroline Tauber grew restless after two days. After five, she thought she’d go mad.
Staying in the two rooms for days on end, with her only human contact the two maids, one to bring her meals and another to take her laundry.
The rooms seemed to be getting smaller with each moment. How could she have thought this place was quaint? Or cozy? It was rundown and cramped and reeked of wood smoke and kerosene. There were no distractions but the newspapers and a few books.
She could not even hold a conversation with the maids. She sensed it was her foreignness, her tortured French, and a touch of class distinction. Though these rooms were modest and her clothing of middling quality, they were beyond the means of the girls who served the rooms in this hotel. And thus there was a societal divide that prevented all but the most mannered and inconsequential small talk.
It wasn’t boredom driving her slowly mad. Who could be bored? The sounds of artillery rose louder every day as the Prussian batteries grew closer to the city. Shells were falling inside the outer defensive walls now. The papers, when there were papers, screamed of civilian casualties, hospitals and churches being bombarded and deeper shortages to come. There were more and more soldiers in the streets that she could see from her windows.
They had been pulled from the outer forts and defensive positions to be in place should the Prussians and their allies breach the walls and enter Paris itself. Gun carriages rumbled by at one point and wagon after wagon of wounded passed beneath her windows at all hours. There were rumors of riots in the streets over politics and rationing. The troops could be fighting a war within and without soon.
She felt trapped. She sensed that was the mood of the entire city. But her plight was special. She was alone in a strange city in a time not her own, truly and utterly alone. And she had no idea when her self-imprisonment would end or if it would ever end.
Only Stephen kept her together. The care of a helpless infant was her only focus. She fed him and changed him and cuddled him, and he helped her forget that the sounds
