Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon (31 page)

Schleu stared at me in silence for
a few seconds, then said, “So when you were recruited, you thought
you’d come here, be handed something to replace that toy gun you had, and
head out to kill skeeters?” Her hand still rested next to the
pistol.

“What I didn’t think was that I’d
be watching some asshole with a Hitler mustache break a skeeters arms so we
could watch them heal.”

She laughed. “I hear some of
Zachariah’s opinion of our National Socialist comrades in that,” she said.
“Admittedly Captain Konrad is a bit pedantic sometimes, but he’s proven to
be an effective recruit trainer. And most of our recruits do not have your
experience.”

Her hand moved away from the
pistol. Not far away, but it was going in the right direction. “We are
about to embark on an operation that has been almost three years in the
planning,” she said. “When we strike, we will strike with force and with
purpose. Every movement, every act has been planned for maximum efficiency
and effect. We only have one opportunity, and it must be a killing
blow.”

She closed the file folder.
“There’s no room for error, no room for individual actions. Your personal
experience is based on actions on a small scale. Kill a skeeter here, kill
a skeeter there.” She shook her head. “We will come when they least expect
it, and we will attack them where they feel most safe, most invincible. And
we will kill them, not one, but thousands.” She paused. “Why is it that
you’re not afraid of me?”

“What?”

“I personally interview every new
recruit. Most come through that door cowed and frightened. Anxious to
please. Anxious to give me the answers I’m looking for.” Schleu paused.
“You don’t seem to care. You haven’t cared from the moment you arrived.
When I examined your group of recruits, only you stared back at me.” She
paused again. “I notice things like that.”

“I can’t speak for what other
recruits have been through. For me, after two and a half years in a camp
and three and a half years scrambling to make a living, all without landing
on some skeeter’s dinner table...” I smiled. “It takes a lot to scare me.
What are you going to do, shoot me? Lady, I’ve been ready for a bullet
since I walked out of that camp.”

She stared at me again silently,
then said, “Go back to your room. Get some sleep. Training begins at seven
a.m., and I promise you, you won’t be watching a skeeter’s arm
heal.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said,
standing.

Schleu pushed my folder aside,
revealing another, and opened it. Johnny’s. The picture was a mug shot, and
there was plenty of information on the page. He was probably the regular
sort of recruit.

“When you leave, please have them
bring in Mr. Ricci,” she said, looking down at the rap sheet. “Welcome to
the Humans First Front, Charlie.”

I nodded and left the office.
Johnny still sat on the stairs, an escort on either side. He was talking
with them, and everyone was smiling. Apparently Johnny had picked up
considerable charm during those four months of charm school.

As I reached them, I said, “The
commander wants to see you next.”

Johnny stood. “I got this, guys,”
he said to the two men. “See you upstairs, Charlie.”

He walked across the lobby to the
leasing office, without escort, opened the door and went inside. One of the
escorts said, “He’s a funny guy.”

“Yeah he is,” the other said. “So
who’s next?”

I left them to figure out who they
were going to haul out of bed and went upstairs to Zach’s apartment. When I
opened the unlocked door, he was sitting in his chair, an open paperback
book in his lap.

“Surprised to see you awake,” I
said.

He smiled. “Yeah, well, they make
so much ruckus, kind of hard to sleep,” he said. “Anyways, I wanted to stay
up to apologize to you.”

“For what?”

“For not sayin’ anythin’ about what
was gonna happen,” he said. “This ain’t my first rodeo with recruits. They
always come the first night and haul ‘em down to see Cap’n Kat. Then a
couple of nights and they’re gone, and it starts all over.” He smiled.
“Course some of ‘em don’t come back from their interview with the cap’n. I
don’t ask about them.”

I wasn’t going to ask about them
either.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It
makes sense that the commander interviews people when they’re not ready for
it. Probably gets truthful answers that way.” Especially from those who
didn’t have as much to hide as I did.

“Yup,” he said. “Though I gotta
say, you seem a lot more relaxed than most. Usually the recruits are
shakin’ by the time they get back.”

“Nothing to shake over,” I said.
“It was a good conversation. She had some interesting things to say.”
Unfortunately, not the things that I wanted to know.

Zach smiled slyly. “She ask you why
you was lyin’ to her?”

I laughed. “Yeah.”

“That’s one of her favorite tricks.
Freaks most recruits out, when she reaches for that gun on the table. One
old boy soiled himself.” He nodded. “Yeah, truth. He pissed his pants when
she put her hand on the pistol.”

“I managed to hold my water,” I
said.

“What did you do?”

“Just kept right on talking,” I
said. “When you tell people the truth, you don’t have anything to worry
about.” I paused. “Anyway, pissing my pants wasn’t going to change
anything. If she wanted to shoot me, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do
to stop her.”

“You got a cool head, boy,” he
said. “I ain’t sure how I’d handle it myself. Course I been with Cap’n Kat
since the beginnin’, and she didn’t play those games in Charlie-17. Just
asked what we’d been through, where we’d been caught, that kind of thing.
Wasn’t a lot of us, so it was all pretty friendly. Got to know everybody,
you know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“Now I ain’t sayin’ that she’s
always friendly. I sure as hell wouldn’t wanna be on her bad side. But
she’s fair, and she don’t act hasty. Thinks ‘bout what she wants to do
before she does it. So what did you talk about with her?”

I moved my fingers across my mouth
in a zipping motion. “Thought we weren’t supposed to talk about certain
things.”

Zach laughed. “What, you sayin’
that she talked about operational stuff with you?”

“A little,” I said. “Nothing
specific, but she was more forthcoming than Konrad was.”

“Hot damn, she must have really
taken a shine to you. From what I hear tell from the recruits that have
stayed here, all she usually does is ask questions about their background.
The gun thing is at the end, then they’re kicked loose.” He paused.
“Unless, of course, they really are lyin’ to her, and admit it. Between you
and me, I think thems the ones who don’t come back.”

“Like I said, it was a good
conversation. And between you and me, I think you’re right with some of
your educated guesses. I think it’s coming real soon.”

“She tell you when?”

I shook my head. “If I told you,
I’d have to kill you.”

“What!”

I laughed. “Just fucking with you,
Zach. She wasn’t going to talk about that with a new recruit, even one
she’d taken a shine to. But based on what she did say, I’m thinking maybe
twenty-four, forty-eight hours.”

“I knew it,” he said.

“What makes you say
that?”

Zach was silent for a moment, then
said, “Well, I wasn’t gonna tell you this, but since you passed the
interview and you’re pretty much one of us now, I guess it won’t do no
harm.” He paused “Last Tuesday, me and Gus got called down to the
commander’s office to get our assignments for the day from Shep. When we
got there, Shep and the cap’n was talkin’. They stopped when we came in,
but I heard em sayin’ somethin’ ‘bout the Lexington Project bein’ a
Christmas present for the skeeters. Then Cap’n Kat left, and Shep told us
what bars he wanted us to scout that day.” He paused. “Actually, I think
that was the last time I saw Shep.”

Not surprising. He was dead the
next day.

“Christmas,” I said slowly. “Yeah,
that sounds about right. Or maybe Christmas Eve?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “They said
Christmas present. Maybe they’re the kinda folks that give out the presents
on Christmas Eve. Had a friend’s daddy who did that with his kids.” He
grinned. “Course, that was so he could get ‘em out workin’ the field on
Christmas Day.”

I thought back to what Redmond had
told me. Schleu needed to die by midnight Christmas Eve. I’d taken that to
mean that whatever she had planned would happen that night, maybe after
midnight.

But if Schleu was going to use six
hundred recruits against Vees, and everything seemed to point that way, she
wouldn’t do it at night. She’d wait until daylight, when the Vees were
home, asleep, after their Christmas Eve celebrations.

If that was true, I had a little
more time. Not a lot, but every extra hour would help.

Behind me, the door opened and
Johnny came in.

I turned. “That was
quick.”

“Well, yeah, a lot quicker than
you,” he said. “Wasn’t much to it. She asked me about some of my charges,
then told me I was lying to her and threatened to shoot me.” He smiled.
“Laughed when I told her to go fuck herself. Where’s she get off, telling
me I’m lying to her when I ain’t.”

“You boys are a real pair of
cowboys,” Zach said.

“What I want to know is where the
fuck she got my rap sheet,” Johnny said. “She knew about juvie shit I did
before the war. That stuff is supposed to be sealed.”

“We got friends in the police,”
Zach said. “And not just here on the east side. Uptown, downtown, even got
some in the police headquarters in midtown. When you got good friends in
high places, nothin’ is sealed.”

“Well that ain’t right,” Johnny
said. I don’t think he was acting. I think he was actually a little
outraged. “Juvie shit is supposed to stay sealed, and nobody is supposed to
be able to get it. Shit you do when you’re a kid shouldn’t count against
you when you’re grown up.”

“Relax,” I said. “She sent you back
here, didn’t she? From what Zach says, some don’t come back.”

“Yeah, like that girl that was
sitting behind you yesterday,” Johnny said to me.

“Chubby, dark hair?”

“That’s the one,” Johnny
said.

Sue Ward.

“What happened to her?” I
asked.

“I don’t know for sure,” Johnny
said. “When I came out, Billy and Dave were standing there with her, and
they took her over to the office.”

Zach chuckled. “Billy and Dave.
Couple of Night Ninjas. They wear those black outfits to scare people when
they’re haulin’ ‘em out of bed.”

“Anyway, I waited on the stairs for
them to come back, you know, just to shoot the shit for a few minutes.
Well, about two minutes after she went in, that girl came out crying. Billy
and Dave said I better go, so I headed back up here.”

“Sounds like the cap’n decided
she’d make a good comfort woman,” Zach said.

“What?”

“Some of the recruits of the female
persuasion ain’t exactly combat ready, if you know what I mean. Too dumb,
too timid, ain’t tough enough for the work. Cap’n Kat weeds ‘em out real
quick. But they still have their uses for the rest of us. Help take the
edge off, if you know what I mean.” He paused and smiled. “But don’t be
gettin’ your hopes up, boys. Comfort women are only for the regulars, not
the new recruits. You gonna have to find your pussy someplace else.” He
paused again. “I don’t partake of them myself. Ain’t like they’re
fresh.”

“Who came up with the name comfort
women,” I asked.

“It was Cap’n Kat who started
callin’ ‘em that,” Zach said. “Don’t know why, but that’s what she calls
‘em.”

I knew why. In World War II, the
Japanese military had a system of brothels for use by their troops in the
field. Mostly staffed by women from conquered countries. The Japanese
called them comfort women.

Apparently Katarina Schleu knew her
history. I might be able to use that. If I got the chance before Christmas
Eve was over.

Chapter
Twenty

Zach’s fist on the closed bedroom
door woke me from a sound sleep. “Quarter after six,” he called. “Breakfast
will be here in fifteen minutes, ya’ll got trainin’ in
forty-five.”

Johnny sighed. “This wake-up shit
sucks,” he said.

“Don’t bitch at me,” I muttered.
“You’re the one who wanted to be here.”

He laughed. “Hey, you’re gonna
thank me for that one of these days.”

Johnny rolled out of bed and
stretched. “I’m calling the first shower,” he said. Before I could say
anything, he opened the bedroom door and went around the corner to the
bathroom.

I sat up and swung my legs over the
side of the bed. Best case, I had two days to do what I had to do, and it
was time to rethink the way I was looking at the job.