Choice of the Cat (Vampire Earth #2) - Page 2

On the banks of the Lake o' the Cherokees: Foxtrot Company waits in a forward camp. Tepees, tents, wagons, livestock, and a smokehouse cluster around a stream running down from the hills into what remains of the lake behind the breached dam. A few eagles fish beneath the ruined arches, lingering along the flight paths most have already followed north up the Mississippi Valley.

In this border country, the Wolves of Southern Command imitate the eagles, moving quickly here and there to survey the countryside and striking at prey small enough to take. Their duty is to scout the Kurian 2x>ne, pick up information, and warn the Free Territory of any impending threat to the human settlements in the hills and dales of the Ozark Freehold. Similar military camps lie scattered in the foothills of the Ozarks and Ouachitas throughout Missouri, the eastern edge of Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas. Beyond this uninhabited ring broods the Night of the Kurian Order.

The Kurians on the other side of no-man's-land wait for a chance, perhaps some combination of weakness and error, to engulf the Free Territory and put an end to one of the last bastions of human civilization.

"Congratulations, Valentine," Captain Beck said, emerging from his tent to receive the report of his tired lieutenant. "I hear you got four Reapers. You're a credit to the Regiment." Beck held out his right hand, back straight as a telephone pole, smiling at Valentine through clenched teeth.

The young lieutenant shook the proffered hand. "Three, sir. The fourth was a little burned, but got away."

"Stafford said he was blinded. That's one less Reaper to worry about, in my opinion."

Valentine never stopped worrying about a Reaper until its corpse quit twitching.

"Could be, sir," Valentine said, massaging his aching neck. He was so tired, he had a hard time organizing his thoughts, but he had to snap to for this particular superior, fatigue or no. Captain Beck had a reputation as a man-driver and courageous fighter. After being promoted as the senior surviving officer after the Battle of Hazlett in the summer of '65, he'd pushed his company through training and once up to strength requested a forward posting.

"I got Stafford's report on the action at the Rigyard," he said, inviting Valentine into his tepee with an outstretched arm. Valentine entered; the shelter smelled of leather and cigars. Socks and underwear drying on a line added a hint of mustiness. "How was the trip back?"

Valentine collected his thoughts. "It rained after Stafford drove off. Slowed us up. The next day I sent out details to start some fires to the north, make them think we were moving across the flatlands for the Missouri border. We spotted a couple of patrol toward evening, one on horse and one in a truck. We lay low and cold-camped. The next-"

Beck held up a hand. "What's that, Lieutenant? A single truck? Sounds like a good opportunity for prisoners."

"It had a radio antenna. Even from ambush, they might have got off a message. We had been lucky with casualties. I didn't want to press it."

Beck frowned. "I'd like my officers more worried about what they are going to do to the enemy than what might get done to them. Your return would be easier if the Territorials were too scared of losing patrols to send them out."

"We'll have a hard time scaring them worse than the Reapers, sir."

The captain clucked his tongue against his teeth, and the tepee seemed to grow warmer. "I'm not questioning your judgment, just telling you how I might have handled it, had I been there."

"Thank you, sir. The next day, we really put on some mileage. By nightfall we passed the old interstate. When did you get back, sir?"

"Two days ago, morning. We scouted that refinery outside Tulsa. It's fortified, but I think the whole Company could hurt it, if we could bait a chunk of the garrison out somehow."

Valentine nodded. Months ago, he had learned the best way to change his captain's mind was to make any objections he had seem like Beck's own. "Certainly, sir. While we're trying to draw the garrison out, what orders would you give if a flying column comes up? Or Reapers? I'm sure we could take it, leading some Bears and a regiment of regulars as a reserve. That or have the help of a really good Cat, sir."

"Getting Southern Command to launch something like that isn't so easy to do," Beck said with a knowing chuckle. "That's enough for now. Take tonight off, get some food and sleep, then give me your full report tomorrow."

"Has anyone talked to the four Okies Stafford brought out, sir?"

"Stafford got their vitals. None of them were military. Feel free to interview them yourself. Add it on to your report if you get anything. Nice work out there, Valentine. Dismissed."

Valentine saluted. "Sir," he said quietly, and backed out of Beck's tepee.

A night off. Exhausted from the fight at the Rigyard and eight days in the Kurian Zone, he longed to fall into his cot, into oblivion. A hot bath first was tempting, but the platoon needed to be checked over, and he wanted to have a word with the liberated prisoners before they were taken east into the Ozarks.

He found Stafford with the platoon, engaged in an impromptu celebration for Poulos and his new bride. Someone had produced a jug, and Freeman, the company's oldest ranker, was pouring generous portions into the cluster of wooden cups held under the spout. The mugs were pieces of off-duty artistry: Free Territory hardwoods had been carved into wolf heads and fox ears. Some had handles chiseled to resemble curved tails. Even the rawest recruit in Foxtrot Company had his individual mug.

"Stafford, a word please." Valentine had to raise his voice over the ribald jests being directed at Poulos and his new bride.

The ruddy-skinned platoon sergeant left the guffaws and joined Valentine. They watched the festivities from the edge of the campfire light. Though himself a teetotaler, Stafford allowed his men to indulge after hard duty. The 120 miles covered on foot in the last seven days qualified.

"Poulos and the Meyer girl tied the knot, Gator?" Valentine asked.

"This morning, Val. They did it up right and proper. She's got her mom's wedding ring on now."

"It'll be a story for their grandkids. Hope nobody takes the hooch too close to the fire; I think Freeman adds a little turpentine to give it that woody, aged flavor."

Gator snorted, and Valentine returned to business. "I looked over your report on the drive back. Anything happen that you didn't want to put on paper?"

"No, sir. Except that I was cutting the engines about every fifteen minutes to listen. God, it was like I was driving around, setting off firecrackers. It's a wonder I didn't get every Territorial for fifty miles around me. But all we saw were a couple of deer we flushed. Came leaping at us in the headlights with glowing eyes and twelve-foot jumps. It took about two minutes for my heart to start beating again." His left eye twitched at the memory.

"I need to talk to that girl's mom and the others you brought out. Where can I find them?"

"The captain had to deal with that when we pulled in. Since they were your responsibility, he put them up in your tepee. Maybe he's sending a message about picking up strays. Lieutenant Caltagirone is still out on patrol with a chunk of third platoon, so Beck figured he might as well give that space to them. The little old guy, though-the one with the really long hair-you won't get much out of him. I think he's cracked. Hasn't said anything that makes much sense the whole ride."

"I don't even remember what they look like. Can I borrow you for a quick introduction?"

"Follow me, Val." Dodging dancers, they moved toward the ring of Company tepees at the center of the camp.

Valentine followed Stafford through the flap of the tepee he shared with Lieutenant Caltagirone. The refugees were relaxing. Their faces had been washed, and plates that looked as though they'd been licked clean were stacked by a washbasin.

"Here's the lieutenant; just a few more questions for you," Stafford said.

Valentine looked longingly at his cot. What was left of last night's charcoal was cold gray ash at the center. Caltagirone's cot and a tiny folding table paired up with a rickety stool completed the furnishings. A folding wood lattice stood behind the beds; spare equipment and clothing belonging to the Foxtrot's lieutenants hung from hooks.

As the prisoners sat up, Valentine walked over to his paperwork pouch bearing his stenciled name-months ago, someone had sewn a patch of a floating white cowl with two black eyes beneath the letters, a reference to his nickname, "the Ghost"-and extracted a clipboard. A new letter was clipped to the top of the assorted forms. He recognized Molly's hand by the deliberately printed black inscription, like a schoolchild's. Temptation to let the questions wait in order to peruse its contents almost overwhelmed him, but he stuck it back in the pouch.

Knowledge that a letter awaited him lifted the fatigue. He swung his leg over the little camp stool, sat, and awaited introductions. Stafford gave the names of the three men-Mrs. Meyer still being at the wedding celebration- and then returned to the platoon.

Their stories were the usual sad tale of refugees from the Kurian Zone. When they relayed the usual Kurian propaganda stories about life in the Ozarks-that a Rule Eleven existed condemning anyone who ever cooperated with the

Kurians to either execution or being worked to death, and further, Free Territory soldiers were allowed to rape any woman they wished-Valentine only shook his head and returned to the routine questions. He had taken hundreds of statements in his time from refugees, and the picture was always the same bleak snapshot: a hard, bland life of labor until the inevitable end in the draining embrace of a Reaper.

Only one statement stood out, and that was from the man Stafford had described as "cracked." He was a smallish man with a permanent squint that gave him a wizened look. His name was Whitey Cooper, no doubt a reference to his snow-white hair. He wore blue-striped ticking, a shirt in the last stages of decay. Not a button remained, and the collar and cuffs were gone, so his bony forearms and hands had a false appearance of unnatural length. It was trying work getting anything out of him. Valentine finally managed to learn that he worked in the main rail yards of Oklahoma City.

"And for better than thirty years, junior," Cooper pointed out, stabbing one of those fingers at Valentine as if threatening him with a dagger. "Nope, not a bird to change its tune, not me. So many came and went there. Ducks-the lot of them, quack-quack-quacking out their lives before flying south. I wasn't set to fly, though, not by a long shot."

"No?" Valentine said, having given up the fight to make sense out of the man after an inquiring glance or two exchanged with the others. He wondered what Molly had written, and if her mother's health had improved.

"Naw, I was quiet as a broke television. If you're up to your neck in shit, don't make waves. Kept me kicking these years. Till them Nazis showed up on their way north and spoilt it with that big train. They messed me up, but they'll get theirs. Now, I know my history, boy. I've read mor'n books than you got fingers. I know the Nazis got beat once, and we'll beat'em again."

Valentine stirred from musings. "Nazis?"

"That's the problem today, nobody's got no schooling. Yeah, Nazis, Mr. Lootenan. They were the bad guys way back when the world had the old-time black-and-white life."

"How do you know they were Nazis?" he asked, picking up his pencil.

"First I thought they were just train men like me. Most of'em weren't much to look at. Thin and sickly kinda, so I assumed they was just railroad men on short commons. What I call the old "gun to yer head" Railway Local Union Nine Em Em. See this good-sized train come through, not the biggest I've ever seen, not by a long shot, but armored engines and caboose and all. I see these guys drinking coffee when it's stopped between, relaxing between the cars on break like. So I figure I grab a cup while it's hot and say howdy, 'cause I had a spare cigarette to trade. I climb up, and they get all exhilarated. Haul me to the caboose, where this big shot fancied-up general starts giving me the onceover. I got thirty years' worth of work stamps in my ID book, but does that cut anything with him? Prick. No, sir. Says I'm spying, as if a bunch of closed boxcars are anything worth spying on. Everyone's all saluting and calling him Generalissimo Honcho or something. Then they take me when the train leaves and start all zapping me with this electric stick. Oh man, I cried, no no not a spy."

"This general, he was in charge of the Nazis? Did you see a name, perhaps on his uniform?"

Cooper winced, as if the memory slapped him. "Oldish, sir. Not oldish and healthy, oldish and dried out, skin like a wasp nest in winter. Thick, wiry gray hair, cut real luscious 'n' full. Little shorter'n me, and I'm only five seven. Pink-eyed, too, like he was hungover. Had a voice like an old wagon running on a gravel road. I've never heard a young man talk like that. Old and squeaky and tired."

"Could you tell from the way they talked where they were from? Did they mention any cities?" Valentine asked again, keeping his voice casual.

"No, if he said it, I forgot."

"What about his men-you said they were thin and sickly?"

"Jest the ones hanging round the wagons. The ones that grabbed me, big burly fellows they were. Plenty of guns, high-quality iron from back then, or as good. Had somun'em oversize gorilla-men with him, too-tall, tall they were, those snaggletooth varmints. It was them that held me when they started in on me."

"I still don't see how they were Nazis," Valentine said.

The man rocked as he sat hunched over, eyes screwed shut. "No, I got a good record here. Check my book. Me a spy?" Cooper trailed off.

Valentine switched tactics. "I think you're wrong, Mr. Cooper. You probably just mistook them for Nazis when they were hurting you."

"I'm learned, I tell you. I can read, just don't get the opportunity. How could I tell? The flag, like they had by the millions in them pictures. On the uniforms, and on the flags in the caboose behind the General Honcho's desk. Wore it proud, the bastards. You'll show'em, though, like you did at the house."

Valentine wrote something on his clipboard. "Like this?"

"That's it, Mr. Lootenan. That's it. I bet you beat on them tons of times before, right?"

Valentine just nodded, to himself rather than to the poor man's words, looking down at the clipboard. He had seen that design before, here and there, and wherever he had encountered it, there had been trouble.

Written in pencil on the slightly yellow paper was the backwards swastika he'd heard called "the Twisted Cross."

"You're sure you don't know where they come from?"

"Naw. Why you need to know that?"

"You said we had to beat them."

"Course you will, Mr. Lootenan. Of course. But you don't have to go looking for them. They're coming for you."

It took Valentine a moment to come up with, "How can you be sure of that?"

"All summer, new lines is goin' in. Labor and materials already arranged. I was supposed to second a section chief. A new north-south running Dallas-Tulsa-Kansas City, and after that then three branch lines."

"Branch lines? Where?"

"Pointing like a pitchfork right at these hills.

Valentine camped in an accommodating wagon that night among three other Wolves who had given up their tepee to Poulos and his new bride. As the final earthy taunts and wedding-night stories died down, Valentine reread Molly's letter by the cold light of the rising moon.

January 18, 2067

Dear David,

I hope this letter finds you well and doesn't take too long-you'd think they could find your unit in less than a month, wouldn't you? Everyone here in Weening is good the winter passed with hardly any sickness but the food is all starting to taste the same though I shouldn't complain as I am certain it is worse for you. I read your last letter out loud during Sunday Services and received many greetings and well wishes to pass on to you that are too numerous to list. Mr. Bourne has something he's going to send you as soon as he can find one of the Wolves passing through the area since he doesn't trust the post with it-the package is a box or trunk of some kind so be on the lookout for it. He was working on it all winter and made me promise not to tell-and he can be sure I'm not telling as he is helping me with this letter! As you know I am somewhat behind in my education, the 3 Rs not being taught in that part of Wisconsin where we met. Have you heard anything from Frat? I think he's still an Aspirant down by Louisiana, but you all move around so much my information is always out of date. I am told the mail is even slower to him and just collects until he can return to his camp.

Graf has been recommended for Lieutenant-I think he's going to ask me to marry him if he gets the promotion. It may mean leaving the village but Mom is doing much better. Mary is old enough now where she can take over a lot of the chores and the Hudson brothers help out with the hardest. My mom and dad pretty much handle everything to do with veterinary work for the town livestock, if someone's having trouble with a calving they run and get them. With Mom better Dad's going to take a larger place in the Village, there's talk of him becoming a Director. To think when he first got here the town gave him a cow and two piglets and some chickens, and now we've got eight good milkers. Of course, in a way our start here is because of you. I should just say it, we owe everything to you: getting out of the badness in Wisconsin and everything that happened in Chicago.

Your tetters are very cheery and polite in the way you ask about Graf. But you always are very casual and polite when you are upset. David, you're one of the finest men I've ever known. I still love you in a way, but a different way than I feel about Graf I think you have a Purpose. I know we talked that our futures were woven together at one time, but something in me associates all the badness back there with you and every time I see you I remember. I should not say it was all wrong, before Chicago our time was wonderful, and precious, but I've sealed up everything that happened with Chicago, it's kind of like a memory of an old nightmare, not very clear. You were so patient with me all that winter, God did I even talk at all while we were in Minnesota? I think you need to be free of me to become whatever it is you are going to become (as you are all bound up with the Lifeweavers and Mr. Bourne says it is a hard way and the choice to follow them doesn't make for a normal life) I need to be free of you to start here with a clean slate. We tried last spring and it was just bad, I was cold-God it was the last thing you deserve!- and you were distracted.

The way things are now is for the best, I'm sure of it. You've written that you think it's great that I have a man like Graf and those words meant a lot to me and I hope they weren't painful to write. I suppose we both have mixed feelings for each other. One thing is certain though, you will always have a home among the Carlsons in Weening no matter what happens to you. You've been my friend, my love, my protector, my healer, my guide, and now I hold you as a dear brother in a Very Special Place in my heart. I look toward your next letter, and pray that your duties will allow you to visit soon.

Yours truly and always,

Molly

Molly was a bright young woman, and painfully right about them. Valentine returned the letter to his dispatch bag. He played a mental slide show of the Molly he had known: from when he first met her in Wisconsin when her family hid him at great personal risk from the Kurians, to his trip to Chicago to rescue her from violent public death after she had killed a Quisling official. They'd escaped by ship to the Minnesota shore, near where Valentine had been born and grew up, and stayed a season at his adoptive father's house.

Valentine and the old priest sat up night after night, discussing what he'd learned of the Kurians. It was the Padre who'd first taught him about ancient civil war that divided the Lifeweavers and led to the Kurian Lords, who- through their vampiric Reapers-killed sentient beings to harvest the energies that sustained their endless lives. They'd been thrown off Earth long ago, the interstellar gateways sealed and destroyed, but they'd come again in 2022, and won.

Valentine made no attempt to renew the intimacy that had briefly existed between himself and Molly, concentrating instead on feeding everyone. Each night he read to Molly by the light of a single candle out of the Padre's collection of old books. Books that had become his family, in a way, after his orphaning. They'd taken him out of his misery, and he'd hoped they could do the same for Molly.

That spring, Valentine was determined to rejoin Molly with her family, although he had no idea if the Carlsons had even successfully escaped to the Ozarks with his fellow Wolf, Gonzalez.

Molly strengthened and blossomed on the journey in the spring sunshine of the north. Valentine had a good nose for trouble, and skirted wide around areas controlled by the Quisling servants of the Kurians. They reached the outskirts of Southern Command on the first day of May, and the young pair caught up to Molly's family at one of the small fortress posts in the hills watching the old roads and trails up from St. Louis. That reunion on the soil of the Ozark Free Territory was perhaps the proudest moment in his life. As if some silent bargain had been fulfilled, he and Molly renewed their intimacy that night, making love with giddy, laughing abandon.

But it was not the same. The desperation and danger of their situation in Wisconsin was absent, and Valentine felt the pull of duty. He had been posted missing and presumed dead, and upon hearing of his safe return to the Ozarks, Gonzalez and a few other Wolves of Zulu Company showed up to welcome him back. He settled the family with old friends in the little borderland settlement of Weening in northern Arkansas near the Saint Francis River and returned to his duties.

It was a frustrating return. Southern Command read, and promptly forgot, his report on the mysterious Kurian operations in the hills of southern Wisconsin he and Gonzalez had stumbled upon, and shrugged their shoulders at Valentine's suggestion of a new organization under a reversed-swastika symbol Valentine had heard called the Twisted Cross.

Zulu Company had replaced him, and Valentine was assigned to Captain Beck and Foxtrot Company, mostly freshly invoked Wolves who had never seen a live Reaper and knew Grogs-the variegated, semi-intelligent beasts bred to aid the Kur in their subjugation of humanity-only by their oversize footprints.

Constant training drained him, and he found it impossible to visit Molly in far-off Weening; they exchanged letters less and less frequently. Molly was young and beautiful, and soon found herself under the attentions of a sergeant in the regulars, the well-turned-out Guards who formed the main body of Southern Command's armed forces. Twinges of jealousy vied with genuine hope for her happiness on the unstable emotional teeter-totter that described his feelings for her.

Valentine shifted his weight on the hard boards of the wagon, causing the springs to squeak in complaint. That trail of thought led to a dead end. He returned to present problems, reviewing Cooper's ravings. He still knew little of the Twisted Cross. Only that its members were human, at least some of them, and that they were objects of dread in the Kurian Zone and on its borders. He had briefly met one in the bizarre garden of unholy entertainments of the Zoo in Chicago while searching for Molly. A man who talked like a soldier and acted like a Reaper, even to the extent that he thirsted for blood. And whoever they were, they were now somewhere just outside the no-man's-land separating the Free Territory from the KZ.

Despite that unsettling thought, he finally slept. Above his hard bed, the stars whirled away in the bright clear night.

"Grogs, Mr. Valentine. Hundreds of'em. Five miles off and coming hard," a pubescent voice intruded on Valentine's deep predawn slumber.

Valentine woke like a startled animal, instantly alert, and the boy ceased shaking his shoulder. It was Tom Nishino, one of the teenage Aspirants who traveled with the Wolves and performed assorted camp duties in the hope of someday joining their ranks. The youth almost danced with excitement beside the wagon. Captain Beck had taken Nishino, the brightest of Foxtrot's teens, under his wing and used him as a messenger.

"Whose are they?"

Nishino looked puzzled at the question. He'd never served down south, where Governer Steiner had his unique and independent enclave of humans and Grogs. So far, Steiner had never let his militias off his lands, which formed a buffer in the south between Kurian Louisiana and the Free Territory. Valentine had always hoped to hear of closer cooperation-he'd played a small part in that alliance his first year as a Wolf.

"Don't know, sir. They're coming out of Oklahoma."

"Are we supposed to sound assembly?" Valentine asked, letting his ears play across the campsite for sounds of the tents being struck and men gathering.

"The captain asks that you have your platoon turn out with full weapons and equipment, and you're to report to his tent, sir," Nishino reported.

"Thank you, son. Please walk, walk mind you, back to the captain and tell him I'll be there in five minutes. Sprinting in the dark is a good way to turn an ankle, or have a sentry put a bullet into you. Take it easy, boy." "Sir," the boy said, showing his best salute, and turned neatly to begin a stiff-spined walk back to the captain's tent. Valentine tried to remember if he'd acted like that when he'd first joined the Cause at seventeen. The Wolves sharing the wagon with Valentine still lay in their bedrolls. The pose was deceptive-Valentine had seen them lay hands on their rifles at the first hint of action in the air.

Valentine pulled on his boots. "Benning, find Sergeant Stafford, please. Tell him to get the platoon together, ammunition and two days' rations. Gabriel, please go and get the draft animals together on a line. We may be moving fast without the wagons. Thank you."

He hopped out of the wagon as the men exchanged knowing looks. They'd already seen through his facade. Whenever their young lieutenant spoke in that crisp, politely affected manner, action was in the air.

Valentine walked to the command tepee, unconsciously registering the clatter and curses in the night air as the camp came to life. Grogs were significant. The battle-bred warriors of the Kurians were rare in Oklahoma; Kur relied on Quisling troops in the plains. Might be they'd been brought down from Northern Missouri, and that could mean an attempt to thrust into the vitals of the Free Territory. Valentine ticked off the possibilities in his brain: a raid, an attempt on the Fort Smith region, or perhaps a thrust northeast to link up with others pushing south into Missouri, catching the forces and populace in that corner of the Free Territory in a meat grinder. Or most likely of all, it was a rushed-up retribution for the recent raid by Foxtrot Company. If that was the case, the Wolves could do what they did best: skirmish and ambush. They'd lead the Grogs on a chase until they could be decoyed into the Ozarks and cut off.

Captain Beck stood outside his tepee in the pink dawn, his hands behind him in the at-ease position.

Valentine came up beside him. "What's the situation, sir?"

"Pickets spotted the Grogs crossing the lake about midnight, five kilometers north of here. Tango Company might have picked them up; that's getting up in their area. They turned south right away, moving along the banks of the river. I sent the camp squad out to keep an eye on them- they're freshest. They'll bushwhack any scouts if they can. That'll slow the Grogs some."

"Strength?"

"Probably won't have any idea of numbers until daylight, but they're on those legworms-it's how they crossed the river so quick and easy. Pickets said they spotted harpies above the treetops. No sign of them here, so I'm hoping it's just their imagination."

"Coming here or just trying to raid into the Ozarks?"

"They're after us, no doubt about that. Maybe some Kurian is down to his last Reaper thanks to you, Valentine. We're going to make them sorry they caught up to us."

"How's that, sir?" Valentine asked, adding a silent prayer. It wasn't what he thought.

"I've already tele'd to Decatur for reinforcements and put the sick and wounded in the trucks you captured. Oh, and the children. There's a cavalry regiment of Guards in the area, and more behind them. The Grogs have got to be planning to burn this camp and maybe catch us pulling back toward the Free Territory. They've moved fast, so it can't be a well-planned assault. If we pull up onto Little Timber Hill, we can hold out there for days. It would take more artillery than the Grogs have in Missouri to blast us out of those rocks." Beck reached for the waxed linen packet in which he kept his cigars. With his usual courtesy, he offered one. Valentine shook his head, gathering the right words.

"Sir, there's nothing here worth fighting for. There aren't any of our farms within twenty miles at least. Let the Grogs bum some wagons and barrels of pork. If they follow us toward Fort Smith, the farther they go, the fewer will get back alive."

Beck's dark brows dueled like bighorn sheep. "Dammit, Valentine, you know how I feel about that kind of crap. Until we start making those Jaspers more afraid of us than we are of them, they're going to keep pushing into us whenever they feel like it. Besides, you're forgetting Lt. Caltagirone. He's still out with his short pla