Read Winter Duty for Free Online Page A

rated his own adjutant, and Post’s office was just beyond his adjutant’s. There was no door between Post’s office and his adjutant’s, just a wide entryway.
    Valentine knocked on the empty doorframe. Post beamed as he entered. There was a little more salt to his salt-and-pepper hair and a good deal more starch in his uniform, but then headquarters standards had to be maintained.
    The last time Valentine had seen Will Post, his friend was lying in his hospital bed after the long party celebrating the victory in Dallas and the retirement of the old Razors.
    Post sported a lieutenant colonel’s bird these days. Even better, he looked fleshed-out and healthy. Valentine was used to seeing him thin and haggard, tired-eyed at the Chinese water torture of minutiae involved in running the old battalion, especially the ad hoc group of odds and sods that had been the Razors.
    When Valentine had first met him in the Kurian Coastal Marines, his uniform bore more permanent sweat stains than buttons. Now he looked like he’d wheeled out of an award-banquet picture.
    “Hello, Will,” Valentine said, saluting. Post, as a lieutenant colonel, now outranked a mere major—especially one who usually walked around Southern Command in a militia corporal’s uniform. Valentine felt embarrassed, trying not to look at the wheelchair. He’d seen it in pictures, of course.
    “Good to see you. What happened to your ear?”
    Valentine had left a hunk of lobe in Kentucky. If he could find the right man with a clipper, he should really even them up, even if it would make him look a bit like a Doberman.
    “A near miss that wasn’t much of a miss.”
    “Sit down, Val,” Post said. “I was just about to order sandwiches from the canteen. They have a cold-cut combo that’s really good; I think there’s a new supplier. Cranberries are plentiful now too, if you’re in the mood for a cranberry and apple salad. Our old friend Martinez has made some commissary changes already.” He reached for his phone.
    “I’ll have both. I’ve an appetite today.”
    Post, in his efficient manner, had seen Valentine’s discomfiture and acted to correct the situation.
    While the Enemy Assessments Director-East called down to the canteen, Valentine glanced around the room. Post’s office had two chairs and an odd sort of feminine settee that in another time and place would have been called a fainting couch.
    “How’s Gail?”
    “Good. She does volunteer work over at United Hospital. She’s good with me, with the wounded. She says she only does it to forget about what she went through, but she could just as easily do that by sitting in a corner slamming tequila. Which is how I met her, way back. Except she was reading.”
    Post’s desk had too many file folders, reachers to help him access shelves, coding guides and a battered laptop to have much room for pictures. He had citations and unit photos—Valentine recognized the old picture of himself and Ahn-Kha on the road to Dallas.
    Ahn-Kha. Probably his closest friend in the world other than Duvalier, and the big golden Grog wasn’t even human. He was leading a guerrilla band in the Appalachians, doing so much damage that both sides were mistaking his little partisan band for a large army.
    He’d seen that same shot on his visit to Molly and her son, ages ago. Ever since he’d brought her out of Chicago as a Wolf lieutenant, they’d been family to one another, with a family’s mix of joys and heartbreak.
    Odd that Post and Molly should both like that photo. Of course, the only other published picture of Valentine that he could remember was an old photo taken when he became a lieutenant in his Wolf days.
    What Valentine guessed to be a map or recessed bookcase stood behind heavy wood cabinet doors complete with a lock. Nearest Post’s desk was his set of “traveling wheels.”
    Valentine looked at the biggest picture on his desk: a family photo of his wife, Gail, and a pigtailed toddler. “I