by Alex Irvine
Shooting around the gate intensified, and something exploded under one of the JTF firing platforms. A moment later four of the black-uniformed soldiers got through the gate. JTF defenders cut them down, but the helicopters opened up on them. Seconds later, another group in black came through. This time they got halfway to the building entrance before Aurelio popped up on the other side of the security gate and shot three of them. The other one returned fire, but Aurelio was off and running, weaving past generators and stacks of crates and even using a large iron sculpture as a momentary shelter to reload. He sprinted out from behind it, firing as he ran, and disappeared from April’s view.
If any of the soldiers found her now, she was dead. She had a knife and that was it. It occurred to her that maybe her best hope was for Ike Ronson to find her, but that was a slim hope indeed, because if Ronson did find her, April intended to stab him. He wouldn’t be much of an ally after that.
The third helicopter had been out of her field of vision for a while, but now it loomed directly overhead. It hovered over the lab building, its downdraft beating on April as it unloaded its complement of soldiers onto the building’s roof.
Aurelio came hustling around the far corner, staying close to the wall. Halfway to April, he stopped and raised his rifle. Instinctively she hit the ground, and Aurelio fired over her. She rolled back to her feet and saw one of the soldiers in black pitching forward face-first onto the grass.
When he got to her, Aurelio leaned in close. “They’ve got men on the roof. It’s game over. We have to get out.” He tapped his ear. “SHD agent Diaz here,” he said, shouting over the rotor downdraft from the helicopter still hovering overhead. “Position overrun. Urgently need tactical support. I am extracting with a valuable human asset.”
He winced as a flare of white noise loud enough for April to hear crackled out of his earpiece.
“Shit,” Aurelio said. “There goes ISAC.”
“ISAC?”
“Our comms network. It’s been unreliable for days now, but I think it just fried out. I still have some database and voice comms, but everything else is toast. Anyway, never mind. We have to get you out of here.”
“What makes me a valuable human asset?” April asked.
“I’ll tell you when we’re not under fire.” Aurelio looked around and then up. The third helicopter eased forward, out of sight. “They’re in the building now. JTF is completely overrun. All we can do now is put some distance between us and Ike before he tells them who they should be looking for.”
To the west were a couple of smaller buildings and a large solar panel array. Beyond it, more campus buildings. To the north, the same. East was out, and so was south. At least, that was what April was thinking, but Aurelio said, “Okay. We’re going to go northwest.” He pointed. “And I mean running. As soon as we get past those first buildings, we cut back south. There’s woods on the other side of the VA hospital, and if we can get into them, we’ll be all right. Sound good?”
“As good as anything else,” April said.
“Oh, one more thing.” Aurelio ran to the body of the soldier he’d shot and recovered his weapon. He handed it to April. “You might want this later.”
Only then did she realize she’d left the Super 90 behind when she ran from the helicopter. But there was no going back for it now. She followed Aurelio along the building wall to its northwest corner. Then he said, “On three. One . . . two . . .”
They ran.
41
AURELIO
They made it past the solar panel array and through a low swampy patch between two ponds with no trouble. The attacking force was completely focused on the laboratory building. “So far, so good,” Aurelio said. They were crouched in the brush on the south side of one of the ponds, catching their breath before they started the next stage of their breakout dash. Just across Fuller Road, the VA hospital loomed. A JTF force, not nearly enough to turn the tide of the battle, was heading out across the road toward the combat zone. Some of the attacking force took up positions in the parking lot to meet them.
“Now’s a good time,” Aurelio said.
He broke from the brush and headed across the road. April ran with him. She looked over her shoulder as they got across to the hospital parking lot.
Six men in black uniforms were breaking away from the coming shoot-out in the parking lot. “They’re following us,” April panted.
Aurelio glanced back. “Looks like we’re not into the woods yet,” he said. Even in the middle of a life-or-death situation, April took a moment to roll her eyes at the terrible joke.
“Dad jokes survived the plague, huh?” she needled lightly as they dodged behind a commuter bus abandoned in the lot.
“Once you’re a dad, it’s like a latent gene comes to life,” Aurelio said. This gave April pause. She hadn’t known he had kids.
He peeked around the front of the bus, drawing fire. Their pursuit had slowed and broken into three-man teams, one angling between them and the hospital entrance while the other came straight toward the bus. “Pin those guys down for a minute,” Aurelio said, pointing toward the entrance. “And keep your feet right by the front tire.”
April did as she was told, waiting until the three men appeared in the drop-off circle in front of the hospital. She sprayed a burst in their direction and they took cover.
Perfect, Aurelio thought. He unhooked a grenade from his belt. “Thanks, Ike,” he said. He pulled the pin and skipped it under the bus sidearm, like he was skipping a rock. Then he stepped behind the bus’s rear tires.
The grenade blast blew out most of the bus’s windows. Aurelio heard a thunk down by his feet, which must have been shrapnel hitting the tire. He glanced over and saw April looking down, too. Then he sidestepped around the back of the bus. The grenade had laid out two of the three attackers. The third was just then scrambling out from behind a pillar in a parking garage by the hospital. Aurelio dropped him. He heard April firing and looked over to see one of the trio in the drop-off circle stagger as the others exposed themselves to get a shot at Aurelio. A second later he heard a rapid click. April was out of ammo.
Aurelio came back around the rear of the bus at a dead run. “Now’s our chance. Go!” he shouted. He sprinted around the access road circling the hospital grounds, April right behind him. The sounds of machine-gun fire and helicopter rotors followed them into the woods.
They cut straight south, around the edge of a big apartment complex. Then they came out on the riverbank, sooner than Aurelio had expected. “Not good,” he said. They were both carrying too much to swim, and besides that, swimming would make them easy targets if there was still going to be pursuit. Aurelio had a brief vision of a Black Hawk catching them in the middle of the river.
“No, look,” April said.
He looked where she was pointing, not even a hundred feet upstream. A footbridge crossed the river, disappearing into the trees on the other side.
“I take it back,” Aurelio said. “Good.”
They got across the path, and on the other side of the river they found that they were on the Gallup Park Pathway, which ran between the river and railroad tracks. Aurelio kept them moving fast for more than an hour, staying on the railroad tracks after the path ended. They finally stopped at an old dam, with the remains of a paper mill across the river. Nobody seemed to be around. Their arrival startled a heron, which lifted away from the riverbank and soared over their heads to the south. “I think this is the next town over,” Aurelio said. “Ypsilanti. We should get something to eat and then keep moving. Once Ike’s handlers figure out the samples are gone, they’ll be looking for us.”
April was quiet as Aurelio handed her an MRE. It was one of his last. They would both be foraging for the foreseeable future unless they decided to head for a JTF garrison. “We should have stayed to fight,” she said.
“I get it,” Aurelio sai
d. “But the minute those Black Hawks showed up it wasn’t really a fight anymore. Also, if we’re dead we can’t share the intel we picked up.”
“Is that what you meant when you said I was a valuable human asset? Because I’ll tell you the truth, Aurelio. I don’t feel too valuable right now. I feel like I led Ike Ronson right to all those people, and now they’re dead.”
“Listen, I’m right there with you,” Aurelio said. “If I’d taken him out last night, none of this would have happened. So we can do one of two things. We can sit around wallowing in survivor’s guilt, or we can make sure we tell people what’s about to happen so more people don’t die.”
She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “You’re a hard-ass, Aurelio.”
“These are hard-ass times. People have died because of things you did, people have died because of things I did. But put the blame where it belongs. Ike Ronson sold us both out.” Aurelio finished his MRE and wiped his fork on his pants before stowing it in his pack. “I wish there was time for commiserating, but there isn’t.”
“Okay,” April said. She took a deep breath, held it, let it slowly out. “So what do we do next?”
“Here’s how I see it.” Aurelio held out a hand. “Give me the clip from that M16.”
It took April a minute to figure out how to release the magazine, and Aurelio didn’t help. She was going to need to know how to do that once they separated. When she found the release switch, she handed it over, and he reloaded it as he went on. Good thing the G36 and M16 used the same ammunition, he thought.
“Here’s what makes you valuable. Professor Chandrasekhar probably won’t make it through the day. Neither will anyone else in there who knows they already sent the antiviral samples to someone in DC. That means you and me and Ike Ronson are the only three people with that knowledge. He’s going to tell his friends. We have to tell ours.”
“So back to New York,” April said. “I’ll be honest, I was hoping to never go back there.”
“Well, you don’t have to. At least not yet. What you need to do is go to DC. That’s where the samples were headed, so that’s where the intel needs to go first. ISAC is on the fritz, so I have no long-range comms right now, or I would let them know you’re coming.” He did still have local area information and static database access, but that was probably from local signals in Detroit. ISAC wasn’t quite blind, but it was definitely myopic.
“DC,” she said. “I don’t know anyone in DC. I mean, I did have a friend there. Her name’s Mirabelle. We were pretty close in college. But I doubt she’s still alive. And anyway, shouldn’t you do that?”
“I have to get to one of the petroleum storage facilities Ike was listing. If an assault is coming, the JTF needs to know about it and beef up their defenses. So I’m headed to New London, Connecticut. Ike named it, and it’s a lot closer than Maine.” Aurelio handed her back the magazine and she clicked it into place. Then he handed her a box of shells. “That’s all I can spare.”
“I hope I won’t need any of it.” April looked haunted. “I was a design manager, Aurelio. I did sketches and spreadsheets. Now I’ve . . .” She closed her eyes. “I don’t even know how many people I’ve killed.”
Join the club, Aurelio thought. But it was tougher on her. She hadn’t trained for the possibility. “You haven’t killed anyone who didn’t have it coming,” he said. “They chose their side.”
“My head knows that,” April said.
“But you still feel bad. That’s good. If you didn’t feel a little bad, you’d be emotionally dead. The world put you in a tough spot. You’re making the best of it.”
He stood up and stretched, then shouldered his pack and slung his rifle. “We shouldn’t stay in one place too long. They might still be looking for us.”
* * *
• • •
Late that day they got into Detroit, navigating by word of mouth to a trading post and port on Zug Island, where the Rouge flowed into the Detroit River. Looking across the river at Canada, maybe a thousand yards away, Aurelio wondered how things were over there. Maybe someday he would find out. The next morning they found passage to Cleveland, and after restocking at the JTF base there, it was time to part ways. Aurelio had put in a word for April with the JTF, and they had agreed to help her get at least as far as Pittsburgh. The JTF officers there would have a better idea how to get her to DC.
“When you get there,” Aurelio said, “find a Division agent. Show them this.” He handed her Ike’s watch. “That’ll get their attention. Then tell them exactly everything you learned out here. Give them my name. A lot of agents in DC know me. Remember, we have to assume that nobody on earth except Ike Ronson’s bosses and maybe a couple of people in back offices somewhere know the BSAV is real. Get word of that to the Division agents in DC. Tell them that’s what they’re fighting for.”
She put the watch in her pack. “Seems weird that I’m going to DC, when that’s where you’re from.”
“Yeah,” Aurelio said. “But that’s how it is sometimes. Can I ask you a favor?”
“Of course.”
“I have two kids. Amelia and Ivan. They were in a refugee camp at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, but then most of the people there were moved out to another camp at the Smithsonian Castle. You ever been there?”
She nodded. “I’ve seen the sights in DC, yeah.”
“I went up to New York because that’s where I was needed, but I was planning to head back down to DC when all this with Ronson went down. And now I’m going to Connecticut. So if you could maybe see if my kids are okay . . .” He was getting choked up. April reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.
“I’d be happy to, Aurelio. You said Amelia and Ivan?” He nodded. April patted him and said, “I’ll do that first thing.”
“No, get the intel about the BSAV to an agent first.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” April said. “If I see an agent before I get to the Smithsonian Castle, I’ll do that. But if not, I’ll check on your kids. Then I’ll tell the agent to get word to you.”
His throat was still tight. Aurelio nodded his thanks. “Tell them I’m okay,” he said.
“I will.” A horn honked. April looked over at the staging area by the football stadium, where she was supposed to meet the driver for her ride to Pittsburgh. “I think that’s my ride.”
“Sounds like it,” Aurelio said. “Listen, one more thing.”
Half-turned away, she stopped to listen.
“I know it’s hard to look past all the bad things that happened the last couple of days,” Aurelio said. “But I hope you at least got a little peace out of learning about your husband.”
April smiled. A melancholy smile, but still a smile. “I did, yeah,” she said. “Thank you for reminding me of that. I hope I can give you a little peace when I get to DC.” She lifted a hand in farewell and walked off toward the waiting truck.
Me, too, Aurelio thought. Me, too.
42
VIOLET
The attack, when it finally came, started at midnight. Violet thrashed awake at the sounds of gunfire and bullets hitting the Castle walls. Before having a conscious thought, she was already diving out of bed to hit the floor. She lay there panting as the other kids in the room did the same, lying flat or huddling in the corners. Shelby started to scream. Saeed was closest to her. He gathered her up in a hug and just held on to her while the bullets pounded into the walls. They heard glass breaking down on the lower floors, and adults shouting.
Then the Castle people started to fight back.
In the past week, they had done a lot of work. The walls around the grounds were up and fortified. The windows were sealed. On the upper floors of the Castle and both museums, Junie and Mike had directed the construction of sandbag-walled firing positions. Sentries kept watch twenty-four hours a day.
Even so, Violet was terri
fied. Shelby was starting to calm down, but even though Violet was gulping air, she couldn’t seem to get her breath.
At first the bullets all seemed to be hitting lower floors, but now they climbed the building. The sounds of shattering glass echoed down the stone hallways. One of the last windows to be shot out was the kids’ bedroom window facing the Mall. The bullets that blew it in punched into the drywall ceiling, and one of them ricocheted back down off the stone roof above, punching through the door.
The firing stopped. People were still shouting on the lower floors, but nobody was shooting back from the Castle.
A moment later Violet heard Sebastian’s voice, booming across the Mall. He was using a megaphone. “Hello, Smithsonian Castle!” he called. “This is a hint. A warning, a shot across the bow, as it were. We’ve been very patient with you, but that patience does not appear to be getting results. So it’s time to take some more decisive action.”
Violet wanted to get to the window and see him. Somehow that seemed less scary than just listening to his voice without knowing where he was. But there was broken glass all over the floor and the couches by the window and she didn’t have shoes on. So she had to stay put and hear the rest.
“We’re going to be back tomorrow. I’ll even tell you when we’re coming. Let’s say . . . I was going to suggest early in the morning, but I know I’ve interrupted your sleep. So let’s say noon. We’ll come back at noon, and I dearly hope for your sake that your gate on Independence Avenue is open. Junie? Mike? I hope you’re hearing me. Sleep tight, everyone.”
