Empire City

by Matt Gallagher

  She held up three fingers. “Only three percent of Americans serve in the military. Three percent that loves America enough to fight for it.

  “Or, as another cranky old general once put it: ‘Those who can truly be accounted brave are those who best know the meaning of what is sweet in life and what is terrible, and then go out, undeterred, to meet what is to come.’ That’s you. I don’t say this lightly. You’re my heroes.”

  The general led the room in applause before continuing. Mia ignored the impulse to tap at her prosthetic. An old habit from the first days, checking to make sure it was still there. She clapped along.

  “Whenever we joined the military, wherever the homeland sent us, we are united in—and by—that service. Wearing the uniform for thirty years remains the honor of my life. To be a warfighter—what more could a person aspire to? The question I asked myself the morning after I retired—the question some of you may’ve asked, too—is ‘What now?’

  “I’ve determined that continued service is the answer. And while continued service takes different forms for different people, it always involves giving back. Paying the war tax is something we all do, of course, but it’s such an intangible duty. Human beings need to see something for it to be real. We need to hold that something. For me—”

  Hold that something, Mia thought. Like an infant. Why now? she thought again. They had too much going on now. She felt a tug at her elbow. She ignored it and tried to focus again on General Collins’s speech. She felt another tug.

  “Gotta go,” Jesse mouthed, pointing to his phone and rising from his seat to a low crouch. “Work. E-mer-gen-cy.”

  Mia’s face set like a flint. A Bureau emergency. There always was a Bureau emergency. And he had the gall to mock spooks for being secretive. At least they didn’t treat every hiccup like an imminent disaster. Whatever, she thought. This would keep him from suplexing Liam Noonan into a table. She raised an eyebrow to convey acceptance, if not approval.

  “Thank you,” Jesse whispered as if she had a choice, and then he was gone.

  Mia returned to the speech. General Collins spoke about the importance of veterans in American society, how in an era of an all-volunteer military and a fraction of the population serving, each and every vet from Wall Street to Main Street had become an envoy. She spoke about the ways young enlisted veterans could benefit any organization or business, but sometimes had difficulties communicating that in their resumes.

  “We taught them how to speak military,” the general said. “Now they need to learn to speak business.” She spoke about the stereotypes citizens held because Mediterranean vets weren’t like the Greatest Generation or the Next Greatest Generation, because they hadn’t “won” their war. They weren’t all unemployed or crazy or bound for a rehabilitation colony. Besides, the colonies often worked! She spoke about how it was the responsibility of privileged veterans like those in this room to help their brothers and sisters in arms, and to do so in real, meaningful ways.

  Mia listened to it all, transfixed. Privilege. Responsibility. Meaning. People didn’t talk about doing more on Wall Street, even at summer luncheons. People usually talked about what was already being done. She could see some of the other attendees shifting in their seats, especially the older men. A lady general was one thing, but a lady general who told them they needed to do more for others? They hadn’t been spoken to like that in a long, long time.

  After the luncheon, a small group gathered around the general’s seat. She saw Liam Noonan, among others, beat a hasty retreat to the doors. I should’ve let Jesse throat-punch him, she thought, half-kidding. If only to keep him off TV for a little while.

  Mia lingered to the side of the circle around General Collins, wanting to thank her and perhaps get her book signed, too. The general had other plans.

  “Mia Tucker.” General Collins stood, parted the circle with knife hands, and grasped Mia by the palms. Mia tried to introduce herself but the general cut her off, saying, “Of course I know who you are.”

  Despite being the same height, Mia found herself gazing up. A slight stoop tipped General Collins’s shoulders forward, something Mia hadn’t noticed during the speech. Thirty years in uniform, which meant thirty years of body armor and thirty years of ruck marches and thirty years of sleeping on cots and in the backs of humvees and cargo trucks. The wear and tear didn’t much show on the general’s face, though, something Mia thought remarkable. Deployments showed on everyone.

  “Do you smoke, Mia?” General Collins sniffed, speaking low. “I always crave one after a speech.”

  “No, ma’am,” she said.

  “I have my assistant carry around packs,” General Collins said. “My family, bless their souls, are draconian about it. Walk with me.”

  The two women passed through a sliding screen door and into the rock garden. The formality in the general’s steps was gone, replaced with the stiff casualness of someone who sleeps like a mummy. Mia didn’t know why the general had recognized her. She may know about the cythrax bomb, Mia thought, but I’m not a Volunteer. I made the choice to leave. I made the choice to come home.

  General Collins took a seat on a wood bench. Mia smoothed her dress and did the same. A ribbon of a stream wrapped around the garden, nourished by a tiny waterfall dribbling down a slope in a far corner. The waterfall’s soft hum gave the garden its only sound. Somehow, an elevated, outdoor garden in the heart of Empire City was as insulated as a shrine. Mia found herself taken by the calm of it all.

  “Where are you now?” the general asked, cigarette between her lips. She cupped it with one hand and lit it with the other. “Job, family, future. Et cetera.”

  “Well.” Mia organized her thoughts as quickly as she could. Generals valued brevity. “I work at a bank. Corporate compliance. Just got engaged to a Bureau man. Staying here a few more years. No hard plan after.”

  “Kids?”

  “No, ma’am.” Mia resisted the impulse to touch her stomach. “Not for a while.”

  “Call me Jackie. I’m not one of those generals who get off pretending they’re still in.” General Collins took a slow, deep drag and leaned over, twisting her body to look at Mia. “I do miss it, though. Don’t you? That purpose of being. The team effort, the team focus. Langley’s not like that at all. There’s just—nothing like it.”

  “There’s not,” Mia said, remembering. “And I do. I do miss it.”

  “I’ll cut to the mustard.” General Collins took another long drag and then flicked the half-smoked cigarette to the stone path under them. “I’m going to announce for the Senate in two months. The fanatics have too much sway, too much influence. The new parties on the far left and far right have just made it worse. One kind of extremism just enables another. If you look at our history, the center is what has made America strong. The center needs a lot of help right now. It must hold. Ever since the jihadists got Javy in Istanbul…”

  Mia had forgotten the general had been close with the fallen ambassador. She’d still been in high school when that had happened. He’d been a founding member of the Council of Victors. Mia waited in silence until the older woman regained her verbal stride.

  “I’ve seen all this before. When I was your age. We’re on the brink again. My generation swore we’d never let another Vietnam happen. Yet here we are. Victory, but at what cost? Extremists, militants, separatists… all here, in America! The jihadists have evolved, too. The things they’re capable of now, in terms of destruction… it keeps me up at night. It really does.

  “I intend to win this seat. I intend to win because this country is in dire shape and needs to be reminded of the power of service. It needs to be reminded of the power of the center, and the hope it offers us all. In order to win, I need a good campaign team. Sharp. Dynamic. High energy.”

  Mia nodded, waiting for the general to continue. When she didn’t, Mia asked, “How can I help?”

  General Collins unwound her body on the bench. A medley of cracking joints followed.
“Fund-raising through your connections, for one. An independent party from the radical middle has no chance without Wall Street money. You could help with that, a lot. But it’ll be an all-hands-on-deck operation. We’ll need team members comfortable doing it all. You’re a special young woman, Mia. Someone with many talents. And you come highly recommended.”

  Mia couldn’t help herself. Something about the way the general had said “special” intrigued her.

  Something about the way the general had said “talents” bothered her.

  “By who?” she asked.

  “A few folks,” the general said. “Pete Swenson, especially. He couldn’t stop singing your praises.”

  Mia tried to remain straight-faced. “Of course,” she said. The garden’s shadows rolled through her, and she reached for a sweater around her shoulders that wasn’t there. “Pete will do that.”

  First his sister and now this, Mia thought. I told him to leave me alone.

  The two women exchanged contact information, Mia with a business card, the general by writing her phone number on another of Mia’s cards.

  “My personal line,” she said. “Be ready. Politics is war without bloodshed.”

  “Chairman Mao,” Mia said, and the general smiled at the attribution.

  “Be ready,” General Collins said again. Then she walked into the building.

  Mia sat in the rock garden alone, listening to the waterfall’s dribbles. She didn’t care that it was fake. She only cared that the calm it brought was true. She’d heard the rumors about why the general hadn’t gotten her third star, stories swapped by national security journalists and think-tank types. Jackpot had punched a War Department superior. No, others said, she’d thrown a commemorative pistol at him, a gift from a tribal leader overseas. Because she’d been lied to about a warfighter surge. No, because she’d blacklisted a subpar private military company and they’d gone around her back. Because she’d been promised the Sinai command before the privateers took over. Because after thirty years of war, she’d just had enough.

  All the stories, all the rumors, agreed on one thing: General Collins was not to be crossed.

  The cinder of the general’s half cigarette blinked out on the ground, thin curls of smoke waning into the air. Before leaving herself, Mia picked up the half cigarette and dropped it into a trash can. Litter on the streets was one thing. Litter in a garden was another.

  Apprehension shook at Mia all afternoon, though why, she couldn’t quite work out. There was the baby, or not-baby, but that wasn’t it. Not entirely. More than anything, Mia wanted to rip off her prosthetic and fly through the sky for hours on end, until her lungs burned cold and her skin was coated in thick, soapy vapor. Then she’d be able to figure it out.

  But she didn’t do that anymore. So she wouldn’t.

  CHAPTER 3

  WHAT WAS MEMORY and what was dream? Jean-Jacques couldn’t be sure anymore. Taut, frenzied firefights in night-vision green had filled his life, so they filled his sleep, too. Midnight raids coming upon villages from the holy above, blades churning, quiet as sin, loud like virtue. Propellant, hot blood, and emptied bowels, or what passed for them in the dreamscape, slid through his mind like rainwater. A mission for someone, or something, so a mission like any other, except for the missions that were different.

  A hunt’s thrills, a hunt’s terrors. Dark everlasting.

  Boot steps and battle rattle, rifles probing, into the compound they go. Shouts like hammers, voices of command and voices of care and voices of alarm all whirling together into one singular monk chant of violence. Red lasers dancing on walls, searching, seeking, proclaiming, first in brittle English then again in sky-soaked kreyol, in power, in glory, like the voice of God itself.

  A touch of smoke. The taste of dust. A rifle burst into shadow. Oh, to know the unknown. The long, dirty pause before clarity, when anything is possible, nothing ripping out into everythings, mind in chest and heart in head, ready, ever ready, always vigilant.

  Of their own accord.

  Where’s the boy? The damn boy, Jean-Jacques. Find the boy.

  The particulars turn to strands of cognizance, short broken reels from the other side. Mind spew or the entirety of the universe? Who could say. Not Jean-Jacques. He didn’t try to hold to them for understanding, not anymore. He forced them away by not forcing anything at all.

  Jean-Jacques knew these weren’t good dreams, but they weren’t bad dreams, either. They were dreams. None of it was new.

  A sense that he hadn’t been himself on the other side of consciousness sometimes skulked around, though, in the soft corners between sleep and awareness. Like he’d been observing there. Watching, not doing. Like the soldier had been a figment all along. Not a growth. Not a progression. Just a necessity for a fixed place and time.

  Too much partying with the guys, Jean-Jacques would think when he came to. Too much comfort and indulgence in Hollywood, not enough time at the gym and the range, staying lethal. But dream, memory, idle thought: all led back to the boy. To the boy he’d lost, to the boy he’d failed. He knew that. All roads led back to the war.

  * * *

  Jean-Jacques Saint-Preux had come home.

  He’d left Little Haiti eight years before, promising to never return. He’d abided by that until now. Jean-Jacques had missed a cousin’s wedding, a nephew’s graduation, an uncle’s deportment. Duty, he’d tried to explain. The profession of arms, a nice, workmanlike way of saying he’d devoted his life to spilling blood and snatching souls in the name of the homeland. Twelve tours between the International Legion, the Rangers, and the Volunteers. Jean-Jacques had earned his honor in the process, and citizenship, too. At some point, though, on one of those twelve business trips, over there had become more normal than back here. Months lost to filming Hollywood propaganda for the government had only exacerbated that dislocation. Jean-Jacques wanted nothing more than to get back to combat, where life made sense.

  In the meantime, home had gone on without him.

  The differences reminded him of that. Renovated houses, new businesses, closed ones, too, strange streetlights and stop signs. A coffee shop had opened up next to the old boxing gym on Delmas Street. A chain coffee shop. When had—he stopped himself. He didn’t want to care.

  The air smelled the same, though. Like hot trash and wildflower.

  Jean-Jacques turned the car onto a thoroughfare. He drove slow along the water, window open and looking left, across the bay. The night skyline of Empire City had once meant everything to him. The big, scattershot lights and dark silhouettes like castles suggested something else, something more. And the power of else and more can transform a young mind. It had for him, growing up in the outer reaches of the city, hiding from bored hoods looking for familiarity in a strange land far from the Pearl of the Antilles. And what could be more familiar, more unifying, than beating on a loner?

  He’d found refuge at the skate park, where enough kids from surrounding districts showed up to bring out the occasional patrol car. They’d laugh at the fat immigrant trying ollies and grinds on a ragged board from the flower power era, but he didn’t mind. Laughter was peace, even laughter at him. The black Americans could call him whatever they wanted, and so could the cops. They didn’t know who he was, where he came from. They thought he was different in a normal way. He’d liked that. Besides, after they went home with their jokes, he could sit on a park bench and watch the water churn and watch the night come upon the city like a mask and he could think about else and he could think about more and he could just be alone. Most important of all, he could just be left alone.

  The skate park wasn’t there anymore. Jean-Jacques had driven past it earlier and found a carry-out Chinese restaurant. But the skyline remained. It had matched the traces of memory, mostly. The Global Trade skyscraper lit up the end of the island, rigid as a longsword. Its force reminded Jean-Jacques of Tripoli for some reason, which in turn reminded him of that specific blend of propellant, hot blood, and emptied bo
wels he’d come to associate with death. Something about nothingness being something, he decided. Instead of what it was supposed to be.

  The lights from the city still washed out the stars above. That left a different type of nothingness.

  What kind of place doesn’t have stars? Jean-Jacques considered that in the car. It hadn’t been until he traveled the globe in attack helicopters that he’d seen the night sky for all its glory. The galaxy went on for forever, something that put into perspective the elses and mores offered by one city skyline. Even home’s.

  Jean-Jacques turned off the thoroughfare and passed under a stoplight. It was stuck and burned yellow and burned yellow and kept burning yellow, never changing. He parked the car. Across the street, behind a chain-link fence, a pair of teen boys built like fishbones played basketball on a new hoop. They didn’t look his way but he could tell they were side-eyeing him through the dim.

  Maybe I should’ve dressed down, he thought, before correcting himself. He’d worn a polo and pressed slacks for a reason. Might as well own it.

  Jean-Jacques unrolled the windows and left the doors unlocked; he’d borrowed the car from one of the bohemians they were staying with and didn’t want to return it less than whole. Such an act didn’t seem necessary in this Little Haiti but it had been in his. He walked past the teenagers and their side-eyes toward a cluster of tall, dull buildings made of brick.

  “Welcome to General Ulysses S. Grant Houses,” read a blue sign held up on wooden stilts. “A Wonderful Community.”

  The courtyard of the public housing complex was a gray slab of cement and cold shadows. Lampposts marked the way to metal tables in the center, forming a sort of concrete pergola. Stereos from different apartment windows blasted out dance songs, the even, pulsing beats filling the courtyard with dueling shouts and sing-along. But other than a group of girls jumping rope, Jean-Jacques didn’t see anyone. Sunday night, he thought. Most people would be walking the Mache. The moon sat tucked behind an armada of gray clouds. Black mass had descended.