Empire City

by Matt Gallagher

  “Roger.” The general reached across the car and patted his knee. “Your infantry is showing. I don’t doubt the Bureau’s sources. Nor do I doubt their seriousness. But think this through, strategically: If these Maydays want me and me alone, why strike today? Why not wait for an actual campaign event, when there’s no other VIPs and extra security around?”

  Tran didn’t respond. The general continued.

  “Today could be a breakthrough for American Service. Think it’s possible someone connected to the administration exaggerated all this to rattle us, to get us to back down? I do. Think it’s possible the good, hard-earned information gathered by rank-and-file Bureau agents gets shaped into political missives by clerks in Federal City? I do. Think it’s possible this is a hoax for ends and purposes we can only begin to guess at? I do.

  “Besides, even if it is this Jonah Gray and his band of disenfranchised, they’re just zealots. Broken ones, at that. Not rocket scientists, not servants of the state. What could they know, really?”

  Mia didn’t know anything about that. As the general had pointed out on the Utopia set, she’d only been a pilot. But her time in the cockpit had given her a topographical view of the wars and, perhaps, of how human beings behaved during conflict. “With respect, ma’am,” she said, “broken zealots have little to lose. It’s not so much what they know or what they can access. It’s more what they’re capable of, in spite of those things.”

  Tran pointed at Mia to show his agreement. General Collins considered this possibility, then reached for a cigarette. They waited while she took a drag and then another, staring out the window at the passing river.

  “I think everyone here served in the military for a similar reason,” she finally said. “To become the person we aspired to be. As tribute to the families and homes that produced us. But also to escape them.”

  That idea coalesced with her cigarette smoke for a few seconds before she continued.

  “You and your grandparents in Saigon, Roger. Your family, Mia, such an American success story. You owe them everything. And yet. You both set out to be as different as possible. An odd compliment, don’t you think? I’m the same, of course. Very much so.

  “The day after I turned sixteen, my father killed himself. He was a sad man. Pathetic, really. Alcoholic. Angry to be angry. Not particularly smart, not particularly handy. Not kind. The army wouldn’t take him during the war, so he got a job at a weapons plant and never left. Heck, I don’t think he ever left western Pennsylvania. He did love us, though. He loved us fiercely. He just didn’t know what to do with it. He didn’t know what to do with himself.

  “Our mother found him in the basement. Hung himself after too many drinks down there. No note, wasn’t his style. But we knew why. Life just took and took and took from him.

  “And I remember realizing that day—there was sadness, yes, I was going to miss him. He was my father. But more than anything, I remember relief. It was overpowering. For the first time, for the only time, as far as I knew, I could do anything I wanted. I was totally free.

  “I wrote about him in my application to West Point. Because I wanted to honor him. But also because I knew it would get me in. Through his death, my father opened to me a world of possibilities, a world so far beyond western Pennsylvania neither of us could’ve even imagined it. He gave me this life.”

  The cigarette was only half-smoked but General Collins was done with it. She tossed it out the window. None of this was in the general’s book, Mia thought. None of this has ever been shared.

  “I didn’t come this far to be afraid. I didn’t come this far to be cautious. I decided the day I graduated West Point I was willing to die for the idea of America. Same as you. Why should that change? I’m an old lady on the backside of life. I can’t become a coward now. That’s not how it works.

  “If this fucker wants me, he’ll get me. Today or tomorrow, it’s all the same. Here’s the thing, though.” The general smiled wide and rapped her fingers against the window, toward the river. “He best not miss.”

  * * *

  Mia found her reserved seat in the third row, facing the library steps. The speaker before General Collins, a retired admiral who’d participated in the naval siege of Hanoi, was twelve minutes past his allotted time and still going. Mia spotted Britt Swenson and Grady Flowers at the end of the first row—from the side, Britt’s profile looked like a long-haired replica of her brother’s, all sharp-jawed symmetry and hyperalertness. Flowers, meanwhile, had slumped low in his chair, making no attempt to hide his boredom, wraparound sunglasses perched upon his head like a crown of ballistic.

  Should I be nervous? Mia wasn’t sure, considering the question as she smoothed out her blouse and fixed her attention upon the stage. The seated audience sprawled across the open pavement of Fifth Avenue, hundreds more on their feet packed in behind them. She hadn’t attended the ballroom inaugural knowing it was under threat. Yet she’d come here today, knowing the parade was. Was that something a good mother-to-be did? Was it something she needed to try to justify to herself?

  She decided no. She wasn’t nervous, and that was that. If Mia felt anything, it was the long, taut calm she associated with helo missions abroad.

  Semper Gumby, she reminded herself. After all, I can always just fly away.

  Loose applause shook Mia from her ruminations. The admiral had concluded, and General Collins was striding across the stage, back rigid and shoulders cocked, West Point ring on her hand glinting like a black sun. She seized the podium with a smile and cleared her throat. The microphone carried the noise with a fist of an echo.

  “My fellow Americans: It’s a great honor to be speaking with you today. Praise to the Victors! The American triumph in Vietnam is everyone’s to remember, and everyone’s to take solace in. It took a special people to push back the onslaught of communism.

  “My message today is simple. We are still those people.”

  Mia treasured that line. In the draft she’d read, she’d underlined it and placed an exclamation mark along its side.

  “I come to you with a message of consideration, and of renewal, and to share a few thoughts with my countrymen. Thirty years ago, Hanoi fell and put to end a seemingly endless war that engulfed a generation. Thirty years ago, American resolve saved the world for democracy. A force of goodness did that, yes. So too did dirty work and messy labor.

  “Much blood was spilled along that strip of land in Southeast Asia. American and Vietnamese. Lives lost, families destroyed. Every Victor here saw a brother or sister in arms fall, someone who deserved to come home and live a full life, but didn’t. Unlike us standing here today, with our old, wizened faces and fading scars, they remain frozen in time. Still impossibly brave. Impossibly young. Still impossibly fierce and a bit silly, too. They remain as they were, forever, filled with the hopes of a future they’ll never have.

  “I’d like to tell a story about one of those fallen. My friend Javy. I met him in school. He was one of those young men seemingly born for the life—he…”

  As the general entered the personal anecdote section of the speech, Mia allowed herself to study the crowd. They were engaged, interested. Even Flowers had sat up. Unlike the admiral, General Collins knew how to inflex her voice. She knew when to pause and she knew when to push, her voice steady in both rhythm and variance. When Mia had first met her, the general spoke her message at audiences. Now she was bringing the audience to that message. It was a small, crucial difference, felt more than anything else. She’s gotten good at this, Mia thought. All the work, all the practice, was revealing itself today. She sounded—well. She sounded presidential.

  “When his wife called with the news, I broke down.” She has them now, Mia thought. Even those fringe citizens who distrusted warfighters would connect with this part. “Years of combat had numbed me some to loss, to death. But Javy felt different. I found solace that evening in ancient words, words I’ll share with you today, as we look back, together.

 
; “ ‘And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’

  “The Greek poet Aeschylus wrote that. The father of tragedy. An Athenian. A man who knew democracy’s strengths. A man who knew its weaknesses, too.”

  Mia looked around again. Every face was awash, every pair of eyes intent and full. This is it now, she thought. Bring us home, Jackpot.

  “Some of you may have seen my name in the news recently. Now’s not the time to discuss that, but I will say this: I won’t apologize for protecting this country. I love this nation. When I swore an oath to protect it, I knew that meant going abroad in search of monsters. We weren’t perfect. I’d be the first to admit that. We weren’t pure. War never is.

  “My name is General Jackie Collins. I’m a veteran. I’m a Victor. Not that long ago, I was one hell of a warfighter. America’s the greatest nation this world has ever known. And I’m here to say: let’s make it even better.”

  Mia saw a blue light flash behind the general as the speech ended. It was a signal to get her off the stage. Mia rushed for the stairs, making it to the rail before she heard the shout, strident and clear: “Thus Ever to Tyrants!”

  Then came the sound of the first bullet snapping air. She looked to the stage, searching for the general. She could only find bodies massing, then bodies falling.

  CHAPTER 24

  IN THE END, his cousin got it all done. The paramedic uniforms, the fake permit, even a fresh paint job for the old ambulance they’d found in a salvage yard. Four cops had come by and checked on them. From the driver’s seat, Emmanuel had yakked with them with a silver tongue Jean-Jacques never knew he had, agreeing with the older babylons that the Victors deserved the parade and more, then matching the younger ones’ disdain for having to yet again celebrate this ancient triumph.

  “You’re an artist,” Jean-Jacques told him, both proud of his cousin and wary, too. “Where you learn this?”

  Emmanuel shrugged. “For the cause,” he said.

  The ambulance was parked directly over a manhole at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-Seventh Street, a few blocks shy of the library, the stage of dignitaries, and a whole slew of television cameras. The manhole connected to a short sewer tunnel used by subway maintenance. A gaping hole in the floorboard of the ambulance would allow the Mayday veterans to funnel from the tunnel straight into the parade, three or four at a time. What came after, Jean-Jacques didn’t know. He’d done his part. He’d done as ordered.

  In the meantime, they waited.

  Signs of early parade pomp were beginning to stir. Young soldiers carried flags past the ambulance, headed toward the library steps. Private security teams were seizing their assigned corners, not looking twice at the ambulance because it was already there. Jean-Jacques even watched Pete walk by, laughing with three old men in suits and a navy admiral. Pete had donned his dress blues for the day, clean and pristine as a new morning.

  The true believer up on that stage, for all the homeland to see, Jean-Jacques thought, recalling how confused and lost Pete had sounded at the tiki bar. The perfect image for citizens across the empire: generals, senators, and Justice, together and united.

  Our sergeant has become their show pony, he thought. If the boys at Regiment could see him now.

  Rolling tanks in Paris, marching battalions in Nicosia, Cold War helos and artillery guns in Cairo and Beirut. Jean-Jacques had attended military parades the world over. He didn’t so much dislike the cocktail of pageantry and show of force as dismiss it. Nothing about the parades was for the actual soldier or veteran. It happened for everyone else, to make them feel whatever it was they felt like feeling, or felt like they needed to try for. All the real warfighters, they just wanted to be left alone, he thought. To sleep. To fuck. To eat. To breathe. To live free, whatever that meant, however it looked.

  “Where these scrubs at?” he asked Emmanuel. “Can’t sit here forever.”

  “Pierre said as soon as the parade reaches us. Then we roll.”

  Jean-Jacques grunted in response. Duty, he told himself. She beckons.

  * * *

  They were still waiting and watching twenty minutes later when Jean-Jacques looked across the avenue and saw the hostage kid who’d been following Pete around like a bootlicker arguing with a uniformed police. He tried to ignore them but found himself captivated by what was happening: the hostage red-faced, gesturing wildly with his hands, while the babylon listened with absolute indifference, arms folded across his chest. Passersby began to stop, interested in whatever the hostage was going on about, and then the babylon shook his head, telling them no.

  “Back in a minute,” he told Emmanuel, shutting the ambulance door behind him before his cousin could object. He reached the group just as the front of the parade appeared down the avenue, the marine band in the lead with big, brassy horns. To the north, toward the library, he heard the grumble of a microphone. The general was beginning her speech.

  “Dash!” the hostage said before Jean-Jacques could make the shush sign. “Thank Christ you’re here.”

  “Take a breath, hostage. Speak clear.”

  “I was trying to tell this goon”—Sebastian closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose—“Jonah Gray. He’s here.” Then he started talking about a tall, trim man in dress blues with a maroon beret who made Sebastian feel a memory that hadn’t even happened, but he’d been transported, into his own head and away from it, too, and before he’d figured out how, the man was gone, walking toward the library and the parade stage.

  Jean-Jacques’s chest seized up. The policeman was laughing, shaking his head. Jean-Jacques bowed his head and tried to think. The Mayday veterans were indeed just a distraction. But why? The Chaplain was smart; everyone thought he’d be with the dirty warfighters when he’d gone clean as could be. What would Pete do? he asked himself. He’d stop this, he knew, or at least try. Jean-Jacques looked around the maze of rooftops surrounding them. It was a sniper’s dream, a fantasyland for any professional with a rifle.

  The marine band was now steps away, playing “Rally ’Round the Flag.” The hostage asked Jean-Jacques something but the horns drowned it out. Then the hostage pointed across the street. He looked over. Bodies had begun swarming from the ambulance like ants.

  They were ragged, lean and hollow-eyed, mostly men but some women, too, all swathed in a jumble of urban and desert camo jackets. One began whooping like a hostile and the others answered him with the same cry. In five seconds there were a dozen in their rank; ten seconds later, three times that. And they kept coming. The police radioed in their presence but made no move toward them. He seemed to know a losing fight when he saw one.

  Whether they were all real Vietnam Victors seemed beside the point to Jean-Jacques. They looked the part. A deep horn sounded. Jean-Jacques first thought it came from the marine band but instead he found a five-ton truck moving onto Fifth Avenue, cutting straight through the band. Big, round Lamar Pierre sat in the driver’s seat, wearing a faded army cap, the truck’s open bed bunched full with colony Victors too broken to walk. A collection of crutches lay in the truck’s corner, stacked like firewood. A long white banner hung from the truck’s side, carrying the message THE HONOR IS OURS. These veterans were jeering obscenities, screaming and shaking their fists at the dismayed citizens. Jean-Jacques waved up to the five-ton, toward a man in a boonie cap with black pins for eyes. The man smiled and promptly flipped off Jean-Jacques with both hands. The five-ton began moving up the avenue, toward the library, ambling like a war elephant. The Mayday veterans on the ground whooped even louder.

  Through the mess of noise and chaos came the soft droning of speakers still projecting a speech. “Get those VIPs off the stage,” he said, pointing to the police’s radio. “Now.”

  “Maroon beret?” he asked Sebastian, who nodded. That meant paratrooper, which would at least narrow a desperate search through a crowd. “You
’ve done your part,” he told the hostage. Then he ran north, toward the library, as fast as any human being had ever moved upon earth.

  Hundreds of grateful American citizens packed the street and library steps, facing the stage, forcing Jean-Jacques to throttle down. There were too many people for him to maneuver freely. This is fucked, he thought, knowing that finding the Chaplain in this mass of humanity would be like finding one particular grain of sand in a desert. Still, he hopped up onto the base of a traffic signal for higher vantage.

  He scanned and scanned while General Collins talked and talked. He had no idea why she was still up there, why the VIPs hadn’t yet been evacuated. The audio from the speech began to clash in the air against the hard chants marching up the avenue. “May-day! May-day! MAY-DAY!” The horn of the five-ton blared over and over and people in the crowd started turning that way, to see what the bother was.

  Then he caught it, just a glimpse of paratrooper maroon but enough: on the stage itself, rows behind Pete Swenson and the dignitaries. He hopped off the traffic signal and began moving through the messy, faceless horde of citizens. The general kept speaking and speaking.

  Precious seconds dripped away under a gray sun. Jean-Jacques zoomed through the bodies with as much exactness and precision as he could. He spun around a child, hurdled a person in a wheelchair. The general kept speaking. Then, from a deep, hidden cave of the mind, the Chaplain’s voice found him: “They’ll get theirs.” He stopped running.

  This lady general and her Council of Victors? They’d played Pete for a chump. They’d used him and probably used us all, Jean-Jacques thought, somewhere along the way. They used the broken fucknuts in Mayday, too, who, despite everything, were still warfighters. Lamar Pierre was a good person. The pantry manager was a good person. They deserved better than this. They’ve used us, Jean-Jacques decided. They’ve used us all, now and always. Sending us to kill and conquer over there so they can control here.