Chapter Forty-Nine
May 16
Hunter spent the next five days sleeping.
He’d discovered Dominique had maintained a separate place at the Ritz during her month with Zmeya, so he just went there, pulled the curtains tight, and crashed. Many disjointed dreams followed.
When he finally let daylight in again, he discovered the majority of Russian troops had left New York City two days before. Moscow had declared their peacekeeping mission a success, with no reason to stay any longer. The Okupatsi forces loaded themselves onto their three gigantic troopships, and the entire fleet just sailed away as if nothing had ever happened.
Hunter walked the streets of Manhattan for the next few hours. It was raining again. With his collar up and his scally cap low over his eyes, no one recognized him, which was good. His spirits were still low.
He surveyed the damage to the city along the way. The devastation was incredible in some places, especially around the old MMZ. Yet other parts of Manhattan were untouched. The overall cleanup had already started; he even saw a few commuter buses making their way up Madison Avenue. Droves of people were returning to the city, many using the subway.
He walked up to North Harlem, past the tunnels they’d used to get into the underground transit system. The boats Geraci and NJ104 had secured to get the assault team across the Hudson were still there, tied up along the shore.
He walked around Yankee Stadium, saw the trenches, saw the blood on the field.
There was a dead Chekski hanging upside down, Mussolini-style, from one of the sports monuments out front. He’d been beaten to death, possibly with baseball bats. A sign tied around his neck said he’d been executed by the new dirt army for crimes against america. On a closer look, Hunter realized he knew who the dead man was. The Chekski executioner with the scarred face. The guy who’d slaughtered the 7CAV people at the Pine Barrens base along with many, many more during a monthlong rampage in New York City. The guy who always left behind a smiling, twisted caricature of himself, painted with the blood of his victims.
Hunter had to laugh at the corpse, because the man’s famously hideous smile was now turned upside down—and looked like a bizarre frown.
He ended his walking trip at an unlikely destination: a side entrance to the practically untouched Empire State Building.
He took the elevator to the ninetieth floor. A hand-drawn sign greeted him. It read mayor’s office, second left.
Hunter walked in to find Bull Dozer sitting behind an embarrassingly ornate desk in an embarrassingly ornate office.
“Holy Christ, what do I call you?” he said looking around at the dark oak pageantry. “Is it ‘Your Honor’? or ‘Mister Mayor’? Or ‘Your Majesty’? What?”
“It’s only a temporary position,” Dozer replied, nodding toward the mountain of paperwork taking up one end of the desk. “But ‘His Craziness’ might be a good place to start.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Hunter said, taking a seat next to Dozer’s old radio, the one he’d had with him during the dark days in the Pine Barrens. “Plus, now you have enough weapons to outfit a pretty sizable army. Even more than the old days at ZAP. Except it’s all Russian.”
Dozer poured each of them a whiskey, and then began ticking off a list from memory.
“One monster aircraft carrier, slightly damaged,” he said. “Forty-three Su-34 JLR kick-ass fighter planes complete with buddy craft. Thirty-six copters, including eighteen of the attack variety. Two thousand and thirty tons of ammunition. Plus nukes, bio weapons. Poison gas. …”
“What are you going to do with it all?” Hunter asked him.
“Despite the Reds’ missile attack, the refrigerated bunkers back in the Pine Barrens are still intact,” Dozer reported. “So, we’re putting all the really scary stuff in them for the time being. At least now those ice boxes will be good for something.”
“And then?”
“Then we’ve got to put the city back together again,” Dozer told him. “I’m guessing a lot of people will want to come back here, now that the Reds are gone and the situation has stabilized. Donnie Kurjan has arranged for a division from the United American Army to stay for at least a year, and Louie is sending five battalions of the Football City Special Forces to do the same thing. That will be an enormous help. Plus, JAWS and NJ104 will been around, and there are my guys, of course. It won’t be easy, but it beats the alternative.
“As far as the big picture, with all the military gear we’ve got now, anyone who screws around this side of the Mississippi will most likely get a visit from us. Eventually, maybe we’ll kick those Asian merc assholes out of the West Coast. It would be nice to get L.A. and Vegas back from them. Who knows? Maybe I’ll meet wife number six in Hollywood. Anything is possible.”
They both drank to that.
Then they fell silent for a moment, Hunter staring into his empty glass. “Nothing on Dominique, I guess?” he finally asked.
Dozer shook his head. “Nothing on where she is, or who those weirdo copter guys were. But I do have this. …”
He passed Hunter a black-and-white photograph that had been taken off a videotape. It showed two helicopters flying side-by-side over the East River. One was the same CH-21 “Flying Banana” Dozer saw carrying Dominique and the yellow box off the top of Tower Two. The second helicopter was a Russian-made Mi-26, the gigantic rotary craft Zmeya used as his taxicab, the same aircraft he’d been expecting that morning atop Tower Two.
“That was taken by an old security camera hanging off the UN Building about five minutes after you crashed on top of Tower Two,” Dozer told him. “Don’t ask me to explain it. I’ve got no freaking idea what’s going on there, other than it appears that whoever was flying that Russian chopper never intended to pick up Zmeya that last time. He was waiting in vain.”
Hunter didn’t say anything; he just drained his drink and poured himself another. The mystery army copter flying alongside the NKVD’s Mi-26 behemoth? What the hell was that about?
“Should I update you on other things that happened while you were taking your nap?” Dozer asked him.
“I’m all ears,” Hunter replied. “Unless it’s going to make me want to go back to bed.”
“You never know,” Dozer said. “So, did you hear about the First Chekski Police Battalion? The guys Zmeya sent down to the Pine Barrens to look for us?”
Hunter shook his head. “What happened to them?”
Dozer shrugged. “That’s just it. No one knows. They disappeared. We found their clothes and their weapons when we went down there to check the ice boxes, but no sign of the Chekskis themselves. Vanished—poof!”
Hunter almost laughed again. It was a weird reaction, but he couldn’t help it. “Hey, their own military guys told them not to go down there. Should have listened. …”
“Your pal, Samsonov, visited me the other day,” Dozer went on. “You know he and a group of them jumped ship and stayed behind. They’re asking for asylum, about a thousand in all, including lots of MOP guys. Sammy says he’ll supervise them and help us get the mess cleaned up.”
Hunter took another swig of his drink. “He might make a good mayor someday,” he said with a straight face.
“All he needs is a girlfriend,” Dozer replied. “And, by the way, I got a call from another old friend of yours, Roy from Troy.”
“ ‘Selling weapons at discount prices since the end of the Big War,’” Hunter said, repeating the arms dealer’s sales motto.
“Very good,” Dozer said. “Anyway, he told me that by now, everyone across the country knows what went on here. So, he congratulated us. Then he said, next time you want two huge buildings knocked down, call him, because he has old remote-controlled airliners wired up with explosives for just that kind of job.”
“Available to destroy tall buildings?” Hunter replied. “He’s a marketing g
enius.”
Dozer filled their glasses again. “Maybe so,” he said. “But personally, I think this country is better off with those two towers still standing.”
They toasted to that.
“Too bad Fitz wasn’t here for all this,” Hunter said. Of all the people he’d fought with after the Big War, Mike Fitzgerald might have been his closest friend. The little fireplug of an Irishman had run the Syracuse Aerodrome—a highly successful air mercenary business that sprang up in the early post–Big War years. He was a patriot, and absolutely fearless when it came to trying to save America, and he’d been killed during the battle of Indianapolis.
Dozer raised his glass in toast to their mutual friend. “I’ll tell him all about it the next time I see him.”
Hunter stopped in mid-gulp. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “Mike’s dead … isn’t he?”
Dozer just shook his head. “Will you please sit down with someone who can tell you who the fuck is dead and who’s alive in this universe? Make a list; carry it around with you.”
“Wow—Fitz is alive?” Hunter exclaimed. “Where the hell was he for this dance?”
“I saw him a couple months ago,” Dozer said. “He told me he was starting to work on something extremely top secret—very scary stuff. He couldn’t tell me what it was. But believe me, he’s alive and breathing, and I expect him to come walking through that door any day now, bottle in hand.”
Dozer looked at his old friend for a long moment. “But seriously, how are you doing, Hawk? You had it pretty rough—with the bang on the head down in the carrier, the powder, the XL getting DOA, and you know, Dominique being …”
He couldn’t finish the sentence, so Hunter took him off the hook.
“Time heals,” he said. “Plus, the guys told me they’ll give me my own Su-34 fighter if I want it. JT, Ben, and Crunchie already got theirs. I might start working out in it if I come back this way again.”
“You’re going somewhere?”
Hunter nodded. “Got to get away for at least a while. Going back up to the Cape. To my old place on Nauset Heights. The hay farm.”
“Skyfire?” Dozer asked.
“If it’s still there,” Hunter said.
“So, you’re retiring?”
Hunter shrugged. “Call it a vacation,” he said. “But you’ll know where to find me. …”
Dozer poured two more glasses. “The Cape will be nice this time of year,” he said. “But how are you getting there? You going to walk? Drive?”
Hunter drained his drink. “Take another guess,” he said.
Dozer finished his drink as well, then asked Hunter, “Well, are you ready for this?”
Hunter nodded reluctantly. “You know I’m not good at these things,” he said. “But let’s get it over with.”
They took the elevator down to the fifth floor, where Dozer led Hunter through a large function room and onto the building’s outdoor concourse overlooking Fifth Avenue and East Thirty-Third Street.
The street below was mobbed with people. For blocks in all directions, tens of thousands of happy New Yorkers were holding patriotic signs and waving American flags. They let out a tremendous roar when Hunter and Dozer joined the group already standing on the concrete balcony, which included Ben Wa and JT Toomey, Captain Crunch, Louie St. Louis, the Cobra Brothers, the JAWS team, Frank Geraci’s NJ104, Catfish Johnson, and Donnie “Lazarus” Kurjan. It was Hunter’s arrival, though, that got the biggest cheer. It also signaled the kick-off of New York City’s own victory parade.
The participants had been congregating on Fifth Avenue all morning. On cue, a brass band started playing and the procession began. Troops marched past the balcony, heading down Thirty-Third Street. The United Americans, Football City Special Forces, the Free Canadians. Some of the surviving members of the 7CAV pulled a float bearing a ragged, humorously slapped-together Sherpa cargo plane made from the wreckage of planes three and four left on board the Isakov; others were carrying blown-up photos and memorial wreathes, honoring their comrades who had been murdered by the NKVD back in the Pine Barrens and those who had died in the Tower Two assault.
Following them were the most unusual participants of all. They were a ragged but proud group of about a thousand armed men, marching under a flag identifying them as the New Dirt Army. They were some of the former hostages that had been taken to Yankee Stadium and marked for execution by Commissar Zmeya.
Dozer leaned over to Hunter and said: “Meet the new NYPD. …”
Once the Dirt Army passed, civilians spontaneously took to the street and began marching as well. Almost all of them were waving American flags. Leftover Russian vodka and homemade American whiskey were plentiful. At some point, the parade took a series of lefts and marched back down Thirty-Third Street passing the Empire State Building again, much to the delight of everyone involved.
At the tail end was the pièce de resistance. Someone had found and inflated a huge, prewar parade balloon of a huge doghouse with a beagle on top. The dozens of marchers handling it, pulling on long ropes, let it go when they reached the front of the Empire State Building. It floated nearly straight up until it disappeared from sight.
After that, the parade turned into an enormous street party, which quickly spread throughout Midtown and then north and south, up and down Manhattan, during the rest of the day. Fireworks were lit off and people sang and danced in the streets.
Cheers of “USA! USA! USA!” were heard well into the night.
Chapter Fifty
At noon the next day, Hunter was circling Nauset Heights on the southern tip of Cape Cod.
He was flying the clown plane one more time. It was so beat up, it was almost foolish to do so, but the little aircraft was his only transportation.
He put down on Nauset Beach and walked the long path that led up to the heights. Years ago, he and Dominique had lived in a small house near the top of these bluffs; she’d named it Skyfire because it was right on the Atlantic Ocean, with beautiful views day and night. That had been the longest time they’d spent together. Then the world had intervened and separated them again.
When he finally reached the top, he was surprised and relieved to see their house was still there. Four rooms, four acres, a barn—and that was it. That’s all they’d ever wanted.
The back door was unlocked. He walked in expecting the place to be cold and drab and in need of cleaning, but it looked as if they’d never left. Everything was spotless; nothing looked out of place.
Then he heard voices.
He went into the next room, and to his astonishment, he found seven people sitting around the dinner table, watching a videotape.
The one who saw him first was Mike Fitzgerald—back from the dead.
“Hunter, me boy!” he yelled. “I knew you’d find us!”
But if that wasn’t bewildering enough, sitting next to Fitz was the flying numbers runner, the guy they called the Worm. And beside him was the Trashman, the guy who drove the garbage truck up to the Pine Barrens. And beside him, the guy with the eye patch who’d helped them get into Tower One during the battle for Tower Two. Next to him were two guys in Russian copter-pilot uniforms. Paused on the TV screen was the smiling girl with the huge brown eyes, the blonde he’d rescued from 30 Rock.
And at the far end of the table … was Dominique.
This is the powder, Hunter thought. It had to be.
Dominique came to him immediately and gave him a long, tender hug.
“How’s your jaw?” she asked. “I’m really sorry about that. I just didn’t want to hit you in the nose and ruin that dreamy face.”
Hunter was still in shock. He couldn’t have spoken if he’d wanted to. His expression said it all: What the hell was going on here?
Fitz got up and gave him a bear hug, too. Then he studied him for a moment and asked, “So you reall
y don’t know, Hawk? You haven’t been following along?”
The Worm said, “Give him some time, he’ll figure it out.”
But the Trashman protested. “God no, that will take all day. Just explain it to him now and bring him up to speed. We’ve got work to do.”
Dominique led him out to the bluff. She was carrying a red-striped pouch.
She was dressed in a long white gown and looked gorgeous as always. But he didn’t think she was real. He pinched himself hard—but she was still there. She didn’t disappear.
“Are you okay?” she asked, holding his hand.
“I don’t know,” he replied honestly.
They sat on the old bench at the edge of the cliff, as they had done so many times before.
“Okay,” she said. “Highlights first, details later?”
“Absolutely,” he replied.
She took a deep breath and began.
“Mike and I and everyone else in that room have been working an extremely top-secret operation,” she said. “We’re up against something that has never happened in history—and I’m not exaggerating. Mike recruited the others; they’re all intelligence pros. And he asked me to go very deep undercover. In fact, all of us were working covertly somewhere in New York City during the Okupatsi. We all had to maintain our identities, me until the very end, because Commissar Zmeya had something we desperately needed.
“We figured out what you were trying to do flying that plane around the MMZ. And we knew it was just a matter of time before all the compadres got back together and tried to kick the Russians out. So we realized we had to help you, but at the same time, we couldn’t blow our covers, because that could have cost us our mission.
“That’s why we had the Worm land in the Pine Barrens, just to make sure what we thought was happening out there was true. Then, after we received his message, we sent the Trashman there to give you the clues you needed on how to attack the Reds. You just missed me when we evacuated 30 Rock, but luckily you found the doppelgänger I’d recruited from the inside. Thank God, that led you to finding out about the Isakov.
Battle for America Page 29
