by Ginger Booth
Rats. But Ava had to concede, his arms were longer, and stronger.
“Hide your eyes. Do not look up. On three. One, two, three.” Doc slammed the base of the flare down on the rooftop, at arm’s length. The rocket took off straight up, its base exploding way too close to their faces for comfort. “Record.”
Ava could see the brilliant near-daylight even before she opened her eyes. She clicked record on her phone and double-checked it was pointed the right way. Doc went for the right side of the cross-street, so she recorded 15 seconds surveying the left. In the meantime, she used her eyes.
This wasn’t a few insurgents milling around. This was a staging area, with trucks, ammo, 50 to 100 people down there, scurrying out of the flare’s white light like cockroaches, as it slowly drifted downward on its little parachute. While she watched, a Jeep took off away from her, and squealed left around the corner.
“Yoda?” Doc demanded.
“Quiet on the neighbors.”
“Shoot,” Doc ordered. He took a knee and started shooting down at the street, to demonstrate what he meant. The people down below couldn’t see them at all, with the flare still going. They only had about 30 seconds of light left, but Ava managed to get a few, one burly and two or more skinnies.
The flare’s light was dimming, the far buildings just starting to cast a shadow, when Doc hissed, “Cease fire! Run home!”
No stealth now. Ava cleared her carbine, and took off, with Doc and Yoda neck and neck. They hopped down to the lower in-between roof, rolled onto the higher roof they originally emerged from, banged through its roof door, and abruptly sat on the stairs, laughing.
“Phew!” Yoda said.
“Panic, comms,” Doc reminded her.
She pulled out her phone. “Calderon says, ‘Scout means quiet,’” she reported, which set them all off laughing again. “Coming home,” she said, speaking what she tapped. “Crossroad busy, staging.”
“Very busy,” Doc and Yoda agreed, still chuckling. Then they heard the guns open up below them, down the block to the left, from their squad.
“Panic, report our position. Yoda, up and out,” Doc ordered. “We’ll shoot ’em from behind. Got another flare, Panic?”
After she sent off her map marker and message, Ava joined them outside for another duck-shoot from above. This time they used a red road flare, which Doc lit and tossed to the right, barely missing a few looters below. This back-lit the insurgents for the rest of the squad, and turned all the red blood to black. The flare lasted longer than the fight. Within five minutes, the insurgents decided this exit wasn’t worth it, and vanished.
When they rejoined their squad, Calderon swore up, down, and sideways at Doc for turning their scouting mission into a firefight. Doc laughed at him. “We didn’t fire first, Sarge, they did. Panic took out the gun emplacement with a grenade. Then we took a look, and popped a few with the last of our flare light. It’s all good.”
After reviewing the video and consulting with Captain Deluca, Sergeant Calderon decided they were pretty much exactly where they wanted to be, harrying the enemy from behind and frustrating his escape. They spent the next couple hours spinning variations on the same thing. Around midnight, at last the thunderheads stopped rolling through, so the starlight and slivery moon were a little better. By then quite a few buildings were burning, as well.
Ava and team were on a roof again when the food hub blew, around oh-one hundred hours. The scout trio dropped to a crouch in concern when they heard a massive WHUMPF! behind them. It reminded Ava of the demolition charges going off across Washington Square. She pivoted around and settled on her butt, mouth open in delight. A giant red fireball, limned in roiling black smoke, rose to yell rage at the sky.
They didn’t jump around pogo-style and cheer. They did sit and admire the spectacle for a minute, like campers around a campfire. What a magnificent waste of precious food and ammo. Ava adored its wild beauty.
Doc sighed and rose. “Up and at ’em. Duck hunt.”
After another hour or so, Calderon declared them done for the night. Ava’s team recommended their current building as good enough. They sacked out on the top floor, with watches on the stairwell. Eventually they doubled up onto one of Major Carella’s buses, and went home to school.
39
Interesting fact: The Hudson River is a fjord. It is 3.5 miles across at its widest at Haverstraw Bay, 35 miles north of the Apple, and 175 feet at its deepest, at West Point.
“Write a report? Are you serious?” Doc asked in horror.
Calderon and Gonzo had summoned team leaders and selected others to the barracks common room. The rest of the platoon was still taking the after-action day off, mostly napping in their bunks.
“Would you rather march fifteen k in a fifty-pound ruck?” Sergeant Calderon countered. “Besides, that’s why I invited Panic. You were scout team leader. She can write.”
Doc smiled hopefully at Ava.
“We don’t have to finish the ruck march?” Ava blurted, in delight.
Calderon shook his head. “Thurston told the higher-ups he saw no need to delay graduation. Deployment was a ‘more authentic final exercise.’ Part of that is after-action reports, though. The Rescos demand them. Might as well make you guys help write them.”
Puño pounced. “Doc, your report will prominently feature what great soldiers Panic and Yoda make.” Or else, was merely implied. “If this deployment supersedes the final ruck test, then they never failed it.”
Calderon pursed his lips. “Just write the reports. Here’s the format the Rescos want.” The drill instructor presented a few examples of dry-as-dust, just-the-facts-ma’am after action reports. The must-have elements included a time line with locations, casualties, estimated enemy casualties, who did what, an accounting for materiel expended, and any intelligence collected. Terse was the preferred voice. After all that was written, they had to extract anything interesting into an executive summary. Apparently the Rescos liked to skim those, then drill into details that intrigued them.
Fox had a question. “Sergeant, why do these reports go to the Rescos and not through the regular Army command chain of command?”
“Good,” Gonzo replied, Fox’s squad leader. “Sergeant Clarke and Captain Deluca write the reports for the command chain. But in Hudson, when the Army is deployed against civilians, we’re under Resco control. So like yesterday, Colonel MacLaren commanded Major Thurston and Carella. The Rescos want to know what’s up with their community. The Army… Calderon, you know what goes into Army reports?”
Calderon shrugged. “Red tape.” Gonzo grinned back.
As they huddled to their provided laptop, Doc made clear he had no intention of ever touching that keyboard. Ava cordially disliked writing. Doc seemed actively phobic.
They quickly realized that Ava’s phone held most of the raw data they needed, because she was in charge of texting Calderon along the way. Doc stepped out to snag Yoda’s phone, too, for his pictures and occasional texts. Doc’s phone held nothing but video clips. Ava transferred this raw material to the laptop and zipped it up for an appendix. The next time Calderon wandered by, he said that was fine, but they had to provide a table of contents for the appendix, captions for the photos, and so forth.
Naturally, Calderon next wandered over to Fox, who fulfilled about the same scout role as Ava in Gonzo’s squad, and likewise did the report writing. Ava had to take time out of her report to show Fox how to upload phone storage and zip and attach. Before long, the fire teams were done – they just shot insurgents – and the scout teams were the only ones still wrangling data.
Predictably, Puño wasn’t going anywhere until he saw Doc’s final report. He stuck his nose into the fire team reports, too. He made sure he agreed with their materiel accounting, and properly highlighted the contributions of the ‘honorable discharges.’
“You need to let them go, Puño,” Calderon groused.
“Not happening, sarge,” Puño insisted.
“Who com
mands this squad, Puño?” Calderon growled.
“I am ever your faithful servant, sarge,” Puño assured him.
Calderon laughed.
Photo captions complete, Ava decided to throw their video clips up on the big screen, to see them better. The common room featured a fairly large monitor, to watch movies as a group.
“Panic, what are you doing?” Calderon asked.
“Counting natives and fat white guys,” she explained.
Doc expanded on this. “We killed an arms dealer from White Rule. Upstate agitator group, white supremacists. Panic’s kind.” He shared an edged smile with his diminutive team-mate Ava. “There’s more of them on the video.” He stepped up to the monitor’s video freeze frame, and planted fingerprints on out-of-town hefty white guys in their non-standard camouflage. “That one’s young.”
Ava was just thinking that. Most of White Rule were rather corpulent skinheads. But one, caught from the back as he dove behind a van, looked almost like Frosty’s hair and build. She didn’t care to mention him, though. Besides, she didn’t think it was Frosty. It was probably just another gang rat caught up in an arms deal – work for weapons.
“Pulling the strings,” Puño growled. “Getting gang rats of color slaughtered.”
Pulling the strings. Oh, thought Ava. She froze, eyes on the monitor. At this point, most of Hudson was ‘pacified,’ except urban North Jersey. The communities around Passaic were undergoing crackdown, not urban renewal. Frosty was the one who planted the seed in her mind, last summer. That maybe someone was pulling the strings behind the Rescos.
“Insight you’d like to share, Panic?” Puño needled her.
“No. Just counting.” Hastily, she counted heads, and made Doc do the same to verify the numbers. They captioned the rest of the video clips the same way – location, natives and suspected out-of-town agitators, known munitions of the insurgents.
“Honorable mention,” Doc said at last. “Team pinned down on rooftop by enemy fire. Recruit Panic took out a machine gun emplacement with a grenade. That was one sweet throw, Panic, dead on the gunner. Where does that go in the report?”
Ava shook her head. “I think it was just an AK on a tripod. If that was even a SAW, we’d be dead now.” Cookie and Puño were their SAW team – the ‘squad automatic weapon,’ their light machine gun.
“Taking out a machine gun emplacement single-handed is a big deal,” Puño insisted. “I’ve seen it in the movies.”
Calderon sighed and nodded. Gonzo nodded as though his head would ratchet off. Doc pummeled Ava’s shoulder with a grin. Fox looked envious.
Puño dove in to dictate that part of the report.
“Panic. Walk with me,” Calderon said, after the report writing was complete, the emails sent. Puño pursed his lips, calculating. Calderon stared him down. “Dismissed, Puño. Private conversation.”
They walked farther than Ava expected, out of Pershing Barracks and through another castle complex and beyond. She had time to think. She saw what Puño was trying to do. No doubt Mattey and Zapple would pounce on the opportunity as well. Why base recruit selection on some ruck march, when they had proven combat experience?
But that wasn’t all there was to it. Aside from feeling insulted – OK, very insulted – Ava didn’t really have a problem with leaving the Army. Every one of the three jobs she’d lined up sounded like more fun, really. And she chose the one that offered her Frosty as well. That was still a little scary and unknown. Except, she’d faced worse than most of these Army types had ever faced, with Frosty by her side. She’d hated White Rule, despised them, left Frosty over them. Sort of. Yet Frosty’s intriguing slip of the tongue, the strings behind the power.
She didn’t want to guess any more. She wanted to know. She wanted onto the team that pulled the strings, not the marionettes who killed on command.
If the Army insisted she stay and fulfill her obligations, OK. But if it was up to her, Ava chose Frosty.
Calderon stopped at a spot near the tip of West Point, overlooking the Hudson to both sides. The wide waters flowed silvery blue, ruffled in the stiff dry wind. The river took a jog here, not quite 90 degrees, skirting the rocky Point on the west bank.
“Pretty namesake,” Ava hazarded.
Calderon nodded slowly, still gazing over the view. “Yeah. Good name for the country. Panic, do you want Army? I recommended against you. I told you why.”
“You were right,” Ava agreed.
“Be angry at me. OK? Not Hudson. Not the Army.”
“I’m not angry at you, either,” Ava said. “I liked it here. Loved it. Loved the people. Especially you. You were awesome, Calderon. We were really lucky to get you for our squad leader. I know that.”
The sergeant frowned slightly, sadly, still staring at the water. “I feel like I’m playing tug-of-war, Panic. You kids have bad actors pulling you down. Like those White Rule clowns. I’m trying to pull you up. You’re not Army material. But you’re a good person. Smart. Capable. You care. You matter.”
He finally looked at her. “Do your best for Hudson, Panic. OK? We’re building a new country out of catastrophe and wreckage. Don’t have to be a soldier to be a patriot.” He swept his arm, indicating the river. “Hudson still needs you.”
Ava thought it was kind of cool, to have a tangible physical symbol of their nation, not just an abstract concept. Cold waters flowed deep and implacable, unmoved by the millennia. “I get it. Promise. Might not be what you think, Calderon, my new job. But yeah. I care.”
“I know you do. Just, if you find yourself on a bad road, Panic – stay in touch. Not just one person. All of us care. Reach out. You can find a better road.”
“I will. Thank you. For everything.”
His lip quirked a brief one-sided smile. “No hugs. No mushy stuff. I’m a sergeant. I have my dignity.”
“No ambiguity.” Ava couldn’t resist.
Calderon chuckled. “None whatsoever, little man. C’mon. Supper.”
Once upon a time, graduation at West Point took place at the end of May, normally delightful weather, sunny and warm, not yet hot. Two days later, in early April, the recruits’ graduation was sunny enough, but the cold dry gale resumed.
They held the ceremony at Michie Stadium, regardless of the weather. The football stadium, by the banks of the now-liquid broom ball reservoir, sat 38,000 at capacity. Major Thurston required the next fitness camp to attend, plus the dining hall and laundry staff, plus any guests they could persuade to make the trip. The crowd of spectators was still dwarfed by the venue.
Mattey, Zapple, Puño, and a whole lot of other people besides, did indeed make a stink about discharging recruits who were blooded veterans. Major Thurston met with the recruits the day before to hear from them directly. Most, like Ava, already had plans they were pretty happy with. Thurston solemnly promised to appeal the policy for the next cohort of recruits, but to let the first class go. He assured them that whether the Army selected them or not, he was proud of their accomplishments, and proud of West Point’s contribution at training such a fine group of citizens. The rejects gave him a salute and a standing ovation.
They wore their usual forest camouflage uniforms today, as clean and tidy as that workaday uniform could get. Regular infantry didn’t wear dress uniforms in Hudson anymore.
Ava marched onto the field with her home table crew and squad, smartly bearing an M4 carbine, for what might be the last time. She stood in ranks during the ceremony, and went up to the podium with everyone else, and simply received a different certificate. Hers said she had completed Basic Combat Training at West Point, with distinction. There were no ugly words on it about discharge, or failing to pass anything. The date of her honorable discharge would be a simple note on her citizen records. Ava appreciated that bit of class. The certificate was suitable for framing.
Lt. Colonel Emmett MacLaren gave the commencement address. He told them that you never knew when you’d be called upon to do something great. If you sou
ght glory, if you hoped to matter, to make a difference with your life, all you could do was be the best you could be. Pursue that faithfully every day. So that when a call to greatness came along, you were ready to dare. Coming from him, especially to this audience rich in survivors he’d saved from the Starve, his short speech meant a lot.
Ava wondered if MacLaren knew all along that White Rule fueled the attacks on his food distribution hubs. Oddly, it didn’t affect her opinion of him. She admired him like all the rest. That the world was muddier than a simple hero story, just made him a better hero in her mind. A squeaky clean Disney prince could never impress a gang rat. Someone who wrestled with the bad guys, and made the hard compromises, was more her kind of hero.
At the end, they all threw their patrol caps into the air and shared hugs and handshakes before quitting the field. It was the only graduation ceremony most of them would ever get. They made the most of it.
“Ava!”
She spun in surprise. The tiny collection of spectators – actual guests, not the captive audience – simply walked onto the field to greet their loved ones. Ava laughed out loud to see Frosty striding toward her, waving. Trailing him were Guzman, Maz, Butch, and Elon Libre. Cookie’s parents also barreled toward them, leading a pack of supersized relations. Horror of horrors, Chet, warlord of Midtown, waded in beside the Cocos of LES and Tribeca, with Marquis’ wife and adorable 4-year-old stepson.
But Frosty reached her first. He lifted her into the air by the waist and swung her full circle. “Congratulations! You did it!” He hugged her close and whispered in her ear. “We drive to Skull direct from here. Plus a few other passengers. No rush.”
He kissed her thoroughly, then broke the clutch to turn and congratulate the others he knew in the squad. Likewise, Ava traded hugs and words with Guzman, Maz, and Butch. Fortunately, Elon was willing to let it go with a handshake.
The massive Ryan clan wasn’t so reserved. She’d only met the two parents, but another ten seemed to believe themselves entitled to squeeze her. Mrs. Ryan was still of the conviction that she needed to compensate for all these poor orphans’ lack of family. Ryans seized and hugged any recruit they could lay hands on. Some unfamiliar recruits even wandered over to volunteer for it, not having anyone else visiting to hug them. And when a hearty grandmother over six feet tall hugged them, they felt hugged.
