After America ww-2

by John Birmingham

  "Take this and snap it on," said the Rhino, handing her a length of black piping.

  Jules scrutinized the pipe. "Flash suppressor?"

  "Nope. Well, sorta. But mostly for sound suppression," he corrected her. "P90's already a good deal quieter than, say, an M4. This makes it even stealthier. I'm guessing we'll be sneaking out of here today."

  "Yes." She sighed as a heavy automatic weapon started grinding through hundreds of rounds somewhere below them. "Anything you need from your room?"

  "Got everything I need right here," he said, nodding at his backpack as he snapped on his silencer. Soon his body armor and oversized equipment vest were in place, leaving his massive biceps exposed for a quick kiss.

  "Did I ever tell that you that you don't get these pettin' kitty cats?" He grinned, before sticking an unlit cigar between his teeth.

  Jules rolled her eyes as she slipped her arms through the backpack straps and they trotted back to the fire escape. The angry sounds of combat seemed to have settled into something like a rhythm beyond the walls of the hotel, a steady pounding of heavier weapons overlaying short, spasmodic gusts of small arms fire, single-shot three-round bursts, and the regular snarls of somebody letting off whole clips. That would most likely be the attackers, she thought. The militia and private operators protecting the Green Zone had better fire discipline than that. A pity their professionalism didn't extend to properly securing the perimeter.

  The lights in the stairwell flickered briefly as they entered, but only once. Nonetheless, the two smugglers picked up their pace as they made the long climb down past the ground floor and into the service levels, where they hoped they could make their exit. Jules expected to run into drug-fucked pirates at any moment, and once or twice they did hear doors opening and slamming closed above them, but they enjoyed a clear run all the way down. It was only when she carefully pushed open the door on the lower ground floor that they ran into trouble. Two rounds slammed into the wall next to her, sending hot chips of cement into her face.

  "Damn it," she cried out. "It's Jules and the Rhino. Who the fuck's out there?"

  A pause followed before a shaky voice called back, "It's me, Ryan Dubois. Julesy, is that you?"

  She shook her head angrily and yelled at the door.

  "Of course it's me, you wanker. I just told you that. Who the hell did you think you were shooting at?"

  The door opened a crack as Dubois nervously peered through.

  "I thought you were pirates, sorry. I heard they got inside the hotel. Lewis told me to stay down here and keep an eye on the service levels. Gave me this."

  He almost waved the chrome.38 special in her face, but the Rhino reached over with one giant paw and pushed the muzzle down firmly but gently.

  "Guns don't kill people, Ryan," he said in soft tones, taking the unlit cigar from his mouth to make his point. "Stupidity does. And Rhinos of course. Rhinos are always killing people. Especially stupid ones."

  "You said Lewis sent you down here," Jules cut in. "So he's still alive?"

  Ryan looked worried, and his shrug was more of a nervous tic than an answer.

  "I hope so. He told me to stay here until he came and got me. But I really don't want to stay here. D' you think I could come with you? This place is giving me the creeps."

  Jules pushed past him, careful not to get in the way of his pistol, which did not have a safety. The hallway outside the fire escape was poorly lit, with only every third fluorescent tube powered up, and one of them was flickering erratically. Shadows appeared to twitch and shiver organically in the crawl space between stacks of cardboard boxes and laundry carts. The thunder of guns and rockets was muffled to a dull rumble by the concrete foundation. Ryan fell in behind them as the two smugglers cautiously advanced down the subterranean corridor, sweeping the space in front of them, ready to lay fire on any sort of danger.

  "So, umm, can I tag along?" he chirped.

  "No," they answered in unison.

  Jules could sense him walking behind them, anyway. She was annoyed, but Ryan was the least of her concerns at the moment. They had no idea what they were walking into, how many pirates might be out there, in what numbers, or even what their intentions might be. A punitive raid? An attempt to overrun the Green Zone? And what was the militia doing? Or, more important, the private ops, the mercenaries. Most of them had left the zone after securing it, but she knew at least two dozen or more still remained, and she feared them more than any freebooter. The mercs had a reputation for using way more firepower than was ever really warranted, which was why Lewis Graham had insisted on keeping some of them around well after this part of Manhattan had been cleared.

  "So it stays cleared," he always said.

  Or he used to. Jules wondered if he was still running around somewhere upstairs.

  "Ryan," she said, coming to a halt outside a storeroom.

  "Uh, yeah?"

  "Tell me exactly what happened this morning."

  He made a show of searching his memories. "Well, I got up early to make sure I scored some flapjacks because those bastards from the third-floor crew are always scarfing the lot down and-"

  "Christ," Rhino said under his breath.

  Julianne rubbed at her sore and tired eyes, pulling her hand away when she felt the sting of Vaseline again.

  "No. Not what happened at the breakfast buffet. Tell us about the attack. What you remember of that."

  The Rhino watched the corridor while Julianne encouraged Ryan to focus.

  "Were you out at the bus queue when the raiders hit?"

  "No," he said, shaking his head with apparent regret. "No. 'Fraid I was on the crapper. Somebody left a copy of the Seattle papers in the dining room, and I was reading the sports pages from the P-I. I had a bet on the Royals-Mariners game, and the radio reception was pretty bad."

  The Rhino piped in. "Tell me you did not bet on the Royals."

  "I did," Ryan said, almost indignant. "Someone told me they won the World Series once."

  "They did," the Rhino said. "Back in '85."

  "Oh," Ryan said.

  "Fuck me," Jules said heatedly. "Would anyone like to chat about the fucking cricket, perhaps? Good! Stay with me here, Ryan. The attack. It started while you were in the bathroom?"

  "Oh, yeah," he said, looking abashed. "Lucky thing. I'd a been toast otherwise. I saw those buses, man, when I came out. They got opened like fucking tin cans, eh?"

  "And the militia. And the private operators, what about them?"

  Ryan shrugged. "Well you know the routine, Jules. There was probably some of them out at the bus line, just keeping things running. But I guess they got blown up, too."

  "Did you go out there, to check?"

  "No," Ryan continued. "When I knew what was happening, I started running for my room. But Mister Graham, he caught me and gave me this gun, told me to get down here and stand guard."

  The Rhino, who was stealing energy bars from a nearby stack of cardboard cartons, stopped for a second.

  "Was Lewis hurt, Ryan?"

  The boy shrugged. "Well, duh. He was out with the buses when the rockets hit. Dude was covered in blood. One arm kind of limp and all."

  Julianne exchanged a look with the Rhino.

  "Sounds like we got caught bent over and pants down."

  The Rhino grunted in disgust.

  "You would have thought after yesterday they'd have had extra security on. Worked the perimeter harder. Always said that Graham asshole was as worthless as tits on a bull."

  Jules began moving again, headed toward a heavy steel door shrouded in darkness at the end of the hallway.

  "Well, to be fair, Rhino, they could have dropped mortars on us from well outside the zone."

  He conceded the point with a barely perceptible lift of the shoulders.

  "Suppose so. They did control this part of town for a long time. Could have prefigured the mortars before they had to give it up. Doesn't sound like any fucking pirates I ever met, though. Their idea of f
orward planning generally doesn't even extend to checking they got enough paper to wipe their asses before takin' a shit."

  Jules nodded as they reached the door. Pressing her ear to the cool steel, she could hear the fighting only distantly.

  "Ryan." She put her hand on his chest. "Do not follow us. It will end badly for you."

  The Rhino took up a firing position to cover her as she heaved on the horizontal steel bar that opened the door.

  15

  New York "Jesus wept, this just gets better and better, doesn't it?"

  Kipper peered through the cracked and heavily grimed window on the second floor of the U.S. Custom House. He could feel his Secret Service detail fidgeting with barely suppressed anxiety behind him. He supposed he shouldn't rile them by exposing himself to danger or even the chance of danger, but from what he could tell, all the action was uptown from their current hiding place. And that's what it was, a hiding place. Agent Shinoda had tucked him away in the massive stone pile of the old customs building that overlooked Battery Park and Bowling Green at the very bottom of Broadway. It was a beautiful building to Kip's eye. Even though it had stood empty and neglected for nearly four years, the lines of the hundred-year-old architecture spoke to that rare and perfect balance of form and function that engineers thought of as elegant. To Kipper, there was no higher praise one could afford a human-made structure.

  His appreciation of the old girl was soured, however, by the evidence he could see of the conflagration unfolding up near the Tribeca area, where many of the clearance crews he'd visited just yesterday were housed. The sun had risen a few hours ago, and with the day came the roar of an explosion that signaled what looked like the start of a small war. And it was a war, he supposed, even if they weren't fighting another country. At least not openly. He'd seen plenty of classified intelligence that clearly incriminated a host of foreign states in supporting the pirates, whether to profit from their raids or simply to kick back against an old enemy. What was that old Arab saying? A falling horse attracts many knives. Or was it a camel?

  Black oily clouds climbed high into the air above the city, and although the fighting was some distance way, he could hear and even feel it occasionally.

  "Mister President. Time to go, sir. Chopper's on final approach."

  "Thank you, Agent Shinoda," he said, turning away from the depressing vista.

  Jed was standing mournfully behind him, a sheaf of papers clutched loosely in one hand. An army officer with a black embroidered bird on one collar stood by him. The name tape above his breast pocket read KINNINMORE. A cavalryman's patch on one shoulder took the form of a shield with a black stripe topped in one corner by the head of a horse.

  Kip was still on a steep learning curve with all things military, and even with a radically smaller defense force, he still found himself lost more often than not in a forest of acronyms, units, and ranks. The cavalry patch he recognized immediately, however. The cav had made a big comeback as the army's glamour outfit the last few years, if by glamour one meant they got to fight and die more often than anyone else.

  The officer ripped out a parade ground salute even though he looked like he'd just crawled through a few miles of dust, blood, and thornbush. Kipper acknowledged his salute, and Jed Culver made the introduction.

  "This is Colonel Alois Kinninmore, Mister President. From the Seventh Cavalry Regimental Combat Team. They flew in here last night to crack a few heads together over at the airport, but he's… ah… well, I guess I'll let him explain. Colonel."

  "Thank you, sir," said Kinninmore. Kipper had expected a ferocious bark to go with the salute, but Kinninmore was soft spoken with a very polished Bostonian accent. "Mister President?"

  "Go ahead, Colonel, but walk with us if you would. I suspect Agent Shinoda will have kittens if I don't get my ass down to the helicopter in time."

  "Of course, sir."

  The small party of men-Kipper, Jed, Colonel Kinninmore, and half a dozen Secret Service agents in black coveralls and body armor-formed up in a loose group and moved out into the corridor, a long, dimly lit but strikingly beautiful hallway finished in white marble.

  "Major tactical ops at the airport are mostly done with, Mister President," said Kinninmore. "We're just counting coup on the stragglers now."

  "That went pretty quick, Colonel. Did you lose many of your men?"

  "Our casualties were twelve killed and fifteen wounded, sir."

  Kipper knew, because he had been told time and again, that fighting in urban environments chewed through men at a terrible rate. But a dozen dead and even more wounded still sounded like a heavy butcher's bill. He would have many letters to write when he got back to Seattle. He made it a point to contact the families of any serviceman or -woman who died following his orders. Culver argued that he could delegate that to others, but Kipper insisted in spite of the increasing amount of time he spent writing such letters and the emotional cost it laid on him. It was the very least he could do.

  "I'm sorry to hear that, Colonel. I really am. I'd like to come visit your wounded if I could, as soon as possible."

  "Thank you, sir. They will appreciate that."

  The party passed by a pair of heavy wooden doors standing open to reveal what looked like a courtroom inside. Kinninmore, who was striding alongside Kipper with a helmet tucked under one arm, seemed oblivious to their surroundings as they turned again and hurried down a wide, sweeping marble staircase and past a sign that informed them they were entering the museum level of the building.

  "I'm pulling three troops from the Seventh along with two marine companies and redeploying them here, Mister President. Immediately. We should have them here within the hour."

  "Three troops?" Kipper asked.

  "My apologies, Mister President," Kinninmore said. "Company elements; we call them troops in the cavalry… er, about three hundred men. With the Marines, we should have close to a battalion-size force here."

  More terminology. Kipper let it go and nodded for him to continue. He made a point of not interfering with the military's decisions in the field.

  "The thing is, sir, I believe there could be something more going on than the looters and pirates simply pushing back at you for trying to retake the city. The elements we fought at the airport were well coordinated, and when we arrived in force, they pretty much melted away. Conducted quite a decent withdrawal under fire and would have got a lot more of their guys out if we hadn't had air support to smack them flat."

  Kip had a momentary vision of what that last euphemism would mean in reality: hundreds of bodies torn asunder by high explosives and white-hot metal. He pushed the images away as they marched along a curving corridor flanked by wood-paneled displays of Native American artifacts, feathered headdresses, buffalo-hide shields, tomahawks, and jewelry, all of them still intact. Thick blue carpet muffled their footfalls, and Kip could not help but notice that it was discolored here and there with the dark, telltale stains of the Disappeared. He almost wondered for half a second when their remains had been cleared away but forced himself to stay focused on Colonel Kinninmore.

  "My S-2 got out and policed up the battlespace, sir…"

  S-2? Was that an intelligence officer? The army has all of these confusing codes for everything. And whatever happened to plain old battlefields? Kipper was pretty sure the colonel meant this his intelligence officer had quickly inspected the remains of the dead and whatever entrenchments they may have occupied.

  "… and I have to say we had a few disturbing finds," Kinninmore went on. "Especially in light of the rocket attack on yourself yesterday, sir. Those Katyushas weren't the usual dime-store crap-if you'll excuse me, sir-that you normally find the pirates using. Intel says they were fresh out of the shrink-wrap from Yemen. And the enemy combatants we cleared out of JFK, they were using good new Russian radios and Chinese assault rifles. Type 56 carbines. We also discovered well-concealed command and control bunkers with medical facilities and housing for a larger force."

>   Kip thought he saw where Kinninmore was going.

  "You're surely not thinking conspiracy, Colonel? China's barely a functioning state after the civil war. And Putin's got his hands full with the stans."

  The cavalry officer shook his head.

  "No, Mister President. Or at least I'm not positing a conspiracy between those states. The Type 56 carbines could have come from what's left of Pakistan or a number of other countries. My point is that the materiel was top-shelf stuff. And it has to be significant that it should suddenly appear, all at the same time, in our eastern theater of operations while the raiders, who spend as much time fighting each other as they do us, suddenly smarten up and start kicking it with battalion-level operations, all coordinated with the best comms gear you can buy on the open market."

  Kipper agreed with the officer that it did sound significant. But in what way?

  "You've got my attention, Colonel. But do you have anything more in the way of detail? Something other than the equipment and… well, behavorial change? People do learn, after all."

  "They do, Mister President. They do. Places like New York, they learn or they die. What I want to know is who's been teaching them. We took a handful of prisoners at Kennedy. Most of them pretty messed up, but we're doing our best to debrief them as soon as possible."

  Kipper could imagine that debriefing would not be a pleasant experience for the captives. He'd long ago authorized the army to treat any pirates captured on U.S. soil as illegal combatants. The best they could hope for was immediate deportation, but summary execution was just as likely. Kinninmore, for all his Boston Brahmin airs, did not look like a man who would lose a lot of sleep if he had to execute a bunch of glorified looters, which in the end was all the pirates were.

  "The thing is, Mister President," the army officer continued, "I don't think everyone we're fighting right now are simple pirates."

  Kipper almost did an exaggerated double take at having had his private thoughts contradicted immediately.

  "Go on," he said.