by Devon Ford
“Go do your rounds,” Chalky told Troy. “I’ll fill in the others.”
Troy nodded to his friend and set down his coffee cup.
THE
GREATEST VICTORY
Saturday 6 p.m. Local Time, Beijing
“His Excellency will see you now,” the aide told her, prompting her to stand and smooth down the plain black suit she had been wearing for an entire night and a day. Various high-ranking officials also stood, resplendent in their crisply pressed dress uniforms in honor of seeing the President of the People’s Republic of China face-to-face.
They entered the grand office to find the man himself stood looking out of the huge glass wall over the city sprawling below. Two aides busied themselves in the room and now gathered papers before bowing and leaving, shutting the double doors as they went. All of the invited guests bowed low, waiting for their leader to acknowledge them. He turned, bowed in response, and sat at his desk.
“Tell me,” he began, “how is the operation developing?”
A man stepped forward quickly, bowing again, and gave the report from the perspective of the bombing runs to list a series of grand successes, with his eagerness for praise making the woman in the black suit mindful of a puppy. The president nodded his understanding, then asked for a report on the ballistic missile strikes. His brow wrinkled once on hearing that a missile destined for one of the largest US military bases had been intercepted by advanced anti-ballistic missile technology which they neither knew about or possessed an equal.
“And we are certain that the origin of the attack is not known?” he asked, interrupting the puppy. Silence in the room allowed her to clear her throat and take half a step forward to sketch a further small bow.
“Nothing indicates that they are aware it was us,” she said, her voice sounding cool and confident in contrast to the excited and nervous generals now standing slightly behind her. “And the majority of primary and secondary targets are on course to be destroyed by tonight. We are ready for the next phase, Your Excellency,” she said, bowing again but not stepping backwards.
The president thought for a few seconds before glancing up and locking eyes with her.
“Proceed,” he told her, and seemed to tell her alone, before waving a hand and dismissing them all. They bowed and left the office.
“One moment,” he called after them, making all of them turn, hopeful that they had been addressed personally, but they saw that he was only looking at the woman in the creased black suit. She walked back inside leaving the gaggle of disappointed uniforms behind and flashed them a small smile as she closed the doors herself.
“Your Excellency?” she enquired politely as she approached.
“I am surprised to see you here,” he told her, still not looking at her but keeping his eyes on the papers on his desk. “I was expecting your superior.”
“He is resting, Excellency. It has been a long night,” she said carefully.
“And a longer day,” replied the president, looking up at her as he leaned back in his chair, “but I suspect you haven’t stopped to rest.”
“No, Excellency,” she answered with a depreciating smile. “I have not.”
“I like that,” he told her, “it shows dedication and commitment. Now, take this”—he handed her something the size of a business card—“and report to me directly whenever you need to.”
She took the card and bowed. Turning back from the door she took a gamble and glanced back.
“Thank you, Uncle,” she said, risking his displeasure by reminding him of their family connection. He smiled a small admonishment at his niece, and waved her away with a final piece of advice.
“The greatest victory is that which requires no battle,” he told her, his meaning obvious; he wanted little or no casualties in the next phase of the operation.
She walked away, the quote bouncing around in her brain as she tried to fathom how the remaining population of the United States could be subdued without casualties. Still, already on their way to the continent was a land force the size of which had not been seen since the combined western nations invaded Iraq, and she doubted that any shattered remnants of the American military could withstand that without air superiority and an intact command structure. After grabbing ten minutes sleep in the car on the way back to the command center, she pulled a bag from the trunk and strode inside, bypassing the security station without question.
Now, dressed in a fresh black suit and white blouse, she gave the order to invade, not waiting for confirmation from her superiors.
SHOWS
HOW MUCH YOU KNOW A PERSON
Saturday 5 a.m. - 79th Street Basin, NYC
After their flight from the dangers of Central Park during a blackout and in the midst of anarchy, the four unlikely allies helped themselves to transport at a CitiBike stand by 72nd Street. All four were quiet, mostly for their own reasons, and none of them had much in the way of breath to spare. Blasting through the streets, weaving around abandoned cars and dodging looters, they had a tense moment as they had to divert the inferno that had once been a massive department store. Eventually hitting Riverside Drive, they turned north again, abandoning the bikes at the 79th Street Basin.
It seemed that they weren’t the only ones with the same idea, and the rows of empty moorings were testament to that. Sebastian peered through the light of the pre-dawn to find his own boat, breathing out a sigh of relief that it was still there. The basin operated a boat office by the café, and the others followed Sebastian’s obvious lead as he strode toward it, kicking in the wooden door without even checking if it was open. He hit the lock of a metal cabinet twice with the butt of his gun, opened it and ran his fingers over the ranks of keys until he found the right mooring number. Grabbing the keys on the big, floating keychain he turned and went back outside.
Leading the way along the wooden pier, he stopped at a small fishing vessel with a covered pilot deck and froze.
The characteristic sound of a shotgun being pumped to chamber a round chilled their spines in unison. Sebastian slowly holstered his gun and held his hands aloft as he turned.
“It’s okay, Jake,” he said, trying to reassure the young cop that he didn’t need to try and take charge. “Cal, Louise, lower your weapons.”
As suddenly as he had frozen, he now dropped his hands and laughed.
“Jesus, brother, you scared the shit out of me!” he said, stepping forward and grabbing the man with shotgun in a tight embrace. The two men rocked back and forth as they hugged it out, laughing.
“I’ve been here since midnight,” the man with the shotgun said, disengaging. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t make it.”
“Me? Come on, man …” Sebastian said, hands out wide and wearing a smile. “Nothing’s killed me yet!”
“Cal, Jake, Louise, this is my friend,” he said. “Meet Joe Wilkins. CIA”
Joe hit him in the shoulder. “Asshole, you’re not supposed to tell people that,” he said.
“That explains a lot,” Jake said, shaking the man’s hand. “I’m guessing that’s where you learned to do all that stuff?” he said to Sebastian.
“Yeah,” he replied, “retired two years ago.”
“Well, not really retired …” Joe said, smiling more broadly.
“Enough about that,” Sebastian said quickly, changing the subject. “Any calls?” he asked his former colleague.
“Nothing,” he said seriously, “protocols to head north are in play.” Sebastian turned to the others.
“We’re heading for Canada to reform. You’re welcome to join us,” he told them.
The three of them looked at each other.
“I’m going home, to West Virginia” Louise said groggily. Cal tried to be gallant and said that he was staying with her to make sure she got back safely. Jake was torn between rejoining the fight against terror and protecting civilians, but just behind the first thought came the realization that any government base would likely be a target an
d heading inland to get off the grid was a safer option. He wanted to say that he would head home, find his family, but he knew that the likelihood of finding them safe as he headed toward a nuclear fallout cloud was less than sensible.
“Okay,” Sebastian said, “we’ll take you to the other side of the Hudson.” He unclipped the duty belt and handed it back to Jake as he stepped down to the deck. Jake began to respond as Sebastian used the keys to open the heavy tackle box built into the boat’s furniture. Before the cop could offer for him to keep the weapon, he straightened with a compact submachine gun and slapped in a magazine before tossing it to Joe. Jake kept quiet about his offer to give up a single Glock.
They cast off inside of two minutes, Sebastian revving the boat’s engine and pointing them west. Jake stole a look into the box to see more weaponry on show before he summed up the courage to ask if he could play with another boy’s toys.
~
Two men dressed in black and carrying suppressed assault weapons jogged onto the pier just as the five people floated away from the wooden walkway. The leader stopped and pulled a face, knowing that his quarry had escaped, even if it was only a personal mission and not critical to the overall plan. His backup raised his weapon and leaned into it, taking a bead on the back of the vessel. A hand appeared on the rifle stock and gently lowered it before he was spoken to in Mandarin.
“Leave them,” he said, “signal the rest of the team to pull back.”
~
“Any chance of the Mossberg?” Jake asked, indicating the shotgun that Joe had brought with him. Joe and Sebastian exchanged a look, the latter nodding to his friend, and Jake was happily reunited with some heavier weaponry. Cal was now wearing the duty belt and the chrome semi-auto had made its way into the bag he carried.
It took them twenty minutes with the cold, watery air stinging their faces to cross. Sebastian throttled down and turned the boat to allow it to bump against a wooden pier where Joe threw a lashing line over a post to hold them steady. The three of them climbed unsteadily to dry land and turned to face the others.
“My advice,” Sebastian said seriously, “is to get a car and head west, but stay off the main road and away from big towns unless absolutely necessary. Good luck,” he said, turning away to power the boat back out into open water.
The three stood on the side of the river and watched the boat motor away, all of them wondering if they had made the right choice. To Cal, his two companions were invaluable. He was a stranger in the country, totally unaware of the customs and cultures and still not possessing even the slightest clue about how big the continent truly was.
“There’s a dealership just north of here,” Jake said, “come on.” He set off, not waiting for the others to follow. Louise was still quiet, almost catatonic and didn’t answer either of them when they spoke. Cal took her left hand after switching the Glock to his left and half pulled her along. Finding the dealership in an alarmingly empty street devoid of activity, Jake told them to wait while he looked around. Cal tried to figure out why nobody was fleeing in panic, but guessed that most had either already left or were simply asleep as normal, like the events on Manhattan didn’t affect them.
“It’s locked up,” Jake said as he returned to them. “We’ll need to break in.” Cal nodded his agreement, leading Louise after him and growing more concerned that she may be in shock.
“Jake,” he said, “she’s exhausted or in shock or something, she needs to rest.” Jake looked at her, seeing a vacancy in her eyes and pursing his lips as he thought.
“Car first, rest after,” he said.
He led them on a short lap of the forecourt, knowing that they would never get one of the premium vehicles from inside through the huge glass walls. Pointing out a pickup truck to Cal and gaining agreement, they went back to the entrance. Breaking a panel in the glass door Jake leaned in and flipped the bolts, pushing the door open over the protesting screams of glass catching on metal. Walking confidently into the sales office he repeated the actions of Sebastian on the other side of the river and forced open the key locker. He found a selection of Ford keys and took them outside to press the buttons in turn, until one was rewarded with a flash as the doors unlocked.
They piled into the truck, throwing the big price tag from the window onto the ground. Jake backed it out carefully and slid the selector into drive. Driving through the mostly empty streets and out into more open country, Cal saw the young cop nodding his head and struggling to maintain a steady 60 mph.
“Okay,” he said, “we need to stop.” Jake was too exhausted to offer any disagreement. The adrenaline-fueled night on the run and the gunfights had taken almost everything from him both physically and emotionally. He pulled the truck off the road, killed the engine, and fell back in his seat. Cal did the same, after looking behind to see Louise fast asleep on the back seat. Closing his eyes, exhaustion soon took him too.
Saturday 10 a.m. - Outside Newark, New Jersey
Cal woke with a start, dragged from sleep by something he couldn’t yet figure out. Looking over at Jake, he saw that their driver was still asleep and slumped against the window. He realized that the sound which had alerted him to something being wrong, which had dragged him from unconsciousness, was the panicked clicking of the rear door handle and rapid breathing with it.
Spinning in his seat, he startled Louise who was trying desperately to open the door but uncomprehending that they were locked, and Jake was sat in front of the controls to release them. On seeing Cal, Louise snatched up the compact pistol next to her, Jake’s backup weapon which he had never taken back from her, and pointed at his face.
He threw both hands up in a movement so rapid that he woke Jake with a start and prompted him to swing his head left and right looking for a threat outside the steamed-up glass of the cab, only to realize that Cal’s eyes were fixed on the back seat. Spinning to look, he froze as the terrified face of Louise stared at them over the top of his own gun as she switched her aim in turn. Both men started to speak at once.
“Louise, it’s okay—” said Cal.
“What the hell?” was Jake’s response.
Louise said nothing. Her mouth moved as though she wanted to speak but hadn’t done so in so long that the ability to converse was evading her. Her brow furrowed in what looked like severe confusion. The little finger of her right hand, clamped so tightly around the stubby pistol grip that her knuckles showed white, twitched involuntarily. She glanced around, looking out of the windows to try and make sense of what she saw. She still couldn’t speak and looked more and more like her panic and frustration would cause her to squeeze one pound of pressure too much on the trigger of the compact Glock in her hand. Her skin was pale but appeared wet with a sheen of sweat over her face, and the shakes competed with the twitching of her fingers to totally transform the woman they had fled with—that Cal had spent two days with—into someone they didn’t recognize. Nor, did it seem, that she recognized them.
Slowly, Jake opened his door and activated the central locking to produce a click from all four doors. Louise didn’t register this other than to look at the source of the noise, which made no logical sense if she wanted to escape the confines of the truck. Jake slipped his legs and body from the open door, never taking his eyes off her, but she didn’t react to him. Cal glanced at Jake, then did the same out of the passenger side. Louise stayed staring forwards, not responding. Both men stepped carefully away from the truck, neither of them understanding the sudden change in her behavior. She had been distant ever since the hotel, but then she had shot and killed someone about to kill Cal. She had been quiet throughout their adrenaline-fueled flight from New York, and was almost catatonic when they had reached the far side of the Hudson River, but now they were faced with what seemed like a completely different person. Jake snapped his fingers for Cal’s attention, then motioned for him to go to the rear side door which was furthest away from her. He stepped carefully toward the side she was sat on, and spoke to Cal.
“Open it, carefully,” he told him.
He did, and Louise’s eyes turned slowly toward him as she still held the gun tightly pointed forwards at the windshield.
Jake stepped close, snatched the door open and clamped a hand hard over the top of the gun, trying to block the topslide from working even if she pulled the trigger. He pulled the gun easily from her grasp as she turned her head toward him and recoiled, letting the gun be taken from her hands. She still seemed utterly bewildered about what was going on.
“Louise!” Cal said, making her slowly turn her head back toward him and stare with seemingly unseeing eyes. “What’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer, just stared at him blankly wearing a confused look of anger.
“She doesn’t look so good,” Jake said. “Has she got any medical conditions?”
Cal had to admit that he didn’t know. Hell, he barely knew the girl having only just met her.
“Louise,” Jake said as he checked the chamber of the Glock and worryingly found it charged with a reflective piece of brass before holstering it back under his arm, “can you understand me?” he said slowly as though talking to an infant or a non-English speaker. She stared at him without responding. The two men looked at each other and Jake shrugged.
“Could be something medical,” he said, “could be shock …”
“It’s like she’s sleepwalking,” Cal said, seeing an instant reaction to his words on Jake’s face.
“Wait here with her,” he said, turning on his heel and jogging toward the rest stop. He stopped at a vending machine and dug in his pocket for change, then stopped and—for the first time in his life—knowingly committed a crime. He put his heavy boot straight through the glass front, and used the barrel of his pistol to knock away the shards sticking out at sharp angles. He grabbed a handful of candy bars. Jogging back to the truck he spilled the contents of his arms onto the driver’s seat, unwrapped a candy bar and handed it tentatively to the girl.
