by Ginger Booth
The last sentence was barely above a whisper. I thought Mora had gotten it out of his system. He started to turn to leave, but then turned back toward Emmett and hopped into the pool, fully clothed. He held out a hand to Emmett to shake. “Sorry, Emmett. I was out of line.”
Emmett shook his hand guardedly. “Thank you, sir. We needed to know. That couldn’t have been much fun.”
“Yeah.”
“Might want to take off your combat boots, if you want a swim. Colonel.” Emmett suggested. He continued to eye Mora warily.
“Maybe we could give you a hand, getting back to your quarters, sir,” Major Papadopoulos – they called him Pops – said reluctantly. He offered a large hand down to Mora. I was tugged from behind Pops, to behind Cameron, who in turn hid behind the Resco for New London County. I would have thought it funny, these tough guys wary of Mora. Except, they surely knew him better than I did. Maybe they weren’t allowed to fight back if he swung on them.
Mora ignored Pops’ hand and trained a belligerent glare on Emmett.
Emmett sighed. “You might have had a bit too much to drink tonight, Carlos.”
“I agree, Carlos,” said Niedermeyer forcefully.
“Amen,” chimed Colonel Hoffman.
“That wasn’t the worst of it,” Mora said, in a dead voice. “Emmett, they seeded New York. The Ebola outbreak. Tolliver admitted it. Boasted of it.”
“We were pretty sure of that,” I offered. “From the pattern of how it broke out, all over the city and suburbs at once. But it came on so fast. How did they do it?” The Rescos flanking me looked torn between curiosity and wishing I’d just hide and keep quiet.
“Weaponized Ebola,” Mora said woodenly, still staring at Emmett. “They used nukes to set off the faults in California, too. Amatrudo recorded the confession on his phone.”
I thought Mora was done. Then suddenly he hauled off and took a swing at Emmett. Emmett lunged backwards quickly, to splash-land into the water. He only took a fist to the thigh, the blow softened by landing through water.
“Colonel Mora!” Niedermeyer called out. “You’re done here! Stand down!”
“He murdered them.” Mora stood there sobbing. “My wife, my daughters. Millions of them.”
I’d forgotten that. Mora’s wife and two daughters had been caught in the city when the epidemic broke out. They were confirmed dead. I could only imagine what it took for Mora to sit through that dinner in silence, while Tolliver boasted of murdering New York City and California.
Two of the largest Rescos broke the stalemate. They jumped in and took Mora’s arms, to lead him up the pool steps and away to his room. They weren’t ours, from Connecticut. Clearly Mora would swing on his own guys.
Pops and Cameron pulled Emmett out of the pool. He didn’t need the help, but accepted it anyway.
“You seem to have a problem on your chain of command, Emmett,” Niedermeyer ventured, in a voice pitched to carry over angry murmurs of discussion.
“Tolliver’s a rat bastard,” Emmett agreed. “Mora’s alright. A bit drunk.”
“Your commander took a swing at you,” Colonel Hoffman offered reluctantly. “That’s not alright.”
“It’s not ideal,” Emmett allowed. He sighed. “But I understand where he’s coming from, tonight. Carlos still has a 10-year-old boy at home. It’s tough. Just the two of them. That swing wasn’t aimed at me, Pete. It was aimed at Tolliver. But he couldn’t hit Tolliver.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Pops said. “In a drunk and unreasonable sort of way. Emmett, don’t make excuses for him.”
The rest of the Connecticut Rescos seemed to agree. I wondered if Mora hadn’t done something like this before. Young Cameron especially seemed to shrink from him.
I noted sadly that the Rescos didn’t seem too surprised that their reserves had been stolen. Nor by the confirmation that New York and California had been intentional massacres. They’d suspected that. Emmett and I had tried to prove it one way or the other, tracking through my data sources that underlay Amenac. That investigation, among others, was where our partnership began.
We suspected. We just couldn’t prove it.
I surveyed the room of Rescos, now talking business in earnest. Casting around for something useful to contribute, I approached Colonel Hoffman, talking quietly with another New Jersey Resco.
“Hi,” I butted in. “I just wanted to say – it means a lot to me, that New Jersey stands with Connecticut on this. I know you have a choice. You have Delaware and Maryland to your south. With D.C. and Virginia behind them, they’re probably more powerful than us. Thank you for coming to this summit, and trying to save New York with us.”
Surprise grew into slow smiles from the two Rescos. “Thank you, Dee,” Hoffman said, nodding. “It is hard. We are cut off from the rest of you.”
“But we stand with New York, and the rest of the Northeast,” the other said. “Major Reg Washington, ma’am.” We hadn’t spoken before.
“Dee...” Hoffman said, hesitant to stick an oar in. “We get a lot of guys in the Army who were knocked around as kids. Like Emmett. Sometimes they put up with too much.”
“Not a criticism,” Washington added. “They make good heroes.” He sighed.
“Not sure what I could do about that,” I said uneasily. “Emmett seemed to want to shield his guys.”
Hoffman nodded, and gave a little sideways shrug. “Maybe enabling an abusive superior isn’t his best option. Something you might be able to help him see.” He smiled encouragement.
I nodded uncertain thanks, and left them. I’d have to think about that. On the one hand, Mora unloading his rage on Emmett made me irate. On the other hand, Emmett seemed to know what he was doing. I didn’t have much perspective on Army life.
I worked my way through the other out-of-state Rescos, giving similar thanks, without interrupting any of them for long. There were only a dozen of them. When that was done, I slipped gratefully into the hot tub. That hot tub had been calling to me all evening.
Pam Niedermeyer slipped in across from me, and eyed me thoughtfully. “That was interesting, the way you worked the room. What were you trying to do there, Dee?”
I didn’t have any grand ulterior motive. I was just showing a little appreciation while I stayed out of Emmett’s way. To Pam, I shrugged. “I just felt like saying thank you.”
“You ever think about what comes next?” she asked.
“Next? After New York, Boston-Prov could use some help,” I said. My gardening chores stretched into the future unending. There was always something new for Amenac to grow into. Emmett wrangled tirelessly to keep the lights on, the natural gas pipelines and water mains and sewers flowing, the Internet up, transportation running, food distribution. The Rescos worked to provide infrastructure to rebuild in the wreckage of our economy. But entropy was encroaching. I imagine I looked sad.
“After the United States,” Pam clarified. “After March, when the Calm Act’s ‘culling’ phase is over.”
I frowned. “No one’s ever told me what the plan is, after March. Pick up the pieces, I assumed.”
Aside from Zack and Emmett, Pam was only the third person to mention March to me. That culling part of the Calm Act was far from public. I doubt even Emmett would have said anything to me, if Zack hadn’t already.
Adam slipped into the hot tub, interrupting wherever Pam had been going with that. With a pang, I wondered if he’d been in a hot tub since our last time together, a romantic evening at his beach house before Christmas, nearly a year ago. I hadn’t. And he seemed to be thinking long thoughts. I was glad he sat next to Pam.
As the party broke up, most of the Rescos floated back to their rooms. The linchpins slipped into the hot tub with us as their consultations broke off, simply because Niedermeyer and Emmett joined Pam and me. The hot tub conversation stayed casual, until we were the last left in the echoing pool room. Most of the lights were turned down, except the underwater ones, giving the hot tub an intimate fee
l.
“I hope you’ll all stay after the summit,” Niedermeyer said, after the social conversation dissolved into the churning hot water. “I’ll work out the details for a dinner. Just us.”
Emmett frowned slightly. “You want Mora for this, don’t you, John?”
“No. You.”
Hoffman agreed. “You’ve clearly got Connecticut in hand, Emmett.” The others nodded.
“You must be exhausted,” I said sadly, when we got back to our suite. We hadn’t made love all week.
Emmett tucked a lock of my wet hair behind my ear. “Chlorine hair. I could help with that.” He relieved me of my towel, and started peeling me out of my bathing suit. He changed his mind. “That could wait.”
“So you’re not tired?”
“Wired,” he reported.
“You’re very pushy.”
“Uh-huh.” He pushed me backward until I was sitting on the bed, then crawled on after me, pushing me down flat until I laughed. “Talk less,” he advised. Not that he gave me any choice in the matter. He crushed his mouth to mine.
Afterward, lying spent draped along his side, I said, “Emmett? I love you.” It was a scary thing to say, for me.
He froze, and stopped breathing for a few seconds. Then he crushed me to him and said, “Thank you. I love you, too. You know that.”
He’d let it slip the first time we’d ever made love, that he’d fallen in love with me when I was still with Zack. I didn’t want to hear it at the time.
“Anything else we need to talk about?” I asked. I considered his surprise previous wife, his upset over Adam, his presentation’s rousing success, his stand-off with Mora. I could talk for hours. But I gave him his 15 seconds or more to respond.
“No,” he decided. “I’m good. Better than good.” He kissed me gently, on the mouth, the eyes, the forehead.
I doubt either of us fell asleep for another hour. We were busy thinking through the day, silent in each other’s arms. It felt great.
9
Interesting fact: Resource coordinators – Rescos for short – had contrasting selection criteria from community coordinators – Cocos. The ideal Coco was a retired non-com or junior officer who refused to take part in the borders, choosing instead to stay home and defend his own community. A Resco was a middle grade officer – level O-4 to O-6 – especially trusted for his loyalty, judgment, intelligence, and independence.
I took the stage first at the summit the next day. I was pleased with my presentation, and hugely proud of Amenac, so I spoke with enthusiasm and confidence.
The attendees already used Amenac all the time. So I went deep into our national impact to date. How many Resco and armed forces personnel online, of course, as well as overall members over time. The survivor reunion database, which had gone from Hawaii- and California-specific, to national, with over 5 million people found and reconnected to their loved ones. Over 20 million had been found and confirmed dead. Which was a comfort, too, to the survivors – to know, rather than to be left forever wondering.
Tens of thousands of farm markets and safe routes to get to them. Thousands of meteorologists giving the best weather forecasts available. By now, the federal government had given up lying. They published honest weather data in the first place. But Amenac had the people’s confidence, not the National Weather Service. We’d never lied to them, and risked arrest and disappearance to tell them the truth. Like many other Amenac initiatives, the meteorologists had their own in-depth site now, where the experts evolved new forecast models that discounted older data in favor of newer, climate-skewed experience. A number of other Amenac-powered research clearinghouses had blossomed, from autism research to environmentalists.
We’d added online voting, and hundreds of communities now experimented with Amenac for direct democracy. I was deeply pleased with how that was evolving, and encouraged the Rescos to experiment with it.
Emmett apologetically took the stage with me to answer questions. And many of the questions were directed at him, from the Resco perspective. He related how he’d acquired me, Amenac, and his epidemiologist Tom Aoyama, out of HomeSec detention in exchange for a marker – for reliable local daycare.
I laughed out loud. “You’re making it up!”
“I’m not,” he insisted. “The Director has two kids, and the schools closed. A mother-in-law with Alzheimer’s at home. In exchange for Tom, I extended the marker to cover her, too. Hey, it’s what she really wanted.” Emmett shrugged with a grin.
“And they’ve honored that? All this time?”
“HomeSec is people, Dee, just like the rest of us. They use Amenac. The weather scares them. They’re afraid of Ebola. They have missing relatives to find. Their work is to stamp out dissidents and potential terrorists, and Amenac helps them monitor that. Granted, when you piss them off, they add demands and make my life miserable.” The audience laughed.
“Question,” called out the Poughkeepsie Resco, who I still had mentally tagged as avm89 – Lt. Colonel Ash Margolis. “Do you have any cyber warfare capability?”
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” Emmett contradicted me. “Amenac is powered by a white hat hacker group. They have massive defensive capability. They also have other sponsors. Two of them are truly interesting resources in their own right. Especially in cyber security.”
I frowned. I was only aware of one other sponsor, Canadian Intelligence. Though as Emmett pointed it out, I realized that keeping Amenac alive constituted cyber security in itself. But I’d never considered it in the context of cyber warfare.
“And those sponsors are?” our host Captain Niedermeyer prodded.
“Can’t say,” Emmett said. “But I could offer some markers on cyber security. To protect a power plant or something?”
“Interesting! Thank you,” avm89 replied.
“Emmett, or Dee,” called out General Cullen. The commander of the New York city borders was the only brass left with us today. He wore camouflage like the rest, and sat near Niedermeyer’s clump in the auditorium. “Have you tracked any Amenac activity originating in Pennsylvania?”
“We did look at that,” I answered. “They’re locked up tight. No civilian communications.”
“I looked a little deeper,” added Emmett, “with some other members of the Amenac ecosystem. The tech is good on the Pennsylvania communications barrier. We cracked through, of course. But all the digital cables are interdicted at the borders. The Army has a strangle-hold on the power lines. Engaging the public in there would be a challenge.”
“But Amenac does track visitor locations?” General Cullen followed up.
“All web servers track that,” I agreed. “Amenac more than most. That’s integral to our system for frustrating the Fed’s efforts to shut us down. If Amenac can’t locate you, you can’t view the site.”
“So if I had a major operation to plan,” Niedermeyer asked, “and I wanted the sort of help Amenac provided with the New York relief plan – would you envision that as a marker?”
“Ah – we went all out on these presentations,” I said. “I think Emmett holds the only marker worth that much.” Well, Emmett and Canadian intelligence. “We don’t have the staff.”
“There’s plenty of unemployed tech talent around,” Emmett differed. “We could add staff for the right project. But Amenac’s existing sponsors hold veto power. We’d have to agree with the goals.”
“Does that mean HomeSec has to agree with the goals?” Niedermeyer clarified.
“HomeSec is a factor we’d take into account,” allowed Emmett. “The driving consideration is Amenac’s public mission. We’d be very protective of that brand.”
“We have the public trust,” I emphasized. “We would not be open to violating that trust.”
“Of course,” Niedermeyer agreed thoughtfully. “That was key to your effectiveness with the New York plan.”
That was key to our effectiveness in everything, including the glue that held us together. But I simp
ly nodded.
Again, Niedermeyer adjourned us for a mid-morning snack break. We got a second standing ovation.
Emmett’s phone buzzed. He would have ignored it, but one of the Connecticut Rescos held up his own phone, and said, “You need to take that, Emmett.”
Emmett read a text message, and nodded. The other shoreline Connecticut Rescos were already headed out the door. “Excuse me, we have a situation. We’re expecting the temperature to fall to 20 degrees by tomorrow night. And the Connecticut shoreline hasn’t got all the harvest in yet.” He grinned an apology. “This freeze affects New Jersey, too. All of us, actually. But inland you’re probably done with the harvest. We’re not. Major Cameron? Could you help me with Long Island while I deal with New Haven?”
And they were off. I noticed that Niedermeyer also dispatched Adam. The New Hampshire and New Jersey Rescos left in a hurry, too.
I grabbed my phone to check in with Alex about my garden and the livestock. He was a reliable kid, but sometimes teenagers didn’t think things through.
Emmett caught me at the water fountain during the break, to quickly tell me that he’d pick me up at the motel for dinner at 6:45 that night.
“Can’t DJ cover for you at home?” I asked, aggrieved. “The summit is important.”
“What? Oh, I’m done with the freeze,” he agreed. “I just authorized overtime pay for the farm workers on my dime, and got people moving. For the rest of the day, we’re doing breakout sessions in parallel with the presentations. I’m booked solid. Take good notes for me, OK?” He gave me a peck on the cheek, and started to leave.
He arrested himself and turned back. “Oh, I forgot.” He grabbed me up in a big hug, kissed me fully, and laid his forehead on mine. “I am so proud of you. And Amenac. Awesome job, Baker. Especially the part where you made me free Tom Aoyama and save New York. That was pretty clever.”
I laughed, and grinned from ear to ear. “I don’t think I’m gonna take responsibility for that one.”
