The Valley of Shadows - eARC

by John Ringo

  Fighting up a building was manpower intensive. Tom felt pretty confident that the NYPD didn’t have the personnel to buy their way up the entire tower before he could evac everyone from the roof.

  Still, standing alone at the doorway, watching the cops watch the building, Tom really hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.

  But it had been two minutes.

  At the railing above him, Durante lowed the handset and got Tom’s attention.

  “We got two birds aw—”

  Pop.

  Tom spun around at a half remembered noise, but then the implication hit him and he dropped to the ground, banging his jaw on the hard marble floor.

  “Incoming!”

  As a loud whoosh registered, automatic fire began shattering the lobby windows. Tom frantically low-crawled over to the escalator and laid as flat as the steps permitted while the lobby filled with glass and bullet fragments. Before he reached even a third of the way to the landing, his building shuddered slightly.

  That didn’t feel right.

  * * *

  Oldryskya dropped to the floor as soon as Smith yelled. One of her guards also went prone, as did all the bank staff. The glass sheathing of the lobby blew inwards and down as quickly as a venetian blind yanked off its fasteners by a sturdy toddler. Ricochets howled off the marble that clad much of the lobby. She heard a meaty slap and a simultaneous grunt as the building perceptibly shook.

  She glanced over at the sounds to watch the second Cosa Nova shooter fall to his knees, then onto his face, a blood pool spreading quickly from an unseen wound. She rolled him over to check his airway but the missing scalp and exposed bone rendered the point moot. Instead, she helped herself to his carbine and worked on getting his plate carrier off. It would be large, but it was a hell of a lot better than an LBD in a firefight.

  Moments later, the digital whooping of the building fire alarm added to the cacophony, and a few orange safety lights pulsed as they rotated overhead.

  The incoming fire continued. At least two heavy machine guns were chugging, absolutely demolishing everything on the ground level.

  “Good instincts,” Durante said, laying a hand on her arm and placing his mouth close to her ears. “But forget it. Boss had me save yours. Keep the rifle and strip him of the mags.”

  At the very end of his sentence the fire stopped, and his last words echoed loudly.

  Oldryskya looked around the edge of the planter to survey the damage. Drywall dust filtered down, and a small fire smoldered at the wooden reception desk area, ignited by a tracer. Paper and glass covered the lobby floor, but there were no cops in view.

  Smith leopard crawled over, body nearly flat to the floor, face turned sideways to lower his profile even farther. It didn’t look like the heroes in the American movies, but then again, he wasn’t shot either. She made another mental note.

  Outside, a loudspeaker blared.

  “Smith! Smith, we get you?”

  * * *

  Tom watched as Durante wormed his away across the floor to the control panel on the third floor and punched few buttons, silencing the profoundly irritating alarm. The orange fire lights still blinked sullenly.

  Someone broke squelch on the radio net.

  “Gravy, Thunder, this is Kapman, do you read, over?”

  Durante slid the radio across the floor to Smith.

  “Kap, go for Thunder.”

  “MANPAD took the second bird,” Kaplan reported, using the shorthand term for a Man Portable Air Defense missile. “It crashed into the refueling station and took the last helo and everyone inside with it. The top two floors are fully involved and spreading. Lost the comms shack, the UHF antenna farm and both radio guys. I don’t even have a corporal’s guard, let alone enough people to attack a liquid fuels fire, over.”

  Tom digested that for a moment. That big thud had felt wrong. Oh, so very unpleasantly wrong.

  “Copy. Looks like the way out is going to have to be through. Come down to three, over.”

  Tom heard a sigh on the channel.

  “That’s what we figured,” Kaplan said. “Tell Durante not to get his ass shot off till I get there. If he does, I got dibs on his watch. On the way.”

  Tom looked around. Counting Oldryskya and the extra Cosa Nova man, they had eleven armed people on the third floor, maybe another half dozen coming down from the roof. If that many. Oh, and the fire.

  The fire. Well, that was just perfect.

  “Hey!” came an amplified voice from the street.

  Over the persistent and newly refreshed ringing in his ears, he recognized Dominguez’s voice on the megaphone.

  “I said, are you all okay in there?” Ding sounded positively upbeat. “Hey, Smith!”

  The crunch of booted feet on glass was plain as police tac teams deployed just outside the bank walls.

  “Oh yeah, we’re all good,” Tom yelled back. “No worries, mate. Howzit with you?”

  “That’s the first laugh that I’ve had in a while, Smith,” the cop replied. “Thanks. That big boom you heard? That was my FBI guy using a Stinger to shut your private rooftop airport down. Looks like quite a fire up there. You weren’t illegally storing a lot of aviation fuel up there, were you?”

  “You just killed a bunch of innocent people, Ding,” Tom said, his voice hard. “My people.”

  “How many of them were kids, Smith?” Dominguez’s replied instantly. “Give me Matricardi and you can still walk before I close every route off this bitch of an island. I know that you have some of his people inside, so he’s either with you or nearby. Either way, they don’t leave.”

  Tom looked around again. Oldryskya’s mouth was pressed into a firm red line. Durante had his usual game face on, which was indistinguishable from any other face he made, and as Steve watched Durante exhaled a huge yawn. The rest of the team varied between manic grins to a “I think I just shat myself look” on the lone mobster. Tom waved the entire group back down to the elevator area where they could at least stand.

  “Hey Ding, if you try to fight your way inside a burning building full of people who know how to fight back, you are going to lose everyone,” Tom said, attempting math. “It doesn’t add up for you. You might kill us, but you’re going to die. Every single one. I’ll make sure of it.”

  There was a pause and Dominguez answered, a little more quietly this time.

  “No, Tom, no we won’t. You see, we already lost everyone. We’re already dead, every mother’s son. Give me Matricardi or no one gets off the island. That’s the final word.”

  Tom looked down at his marine radio and switched channels. He took a deep breath.

  And yelled.

  “Fuck the motherfucking First Precinct and fuck the NYPD.”

  He keyed the radio.

  “Mile Seven, this is Thunderblast,” he called.

  He heard his brother Steve respond.

  “Thunder, Mile Seven.”

  Tom took a breath and made the call.

  “Code is Goose, say again, Goose.”

  Every spring and fall in Ireland, migratory geese pass through on their way to their feeding grounds in the south or their nesting grounds in the north. Working the harsh and stony lands of the green aisle, Irish lads of old would watch the geese fly and wonder what lands they sought.

  When those same Irish lads left home to seek their fortune, it was assumed they’d never return. Few did. Irishmen had scattered their bones on every continent on Earth. And when they left home, as so many had, they called it “following the wild geese.”

  With the helos gone all they had left were the RHIBs, which had very limited range. The Mile Seven was Tom’s last more-or-less secure exfil. But it was less than likely that Tom would make it out of the building, much less to his brother’s boat. And if he kept his brother waiting, they might not get out either.

  It was time for Steve and the Smith girls to follow the wild geese. Let someone make it out of this hellhole.

  Most of Steve Smith’
s last transmission was lost in a loud rumble outside the bank, but he made out a few words.

  “Roger, Goose. Good luck.”

  It was enough. Tom looked down at the trashed lobby and rolled his shoulder, unconsciously easing some of his tension.

  Now, to cases.

  * * *

  They watched the bank burn as Paul’s helicopter loitered in a lazy circle above Upper New York Bay, five miles from downtown. The pilot tried fruitlessly to raise the ad hoc rooftop control tower.

  His comment to Paul was superfluous.

  “I got nothing on UHF.”

  The initial gabble of conversation on the intercom had died, so his words rang in everyone’s headset accompanied by the background whine of the engine.

  “Jesus!” Into the silence, he added, “The bridge, lookit the Brooklyn Bridge!”

  Small puffs of dirty gray smoke hung alongside the aged suspension cables that supported the roadbed. A few stopped cars were visible. They watched cables part, first on the inbound and then the outbound lanes. The roadbed twisted back and forth, the rotation increasing in amplitude as the balance swung first one way and then the next, till the concrete and steel roadbed fragmented, raining down into the bay. Immediately adjacent, they watched the spectacle repeat on the Manhattan Bridge. In the far distance, smoke enveloped the Washington bridge, obscuring any damage.

  An awed voice echoed on the intercom.

  “Motherfuckers blew the bridges. They blew the fucking bridges.”

  For several more moments they surveyed the destruction. One by one, the passengers looked up at Paul while the pilot continued to maintain altitude, swearing softly.

  Paul gazed around the faces about him. Fear and shock dominated, but there was at least one completely composed face.

  “We can not set down in the fire, even if we could see through the smoke,” Joanna Kohn said into the silence. “And they might have more missiles, correct?”

  The pilot replied while Paul gauged her words.

  “Fucking A,” the pilot replied. “You can find someone else to fly this thing if you want to land there. That is a non-LZ.”

  “Just so,” Kohn replied. She looked at Paul. “Even if we could land, what would we do? You told us we were at the maximum safe load to reach our way point, yes?”

  “Yes,” Paul said tightly. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Anyone down there is on their own. And we’re burning fuel.”

  He leaned forward and tapped the pilot’s shoulder and then shook his head in response to the query on the pilot’s face. Paul pointed outwards and leaned back.

  The aircraft straightened and flew west. Paul kept his head turned to watch the black smoke from the bank mingle with the darkening haze from the other fires around the city.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Frank Matricardi and Joey Tradittore watched the white finger of the Stinger reach up and swat the helicopter back onto the roof of the bank even as the echoes of automatic fire rang along the concrete canyons of lower Manhattan. The older man tried to count the guns from the sound and failed.

  “What the fuck was that?” exclaimed one of his shooters.

  “Fuckin’ missile is what,” Tradittore replied.

  “That’s a lot of fucking guns,” the boss added.

  Inside the cluster of vehicles, the remaining men exchanged nervous looks but otherwise kept watch.

  “Still nothing on our radio, either,” Frank mused. “Got to be the cops.”

  “This is looking pretty thin,” Tradittore said. “We could still get out of here.” He looked in the direction of Wall Street. The column of black smoke from the bank grew.

  “And go where?” Matricardi asked sarcastically.

  “Maybe the house upstate?” Tradittore said, shrugging.

  “One thing’s for sure, we aren’t flying from there, or anywhere, as long as the cops have missiles,” goon two offered, demonstrating his mastery of the obvious. “What do you think, Joey T?”

  “I think we do what the boss says,” Tradittore replied.

  A few minutes later, they heard deeper, rumbling explosions. None of the bridges were in direct line of sight, but they watched an explosion bloom from the side of a tower on a pier projecting from the opposite shore in Jersey City explode. It began streaming a plume of brown smoke. Tradittore jerked his head backwards, like a man who had just been slapped. He glanced around, checking for any live zombies.

  “Back in a sec.”

  Without waiting for permission, he moved from the vehicle to look around the corner of the adjacent building fronting the river and nodded. He trotted back, a little out of breath.

  “Yeah, they got both of them,” Joey said, slumping into the seat in defeat.

  “Both of what?” asked Matricardi.

  “The Holland Tunnel ventilation towers,” Tradittore huffed. “They feed fresh air and power down there—no towers means that anyone trying to get to Jersey is going to suffocate before they get too far.”

  The rumbles continued in the distance.

  “I’m betting that they didn’t just blow the Tunnel, neither,” Tradittore grumbled, crossing his arms. “That’d be da fuckin’ bridges. Assholes.”

  “The cops think we killed their kids, their women,” Frank Matricardi mused aloud. “They mean to trap everyone here. No helicopters. We probly can’t drive outta here no more, either.”

  “How the hell are we getting out of here then!” one of the shooters asked.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking, Joey?”

  Tradittore looked back at his boss.

  “I figure Smith will still keep his word, and he’s got a plan.”

  “Yep,” Frank said, nodding his head. “Smith’s whole job was planning and he had the bank’s money to do it. Figure he’s got plan A through Z. Hell, he’s probably only on D by now. And by now Oldryskya will be in there. He said he’d get us out as part of the Deal. Between her persuasion and his honor, it’s still a done deal. Let’s use his plan. Unless you got a better idea than ‘let’s try to get to the house in upstate,’ Joey.”

  Behind the boss, another of the Cosa Nova shooters raised an eyebrow. Tradittore caught the man’s expression and shook his head almost imperceptibly.

  “Everyone back in the trucks.”

  * * *

  Kaplan had made it down to the third-floor atrium with his people including Sergeant Copley. They were panting after their headlong gallop down nearly fifty flights of stairs. Copley paused by the exit door, counting heads. After a second scan he started looking around wildly.

  “Where’s Astroga?

  He turned to look back up the stairwell shaft and yelled, “Astroga!”

  The elevator dinged and the doors slid open to reveal the smoke stained face of the indomitable specialist.

  “I pushed for the elevator and by the time I turned around you guys had disappeared,” she said, seeming puzzled. “Where’d you go?”

  Copley was neither remotely amused nor understanding, and advanced menacingly to tower over the unawed soldier.

  “I am going to bust you back to, back to…” He searched for a ranked destination far enough to match her crime.

  Meanwhile, Durante exchanged a fist bump with Kaplan.

  “No Rolex for you,” he said.

  “Yet, but keep it handy” the shorter man replied, eyeing the case that Kaplan gripped one-handed. “The stuff okay?”

  “Should be, topped it off like Curry showed us.”

  A few others were exchanging back slaps and private asides.

  Tom looked back from his crouched position where he was trying to discern the police movements outside. The tac teams had withdrawn out of sight.

  “If all of you are quite through gassing, we need to identify the best exit,” he stated briskly. “Or even an exit. The front is right out, they have at least two machine guns mounted to cover the street. Gravy take one man, check the garage side. Kapman, same thing but recon the rear fire exit and the connection
to the subway passage.”

  As the two pelted off in different directions, Copley stopped glaring at the still-insouciant Astroga to ask Smith, “What can we do?”

  “Find a spot where you can cover the doors from here in case they try a frontal rush,” Tom replied. “Stay well back. Oldryskya, take your guy and get an angle on the coffee nook to the left. We hold hard here until we find a way out.”

  The remaining window glass began to blow inwards while the report of automatic fire rang through the lobby again.

  * * *

  The police machine gunner rapped out a long burst, traversing one side of the bank lobby.

  “Deliberate fire,” Dominguez said. “Take your time and conserve ammunition. We got all the time in the world.”

  The gunner didn’t reply from his firing position behind another concrete planter. The thick, dirt-filled rectangles were ubiquitous in the downtown area due to their use for channeling vehicle traffic. Another machine gunner squatted a short distance away, awaiting his turn. The two largest remaining tac teams had been withdrawn half a block away, in order to put some hard cover between them and potential snipers inside the bank. He had a mixed team on perimeter security, chopping up the infected that were drawn to the sound of the shooting. So far, the largest group of zombies numbered less than half a dozen and most of the cops were reliable shots at close range. The number of dead zombies in view was gratifying, until you thought about them as victims.

  And about how many were left.

  Dominguez rubbed his eyes, which were irritated by the thin smoke that reached street level.

  Above, flames were visible through the smoke that enveloped several upper floors.

  “Sooner or later, they’ll have to come out,” he remarked for the benefit of his group. “Then we can collect another installment of payback.”