“We’re looking for elderly and anyone else who might not have made it out over the past twenty-four hours,” Castle said. “Anyone in this area is going to be very sick when we find them, but it’s possible we can still save them if we get them medical support.”
“What about the people in the dead zone?” Marks asked.
Castle shook his head. “Anyone there is going to die—nothing we can do for ’em.”
Tooth drove the command Humvee down the abandoned streets, toward the drifting smoke on the horizon. The invisible airborne isotopes continued to escape unchecked.
Two other Humvees and the enclosed flatbed truck followed them into the residential area. Swirling trash drifted across the road. They drove in silence, listening to the howling radioactive wind.
A small suitcase lay in a driveway, its contents spilled out on the concrete. Ronaldo pictured the family running out of their house, and a child stumbling, dropping the bag. He, too, would have told his kids to leave it there instead of wasting time to gather it up.
The low rumble of fighter jets drowned out the whistle of the wind. Seconds later, a squadron of F-16s streaked across to the east.
The rumble subsided, and the first sign of life darted across the street. Tooth slowed to avoid a golden retriever. The dog stopped in the middle of the road, tail between its legs, then ran into a yard.
“Pull off,” Castle said.
“Sir?” said Tooth.
“I said pull off.”
“But, sir, it’s just a dog.”
“‘Just a dog,’ my ass,” Castle said. “That’s someone’s family member.” He got out of the Humvee as it rolled to a stop. Ronaldo also got out, with his rifle slung over his back. The dog stood in a yard, watching them both, eyes roving between them.
“Sir, we’re here to rescue people, not animals,” Tooth said out the window.
“You must never have had a dog, Lance Corporal Numb Nuts,” Castle replied. “Now, shut it.”
Ronaldo smiled. He appreciated that Castle was a hard-ass with a soft heart.
The convoy passed the command truck while they chased down the dog.
“Come here, boy,” Ronaldo said.
The dog darted away as they approached, clearly frightened. Not that he blamed it; in their CBRN suits, they looked like something almost—but not quite—human.
Marks got out to help, and the three of them finally managed to surround the dog. When it tried to run past Ronaldo, he dived and tackled the snarling, yelping dog to the ground.
The other marines helped him get it into the Humvee.
“Now what do we do with him?” Marks asked.
“Put him in the truck,” Castle replied. “We’ll take him back with us.”
They shut the dog in the back and rejoined the convoy. The trucks had stopped outside a church. From what Ronaldo remembered of the map at their briefing, they were near the edge of the dead zone.
“Looks like we have a situation,” Tooth said.
Ten other marines waited on the lawn outside the church, and two more stood on the stoop leading to red double doors. Ronaldo saw something strange as he approached: a chain wrapped around the handles.
“Are those voices coming from inside?” Marks asked.
Ronaldo stopped to listen, and over the wind he heard cries for help.
They were coming from inside the church.
“Get that door open!” Castle ordered.
One of the marines used bolt cutters to break the chain. He pulled it through the handles, then pushed the doors open. A man staggered into the sunlight, a hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun and wind.
Ronaldo glimpsed multiple bodies on the floor behind the man, and a woman crouching with a rosary clutched in her hand.
“What the hell are they doing locked inside?” Marks asked. He stood next to Ronaldo, staring in horror at the sick people who stumbled out of the church.
“Corpsmen!” Castle shouted.
Several marines and the navy corpsmen who had accompanied the convoy moved to help the survivors. Ronaldo walked over to see what he could do to help. He mounted the steps to the church, where he found a woman sitting on a bench.
“Miss?” he said. “I’m here to help you.”
She slowly tilted her head toward him as if confused—one of the symptoms of radiation poisoning. But when she saw his uniform, the confusion turned to fear and she scooted away, falling off the bench.
“It’s okay,” he said, holding up a hand. “I’m here to help.”
She crawled away down the aisle of pews.
“Ronaldo.”
He turned to find Marks standing in the aisle
“They said soldiers locked them in here,” he said.
“What!”
Ronaldo turned back to the woman, who cowered behind the far end of the pews, trembling as she whispered a prayer.
-5-
Antonio made love to Lucia in the darkness of their shitty apartment in western Anaheim. Normally, he looked forward to sex with his bride, but tonight, his mind was distracted. She knew him well enough to notice his heart wasn’t in it tonight.
“What is it?” Lucia asked.
He rolled off and sighed, embarrassed to admit the truth: that hatred for his enemies had poisoned his mind, and the toxic anger was interfering with one of the things he always looked forward to.
Embarrassed or not, he didn’t keep things from his wife.
“It’s Enzo,” he said.
“I thought you would feel better now that Lino and Yellowtail obliterated the rest of our enemies in Naples,” she said. “But I guess you won’t be free of this poison in your heart until Enzo is dead too.”
His wife didn’t miss much.
He slid off the bed and walked over to the window. A blood-orange sky hung over the hilly neighborhood. Not a single person walked down the sidewalk, and only a few cars moved on the street. Several miles across the city, Moretti soldiers were preparing to take down a small crew of Sureños.
In a few hours, the residents who hadn’t left Los Angeles would endure yet another night without power, thanks to the attack on the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant. While they slept, Antonio would shake on a major deal that would help his family expand, and soon, very soon, he would deal with Enzo Sarcone.
He turned back to Lucia and admired her naked body in the dim light. God, you are beautiful.
More beautiful than the day he met her twenty years ago, when he was just a young soldier preparing for a different war and she was a waitress serving beer to drunk patrons. But it wasn’t just her beauty that made her the one. Like Antonio, she had risen from poverty, clawing her way to the top, and had helped him build his business. She was a warrior at heart and a wonderful mother.
“What are you looking at?” she asked in her sharp Italian accent.
“Only a goddess.”
Her brown eyes met his, and her dimples framed a widening smile. She brushed her dark hair over her shoulder and beckoned him back to bed.
“Relax, my love,” she said.
Antonio let out a long sigh and then made love to his wife until they both melted in grunts and cries of pleasure. After a shared cigarette, he walked over to their closet to look for his new suit, an Armani he had taken from the hoard of stolen merchandise before Vinny sold it off in bulk.
Lucia joined him, grabbed the coat, and held it out so he could slide his arms into the sleeves. Then he turned, and she fixed his collar and kissed him on the lips. He reached up and fixed his wavy brown hair, brushing it backward.
“Very handsome,” she said.
He returned her smile and then reached inside the closet to pick a tie from the rack. He selected a silver one and stepped over to the window to see who was honking.
Christopher had pulled u
p in the old Mercedes, and Raff jumped out and walked up to the front stoop. Unlike some of the other guys, who might have shouted, he waited politely for Antonio to buzz him in.
“I’m not sure when I’ll be back tonight,” Antonio said to Lucia.
“I’ll be up waiting for you. You know I can’t sleep while you’re away.”
He kissed her goodbye, and she followed him down the hall, where he stopped to say good night to his son.
Marco lay on his bed, large red headphones covering his ears, the music playing so loud Antonio could hear it from where he stood.
“Marco.” He said it twice until his son heard him and peeled off his headphones, beaming his perfect white smile.
“Nice suit, papà.”
Marco spoke better English than any of them and occasionally spoke Italian. Antonio was fine with that. Going on twelve years old, the boy had spent most of his life in Los Angeles, and he didn’t want him to forget his heritage.
“Good night, Marco,” he said. “Be good, okay?”
“You going to work? Can I come?” Marco swung his legs off the bed.
Antonio appreciated his ambition, but Lucia’s hand on his shoulder reminded him that they had decided against a life of crime for their only child.
He shook his head, and Marco lowered his in disappointment.
“Vinny gets to go help. Why can’t I?”
“Because your cousin is old enough, and you aren’t,” Lucia said.
“Be good and listen to your mom.”
“Is Raff going to be here?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, good,” Marco said. “He likes to play games with me.”
Antonio wondered whether that was a dig at him for being absent, but right now he didn’t have time to worry about that. He left his son’s room and went outside to speak to the man now responsible for his family’s safety.
“Raff,” he said, looking him in the eye, “you make sure nothing happens to them, okay?”
“I would give my own life for them, Don Antonio.”
Antonio held his gaze. Raff’s loyalty was unwavering and absolute, which was why Antonio always asked him to watch over the two lives he valued more than his own.
“I’ll take good care of them,” Raff said.
Antonio patted him on the shoulder and walked to the car. Cigar smoke drifted out of the Mercedes’s open window as Antonio approached. His brother sat behind the wheel, wearing a silver suit that matched the gray streaks in his goatee.
“Last one I’ve got,” he said, holding up the cigar. “Got to enjoy it.”
Antonio got in and looked at the shabby apartment building as they drove away. Someday, he would own another compound, from which he would rule the Moretti empire.
“Have you heard the news?” Christopher asked. He turned up the radio. An emergency broadcast played from the speakers.
“The following message is transmitted at the request of the president of the United States. This is not a test. Executive Order One-Oh-Nine places all US states and territories under martial law, effective 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on September twentieth, 2020.”
“Well, shit,” Antonio said.
Christopher changed stations, playing a local alert.
“State and city officials, under the instruction of the president of the United States and Executive Order One-Oh-Nine, have placed Los Angeles and the entire state of California under martial law, to be enforced by the American Military Patriots. A regiment comprising AMP battalions from the loyalist states has been sent to Los Angeles, to put down insurrectionist elements. Curfew has changed to 8:00 p.m. Anyone evacuating the city must do so before the curfew or be subject to detention by AMP personnel.”
Christopher switched stations again, to a live report.
“Mexican and Canadian officials are reporting an influx of illegal crossings at their borders,” said the announcer.
Ironic. Antonio had never thought he would hear about Americans trying to escape to Mexico.
“Naples is sounding better by the minute,” Christopher said, “especially now that Lino and Yellowtail took care of the rest of our enemies. Or Rome. I told you we should have moved there.”
Antonio sucked in a breath to manage his anger, but this was crossing a line. Reaching over, he yanked the cigar out of his brother’s mouth and then tossed it out the window.
“What the hell!” Christopher said.
“I told you, we’re staying in Los Angeles, and I don’t want to hear anything else about going back to Naples or Rome, or anywhere else. Got it?”
Christopher gripped the wheel tighter and kept his eyes on the road. “Yeah, I got it.”
“Do you think we would have been able to get our new men into the country from Italy before any of this shit happened?” Antonio asked. “It would have been impossible, but now the government has bigger problems than trying to monitor every crossing.”
Christopher pulled onto the highway, quiet but clearly enraged.
“We came here to rebuild and to fly the Moretti flag, and your lack of respect is grating on my nerves, brother.”
“I’m sorry if you took it as a lack of respect,” Christopher replied. “I’m just on edge about what’s happening here.”
“You didn’t trust me the other night, and look what happened. We took out five AMP soldiers, kept our fifty grand, and added fifteen machine guns and twenty thousand rounds to our armory.”
“Things have changed slightly since then.”
Antonio didn’t disagree, but it didn’t matter.
Christopher slowed as they came up on a checkpoint with the raven’s-head flag of AMP, and a banner that read, “Always on Watch.”
The slogan was everywhere now, and so were the AMP soldiers, adding new recruits from other branches, as well as mercenaries, to their ranks every day. The men ahead were likely from other states, deployed here when Governor McGehee refused to hand over the state’s National Guard to the reorganization authorities.
His brother saw these people as foreign threats, but Antonio saw them as potential customers and allies.
Antonio rolled his window down for an AMP soldier with a pair of dark sunglasses, who ducked down to look at him and Christopher. A second officer walked a bomb-sniffing German shepherd around the car.
The officer tipped his aviators up. “Where are you two headed?” he said in a Brooklyn accent. Antonio was right; these men weren’t from California. And they might have fewer compunctions about killing Californians.
If he told the truth, they would be questioning him for the next hour, so he did the natural thing. “To pick up my son from Long Beach and bring him back to Anaheim,” he said.
The soldier asked for their IDs, and Antonio handed them over. A quick glance at the cards and then their faces, and the guard motioned them through the open gate.
“Better hurry,” he said. “Curfew’s been moved to eight o’clock.”
“We will,” Antonio said. “Thank you … sir.”
They continued north to Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base, where a C-130 touched down on the tarmac, no doubt bringing in another load of AMP soldiers.
“Here we go,” Christopher said, pulling into the mostly empty parking lot at the Los Alamitos racetrack.
Christopher parked, and Antonio got out of the car. He walked over to the Cadillac and opened the back door. Sergeant Rush sat in the back seat between Lino and Yellowtail.
“Well?” Antonio asked.
“We’re good to go,” Lino said. “One of the Humvees is ready to move, and we have two of the M4’s inside it.”
Carmine twisted from the front seat, the wrinkles and scars on his middle-aged face emphasized by the dome light.
“And you?” Antonio said to the AMP soldier.
“I’ve got the meeting s
et up with my CO,” Rush said. “We just need to go to the base.”
“Base?” Antonio said. “That wasn’t part of our deal.”
Rush sighed. “I know, but you got nothing to worry about. My CO authorized the mission you guys ambushed the other night, but he has no idea it was you guys. He thinks—”
“Hell no!” Christopher interjected. “You think we’re stupid ?”
“He never knew who my contact was, I already told you,” Rush said. “He believes the story about the Sureños being behind the ambush. Hell, he saw their dead cholo with his own eyes. You’re golden, I promise.”
Antonio exchanged a glance with Christopher, who chewed nervously on a toothpick. He snorted and shook his head when Antonio gave a nod.
“Rush, you ride with us,” he said.
The sergeant got out of the Cadillac and slid into the back seat of the Mercedes.
“Remember, if we don’t come back tonight, your family dies,” Antonio said.
Rush swallowed. “I understand, sir, but you can trust me.”
“We will see about that.”
They drove to the Los Alamitos base and entered through a barricade after Rush showed his ID. Inside the gates, the base teemed with activity. Soldiers loaded vehicles, and others headed out for patrols beyond the fences.
It had been a long time since Antonio set foot on a military base, and a part of him missed how all the cogs seemed to mesh so perfectly.
A well-oiled machine, like the Moretti organization.
“Park over there,” Rush said.
Christopher pulled up to a brick building, and Rush got out.
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
Christopher looked over at Antonio, who nodded back.
As the sergeant entered the building, they listened to the beating rotor blades of a Black Hawk preparing to take off from a pad behind the building.
“You sure you can trust him?” Christopher asked.
“I don’t trust anyone, brother.”
A few minutes later, Rush returned with a tall, fit man with a pencil-thin silver mustache. They spoke outside the building for a moment; then Rush motioned for Christopher to repark next to a line of Humvees.
Sons of War Page 8
