Warlord of New York City

by Leo Champion

  “Thank you, President Chang,” said John Moncreve. To the two claimants, the grey-haired old underboss said: “Your families are already there. Corporals, prove this.”

  The corporal behind each of the two men flicked their tablets on and placed the devices face-up on the table of the man they were standing behind. Scared faces – female, then children – appeared as the people on the other end of the connections panned around both rooms. A couple of soldiers with drawn guns stood in the background of each. Then the holders of the devices on the other end to show themselves: a coldly smiling Captain John Moncreve, Roger’s older brother, and a nervously frowning Sergeant William, his younger.

  “A week ago we could have marched down Prince Street against untrained streetgangers, disorganized recruits and a handful of pigeons,” John Moncreve told the two claimants. “There might have been casualties. There will be more now that the illegal occupiers have had a week to train, organize, arm and consolidate.

  “Your squabble has wasted resources and allowed a disruption to grow into a problem,” President Chang softly told the pair of claimants. “We have ended it for you.”

  Nobody was allowing themselves to look at the plain-clothed NYPD man behind the tenement boss. Because that would have involved acknowledging his presence, which was a message nobody wanted to have their names marked as having read.

  “My friend John,” Chang said, “might have something to else say at this point.”

  Roger’s father, the late Reverend’s best friend, stepped forwards just imperceptibly.

  “Thank you, President Chang. Does anyone dispute my position as new Reverend of the Garsons Precinct, currently under illegal occupation as the West Bowery Free State?”

  “Yes!” exploded the men at either end of the table.

  The tablets in front of them were still on, and John Moncreve coldly turned left toward Colonel-Reverend Roger Garson. “That man makes another sound, kneecap his wife. Goes for both of them – William, have your corporal do it please.”

  Both men shut their mouths. Hate was in their eyes.

  Stiffly, formally, the grey-haired old duelist turned exactly ninety degrees, toward the President, and inclined his head.

  “I hereby submit to you, President Chang, the governance of my precinct,” said Reverend-for-five-seconds John Moncreve. “I pledge to you my family’s coin, my family’s bonds and my family’s arms.”

  Roger nodded slowly, quietly, although nobody was looking at him except perhaps the NYPD Inspector.

  President Chang placed a hand on each of John Moncreve’s shoulders.

  “I accept those pledges and offer you my family’s guidance and my family’s protection.”

  President Chang raised his hands. On each board of Roger’s father’s shoulders were two five-pointed gold stars. Placed, not pinned. For now.

  Then the Changs boss turned to face across the table, at the remaining senior officers and upper management of what had until now been the Garsons precinct.

  “Does anyone here dispute or reject this transfer of administration?”

  Lieutenant Grimaldi looked like he was about to speak up for a moment. Don’t, Roger willed, as the elderly Tong boss’ cold green eyes scanned across the gathered people.

  “Thank you,” he said softly. “Your own pledges will be accepted after lunch. Any who wish to leave before then, may. My staff will take you to the dining room.”

  The door behind Roger Moncreve opened and people almost bolted out, Roger waiting for a moment to see if his dad needed anything from him. A slight sideways gesture of that man’s head indicated otherwise.

  “Why didn’t he just have both of those idiots shot?” Grimaldi asked quietly in the hallway. A gesturing lieutenant in livery was guiding the shocked group leftwards down the hall.

  “They have family marriages and blood debts all around the city,” Roger said. It’s not obvious? “Killing them would upset too many people. I don’t think the NYPD wants it known they’re interfering at all up north of Canal.”

  “That guy in the tan suit is a working cop?”

  Grimaldi’s family was from Bayonne, on the Jersey shore where City Hall vig flags flew thinly, where they did at all. But the lieutenant had attended some of the same social functions and seen that man in his official uniform.

  “You know,” Roger told his lieutenant, “that Jamie damn Ibson is an Inspector of the NYPD. Remember the party South Bowery threw last summer?”

  “I thought he was off duty right now. Actually just here in a social capacity or something.”

  “Chief Kagan’s personal troubleshooters don’t so much as a take a piss in purely a social capacity,” Roger told his idiot number two as they reached a well-appointed dining hall with plates laid out and a number of higher-ranking Chang officers waiting for them, “and they’re never exactly off-duty.”

  That Roger Moncreve didn’t care about politics didn’t mean he failed to understand them, perhaps better than most.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “You ever look down, Ranjit?” Diana Angela asked from the hundred and sixtieth floor. Those balloons were everywhere now, all over the city painted in tenement colors, and just the thought of them reminded her of that pain Sunday when the frag bombs had nearly killed her.

  “No ma’am,” her assistant, who wore three closed squares on his shoulders, asked a little bemusedly. “Why-ever would I?”

  “Because sometimes you see things. Look for a moment. What do you see?”

  “Those blimps. They weren’t there last week, were they?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “What do you think they mean, ma’am?” Ranjit Hasan asked.

  It means the airborne warlord’s made a lot of enemies in his home scene.

  It means he’s stalled effective bombing in the city until somebody figures out a solution to them.

  It has strategic implications on the city I’m not qualified to analyze.

  “I think they look pretty,” she said.

  * * *

  “Some of you got body armor,” Sergeant Haskins shouted at the line of twelve men that included Cam Krasner, who held a musket he as a scavenger wasn’t trained to analyze. It was a whole different creature, mechanically speaking, to his simple flashgun. It had moving parts!

  “Most of you haven’t. You know what Captain Karstein says?”

  There was silence from the squad, the ten other guards and from Krasner, who as a raff recruit was inclined that way anyhow.

  “Didn’t hear you.”

  “No sir!” Krasner shouted with the rest of the squad.

  “I can talk for myself,” said Captain Kimberli Karstein, marching up in front of the line of soldiers. She was a short-haired blonde woman, short in height but making up for it in attitude. And if Jimmy had met her up this close back in the day, he would have thought twice about talking any shit about the Reverend…

  “Thank you, Sergeant Haskins. I say you’re picked fighters, to be in Second Company. That means you’re transferred from somewhere or recommended from the raff list. What happens next is on you. You can quit any time – I’ll sign you back to the raff any time,” the captain said. Her hard eyes flickered across the squad. “I don’t want losers in my unit. Is. That. Clear?”

  “Ma’am!” Cam Krasner didn’t need to be prompted to shout. “Yes! Ma’am!”

  “Good. Prove it. Sergeant Haskins, squad’s yours. Demonstrate live fire!”

  “Yes ma’am!” Sergeant Haskins banged his fist against his forehead as the captain got out of the way. “Squad, load!”

  They were going to fire live ammo here in the middle of the street?, Krasner thought in horror. But people had heard the shouting and were fleeing out of the way.

  Brasci nudged him. He fumbled with his powder…

  “Squad aim!” Brasci shouted too soon. Krasner hadn’t put his ball in, but there was no time now. He leveled his empty musket, raising it to his shoulder.


  “Squad fire!” Bang, without the kick.

  “Krasner, Gowalski!” Sergeant Haskins shouted. “Report for fifty pushups and your day off’s cancelled – captain says you will learn to fire at an acceptable speed!”

  Kimberli Karstein said nothing, but the captain was smiling.

  * * *

  “And they’re doing it again,” Don Karstein reported, not bothering to salute as Hammer, followed by Ali Benzi, Jacopo Benzi, and a limping wounded corporal named Travis Adkins, who wore a radio headset and was Jacopo’s aide, entered the war room.

  “Blowing their horns while their troops mass?” Hammer asked. Unnecessarily – you could hear them from this room, on the third floor from the Chapel down from the main boardroom. It was the fourth time in two days the Changs had done this, and it was getting annoying. That was probably the point. “Close the windows.”

  “Yessir.” One of the four elderly woman who inhabited the Chapel moved to obey, taking a wand. One of the other two was at a computer whose monitor showed unit positions. The other two, all four of them grey-haired and elderly, officers’ widows from what he’d been told, were at a plotting map table in the middle of the war room. They deftly moved squad counters around on long tongs, and were presently stacking them by the border area as reports came in.

  “We’re responding as usual,” said Don Karstein.

  Not to Hammer’s shock, Second Company – the tokens numbered ‘2’ on them, currently taking pride of place at the corner of Mott and Elizabeth. Right where the heat would come down, if it were real. With them was Third. The other companies were moving into place too, the two elderly ladies on the plotting table deftly moving the counters with a pair of tongs each hand as they looked over the third one’s shoulder at the big flatscreen with the positions. They both wore radio headsets.

  “It’s not real this time either,” said Don Karstein.

  The old ladies were moving Chang counters, too – alphabetized rather than numbered tokens, in arrays that implied speculative, mostly, rather than known.

  “How do you know that?” Hammer asked. “Lowest-ranking first. I want your opinions.” He gestured around the room, encompassing everyone.

  Corporal Adkins moved to speak up, but Hammer pointed at the old ladies.

  “You guys. What do you think?”

  The four were silent. Then one of the old ladies with the tongs spoke up, looking down across the table at where Hammer’s boots would have been if the table hadn’t blocked them.

  “We know it’s not real because they’re not moving their reserves. Spotters would show them – can I show you what they would do if they’re serious?” the old woman’s cracked voice asked.

  Hammer raised an eyebrow.

  “Show me,” he said flatly.

  Deftly the woman flipped a bunch of the counters with a pair of tongs in each hand. Hammer had to admire her ambidexterity, and wondered how long she’d been doing this. The squad tokens had different colors – red for hostile known, orange for hostile suspected. The numbers for each were the same.

  “Boss, they’ll be stacking more troops ready to line them up and assault in column if they were actually serious.”

  “Sir, Marder wants to know if it’s time to hit them,” said Ali, interjecting.

  Marder and the airbornes had standing readiness orders to hit the Changs at the first sign of combat, but not to do so without orders.

  This old lady appeared to know her shit.

  “Tell him to hold and stay down, for now.”

  “Yessir,” said Hammer.

  The old woman had kept moving tokens.

  “Boss?” said Corporal Adkins after about a minute. “Looks like they’re doing, so far as we can tell…”

  He pointed at the tokens on the war table. “That, sir.”

  Hammer looked at the old lady.

  “How did you know that?”

  “Not the first time we’ve faced the Changs,” she said. “Lei Chang is predictable. He’s going to spearhead his A and B Companies right along Prince Street if he’s facing us, because that’s the fastest route to the Chapel and he wants his elites competing against one another. C, D, E, and G Companies will back them – a force of three hundred men total. F and H Companies will be aimed up Elizabeth Street as a distraction from that direction – if they can tie down one of our companies, that’s enough for them. The main force will be Prince Street.”

  Colonel Benzi started to say something. Hammer shushed him with a gesture.

  “Let her talk. That accounts for eight of their companies. How do you know about the others?”

  From where he stood at the plotting table, Hammer could see I Company’s squads arrayed around St. Patrick’s Cathedral while the counters representing J Company’s five squads were placed around the Changs’ external intersections.

  “Boss,” said Corporal Adkins, “we’re getting reports from the streetgangers. Staff Sergeant Beppe says…”

  There was a smile on the old lady’s face as she flipped tokens along the north from uncertain to known. J Company squads, exactly where she’d expected them to be.

  “How the hell did you know that?” Hammer demanded.

  “Lucky guess,” said Don Karstein.

  “Shut up,” Hammer said, and gestured to the bowing old ladies. “You. Tell me how you knew their exact placement.”

  “Sir, we’ve been doing this thirty years, ever since Carl Garson the First took power. Our husbands were all sergeants and officers who died during his split, or in the war that followed right away,” said the first old lady at the tongs.

  “What’s your name?” Hammer asked.

  “Thurston.” A trace of half-remembered stiffness got the old woman’s backbone and made her straighten for a moment until she remembered her current place. “Formerly the wife of Captain John Thurston, sir.”

  “You were right, Lieutenant Thurston. Ali, get her some gold bars. The other three of you are sergeants, effective immediately.”

  “Sir, these women were paid as raff!” someone – Hammer didn’t care to know who, it was a male voice – objected.

  “Not any more. They know the enemy’s movements. Lieutenant Thurston, suppose they’re serious. How will we know they are?”

  “They’ll move G and H Companies into line along Prince Street, and we’ll be able to see that.”

  “What about X Company?” Jacopo Benzi asked. “The exiles. What will Lei Chang do with them?”

  “They’ll be put into play in the north, sir,” said now-Lieutenant Thurston. “As motivated wild cards that won’t intervene with their main plan.” She looked like she was going to say something else, but she silenced herself.

  “Lieutenant, you have full permission to speak freely in your war room at all times. Interrupt me if you see fit. There’ll be captain’s bars of your own if you do so at the right time and it wins us the war we need to win,” Hammer said.

  “They’ll be thrown into the north to interfere with whatever you plan to do with the streetgangers everyone knows you’ve been arming, and distract you.”

  “Can – Third Company hold them off?”

  “Of course they can,” said Karstein.

  “I wouldn’t bet on it, sir,” said Lieutenant Thurston. “They’re led by Roger Moncreve, and I know that young man. He’s a fine soldier, sir, and the men are motivated to take their homes back.”

  “Move two squads of Fifth Company” – the reserves – “north,” Hammer ordered.

  One of the old ladies issued orders into a microphone. Presently, counters moved.

  “Listen to the lieutenant,” Hammer told Colonel Benzi and Major Karstein. “And Ali, get these four the pay and insignia they’ve earned going forwards.”

  “Yessir.”

  * * *

  Santos cradled the crossbow like there was a pound of nitroglycerin on the end of the bolt. It was aimed carefully upwards but she kept her fingers well away from the trigger and Hammer could see the safety was on, a
s they stood on the roof of the Chapel.

  Got to rename this place, he thought not for the first time. But he had other priorities right now…

  “Hydrogen burns, right?” she said.

  Jacopo Benzi shrugged. Hammer nodded. Ali Benzi was noncommittal but Sally Denonile nodded vigorously.

  “So does magnesium.” Santos held the crossbow up. “It took us ages to get the ignition working right, but we’ve done it.”

  Sally Denonile nodded in agreement. She’d been working with Santos’ R&D crew on the top of the adjacent building to the one Marder now lived in, experimenting.

  “So what happens,” Santos said, “is that these special bolts are loaded with magnesium tips. When they go out of the crossbow, they’re set on fire by friction. When they hit the barrier balloon… may I?”

  Denonile looked at Hammer, who nodded.

  “Do it.”

  Santos aimed the crossbow up at the barrier balloon over the Chapel. She un-safetied the weapon and fired. As it left the bow there was a whisk and the bolt’s tip caught fire in a blaze of actinic white. It flew up to the barrier balloon – and in moments the balloon was a blaze of fire.

  “Cut it loose, Karl!” Santos ordered her tall, shaven-headed assistant, who had a machete drawn. He swept it across the rope holding the burning balloon in place; it flew up, dragging the rope behind it, taken east by the winds to become someone else’s problem. Hopefully not the Lonsdales’.

  Santos was grinning.

  “If the rope isn’t cut, they don’t last long until they burn through the tops of the balloons, most of the hydrogen escapes in a big flume of fire, and the remains of the balloon come crashing down. How about it, Boss?”

  Hammer grinned back at her. “Good job. Build more of these, now. Ali, cut this woman a five thousand dollar check plus whatever additional resources she needs. Santos, I think you’ve just neutralized what our enemies think is their best defense against us.”

  * * *

  “This is the primary sorting plant,” said Lock, who wore a filthy once-white apron as he gestured at the man-drawn trucks. Ragged raff were shoveling out raw trash onto conveyor belts. A number of managers, formerly clerks and technicians, stood nervously awaiting the boss’ judgment.