by J. F. Holmes
God, he was such a shithead sometimes. I glared at him, and he smiled back. “OK, then. We roll in two days. Let’s make it happen. Range first light tomorrow, zero weapons, then everyone gets twelve hours to pack. Plan on being out at least two weeks and go heavy on the ammo. Shona, Boz, have the cadre work with Cahill’s people, see that they know what they’re doing as far as loadout. Make sure they have civilian clothes. Sergeant Yasser, I need to talk with you afterward.”
The meeting broke up, and everyone left to get ready. We hadn’t discussed our actions on the objective; that would develop as we gained intel. Once everyone had left, I sat down with Yasser.
“I know our orders are to capture this guy, but if we have the chance to take the shot, we’re going to do it. I want to know if you’re comfortable shooting a politician in cold blood. If not, I’ll do it,” I told him.
He actually laughed, a rare thing from such a serious guy, and said, “No offense, Colonel, but you can’t hit the broad side of a barn, as you Americans say. I’ll do it, and I have no problem with killing a politician. The world would be a much safer place if we did so more often. Too bad he’s not a lawyer also.”
“Good. And don’t give me any of that ‘I will hit him if Allah wills it’ bullshit. Spend all day today making sure you’re on target for a really long-distance shot, have Ziv work with you as spotter, and get him zeroed in too.”
Chapter 310
The next night, another helo showed up to take me and Brit to Epson’s State of the Union Speech. It was no longer given in January; instead it took place on the anniversary of the outbreak, July 1st. More bullshit to show people how far we’d come, but I knew it was necessary.
My dress blues were, as usual, uncomfortable as hell. I wore them as little as possible, which was never, and getting the right fit was almost impossible with a shoulder holster under it. Matter of fact, I’m surprised we bothered with the damn things at all, but you know the senior officers and their love of pizzazz.
“YOU LOOK GREAT!” shouted Brit as we crouched our way into the Blackhawk. I’d barely caught my gray Scout beret from being blown out of my hand.
“KISS MY ASS!” I shouted back. Thank God I was wearing spit-shined paratrooper boots instead of shoes, or I might have slipped and fallen on my ass. We climbed in under the twirling rotor blades, Brit sitting across from me. She liked to, because she said this way she could see the fear on my face as we flew.
I looked at her as the setting sun threw a beam of light into the open cargo space. She wore, under her customary beat-up leather jacket, what would have been called, before the Apocalypse, a ‘little black dress’. Brit wasn’t tall, but the years of combat and struggle had left her with some pretty damn firm legs. She caught me looking, smiled, and slowly stretched them out in front of her, revealing a small automatic strapped to the inside of her leg. Damnit, woman. Even hotter.
The smile that lit up her face was why I’d fallen in love with her, though. She reached up and adjusted the patch over her right eye, but the left sparkled ice blue with humor and life. The air currents whipped her long crimson hair around, and she snagged it back into a ponytail.
We were the only passengers on board so far, though I knew we had other stops to make. The aircrew was a young guy, E-4, and I caught him staring at Brit’s legs, mini dress, combat boots with a Ka-Bar fighting knife sticking out of the left one. She saw my face, looked over at the kid, and made a sucking motion on her finger. He looked away very quickly, and I laughed at her, mouthing the words, “cradle robber”. She raised her wet middle finger and rotated it in the air.
The State of the Union address was being held at Empire Plaza in Albany, even though the new Capital was in Syracuse. Some BS about the tenth anniversary of the plague, the defeat of the Mountain Republic, honoring our heroic military, blah blah bullshit bullshit. I hated these things. The bird dropped us off at the roof of Albany Medical Center, and a Humvee took us up to the Plaza, where a crowd of thousands had gathered to hear the President speak.
“Would you frigging relax?” said Brit, loving the crowd and the attention that was being paid to her. To me it was a giant target. One gunshot or IED and this place would turn into pandemonium. Thank God we were sitting in the VIP bleachers with other senior military. I spent the time talking with a Command Sergeant Major I knew.
“Long way from Mortaritaville, Nick,” he said, referring to where we’d met, at Ballad in Iraq, a base notorious for the daily indirect fire. “That was a long frigging time ago!”
“Almost twenty years, Joe,” I answered, thinking back. “We were just kids then.”
“Yeah, well, I hope all those Sunni shitheads we fought are choking on undead. But I bet you’ll know soon enough, huh?”
Apparently rumor of our mission to the Middle East had been going around. “I’d tell you, Joe, but then I’d have to kill you.”
He looked at my uniform, noting the stripes on the sleeve. “What, aren’t you wearing your Colonel’s rank?” he remarked, touching the Command Sergeant Major’s insignia.
“That’s only a brevet rank, and for the field. Places like this, I revert back to being enlisted.”
Brit laughed and said, “He’s full of shit, Joe. He wears them because he thinks he can get away with saying shit as a troop that he can’t as an officer.”
“Well,” I grumbled, “it’s true!”
Our bullshitting was interrupted by a band starting “Hail to the Chief” and we all stood. Chris Epson walked down a red carpet laid out from the road to the stage, surrounded by Secret Service in plain clothes. As he walked, a roaring ovation broke out from the crowd, and he smiled, waving his arms, and the cheers got louder.
“It always goes to their head,” I muttered, and Brit elbowed me, hard.
Epson had mounted the stage, and stood behind the podium, holding a set of papers in his hand. We all sat down as he began his speech, and I pretended to fall asleep immediately, but Brit pinched the inside of my leg.
“My fellow Americans,” he began, then stopped, looking at the papers and then putting them down. I heard him mutter “screw this” and he walked out in front of the podium with the mic in his hand.
“My fellow survivors,” he said simply, “I want to talk about where we are, and where we’re going.”
He paused, took a breath, and continued. “Yesterday, I accepted the formal surrender of the last organized forces of the so-called Mountain Republic. Congress has declared a general amnesty, and we can start healing. Their leadership is on the run and should be brought to trial within the week.”
The crowd erupted in cheers, and I thought to myself, “Within a week my ass.” I must have said it out loud, because Brit hit me again.
“I’m also proud to say that, with the arrival of the latest carrier load of refugees from England, we’ve passed the five million mark in population. With New York, Vermont, Quebec, Pennsylvania, Maine, the settled parts of New Jersey, and Massachusetts, we’re coming back, and Nova Scotia and New Hampshire will join us next month, having each passed the one hundred thousand mark. Last, hopefully, I want to tell you that, in September, we’ll start moving the government back to Washington DC, where it should be.”
He stopped and took a sip from a glass of water, and the crowd waited for him. After a moment, he said, “People, I didn’t want this job. I was dragged kicking and screaming into it, by a man who reminded me of my duty to this country. For that, I’m forever in his debt. More importantly, though, I woke up to what America really is. It’s you, the survivors, who have lived through two terrible plagues, the fall of our civilization, civil war, starvation, and ruin. And you fought and kept the dream alive. This is your country, not mine. I’ll do my best for the rest of my term but, on this, the tenth anniversary of the plague, I want you to start thinking hard about the future.”
He waited for the cheers and applause to die down, then continued, “As for that future, it’s time to start venturing out into the world again.
I intend to bring home every American who survived out there in the world, especially our troops who were left overseas. Leading that effort will be the man who brought me to my senses and reminded me of my duty, my friend, Colonel Nicholas Agostine.”
“Oh, you PRICK!” I said as a spotlight moved to shine on me. Brit started laughing that wild, insane laugh of hers, and I knew it was me she was laughing at.
Chapter 311
Later that night was a formal ball, or reception I guess you could call it. I don’t know, I hated the damn things. It seemed like a waste of resources and time; the band playing while the world burned. We had only a few days until we were going on a mission with an untrained, untested crew.
Brit, on the other hand, was enjoying the hell out of herself. She actually held up the receiving line, and everyone in earshot, when she started telling the story about how I’d taken a shot at Epson and missed.
“So there’s Nick, all ready to take him down, and wham! the shot misses by a country mile! Of course he was probably all worked up about the fist fight him and the President got into a little earlier, but everyone on the teams knows that my husband can’t hit the broadside of a barn with a sniper rifle.”
Even though Epson was laughing, and his, um, date, was smiling, the Secret Service guys behind the President looked like someone had just poked him in the ass. I gently took Brit by the elbow, said, “Thank you, Mister President,” and guided her away to the buffet.
“Are you trying to get me shot?” I grumbled to her.
She laughed and said, “No one cares, Nick. It’s an entertaining story, and no harm done. Now come on, live a little! You of all people know we never can say how much time we have.”
I tried to lighten up, I really did, but I felt like a fish out of water there. There were dozens of Generals and Admirals, milling about and pressing the flesh with politicians. Part of me wondered where they’d been hiding while the Apocalypse took down the world, and I started looking at their ribbon racks, trying to tell who had done what, and who deserved to be punched if they opened their mouths.
Brit saw me doing it, rolled her eyes, and dragged me out onto the dance floor. Meaning I kind of shuffled here and there, feeling like an idiot, while she reenacted her days as a student trying to earn college tuition money, not that she ever had. She COULD have, mind you, and looked even better now. I’m not gonna lie, I actually stopped dancing and just kind of stood there and watched. The Celtic cross tattooed across her back was evident to everyone, and she even made the movements of her new hand seem sinuous. I think every guy there, and not a few women, pretty much stopped to watch. I saw one old lady smack her husband, a three-star admiral, upside the head. I thought of a long-ago picture on the internet of an officer’s wife at a Military Ball who was showing way too much leg as she ground her crotch into someone. It was funny at the time; now I was grateful that Brit was only dancing by herself.
“Are you done?” I asked her as the music changed over from a heavy dance beat to something much more formal. “Because I think you caused a few heart attacks.”
She smiled and held out her arms, and I slipped into them, spinning her around the room. We needed time like this; so much had been spent fighting, running the farm, raising kids, training the teams.
“You know,” I said to her as we danced, “you move pretty gracefully for someone with a dislocated shoulder.”
“And you,” she replied with a smirk, “don’t look half bad with a broken nose.” Both of us laughed, recalling how we’d met and what we’d done to each other.
After a while we returned to our table, where dinner was being served. On my right was Brit, and she began an earnest conversation with the President’s date, who could actually be mistaken for his daughter. Whatever, more power to him. On my left, a man in a tuxedo introduced himself as the Mayor of New York, James Steinberg.
“How is the City?” I asked, knowing full well where the reconstruction of Manhattan stood. With the destruction of many of the bridges there, a decision had been made to concentrate only on the island itself, leaving the other boroughs to fend for themselves. The Brooklyn and Staten Island Navy Yards, of course, were humming with activity.
“Well,” he said, “it’s New York City; you know how it is. Never keep us down! But if I recall, you were there last year, weren’t you? Up around midtown?”
“We were,” I answered guardedly. Most mission details were classified, but that one had made the news. Preventing the looting of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dealing with a company of mercenaries.
He smiled his politician smile and held out his hand. “I just want to thank you; that was a great deed you did for the City, and for the country.”
Praise always made me uncomfortable, but I shook his hand and said, “Just doing my job, your Honor.” He smiled and turned to talk to another politician on his left, who I vaguely recognized as some other mayor or something from the West Coast, maybe the fortress city of San Diego. I wanted to talk to him and hear the story of how the Marines and Navy had secured it against the Los Angeles hoard.
Meanwhile, my damn uniform was feeling really uncomfortable, so I unbuttoned the jacket and shrugged out of it, formalities be damned. I’d just started to shovel in a mouthful of spaghetti when I heard someone yell, “GUN!”
I grabbed Brit and dragged her to the floor, and she rolled to put her back to me, her pistol appearing from under her skirt. Mine came out of my shoulder holster a split second later. We both quartered the room, scanning for targets, while people around us screamed and Secret Service shouted, hauling the President away.
“GIMME A TARGET!” yelled Brit, and I shouted back, “I GOT NOTHING!”
Everyone had hit the floor, and the Mayor was pointing…at me.
“HE’S GOT A GUN!” shouted the politician. I was really tempted to use it.
Chapter 312
“So Nick actually draws down on the Mayor! Told the Secret Service guys that he might be part of a diversion!”
The guys were gathered around the dinner table at the farm house, and Brit was telling them the story while I sat there and poured over maps. Our daughter Jane sat on her lap, and Mike was sitting next to me coloring, not bad for a four-year-old. They were used to the rough banter around the table, and there were several other kids there too. Nate and Nick, mine and Red’s respective seven-year-olds, were probably out someplace getting into trouble. The mission planning was going well, everything was about packed, and a CH-47 would be there at dawn tomorrow to pick us and our gear up.
“It’s all funny until I have to get up in the middle of the night to bail you out of jail,” grumbled Red. He hadn’t actually bailed us out, but he did drive down the rough thirty miles of road to come get us. Apparently our helicopter ride had gone the way of our welcome.
“Hey, I should have shot that dipshit. I don’t know how he managed to survive the plague anyway. He sees a gun in a shoulder holster and about pees his pants?”
Beside me Mike had stopped coloring and made the “Dad said a bad word” face. I tousled his hair and we went back to planning things out, talking more so about the mission to Cyprus than anything else.
“So tell me about what happens after you got thrown in the slammer,” said Shona, and I related the story of the rest of the night, laying out the plans for Israel as I had been given them.
****
While we sat in the cell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, an Air Force General named Simpson, had pulled up a chair and had a long talk with us about the importance of what we’d be sent to do.
“Your mission to capture,” and here he put up little air quotes with his fingers, “Jedidiah Holcomb is important, but I think it’s a waste of time.” I understood the air quotes to mean kill, rather than capture. He was a soldier, not a politician, but I couldn’t help poking him.
“How so?” I asked. “Do you Air Force weenies have another rebellion up your sleeve you’re not telling anyone about?”
&nb
sp; “That was a cheap shot, Agostine. I lost my wingman getting YOUR team into Syracuse, flying wild weasel missions. I killed other Americans, just enlisted guys, kids, for this country. Don’t ever think I don’t forget it.”
“I’m sorry, General, you’re right,” I apologized, even as Brit kicked me. “Back to the Middle East.”
“Operation Recover is, like the President said, aimed at bringing back every American who’s been overseas since the plague. Of course, priority will be for service personnel and equipment.”
“Not going to be a lot after the end of the world, two plagues and ten years, General,” said Brit.
“Some, but you’re right, not a ton. Most of our overseas armor went to the UN drive from Gibraltar into Spain, then France. It got hit hard by the second plague, so we don’t expect much out of that.” He opened a map case, and annoyed at the bars between us, ordered the guard to open the cage.
“Uh, I can’t do that, Sir!” said the young uniformed Secret Service officer.
“Just give me the goddamned keys, son!” he barked, and my respect for the man jumped a bit. The kid fumbled them, then unlocked the cell himself.
“Thanks,” I said, meaning it. I was still in my uniform, and Brit was still in her dress. Being in a jail cell was kinda weird when I was dressed for a party.
“Your man Captain Redshirt will be here in about an hour to pick you up. Needless to say, you’re persona non grata around here until the politicians go away.” He snickered and muttered, “GUN!” I liked him even more.
The map was a fairly big one, displaying Europe and the Near East. “Aside from the Israeli issue, these are the locations of possible American military units, some from before the first plague, some from after the second. Ones that have remained in contact, we’ve already repatriated.”
I looked hard at the marks on the map; there were over a dozen. Major naval bases, forward deployed army units, even a place where an MEU had gone ashore and set themselves up a little, um, kingdom I guess. Staying far away from that one; I’d had enough of tin-pot dictators.