Empire City

by Matt Gallagher

  Did you know that upwards of 75 percent of America’s youth today can’t qualify for military enlistment? It’s true! Between physical requirements and mental health screenings, only three out of ten young Americans are eligible to even try to become a warfighter.

  That needs to change. No fatties or nutters in our ranks! Exercise regularly. Put down that fast-food snack and grab an apple, instead. Be open with your parents, religious leaders, and school counselors if you ever start to feel overwhelmed by life. And make sure your friends are doing the same. We’re going to need you on the front someday!

  Because protecting the homeland starts at home.

  CHAPTER 2

  MIA COULDN’T HELP it: failure brought the shakes. Not anything too obvious, just little trembles, her hands mostly, the kind warmth didn’t cure, the kind that needed to be waited out. Failure had always affected her like that, which was one of the reasons why she’d committed herself to experiencing it as seldom as possible. It wasn’t that she feared it. Only cowards feared failing, she thought. But the idea of her disappointment being seen and conceptualized by others drove her to achieve more than any goal ever could. Her brothers mocked it as obsession, her father admired it as drive, her grandfather called it the Tucker blood. Whatever it was, wherever it came from, Mia didn’t fail often. Most everything she’d ever wanted, she did, and did very well.

  Was the little plastic stick she held in the bathroom failure? She wasn’t sure yet. It didn’t seem like success.

  I can’t be, she thought, staring at the two vertical lines like they were hieroglyphics. This doesn’t make sense. But of course she could be. She was.

  Between the waves of nausea and sore breasts, she’d suspected for days, but there’d been the possibility of confusion, of a mistake. In Germany they’d said this wouldn’t even be possible. But they’d said a lot of things in Germany, some of which had proven true. Some of which hadn’t.

  Mia took a deep breath, ignoring her shaking hands. This hadn’t been part of the plan—she and Jesse weren’t to even talk children for another four years—but she could adjust. She didn’t like adjusting, but Semper Gumby. Always flexible. She’d learned that in flight school and still adhered to it when she needed to.

  You have time, Mia told herself. Focus on today.

  Today was Sunday, the day after the engagement party, and well wishes and small talk still clouded her mind. Unopened envelopes and gifts covered their kitchen table in mounds, and her good leg ached from standing for too many hours. The envelopes and gifts could remain unopened for the time being, though, and the feet were going back into wedges. Wall Street paused for no one, even on Sundays.

  Focus, Mia told herself again.

  She bent over and removed her shrinker. She didn’t need it anymore but preferred sleeping with it to keep her stump warm. She grabbed her regular prosthetic from a shelf and brought it to her right knee socket. It felt cold and familiar in her palm, like an old metal spear. It popped into place, and when she set it down on the floor, the muscles in her good leg loosened with relief. Then came the skin cover and a pair of black leggings, ubiquitous to her life now, and a new sheath dress she’d been saving for today’s luncheon. She brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and left the bathroom.

  The living room was empty and dim. She’d purchased the two-bedroom condo two years before with deployment savings. Her father and grandfather had wanted to contribute, and also wanted her to live uptown. “You work in the Finance District,” they said. “You don’t live there. That’s how it’s done.”

  They also considered uptown safer and less likely to be attacked, but neither would ever say that out loud. They were persistent men unused to being told thank you, but no. Turning them away hadn’t been easy, but it’d been worth it. Both to maintain her independence and to be able to walk to work. Besides, there were worse kitchen views than Vietnam Victory Square.

  Through the kitchen window the square sparkled like a church, a white spire shooting above the crowns of the trees. Mia wasn’t one for daydreaming, or for maudlin patriotic symbols, but she did enjoy early morning coffees thinking about what that long marble wall meant to the soldiers and marines who’d come before. She’d find them in the park, sometimes, on her way to work. Sitting on a bench, looking at the wall or at the Legionnaires statue. In suits, in ragged combat jackets, in dad jeans and fanny packs, trying to reckon with their war, with the costs of victory, with themselves, too. She found it oddly serene, watching strangers sift through the arcane past for something like clarity.

  The government had done well. It was a good monument. The Council of Victors had done well, too—it’d been their first project after taking over for the old Veterans Administration. She doubted her war would ever get anything like it.

  Mia walked through the living room and into the open bedroom. “Up,” she said to Jesse, who still lay facedown in bed. She turned the blinds. Lady Liberty and the blue waters of the harbor came into view, slices of late morning filling the room. This earned a deep groan into the pillows.

  “Hungover,” Jesse said. “No más.”

  “Hah,” Mia said. Jesse didn’t drink, something he’d never explained and she felt didn’t matter to their life together. He’d gone undercover for years for the Bureau, sent to be her handler after, as a reprieve. He had a history. So did she. Persons of consequence usually did.

  She turned and took in her groom-to-be. His wide, pale frame had moved to the center of the bed, and he’d buried his head into his arms to try to ward off the window light. Her family had handled his Jewishness better than expected, but their New England conceits emerged when it came to his size and stutter. Pilgrims tended to cling to sanctimony, Mia had learned, even with their own kin.

  “How’s my girl?”

  “Her?” Mia looked out the window toward Lady Liberty. Still green, still corroding. Still sinking. “You can do better, I think.”

  “Funny.”

  Mia leaned over and kissed Jesse on the tip of the nose. “Up,” she repeated. What she couldn’t explain to her family and never would was how he’d cared for her after she came home. She’d been a wreck, and alone. First he’d done it as a job, then as a friend, then, later, as something more. Mia came from a family who valued success, stoicism, and means, not always in that order. Those things did matter to her. But the military had taught Mia that nothing mattered more in a human being than competence. And fat, pale, stuttering Jesse Stein was the most competent man she’d ever known.

  Even if he didn’t look it at the moment.

  “Do I have to come?” He moved his head under a pillow. Mia recognized it as progress. “It’s a lunch for Wall Street vets. I’m not Wall Street. I’m not a veteran. And I don’t want lunch.”

  “What else.”

  “There’s a fantasy football draft to prep for. Work league. Very important.”

  “Too bad. You promised last week.”

  “The last one of these you dragged me to was about inev-inevitably nuking China. Over trade. Depressing.”

  “You weren’t paying attention then. Not inevitable. Just possible. And not over trade. Over Vietnam’s potential statehood, and competing mining contracts in Africa.”

  “Let me sleep, woman!”

  Mia smiled, thinking about the stick in the bathroom. He’d be so happy to know. But. There were biological concerns to consider. Super-biological concerns. The type of concerns a handler would need to know. The type of concerns a fiancé didn’t need to. At least for now.

  “It’s two hours,” Mia continued, reaching her hand under the covers to scratch between Jesse’s shoulder blades. “There’s a guest speaker. Famous general. Bit of a role model of mine. All you have to do is sit there.”

  That earned another groan into the pillows. “The only thing worse than a self-important vet,” he said, “is a self-important vet giving a speech.”

  Mia smacked him on the back of the head. “I’m a self-important vet,” she said. “And
this is my speech: get up, we’re going to be late.”

  Jesse laughed, flipped over, and pulled Mia into the covers. “Let’s stay here,” he said, smelling of sleep and last night’s toothpaste. “Like Tupac says on his morning show. Fuck the world today.”

  This is why I love him, Mia thought, turning away from his attempt to steal a kiss but settling into the crook of his shoulder. He makes me feel safe, even while driving me crazy. She wondered if he could feel her hands still trembling, but if so, he didn’t say anything. She let herself listen to his heartbeat through his chest for a few minutes. It reminded her, ever faintly, of the rotor wash from an attack helicopter.

  Later, after she cajoled Jesse into the shower, Mia checked her phone. There was a text from Britt Swenson, asking for Sebastian Rios’s email. Oh Lord, Mia thought. This can’t end well. Then she texted Britt with the email and finished getting ready for the luncheon.

  * * *

  The guest speaker for the Wall Street Veterans’ annual summer luncheon was Major General (retired) Jaclyn “Jackie” Gaile Collins, sometimes referred to as Jackpot by her warfighters (affectionately and otherwise), former head of the U.S. homeland intelligence command, current deputy director for science and technology at the Agency, decorated combat hero, West Point class of 1977, wearer of an oversize West Point class of 1977 ring, noted military gender pioneer, proud political moderate, and prouder mother of two.

  “Impressive,” Jesse said, reading over the general’s bio on his phone in the cab to the luncheon. “The minefield stuff in Vietnam—she’s legit. How’d you get her?”

  “Her daughter’s at Lehman Brothers,” Mia said. “Easy ask.”

  “What’s with the nickname, though. Seems—sexual?”

  “Nothing like that. When a ground raid finds the enemy target they’re looking for. Jackpot. As a colonel, she transformed the process for commando missions. Figured out how to work networks bottom-up instead of top-down. Went from a hundred raids per year to three thousand. Turned spec ops evergreen.”

  Jesse nodded, then flared his nostrils. “Agency spooks, though.”

  Mia rolled her eyes. Tribal fights in the army, tribal fights on Wall Street, tribal fights between government agencies, they were all the same. Before she’d gone back-office and moved to corporate compliance, she’d earned her stripes in investment banking, the front lines of money. Seventy-, eighty-hour workweeks, where careers could be made in minutes, and broken in half that. Same with entire accounts and capital portfolios that she’d tried desperately to remember were people’s livelihoods, people’s dreams. College educations. Retirement funds. Small businesses. It was hard, though. The game was the game. And the game left little space for contemplation. Contemplation meant time, and time meant money, and money meant everything—not just everything to the banks, or to the slick-suited creeps trying to sleep with a Tucker granddaughter, or to the bull statue tourists took pictures with because, hah hah, it had testicles. Money meant everything to those dreams she’d been charged with seeing through. That meant something, Mia knew. Even if it usually felt like nothing at all.

  She’d never expected to end up in the family trade. She’d gone away to Dupont in the alien south to do something different. She’d found it with ROTC, and then the army. Then she’d volunteered for the wrong mission and it’d all been taken from her. C’est la guerre, she told herself anytime she felt the spider legs of regret crawling into her thoughts. C’est la guerre.

  The dark thrills of combat could never be replicated, Mia believed that, but the military had its similarities to finance. The firm hierarchy and structure, for one. Having to prove herself in a world of brash young men, for another. Resolve and will trumping that brashness over and over again, for yet another.

  Mia did miss investment banking sometimes. But she didn’t long for it.

  Finance was in Mia’s blood. War lay in her bones.

  She’d been looking out the cab window, mind adrift. Jesse tapped against the partition to bring her back.

  Mia followed Jesse’s nod and grin. Someone had carved FREE ABU ABDALLAH into the partition plastic. “Jackpot should be alerted,” he said.

  He was trying to play with her, but Mia shook her head. The terror chieftain’s trial at the World Court had become a daily spectacle. Like a lot of Americans, Mia wished the Volunteers had just killed Abu Abdallah the night of the raid and been done with it. A hell of a time for them to discover courageous restraint, she thought.

  The cab moved north along the city’s main park and dropped off Mia and Jesse in front of a square Victorian building with high gables. The board had asked Mia about the Yale Club for today and she’d played coy. She’d called in that favor before. But the new recession had complicated her family’s relationship with some people at the club. Her father insisted it would blow over. Mia wasn’t so sure. Whatever hard line separated business matters from personal, the crash had snapped it clean all over the city.

  The luncheon room overlooked a small rock garden and screen doors on the sides let in a warm midsummer breeze. Mia and Jesse had arrived in time—barely, she noted—and after a quick hello to some of the other junior board members, they took their seats as near the podium as Mia felt appropriate. New paperbacks of the general’s The Soldier and the State covered the tables like confetti. Mia guessed she was one of the few who’d already read it. People in finance loved books, and loved getting their books autographed. Reading those books, though, was something else.

  A waiter took their orders. Mia made conversation with an asset manager on mimosa number three. He’d been a submarine officer in the 1980s. After the Cold War ended with the Russian Revolution but before the Palm Sunday attacks. Mia knew how to deal with men like this, when to ask a question and when to laugh, and most especially, when not to mention her own combat record. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jesse talking with a man about their age with trim dishwater blond hair and no neck. Oh God, she realized. That’s Liam Noonan. Mia began to eavesdrop. They were discussing the revised Warfighters Care Act. They hadn’t been seated even ten minutes.

  “It’s personal for me. Once a Navy SEAL, always a Navy SEAL.” A bond trader for a boutique firm, Noonan never failed to mention his background when he appeared on cable television. “I’ve had friends sent to rehabilitation colonies who are still there. I’ve had friends sent to colonies who received treatment and returned to society, whole and healed.”

  “So you’re okay with the new legislation?”

  “Hell no. Big government always makes things worse.”

  “But there’s stories about drug companies experimenting on colony vets.”

  “Media garbage. More bureaucracy won’t do a thing. We need quick and thorough solutions. Only a free market can provide that.”

  “Sounds like someone has colony stock options.” Mia bit her lip to keep from smiling. Jesse rarely talked politics. He didn’t even vote. G-men needed to be above the fray, he thought. But the report on the colony experiments had roused something in him. Mia had heard him mumbling at the television about it. “I saw on the news that fourteen percent of new vets are sent to colonies now. That’s big money.”

  “The tribunals have explained. It’s medical.”

  Jesse didn’t seem to hear that and kept pressing. “And what about the International Legion? Those poor bastards only get citizenship if they pass a tribunal. Way harder than the medicals here, right? That’s one way to keep the ranks full.”

  “It’s about us! Not them!” Noonan slammed his fist on the table. The stock options dig had landed. “I’ve shed blood for the homeland. What have you done?”

  The hair on the back of Mia’s neck rose. She could almost feel Jesse considering punching out the bigger man’s larynx. Men are so stupid, she thought, maintaining eye contact with the still-jabbering asset manager while patting Jesse’s leg under the table. That seemed to help; his body slackened at her touch.

  “Just a concerned citizen,” Jesse finally
said. And then with a scorn so razor-fine only Mia could hear it, “America Honors the Warfighter.”

  “The honor is ours,” Noonan replied, automatic as a pull string.

  “The SEALs, that’s something,” Jesse said. “Weren’t you all auxiliary for the Volunteers? When they grabbed Abu Abdallah, I mean.”

  He was now asking for a fight, there could be no doubt about it. Mercifully, the food arrived and the general appeared in the back of the room. A hush fell over the luncheon like a shroud. Jesse kept his arms crossed and winked at Mia. Liam Noonan’s face remained a hot crimson.

  And Jesse wonders why 80 percent of the wedding are my invites, Mia thought.

  General Collins moved to the podium with the self-possession fundamental to all flag officers, a practiced ease that both belied and sustained itself with every step. She was a stout woman, Mia observed, not big, not tall, yet a full presence. She wore a gray suit with a notched collar and no shoulder pads, and peep-toe flats that Mia admired. The general set an open manila folder upon the podium and smiled wide for the room. The West Point ring on her right hand rose and fell with her gestures like a black sun, and Mia had to blink a few times to keep from following it.

  “Hello, Wall Street Veterans!” General Collins said. Her voice was throaty and hoarse; Mia knew a woman couldn’t make it in the military talking like velvet, no matter how capable. “To be among this group is an inspiration. I’m going to bottle some of the energy and brains here and bring it back to Langley. We sure could use it.”

  Polite laughter filled the room. Mia didn’t dare look at Jesse.

  “I want to begin by thanking each and every one of you for your service to our great nation. Particularly the younger veterans in the room who joined after Palm Sunday. Your generation is often slurred because of the supposed prosperity you were born into. ‘Found at freedom’s peak,’ former president Rockefeller said. Yet you still went to war. You knew you’d be going. You’ve been sent to Lebanon, Cyprus, Syria. All over the Near East, all over the world. You’ve conducted air campaigns in Persia, the Balkans, God knows where else. You kept Greece and Turkey from starting World War Three, even after nuclear disaster. ‘The Mediterranean Wars,’ they call it. What they really mean is ‘Endless Conflict.’ All that takes a special kind of commitment, a special kind of courage.”