by Zack Parsons
“I saw you in here last night,” said the priest. “I’m not very good at telling you from the others, but I remembered the dog. What’s your name?”
“Casper.”
“And the dog?”
Casper had to consider the question. “He’s not Ringo.”
The priest chuckled and said, “No? How about Lennon?”
“The Communist?”
“That’s the one,” said the priest.
Casper shrugged. “Sure, Lenin it is.”
“I’m Father Woodhew. Just Father to most. I apologize for those boys out front. They’re always coming here looking for a fight. ” The priest took a small cookie out of his pocket. He bent low and held it cupped in his hand. The dog snuffled it out of his palm and accepted a pat on the head as it crunched away. “If he messes in here, you’ll need to clean it up in a hurry. That’s just the thing could start a donnybrook. I say, for now you find a seat with some of your kind. Most folk won’t like you too much, and it can be hard to make friends.”
The priest deposited Casper in the back of the line feeding past the kitchen.
“I need to welcome everyone,” said Father Woodhew.
“Do you have a cemetery here?” asked Casper. “For people who go to this church, I mean.”
“There is a small cemetery behind the church, but we haven’t buried anyone there in a long while. Not since the seventies at least. Do you have a relative interred there?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll get the record,” said Father Woodhew. “You wait in line.”
The priest threaded his way through the cafeteria. Casper looked around at the line. The couple ahead of him, heads and shoulders draped in wool blankets, looked back, saw he was a duplicate, and pulled their children in tightly against their legs.
The line stopped and started and advanced slowly. With each shuffling step the savory aroma of the buffet grew more overwhelming. The dog whined and licked its chops.
“It does smell good,” said Casper.
Father Woodhew returned with a folio bound in time-worn leather.
“This one goes all the way back to the forties. If you need something older I’m afraid I can’t help you tonight. If you come back tomorrow—”
“This is what I needed,” said Casper.
He knew what he would find before he found it. No Lynn Cord, because she had resumed using her maiden name. She was Lynn Short. Born 1911, Died 1962. A beloved sister and aunt.
When he exhaled it felt like more than just air leaving his lungs. Casper closed the book and passed it back to Father Woodhew. The priest squeezed Casper’s hand.
“If they are buried there then they are with God now.”
He received his tray of food and searched the tables for an open seat that wasn’t adjacent to someone staring at him with hatred. A slim, light-skinned black man with a spotty face and uneven, dreadlocked hair looked up at Casper and quickly looked away. There was an open seat next to the man, beside a very heavy white girl who was wrapped up in conversation with the people she was sitting with.
Casper took the opening, weeding his way through the crowded row between the tables and dropping heavily into the chair beside the black man. All around chairs squealed against the floor as men and women abandoned the table and moved away from Casper. Some of them shoved him in the back as they pushed past carrying their half-eaten trays of food.
Only the black man remained, shoveling food into his mouth. He was wearing a puffy winter coat, ripped across the shoulder, and he smelled like cigarettes and sweated booze. A plastic grocery bag stuffed with clothing was tied around his forearm by a heavy piece of white rope.
“Casper.” He didn’t bother to offer the man his hand.
“Don’t think you can talk to me,” said the black man. “Everybody in here wants to kill you. Even the dupes you was supposed to sit with.”
Casper began to eat. The food was institutional grade, which suited him just fine. He was ravenous. He stared at the tray, but he could feel the eyes on him all around the room. The weight of the dog rested on his feet.
“Man, I swear you got a death wish, coming here,” said the black man. “Don’t try to Rosa Parks with me. Nobody makes the rules. You sit with your kind, we sit with ours.”
He stood but did not immediately depart.
“You can have my biscuit,” said Casper. “You don’t even have to stay. Just tell me your name.”
The man with the dreadlocks hesitated. He eyed the crusty biscuit and licked his lips. His skinny fingers swept over Casper’s tray. The biscuit was gone, disappearing into the bag tied around the man’s wrist.
“They call me Bottles,” he said. “And don’t try to sit near me never again.”
COMINTERCEPT – CIVILIAN/MILITARY UHF/VHF –
IN THE OPEN - RED LABEL
7/02/06 - 9:01:39 PST - Partial Machine Transcription
Subjects: AF 996 (Aeroflot International Flight 996), WALLACE (USS George Wallace CATTC), BREWER 14(USMC MH-54, Transport), HAVOC 53(F-18J, Escort)
Aeroflot International Flight 996 is a chartered civilian aircraft departing Vladivostok and over the Pacific bound for LAX. UMSC MH-54 transport helicopter BREWER and F-18J multirole fighter HAVOC are launched from the aircraft carrier USS George Wallace.
WALLACE: Civilian aircraft Aeroflot 9-9-6, this is the USS George Wallace tower. You are entering our CAP space. Maintain heading and altitude.
AF 996: Ah, repeat, USS Wallace?
WALLACE: Aeroflot 9-9-6 en route to LAX, maintain heading and altitude. This is the United States Navy.
AF 996: I copy that, US Navy.
AF 996: (cockpit crosstalk)
WALLACE: AF 9-9-6, maintain heading, descend to three thousand feet.
AF 996: Descending to three thousand.
AF 996: Uh, US Navy, this is 9-9-6. There are fighter plane aircraft visible off port wing.
HAVOC 53: Aeroflot, good morning. Me and HAVOC 5-4 are going to see you in safely.
AF 996: Okay, we do not want the trouble, US Navy.
WALLACE: AF 9-9-6, drop speed to two hundred knots.
AF 996: Okay. Slowing to two hundred knots, US Navy.
BREWER 14: Aeroflot 9-9-6, this is BREWER 1-4 coming in low and slow on your seven.
AF 996: Copy, BREWER 1-4. We do not see you on radar.
BREWER 14: AF 9-9-6, that’s just fine and dandy. We’ll be there.
AF 996: Very well.
BREWER 14: AF 9-9-6, Wallace CATTC is going to hand off to the civilian controller. Follow their vector in, but I want you to halt on your landing runway and remain in place. Do not taxi. Do you understand?
AF 996: BREWER 1-4, we are not supposed to do this.
BREWER 14: Just tell me you understand, AF 9-9-6.
AF 996: We copy you, BREWER 1-4. Land and do not taxi. Is there any other instruction?
BREWER 14: We’ll see you on the ground, Aeroflot.
CHAPTER SIX
Los Angeles International Airport was empty. Its runways and tarmacs were a concrete desert. Minutes could pass in its bright caverns during which not a single passenger walked the concourse. The ghost life of its facilities continued. Escalators climbed and fell, shops remained open, security stood ready, and janitors and ticket-counter employees continued at their jobs.
Outside its terminals, beyond the silent food court and shopping plaza, there was a security perimeter maintained by the Army. A handful of business flyers, private jets, and cargo aircraft were still operating. All other civilian air traffic was routed well north and south. Protestors camped in the parking lots and occasionally attempted a run on the front gates. They were inevitably forced back by the security—mostly duplicates—supplemented by a detachment of military police.
A convoy of matte-black armored carriers arrived in the passenger drop-off area with a blast of horns and the lurching gurgle of idling diesel engines. The Rapid Response teams loaded inside the vehicles were under orders to cre
ate a spectacle. Hatches banged open, sergeants barked commands to dismount, and squads of security troopers charged out and deployed in full tactical gear. They faced a jeering crowd of onlookers. The confused airport security watched and, unsure of how to react, decided to do nothing.
Simultaneously, a quartet of unmarked vans arrived at a chain-link side gate manned by a pair of uniformed guards. Identities were verified, and the gate rolled open. The vehicles slipped inside without anyone noticing. Polly Foster was in the lead vehicle.
The vans fanned out and halted on the tarmac at Terminal Three. Polly stepped out into the still morning. The quiet and the retracted Jetways lent the terminal a forlorn atmosphere, like the docks of a drained lake.
A pair of fast, low-flying military jets shook the sky as they passed overhead. Polly was searching for them when she spotted the wide-bodied Antonov on approach. It wallowed in the air, sliding side to side above the shimmering river of the landing strip.
It was a beast. It dipped lower, and its four jet turbines whined. Smoke gusted from its rows of tires as it touched down, finishing a long deceleration and halting on the nearby runway. It was only as its powerful engines cycled down that Polly heard the thudding of the helicopter following it in.
She recognized the Poseidon, the naval version of a military Griffon helicopter. It was flat gray and bore no markings. It circled above the stopped Antonov once before descending to the runway. The moment the helicopter’s wheels touched concrete, a bristling contingent of Marines in city-pattern fatigues spilled out of its doors.
This was not how things had been arranged. There was no provision for a deal with the military. Polly thumbed her radio.
“Head for the Antonov. We’ll meet them on the runway. Keep your safeties on.
She expected to meet the UN team leader, Dr. Robin Burns. What she was greeted by instead was a polite but insistent United States Marine Corps sergeant. He was an imposing and extremely fit African American with FUNKWEED stitched on the breast placard of his city-pattern vest cover.
“Let us through,” said Polly.
“I’m sorry,” said Funkweed, “Captain Dryson will have to talk to you first.”
He kept his tone respectful and his carbine pointed at the ground, but he was physically blocking her from approaching the Antonov. The helicopter lifted off, leaving behind a full squad of Marines—Force Recon, by the looks of their gear and patches—to secure the ponderous Soviet transport aircraft.
“This was all arranged with the Army,” said Polly. “They’re in control of this facility. Colonel Ford? Do I need to get him down here?”
“This is a Marine Corps operation,” said Funkweed. “I’ll salute an Army man if you’d like to haul him down here, but I take my orders from the captain, and he said nobody gets on that plane.”
Polly studied the squad of Marines. They were unusually fit and disciplined, even for Marines. Each man was not only in peak physical condition but almost the same height and build. None of them were duplicates.
They took up positions around the aircraft, not threatening but making it apparent that if she or anyone else tried to interfere, there was going to be an intense disagreement. She ordered her escort teams of two men per vehicle to remain in the vans.
Only Sergeant Funkweed was relaxed. He folded a stick of chewing gum into his mouth and leaned his wrists over the back of his slung weapon.
“All the palm trees are dead.” Funkweed gestured to a row of denuded trunks planted along the fence a few hundred yards across the tarmac.
“All the trees within a hundred miles are dead,” said Polly. “The leaves turned white and dropped off weeks ago. That’s the sort of thing the UN team might be interested in.”
“You think?” He grinned and snapped his chewing gum.
“Yeah, I think.”
“You should tell them,” he said, “when Captain Dryson is done with ’em.”
Buzzers sounded from within the belly of the Antonov, and, with a sustained whine of hydraulics, the aircraft’s blue nose began to rotate up and over the cockpit, gradually exposing a cargo hold filled with equipment and boxy European land rovers. The trucks were painted white and stenciled with the UN lettering in black.
A lanky Marine officer and several civilians stood at the top of the Antonov’s ramp. The Marine descended the ramp with the nose cone still rotating into the open position. Polly and Funkweed approached him.
“You must be the detachment from Bishop Unlimited,” said the Marine officer. “The name is Captain Everett Dryson.”
“Polly Foster. I’m from Rapid Response, not Bishop. It’s an autonomous subsidiary.”
“Still a subsidiary.” Dryson exchanged a grin with Funkweed.
He shook Polly’s hand assertively. He was tanned and self-assured. He wore a pistol in a shoulder holster. His long, plain face was unapologetic, his eyes unwavering beneath dark brows. His confidence, meant to calm, only rankled Polly further. Act like the boss, and people will treat you like the boss. She was familiar with the trick.
“You and your men need to leave,” she said. “This was arranged through Colonel Ford’s office and in cooperation with Third California Mountain. I am the security liaison for the UN inspectors. That was the deal.”
“Deals like that are above my pay grade, Miss Foster. Even above Colonel Ford’s.”
“Admiral Haley?”
“Maybe even above him. This inspection deal wasn’t with the company or the Army; it was with the United States government. Somebody way above me was worried that, respectfully, some folks here might not put the security of these interlopers at the top of the agenda.”
So this was an ambush and an insult on top of that.
“It’s understandable,” he continued. “I’m sure everyone in Los Angeles has a lot on their minds. They don’t need a babysitting job added to that. We’ll take it from here.”
The civilians were wandering out of the Antonov’s belly and onto the runway. There were a lot of them, dressed in jackets and photographers’ vests, bleary-eyed in the bright sunlight. Polly recognized a handful of them from the briefing documents Milo had given her.
“I am responsible for the safety of these people, and I don’t want this to turn into a fight, Captain. Tell your men to stand down and back away from the aircraft. You can call in your helicopter and leave peacefully.”
Polly made no move for her sidearm, but the threat was understood by Dryson and Funkweed. Their smiles disappeared. Their posture shifted. They were taking her seriously.
“I would seriously advise against trying to force the matter,” said Dryson. “This aircraft is under my protection, and you need to step away.”
“You don’t have any dupes on your crew,” said Polly. “No type twos?”
“No,” said Dryson.
“That’s too bad.” Polly reached slowly and deliberately for the radio on her belt. “We come in pretty handy when the odds are hopeless.”
Dryson smiled again, and the expression was pinch-lipped and humorless. He unfastened the strap securing his pistol in its holster. Sergeant Funkweed was now holding his carbine as if he intended to use it. Despite the threats, Polly raised the radio to her face and keyed the channel.
“I’ve asked the drivers to unload the vehicles.” The words were hard-edged and came from a diminutive woman pushing her way past Funkweed. “I need you people to move. You’re blocking the way.”
Polly recognized her as the inspection team’s leader, Dr. Robin Burns.
The details from the briefing files rattled through Polly’s head. Burns was a Harvard-educated blood specialist, worked with Mayo and then assisted on pandemic studies for the CDC. A brush with death saw her enlisting her skills with the United Nations. Mid-forties, married, husband an avowed Communist working for the Chinese, two children living somewhere in the French Canadian enclave.
The formidable CV was matched to a woman not a crumb over five feet. Robin Burns was slim, naturally pretty
in a delicate manner that seemed better suited for a life of leisure. She was obviously doing everything possible to ignore her own good looks. Her graying blond hair was swept back and tied. Instead of makeup she wore a pack strapped to her shoulders that bulged with equipment, and she wore sensors and sample equipment on her belt. Fists on hips, she swept her harsh glare over Polly, Captain Dryson, and Sergeant Funkweed.
“Settle it,” said Dr. Burns. “I want to do the best possible job in the least amount of time, and I don’t need your cock-waving getting in my way.”
“Ma’am.” Captain Dryson saluted her respectfully.
“Don’t salute me, you fascist.” She gestured to a caramel-skinned giant of a man wearing a blue uniform picking his way through the aircraft’s formidable luggage. “Get your Marines, and help Rukundo and the others load up the trucks.”
Dryson complied enthusiastically, marshaling his men and joining the UN scientists in packing up the white land rovers. That left Polly staring down Dr. Burns.
“You’re from the company.” Dr. Burns spoke with an indistinct, Midwestern American accent. “Foster, was it? I was told that to get access to your facilities, we need to cooperate—catch more flies with honey, that sort of thing. I’m not much of a honey sort of gal. I apologize in advance for my brusqueness, and I hope you understand, for this job to be finished, I need full access.”
“I will do my best,” said Polly.
“And I hope that’s good enough. If it isn’t, I might have to rely on these jarheads. Captain Dryson expressed his eagerness to make sure we get everything we need.”