"What are you drinking?" she asked.
"Well, that is a sad story, Miss Jules. This here is one of the last ever bottlings from the lost and much lamented Dogfish brewery. Four times the grain, twenty times the hops, and about a hundred times better than cat's piss like Bud."
"Rhino, I would never have taken you for a boutique beer man. It's all rather flowery and gay, isn't it?" Jules said as she pulled up a chair.
The Rhino made a show of scowling at her before he finished off the dregs of the beer in his hand.
"This here brew has such a high alcohol content that you could run your old boat off it, if they hadn't taken it from you in Sydney."
"Don't remind me," she said wearily. A waiter arrived, a young woman in the sharply starched blue BDUs of Schimmel's Manhattan constabulary, one of the local Manhattan militia units. The hotel, indeed the whole Green Zone, was officially the concern of New York Territorial Governor Elliott Schimmel. She took Jules's order for a T-bone and baked potato with a side of green beans after first fixing them up with drinks. Another, increasingly rare bottle of India pale ale for the Rhino and a gin and tonic for her. When the waitress had retreated, Jules leaned forward.
"We need to make our move pretty soon," she said in a low voice. "That attack on Kipper this afternoon, I don't like the look of that at all. It has all the hallmarks of some jumped-up gang boss staking out his turf. I fear this city is going to be a very unfriendly place to visit in the near future."
"It's not exactly fuckin' Wally World now," the Rhino said. "But you're right. I checked on the Net earlier. Everyone's talking about it as a warning to Seattle to stay out of the East. Geraldo even had an interview with some Haitian toe rag running a crew out of East Quogue, who said all the pirate outfits would get together to make sure Uncle Sam kept his nose off their turf. Their fucking turf! Can you believe it?"
"Easy there, big boy," she cautioned him, but for once he would not be talked down.
"It's easy for you, Jules. This isn't your country. It's just a place you're working. But I served twenty years to protect and defend America from exactly the sort of bottom-feeding scum suckers who've swarmed all over us since the Wave. It makes a rhino angry is all I'm saying. And an angry rhino is a dangerous thing."
"I'm sure," Jules said, pausing while the waitress returned with their drinks. She signed the chit that would charge the bill back to her account but didn't leave a tip. By federal law you couldn't offer a member of the militia any sort of monetary inducement. It was the woman's duty to ply Jules with gin and tonic. The lavish catering was also part of the incentive to come to New York or one of the other Declared Zones. To many it was a damned sight better than standing in line at one of the many government kitchens in Seattle waiting for a cup of thin venison chili.
"The fact remains," she continued when they were alone again, "that we have to get a move on. If Kipper is serious about retaking New York and settling it, there is going to be an almighty brouhaha in this place before too long. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the freebooters band together, at least temporarily, and it is almost certain that they'll call in help from their motherships and home ports. In fact," she said, leaning forward, "I would lay very good odds that our little holiday resort here will be targeted for a jolly good rogering by the Jolly Roger crowd in the very near future."
The Rhino sipped his beer and nodded.
"You might well be right about that, Miss Jules. It would sort of make sense for them to hit hard before Seattle can get a grip on the city. So where's that leave us?"
Jules smiled and went quiet again as the waitress appeared with her meal. The food was all flown in from Kansas City or the West Coast and must have been hideously expensive. There weren't many working men and women in America who could afford T-bones and designer beer for dinner anymore, but everything in Manhattan's Green Zone was subsidized by the federal government, so although Jules would have to pay for the meal and the drinks, it was a nominal cost.
"We need to be ready," she said. "When the opportunity arises, we have to go without hesitation. But if nothing does arise in the next few days, I think we have to make our own chances."
Jules casually took in the dining room. It was fast filling up with workers from their crew and the other two that had been clearing the main arterial roads at the lower end of the island. The room was noisier, rowdier for sure than it would have been back in the day. Most of these men and women were veterans of working the Declared Zones, and they had the hard-bitten, chewed-off look of frontier types. They were coining it, to be sure, but there was no old money style and grace about them, none of the reserve with which she was so familiar from her childhood.
A booth full of roughnecks started a drinking game as they waited for their meals to arrive. Ryan and Manny and some of the younger hands from their crew had colonized another three tables nearby and pushed them together and were raucously playing some sort of networked game on half a dozen PSPs, another rare luxury item. One of the televisions above the bar played archived episodes of One Life to Live, which drew the attention of men and women alike, oddly enough. Out in the foyer of the hotel four fully armed members of Schimmel's militia prowled the carpet, occasionally disappearing out onto the street for a few minutes to consult with the private contractors.
Across from her, the Rhino had diced up his steak and potatoes like a master samurai and was inhaling the results. It was his second meal of the night. Julianne was famished after a day of extreme physical labor, but she restrained herself. For all that her father had been a fraud and a scoundrel, Lord Balwyn had instilled in her the importance of at least "looking one's part," and that meant not falling on one's food like a starving wolverine.
"Have you had a chance to talk to that goon Lewis yet?" she asked after thoroughly chewing and swallowing a small forkful of beef. A glass of red wine would have been nice with it, she thought idly, but she had work to do later and instead sipped at her chilled spring water, another expensive luxury.
The Rhino nodded as a fist-sized lump of food disappeared inside his maw.
Jules waited a discreet moment.
"And?"
"I asked him about the attack on Kipper. You know, everyone's asking, and Lewis does love to be the guy with the inside knowledge. Anyway, we got to talking about the plans to reclaim the city and all, and I just casual like asked him how things were going, especially up in the border zones around Central Park and the Upper East Side."
Jules nodded at him to continue.
"He said the park itself isn't too bad. The bandits stay clear of it because they can be interdicted by missile drones so easily."
"As could we," she added quietly.
"Yeah… but anyway, the park is pretty much clear. A lot of midtown's not so sporty as it used to be. Mostly been picked clean the last few years. Main issue where we're headed is that a couple of the gangs did set themselves up on the park, you know, living out of the Plaza and some of the better apartments."
"As one would," Jules conceded.
"Verily indeed," the Rhino quipped in a mock posh accent. "Anyway, that area's a free fire zone now. A true no-man's-land. So it's not permanently inhabited, but it's dangerous as hell to pass through."
Jules pushed back from her plate.
"Why didn't the air force just bomb those places if they knew there were a lot of pirate Johnnies hanging around?"
The Rhino looked momentarily discomfited.
"Coupla reasons. The president, he doesn't like to bomb his own cities and… well, there's a lot of talk that some of those places, like the Plaza, get used as rec facilities."
"As what?"
"Brothels."
"Good lord. Where do they find the talent?"
"Slaves," the Rhino said. "American slaves. So no boom boom while there's boom boom."
Jules found herself blushing, somewhat to her surprise. "Oh, dear. I am sorry, Rhino. I didn't know. I hadn't heard."
He shrugged, pretending he
didn't care.
"You're not enslaving them. Anyway, it's all rumor, you know. Chain-gang scuttlebutt. Buncha fuckin' idiots swinging a hammer, daydreaming about what they'd do if they had a hotel full of whores to themselves."
"Well, we knew this wasn't going to be a milk run," Jules said. "Are you still up for it?"
"Hey, lady, the Rhino is permanently up."
Julianne shook her head and returned to her meal. "Okay, then. Let me think this through tonight and we'll talk again tomorrow." Back in her room, changed into track pants and a Teletubby sweatshirt, Julianne poured herself a nightcap of whiskey and soda and secured the locks on her room. With curtains pulled she sat at the small desk and unfurled the papers she had taken from a hidden compartment in one of her backpacks. They showed the floor plans of an apartment overlooking upper Central Park from Fifth Avenue. Others were detailed aerial shots of the neighborhood, some of them pre-Disappearance and others taken within the last few months. She had to wonder at the amount of leverage her client must have used to gain access to what were obviously military intelligence sources. She didn't need more than a glance to know which images had been taken before the Wave and which afterward. The latest photographs all showed a city torn by the riots of nature gone wild and the infinitely more hurtful disturbances of men run amok, up to and including arc light firebombing runs by the remains of the B-52 bomber force. Firestorms could be seen raging in the areas local commanders had written off as unsalvageable, but Manhattan had been spared the worst of it.
Jules looked over the intelligence packet provided by her client. It was a collage of cached Internet files, pilfered recon reports from the Third Infantry Division, news media feeds, and pre-Wave satellite imagery. Rubin had also provided a Macintosh iBook with a series of embedded video files taken from recent drone flights over Lower Manhattan. A copy of an army map for Operation Sinatra showed a series of phase lines, graphic control measures meant to signify objectives for ground forces, slicing the island into a series of small, manageable components. Some of the material was six to eight weeks old, which was regrettable, but it did show the lead elements of the army and the Manhattan militia units penetrating up to 26th Street. It also showed a battery of Marine Corps artillery in a baseball diamond off FDR Drive. The operatic boom and crash of those howitzers could be heard through the night, and if one looked out over the ruins of Manhattan, it was possible to see the shells passing through the clouds, lighting them briefly before screaming on to their destination.
She thought briefly about using the sewers to move forward to their target. A couple of beers in those bars where the soldiers and militia hung out quickly convinced her otherwise. The Army Corps of Engineers had restored some pumps on the island and used the sewers to facilitate the movement of U.S. forces on the island. When the sewers and subways were not in use for troop transport, they were allowed to flood again. Rhino had suggested that Navy SEALs might be able to use the sewers, but with their rudimentary scuba skills, it was a death wish to try it.
Examining the drone feed on a disk, she could see that the life of Central Park had spilled over the iron fences and across the footpaths and tangled wreckage of the avenue, and everywhere greenery had blossomed and surged, burying much of the wrecked and frozen traffic in a lush tangle of vines and bushes and newly sprouted saplings. People had fought back, though, and huge areas of ancient regrowth had been burned out, either deliberately or as a side effect of conflict between the warring gangs.
Jules sipped at her drink and studied the most recent surveillance shots, wishing they were more current than six weeks old. There was nothing to be done about it, though. You just had to go with what you had.
And what she had was the plans to a building in this contested, lethal no-man's-land in which lay hidden a treasure she had been contracted to remove and return to its owner on the West Coast.
10
New York Yusuf swam for his life. A great many things floated in the river, dragged along by the tide, sometimes gathering in great rafts of wrack and flotsam that turned slowly in the cold green water as the vast, unstable islands of refuse made their way toward the sea. The thin African boy clutched a half-inflated basketball that he'd found around not far from where he had jumped into the Hudson from the crumbling concrete deck at the northern tip of Ellis Island. At first, he had not kicked or tried to swim away, partly fearing that the Americans would shoot him from the sky if they saw him thrashing about in the water and partly because he was worn out. It was all he could do to limply hang on to the basketball and let the current take him away. Eventually, however, he had to kick against the pull of the water lest he be sucked into the dangerous logjam of refuse.
For a while he worried that he might wash up on the southern end of Manhattan where they had just struck at the infidel or, even worse, on the other island about a mile south, where the American military and militia forces had their main base. As soon as he was in the channel, however, he felt the tug of a much stronger current carrying him north. Being careful not to move in any way that might draw attention to him, he was able to see the effect of the rocket attack for the first time. It was a glorious sight in spite of his own ignominious circumstances. The ancient circular fortress nestled in a park where the vegetation had run wild was partly ablaze. Many vehicles outside the old castle also seemed to have been struck by fedayeen rocket fire, although it was obvious from the spread of destruction across many blocks in that part of the island that a good deal of the bombardment had gone astray. Still, Yusuf thought, with real satisfaction, they had struck a great blow for freedom and righteousness today.
He did not know who in particular they had attacked. It was not for a lowly soldier of a mere saif to be privy to such details. But looking at all the flashing lights and thinking back on the savagery of the Americans' counterstrike, there had to have been somebody very important inside that fortress. Perhaps even the governor of New York! What a blow to the Americans' prestige it would be were the emir to reach out and lay the judgment of God on somebody like that. Yusuf allowed himself a small tired smile as he floated past the chaotic scene. He was too far away to make out much individual detail, but he could see that the Americans had been badly hurt. Hundreds of them were running about outside the fort, seemingly without purpose. Wailing sirens carried their panicked notes all the way out to him in the middle of the channel. It was gratifying to see them laid low in God's eye.
At one point, however, a small eddy in the river turned him around, affording the exhausted boy soldier a view of the smaller island from which he had escaped. The scale of destruction there seemed infinitely greater. Over a dozen helicopters looped and circled in the air above fiercely burning buildings, and higher up jet fighters described elongated figure eights over the whole area. No gunfire came from this island, telling him that whatever battle had been fought there was over and the Americans had most certainly won. As he watched, two of the fat, dark green troop-carrying helicopters flew low and straight across the water to land unopposed on the same dock from which he had made his escape. The current turned him around again then and carried him farther away before he was able to observe anything else.
Conveyed upriver at something considerably quicker than a walking pace, Yusuf was soon so far from the scene of the battle that he could no longer make out any details at all. He contented himself with watching the ruins of the city go by. He had been in Manhattan for only three weeks after arriving from the training camp in Morocco, his ship unharmed by the threat of British submarines or warships. They were known to fire on vessels within the so-called exclusion zone that extended many hundreds of miles out from the U.S. coastline. He still marveled at the scale of the metropolis. What a seat of power it must have been when the city still lived. And to think it was just one of many cities across this continent. Perhaps the greatest of them, to be certain, but still only one of hundreds according to their teachers in camp. He wondered how God could have allowed wickedness to be raised
so high before finally striking it down. But then, maybe that was the point, he thought, a lesson to the righteous and the evildoer alike, as he floated past what looked like the ruins of some sort of little harbor on the mainland side of the river. For a wonder, a number of sailboats still lay at anchor there. Some others had been thrown up out of the water, presumably by a storm, and lay broken-backed on the docks, which were strewn with debris and rubbish. Other boats were half submerged, their masts broken like matchsticks. These observations were interrupted by a painful bump on the side of his head.
Yusuf found himself at the edge of what appeared to be a huge floating mass of trash. Some of it had originated in the natural world. Large tree branches and even one or two whole trees that looked like they had been knocked over at their very roots were entangled with rotting bulrushes and great accumulated clumps of smaller twig and leaf matter. Caught up with them were car and truck tires, all manner of ruined furniture, and a seemingly infinite number of plastic bags, some of them empty and some of them bulging with unknown contents. His nose wrinkled and he gagged in disgust as he realized that some of the floating island was composed of dead bodies, many but not all of them human. A large, clear plastic bag full of small white balls floated by within easy reach. Yusuf tested it and found it not only more buoyant than his sadly deflated basketball but much easier and more comfortable to rest on. He abandoned the ball and moved across to the bag, on which faded red lettering spelled out BEANBAG STUFFING.
He did not wish to get caught up in the island of floating wreckage and thought it prudent to get as far away from the rotting bodies as possible. He shuddered with loathing when he recognized the bloated corpse of a wild pig not more than a few yards away. The drifting atoll was large enough that it took him a long time to swim around it and, with some added effort, to break free of the slow but significant whirlpool in which it seemed to be spinning.
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