Ritchie paused at that, struck by an odd image running through his mind: pirates with AK-47s lurching through the streets of Manhattan like zombies.
"Walking dead… ase?" Kipper asked as his image and audio faltered a little. "Wha… at?"
"I'm sorry, Mister President. You're breaking up. If you're asking what the walking dead phase is, it's exactly what it sounds like," Ritchie replied. "The enemy so targeted and not killed immediately will recover from an initial bout of illness and survive free of any symptoms for a period that could last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks in any given case. During that time they could cause a great deal of havoc, especially given that they'd know they had nothing left to lose."
Kipper rubbed the bridge of his nose as though he had a bad headache while Culver shifted through his papers.
"What about other weapons?" Culver asked. "Have you had an opportunity to survey our options?"
Ritchie nodded. "I talked to the chemical warfare folks over at Twenty-fifth Infantry before you called. The United States was already in the process of demobilizing and destroying our biological and chemical stockpiles when the Wave struck."
Kipper looked up at the screen, then back at Culver, his face deeply lined with fatigue.
"I understand there are small stockpiles at locations I can disclose via encrypted text transmission. However, there remains the same question as to whether or not those weapons are viable for use," Ritchie said. "Moreover, their tactical value may well be degraded by the specific theater conditions. Despite the mythology, neutron weapons were conceived of as a defense against Soviet armor massed out in the open, not as a way of denuding enemy cities of all life. Plus, of course, it's not an insignificant thing, opening this particular chest of wonders, Mister President. I would like to place on the record my very strong advice that we do not even consider going down this road."
The president stared off to the left somewhere, as though looking out a window, perhaps. When he turned back to the screen, he asked, "Are those weapons secured?"
"The facilities are," Ritchie replied. "We do not have a full inventory of all of the weapons and their status, but that is mainly a human resource issue. The depots themselves are secure."
They were secured, as Ritchie well knew, by a cluster of W62 and/or W78 thermonuclear warheads surrounding the perimeter of each facility. These warheads, with a yield of 170 to 300-plus kilotons, were in turn surrounded by another perimeter of antipersonnel weapons and watched by satellite and hardwire video surveillance. The warheads were arranged in a way that ensured maximum destructive yield over a facility such as the Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah or the Johnston Atoll Strategic Weapons Reserve in the Pacific Ocean. Part of Ritchie's job was to secure all such weapons of mass destruction by any means possible. Since his 1,000-strong Strategic Command Security Force was not nearly enough to even begin to garrison all the sites, it was logical to simply booby-trap them, especially given the fickle nature of loyalty these days within certain elements of the U.S. Army. Blackstone's siren song reached all the way out into Ritchie's command, though he was confident that most naval personnel remained immune to the charms of terrorizing migrants in Texas.
If Mad Jack ever got his hands on a nuclear weapon, however…
"I know ground operations aren't your thing, Admiral," said Kipper, "but do you have any thoughts on the current problem? In New York, I mean."
Drawn away from contemplation of his daily nightmare, Ritchie shook his head.
"I am afraid there will be no easy solution, Mister President. There never is. I will offer this for consideration: How long will the bulk of New York City last without human intervention? We have found significant natural deterioration of the places we've already resettled. Am I correct?"
The president nodded.
"Even if we were to secure the New York City area, and even I agree that it has to be secured somehow, just how long will it be before we need all of the possible living space?" Ritchie asked.
Culver leaned forward. "If current immigration trends continue and our birthrate remains nominal, perhaps a hundred years from now."
Ritchie nodded. "By that point, Mister President, we would need to demolish what is there and build something new. Well, not us, of course, but you know what I mean. Nature will have destroyed the city for us even if we are able to drive the pirates out."
"What do you suggest, Admiral?"
Ritchie backed away from suggesting anything. The idea of mushroom clouds consuming a dead city full of memories and pirates was just too much.
"I have no easy solution, Mister President. That is the best I can tell you."
Kipper did not look happy, and part of Ritchie urged him to leave it at that, but he couldn't. "Do you mind if I speak freely, sir?"
The president seemed surprised he'd asked, but then, he was neither a military man nor a career politician.
"No. Go on," he said.
"Mister President, I understand it is a terrible thing sending men and women into combat. If you are a halfway decent human being, it should weigh on you like no other decision you will ever make in your life. But sir, just because it is emotionally difficult and morally challenging, it is not necessarily wrong. Those men and women were not press-ganged into service. It was not just a choice for them. It was and remains a calling. And sir, no nation on earth can hope to survive long without people who will answer that call. No nation can hope to survive if it does not respect what they have offered and do the hard things that history sometimes asks of us. Sometimes, Mister President, there is no answer but blood."
James Kipper stared out at him from the screen, his hands held together as if praying, pressed against his lips. He seemed to be weighing what Ritchie had said. After a moment he replied.
"Thank you, Admiral. I'll think on that some more."
28
New York "CLAYMORE!" Milosz shouted. He squeezed the clacker three times. The intersection before him lit up with a flash and a roar of three claymore antipersonnel mines set up to optimize the body count. When the dust, the smoke, and the ringing in his ears cleared, he could see an intersection full of shredded offal and bone where screaming asswits had been.
"This is like the shooting of monkeys in a barrel, yes?" Milosz shouted as he exchanged an empty magazine for a full one. "Except we are these fucking monkeys. No racial offenses to be intended, Wilson."
Tracer fire punched into the polished stone column behind him, chewing out chunks of powder and sharp, stinging fragments of marble. An armored truck sporting the logo of the Wells Fargo Company lurched into the intersection with a 12.7-mm DShK mounted on top. A rail-thin Somali worked the machine gun around the intersection, spraying the walls with heavy fire. Sergeant Veal laid down return fire with his M240, firing off short bursts of 7.62s while his partner worked her radio. Veal's rounds shattered the armored glass of the truck.
"None taken! I'm more offended that you didn't bring the fifty-cal, Fred!" Wilson roared as he lifted his carbine over the windowsill of the bank at the corner of East 29th Street and Madison to squeeze off a few as Somalis and Yemenis started to pour in around the Wells Fargo truck. Return tracer fire zipped through the air in torrents like deadly horizontal rain, but inaccurately, as if blown everywhere by a squalling wind. Milosz kept his head tucked in so tightly that his neck started to cramp, but straying even an inch too high could mean losing the top of his skull. This was the problem with operating behind enemy lines, he thought: Always it sounds like such a very glamorous sort of adventure until the fucking enemy turns around and realizes you are there.
"Throwing white," he yelled over the infernal din before pulling the pin on a smoke grenade and tossing it through the shattered windows and into the street outside, aiming for the center of the intersection.
"White smoke at your three o'clock, over," Tech Sergeant Gardener yelled into her radio headset. There was a brief pause before she yelled again. "Target in platoon strength, one hundred yards south o
f smoke. Enemy in the open, moving toward us. Over."
Milosz picked up his M4 carbine again and risked a peek over the solid gray stonework behind which they were sheltering. He got a quick picture of two dozen or more men running and darting from doorways to smashed cars, moving from one scrap of cover to the next, firing and yelling as they came. In among them he spotted a lone man who seemed to be directing traffic, his head swathed in what looked like a red scarf. A single round sizzled past Milosz's ear and clanged off something metallic behind him. He heard the speeding projectile as a distinctly separate entity inside the storm of battle, a single shot out of the bullet swarm that raged around them. He leveled the muzzle of his M203 on them and fired a forty-millimeter high-explosive grenade into a car across the street where many of the nig nogs were taking cover. A crunching explosion blew chunks of shrapnel and fresh man meat into the street. A quick check. The scarf was nowhere to be seen.
"Cleared hot!" Gardener yelled, before she grabbed Milosz by the shoulder and pulled him down hard. He heard the thudding roar of a swooping gunship a split second before the deafening buzz-saw howl of its minigun turned the street outside into a mess of flying metal, glass, and spent brass casings. A few seconds later rockets whooshed in, detonating with deadly effect in the concrete valley of Madison Avenue. Milosz risked another look and was horrified to see that one of the attackers-the asswit in the red scarf, back from the dead!-had somehow sprinted through the fiery maelstrom and thrown a grenade into Sergeant Veal's position. The air force machine gunner was blown in half as he tried to throw the grenade back. Gardener screamed, and Milosz shook his head, which rang like a giant gong.
The attacker cocked an arm back to throw another grenade into their hiding place. Before Milosz could get his weapon up to snap off a shot, Technical Sergeant Gardener, firing one-handed while still yelling instructions to the gunship pilots, put half a clip from her M4 into his stomach. Milosz would swear that for just a moment he could see right through the man in the scarf to the burning wreckage of the street behind, where secondary explosions were tossing cars around like throw pillows, melting tires and windshields, and blowing out windows high above the street.
"Fucker!" Gardener yelled as she swapped mags.
"Ha! Take that Captain fucking Crunch," Wilson shouted half hysterically. "You like that, huh? Sucks to be you now, don't it, bitch!"
The pirate spun around, ending the weird effect-had it been an illusion?-of being able to see right through the huge, ragged hole in his torso. Milosz and Gardener ducked as the grenade exploded, adding its cracking bass note to the explosive symphony.
"I do not imagine Colonel Kinninmore will be having such a full and frank exchange of views with this motherfucker, eh?" Milosz cried.
"Whoa! Three o'clock!" Wilson yelled, quickly shifting position to one of the big, soaring windows that looked east down 29th Street. "There's more of them."
"Cursed be your mother's anus and your father's testicles!" Milosz roared in demented anger as he scrambled over to cover the new line of attack. "This is not how we do stealth in Polish special forces, I tell you, Wilson. And yet Poles it is who everyone makes joke about. Is this fair, I ask you? Is this fair?"
He yelled that last while methodically firing single rounds one after the other into six charging pirate asswits. Most of them wore red keffiyehs like the man Gardener had just killed, and as they charged, Milosz distinctly heard the war cry "Allahu akbar!" One came so close that he heard his bullet strike flesh, like the sound of a hand slapping water, and saw a small fizzing cloud of steam puff out from the entry wound. Meanwhile, the thin black ranger was down on one knee, swapping a magazine, while Gardener called in a new close air support mission and covered the burning morass of Madison Avenue lest any more freakishly lucky survivors should emerge from the hot tangle of twisted scaffolding and burning cars.
"Downtown four five, this is Halo two niner, requesting close air. Swing ninety right on last confirmed gun run, white smoke as previous, over," she said into her headset with a shade less urgency and volume than before.
The crackle and wind roar of the blaze triggered by the last Little Bird attack was loud, but not so loud that it drowned out the cries and shouts of the enemy as they pressed forward again.
"Little Birds are pulling out for resupply," Gardener said, checking over Veal's body. The mute sergeant's right arm had disintegrated in the same grenade blast that had split his torso open. "I'm trying to get some A-10s. They ought to be stacked up between five and eight thousand feet."
"Goddamn! Hope they don't leave us open for too long," spit Wilson. "I'm down to three mags and pistol ammo. What you got, Fred?"
"Two full magazines of carbine ammunition and two rounds for the two-oh-three," Milosz said, banging another two shots down 29th Street, knocking over a crazy black fellow who appeared to be armed with nothing more than a machete. His carbine jammed as he watched the African climb to his feet.
"American piece of shit," Milosz shouted, pulling the charging handle in an attempt to clear the jam.
"Roger that. Cleared hot," said Gardener. "Over. Gentlemen, heads down, please."
Milosz distinctly heard the whine of turbines echoing around the concrete canyons of the city again before a fantastic river of bright yellow tracer fire deluged the street, sweeping over everything in its path like fiendish sorcery. The machete-wielding fool was scythed apart, bursting open in a splatter of blood mulch as though cleaved from shoulder to hip by a giant's invisible sword. It happened in an instant, the lethal radiance unstitching his sprinting form in a malign display of rag doll physics before ribboning up the street to disassemble even more of his comrades. A second later the incendiary hammer fist of Hellfire missiles fell upon 29th Street, atomizing the living and the dead alike in a scorching blast that Milosz could feel in the uncomfortable tightening of all his exposed skin. He shut his watering eyes against the heat, ducking well below the solid stone window box. The turbines howled away, powering the A-10 back into the low clouds over Manhattan.
Gardener's calm voice came from somewhere to the left. "Outstanding work, Downtown four five. Another load of tourists gone to hell."
Wilson was more emphatic as he whooped it up. "Ha! Not so tough now, are we, motherfuckers? Teach you to disrespect the city ordinances, didn't we? Welcome to explodapalooza, fools."
Milosz squinted into the fierce glare of the small, self-contained apocalypse burning merrily away in Madison Avenue, and there, sure enough, he saw more figures moving, advancing carefully through the fiery debris, some of them in the ubiquitous scarves of the tactical commanders he had learned to look out for.
"Goddamn," Wilson protested. "Don't these ignorant motherfuckers ever get the message? Gardener, is that more of them?"
"I do not know that we should be killing these people, Wilson," Milosz said. "They remind me very much of the bootblack in Horatio Alger story with their sticking-to-it-iveness, yes? Would make excellent citizens now, I am thinking. Perhaps we should discuss possible truce and fast-tracking of naturalization, no? As alternative to being overrun and fast-tracked into early grave?"
"Horatio fucking who? Izzat that fucking nigga in the two-seven always talking about getting out and working salvage in LA?"
"Downtown four five, this is Halo two niner," Gardener said. "Requesting close air again. Over."
"Again with the N-word, which we discussed, Wilson," Milosz said, as he took a pair of binoculars from his battle dress and tried to get a fix on the advancing enemy. "Is this an irregular English noun, perhaps?"
"Downtown four five, please say again, over."
Milosz replaced the spyglasses and tried to find the man he had just seen through them with the scope of his M4, but it proved impossible in the clutter of the burning street.
"You got it." Wilson laughed. Milosz had no idea why anyone would laugh in such a situation. "They are worthless jungle niggas to me. But to you they are the proud and worthy descendants of the Zulu warri
or race. Or asswits. Asswits works just as well."
Milosz shook his head in exaggerated dismay.
"Have I mentioned this is crazy fucking country, Wilson?"
"Downtown four five, we have hostiles on the move toward us… how long… goddamn it, no!"
"'Goddamn no' is not good," said Milosz, suddenly paying more attention to the very pissed off air force controller. "What happened to outstanding work, and excellent shooting of the enemy, and please to killing some more?" he asked.
"They got retasked," she said. "We're on our own."
"On my twelve," Wilson said, without a trace of good humor. He snapped up his carbine and rattled off a brace of single shots. Milosz, too, had switched his weapon to single fire, needing to preserve ammunition. Gardener began fiddling with her radio, adjusting frequencies.
"Air liaison, air liaison, this is Halo two niner, requesting priority patch through to ASOC. Grid reference is…"
"Hey, Alabama," Wilson called over his shoulder. "Don't you let those fucking assholes hang us out to dry here. You get a fucking fifty-two to demolish every fucking block around us if you have to, but you keep those nasty fuckers out of our faces here."
Gardener ignored him and kept at her job.
"Air liaison, air liaison, this is Halo two niner…"
"Wilson, perhaps we need to fall back soon," Milosz suggested as the first rounds of the next attack began zipping and cracking past his head. It was just a few shots to begin with as the pirate asswits pushed forward through the carnage and destruction laid upon their comrades.
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