by Chris Weitz
There’s a chorus of pops and bangs as the Russians fire back at whoever was stupid enough to engage. Meanwhile, the wounded soldier is scrabbling at his collar. Then his crazed eyes light on me and oscillate quickly between fear and hope.
It’s pretty unlikely that this guy is gonna be around long. There’s just so much important wiring in too little real estate in the neck. You’ve got your trachea, your esophagus, your carotid and cervical arteries… But what am I supposed to do, just let him croak? He’s got nothing to do with Uptown or Washington Square or any of this—he may as well be E.T.
I bend over him and put pressure on the wound. It’s a pretty neat little hole, and my guess is his spine is still intact, considering he’s still moving his extremities. I shift my hand away from the hole for a peek and, amazingly, spot a nub of metal, the edge of a bullet, resting against the blue-purple sheath of his carotid artery. It didn’t hit him at full velocity—might have been a ricochet. I can see it’s no less painful for all that, though; the bullet twists slightly as he struggles.
It’s difficult to concentrate in the thunderstorm of gunfire just outside. But it seems to me that while the guy has lucked out in terms of wound location, the jagged little slug will nick the carotid at any moment if I don’t get it out.
He’s not going to thank me for it, though.
I look over in the general direction of Jefferson.
Me: “Help me hold this guy down!”
Jefferson crawls over, nearly bumping into Rab, who’s coming over as well. After a momentary mutual glare, each of them grabs one of the soldier’s arms and holds the poor guy steady.
Since I don’t have my old wound kit—they took it from me what feels like centuries ago, at the lab—I take a deep breath and carefully poke the ends of my fingers into the blood-slick wound. A muffled scream. My fingertips feel around for purchase on the slug, which turns suddenly elusive. It tucks back into the tortured flesh like a frightened mouse. I overcome my revulsion and my pity for the soldier and squeeze my fingers further, until finally, I grab hold of the bullet and pluck it out.
Tears roll from the soldier’s eyes, and he looks at me with baffled incomprehension. I take his hand and press it to the wound.
Me: “Don’t let go.”
I fish around in my bag and come up with a precious roll of duct tape I stole from the helicopter. I swab at the wound with the top of his shirt, then rip off a square of silvery tape and slap it down over the hole.
Some notion of what’s happened is now lighting up the guy’s eyes when suddenly he’s pulled over the threshold by his legs, which have all the time been crooked over the edge of the window frame.
Amazingly, in the chaos of the firefight, the rest of the Russians don’t seem to notice us. They’ll be hella surprised when they find my ghetto bandage.
The wounded soldier’s eyes linger one last moment in the window hole before he disappears, carried away to wherever the Russians are retreating. The sound of gunfire dies down. We’re left in stunned and bruised silence.
WE DOUBLE-TIME IT BACK THROUGH SHERIDAN Square, past the golden dude on the golden horse, whoever he is, past the Plaza Hotel. The Gurkhas and the buzz-cut troops leapfrog ahead of one another and scamper from one piece of architecture to the next so that, if you looked at it from above, we could be a big superorganism slithering amorphously along. It all seems very convincing and Call of Duty and whatnot.
Still, I know we shouldn’t be out here in the street. After our little tussle at the Apple Store, the Uptowners will be on alert. I catch up with Wakefield as he strides down Forty-First and make the argument.
“I appreciate your opinion,” he says, even though he obviously doesn’t. “But we’re perfectly capable of traveling half a mile on foot quickly and safely.”
“And I, like, appreciate your opinion? But you’ve got to recognize it won’t be quick and safe if you try to just sashay over to Grand Central.”
Now here’s the thing. I wish I could present my ideas better at this moment. Because I’m right, but when Wakefield looks at me, all he sees is a gay seventeen-year-old n-word. And that doesn’t cut much ice in his world. I can tell that he has about zero time for my advice.
“If our first encounter was any measure of their capabilities—”
“It wasn’t,” I say, interrupting him, which I guess he’s not used to. “The Uptowners were surprised; they were out of their element. Now they know you’re here, they know what you’re after, and you’ll be on their home turf.”
He makes more of a show of turning it over in his mind before he blows it off. “Be that as it may, a direct approach will work best. We have more than enough firepower to overwhelm any opposition we encounter.”
“Bunker Hill, bro,” I say. I’m not the kind of guy who usually says bro—which is to say, I’m not a bro—but I figure if I butch it up a bit maybe he’ll go for it.
“Excuse me?”
“Bunker Hill? Remember? Redcoats try to take it all lined up in rows and shit? A bunch of Colonials just treat it like a shooting gallery? They don’t leave until they run out of ammo?”
I get the feeling either Wakefield never heard of Bunker Hill or that he has no intention of basing his decisions on Revolutionary War battles.
I try another tactic. “You want to get to Grand Central fast? Then let’s use the subway tunnels. There’s a station at Fifty-Ninth and Fifth. Probably barely guarded. A ten-minute jog and we’ll come up beneath those Uptown fools, snatch the football before they know it.”
I have no desire whatsoever to relive my time in the subway. Last time I was underground, we were getting chased by the Uptowners through the territory of the Mole People. Things got all Mines of Moria up in that bitch, like, chaos and violence and tragedy and whatnot. Some nice kids died.
We even lost track of Jefferson for a while, and he came back with Kath, all hotsy-totsy and murderous. At the station I just talked about? She shanked a guy to death while she was kissing him. Girl is fierce. Like, actually fierce.
All that aside, it probably would be safer to hit the Bazaar through the tunnels.
Wakefield: “Thank you for your thoughts. Now, if you’re done, we’ll be getting on.”
There’s a blanket of snow on the ground, absorbing noise, making the streets hushed and peaceful. The snow keeps coming down like we’re inside a cheap souvenir, and burned-out cars and mailboxes and twisted garbage cans get turned into white sculptures. I’m trying to shake the childhood flashbacks—peeking in the Saks Fifth Avenue windows, hot chocolate by the skating rink at Rockefeller Center, horse-drawn carriages. The horses got shot and eaten; the ice rink turned into a swampy pool.
After slinking and juking our way down from the park with nobody saying boo, the soldiers and Gurkhas have loosened up a bit and are taking a cautious stroll down the middle of the street. But around Madison Avenue, the trouble starts, just like I knew it would.
It begins quietly at first. A piece of paper flutters down from above, like a crazy-large snowflake. There’s a whole lot of above in this part of town, cement and granite and sandstone cliffs studded with pocked and smashed windows, ragged flags and corporate banners trailing and flitting.
I pick up the paper. Please be advised that garbage collection will shift from Wednesdays to Thursdays beginning on Memorial Day… I laugh. There are drifts of debris all up and down the street, seething with vermin.
Another leaf of paper floats down. Another. Then the drifts grow into a flurry… a storm. The soldiers look up along their rifle sights, trying to spot who’s making this happen.
And suddenly it’s not just paper falling from the sky but flat-screen televisions, tables, chairs, metal rectangles that must be computer servers or something. They’re easy to dodge because they’re coming from way up, but it draws all our attention.
And then the attack begins from down on the ground. The guy next to me—a freckly redhead—goes down, and I hear the thunderous ratcheting of a big machin
e gun, jostling and screaming, cracks of bullets hitting buildings. A piece of debris hits me on the shoulder, and I fall over. I find myself looking into the eyes of the redhead as the light goes out of them. Better him than me.
I crabwalk toward the nearest doorway but find my way blocked by an Uptowner with an old cavalry saber. He charges and whips the sword down at my head, and I only just manage to get my backpack up to block the swing. The sword slashes the bag open, and all my stuff rains around me as I try to recover. Homeboy stabs and hacks at me, chipping his sword against the street as I dodge. It looks like he’s gonna carve me until, somehow, he levitates into the air.
At first, I think it’s some crazy superpower he’s just discovering, but no. He’s actually getting lifted up by Donna’s former bodyguard. The huge guy straight-up Mr. T’s him into a wall, like he’s a puppet or something. The Uptowner crumples, leaving a sick red stain on the granite.
I scurry to the doorway, where I’m soon joined by the giant. Down the street, the soldiers have reacted quickly, breaking into two squads and hugging either side of the street.
Ahead, in the direction of Grand Central, I hear more shouting, and the rat-a-tat of the guns goes up a notch. One of the little guys with the knives appears, his face spattered with blood. He wipes his knife on his pants.
“Very bad outside!” he says.
I look back the way we came and see a blossom of orange fire and black smoke. It’s a flamethrower, for sure. The guy must be positioned around the corner, waiting for us to try to retreat so that he can roast us alive.
“Well,” I say, “we’re officially fucked.”
“Looking that way,” says the guy whose name, I now remember, is Titch.
I look through the plate glass of the heavy brass doors, and a lightbulb goes on in my mind. My memory is tweaking back to a shopping expedition long ago, a dull afternoon with Donna that we managed to make fun. We were just wandering around Grand Central, and we realized that there were passages to some of the big buildings nearby so that people could get to their commute straight from their office buildings without going out into the cold winter streets. If we’re lucky, this is one of those buildings.
“This way, boys,” I say.
The lobby of the old office complex is cavernous and complicated, vaulted and marbled like it’s Gotham City or some shit. Tucked in its recesses, there’s a little clump of shops to feed the offices above. We pass a dead cafeteria, a news kiosk, a shoe-shine station that sits like an abandoned throne. The surfaces dance in front of our eyes as we flee from the light and the firefight: me, Titch, and the Gurkha named Guja.
And then there, in front of us, is a passageway that leads down into the subway. There’s a long, dark, gently inclining tunnel. Two switchbacks leave us off at a tollbooth-and-turnstile vestibule. There’s a shutter made of modular steel ribs blocking the corridor. I try to lift it, but the padlocks are rusted shut.
Guja comes over to me and says, “We must go back.”
“Back where?” I say. “Back up there? You mean back into the shit? What for?”
“Colonel Wakefield. The mission.”
“Colonel Wakefield should’ve listened to me,” I respond.
The Gurkha has nothing to say to this, other than “We must go back.”
“We don’t even know if they’re alive.”
Guja takes out a little communication device and turns it on. Nothing but static. Which could be because we’re underground or could be because everyone up top is dead.
Titch says, “If they’re dead, Guja, there’s nothing we can do. If they’re still alive, then they’ll try to complete the mission, and they’ll head to the Bazaar, same as before. If they’ve been taken hostage, they’ll end up there anyway. So that’s where we go. Okay?”
The Gurkha thinks. Conflict on his face. He doesn’t want me to be right. Eventually, he just nods.
I say, “Great, except that we’re stuck here. Unless one of you has a bolt cutter.”
Titch strides up to the gate and, after peering at the details for a moment or two, places the heel of his boot chest-high against the links, then wraps his gigantic hands around a pair of strengthening rods. He heaves at them, and a series of groans and pops from the metal assembly ends in a section of the gate just ripping away and hanging limply to the ground.
“Shall we?” he says.
THE RUSSIANS WITHDRAW, TAKING WITH THEM the guy Donna patched up with spit and cello-tape—and how sexy is that, by the way?
I mean Donna’s skill, not the taped-together Russki.
We take safer positions and watch as the Russian squad is followed by an equally dangerous-looking crew of what appear to be Chinese commandos—at least, judging by their quick, hushed monosyllables. Which, if you count the Brits and our American cousins together in one mission, raises the total number of world powers currently tootling around New York looking for the biscuit to four. From a strategic point of view, this is not good.
If I were a betting man, I’d reckon that back at HQ they aren’t too pleased about the possibility of the US nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of the pugnacious Russians or the godless Chinese commies. This all smacks to me of the possibility of Escalation, of carrier groups and amphibious assault units on the way, of a very large consignment of Shit heading at terminal velocity toward an equally outsize Fan. Judging by the direction the commandos are heading, there will be the proverbial hot time in the old town tonight. The old town being Grand Central, last-known location of the ever-elusive footy. And then? Who knows. Perhaps the global balance of power changes. Or the world ends.
I call Titch up on the walkie to let him know about the Russians and the Chinese but get no response, which either means he’s busy or he’s dead. It’s very hard to imagine anything or anybody killing such a specimen of size and ferocity, so presumably he has better things to do than talk to me.
Though a habitually ungrateful sod, I’m genuinely thankful that Titch has let me take on this side mission, as opposed to, say, crushing my head between his beefy hands à la Gregor Clegane. Perhaps he knows that I’ll protect Donna if I can.
Who am I kidding? Donna’s the one who’ll have to protect me.
We pick up our journey westward, slushing through the snow and shell casings. To our right is the tundra-like expanse of this huge, godforsaken park. To our left, over the trees, mountainous buildings rise, as if all the tallest bits of London from its oil-and-oligarch stage had been crammed together in a small space and had reproduced like rabbits.
We reach the west edge of the park, demarcated by gray stone walls, and head uptown. Wild dogs, a charming feature of the neighborhood, look at us with gustatory curiosity. The snow, mostly unturned by travelers, is silvery and glistening. There’s a hush over the whole ruined island.
I observe Jefferson and Donna as they amble along, silent but companionable. They’re together again—but something’s up between them. Not just the obvious history. I mean something toxic, a crack I can wedge myself into.
I pry my eyes from the objectionable sight of the two of them together and look around at the buildings. This must have been a fun city at some point—so much sheer density, so much life and commerce in such a small space. Now it’s a stinking cyclopean mausoleum. Again I ponder my 100 percent terrible, not-even-so-bad-it’s-good decision to come here.
Not that it was entirely my choice, of course. A couple of years ago, when I was apprehended by the Reconstruction Committee at the tender age of eighteen, it was made very clear to me that if I did not do the proverbial One Last Job for my esteemed employers, I would be expected to carry water for them for the rest of my days, until I was a Very Old Rab, an even more deeply compromised Rab, a thoroughly de-souled and bitter and worn-out Rabindranath Tagore Tandon. My handlers back home, Welsh and the intelligence gang, are on the surface a pleasant lot. But beneath the velvety smoothness of the public-school-accented talk, one can feel the clenched iron fingers of political zealotry. They
’re much more committed than any of the flakes and the sport protesters and the guitar-bothering communards I was running with. For all their polish, Welsh and his lot are dangerous animals.
I look around at the heavily armed hormone factories I’m surrounded by. Jefferson and Donna. Kath and the little psychos she has trailing at her heels. And I feel very out of place.
Young Rabindranath is not a zealot. Guileless, unassuming, gentle Rab, who would not hurt whatever it is that malicious flies hurt, let alone a fly, has never felt overly attached to any particular set of principles.
That does not, mind you, mean that I am unprincipled. Rather, I am overprincipled. I am, to quote your national bard Whitman, “large, I contain multitudes.” I can see both sides. For me, life is not just not black-and-white; it is not gray, either. It is a rainbow whose colors and intensities shift as it falls upon different ethical and contextual landscapes.
I’m only a part of this mess at all because the Reconstruction Committee convinced me it might be time to give a little thought to the idea of Political Stability.
Admittedly, this was after they’d apprehended me whilst I was attempting to download encrypted files detailing the Reconstruction Committee’s kill list onto a Wi-Fi disk.
“Some part of me is pleased,” said Welsh on our first meeting, as he set down his cup and saucer and pulled the government-issue chair over to the metal table, “to see that Trinity has kept up its tradition of treachery. Continuity is a good thing. But only a very small part of me. The rest of me wonders, Rabindranath, what we are to do with you.”
What indeed? I was given a choice between languishing in very unpleasant lodgings at His Majesty’s pleasure for the foreseeable future, or doing a good turn for the Reconstruction Committee. So I made the only decision I could. Which is to say, I spilled the proverbial beans. I flipped. I flopped. I turned.
Enough with the booing and hissing! How is it my fault? I was not made to be a hero. I was made to live well and to appreciate the finer things, the look on a girl’s face at peak moments, the heady buzz of just enough but not too much to drink, soft summer evenings on the River Cam.