by James Tarr
She walked west on West Grand, across the front of the Fisher Building, sipping at her coffee. She glanced into the Growler as she passed. Two soldiers. She was pretty sure they were checking out her ass as she walked away.
Once around the corner she headed north, and entered the building through the west entrance. The lobby there was three stories, with beautiful murals on the ceiling and large tile mosaics on the walls. Most of the stores on the ground floor were shuttered, but a few were open.
She checked the time on her phone, just to make sure, and casually made her way back to the staircase, and down to the Concourse level. The building’s maintenance office was up ahead on the right. The old wooden door was propped open and she knocked on it. There were two men inside.
“Hey Ricky,” she said to the skinny black man who was just putting on his tool belt.
“Hey there,” he said to her with an impossibly deep voice. Everyone always told him he should have been in radio with that voice. His eyes darted from Lydia to the other man present and back. A smile grew on his face. “I’m just heading out,” he said.
“We’re just friends!” the other man said loudly, the exasperation clear in his voice.
“Whatever man,” Ricky said with a smile. He grabbed a large metal toolbox and Lydia stepped aside as he headed out the door. “Don’t disappear all morning, Tom,” he called back over his shoulder to his co-worker.
He was pretty sure Tom and Lydia were a thing. She’d been coming by at odd hours off-and-on for months and then sometimes the two of them would disappear, sometimes for five minutes, sometimes for an hour. Ricky knew what that meant, but it was none of his business, really. Tom wasn’t married and Lydia was smoking hot, so he was more jealous than anything else. And as long as none of the tenants were complaining, their supervisor Eddie didn’t give a shit whether or not they were doing the work. Everybody got paid regardless. Not well, but some was better than none.
Lydia and Tom listened to Ricky’s steps growing fainter and then the slow thumps of his boots heading up the stairs for the main lobby. Tom took a deep breath. He looked nervous and worried. “You ready to do this?” she asked him. She was just as nervous, she just hid it better. She’d been in deep for the better part of two years, but today was going to be a hell of a lot more than just sneaking around and keeping her eyes and ears open and using dead drops.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. He had his tool belt around his hips and he grabbed a two-foot-long crowbar off one of the benches.
Lydia followed him out of the maintenance office and into the north corridor. Not too far up, the hallway ended in a set of four glass doors. Tom pulled out his big key ring, found the appropriate one, and unlocked one of the doors. He stepped through, Lydia behind him. She let the door close behind her because the glass was tinted and it shielded them from immediate casual observation. Three feet in front of them should have been another set of doors and beyond them a second subterranean tunnel heading northeast to the Albert Kahn building. Instead of doors they were face to face with sheets of plywood screwed into the door frames.
The tunnel heading north had been closed for well over a decade. It hadn’t been open since before the war. Lydia checked over her shoulder; she didn’t see anyone in the hallway or the Concourse lobby beyond it. She turned back around and looked at the plywood sheets.
Tom was standing directly in front of one and a quick glance showed her that most of the screws holding the plywood to the frame had been already been removed. Tom had been taking out one at a time over the past month and now there were just two screws at the top and two screws at the bottom holding that one plywood sheet in place.
“We’re clear,” Lydia told him. Now was the moment of truth. She stepped up next to him and knocked on the plywood four times, her heart hammering in her chest, sweat breaking out across her forehead.
There was a two-second pause, just long enough for her to start worrying, then an answering knock. Four taps. Lydia checked over her shoulder once again; still nothing to see. “Do it,” she told him.
Tom wedged the nose of the pry bar between the plywood and the frame near the floor and pushed. The screw popped out of the frame easily. He then did the same at the top near the ceiling and handed the crowbar to Lydia. He didn’t bother with the screws on the other side of the plywood sheet, he just grabbed the freed edge of the plywood and wrenched it open. The wood around the screws still in the door frame cracked and the big sheet came free. He set it aside and took a step back.
At least a dozen faces were visible in the light spilling through the opening Tom had made. Sweaty, dirty men, all of them pointing rifles at the two of them.
“Golf ball,” the man closest to her said.
“And you’d be Felix,” Lydia responded. She handed Tom his crowbar. “I need a pistol.”
One of the soldiers handed a pistol forward without question or complaint while the first man produced a small radio with an illuminated digital readout. “Jackrabbit, jackrabbit, jackrabbit,” he said quietly into the radio.
As she stuffed the pistol into the waistband of her jeans she told them, “As of three minutes ago, you’ve got two Tabs in the south lobby, and two in a Growler outside the front door. There’s a Growler and four soldiers at the Cadillac building across the street. One on foot down near the Saint Regis. Not sure where the rest are in the area, but I’m sure they’ll find you. Fastest way up is the main stairs about halfway down on the right.” Which she figured they already knew, but it didn’t hurt to be sure.
“Roger that. Go,” the only man she’d heard speak said, waving the men behind him forward.
She and Tom moved to the side as the soldiers pushed through the narrow opening one at a time, moving as quickly as they could under their burdens. She counted eighteen and then the column ended. The air was a swirl of odors that nearly made her gag—wet mud, sewage, and body odor. The door swung closed behind the last one. For just a second she watched the men jogging down the hall through the tinted glass, then turned back to the group still in the tunnel. Roughly half the dogsoldiers remained.
“You’re the teams going straight across? I’m going ahead of you,” she told them. “You need someone with a key card. Give me a thirty-second head start.”
She jumped as the gunfire and screaming began upstairs, and was about to dart away and head for the tunnel south when a hand gripped her forearm firmly. Lydia looked up and was surprised to see the soldier was a woman, a short, whipcord thin redhead. She was shaking her head. She looked down at her watch, then back up at Lydia.
“Twenty seconds, then you go,” Petal said definitively. “We want them distracted.” Her nostrils flared. The classy-looking young woman in front of her smelled amazing. Perfume! She couldn’t remember the last time she’d smelled perfume. It made her realize just how much the war had cost her, that the simple smell of perfume now seemed alien to her.
Morris had very detailed maps of the entire city, but the one he’d spread out before the five squad leaders just covered the center of the city—the Blue Zone.
“Right at the north end,” he’d told them at the start of their briefing, “is what is called the New Center area. I’m sure you know, you’ve been here fighting for years and I’m the visitor, but humor me. West Grand Boulevard runs right through the middle of it, east-west. The Tabs have code-named it Washboard. Right here,” his thick index finger touched the map, “is the Fisher Building. Thirty stories, an old-school art deco skyscraper. The local propaganda mills broadcast out of there, the TV and radio station are on the seventh and eighth floor. Actually, they’ve got offices on several floors, but they broadcast out of the eighth. That’s really the only potential military or strategic target in the area. A lot of people work in that building. Right next to the Fisher Building,” he moved his fingertip to the right, “is New Center One. Offices, retail space, college classrooms. It’s eight stories. Half empty, but that means half not. They are bordered to the north by Lothrop Stree
t. That’s the northern edge of the Blue Zone, and there are concrete barriers shutting off most of the north/south streets right there to vehicles. Fisher Building and New Center One sit on the north side of West Grand Boulevard. Directly across from them is Cadillac Place.” He moved his finger to the south side of West Grand.
“Cadillac Place originally was the GM Headquarters, and it’s huge. It’s only fifteen stories, but it stretches all the way from Cass on the east to 2nd Avenue on the west, from West Grand to West Milwaukee on the south side. It’s an entire city block. Right now it’s eighty percent empty, which is great for us. The only thing in there are city government offices, taking up most of the second and third floors. Let me draw you a mental image. Let’s say this whole area is a face.” He waved his hand over the map. “Think of the Fisher Building and New Center One as eyes, and Cadillac Place as the mouth, right? To the left, west of the Fisher Building, is an attached ten-story parking garage. Left of that is an overflow parking lot, then 3rd Avenue, then a newer six-story condo or apartment building. We’ll call that the left ear of that face.”
“To the right of New Center One, that right eye as you’re looking at it, is the St. Regis, a hotel that’s sort of become apartments for the people that live in the area. Call it the right ear. It’s connected to New Center One with a second-floor walkway. Those walkways are everywhere. Across Cass from Cadillac Place, just on the right side of the smile, is a four-story parking garage. We’ll call it the right cheek. There’s a walkway that goes from the roof to the fourth floor of Cadillac Place”
Morris moved his finger again. “Just below, just south of the mouth is the Alfred Taubman building. Eleven stories, and from there you get a great, unobstructed view in every direction but north, because Cadillac Place is taller and in the way. That’s the chin. Above the eyes,” he pointed, “you’ve got the Albert Kahn building. The forehead. Now technically the forehead is outside of the Blue Zone, on the other side of those barriers running along Lothrop, and it is completely abandoned and has been for years, but because it’s right there and big, it’s ten stories, people tend to keep an eye on it.”
He spread his hand and waved it above the map. “You’ve got as many skyscrapers, high-rises, whatever you want to call them, right here on top of one another inside a quarter mile radius as you do anywhere else in the city. Pretty much all of them are connected, either by pedestrian walkways above the streets or tunnels beneath. They’ve got water and power and you’ll see some vehicles on the roads, although gas is hard to find even if you can afford it. A lot of people work here, so there is a pretty constant military presence. More soldiers are regularly stationed here than anywhere else in the city outside of their base. Twenty to thirty troops, with a Growler or three, and maybe an IMP. They might be in the building lobbies, in their vehicles outside, or wandering around the sidewalks, there’s no way to know for sure. Which is why, I assume, you’ve never really gone after them here. Two or three dozen troops that wander around, with armor and buildings for cover.”
“Lot of people who aren’t Tabs walking around, too,” Chan added. “High probability of collateral damage. Plus, there’s no way to get anywhere close without being spotted. Normally.”
Morris nodded. “That too. Well, hopefully the civilians won’t get it too hard, but for this plan to work we need as many of those people in and around Nakatomi as panicked and scared as possible—when the time is right.” He frowned at the map, then shrugged and looked around at the squad leaders. “At least on this op, for once, you’ll be able to use battlefield pickups.”
The last three hundred yards had been a nightmare. The sewer pipe had been less than three feet in diameter. They’d had to take off their backpacks and drag them behind as they went, hands and feet getting bruised and scraped on the cement. It was either that or do the trek aboveground which, while quicker, would have gotten them spotted almost immediately. Weasel, Renny, and a young man whose name Ed couldn’t remember were the only ones able to avoid the crawl, and waved the rest of the men on.
Ed was in the middle of the squad, and it seemed to take an eternity of crawling—drag pack, move hands, knees, drag pack, repeat forever—until the pipe before him suddenly opened into a large earthen hole filled with jagged pipes and chunks of concrete. He blinked at the light and looked up to see several people staring down at him. Chan stepped halfway down the steep slope and offered Ed his hand. Ed was too tired to even thank the man, he just took the hand.
It took five minutes for the rest of the squads to crawl out of the pipe and be helped out of the hole. They found themselves in a large concrete-walled storage area lit by several bare bulbs. The space was filled with bodies, as Theodore and Flintstone had finally rendezvoused with Kermit, Yosemite, and Sylvester. Ed looked around at the exhausted faces of his men, then checked his watch. They’d made it with nearly three hours to spare.
“Everyone get something to eat, and drink, and then get some rest. You’re going to need it.”
After checking on all his people and conferring with the other squad leaders, Ed sat down to doublecheck his gear. He woke up with Chan shaking his shoulder. “Forty-five minutes,” Chan told him. Ed sat blinking for a few seconds, trying to clear his head.
Chan and his squad had arrived two hours before Theodore. They’d come in a completely different route, as had Kermit and Sylvester, just in case. Physically their route had been less taxing, but Yosemite’s last two hundred yards had been above-ground. Luckily they’d done it before four a.m., and not been spotted in the dark. Ed went to stand up and his mouth opened in pain.
“Shouldn’t have sat down and stopped moving?” Chan asked him, recognizing the look.
“Shouldn’t have sat down and stopped moving,” Ed agreed. His whole body ached and was stiff, like he’d been in a high-speed car wreck. His clothing had stuck to raw spots of skin but peeled off when he’d moved, like ripping off a scab. Scabs. Once again Chan held out his hand and helped Ed to his feet.
Brooke and Barker were talking to a man Ed didn’t recognize, and he walked over to them, glad to be, at least temporarily, free of the weight of his pack. The man was in a security uniform, with a pistol on his hip. The nametag on his breast read RICO.
“Right now everything’s locked up,” the man was saying, “but I can get you from here to where you need to be in about two minutes.”
“We’re going to be carrying a lot of gear,” Barker told him. “Moving slow.”
“Two and a half minutes, then.” Rico had a head shaved to stubble, his skin the color of milk chocolate. He flashed a bright smile. “Tunnel’s on this level. Second floor walkway to New Center One is up some stairs and down a hall.”
“I’m not convinced the radio will reach from the end of that tunnel across the street all the way to where you planned on staging,” Ed told Brooke. “Underground, then up three stories through a building?”
“Good point.” She thought for a second. “How about I leave a guy at this end of the tunnel, as a runner? When you transmit, he’ll get it, then run up to us. With no backpack, it shouldn’t take him more than thirty seconds?” She looked to the guard for confirmation.
“Right,” Rico said.
“What’s your plan after you let us through?” Barker asked him.
The guard stuck a thumb at the crater in the basement floor. “A hole this big, they’re going to know I knew about it. I’m getting the fuck out of the city. I’ve got family down south, I’m going to try to get there.
“We could always use another man,” Brooke said.
The guard shook his head. “I did my part. I wish ya’ll the best, but I’m not a soldier. I haven’t had to kill anybody yet, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Fair enough, this’ll have to do,” Ed said. Brooke had a sour expression on her face and gave Ed a dirty look, but he just shrugged.
Ed wasn’t aware of a man or woman in the five squads who wasn’t a combat veteran, but as he walked around th
e big room the stress and worry and fear was visible on their faces, even if they tried to hide it with smiles or anger or blankness. Some just sat there looking at nothing, alone with their thoughts, some joked, others compulsively cleaned their weapons a fourth time. He squeezed a shoulder here, gave a nod there, a small smile, a thumbs up, exchanged a few meaningless words of small talk, whatever it took.
When the time came the men grudgingly shrugged on their heavy backpacks and shouldered their other gear, then trudged out of the basement storage room. Rico led them down a short corridor, then used a key to open some glass doors. Just past them sheets of plywood had been nailed up, but Rico had removed two of them just the day before.
“Nothing in there but dust and mold,” Rico said as one of the men shone his flashlight inside. “Tunnel’s about fifty yards long. There’s a right turn, then a left near the far end.” He waved at the doors in front of them. “Got the same setup on the other side. I checked yesterday, and all the wood on the other side is still up, but one of the sheets seemed real loose.”
Ed nodded, and checked his watch. Five minutes. He turned to all the expectant faces behind him, and pointed through the doors. “You all know the plan. Theodore, Flintstone, Kermit and Chan into the tunnel. You can use lights, but quiet as fucking mice.” Chan was right there beside him, and the two men turned to Brooke, who was nearby with her squad. Ed held out his hand. “See you when I see you,” he told her.
She snorted, ignored the hand, and came in for a hug, first with him, then Chan. The fact all of them were wearing armored plate carriers and festooned with pouches stuffed with heavy and angular gear made it the least intimate hug Ed had ever gotten, which made him smile.