by John Ringo
“Just that we’re activating in order to augment JTF Empire Shield,” answered Specialist Cameron “I’m the Gunner” Randall. He was another veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom who was supposed to leaven the National Guard arty unit after leaving the RA, or regular army two years earlier. The call up that had brought them to assemble had been rumored for weeks, but in typical Army fashion, they were notified at the last minute. Copley had received a text from 1LT Pozzo, the battery executive officer, after dinner the night before. Then he had spent two hours digging through his boxes of kit in order to make up for the known deficiencies in the TOE for his section.
“Hey, Sergeant.” Randall leaned in close to avoid being overheard. “What are you doing with your family?”
“Reenie is taking the kids west to her folks’ place in Pennsylvania,” replied Copley. “You?”
“Hell, I’m divorced,” the specialist said. “My ex lives in Minnesota and I visit my kid in the summer.”
They reached the door and quickly stepped into the National Guard battery commander’s office, where the CO, XO and first sergeant were consulting a notebook PC, a sheaf of paper and a steaming mug of coffee, respectively.
“Sergeant Copley, good to see you,” Captain McCabe said, as Copley exchanged nods with Misiewicz, the battery’s senior noncom. “How many no-shows you got in your section?”
Battery A only had six howitzers, often called “tubes,” organized in three sections of two weapons each. Each section was notionally led by a staff sergeant, though in Copley’s case, his combat experience substituted for the extra rocker. Each section should have mustered fourteen soldiers. Copley was assigned twelve.
“Eight on hand, sir,” he replied, answering the CO’s question. “One more said that he’s still en route.”
“That’s more than the other sections,” stated the captain. “Take your section, one LMTV, one unit of fire, complete personal equipment including small arms and proceed to Fort Hamilton with the XO and the Fire Direction team. We’ve got orders to reinforce Joint Task Force Empire Shield.”
JTF Empire Shield had been running constantly since 9/11. It had since evolved into a standing force composed of rotating units of the National Guard, drawn primarily from state units. The deterrence and defense mission had traditionally been focused on logistics hubs such as Penn Station and La Guardia airport. It seemed that the mission was expanding, extending coverage to more locations in metro New York.
“We’ll send the other two sections and stragglers,” the captain continued. “But they want bodies ASAP.”
“Do you have any more information on the callup, sir?” asked Copley, with a glance at the first sergeant, who was still absorbed with his coffee. In a strack regular army unit, like the one Copley had served in during his last deployment, the First was the enlisted font of all knowledge and had his finger on the pulse of not just the command, but was tied into the senior noncom network all the way to division. The First for Battery A was…not cut from that cloth. “I mean, this zombie thing has been going on for weeks, and it seemed to be leveling off—what changed?”
McCabe ran his hand through his salt and pepper hair. The Guard promoted much more slowly than the regular army and at forty-eight he was both older than some regular army full colonels and younger than other captains in the 258th.
“Hell, I don’t know what has regiment in a twist, Copley,” the captain answered. His eyes were red and his ACUs rumpled. “They’ve been steadily calling up the infantry guys these last two weeks. The last of the Sixty-Ninth just deployed into Staten Island last week. I don’t know what they expect a few more thousand Guard to accomplish in a city of twenty-five million, either. Just take the truck, follow the XO here, and report to the JTF.”
“Sir, are we dragging the tubes with us?” interjected Randall.
“Negative, this is going to be an INCONUS presence mission,” the captain said, using the abbreviation for being INside the CONtinental U.S. “I don’t think that the brigadier is going to call for indirect fires into Manhattan just to knock over the occasional zombie.”
* * *
Oldryskya Khabayeva had adopted the same business dress as the rest of Smith’s team. Three-piece suits and six-inch heels were both out. Sports jackets, and low-profile tactical trousers with comfortable, light weight all leather boots were in. Following the welcome aboard meeting, Khabayeva, Schweizer and Tangarelli briefly grouped together, as any three strangers dropped into a new and stressful environment might. The OEM rep quickly oriented on the refuge design and preparation team while the cop supported the executive and building protection forces. Risky offered to assist in the laboratory with the older Smith girl, but was rebuffed by the doctor there.
Curry didn’t want anything to do with her and politely but firmly declined her assistance. His flat appraisal of her telegraphed his answer before he said a word: thanks, but no thanks, miss. I already have enough hands.
However, the BERTs needed help. She learned Durante had relieved Kaplan on that detail as soon as he had returned from Europe after some vague mission for Smith. She hadn’t exactly flirted with him, but she wasn’t above taking advantage of the subtle striking power of her perfume when she approached him in the bank’s underground garage. Durante saw her coming. Even the unflattering overhead florescent lighting couldn’t dampen her looks.
“Do you shoot?” he bluntly asked her in reply to her offer of assistance.
“Since I was little,” she answered. “My stepfather taught all of his daughters. Light arms, mostly Kalashnikov, but also other marques. Now I have access to American guns.”
“Nice accent,” Durante said. The taller man gave her a second glance and returned to checking and racking reloaded Tasers in a large, open topped equipment case. Each unit was shoved into a foam slot and retained with an elastic band. “Where you from?”
“I was adopted, I think somewhere in the Ukraine, but I grew up in Tashkent, and yes, the one in what you Americans call the ’Stans.”
She had answered the question several times now. Her nearly impeccable English retained the faintest whisper of a Eurasian accent.
“Nice country in spots but that’s a tough place to be from, squeezed by the Kazhaks to the north, and surrounded by a tangle of borders shaped like a dog’s hind leg.” He finished and stood facing her, giving her a harder look. She was in fact pretty damn gorgeous, but she had some muscle mass and it looked toned, so that she wasn’t merely supermodel skinny. “What do you do to stay fit—CrossFit?”
“Have I tried to tell you all about it yet?” the dark-haired woman said with a slight smile. “I don’t think so. It is simple, I run and swim and do a little climbing. Off season I use gym to keep my upper body stronger than average, though I’m discouraged from getting too hard. Mr. Matricardi does not consider muscular to be…pretty.”
“All right.” She could see Durante thinking about it. When he frowned slightly, the scar on his forehead turned white, disappearing into his hairline. “We got a short safety brief in a few minutes and then we roll later this morning. Why don’t you sit in, and then plan on being an observer only on the next run?”
With loud snaps he seated the catches around the edges of the case.
“Only an observer?” Oldryskya eyed the vests that held armor and pouches. “Mr. Smith said ‘no tourists,’ no?”
“Look,” Durante replied, looking up at Risky intently. “Even when everything is perfectly arranged, things can go wrong. Zombies or thinking people, the enemy always gets a vote. So if you want to get stuck in, first you watch. And I’ll watch you.”
He relented.
“Afterward, if you still want, we can get permission to make this a little more routine and you can help with the actual op,” Durante said, before adding firmly, “This time, you stay in the truck cab, see?”
“The cab I can handle,” Oldryskya said. “It’s the trunks that I don’t like. Can I borrow a plate carrier? I have pistol.”
/> “We got some gear that should fit,” Durante replied, slightly puzzled at her last comment. He shook it off. “One thing, though. What we do with trucks isn’t pretty and the teams have to work together closely. There is, to be clear, actual, no-shit, danger in this tasker.”
Oldryskya let her eyes grow a little wider and replied.
“Danger,” she said, her eyes wide and smiling slightly. “Oh, my. Not that.”
* * *
“I need them gone, right now!” Dominguez was in uniform, the two silver bars of his captaincy gleaming again the dark blue uniform. He gestured sharply at Joanna’s staff, some of whom shrank back from his sudden, visible anger.
“Good afternoon, Captain,” she answered, remaining comfortably seated behind her desk. “Ken, please take the team to Conference Room Two and continue. I will join as soon as is practical.”
Dominguez stood to one side of the door through which he had just stormed, disregarding the administrative assistant who remained outside, white faced. The group, including Gauge and Schweizer, filed out, the latter flicking his eyes back and forth between his boss and the policeman.
As the door clicked shut, Dominguez met Joanna’s eyes.
“Enough,” he said, making a visible effort to master his temper. “There’s been enough and I want to take Matricardi in. His arrogance and his blatant commercialization of a huge part of our vaccine supply is encouraging all the other gangs, and the banks. It’s fucking with my officers, it’s illegal as hell and it’s slowing the vaccination of our core service team.”
“The agreement is clear,” Joanna replied. “Not just the cartel agreement, but our agreement, yours and mine. That agreement explicitly covers strategy, my strategy—and my strategy includes Cosa Nova.”
“I don’t care!” Dominguez retorted, his voice rising again. “He’s dirty. My guys are tired of associating with criminals! We don’t need them and even if we did, what price do we pay if we ally with scum like Matricardi, who are making money on fear and misery, enabled, enabled, by us?”
Joanna’s eyes narrowed. A challenge now, as the situation hung in the balance, would not be tolerated. She understood human nature quite well, even if she didn’t always share it. Dominguez’s objection wasn’t to the task itself, of cutting up infected. No, it was simpler than that. His personality couldn’t reconcile that he had to not only endure the presence of persons he had always labeled as bad, he had to actively assist them. The City was in fact upside down, and Dominguez’s mind wasn’t plastic enough to handle the dissonance of the new framework.
It was a serious handicap.
She would have to appeal to the old framework of values, then.
“You will carry out my strategy, as agreed,” she said coldly. “You will work with whomever you must, directing the remaining members of the department and producing vaccine.”
“Butchering the citizens of New York you mean,” spat Dominguez. “Creating a market for the likes of Matricardi! Using up my cops, even our families, in order to gain more power.”
“Making a life-saving medicine which is our only hope of surmounting this emergency is what I mean, Captain Dominguez.”
Joanna had seen tensions build in Dominguez since the loss of his wife, but hadn’t forecast a rupture so early. She had to keep the careerist under control.
“Don’t you think that I don’t see your plan, Kohn—I know about your aspirations. It was good enough when—”
“No Rafael, you do not know my plans,” Joanna said, finally standing. She briskly tapped her knuckles on the desk blotter. “If you must arrest someone, then address your need by solving the problem of members of your department working with Overture. Address the problem of Overture controlling more and more of Queens and the Bronx. But. Leave Matricardi alone.”
“I’ll expose the whole thing if I have to, Director Kohn!” Dominguez began to turn. “We can go down together then. At least before this city is overrun with zombies, I’ll have the pleasure of seeing your arrest.”
He turned to leave but was frozen by Joanna’s silvery, tinkling laugh. She held the back of one hand to her lips, her eyes alight.
“You may arrange your own demise, Captain Dominguez, but mine?” she said, lowering her hand to a locked desk drawer. She rapidly punched in a combination as she continued talking. “I have a signed letter from the mayor, personally authorizing me to take any steps necessary, any steps at all, to combat H7D3. This includes deputizing you to lead the police response.”
“So?” Dominguez replied, but he lowered his hand from the doorknob. “Who cares about a signature now?”
“Do you have a letter like this Rafael?” Joanna asked, as she held up a sheet of paper. “A letter granting you broad powers? The authority to process vaccine? I rather think not. Of course, as long as we are partners in this effort to save the City, all of your actions and the actions of the department, are fully covered under law, under my authority. Of course…”
She sat down again, leaving both hands on the desktop.
“Imagine my terrible shock if I learned that our respectable captain of Precinct One, the acting assistant chief, the savior of Manhattan,” here Joanna raised one open hand to cover her mouth again, this time in stylized horror, “was running a human-parts chop shop while being in league with the most vile elements of the criminal underground. I just do not know what I would do, do you?”
“You fuc—” Dominguez began.
“And there is the question of who will care for your children,” Joanna said, continuing with timing too impeccable to be an accident. “Without you, it will be difficult to assure their security in the event that the city falls and we need to use our final contingency with the bank.”
“You wouldn’t, you, you couldn’t!” Dominguez sputtered, but much more quietly than before.
“Better to say that I do not want to, Captain,” Joanna replied, reassuring him. “But I can, and I shall if I must. There is too much at stake for you to suffer a crisis of conscience, or allow your intemperate rage to conceal the true objective, however it is attained. And if the City should fall, we must be ready to carry on, wherever the tide of this disease pushes us.”
Dominguez held her gaze for a long moment.
“We can continue to work together,” the composed OEM head said. “Or not. Now, you must, as the saying goes, ‘get your game face on,’ Captain. We have a meeting with our partners shortly.”
So fractionally that she wouldn’t have noticed had she not been utterly focused on her target, Dominguez’s uniform jacket tightened across his shoulders.
Kohn wasn’t sure whether it was resignation or…something else.
* * *
The foursome that formed the nucleus of the cartel had settled into routine weekly meetings. This one wasn’t going smoothly. Tom knew that Dominguez had never been particularly “happy,” but now he was permanently simmering with barely controlled anger. Usually, he couldn’t be bothered with Matricardi’s concerns, even if Smith was. Dominguez could count on Kohn to take his side.
However, this time Tom had the unexpected support of Kohn, and Matricardi had the floor. As usual, he sported a white carnation in his lapel.
“One of my teams got shot at last night,” he said angrily. “Wasn’t the first time. Shooters belonged to Overture. When the cops showed up, they sided with the other guys and threatened to arrest us—and our truck is the one with the bullet hole in it!” He chewed on an unlit cigar. “We got a deal, right here, amirite?”
Smith and Kohn nodded. The cop looked across the room at nothing in particular, flipping a deck of garish cards in one hand.
“Well?” the Sicilian insisted.
“The department is under severe stress,” Kohn replied obliquely. “No-shows are continuing. We are actually collecting fewer infected even though the service call rate is up. As we feared might occur weeks ago, some parts of the city have made informal deals with the contractors in their immediate vicinity. The capta
in and I can not control it.”
Though her words were conciliatory, the tone was anything but.
“What we are experiencing is happening in all major metro areas,” Kohn reported. “Entire areas of L.A. are simply cordoned off. As far as I can tell, most of the federal government has continued working in the District, but a curfew is in effect and all local law enforcement has been federalized. Chicago has an extraordinarily high homicide rate that only slightly exceeds their worst pre-Plague years, but indicators strongly suggest deliberate under reporting. The military is mostly isolating itself on bases. I do not believe that we can contain the disease. We are approaching end game.”
There was silence for a short time and then she continued.
“Locally, the ‘acting chief for the eastern boroughs’ is reputed to have informal ties to the, uh, contractors,” Kohn said. For some reason, she couldn’t quite say “criminals.” “His concerns mirror my own, but he appears to be anxious to believe that we can prevent total collapse. Overture has offered him a story that he can believe in.”
“I was able to purchase a large lot of medical grade vaccine,” Tom said, trying to calm things down. “It might be enough to let us accelerate the schedule if it all tests out.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Dominguez’s voice startled them. “Doesn’t make a difference. We need to talk about moving up the evacuation. The force is starting to fold.” He didn’t really look at anyone as he spoke. The card deck in his hand scritched on his armrest.
“Out of the question,” Tom countered. “We don’t know that collapse is inevitable. We just got a shot in the arm in the form of a new batch of National Guard. They are going to cover the high-value targets in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Jersey City, as well as transportation infrastructure. That should let you shift officers to reinforce areas on the periphery as well as give some teams a rest.”
“A couple thousand more guardsmen spread across a city the size of New York?” Dominguez said, unimpressed. “That’s like trying to stiffen a bucket of spit with a handful of lead shot. We should be looking at evacuation options and not trying to help you make some extra profit.”