by John Conroe
“You defended each other,” he stated, as if things were suddenly clear.
“Let’s be honest,” Astrid said, smirking. “I had to defend him a lot more than he had to defend me.”
Cade looked at me, waiting for a response. “Yeah, that’s actually really accurate. She only had to face jealous girls while I was kind of a, well, wise ass.”
“No?” he said, excessive disbelief on his face. “I find all that hard to believe. Girls jealous of Astrid? You having a smart mouth?”
“I know, right?” I agreed. “But that’s the truth of it.”
“Verbal abuse, or did it escalate?”
“Mostly verbal. Only a couple of physical bouts. Astrid could beat most of the boys in a fair fight and, well, I don’t know if you know this, but she never fights fair. I did okay too. I wasn’t very big, but, well, Ghurkas don’t ever give up, and I’m pretty fast.”
His expression had gone to amusement when I mentioned Astrid fighting, but it went dead serious at my last comment.
“Your dad was Ghurka,” he said.
“Born and raised,” I said.
“I’m told Ghurkas make some of the finest soldiers,” he said.
“You were told some solid truth, Cade.”
“And you were raised Ghurka?”
Aama snorted softly. I glanced at her with a mock frown. “Yes, Cade, although my training was a little cushy compared to my dad’s.”
Aama spoke to me suddenly, her tone brooking no argument. “Timi ta Gookhaliko sartan hou. Sar zhukara hunnue pardaina. Teme Lai, taha cha kee timro sar jhukaunu pardaina.”
“What did she say?” he asked me. I didn’t answer.
“She said You are of true Ghurka blood. Don’t let anyone get you down. You know what you are capable of,” Monique translated.
Cade was silent for a moment. “Maybe we should hire more Ghurkas for the show?” he asked my grandmother.
She smiled and shook her head. “Only Ajaya. No one else would live,” she said, looking my way and giving me a nod.
He turned back, looking surprised. “Wow, high praise indeed, AJ. Can I call you AJ?”
“Sure,” I said with a shrug.
“So you go in on foot, wearing a stealth suit, carrying a heavy rifle and a pistol and a pack of gear. And you go into buildings and climb up them?”
“Yeah. That’s where the best stuff is. Manhattan is a vertical city. Ground level is less than ten percent of the pickings.”
“And you what? Just waltz past all the drones?”
“Sorta. I mostly avoid them.”
“But how, AJ? They were designed to hide and ambush. How can you detect them when no one else can?”
“Ah, well, Cade, if I answer that, I’ll be giving up my most important trade secrets. That’s not smart.”
His face went serious. “You would hide you techniques and let people die?”
I felt my own face get stern. “If I told everyone what I was doing, people would copy me. Well, try to copy me. Then lots of people would die.”
“Fair enough as far as civilians go, but what about the military?”
“You know, I’ve been asked that question just recently. They let me roam around by myself for the last two years, as much as expecting me to die. Now they want to know why I didn’t. ”
“What about your dad? Did they ever ask him?”
“Yeah. He wouldn’t teach them,” I said.
“Ah, not exactly Ajaya,” my mom said suddenly. “He taught one group. They all died. He refused after that.”
“He what? When?” I asked, shocked.
“The second year after the breakup. He refused after that. Except for you.”
“He was willing to risk his son?” Cade asked.
“That was my view. But Baburam had trained Ajaya from the cradle. He said our son had a gift that couldn’t be taught. We argued enormously. Eventually I allowed a real short foray into the Zone. Ajaya did so well that, despite my better instincts, I let him go again, and then again,” Mom said.
“That must have been insanely difficult,” Cade said.
“Oh it was. But my husband always contended that he would die before Ajaya ever would. He contended that it was my son’s natural element. Since his death, I have to say, Ajaya has proven him right beyond even his highest expectation.”
“So pressing for details isn’t going to get me anywhere?” Cade asked, already seemingly resigned.
“Right.”
“All right then. Let’s talk about the trap that almost got the Johnsons. Speaking of which, does anyone else find it odd that only one Johnson is in the house?”
My peanut gallery went still and the production crew all froze, waiting for a response.
“Is there any other Johnson? Really?” I asked, smiling. “I always thought there was just the one.”
His eyes went wide. Not the reaction he’d been expecting. He glanced at Astrid. “You should marry this one,” he said, his head snapping back to me before she could answer him. “So the feud is real?”
“There was a lot of bad blood. Nowadays, it’s more that we’ve all agreed to disagree. Except for Astrid. She always stayed in contact. With Mom, with the twins, even with me.”
“Even with you, huh?” he shook his head, smiling. Then he turned to Astrid, eyebrows raised.
“Mom and Barbara were close. Mom died before the breakup, the cancer too fast and aggressive to treat. I think her death had a lot to do with the whole mess. I doubt she would have allowed it if she’d been there. But Barbara was so supportive, even during and after the whole fallout. She never let it affect our relationship. Nether did the twins,” Astrid said.
“What about AJ here?” Cade asked.
“I could get away with talking to the ladies, but Dad was volatile about Baburam and his shadow mini-me,” she said, smiling a little.
“How did that make you feel?” Cade asked, turning to me.
“Oh, I knew exactly what was going on. I never blamed Astrid, but Brad? Different story there.”
“Good thing you were driving that day, eh Astrid,” Cade joked.
But Astrid didn’t laugh, her face instead looking stricken. “I know. Believe me, I know.”
Cade pulled back, maybe almost embarrassed. Then his face went smooth and he turned back to me. “Take us through it, step by step.”
So I told him about that day, starting with my unimpeded trip to the building and climbing to the seventeenth floor. About recovering the notebook computer and then hearing the sounds of combat. About looking out the window and seeing swarms of drones.
“When did you know it was the Johnson LAV?” he asked.
“Immediately. No one else uses orange and white.”
“Could you see into the rig?”
“I could see Astrid driving.”
“What was your first thought when you saw her?” he asked.
I was kind of back in the moment when he asked and my mouth just opened and spoke without my brain putting a brake on it. “No. I thought no. Not today. Not ever, if I’m around.”
“No what, AJ?”
“No, she’s not gonna die in the Zone,” I said, locking my eyes on his so that I couldn’t look her way.
“You thought you could help? That you could prevent her death?”
“No. I knew I could. It wasn’t gonna happen, Cade. Not on my watch.”
His eyes gleamed like he had just been handed a baseball-sized lump of gold.
“What did you do next? How did you put your plan together?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t put it together… I didn’t sit down and draw it out. There wasn’t time for that. It just popped into my head. Steps I needed to take.”
“Steps? What steps?”
“Range the shots. Get a shooting position. Prepare an egress. Take out the Spider, destroy the machine-gun sight, kill the missiles, and break the cable. Then get out of there while setting off the bomb.”
“All of that just pop
ped into your head? With details?”
I shrugged. “How do you know what questions to ask me? You aren’t looking at notes, and my answers aren’t always what you expect. How?”
A light of understanding appeared in his eyes. “Experience. I’ve done this for years and years.” He paused and looked at me. “And so have you. I keep forgetting that you’ve been at this almost half your life.”
His hand came up to his earpiece and he listened for a second, his eyes going wide. “Although I apparently need a nudge now and then. Spider? You said a Spider? As in a Spider CThree?”
“Hunter-Killer units are super rare; only few came off that ship. Nowadays they’ve mostly used up their ammo, so those two must have been held in reserve. Plus, they don’t set complex traps like that on their own. So I knew there had to be a Spider running it. It was on top of the Customs House. My first shot took out its vision sensor. The shot was suppressed and subsonic. Then I shot the other four rounds that you know about.”
“So you shot at the Spider with an underpowered round to keep the element of surprise for a second?”
“Yup. Drive the boss away. Take out the dangers, free the LAV, then get my ass into the elevator shaft.”
“That’s how you survived the blast. In the elevator… shaft?”
“I propped open the doors, attached cable descenders, and set out the bomb. After my last shot, I rolled off my platform and ran for the shaft. Set off the bomb as I started to descend… as the first wave of UAV’s came through the window.”
“A controlled fall down an elevator shaft?” he asked, face incredulous.
“More or less. Kind of jammed up my leg on the car. Crawled out of the basement through a utility tunnel, then got to the street as quick as I could.”
“As quick as you could? Why not stay down in the tunnel?”
“Rats, Cade. The tunnels are full of rats.”
“And you’re more afraid of rats than drones?”
“Millions of hungry rats that grew big eating human remains? I can fight drones. I can’t fight a thousand rats all at once.”
He shuddered. “Okay, that visual’s gonna stick with me for, like, ever. So you’re back on the street. What next?”
“There were quite a few extra drones about, but I avoided them. Almost got busted by a Kite and its Tiger unit, but they both got distracted.”
“A Tiger? And it got distracted?”
“Falling debris, I think. Probably loose stuff from my bomb. Anyway, I got past them and made it to my safe house. Spent the night and then came out in the early morning.”
“Wow, there’s so much to unpack in those sentences. Safe house?”
“Yeah, I have little havens set up all over the island, for exactly those kinds of situations.”
“Oh, like situations where you take on a Spider, two Hunter-Killers, a buttload of Wolves, and about a bazillion UAVs, then fall down an elevator shaft, crawl out of rat-infested tunnels, and play hide and seek with a frigging Tiger unit?”
“Ah, yeah.”
“Ya know, some people are gonna say you’re making some of this stuff up,” he said.
I shrugged. “I don’t give a shit what they think. Never have. I’m not part of this show, Cade. I do my job and support my family and that’s it. I work in the shadows, not the spotlight. You guys asked me to be on this interview, remember? If you don’t believe it, I don’t care.” I realized as I finished that I was leaning forward, maybe a bit aggressively.
Cade had pulled back. His hands came up. “I said some people. Not me. What about you, Astrid?”
“Every word. Although, knowing AJ, my suspicion is that he’s actually underplaying much of what happened. Some people, you have to believe half or a quarter of what they say. With AJ, you gotta add that much back in,” she said, giving me a head tilt and a smirk when I looked her way. I automatically gave her my innocent face. We were falling back into routines from school years like no time had passed at all.
“So a Spider. They’re still there, or at least one of them?” he asked.
“At least two. I’ve seen two at once. I would guess all three are operational.”
“And they’re setting traps, like the one that got the Destroyers.”
“Yes.”
“You heard the military actually extracted them, alive and okay?”
I just nodded. He watched me for a second, looking for something. Then he flashed his trademark smile at the camera. “And we’ll be interviewing both of them tomorrow. Zone Defense has declined to comment on either the rescue or why one was mounted. We’ll keep working to get to the bottom of that story and, as always, will keep you posted.
“So, AJ… when are you headed back in?”
“Not sure, Cade. My ankle is still a bit tender so I’ll let it heal before anything else.”
“I heard a rumor that Zone Defense suspended your license? Why would they do that?”
“You’d have to ask them. They haven’t been very clear with me on that topic.”
“You don’t seem worried.”
I laughed. “Let’s see. The powers that be tell me I can’t go risk my life in the most dangerous place on Earth. I just got paid on my last trip, I’ve still got items for sale on my Zoneite site, and I think you all are adding a little something to our family fund. I’ll find something.”
“I, for one, would rather see you do almost anything else,” Mom said suddenly.
Cade gave her a sympathetic look. “Hey, who knows, maybe you could be a consultant on Zone War? Where’s Trinity?” he looked off-camera, moving his head till he spotted her. “What do you think, Trinity?”
She smiled. “Oh, we could probably work something out.”
“Maybe we can,” I answered.
Chapter 18
It was a late-afternoon interview for the show and when we got done, Trinity wanted to take us all to dinner. We ended up at a Spanish place, feasting on tapas. The twins were beside themselves with excitement at being included on the show. They alternated with hanging on Trinity’s every word and wanting to get home to start responding to the messages they were getting from their friends at school. Mom’s rule of no AIs at the dinner table was wearing on them, but the extra hang time with the producer of Zone War went a long way toward salving that injury.
Somehow, Astrid and I ended up sitting next to each other. Myself, I suspect the plotting of teenage girls.
“You don’t honestly think you can beat me, do you?” she asked me.
“Vermont was a long time ago, Trid. I shoot long-range shots all the time.”
“But how far? Two, maybe three hundred meters? The Zone is too cluttered with buildings to get long shots. I have access to a thousand meter range.”