The clatter of weapons fire died down in much the same way his tractor at home wound down after he shut it off. A few bursts stitched the walls, followed by sporadic single pops, finally punctuated by a single hollow thump.
An ear-piercing wail reverberated off the marble interior of the reading room. Milosz could just barely make out, through the smoke and mist, a woman cradling a child in her arms. She rocked back and forth, adding her own screams to the baby's protests.
The fighting had shattered the cathedral-like windows, letting the driving rain pour inside. As the rain dispersed the smoke, Milosz could see them.
Bodies. They lay strewn amid the tables and chairs of the reading room. They held children close, curled up with their backs to the door he and Gardener had just fought their way through. Along the walls were stacks of canned goods, jars of sauces, meats, and other food that was still edible, if a bit questionable.
A can of pineapple rolled to a stop against Milosz's boot. Through a hole it leaked a thick yellow syrup onto the floor, which mixed with the dark blood of a little girl who was missing the back of her head.
Two of the surviving militia men who had covered the assault from the upper level looked at each other.
"How many frags did we throw in here?" one of them asked.
The other shook his head. "I have no idea."
"Too many," Gardener said, wiping her brow. She was sweating profusely despite the cold rain, preversely reminding the Pole of a wheel of cheese. "Or not enough. It doesn't really matter now, does it?"
"Are we going to get in trouble for this?" the one who had asked about the frags wondered.
"I doubt it," Milosz said. "They will probably give you medals. And one hundred and forty new bucks this month. Probably."
51
Kansas City, Missouri The city never slept. The demands of reconstruction meant there was always something going on somewhere, and Kip took solace from that as he sat at his desk in the early morning, eyes burning with fatigue, struggling to write something original in each letter of condolence. Handwriting each letter, each comma, and restoring his rusty cursive script after decades of disuse helped provide a sort of penance for the men and women dying on his command. "Dear Mrs. Kohler," he wrote, ignoring the cramp in his fingers, "I am terribly sorry to have to write you this letter…"
He had begun writing after a long night of briefings and video meetings with his military chiefs, and the brief, frustrating talk with Agent Monroe. It was nearly four-thirty before he finished the last of the letters, and his head swam with fatigue. He was sick of it and desperately wanted nothing more than to climb into bed next to Barbara back at home and fall asleep for twenty years, waking only when all this was history. Instead he spent the next hour inhaling coffee and reviewing reports from Manhattan. When the first silver bands of dawn softened the eastern horizon, he asked his security detail chief-Agent Shinoda was asleep-if she could organize a morning run for him with some troops.
Forty minutes later he was pounding down Highway 210, surrounded by a platoon of U.S. Army rangers, who seemed flattered to have been called on in such a fashion by their commander in chief even though he had signed orders yesterday sending them all to the slaughterhouse of New York.
Kipper would never understand the military mind.
The rangers took the president past a QuikTrip and a recreation center that were both open despite the early hour. The QuikTrip's red facade had faded to pink after four years of weathering, but the doors opened frequently as men and women from the night shifts grabbed a meal or perhaps a nightcap and some early birds came around looking for an easy breakfast. As he jogged along, he watched others make their way into the rec center for a shower, a swim, or perhaps, strangest of all in an era of renewed physical labor, a workout. Through the windows of the center he could even see militia troops playing basketball as part of their physical training. He felt guilty at the sight of them. The militia was suffering by far the worst of the fighting in Manhattan.
The runners took a turn down past the Northtown's city hall, where the FBI had set up shop along with the restored Metropolitan Kansas City Police Force. A couple of officers in green fatigues on the front steps noticed their commander in chief and snapped out salutes as he headed north toward the high school where newly arrived immigrants were processed and given rudimentary medical treatment and a meal in the cafeteria. To them he was nobody, and they ignored him. KC was crawling with small groups of military men and women pounding the bitumen. That was a strangely satisfying experience. The rangers continued past the red brick three-story building and the football stadium. A glance over the rock walls revealed the olive drab tops of army tents, where many of the refugees would spend their first night. The Missouri militia watched over the football stadium from plywood guard towers.
Kipper made an effort to keep up with the rangers, who were singing a song, or a cadence as they called it. There was a rhythm to it that was supposed to help one endure the double time, but Kipper kept tuning it out, lost in his own thoughts, mostly haunted by images of his trip to the hospital.
Her face!
Moving farther north, they passed a high school campus and turned east by a large park dominated by cracked tennis courts and weed-choked baseball diamonds. A few abandoned cars filled the parking lot, probably belonging to runners who'd been getting in a morning jog when the Wave took them. The rising sun silhouetted the bulk of North Kansas City Hospital from here, reminding him of yesterday's visit. Running alongside the men who would be going into New York City on his say-so, he was haunted by visions of them reduced like that poor woman yesterday. Faceless, limbless, hobbled and broken for the rest of their lives.
Why risk their lives for a dead city or country?
He couldn't help wondering. If you took away the uniforms, they were just regular people, young and fit, for sure, but not supermen. Not giants or comic book heroes. They were average guys with the same problems as any other average guys: overdue bills, relationships, family problems. The usual.
Why do this when he couldn't even guarantee they'd be paid this week? Why not hire themselves out to private contractors who valued their skills and would pay well for them? Why did they do it? Because, as Barbara kept telling him, somebody had to.
Kipper increased his pace a fraction until he was running alongside the rangers' squad leader, or platoon leader, or whatever. That made him a… lieutenant… he was pretty sure. There was no way of telling from the man's running gear.
"Son," he puffed, "I reckon I've had enough of this sweaty bullshit. How about we head back and win us a war."
"Hooah, Mister President!"
"Yeah," said Kip. "Plenty of that today." Having made the call to throw everything into the maw, Kipper found himself strangely calm as he examined the results a few hours later from almost exactly one thousand miles away. It was possible, if the satellites and the stars were aligned at the precise moment, to watch the unfolding battle for New York City on the screens in the ad hoc command center the army had quickly established once he'd decided to stay in the Midwest hub settlement. Kip wasn't sure where all the extra personnel had come from, whether they'd been here when he arrived or had flown in over the week, but the Cerner Campus was suddenly overrun with uniforms, and the rather quiet building in which he had his local office was swarming like a busted ants' nest.
It reminded him of the first week after the Wave, when Seattle's city council tower had been all but invaded by Mad Jack Blackstone's people from Fort Lewis. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of phones rang constantly. The corridors were crowded, sometimes getting on for impassable, as hundreds of men and women scurried about, carrying sheets of paper, folders, ring binders, phones, files, maps… all the mountains of paper generated when the United States committed itself to battle. The small conference room where he and Jed had often met to run the country was now crowded with communications gear, computers, and dozens of wide screens. He had relocated to a boardroom up on the top floor, similarly overrun and stocked with electronics but at least not as hopelessly crowded as downstairs, with only a handful of military officers able to cram themselves in around him.