Miguel continued, "You are all carrying the same weapons, yes?"
Ben Randall answered, "Yep. Government-issue M16s. They hand them out when you get off the boat in Corpus Christi. I'm surprised you and your daughter don't have them," he said before suddenly blushing bright red and stumbling over an apology. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean…"
Miguel waved it away with one hand. "We were issued three army rifles when we arrived, but I do not like them as guns. We are not soldiers, and they are unreliable in any case. I took some time when we arrived at the homestead to seek out more appropriate firearms. Some for killing snakes," he said, patting the cut-down shotgun in the oversized holster at his hip, "and some for farmwork, like my Winchester. I prefer a weapon with which I am familiar. And I have used a Winchester all my life."
"And your daughter's rifle?"
"She hunts," Miguel said. "It is no matter. She will not be involved in this. She can protect herself and the women with that Remington."
"Is she a good shot?" Aronson asked.
Miguel nodded. "She brought down a ten-point whitetail buck at three hundred yards." He paused for a second. "I do not believe she will hesitate before pulling the trigger on a man."
Aronson took a moment to digest all that before looking to his wife. "How are the supplies?"
"We will have what we need to see us through the next week," she answered.
"That will be more than enough," said Miguel. "We will resolve this one way or another in two days."
23
New York "Maybe Union Square's not such a good idea," said Jules.
The rooftop garden, which had gone wild in the last three years, afforded them with an excellent view of the soldiers pouring into Union Square, where Jules had been hoping to lay up for the night. She and the Rhino leaned over the guardrail in the constant drizzle and passed a pair of binoculars between them, scanning east on 14th Street to where the army apparently was gathering… well… a small army of some sort as far as Jules could tell. Jules's injured shoulder forced her to use the binoculars one-handed when she took them, and the image was correspondingly shaky. Her shivering from hunger, cold, and fatigue did not help matters. Only a day had passed since her shower before bed back on Duane Street, yet she was already sweaty, itchy, and greasy from the rain.
"Looks like they're getting together some sort of armored task force to punch a few blocks north," said the Rhino, shaking a shower of raindrops from his army surplus Gore-Tex jacket.
All manner of armored vehicles and even a few tanks were rumbling into the streets around the little park. They couldn't see much to the northeast, but from the martial thunder and lightning in that direction there was something untoward going on.
"Well, that's just marvelous," Jules replied sunnily, relatively dry in her own Gore-Tex jacket. "We're going north; perhaps we could thumb a ride… That's sarcasm, by the way," she added. "Just in case you got all excited at the idea of a ride on a big bloody tank."
He continued to peer through his binoculars, not bothering to answer.
"Perhaps if we headed down to the river," she suggested more seriously, stepping back from the sheer drop to West 14th and pushing through the wet, overgrown foliage to a small open vantage point a little farther down. The rooftop garden thinned out there, possibly because it would be in the shade of a looming elevator shaft for more than half the day. The road far below them was badly congested with crashed cars and, for some inexplicable reason, dozens of Dumpsters. It looked as though a small river was running along the street, and at the corner of Seventh Avenue she could see an extraordinary sight: a veritable geyser gushing up from underground through the entrance to the subway there. It made her wonder whether the entire city might collapse in on itself and sink into the rivers that surrounded it.
"Nope, can't go west," the Rhino said, as he moved a piece of chewing tobacco from one cheek to the other. Julianne prepared herself for the inevitable stream of spit, and…
There it was.
She felt like shuddering every time he did that, but if he wasn't smoking cigars-and he wasn't right now because of the chance they'd be spotted in the dark-the Rhino insisted on getting his tobacco hit via plugs of the foul "chaw," as he called it.
"Can't do that, Miss Jules," he continued. "I endured a good long time picking Lewis's tiny brains about who controlled which parts of the city, and he said everything north of Eighteenth and west of Eighth was being fought over by Serbs, Russians, Chechens, and Rastas. You don't want to be tangling with any of them."
An enormous blast a mile or two to the north sent a bright white ball of fire and sparks high into the sky.
"Do I have to make the obvious point that I don't want to be tangling with any of these fucking munters?" she asked.
"Sarcasm again, Miss Julianne?"
"Yes. Sarcasm. I'm afraid that at the moment I have only the lowest form of wit to offer. And to think I took a first in rhetoric at Cambridge."
"Didn't you cheat your way through college?"
"Cheated and bonked, but I did have a base level of competence, you know. It's in my nature. Daddy virtually lived off his wits until he blew his brains out."
The Rhino lowered his binoculars and joined her in the small clearing. Jules could recognize a few of the plants that had gone wild up there-some Japanese maples that had burst out of their pots and colonized a large square of native grasses, a thicket of tomato vines, and what looked like zucchini-but most of it was just anonymous shrubbery and scrappy urban jungle. The Rhino spit out the rest of his chaw, plucked a small tomato off the vine, and bit into it, but then he screwed up his face and spit out the pulp.
"Nasty."
The tom-tom beat of a heavy weapon started up, and within seconds Julianne flinched as a jet fighter slipped down out of the clouds and released a couple of bombs that detonated with enough force to shake the city. Pulling out of the dive, the jet fighter climbed back into the clouds, its engines howling at the skyscrapers. The drumbeat did not resume.
"Bloody hell," she said as the rumble subsided. It never ceased to amaze her. The sounds on the battlefield were not like the movies at all. You never heard the jet until it was too late to do anything about it, especially if you were the target. She hoped that did not happen to her.
"Yeah." Rhino showed his tobacco-stained teeth. "Fuck, yeah. They're not dicking around anymore, are they?"
"Perhaps they're avenging all our deaths," Jules suggested with no real sincerity.
"I sorely doubt it," the Rhino said. "But it looks like the president has decided he's had enough of caring and sharing."
The way he said "the president" gave Jules to understand that the Rhino most definitely approved.
"So what are we going to do?" she asked. "We need to get to that apartment and get out of the city with Rubin's papers if we're to be paid."
The huge, slab-shouldered sea dog appeared to think about plucking a zucchini and trying his luck but decided against it. The rain came down heavier for a moment, then eased off, as though the downpour had given its all before petering out.
"I'm gonna suggest we keep pressing on, Miss Jules. If we thread ourselves up between the ragheads who started this fight-" He jerked one thumb over his shoulder back toward Union Square. "-and the crazy fucking Ivans down by the river-" He nodded toward the Hudson. "-we might just show 'em all a clean pair of heels."
Jules frowned, unconvinced, but there didn't seem to be many alternatives. If the Rhino was right and this was the first day of a battle to retake the city, the army would roll up the island block by block, probably destroying everything in its path. They had to get to Rubin's apartment and retrieve his documents before that happened, even if it meant dialing up the risk for a day or two. This gig was a big score. If it paid off, she could probably retire from assing about in the smuggling game and set up a legitimate business out on the West Coast, running salvage charters down to LA or something. Or, rather, not running them in person, just raking off the cream while some other poor bastards did the hard work as her contractors and remitted all the profits back to her.