Compared to anywhere else in the city the foot and vehicular traffic made it seem like rush hour in Manhattan, but he’d heard from locals that even this relatively bustling area of the city was but a shadow of its former self. The Cadillac Place office building was mostly empty; the same was true of the Fisher Building, New Center One next to it… in fact, that could be said of most of the Blue Zone. Even with the military protection, being inside a war zone was hard on people and business. War was hard on people and business.
Like many skyscrapers and high-rises the footprint of the Fisher Building was actually rather small. It’s 100,000 square feet of space was due to it rising thirty stories above the street, and one story below.
As the local combined TV and radio station broadcast out of the building the military treated it like a potential terrorist target, even though there’d never even been unsubstantiated threats against the facility. Nevertheless there were jersey barriers and dragon’s teeth in front of all four entrances, north, south, east, and west, and there was usually a manned Growler or IMP parked in front of the Fisher, or nearby.
Parker led Lydia between two of the concrete barriers and then held the door open for her. He nodded at the men in the Growler parked at the curb about fifty feet away. The three-story lobby of the building was just amazing, and had won a number of awards when it had been constructed over a century before. The vaulted ceiling was richly decorated and he’d once heard they’d used forty different kinds of marble. The lobby walls and hallway ceilings were covered with artwork including eight-foot-tall tile mosaics. Parker spotted two additional soldiers loitering at the security desk near the entrance. They straightened up when they saw him, and saluted. He nodded as he and Lydia walked by.
The independently-owned coffee shop was deep inside the building, and even with the outrageous prices did a steady business, as it was one of the few places inside the city to find coffee. Still, Parker winced inwardly at the near fifty-dollar bill for two large cups of the stuff. Just one more reason to hate capitalism.
They were standing in the grandiose lobby talking and laughing and sipping at their black gold when Parker’s encrypted military satellite phone rang. He frowned. The phone never rang with good news.
“Sorry, I’ve got to take this,” he told Lydia, digging it out.
“Sure, no problem,” she told him, watching him over her cup as she took a sip.
“Parker.”
“Sir, it’s Chamberlain.”
“Yes Major?” Mike Chamberlain was his S3, in charge of Operations.
“We’ve had an incident I think you should be aware of.”
Parker took a deep breath, glanced at Lydia, and said, “What kind of incident?”
“We had a patrol ambushed on the west side of the city not quite an hour ago. When the QRF arrived on scene, apparently… well, there appears to have been a bomb, or a booby-trap, we’re not quite sure exactly what it was…”
“How bad?” Parker asked, a leaden feeling pulling at him.
“Fourteen KIA, six wounded. At least two missing. And we lost a Growler and an IMP. If there were any EKIA they took them with.”
“Goddammit.”
“Yes sir. We’re still searching the area. Sir, I’m beginning to think this isn’t random. Maybe ARF is making a move. The Kestrel a few days ago, which took out an entire squad of terrorists, but we’re thinking another squad got away. Those two dust-ups just south of the city yesterday, the one patrol taking fire and that truck running the checkpoint for no apparent reason. Whatever the hell happened at that apartment building tower the other night, which might have just been crazies, but maybe not. This ambush. I don’t know if I’m seeing a pattern, but it’s definitely unusually high activity. I’ve started plotting everything that’s happened in the last week on a map, and I’d like you to take a look at it. And the S2.”
“I’ll be over in about fifteen minutes, I’m off base right now.” He looked at Lydia and shrugged apologetically as he disconnected the call. “I’ve got to head out.”
She nodded. “I heard.” In fact, she’d been able to hear most of the other end of the conversation, he always had his phone’s speaker turned up to max volume. Hearing loss from a firefight when he was a Captain, he’d told her. She kissed Parker on the cheek. “Go on, get to work, do Army stuff. I’ll talk to you later.”
He headed toward the front door with his two soldiers, their boots echoing off the marble, and she watched him go, sipping at the coffee.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Early returned not quite two hours later with two squirrels, a pigeon, and the cargo pockets of his trousers stuffed with red-orange daylily blossoms. The men had learned the tender flower petals were very mild, with a faint mushroomy aftertaste.
Early and Weasel built a small fire about a hundred feet from the house they were using as overnight shelter. The fire was between two ramshackle homes very close together, barely six feet separating their burgundy brick walls. The space between the houses was entirely in shadow and cool; it felt like a tunnel. The walls seemed to lean in. Aircraft would need to be directly overhead to even spot the fire or the heat it was giving off. And then they’d only see the silhouettes of two men.
“A wild game dinner after a snack of military munchies?” George said to Ed as the two men pored over the map spread out on the kitchen table. “I’m going to get fat.” Just about everyone in the squad had their own map, but Ed’s was the only sample that had been laminated. Ed snorted.
“What are we, about three miles from the general store?” George put his fingertip on the laminated surface.
“Straight line. If it’s still open for business. And about the same distance to Uncle Charlie’s rendezvous point, but I don’t want to head there. Not yet. We’re not due for days, and I don’t want to draw any unwanted attention to the area. Presuming nothing untoward happens tonight, we can head out in the morning, very slow and careful. Shouldn’t take too long to get to the store.” Ed frowned. “I want everyone spread out when we go. I mean really spread out, fifty foot intervals or more, so that if anyone gets spotted they’ll look like they’re alone, at least at first. I don’t know if they’ll have high altitude drones up or satellites, but we hurt them bad today, and they’re going to want payback.”
“It’s weird,” Jason said to Early, hefting his new rifle. Early had shown him how to disassemble it for cleaning and watched him put it back together. “You just look through the tube, and where the red dot is, that’s where the bullet hits?”
Early nodded. “Provided its zeroed. Lot easier than the iron sights you’ve been using. That’s why everyone’s gun has them.” They were sitting in a downstairs hallway, facing each other, backs against the wet plaster walls.
“Yours doesn’t.”
“My M1A is very old school. But unlike your lever gun it’s a semi-auto, holds twenty rounds and is quick to reload, and hits harder than anything anybody else here is carrying except Quentin’s sawed-off shotgun, and that’s an across-the-street gun at best. Although it’s actually for drones.”
Early stared down at the scarred wood stock of his rifle. He’d been carrying it since the start of the war. He’d owned it for twenty years before the war had ever started. It was long, heavy, and recoiled quite a bit, but he knew it like a part of his body. It had saved his life more times than he could count. And with it he’d taken more lives than he cared to remember. He sighed, and looked up. Jason saw the look on his face and couldn’t read it.