Brookelynne looked Sarah up and down, then cocked her head at Early. “Aardvark,” she said.
Early nodded. “Buckaroo. You alone?”
She shook her head. “No, the others are covering the front, waiting for a wave.” She looked between the two of them, then past them down the empty hallway. “It just you?” She sounded disappointed.
“Negatory. Big crowd downstairs, waiting for stragglers. You still running with Sylvester?”
“Hell, I’m running Sylvester, Larry caught a round in the mouth last month.”
“Sorry to hear that. Why don’t you reel them in, we’ve got food and water and baby wipes galore downstairs. Toilet paper, and a place to use it. Then we’ll find out what this shindig is all about.”
“You still haven’t been briefed?”
Early shrugged. “Only wanted to do it once, I suppose.”
“Hmm. Well, this should be fun.” She looked Sarah up and down once again, meeting her gaze, a small smile twitching the corner of her mouth.
“You look… healthy. In from out of town?”
Sarah swallowed. “Um, yeah.”
“Welcome to the D,” Brookelynne said, then headed for the front door. She opened it wide and gave a big wave, then stepped back and closed the door. She waited, nearly hidden from anyone outside watching by the glare off the glass.
“She seems, um, friendly,” Sarah said.
Early snorted. “Brooke is what you’d call a libertarian. She likes everyone. And from what I hear, everything.”
“I think you mean libertine.”
“Well, I never did go to college,” Early admitted, “but in this case I reckon we’re both right.”
Uncle Charlie stood in front of the assembled group. “Gentlemen, ladies, glad to see your smiling faces. I wanted to address all of you before I pulled your squad leaders aside and briefed them on your specific missions. My name is Lieutenant Colonel Michael Morris. I’ve been communicating with you dogsoldiers for over two years now, and I have to say it is an honor to finally meet you in person. I,” he waved a hand at the people he’d brought with him, who were flanking him, “we’ve all heard about the conditions inside this city, but I have to say stories and even the pictures didn’t prepare me for it. It’s worse than Los Angeles, and the fact that you continue to not just live here but fight, and fight well, with, I will admit, far too little direct support from us, is mindboggling.”
“Two years? I’ve been dealing with Uncle Charlie for four years,” someone said.
Morris nodded. He was expecting a few interruptions. He tried to keep his face neutral as he gazed out over the audience. The long-suffering dogsoldiers of this city didn’t look like soldiers, they look like half-starved refugees. Refugees geared up for war. He’d heard a term, once, that seemed appropriate, what was it? Murder hobos, that was it. Most of them, he knew, had no prior military experience, and didn’t seem to even know much less use half the lingo the military favored, but apparently combat and wretched conditions combined to weed out the less skilled and motivated, as most of the dogs he’d seen had decent trigger finger discipline and muzzle awareness. At least as good as regular Army troops. While braving hardships far worse than what was seen in most of the country.
He had to admit, it was the weirdest and most irregular Army he’d ever seen or heard of, probably that the country had seen since the Revolutionary War. Nobody was in a uniform or even camouflage, and everybody was using a different rifle. And, unlike the regular army where usually only officers and Special Forces carried handguns, just about every one of the dogsoldiers was sporting a pistol. It seemed to be a symbol of pride or independence or just a flying middle finger toward the government forces that wanted to disarm them.
“Prior to my consolidating the position, ‘Uncle Charlie’ was several different people in our intelligence unit. Our unit’s job has been to do everything we can to track and coordinate resistance efforts in this region, everything within a couple hundred miles of here. We’ve spent a lot of time and energy on the city, as it’s been a conundrum. The military has been undermanned here for years, and it’s only getting worse. It’s practically a skeleton crew, and from what intel we’ve gathered about their current commander, he’s little better than a placeholder. Ineffectual. In fact, we’ve had several opportunities to take him out and I made the call not to, as whoever replaced him would most likely do a better job. I’ll be brutally honest with you though, the problem has always been getting anybody at headquarters to care about any of this.” He gestured at the men, and beyond them. “You’re stretched just as thin, and there’s fuck-all in this city to fight over. Other than the city itself,” he said quickly, raising a hand, “I know it’s home to you, and the Tabs are fucking it up like they’ve been doing for decades. What I mean is there’s no strategic value to controlling it. It would be a moral victory, maybe, but we’re so far behind the lines it wouldn’t be that much of a PR victory.” He paused. “Now, there are some advantages to being forgotten about. From what I hear, none of the IMPs you’re going up against have remote-controlled roof guns, they’ve got to be operated by hand. And you haven’t had to deal with MURVs.”
“Mobile unmanned reconnaissance vehicles,” one of Morris’ people explained when it was obvious a lot of them had never heard the term. “Basically mini tanks driven by remote, size of small cars, nothing but armor and guns. Hard as hell to destroy. Those things killed a lot of good people.”
Morris nodded at the explanation, then looked out over the crowd. “Things, however, have changed. You’re here because we have a plan. This plan has been in the works for over a year. We’ve been laying the groundwork for it, in the city, since last spring. Work crews, combat engineers I guess you could say, doing recon and then earthworks projects that we’ve kept secret, even from you, until now. People inside the wire, in the Blue Zone, providing us detailed intelligence. We had the rough idea of a plan to shake the military’s hold on this city, but we needed not just the right moment, but the right reason. This, this is that right moment. And we have one hell of a reason. In case you haven’t heard, the two sides are going to be sitting down in a few days.”
There was an outburst of noise—exclamations, questions, excited conversation. It went on until George turned around at the front of the crowd and glared them into silence. Then he turned back around and nodded at the light colonel.
Morris continued. “You’re far enough behind the lines that maybe you’re not getting much news, or at least truth. The truth is we’ve been steadily kicking their asses for two years, pushing them back, grinding them down, but they refuse to see the reality of the situation on the ground.”
“Well, hell, hasn’t that been their whole problem from the get-go?” someone asked. That got a few snorts.
“You’re not wrong,” Morris said, “but specifically this war has been dragging on far longer than anyone could have ever envisioned. Or wanted. When the war started they assumed they would just walk all over us, as they thought they had all the entire government backing them including the unquestioned loyalty of the military. Turns out that wasn’t the case, but we did take quite a pounding for a couple of years. Since then we’ve been clawing at each other’s throats. We’ve always had the benefit of numbers, whereas they’ve had the gear; more tanks, more drones, you name it.”
“Really? We hadn’t noticed,” someone felt obliged to add, which got a few laughs.
“You mentioned Los Angeles,” Ed said. “We’ve been seriously short on real news for years. What can you tell us of the rest of the country? We’ve heard crazy rumors about California.”