After America (20 page)

Black oily clouds climbed high into the air above the city, and although the fighting was some distance way, he could hear and even feel it occasionally.

“Mister President. Time to go, sir. Chopper’s on final approach.”

“Thank you, Agent Shinoda,” he said, turning away from the depressing vista.

Jed was standing mournfully behind him, a sheaf of papers clutched loosely in one hand. An army officer with a black embroidered bird on one collar stood by him. The name tape above his breast pocket read
KINNINMORE
. A cavalryman’s patch on one shoulder took the form of a shield with a black stripe topped in one corner by the head of a horse.

Kip was still on a steep learning curve with all things military, and even with a radically smaller defense force, he still found himself lost more often than not in a forest of acronyms, units, and ranks. The cavalry patch he recognized immediately, however. The cav had made a big comeback as the army’s glamour outfit the last few years, if by glamour one meant they got to fight and die more often than anyone else.

The officer ripped out a parade ground salute even though he looked like he’d just crawled through a few miles of dust, blood, and thornbush. Kipper acknowledged his salute, and Jed Culver made the introduction.

“This is Colonel Alois Kinninmore, Mister President. From the Seventh Cavalry Regimental Combat Team. They flew in here last night to crack a few heads together over at the airport, but he’s … ah … well, I guess I’ll let him explain. Colonel.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Kinninmore. Kipper had expected a ferocious bark to go with the salute, but Kinninmore was soft spoken with a very polished Bostonian accent. “Mister President?”

“Go ahead, Colonel, but walk with us if you would. I suspect Agent Shinoda will have kittens if I don’t get my ass down to the helicopter in time.”

“Of course, sir.”

The small party of men—Kipper, Jed, Colonel Kinninmore, and half a dozen Secret Service agents in black coveralls and body armor—formed up in a loose group and moved out into the corridor, a long, dimly lit but strikingly beautiful hallway finished in white marble.

“Major tactical ops at the airport are mostly done with, Mister President,” said Kinninmore. “We’re just counting coup on the stragglers now.”

“That went pretty quick, Colonel. Did you lose many of your men?”

“Our casualties were twelve killed and fifteen wounded, sir.”

Kipper knew, because he had been told time and again, that fighting in urban environments chewed through men at a terrible rate. But a dozen dead and even more wounded still sounded like a heavy butcher’s bill. He would have many letters to write when he got back to Seattle. He made it a point to contact the families of any serviceman or -woman who died following his orders. Culver argued that he could delegate that to others, but Kipper insisted in spite of the increasing amount of time he spent writing such letters and the emotional cost it laid on him. It was the very least he could do.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Colonel. I really am. I’d like to come visit your wounded if I could, as soon as possible.”

“Thank you, sir. They will appreciate that.”

The party passed by a pair of heavy wooden doors standing open to reveal what looked like a courtroom inside. Kinninmore, who was striding alongside Kipper with a helmet tucked under one arm, seemed oblivious to their surroundings as they turned again and hurried down a wide, sweeping marble staircase and past a sign that informed them they were entering the museum level of the building.

“I’m pulling three troops from the Seventh along with two marine companies and redeploying them here, Mister President. Immediately. We should have them here within the hour.”

“Three troops?” Kipper asked.

“My apologies, Mister President,” Kinninmore said. “Company elements; we call them troops in the cavalry … er, about three hundred men. With the Marines, we should have close to a battalion-size force here.”

More terminology. Kipper let it go and nodded for him to continue. He made a point of not interfering with the military’s decisions in the field.

“The thing is, sir, I believe there could be something more going on than the looters and pirates simply pushing back at you for trying to retake the city. The elements we fought at the airport were well coordinated, and when we arrived in force, they pretty much melted away. Conducted quite a decent withdrawal under fire and would have got a lot more of their guys out if we hadn’t had air support to smack them flat.”

Kip had a momentary vision of what that last euphemism would mean in reality: hundreds of bodies torn asunder by high explosives and white-hot metal. He pushed the images away as they marched along a curving corridor flanked by wood-paneled displays of Native American artifacts, feathered headdresses, buffalo-hide shields, tomahawks, and jewelry, all of them still intact. Thick blue carpet muffled their footfalls, and Kip could not help but notice that it was discolored here and there with the dark, telltale stains of the Disappeared. He almost wondered for half a second when their remains had been cleared away but forced himself to stay focused on Colonel Kinninmore.

“My S-2 got out and policed up the battlespace, sir …”

S-2? Was that an intelligence officer? The army has all of these confusing codes for everything. And whatever happened to plain old battlefields?
Kipper was pretty sure the colonel meant this his intelligence officer had quickly inspected the remains of the dead and whatever entrenchments they may have occupied.

“... and I have to say we had a few disturbing finds,” Kinninmore went on. “Especially in light of the rocket attack on yourself yesterday, sir. Those Katyushas weren’t the usual dime-store crap—if you’ll excuse me, sir—that you normally find the pirates using. Intel says they were fresh out of the shrink-wrap from Yemen. And the enemy combatants we cleared out of
JFK
, they were using good new Russian radios and Chinese assault rifles. Type 56 carbines. We also discovered well-concealed command and control bunkers with medical facilities and housing for a larger force.”

Kip thought he saw where Kinninmore was going.

“You’re surely not thinking conspiracy, Colonel? China’s barely a functioning state after the civil war. And Putin’s got his hands full with the stans.”

The cavalry officer shook his head.

“No, Mister President. Or at least I’m not positing a conspiracy between those states. The Type 56 carbines could have come from what’s left of Pakistan or a number of other countries. My point is that the materiel was top-shelf stuff. And it has to be significant that it should suddenly appear, all at the same time, in our eastern theater of operations while the raiders, who spend as much time fighting each other as they do us, suddenly smarten up and start kicking it with battalion-level operations, all coordinated with the best comms gear you can buy on the open market.”

Kipper agreed with the officer that it did sound significant. But in what way?

“You’ve got my attention, Colonel. But do you have anything more in the way of detail? Something other than the equipment and … well, behavorial change? People do learn, after all.”

“They do, Mister President. They do. Places like New York, they learn or they die. What I want to know is who’s been teaching them. We took a handful of prisoners at Kennedy. Most of them pretty messed up, but we’re doing our best to debrief them as soon as possible.”

Kipper could imagine that debriefing would not be a pleasant experience for the captives. He’d long ago authorized the army to treat any pirates captured on U.S. soil as illegal combatants. The best they could hope for was immediate deportation, but summary execution was just as likely. Kinninmore, for all his Boston Brahmin airs, did not look like a man who would lose a lot of sleep if he had to execute a bunch of glorified looters, which in the end was all the pirates were.

“The thing is, Mister President,” the army officer continued, “I don’t think everyone we’re fighting right now are simple pirates.”

Kipper almost did an exaggerated double take at having had his private thoughts contradicted immediately.

“Go on,” he said.

“We’re also getting some intelligence back from Ellis Island, where the rocket attack was launched from …”

Kinninmore flicked the briefest glare of disapproval at Kip’s Secret Service detail before carrying on.

“... and what we’re hearing is that there’s some new guys working the city. Professionals. I mean real pros, not just the organized gangs from Russia and so on. These new guys are rallying the pirate gangs and paying them off with tribute and turf.”

“Any idea who?” asked Kipper.

“Early days, sir. But it doesn’t sound good. Some of the prisoners referred to them as fedayeen. Some called them jihadi.”

Kipper’s nuts did a slow crawl up into his body.

He was unfamiliar with the first word, but he well remembered the term “jihad” both from the days before the Wave and of course from the French civil war that had followed it.

“What are those fucking wing nuts doing here?” he asked.

Kinninmore shook his head as they reached the foyer of the building. The sound of helicopters was growing louder.

“Mister President, at the moment all I have are the first scraps of information from a very confused battlefield. I can’t tell you any more than that. What I can say is that this does not look like a flare-up or an ad hoc resistance movement suddenly self-organizing. It looks to me like somebody who knows what they are doing is pissing in our patch.”

Kipper found the colonel’s vernacular a strange fit with his cultured accent, but he supposed that Kinninmore must have spent his adult life in the army and so it would be silly to expect him to speak like a merchant banker or art dealer. He stopped just inside the building’s entrance, and gave the officer his full attention.

“Colonel, I remind myself every day to listen to people who know what they’re talking about. If you feel strongly enough about this to have dragged yourself through the briar patch getting the information to me, I am willing to listen. Right now, though, at this very minute, we have people fighting and dying a few miles from us. First person I’m going to talk to when I get on my chopper is General Franks. I’m going to tell him to devote whatever resources he needs to clearing this city out, once and for all. This is an American city, and it is going to stay that way,” Kipper said.

“Hooah,” Kinninmore replied in soft but firm agreement.

Kipper continued, “I need you to write me up a report on what you’ve just told us and forward it directly to Franks as well as your local higher-ups on my authority. I’ll have the national security director schedule it as one of our first agenda items for our next meeting, which is …”

He looked across at Jed.

“Three days from now, Mister President.”

“Okay, three days. Is that good enough, Colonel?”

Kinninmore straightened his back and nodded. “Very well, Mister President. My S-2 has already prepped a report, with attachments. I will have him e-mail it to you via secure link
ASAP
.”

“Good enough, then,” Kipper said, extending his hand. “Colonel. Good luck. Kicking these losers out of New York is a higher priority for me right now than knowing exactly who they are. But I do want to know that, too. And make sure Jed gets details of where your wounded are being treated. I will be visiting them.”

“Thank you, Mister President.”

Kinninmore saluted again, looking marginally happier than when Kip had first seen him but still very grim as he replaced the helmet on his head. If they were going to be fighting in the city to the end, he was going to lose many more troopers. A thumping roar announced the arrival of
Marine One
, Kip’s personal chopper, now finished with evacuating casualties from the rocket attack. The Secret Service agents formed up around them, and Kipper was hustled out into the morning air, where oil smoke, dark and thick, obscured the sun and left a burning sensation in his nose.

Sergeant Ryan Peckham of the Marine Presidential Security Detail ripped off a perfect salute. “Good day, Mister President. If you’ll step aboard, please.”

Kipper returned the salute, still a sloppy one, he supposed, but Sergeant Peckham took no notice. The president of the United States passed by Peckham’s younger brother, Lance Corporal Justin Peckham, who was standing at the ready behind a multibarreled door gun on
Marine One.
It intrigued Kip why two brothers had ended up on his chopper, but he had never had time to ask them about it.

Many things had changed since the Wave, and
Marine One
was a perfect example. No longer a brightly polished dark green and white VH-3D Sea King helicopter emblazoned with the presidential seal, Kipper’s rotary wing transport was now a gray, camouflaged, and heavily armed AugustaWestland medium-lift chopper, a joint British-Italian design. The Royal Air Force had fitted out six for his use as part of a complicated facilities and equipment exchange deal negotiated under the new Vancouver Alliance agreement. Climbing aboard, he found the cabin was still configured for medical evacuation, with only four seats available up near the cockpit. It was difficult to hear himself talk over the thunderous noise not just of his aircraft but from the three gunships hovering protectively overhead. As he strapped in, Jed Culver dropped into the seat opposite and raised an eyebrow but said nothing, either. Between the Super Cobras of the
Marine One
escort force and the howling engine over their heads, it was simply too noisy to speak until they were under way.

That took less than a minute, and when they lifted off, Kip felt himself pressed into the seat much more firmly than usual. The floor tilted radically, and the Rolls Royce turboshafts spooled up with a scream. The marines flying him out of New York were not inclined to take chances. They were another sign of the radically changed times. Three marine Super Cobras flew escort for
Marine One
no matter where the president went. The marines themselves were no longer attired in the smart dress uniforms and white gloves of their counterparts back in Seattle. All of the flight crew’s members wore desert tan flight suits and came with a heavy load of personal weapons. Members of the Presidential Marine Security Detail wore body armor, standing at the ready by doors and window apertures that bristled with heavy machine guns. When they were safely away and the noise had throttled back some, Kip leaned over to speak to his chief of staff.