After America (45 page)

Of the others, besides Sally Gray, who was younger and thus no part of this conference, he had no idea, but he was comfortable enough addressing all as ma’am.

A pall still hung over the small band, with all of them speaking as though they were in church, not quite whispering but not speaking as loudly or gaily as one might expect of people who had just escaped death. Miguel supposed the close nature of that escape would naturally suppress their spirits. The wound of losing one of their own, the violence to which they had been a party, and, most serious of all, the outrages committed upon the women would take some time to heal.

“Miguel,” said Aronson, “my wife agrees with you that we should not delay long in our departure from this place.” Maive surprised him by placing a cool hand on his forearm and squeezing lightly.

She looked over at the camp whores, and Miguel was certain he detected just a flash of ill feeling directed toward them, but Maive Aronson immediately softened her gaze and went on.

“It would be best to get the women away from here. We have enough supplies from the stop at Leona. We should be gone from here as quickly as possible.”

“That is probably wise,” Miguel said. “I do not know that there would be much worth salvaging here, anyway. The center of the city is badly burned out and looted already.”

“That was the agents,” Jenny said, with much more obvious bitterness than Maive. “One of them told me they had been using this town as a base for six months and had destroyed a good deal of the town center for the fun of it.”

She sounded as appalled by the suggestion that anyone would do such a thing as she was by having been captured and mistreated by the same men.

“Then we should move on as soon as we can,” said Miguel. “Where do you next plan to make camp?”

“Palestine,” Aronson said.

New York

No, thought Milosz, you do not obtain military-specification P90s from stroking pussycats. You steal them or buy them on the black market, or, given the way this country was, you loot them from a deserted gun store. But what the hell. He could not care less where the strange hippopotamus man in the very odd Viking helmet and his English lady friend got the weapons that had saved his ass. All Milosz cared about was that his scrawny ass remained in one piece, while back at Madison and 29th the asses of many nig nogs and crazy ragheaded asswits were scattered about the street in many, many pieces.

“You need to get out of this part of the city,” Wilson insisted in the same tone of voice Milosz had heard him use when pushing around lower ranks and junior officers.

The man and woman, however, seemed oddly immune to the master sergeant’s imprecations. “Imprecations” was another word Milosz had learned from reading Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald, along with “orgastic,” which admittedly remained something of a mystery and not a word he was confident about throwing into this conversation.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant—” the woman began.

“Master sergeant, United States Army Rangers.”

“That’s lovely. But I’m sorry, Master Sergeant, no, we cannot leave the city until our work is done.”

“Your work was hauling rusted fucking car wrecks out to the salvage barges, according to these papers,” Wilson said. “Not spooking around Pirate Island capping motherfuckers and looking for fucking treasure maps. Your work didn’t involve any of that crazy shit at all.”

“Well,” the woman said, smiling in a rather sexy fashion, Milosz thought, “our work didn’t involve saving your asses from Captain Fucking Feathersword and his merry band of cutthroats, either. But we did. So perhaps you’d be a darling and let us toddle off before your friends arrive. Honestly, being sent back now would ruin our whole day.”

Milosz peered out of the office window down into the streets of midtown Manhattan. From their vantage point on the forty-second floor of the building to which they had fled he had a good view of the
OPFOR
concentrations around the approaches to Madison Square Park. They were a lot less concentrated. A lot more “attrited,” as that American colonel had said. The lower end of the city looked like hell. Frankly, he was glad to be out of it for a little while.

He idly examined the office, wondering what kind of business the occupants of this particular floor had carried on. Whatever the case, they’d been busy on March 14, 2003. The leavings of the Disappeared lay everywhere: at desks, in hallways, mounded in a pile of stiff, blackened suits and dresses encircling a box of petrified Krispy Kremes. He did his best to ignore them and Wilson’s argument with the smugglers, for that was surely what these two must be.

“Halo to any element, request close air. Location is …” Gardener said into her headset.

He returned to the drama unfolding below, where dozens of city blocks were aflame. Sunrise was mere moments away. Gunships darted in and out of the shattered canyons, hosing long ropy streams of tracer fire onto unseen targets. Every few minutes a jet fighter would fall out of the sky, loosing rockets or bombs into the cauldron of battle, their detonations causing the window in front of him to vibrate. The scale of destruction was fantastic.

“Troops and vehicles in the open,” said Gardener. “Approximately one hundred effectives plus five civilian trucks moving toward …”

She sat in a corner that had not been given over to the office of any single executive. A breakout space, she called it, a small open area decorated with a couple of couches and a small coffee table on which lay old magazines and a vase of brown dried-up flowers. Gardener, comfortable on a musty couch, examined the maelstrom through her binoculars, apparently unaware she was sitting on a red dress left behind by one of the lost souls who had worked there. Her muddy boots were propped up on the coffee table, and her carbine lay across her lap. She had taken her helmet off, leaving the radio headset in place, exposing some of her stray blond locks. She pressed her fingers to the earpiece of her headset and called in a string of air strikes, punishing the foes who had killed her partner, Sergeant Veal, and had very nearly taken her life as well.

“I copy, Talon. What have you got?” she asked. She waited a moment and then replied. “Clusters will be perfect. Do you see them?”

She pressed her headset against her ears and nodded.

“Halo copies.”

Behind Milosz, Wilson raised his voice again.

“Listen, I am the world’s most grateful motherfucker that you happened along and pulled our nuts outta the fire,” he said. “But you can’t be tear-assing around the
AOR
on your private business with all of this shit flying around. Have you looked out the fucking window the last few minutes? Huh? We got us Apocalypse fucking Now out there, people. Top-shelf fucking ordnance getting uncorked today. Star Wars shit. Hell, they gonna be firing up the fucking Deathstar and just zapping this whole fucking island to ashes before we’re done, believe it. And you want to go back out into it? You are going to get yourselves killed. And since I owe you for me and my people not getting killed, I have to say no, and furthermore, Hell No. When resupply flies in on the roof, you are flying the fuck outta here.”

Wilson had worked himself up into such a state that Milosz was actually drawn away from the spectacular bonfire down in the streets that had exploded behind the master sergeant at the end of his rant, lighting the room up considerably. Gardener was all over that detail, anyway. The man and woman—what did they call themselves, Hippo and June?—seemed relaxed and even amused by Wilson’s rant. But then, they were the only ones with loaded weapons in the room, and it was clear they wouldn’t be giving them up. Plus, Milosz thought, to wear such a stupid helmet with such large cow horns poking out, the hippo man was very obviously an individual who took his amusement where he could find it. He searched his memory for a literary character he might compare this hippo to—an old trick for passing the time and for fixing in his memory the details of books he wanted to remember. But nothing came. Watching them and their utter imperturbability—another Fitzgerald word—Milosz just knew there would be no getting these two evacuated anytime soon. Or ever. They were happy to stay and watch over the Americans until they were resupplied—the hippo, who looked like a former soldier of sorts, as well as a Disneyland Visigoth, had promised them that. But that was the only promise they had extracted from the pair.

“Hey, Wilson,” he said in an easygoing, reasonable tone, “what does it matter what the lady and the hippo do? If they get killed, who will blame us? It is not as if they are supposed to be here. I don’t suppose anyone but this Rubin they speak of even knows they are still in the city, no?” He tilted his head at them, looking for confirmation.

“It’s Rhino, son. Rhino A. Ross,” said the man he had mistaken for a hippo. Advancing on Milosz, the giant engulfed his right hand and pumped it three times. “Chief petty officer, United States Coast Guard, in my glorious youth,” he continued. “At your service. And you make a good point, son. You’re obviously a worldly and educated man. And Polish, too, if I am not mistaken. I served with a Pole once. Bochenski his name was. A marine engineer but a polymath of the first order. Had a gifted amateur’s interest in fifteenth-century Florence, which is by the bye, but of immediate and critical relevance is the very point you just made, sir. Nobody is going to care about us except our employer, and I can assure you his interest in our well-being extends only so far as his self-interest allows. In the event of misfortune, we will be quickly replaced and forgotten. No reason, then, we shouldn’t be on our way once you’re able to see to your own defense again.”

Milosz took his hand back with a rueful grimace. The Rhino probably had not crushed it nearly as much as he could have.

“Wilson,” he said, “I think we should not be too hasty with the bum’s rushing of these two back to rear echelon, no?”

The master sergeant’s face clouded over with suspicion. “And why not, Fred? It’s bad enough we’re going to have to fess up about how they saved our asses. If we let them wander off after that, we’re toast whether they make it back or not.”

“Not if they simply disappear and we never report them,” Milosz said.

The English woman suddenly tensed. “Nobody’s disappearing us,” she protested, leveling her weapon in their direction.

“Easy,” Wilson said. “Be cool, lady.”

Milosz endured a second’s confusion before understanding suddenly dawned. “No, no,” he said quickly, wondering what he would disappear them with if he were so inclined. The only person with any firepower was Gardener, and calling in an air strike on their position was not logical. “I do not imply that we will make you disappear. Just that we will let you disappear. On one condition.”

The Viking rhinoceros subtly shifted his grip on the P90, causing the barrel of the weapon to point a bit more in the general direction of Wilson and Milosz.

“What sort of condition?” he asked.

“I believe the American phrase is ‘a piece of the action,’” Milosz said, pleased with himself for remembering that vernacular expression.

“Oh, fuck me, Fred. We don’t need this George Clooney bullshit,” protested Wilson.

“No. You wait on a moment,” Milosz said. “I do not know this Clooney character. Perhaps he is your friend, but just think about this. You were nearly killed by pirate asswits last night, and for what? Not even for a lousy paycheck you can depend on. A hundred and forty new bucks that may not be paid you if we even make it back to battalion. Please to forgive my presumption, Rhino A. Ross and, sorry … English Lady Baldwin?”

“Balwyn.”

“My apologies. But I presume you are to be paid much more than one hundred and forty newbies, yes? So if we were to help you toward completion of project, we too might be paid by this oil man Rubin, no?”

“I can’t believe this,” Wilson said, shaking his head.

The Rhino pursed his lips and shrugged. “I suppose so,” he said. “If we had Rubin’s papers, it wouldn’t be hard to get you a cut … a small cut,” he added. “But a hell of a lot better than a hundred forty newbies, yeah.”

“I would like equity,” Milosz said.

The English woman snorted, but more in amusement than dismissal.

“Listen, if we have Rubin’s paper, he would negotiate,” she said. “But it would take more than just letting us walk out of here. We could do that right now.”

She hefted her gun to remind him. Even disabled by some sort of wound to one arm, she looked more than capable of using it.

“If you want a cut, you need to get us closer to his apartment,” she said.

“Jesus Christ,” Wilson said, dropping his Kevlar helmet to the ground.

“No. Jesus Christ of no use in this situation. But Fryderyk Milosz and Master Sergeant Wilson of U.S. Army Rangers very useful. Oh, and Technical Sergeant Gardener, too. She most useful of all.”

“Just shut up and take the deal, Sarge. I didn’t get paid at all last month,” Gardener shouted from her couch before pressing her headset. “This is Halo. Talon, give me two more of the same on the original target, do you copy?”

Julianne jumped out of the cabin of the helicopter and fought the rotor wash trying to sweep her off the roof. She stayed bent over as she ran forward, clutching the straps of her backpack lest it be ripped away by the furious downblast. She turned and crouched beside an air-conditioning unit and was almost bowled over by the Rhino, who was right on her heels. The dark green chopper snarled even more ferociously as the pilot fed power into the engines and lifted off again. Her dirty, unwashed fringe whipped stinging strands of hair into her eyes, but she watched and waved them off, anyway. The Polish soldier, Milosz, stood in the doorway, grinning hugely. With one hand holding a grab bar, he laid the tips of two fingers under his eyes and then pointed directly at her.