Reapers (34 page)

He swilled down the rest of his beer and smacked it on the table. He had everything ready by the following afternoon, but they hung around Sicily until dusk, meaning to sail past Distro's Chelsea holdings under cover of night. The boat was several feet longer than the one Kerry had led down to the New Jersey coast. Possibly to make room for all the guns, which included a rocket launcher, and the bevy of passengers, which included Ash, Lucy, Brian, four men, and three women. Lucy didn't have so much as a knife. If they turned on her, she'd either have to loot the cabin's armory, or jump overboard and see how long she could hold her breath.

They pushed off. A modest wind blew from the land. A few lights pricked the skyline, evidence of the sporadic power the Feds provided those who could afford it, but that just made the city's black towers all the bleaker. The crew passed Chelsea Piers in perfect silence.

Once they were out of hearing range, Ash grinned and spat into the river. "Bozos. We'll clean their clocks."

Lucy let the captain know to head out to sea and swing south along the coast. They scooted out the channel and hooked to the right. The Jersey shore was nothing but a bunch of dark lumps. After a few miles, Lucy told the captain to make way for High Bar Harbor.

The boat pitched on worse waves than she'd faced on the trip down with Kerry. She went down the steps to catch a nap. She woke as the captain wrangled his way through the channel to the bay. The man's expression was as tight as his knuckles.

"Pay no mind to Captain About-to-Shit-His-Pants," Ash told her. He waved his hands down in a swimmy motion. "He's scared it might be
dangerous
to sail into an unfamiliar harbor at night."

"It hasn't been dredged in years," the man muttered, glancing between the shores bracketing them to right and left.

"What's the worst that happens? We run into some sand? If the Bedouins aren't afraid of sand, why should we be?"

"The Bedouins never had to swim the Atlantic in December."

They were operating silent and without lights. At one point the captain got in a hushed yet heated argument with Ash about dropping a pole into the water, but Ash made a series of obscene threats and the captain relented, though not before promising that, should they run aground, he would leave the Kono to start a new life in the Rocky Mountains, as far from the sea as he could climb.

After some more grumbling, he sailed around the long spit extending north from the yacht club, then maneuvered into the artificial residential canals on the western side of the small blob of land. They tied up parallel to shore. The captain slumped in his chair, mopped his brow, and fetched a pint bottle from the pocket of his pea coat.

"Land ho," Ash said quietly, voice hanging in the cold, damp air. He clapped Lucy on the shoulder. "Ready to spill the beans?"

"Funny you should say that," Lucy said. "Follow me."

He climbed down from the boat, then offered her a hand, which she declined. He was armed with a pistol and he brought along a silent man with a black assault rifle. The others remained onboard. Lucy led the two men through the decaying houses and into the salt marsh. A dusting of snow lay on the solid parcels of ground, helping Lucy to pick her way through the darkness. Between the snow and the gloom, she had to circle around a couple times before she found the parallel ruts in the soil.

She eased herself to one knee and pointed along the lines. "You see?"

"Incredible. You've discovered dirt."

"Right. Now check out the tracks in the dirt.
Now
imagine the helicopter that made those tracks."

Ash's frown deepened like the approach of twilight. "You think Distro is bringing their goods in via helicopter, then shipping them from here to the city?"

"That's how they bring in so much exotic wares. And why they always know exactly when it's supposed to arrive. They don't have to worry about storms and winds and shit. They're flying it in as close as they can get without exposing their system to you guys."

"And they're using this patch of ground—which you could slip through a regulation-sized mail slot—instead of the streets right over there." Ash gestured across the field toward the houses standing between them and the yacht club. "How many can an average boat carry? Would you call it a boatload? Now imagine your helicopter. How much weight do you think
it
can carry?"

"Maybe they make multiple trips." Lucy brushed away the snow and bent close to the ground. "I found coffee beans. Right here beside the tracks. If they're not offloading the goods right here, how the hell did those beans get spilled? Did a Colombian albatross stop to take a dump?"

Ash turned to his soldier. "What do you think?"

The man sniffed. "I think they're using boats."

"Interesting you should say that. Because if they're using boats, and we knock out this harbor, they'll just set up another somewhere else." He brought his face inches from Lucy's. "You told me you knew how to destroy them."

"You see a lot of functioning air power these days? If you knock out their whirlybirds, the city's yours." Lucy's mind raced. "Today's Thursday. New shipments came in every Saturday morning. If I'm right, the shipment will land here tomorrow."

"If it doesn't?"

"Then you can take back my life that you saved. But you remember one thing: I want Nerve dead just as bad as you."

"Oh, I doubt that." Ash bounced to his feet. "Back to the ship."

They sloshed through the marsh to the boat. Ash ordered two of the soldiers to scout the marina, then told Lucy to get downstairs. The man with the assault rifle came down and watched her from a padded bench.

Some time later, boots thumped around above deck. Voices murmured. Lucy couldn't make out their words. She wasn't too happy with herself. The street
would
make a much better landing pad than some soggy old field. And if you ruled out the field, that meant the coffee beans were a red herring. Her whole theory collapsed.

Troops took turns watching her. She managed to sleep some. Right before dawn, she woke to the sound of boots on the steps. The soldiers and crew were all piling below, getting out of sight. Ash and one of his men stayed up in the cabin, presumably to watch the skies. When Brian came downstairs, he gave her a long look, but said nothing.

The Kono stayed belowdecks the whole day. Pissed in a bucket and left it by the steps. Every few minutes, Lucy was sure she heard the whop of a chopper, but it was her ears being tricked by the wash of the tide, the stirrings of the two men above. The soldiers murmured to each other as if she wasn't there.

It was one of those days that lasted forever yet was over in a blink. After nightfall, Ash called the crew upstairs. Ropes and feet thumped around. The boat swayed away from the dock.

"Sorry," Brian told her.

"If you're that sorry, go talk to him. Tell him we got to stay another day."

"We did talk. His mind's made up."

She stared at the plain white ceiling. "He's making a mistake."

"He's not afraid of making mistakes," Brian said. "He's afraid of standing still."

The boat pulled away from the dock. It leaned to the right, swinging around the spit, then leveled out, cruising toward the open sea. Waves knocked against the hull. And then she heard the sound of the surf, except instead of waxing and waning, it climbed and climbed until she could feel its thunder in the healing wound in her chest.

"It's not a helicopter." Lucy's jaw was somewhere around her ankles. "It's a jet."

22

"Get down," Ellie said. "We're not alone."

She ducked behind a sedan angled on the shoulder. Dee and Hobson moved in beside her. She got out her binocs and gazed down the lanes spanning the river. Past the latticed steel tower near the far end, concrete barriers choked the road. Behind these, a man turned his back to her. She could just make out the black line of a rifle spiking from his shoulder.

"Two of them," she said. "Armed."

"Can we use another bridge?" Dee said. "Holland Tunnel?"

Hobson took off his bowler and inspected the brim. "Logically speaking, if they're guarding one of them, they're guarding all of them."

Dee peeped around the side window. "If they wanted to kill us, wouldn't they ambush us? And not stand right there in the open?"

"Listen to that," Hobson chuckled. "How does Deputy Dee sound?"

"Absolutely not." Ellie put away her binoculars. "Well, come on."

She led the way onto the bridge. They had spent the night in a neighboring township and the morning light was flat and gray. Snow plastered the rooftops across the Hudson, but the wind had swept most of it from the bridge's surface, leaving slicks of black ice that left Ellie's snowshoes skidding. She tottered forward, glancing between the guards at the other end and her unsteady footing.

The guards noticed them within seconds. One produced binoculars. They left their rifles on their shoulders as Ellie and crew moved within hailing distance.

"Hello, ma'am," one of them said. He had the spontaneous patter of a salesman. "And sir. And other ma'am. Could you stop right there? I'd love to let a couple pretty girls inside, but unfortunately, the nation of Manhattan's tourist season is now closed."

"We're not tourists," Ellie said.

"We're also closed to business, pleasure, passage, and to anyone who isn't a documented citizen of the island."

"You're with the government?"

He grinned. "What tipped you off? The uniforms, or the refusal to let you get anything done?"

"Then I would like to file a formal complaint against the human traffickers operating in your city."

"Human traffickers?" The soldier exchanged a look with his partner. "I don't think we got any of that going on here."

Ellie stepped forward. "Several weeks ago, my daughter's fiancé was kidnapped from Saranac Lake. We've tracked him to the city. I don't care if it's tourist season, flu season, or C.H.U.D. season. I'm coming inside."

His partner leaned in. "Could be those uptown shitheads, man."

"Zip it," the first soldier said. He scrunched up his face as if enduring great pain. "I take you seriously, ma'am. Seriously enough that, even though we're not really closed for tourist season but because we got a lot of people in here who seem bent on shooting each other, I doubt that information is going to turn you away. Am I right?"

"Utterly," Ellie said.

"Here's what I'm going to do for you. I'm going to take down your names and give you temporary passports. Then
you're
going to go straight to City Hall, explain your situation, and do whatever they tell you to do. Is that a deal?"

"If they tell me to leave, I'm going to tell them the same thing I told you."

He brayed laughter, mist drifting from his mouth. "Listen, will you pretend to agree with me so I can swear up and down to my prick of a superior officer that you solemnly swore to abide by the adjudications of the sovereign nation of Manhattan?"

Despite herself, Ellie laughed. "I so swear."

"Boom! I'll grab the paperwork and we can get you on your way."

He walked to the shack behind the barricade and returned with three clipboards and pens. Ellie set to work filling in her name, residence, and reason of visit.

As she passed it back, the second soldier frowned at Ellie's rifle. "What about their guns?"

The first man rolled his eyes. "Jesus, Ezra, do
you
want to send someone into the island unarmed right now?"

"Then you get to answer to Valentine."

"No problem. I'll just tell her you were asleep at your post." He laughed some more, collected Ellie's paperwork, and passed them each a laminated badge. "You know where City Hall is?"

"I used to live here," Ellie said.

"Why didn't you say so? Welcome home!" He stepped aside with a flourish. As they passed, he winked at Dee.

Past the bridge, they descended to street level. Hobson lifted his gray brows. "Well."

"Did you know they had a government?" Ellie said.

"I'd heard rumblings. I'd always assumed it was a tin-pot setup."

"Unless they're a complete farce, they'll know about the slave trade. We'll pry the intel out of them and go straight to the source. Could be out of here in a couple days."

The wicker frame of Hobson's right snowshoe snapped. He cursed, but the shoe held together. "Let's pray they're corrupt."

Dee raised one eyebrow. "Why would we want that?"

"Easier to bribe."

They walked past miles of brownstones and tall project towers. An hour later, they paralleled the park, walking along a stone fence that had been topped with barbed wire. Log cabins and shacks dotted the fields and hid in the trees. The grass had been plowed under; most of the land was brown dirt and churned-up stalks of the fall harvest. Axes thunked wood. Here and there, people strolled down the paths, dogs clicking along beside them. Watching them, Ellie could almost pretend the plague had never happened—except each man and woman carried a rifle on their shoulder or a pistol on their hip.

"This is so weird," Dee said.

Ellie took in the skyline of Midtown. "Remember it?"

"It smells even worse than it used to."

Hobson chuckled. "Makes you wish you had an off switch for your nose."

Once the park was behind them, the city grew quiet. Every few blocks, Ellie glimpsed a drape stirring or a figure watching them from an apartment, but virtually all the windows were dark or broken or thick with dust.

The steel mountains of Midtown sloped down to the foothills of Chelsea and a Village that had just managed to become completely gentrified before the Panhandler wiped the slate clean. Ellie felt like she was trespassing over a grave. Nonsense, of course. More people had died in New York in the centuries before the plague than during the collapse. Cities like this had always been cemeteries. The only reason you didn't notice was because people had been so good at replacing the corpses with live bodies.

She kept both eyes out for trouble, but the turrets of City Hall soon climbed from the downtown highrises. As they crossed its plaza, a wary soldier exited the front doors, stopped them, examined their laminated passports, and allowed them inside. They unbuckled their snowshoes and left them by the door. After the last two weeks, walking without them made Ellie's feet feel lighter than air, as if her legs faded into nothing somewhere around the shins.