The Black Ships (17 page)

Manhattan, New York

November 28
^th
, 2026.

C
allum looked up as Mark Frey set his mug on the table and dropped
into a seat across from him. “Fired on the crowd,” Cal said, holding up the
newspaper that he had been reading. “There were a few rocks thrown, maybe a
Molotov cocktail or two, but no soldiers were hurt beyond a couple of minor
cuts, and the bastards fired on a crowd of hungry civilians.” He slapped the paper
on the table in anger.

His tirade went largely unnoticed. The
Groundskeeper, or GK, was known as a hotbed of political argument and one more
angry young man would not attract any attention. It was the main reason that
Mark had suggested it when Cal first approached him. Cal had contacted Kevin
through a rented mailbox after reaching New York to ask for Mark’s information.

Before everything had fallen apart at
Moffett Field, the two men had discussed the possibility of setting up a new
cell on the east coast. Kevin had mentioned a like-minded cousin who worked as
a cab driver in Midtown Manhattan, and Cal was eager to use the connection to
get a head start on his new group. The first follower was always the hardest.
After that, you had access to their friends and networks.

Mark nodded, his expression grave. “They
use the Swiss and Canadians against the French,” he growled. “Then, once France
is under their thumb, they’ll use the French against someone else.”

“And how long before they’re sent here?”
Cal waved around the room with his left hand. “How long before they don’t even
need to? They might just be able to do it with our own soldiers.”

“That’s how the UN does it,” Mark agreed.
“One country at a time, using our own resources against us.” He leaned over the
table. “You know, I pick up a guy at Kennedy every week, and he told me this
was going down.” He nodded at the paper on the table. “By the time I got him to
the UN, he had pretty much told me the whole plan, except for the Canadians.
They must have been a last-minute addition.”

“Might work,” Cal mused. “From what I read
on a blog about it this morning, the Canadian version of French has been
diverging for centuries. France left them on their own a long time ago.” He
chuckled. “The minute one of them speaks, the French won’t be able to resist
the urge to tell them to ‘stop speaking English’. They’ll be too busy with
witty comments to keep on rioting.”

One of the GK staff came over with a small
steel coffee pot. Mark held out his mug for a refill and then nodded to Cal.
“Try this; they source grinds for regulars and keep them in those fancy little
cubbies over there,” he said, waving his mug in the direction of the wall
behind the counter. A bank of small, glass door compartments filled the upper
half of the wall. Each door had a small chalkboard where a customer’s name and
blends were written. A brass-framed ladder ran on a roller system, allowing
quick access to the compartments.

“This is from a single farm in Costa Rica,”
he explained. “I pay for the bag plus markup and that covers my tab until it
runs out. I had them make some extra this morning.” He smiled his thanks at the
young woman as she finished pouring and returned the small pot to a bank of
brewers along the counter. “So, what can we do?”

Good question,
thought Callum.
The last time, I just built up a group by
accident. I wasn’t thinking of taking action. By the time I decided to do
something, I already had a large group to work with.
He took a drink. It
tasted OK, but not as fantastic as Mark seemed to think. Cal had a sneaking
suspicion that the staff at GK had a huge vat of generic beans in the back and
simply put them in small bags with fancy labels. The rest was just window
dressing to help justify gouging the regulars.

Window dressing. Appearances. A cab looks
like a cab until the passenger finds a gun in his face. A UN flunky who didn’t
rate a limo may well be a more useful target than an actual ambassador. He
would have less to lose by trading cooperation for his freedom. Cal smiled.
“Mark, when do you pick up your regular fare from Kennedy?”

Paris

November 29
^th
, 2026

M
ärti sat against a pillar in the second bay of the nave, his head in
his hands. He hadn’t slept in two days. His men had been posted throughout the
city to prevent marches. The general consensus was that the growing crowds of
angry, marching citizens were not going to decrease. If anything the numbers
were growing at an alarming rate. The soldiers had been ordered to prevent all
marches. By blocking their routes, it was hoped that they would eventually
disperse and return to work.

It didn’t work.

Märti’s men had originally been placed
throughout the city, but it soon became clear that every march had one common
target - the river. Every mob would eventually head for one of the graceful
arches that spanned the river, knowing that the best press coverage would be
had at such picturesque sites. The Swiss soldiers had been moved to hold the bridges.
Märti was using a boat to move up and down the river to check on his men.

He had just left the Pont Neuf at the
downstream end of the Îsle de la Cité when his headset activated. The platoon
guarding the smaller, left bank side of the bridge had reported seeing a large
group heading their way along the Rue Dauphine.

Märti was only a few meters away from the
tip of the island and so he had the boat turn around and run up against the
stone-faced embankment. He leapt out, running through the small park and up the
stairs of the massive stone square where the statue of Henry IV sat on
horseback. As he crossed the square and headed to the right, he could see some
of his men closing the barriers while others donned their helmets and tested
the grips of their riot shields.

He felt a moment’s concern as he saw that a
young woman had stopped in mid-crossing, holding hands with a little girl of no
more than two years. She had obviously realized that she wouldn’t be able to
reach the other end with an angry mob in the way and was trying to decide on
the safest course of action. The lieutenant in charge of this platoon was
trying to wave her back but she ignored him, taking shelter in one of the round
bastions that jutted out over the river at each of the piers.

The crowd surged onto the far end and
flowed towards the soldiers, some wearing black ski masks, but most were
showing their faces. They began to slow as they approached the barricade on the
island side of the bridge, stopping at the seemingly standard distance of angry
crowds everywhere.

Just inside of throwing range.

Sure enough the rocks began to rain down
and the lieutenant bellowed an order. The second rank of men lifted their
shields and pushed them forward, providing overhead cover for themselves and the
men whose shields were used to guard the front. The maneuver would doubtless
have been familiar to the Roman garrison of this same island, centuries ago.

The pace of the bombardment began to wane
as the protestors started to run low on ammunition. Märti was starting to hope
the stand-off would end without violence when he noticed one of the masked men
lighting a Molotov cocktail. Running out in front of the crowd, he hurled the
bottle and scurried back into the crowd, working his way through the mob.

The bottle struck the ground a couple of
feet in front of the line of soldiers, sheeting flame across the cobbles and up
the legs of several men. “Steady,” Märti roared at the top of his lungs. The
men were clad in fire-retardant uniforms and it would take a long time for a
fire to burn through their heavy boots. One man, a corporal, close to the
right-hand parapet of the bridge landing seemed to have forgotten that and he
was frantically shrugging his left arm free of his heavy shield so he could
slap at the flaming liquid on his legs.

The frightened man’s panic had opened a
hole in the line and the crowd surged forward, pelting rocks into the hole. The
soldier took a hit to the forehead and looked up with panic to see another man
lighting a second Molotov cocktail. Before Märti or the lieutenant could reach
him, the young man pulled his assault rifle from his shoulder, cocked it and
opened fire in the general area of the masked man, who took a hit in the
shoulder, dropping his missile.

The bottle hit the ground, shattering and
exposing its cargo of gasoline to the flaming wick of cloth that had been stuck
in the neck. A carpet of flame spread under the feet of the protestors who were
already struggling to get away from the gunfire. The Junior officer reached the
man who was still firing wildly at the scattering crowd and, after a moment of
indecision, pulled his pistol and shot him.

Märti was shocked at first but he realized
that, if the man was beyond reason, then it would have been impossible to stop
him without further casualties. For every second that he was still controlling
his Stgw 220-a, twelve rounds could be fired into the crowd of civilians. If
killing him, rather than wrestling him to the ground, saved even one innocent
civilian, then the choice made by the lieutenant was the right one.

Though the junior officer obviously
understood that in the heat of the moment, it was no comfort to him now. He was
crouched by the body in a daze, his pistol still in his hand and tears
streaming down his face. Märti dropped to one knee next to him, gently taking
the pistol away. “You did what had to be done Leuzinger,” Märti spoke gently
but loud enough for the men standing around them to hear as well.

They would have been shocked by what
happened and some would be angry at their officer. It was important that they
understand. “More would have died if you hadn’t stopped him.”
How many did
die?”
He helped Leuzinger over to the edge of the road where he leaned him
against the parapet. He looked out across the bridge. At least five dead, and
more than twenty wounded, one of whom was being pulled, screaming, out of the
gasoline fire by two soldiers under the direction of the platoon medics.

Märti walked out into the carnage, stopping
to apply a battle dressing to the arm of a wounded man who glared at him in
impotent rage. Neither man spoke and Märti moved on as soon as he was finished.
The wounded were being organized and assessed by the medics, one of whom was
applying a small plastic sheet, taped on three sides to the chest wound of a
middle-aged woman.

Through the continual sounds of pain coming
from the wounded, Märti heard the terrified screams of a little girl. In the
heat of the moment, he had completely forgotten about the young woman and
little girl who had been trying to cross the bridge. He raced over to the
bastion where he found the small child kneeling by the body of the woman.

Two wet holes in her black overcoat steamed
in the cold air. One was over the heart. He knelt, checking for a pulse and
finding none. The little girl looked up at Märti and, frightened by the
stranger, she pushed at the woman with her tiny hands. “Mama,” she cried in
French, still looking with fear at Märti. “You don’t sleep now!” Her words melted
into incoherent sounds of fear and anguish as she sat alone in this place of
horror.

A private came over, crooning endearments
softly in his accented French. The girl, her fear focused for the moment on the
officer in front of her, allowed the young man to pick her up and carry her off
towards the barricade. Märti knelt there, staring at the place where the little
girl had been, and he tried to make sense of it.

Why are we even here? What possible good
is there in pitting soldiers against desperate civilians?
He looked up as he heard his men exclaiming quietly behind him. At
the far end of the bridge, several television news vans had already begun to
set up. He looked back to the barricade. Finding the senior sergeant, he caught
his eye and held up his hand with four fingers, then indicated the ground next
to himself. The man nodded and selected four men, leading them over.

“Oberlin, help the medics with the wounded,
anyone who can be moved should go to the island where we can arrange for
transport to a hospital - wait…” As his mind cleared, he began to remember the
reasons why he had chosen to garrison this island. “Open the barricade and back
up a truck, get on the radio to the other platoons on the island.” His voice
had taken on a new sense of urgency as he realized how close help was for the
wounded. “We’ll take them to Hôtel Dieu.”

Oberlin nodded and ran back to the
barricade, shouting as he went. Märti headed for the medics to let them know
the plan. The historic hospital housed one of the city’s foremost trauma
centers and it was next to the cathedral, only a few hundred meters away. He
stopped by the lead medic, telling him quickly so as not to unduly distract him
from his work. The man seemed relieved to know how close the hospital was.

“Sir, you should find a way to let them
know how many patients are coming,” the young medic advised as he worked to
dress a sucking chest wound. “It could make the difference between life and
death for some of these patients and perhaps the preservation of a leg or two.”
He shouted at an idle soldier to finish the dressing while he moved on to
another casualty.

Märti activated his headset. “Four two,
this is Four, over.” He used French, despite the earlier decision to use Swiss
Italian for all radio communication while in Paris.

The response was almost instantaneous, the
other units would have heard the weapons fire and gone to high alert. “Four
two, standing by, over.”

“Four, I need a reliable man to get over to
the hospital emergency ward at the Hôtel Dieu with a radio, over.”

“Four two, roger that, reliable man to the
hospital. Will go in person right now, over.”

“Four, contact me when you find someone in
charge, out.”

With the urgencies in hand, Märti found
himself free again to wonder why he and his men should be there in the first
place.
This is worse than useless.
He could feel a cold rage building. A
rage against the fools who had decided that combat troops should be used as
crowd control.
We aren’t policemen; we don’t have their training or
experience. What did they think would happen when a soldier came under fire?
His
thoughts were interrupted as his headset warbled in his ear, announcing an
incoming transmission burst.

“Four, this is Four Two, over.”

“Four, send, over.” Märti walked over to
the senior medic.

“Four Two, roger, am at trauma center with
front desk staff, over.”

“Four, wait one, over.” He handed the
headset to the medic. “Take this, tell Four Two the particulars. Use French, we
don’t want any delays in translation.”

The medic donned the headset. “Four Two,
this is Four One Mike, four times casualties with chest cavity wounds, two
times casualties with abdominal wounds, less serious cases to follow, over.”

A pause ensued while the officer in charge
of Second Platoon relayed the information to the trauma staff, then the headset
chirped and crackled again.

“Four Two Mike, roger, two times casualties
with grazing head wounds, eight times casualties with arm wounds, five times
casualties with leg wounds, list ends, over.” He nodded at the reply, taking
off the headset and handing it back to Märti. “He wants to talk to you again,
sir.”

“Four, send, over.”

“Four Two, roger, staff are preparing. Sir,
they aren’t very happy with us, over.”

“Four, they aren’t the only ones, out.” He
disconnected and watched as the worst cases were loaded into the back of the
platoon’s five-ton.
Now we have given them something new to focus on.
 He
glanced over at the far end of the bridge where a horde of television news vans
had congregated, completely blocking traffic on the Quai de Conti.

Now we have given the entire world
something to focus on - the impression that we all live under a brutal regime
and I am the face of that impression.

Two days later, he found himself leaning
against a pillar inside of the great cathedral. He had seen the news coverage
from dozens of outlets. Each had denounced the actions of the Swiss troops as
excessive and brutal. Each report had included a shot of Märti on the bridge,
standing amidst the chaos. Every report had invariably gone on to present a
summary of his career. The implication could not be missed by even the dullest
viewer: this was the man responsible for the brutality on the Pont Neuf.

The worst of it was that Märti could not
claim that they were wrong. He was responsible for all of the men in his
battalion and, if one of them cracked under stress, then he should have known
that he was a risk. He knew that there was no chance of knowing all the men of
his six platoons well enough to catch such a thing but both companies had captains,
each platoon had lieutenants and each squad had a senior non-commissioned
officer.

Every soldier had friends.

I wish I could say the same,
Märti thought as the cold stone column drew the heat from his body.
Even his company and platoon commanders had each other to talk to. It would be
bad for the already-shaken morale of the battalion if Märti were to unload on
one of his junior officers.

“You carry a great weight in your heart,
Major Bohren.” The bluff voice startled him and he looked up to see an elderly
priest standing in the center of the nave. He had apparently recognized the
Swiss officer from the news. “Your young lieutenant also carries a heavy
burden.” The priest had crossed the nave as he spoke and now sat against the
pillar opposite Märti, facing him across the floor of the second bay.