After America (54 page)

Kipper felt his head reeling at the numbers. They simply could not bear those losses for very long.

“Were they all taken down by missiles, General? Surely we could find out where those things came from.”

“Some of them were ours, sir. And no, most of the choppers were killed by very low-tech means. Rocket-propelled grenades, often fired from skyscrapers. As I said, sir, it is a very challenging battlespace.”

Jed leaned across his wall of ring binders. “We have discussed this, Mister President. We can use men or we can use ordnance. But at the moment we’re not using enough of either. Is that what you’re saying, General Franks?”

“Yes, Mister Culver.”

“How many troops do we have on the island right now, General?” Kip asked.

“Close to twenty-four thousand regular army, marines, and New York militia, Mister President. The militia element forms the majority of our combat power, probably close to sixty percent. But their effectiveness is mixed depending upon their local commanders,” the chairman said. “If you are amenable, I would like permission to deploy an additional marine expeditionary brigade into New York.”

“Where would these marines come from?” Kipper asked. The U.S. Armed Forces were a lot smaller than they had once been. You couldn’t just go tossing marine brigades around like confetti.

“I’d probably pull them from California. Los Angeles and San Diego. Stripping them down to
MCRD
San Diego,” Franks said. “Things are secure enough that the corps felt they could move boots back to San Diego. At least secure from outside interference at any rate, and using marines there is probably overkilling the issue of zone runners and scavengers. We’re scheduled to transfer more of that mission over to the local militia, anyway. May as well move it up.”

Jed Culver riffled quickly through a sheaf of papers until he found what he wanted.

“Couldn’t we send forces from Missouri and strip units from the garrisons along the Seattle-Kansas City rail line? They’re a lot closer, and they’re not busy. It’s mostly wilderness out there.”

Franks shook his head. “I know it looks as if those troops aren’t doing anything, Mister Culver, but they keep the rail line secure from interdiction and sabotage.”

“Sabotage?” Kipper asked.

“The incidents have been relatively small in number and not coordinated, but all it takes is one train derailment to cause considerable disruption to reconstruction efforts in the Midwest,” Franks said. “The Second
MEB
is vital, but with a third one in—”

“Who the hell’s been sabotaging my railways?” Kip asked. If Franks noticed his sudden surge of interest, he didn’t react to it, continuing in the same gruff voice as before.

“The bureau is investigating, Mister President. They’re not ruling anything out. There’s some indication it could be a Deep Green thing or one of the Earth First splinters. But the strikes were pretty far into the interior, well beyond the reach of a bunch of tree huggers and vegan whack jobs. Latest theory is Fort Hood, possibly using a bogus Green front to mess with our supply lines. They do have the capability and motive,” Franks said, notably omitting Blackstone’s name. It was known that Franks had been part of the effort to oust Blackstone from uniform. Kip understood that he didn’t care for the man in the least.

“That Blackstone asshole again?” Kipper exclaimed with a passion that surprised even himself. “This guy is like Satan’s own jack-in-the-box the way he keeps popping up. How bad is it, General? And why wasn’t I informed?”

Franks didn’t look at all uncomfortable with the question.

“It’s not as bad as it could be, Mister President, precisely because we have those garrison forces along the line, constantly patrolling. And that’s why you weren’t informed. Compared to some of our other problems, this one is small potatoes and easily managed as long as we keep those forces in place and on alert. I’d add, though, that the fact they haven’t caught anyone does tend to bolster the case that it’s not amateurs operating out there.”

Kip got his runaway temper under control again. He’d come forward in his chair, and the knuckles on his clenched fists stood out white against the suntan he’d picked up visiting so many reconstruction sites.

“Okay,” he said. “But General, and Jed, too, if this sabotage gets out of hand or even if it starts ramping up, I want to know. That rail line is the single most important transport corridor we have.”

“Will do, Mister President,” Franks said.

“I think you were about to give us a few options for redeploying troops to New York,” Culver suggested, moving the discussion forward again.

On screen, Franks nodded.

“We should also be able to redeploy the marines from Kennedy since the cav has now totally secured the airport. Navy is moving some of their assets up from Puerto Rico to seal off access to the city from the sea. At least as best they can. These ‘assets’ consist of two destroyers and an oil tender. It will be a big help if Secretary Castellato can secure some assistance from the British, Mister President.”

“That’s why she’s there, General,” Kipper said. He was due to call Castellato in two hours for an update but saw no point in wasting time speculating on progress until he’d heard from Alida herself.

Franks leaned toward him on the screen, almost filling it.

“I should warn you, sir, that casualties are certain to increase over the course of the next month.”

“I’m sorry,” Kipper said, certain he’d misheard. “A month? This battle could last a month?”

Franks nodded. “Easily, Mister President. We could deploy two to three times as many troops without changing the duration of the engagement.”

Oh, man
, thought Kipper. This was getting worse by the minute.

“I see,” he said aloud. “General, did you receive a copy of Admiral Ritchie’s brief concerning the possible use of nuclear and/or chemical weapons in New York?”

“I did, Mister President.” Franks replied. “And I concur with Ritchie’s opinion. We should be very, very careful about going down that path for all of the reasons he outlined. I can understand the attraction of a technological fix, Mister President. I don’t like losing precious lives any more than you do.”

“Well, then give me some options, General,” Kipper said plaintively.

Franks nodded slowly, as if considering the issue for the first time, which was obviously not the case.

“If you are willing to write off large sections of New York City,” he suggested after a moment, “we could send a flight of B-52s over.”

“What? Conventional bombing?” Kipper asked.

“A massed conventional bombing run would certainly break the will of the irregular forces we face there. The pirates and whoever has been coaching them. Also, it would place the rest of the world on notice that whether or not we actually stand on a given piece of U.S. territory, it is ours and we will do whatever it takes to keep everyone else out.”

“Cost,” Culver chimed in. “Just how much will this bombing run cost us? In human and capital terms.”

“Well, you do the job properly and you’ll kill everyone needs killing, Mister Culver. Thousands of them. As for damage, the areas targeted will look a lot like pictures you may have seen of cities that were bombed during World War Two. If you like, I can have a member of my staff send over a brief.”

“Jesus, we’d be better off just throwing a nuke at the place,” Culver said to himself mordantly.

“To borrow a line from history, we
will
have to destroy part or all of the city in order to save it,” Franks said. “New York is too valuable as a port of entry and a strategic location on the eastern seaboard to let anyone else take over there, even if we cannot take full advantage of it. Mister President, we have to give serious consideration to the reality on the ground. We can retake this city, hold it, restore it, but it won’t be the New York we remember.”

Kipper leaned back in his chair and stretched his back, which was feeling cramped. He poured himself a glass of water and pondered the options.

He knew as a basic tenet of his profession that occasionally you had to demolish something in order to rebuild. But such demolitions were neat, orderly affairs and never hurt anyone. Not on purpose, at any rate. Over the last four years he had proved, he hoped, that he wasn’t squeamish about killing America’s enemies when necessary, but the senseless destruction of all that property … New York City had such a long history … museums, galleries, Central Park, buildings that had a story, each and every last one of them. They were going to destroy so much of their heritage if they did this.

“Let me think on it, Tommy,” Kipper said. “In the meantime, I authorize you to begin redeployment of the marines you mentioned to New York.” A door knock behind them drew Kipper’s attention, and he saw a young woman tapping her wristwatch apologetically.

“Mister President, we’re about to lose the link.”

He mouthed “thanks” at the woman and apologized to Franks for the interruption.

“Thank you, General. We’re about to lose the satellite. Please, rest assured, I’m not going to dick around with this decision. You’ll have word very soon about …”

But the screen where Franks had been sitting was already full of white noise.

Kipper and Jed sat in silence in the hot, oppressive room. For once his chief of staff seemed to understand that he did not want to be talked at. He most wanted just a few moments of quiet to think things through. The president tried to put himself in the place of all those men and women he had ordered to New York, at first assuming he was sending them on nothing more than a brief policing operation. The pirates, after all, were little better than glorified criminals, looters. They were a problem all over the country, not just in New York, and as well armed as they were, they had never presented as anything other than a rabble, until now.

And now?

He had no idea. There just wasn’t enough information. How he envied his predecessor in this job. Bush had enjoyed almost infinite resources, the all-knowing intelligence agencies, the all-seeing spy satellites, vast networks of spies. Kipper often found himself having to put aside an almost childish jealousy when he thought of how much information Bush must’ve had as he prepared to go to war in Iraq. If only he now had but one-tenth of those resources available to him.

Instead he had imperfection, uncertainty, doubt. And fear. The fear that every decision he made was wrong, disastrously so. Every judgment in error. His reasons ill founded.

“Jed, I don’t know what to do,” he said hoarsely. “I never seem to get it right.”

Culver reached across and squeezed his arm.

“No, Mister President, you do get it right more often than not. But you forget that the world is not an engineering problem, sir. You’re not dealing with elegance and balance and discretely measurable artifacts. You’re dealing with people. Flawed, imperfect people. You can never set right human affairs the same way you can square off a right angle in a technical drawing. Neither the virtues nor the malevolent rottenness of the human soul can be specified to millimeter tolerances. You can only do the best you can.”

Kipper let his head fall forward into his hands. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, which were throbbing painfully.

“Jesus, Jed, way to cheer a guy up,” he said.

He knew the TV screens in front of them were still running loops from the fighting in New York. He did not need to look at them. He would always be haunted by what he had seen there and, even worse, what he had imagined. Crowding out all those hellish images, however, was the woman he had visited in the hospital, the woman whom he had sent into battle and who had come back a broken and incomplete remnant of everything she once was and might yet have been.

The president of the United States of America let his hands fall slowly away from his face. He turned to his military aide, Colonel Ralls, who was standing quietly off to one side as always.

“Mike, can you get General Franks back for me?” he said. “A phone line will be fine. I’ve made a decision.”

Berlin

Caitlin did not follow the woman immediately. Fabia Shah was on her lunch break and would not venture far. She disappeared around the corner about a hundred yards down the street, marching the whole way, stopping to talk with nobody. Caitlin and Mirsaad finished their meals with a couple of very short, strong Turkish coffees before leaving to spend a few hours working on the reporter’s behalf. Having found Baumer’s mother where she expected, Caitlin could pick up her tail later in the day. Meanwhile, Mirsaad moved about Neukolln, and Caitlin tagged along with him, dutifully playing the obedient intern as he drove from one appointment to another, interviewing the imam of a small reformist mosque that had taken over a Chinese Christian church on Werbellinstrasse, the local welfare officer for the city’s Islamic Federation, and the director of a women’s shelter operating about a mile north of the shariatown.

As the light began to fail, they headed back into Neukolln’s dense warren of faded identikit apartment blocks, the ranks of grimy whitewashed four-and five-story tenements recalling for her a line she’d read sometime in her college years. Aesthetically worthless rent slabs. Caitlin struggled for a second to recall where she’d seen such an evocative description. She frequently had trouble recalling little things like that after the operation to remove her tumor. She knew the line wasn’t written about this section of Berlin but was struck by how apt it was.

“This woman you are looking for …”

“Not looking for, Sadie. We found her already. I just needed to confirm she was still here in Neukolln. Do you think you could head over to Mahlower; it’s the next right.”

They motored through a big intersection on Hermannstrasse and made the turn she had pointed out. Mahlower was relatively short and home to just six apartment blocks, three on each side. Caitlin had him pull over and park.

“This woman we saw today, she is somehow connected to the attack on you, on Bret?”

Caitlin shook her head. “No. Not directly. But she knows somebody who almost certainly was, and for now she’s the best link I have to him. He came back here when he got out of jail awhile ago. I’m willing to take a bet she’s either seen him or heard from him. It’s a start. That’s all.”