Empire (24 page)

Reuben got his man down on the ground and put a knife into his throat under the jaw of the helmet faceplate. It took some wiggling to get the artery. The two remaining guards were shooting now. No doubt calling for reinforcements.

Reuben called to Willis and the cops. “Fill your hands, you sons of bitches!”

Whether they got the movie reference or not, they understood the order and began firing. The bad guys' body armor was good, but it wasn't perfect. Reuben wasn't sure that any of the cops' bullets felled either of the remaining tunnel guards—he knew that he got one of them with his M-240 and Cole was certainly firing the Minimi, so he probably got the other.

Before the firing even stopped, Reuben had one of the helmets off a dead enemy soldier, and was stripping the body armor. “Go ahead!” he shouted to Willis. “If it's our guys on the other end, identify yourselves and for pete's sake tell them we're coming!”

“And if it isn't?”

“Then hide if you can and wait for us and our weapons.”

Cole was also stripping material off another soldier. “Cole!” shouted Reuben. “Take a thumb! We want to know who these guys are, not just what they're wearing!”

It was grisly work. But they had to know what they were up against. Criminals? Ordinary civilians? The FBI needed a chance to make an ID.

Reuben knew they were done scavenging when they could hear the thud, thud of approaching mechs.

The cops were already out of sight down the tunnel. “I wonder if they'll come down the tunnel after us,” said Cole.

“I've got a helmet and vest,” said Reuben. “You drop the ones you got. Keep the pants and the weapon.”

They each dropped their version of what the other was keeping, and ran on, that much lighter.

The cops just weren't in Special Ops shape. They caught up with them before they reached the midpoint of the tunnel.

“Don't leave us behind!” one of the uniforms shouted.

“Shut up,” said Willis.

“Not leaving you,” shouted Reuben. “Setting up a rear guard.”

There were no cars in the tunnel. Reuben and Cole set up in recesses in the tunnel wall, one well behind the other, on the opposite side. As the cops jogged and panted past them, Reuben called out. “Leave a relay chain to tell us when you get to the end so we know when to pull back!”

Willis gave a thumbs-up and kept jogging. Up the slope now. Steeper and steeper.

“There's a lot of water over our heads,” called Cole.

“Shut up and keep bailing,” said Reuben.

After the cops had had enough time to get well up the tunnel, Reuben left his position and moved back to one farther up than Cole's. He was just turning to get in place when they heard the thuds. Lots of them. The mechs were in the tunnel.

“What did we decide our bullets were worth against those mechs?” called Cole.

“Get back here,” called Reuben. “No stopping now!” The rear guard only made sense if they could slow down the enemy. If it was all mechs, then Reuben and Cole would die for no purpose. The mechs were fast. But for a few moments, the curvature of the tunnel would protect them.

When they got to the end of the tunnel, they were met by National Guardsmen who obviously expected them. Thanks, Willis.

“Commander?” asked Reuben.

Twenty steps on, Reuben was greeted by a young captain. “You know what you're doing?” Reuben asked.

“Two tours in Iraq,” said the captain. “I've been under fire and gave back.”

“You have any artillery?”

“Tanks are almost here.”

“Don't do anything till they get here unless you got AT-4s or SMAWs.”

“AT-4s, sir. Never used them under fire, though,” said the captain. “Didn't face many tanks when I was in Iraq, and the actual teams are raw.”

“Now the training pays off,” said Reuben. He pointed left and right. “They got armored walker things, mechanicals. Might be manned, might not. They can't be hurt by small arms fire. Minimis and M-240s can get through the body armor on the soldiers, though.” He held up the pieces to show. “Don't expose yourselves. The mechs shoot at uniforms.”

“Here they come,” said the captain, pulling him along toward cover.

Not that they could see anything. But the sound was deafening. How many mechs were down there?

As the mechs came toward the mouth of the tunnel, Reuben checked out their assets. Two AT-4s, one on each side of the roadway. The National Guard had placed themselves well. They might never have been under fire, but they weren't untrained and their leader knew what he was doing.

Meanwhile, Cole was getting Willis and his men to move back farther, completely out of the way. They were useless now, an asset for later that needed to be protected. Cole obviously understood that even if everybody here at the tunnel mouth was killed, the New York cops still had to survive and tell what they'd seen. Cole had even given Willis the body-armor pieces he had scavenged.

Reuben needed to get rid of his own. “Can you spare a guy?” Reuben asked the captain. “These armor pieces need to get back to somebody who can study them and figure out who the hell made them and what we can do against them.”

In a moment he was handing the pieces to a young corporal. “Wait,” said Reuben. He dug the bloody thumb out of his pocket
and handed it to the kid. “Don't puke, just get this to the FBI for fingerprinting. Think of it as spent ammunition that needs ballistics done on it.”

The corporal gulped once, pocketed the thumb, and took off running, carrying the armor pieces.

The mechs were emerging from the tunnel now, still in shadow but clearly visible.

“Any time now,” Reuben said to the captain.

“Any points of vulnerability?”

“These ain't death stars,” said Reuben. “Just hit square on the body. If you get lucky, they blow up real well. They're full of ammunition.”

They got lucky.

The first two rockets hit. The two mechs blew up.

I have to tell Mingo what he needs to put in his next arsenal, thought Reuben.

The National Guardsmen were cheering. But the captain was yelling at them. “Keep firing, you boneheads, there could be a hundred of them!“ There were already four more visible.

“How many MT-4s you got?” asked Reuben.

“We're National Guard stationed in Jersey,” said the captain, “what do you
think?
”

“Does that mean less than ten?”

“That means two more.”

“Then fire them as if you had a hundred,” said Reuben.

The captain signaled again for them to shoot. Two more hits. Two more scores, though one of the mechs did
not
blow up completely, but fell over and did not try to get up.

The other mechs turned around and ran back down the tunnel.

This time the captain didn't try to stop the cheering.

A couple of guardsmen started running down toward the blown-up mechs.

“Don't go near them!” shouted Reuben. “They might be booby-trapped! You'll get blown to hell!”

The guardsmen stopped. Again, good discipline.

Reuben and Cole made their way down to the one that hadn't blown up. They played the same routine with the back panel. Only they didn't pry the lid off after blowing the keypad and shooting the button.

The hatch came off by itself.

A man's head emerged. He saw the situation—Cole and Reuben with their weapons pointed at him—and ducked back inside.

“Come out and surrender!” demanded Reuben.

He was answered by a single gunshot inside the mech.

“Shit,” said Cole.

Reuben ran for the hatch. The man inside had put a pistol in his mouth and fired. But there was less mess than Reuben would have expected. “I think he missed,” he said. “Help me get him out.”

It was awkward, but finally they each got an arm and pulled him through the hatch. He had shot into his mouth but the barrel had been pointing the wrong way. The bullet had apparently gone up through the roof of his mouth and through his left eye. There was a furrow in the forehead and the skull was open, showing brain. But the guy wasn't dead, even though he was definitely unconscious and his left eye was destroyed, along with his palate and cheekbone.

They dragged him up toward the waiting guardsmen. “Medic?” Reuben asked.

“Ambulance on its way,” said the captain. “I called for it when we set out for the tunnel.”

“Good man,” said Reuben. “Major Reuben Malich,” he said. “The guy with me is—”

“Hell, I know who you are, I own a TV. My name is Charlie O'Brien. I'm honored to meet you.”

Two things happened while they waited for the tanks to arrive. First, a couple of jets approached Manhattan from the south, flying low. The guardsmen started cheering, but when the jets got close to the Statue of Liberty, the pilots lost control of their aircraft. The jets veered off. One of them hit the water flat on its cockpit; the other smashed through Liberty's gown and then dropped like a rock into the water.

“Tell them not to send any more jets,” Reuben said to the captain.

“What
did
that?” said the captain. “I didn't see an explosion or anything.”

“A death ray,” said Reuben. “Or avian flu,” said Reuben impatiently. But the captain wanted a straight answer. “My guess is, a highly focused electromagnetic pulse. F-16s are shielded, but if you can get past it and screw up the electronics, they can't fly. Get on your damn radio and tell them no more jets.”

The second thing was, Captain Charlie O'Brien heard something over the radio and turned to Reuben. “I'm supposed to put you guys under arrest.”

Reuben looked at him sternly. “That's politics, Charlie. You saw me come out of that tunnel. You saw me and Cole bring along a bunch of New York City cops. We took down four mechs together and you saw me pop the hatch and pull out that poor bastard. I will debrief to you and you can pass that information along. But whoever wants me under arrest is part of the same group that killed the President and Vice President.”

“Who?” said Charlie. “Who's doing this?”

“They're Americans,” said Reuben. “And anybody could be on their side, working inside the government, against the Constitution.”

“They aren't terrorists?”

“Definitely not,” said Cole, who was with them now. “They're the opposite. They were killing all uniforms, but leaving civilians alone wherever possible. Warning them to stay off the streets. These guys mean to occupy and govern New York, not terrorize it and run away.”

“Are we under arrest?” asked Reuben.

“Hell no,” said Charlie. “But they said they were sending choppers to pick you up. So take my car—it's a Ford Escort back up the road, just press the remote and see which lights come on.” He handed Reuben the keys.

“You're going to be in deep shit about this,” said Reuben. “I can't take your car.”

“Take it and I'll make them
eat
their shit,” said Charlie. “We were down there with infantry before those cops started coming up the tunnel. I know which side you're on.”

“I don't even know what the sides are yet,” said Reuben. “This could be a right-wing militia group that picked New York to punish the capital of pansy left-wing weenies. Or it could be a left-wing militia that went for New York because they think they've already got the hearts and minds of the citizens.”

“Whoever they are,” said Cole, “they've got a really cool weapons designer and they're willing to blow their own brains out rather than be captured.”

“Get to my car and go,” said Charlie. “I didn't get the message till you were already gone.”

How much responsibility do you bear for the ill uses others might make of your ideas? Almost as much as the responsibility you bear if you fail to speak your ideas, when they might have made a difference in the world.

Reuben stayed off the toll roads on the way back to Aunt Margaret's house. Too easy to stop traffic for an ID check. Besides, they'd be transporting troops northward. The toll road would be blocked up for miles.

“It probably isn't right to take Charlie O'Brien's car all the way to West Windsor,” said Cole. “But I don't see us riding a bus back, either.”

“It's wartime,” said Reuben. “We'll mail him the keys and tell him where to pick up his car.”

“I keep running my head into a brick wall here,” said Cole. “How could weapons like this be developed without any intelligence service knowing about it?”

“Easier than you think,” said Reuben. “Defense Intelligence is mostly looking abroad for weapons development and manufacture. If they have a key guy in the FBI who knows what
not
to pass upward to his superiors, or who can steer agents away from the right direction, you could probably do it in some out of the way place in this country.”

“They had to transport those mechs to New York.”

“On trucks painted with the ABF logo so nobody looks twice at them.”

“There are inspection stations.”

“It's all about money and true believers,” said Reuben. “Most of
the people in the know are true believers in the cause. They don't talk. And those who aren't true believers are paid a lot of money, and they don't know much anyway.”

Cole pushed
SEEK
on the radio to find a broadcast station running news.

They were all running the news. But it was still scattered. Some kind of disturbance in New York. Two downed jets. Firing reported. All landlines and cellphones silent. Rumors of aliens, of military convoys heading north through New Jersey, warships sailing toward New York, Marines getting ready to land, National Guard troops called out in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.

And, oh yes, preparations for the funerals of those who died on Friday the Thirteenth.