1996 - Division by Class

[Calder]

Chapter Twenty One
24th Floor, Imperial Forum Hotel-Casino, Havana, Cuba

“Ewwww, Mo – o - om!”

Igrat had just stepped out the shower when Cristi opened the bathroom door and stepped in. Igrat had never been body-conscious and it took a second for her to realize that it was her nudity that had caused the shocked comment from Cristi. Even then, she didn’t hurry while she picked up a bathrobe and put it on. “You decided to wake up at last then?”

“Yeah, Mom. Ummm . . . . ” Cristi was jiggling from one foot to the other and pointed at the toilet, For all that, her eyes had narrowed slightly and she was looking at Igrat with a frown creasing her forehead.

“Go ahead. I’ll order breakfast.” Igrat went out into the living area of their suite and ordered bowls of fruit, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs plus huge amounts of orange juice from room service. She guessed that after her attendance at a top-level Commission meeting the night before, the service would be rapid in the extreme. After business had been concluded, the party had gone on until three in the morning. One of the highlights had been the severely overweight but grandfatherly Migliore teaching Cristi old-fashioned ballroom dancing. In the background, Igrat had spent a significant amount of time talking to Sabrina Castillo about dealing with any lasting psychological trauma Cristi might suffer from the attack on her. From her own experience, Igrat knew just how serious the potential problems could be. She was also able to recognize just how good the advice she was getting was. Any doubts she might have had about Sabrina Castillo had vanished during that conversation.

Cristi re-entered the room, a lot more relaxed than she’d been a few minutes earlier. At the same time there was a knock on the door and room service announced that her order was ready. Igrat poured out a large glass of orange juice and gave it to Cristi. “Here, drink that down. The trouble with late-night parties is they leave a girl dehydrated the next morning.”

“Thanks, Mom. Sorry I walked in on you.”

“No problem. Cristi, there’s no reason to be ashamed of your body. There are a lot of reasons why a girl shouldn’t flash the goods around at inappropriate times but there is no need to be obsessive about it. The gods gave you a brain and they gave you a body and you should be proud of both. When you walk in on somebody, an ‘oh . . sorry’ is quite adequate. Likewise, if somebody walks in on you, there’s no need to make a fuss or panic. Just put on the nearest robe or towel. So, anyway, how was your first real party?”

Cristi was shoveling scrambled eggs and salmon on to her plate. Igrat watched her do so with quiet satisfaction. The days when she had to be pushed into helping herself to food from a communal table were disappearing into the past. Cristi was slowly but surely becoming a normal teenager. “It was wonderful. I’ve never been up so late or enjoyed myself so much.”

Or been the center of attention for so long. Igrat thought, carefully hiding a knowing smile. “There was a hidden ‘but’ there.”

“All those people, Neil and Joe and all the others. They were telling me stories about the things they and my father got up to. They were so funny, I couldn’t help laughing.”

“Never met a mob wiseguy yet who couldn’t have made a good living as a standup comedian.” Igrat was eating fruit with gusto. “We haven’t got to the ‘but’ yet though.”

“While they were telling the stories, I couldn’t help thinking that no matter how funny the story was, these were real people who were getting hurt or being cheated. And yet I couldn’t stop laughing. Was that bad of me?”

Igrat shook her head. “Under the circumstances, polite and sensible. These guys are funny and they do tell a good story. You did very well last night. You said you wanted to earn respect and make your father proud. I’d say you did both. You certainly made me proud and the way you handled yourself got me a lot of respect as well. Eggs are good, aren’t they?”

“Mmmm. Some of the girls at school say they have oatmeal for breakfast.”

“Nothing wrong with eating oatmeal as long as you do at in private and wash your hands afterwards.” Igrat noted the faint tinge of embarrassment on Cristi’s ears as she recognized the reference. She really is growing up and becoming a normal teenager. “I’ll bet the girls who do eat the stuff are overweight though.”

Igrat noticed that when Cristi looked at her, the calculating look was back in her eyes. “They certainly don’t look as good as you. You look more like my elder sister than my Mom.”

“Why thank you. Told you, I spend a lot of money and work really hard to keep myself in shape. About time you started to do the same. We’ll go down to the keep fit center for an hour after I’ve watched the news. I’ll introduce you to the noble art of the cardiovascular workout.” Igrat patted her stomach. “Above all, keep this flat. You should be able to bounce a quarter off your abs.”

Igrat got up from the table and flipped on the television. The screen was black for a second and then the picture formed. “And this is breaking news from the Cuban Television Service, sponsored by Hilton Hill Resorts. Major unrest has broken out in New York City with fighting between police and youth gangs reported in the Brooklyn and Queens areas. The fighting followed an effort by the mayor’s office to restore normal civil services to those areas after a string of brutal murders shocked the population. At least eight police officers are reported to have been killed when they attempted to enter the crime-riddled areas. A public school in the center of the affected area is reported to be under siege with the staff and students defended by a force of State troopers. Governor Pataki is expected to make a public statement, mobilizing the National Guard within the next few minutes.”

Igrat looked at Cristi who was staring at the television with her mouth hanging open. “Oh, crap.”

Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, New York

“Colonel Bailey? I’m Major Duncan, New York National Guard. I have orders to subordinate my command to you for the duration of this operation.”

State Police Colonel David Bailey looked up from the map he was studying. “Thank God for that. I was afraid Pataki might back down at the last moment. We got a bad problem here.”

“There’s other National Guard units coming in. We got here first because we were already mobilized for a routine training exercise. We’re a mechanized infantry outfit. We got a company of M113 armored personnel carriers here and a platoon of M81 Abrams tanks on the way in. They got stuck in traffic backed up from the Manhattan Bridge but they’ll be unloading from their transporters in a few minutes.”

Bailey couldn’t help repeating himself. “Thank God for that. Please tell me you’ve got live ammunition.”

Duncan grinned. “Never go anywhere without it. Every man has his full load of 27-59, grenades and a rocket launcher. Our 113s have a full load of 73mm explosive and fifty. The 81s will be carrying 120mm explosive and beehive plus their load of fifty. We emptied the armory before we left. Every vehicle is carrying extra ammunition and explodables. If your men need anything, help yourselves.”

He was interrupted by a radio message coming in. Bailey listened to it, then turned to his maps and drew a red cross over a road junction. “We’ve nearly got the whole area sealed off. Metro has stopped the train lines crossing the affected area which is causing chaos across the whole city. The Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges are closed to all but police and National Guard traffic. The short story is, we’re not letting anybody in. Anybody who wants to come out can, but they are being detained, disarmed and taken to a transit area for safe-keeping. He looked suddenly grim. “For some of them, it’s the first decent hot meal they’ve had in a long time. Just how the hell did we get to this point?”

“Something’s gone to hell, that’s for certain. What’s the plan, Colonel?”

“Main problem center is along Livingston. The gangs in there seem to have decided that’s their border and they have set up to defend it. Our job is to persuade them otherwise. We got a problem though. A cruiser from the 13th Precinct was supposed to go down Livingston between Clinton and Flatbush. For some reason, they turned down Hoyt, right into the target area rather than establishing our presence along its edge. We got an 11-33 from them, officers in mortal peril. Then nothing. Given what the kids in there have been doing, I’m not sure whether we hope they’re alive or not.”

“What the hell were cruisers from the 13th doing all the way over here?” He glanced at his watch, noting the time carefully. “I can give you a look at what’s going on there though. Come to my command vehicle.”

Parked amongst the sleek, low-slung M113s was a larger, more corpulent vehicle. Obviously derived from the same basic design, it had seven road wheels rather than six and its roof had been lifted by a good few feet. The flat turret containing the 73mm guns sported by the other M113s had been removed to provide even more internal space. Inside a group of five operators were watching data screens. “Rawlinson, I need the MOLPOL link.”

“It’s hot, Sir. We’ve got a pass overhead in seven minutes. I spoke to them a moment ago so the link is still secured.”

“Put me on. . . . . . MOLPOL Seven, this is Major Duncan, New York National Guard. We need your help down here. Can you give me top resolution imagery of Brooklyn, corner of Livingston and Hoyt?”

“Certainly Major. It’s in our scanning zone now. Livingston is a little terrain-shadowed but Hoyt is visible all the way down.” The SAC officer on the other end of the link had a tone of silky menace in his voice. It was nothing personal, most SAC officers spoke that way most of the time, One of SAC’s unofficial mottos was ‘be polite and courteous to everybody you meet but make sure your copy of the plan to destroy their entire country is fully up-to-date.’ The voice was still had that tone of silky menace when the speaker resumed a few seconds later. “Coverage coming down now. Be advised there appears to be a burned-out police cruiser on the corner of Hoyt and Livingston. Four bodies at least in the area. The roof identification code on the roof of the cruiser has been burned off but the plate number is. . . .”

There was a second’s pause while the MOLPOL read the police cruiser’s rear plate. Bailey noted it down and spoke quickly on his personal radio.

“We have confirmation. That cruiser is One Adam Seventeen out of the 13th Precinct. Can you ask the MOLPOL if they can see any police in the area.” Bailey hadn’t specified bodies but there was no doubt that was what he meant.

Duncan spoke for a moment, then shook his head. “Bodies are in doorways and well removed from the wreck. MOLPOL Seven is going to give us high resolution cover of the entire area. They’ll pass word to MOLPOL Nine so it can take over when it’s in position. They’ve dropped our connection now, they say they have imagery requests backed up out the wazoo.”

Bailey was looking at the downloaded high-res. “These look like gang-bangers. I guess Adam-17 took down a respectable bodyguard with them.”

He was interrupted by a mighty roar that shook the M113ACV. He looked out over the lowered back ramp and saw the biggest tractor unit he had ever seen pulling up. It had eight wheels and the flat-nosed cab was positioned well forward of the lead axle. The trailer unit had another eight wheels with a low-slung platform between them. The drive-off ramps were already being lowered to allow the M-81 tank carried there to back off.

“We’re going to have problems with those on the narrower streets.” Duncan was thoughtful. “That 120 is not going to have enough room to swing. We’d better keep them on the main drags. We’ll use the 113s on the side streets. We’d be better off with M-81CEVs but I don’t think we have any. Anyway, we’ll be right behind you; tell your guys we’ve got your backs. If anybody even looks at them squirrelly, we’ll take the bad guys down with unbelievable prejudice.”

Bailey looked relieved. There had been a time when the words “we got your back” had been a lightly-given half-promise. That had been before the Russian Front. Now, “We got your back” was a sacred oath, the breaking of which could only be excused by the giver dying in the attempt to fulfill his vow. Social ostracism was the mildest consequence of failing to keep that promise once given. “I’ll pass that around.”

“Tell them something else; if they see a ‘track or one of the tanks about to fire, get clear. The muzzle blast is something quite special. Funnelled in narrow streets like this, we won’t need shells to do a whole load of urban redevelopment.”

Basement. Public School 261, Queens, New York.

“You do know she’s Major Cobb’s prime squeeze don’t you?” Trooper Louis Green had a distinctly cautionary note in his voice. “Try and make a move there and you’ll be directing traffic in Erie for the rest of your career.”

“Rather there than here.” Trooper Wayne Evans’ opinion was heartfelt.

“I meant the lake, not the city.”

“So did I.” Evans hesitated and grinned to himself. “First time I saw here, I didn’t get what the Major saw in her. She’s pretty enough but nothing that special for a Latina. Then I saw her all dirtied up and carrying that Barrett – one-handed no less - and I decided I was totally in love.”

“Memo to self.” Green was staring at the ceiling. “Trooper Evans is hopelessly perverted. Any normal man would have fallen in love with the Major’s Bird as soon as he saw her truck.”

“Hah. Anybody can drive a big truck these days. Power brakes, power steering, automatic transmission. But carrying a 33 pound rifle in one hand, that’s rare.”

“The way she shoots it, that’s rare.” Both troopers nodded at that. Achillea had established a reign of terror for a thousand yards out from P.S. 261. If a line of sight existed – and one had to if the gang-bangers were going to shoot at the school – she could hit anybody trying to take a shot. They could fire one shot safely but a second shot from the same position would tell her where they were. If they tried to fire a third, she would be waiting. That lesson had been driven home by one long-range sniper kill after another. The sight of a body after it had been hit by a .50 caliber hollow point was enough to dim the ardor of the most bloodthirsty goon. As a result, the volume of fire directed at P.S. 261 had withered away to the point where Major Cobb had called in to headquarters and advised them that the situation was secure. Relatively speaking of course. However, the controlled situation had allowed the forces moving into Brooklyn to deal with more pressing circumstances than those at P.S. 261.

Achillea’s sniper fire had also forced the gang-bangers to change tactics. They were supposed to keep intense pressure on the school and its occupants in order to draw the National Guard and State Police into ambushes where they could be engaged and forced out of the neighborhood. That was what they had been told anyway. Unable to create the pressure by simply firing on the building and having already taken for more casualties than they had assumed possible, they had switched tactics. Now, they were trying to infiltrate into the school.

Not long after the new P.S. 261 had been built, it had been decided to surround key areas with a wall. Within that walled perimeter was the delivery area for the kitchens, with gates large enough to accommodate a garbage truck. The gates were basically just chicken wire on a hinged scaffolding frame and were easy enough to sneak through. Once in the courtyard, a group of four gang-bangers had used the trash containers as cover to make their way to a narrow gap between the wall and the building. The gap was barely large enough to allow passage to a juvenile and a full-grown adult would have found it too tight. But, it did lead to a disused door that opened the way to the basement. Kids arriving late had been using it as a covert way in ever since the school had been built.

None of the four intruders had ever learned much about covert operations. They’d been talking loudly to each other all the way in. Lurid boasts about what they intended to do when they got inside. Unfortunately for them, their voices had been clearly heard by Evans and Green inside the basement. The twp troopers had dropped their quiet banter and were now waiting in perfect silence for the loquacious criminals to approach the door. As they did so, Evans opened the door, Green tossed out two flash-bangs, then Evans slammed the door shut again. The blast could clearly be heard through the heavy concrete walls while the flash of light was brilliant enough to outline the door in searing white.

Evans opened the door again. All four gang-bangers were down as far as the confined space would let them and writhing from the effects of the flash-bangs. It looked as if they had actually landed on the shoes of one since his feet were bleeding and his jeans were smoldering at a level that seemed dangerously close to open ignition.

Green pointed at him. “I think, Trooper Evans, that this one is not a truthful person.”

“I am forced to agree with you, Trooper Green. Listen up you turds. Those were supposedly non-lethal flash bangs. The next thing we toss out here will be very lethal fragmentation grenades. You can’t run in this confined space and the fragments will bounce around off the walls, chopping you into hamburger. Then, the blast will splatter what’s left of you all over the place. All that will be left to bury will be a blood-soaked snot-rag.”

“A sorry sight, Trooper Green.” Trooper Evans put almost no grief at all into his voice.

“Indeed so, Trooper Evans. Very distressing for the grieving relatives. So, turds, toss your guns in, then come in one at a time with your hands up. One false move and you’re dead.”

“I think, Trooper Green, that you should remind the turds that we define what constitutes a false move.”

“A good point, Trooper Evans. Thank you for the timely reminder. Turds, we decide what constitutes a false move so you would be well-advised to leave a considerable safety margin.”

The four erstwhile ‘commandos’ as they had dubbed themselves managed to get through the door despite their severely impaired vision and destroyed balance. They were quickly and methodically searched then put on the floor with their hands cuffed. Evans tossed a bucket of water over the one with the smoldering pants. The first attempt to break the P.S. 261 perimeter had been an ignominious failure.

[Calder]

Chapter Twenty-Two
Corner of Livingston and Hoyt, Brooklyn, New York

“This is Tango Echo Five, Be advised there are people on the roof of the building site, south west corner of Hoyt and Livingston.” The voice crackled over the loudspeaker in the M113ACV.

“And so we start.” Duncan looked through the vision blocks built into the side of the vehicle. Although his ACV was seriously modified for its role, it still had its four gun ports built into the sides and the associated optics. They had the decisive advantage that looking through them told Duncan exactly what his infantry in the back of their armored carriers could see. It was easy to forget that the restricted vision from the back of the vehicles meant he could see what the occupants could not.

“If there are people on the roof, there will be more inside, Chris.” Bailey was using the large electro-optical scanner built into the sensor turret on the roof. I can see shadowy movement in there.”

“Switch to infrared, Dave You should be able to see heat signatures. Rawlinson, show our guest how to switch frequencies on the EO.”

“Will do. Colonel, we have three modes on this sensor. Visible light, ultra-violent and infra-dead. To switch from one to another, just press the button here to uncage the selector and then turn to the desired mode. When there, release the button to cage the selector. You can display two modes on the screen, just select split-screen here. I wouldn’t recommend that though. You’ll lose the advantage of the bigger screen.”

“Rawlinson is a virtuoso with the kit on this track. We got a lot of things here but the best way to use them is to identify the ones we feel comfortable with and use them. If you think this is good, wait until you play with the regular Army’s Bradleys. We’re two generations behind in the Guard.”

Bailey was watching the red and yellow shapes moving by the open sides of the abandoned building site. The State Police had infra-red equipment as well but not as effective as the system he was using and it wasn’t behind armor. “I think they’re taking up some elementary defensive positions. Seem to be on the floor behind openings.”

“We’ll have to discourage that. Dave, could you get on the radio, open EMS frequency, and advise the medical facilities to expect white phosphorus casualties.”

Bailey went pale. “Chris, you can’t use willie pete. Not after the crap in the papers about it.”

Duncan grinned. There had been a hysterical campaign mounted by some of the less astute media against the use of white phosphorus munitions. A SAC spokesman had weighed in early with a sincere promise that SAC would never drop a white phosphorus munition as long as there was a thermonuclear device left in its arsenal. That wasn’t really a line the Army could use convincingly; Army generals lacked the hangman’s humor that seemed to permeate SAC. “I don’t intend to, but, we can make all that trash work for us. The reptiles have made willie pete out to be pure hell on earth – which isn’t far from the truth by the way. You can be damned certain the ungodly in there have a police scanner and they’ll pick up your warning. We’ll just fire a few white smoke rounds into the building. Even normal smoke is pretty bad in a confined space like that and their imaginations will make up the difference. With all the bad press, they’ll crack and come out.”

“I like it. I’ll send the message now.” Bailey moved to the radio whose operator had already switched it over to the EMS open frequency. As soon as he had sent the warning, Duncan picked up the microphone that triggered the loudspeakers mounted on his vehicle.

“Occupants of 205 Livingston. Throw out your weapons and come out with your hands raised. Resistance is futile.”

There was a second’s silence, then it became apparent that at least one of the occupants of 205 had a loudspeaker because he used it to scream out a stream of virulent obscenities. The loudspeaker was obviously an old design, perhaps one that had been found somewhere after decades of disuse. It so distorted the words that Duncan couldn’t make most of them out. Still, he got the distinct feeling that the aggregate meaning was ‘No.’

“Oh, come on. Even a newbie recruit can swear better than that. I’ll make you a deal. You come out peacefully and I’ll ask one of my drill sergeants to teach you to swear properly instead of raving like a menopausal woman.”

“We’re not allowed to say things like that.” Bailey sounded regretful, especially as the insult sank in and the speaker with the loudhailer went ballistic.

Once again, most of the message was largely indecipherable but one part came over very clearly. “We’ve got two pigs in here. You make a move and they’re dead.”

“And that settles it.” Duncan switched to his tactical command frequency, one that was both encrypted and frequency-agile. “All Able vehicles, Prepare to open fire on 205 Livingston, All vehicles to fire smoke. Not, repeat not, explosive or white phosphorus.”

A few seconds later, Bailey saw a brilliant white flash on his selector-optical screen. Somebody had fired a rocket launcher, sending the round arching into the sky. It landed somewhere on Livingston or on one of the buildings that lines the street. The fact that Bailey wasn’t sure which spoke volumes about the accuracy of the weapon and the skill of the person who had fired it.

“All Able Vehicles, open fire. Three rounds rapid.” Duncan gave the order tersely.

The Russians had designed the 73mm low-pressure gun on the M113 with all of the lessons of street fighting in World War Two firmly in mind. The short barrel made it easy to swing in confined spaces whle the low velocity gave it an arching trajectory that allowed for shots over obstacles. The same short barrel gave it a ferocious muzzle blast that served well as a close-in defense system. The low velocity also made for a short round, increasing the number that could be carried. Here, the 73mm was in its element. The five vehicles of Able Platoon fired their 73s in a quick staccato of shots that sent the smoke rounds through the windows of the semi-ruined building. Thick, dense clouds of choking white smoke poured from all the openings, sending a column high into the sky. Across the city, two Kaman Rotodyne CH-157s turned towards the smoke column. Each was carrying an assault landing team of twenty airborne infantry.

On the ground, the occupants of 205 Livingston assumed that the choking fog that enveloped them was the dreaded white phosphorus. Two of them, already positioned nearest the doors ran out into the street, firing wildly with some kind of submachine gun. They didn’t get very far, An M113 of Bravo Platoon snapped out a quick burst with its coaxial .50 and both men were cut down. Sprawled on the ground, their bodies jerked a few times and then were still.

Bailey looked at them dispassionately. “They chose . . . . . . . poorly.”

Obviously, the people inside 205 Livingston agreed. They started throwing a selection of weapons out of the windows and doors before lurching out with their hands held high. They were choking and several were desperately trying to brush something off their arms and bodies. As Duncan had guessed, believing the smoke clouds to be white phosphorus led their minds to imagine the fragments burning into their flesh. Covered by the guns on the M113s, the gang-bangers were no longer the swaggering bullies that had terrorized the neighborhood for years. They obeyed the orders shouted by the State Police troopers almost timidly. Soon, they were lined up, kneeling on the ground with their hands behind their heads . Methodically, they were being searched, any remaining weapons removed, then they were handcuffed and taken back to where the tank transporters were waiting to remove them from their home ground.

Overhead, the curious whistling whine of a rotodyne in flight swept past as the two CH-157s approached the derelict building. Looking up at them, Bailey could see the packs of rockets hanging from the hard points under their wings. When the Guard said they had our backs, they weren’t joking.

“This is Tango Echo Five. Roof is clear now. We are inserting search team.”

One of the rotodynes hung back ready to provide covering fire while the other moved in to drop off its assault team. The whistling noise grew louder and rose in pitch as the rotodyne went into hover. Then, its tail ramp opened and the men inside jumped on to the roof.

“11th Air Mech Division.” Duncan had recognized the markings on the tail of the rotodyne. “They must have come in from Binghampton. Only a thirty minute run. If you meet those guys, remember to call them paratroopers, they get pissy if you don’t.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

Bailey heard the radio crackle suddenly. “Roof clear and secure. Going down.”

“I thought your people would be going in?” Bailey hadn’t worked with the Army before and their ways were new to him.

“Always clear buildings from the top down. We’ll wait down here while they clear the building and bag anybody left in there. They’ll drive what’s left out into our arms.”

“Ninth floor clear. Building is a trash heap in here.” The voice on the radio was audibly disgusted. “Tell the State Troopers anybody searching up here better wear heavy gauntlets. Hate to think what the needles on the deck are infected with. Going down.”

“Now that we are tooled up for. Our protective gear for that kind of search is the best the state can buy us.” Bailey looked grim, then picked up the radio microphone. “They claim to have two officers held in there. Any signs of them?”

“Negative, Eighth floor clear. There’s no subdivisions up here, the floors are pretty much open.”

Duncan and Bailey listened as the paratroopers methodically cleared the building floor by floor. Eventually, the floor count dropped to one. “Clearing first floor now. Tell the track-heads we’ll be coming out soon. Oh, crap. We found your two officers, both dead. One, male officer, body is severely charred, other is a female officer, head blown apart – looks like she ate her gun rather than get taken alive. Body has been stripped and mutilated. Both have been dead for hours. Get us a couple of body bags, nobody should see this.”

By the time Bailey got outside the ACV, word of the discovery had started to spread. One State Trooper was walking to where the prisoners were kneeling, unslinging his M14. “Trooper Carlson, stand where you are. We are not Germans.”

Carlson looked mutinous. “They’re our brothers . . . brother and sister . . . . . . Those bastards knew they were already dead.”

“And there will be a reckoning for what they did. A legal one. Now, get them on to those transporters and take them to the collection point over at Fort Greene Park. You’ll be held accountable for any that don’t make it there alive.”

The Roof. Public School 261, Queens, New York.

Achillea watched the column of white smoke rising to the north of her position and the two rotodynes circling the building the smoke came from. There were other rotodynes patrolling over the area to the north and east of her position and the occasional heavy burst of fire that she recognized as the 23mm cannon they carried under their nose. She hadn’t seen the distinctive track of rocket fire yet so she assumed that the gang-bangers were folding up with minimal resistance. From the changing positions of the rotodyne’s orbits, she could see that the police and National Guard along Livingston were having problems but the troops to the east were moving much faster. One thing that did concern her was that the rotodynes were obviously inspecting the rooftops for snipers. A description that applied to her perfectly. Caeci morbi divisos asinum lactantem fatuis. It’s time to get off this roof before they shoot me by mistake.

She shuffled backwards to where the access door to the roof was situated, slipped through, and closed it behind her. She had no doubt that the sniping at the school would start again as soon as the gang-bangers realized that the mortal threat of her rifle had been removed. That was a problem for later. At the moment her shoulder was sore and she needed a rest. There was one thing she had to do first. Her big Barrett was useless in the confined spaces indoors so she slung it over her back. Then she took her .32 Colt out of its holster and checked it. One round in the chamber, eight more in the magazine. Plus eight spare magazines on her belt. She also checked her bowie knife to make sure it was seated properly in its sheath. Convinced that her equipment was in good order, she set off for Major Cobb’s office.

On the way, she passed a classroom where Harry Mitchell was giving a geography lesson. She gave him a friendly wave which he returned but she noticed he made a point of keeping both hands where she could see them. That saddened her slightly; the truth was she’d actually enjoyed teaching physical education at the school and she was going to regret leaving the job behind. Perhaps I can use teaching fizz-ed as an interim job next time I have to disappear for a while. Find a nice quiet country school somewhere and spend a few years burning the fat off overfed youngsters. Perhaps I could even teach them how to use a sword properly.

“Hi Vince. You’ve just lost sniper cover. The rotodynes overhead making being on the roof too dangerous. How’s everything else going?”

“There’s a lot of trouble up on Livingston half a mile north of here. At least two cops got killed at Livingston and Hoyt and there have been other incidents along Livingston and Flatbush. The perps along there are actually putting up a fight, or trying to. Then the Guard put them down and the survivors surrender. Troops coming in from Prospect Park are having much less trouble. The troopers are making the arrests while the Guard are just looking intimidating. Report from the detention center at Prospect Park say they’ve already got a thousand or more suspects awaiting screening.”

Ovidious Lucillus Nerva had fallen in with bad company. He had come from a good family but he had been taken in by the false glamor of thugs and had gone out of his way to associate with them. They had seen him as a useful idiot and a potential decoy for their really criminal activities. He’d been acting as a lookout when they tried to rob a villa but it had all gone wrong. The Dominus and Domina had both been armed and knew how to use their weapons. Their household slaves had turned out to be loyal, courageous servants. Most of the gang had been killed in the fight and the handful left were to be killed in the arena. The dominus and domina were watching the spectacle along with the servants who had received their freedom in acknowledgment of their devotion to the family.

Ovidious Lucillus couldn’t believe that he was about to die in the arena. Right up to the time when Achillea had made her salute to the Magistrate, he had been expecting to hear that he was released. He had believed his father would get him out of trouble as he always had before. What he hadn’t known was that the Dominus and Domina had actually suggested that a plea for mercy would be favorably received – for which a debt would be established and would have to be repaid - but his father had refused. Youthfully folly was one thing, a crime that dishonored the family was another. When he realized the truth, Ovidious Lucillus had started to cry and then broken away to run.

It was beneath Achillea’s dignity to run after him. She might be a slave herself but she was also the Primus of the Ludus Quintillus. She pointed at the pilum carried by one of the soldiers. He hesitated until the Magistrate nodded, then he tossed it to her. She caught it in mid-air, then in a single flowing motion turned and threw it at the fleeing boy. It took Ovidious Lucillus in the back, and skewered his heart. By the time she reached the pool of blood around his body, he was dead. The crowd gloried in the superb skill she had demonstrated although there was an undertone of disappointment at his unseemly flight.

Achillea pulled the pilum from the wound and held it up so the blood from the blade trickled down her arm. “Advice for those who might wish to disturb the peace we owe to our most noble of Magistrates – do not run. You will only die tired.”

There was a roar of applause; Achillea’s quips to the crowd were almost as famous as her kills. The tribute to the Magistrate – a just and popular man – who had trusted her with a pilum was noted and also received approval. Roman justice, stern, pitiless and inexorable, had been done.

Achillea shook the memory of Ovidius Lucillus Nerva away. “Most of them will be just young fools. They were led into their follies by evil men who had a greater design than those kids knew.”

Cobb nodded in agreement. “The Governor is already working on a scheme to reform them. He thinks it is one of the cases where justice needs to be tempered with mercy. The kids who are fighting along Livingston though, they’re in a different category. No mercy for them. There’s a dozen dead cops out there and there has to be an accounting for that. Two of them are from your neck of the woods by the way. Daniels and Garner?”

“I know them. Patrol Officers, competent but over ambitious. Always looking for the break that’ll get them a promotion. I guess they saw one break too many.”

“They went down Hoyt without clearance. The guess is they were trying to be the first to get here. Damned stupid thing to do. I reckon the Academy will quote them as an example of what not to do in circumstances like this if they happen again.”

“Oh, they’ll happen again. I’m told Detroit and parts of Philly have a nasty similarity to this situation. How’s our perimeter?”

“Holding up well. Why don’t I take you on a tour? Be good for morale.”

[Calder]

Chapter Twenty-Three
Grand Army Plaza, New York

“These are scenes we thought, we hoped, we would never see in an American city. From our position here, w can see tanks of the New York National Guard are sitting on Grand Army Plaza, helping to seal off the contested area of the city. We have been advised that all access to those areas has been closed including the subway system and all bus routes. A detention camp has been set up over in Prospect Park for people fleeing the area. The authorities are screening all the refugees very carefully before forwarding them on to relief centers. Our special correspondent, Georgia Rogers is outside that camp now. Georgia, what is happening over there.”

“Well, Kent, the camp here is acting like a filter. The refugees are coming in from the north, being interviewed and checked out. Any suspected of criminal activities are being detained in a secure area while the rest leave to the south in National Guard trucks. We are assured that proper refugee camps have been established, further away from the city, where the people displaced by the fighting can be fed and given somewhere to sleep. I must say that most of the refugees who leave for those facilities seem almost pitifully glad to be getting out of this area. However, there are other streams of detainees being brought in. These are the street thugs detained by the State Police after any resistance they offered was crushed by the National Guard. They are being charged with a variety of offenses and held in guarded sections of the facilities here.”

“How many have been charged so far Georgie?”

A brief flash of annoyance crossed the correspondent’s face when she heard the over-familiar contraction of her name. “Well, Kennie, the State Police are releasing charge numbers every half hour. The latest one was that 984 people have been charged with varying offenses ranging from obstructing the police to murder. To put that into context, so far we know that the local police suffered twelve dead and about the same number injured when they tried to re-establish a police presence in the neighborhood. The National Guard has recovered the bodies of those officers killed and they have been taken to Saint Thomas on 5th Avenue. I’ve heard that some of the bodies were severely mutilated but I have no confirmation of that yet, Kennie. The National Guard units are not reporting any killed but they do say three of their soldiers have been wounded. One M113 was hit by an anti-tank rocket and disabled. It’s been towed clear.”

“We’ve lost a tank, Georgia?” Kent Clarke’s voice showed his embarrassment at his faux pas and the very public rebuke from his partner.

“The M113 is an armored personnel carrier, not a tank.” Georgia’s voice was still curt. Unlike Kent, she was a military veteran and was meticulous about using the right terminology. “And it was damaged, not destroyed. The National Guard troops returned fire killing the rocket launcher crew and their supporters. The Guard is trying to use non-lethal weapons but sometimes it isn’t possible. So far, about thirty people attempting to fight the Guard units have been killed. Most of the serious fighting is along Livingston. The rest of the area is being returned to government control very quickly and mostly peacefully.”

24th Floor, Imperial Forum Hotel-Casino, Havana, Cuba

Igrat turned the television off and stretched. The keep-fit center in the hotel was well-equipped and had an expertly-trained staff. They’d recognized she was in “maintenance” rather than “get fit and lose the fat” mode and adjusted their regime accordingly. They’d also realized that Cristi needed “get started right” training and gone out of their way to make her exercise session enjoyable as well as beneficial. Igrat had also had a quiet word with them, alerting them to Cristi’s health problems. Even allowing for all of that, she was still sprawled out on her bed in the singlet and shorts she had worn for the keep fit session, holding her hips and moaning gently.

“Come on Cristi, they didn’t work you out that hard. And getting fit now will pay you dividends for the rest of your life.”

“It’s all right for you, Mom, but you’ve been doing this for a hundred years.”

Igrat looked indignant. “I am not a hundred years old. Long way from it.”

Cristi looked as if she was summoning up courage to say something and only just managing to do it. There was real fear in her voice when she did speak. “Mom, you are older than you say you are although you don’t look it. I know you said you’re lucky enough to age slowly but there’s more to it than that. Please don’t be angry with me.”

Igrat licked her lower lip slowly and thought about what to say next. “How old do you think I am?”

Cristi’s voice was positively shaking. “I think you and the person you call your adopted mother, Ingrid Shafrid are the same person. That’s your Medal of Valor on the wall, not hers.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You told me. The morning we went shopping for the first time, you told me how you were beaten once and it took you two years to recover. And how the man who rescued you shot the attackers. Well, I read Ingrid Shafrid’s citation and it’s the same story. You two couldn’t be attacked the same way in so many details. What confuses me is how young you look. When I saw you in the shower this morning, your rack doesn’t droop nearly enough for a woman of fifty.”

“My rack,” said Igrat icily, “doesn’t droop at all.”

“You see!” Now there was triumph mixed with the fear in Cristi’s voice.

“Look, Cristi, I told you the truth. Some people age more slowly than others. What I didn’t tell you is that at the extreme end of that are people who age very slowly indeed. You read in the National Geographic about those people in Siberia who live to a hundred and sixty or more? Well, they aren’t just in Siberia.” And thank you Tommy Lynch for planting that story. “I’m one of them, So is Achillea; that’s one reason why we’re so close. Doc Marshall isn’t but she knows about us and we help her study us in the hope that the reason why we age slowly might find cures for people with diseases like cancer. Yes, Ingrid and I are the same person. But, everything I told you is true.”

“Do you drink blood? Is that why you are looking after me? So you can stay young by drinking my blood?” Cristi was nearly crying and her face showed her desperate desire to hear a denial spoken clearly and unambiguously. Even so, to Igrat’s incredulity, she saw Cristi unconsciously lifting her chin slightly and turning her head to expose her throat. It was a display of love and trust that Igrat found incredibly humbling and that was a sensation she hadn’t felt for centuries.

Igrat spoke very carefully, realizing that Cristi had managed to frighten herself very badly and didn’t need to have the situation made worse. She’s fourteen years old and she’s trying to talk about things that she hasn’t learned to verbalize yet. So, she’s using terms and concepts that she does understand as substitutes for the ones she does not. What she’s really saying is that she needs me to reassure her that everything is safe for her and she’s secure. That there is nothing evil going on. “No, Cristi, I am not a vampire. Come on now, we’ve been on enough walks in the bright sun for you to know that. If you insist on watching those cheap horror films, at least try and remember the information they contain. No bright sunlight for vampires and they should keep away from the pointy ends of sticks.”

To Igrat’s relief, Cristi actually giggled at that. “Achillea says it’s always a good idea to stay away from the business end of pointy things. So, if you don’t drink blood, how do you stay young?”

Damn you Elisabeth Bathory. You were a baseliner as well when you found out about us and the knowledge that extended life existed but was not gifted to you drove you mad. You got the idea that we drank blood to extend our lives and you tried to do the same. You slaughtered hundreds in that mad quest until eventually your evil caught up with you. Even now, that evil lives on, cursing us Daimones with the legend you created. Because of what you did, everybody who hears of extended life thinks of evil fiends drinking blood to extend their youth.

“The truth is nobody knows why ageing slows down. It’s genetic, somehow, but we don’t know how. I look after you because I admire you, because I think you are very brave and because I see a lot of me in you. And for all that, I love you and I’ve sworn to protect you and not let people hurt you again. There’s something else as well. I was married once and I loved my husband very much but I could never give him children. So, when he died, his name died with him. But now, you can carry his name and it will live again. For a while anyway. By the way, my husband would have admired you as well. To him, courage was the highest virtue.”

“Can I be like you?” The fear had faded from Cristi’s voice at last.

“Perhaps. The odds are against it but you might be. We won’t know for another decade or more. But, you keep fit and eat a good diet and you can add thirty years to your active life. Cristi, this is very, very important. You mustn’t tell anybody about what we’ve just discussed. People from outside here about extended life and think about dreadful things like vampires trying to drink blood. Then, they’ll try and hurt us. Kill us if they can. So, for my safety and for everybody like us, this is a secret you must keep.

Cristi nodded slowly, then her eyes started to fill with tears. “Mom, if I’m not like you, that’ll mean you’ll have to watch me grow old and die won’t you? That’ll be so horrible for you.”

Igrat reached out and hugged her daughter. “Look, Cristi, let me tell you something very important. Moral Guidance of the Day and this one is really vital. We don’t own yesterday. We can’t do anything about it, it has happened and gone. We can’t do anything about tomorrow. We don’t know what will happen or why or even if we’ll be there. All we can own is today. So worry about today and leave tomorrow for the future.”

Corridors, Public School 261, Queens, New York.

Achillea and Cobb were moving cautiously down the corridors that serviced the outside of the building. As they came to a door, the one on that side of the corridor while the one opposite checked the entrance. Then both would enter the room and ensure it was clear. So far, they had checked out more than a dozen rooms without running into opposition. The perimeter seemed to be holding much better than Achillea had expected.

The next room was definitely occupied. It was the classroom she had passed earlier and she could hear Harry Mitchell carrying on his lesson about river deltas. She visually checked the room from outside first and gave Cobb a small wave of negation with her hand. The room was clear of opposition so they could enter in a civilized manner. As they did so, Mitchell gave them a friendly wave of welcome but he had the sense to move slowly and keep his hands visible. He knew enough about situations like this to realize that, despite their casual demeanor, the two visitors were keyed up and jumpy.

“Miss Foyle!” His students were not so circumspect. Several got up from their desks as they saw Achillea entering and were going to move to greet her.

“Return to your desks.” Mitchell spoke firmly. Achillea looked at him curiously. He had changed a lot since their first meeting what seemed to be several millennia earlier. The hopeless air of misery and despair had gone and he was exuding a quiet confidence that seemed to transmit to the students around him. It suddenly struck Achillea that all the teachers who were left here were showing the same change. With Simmons and his acolytes gone, they had been able to get back to teaching the way it ought to be done. That had spurred them on to recovering themselves. “Major Cobb, Miss Foyle, how is the security situation?”

“Pretty good, Principal Mitchell.” Cobb was speaking carefully and loudly enough for everybody in the room to hear. “We’ve had some attempted intrusions but we’ve stopped every one of them. We’ve got you all here to thank for that by the way. The way you helped us made all the difference. A lot of people are going to end the day here unhurt because of you. We’ve arrested a dozen or so would-be intruders and detained them.”

“They’re in the gymnasium, handcuffed to the parallel bars.” Left to her own devices, Achillea would have lined up the arrested gang-bangers by the windows as human shields for the students and teachers. She did, however, recognize that the presence of the police made the logical course of action impossible. “We’ve got National Guard CH-157s overhead. They’ll be supporting us from now on. Last I saw, the National Guard and State Police have people on the ground along Schemmerhorn, about five hundred yards out from here. We’ve told them we have the situation under control and not to take any risks on our account. So, they’re taking things carefully. You might like to know that the Guard and Police units moving in from the East are making good time. They are not running into anything like the organized resistance the forces coming in from Livingston are facing.”

“How many ‘bangers did you get from the roof, Miss Foyle.” Sonja Hafenne called out the question. Her face was still carrying the bruises from the attack on her and the vindictiveness in her voice was very apparent. The question made Achillea stop and think for a second. Just how many people have I killed over the years? I really have no idea. I’ve heard people say a killer always remembers the faces of his victims but I don’t. Not unless there was something special about the kill. It was simply their day to die just as one day it’ll be mine. There’s nothing special about that.

“Enough. The sniper fire has stopped hasn’t it? Sonja, killing is a tool we sometimes need to achieve an end. In this case we had to stop the bad guys shooting at this building. That’s a good end to aim at so the means we use to get there are good as well. Once the end has been achieved, we put the tool down. That’s the difference between us and the thugs who beat you.”

“And, on that note, we better carry on patrolling the buildings. Principal Mitchell, you’re talking about river deltas right? Tell them how deep the mud is in the Mississippi Delta country.” Cobb waved to the class and led the way out.

Outside, he slumped against the wall. “Achillea, that sounded dangerously like ‘the end justified the means’. As a law officer, I’ve got to disagree with that.”

“The end does justify the means as long as the means is appropriate to achieving the end in view.” Achillea’s eyes were scanning the corridor for threats while she was talking. “You’d kill a kidnapper to save a hostage wouldn’t you?”

“Yes . . . . but. . . .” Cobb decided to drop the point for the moment.

Three doors leading to empty rooms later, Cobb waved his hand from side to side, palm down. He’d heard something that was out of place. A moment later, Todd Brown turned the corner, a crude-looking submachine gun with a sideways-pointing magazine in his hands. When Achillea had first met him, his round face, freckles and hair and given him a cheerful, friendly demeanor that had doubtless fooled many of his victims until it was too late. All of that had gone. His eyes were sunken and dark-rimmed his cheeks sunken and colored with a blue shadow that seemed to dominate his whole face. Achillea knew that look and where it came from. When somebody looked death in the face and saw its reality, one of two things happened. Either they accepted death as an inevitable but unimportant consequence of life or they tried to deny it and by doing so let death into their souls where it would eat them alive, from the inside out. Achillea had taken the first path; Brown had obviously taken the second.

He tried to bring the submachine gun to bear on them but he was hopelessly slow. Achillea had already drawn her .32 Colt and was about to pump four shots into his heart when a slam knocked her off her feet and sent her sprawling on to the corridor floor. Cobb had tried to jump in front of her, presumably to shield her form the blast of the submachine gun, not realizing she already had the situation under control. In doing so, he had left them both helpless on the floor, entangled with each other and utterly vulnerable to fire from the submachine gun.

All that saved them was the fact that submachine guns are exceptionally difficult weapons to use. Henry McCarty described them as “replacing one bullet that hits with a lot that miss”. Todd Brown had probably never fired the gun before and it went completely out of control when he pulled the trigger. Bullets hit the walls, climbing upwards before the remainder of the magazine hit the ceiling. Achillea used all her strength to throw Cobb away from her and get her gun-hand clear. As soon as she had a clear line of sight, she emptied the entire magazine into Brown, dropped it and slapped another home.

Brown couldn’t understand what had happened. He had seen submachine guns used in films and the person using them had always wiped out the opposition. Yet, the two people he had fired at were both alive. He saw the flashes from Achillea’s hand and felt the smacks on his body, followed by a deep, burning, unbearable pain. Suddenly, he was back in the place where the vicious cold bit into his bones and the feeble light from an almost invisible sliver of moon in the sky still barely accentuated the shadows that surrounded him. The foul wind, stinking of rot and decay still filled the unclean world. It still swept him away but now he was far too weak to offer any resistance as it folled him along the ground towards the shadow where the things were waiting for him. Once again, he thought he heard the plaintive, mournful howl of wolves but now he knew that the sound was of little importance, The things whose full hideousness was only now apparent to him were waiting and the world went dark as they closed in on him.

“Quid infernum? Vos Stultum et imminutum a galli lactans filium syphilitic meretrix et sus-suppuratio raptor.” Achillea was furious, the skin around her eyes tight and red, her glare enough to blister the paintwork on the wall behind Cobb. He blanched and took a step backwards although that did little to diminish her anger. “Do you realize that you nearly got us both killed. If that fool knew what he was doing, we’d both be dead right now.”

“But . . . .but.”

“Don’t but me. If you want our relationship to continue, get one thing into your head right now. I don’t need to be protected, not by you, not by anybody else. What you call protection, I call getting in my way. If you’d simply stood still or dropped flat, I’d have killed that jerk before he’d ever had a chance to get a shot off. But, oh no, you had to try and play the hero and get in front of me. And so, the jerk got off a whole magazine from that Capsten. I’m not afraid of dying; when it’s my day to die, it’s my day to die. No more, no less. But I really, really resent dying as a result of somebody else’s stupid mistakes.”

Cobb was about to reply in kind when he realized that he was in a hairs breadth of destroying their relationship before it had properly begun. Then, inspiration struck him. “’Lea, I’m wearing a protective vest, you’re not. That old Capsten fires nine millimeter parabellum and the interceptor plate in my vest will stop that cold. In situations where one officer has a vest and another doesn’t, we’re trained to get in front of the unprotected officer so the vest protects both. I’m not used to working with somebody who is death on two legs, let alone a woman as skilled as you. My training just took over. I’m sorry but I wasn’t protecting you, I was aiding a fellow officer. The end in view was good so the means must be. We can talk about the appropriateness later.”

Achillea looked at him stonily but her anger ebbed. Getting mad at him won’t change what happened. “All right, I’ll accept that. In future, when something like this happens, you go away from me, not towards me. Most men regard other men as the primary threat and make them their priority. So by separating from me, you draw their fire away from me and give me a chance to drop them before they get a chance to do anything. Another thing, you go into a fight thinking you have to do half of somebody else’s job, you will get yourself killed and probably the person you’re trying to help. Now, let’s get back to work. We’ve just proved there is at least one bad guy inside the perimeter.”

Cobb straightened up. “’Lea, are we good now?”

“Yeah, we’re good. It just takes time for people to get used to each other.” Achillea grinned at him then reached down and picked up the Capsten. “You’re right, it’s a Mark One in nine millimeter Parabellum. They’re pretty rare. It’ll look nice in my collection.”

[Calder]

Chapter Twenty Four
24th Floor, Imperial Forum Hotel-Casino, Havana, Cuba

“Cristi, can you look after yourself for the rest of the afternoon? I’ve got work to do and it’s the sort of thing that I can’t take you along to.” Although she gave no outward appearance of stress, Igrat was tensed up to the point where her nerves were screaming. This was a critical situation and one of the reasons why she and Cristi had come to Cuba in the first place. “You can wander around in the shopping mall if you like. This place is absolutely safe for tourists. Eat down there if you want. Indulge yourself with a carbohydrate shot; it won’t hurt to break your diet for a day.”

Igrat’s largesse was rewarded by a tinkle of laughter. “I don’t think I want to eat French fries any more. When they served them for lunch at school, they made me feel bloated and weighed-down so I stopped eating them. Will we be going back to New York soon?”

“I don’t think so, not for a few days. Not with the security operation going on in the city right now. I’m not sure when we’ll be leaving here for there.” Igrat was actually telling the truth although not quite the way it sounded. She would be meeting with the Cuban leadership shortly to pick up the pack of intelligence data that was Cuba’s side of the deal placing the island under American protection. U.S. technical intelligence,obtained from the space stations and reconnaissance flights was superb, but its human intelligence was lamentably and notoriously poor. On the other hand, the Cuban government had links with most of the organized crime syndicates around the world and those syndicates watched the island’s back in exchange for a cut of Cuba’s fabulous income. The pick of that intelligence went to the National Security Council. It was already late afternoon; the meeting with the Cubans would go on until far into the evening. Shortly afterwards, Igrat and Cristi would be flying to Washington, not New York. This time around, she would be carrying other vital reports as well.

“I think I’ll stay here for a while if that’s all right, Mom. The next episode of the Accursed Kings is on and I don’t want to miss that. If you’re not back for dinner, I’ll go down to the mall then.”

“That’s fine. Remember to tell me what happens in ‘Kings won’t you. I want to see Robert of Artois get his.”

“Will do, mom.”

Igrat closed the room door behind her and set off down the corridor, carefully not acknowledging the young man in the light gray suit casually reading a newspaper in the corridor. She couldn’t help reflecting that he was the very image of every young man patiently waiting for a girlfriend who had no sense of time. The hotel elevator took her down to the lobby where a limousine from the President’s Office was waiting for her. The driver held the door for her, ushered her into the back seat then got behind the wheel.

“Hi, Iggie. How are things going at your end?”

“Good so far. Yours?”

Gusoyn nodded. “So far so good. Everything is set up for tomorrow. The Seer reminded me to tell you that the package you are bringing back this time is crucial. He says it could be the most important package you have ever carried and that is an unprecedented statement.”

He slipped the limousine into the stream of traffic on the Golden Boulevard and accelerated to keep pace with the mass of cars around him. As soon as the situation was stable, he continued on. “The situation in New York is straightening itself out. We have heard from Achillea who has the situation under control in the school she’s in. She has warned us that the critical part there will come this evening when the noose around the areas controlled by the gangs has closed in. Once evening stats to fall, the survivors will try a concerted attack on the school to seize hostages. She has started to get set up for that now.”

“How is the fighting in the Brooklyn and Queens?”

“The fighting in Queens is all over. The gang-bangers there just surrendered up. There never was much of a fight there although the newspapers made it sound like Stalingrad and the television crews made it look like Archangels’k. Brooklyn is a bit different. There is some hard-core opposition there and they have put up a fight. Or, they tried to. The National Guard put those who made the attempt down very quickly. So far, the police and Guard have killed about eighty and arrested over two thousand. The Seer says that it will all be over by nightfall. That is when the trouble will really start. Lillith has come up with a plan to deal with the immediate problem. The Seer will tell us about it after we have dealt with more serious issues.”

Igrat sat back in her seat and thought that over. The fact that Gusoyn had come to Cuba to act as her driver tonight, and, by implication brief her on what was happening in Washington, was very important. To those who knew little of the real situation in Washington, Gusoyn was just another driver, tasked with transporting people around the city. The more perceptive knew that he was more important than that, that he was the eyes and ears that kept his employers informed of what was happening in the nation’s capital. Those who really knew what was going on also understood that Gusoyn was The Seer’s right hand man, the person to whom the Seer turned when he needed something done quietly, discretely and very well. So, as Gusoyn talked, Igrat listened very carefully and remembered everything.

By the time he had finished, they had reached the Speakeasy Hotel and Casino where the top four floors were Cuba’s equivalent to the Presidential Palace. She thanked Gusoyn and walked across the lobby of the Hotel towards the elevator bank at the far end. One elevator was separate from the rest and could only be entered by people who had a special key. Igrat was one of them. By the time she reached the Presidential Offices, Joe Catalina was waiting for her. “Iggie, welcome. Please come to my office, we have a lot to discuss. Be thankful; if it wasn’t for microfilms, the weight of this stuff would leave you with one arm six inches longer than the other.”

Corridors, Public School 261, Queens, New York.

“So you do have a vest!” Cobb looked at Achillea with well-feigned surprise. She was wearing a new-pattern Army bullet-resistant vest, the one with a high overlapping collar and reinforced interceptor plates. During a lull in the activity around the school she had collected it from her truck. Why she had forgotten to put it on when she had arrived at the school that morning mystified her. These things happened sometimes. Bombulum cerebro. That’s why we were trained to do everything by muscle memory.

“Gets in the way when handling a big rifle like the Barrett. And if you do it right with those things, you don’t need a vest.”

Cobb stopped himself grinning. He recognized an excuse when he heard one and it was a relief to know that Achillea wasn’t infallible. Her hair was completely messed up, her face and hands were covered with a mixture of dirt, gun oil and gunshot residue and her clothing was dust-covered and disheveled. What confused Cobb was that she was attracting more and more admiring glances as the day went on. He was coming to the conclusion that the combination of guns, dirt and oil made her exotically different. “All right. What next?”

Achillea closed her eyes for a second and envisaged the situation. She played the various circumstances through her head and could see them both through her own eyes and though those of the gang-bangers outside. “They’re getting desperate. They’re a bit like a donut. We’re the hole in the middle. The Guard and the police are the outer world. Sooner or later, the outside world is going to take a big bite out of the donut and link up with us. About the only defense the bad guys have against that is to break in here and grab us as hostages. Human shields. So, we can expect a mass attempt to break in. Or as ‘mass’ as the bad guys can get together after the way the Guard went through them. They can’t get in through the back; they know that we’ve got the ways in there blocked and watched. So, they’ll hit the chain-linked fences to burst in through the sides and then try to get in through the gymnasium. We need to cover that area of open ground with riflemen and have a group ready in the gymnasium to finish off anybody who gets that far. And, Vince, I mean finish off. This is the final throw for them. We can’t pull any punches.”

Over the years, many criminals had been deceived by Cobb’s round, amiable face and pleasantly friendly demeanor. Once they’d been caught, behaving like reasonable people had always meant that the face stayed amiable and the demeanor friendly. Cobb had a surprising number of friends amongst the men and women he had put in prison. Mostly from bad, broken backgrounds, he had been the first person in their lives to treat them absolutely fairly and they recognized that. It was only the ones that had been unreasonable, the ones who had refused to realize the game was over, that had seen the steel that was under the affable presentation. It was the steel that answered Achillea’s comment.

“That’s why I want you to head up the squad in the Gymnasium. Pick out the men you want with you, arm them the way you want and do what you have to do. ‘Lea, my boys are police. In the final analysis, they’re trained to make arrests. If the bad guys get in, it’s going to be a war in that gymnasium. They need a warrior to show them what has to be done.”

Achillea nodded and walked over towards a group of State Police who were resting in the canteen. Contrary to mythology they were not eating donuts or drinking coffee. It was not for want of desire but they’d tried both and found the donuts were so stale they crumbled and the coffee was, as Achillea well knew, foul beyond belief. She looked at the group wishing Igrat was with her. Iggie has the ability to read the people around her and play them like nobody I’ve ever met. I need her now to back up my own instincts on which of these guys to take in there. She looked at the State Police troopers eyes and picked out six, five men and a woman. “All right, you heard the Major. We’re the last line of defense before those thugs get at the kids. Grab a PPS-45 and a shotgun each. As many drum magazines for the PPS’s as you can carry and make sure they’re all loaded to capacity. The rate those guns burn ammunition, you’ll need them. If it gets down to using the shotguns, don’t short-stroke them. If you do, drop the damned thing and use something else.”

Most of the men and one of the women she hadn’t picked were looking at her regretfully. They’d wanted to go with her, to feel the pride of being selected by her as one of her comrades. One of the men looked at the floor and shook his head humbly. “We are not worthy.”

She grinned at him and punched his arm. “You’ll be covering us from the windows in the main block with M14s. If we have to do anything more than sit on the floor, swap lies and pick our noses, then you will indeed not be worthy.”

Cobb was waiting for her by the doors that led through to the gymnasium block. “Vince, they’ll start by crashing truck through the fence. You’ve got a ma deuce and a couple of RPGs. Make sure that sucker burns.”

“So that the wreckage blocks the hole it’s just made?”

“No, because a TV crew with the Guard and police will, as sure as the Gods made little apples, be filming it. They have a direct line of sight to our perimeter. A truck stuck in the fence and burning will make great footage for them. Always please the crowd Vince. Always please the crowd.”

“Ummm, you do know we’re police don’t you.” Cobb was smiling, more interested in what the answer would be rather than whether she would agree with him.

“Look on it this way. Give the TV crews something spectacular for their headline news and they’ll make you look good in exchange. After you’ve looked like heroes on the headline news, your budget is safe for the next five years.”

Cobb started to laugh, changed it into a snort, then thought about what Achillea had said and realized she was right. “OK, that sucker burns. I don’t suppose you brought armor-piercing incendiaries for that ma deuce did you?”

“Of course.”

“I should have known.” Cobb shook his head sadly. “You’ve known how this would end all along, didn’t you?”

Achillea patted his shoulder, as always controlling her strength carefully. Every very strong person did that and physically strong women more than most. “Let me give you some advice Vince. The big trick isn’t to know how things will work out although most times that’s fairly obvious. Nor is it to plan on that knowledge. The game is to think fast enough to change your plans as events change around them. Once you get into the habit of seeing how things go and changing your plans to match them, it will look as if the events that took place were the way you expected them to be all along. After all, I never expected to end up with you in my bed doing beastly, horrible things to me. But, it all worked out.”

Cobb looked at her with amusement. “I don’t seem to remember you complaining.”

“Perhaps I like beastly, horrible things. Now, Vince, you watch our asses while we’re in there. If they come around the sides and trap us in there, you’ll have to do beastly, horrible things to my corpse. And the problem with necrophilia is that it’s dead boring.”

Cobb’s laughter was a mixture of genuine amusement and sheer horror at the awful pun. “Well, that’s illegal in New York State although I suspect it might be compulsory in California. Don’t sweat it. We’ll cover you.”

Inside the gymnasium, Achillea started to organize setting up the gym equipment to provide her small force with a modicum of cover. She knew that when the fight in here started, as she was sure it would, it would be vicious, exceedingly violent and very brief. Even limited amounts of cover were likely to be decisive. Half way through dragging a vaulting horse into position, one of the State Police troopers joined her. “Ma’am, I’ve known the Major for a long time. I was with him the day he heard about his wife. He never really smiled from that day until the day he met you. So, thank you. From all of us.”

Corner of Atlantic and Hoyt, Brooklyn, New York

“Chop the ground floor out and the whole building pancakes in on itself.” Duncan was explaining the finer points of street fighting to Bailey. The fate of the derelict deli on the corner of Hoyt and Atlantic had been a case in point. There were several ways of dealing with building occupied by an enemy who refused to leave including blowing rat-holes in the walls and landing troops on the roof. Using tanks to knock out the ground floor and letting the collapsing building get rid of the occupants was the safe way. For the attacking troops that was.

“Pity, it was a nice old building once.” Bailey looked at the collapsed ruin of the four-storey red-brick with immense sadness. The National Guard unit wasn’t being excessive in its use of force but it wasn’t taking any chances either. Two rockets had been fired from this particular building so the two tanks that had accompanied the M113s down Hoyt had finally justified their presence by firing explosive rounds into the ground floor of the old building. And so another piece of New York’s history gets destroyed because of these lunatic gang-bangers. There’ll be nothing left here by the time this is all over. And all people will remember is that an area of the city got taken over by gang-bangers and throwing them out made for entertaining television.

A little down the street, a third M81 tank had just turned on to Atlantic after it had intimidated a group of thuggish wannabees into giving up and surrendering. Those thugs were now on their way to the detention center in Prospect Park. The tank had just straightened up when the white trail of a rocket streaked out from one of the buildings on Atlantic and slammed into the tank. The explosion seemed to engulf the tank turret. Bailey noticed that Duncan and his ACV crew were holding their breath. Then, as the smoke began to subside, he saw the long 120mm gun swinging to bear on the window the rocket had come from. He could imagine the rocketeer desperately trying to reload in time but the blast of the big gun tore out the whole side of the wall. There would be no more rockets coming from that building. The old structure seemed to be staggering slightly after the impact, then it collapsed into a cloud of smoke and rolling dust. Inside the M113ACV, the release of breath was audible.

“You didn’t think the tank was going to be killed did you?” Bailey was surprised that the Guard soldiers should be so pessimistic.

“It can happen. If the turret gets hit at the right angle and the jet goes through, it can kill a tank. That’s what it was designed for after all.” Daniels looked grim. “There was a bad problem with the M81. The turret traverse and gun elevation are hydraulic and the original hydraulic fluid turned out to be inflammable. So, a hit on the turret would set the fluid burning and that would cook off the ammunition. Looked like a giant blowtorch going skywards through the turret hatches. Crew wouldn’t have a chance. They’ve replaced the fluid now with one that doesn’t burn but we’re the Guard and we get all the good stuff last. So there was a chance that tank could have brewed up.”

“Damn, I thought those things were invulnerable.”
“The new ones are much harder to kill. Nothing’s invulnerable though. SAC will tell you that.”

“I’m not going to make a damned fool of myself Kennie. You can make yourself look an idiot if you want to.”

The woman’s voice had penetrated the low-grade fighting noises that provided a constant background. Duncan and bailey looked around and saw that a television news van had pulled up and the camera crew on top were filming the scene. The woman, Bailey recognized her as Georgia Rogers, was sitting on the hood of the van while her partner waved his hands at her. Eventually the partner turned his back on her and stormed over to the M113ACV. Behind him Georgia mimed putting a rope noose around her neck and adopted a “hanged” expression, her eyes crossed and her tongue hanging out of one side of her mouth. Although nobody realized it at the time, the sequence caught by the camera would become a staple of blooper reels for years to come and make a television star of Rogers.

“Hey, we only got a long-range shot of that tank being hit.” Kent Clarke was at his most self-important. “Could you re-enact it for us please? We’d like to get some close ups of the explosion and a few different angles.”

In the background, Rogers made a gun out of her fingers and pretended to shoot herself. Bailey was hard put to stop laughing but Duncan looked earnestly helpful. “Why, of course, Sir. Just sit on the tank here, where the big black stain is. Mind the coppery patch, it’s probably still a bit hot. Michaelson, get one of those bazooka rockets we captured and shoot it at the tank. Mind you hit it in exactly the same place as that rocket hit a couple of minutes ago.”

“Sure thing Major. It’ll be a pleasure.” The Guard private picked up an RPG and took aim at Clarke sitting on the M81. It took a split second for Clarke to realize what was about to happen. Then he leapt from the tank and ran panic-stricken down Atlantic Street. The roar of laughter from the Guard, State Police and television crew followed him all the way.

[Calder]

Chapter Twenty Five
Main Corridor, Public School 261, Queens, New York.

Trooper Green felt the shock of the impact surging through the structure of P.S. 261, swaying the floor under his feet and nearly causing him to lose his balance. The sound of the crash followed a microsecond later, the gap being just long enough for him to separate the events. That was how people believed they had ‘predicted’ earthquakes. The ground wave arrived slightly before the air wave. “It’s breaking loose Wayne. That was a truck hitting one of the end walls. The turds must have stolen a garbage truck or something.”

“’Lea warned us those side walls were blind spots. ‘Don’t let them come around the sides’ she said.” Trooper Evans was interrupted by the heavy thudding of the .50 machine gun emplaced on the other side of the main building. “The turds are hitting the other side right now.”

The two braced themselves for another impact but when it came it was only a faint shadow of the first blow. Green’s personal radio clicked into life a split second later. “Green, Evans, the bad guys just put a container tractor unit from the docks into the Dean Street wall. The bad guys are coming through but there’s nowhere much they can go right now. They tried to put another unit into the Pacific Street wall but a Guard track has just taken it out with a 73mm shot before it hit.”

“Where’s the kids, Major?” Evans spoke over Green’s shoulder. He had children of his own, about the same age as some of those in the classrooms.

“They’re as safe as anybody can be in this mess. Certainly safer here than they would be out there. We got them in the classrooms at the center of the building. Assuming this place was built to code, they should be OK in there. Teachers are carrying on with the lessons.”

“And ‘Lea?” Green thought the question would be tactful as well as useful.

“Gym building just came under attack. The bad guys tried to put a pick-up truck through the fence. The ma deuce she loaned us brewed it up nicely. It’s burning in the fence now. There’s an attempt to get in through the big double doors going on but she’s dealing with it. Let her get on with it, she knows what she’s doing. She might get offended if somebody looks over her shoulder.” Cobb sounded rueful and slightly chastened. “You two, stay where you are and act s a backstop. If anybody gets past us down here, you’re blocking the primary means of access further in. Out.”

Green and Evans looked at each other. It was Green who said what they were both thinking. “Well, I never thought the turds would have had the sense to try and mount a coordinated attack. I wonder what else they’ve got in mind?”

“Sneaking in I guess. We know we haven’t closed all the ways into this place. My guess is those trucks are intended to keep us busy while other turds creep in. I think the Major is expecting that as well. That’s why we’re here. I’d guess he’s got sections like us scattered around the building.”

Green nodded in agreement. “Does that not make you think that standing in the middle of the corridor may be just a trifle unwise, Trooper Evans?”

Evans grinned, picking up the game the two of them played when they were dealing with a “situation”. Experience had taught them that for some reason criminals found it incredibly unnerving. “Indeed it does, Trooper Green. Thank you for drawing this to my attention. Have you, perhaps, a suitable location in mind from which we can perform our assigned duties?”

“I certainly do, Trooper Evans. It occurs to me that the office on the corner ahead of us is possessed of thick walls yet offers an excellent field of fire down both this corridor and the one at right angles to it. I would commend it to anybody who wishes to take up the calling of personal exsanguinator.”

“A worthy suggestion indeed, Trooper Green. Let us avail ourselves of your advice without delay.”

Dean Street Wall, Public School 261, Queens, New York.
The wall had caved in with the impact and much of the floor above the impact point had fallen on the tractor unit. It turned out that the builders of the school had been conscientious craftsmen who had intended their work to be solid and enduring. As a result, the tractor had come to a halt after breaking through the outside wall and hitting the next internal wall in. As a result, it was being raked from the state troopers on both sides while others were firing down from the second floor at the thugs still milling round outside. As a result, the areas around the wrecked truck were quickly becoming blood-baths.

Cobb took careful aim at a thug who was trying to squeeze through the gap between the wrecked wall and the equally wrecked truck. Years of training as a police officer were trying to make him aim for a disabling shot that could be followed by an arrest. He shook his head slightly to clear those treacherous thoughts out of the way, then fired. His M14 was one of the ones Achillea had loaned his men and it had a British-made optical sight in place of the iron sights on the police M14s. So it was that, when he placed the tiny inverted V on his selected victim’s head and pulled the trigger, he got a close-up view of the damage the bullet inflicted. The 27-59 had always been regarded as a particularly vicious round. Essentially the case was a shortened version of the older 30-06 with improved propellant to give the same ballistic performance. The long .276 bullet it fired tumbled on impact and shattered to give a gaping wound. The thug went down, the splatter from what had been his head adding to the carnage on the walls and floor.

“Grenade!”

The yell from the second floor preceded the sight of a small, egg-shaped object sailing through the air. It went over the wrecked truck and vanished the other side. A second later there was a vicious explosion and the sounds of screaming.

“We’re done. We give up. Don’t shoot any more.” The cries from the thugs outside and around the truck were desperate. The execution done by the rifle fire had destroyed any morale they might have had; the blast of the fragmentation grenade had been the last straw. The thugs had lived their lives so far by throwing their weight around and exploiting the helpless. Now, they were on the receiving end of that treatment at the hands of men skilled in the use of arms and trained to fight as teams. The idea that they could be shot down without standing much of a chance was more than they could stand.

“Throw down your weapons. Come in, one at a time with your hands raised. Anybody whose hands we can’t see gets shot.” The old police saying ran through Cobb’s mind It’s the hands that kill you. “Once inside, go where you are told, then get on your knees with your hands behind your head.”

The slow procession started, the gang-bangers making their way in, one by one and kneeling where they were told. As they did, they were searched, anything that could be a lethal weapon was being taken and then they were being herded into a holding area.

“They’re just kids.” One of the State Troopers sounded awed by the discovery. It was a mark of how the threat to the school and its occupants had deflated once the enemy had lost their shield of anonymity and been seen for what they really were.

Cobb looked at the M14 he was holding. It really is a much better-quality weapon than the ones the State bought for us. There’s a moral there somewhere. “With one of these, a kid can kill just as easily as a full-grown man and I guess some of these ‘kids’ have done more than their share of killing.”

Cobb looked at them, once again absorbing the reality of the opposition that had been facing them all day. Deprived of their bravado and numbers they were quickly reverting to the adolescents they really were. It was far too late, of course. They had chosen their course and they would have to settle the accounts that course had opened. The problem was that the people who had planned that course were escaping judgment. This time around at least.

On Hoyt, Between Atlantic and Pacific, Brooklyn, New York

“Good shot, Three!” From his M113ACV Major Duncan could see the black smoke boiling up from the wrecked truck. There had been a column of two of the big tractor units led by an old, battered, pick-up. The pick-up had shot through the junction of Hoyt and Dean before anybody could do anything about it. The first semi-trailer tractor unit had done the same before it had plowed into the wall of P.S. 261. The second tractor unit had turned up Hoyt, towards Pacific and that had meant it was approaching the National Guard M113s head-on. The platoon number three vehicle had fired a single round from its 73mm gun with devastating effect. The gunner had used a British-designed high-explosive squash-head round. A thin-cased shell, it was designed so that the explosive contents flattened themselves against the target before the round detonated. Used against armor or concrete, the idea was that the shock wave from the explosion would cause the inside of the armor to detach and spall out a mass of fragments. Used against an unarmored truck, the result had been to blow the front of the target to fragments and make the rest the center of an inferno of blazing diesel. It had been a very good shot indeed.

“What the hell are these people up to? That made no sense at all.” Duncan couldn’t quite work out why the gang-bangers had done things the way they had. It would have made more sense for them to have split the column at the intersection of Dean and Bond and sent the last truck up Bond to turn on to Pacific at the next intersection. Turning the truck at Hoyt had condemned it to almost instant destruction from the approaching M113s.

Colonel Bailey looked at the displays. “They couldn’t have brought those trucks in from outside. We’ve got units along Atlantic Avenue to the north, Bergen to the south, Court Street to the west and Nevins Street to the east. This area is the last hold-out. We got the rest under control and there’s no reports of anything moving that we don’t own. So those vehicles were already inside that perimeter. There’s an old, disused parking lot on Dean, between Hoyt and Bond. My guess is that they were kept there for this purpose.”

“Then why didn’t they try it right at the start?” Duncan was confused and bewildered. He knew that was a very dangerous thing for an officer in his position to be.

Bailey thought about it for a second. He had the advantage that he was thinking about the people they were fighting as criminals, not as insurgents or soldiers. That gave him an insight that Duncan lacked. “They were sucking us in. Their idea was to have us come hammering down Hoyt to rescue the school and they’d hit us from all sides in an ambush. We get that every so often when perps want to ambush a police unit for some reason. Make a false 911 call and then hit the cruiser responding. This was the same thing writ large. We wrecked the plan by coming in slow and steady and rolling up the ambush before it could close. You done good today Chris. They wanted a pitched battle with lots of corpses and you made sure they didn’t get it.

“We both owe the Major in that school. If he’s panicked and screamed for help, we’d have had to come barreling down Hoyt.” Duncan looked through the electro-optical scanner. “Hello. We have a second column of smoke. Want to bet that’s the pick-up.”

Bailey was speaking quickly on his personal radio. “Confirmed. That pick-up truck tried to crash the perimeter fence but was torn up by a ma deuce. There are some thugs trying to get in by way of the gymnasium doors. He says it’s no problem, he has it covered.”

“How the hell did he get a ma deuce?”

Bailey spoke for a second and his eyebrows elevated at the answer. “Loaned by a friendly civilian. Along with armor-piercing and incendiary ammunition. He also says there’s a dark blue F450 in the parking lot and warns us if we hit it by accident, we’ll be in trouble.”

“We’d better get down there. Forward HO!” The column of M113s started moving again, then rounded the corner from Hoyt on to Pacific. Across the school grounds, Duncan could see the burning pick-up truck stuck in the Dean Street fence and a small crowd of gang-bangers gathered near the gymnasium doors. The doors were open and swinging but there was something pinned to one of them. Duncan switched up the magnification to see that the object was a gang-banger apparently transfixed by a javelin. “Just what the hell is going on in there?”

Gymnasium. Public School 261, Queens, New York.

The kill had been completely silent and had left the victim swinging on the double doors that gave outside access to the gymnasium. The destruction of the pick-up truck as it burst open the fence had left the attackers without the means to force the doors quickly. Eventually, one of them had found some bolt-cutters and cut the chain holding the doors closed. He had forced them open and then made the critical, foolish, fatal mistake of standing in triumph in the open doorway.

In getting the gymnasium prepared for the battle, Achillea had found some old and long-neglected sports equipment. She had assumed that Simmons had considered it too warlike for his idea of a progressive education and had probably thrown most similar equipment away. Somehow, the rack of four foils and the two javelins had been overlooked. She regarded the foils as useless; there weren’t even adult foils but the junior version that lacked ay real strength and reach. The javelins were a different matter. They were the correct weight and their points were sharp. After years of storage, they were dirty and rusty but she regarded that as a positive advantage. Dirt and rust meant that the wounds the javelins caused were certain to become infected and to Achillea, here and now, that was a good thing. Therefore you must always exercise a wise moderation that should distinguish between deserving and undeserving characters. An indiscriminate and general mercy is as much a cruelty as the absence of any mercy. For if you turn your thumb for the undeserving, the crowd will ignore your plea for the deserving.

And so, while the intruder had stood by the opened door in triumph, Achillea had thrown the javelin with every last measure of her strength behind it. The javelin, so close to the pilum she had learned to handle centuries before, had sped straight and true to its target. It had penetrated all the way through the man’s body and through the heavy, fireproof door behind him. Now, that door swung slowly backwards and forwards with the man’s body impaled upon it. It was doing more to deter the attackers than any blast of gunfire could have done. Ovidious Lucillus Nerva, I sent you a friend. One who was almost as stupid as you.

The police woman Achillea had picked for this detail was looking at her with hero-worship in her eyes. “Ma’am, how do I get to be like you?”

Achillea thought about that for a moment and when she answered, it was her Dottore speaking across the centuries. “Pick a weapon at which you wish to excel and practice with it. Every available moment you can find. But above that, work just as hard on developing your character. Learn to transform fear into prudence, pain into courage, mistakes into wisdom, and desire into achievement. Remember that, although it is the hand that wields the weapon, it is your character that wields the hand. Keep that in mind and you won’t go far wrong.”

The woman, she was barely more than a recruit although to Achillea’s practiced eye she had great potential, nodded and thought about what Achillea had said to her. Then, as she thought deeper, the implications of the advice sank in and she nodded again, more slowly and thoughtfully.

That was when Achillea heard the roar of diesel engines and the rattle of tracks outside the gym. The National Guard was arriving with M113s and probably tanks. Almost simultaneously, the gang-bangers outside surged into the gymnasium. She suspected they were as much fleeing from the armored vehicles as trying to attack but she decided she couldn’t take the chance. An indiscriminate and general mercy is as much a cruelty as the absence of any mercy. Her PPS-45 started hosing long bursts into the people trying to crowd through the doors. The other defenders opened up as well, their positions putting the attackers in the center of a U-shaped ring of gunfire. It was as Achillea had expected, brutal, violent and short. The gang-bangers managed to fire off a few shots but they went nowhere important. In exchange, they died.

Achillea was looking at the pile of bodies in the doorway, at least a dozen she guessed possibly as many as eighteen, when a voice came from outside. “Good guys, good guys. Can we come in?”

“Come on in.” Achillea’s reply was unemotional. As far as she was concerned, this was just another day at the office.

“Ma’am, I’m Major Duncan, New York National Guard. We’ve come to relieve you here.”

“Achillea Foyle. OSS Operations Division. Major Cobb of the New York State Police is in charge here. We have the perimeter secure. What we need are some troops to work down from the roof to make sure we haven’t any hold-outs or infiltrators.”

“I’ll see to it. Well done Miss Foyle.” Duncan looked at her and then at the figure skewered to the door. “That was you I suppose?”

Achillea nodded.

“Well done indeed. Killed by a javelin. That’s rare these days.”

Geography Class, Public School 261, Queens, New York.

Harry Mitchell had just reached the point in his lesson when he was covering how the weight of alluvial deposits in river deltas compacted the mud at the bottom and started to turn it into mudrock when there was a crash at the door of his classroom. One of the gang-bangers was standing in the doorway, bringing a submachine gun up to aim at the pupils. Mitchell recognized him, vaguely, from one of his classes a year or so ago. Almost by instinct, driven by the need to protect the children in his care, Mitchell seized a revolver from his pocket. It was an old-model six-shot .38 special with a two-inch snub barrel. Mitchell had never fired it. Years before he had inherited it from his father. It had been put in a drawer and three-quarters forgotten. This morning, Mitchell had found it and put it in his jacket pocket.

He pointed it in the direction of the attacker and started pulling the trigger. Of the six rounds that had been in the gun for more than fifty years, one misfired. Mitchell heard six shots though and it was the fact that he heard them rather than saw the flash that made him realize that he had been firing with his eyes tightly closed. When he willed himself to open them, he was appalled by the damage a .38 special could do. Looking at the body, he found it hard to believe that such a small bullet could do so much damage. Then, he became aware of the State Trooper standing in the corridor with a pump-action shotgun in his hands. A wisp of smoke was still trailing from the barrel.

“Nothing to worry about, Sir.” The trooper gave him a friendly smile. “We saw this one on the surveillance cameras and we were about to nail him when you opened up. Distracted him enough to give us a clean shot. You done good sir.”

Mitchell looked at the scene. There were two bullet holes on the ceiling, one in the floor, one in the wall next to the door and one in the opposite wall of the corridor. Behind him he heard one of the girls in his class. “Is he dead sir?”

“Madeline, how should I know? This is a geography class. Your next session is biology so ask Miss Haskins. Now, the importance of mudrock is that it gives us the first solid foundation for buildings. So, settlements tend to be established where mudrock is close to the surface.”

[Calder]

Chapter Twenty-Six
Dumbarton Avenue, Georgetown, Washington D.C.

“How are you feeling, Cristi?” Igrat speared a large lump of pineapple from the salad bowl and started nibbling at it.

“Bewildered, and a bit tired. I wasn’t expecting to come to Washington. Let alone late at night in an Air Force jet. What was that one we rode on?”

“Queen of Scandia? She’s a VC-151 Superstream, military version of the Superstream II. It’s probably the most common Air Force plane we ride when we’re at work. That one was a special flight laid on for us.”

“The package you carried was that important?” Cristi remembered the frantic departure the night before. Just after 9pm, Igrat had hurried into the hotel room and told Cristi they had to get to Washington immediately. She’d added that they had vital information on who was behind the troubles that had wracked New York. She’d asked Cristi to pack their things while she went down to settle their account. Twenty minutes later, they were in a limousine heading for the airport. The VC-151 was waiting with its engines running and lights flashing and had taken them on the 45-minute flight to Washington. Another limousine was waiting for them at the end of the runway of Andrews Air Force Base. Their aircraft hadn’t even turned off the runway; the limousine took an unmarked road from the overrun area onto the Beltway. To Cristi’s astonishment, the car had blue and white lights flashing in its windscreen. They’d headed straight for the center of Washington to a large building just off Pennsylvania Avenue. Igrat had got out of the car there and handed her case to a man waiting on the steps. Cristi had guessed that their driver had radioed ahead to tell him that they were on their way in. What did confuse her slightly was the triumphant thumbs-up Igrat had given the man. After that, the urgency had evaporated. They’d been driven to the house in Georgetown without the special effects lights and Cristi had been in bed by midnight. It had been, she thought to herself quite an evening.

“More important than you can possibly realize.” Igrat wasn’t smiling and Cristi understood that her exciting evening had allowed her to see something few people were privileged to watch. “As a result of the contents of that package, we’ve got a ten o’clock at the National Security Council Building.”

“We?” Cristi was confused and starting to get frightened.

“Yes, we.” This time Igrat was smiling. “You do realize Cristi that you saw this whole mess go down. Even better, you’re a perfect witness. Your age means that you are able to tell us what you saw and how without interpreting it or adding your own opinions. It also means that you can’t lie convincingly to people who know what to look for. That makes your evidence very authoritative. Anyway, you’ve nothing to worry about; just answer the questions people ask as accurately and completely as you can. If you don’t know the answer, say so. If you need to think, just say that as well. Nobody will rush you. Just pretend you’re eating spaghetti and meatballs while you get your thoughts in order.”

A few minutes and several bowls of fresh fruit salad later, a horn sounded outside. “That’s us. Our driver’s name is Gusoyn by the way. He was the man who drove us last night. When we get to the NSC, I’ll be going in first. There’s a lot of secret stuff happening and I have a lot of words in my head that need passing on. Somebody will come and get you when we need you.”

Conference Room, National Security Council Building, Washington D.C.

Nefertiti Adams tapped the glass panel covering the conference room table with her pen. “The first order of business is ours. Robert, you get us started.”

Robert Loxley stood up and straightened his jacket. There was something about this meeting that demanded formality. “Nefertiti, Seer, we have conducted the most elaborate background screening of Cristi Escalante we have ever carried out. If we screened our politicians the way we screened Cristi, we wouldn’t have half the problems we do.”

A ripple of laughter spread around the room, breaking some of the tension. Loxley bobbed his head in acknowledgement. “There is no doubt in our minds, she is who she says and what she says. We even got her footprint from the hospital she was born in and it matches. We had DNA samples from Vernita Escalante and Rodrigo Lombardi. We ran the best comparison technology will allow and they match up. Cristi Escalante is the real deal.”

“Playing devil’s advocate here.” Lillith looked around. “Could everything you checked have been faked? We could do something that elaborate.”

“We could and we do. We fix fingerprint records, documentation and almost everything else. But, we can’t fake DNA testing. It’s a very real danger to us. Sooner or later somebody is going to get two samples of our DNA an impossibly long time apart and we’re blown. That’s why this project is so vital to us.”

Nefertiti nodded in agreement. “That is very much the truth. Now, we can assume Cristi is not an imposter or infiltrator. Can we trust her? Nell?”

Eleanor Gwynne thought carefully for a second or two. “Yes. I believe we can. You see, Achillea and Igrat treated her with love and respect, with friendship. They gave her a place, not just to live but in the world. It is the first time in her life she has been treated that way and it came as a profound shock to her. The nearest I can describe it is to imagine a blind person who could suddenly see. I think Cristi is going to be almost fanatically loyal to Igrat and Achillea and, by extension to the rest of us. I honestly think she’d rather have her tongue torn out than betray us – or she would tear her own tongue out rather than be forced to tell others about us.”

“Wow,” Lillith was finding it hard to maintain her devil’s advocate position. “The problem is, as I see it, what happens when we disappoint her? Somebody will.”

“She’ll turn to Igrat or Achillea for comfort. But, mark this well people. There is a good head on those shoulders. What she went through forced her to grow up early. She’ll understand that people vary and make the necessary allowances. You’re an excellent mother, Igrat.” Nell gave a sly grin. ‘Gentle Nell’ was a person of immense kindliness and liked almost everybody (except Conrad). Nevertheless, she had a sharp and biting sense of humor.

“Igrat, have you evidence to back up Nell’s opinion?”

Igrat nodded. “When Robert pushed Cristi on to my lap, I had a long talk with my father. We set up tight surveillance on her and also a series of tests to see if she was discrete and could keep secrets. Also to see if she was trustworthy in other ways. Over our stay in New York, I fed her some information that, if she was infiltrating us, she would have to report it back. She gave no indication of even thinking of doing so. She kept her mouth commendably shut in school. She never ‘shared’ any secret stuff I told her. While we were in Cuba, she had eyes on her, sixty minutes an hour, twenty four hours a day. In Cuba, I gave her two big secrets. One was about us, not quite the full story but enough to be a bombshell. The other was that I was carrying the information that would blow the people behind the trouble in New York wide open. Cristi was alone with that information and had the opportunity – or so she thought – to transmit it. Of course the mob had her under surveillance all the time and they’re good at catching stoolies. She never tried to get the stuff I told her out, even though she believed she was going to be in Cuba for weeks and the information would be stale by the time we got back to the mainland. All the way home, I was wondering if our car was about to be hit by an anti-tank missile.”

“We were illuminated by a laser once.” Gusoyn spoke quietly and carefully. “It was a police speedtrap. Otherwise, nothing.”

“I could slip her some scopolamine or its equivalent.” Naamah was also thoughtful. “But, it’s a waste of good medication. Nobody reads people like Iggie and Nell. If they say fine, I’ll take their word for it. And Iggie’s right. With the stuff she told Cristi, the girl would have been desperate to get it out if she’s been bad. I say, we can trust her.”

There was a murmur of agreement. Nefertiti looked around, carefully weighing the feeling in the room and measuring it against her own instincts. “I agree. We’ve checked Cristi out as well as anybody can be checked. Iggie, well done. This must have been very hard for you. Slipping up in a way that seems natural is as hard a task as it comes. You’re going through with adopting Cristi?”

“Got the paperwork done. All it needs is for me to sign it. And her of course.”

“Then get it done. Parmenio, could you please tell everybody what is going on here?” Nefertiti’s rich voice never lost its gentleness but there was no mistaking when she gave an order.

The Seer stood up and paused for a few seconds. Sitting close to him, Igrat had a sudden mental picture of him eating spaghetti and meatballs and the image almost made her laugh. “People, I’d like to go back to what Robert said about DNA testing. It’s a very real danger to us and its one we can do little about. Do we all know where we left DNA samples a hundred years ago that may still be usable? Can we guarantee that somebody will not get such a sample from us today? Put the two together and we’re blown. That’s not the only example of the way things are closing in on us.

“We’re all used to hiding in the shadows but the truth is that the shadows are shrinking. Soon the sun will be overhead and there will be nowhere left to hide. We’re worryingly close to that point now. A hundred years ago nobody really kept centralized records, certainly two hundred years ago they didn’t. Now everybody does and we’re already beginning to trip over them. We’re beginning to get to the point where we can’t avoid the trips and we’ve had to change our attention to stopping the trips developing into stumbles. I have studied these trends and it is my belief that within forty or fifty years at the outside, we are going to be exposed.” The Seer listened carefully to the intake of breath that caused. “In today’s conditions, I do not think we would survive that.

“Nefertiti and I have been working on a long-term plan to allow us to come out of the shadows completely. To live openly, as we are, accepted for what we are. This plan has many components. One of them is convincing people that an extended lifespan is normal and nothing to be afraid of. We have already started that. You may remember Tommy Lynch’s article in the National Geographic not long ago about those people who live in Siberia and routinely live beyond a hundred years, sometimes up to a hundred and twenty or thirty. He shaded that a little but that story is true and will stand up to investigation. I am sure,” At that point The Seer permitted himself a small grin. “that future investigations will show other small groups with similarly long lives. We have also started planting stories in things like health journals that show how by eating a good diet and undertaking proper exercise, people can greatly extend their lifetimes, by twenty or thirty years. The appropriate authorities have picked up on that and are now joining the campaign. The old three score and ten has already been relegated to history and people living an active and productive life into their nineties or more is not usual.

“Quite soon, we will probably see,” Again The Seer gave a small grin, “the question being asked, ‘what will happen if these people in Siberia and elsewhere who already live longer lives adopt a healthy diet and healthy lifestyle. And, you know, the answer will be, they live longer yet. The purpose of all this is to blur people’s perception of what a normal lifespan is.

“There’s another step needed. We need to greatly increase the number of people who know about us and regard us as being friends and allies. Who look on us with favor and are willing to speak well of us to others. When we finally step out of the shadows, those people will be the key to creating an atmosphere of acceptance. Some baseliners know about us already. We all know that, know that we have friends who have helped us and whom we in our turn have aided. In the vast majority of cases, people who have found out about us have kept our secret. In many cases, our secret has become a family secret, handed down from generation to generation with the knowledge that if they run into hardship or danger, we will honor their loyalty to us by coming to their aid. All this gives us cause for great hope. We can be presented to people in a way that will bring about our acceptance instead of our massacre.

“When Cristi was thrown into our lap, she was an ideal subject for the development of plans to make an increasing number of people favorably aware of our existence. She knew nothing of us, she had no idea we existed and, put bluntly, she had nowhere else left to go. Igrat and I spent hours on the telephone, evolving a plan that would make Cristi aware of our existence on a controlled basis so we could observe her and gauge her reactions to the growing realization of who and what we represent. That way, we can determine how to present ourselves to others so that we can count upon their friendship. In other words, she is a pilot project for the greater program. Igrat?”

“Cristi has accepted the first stage of the exposure process well. However, the legacy of Elisabeth Bathory continues to haunt us and her first thoughts were of vampires and monsters. That was worrying. However, it was quickly overcome; she knew that we had looked after her, protected her, cherished her and that people who did that would not be evil or do bad things to her. I think her instinctive comment though would suggest that we should increase our information campaign to include linking legends like vampirism with the diseases that are actually the cause of those legends. I believe Porphyria is most closely associated with classical accounts of vampirism? Also, we would need to deemphasize vampiric evil in people’s minds so the image created by Elisbeth Bathory loses its power. Not monsters but sick people who should be pitied, not reviled.”

“That’s easier said than done.” A figure leaning up against the wall in a corner spoke thoughtfully. “You’re dealing with a deep-rooted legend there. First of all, we would have to de-emphasize the power of the legend. Perhaps we could do a show about a teenage girl who goes around killing vampires at a rate that makes an SS execution squad seem positively lethargic. Then we follow it up with another show that shows supernatural creatures as being different from us but both good and bad. Then, once that image is established, we de-emphasize the bad and emphasize the good. Eventually we end up with shows about people just like ‘us’ but a bit different.”

“Sounds good Bill,” Igrat liked what she was hearing.

“Umm, it’s Josh now Iggie. ‘Bill Shaych’ ‘died’ a few months ago.”

“Sorry Josh. The important thing is that we don’t have the same degree of freedom any more. Once, because we were undercover and in the shadows we could do whatever was needed to protect ourselves. Not any more. Our experience with Cristi shows us that to rely on baseliners, we have to show them that we are good people, that we mean well and that we use our gift for the benefit of the community in which we live. That’s more or less true of course, but we have to act in that image as well. A part of the Secret Service found out about us a long time ago but they have kept quiet because they saw we were trying to do the right things. One thing. I’m sorry but we really must cut back on the name we use for ourselves. We know that Daimones refers to an ancient cavalry regiment but to everybody else it means demons. It’s a drag we don’t need. Other than that, I’ll keep reporting back on Cristi and the lessons learned as she gets to know us.”

“You’ve done a good job Iggie. Once again, I have to say that this must have been very hard for you.” Nefertiti spoke and her voice was filled with respect.

“Indeed so. People, you know now what we’re doing and why and you know how Cristi plays into this. I need not emphasize how important this plan is.” The Seer hesitated slightly. “Nor should I need to say how relieved I am that Cristi has turned out to have a clean bill of health on security grounds. My commendations to everybody involved in checking her out. Especially you, Iggie. As Nefertiti said, it can’t have been easy for you. Now, we need to set up a National Security Council Meeting to discuss this New York situation. So, the rest of you, scat and get it organized. Igrat, I’d like to meet Cristi.”

“She’s waiting outside. I’ll go get her.”

Cristi was sitting in an office chair, reading the latest copy of Cosmopolitan. When she saw Igrat, she jumped up, putting the magazine carefully on a side-table first. “How’s it going, Mom?”

“Very well indeed. You’re up next. Just a few minutes and you’ll be answering questions from the National Security Council.” Made-up questions of no real importance in fact but they provide the excuse for bringing you in here.

“Ohh.” Cristi looked distinctly nervous. The change from an abstract prospect to something that was due to happen in the near future was daunting.

“I told you, nothing to worry about. Everything is going fine. By the way, ‘Lea is here, she drove down overnight. New York is all over, the National Guard and police are in control. What the NSC is doing is investigating ways of making sure this never happens again. Now, before you go in to see the council, the National Security Advisor wants to speak to you.”

“The Seer?” Cristi’s jaw dropped open.

“Himself. By the way, something you ought to know. He’s my father. Really my father. He adopted me when I was in the gutter. Incidentally, I’ve signed your adoption papers. All you have to do is sign them as well and you’re Cristi Shafrid.”

“Where, where? Can I borrow a pen?”

Igrat laughed and gave Cristi a pen from the holder on the desk and the adoption papers. “Where there’s a red tag. Sign as Cristi Escalante for the last time.”

When Cristi had finished, Igrat knocked on The Seer’s office door. There was a brusque “Enter” and she shepherded Cristi in.

“Seer, I would like you to meet your grand-daughter, Cristi Shafrid.”

Looking at her father’s eyes, Igrat suddenly realized that, for some reason, his office must be unusually dusty that day.

[Calder]

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Main Conference Room, National Security Council Building, Washington D.C.

“Will you please stop nagging, Hillary!” The President’s voice echoed down the corridor. Inside the conference room, a Secret Service agent rolled his eyes. The Seer pretended not to notice.

“You call it nagging, Bill. I call it motivational speaking. You let me in here”

The voice of a Secret Service Agent sounded patient. “I’m sorry Ma’am, you are not authorized entry to the Friday Follies.”

“I am the First Lady. You . . . .” The blast of obscenities that followed would have distressed the Senior Chief.

The Secret Service agent inside the Conference Room rolled his eyes again. He was a part of the group of Secret Services Agents collectively code-named, “erudite”. Then meant they knew of the Daimones secret. He was about to say something when the door opened, the President scuttled in and the door closed behind him. The First Lady was still outside and the foul language was still coming from her.

“Mah apologies, ladies. Hillary belongs to a clique that believes a mark of true female emancipation is foul language. Raven, could ah please trouble yah for an Irish Coffee? A very strong one?”

“Mister President?” Anne Bonney came out of the kitchen bearing a brandy glass containing Irish Coffee on a silver tray. She had made the drink, using the President’s favorite Maker’s Mark 46 whisky. It was well-known although discretely not mentioned that a senior member of the Federal Civil Service could get a glass of Irish Coffee at the NSC Building. It was also known and accepted that this was a privilege extended to civil servants whose duties were forcing them to the verge of a nervous breakdown, not as a supply line for alcoholics. The NSC defined having to deal with the First Lady as being in imminent danger of a nervous breakdown.

“Anne, thank you. Ah don’t know what ah would do without yah. Seer, I asked to meet with you before the Friday Follies to discuss this New York business. It’s close to the election and my opponents are slamming us hard on the sight of an American city with armored vehicles on the street.”

The Seer noted that the President’s ‘Folksy’ accent had vanished now he had got down to business. “Mister President, I cannot presume to give you advice on party political issues or take a position in political disputes where national security is not involved. However, I must reflect that if you were a Republican and the opposition were Democrats, you would be subject to the same attacks with the same level of justification. After all, this situation goes way back before your administration and grew up under the gaze of both parties. As the Russians would say, there is blame enough for all to share here but the real blame goes back to the people who set this whole situation up. We have no idea at this time who they are.”

“That’s one of the things I want to discuss with you Seer. There is a group of people out there who will do anything they can to enrich themselves no matter how much damage it causes to this country. I want the National Security Council to make finding them and bringing them to justice its top priority. As far as I can see from the thinness of the briefing books, the level of external threat is at an all-time low so this extension of your remit should not present a workload problem for you.”

“We have already made a start on this, Mister President. There was a possibility that this whole ugly business was an attack from outside so we made some investigations. Or, more properly, we asked our friends over in Cuba to make some investigations for us.”

“You asked the Mafia to look into this?” The President seemed appalled.

“Of course. They can go places and ask questions that no law enforcement agency can. Won’t be the first time they’ve done it for us either. They were very active in stopping sabotage on the docks back in the ‘forties. Another point is, we don’t know who to trust in this business. Almost anybody could be part of this conspiracy. Of all the people to approach though, the Mob is the least likely to be involved. Anyway, we got their report last night and my staff have been reading it since then. They’ve identified at least a dozen more inner-city areas where the same process is at work. New York was the worst but the rest aren’t far behind. They’ve also linked this to Phenix City – which seems to have been a proving ground and prototype for this kind of operation – and to Aurandel. The latter was a different kind of operation but it shows a lot of the same characteristics." And we’ve already started linking names up. It’s going to be a long job making a case here and making sure we take the whole organization out. But, we’ll do it. “We’ll need an executive order, Mister President, authorizing us to make the investigation.”

“You’ll get it. Assuming that is that I am still President this time next month.”

The Seer thought carefully. “Mr. President, at times like this, people look for leadership, for somebody they can turn to who exudes an atmosphere of steadiness. That’s why FDR won three elections in succession – the times demanded a steady and responsible hand on the tiller. It demanded a man who is Presidential, a man who will speak to the nation as a unifying figure who will solve the situation without worrying about avoiding blame.”

“But what about the attacks on me?” The President could see what the Seer was getting at but when attacked, his every instinct was to retaliate.

“Well, let’s do a logic tree, Mister President. If you are presidential and your opponent is presidential, people will go for the proven track record. You win. If you are presidential and he is not, you win. If he is presidential and you are not, people will see that and he wins. If neither of you is presidential, flip a coin. So, if you maintain the Presidential image you will win. If you do not, the odds are seriously against you.”

“Assuming that idiot Mayor Dimwit doesn’t completely mess things up.”

“Dinkins, Sir?”

“You haven’t met him, Seer. When I said Dimwit, I meant Dimwit. He wants to buy the whole Brooklyn/Queens area up at fire-sale prices and sell it to developers. He’s proposing to pay out a bit more than a dollar an acre but not that much more. People left in there will be destitute. On top of everything else they’ve suffered, they’ll be homeless. Dimwit and his friends will make a fortune.”

“It sounds to me like we should start our investigation with a look at Mayor Dinkins.” The Seer sounded thoughtful.

“Mister President, we have some news footage.” Raven had switched the television on. It showed National Guard tanks and armored carriers sitting on the intersections in Brooklyn, their guns trained down the main streets. The crew cut to the sights on the metro where armed troops were watching for trouble with obviously loaded weapons.

Raven shook her head. “I never thought I would see a war being fought in American cities and towns.” Except Wounded Knee of course. So many of those from the Path died there. “When we watched the footage from New York last night, we had a thought. Does not the War Damage Repair Act apply here? It certainly looks like a war.”

“It does, doesn’t it? The President was suddenly very thoughtful. “That would be using Federal money to buy up the property at pre-war market values so the original owners would have a start towards a new life at least. Seer, could you put a paper together for me on that? By this evening so I can use it in a Presidential broadcast.”

“Raven, see to it.”

“I will, Boss. Will 7pm be all right Mister President? I’ll have it couriered over to the White House.” Raven’s face was a triumph of pure Shoshone impassivity. The paper had been written over the last few days and was ready for delivery.

“That will be fine Raven.” The President slowed his speech down and spoke carefully and stumblingly, a man reading a word he had looked up but wasn’t sure how to pronounce. “Aishenda'ga.”

8pm, Dumbarton Avenue, Georgetown, Washington D.C.

“Here he goes. What’s the betting he reads the report we sent him unchanged.” Naamah was crowing with delight. The truth was that she missed her time as the President’s Executive Assistant and envied Anne Bonney for taking over from her when she had “retired.”

“Don’t underestimate him.” The Seer was cautious. “He’s not as dumb as he makes out. He’s a classic case of a medium-smart man ruined by a bad marriage. How are you doing Cristi? Like sort-of Shoshone food?”

Cristi had a bowl of ice-cream topped with what Raven called “Berry Pudding”. It was a mix of berries that had been simmered gently and seasoned with herbs. Once it had been reduced to a thick jelly, it was used either as a dish in its own right or as a dressing for fry-bread or cereals. Cristi was about to answer but the President started speaking first.

“Mah fellow Americans. Ah speak tonight as your President, not as a candidate for public office. This week we have all been shocked by the sight of part of our largest city so lawless that it required the tanks of the National Guard to restore the authority of the State Government to its streets. Tanks on the intersections of our city streets. American citizens, our brother and sisters herded into refugee camps depending on hand-outs for their next meal. This is not the American way. How did we come to this? Who is to blame?

“There are many people who will point fingers. ‘Not us, they will say. It was all them’. Others will say ‘We didn’t mean this’. Tonight Ah will give you a better answer. Who is to blame? All of us, from every party and every walk of life. This problem has been building up for decades, under every administration and every set of policies. In the words of our Russian friends and allies, there is blame enough here for us all to share. Once, when President LeMay was commander of Strategic Air Command, his favorite rebuke was ‘You can do better than this.’ Today, we feel the full sting of the lash buried in that statement. We could all have done better than this. Now we must do better. Pointing fingers at others to hide our own guilt is pointless. It is part of the same disease that caused the events in Brooklyn and Queens.” The President pounded his fist on the table to add impact to his words. “We. Must. Do. Better. Than. This.”

“We can start by rushing aid to the victims of Brooklyn and Queens. When a tank fires its main gun at somebody shooting at it, that situation is called a war. If it looks like a war and sounds like a war, then it is a war.” The President paused and a film of a tank firing into a building on Hoyt Street “That looks and sounds like a war to me. Some people may argue that this wasn’t a war. Well, ah believe Miss Georgia Rogers made the definitive comment on that.”

Up on the wall behind the President, the screen cut to the scene of Georgia Rogers pretending to hang herself. The President paused for a moment, gave a wicked grin and then continued. “On that basis, tonight ah have issued an Executive Order, probably my last before the impending election, that activates the War Damage Repair Act. Under the terms of this act, the Federal Government will purchase, under eminent domain but at pre-war values, all the property damaged by hostile forces since the commencement of hostilities. That will be defined as 1984 when the urban decay appears to have started.

“This will give the residents of the stricken areas some money to help them start rebuilding their lives. As part of the War Damage Repair Act, surveyors will be inspecting all the buildings in Brooklyn and Queens to determine whether renovation to acceptable standards is possible. If it is and the previous owners wish to repurchase their property and renovate it themselves, they may do so at today’s minimal property value. If they wish to allow the Government to renovate their property and then repurchase it, they may do that although obviously they will be asked a higher price. The remaining properties and empty lots will be redeveloped and sold. The working of the War Damage Repair Act in 1948 to 1950 dealing with German missile attacks on New York, Baltimore, Washington and Norfolk showed it to be cash-neutral. The money raised by redevelopment more or less paid for the earlier eminent domain purchases. The Federal Government is advancing the money to the local people and then recovering it later by redeveloping disused land.”

The President paused and his expression was suddenly thunderous. “Investigations of this tragedy have shown that the cause of spiraling urban decay was poor education. A failed school, staffed by incompetent teachers who placed doctrinaire theory above the welfare of the children in their care, produced a generation of students who were functionally illiterate and unemployable. Again, this must never happen again. Ah am assembling a group of experts, from unions, industry, academia and the armed services to develop a set of standards that pupils must reach before they are allowed to graduate from High School. Ah have selected Doctor Thomas Lynch to act as Chairman of this Committee. Under his supervision, it will also establish standards for promotion from one grade to the next. Education will remain a matter for the individual states. They may organize their education systems as they please – as long as the end result is that they meet the standards we as a society demand.”

“I thought you were writing a book on the definitive history of 18th-century warship design and construction?” Inanna looked at Lynch affectionately.

“I am. Special request by a friend of mine. This Committee will slow it down a bit but it will soon get out there. I think the Presidential address is almost over now.”

Once the President had finished speaking, the Seer leaned back in his seat and nodded thoughtfully. “You’d better go into hiding again ‘Lea. You’ve just got another Democrat re-elected and the Senior Chief will be looking for you with a baseball bat. Again.”

Achillea looked distinctly nervous. “But I didn’t DO anything this time.”

Igrat rushed in to support her. “She’s right, father. We were very peripheral to the whole thing, I don’t think much would have changed if we hadn’t been involved at all.”

“Not quite true, ‘Lea. If it hadn’t been for you, that school would have been in a lot more danger and they wouldn’t have been able to give the Guard enough time to come in slowly and carefully.” The Seer thought for a second, “And, Iggie, if it hadn’t been for your inspired news management, there would have been a lot more pressure to go in there hot and hard. So, you both played your part although those parts were indeed peripheral.”

“You saved me.” Cristi protested. She could see that compared with what had been happening, the part Achillea and Igrat had played was small indeed but for her, it was overwhelmingly important. Sometimes she woke up in the very early morning, terrified that her life with Igrat was a dream and that her birth mother had succeeded in selling her to a pimp. “Who is the Senior Chief anyway?”

“Just a friend of ours. He gets a bit overwrought sometimes on the subject of Democrats.” The Seer looked at Cristi and smiled gently at her. “You’ll meet him soon and you’ll like him. He’s a real gentleman and a true sailorman. If you’re very, very lucky, he’ll teach you how to sail a yacht. What are your plans, Igrat?”

Igrat thought carefully for a second. “Back to New York. Get Cristi back into school when it opens again and carry on trying to get her caught up. I’m going to retire from the OSS for a while. I can’t take the chance of leaving Cristi on her own again.”

“That’ll never happen.” Lillith looked up from where she was sketching numbers on a pad. “The President’s right, it’ll be revenue-neutral. The Federal Government will bleed money early on and make it back later. None left for the conspiracy behind this thing. They’ve lost, big time. Whatever Iggie and ‘Lea might claim, they hit this conspiracy hard – in ‘Lea’s case for the second time. Be that as it may, don’t ever worry about being alone again Cristi. We’re all looking out for you now. Igrat’s your mom, just look on the rest of us as aunts and uncles.”

Igrat took the hint. “Cristi, it’s time for bed. We have a long drive tomorrow. The airports in New York are closed down and the roads are hell. We both need our beauty sleep.”

The two left, closing the door behind them. The Seer was watching them with an evil grin on his face. “And so our Iggie becomes a mother. Ohhh, I’m going to enjoy watching this.”