They both squinted at the screen in silence for about a minute. The tip of Ed’s finger traced the streets surrounding their building.
“Okay, nothing rolling, and no roadblocks or checkpoints. Why don’t you zoom in another thirty percent or so and we’ll work the route south.” Ed nodded and did just that. The rest of the squad glanced occasionally at the two men hunched over the small computer screen. The men who’d finished cleaning their weapons and checking their gear sat quietly, waiting. Finally, the squad’s two leaders straightened up. Everyone knew what that meant.
“Quentin?”
Perched on a deep steel shelf bolted to the wall, Quentin had been on watch for the last hour, staring out a clean spot in the grimy north side windows. He turned his head, the sunlight painting his cheek a rich shade of copper. “Nothin’ but the pigeons.”
Everyone then turned their heads toward Bobby, who had the south side windows. He shook his head. “Clear here.” Up on the second floor, Weasel would have called out immediately if he’d seen anything.
“All right.” Ed nodded. He spoke to Mark. “Weasel’s got the best eye. Tell him to stay in place until we pull around front. He can come right out the front door and jump in.” Mark nodded and jogged up the stairs. He was back a few seconds later and gave a thumbs-up.
George straightened. “Okay, anybody who’s not, wake the fuck up. We’re going to be all over each other in that car. I want you loaded, but safeties on. You hear that? Safeties on. Doublecheck ‘em, and watch your muzzles getting in and out. We’re going to be packed like sardines—a stray round won’t just hit one person, you got it?” He got a few dark looks from the seasoned veterans, but nobody said anything. Among other things George had been a firearms instructor before the war, and old habits died hard.
The room echoed with snicks and clicks as everyone checked and doublechecked their weapons and gear. Jason looked around nervously. He felt like he should be doing something, but he didn’t know what. After what had happened the night before, he decided to just wait for them to tell him to do something.
George pointed himself at a wall and practiced snapping his carbine up to his shoulder a few times to get a sight picture. Ed blew dust off the lenses of his carbine’s optical sight and snapped the weapon up to his shoulder a few times. The scope’s reticle, a large ruby red circle around a dot, was powered by light-gathering fiber optics and glowed faintly in the dim shop. In direct sunlight the sun lit up the reticle like it was powered by batteries, but he was glad it wasn’t. Batteries were getting harder and harder to find. Behind it on the weapon’s receiver was the base for the small NV scope Ed had pulled off just after dawn. He took a deep breath and wiped his palms on his thighs one at a time.
“All right,” Ed said finally, scratching his head, staring at their transportation. “Let’s see if we can all fit in and then maybe this piece of crap will actually start.”
The Ford Expedition was thirty years old if it was a day. The general consensus was that its original paint job had been a creamy yellow. It had been painted at least twice since then, poorly, and suffered body damage, major and minor, along with a not inconsiderable amount of rust. It looked like someone with a rich diet and internal hemorrhaging had been sick all over the car, and when they’d first spotted it Bobby immediately dubbed it the Vomit Comet.
All four tires were low on tread and the suspension was pretty much shot. Every window, including both the front and back windshields, had long ago been smashed out. Even in these slim times there were much nicer vehicles to be found, but they just hadn’t had the time. The battered SUV was big enough to hold the squad, if just barely, and wonderfully nondescript. It also held something even harder to find than a working vehicle—gasoline, over a third of a tank. The Ford was old enough that Quentin, who in some former life had spent a few years as a mechanic, had been able to get it up and running without a diagnostic computer.
There was no power, of course, but the blue overhead door could be rolled up by hand. Ed unbolted the pedestrian door beside it, glanced at Quentin, who gave him a thumbs up, and stepped outside.
The air was already heating up in the bright sunlight. It was going to be a scorcher, but the brick and concrete hadn’t yet begun to soak up the heat and the shadows were still cool. Ed looked left and right, but nothing was moving on the short cross-street that dead-ended to the west at a double set of train tracks atop a six-foot gravel-strewn berm. The four-foot-wide alley at the back of the shop was empty but for some broken bottles and the reek of something very dead. He stood there silently, waiting, watching and listening. All he heard were a few birds. He smacked his hand against the overhead door, then walked toward the front of the building, scanning the street, the windows, the few bushes, the carbine’s buttstock tucked into his shoulder, ready.
Ed crouch-walked to the corner, squatted behind a twisted juniper bush, and used his loved and much-abused Meopta binoculars to peer north and south. Above the still concrete the air was just starting to shimmer in the heat. The mirage waves were boiling straight upward, which meant another day without so much as a whisper of wind. To the east a piece of frayed string had been flung across the sky, a contrail so high up they’d heard nothing of the jet’s passage. Military or commercial jet, he wondered. As insane as it seemed, much of the world was going on with business as usual (or attempting to) while the war raged.
Behind him the overhead door rolled up with protesting groans. The Expedition’s exhaust was a low chug as Quentin backed it out. Mark and Early were in the way back, designated tailgunners, staring out the hole where the rear window used to be, kneeling on the tattered brown carpet. George was with Quentin in the front seat, and the two kids, Bobby and Jason, were behind them. Between their packs and rifles, the six men already had the vehicle filled.
As the Ford chugged patiently behind him, Ed checked the street once more with his naked eye, then waved the SUV around the corner. It had barely come to a stop in front of the building before Weasel was out the door. He piled into the front seat. Ed was right behind him and jumped in next to Jason, who looked nervous enough to puke.
Quentin had the car moving even before the doors were closed. The Ford swayed like a pregnant cow under the weight, and accelerated much the same, but the engine never faltered.
George had his carbine aimed forward, over the dash, and scanned the street ahead of them. “Here’s where the fun begins,” he muttered.
CHAPTER SIX
At the moment his office was on the fourth floor, and faced south. Every few weeks he moved it inside the building, just in case there were informants among the civilian employees. Well, he knew there were informants and infiltrators, one of his Lieutenants had been found with his throat slit in one of the abandoned office buildings in the Blue Zone just the week before.
An industrious guerilla or two could conceivably get close enough to put a round through the double-paned plate glass window before him, no matter how tight perimeter security supposedly was or how many tanks were parked around the building.
For a base of operations his predecessor had chosen well. The piece of land he’d staked out was hard to beat, at least inside the city, so close to the river. The location provided almost instant access to two expressways and two major surface streets while being somewhat physically isolated.
Truthfully, the environs had had less to do with the late Major General Block’s choice of the site than the buildings themselves. The logic of his choice was hard to dispute; the electric company building, he said, would be the last to lose power and the first to get it back. Ditto the AT&T building. The perimeter included the Federal Building in the southeast corner, and the public safety headquarters (city and state police and fire) in the southwest corner. Most of the surface streets leading into the half mile square area had been blocked off to vehicular and foot traffic with concrete barriers and concertina wire.