CHAPTER NINE
The houses were single story red brick pillboxes with white siding trim, most with attached one or two car garages. Many of the lawns had gone unmowed for years, and the bushes had grown wild. In their neutral clothing the squad disappeared as they moved into the long grass. Early pulled Jason close in behind him as he hugged the corner of a house and peered up the street. The other members of the squad had also ducked in-between houses and were watching and listening. They could hear birds, and someone talking loudly a very long way off, and the soft chug of the Ford’s exhaust.
After a minute, Ed broke from the shadows of a massive yew bush and slowly moved forward, carbine up. He kept close to the houses, moving from shadow to shadow, swishing through the long grass, his eyes darting back and forth. He would have preferred to traverse the backyards of the houses toward the OP, but just about every one was enclosed by chain link. Climbing over fences was slow and usually noisy, and fences trapped you.
George began paralleling the squad leader on the opposite side of the street. He was more exposed to the early morning sun, but there was nothing he could do about that. At least they had some overhead cover; maples here and there leaned over the narrow street. He kept to the thigh-high grass and used whatever overgrown and gone-to-seed shrubs and ornamental trees he could find for concealment as he slid east. Mark, Early, and Jason silently moved out and began following him, keeping at least a house length interval between each man. Bobby and Weasel shadowed Ed, watching the far side of the street as much as their own.
At least a quarter of the houses on the street were maintained to some degree, and Ed could feel eyes on him as he picked his way across overgrown lawns and cracked driveways. He tried to ignore the crawling sensation on the back of his neck every time he went on patrol. There was no real way to predict or protect against snipers and so he did his best not to think about that one bullet. If it happened, it happened.
It was a long block, but he finally drew within five or six houses of the end of the block, The Pres, and the OP. Ed knelt behind a browning arborvitae and studied the remaining length of the street. He dug out the binoculars and examined the front of each house, each window and door, and the short section of The President where it passed in front of their side street. He saw nothing amiss. His had been the first boots in days to walk through the overlong front yards of the houses, but this far north that didn’t really mean anything. Everyone used the sidewalks and streets in this neighborhood. It was a lot different in the City.
At the corner of The Pres was a two story cube of red brick and white siding, the first of four stretching from the side street nearly to the service drive along The Pres. Ed didn’t know if they’d originally been rental units or privately owned homes, and didn’t care. He only cared about who might be inside them, especially the furthest one south. Its second-floor window provided a great view of the Ditch, both service drives, and The Pres for over a quarter mile past the expressway.
Ed signaled to the men behind him and across the street to give him more of a lead, then stood up and carefully moved forward once more. He had no doubt many of the closed garages he was passing contained cars, but nobody parked a car with gas in it—unguarded—where it could be seen. Gas was in perpetual short supply, but siphon hoses were not.
Ed reached the last house and paused underneath the gnarled branches of a flowering crab tree. Ahead of him was an expanse of grass and beyond it the row of four block houses. The fire-gutted hulks of two cars sat on their frames near the brick edifices, weeds growing through the ragged holes in their bodies. The rear doors of all four houses were gone or splintered into uselessness, and most of the glass was gone from their window frames. Ed couldn’t see anything in the shadows within the houses, but he was on high alert; parked between the center two houses, hidden from casual observation, was a battered full-size Toyota pickup.
The north-side lookout was in the second-floor window of Number One and had spotted George about ten houses away from the corner. Word had been passed, and by the time Ed paused at the last house and stared at the dark interior of Number Four half a dozen weapons were trained on him.
Standing well back from the empty window frame, the tall man peered through his binoculars at Ed. The lenses brought the squad leader’s thin face into sharp focus. The man made a sound and let the binoculars fall on their strap around his neck. With one hand on the carbine slung over his shoulder, slowly chewing a piece of turkey jerky, the man stepped forward and stopped in the open doorway in full view of their visitor.
Ed blinked as the man, wearing a plate carrier and magazine pouches, appeared suddenly in the doorway, looking right at him. The two men stared at each other for a second, then he was gone, sliding back into the shadows of the house. Ed signaled for his squad to stay put and slowly rose. He looked around once more, then, keeping both hands on his carbine but pointing it at the ground in front of him, carefully walked across the open grass to the house.
Ed stepped through the doorway and blinked as his eyes adjusted. There were three men in the room with him, two of them pointing rifles at the floor near his feet. The third was the man who’d shown himself to Ed. Ed looked at the two men covering him, his face unreadable, not moving his hands from his carbine, then moved his eyes to the tall man with the binoculars around his neck.
“Theodore,” the man said.
“Franklin,” Ed said. “You got room at the inn?”
The tall man’s face cracked open in a huge grin. “Shit, Ed, I thought you were dead. I heard you had a nasty run-in with a Toad.” He stuck out a bony hand and the two men shook.
Ed shrugged. “Weasel’s got a cracked rib, but we didn’t lose anybody.” Even inside the house they spoke quietly out of habit.
“The geriatric squad pulls one out again,” one of the two rifle-toters said, slinging his weapon over his shoulder. Ed couldn’t remember his name, Mike or Mark, but he was just a kid, maybe twenty years old. “You move pretty quiet in those silver sneakers.” Someone nearby chuckled. Ed ignored him.
“Clear to roll ‘em up?” Ed asked.
“Yeah, it’s pretty quiet today.”
Ed stepped into the doorway and signaled to George across the street. He couldn’t see George, but he knew he was somewhere over there, hunkered down, watching.
“You get a call too?”
Ed stepped back into the darkened room and looked at the tall man. “We’re compartmentalized for a reason, Tony,” was all he said.
Tony tried to suppress a grin. Ed was still Ed.
“Jesus,” Mark or Mike said in exasperation, with perhaps just a hint of admiration. His partner leaned his rifle against the wall and pulled out a canteen.
Tony tried a different tack. “Charlie said everybody was invited.” He looked at Ed with raised eyebrows.
Ed didn’t change his sour expression, but did say, “Well, then, I guess that includes us.”
Tony’s eyes rolled up toward the ceiling. “You ever wonder how many of us there are? Not just us ARF Irregulars, necessarily, but who all else is out there. Because you know they’re out there, people that just showed up, on their own, alone or in pairs, guns in hand. I’ve seen them. We’ve all seen them. More at the start of the war, but they’re still out there.”
“War tourists,” Mark/Mike said dismissively.
“It’s not tourism if they’re fighting,” Ed said sternly. “Hell, just heading into the city can get you killed whether or not you’ve got a gun in your hands. They’re not getting Uncle Charlie’s intel, but then again if they’re unaffiliated… if our network gets compromised, the Irregulars wiped out cell by cell, it won’t affect them at all. They’ll still be out there stirring up trouble. Fighting for what’s right.”