“All together,” George said without hesitation. “If anybody is out there watching I want all of us across before they have a chance to plan any surprises. And if they try something, it’ll be both of us pouring fire into them.”
“Well, I’ll defer to your guys’ judgment,” Tony said, frowning. “You’ve got the experience.” As far as he was concerned, two cars together was far too big of a target, but George wasn’t wrong either. There was no way to cross the Ditch without putting a big target on your back.
“I don’t want to burn too much daylight here.” George said.
“No,” Ed agreed. He dug out the small tablet and handed it to George. “That photo we downloaded earlier is over an hour old now. See if you can pull up a more recent one. I’m going to go up and get eyes on.”
Mark or Mike visibly straightened as Ed paused in the bedroom doorway. Theodore’s squad leader had as much of a reputation as anyone could have in their compartmentalized organization, and the young man eyed him appraisingly as the thin, bespectacled man stood in the center of the dim room and peered out the small window set high in the far wall.
“You Mark or Mike?” Ed asked without turning around.
“Mike.”
Ed glanced over his shoulder at the young man sitting at the table behind the spotting scope, then back out the window. Mike looked nervous.
“Seen anything?”
“Half a dozen on foot, and two vehicles in the past half hour or so.”
“Vehicles?”
“Passenger cars. Small, scooting along the far service drive.”
“Hmmm.” Ed lifted his binoculars to his eyes. He was far enough back from the window that light wouldn’t reflect off the lenses, but he still took a careful half step back as he studied the crossing.
The Interstate known as the Ditch, with its eight lanes split by a four-foot cement wall, was out of sight, a concrete channel carved into the earth thirty feet below street level. Once it had been the area’s busiest road traveled by tens of thousands every day, cutting through the meat of the northern suburbs. No one used it anymore; rubble from damaged and downed overpasses had rendered it impassable, at least to anything larger than motorcycles. The service drives on either side were used regularly.
The President where it crossed the Ditch was pockmarked by explosive damage so old nobody remembered if it had been caused by grenades, mortars, or an IED. Pedestrians could navigate its span safely, but vehicles had to use the intact crossovers a hundred yards to either side. Residential streets ran off the service drive to the south, the houses so close to the Ditch their second floor windows almost overlooked the abandoned traffic lanes far below. At the southwest corner of the intersection was the wreckage of a gas station, destroyed in a fire near the start of the war. Across the Pres from the station was a small strip mall, the stores now dusty and vacant.
Ed played his binoculars over the front of the mall first, looking for movement or signs of human occupation, then turned to the houses visible along the service drive. The Army had, in years past, set up observation posts of its own overlooking undamaged crossing points of the Ditch. They themselves were usually spotted within twenty-four hours. What followed was a consistent pattern—harassing sniper fire, usually mixed with well-aimed 40mm grenades and the odd RPG, and in a day or a week the Army would abandon the post. The Army tried using tanks or armored fighting vehicles as mobile OPs at some of the crossing points, but anything the guerrillas couldn’t destroy they just avoided, and those OPs never had anything to report.
The house closest to the twisted gas pumps showed sign of having been used as an Army OP some time past; its entire second floor had been obliterated by RPGs. Ed let his binoculars drop on their strap, then on second thought pulled them over his head and held them out. “Let me get on that,” he said to Mike. The young man got up from behind the spotting scope, taking the proffered binoculars, and Ed settled in behind the glass. What it lost in field-of-view over the binos was more than made up for by its thirty-power magnification.
Ed set his glasses on the table so he could get his eye closer to the scope and adjusted the focus on its eyepiece. The shabby houses across the ditch jumped out at him, their siding shimmering in the heat mirage. He studied the black rectangles of their windows, looking for glints of light, movement, anything that might indicate the crossing was under surveillance. After ten minutes his eye hurt and he was starting to get a headache.
He pulled his head back from the spotting scope and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know how snipers do it,” he said quietly.
Mike was standing off to one side, using the binoculars. “Here,” he said. He dug into his pocket and produced a foil-wrapped stick of gum.
“Thanks,” Ed said in surprise. He hadn’t seen any gum in over a year, and even though the stick was initially hard as ceramic he chewed it with appreciation.
George popped his head through the doorway, saw Mike, then found Ed with his gaze. “Nothing new,” he told Ed, referencing the satellite photography. “Tony’s good to go, unless you’ve got something.”
“Probably too much to hope for,” Ed mused. He put his glasses back on and stared out the window. “Other side looks clear. Why don’t you give everybody the heads up. Five minutes.”
“Roger that.” George’s head disappeared.
With a grunt Ed stood and moved from behind the table. “All yours,” he told Mike. He stuck a hand out for his binoculars. “You see anything, you let someone know.”
“Yes Sir.”
CHAPTER TEN
The word had been passed—five minutes. Jason wasn’t sure why everybody was nervous, but they were, and it was making him twitchy as well. “Did somebody see something?” he asked Early, as the big man checked his kit.
“If they had, we wouldn’t be standing here with our thumbs up our behinds,” Early said. He pointed at the wall in the general direction of the Ditch. “That road ain’t the city limits, but south a it’s where things tend to get excitin’. Once we hit the border, well, that’s a whole ‘nother world.”
The Ditch was as much a psychological boundary as it was a physical one. To the men in the squads, everything south of the Ditch was enemy territory, even though they were three miles from the actual city limits and plenty of civilians still lived between the Ditch and the Border, as they called the city limit.
“Don’t worry,” Jeff told him. Jason looked at him, a young man not much older than he was. “When the shooting starts you’ll figure out real quick what to do.” Tavon nodded in agreement.
“Or you won’t,” Mark said, fiddling with the SAW’s sling. He looked up at Jason. “Either way it’ll be over quick.” Jason didn’t know how to react to the statement, delivered without inflection. Jeff and Tavon just looked at Mark, then busied themselves checking their weapons.
George stood near the center of the shadowy room, snapping his carbine up to his shoulder, aiming out the empty window frame at a loose brick sitting in the grass about thirty feet away. Tony’s young fighter, Mark, looked on silently in amusement. Tony caught his expression out of the corner of his eye.
“You see something funny?” he snapped.
The young man quickly shook his head and looked away. George glanced around, not sure what he’d just missed, then jumped up and down a few times, trying to loosen tense muscles and make sure nothing in his kit rattled. Ed stepped in through the doorway, blinking his eyes. It was a bright sunny day outside, and in comparison the inside of the small houses were dark as caves.