“Harry, are you in?” Lea asked.
“You haven’t exactly given us a lot of details. We show up at a dock tonight, you pick us up, and we kill Jerry and Anthony. Is that it?”
“That’s the bottom line.”
“I’m in,” Jack said.
His instant decision didn’t come as a huge surprise. Jack always thought with his heart rather than his head. With our previous plan screwed and a larger enemy force on the horizon, I had to agree with him. We were neutralized and could run away, wash our hands of this thing, but I wanted revenge.
“Count us in,” I said. “Nine hours to get ready and up to City Island.”
“You need explosives to blow up the control unit.”
“Leave that to us,” Jack said.
It all seemed too easy. Lea turning up and serving up two of our mortal enemies on a plate. Perhaps I was being too cynical, but who could blame me?
“Are you sure about Martina?” I said. “She’s been an important part of the operation for years and obviously knows Anthony and Jerry.”
“I’ve been with her every day since I split with you guys. I know her; she’s serious about it.”
“What about HQ?” Jack said. “Are we just doing their job for them? Do we need to really do this?”
“You know there’s nothing guaranteed in this world.”
“If your HQ doesn’t show up,” I said, “we’ll end the local team tonight.”
The final words stirred something inside of me. From a hopeless situation a few hours ago, we had been handed a new lease on life.
Lea smiled. “Thanks, guys. I knew if I reached out, you’d be able to help.”
“What about afterward?” Jack asked.
“We’re planning to move south, down to Florida.”
“Living in fear?” I said. “Lea, I want to survive too, but we’ve seen enough shit recently to give us another purpose. If we want any kind of a society, we need to take the fight to GA on a grander scale.”
“Do you think it’s possible to get away from these people?” Jack added.
She checked her gun and started to walk away. “We can talk about this if we pull it off tonight. I need to get back. See you at ten?”
“We’ll be at City Island dock,” Jack said. “Make sure you are.”
“One last thing, Lea,” I asked. “Why are some people acting so weird? I mean, way beyond the weirdness of killers?”
She looked over her shoulder. “There are all kinds of aftereffects, apparently. One of the techs said there’s been a high error ratio in the software. Don’t ask me to explain.”
With that, she jogged away and disappeared from view, back toward the factory entrance.
“I’m looking forward to this,” Jack said. “We’ve got a chance to settle a few scores here.”
“Can’t say I’m that convinced,” I said. “We can go with it for now, but something tells me this isn’t as straightforward as she’s telling us.”
“What about Morgan?” Jack asked. “I knew we couldn’t trust him, but I didn’t expect him to go running to GA.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Let’s hold off the celebrations until we get this thing done.”
I could understand Jack’s excitement, but Lea seemed hesitant, and her association with Genesis Alliance over the last few days deeply concerned me. From what she’d said, they were also in disarray, and desperate people do desperate things. I remembered the picture of Martina with Anthony from his house in Hermitage, and that she had the launch codes. What did we really know about her motives?
We moved away from the factory. I slipped into the Ravel Hotel back on Queens Boulevard and took a local map from the reception desk. A man and woman lay next to a pair of suitcases in the lobby, surrounded by shattered glass.
The most sensible route to Flushing Meadows, avoiding Elmhurst, was cutting through Astoria, past La Guardia airport, straight to the stadium. The main routes were mostly cluttered with vehicles, giving us plenty of cover and places to hide if we noticed anything unusual.
An elevated steel structure ran above us on 31st Street, supporting a railway track. We walked under it, and I noticed it needed maintenance and repainting. Without protection, the steel would corrode and fail. I wondered how long the city had left before it started to collapse. Bursts of automatic gunfire rattled in the distance for around a minute.
“Do you think that’s GA at Bernie’s?” Jack asked.
“Could be any number of things. We’ll have to be careful at the stadium. I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to go back to find out what happened to their guys.”
We reached Tribora Plaza and headed in an easterly direction, soon joining the Grand Central Parkway. On our right, we passed St. Michael’s Cemetery; loving headstones formed neat rows. On the road outside, the dead lay scattered around in random formations. The juxtaposition changed from death and life to respectful and profane.
A short distance along the parkway we passed La Guardia Airport. Two planes were parked at angles on the runway; both had their slides deployed. Lea had arrived on one of them from Detroit. The terminal building windows glinted in the midday sun. We left JFK burning to the ground.
“Down,” Jack said.
He crisply indicated to our front. I crouched and looked under and around the vehicles to see if I could spot any hidden killers. In the Army, we were taught not to point, but to use a flat hand when indicating direction. I had slipped out of the habit long ago, but Jack often did it.
A cat hopped onto a car’s hood around fifty yards ahead of us and licked its paw. I lowered my rifle and continued forward, swept around a bend to the right, then crossed back on to Shea Road and stopped short of Flushing Meadows.
I leaned against a tree, took a package of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups out of my backpack, and tossed one to Jack. Its black paper tray fluttered to the grass, but he caught the important part and stuffed it in his mouth.
“Straight in and out of here,” I said. “I hate the idea that GA have been all over this place in the last couple of days.”
“If they came by boat and they’re now in Elmhurst, maybe we can ambush them. Take half of the crew out early.”
“Let’s follow Lea’s plan. We want them sweating about their Headquarters. Let’s not give them a sniff that we’re planning to strike Hart Island.”
Due to Morgan’s cleanup operation around the stadium, there were limited hiding places for killers and goons. Most corpses from the second activation were recognizable. As much as his death had stirred little emotion inside me, I still had grudging respect for his work here. We followed the same route we had before: through the fire door, up the stairs, and straight to the storeroom.
I grabbed the grenades and stuffed half of them into the top of my pack. Jack cleared some space in his, putting in chocolate and water, and placed more grenades into his bag. They looked like the British fragmentation type, with a pin and a timer.
I grabbed a pair of binoculars and two fully loaded Glocks, and dropped the cattle prod.
“A couple of those goons on the court looked roughly our size,” Jack said. “Saves us a shopping trip. I’d rather get to our pickup point early.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
After observing the arena from our corporate suite, we headed down to the playing area. The three GA corpses still lay in the positions where they’d fallen, among members of the company. I judged the corpse by the net as the closest fit to me. Rigor mortis had set in, and I couldn’t maneuver the clothes from his stiff body. Using my knee as a brace on his chest, I snapped his arms over his head and freed the sweater. The cargo pants came off more easily, and I swapped my clothes. I grimaced when I pulled the sweater over my head. This man had a serious body odor problem. I rubbed my fingers across a light-blue embroidered GA logo across my left breast. I couldn’t understand the point of branding their uniforms if they were the only formal group left on Earth.