CHAPTER 17

Snowing, and Ham was bitching.

“Months of hard-assed training to join Dan Gray’s Scouts. And what are we doing?

Stringin” fence!” he said disgustedly.

Jerre laughed at him as she and Pam struggled to work the homemade come-along that pulled the wire tight.

“You can blame it on me, Ham. I don’t mind.”

“It isn’t your fault,” Tina said, hooking the wire on the post. “It’s my fault for getting up in Dad’s face. I should have known better. But Dad has his faults too. I’m his kid. I know. Dad can be awfully ruthless and vindictive.”

“That’s a trait that all world leaders and great military people have,” Doctor Ling told them. The doctor was working right along with them. “And back when the world was whole, nearly all self-made men and women, millionaires and billionaires and heads of great corporations. They have to be. That’s the way the world is.” He caught his finger in some wire and cussed. In several languages.

“Why?” Sergeant Wilson asked, when the doctor had exhausted his vocabulary of cusswords.

“Because they are dealing with, controlling, getting along with, and asking all types of personalities to follow them. They’ve got to be tough, sometimes hard, sometimes ruthless, sometimes charismatic, sometimes cruel-they’ve got to run the entire spectrum.

Very few people have that many qualities they can fall back on. Ben Raines does.”

“My people are on the ground and planting charges, General,” Dan told Ben.

“Everybody down all right?”

“They lost one man. His chute malfunctioned.”

“I’m sorry, Dan.”

“They know the risks involved in becoming a part of my Scouts.”

Ben said no more. Dan would grieve for this Scout in his own way. Stoically and wooden-faced. But grieve nevertheless. He was a hard man, in the midst of men and women just as hard-in a hard time.

Ben ordered coffee sent in and added a healthy slug of booze to each coffee. He lifted his mug.

“To the SAS and Her Majesty.”

“Thank you, sir.” He sipped and lifted his mug.

“To General Ben Raines and what he stands for,” the Englishman proposed.

“You’re putting me in awfully lofty company, Dan. But I appreciate it.”

“The Queen would have liked you, General. And so would have Maggie. They both might have had to set you down from time to time and give you a good

talking-to, but they would have liked you.”

Ben leaned back in his chair and laughed. “Yeah?

I wish I could have met them.”

“You had contact with Tina?”

“Oh, yeah, Just a few minutes ago. She and her team are busy stretching fence wire.”

Dan allowed himself a slight smile. “I’m sure they’re all thrilled with that task.”

“Oh, they seemed overjoyed at it.”

Coffee finished, Ben shrugged into battle harness and picked up his Thompson. “You ready to go to work?”

The Rebels pushed on, fighting through the snow and the slush and the cold of that day. West and his people bulled their way toward the center of Lower Manhattan and by late afternoon had linked up with Ben and his teams in Confucius Plaza. Ike and Cecil and their troops were still some blocks away, battling all up and down Lafayette.

“You check out the Manhattan Savings Bank, West?” Ben asked.

“Yes. Very interesting architecture. It’s been looted, of course.”

The Manhattan Savings Bank, a branch of it, located in Chinatown, had been built in the shape of a Chinese temple.

“Find anything else interesting?”

The mercenary and the Rebel locked gazes. West knew what Ben was leading up to; he had been noting the same thing all day. “With few exceptions, General, the looting was done sanely and selectively. Someone with a good eye picked over the jade, the ivory, the silks and brocades. And I get the feeling it was not done for profit.”

“That’s the feeling I got, too. That someone did it with an eye on the future.”

“But who?”

Ben shrugged. “Good question. I’ve tried several times today to reestablish contact with those living under the city.

No luck. Katzman just told me he’s tried a dozen times to contact those living around Central Park. They refuse to answer.”

“Has he picked up any chatter from them-among themselves?”

“Just a bit. They’re operating with CB’S. And they speak in code. A very simple code.

Intelligence broke it very quickly.”

Dan walked up, to stand listening.

Ben brought him up to date, ending with, “It seems that the primary reason they are reluctant to make contact is that someone among them is afraid I’m going to kill him.”

“Then you are assuming they are unfriendlies?” the mercenary asked.

Ben shook his head. “No. I don’t see how they could be since they speak of killing Night P.”

“I wonder how they’re heating their apartments?”

“I think I figured that out, too,” Ben replied.

“What’s the one thing that stands out as missing in almost every building-the thing we’ve had to bring in from outside the city?”

“Furniture,” Dan pegged it. “That is to say, anything wooden.”

“Precisely. For a time they did that. Then I got to wondering why, when our people did their flybys, the city was so free of smoke. The Night People, filthy beings that they are, seem to huddle together for a sharing of warmth.

Their main CP, let’s call it, as the heat-seekers have shown us, is probably the old Columbia University complex. They’re packed in there like rotten sardines. I studied the pictures of the flybys. Some smoke is coming from there. But the people around Central park-that’s a different story. I went back to the blowups.” He held out his hand and Jersey gave him a map case. Ben pulled out a dozen blowups and laid them on the hood of a truck. “Look here. On top of these buildings.”

“Well, I’ll just be damned!” West exclaimed.

“They’re not dummies, General. They’ve built solar equipment to trap the sun as a course of energy, converting that into heat.”

Dan studied the blowups. “Yes. Obviously they have some means of storing whatever they pull in, probably by heating water. Although I will admit that I don’t understand all that I know about solar power.”

“An observation, General?” West asked.

“Of course.”

The mercenary tapped the blowups. “Professional people live here. For the most part. People with education-although that learning might not be in the form of earned degrees, I’d wager that many of them are college graduates.”

“I tend to agree with you,” Ben said. “But if that is the case, why would they think I would want to do them harm?”

The sky had increased the intensity of falling snow, and the Rebels shifted locations, moving under an awning. Jersey was studying the blowups. Ben watched her for a moment.

“What have you found, Jersey?”

She looked up at him. “Solar power is not the only thing those people over by the park are using, General.

Look here. You got to look hard to see them, because they’re painted to same color as the rooftops.”

“What?” Dan leaned closer.

“A whole bunch of little-bitty windmills.”

Ben had removed his boots and socks-his feet had been soaked for hours-and was rubbing some warmth back into his feet, sitting on a couch in his office. “Rubber boots,” he told Beth.

“Make a memo for Katzman to send to Base Camp One. We need rubber boots. Insulated types. Get them up here pronto.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Solar energy and windmills,” Ben mused.

“Educated people, and yet they’re afraid of me.

Why?”

“A lot of educated people are scared of you, General,”

Jersey bluntly informed him.

Ben stared at her, amazement etching his features.

No one had ever told him that before. “What do you mean, Jersey? I don’t burn books and destroy institutions of higher learning. We reopen schools wherever

we go. Why would an educated person be afraid of me? And where did you hear that?”

She sat down on the edge of his desk. “Hell, General, everybody has heard that. How many ex-college professors and hotshot writers and TV people and those types are in the Rebel ranks?”

Ben didn’t have the vaguest idea. There were several thousand Rebels in New York City alone, another thousand spread out all over the nation, patrolling and setting up outposts and recruiting and what-have-you. Joe Williams was commanding a full battalion back at Base Camp One. Juan Solis and Alvaro had set up a tiny version of Tri-States in the Southwest. Ben couldn’t be expected to know the names and previous occupations of everybody in his army.

“I don’t know, Jersey. How many?”

“Maybe five or six. Ask General

Jefferys. He’ll tell you the same thing. They just don’t like our form of government.”

That didn’t come as any surprise to Ben; but he had never given it much thought.

“Too repressive, huh, Jersey?”

She shrugged. “Not for me. But for them? … I guess so. You remember how much hell the professor-types raised when the military put you in the White House.”

Ben had forgotten all about the fury raised from academia-ville during his short stay as President. He had been trying to put the country back together and those yoyos were resorting to 1960’s tactics, trying to burn it down again.

He caught the folded-up socks she tossed him.

“Screw “em,” Ben muttered. He put on dry boots and stood up, slipping into battle harness. “Let’s go get something to eat. Damn, I’m hungry.”

Ben put the puzzle of why the midtown survivors were so afraid of him out of his mind and stepped out onto the street at four-thirty the next morning. This time he did not have to worry about startling any guards, for his new office building had shifts working all night long: in communications, intelligence, supply, evacuation, transportation, service and personnel.

They were skeleton crews, to be sure, but each department was staffed on a twenty-four-hour basis.

Dan’s call turned him around. He stood with West and Ike and Cecil and Chase. “We’ve been waiting for you, General,” the Englishman said.

“We’ll walk to breakfast with you. Tell you about a few new tricks we ran up on during the night.”

Over a breakfast of beef and gravy over biscuits-better known universally as Shit on Shingle-Dan dropped it on him.

“The creepies are smartening up, General. It’s really going to be slow going from here on in.”

Ben looked at him, waiting.

“It appears as the creepies pull back, they’re booby trapping everything they can,”

“Damn!” Ben said.

Chase took it. “We lost two last night.

Three more were hurt so badly they’re out of it for the duration.”

“What kinds of booby traps?”

Ike shrugged. “All kinds, Ben. Trip wire, swing stakes, signal-breaker types. Some of them are crude, some are very, very fancy.”

Ben chewed for a moment and took a sip of coffee.

Jersey and Beth and Cooper sat at the next table. They were all three privy to everything that might be said. Traitors in the Rebel army were a rare thing, and when they were caught the punishment was always the same: they were put up against a wall and shot.

“Well, people,” Ben said, “let’s go back to the military classrooms; we’ve all been there. The class is called Estimate of the Situation.”

Ike groaned.

Ben smiled. “You take the pointer, Ike.”

“Thanks a bunch, Ben!” the ex-Seal

said. “OK. Number one: mission. Number two: situation and courses of action. Number three: analysis of opposing courses of action. Number four: comparison of our own courses of action. And number five: the decision-who, what, when, where, how, and why.”

“We know the mission,” West took it.

“Our situation,” Dan said, “while not grim, could certainly be better. Our course of action is going to have to be much slower, with much more caution. We’re going to have to accept the fact that our use of explosives will be much greater. That’s for our own safety. Many of the buildings we’ll encounter are ready for the wrecking ball anyway. And while we’re at it, let’s talk about chemicals.”

“I thought we rejected that idea,” Chase spoke up.

“We rejected the use of lethal chemicals,”

Ben told him. “Not incapacitating ones such as a hydrolytic form of H-series. Which we have plenty of, by the way.” Ben did not wait for any further discussion on that matter. His was the final say, and he was not going to risk the lives of his people unnecessarily. “Beth. Tell Katzman

to honk at Base Camp One. Tell

Joe to start shipping up the H-series. Mustard and Blister. We can mix it here. And tell him we wanted it yesterday.” Ben stood up. “Stay put.

I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” He walked away, Jersey and the squad of bodyguards trooping behind him.

“Now what do you suppose he’s up to now?” Chase tossed the question out.

Ben went to the same manhole cover and pounded on it with a wrench. “You better talk to me, people. All Hell is about to break loose.” Silence. “Now, goddamn it, I’ve tried to contact you on the frequency you gave me. You won’t reply. I’m trying to save your lives. Now, by God, talk to me.”

“All right, General Raines” the voice was muffled but understandable, and coming from directly under Ben’s feet.

“You are who you say you are. Forgive our suspicions. We each have news; I will share mine first. The survivors around Central Park are very anxious to link up with you and your Rebels. Their leader is named Gene Savie. He is fearful of you killing his father should you meet.”

Ben looked up at Jersey. “You ever heard of anybody called Savie?”

She shook her head. “No, sir.”

“Those people have nothing to fear from me,” Ben called.

“Nevertheless, this is their reason for not answering your calls. Now what is your news?”

“A question first?”

“Of course.”

“Do you people ever come out into the light?”

“Only during the day. But not in a long time and not since you and your army have arrived in the city. We used to come out to kill Night People while they slept. Then they became too many for us to cope with.”

“How do you live?”

“We grow foods organically in hothouses. We are entirely vegetarians and really eat quite well.

There is no cause for you to worry about us in that respect.”

“You speak like an educated man.”

“I have my doctorate in Philosophy.”

“How far away can you get from this area? The area being from here up to West Fifty-seventh Street.”

“None of us live in this area. We only came this far down because you were here.”

“Then clear out. We’re being forced to use something I had hoped we could avoid.”

“Is it lethal?”

“No. But a prolonged concentrated exposure to it might be.”

“I thank you, General Raines. We’ll talk again when you reach the survivors around the Park.”

Ben put his ear to the cold metal and could hear the sounds of footsteps vanishing, probably down a steel ladder. Ben stood up.

“How do you know you can trust him, General?” Jersey asked.

“I don’t. But sometimes, Jersey, you just have to play your hunches.”