After America (15 page)

“Missus Kipper, ma’am. You really need to come with us now.”

It was the hard edge he put on the last word that finally broke through and caught Barb’s attention.

“What’s up?” she asked, turning to him. “Is there something wrong?”

She looked around quickly but saw nothing untoward in the markets. They were crowded with midweek shoppers, most of them with their arms full of groceries. Like her, they were probably supplementing the produce nearly everyone grew these days in their home gardens or on the community plots that had taken over so much public parkland. Barb kept her face neutral and her voice low, not wanting to cause a minor panic, even though she was suddenly feeling very anxious.

“Is it Kip?” she asked as quietly as she could. “Has something happened to my husband?”

“If you’ll come with us, ma’am,” the agent insisted, taking her string bags of onions and celery and carrots and handing them off to another man, who disappeared into the throngs. Three more agents moved in around Barb and Suzie and began to maneuver them toward the exit where Pike Place swung around to climb up a slight incline back to First Avenue. Three black Chevy Suburbans were waiting under the market’s famous orange neon sign. The day had clouded over while she’d been shopping, and the lettering stood out sharply against the lowering gray sky.

Barb bit down on her irritation. She had grown used to the ways of the Service and knew they would explain all that they could once she and Suzie were safely out of harm’s way. A few people in the crowd noticed that the First Lady was cutting short her regular shopping trip, and there was a momentary surge in the background buzz, but when nobody pulled any guns or started bellowing instructions to her protection detail, the small surge in the crowd’s excitement level quickly abated. Just as the city had grown used to the First Family walking and living among them, they had become accustomed to Kipper and Barb occasionally disappearing without notice at the behest of their bodyguards. Three years after the Wave had simply vanished, the world remained a dangerous and unpredictable place. It was always a wonder to Barb that people seemed to have adapted so quickly to the arbitrary and hazardous nature of life in the new world.

“Does this mean we don’t have to have vegetables for dinner?” Suzie asked with the eternal hopefulness of childhood as she hauled herself up into the rear seat of the Suburban in the center of the little convoy.

Barb smiled nervously at her daughter. It was a little sad how quickly Suzie had also adapted to an unsettled and uncertain existence. She had been whisked away into hiding so many times in Kip’s first year as president that she took it as a natural state of being.

“Seat belt on, darling,” Barbara said, as she strained to lock in on some vital piece of intelligence from the chatter of the agents, surrounding the vehicle, fingers to their earpieces, listening to whatever information there was to be had. At times like this, Barb wished she had one of those earpieces.

“I have my belt on, Mom, but you didn’t answer my question. Are we having vegetables? Potatoes are okay, especially the crispy ones that Chef Mikey does. Is the chef cooking dinner tonight, or are you, Mommy? If we have visitors, don’t you think Chef Mikey should do the crispy potatoes?”

“Suzie, just quiet down for a moment and let Mommy get strapped in, would you?”

The agents were moving with some haste but not scrambling madly the way they had on the day Kip had ordered those Chinese planes shot down over Alaska. That day remained her yardstick for judging when the brown stuff had really hit the fan. The Suburban’s engine roared into life, and they accelerated away sharply enough to press her back into the seat. She pushed herself forward with some effort, leaning over to speak to the Secret Service man riding shotgun in the front seat.

“So what’s happening, Peter?” she asked. “Is it Kip? Is he okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the agent replied tersely as they sped up the hill and across First Avenue.

“Yes what?” Barb asked with a flash of irritation.

“Yes, ma’am. It’s your husband,” he said, but without elaborating.

“Mommy,” a small voice asked from beside her. “Is Daddy okay?”

“I’m afraid he’s dead,” the agent informed him.

“Damn,” Jed muttered.

“But I was standing just a few feet away,” Kip protested. “I didn’t get a scratch. How did he get hit?”

“Mister Koppel was struck by shrapnel, sir,” the detail chief, Agent Shinoda, replied. “It was bad luck. He died on the scene while two of my people attempted to stabilize him. One of them was wounded in doing so. Critically.”

“I’m sorry,” Kipper said. “What was his name?”

“She, sir. Agent Rachael Lonergan. She lost the lower half of her left arm. She’s supposed to be on case-vac to Kennedy, but I, uh, need to discuss that with you, Mister President. We don’t control that evac point at the moment.”

Kipper shook his head in confusion. The three men were huddled in a small subterranean room in Castle Clinton. The rocket attack had been suppressed nearly a quarter of an hour ago, and Kipper could hear only sporadic and muffled gunfire from above them. The end of the battle on Ellis Island, they told him. With no power to provide lighting, they spoke underlit by the white glow of a battery camp light that gave their faces a shadowed, haunted look.

“What do you mean you don’t control Kennedy?” the president asked.

His detail chief shook his head.

“I’m sorry, sir. Poor choice of words. We control the secured area of the airport that we came in through this morning, but it is being attacked by irregular forces.”

“Pirates?”

“Pirates, mercenary forces, irregulars,” said Shinoda. “They’re uncoordinated, but there’s a lot of them, in four, maybe five elements, an alliance of convenience most likely, cobbled together for the duration of your time in New York. We’ve seen them ally against each other at times. It would make sense for them to combine against us. Mister President, we cannot take you out of the city via Kennedy.”

“Do you think you’ll lose control of the secured area?” Kip asked.

“No, sir. A battalion from the First Cavalry Division is there along with an additional battalion of Governor Schimmel’s militia and a hundred special operators from Sandline who were on their way out after completing clearance operations in Lower Manhattan. Combined with our firebases, we have more than enough firepower to hold the position, sir. The problem is that it’s simply not safe to take you out through that facility, Mister President.”

Kip folded his arms and dropped his chin down onto his chest, the universally recognized symbol of an unhappy President Kipper. His ears were still ringing, and he had a monster headache that was refusing to disappear even after a couple of painkillers.

“Well, Agent Shinoda, I’m sure you have any number of fallback plans and alternate routes out.”

Shinoda nodded. “Yes, Mister President. We can evac you by
Marine One
to—”

“However,” Kip interrupted, “we have, what, fifteen serious casualties from the rocket attack and about twice that again in walking wounded?”

Jed Culver closed his eyes and started shaking his head.

Shinoda nodded. “Mister President—”

Culver tried to interrupt, but Kipper cut him off.

“Not a word, Jed. Agent Shinoda, what arrangements do you have for getting the really badly wounded people out? I assume they would have gone out on some sort of medical flights from Kennedy.”

Shinoda looked grim-faced as he nodded. “We’d evac them to the federal health center in North Kansas City. They’ll have to wait until we can secure the landing strip, sir.”

“That fight could go on for days,” said Kip. “Your own briefings said there were a minimum of eight or nine thousand freebooters in New York alone. And plenty more up and down the coast. They picked this fight on purpose. What makes you think they won’t just keep pouring men in to keep it going?”

“Mister President, that’s not really my area of concern. You’d need to talk to your military—”

Kip waved his hand to cut Shinoda off. “Well, at this very minute it is your concern, Agent Shinoda, because I’m making it so. Are you certain we’re not going to lose all of those wounded people while we wait for the fight at the airport to die down?”

Shinoda looked deeply uncomfortable but did his best to answer, raising his voice to be heard over the growing clatter of a helicopter that sounded as though it was setting down inside the castle’s walls.

“The irregular forces are very loosely coordinated, Mister President. In fact, calling them coordinated at all is probably an exaggeration. Maintaining a siege of the airport against superior firepower, especially with the air-to-ground assets currently servicing them, well, it’s just not feasible sir, not in the long run.”

“But our people don’t have long, do they? Our wounded, I mean. They need to get out now.”

Another Secret Service agent, this one dressed in black coveralls, appeared at the doors. “Excuse me, sirs, but
Marine One
just set down topside.”

“Mister President,” Jed said. “Perhaps if we could continue this on the chopper.”

Kipper shook his head. “Nope. I’m not getting on the chopper until the Secret Service can assure me that all of the seriously wounded have been evacuated to a secure federal facility. You can start moving them out on my helicopter. It’s equipped for this sort of thing, and I’m perfectly healthy, so I don’t need it.”

Agent Shinoda attempted to demur. “But Mister President …”

“Forget it. This isn’t a debate. I’m going to have it my way. Now Jed, you go find me whoever is in charge on the military side around here and make sure he knows what I want done. Agent Shinoda, I will stay down here if it makes your job easier, or I can relocate somewhere more secure. I’ll leave that choice to you. But I don’t leave Manhattan until the wounded are out, do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Shinoda said with visible reluctance.

“Where do you have the wounded now?”

“We established triage upstairs, Mister President, inside the old gift shop.”

“Fine.” Kipper nodded to himself. “That sounds safe, so take me there. Right now.”

Shinoda looked as though he was going to argue, but a raised eyebrow from Kipper was enough to subdue any resistance.

“Did you see any pirates, Daddy? They were on the news, but Mom wouldn’t let me see it even though you were on with the pirates, too.”

Kipper smiled as he held the handpiece to his ear and imagined his daughter back home, fed and bathed and ready for bed—safe and warm and thousands of miles away from this dead city full of murderous crazy fuckers and blood and horror and madness. Her room was next to Barb’s and his on the second floor of Dearborn House, and Kipper knew she would be sitting on the thick shag pile rug at the foot of her bed, surrounded by her closest advisers: Tigger, Barbie, and a white teddy bear dressed as a cheerleader that sang, “Oh Mickey you’re so fine you’re so fine you blow my mind …” at the merest bump or provocation. It was a hell of a lot nicer to think of than his current surroundings, in the back of an armored car somewhere in Lower Manhattan listening to Suzie’s voice through a connection of static and beeps.

“No, darling, I didn’t see any pirates,” Kipper said. “They were on another island. Now, have you brushed your teeth and said your prayers?”

The military radio beeped, indicating that Suzie was going to speak again. It really annoyed Kipper no end.

“Yes,” she said suspiciously.

“Well, then it’s bedtime, sweetheart. So climb under the covers and let Daddy speak to Mommy.”

The radio beeped again.

“Okay, night night, Daddy.”

Oh Mickey you’re so fine you’re so fine you blow my mind. Hey Mickey!

“Good night, Suzie,” he called out, but she was already gone. The next beep of the radio heralded the less pleasant segment of this call home.

“Kip, is that you? Are you okay? They said you were fine, but my God, some of the pictures on the news. All those people. I told you not to go out there. I told you. The Secret Service told you. Jed told—”

Barb had gone from relief at hearing his voice, to anxiety, to building rage all in the space of a few seconds. He had to cut her off before she lost it. Hunching over the blinking lights of the control panels in the back of the armored vehicle, cupping his hands over the mouthpiece, he tried to keep his voice down. The two army technicians in there with him did their best to pretend they couldn’t hear a word of his developing domestic argument. A bit of static washed over the transmission, cutting Barbara off and giving Kip his chance.

“Whoa, honey,” Kip said. “Just settle down. I’m fine. I am perfectly fine. Hardly a scratch. And I’m surrounded by a whole army of … army guys.”

The two army techs surreptitiously rolled their eyes at each other. Another beep of the radio signaled Barb’s biting retort.

“What do you mean, you’re surrounded by army guys? You’re supposed to be on a flight back home by now. Where are you?”

Kipper flinched at her tone of voice. This wasn’t going to be much fun.

“Well, thing is, I’m in New York …”

“What the hell are you still doing in New York City, James Everett Kipper? I swear to fucking God that you are dumb as a sack of hammers.”

The techs shrank at their posts and removed their headsets. The president reined in his temper before it got the better of him. “Two things,” he said quickly. “One, the airport we came in through wasn’t safe anymore.” He didn’t explain why. “And two, those people you saw on the news, the ones who were hurt, I put them on my chopper to get them out of here and back to KC for treatment. They’d have died, all of them, if we’d waited.”

There was a momentary pause while Barb digested that. Kipper peered out the slits in the heavy steel doors on the back of the … the … damn, he didn’t even know what kind of tank or armored car he was in. This military stuff just was not his thing. Outside on the street he could just make out figures in uniform flitting about and other vehicles moving around, some like his and some Humvees—at least he knew what a Humvee looked like.