Shadow Ops 3: Breach Zone (28 page)

‘Better get this hatch secured,’ Bookbinder said, his throat closing with grief.

He slumped as Marks and one of the sailors got the hatch shut and put the dogs in place just as the first goblins threw themselves against it, shouting and banging on the metal surface with spear butts and knives. Shots sounded from the bridge again as Bonhomme reloaded and opened fire.

They were silent for a moment before Marks sighed, ‘Come on, sir. Let’s get up to the bridge and see what we can see.’

He stationed one sailor on the hatch, all that could be spared now, and the two of them climbed the ladder, shivering from exhaustion and sadness. They reached the bridge to find Bonhomme pulling himself back inside the window, smoking rifle empty on the deck behind him.

The ship shuddered. The bow jerked suddenly, a huge wave materializing twenty feet past it and rolling slowly forward. The goblins cried out in a single voice. Bookbinder and Marks went to Bonhomme’s side in time to see them pointing at the water, shaking with fury, leaping off the deck.

Then the stink hit them. Fetid, deep, and rotten, as if a century’s worth of garbage left at the bottom of the ocean had bubbled skyward. ‘What the fu . . .’ Marks began, then went silent.

All around the
Breakwater
’s bow, dark fluid rose to the surface, steaming the disgusting odor into the air. Chunks of something that Bookbinder couldn’t identify floated in the midst of it. The dark liquid swirled, viscous and thick, breaking off into separate clouds, fed by funnels of the stuff from the leviathan’s shape below.

A shape that was growing smaller as the creature sank, fins and tail thrashing.

‘What would you call that?’ Bonhomme asked.

‘A direct hit,’ Bookbinder said.
You did it, Bosun.
He tracked the direction of the blooming liquid to the giant monster’s front and knew Rodriguez hadn’t died for nothing. ‘Right between the eyes.’

Chapter Fifteen

Reunion

Let’s get this straight. You build an entire legal framework dedicated to persecuting and punishing those who deign to use magic outside your arbitrary guidelines. Then, you’re surprised when the pariahs you’ve created make war on you? The only Selfer threat is the one you made for yourself. America is a nation choking on its own hypocrisy.

– Adam Berrin
The Nation Online

With the death of their leviathan, the fight went out of the goblins. They made a few more halfhearted attempts as the
Breakwater
limped along on its single engine but seemed unwilling to stray far from the slowly spreading stain on the surface that marked the monster’s final resting place. Bonhomme gave the weapons-free order and a few well-placed shots convinced them that they didn’t want back on the buoy deck.

Bookbinder looked away as they retrieved Rodriguez from the ruined crane. His last sight had been of her face locked in a determined grimace, hell-bent on saving their lives. He wanted to remember her that way. The sailors seemed to be grateful to be left alone to tend to their own, and Bookbinder was content to leave them that way.
Thanks, Bosun,
he thought, making his way back to the bridge.

As Fort Wadsworth came into view, the dull thudding of rotors sounded, and Bookbinder made out two Blackhawk helicopters growing on the horizon. Their door gunners pumped a few short bursts of fire into the depths off the
Breakwater
’s starboard quarter, and the goblins finally gave up the fight altogether, the churning water finally going still. Bookbinder forced down the anger that rose at their appearance, but Marks gave it voice. ‘Better late than never.’

The helos hovered over the ship. Bookbinder guessed they were trying to radio, but now had a good look at the damaged radar mast. They finally came as low as they could before tossing out a handheld radio wrapped in a poncho liner. Marks ran down to retrieve it, held it to his ear, and returned to the bridge with an arched eyebrow.

‘It’s for you,’ he said, handing the radio to Bookbinder.

Bookbinder took it. ‘General Bookbinder.’

‘General, this is Chief Warrant Officer Grieves from Incident Command Post Battery Park. I’m glad you’re all right. We need to take you back to Manhattan.’

‘I’m fine, but we’ve got dead and wounded on board. This ship is in a bad way.’

‘Drop anchor where you are. We’ll load up the whole crew and take them in. We can use the help.’

‘No way,’ Bonhomme said. ‘This is my ship. I’m not scuttling her, and I’m not abandoning her.’

Bookbinder relayed this to the helo. Grieves’s response was doubtful. ‘You sure you can make it? You look . . . beat up from here.’

Bonhomme’s eyes flashed. ‘It’s not even a mile from the pier. I can get her in.’

‘Negative. No liftoff needed, they’ll get in on their own power,’ Bookbinder translated. He turned to Bonhomme. ‘It’s fine, skipper. You take your ship home.’

‘I’m sorry, I . . .’

Bookbinder couldn’t bear to hear it. He remembered cowering before the bullying commander of FOB Frontier, Colonel Taylor, as the man’s spit flew across the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t been equal to the task, unable to stand up when he needed to.

Until, suddenly, he had.

Bonhomme’s course was different, but too similar for Bookbinder to hold any grudge for his initial panic. He’d rallied. Bookbinder would have gone to pieces trying to hold FOB Frontier together if it hadn’t been for Crucible, rock-steady at his side.
I guess we all have our Crucibles. I was Bonhomme’s.

‘All right,’ Grieves said. ‘They can head in, but you need to come right now, sir.’

Bookbinder hesitated a moment. A part of him rebelled against leaving the
Breakwater
after all they’d been through, but the real fight was on the island. Manhattan by helo was closer and faster than Staten Island on this limping ship.

He turned to Bonhomme and Marks. ‘Gentlemen.’

Bonhomme stared, Marks inclined his head. ‘We’ll get back, then we’ll get in the fight.’

‘I’ve got a feeling that’s where I’ll be,’ Bookbinder said. ‘See you soon.’

Bonhomme insisted on caring for his own, but the crew carefully wrapped Ripple’s corpse in blankets, hoisting it up after Bookbinder. He stared at the rumpled cloth in the bottom of the helo cabin as they headed inland, the
Breakwater
slowly dwindling to a speck below them.

The two helicopters encountered no resistance as they covered the rest of the distance to Manhattan’s southern tip, where one broke off to make for the northern barricades while the other descended slowly over Castle Clinton.

Bookbinder looked out of the open cabin. The park below was still burning in patches, strewn with rubble and fragments of smoking metal. Corpses were neatly stacked in a pile outnumbering the living. The survivors were near corpses themselves, filthy, ragged, and exhausted. Dead vermin were scattered everywhere, pigeons and rats mostly. Two soldiers were straining with entrenching tools, shoveling them into a pile that was already so high it threatened to topple over on them.

My God. What the hell happened here?

The Blackhawk touched down, and Bookbinder cradled Ripple’s corpse in his arms. No sooner had he stepped out than the defenders began to load up the open cabin space with wounded and a few civilians. They moved mechanically, eyes hollow, paying no attention to the star on his uniform, too tired to notice or care.

Bookbinder laid Ripple gently on the ground, then tapped an airman on the shoulder. The man’s rank had been lost when his sleeve burned away. The arm beneath was covered with bandages already stained yellow and red from the wound beneath.

The airman looked up at him, blinked. Then his eyes fell across the star and he slowly dragged his hand up in a salute. ‘Sorry, General.’

Bookbinder returned the salute, realized he was uncovered. He’d lost his patrol cap somewhere during the fighting on the
Breakwater
. Too tired to care, he waved the salute off. ‘I think we’re past protocol for now, son. What’s going on?’

The airman gestured toward the castle interior. ‘Colonel Thorsson can explain everything, sir. You bringing help?’

They look like they could use it.

‘Sure, I am.’ The lie turned his stomach, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell the truth. Not to this exhausted kid. ‘Help’s on the way.’

The airman nodded and stumbled off, shuffling like the walking dead.

Bookbinder made his way to the castle entrance. Two bulletproof barriers stood to either side, signs of a guard post that had once been set up here though it wasn’t manned now.

Inside, soldiers worked in silence, triaging wounded, dispensing ammunition, all with the same hollow desperation Bookbinder had seen in the airman’s eyes.

Lieutenant Colonel Thorsson leaned over a map sketched in charcoal pencil on butcher paper, talking in hushed tones with a young captain. Harlequin looked up as Bookbinder walked in, his expression igniting.

He reached Bookbinder in two strides and shook his hand hard enough to sprain his wrist. ‘Oh, thank God. Thank fucking God. It’s so good to see you, sir.’

Bookbinder gently pushed him back, nodded to the captain, who grinned despite a bloody bandage indicating the loss of an eye.

‘Good to see you, too, Colonel. I would have come sooner, but we had goblin trouble out on the water.’

‘There’s goblin trouble everywhere, sir. Our problem is the mountain gods. We need something that can hurt them.’

‘The SOC can hurt them.’

‘The SOC’s pinned down, sir. Mescalero.’

‘Mescalero . . . ?’ Bookbinder began.

‘It’s right on top of our nuclear arsenal at White Sands,’ the captain said. ‘We can’t afford to lose control over that Breach.’

Bookbinder shook his head. ‘Jesus.’

‘We were short on magical support to begin with. Working mostly off training Covens here, and few enough of them as it is. We just got hit again, and hard.’

Bookbinder remembered the court of Ajathashatru the Fifth. The Naga Raja had kept him virtually imprisoned there in the hopes of using his power to imbue the naga arsenal with magic.

‘Magic bullets. You need me to make magic bullets.’

‘Can you do that for us, sir? Our only other option is to reach out to some Selfer gangs in theater. I was just talking to Captain Cormack about doing that. With you here, we won’t have to.’

Bookbinder had always put his duty first, but he didn’t have a star on his chest for no reason. If there was a time to use his rank, it was now. ‘First, I’ve got someone I need to bury.’

‘Respectfully, sir, we’ve got plenty of people to bury.’

‘Then let’s do right by all of them. We can’t fight standing knee-deep in our own dead.’ He took in Harlequin’s shadowed eyes, his matted, bloody scalp. ‘Let’s take a minute to lick our wounds. Then we can get back in the fight.’

At Harlequin’s request, Drake magicked a tomb for Hewitt’s remains in the concrete foundation of the castle. There was little left to bury, but Harlequin had insisted. The Novice had even raised Hewitt’s name in stone letters over the spot. ‘He fought like a lion to hold this ground,’ Harlequin said. ‘He shouldn’t give it up now.’

Drake also opened a hole big enough for a mass grave. The Novice seemed eager for the chance to do something, looked gratefully at Bookbinder when he’d given him the detail. He took him aside as the bodies were laid in the pit as gently as could be, which, given so many corpses and so few hands to do the work, wasn’t very gentle at all.

‘Listen, Novice. I’ve got someone . . . important to me.’ He pointed at Ripple’s corpse, a tiny shape under the blanket. ‘I want you to take care of that one for me. Put her apart, deeper down. Do it right.’

Drake’s jaw set. His eyes focused, and Bookbinder knew he’d made the right call. ‘What’d she do, sir?’

‘She saved my life,’ Bookbinder said. ‘I want a grave I can visit.’

Drake nodded and set off. Bookbinder finally let himself return to Castle Clinton, where he slumped in a folding chair, sipping on bottled water. He let his head loll forward, eyes half-closing. His uniform was still striped with sweat and long ochre streaks that could have been older blood or might have been rust from the
Breakwater
. White patches bloomed across the fabric.
Salt.
He smiled inwardly.
I’m a real sailor now.

He looked up. Harlequin had come into the room and sat down across from him, though he was too tired to notice when. He raised his head with an effort. Harlequin’s eyes were half-shut, with bruised-looking half-moons beneath them.
When was the last time he slept?
Bookbinder wondered.
My God, that’s what I look like, isn’t it?

‘You okay?’ Bookbinder asked.

Harlequin didn’t bother to look up, reveling in the rest that came from simply allowing his neck to take the weight of his head. He half shrugged. ‘Picking ’em up and putting ’em down, sir.’

Bookbinder floated on his fatigue, stared off into the middle distance.

‘You know, Gatanas said I was supposed to surrender command to you once you arrived,’ Harlequin said.

Bookbinder snorted. ‘Hell, no. You’ve got things as well in hand as they can be.’

Silence followed, then he laughed, a short bark.

‘What?’ Harlequin asked.

‘It’s just that, when we were at the FOB, the only thing I really wanted in life was to be a real dyed-in-the-wool commander. Now I’m doing it, and I can’t think of anything I want less.’

Harlequin nodded. ‘You got back with your family?’

‘I’m in the doghouse with Julie,’ Bookbinder said. ‘Maybe if we win this thing and get medals from the president on TV, she’ll get over it.’

‘In the doghouse?’ Harlequin raised an eyebrow.

‘She’s . . . distant. I guess you’re away from a person for a really long time, then when I got back, they wouldn’t let me see her. Between the tests and the questioning, I never really came home. All that time, she’s hearing from the news and the other officers’ wives that I’m some kind of traitor. That can put cracks in a person.’

‘Or make her draw closer to you. That’s what should happen.’

Bookbinder shook his head. ‘We took up with one another in high school. She waited for me through academy, through every tour since. The Army was my life, same as yours. We’ve lived on or near a post since she was seventeen. All her friends are service. Everywhere we go. Everything we do. Did.’

Harlequin’s face was a mix of surprise and sympathy.

‘Ah, never mind,’ Bookbinder said. ‘She’ll come around.’

He didn’t know that, but somehow, saying it helped him believe it. ‘Once we beat this thing, that’ll make everything right, right?’

Harlequin snorted. ‘Most definitely, sir.’

‘Don’t get married.’

‘No danger of that.’

‘You got someone waiting for you?’

Harlequin was silent for a long time. ‘There was somebody. It didn’t work out.’

‘Happens to all of us. You move on.’

‘I never did, I guess.’

‘You’re a young man. Good-looking. You’ve been all over TV. I figured you’d have taken up with some vapid, music-video starlet. Hell, if things don’t work out with Julie, I am most definitely sowing my oats again for a while.’

Harlequin didn’t answer, and Bookbinder realized with a start that his back had gone stiff and his expression blank.

‘Ah, hell. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.’

‘It’s all right, sir,’ Harlequin said. ‘It’s just that we’ve got a lot of work to do.’

‘Of course. Let’s get to it.’ They walked out of Castle Clinton and headed toward the barricade wall, saying no more of it, but Bookbinder’s mind churned.
What happened to him?

‘I’m SOC, aren’t I?’ Bookbinder asked, trying to regain the friendly course of the conversation.

Harlequin arched an eyebrow, tapped one finger against the SOC patch Velcroed to Bookbinder’s sleeve, filthy and peeling off at one corner. ‘Says so right there.’

‘You guys all get call signs, don’t you?’