Empire

Holland Tunnel

It made sense to dodge the mechs wherever possible. But the sound of shooting and explosions drew Reuben. It was a part of who he was. It’s not that he felt no fear of danger—quite the contrary. When he knew of danger, he had to approach it in order to weigh it, to see how much of a threat there was. And it was more than that—he had to eliminate it if he could. He knew what he could do, when it came to combat. He knew that few other people could do it. With Cole beside him, they might be able to do what any number of men with police training could not do.

And there were the bodies. Riddled with bullets, they lay half in, half out of squad cars, all wearing uniforms. Most of them New York’s finest, but one was simply a doorman to an apartment building, lying out in the street because, apparently, he had not obeyed an order to stop.

“Not one civilian,” said Cole.

“Except the doorman.”

“In uniform. Nobody in civilian clothes.”

“It’s summer,” said Reuben. “We could do this in our underwear.”

“They’re trying not to kill civilians,” said Cole. “Same rules of engagement as we use. They really are Americans.”

“Using weapons that aren’t in the American arsenal. In anybody’s arsenal,” said Reuben.

“You think these were developed by Iran? North Korea?”

No need to answer. They both knew that Iran and North Korea might have nukes, but that they were copied from existing devices. These things required original work. “Russia?” asked Reuben. “China?”

“Possible, but not practical. What could they hope to accomplish?”

“But who could afford to develop this?” asked Reuben. “How many of them are there? Are other cities getting hit right now? And again, how do you occupy New York City? How do you defend this island against the Marines when the counterstrike comes?”

“Best we can hope to find out right now,” said Cole, “is just what these things are and how they work.”

“Bring one down,” said Reuben, agreeing with him.

“Open it up and drag out the guy.”

“Or the computer chips.”

“Or the trained squirrels,” said Cole.

“That means we’ve got to go toward the noise,” said Reuben.

“Weren’t we already?” asked Cole.

They rounded a corner and found, not a mech, but three squad cars and about two dozen cops along with a couple of plainclothes guys who were clearly in charge. One of them spotted Reuben and Cole and at first signed for them to get off the street. Then, as Reuben and Cole began to jog toward them, the police officer realized that they were U.S. Army, not civilians.

“Thank God!” the cop shouted. “The Army’s here.”

“Sorry,” said Reuben. “It’s just us two. Major Malich. Captain Coleman.”

“Sergeant Willis,” said the plainclothes guy, introducing himself.

“We need to get one of these mechs down to ground level so we can open it up and see how it works,” said Reuben. “Unless you already know.”

“Our bullets don’t even bounce off,” said Willis. “It’s like they eat them and spit them back at us.”

“They can’t have an infinite supply of ammunition in there,” said Cole.

“We’re planning to run squad cars at them and try to trip them up,” said Willis.

“One at a time?” asked Reuben. “All from the same direction?”

Willis looked a little crestfallen. “I guess that makes us the dumb movie cops who don’t know what we’re doing.”

“You’re not trained for war,” said Reuben. “Leave one squad car here, but have the doors open and make it look abandoned. As soon as the mech passes, then the driver comes out of hiding and drives out behind the thing. Meanwhile we get the other two cars coming from cross streets. Maybe it can’t shoot all three at once.”

“And maybe it can.”

“Meanwhile,” said Reuben, “Cole and I will run up alongside it and try to get on top. Don’t waste bullets shooting at it. Just keep it busy. And if you have a way to keep the cars driverless, that’s fine with me. But with or without drivers inside, they’ve got to run right at the thing.”

A cop at the corner was already shouting. “It’s coming!”

“With me or not?” asked Reuben.

“Better than my plan,” said Willis.

Reuben and Cole rode in different cars, back around blocks to get into position for the ambush—if you can count a bunch of third-graders jumping a grown man as an ambush. In the car, the cop who was driving was clearly scared. “The announcement they run—it says they’re Americans, right?”

“By birth, maybe,” said Reuben. “They’re criminals right now. Traitors. They’re aiming at cops. Trying to wipe out authority.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t have any weapons that’ll hurt these things.”

“Maybe the car will.”

“And maybe I’ll get my ass blown up.”

“You could get it shot off on a drug bust, too,” said Reuben. “But there’s no point in all you guys dying to defend against an enemy you can’t beat.”

“A couple of us are thinking, we should just give up.”

“Do you see any way for that thing to take a prisoner?” asked Reuben.

The guy didn’t say anything.

“What I think,” said Reuben, “those things are here to kill cops. When the cops are dead, then they own the city. So once we get this sucker on the ground and take pictures and whatever piece we can carry, you guys come with us and get out of New York. Live to fight another day.”

“I got family here,” said the cop. “Brooklyn, anyway.”

“When the Army or the Marines come back in to retake the city,” said Reuben, “they’ll need people who know every street and every building. We need you guys in Jersey, not dead on the streets here.”

The cop nodded. Reuben knew that having a purpose could make all the difference.

The mech must have passed by the apparently-abandoned squad car, because when it was in midblock, the car pulled into the intersection behind it. Reuben had only just reached the corner, and he could already see the thing swiveling to shoot at the car.

So he ran out into the street, pulling the pin on a grenade as he went, and threw it as close to between the mech’s feet as he could, without overshooting it. The idea was to get the mech to turn back around and face this way.

It worked too well. The thing didn’t just turn, it began to run, big leaping clumping steps, straight toward Reuben, firing as it went.

He ran toward the parked cars, though he knew they provided no shelter, and hit the ground. Meanwhile, he could hear the squad car behind the mech picking up speed. He also heard the cars hidden on the side street behind him gun their engines.

The mech saw the trap at once but didn’t even try to dodge out of the way. It simply jumped onto the hood of one of the cars and stepped over it. The drivers braked and the collisions were minor.

But from behind them, the mech started shooting at all three cars. The drivers had their doors open at once, but before they even emerged, Reuben was running at the thing. He could see Cole coming at it from the other side.

If the mech saw them it gave no sign. Which might mean the operator knew there was nothing that two guys could do from the outside.

Reuben didn’t need to say anything to Cole as each of them climbed up a leg. No vulnerabilities where the legs joined the body of the thing. How inconvenient that they hadn’t provided a nice place to put a grenade that would blow it apart.

There also were no handholds to grip in order to climb around and get on top. The thing was designed for combat, and they’d anticipated the obvious moves.

It was Cole who came up with an idea. He gripped the mechanical leg tightly and swung his over to brace his feet against the leg Reuben had climbed. Reuben understood at once, and did the same, so his feet were pushing against the mechanical leg Cole was holding.

As soon as the mech started to take a step, Reuben and Cole both pushed the legs apart as hard as they could. That way its foot would come down in an unpredictable place. Everything depended on how well the software that controlled the walking process was able to respond.

The answer was—pretty well. But not well enough. It staggered and lurched, and while it took all Reuben’s strength to hang on, they knew now that it was worth continuing. On the next step, they pushed again, and the machine staggered again.

And now another car—a civilian car this time—came straight for them from the side street. The mech tried to swivel toward the car, but again Cole and Reuben pressed the legs apart and its shots missed.

Since the mech was facing the car now, more or less, the car hit both legs just as Reuben and Cole were swinging down and away. They let go in time, though, hit the street and rolled.

The mech was on the ground. But it was prepared for that and was already using a slender armlike projection from the center of the body to push itself up to its knees. Not fast enough, though. There was already a cop on top of it, and he held out an arm to Reuben to help him get up.

The hatch on the back had to be the entry point, either for a living operator or for the mechanics who worked on the machinery inside. There was a keypad that allowed entry by combination. Instead, Reuben slapped an adhesive patch on the keypad, and then stuck a grenade to the patch and pulled the pin. “Jump!” he yelled to the cop.

They both jumped.

Another car hit the mech’s legs just as the grenade went off. Again it was down, and this time the entry door, which was facing straight up, had no keypad, just a hole with a bunch of broken wiring.

Inside the hole, Reuben quickly discovered, was a button that looked to him like it ought to be an emergency release. He couldn’t get his finger down inside. But a pistol bullet went through the gap and into the button just fine.

Now the entry panel could be pried off, though it still wasn’t easy.

One cop was standing directly over it when it came free. The explosion evaporated him.

The inside of the mech was nothing now but a mass of debris.

“Was it manned?” asked Cole.

Reuben wasn’t sure he could tell. “No body parts inside,” he said. “But they might have been burnt up. Vaporized. It’s big enough for a man, but maybe they use the space for ammo. That’s what blew.”

Willis was at the base of the thing looking up. “Did you learn anything?”

“Something,” said Reuben. “As much as we’re going to learn. Sergeant Willis, I want to take your guys out of this city right now.”

“Our duty is here.”

“Your duty is to guide our guys or the Marines when they come to take this city back,” said Reuben. “And that means right now your job is to stay alive and get off this island.”

Willis might have taken a long time making the decision, except that four mechs appeared at the ends of all four streets. “Shit,” he said. “They know we got their boy.”

“This way!” shouted Cole. He had already done his duty, which was to look for avenues of escape.

In this case, that meant running down the subway stairs at the corner.

“Cover me!” shouted one of the cops, and a couple of them started shooting at the mech coming up the street toward the subway stairs.

“There’s no ‘cover me’!” yelled Reuben. “They don’t care about our bullets! Just run and get down there!”

Only one man was hit on his way to the subway—hit bad enough that Reuben dragged away the cop that was trying to go back to drag the body with him.

“Are the subways running?” Reuben asked Willis.

“All stopped,” said Willis. “And all entry points to the city closed from the other side.”

“What about the third rail—powered or not?”

“I don’t know,” said Willis.

“Then let’s not touch it,” said Reuben. “We want to get to the Holland Tunnel,” he said. “Which way?”

“The subway doesn’t go there.”

“But do we go this way or that way to get to the next station? Or the one after that? Or is there some way up to the surface not at a station?”

“Not that I could get us into,” said Willis. “This way.”

They dropped down to the track level and ran, the emergency lighting barely illuminating the tracks enough to see where to plant their feet.

Reuben pulled out his cellphone. No bars. “Am I getting no signal because I’m below ground, or because the signals are jammed?”

“We’ve got cellular all the way through the subways,” said Willis. “So it’s jammed.”

“Too bad,” said Reuben. “I was going to call in air support.”

“I can’t believe they’re not already here.”

“The Air Force may not know yet. It’s what, six-thirty in the morning? If nobody in New York can call out, has it even been reported?”

“You can’t keep something like this a secret!” said Willis.

“Not forever. But for an hour, maybe you can.”

They came to another station. “No,” said Reuben. “They’ll be waiting at this one. They can move at least as fast above as we can down here. Keep going.”

They went on to the next. And the next. Now they were beyond the Holland Tunnel. They’d have to backtrack.

They ran up the stairs to the surface and immediately ran for a side street so they were out of the view of the avenues. They were lucky. No mechs in place to observe them.

“If they had five hundred of these things,” Reuben said to Cole, “they could scan the whole city. They don’t have that many. Not even close.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Cole. “What do you think it takes to build one of those? Two million? Six?”

“Real costs or Pentagon costs?” asked Reuben.

“Microsoft costs.”

“These are not a Microsoft product,” said Reuben.

“Developed in secret, though.”

“Yeah, but they don’t lock up.”

Willis knew the objective and he knew the streets. He’d never been a soldier, but he was a commander, and a good one. His men followed him without argument. So did Reuben and Cole. You follow the guy who knows what he’s doing.

When they got to a bunch of concrete barriers near the entrance to the tunnel, that stopped being Willis and started being Reuben and Cole.

There were no mechs guarding access to the tunnel. But there were a half-dozen men in space-suit uniforms. Helmets that covered their whole heads, even their faces.

“I bet those helmets are transparent from their side,” said Cole.

“With a heads-up display and automatic targeting and heat-source tracking,” said Reuben.

“AndTetris,” said Cole.

“Got to kill these guys,” said Reuben. They had no way to deal with prisoners. They needed stealth. “Except maybe the last one, for interrogation.”

“Body armor for sure.”

“Which I bet their own weapons can pierce.”

“They only have to be able to pierce ours.”

“Let’s not make these guys into supermen. Armor’s heavy and hot. If it’s really secure, with no gaps, these guys are dead on a hot June day like this is gonna be.” Reuben pointed toward one. “Yours. Try not to make a lot of noise.”

“They’re probably transmitting to each other constantly,” said Cole.

“So… not even a gurgle,” said Reuben.

It was a matter of stealth. And stealth meant patience as well as silence. No sudden movements that would catch the peripheral vision of any enemy soldier who had them even slightly in his field of view.

He tried to imagine who might be inside those suits. New guys who had never fought before? Or vets from the Middle East, fed up with the government and eager to use their training to overthrow it? Was he going to face some X-Box geek from Seattle or a killing machine from Fort Bragg?

Something in between. He had instant reflexes—the moment he felt Reuben’s hands on him, he started to move. But he hadn’t spotted Reuben coming. A killing-machine soldier would never have left so much of his field of view unattended for so long.

Because by the time Reuben’s hands were on him, it was already too late for the guy. He turned to the right, so Reuben turned his head sharply to the left and he dropped like a rock.

But inside that helmet, he might have said, “Hey.” Or something.

Or maybe not. Because the other guys didn’t show any alarm. Cole also got his man silently.

Not so lucky with the next guy. Reuben didn’t know whether it was his guy or Cole’s who gave the alarm, or maybe just a chance observation, but nobody was standing still to get their neck broken. But they weren’t shooting yet, either. Reuben still needed a silent weapon. The Uniball pen he always carried.

Reuben got his man down on the ground and put a knife into his throat under the jaw of the helmet faceplate. It took some wiggling to get the artery. The two remaining guards were shooting now. No doubt calling for reinforcements.

Reuben called to Willis and the cops. “Fill your hands, you sons of bitches!”

Whether they got the movie reference or not, they understood the order and began firing. The bad guys’ body armor was good, but it wasn’t perfect. Reuben wasn’t sure that any of the cops’ bullets felled either of the remaining tunnel guards—he knew that he got one of them with his M-240 and Cole was certainly firing the Minimi, so he probably got the other.

Before the firing even stopped, Reuben had one of the helmets off a dead enemy soldier, and was stripping the body armor. “Go ahead!” he shouted to Willis. “If it’s our guys on the other end, identify yourselves and for pete’s sake tell them we’re coming!”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Then hide if you can and wait for us and our weapons.”

Cole was also stripping material off another soldier. “Cole!” shouted Reuben. “Take a thumb! We want to know who these guys are, not just what they’re wearing!”

It was grisly work. But they had to know what they were up against. Criminals? Ordinary civilians? The FBI needed a chance to make an ID.

Reuben knew they were done scavenging when they could hear the thud, thud of approaching mechs.

The cops were already out of sight down the tunnel. “I wonder if they’ll come down the tunnel after us,” said Cole.

“I’ve got a helmet and vest,” said Reuben. “You drop the ones you got. Keep the pants and the weapon.”

They each dropped their version of what the other was keeping, and ran on, that much lighter.

The cops just weren’t in Special Ops shape. They caught up with them before they reached the midpoint of the tunnel.

“Don’t leave us behind!” one of the uniforms shouted.

“Shut up,” said Willis.

“Not leaving you,” shouted Reuben. “Setting up a rear guard.”

There were no cars in the tunnel. Reuben and Cole set up in recesses in the tunnel wall, one well behind the other, on the opposite side. As the cops jogged and panted past them, Reuben called out. “Leave a relay chain to tell us when you get to the end so we know when to pull back!”

Willis gave a thumbs-up and kept jogging. Up the slope now. Steeper and steeper.

“There’s a lot of water over our heads,” called Cole.

“Shut up and keep bailing,” said Reuben.

After the cops had had enough time to get well up the tunnel, Reuben left his position and moved back to one farther up than Cole’s. He was just turning to get in place when they heard the thuds. Lots of them. The mechs were in the tunnel.

“What did we decide our bullets were worth against those mechs?” called Cole.

“Get back here,” called Reuben. “No stopping now!” The rear guard only made sense if they could slow down the enemy. If it was all mechs, then Reuben and Cole would die for no purpose. The mechs were fast. But for a few moments, the curvature of the tunnel would protect them.

When they got to the end of the tunnel, they were met by National Guardsmen who obviously expected them. Thanks, Willis.

“Commander?” asked Reuben.

Twenty steps on, Reuben was greeted by a young captain. “You know what you’re doing?” Reuben asked.

“Two tours in Iraq,” said the captain. “I’ve been under fire and gave back.”

“You have any artillery?”

“Tanks are almost here.”

“Don’t do anything till they get here unless you got AT-4s or SMAWs.”

“AT-4s, sir. Never used them under fire, though,” said the captain. “Didn’t face many tanks when I was in Iraq, and the actual teams are raw.”

“Now the training pays off,” said Reuben. He pointed left and right. “They got armored walker things, mechanicals. Might be manned, might not. They can’t be hurt by small arms fire. Minimis and M-240s can get through the body armor on the soldiers, though.” He held up the pieces to show. “Don’t expose yourselves. The mechs shoot at uniforms.”

“Here they come,” said the captain, pulling him along toward cover.

Not that they could see anything. But the sound was deafening. How many mechs were down there?

As the mechs came toward the mouth of the tunnel, Reuben checked out their assets. Two AT-4s, one on each side of the roadway. The National Guard had placed themselves well. They might never have been under fire, but they weren’t untrained and their leader knew what he was doing.

Meanwhile, Cole was getting Willis and his men to move back farther, completely out of the way. They were useless now, an asset for later that needed to be protected. Cole obviously understood that even if everybody here at the tunnel mouth was killed, the New York cops still had to survive and tell what they’d seen. Cole had even given Willis the body-armor pieces he had scavenged.

Reuben needed to get rid of his own. “Can you spare a guy?” Reuben asked the captain. “These armor pieces need to get back to somebody who can study them and figure out who the hell made them and what we can do against them.”

In a moment he was handing the pieces to a young corporal. “Wait,” said Reuben. He dug the bloody thumb out of his pocket and handed it to the kid. “Don’t puke, just get this to the FBI for fingerprinting. Think of it as spent ammunition that needs ballistics done on it.”

The corporal gulped once, pocketed the thumb, and took off running, carrying the armor pieces.

The mechs were emerging from the tunnel now, still in shadow but clearly visible.

“Any time now,” Reuben said to the captain.

“Any points of vulnerability?”

“These ain’t death stars,” said Reuben. “Just hit square on the body. If you get lucky, they blow up real well. They’re full of ammunition.”

They got lucky.

The first two rockets hit. The two mechs blew up.

I have to tell Mingo what he needs to put in his next arsenal, thought Reuben.

The National Guardsmen were cheering. But the captain was yelling at them. “Keep firing, you boneheads, there could be a hundred of them!” There were already four more visible.

“How many MT-4s you got?” asked Reuben.

“We’re National Guard stationed in Jersey,” said the captain, “what do you think?”

“Does that mean less than ten?”

“That means two more.”

“Then fire them as if you had a hundred,” said Reuben.

The captain signaled again for them to shoot. Two more hits. Two more scores, though one of the mechs did not blow up completely, but fell over and did not try to get up.

The other mechs turned around and ran back down the tunnel.

This time the captain didn’t try to stop the cheering.

A couple of guardsmen started running down toward the blown-up mechs.

“Don’t go near them!” shouted Reuben. “They might be booby-trapped! You’ll get blown to hell!”

The guardsmen stopped. Again, good discipline.

Reuben and Cole made their way down to the one that hadn’t blown up. They played the same routine with the back panel. Only they didn’t pry the lid off after blowing the keypad and shooting the button.

The hatch came off by itself.

A man’s head emerged. He saw the situation—Cole and Reuben with their weapons pointed at him—and ducked back inside.

“Come out and surrender!” demanded Reuben.

He was answered by a single gunshot inside the mech.

“Shit,” said Cole.

Reuben ran for the hatch. The man inside had put a pistol in his mouth and fired. But there was less mess than Reuben would have expected. “I think he missed,” he said. “Help me get him out.”

It was awkward, but finally they each got an arm and pulled him through the hatch. He had shot into his mouth but the barrel had been pointing the wrong way. The bullet had apparently gone up through the roof of his mouth and through his left eye. There was a furrow in the forehead and the skull was open, showing brain. But the guy wasn’t dead, even though he was definitely unconscious and his left eye was destroyed, along with his palate and cheekbone.

They dragged him up toward the waiting guardsmen. “Medic?” Reuben asked.

“Ambulance on its way,” said the captain. “I called for it when we set out for the tunnel.”

“Good man,” said Reuben. “Major Reuben Malich,” he said. “The guy with me is—”

“Hell, I know who you are, I own a TV. My name is Charlie O’Brien. I’m honored to meet you.”

Two things happened while they waited for the tanks to arrive. First, a couple of jets approached Manhattan from the south, flying low. The guardsmen started cheering, but when the jets got close to the Statue of Liberty, the pilots lost control of their aircraft. The jets veered off. One of them hit the water flat on its cockpit; the other smashed through Liberty’s gown and then dropped like a rock into the water.

Tell them not to send any more jets,” Reuben said to the captain.

“What did that?” said the captain. “I didn’t see an explosion or thing.”

“A death ray,” said Reuben. “Or avian flu,” said Reuben impatiently. But the captain wanted a straight answer. “My guess is, a highly focused electromagnetic pulse. F-16s are shielded, but if you can get past it and screw up the electronics, they can’t fly. Get on your damn radio and tell them no more jets.”

The second thing was, Captain Charlie O’Brien heard something over the radio and turned to Reuben. “I’m supposed to put you guys under arrest.”

Reuben looked at him sternly. “That’s politics, Charlie. You saw me come out of that tunnel. You saw me and Cole bring along a bunch of New York City cops. We took down four mechs together and you saw me pop the hatch and pull out that poor bastard. I will debrief to you and you can pass that information along. But whoever wants me under arrest is part of the same group that killed the President and Vice President.”

“Who?” said Charlie. “Who’s doing this?”

“They’re Americans,” said Reuben. “And anybody could be on their side, working inside the government, against the Constitution.

“They aren’t terrorists?”

’’Definitely not,” said Cole, who was with them now. “They’re the opposite. They were killing all uniforms, but leaving civilians alone wherever possible. Warning them to stay off the streets. These guys mean to occupy and govern New York, not terrorize it and run away.”

“Are we under arrest?” asked Reuben.

“Hell no,” said Charlie. “But they said they were sending choppers to pick you up. So take my car—it’s a Ford Escort back up the road, just press the remote and see which lights come on.” He handed Reuben the keys.

“You’re going to be in deep shit about this,” said Reuben. “I can’t take your car.”

“Take it and I’ll make them eat their shit,” said Charlie. “We were down there with infantry before those cops started coming up the tunnel. I know which side you’re on.”

“I don’t even know what the sides are yet,” said Reuben. “This could be a right-wing militia group that picked New York to punish the capital of pansy left-wing weenies. Or it could be a left-wing militia that went for New York because they think they’ve already got the hearts and minds of the citizens.”

“Whoever they are,” said Cole, “they’ve got a really cool weapons designer and they’re willing to blow their own brains out rather than be captured.”

“Get to my car and go,” said Charlie. “I didn’t get the message till you were already gone.”