Joe Ledger: Code Zero Part 18

A for Anarchy. O for Order. And its polluted philosophy: Anarchy is the mother of order.

Chapter Twenty-seven.

The Hangar Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn Sunday, August 31, 11:25 a.m.

I sat on a nuclear bomb, swinging one foot, cleaning my nails with the tip of a skinning knife. All around me people I liked were beating the h.e.l.l out of each other.

Ghost lay at my feet, chewing on an arm.

It was a normal Tuesday for me.

The arm, by the way, was rubber. It's been a running gag with my crew to appease the fur monster by giving him toys shaped like human hands, arms, and legs. Occasionally they'd give Ghost toys fashioned to look like even more sensitive body parts. I took those away from him. Ghost sleeps on the foot of my bed. I don't want him to get ideas.

I sipped a cup of Death Wish coffee and watched the members of Echo Team go through armed and unarmed combat drills with a bunch of candidates sent to us by Delta, the SEALs, Force Recon, and FBI Hostage Rescue. These guys were the survivors of a group of ninety-two we'd started with two weeks ago, and this was why we were here in Brooklyn. The job would normally have fallen to the senior team leader at the Hangar, but he was still in the hospital recovering from injuries received on a b.i.t.c.h of a mission that had, among other things, landed him in a pit filled with genetically altered pit bulls. The smallest of those dogs had been 140 pounds. The rest of his team was in various states of recovery and rehab.

Very frequently our job sucks.

I'd brought the six remaining members of my own battered Echo Team with me to Brooklyn, and they were currently pitted against the last fourteen candidates. There was a lot of grunting, cursing, sweating, thudding, and groaning going on.

Very little of it from my guys, I was happy to see. Happy, but not surprised. Echo Team has walked a lot of hard miles through the Valley of the Shadow.

A wooden knife came sailing through the air, hit the mat in front of me, and bounced up to thud against the bomb. The resulting carroom was hollow. Most of the bomb was a sh.e.l.l; a Teller-Ulam case was enough to make a point during lectures. It had a dummy electronics package for disarming drills, but no fissile materials.

We're macho manly men, but we're not stupid.

As I watched, a Cro-Magnon-looking guy who'd been a first-team shooter for Delta grinned as he closed on the oldest man on Echo-Top Sims, who was pushing forty-five now. The Delta shooter saw an old man with gray threaded through his hair, a seamed brown face, and crow's feet. Easy meat. The Delta bad boy grinned and went for it.

The next thing the bad boy saw was the mat coming up to smack him in the face. I doubt he ever saw the punches and kicks Top used to knock a big chunk of ego off him. Next time maybe he'd fight the man rather than the a.s.sumption.

Ghost glanced up as the man hit the deck, and I swear to G.o.d I heard him snicker.

My guys-Top, Bunny, Lydia, Ivan, and Sam were dressed in black BDU trousers and T-shirts with the green Echo Team insignia on the chest. Someone-I suspect Bunny-had added a scroll of words around the insignia as an unofficial motto for the team: If It's Weird and p.i.s.sed Off-We Shoot It.

Crazy, but sometimes there is truth in advertising.

Besides, lately there was a lot of very bad stuff happening in the world. The DMS was stretched way too thin, hence the push to recruit some newbies. There was not one field team operating at full compliment. Not even Buffalo Team in North Dakota, which was nicknamed the "sewing circle" because they usually had twice the downtime of other groups. Not anymore. Buffalo Team had been chopped pretty badly in three successive gigs that left them with only two uninjured operators and four with moderate injuries who could still roll out at need. h.e.l.l, even our frequent collaborators in SEAL Team Six and the FBI's Hostage Rescue Teams were being run ragged. This wasn't a new war against a single enemy. It was everywhere. Cartels rolling with body armor and high-tech firearms, religious fundamentalists with bombs, splinter cells buried like ticks in the skin of society, and let's not forget a bunch of supposedly not officially sanctioned hit teams from China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea, neo-n.a.z.is, and, yeah, even some secret societies. Everybody was cranky and the bad guys seemed bent on turning the whole world into a war zone. We needed to replenish all of our existing teams that had taken losses and put additional teams in the field, and we needed to do it yesterday.

I'd hoped we'd have more than fourteen left out of ninety-two. But one by one the candidates from that larger group had demonstrated qualities inconsistent with what we needed. Anyone who showed hesitation in a crisis was instantly cut. Anyone who couldn't switch from pack member to leader and back again was gone. Anyone who lost a step when mission parameters were changed was out. Anyone who couldn't take the bulls.h.i.t, pain, and hardship we dealt was let go.

That left fourteen.

I set my coffee cup down and hefted my knife. This one was steel and it was sharp.

"Incoming!" I yelled, and threw the knife randomly into the ma.s.s of tussling bodies.

They all scattered, dodging and diving out of the way. All but one of them cut sharp looks at me as they moved. One guy, a wiry goofball with a shaved head, evaded the knife-which landed with a thunk in the middle of a training mat-but the way he did it p.i.s.sed me off.

"Top," I said.

Top had caught it too. His eyes blazed as he rose to his feet and bellowed, "Ten-shun!" with his leather-throated drillmaster's voice. Everyone snapped to immediate attention, including the goofball. I picked up my coffee and sipped it while Top handled this.

He got up in the kid's face. Top is about six feet tall but when he's mad he's a roaring giant.

"Soldier," he roared, "what were you evading?"

"Knife, sir."

"'Sir'? Sir? Don't call me sir, G.o.dd.a.m.n it. You think I'm an officer? I work for a living."

"Knife, Sergeant Major."

"Did you look to see if it was a knife?"

"No, Sergeant Major, but I-"

Top got a little closer. "How did you know it was a knife?"

"It was a knife drill-"

As soon as those first words were out the goofball tried to put the brakes on, tried to keep the rest of that sentence in his own head. I heard a couple of the other guys hiss the way people do when someone else steps barefoot into his own s.h.i.t.

Lydia and Bunny were silently shaking their heads. Sam sighed. I heard Ivan mutter, "Oh, hog b.a.l.l.s."

No need to repeat exactly what Top said to the goofball. It was all bad, it was all nasty, and it was all deserved. In combat training you don't react to what you think the drill is, you react to what is actually happening. It was a worse mistake than when the Delta shooter had underestimated Top. It was the kind of mistake a Special Forces operator should never make. There is no margin for error, no allowing for those kinds of a.s.sumptions. It made me wish I'd thrown a flash-bang instead of a knife, because that would have hammered home the point.

"So you just a.s.sumed it was a knife because it was a knife drill," roared Top, "Your psychic powers eliminated every other possibility so that you did not even have to so much as turn your head to see what you were evading?"

"I'm sorry, Sergeant Major, it won't happen again."

"Tell me, son, who had the sheer audacity to send you to us?" demanded Top. "Who hates us that much?"

"Army Rangers, Sergeant Major."

"Bulls.h.i.t, son," growled Top in a voice that shook the rafters. "I am an Army Ranger and Captain Ledger is an Army Ranger and the Army Rangers don't have a clown college, so you can't be an Army G.o.dd.a.m.n Ranger, now can you? I want you to get your s.h.i.t and get the h.e.l.l off of my training floor." Top paused for a millisecond. "Why am I still looking at you?"

It was harsh and it was humiliating, and usually neither Top nor I go in much for a public dressing-down. But it was such a rookie mistake that any operator who was here right now would have doubts about this kid when it came to real combat. That kind of split focus and weakened trust would get people killed. Not could get people killed-it absolutely would.

The Department of Military Sciences is a tough gig. Mr. Church built it around teams of operators who were not among the best, they were the best. The top men and women recruited from active service in Delta, the SEALs, and elsewhere. The best of the best without exaggeration. It wasn't an ego thing or a prestige thing. These soldiers had to be that good because of what we faced day in, day out.

However, while I was watching this incident I wondered how an ordinary citizen would react. They'd probably think that this was comical, or that it was needlessly cruel. That it was a bunch of macho thugs comparing d.i.c.ks. From a distance, it looked just like that. But if that same citizen could see guys like Top in real combat, fighting the monsters we fight, then they might take a longer pause before pa.s.sing judgment. This isn't a Sylvester Stallone flick and it's not a comic book. This is the world, and the world is a far scarier place than Joe Ordinary will ever know.

Ivan said, "Dog b.a.l.l.s."

Most things were some species of b.a.l.l.s to Ivan.

The room fell into silence as the Ranger, his face flushed to scarlet, gathered up his gear and walked to the locker room. His backbone was straight, though, I'll give him that. With luck, this incident will have burned out the last traces of slack a.s.sumption in him. He might go on to be the kind of soldier who would deserve his slot on our team. We'll never know, though, because there are no callbacks in this theater.

When the door closed, everyone turned toward me. My guys and the recruits. I looked at them, particularly the new guys, looking for resentment, for hostility, for accusing glares. Anyone who pinned his own emotion to what had just happened was going to split cab fare with the Ranger. All I saw were serious faces from the thirteen remaining candidates. I waited out a three-count and then gave them a single, curt nod.

"Any questions?" I asked.

There were none.

"Very well," I said. "New drill, Top-three to two, broken leg."

"Bite my b.a.l.l.s," said Ivan, but he was grinning, enjoying what was coming. Lydia laughed and punched him on the arm.

Top gave me a curt nod. It was one of his favorite scenarios, too.

The group was divided into five-man teams. Three bad guys, two good guys; but the kicker was that one of the good guys was to simulate having a badly broken leg. Working together, the good guys had to fight their way past the three opponents, cross fifty feet of the mat, and cross a safe line Top had taped on the far side. The bad guys were allowed to have wooden knives and clubs. The good guys were not.

It was a b.i.t.c.h of an exercise. There were variations of it to simulate broken arms, being blinded, or in bigger groups having two soldiers protect a "shot" comrade from the whole rest of the team. There was nothing academic about any of this, most of the people in this room had already been in one real-life version of this kind of thing. And that's a d.a.m.n sad fact to report.

Ghost, however, sat up to watch and was apparently entertained by the thuds of wood on skin and the sounds fighters made when their mock opponents weren't feeling all fuzzy and warm.

My phone rang. The screen display showed an icon of a steeple.

My boss, Mr. Church. Before I could get anything else out he cut me off. "My office. Now."

Chapter Twenty-eight.

The Hangar Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn Sunday, August 31, 11:33 a.m.

Church was alone in his office and he gestured for me to close the door and sit. I dropped into a leather chair. Ghost sat in the corner, watching us both.

"Captain," Church said without preamble, "we are having an interesting day."

"I know. I heard about Riggs and the Berserkers."

"Before we get to that, where are we with the candidates? How soon before they're ready to roll?"

I sucked my teeth. "'Roll' as in begin official training, or 'roll' as in go into the field?"

"The field."

"Ideally? Three weeks. Why, how much time do I have?"

"Almost none. We're having an interesting day."

"I hate the word interesting."

He snorted. "So far most of what's happening does not directly involve us, but I don't like the way the day is shaping up. If things move in a certain direction I would hate to lose a step getting into gear. To that end, we may have to dismiss anyone who needs hand-holding and a.s.sign the rest where they'll do the most good."

"That bad, huh?"

He merely grunted. There was a beautiful cut-gla.s.s water pitcher and two gla.s.ses on his desk. He poured us each a gla.s.s. In the middle of the desk, perhaps slightly closer to him than me, was a plate of cookies. Church always had cookies. If he had to jump off a sinking ship in only his skivvies he'd land in a lifeboat that was stocked with cookies. They were either his only weakness-or perhaps the only proof of his humanity-or maybe there was some kind of significance to the cookies. To which ones were on offer apart from his ubiquitous vanilla wafers; and to the times he offered one, or didn't, and how many he ate-and how often. Rudy and I have been trying to work it out for years. We were sure there was something there.

Or maybe Rudy and I had become bats.h.i.t paranoid. Jury was still out.

Church took a vanilla wafer, tapped the crumbs off, took a small bite, and set the cookie down in the precise center of a paper napkin. "Have you watched the news this morning?"

"No. Been busy making life miserable for the candidates. Why? Are the Berserkers-?"

"No. We have no news on that situation. However, a bomb was detonated this morning at a sports center in Lexington, Kentucky. Initial reports suggest it was a backpack bomb similar to the Boston Marathon event some years ago."

"More Chechnyans?" I asked.

"Witnesses say that the suspects were two teenage boys, probably Asian." He described the situation. "This is breaking news, so you now know as much as I do. However, I rolled Moonshine Team to provide any on-site a.s.sistance, and I put them at the disposal of the ATF and local law."

"Okay."

"There was also an explosion at a law library in Gettysburg. One casualty, no witnesses. Nature of the bomb is unknown. So far no one is connecting the two, but I dislike coincidences. I sent Liberty Bell Team via helo to put eyes on that."

I nodded.

"We don't yet know if these are connected to each other or to the situation developing on the Net."

"Yeah, Bug sent something for me to watch, something about a hacker video, but I haven't had time to take a look. It didn't seem to be our sort of thing."

"Take a look now, Captain," he said. "I think you'll find that it's very much our thing."

He picked up a remote and pointed it at the flatscreen on the wall. The face of a pretty Korean gal appeared on the screen. Betty Page haircut, big sungla.s.ses, bright red lipstick.

"Okay, monkeys," said the Korean girl, "pay attention, 'cause there are three things you need to know and Mother Night is here to tell you."

We watched the video. Twice.

"c.r.a.p," I said. "Mother Night? She's back? How old is this?"

"It's a combination of a brief prerecorded video loop used as a placeholder, probably to attract attention, followed by what appears to be a live feed."

"That girl ... she looks like the one I..."

Church's eyes were dark marbles behind the tinted lenses of his gla.s.ses. He waited for me to continue. "Very similar," he said, "but we ran facial recognition on both women and they are not a match. This woman is likely as much as ten years older. And before this video began there was a second video, a loop of yet another Asian woman in an identical costume."

"What's that mean? Is Mother Night a them rather than a her?"