some of those places, like the Plaza, get used as rec facilities.'
'As what?'
'Brothels.'
'Good lord. Where do they find the talent?'
'Slaves,' the Rhino said. 'American slaves. So no boom boom while there's boom boom.'
Jules found herself blushing, somewhat to her surprise. 'Oh, dear. I am sorry, Rhino. I didn't know. I hadn't heard.'
He shrugged, pretending he didn't care.
'You're not enslaving them. Anyway, it's all rumor, you know. Chain-gang scuttlebutt. Buncha fuckin' idiots swinging a hammer, daydreaming about what they'd do if they had a hotel full of whores to themselves.'
'Well, we knew this wasn't going to be a milk run,' Jules said. 'Are you still up for it?'
'Hey, lady, the Rhino is permanently up.'
Julianne shook her head and returned to her meal. 'Okay, then. Let me think this through tonight and we'll talk again tomorrow.' Back in her room, changed into track pants and a Teletubby sweatshirt, Julianne poured herself a nightcap of whiskey and soda and secured the locks on her room. With curtains pulled she sat at the small desk and unfurled the papers she had taken from a hidden compartment in one of her backpacks. They showed the floor plans of an apartment overlooking upper Central Park from Fifth Avenue. Others were detailed aerial shots of the neighborhood, some of them pre-Disappearance and others taken within the last few months. She had to wonder at the amount of leverage her client must have used to gain access to what were obviously military intelligence sources. She didn't need more than a glance to know which images had been taken before the Wave and which afterward. The latest photographs all showed a city torn by the riots of nature gone wild and the infinitely more hurtful disturbances of men run amok, up to and including arc light firebombing runs by the remains of the B-52 bomber force. Firestorms could be seen raging in the areas local commanders had written off as unsalvageable, but Manhattan had been spared the worst of it.
Jules looked over the intelligence packet provided by her client. It was a collage of cached Internet files, pilfered recon reports from the Third Infantry Division, news media feeds, and pre-Wave satellite imagery. Rubin had also provided a Macintosh iBook with a series of embedded video files taken from recent drone flights over Lower Manhattan. A copy of an army map for Operation Sinatra showed a series of phase lines, graphic control measures meant to signify objectives for ground forces, slicing the island into a series of small, manageable components. Some of the material was six to eight weeks old, which was regrettable, but it did show the lead elements of the army and the Manhattan militia units penetrating up to 26th Street. It also showed a battery of Marine Corps artillery in a baseball diamond off FDR Drive. The operatic boom and crash of those howitzers could be heard through the night, and if one looked out over the ruins of Manhattan, it was possible to see the shells passing through the clouds, lighting them briefly before screaming on to their destination.
She thought briefly about using the sewers to move forward to their target. A couple of beers in those bars where the soldiers and militia hung out quickly convinced her otherwise. The Army Corps of Engineers had restored some pumps on the island and used the sewers to facilitate the movement of U.S. forces on the island. When the sewers and subways were not in use for troop transport, they were allowed to flood again. Rhino had suggested that Navy SEALs might be able to use the sewers, but with their rudimentary scuba skills, it was a death wish to try it.
Examining the drone feed on a disk, she could see that the life of Central Park had spilled over the iron fences and across the footpaths and tangled wreckage of the avenue, and everywhere greenery had blossomed and surged, burying much of the wrecked and frozen traffic in a lush tangle of vines and bushes and newly sprouted saplings. People had fought back, though, and huge areas of ancient regrowth had been burned out, either deliberately or as a side effect of conflict between the warring gangs.
Jules sipped at her drink and studied the most recent surveillance shots, wishing they were more current than six weeks old. There was nothing to be done about it, though. You just had to go with what you had.
And what she had was the plans to a building in this contested, lethal no-man's-land in which lay hidden a treasure she had been contracted to remove and return to its owner on the West Coast.
10
New York Yusuf swam for his life. A great many things floated in the river, dragged along by the tide, sometimes gathering in great rafts of wrack and flotsam that turned slowly in the cold green water as the vast, unstable islands of refuse made their way toward the sea. The thin African boy clutched a half-inflated basketball that he'd found around not far from where he had jumped into the Hudson from the crumbling concrete deck at the northern tip of Ellis Island. At first, he had not kicked or tried to swim away, partly fearing that the Americans would shoot him from the sky if they saw him thrashing about in the water and partly because he was worn out. It was all he could do to limply hang on to the basketball and let the current take him away. Eventually, however, he had to kick against the pull of the water lest he be sucked into the dangerous logjam of refuse.
For a while he worried that he might wash up on the southern end of Manhattan where they had just struck at the infidel or, even worse, on the other island about a mile south, where the American military and militia forces had their main base. As soon as he was in the channel, however, he felt the tug of a much stronger current carrying him north. Being careful not to move in any way that might draw attention to him, he was able to see the effect of the rocket attack for the first time. It was a glorious sight in spite of his own ignominious circumstances. The ancient circular fortress nestled in a park where the vegetation had run wild was partly ablaze. Many vehicles outside the old castle also seemed to have been struck by fedayeen rocket fire, although it was obvious from the spread of destruction across many blocks in that part of the island that a good deal of the bombardment had gone astray. Still, Yusuf thought, with real satisfaction, they had struck a great blow for freedom and righteousness today.
He did not know who in particular they had attacked. It was not for a lowly soldier of a mere saif to be privy to such details. But looking at all the flashing lights and thinking back on the savagery of the Americans' counterstrike, there had to have been somebody very important inside that fortress. Perhaps even the governor of New York! What a blow to the Americans' prestige it would be were the emir to reach out and lay the judgment of God on somebody like that. Yusuf allowed himself a small tired smile as he floated past the chaotic scene. He was too far away to make out much individual detail, but he could see that the Americans had been badly hurt. Hundreds of them were running about outside the fort, seemingly without purpose. Wailing sirens carried their panicked notes all the way out to him in the middle of the channel. It was gratifying to see them laid low in God's eye.
At one point, however, a small eddy in the river turned him around, affording the exhausted boy soldier a view of the smaller island from which he had escaped. The scale of destruction there seemed infinitely greater. Over a dozen helicopters looped and circled in the air above fiercely burning buildings, and higher up jet fighters described elongated figure eights over the whole area. No gunfire came from this island, telling him that whatever battle had been fought there was over and the Americans had most certainly won. As he watched, two of the fat, dark green troop-carrying helicopters flew low and straight across the water to land unopposed on the same dock from which he had made his escape. The current turned him around again then and carried him farther away before he was able to observe anything else.
Conveyed upriver at something considerably quicker than a walking pace, Yusuf was soon so far from the scene of the battle that he could no longer make out any details at all. He contented himself with watching the ruins of the city go by. He had been in Manhattan for only three weeks after arriving from the training camp in Morocco, his ship unharmed by the threat of British submarines or warships. They were known to fire on vessels within the so-called exclusion zone that extended many hundreds of miles out from the U.S. coastline. He still marveled at the scale of the metropolis. What a seat of power it must have been when the city still lived. And to think it was just one of many cities across this continent. Perhaps the greatest of them, to be certain, but still only one of hundreds according to their teachers in camp. He wondered how God could have allowed wickedness to be raised so high before finally striking it down. But then, maybe that was the point, he thought, a lesson to the righteous and the evildoer alike, as he floated past what looked like the ruins of some sort of little harbor on the mainland side of the river. For a wonder, a number of sailboats still lay at anchor there. Some others had been thrown up out of the
