help.'
Culver checked his PDA. 'Ah, Mister President, we do have a tight schedule.'
Kipper turned and punched Culver on the shoulder. 'Jed, there's all the time in the world for doing the right thing. Come on, what are you frightened of, needles or something?'
'No, sir. I'm just afeared for my reputation. If Congress finds out I give blood instead of drinking it, they'll never take me seriously again.'
Kipper turned back to the surgeon. 'Is that okay, Doctor Leong? I can assure you I don't have cooties. What about the rest of you ladies and gentlemen? Are we cootie clear?'
The military officers seemed a little taken aback, but Leong pronounced himself more than willing to take blood with a little brass in it.
'My patients will love that.' He smiled.
From the tired, twitchy look of the gesture, it had been a long time since the doctor had last cracked a grin.
Much to Jed's obvious annoyance, the donation routine took an unscheduled half hour, which Kipper made up by announcing that they'd eat lunch on the move. He was feeling a little nauseous and dizzy after giving blood and didn't much feel like a sit-down meal, anyway. A cookie and a glass of juice were about all he could handle. While a couple of orderlies were off trying to rustle up sandwiches for everyone else, Jed suddenly appeared at his side, brandishing a cell phone like a time bomb.
'For you, Mister President. It's Colonel Kinninmore. From New York.'
'I'm sorry, Doc, I really have to take this call in private,' Kipper said, apologizing to Leong. 'Is there somewhere…'
'Of course,' the physician replied. 'A room along here became vacant just an hour ago, I'm afraid.'
'Thank you,' he said quietly.
A few moments later he and Jed were secure behind the door of a suite containing a bed that recently had been stripped of its linen and presumably its occupant.
'Put him on speaker,' Kip said.
'Mister President, are you sure about…'
'Go on, Jed. I doubt anyone could hear us, and even if they could, this hospital is full of soldiers. They know better than you or I what's happening in New York. Go on.'
The chief of staff did as he was told but dropped the volume a few notches.
'Colonel Kinninmore, it's Jed Culver. I have the president with me. On speakerphone. We're not in a secure location, I'm afraid.'
'Don't worry about that,' Kipper said, raising his voice to be heard over Jed. 'Just tell us what you've got, Colonel.'
Kinninmore's voice sounded tinny and flat, an artifact of the encrypting system Kipper had made redundant by insisting on using the speakerphone.
'Mister President, we haven't obtained any hard human data yet-'
'You mean you haven't captured any of our mystery guys, is that right, Colonel?' Jed asked.
'No, sir,' came the answer, crackling through the airwaves. 'We've come close once or twice. There are definitely a group of hostiles active in New York, coordinating a disparate group of independent actors, but whenever we've come close to capturing one of them, they've killed themselves.'
'What?' Kip said.
'They killed themselves, Mister President. Sometimes self-detonated a bomb belt-type device, sometimes a grenade. We've taken some significant casualties because of that. Once or twice, when that option wasn't available, they simply put a bullet in their own heads. One guy cut his own throat out. Hard core, sir. These guys do not want to be captured.'
Kipper exchanged a look with Jed. A 'what-the-fuck' look, his wife would have called it.
'So you haven't caught any alive, Colonel,' he continued. 'But the fact you've called means you have something more than a bunch of corpses to go on.'
'Yes, sir. We have managed to lay hands on quite a few of the pirates now. Mostly low-level muscle. And they're much happier to talk once they get a meal and some drink in them.'
Kipper was surprised. He'd expected that modern interrogation techniques would run more to water torture and car batteries. He'd reluctantly authorized such extreme measures in the Declared Zones over a year ago, but if Colonel Kinninmore thought a cup of soup and a bread roll would get better results than a rubber hose, Kipper was not going to second-guess him. He was kind of grateful, actually. He really didn't want to go down in history as the 'torture president.'
'The enemy combatants we have secured,' said Kinninmore, 'are all singing from the same sheet. About four months ago this crew arrived in Manhattan from somewhere in North Africa. Maybe Morocco, Algeria. Depends on who you ask. One of the post-Holocaust caliphate states, anyway. They were very well armed, well trained. Real discipline. They cut down a couple of the lesser players without drawing breath, but rather than consolidating and working their way up the food chain, they threw the switch to negotiation. Offered all the remaining gang leaders tribute and territory outside of New York if they combined forces to drive us out of the city. They bought their allies and paid a good price, too, by all reports.'
It was Jed Culver who spoke this time. 'Did you say outside of New York, Colonel? They were offering to carve up turf outside Manhattan?'
'Not just Manhattan, Mister Culver. All up and down the eastern seaboard.'
'How?' Kipper asked.
'Don't know that yet, Mister President,' came the disembodied reply. 'None of our prisoners are what you'd call decision makers. A lot of what they're telling us is circulating as rumor on the other side. But the rumors all lock in together. They all sound the same. There is an operator out here who's managed to get these guys working together, most of them, anyway. Apparently, the Eastern European gangs weren't having any part of it. They're sitting this out.'
Kipper leaned in closer, feeling suddenly as if he really should be taking the security of the call more seriously.
'And the jihadi angle, Colonel. Any word there?'
Kinninmore's voice disappeared in a wash of static.
'I'm sorry, Colonel,' Jed said. 'Could you repeat. It's a bad connection.'
When Kinninmore came back, Kipper was certain he could hear gunfire and maybe explosions somewhere in the background.
'Some of the prisoners have confirmed that the newcomers have described themselves as fedayeen. There seems to be about four or five groups of them, identifiable by the different color scarves they wear. Their common language is Arabic, but then, a lot of the North African pirates speak that, too. They're devout. They don't miss prayer, but again, some of our pirate captives are no different. The main thing is, Mister President, all of our captives say that these new guys have been acting as leaders or advisers for the pirate gangs during this recent fighting. They are running the battle from the other side. And they're doing a good job. They're not punching it out; they're drawing us in and hitting us with a lot of ambushes and booby traps.'
'Booby traps?' Kipper said.
'Yes, sir. That's the really annoying thing. A lot of our casualties aren't even coming from stand-up firefights. We smash them flat whenever they try that. Most of my KIAs and my wounded are coming from car bombs and improvised mines. The city is a nightmare for them. I think they presighted a lot of these things well before we got here.'
'Do we have any idea who's running this show?' Jed asked. 'Any indications a foreign power might be involved?'
'Nothing concrete, sir. There is a leadership cadre that my prisoners are aware of, but they don't have names or any kind of actionable information. If we could just grab up one of these scarf-wearing motherfuckers…'
Kipper could hear the intense frustration in Kinninmore's voice despite the flattening effect of the encryption software.
'Excuse me, Mister President, I didn't…'
'Don't sweat it, Colonel,' said Kipper. 'I feel the same way. Like we've been hit by some bastard from out of
