“Okay, boss man,” Grady said, waving a hand dismissively as he turned away. “I’ve only got like twenty years of dealing with small-time fuckwads like this. You do your Army planning bullshit.”
Jake waited until he’d ambled away and glanced back at Sergeant Turner and Feliciano. “I am really not liking that guy,” he chuckled. If he could, he’d toss Grady Harper, but the operator was the entire purpose of their mission.
“Don’t let him get under your skin, sir,” Sergeant Turner advised. “In Iraq and Afghanistan, we had those SF and Delta guys always swooping into our AOR with guns blazing. They’d do their John Wayne bullshit, kill some bad guys, and leave. Never mind the mess that the guys who patrolled the streets every day had to deal with after the operators left. That’s just how Harper was raised. He probably doesn’t even realize that he’s making potential—”
Several gunshots rang out in quick succession. Jake dove to the bridge’s rough surface. He was completely exposed in the middle of the road, but his first priority was to establish fire superiority over whoever was shooting at them. Then he’d reposition his men out of harm’s way.
Another two shots shattered the morning air.
“What do you see?” he yelled out, guiding his rifle awkwardly to his shoulder.
“A goddamn cowboy. That’s what, sir,” Turner said, grunting as he pushed himself to his feet.
“What?”
He used the butt of his rifle to give him leverage enough to stand. When he did so, he saw Harper holstering his pistol. The operator waved a hand in a friendly gesture and called out, “The bridge is open, LT.”
All around him, the men in the platoon cheered. Once again, Grady Harper had taken the initiative and simply eliminated the threat before Jake could do anything about it. Worse, the men loved the guy. It was becoming more and more of a problem.
“What the hell are we supposed to do with him?” Jake asked Sergeant Turner furtively.
“The only thing we can do, sir. Try to keep him reeled in enough that he doesn’t get us all killed. Other than that—fuck, I don’t know. For now, the bridge is open and we don’t gotta walk several miles to the next one and find the same damn thing over there.”
“Motherfucking cowboy bullshit,” Jake muttered as he stepped off toward the barricade.
As he walked through the homemade checkpoint of corrugated steel, construction barriers, and chain link fencing, Jake counted four bodies. Three of them with bullet wounds to the chest and the fourth a little further back.
The last body had two bullet holes in his back.
They were finally in Manhattan. The trip had already been full of backtracking and wasted time. From what Grady could remember, Manhattan was a very big place and Columbia University was eight or nine miles from where they sat now. Then, if his suspicions were confirmed and the internet rumors about the CDC were correct, there wouldn’t be any help at the university. The biochemistry and molecular biophysics labs at Columbia’s Irving Medical Center would be where the real work had been done. That was another three miles north of the main campus.
He needed to get his hands on a map, but it appeared as if everything made of paper had disappeared into fires to keep the residents of the dying city warm over the long winter months. For the time being, they were stuck listening to Specialist Feliciano for details about the city. His knowledge of Brooklyn had been spot on, but he’d admitted to not traveling over to Manhattan very often, so besides telling the platoon to go north toward Harlem, he wasn’t going to be much help on this phase of the mission.
The platoon was a mixed bag of individuals, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. Grady glanced at the kid, David, whom Taavi had adopted. He was alright as far as kids went. He was much better than most of the soldiers at keeping quiet while they walked and he didn’t bitch about the conditions, so there was that. The lieutenant, though. That guy was too timid. There’d been several times where his aversion to confrontation could have gotten them all killed if Grady hadn’t gone against his decision and did the right thing. The LT didn’t agree with the way he did things, Grady accepted that. He was still young, but he was in charge of this little ragtag group and needed to grow the fuck up.
It was a precarious situation that Grady found himself in. On the one hand, he didn’t want the LT to fail, he actually liked that the kid could take criticism and at least asked for suggestions when problems arose. On the other hand, he almost always sided with the regular Army guys’ counsel, seemingly dismissing what Grady recommended without giving any thought to it. That’s the part that rubbed him the wrong fucking way and he needed to have a Come to Jesus with Lieutenant Murphy at their next stopping point.
“Ah, fuck it,” Grady mumbled.
“Hmm? What’s that, you say?” Taavi asked from beside him as they walked.
“I’m just trying to figure out the LT,” he replied. “He’s been out in this world for a long time. He should know that there’s no place for indecision or second-guessing. Doing that makes you dead. So does giving a couple of two-bit thugs the opportunity to fleece us for our supplies and ammo.”
“Well, it looks like you took that final decision away from him, my friend.”
“Damn right,” Grady muttered. “You’re a senior leader in your army. What’s a good way to reach this guy, to tell him to unfuck himself and get his head on straight?”
Taavi chuckled softly. “We don’t have problems with our soldiers, Grady. If they are a…ah, a screwy?”
“Screw up,” he corrected.
“Yes. If they
