After America

Black oily clouds climbed high into the air above the city, and although the fighting was some distance way, he could hear and even feel it occasionally.

"Mister President. Time to go, sir. Chopper's on final approach."

"Thank you, Agent Shinoda," he said, turning away from the depressing vista.

Jed was standing mournfully behind him, a sheaf of papers clutched loosely in one hand. An army officer with a black embroidered bird on one collar stood by him. The name tape above his breast pocket read KINNINMORE. A cavalryman's patch on one shoulder took the form of a shield with a black stripe topped in one corner by the head of a horse.

Kip was still on a steep learning curve with all things military, and even with a radically smaller defense force, he still found himself lost more often than not in a forest of acronyms, units, and ranks. The cavalry patch he recognized immediately, however. The cav had made a big comeback as the army's glamour outfit the last few years, if by glamour one meant they got to fight and die more often than anyone else.

The officer ripped out a parade ground salute even though he looked like he'd just crawled through a few miles of dust, blood, and thornbush. Kipper acknowledged his salute, and Jed Culver made the introduction.

"This is Colonel Alois Ki

"Thank you, sir," said Ki

"Go ahead, Colonel, but walk with us if you would. I suspect Agent Shinoda will have kittens if I don't get my ass down to the helicopter in time."

"Of course, sir."

The small party of men-Kipper, Jed, Colonel Ki

"Major tactical ops at the airport are mostly done with, Mister President," said Ki

"That went pretty quick, Colonel. Did you lose many of your men?"

"Our casualties were twelve killed and fifteen wounded, sir."

Kipper knew, because he had been told time and again, that fighting in urban environments chewed through men at a terrible rate. But a dozen dead and even more wounded still sounded like a heavy butcher's bill. He would have many letters to write when he got back to Seattle. He made it a point to contact the families of any serviceman or -woman who died following his orders. Culver argued that he could delegate that to others, but Kipper insisted in spite of the increasing amount of time he spent writing such letters and the emotional cost it laid on him. It was the very least he could do.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Colonel. I really am. I'd like to come visit your wounded if I could, as soon as possible."

"Thank you, sir. They will appreciate that."

The party passed by a pair of heavy wooden doors standing open to reveal what looked like a courtroom inside. Ki

"I'm pulling three troops from the Seventh along with two marine companies and redeploying them here, Mister President. Immediately. We should have them here within the hour."

"Three troops?" Kipper asked.

"My apologies, Mister President," Ki

More terminology. Kipper let it go and nodded for him to continue. He made a point of not interfering with the military's decisions in the field.

"The thing is, sir, I believe there could be something more going on than the looters and pirates simply pushing back at you for trying to retake the city. The elements we fought at the airport were well coordinated, and when we arrived in force, they pretty much melted away. Conducted quite a decent withdrawal under fire and would have got a lot more of their guys out if we hadn't had air support to smack them flat."

Kip had a momentary vision of what that last euphemism would mean in reality: hundreds of bodies torn asunder by high explosives and white-hot metal. He pushed the images away as they marched along a curving corridor flanked by wood-paneled displays of Native American artifacts, feathered headdresses, buffalo-hide shields, tomahawks, and jewelry, all of them still intact. Thick blue carpet muffled their footfalls, and Kip could not help but notice that it was discolored here and there with the dark, telltale stains of the Disappeared. He almost wondered for half a second when their remains had been cleared away but forced himself to stay focused on Colonel Ki

"My S-2 got out and policed up the battlespace, sir…"

S-2? Was that an intelligence officer? The army has all of these confusing codes for everything. And whatever happened to plain old battlefields? Kipper was pretty sure the colonel meant this his intelligence officer had quickly inspected the remains of the dead and whatever entrenchments they may have occupied.

"… and I have to say we had a few disturbing finds," Ki

Kip thought he saw where Ki

"You're surely not thinking conspiracy, Colonel? China's barely a functioning state after the civil war. And Putin's got his hands full with the stans."

The cavalry officer shook his head.

"No, Mister President. Or at least I'm not positing a conspiracy between those states. The Type 56 carbines could have come from what's left of Pakistan or a number of other countries. My point is that the materiel was top-shelf stuff. And it has to be significant that it should suddenly appear, all at the same time, in our eastern theater of operations while the raiders, who spend as much time fighting each other as they do us, suddenly smarten up and start kicking it with battalion-level operations, all coordinated with the best comms gear you can buy on the open market."

Kipper agreed with the officer that it did sound significant. But in what way?

"You've got my attention, Colonel. But do you have anything more in the way of detail? Something other than the equipment and… well, behavorial change? People do learn, after all."

"They do, Mister President. They do. Places like New York, they learn or they die. What I want to know is who's been teaching them. We took a handful of prisoners at Ke

Kipper could imagine that debriefing would not be a pleasant experience for the captives. He'd long ago authorized the army to treat any pirates captured on U.S. soil as illegal combatants. The best they could hope for was immediate deportation, but summary execution was just as likely. Ki