Timothy Zahn - The Green And The Gray

"Not necessarily," Fierenzo said. "There are parts that are almost certainly literal. This 'roaming Warriors on Wed' line, for instance. The Wednesday reference seems pretty concrete."

"Well, we sure didn't see any Warriors last Wednesday," Roger told him. "At least, not that I know of. I sort of assumed the Wednesday reference meant tomorrow, not last week, and that she was trying to warn us that after whatever happens tonight there would still be Warriors around tomorrow."

"Possibly," Fierenzo said. "But I'm not ready to give up on last Wednesday just yet. Tell me everything that happened that day."

"We went to work," Roger said, frowning as he thought back. After everything that had happened in the past few days, last Wednesday seemed like an eternity ago. "We came home, ate dinner—"

"What did you have?"

"Fish," Roger said. "Then we got ready for the play, argued a little about whether to walk or take a cab and about not getting enough exercise. Then we went to the play. At the end she managed to lose a ring under the seat, so that when we left all the cabs were already gone. We started walking home, discussed the play a little..."

He trailed off as the whisper of something caught at the edge of his mind. Watch out for roaming Warriors....

"What is it?" Fierenzo asked quietly.

"She liked the play a lot," Roger said slowly. "I mostly didn't. It was one of these deep, psychological things, with a typically ridiculous love triangle in the middle of it." He shook his head as it belatedly struck him. "Relational thinking," he said. "No wonder she likes things like that while I don't. I'm watching the plot contrivances; she's watching the character interactions."

"What in particular did either of you say about it?" Fierenzo asked. "Anything about Romans?"

"No," Roger said, staring at the tiny letters Caroline had printed. "No, wait a minute. I did make a comment about—" He looked sharply at Fierenzo. "About Latin lovers," he said. "Roman Warriors; Latin lovers."

Fierenzo shook his head. "You've lost me."

"I called the villain in the play a Latin lover," Roger said, stumbling over the words as his tongue tried to keep up with his brain. "Caroline pointed out he was French; I said he was a Latin lover in the generic sense; she asked if that was the same sense as the 'when in Rome' cliche. You see? Latin

—Roman. Roman—roaming."

Fierenzo still had a wary look on his face. "I hope there's more to this."

"Plenty more," Roger said grimly. "Because right after I dropped that reference we argued a little about whether the main female character was a victim or not. I thought the woman was dragged unknowingly to her doom. She argued that the character knew what was going on the whole time."

"Knew what was going on," Fierenzo murmured, half to himself. "Knew what was..." He broke off.

"Sylvia knew she was leaving notes?"

"That's what it sounds like to me," Roger agreed. "And that fits with Caroline suddenly having to put this into code. What I don't understand is if Sylvia found out about that first note, why didn't she just keep Caroline inside where she couldn't leave another one?"

"Obviously, because she wanted Caroline to leave it," Fierenzo said grimly. "Sylvia's been feeding her disinformation and deliberately letting her pass in on to us." He looked at the fax. "Which means everything above the P.S. is garbage. The Greens aren't attacking from the north at all."

"But if Caroline knew it was a lie, why send it at all?" Roger asked, frowning.

"Because by then she knew her first note was disinformation, too," Fierenzo told him. "Problem was, there was nothing she could do to call it back. Since the Greens were vetting the notes, and since Sylvia obviously wouldn't let a straight warning get through, she had to say what Sylvia wanted and then piggyback this P.S. onto it and hope they couldn't figure it out."

"And hope that we could," Roger said, thinking back to her first note and the supposed confirmation of Damian's existence. "Does this mean that there isn't any Damian?"

"I'd say there's a real good chance of that," Fierenzo agreed. "Looks like Torvald and Ron were right

—the whole thing was never anything but a scam. A little bait to lure the Grays into planning for the wrong war." He tapped the fax. "And maybe being caught on the wrong part of the island to boot."

"Okay," Roger said slowly. "But if there's no Damian, then what's the trap?"

"Oh, my God," Fierenzo murmured, his face suddenly turned to stone. "What am I using for brains?

Your wife's a genius, Roger. All she has is a gum wrapper; so what does she do but make her words do double duty. One clue, two different meanings."

He nodded at the fax." 'Roman Warriors' points to your Latin lover and Sylvia, all right. But it also clues us in to the X's at the bottom."

Roger caught his breath. "Are you saying... Roman numerals?"

"And at X equals ten, that's ninety Warriors," Fierenzo said. "Or more—those three dots probably mean the series continues."

He looked at Roger, his face tight. "There's Nikolos's dirty little secret, Roger. No wonder he didn't care if Melantha died Wednesday in Riverside Park. He's got a private army of Warriors stashed away in the Catskills."

"With the Grays only expecting the sixty they know about," Roger said, a shiver running up his back.

"Nikolos is going to pull a Little Bighorn on them."

"Not if I can help it," Fierenzo said, pulling out his cell and punching the buttons. "Maybe we can intercept those vans before—Jon, it's me. We've got it."

"Okay, we're on it," Powell said, scribbling one last note. "Thanks."

He punched off the cell. "That was my informant," he told Cerreta and Messerling. "New information: those vans may be carrying soldiers. Possibly over a hundred of them."

"Soldiers?" Messerling said, frowning. "I thought we were talking about a gang war."

"So this means we are talking terrorists?" Cerreta added.

"No, it's still a gang war," Powell said hastily, trying to remember the precise words Fierenzo had told him to use. "But this group has been specially trained and equipped."

"So bottom line is that we're now talking between a hundred fifty and two hundred fighters on the streets?" Messerling asked.

"And that's just on one side," Powell said, nodding. "And it gets worse. There are indications the attack we've been expecting will be only a feint. That means the main thrust could come from any direction."

"Unless we can nab them before they get to choose which bridge or tunnel they want," Cerreta said, picking up the phone and punching in a number.

"State Police?" Messerling asked.

Cerreta nodded. "That type of van normally isn't equipped for passengers," he said. "If they've got that many people crammed in there, we can get them on a traffic violation long enough to search for weapons. Yeah—this is Cerreta; NYPD. Get me Kowalsky in Operations."

"Fine, but what's our reason for stopping them in the first place?" Messerling asked.

"Smith was tracking some white vans," Cerreta said, holding his hand over the mouthpiece. "A white van deliberately forced him off the road. Since we don't know which one it was, we'll just have to stop all of them while we figure it out."

"I'll buy that," Messerling agreed, nodding. "I just hope a judge will, too."

"Let's worry about that after we get them off the road." Cerreta held up his hand. "Matt? It's Paul Cerreta. I've got a little problem for you...."

"There!" Officer Alfonse Keely said, pointing at the row of white vans speeding toward them down the Thruway. "Ross?"

"That's them," his partner confirmed, half his face covered by the massive binoculars gripped in his hands. "Tags one... two... yeah, that's them." He lowered the binoculars, frowning. "I thought Dispatch said there were five of them."