John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

Grayson rose, they shook hands, and the deal was done.

Ten minutes later, as Cam went out for a stroll and a stretch to clear his head, Colonel Billy Ray Salazar happened to be crossing the quadrangle in front of the First Church of the United Christian States. Cam asked him politely how the fishing had been lately, Salazar stopped to tell him, and in the middle of a long story about a monster catfish that had broken the line at the last minute, Cam was able to say, very quickly and softly, “We’re blown, and we’re going to have to go ahead anyway. Usual protocol for emergency conference. Let our absent friends know.”

Salazar went right on talking about fish; only the slightest twitch, once, of his cheek indicated to Cam that he had heard.

As Martin Fierro made its way south, the weather continued fair but cold. The three passengers had an after-lunch habit of bundling up in borrowed sweaters and having a last cup of hot tea in a sunny spot out of the wind; it was as secure a place as they could find for private discussions.

Today, without preamble, Chris said, “Since morning we’ve been headed northwest.”

Larry nodded. “I woke up when I heard them bringing the ship about, looked out the porthole. We were passing Sea Gull Island as we turned north into Chesapeake Bay.”

Jason stared at him. “How did you—”

Larry grinned. “When I was assigned to Bureau headquarters and still married, my wife and I, every chance we got, used to love to spend the weekend driving around the bay in a big circle. So this morning, well, you really can’t mistake the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel for anything else. After the turn this morning, Martin Fierro ran parallel to it for several miles before it found an open channel. I was surprised at how much was still standing after the DC bomb, but the Bridge-Tunnel was made to stand hurricanes, and even something as huge as the Washington nuke, at this distance, was just a big wave, a strong wind, a small earthquake, and I guess some fires if there was anything to burn. Probably the tunnels flooded when the ground shock wave cracked them, and I saw some trestles that had fallen over, so you couldn’t cross the bay on it, but most of it is still there, and not hard to recognize.”

Chris looked around for Argentine crew again, before asking, “So what do you suppose they are doing? There’s no resettlement, nothing to trade with, probably not even a surviving dock.”

“Well,” Larry said, “since early morning, Roberto’s been hauling up water samples and logging them every half hour. I’m guessing that’s meant to look like he’s just taking soundings. And a couple of times they’ve sent a dinghy out, which came back with a wet bag of something—bottom samples, or maybe they’re going out to a shore just over the horizon. And fish coming up off the trawling lines are going into jars of alcohol, not to the kitchen as they usually would. So my guess is that they’re doing a biological survey for someone back in Argentina, along with maybe a certain amount of mapping.”

“Why would they do that?” Jason asked, quietly.

Larry shrugged. “I’m the president of Argentina, okay? Now, here I am, the head of one of less than a dozen nations that came through Daybreak sort of functional. Not only am I located on a whole collapsed, disorganized continent I can overrun in the next generation or two, there’s an even bigger continent to the north with huge depopulated areas and the rest in political chaos. Not that I wish them ill, but you know… maybe if I knew more about the devastation, I could help them better. Plus I should be keeping an eye on what kind of craziness they might do after what’s happened. So why not know something about one of the biggest and best bays in the world for harbors and fishing, since the yanquis aren’t using it right now? Especially since who knows what things might be like in ten years, or a generation?

“In fact, speaking as El Presidente, despite the Commandant’s sharp little eyes, I’d be looking over New York Harbor too. In fact it’s just possible the Commandant pulled a dirty trick on me and found a way to force one of my ships to carry American spies.

“Am I planning an invasion? No. Right now I couldn’t invade Uruguay. Am I thinking of seizing parts of the old United States? Not anytime soon. Do I think I’ll have to fight the norteamericanos ? I hope not; peaceful trade would do us all so much more good. But do I need to know everything I can? Oh, yes. Very much yes.” Larry shrugged. “We’d be doing similar stuff if the situations were reversed.”

“If you’re right,” Chris added, “they’re also checking out Cape Cod and the Long Island Sound. Not that they are extra-special wicked or anything but just in case, you know? That’s how this stuff has been done since Sumer.”

They stayed out in the sun on the deck as long as they comfortably could. Their cabin door had barely closed before they heard quiet orders and scrambling feet, and felt the ship swing round to another tack.

These streets were abandoned but far from empty. To the north, Fort Stewart had shrunken away, retreating into a real fort. To the south, the Hinesville city government had given up any enforcement or patrols. What flourished between was everything authority disapproved and people wanted.

Grayson felt ridiculous in his Hawaiian shirt, blue jeans, broad-brimmed hat, and Castle Newberry sunglasses. Jenny had carefully picked out an outfit to conceal his identity while signaling rich . Apparently it had worked; on his way to the bar, half a dozen hookers and a dozen moonshine and pot touts tried to entice him, but none had begun with, “Hey, General Grayson.”

This swath of unauthorized bars, drug houses, and brothels was strictly off-limits to soldiers. I wish the MPs would grab me, because I hate this. It had to be done for his career, for the Army he loved, for the country. It had the approval of the one living person he really loved, and for that matter it even had the blessing of clergy. Nonetheless, he felt vaguely sick.

He found the Bug Out Tavern, went in the front door, and gave a password to the man at the improvised bar. The man gestured toward the back; in the dark hallway Grayson saw candlelight playing from under the crack of one door. He knocked, repeated the password, and was admitted.

As he moved to the front of the table, he thought, Nazis in Toyland . They were men who loved to strike the pose and wear the clothes, but couldn’t or wouldn’t do the job. They were dressed in scraps of camo, almost all with bare chests impractical for combat, and looked like some comic-book designer’s concept of a postapocalyptic bad-ass gang. But Grayson saw the bad balance on the standing ones, the unfocused gazes, the flab and bloodshot eyes and shallow breathing, the way their weight was back as if they were already half out the door; these were not men to have at your back, or anywhere upwind.

Yet their eyes shone with hunger to hear what he had to say; before Daybreak, they’ d’ve been mom’s-basement right wingers and 7-Eleven clerk soldiers of fortune. Still hanging around the Army, still no use—till now.

He cleared his throat, and began. He laid it on thick; he’d never have been so prolix with an actual elite unit, let alone with the sort of dirty-dozen-fighting-for-honor-and-redemption that these poor posers wanted to be. Three of them were fresh out of the stockade, on paroles he had arranged. Two were deserters. Two needed their paper records destroyed. Parker, the closest thing to a leader they had, had been on his way to a general discharge for the good of the service when Daybreak had rendered men with training too valuable to let go; he’d rewarded the decision to keep him by making corporal—twice, so far, tied with the number times he’d lost it.