Devon Ford - The Fall

“We need to get distance from the building,” he told them, full of a different kind of confidence than before. “Head for the park and up to 79 thto get a boat from the basin. Agreed?”

The way he spoke told a story in itself, but for now everyone was happy to agree. Except Jake. He hesitated, holding back, and finally found his voice.

“Those people,” he said, the strain evident on his face, “we can’t just leave them…”

“We can, and we have to,” Sebastian snapped. Cal turned to face the young cop and put his empty left hand on his shoulder.

“Jake,” he said, searching for eye contact in the dark, “don’t you get it? This is beyond fucked up. We need to get the hell out of here before more bombs drop. On us this time.”

Jake’s face fell, and Cal suspected he could see a tear roll down one cheek quickly wiped away lest it betray any sign of weakness. They were all terrified, all shocked to their very cores about how quickly normal life had turned to horror. Jake nodded, whispering, “Okay,” and fighting down his pathological need to go back and help people.

There were just too many people who needed saving, and he had to prioritize. He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments and sent up a silent prayer for forgiveness. He couldn’t save everyone, couldn’t even realistically expect to make it back to his precinct and put himself back under the control of the NYPD command structure. He could, he assured himself, do his best to protect these civilians until they were safe. Which is what he promised himself he would do, and cross the next bridge when he came to it.

They walked together in a tightly formed line, keeping their guns hidden. The streets were in panic, as by now many people had heard of the events elsewhere in the country. Jake had lost his uniform cap in the chase north but his remaining NYPD trappings got suspicious glances from some they saw. The mixture of calm and chaos, of looting and shopkeepers remaining in their stores to protect their livelihoods, had begun to disintegrate.

Their journey took them past departments stores, some resting in the dark as though they were in hibernation and others ravaged with broken windows and stripped displays. A man careered around the corner ahead and almost thumped headfirst into Sebastian at the lead, only he stepped back and went upright against the wall to allow him to pass. His vision was obscured by the box he was holding. Amongst all the fear and chaos, amongst the world-changing events that he may or may not know about, he had chosen this precise moment to help himself to a new coffee machine.

He stumbled, saw Jake still wearing his police uniform, and completed the maneuver to fall flat on his face. The coffee machine, the now dented image of sleek plastic and shiny chrome, skidded away from his grasp as he flew back up to his feet and looked desperately left and right for inspiration and escape. He opened his mouth, stammering for a believable excuse in front of the figure of authority and enforcement. Jake saved him the trouble.

“Get the fuck out of here, asshole,” he said, prompting the opportunistic looter to regard him with surprised confusion. “I said go, fuck off!”

As instructed, he went, stopping only to retrieve the coffee machine box which rattled with the unmistakable sound of broken glass as he ran. Jake holstered his gun, stripped off his uniform jacket and unstrapped his covert holster before wordlessly handing it to Cal to hold. He unbuttoned and folded his uniform shirt and handed that over for it to be stuffed into one of the liberated bags, leaving him wearing the black base layer under his vest. He strapped the rig holding his Glock 26 back on and nodded to the others.

“No judgement,” he said, a plea more than a statement.

“Sensible,” Sebastian said from the front of their line, eyes scanning to the front.

Ten minutes later they found the southern edge of Central Park and Jake stepped forward to take the lead.

“Central Park at night isn’t as safe as they say it is, and that’s on a normal day. We go straight up, toward the lake, then hit 72 ndStreet, okay?” They nodded in turn, Cal and Louise in total ignorance of the best way to tackle the big, dark obstacle, and followed Jake as he led the way into the inky night.

The alarm sounded loudly inside the barracks. It was called a barracks, but it was bigger than some towns that the occupants had originated from. It was a city, and it bristled with more ego than many thought possible. It was an army base, but some of the elite operators under the umbrella of the 5 thSpecial Forces Group, as well as their dedicated helicopter pilots and crews from the 160 thSpecial Operations Aviation Regiment, also called it home. It seemed that these crazy, hard-bitten, and stone-cold operators needed pilots who were just as crazy and stone-cold as they were.

There were hospitals, training groups and schools, military police, and bomb disposal. All of which were now woken by a god-awful noise which none of them had heard in years since the training drills for a terror attack.

In the accommodation block of the 5 thSFG, Captain Troy Gardner sat bolt upright to the sound of the siren and simultaneous chirping of his satellite phone. Unlike almost every other unit in the military the world over, Gardner’s team of specialists operated solely within their own orbit and answered to pretty much nobody. Gardner got their orders, the team worked out the mission execution as a unit, and then Gardner got the resources he asked for. They were nominally part of one of the three battalions currently based there, with one on a training exercise and two midways through foreign tours. The team, named Endeavor by their command structure, had access to the best gear and suffered none of the military discipline that other units faced daily. Few of them bothered to shave, and many wore fierce beards which could be combined with sunglasses and shemaghs to allow them to blend into obscurity in whatever country they were operating in. Physical training was a personal issue, not regimented like every other unit, and he fully expected his team to be in peak physical condition just as he was. Only a few of them were army, as ever the top-tier of special forces operators came from various sources and branches of the military on their way up, and the rivalries between Recon Marines, Army Rangers, and Navy SEALs was a daily source of amusement for them.

Troy Gardner, called Horse—short for Trojan Horse—by his team although not too often to his face, was instantly awake and fully conscious: a trait of an operator at apex predator level.

“Gardner,” he said into the handset, then listened and grunted in response for a few seconds before clicking off the phone. He threw himself out of bed and into the dark fatigues folded on the chair beside his utilitarian cot. He opened the wooden locker and shrugged into his heavy vest and equipment rig. He didn’t have his weapons with him, but their own armory was at least in the same block. He walked out of the door without a second glance and began to walk the corridor from one end to the other, casually kicking the doors on the left as he went then turned and walked back kicking the doors on the right. His operators appeared at their doorways, similarly shrugging themselves into their equipment.

Troy waited until all the expectant faces were assembled and gave a short speech, speaking loudly over the din.

“Word just came down,” he said, “we’re out of here. Clear the armory, I’ll get our rides ready. Helipad in thirty.” With that he turned and left, going via their armory to finish dressing himself. He gave no specific orders for who should do what, but trusted his team of nine other operators to do what needed to be done. Swiping his ID and entering a six-digit code from memory, the heavy door bleeped and swung open when he pulled it. He picked up his heavily customized FN SCAR rifle which he preferred chambered in the heavy 7.62 caliber; he hated having to scour the bodies of the enemy forces and find so many of them still alive from the lighter ammunition. It was decorated in dappled tan and brown, a testament to how much of his active service was spent in various sandboxes all over the world, with a fat tube slung under the barrel and a thick suppressor protruding over the end of it. He hefted it, picked up a twin magazine and seated it before pointing the barrel into a sand-filled steel tub and racking back the bolt to chamber a heavy round.