James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

The tunnel heading north had been closed for well over a decade. It hadn’t been open since before the war. Lydia checked over her shoulder; she didn’t see anyone in the hallway or the Concourse lobby beyond it. She turned back around and looked at the plywood sheets.

Tom was standing directly in front of one and a quick glance showed her that most of the screws holding the plywood to the frame had been already been removed. Tom had been taking out one at a time over the past month and now there were just two screws at the top and two screws at the bottom holding that one plywood sheet in place.

“We’re clear,” Lydia told him. Now was the moment of truth. She stepped up next to him and knocked on the plywood four times, her heart hammering in her chest, sweat breaking out across her forehead.

There was a two-second pause, just long enough for her to start worrying, then an answering knock. Four taps. Lydia checked over her shoulder once again; still nothing to see. “Do it,” she told him.

Tom wedged the nose of the pry bar between the plywood and the frame near the floor and pushed. The screw popped out of the frame easily. He then did the same at the top near the ceiling and handed the crowbar to Lydia. He didn’t bother with the screws on the other side of the plywood sheet, he just grabbed the freed edge of the plywood and wrenched it open. The wood around the screws still in the door frame cracked and the big sheet came free. He set it aside and took a step back.

At least a dozen faces were visible in the light spilling through the opening Tom had made. Sweaty, dirty men, all of them pointing rifles at the two of them.

“Golf ball,” the man closest to her said.

“And you’d be Felix,” Lydia responded. She handed Tom his crowbar. “I need a pistol.”

One of the soldiers handed a pistol forward without question or complaint while the first man produced a small radio with an illuminated digital readout. “Jackrabbit, jackrabbit, jackrabbit,” he said quietly into the radio.

As she stuffed the pistol into the waistband of her jeans she told them, “As of three minutes ago, you’ve got two Tabs in the south lobby, and two in a Growler outside the front door. There’s a Growler and four soldiers at the Cadillac building across the street. One on foot down near the Saint Regis. Not sure where the rest are in the area, but I’m sure they’ll find you. Fastest way up is the main stairs about halfway down on the right.” Which she figured they already knew, but it didn’t hurt to be sure.

“Roger that. Go,” the only man she’d heard speak said, waving the men behind him forward.

She and Tom moved to the side as the soldiers pushed through the narrow opening one at a time, moving as quickly as they could under their burdens. She counted eighteen and then the column ended. The air was a swirl of odors that nearly made her gag—wet mud, sewage, and body odor. The door swung closed behind the last one. For just a second she watched the men jogging down the hall through the tinted glass, then turned back to the group still in the tunnel. Roughly half the dogsoldiers remained.

“You’re the teams going straight across? I’m going ahead of you,” she told them. “You need someone with a key card. Give me a thirty-second head start.”

She jumped as the gunfire and screaming began upstairs, and was about to dart away and head for the tunnel south when a hand gripped her forearm firmly. Lydia looked up and was surprised to see the soldier was a woman, a short, whipcord thin redhead. She was shaking her head. She looked down at her watch, then back up at Lydia.

“Twenty seconds, then you go,” Petal said definitively. “We want them distracted.” Her nostrils flared. The classy-looking young woman in front of her smelled amazing. Perfume! She couldn’t remember the last time she’d smelled perfume. It made her realize just how much the war had cost her, that the simple smell of perfume now seemed alien to her.

Morris had very detailed maps of the entire city, but the one he’d spread out before the five squad leaders just covered the center of the city—the Blue Zone.

“Right at the north end,” he’d told them at the start of their briefing, “is what is called the New Center area. I’m sure you know, you’ve been here fighting for years and I’m the visitor, but humor me. West Grand Boulevard runs right through the middle of it, east-west. The Tabs have code-named it Washboard. Right here,” his thick index finger touched the map, “is the Fisher Building. Thirty stories, an old-school art deco skyscraper. The local propaganda mills broadcast out of there, the TV and radio station are on the seventh and eighth floor. Actually, they’ve got offices on several floors, but they broadcast out of the eighth. That’s really the only potential military or strategic target in the area. A lot of people work in that building. Right next to the Fisher Building,” he moved his fingertip to the right, “is New Center One. Offices, retail space, college classrooms. It’s eight stories. Half empty, but that means half not. They are bordered to the north by Lothrop Street. That’s the northern edge of the Blue Zone, and there are concrete barriers shutting off most of the north/south streets right there to vehicles. Fisher Building and New Center One sit on the north side of West Grand Boulevard. Directly across from them is Cadillac Place.” He moved his finger to the south side of West Grand.

“Cadillac Place originally was the GM Headquarters, and it’s huge. It’s only fifteen stories, but it stretches all the way from Cass on the east to 2 ndAvenue on the west, from West Grand to West Milwaukee on the south side. It’s an entire city block. Right now it’s eighty percent empty, which is great for us. The only thing in there are city government offices, taking up most of the second and third floors. Let me draw you a mental image. Let’s say this whole area is a face.” He waved his hand over the map. “Think of the Fisher Building and New Center One as eyes, and Cadillac Place as the mouth, right? To the left, west of the Fisher Building, is an attached ten-story parking garage. Left of that is an overflow parking lot, then 3 rdAvenue, then a newer six-story condo or apartment building. We’ll call that the left ear of that face.”

“To the right of New Center One, that right eye as you’re looking at it, is the St. Regis, a hotel that’s sort of become apartments for the people that live in the area. Call it the right ear. It’s connected to New Center One with a second-floor walkway. Those walkways are everywhere. Across Cass from Cadillac Place, just on the right side of the smile, is a four-story parking garage. We’ll call it the right cheek. There’s a walkway that goes from the roof to the fourth floor of Cadillac Place”

Morris moved his finger again. “Just below, just south of the mouth is the Alfred Taubman building. Eleven stories, and from there you get a great, unobstructed view in every direction but north, because Cadillac Place is taller and in the way. That’s the chin. Above the eyes,” he pointed, “you’ve got the Albert Kahn building. The forehead. Now technically the forehead is outside of the Blue Zone, on the other side of those barriers running along Lothrop, and it is completely abandoned and has been for years, but because it’s right there and big, it’s ten stories, people tend to keep an eye on it.”

He spread his hand and waved it above the map. “You’ve got as many skyscrapers, high-rises, whatever you want to call them, right here on top of one another inside a quarter mile radius as you do anywhere else in the city. Pretty much all of them are connected, either by pedestrian walkways above the streets or tunnels beneath. They’ve got water and power and you’ll see some vehicles on the roads, although gas is hard to find even if you can afford it. A lot of people work here, so there is a pretty constant military presence. More soldiers are regularly stationed here than anywhere else in the city outside of their base. Twenty to thirty troops, with a Growler or three, and maybe an IMP. They might be in the building lobbies, in their vehicles outside, or wandering around the sidewalks, there’s no way to know for sure. Which is why, I assume, you’ve never really gone after them here. Two or three dozen troops that wander around, with armor and buildings for cover.”