We had no trouble getting back to the river. It looked like every dead person in Midtown Manhattan had been drafted into Gary's army. The girls were thrilled to see Ayaan again. They laughed and wiped tears from their eyes and pressed their cheeks against hers. There were plenty of questions for her, of which I only understood "See tahay?" and "Ma nabad baa?", the standard greetings. Her answers met with rapt attention and genuine delight.
As for me Osman took one look at my slept-in clothes and my haggard face and shook his head. "At least nobody died this time," he said. He grabbed an old plastic milk jug full of green hydraulic fluid and went back down into the engines of the ship then to get us ready to sail.
It wasn't a long voyage to Governors Island, but we took our time. The teardrop-shaped Island lies just south of the Battery at the tip of Manhattan, close to Ellis and Liberty Islands. It was a Coast Guard base for most of my life but in 1997 the government decommissioned it. What Jack wanted with the place I had no idea.
I didn't mind going there, though. New York. It was so good to be back on the water, back where I wasn't constantly in danger. You stop noticing how edgy you get in a sustained combat situation. You start thinking it's normal to get muscle cramps for no reason or to feel like something is creeping up behind you, even when your back is to a wall. It's only after you return to safety that you realize just how crazy you were becoming.
Which maybe explains why I asked Osman to take the long way round. He put the Arawelo through her paces, sailing at half steam in a full circuit of the tiny island while I watched its tree-lined shorescape go by. Docks and wharves lined most of the coast while in other areas walkways had been built up overlooking the harbor. The gunports of round-walled Castle Williams were empty and I could look through them into an abandoned courtyard that shimmered in the heat of the day. The girls were fascinated by the biggest structure of the island, a perforated steel tower that sat in the water just off the shore like the skeleton of a high-rise. It provided ventilation for the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel. I ignored it and kept scanning the shoreline. Ayaan eventually came up to the rail beside me and asked what I was looking for.
"The dead," I told her.
"And have you seen them?"
I shook my head. I hadn't. It seemed impossible that a place in this world could be so tranquilly unaffected by the Epidemic but Governors Island appeared to be not only deserted but thriving. The greenery that dipped down to brush the water shook with the warmth of the day and the cheerful breezes off the harbor that didn't smell like death at all. The sun bounced off of unbroken windows and gave everything a wholly unnatural sheen of health.
Jack had sent us to a safe place, it seemed. Somewhere quiet where we could make plans. I signaled for Osman to bring us in to the ferry slip. The docks there were the only ones on the island big enough to accept the Arawelo. We pulled in between a pair of retaining seawalls lined with old tires and felt the ship lurch with a creaking wail as she bumped in to a complete stop. Fathia and I cast lines up onto the dock and two of the other girls made them fast against big concrete planters full of dusty miller and coleus. We had the gangplank ready to deploy when the noise of a gunshot made us all wince.
A man in a navy blue blazer and a baseball cap stepped onto the ferry loading ramp and looked down at us. I shouldn't have been shocked to see a survivor at this point, not after my experiences in Times Square but this guy had my attention. For one thing he had a shiny metal badge on the front of his coat and the letters DHS painted on the back; for another he had an M4A1 carbine with a night-vision sight like an oversized telephoto lens and an M203 grenade launcher slung under the barrel. He wasn't a tall man and it looked like that much weaponry might topple him over, but I didn't laugh. The weapon was trained on my forehead. I could look right up into its flash hider.
"We're alive," I said. "There's no need for that."
The rifle swung to my left and I ducked down by reflex. "Why don't you just stay right there, towelhead," the survivor announced. He was covering Ayaan who had started to reach for her Kalashnikov. Great, I thought, just what we needed. Geopolitics played small at the worst possible moment.
"You're with the Department of Homeland Security, right?" I called.
The survivor didn't turn but he scratched at his unruly stubble with his left hand. "I'm Special Agent Kreutzer of the DHS, yeah, and I'm going to commandeer your vehicle under the emergency provisions of the Patriot Act. You can go ahead and start throwing your weapons over the side, now. You're not going to need them anymore."
I breathed deeply. "Listen, my name's Dekalb. I'm with the United Nations Mobile Inspection and Disarmament Unit. I think we all need to just stand down."
"I don't take orders from any mushy-headed one-worlder fucks, thank you very much. Now start obeying my fucking instructions! I've got an objective to meet!"
"What's your objective?" I asked, trying to keep the dialogue open. This guy was going to shoot somebody if I didn't calm him down.
The agent raised his arms to the heavens as if beseeching a beguiling fate. "To get my hairy white ass out of here! Now disarm, motherfuckers!"
It was the opening Mariam needed. Unbeknownst to me (and, thankfully, to Kreutzer too) the girl sniper had climbed on top of the wheelhouse and lined up the perfect shot. When Kreutzer's arms lifted and he was no longer aiming directly at anyone on the ship she held her breath and squeezed the trigger on her Dragunov. The top-heavy carbine dropped to clatter on the concrete as Kreutzer grabbed at his right index finger. "Jesus!", he screamed. "She blew my finger off!" He stared down at his bloodied hand with wide eyes and then looked at me again. "Jesus!"
In a second I was over the rail. I scooped up the weapon he'd dropped, intending to cover him with it while the girls secured the perimeter. Ayaan had a similar idea but it mostly involved clubbing the survivor across the face with the buttstock of her AK-47. He fell to the ground and rolled into a fetal ball.
"Goddamnit, Ayaan, that was unnecessary," I shouted. "And dangerous, too. What if he had a partner - or a whole platoon of them hiding behind those trees?"
Ayaan nodded thoughtfully. Then she jabbed Kreutzer in the gut with the barrel of her rifle. "This towelhead wants information, futo delo. Is there a platoon of fools like you hiding there?"
"Oh, glory, no, oh Lord I'm the only one here, Jesus protect me in my hour of misery I swear it, I swear it!"
She looked up at me with a smile and a shrug.
I called for the girls to come and bandage the poor asshole's finger (Mariam hadn't blown it off at all, merely cut it enough to make him drop his weapon) and start looking for a secure place to set up operations. It looked like Governors Island was ours for the taking. I examined the weapon Kreutzer dropped and put it on safety, then handed it to Ayaan.
"You ever think about upgrading?" I asked her.
She gave the weapon about a second's worth of examination, sighting down the overloaded receiver and hefting its considerable weight. She pulled out its composite buttstock to full length and then slammed it home again. Then she glanced from the black plastic and electronic doodads of the M4A1 to the varnished cherry wood and solid steel of her rifle. Kreutzer's weapon looked like a toy.
"Everyone knows about this weapon. Urban warfare version of the M16, yes?" she asked. "It is known to jam at a bad time. The barrel overheats when you fire one full clip." She tossed it back at me and I staggered as it collided with my arms. "No sale, Dekalb."