Project Reunion (14 page)

“Yes, I saw that on your record, Emmett,” Link said. “I was interested to see that you graduated from ILE three years ago. You arrived in New Haven
two
years ago.”

“I was on classified assignment after ILE,” Emmett agreed. No doubt about it, he was tense now.

“There’s an interesting rumor,” Hoffman said, continuing the tag-team offense, “that the final SAMS class at Leavenworth game-tested the Calm Act. Even helped write it.”

“I tried to look up who was in that SAMS class,” Link said. “That information was locked up tight. Possibly expunged. You would have been an ideal candidate, though, Emmett. And your performance with these plans – like a SAMS who’s considered the scenario before.”

“Sam’s?” I asked Emmett.

“SAMS stands for School of Advanced Military Studies,” Emmett supplied softly. “Another grad school, post-ILE, at Leavenworth. SAMS go deeper into planning complex operations.”

“Including cross-service, such as a joint Navy, Marine, Coast Guard, National Guard, and Army operation,” General Link elaborated for me. “Though even a SAMS wouldn’t be able to tackle this one cold. Unless he’d played the scenario before.”

“I think you’ve been outed, Emmett,” suggested Niedermeyer softly. “What I’d like to know is, who are the other SAMS in the Northeast from that class?”

Emmett’s eyes flashed bitterly at Niedermeyer’s, but just for an instant. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been watching Emmett so intently. My stomach was turning sour. I felt like the foundation of my life had been yanked out from under my feet. And this less than a day after I’d finally admitted I loved him.
You wrote the Calm Act?

“That question is one I will never answer,” Emmett replied to Niedermeyer. “Alright. I’m outed. So be it. It’s more than my life is worth to out the others.”

Niedermeyer nodded understanding. Was it also relief? Or just the release of tension as Emmett admitted this...SAMS thing? I wondered briefly if SAMS were Army-only, or included other services.

“Dee...” Emmett turned to me, with a trace of pleading in his eyes. “I didn’t sign up for this. SAMS... It’s like a second grad school. I was honored to be accepted. We were already enrolled when they told us we’d be doing ‘something different this time.’ And we did
not
write the Calm Act. Well, not most of it.” He sighed. “We did add the section that authorized the resource coordinators.”

“And the Resco manual that goes with it?” Hoffman inquired. “That was quite a training manual.”

“Yeah, that too,” Emmett agreed. “We were tasked with, um, play-testing the Calm Act. The Resco materials came out of...play balancing, you might say. Other sections, we recommended changes. We never saw the final version, what Congress approved. Not all of it, ever. Some parts were classified too highly.”

“You chose the Northeast. You’re not from here,” I accused.

Emmett shrugged. “Hawaii was popular with the SAMS,” he quipped. “For obvious reasons. Dee, I was originally assigned in Missouri. I never lied to you about that. I came up here to join a friend, and make a difference. It’s the end of the world, you know? Why play it safe, when I could play big.”

Link framed his question thoughtfully. “Having ‘play-tested’ the Calm Act, Emmett – is relieving New York a good move?”

“It’s an excellent move,” Emmett replied, without hesitation. “Unify and mobilize a large and viable swath of the U.S., in advance of March. Start reversing the victim mentality created by the culling. Create a feeling of solidarity across the states, that we’re in it together. It puts the Northeast in a strong position to start the next phase. Uniting the regional armed forces is a major plus.”

“Is that why you’re doing it?” Ivan Link pressed.

“No,” Emmett sighed. “I believe – I believed all along – that the right thing to do, is the right thing to do. The only good strategy is to play for lives. For quality of life. For a sustainable society. Dee originally suggested that New York deserved a chance, and pointed out – rightly – that Tom Aoyama, my epidemiologist, could lead us to that chance. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it could work.”

“I don’t understand,” I complained. “What other strategies are there?”

“Power. Control. Resources,” Emmett said. “Survival. Dee, in the Northeast we’re playing one of the better hands. Large parts of the U.S. don’t have the resources to go it alone. They’ll seek to steal them, and more turf. Better turf, anyway.”

“Who are the players?” I asked. “These SAMS, like you?”

“My crop of SAMS are still only middle-grade officers, Dee,” Emmett replied. “And as Ivan pointed out, we don’t even have the SAMS credential on our records, just our abilities. If one of us plays for territory, it would be through someone who already has command of a big chunk of the Army, probably. Like Ivan here, or General Cullen, or Tolliver. It’s possible a SAMS could try to wrest control. But that’s a waste of energy, if he could work through an existing command structure instead. Much easier.”

“So this massive –
game,
” I hissed the word, irate. “This begins in March? What exactly does the Calm Act call for, in March?”

“We don’t know what the final phase of the Calm Act says, in March,” Emmett said. “The United States is over, so far as we could tell. If a powerful enough player wins, the U.S. could be put back together again. But that’s a very ugly scenario. On the bright side, I doubt any of us would live to see it.”

“So your game, Emmett,” said Link, “is to what, play Cullen or me, to win the Northeast?”

“It’s not my game,” Emmett said bitterly. “As I said. I’m playing for the lives in New York. Because they’re worth saving. I won’t risk lives in New Haven. Because I care about them.”

Link sat back and stared at him. I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t sure I believed Emmett, either. And he certainly hadn’t replied with a ringing ‘I’m behind you, sir!’ team player style endorsement of Link.

But I didn’t know or care about Link. “How many of you SAMS are there, Emmett?” I asked.

“Fifty-eight.”

“Sounds small, for a SAMS class,” Margolis commented.

“It didn’t turn out to be a SAMS class,” Emmett returned. “They said it was a special intensive. It was certainly intense.”

“Emmett,” Hoffman asked, “should South Jersey team up with the Northeast?”

Emmett toyed with his dessert, an apple-oats cobbler. Assorted courses had come and gone with Marine-fisted elegance while we spoke.

“Pennsylvania is a problem,” Emmett eventually said. “Your position in Jersey is infinitely stronger if we reintegrate New York. But I’m not a crystal ball, Pete. Sorry. You’re at a bit of a crossroads in South Jersey.”

“You mean battlefield,” Hoffman suggested.

“My honest advice?” Emmett said. “Play neutral. Treat your people well. Get the best deal you can for them. If you live at a cross-roads, might as well set up shop as a trading post.”

“MacLaren, we need South Jersey!” Link barked at him.

“With respect, sir, who is ‘we’?” Emmett returned. “And do we? If we can’t defend Pete, then why ask South Jersey to join us? Why die there, defending an exposed position? Unless it’s good for South Jersey, and good for us, teaming up is a bad move.

“But Pete, I hope you’ll help to save New York. In the long game, maybe that gives you options. In the short game, doing the right thing is its own reward. I may never be able to help you militarily. But help with New York, and whatever happens – you have my good will.”

“Yeah,” said Hoffman. “I’m behind you, on New York, Emmett. Bank on it.”

“Ash,” Link said to Margolis. “New York state will stand with New England. Won’t it?”

Margolis looked around the other men, then also applied himself to his dessert. “I don’t know,” he eventually said. “Maybe after New York City. We’ll see.”

“The next right thing, is New York,” Emmett said. “Then Boston-Prov.”

“Pennsylvania is a problem,” Niedermeyer underscored, to close the subject. “Tibbs? Perhaps you could pass us back our phones? Gentlemen, ladies, it’s been a very enlightening evening. Thank you very much for coming.”

Niedermeyer really was good at this master of ceremonies thing. For a brief moment, I considered that I’d spent the past two days up on strings, just another marionette being jerked around by a puppet master. I discarded the thought as unkind. Niedermeyer was a highly effective leader. And he’d done quite well by Emmett and myself.

As I suspected, the phone Tibbs handed Link was in a bright shiny new box. “Just like new, sir,” he murmured helpfully. He handed mine back with a smile worthy of a sphinx. No, Amenac wouldn’t be allowed to dissect the corpse of Link’s phone.

“Did you catch the aide, Corporal?” Emmett inquired.

“He’s
my
goddamned aide, Emmett!” Link spat at him.

“Sir.”

Tibbs turned to Emmett and Niedermeyer, snubbing Link, to report that the aide and driver were being questioned in the Ark 7 brig. He shared a smile with me. “Have a good night, Ms. Baker.”

I grinned. “
Thank you
, Corporal Tibbs. You’ve quite made my evening.”

I left Emmett to his awkward good-byes with his Army colleagues, and instead traded farewell hugs and cheek kisses with the Niedermeyers and Adam.

“Stay in touch,” Adam breathed in my ear, in the scant moment his mouth was in the vicinity.

“You, too, Adam,” I replied. I tapped Pam’s albatross with a smile. “All things both great and small.”

The Coast Guard trio chorused the end of the stanza. “For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.”

I should have expected that. At a guess, a Coast Guard Academy graduate – and by association, the wife of one – probably couldn’t avoid Moby Dick or the Ancient Mariner. There were only so many masterpieces of nautical literature to torture students with. So it was an inconclusive experiment on The Great Pumpkin front. But it gave us all a good laugh.

“Have a Happy Halloween, Dee,” Pam added, with a wink.

Chapter 11

Interesting fact: The state of Washington was the same size as all six states of New England combined. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania combined to roughly the size of Nevada.

“You could have waited inside,” Emmett said, as he joined me on the dark and blustery wet street. He tried to put an arm around me for warmth. I could have used it. A pashima shawl is a perfect foil for air conditioning on bare shoulders. For 45-degree rainy winds, not so much.

I stepped out of his arm and headed for the car, using my phone to light our footing.

“Dee?” he called, frozen to the spot.

“Not on the street. You have the keys. Unlock the car.”

“Dee...” he attempted again, once we were in the car, out of the wind.

“Start the car and turn on the heater. And start driving,” I ordered. Once we were moving, I pointed. “The water’s over that way. Park somewhere scenic.”

The industrial seawall he found wasn’t terribly scenic, but I did see some heaving waves in the headlights before he turned them off. After that we couldn’t see much of anything, but the familiar sound of waves crashing soothed me. Emmett laid his head back on the head-rest, and waited in the dark.

I out-waited him.

“I never lied to you, Dee,” he said softly. “Everything I said in there was true. Including how dangerous it is to talk about this. Including how I started down the road to save New York because you suggested it was possible. Because they deserve a chance. I sure as hell didn’t do it for Link.”

“You didn’t do it for me, either.”

“I’m not sure about that,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” I said, clearly enunciating each syllable.

“It couldn’t get this far unless it made sense,” he conceded testily. “To move millions of people, it has to make sense to millions of people. Not just Emmett trying to impress Dee.”

I didn’t know what to do with that – the idea that this powerful and influential man would even try to impress me. He’d impressed the military power brokers of the Northeast at this meeting. Me? But then, maybe it was true. He really did want me to tell him I loved him last night, really was that grateful.

“I’m beyond impressed, Emmett,” I said. “You’ve been so impressive at this meeting that it scares me. To also be behind the Calm Act –”

“We did what we could to soften it, Dee,” he said. “The Rescos and Cocos make a huge difference. Without them, this would have been hell on Earth.”

I could see that. I’d seen that all along, how people like Zack and Emmett stepped up and organized communities. Things still fell apart. But we weren’t terrorized, at the mercy of thugs stealing all the food production. So there was more food produced. We lived better, and more of us lived. If it were just a free-for-all within the boundaries, might was right. Life would have been far worse.