1.
Pike and his men reached the encampment’s southwest gate at precisely 3:15 a.m.
Twelve minutes earlier, their sleek black SUVs—three in total, armored, tinted, and stripped of emblems, license plates, and VINs—entered the Lincoln Tunnel in Weehawken, New Jersey, having passed the darkened tollbooths without slowing. Two minutes after that, they emerged from beneath the murky waters of the Hudson River in Midtown Manhattan and zigzagged until they reached Eighth Avenue.
The stoplights blinked yellow in all directions. They encountered neither traffic nor pedestrians. Three years ago, Pike thought, these streets would’ve been bustling—even at this time of night. Now, thanks to the citywide curfew, they were empty save for police cruisers and sanitization crews.
The former rolled lazily through the intersections, or idled nose-to-tail beside one another so their drivers could converse. The latter clung to the sides of tanker trucks in hazmat suits, or wandered two-by-two with smaller canisters strapped to their backs, spraying bus stops, subway stations, and other public spaces with disinfectant foam. Fresh from the nozzle, it was enough to make your eyes water, but within minutes it dissipated to a lacy film that turned to fine white dust when touched, and smelled like some fragrance chemist’s idea of clean.
As squad leader, Pike rode shotgun in the point vehicle. Pike was his call sign, not his name, although he wore it just as comfortably. Despite the illicit nature of their mission, he didn’t waste a thought on the police cruisers or sanitization crews, because he trusted the route unfolding on his SUV’s heads-up display. It constantly recalculated using data siphoned from the city’s surveillance grid to avoid unwanted entanglements, so traversing Midtown unmolested was a simple matter of following the glowing red line projected onto the windshield from the dash.
They took Eighth Avenue to Columbus Circle. Pike felt his weight shift toward the passenger door as they rounded it at speed. At the third right, they continued north, eventually rocking to a halt at the intersection of Central Park West and 65th Street.
“Okay, gentlemen. You know the plan. Let’s get to work.”
At his command, seven men—Pike among them—exited the vehicles. All wore matte-black body armor and masks to match. Despite the hour, the temperature hovered in the eighties, and the August air was laden with humidity. Pike, sweating, felt a pang of envy toward the drivers, whom he’d instructed to remain inside the SUVs, engines running, AC on.
A tall fence encircled the portion of Central Park between the 65th Street Transverse and Terrace Drive, chain link topped with razor wire. Streetlights glinted off the sharpened coils. Concrete barriers lined the fence on the outside, intended to prevent vehicles from breaking through. They were installed two years ago after a nearby florist—who, despondent at the loss of business and unable to make rent, had unsuccessfully petitioned the city to relocate the park’s inhabitants—plowed through the encampment in his delivery truck. Eleven died. Thirty more were badly injured.
Although its light was on, and the endless patter of talk radio drifted out its open window, the guard booth was unoccupied. Pike slipped inside and sat down in the empty chair.
“… which, my fellow insomniacs, brings us to the topic of the hour: the border crisis. Public health threat or humanitarian disaster? You tell me. Our first caller is Kevin from Wyoming…”
The desk was dominated by a computer with two oversized monitors. A small fan clamped to one corner pushed warm air around halfheartedly, rustling the paperwork and fast food wrappers scattered around the laminate work surface. A partially eaten donut bled grease onto an old invoice. A frozen macchiato made a puddle of condensation as it thawed.
“… seems to me, these so-called refugees ain’t exactly the innocents the media make ’em out to be. I mean, they slink across the border in the dead of night, carrying God knows what kinds of diseases. They infest our cities, infect our children, and then they have the gall to demand…”
Pike inserted a thumb drive into the port on the keyboard, then turned his attention to the monitors. One featured a smattering of windows: email, internet radio, diagnostics for the camp’s various utilities. The other rotated through an endless cycle of surveillance feeds.
A few clicks of the mouse and the surveillance feeds went black. Another click and the gate buzzed open, wheels squeaking as the chain-link panel rolled aside.
“… understand, I ain’t condoning violence—all I’m saying is, you can’t fault these militiamen for wanting to protect their own. And if these people realize the price of entering our country illegally is a bullet to the head, maybe they’ll think twice about…”
Mounted on the wall to the right of the desk was an oversized red button protected by a clear plastic lid. EMERGENCY SHUT-OFF, read the sign above it. DO NOT TOUCH. Pike flipped open the lid and hit the button.
The monitors shut down. Kevin from Wyoming fell silent. The fan at the corner of the desk whirred to a halt. The guard booth’s light went out.
As did every floodlight in the camp.
For a moment, Pike just sat there in the darkened booth, waiting for his vision to adjust. Perspiration soaked his clothes and gathered at the edges of his mask. In the sudden quiet, his breathing sounded too loud to his own ears.
When his eyes had fully adjusted, Pike rose, pocketing his thumb drive, and rejoined his men. Then they slipped through the open gate without a word.
Daniel Ballard crouched behind a row of bushes, his heart pounding in his chest.
Until recently, he’d been perched in a nearby oak tree with a partial view of the guard booth, his presence camouflaged by its rustling leaves and his threadbare, dun-colored clothes. When the guard abandoned his post, Dan climbed down to see if he could find out why. Then the military types arrived—tactical knives strapped to their thighs, suppressed compact submachine guns slung across their chests, and strange metal cylinders on their backs—so he hid.
Dan was a lookout. One of four stationed throughout the camp. Six months ago, when Gabriel—a fellow resident—first broached the idea, Dan thought it was a lark, a silly game of cloak-and-dagger that would never actually amount to anything. He’d only gone along because it sounded like a welcome distraction from the monotony of life inside the fence. Climb a tree. Pop a tin of those sardines his fiancée wouldn’t let him bring into the tent. Maybe even get a little reading done.
Of course, during the graveyard shift, it was too dark outside to read, but everyone in the rotation took a turn, so there was no point complaining. Besides, the night shift wasn’t all bad. The city was peaceful, the park quiet. And nights like this, it was too hot to sleep anyway, so there were worse places to spend them than up a tree, lulled by the whisper of the leaves.
Like, say, hiding in the bushes while masked men with machine guns infiltrated the camp.
Dan was no soldier. Before he wound up in this godforsaken place, he taught grade school in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He was trained to handle unruly ten-year-olds, not armed combatants.
Although his lungs ached for air, Dan forced himself to breathe slowly, to avoid making any noise that might give away his position. Gingerly, he reached into the pocket of his tattered jeans and teased out his contraband cell phone.
When Dan hit the home button, the phone’s screen blazed to life. He pressed it to his chest and cast a worried glance toward the men, praying that they hadn’t noticed—but the light had wrecked his night vision, so all he saw were green spots dancing in the darkness. Once his eyesight recovered, he cupped his left hand over the phone and tried his best to peck out a text with his right without losing track of the intruders.
That proved more difficult than he’d anticipated. Occasionally, one of the men was swallowed by a patch of shadow or disappeared behind a tree, causing Dan to panic—his gaze darting wildly about, fear uncoiling in his stomach—until he managed to lay eyes on all seven.
Then one vanished and never reappeared.
Don’t freak out, he told himself. You probably miscounted, is all.
Dan’s lips moved silently as he counted again.
Three, four, five, six… shit.
His mouth went dry.
His pulse thudded in his temples.
His head swiveled as he searched desperately for the missing man.
For a long time—thirty seconds? a minute?—Dan couldn’t find him. Then a thousand white-hot pinpricks seared his scalp as he was yanked backward by his hair, and he felt the pressure of a knife’s edge against his throat.
Dan dropped the phone and batted wildly at his attacker. The man jerked Dan’s head to the left, and slid the knife at Dan’s neck to the right, before releasing him.
The blade was so fine, so well honed, it took Dan a moment to realize he’d been cut. The scent of iron filled his nostrils. Blood spilled warm and sticky down his shirt. Reflexively, he raised his hands to his neck to stanch the flow.
It wasn’t any use. Blood seeped between his fingers. Wind whistled through the gaping hole in his esophagus. Every labored breath drew fluid into his lungs.
Dan’s arms grew heavy from blood loss. As he toppled forward, they flopped uselessly to his sides. Unable to catch himself, his cheek slammed into the ground.
Beside him in the patchy grass lay his phone, its screen glowing bluish white. His assailant stomped on it with a bootheel.
Dan gurgled as his body, starved of oxygen, shut down.
His vision dimmed, then failed.
The last thought that arced across his synapses before death claimed him was a fervent hope that, by some fluke, the warning text he’d been composing had sent.
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