084: and a Night

Alphabit, December 21st, late

Long time since I've commanded the boat.  The Vistula was all the Old Man's.  The Hudson is mine.  Major Kat, Leo, Doc, Root, and I, we should have taken a sixth for the off side.  Still, I work them into the current till we can let that do the work.

The night is dark.  What breaks there are in the clouds show stars and the occasional sliver of the moon.  She's waning to New.  Christmas this year is on the Dark of the Moon.  I doubt any good will come of it. 

The night is cold.  Even with our parkas, thermal fatigues, and gloves we feel the bite of the cold wet air.  If I close my eyes and inhale the sting of cold salt on my nostrils almost convinces me I'm back on the Irish shore.  No wife, no parents, but a passel of cousins behind memorie's door. 

No, I'm better here.  There's monsters to hunt.

Miles later we turn towards shore.  Take the paddling slow.  Gently dip into the water, a strong stroke, and a quiet withdrawl.  I least I do.  We should have practiced.  Instead I trust to the dark and our night vision gear.  No sight of a watchman.  Close to the walled banks we come. 

I'm searching for a storm drain.  One whose grate is broken or weak.  The first two fail our tests.  The third, once the lock & chain is wrapped in cloth, yields.  A bit of lubricant on the hinges and wrapping muffles the squeal.  More than large enough for the boat. 

I amke the boat secure and we climb to the inspection walkways.  Major Kat and Leo lead the way deeper in.  We'll go as far as we can underground before surfacing.  The whole way if we can manage it.  We mark our way with knives on the rot clinging to the walls.  There are no maps.  Dead reckoning.

The main channels eastward are large.  The north south overflow connectors are smaller, but would still take a man.  We don't have to worry about rain and flooding.  Soon we don't have to worry about the cold.  The further in we go the higher the temperature gets.  Never comfortable, but above freezing.  We unzip and begin to notice with the warmth is a stench; a mix of rot and human waste.  Blessed St. Patrick is it ripe.

Soon we're all wearing clothes over our face to ward it off.  Root jokingly suggests using a gas mask.  I hope we don't catch anything.

Hours pass as we tread north and east.  Rats and other vermin scatter at our approach.  lLeo looks out grates for street signs to navigate by.  Damage to the lines turns us around more than once.  Kat tells us to keep an eye out for a maintenance room.  Damn it all, we're spending the day down here.

5:12 by my wind-up.  We're as close as we can get to the intersection where the ambush occurred.  We're deep in Hizzoner's territory.   We watch from the street level grates.  Half an hour, no patrols.

Leo levers the manhole, up and out.  We climb, single file, and cover until the team finishes surfacing.  Leo drops the cover back and brushes snow across it.  The road shows signs of foot and wheel traffic.  It should go unremarked in the dark.  We pad, silent and swift, through the alleyways.  That's one lesson we all learned from Poland, silence. 

The buildings around us are damaged.  Windows gone right up to the 5th or 6th stories.  Once I'd be busy fixing the best or tearing the worst down to foundations.  Focus.

Rarely I see signs of habitation.  The tell-tale signs of boarded over window with cloth stuffed in it or fresh waste not yet covered by snow.  Here are people.  Where are the patrols?  We cover blocks snow cruching faintly underfoot.  No patrols.

The ambush site is a complete waste of time.  The locals long ago stripped and moved the wrecks.  Leo and Kat huddle out of the wind conspiring on our next brilliant act.  Off to the south comes the sound of gunfire, spaced single shots and a shotgun's thud, then nothing.  We wait.  No sounds of vehicles rushing off to investigate or running men securing their perimeter.  Where are they?

Loe briefs us.  We're going into one of the apartments we passed on the way up.  The lower floor, half sunk into the street, had a covered window.  We'll break in and get someone to talk to.  He's taking point.  This is a good plan for me.

I hear Leo and Kat coming to the realization that neither of them can pick a lock.  Kat will break it and Leo will rush in.  I smile as I remember Eddie leaving Krakow with a pillowcase fll of door knobs.  He'd grown tired of crowbarring door open.  Should have asked for a lesson.

The door isn't in any way solid.  It comes right off.  Leo, Kat, then Root secure the apartment.    People shout out in fear and surprise; women and a boy.  Leo snarls for them to shut up.  I cover  the front hallway, Doc the back.  As they subside into wimpers a babe starts to scream in terror.  Again Leo orders them.  Scampering movement, frantic hushing, Leo's bark.

The babe stops.  In the silence there sound suppressed sobs. Knuckles whiten on the rifle.

Kat gives words of reassurance.  Faintly, the rythem of a suckling child intersperces her words. 

There's four holed up in this shell, two women, one boy no older than 8, and the babe.  Leo heads the interrogation.  Kat and him confer in her broken Russian when they finish answering.  then on to the next question.

Hizzoner claims all the land from Riverside to Central Park, CUNY to the Lower West Side.  During the day his men walk the streets.  They pay their taxes in scavenged goods, sewing, or flesh depending on the collector.  Near sunset, Hizzoner's men return to Central Park, Riverside, or CUNY's walls.  Others roam the night.  Mostly they target Hizzoner's fields or stores.  Sometimes they collect the taxes as well.  They know little of the men or organization behind Hizzoner, just that some were soldiers or police and others were hard-eyed gangsters or bangers, and they number in the hundreds.  The women haven't been to the parks or CUNY since before Hizzoner took over.  they don't to get anymore attention then they already have. 

Before we finish Leo asks them what they did before.  He answers his own question with an aside in Russian to Kat, "Whores."  They answer, one was a bank teller and the other a house wife.  Leo will pay for that later, I know.  Leo warns them not to tell a soul or he will return and wet the pavement with their blood.  We leave as fast as we came.

Our manhole waits for us.  We're deep down by daylight.

No rest, we turn back east.  Leo won the toss with the Major.  We'll get near Central Park, see if the mains extend underneath it, before we rest.  I'd rather head back to the boat and sleep in the cleaner air. 

Dead reckoning leads us to collapsed mains near the park's borders.  Spillovers lead us south to more collapsed mains.  Accident or deliberate, I lean towards the latter, the way east is shut off.  Soon the air is as well.

Kat catches it first, realizing the headache and tightness are more than just strain, and orders us to stagger back the way we came.  We emerge into good air gaping like fish.  The black dots slowly fade from my vision.  I tune out the major's lecture about confined spaces and air flow.  I know it, forgot to apply it, won't do that again. 

Still, we don't go back to the boat.  We go back to a maintenacne room.  Better than sleeping on the inspection walkways, but not by much.  Leo wants to watch feet go by near the park.  Leave him too it.  I'm asleep before he steps out.