"Damn it," she cried out. "It's Jules and the Rhino. Who the fuck's out there?"

A pause followed before a shaky voice called back, "It's me, Ryan Dubois. Julesy, is that you?"

She shook her head angrily and yelled at the door.

"Of course it's me, you wanker. I just told you that. Who the hell did you think you were shooting at?"

The door opened a crack as Dubois nervously peered through.

"I thought you were pirates, sorry. I heard they got inside the hotel. Lewis told me to stay down here and keep an eye on the service levels. Gave me this."

He almost waved the chrome.38 special in her face, but the Rhino reached over with one giant paw and pushed the muzzle down firmly but gently.

"Guns don't kill people, Ryan," he said in soft tones, taking the unlit cigar from his mouth to make his point. "Stupidity does. And Rhinos of course. Rhinos are always killing people. Especially stupid ones."

"You said Lewis sent you down here," Jules cut in. "So he's still alive?"

Ryan looked worried, and his shrug was more of a nervous tic than an answer.

"I hope so. He told me to stay here until he came and got me. But I really don't want to stay here. D' you think I could come with you? This place is giving me the creeps."

Jules pushed past him, careful not to get in the way of his pistol, which did not have a safety. The hallway outside the fire escape was poorly lit, with only every third fluorescent tube powered up, and one of them was flickering erratically. Shadows appeared to twitch and shiver organically in the crawl space between stacks of cardboard boxes and laundry carts. The thunder of guns and rockets was muffled to a dull rumble by the concrete foundation. Ryan fell in behind them as the two smugglers cautiously advanced down the subterranean corridor, sweeping the space in front of them, ready to lay fire on any sort of danger.

"So, umm, can I tag along?" he chirped.

"No," they answered in unison.

Jules could sense him walking behind them, anyway. She was annoyed, but Ryan was the least of her concerns at the moment. They had no idea what they were walking into, how many pirates might be out there, in what numbers, or even what their intentions might be. A punitive raid? An attempt to overrun the Green Zone? And what was the militia doing? Or, more important, the private ops, the mercenaries. Most of them had left the zone after securing it, but she knew at least two dozen or more still remained, and she feared them more than any freebooter. The mercs had a reputation for using way more firepower than was ever really warranted, which was why Lewis Graham had insisted on keeping some of them around well after this part of Manhattan had been cleared.

"So it stays cleared," he always said.

Or he used to. Jules wondered if he was still running around somewhere upstairs.

"Ryan," she said, coming to a halt outside a storeroom.

"Uh, yeah?"

"Tell me exactly what happened this morning."

He made a show of searching his memories. "Well, I got up early to make sure I scored some flapjacks because those bastards from the third-floor crew are always scarfing the lot down and-"

"Christ," Rhino said under his breath.

Julianne rubbed at her sore and tired eyes, pulling her hand away when she felt the sting of Vaseline again.

"No. Not what happened at the breakfast buffet. Tell us about the attack. What you remember of that."

The Rhino watched the corridor while Julianne encouraged Ryan to focus.

"Were you out at the bus queue when the raiders hit?"

"No," he said, shaking his head with apparent regret. "No. 'Fraid I was on the crapper. Somebody left a copy of the Seattle papers in the dining room, and I was reading the sports pages from the P-I. I had a bet on the Royals-Mariners game, and the radio reception was pretty bad."

The Rhino piped in. "Tell me you did not bet on the Royals."

"I did," Ryan said, almost indignant. "Someone told me they won the World Series once."

"They did," the Rhino said. "Back in '85."

"Oh," Ryan said.

"Fuck me," Jules said heatedly. "Would anyone like to chat about the fucking cricket, perhaps? Good! Stay with me here, Ryan. The attack. It started while you were in the bathroom?"

"Oh, yeah," he said, looking abashed. "Lucky thing. I'd a been toast otherwise. I saw those buses, man, when I came out. They got opened like fucking tin cans, eh?"

"And the militia. And the private operators, what about them?"

Ryan shrugged. "Well you know the routine, Jules. There was probably some of them out at the bus line, just keeping things running. But I guess they got blown up, too."

"Did you go out there, to check?"

"No," Ryan continued. "When I knew what was happening, I started running for my room. But Mister Graham, he caught me and gave me this gun, told me to get down here and stand guard."

The Rhino, who was stealing energy bars from a nearby stack of cardboard cartons, stopped for a second.

"Was Lewis hurt, Ryan?"

The boy shrugged. "Well, duh. He was out with the buses when the rockets hit. Dude was covered in blood. One arm kind of limp and all."

Julianne exchanged a look with the Rhino.

"Sounds like we got caught bent over and pants down."

The Rhino grunted in disgust.

"You would have thought after yesterday they'd have had extra security on. Worked the perimeter harder. Always said that Graham asshole was as worthless as tits on a bull."

Jules began moving again, headed toward a heavy steel door shrouded in darkness at the end of the hallway.

"Well, to be fair, Rhino, they could have dropped mortars on us from well outside the zone."

He conceded the point with a barely perceptible lift of the shoulders.

"Suppose so. They did control this part of town for a long time. Could have prefigured the mortars before they had to give it up. Doesn't sound like any fucking pirates I ever met, though. Their idea of forward planning generally doesn't even extend to checking they got enough paper to wipe their asses before takin' a shit."

Jules nodded as they reached the door. Pressing her ear to the cool steel, she could hear the fighting only distantly.

"Ryan." She put her hand on his chest. "Do not follow us. It will end badly for you."

The Rhino took up a firing position to cover her as she heaved on the horizontal steel bar that opened the door.

New York "Jesus wept, this just gets better and better, doesn't it?"

Kipper peered through the cracked and heavily grimed window on the second floor of the U.S. Custom House. He could feel his Secret Service detail fidgeting with barely suppressed anxiety behind him. He supposed he shouldn't rile them by exposing himself to danger or even the chance of danger, but from what he could tell, all the action was uptown from their current hiding place. And that's what it was, a hiding place. Agent Shinoda had tucked him away in the massive stone pile of the old customs building that overlooked Battery Park and Bowling Green at the very bottom of Broadway. It was a beautiful building to Kip's eye. Even though it had stood empty and neglected for nearly four years, the lines of the hundred-year-old architecture spoke to that rare and perfect balance of form and function that engineers thought of as elegant. To Kipper, there was no higher praise one could afford a human-made structure.

His appreciation of the old girl was soured, however, by the evidence he could see of the conflagration unfolding up near the Tribeca area, where many of the clearance crews he'd visited just yesterday were housed. The sun had risen a few hours ago, and with the day came the roar of an explosion that signaled what looked like the start of a small war. And it was a war, he supposed, even if they weren't fighting another country. At least not openly. He'd seen plenty of classified intelligence that clearly incriminated a host of foreign states in supporting the pirates, whether to profit from their raids or simply to kick back against an old enemy. What was that old Arab saying? A falling horse attracts many knives. Or was it a camel?