Should I be nervous? Mia wasn’t sure, considering the question as she smoothed out her blouse and fixed her attention upon the stage. The seated audience sprawled across the open pavement of Fifth Avenue, hundreds more on their feet packed in behind them. She hadn’t attended the ballroom inaugural knowing it was under threat. Yet she’d come here today, knowing the parade was. Was that something a good mother-to-be did? Was it something she needed to try to justify to herself?
She decided no. She wasn’t nervous, and that was that. If Mia felt anything, it was the long, taut calm she associated with helo missions abroad.
Semper Gumby, she reminded herself. After all, I can always just fly away.
Loose applause shook Mia from her ruminations. The admiral had concluded, and General Collins was striding across the stage, back rigid and shoulders cocked, West Point ring on her hand glinting like a black sun. She seized the podium with a smile and cleared her throat. The microphone carried the noise with a fist of an echo.
“My fellow Americans: It’s a great honor to be speaking with you today. Praise to the Victors! The American triumph in Vietnam is everyone’s to remember, and everyone’s to take solace in. It took a special people to push back the onslaught of communism.
“My message today is simple. We are still those people.”
Mia treasured that line. In the draft she’d read, she’d underlined it and placed an exclamation mark along its side.
“I come to you with a message of consideration, and of renewal, and to share a few thoughts with my countrymen. Thirty years ago, Hanoi fell and put to end a seemingly endless war that engulfed a generation. Thirty years ago, American resolve saved the world for democracy. A force of goodness did that, yes. So too did dirty work and messy labor.
“Much blood was spilled along that strip of land in Southeast Asia. American and Vietnamese. Lives lost, families destroyed. Every Victor here saw a brother or sister in arms fall, someone who deserved to come home and live a full life, but didn’t. Unlike us standing here today, with our old, wizened faces and fading scars, they remain frozen in time. Still impossibly brave. Impossibly young. Still impossibly fierce and a bit silly, too. They remain as they were, forever, filled with the hopes of a future they’ll never have.
“I’d like to tell a story about one of those fallen. My friend Javy. I met him in school. He was one of those young men seemingly born for the life—he…”
As the general entered the personal anecdote section of the speech, Mia allowed herself to study the crowd. They were engaged, interested. Even Flowers had sat up. Unlike the admiral, General Collins knew how to inflex her voice. She knew when to pause and she knew when to push, her voice steady in both rhythm and variance. When Mia had first met her, the general spoke her message at audiences. Now she was bringing the audience to that message. It was a small, crucial difference, felt more than anything else. She’s gotten good at this, Mia thought. All the work, all the practice, was revealing itself today. She sounded—well. She sounded presidential.
“When his wife called with the news, I broke down.” She has them now, Mia thought. Even those fringe citizens who distrusted warfighters would connect with this part. “Years of combat had numbed me some to loss, to death. But Javy felt different. I found solace that evening in ancient words, words I’ll share with you today, as we look back, together.
“ ‘And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’
“The Greek poet Aeschylus wrote that. The father of tragedy. An Athenian. A man who knew democracy’s strengths. A man who knew its weaknesses, too.”
Mia looked around again. Every face was awash, every pair of eyes intent and full. This is it now, she thought. Bring us home, Jackpot.
“Some of you may have seen my name in the news recently. Now’s not the time to discuss that, but I will say this: I won’t apologize for protecting this country. I love this nation. When I swore an oath to protect it, I knew that meant going abroad in search of monsters. We weren’t perfect. I’d be the first to admit that. We weren’t pure. War never is.
“My name is General Jackie Collins. I’m a veteran. I’m a Victor. Not that long ago, I was one hell of a warfighter. America’s the greatest nation this world has ever known. And I’m here to say: let’s make it even better.”
Mia saw a blue light flash behind the general as the speech ended. It was a signal to get her off the stage. Mia rushed for the stairs, making it to the rail before she heard the shout, strident and clear: “Thus Ever to Tyrants!”
Then came the sound of the first bullet snapping air. She looked to the stage, searching for the general. She could only find bodies massing, then bodies falling.
CHAPTER 24
IN THE END, his cousin got it all done. The paramedic uniforms, the fake permit, even a fresh paint job for the old ambulance they’d found in a salvage yard. Four cops had come by and checked on them. From the driver’s seat, Emmanuel had yakked with them with a silver tongue Jean-Jacques never knew he had, agreeing with the older babylons that the Victors deserved the parade and more, then matching the younger ones’ disdain for having to yet again celebrate this ancient triumph.
“You’re an artist,” Jean-Jacques told him, both proud of his cousin and wary, too. “Where you learn this?”
Emmanuel shrugged. “For the cause,” he said.
The ambulance was parked directly over a manhole at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-Seventh Street, a few blocks shy of the library, the stage of dignitaries, and a whole slew of television cameras. The manhole connected to a short sewer tunnel used by subway maintenance. A gaping hole in the floorboard of the ambulance would allow the Mayday veterans to funnel from the tunnel straight into the parade, three or four at a time. What came after, Jean-Jacques didn’t know. He’d done his part. He’d done as ordered.
In the meantime, they waited.
Signs of early parade pomp were beginning to stir. Young soldiers carried flags past the ambulance, headed toward the library steps. Private security teams were seizing their assigned corners, not looking twice at the ambulance because it was already there. Jean-Jacques even watched Pete walk by, laughing with three old men in suits and a navy admiral. Pete had donned his dress blues for the day, clean and pristine as a new morning.
The true believer up on that stage, for all the homeland to see, Jean-Jacques thought, recalling how confused and lost Pete had sounded at the tiki bar. The perfect image for citizens across the empire: generals, senators, and Justice, together and united.
Our sergeant has become their show pony, he thought. If the boys at Regiment could see him now.
Rolling tanks in Paris, marching battalions in Nicosia, Cold War helos and artillery guns in Cairo and Beirut. Jean-Jacques had attended military parades the world over. He didn’t so much dislike the cocktail of pageantry and show of force as dismiss it. Nothing about the parades was for the actual soldier or veteran. It happened for everyone else, to make them feel whatever it was they felt like feeling, or felt like they needed to try for. All the real warfighters, they just wanted to be left alone, he thought. To sleep. To fuck. To eat. To breathe. To live free, whatever that meant, however it looked.