Free Tooth and Nail by Craig DiLouie

to see if you wanted to do an After Action Review.”
    Bowman says, “In a way. . . .”
    Kemper sits, takes off his own mask, lights the stub of a foul-smelling cigar and sighs, exhaling a long stream of smoke.
    “You want to know what I think?”
    “Yeah, Mike. I do.”
    It is a hard thing to explain, but Kemper is not concerned right now about the morality of shooting those people. Morality is a luxury in a situation like this. What worries him instead is the open question of the Lieutenant’s judgment.
    A question to which he may never learn the answer.
    “LT, what happened here tonight was a terrible thing, but you were acting within the ROE and had only a few seconds to make a decision to protect the platoon,” he says truthfully. “While a man’s conscience is one thing, the Army will say you made the right call.”
    “That’s what Captain West said.”
    “You told him what happened? What’d he say?”
    “He said his own hands are full and that I should follow my fucking orders. End quote.”
    Kemper leans back in his chair, absorbing this information.
    “All this. . . . It doesn’t make much sense, does it?”
    “It makes no sense at all.”
    “Have you talked to any of the other platoon leaders?”
    “That’s just the thing, Mike. Quarantine is restricting the net to emergency traffic only. Something big is happening, and we’re isolated. I’ve got no intel. No big picture.”
    Kemper is beginning to understand what is going on inside the LT’s brain. The situation has changed and with it, the ROE, and Bowman is trying to figure out why. If he understands why, he can make good decisions and, perhaps, justify to himself why he ordered his men to shoot down more than forty civilians in cold blood.
    “Everybody’s feeling like crap right now and unfit to wear the uniform. Morale is shit. But we’re the professionals. We can’t appear indecisive in front of the boys. They need us to lead them.”
    Bowman stiffens, then smiles shyly. “So this isn’t all about me then, is it.”
    “No, sir, it ain’t,” Kemper says quietly.
    “What’s so weird about this whole mess is it’s like this is a foreign country and we’re the enemy. I feel like we’re in this Twilight Zone episode where we did something terrible in Iraq so God warps reality and turns America into Iraq. And we have to figure out what we did wrong or repeat the same mistakes against our own people.”
    “Sir, with all due respect, you think way too goddamn much.” Bowman smiles grimly. “Mike, I just saw a cop shoot a wounded American citizen in the head. A cop who watched his best friends get ripped apart by a crazed mob in a rare terminal stage of a new disease. I’d say anything is on the table at this point.”
    “We’re all tired.” The NCO exhales another cloud of smoke and grinds his cigar against his boot heel. “We’re wiped out. In any case, New York has always seemed like a foreign country to me.”
    The LT regards him for a moment, then laughs out loud.
    “It gives me an idea,” he says. “The situation demands that we treat the city as hostile. So we do just that. If your force is isolated in hostile country and you need to move from a place of security to a new AO, what’s the first thing you do?”
    Kemper suddenly smiles.
    “You reconnoiter,” he says.
    “Right. We have just enough time to do a recon mission before we have to be on the move. It might give us the answers we need so we know what we’re facing here.”
    “Satisfactory,” says Kemper. This is the Todd Bowman that the platoon sergeant trained to be a commander in Iraq, and it is good to have him back. “I know just the men for this mission.”

We could use a gun, though
    Morning brings a cool, dewy feel to the air. The windows on the taller buildings gleam in the first light. Several buildings near the site of yesterday’s explosion are still smoldering, and a sudden change in wind rains ash and the acrid stench of burning