The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination (30 page)

C
amille studied
the officials from the National Police Force, the Peregrine Fleet, sitting at the conference table with a team of assistants shuttled in and out. She didn’t have to wait long for the argument to start.

Levi Tuke occupied her central screen, framed by the thumbnails of the others. “We must not attack New York. That is imperative. A colossal error. The undoing of everything. We will prevail . . . unless you attack. We’re dealing with a five-thousand-year-old system that’s evolved to assimilate direct attacks.”

“We are not attacking New York,” said a salty Vice Admiral. “We are cleaning the lizards’ cage. Those fools ruined the whole goddamned world.”

Levi’s frustration was evident, but he kept his reserve. “And how did they ‘ruin the world’? They put fear ahead of reason, just as you are doing right now. You are about to repeat the eternal mistake, make the move that simply starts another round of the same old game. Same heads, different hats. We know this game. If we play, if we take the bait . . . who are the real fools?”

An even saltier Admiral said, “We cannot sit by, Mr. Tuke, while they loot what little is left that’s needed to restart the world. It is not your interpretation of events we question, sir, but your sense of emergency. It is inappropriate to the threat at hand. Failing to respond now —that’s naïve.”

Everyone started talking all at once, and someone shouted, “These are ruthless bastards. Their grasp will have to be torn from our nation’s throat finger by finger.”

“Or we can cut off the hand,” said Tuke.

A reasonable man sitting next to Cassandra said, “It’s a matter of timing. We must attack while we still hold the element of surprise!”

“Timing is absolutely everything,” said Tuke. “We have been working on this for centuries. Waiting for this moment. The moment when a system built on an outdated notion of nobility and arrogance lost its currency. But this moment will be lost like tears in the rain, if you attack. Destruction is the foundation of their strategy. They invite it. If you accept, what you assume to be a victory will in fact be merely the end of another round of the same old game. The next game will begin again, minutes later, with the same heads wearing different hats.”

Tuke tapped on Admiral Carson’s thumbnail. “I have heard that you, Admiral Carson, are a man of substance. Do not attack. That, I assure you, is a programmed response put in your head by the very system you intend to destroy. A socially engineered reaction inculcated from birth.”

Admiral Carson was slow to respond. “It’s true. We are spoiling for a fight. We can no longer watch the same people who ruined the world lavish what little’s left upon themselves, while our veterans suffer. While progress languishes. It is too absurd to endure. We cannot wait any longer. Sometimes you’ve got to start a fight, if you want to win a fight.”

“You cannot win this fight,” said Tuke, “no matter what time you think it is. This game began seven thousand years ago. It’s hosted emperors and kingdoms, sovereign markets and global alliances. This is but one game. One vicious game that divides the players against themselves, until there are only two camps left to fight. It’s always the same two, regular people who simply want to raise their children, against those whose arrogance cannot be satisfied without the economic enslavement of others.”

Levi could feel them moving his way. “Well! They’ve overplayed their hand this time, and you — you want to attack? To throw all the cards in the air. And you expect a brand spankin’ new result? Who’s being naïve?”

There was an eerie silence.

“I’m asking you to wait forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours. And we will deliver a blow far more devastating than anything you’re capable of.”

“What’s the plan?” asked the sour-faced General Joe Scaletta.

“We cannot reveal our plan,” said Levi Tuke.

The entire room erupted in an ugly groan.

“The only way to insure its absolute security is not to share it with anyone. There is nothing you can do to help this plan. There’s nothing you can add without unraveling the whole thing. It’s far too simple for that. Simplicity is its shield.”

The room shook with grumblings.

“No one is under more pressure than me,” said Levi. “They could kill more of my people at any moment. Believe me. I have a sense of emergency.”

After a minute’s deliberation, the grumbling settled into compromise. Admiral Carson spoke: “Forty-eight hours.”

Levi smiled with great relief. “Sunday morning. Just in time for that horrible Church show.”

* * *

P
etey Hendrix sat
before a bank of monitors watching Tuke’s image fade.
Forty-eight hours
ricocheted around his head. He’d hired his own hacker, ThreeThumbs, who was decked out in the same high-tech outfit as Boyne’s nephew. ThreeThumbs had hacked them into the Tuke feed and was now chuckling to himself.

Petey’s voice was pocked with alarm. “Who would have thought it would come to this?” he said.

“Just about everyone,” said ThreeThumbs, as disrespectfully as he could.

It didn’t bother Petey. “Everyone knows our whole setup is a scam. Everything we’ve legislated was rigged to our advantage. It has to end, no surprise — but like this? They’re going to game me out of all this?”

“The game is afoot,” said ThreeThumbs, rubbing his palms together.

Petey pulled a small bar of gold from his shirt pocket and dangled it in front of him. “So what do I do now?”

“What’s your goal?” said ThreeThumbs, snatching the bar of gold.

“To avoid them for a while. I need to stall. I just need some time. A little time.”

“Time and tide, my friend. Time and tide, they get ya every time.” ThreeThumbs laughed and headed for the door.

Petey trailed after him, shouting, “How do I figure this out?”

“If giving your team what it wants is good, then giving your opponent’s team what it does not want must also be good. Right? Read that somewhere in the WikiTuke.”

Petey’s eyes blinked uncontrollably. He hated all this game theory pretzel logic bullshit.

“It’s obvious,” said ThreeThumbs. “Tuke has picked your game apart and he’s about to throw his trump card. If you don’t have the strongest hand, you’d better be the most deceptive player.”

Petey smiled. “That’s where you’re wrong. Believe me. All I need is some time. How can I stall them?”

“You should hire a game designer. A really good one. One who’s already organized. Someone with the big brass. Someone who can move the masses. A true social agent. Someone who knows and loves The Massive.”

“Do you know someone like that?”

“None that would work for you.”

“So that’s a no?” said Petey, rubbing his thumb against his fingertip.

“Look, man,” said ThreeThumbs, turning to leave. “I know you know a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy?” He danced off, dragging his outsized coat toward the door, laughing madly.

“Fuck you very much.”

“You’re welcome!”

Petey raised his phone and punched a number. With each ring his anxiety spiked. Finally, someone answered, “Hello.”

“Are you in town yet?”

He listened grudgingly before interrupting. “Look! I need a game designer — you know one? A good one.”

He listened for a second, anger simmering. “How long would it take her to make me one of those social games?” He took an anxious breath, and exploded. “Depends!? On what!?”

His face crinkled as he shouted, “I don’t know. Maybe a first person shooter, wherein the goddamned NPF attacks New York City! That’d be some kinda fuckin’ distraction. That’d give me time to make my move.”

Smiling ever so demurely on the other end of the line, smug and determined, the lovely Priyanka listened intently, then put her hand over the mouthpiece. “You’re on,” she said.

A young woman in a very well-tailored, high-tech outfit with closely cropped, chestnut hair grinned nervously, then walked out the door.

Priyanka removed her hand from the phone. “I got you covered. Like I always do. Stop worrying. She’s on her way. Poor Petey.”

* * *

C
assandra ran back
to the conference room to collect her new laptop and found General Joe Scaletta killing time. His aimless pacing looked suspicious. A few men trickled in, looking over their shoulders, obviously waiting for her to leave. Their attempted discretion was pathetic, but she pretended to take the hint, scooped up her laptop, and left in a hurry.

Scaletta closed the door after her and looked around the room. “Are all these things off?” Everyone checked every monitor and, once certain they were all off, gathered at the conference table.

Cassandra ran straight to her desk and turned on the old surveillance camera mounted in the conference room ceiling. It hadn’t been used in twenty years, but it worked. She aimed her laptop’s camera at the surveillance monitor and cued up her new friend, MISH. They quietly watched as General Scaletta outlined his plan.

“This has gone far enough,” he said. “I cannot indulge this Tuke pansy any further. Nice guy, but so stupid. And all this non-stop communications crap. I hate all this. We don’t need to be in constant communication with everything all the time. That’s the sort of oppressive shit he will impose on us. Some kinda socialist technocracy.”

An affirming grouse spread amongst them.

“What the hell is this, we sit back and wait for Tuke? Fuck that! We don’t even know what we’re waiting for.”

“You think he can deliver?” asked a young Pilot, Jack Wensall. “Like he said.”

“If he can’t, we’re fucked. If he can, we’re fucked,” sneered Scaletta. “Tuke is just another intellectual extortionist who thinks he’s doing us all a favor. Believe me. This is not right. We will stay a third-world country if we don’t restore the path. God’s righteous . . .”

“Leave your god bullshit out of this, Scaletta, you’ll alienate everyone,” barked Admiral Kerins, the senior officer present. “No more of that nonsense. Proceed.”

“Here’s the short and skinny,” said Scaletta. “We risk the chance Tuke will set up his socialist technocracy. Himself as a latter-day Stalin.”

Admiral Kerins bristled. “What’d I tell you about the crazy?” He stared threateningly.

Scaletta finished in a clumsy, but careful pronouncement. “We go into Manhattan and throw Petey Hendrix and his banker buddies out. Set up a temporary government truly rooted in original constitutional law, natural law, real democracy . . .” He caught himself just short of a rebuke.

“What’s the tactical?” said Admiral Kerins.

“We attack fifteen minutes before the
America on Sunday
show. Use the broadcast to announce . . . the situation. Until elections can be held.” General Scaletta dipped his chin humbly and stood to attention, sending his plan up the chain of command.

Admiral Kerins drummed his fingers on the fading Formica and gazed into the eyes of his coconspirators. “I don’t agree with one single thing you have to say, Scaletta. You are totally full of shit. But our veterans are far too fragile to take any risks. If we understood what Tuke was about, maybe. But there are millions of veterans wandering around, angry as hell, wondering why we didn’t do right by them. They’re barely hanging on. Any blow to the system, screwed up as it is . . . they won’t survive. I cannot condemn them a second time. I cannot abandon them again. It was cowardly. And I, for one, can no longer live with that shame.”

He pushed with all his wobbling strength on the arm rests and raised himself to his feet. “Prepare to launch an attack on New York City, Sunday morning, early. Before that awful church show.”

Cassandra slumped back in her chair in horror. MISH’s cartoon face bulged for a split second before the monitor went black.

T
he stone Gate wept
. He is dead. He is dead. He is dead!

In the center of Gatekeeper’s Square, Freddy Cochran and his mob stood on the roof of Efryn Boyne’s transporter, surrounded by a stricken nation whose hooligan rage would not be quelled by words. A thousand hands reached for Freddy, lest he crumple in an all-consuming grief, heart crushed like a hobo’s hat. He threw himself onto the transporter’s roof, screaming, “He is dead. He is dead.”

Freddy’s psychopathic major-domo, Roy Wils, struggled mightily to hold onto the inconsolable old boxer. He hauled Freddy to his feet time and again, but Freddy wailed and pounded him mercilessly. Roy’s face was bruised and bleeding, his clothes torn, and he was damn proud of it.

A bloodcurdling lament slowly rose into a chorus of baleful moans — and the stone Gate did truly weep. On the other side of the Wall, the curious Burbclave Preppers were stacked fifty deep trying to figure out what was going on. Who was dead? In the adjoining good-side neighborhoods, people were heading away from the ominous sounds echoing from the Wall. Someone important was dead; better run.

Freddy went dishrag limp, teetered, then slumped into Roy Wils’ tree-trunk arms. There was nothing left of him, but he fought with his last fiber to pull himself up, and every hand in the crowd reached to help. He climbed Roy Wils’ anguished frame, quaking in misery. The throng pushed forward, piling one upon the other, with a yearning insanity to touch Freddy, who disappeared in a raiment of clawing hands, gasping for air and swinging madly.

His face turned purple, and he exploded into a rage. “Hearts broken black with raven sorrow! The Black Heart. The heart of hearts. The Sacred Black Heart — spawned in the shadows of despair. Beneath this Wall. His Wall. He. He shined a light upon us. And! Gave birth to a nation . . . and now he’s dead. Efryn Boyne is dead! He is dead!”

The Burbclave burst into cheers. The Leprechauns started seething and bashed their heads on the Wall. The Preppers fled.

Freddy gave Roy a subtle nod. Roy winked at someone on the far edge of the crowd, as Freddy continued. “He didn’t die. Nay! He was murdered! Cut down before he could write his own epitaph.” Sorrow enveloped him. “He thought only of you. His kith and kin. His blood! His sept.”

The crowd fell silent.

“And for hate's sake I swear, blood alone moves the wheel of man. Our story is written in his blood!”

At the far edge of the crowd, a long wooden staff bearing a plain black flag rose. The gasping crowd parted as a young girl in her tartans raised it high and waved it side to side. The absence of the beloved Black Heart from this flag made it blacker than black. The New Hibernian rugby team, past and present, lined up to escort the young girl into the throng. They cleared a brutal path, and in her wake a freckle-faced boy of no more than seven followed cradling a big wooden bucket in his husky little arms. They marched toward the mordant spectacle that was Freddy Cochran. The girl stopped before the transporter and held the black flag steady. The boy handed the wooden bucket up to Roy Wils, who passed it to Freddy.

Freddy raised it out to the crowd, then to the tallest arch. To the capstone — the original Black Heart. He turned to the crowd, and said in a smoldering voice, “Let me tell you how this story ends, my brothers.” He plunged his fists into the bucket and held them up, dripping with blood. Efryn Boyne’s blood. “We are going to rage out from the nation he built — and settle the fuckin’ score.”

He smeared his face with the blood and handed the bucket to Roy Wils, who wound up and hurled the blood out over the crowd.

The Leprechauns went insane.

Everyone else ran for their lives.