The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination (44 page)

She gawked. “Who are you?”

“Who am I? Who are you?”

She looked him up and down. His shoes gave him away. He was the enemy. “You’re just in time,” she said.

“For what?”

She bristled, panned a scornful eye at him, and shaped her thumbs and fingers into an M. A 3D map popped up between them. She aimed her right index finger at it and pushed in. The UN Complex filled the space. “For the show.”

R
epresentative Mahesh Murthy
sat squirming in his Sunday seat in the UN Council Chamber, hoping his grumpy friend wouldn’t show up. He was almost certain Thomka wouldn’t, so he had worn a brand spanking new and ridiculously fashionable colonial man-suit. Thomka would’ve despised it. There was time to kill before the show, which he’d planned to use comparing outfits with senatorial rivals. His was hands-down the most extravagant.
No thanks to you, Albert Thomka. Fuck you very much. You’re smothering my creativity. No doubt about it! You’re a drag.

Now that it seemed certain Thomka was a no-show, Murthy whipped out the trump card he’d kept hidden in his briefcase. A big-haired wig with a cascade of curls, just like the old Dutch Mayor Abraham De Peyster wore.

The lights dipped.

Good! Thomka isn’t coming.

Representative Murthy slouched down in his seat, fitted the massive wig to his head and smoothed it back.

Show time!

* * *

F
red had lost
sight of most of the people he’d met along the way and was allowing himself the rare pleasure of being swept along by the crowd. The UN Complex was only seven blocks down 42nd Street from Times Square, toward the East River. They were moving slowly but steadily, cheek by jowl. He was enjoying himself, but wished he could find Max. He wasn’t all that worried about Max anymore, now that he had a woman with him. Leaving a teenaged boy wandering about unattended was never a good idea. Thank god for Lily.

Fred shuffled forward and steered himself out into the middle of the throng, where he could only see the tops of buildings, old and new, glorious and tedious alike, all amazing in their own way. He took a deep breath and made a quick analysis of the weather: low forties, sunny, chilly, breezy. Nice day.

He was moving along, but damn if it didn’t feel exactly like waiting. The slow pace was killing him. The surrounding pressure let up a bit and the skyline’s square regularity was interrupted by some triangulation. Fred took a few steps on his tiptoes, squaring up the building’s roof lines. The shape of the street below would mirror those roof lines. It looked like a wide boulevard was cutting across the grid, causing one enormous gap. Must be Times Square?

He rose up onto his tiptoes for a better look and quickly slipped back down to his heels, took a few rejuvenating flat-footed steps, then got back up onto his toes. Maybe he’d spot Max? But to see over the heads of the crowd he’d have to get higher, so he strained his shoulders and neck. His head barely poked up through the canopy of hats, hairdos, placards, battalion flags, and squadron banners, many GI issue with a sand-blasted patina he recognized. But he still couldn’t see over the crowd. No Max! Damn, his calves were starting to burn. Back down to his heels.
OK, one last crack, and if I don’t see Max, I’ll live with it.

He bounced on his toes a couple of times, and slowly hoisted himself like a periscope. He still couldn’t see beyond a few feet, but could hear a massive choir drawing near. Every head turned toward the pure harmony echoing off the skyscrapers on Fifth Avenue. Fred couldn’t make out what they were singing, then it came back all warm and familiar.

“I don’t know but I bin told!”

“I don’t know but I bin told!”

“Road to hell paved with gold!”

“Road to hell paved with gold!”

Everyone took up the cadence. Fred had never heard anything so loud or so moving. The earth literally shook. The crowd’s pace quickened, and Fred missed a beat. His left knee buckled, his ankle turned, and he stepped right on the back of the shoe of the man in front of him. The man turned angrily, hopping on one foot and wrestling his shoe back on the other. Fred was mortified. “Oh . . . please, I’m so sorry.”

The man was around thirty-five and seemed more concerned about Fred, who was wobbling erratically, than himself. “No problem. Let me help you.”

Fred hobbled a few excruciating steps before the shock numbed the pain. “I thought I might see my son,” said Fred, looking absolutely pitiful. “I know he’s here. I’m really sorry. . .”

The man smiled at Fred, then tapped the shoulder of the man in front of him, pointed to Fred, and said, “He’s trying to find his son.” Fred watched in amazement as that man, and the man in front of him and the man in front of him, made way. They parted the crowd, with the magic words, ‘looking for his son.’

Unfortunately, there in the middle of Times Square, Fred was escorted right past Max and Lily, who were only five yards but ten thousand people away. His ankle throbbed like mad. He would’ve stopped, but that might trouble his benefactors. So he soldiered on, humming the cadence.

“I don’t know and might be wrong!”

“I don’t know and might be wrong!”

“Sooner we get there sooner we gone!”

“Sooner we get there sooner we gone!”

He could almost hear the call, but the answer shook the entire city. Someone noticed Fred’s limp and two men tossed his arms over their shoulders and carried him along. An older woman, herself leaning on a young man who looked just like her, raised her hand as he passed, and asked, “What’s the boy’s name?”

Fred winced, and shouted, “Max. Max Burdock.”

The old woman cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed feebly, “Max! Max Burdock!” It was woefully faint, so the people around her took up her call. “Max. Max Burdock!” came a handful of voices. “Max. Max Burdock!” came a thousand more. “Max. Max Burdock!” rang throughout the crowd.

Max didn’t recognize his name, and had fully intended to join in as soon as he figured out what they were saying. Lily thought she’d heard right, but it seemed far too unlikely. Then! “Max. Max Burdock!” was everywhere.

Lily yanked his arm. “That’s you!”

Max’s eyes bulged. “No way.”

“Max. Max Burdock!” she sang in chorus, “that’s you!” She jumped up and down, shouting, “This is him! This is Max!”

Max had been through a lot recently, but this was the most painful. A crew of retired submariners versed in close-quarter movement shouted, “You there! Make a hole,” and they steered Max and Lily through the crowd.

Someone shouted, “We found him. We found Max.” The word passed over the crowd and to Fred’s ear in a rippling instant.

The old woman, who’d taken great pains to dress for the occasion, pointed at Fred, smiled, and said, “See.”

And just like that Max and Lily appeared. They relieved the two men who had been carrying Fred and fell in with the crowd.

Fred shouted, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”

“No big deal,” said Max, his voice frosted in relief.

“How can this be? We meet in the middle of this? It just doesn’t make sense.”

Lily took Fred’s arm, on the good-ankle side, and slung it over her shoulder. “It makes perfect sense, Mr. Burdock. We’re all going to the same place at the same time. And here we are. Together.”

Fred heart skipped a beat; he had forgotten how adorable a woman could be.

They could see the heads in front of them dropping down toward the East River which slowly appeared, and Lily said in an awestruck voice, “There it is.”

From the rise on 42nd and Park Avenue, the UN Complex stood before them . . . a stone’s throw away, but ringed with heavily armed men in full battle gear.

* * *

G
eneral Joe Scaletta
sat on the corner of his bed, his hands in his lap, head tilted up, one leg to either side of a perfect hospital corner, chest emblazoned with forty-one ribbons and commendations, studying patterns in the acoustic ceiling: craggy faces, constellations, connect-the-dot landscapes. It helped him bide his time without wrinkling his uniform, which had more superfluous add-ons than a strip-club buffet. It was so classically militaristic it would have been right on trend at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Although communications were down, which was not unusual, he’d been told the Peregrines had left for the UN Complex on time. He was now fairly certain he would soon be far more important than he was right now.

Knock knock knock.

“Enter!”

Corporal Elvgren entered.

Scaletta spoke without moving a muscle. “Anything?”

“No, sir. But that’s good, isn’t it? If no one can contact anyone, things should stay the same. As planned.”

“You think?” He rolled one eyeball at Corporal Elvgren.

“Admiral Carson is treading water. Dog-paddling out in the Pennsylvania boonies. By the time they get back in the game . . . game’s over.”

General Scaletta pondered that with a blank stare, then asked a more pressing question. “Maybe I should wear civilian clothes, a regular suit? Don’t want this to look like a military coup.”

Corporal Elvgren glazed over in embarrassed disbelief, wondering how he’d ended up babysitting this idiot.

T
he incalculable volume
of space above Tuke’s stage was filling up with 3D projections of multidimensional data plots, globes and maps, CCTV galleries, an endless barrage of measurements, and The Tuke Massive’s many live feeds. Tuke moved like a symphonic conductor, sending these into the air with a set of simple gestures. He tossed them around like so many socks in a drawer. Matching, prioritizing, editing on the fly as he crossed the stage in lyrical arcs, sweeping spreadsheets, logistics tables and currency fractals into the space above the heads of all those assembled in the massive cavern.

And there were thousands.

ReplayAJ appeared on Tuke’s tiny personal monitor waving her hands wildly, and when he didn’t acknowledge, yelled, “Did you see this?”

Tuke did a surprised tap-dance, and answered apologetically, “Sorry! It’s mucho fuego here, my dear.”

“Yeah, but over here we have this going on.” A satellite image of the eastern coastline near Baltimore projected five small dots flying in formation, below radar altitude, straight for Manhattan.

“That stupid Joe Scaletta,” Tuke lamented jokingly.

“What’s the move?”

“Bad brains . . . And he’s in charge?”

“Answer the question!”

“Sorry, what’d you say?”

She wasn’t going to play. “Peregrines? New York? Fix it!” She blinked off.

He adjusted his microphone, and said, “OK. Cue the KNim.”

This was what the Knickerbocker Nimrod had been waiting for. A DEAD SLAM! They would execute the world’s first Dead Slam, with themselves at the head of the line when the world came back online. And then they’d do the one thing they were established to do. They’d introduce a few lines of code that would cause every device in the financial sector to shutdown and re-index.

>Re-Index!?

>Revert to original factory settings. All storage discs empty.

A DEAD SLAM.

* * *

G
eneral Scaletta’s
Peregrines banked left under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, crossed the harbor, and lined up over First Avenue. Captain Jack Wunchel was the tip of the spear in a triangular formation. He saw his men’s anguished faces and tried his microphone, but it was all crackles and pops. He rotated his thumbs straight down and vigorously waved them on. They dropped to one hundred feet and slowed. From this height they could see thousands upon thousands of people storming up First Avenue toward the UN Complex. To their great dismay, the crowd was awash in olive drab flak jackets and prosthetic limbs and carrying regimental banners which they proudly waved at the Peregrine pilots.

The Peregrines cleared the last of the tall buildings before the low-slung UN Complex, where to their further dismay they found a battalion of mercenaries clad in tortoise-black body armor defending the quadrangle separating the UN Complex from First Avenue.

Captain Wunchel kept his gaze straight ahead, so as not to look into his men’s eyes. He knew what they were thinking, and it was too treasonous to consider. Suddenly, his microphone buzzed back to normal. He snatched it from the dash. “Follow me.” He dropped his Peregrine into the space between the crowd and the mercenaries.

His wing-man radioed in a panicky voice, “What are we doing?”

Captain Wunchel barked, “Descend and cover.”

None did, but it nonetheless appeared to the mercenaries as though the Peregrines had come to back the veterans up and their resolved stiffened.

Sheer momentum pushed the crowd across First Avenue. Those on the leading edge hurled themselves back as Captain Wunchel’s Peregrine came at them in a jabbing maneuver, then backed off and hovered over the mercenaries. “Where are you?” he shouted into his microphone. “You’ll all be court-martialled for this.”

The other Peregrines drifted higher. The pilots had realized they were on the wrong side. This was a fool’s errand fueled by the blind obedience of Captain Jack Wunchel.

Captain Jack rushed the crowd again with the nose of his Peregrine, but closer. The first four rows put their arms out to their sides and heaved backwards with all their might, but the crowd was unaware of their plight, and pushed them to less than ten feet away from the mercenaries.

“Last chance to save your commissions,” shouted Captain Wunchel. “Come down and help me, or I will blast these terrorists into the Stone Age.”

“You’re out of your mind, Cap’n Jack. Always have been,” said his wingman.

Captain Wunchel curled his lips into an angry slit. “When will you people wake up?” He hit a button and a Gatling gun rotated out from under his Peregrine.

The crowd’s panic failed to slow the push from behind.

Captain Jack’s angry face took on a martyr’s pallor. He aimed for the shrinking patch of First Avenue between the crowd and the mercenaries and pulled off one round. Chunks of asphalt flew. Screams were heard all the way back to Times Square. Everyone froze.

Captain Jack had expected a mad rush away from the UN, but this march was on too grand a scale for that. He repositioned and cued up three rounds.

For the first time in days, the crowd took a step back. Suddenly, the sky went dark. Everyone looked up and found it filled with Peregrines stacked in layers and traveling faster than seemed possible, one massive shadow charging toward Captain Jack.

In the lead Peregrine, Admiral Carson sat boiling mad, aiming a boxy, fire-engine red controller at Captain Wunchel’s Peregrine. He whacked the joystick with a flick of his right index finger.

Captain Jack’s Peregrine was tossed like a matchstick out over the East River and beyond the horizon.

A gentle turbulence from the Peregrines carried Lily’s hair into Fred’s face. He brushed away the tickles it made on his rosy cheeks and laughed. Max stared straight up into the cloud of Peregrines, until the look on Lily’s face caught his eye. He beamed an impassive smile at her. They had arrived. They were merely spectators now.

More Peregrines banked out of the side streets and in from the East River. There were thousands. The mercenaries, in a panicked retreat, pressed back to the UN Complex. Admiral Carson’s Peregrine glided into the space above them, dipped its nose, and rotated its Gatling into the ready mode. All the other Peregrines did likewise. The standoff was so absurdly lopsided that the mercenaries dropped their weapons, peeled off their armor, and raised their hands.

* * *

B
ishop Virginia McWilliams Hendrix
, wearing her majestic cube-hat and an uncertain smile, was in the midst of her trance-like opening:

“My children! The wrath of God is upon us.”

“For we have gravely offended thee.”

"We are consumed by thine anger,” she called out serenely, one ear detecting the muffled sound of a cheering crowd.
How strange…

“And by thy . . . fury we are . . . troubled," the congregation stuttered — something was amiss. Out of nowhere, a manly figure marched across the darkened stage.

Bishop Hendrix was too enraptured to notice until the man walked straight into her pink spotlight. The crowd gasped and applauded wildly. It was the brutally handsome Brian Stahl — star of everything. Virginia faded cautiously from the spotlight.

“I have an announcement to make,” Stahl said flatly.

A dull silence stifled the sycophantic clamor of the parishoners as the room went black. Then the house lights came on! Brian Stahl, in very unflattering light, raised a hat adorned with an upside-down martini glass, and shouted, “The party is over! The great charade has been cancelled. And all of you who’ve taken advantage of it . . . you are done.”

A confused grumble buzzed through the Council Chamber. Representative Murthy’s head pivoted wildly.
Where’s Thomka?

Brian Stahl shouted, “This! Whatever the fuck this is . . . is over.”

Those few who had anticipated this eventuality rose and calmly made for the exits. Those of the best and brightest who hadn’t, the vast majority, hung in a perplexed fog. Murthy slid lower into his seat and hid beneath his absurdly large wig weighing his options, which were few and shamefully inconvenient.

Brian Stahl faced the camera and spoke directly to the TV audience. “I have several declarations for this — gang.” He pointed with grave disdain at what the home viewer might assume was a test tube of slimy pustules.

Each and every Representative was suddenly wearing a
who-me?
face.

“First! The dollar will no longer carry the ‘full faith and credit’ of the United States of America. Our debt-soaked dollar is from this moment forward null and void. It will be replaced by a fully transparent digital currency — The Common. We will start anew, with a level playing field. Where no one has a cash advantage.

“Two. New money will no longer enter the economy through private banks, as debt. It will be allocated to work, innovation, infrastructure, research, distribution systems, and paid only when proof of work is shown. The farce of the Central Bank is over. Banking has been a scam since before Jesus threw you assholes out of the temple. Amen.”

Oddly, some answered, “Amen.”

The Representatives suddenly recognized themselves as the villains in this sermon, and began easing toward the doors.

“Third! This puppet show you call a government is dissolved. There will no longer be . . . representatives. No parties. No donors. No lobbies. No contributions or bribes. The actual people will govern, presiding as a network. Those who choose to participate will determine policy, directly. We are now a Participatory Democracy. If you want your voice to matter, you have to participate. Otherwise . . . shut the fuck up.”

Sheer disbelief cast the representatives into a state of contrition, all looking as innocent as newborn fawns. They funneled into a pedestrian-jam at the doors, searching for security or their personal bodyguards. None were found. The entire complex was occupied by exceedingly unfashionable men in tattered fatigues, flak jackets and pea-coats.

Bishop Hendrix, realizing the jig was up, back-pedaled quietly into the wings as Brian Stahl continued.

“Fourth! All debts, foreign and domestic, are hereby vacated. The U.S. government bonds issued by your predecessors have been paid in full by any and all moneys you’ve deposited in foreign accounts. All off-shore accounts have gone to pay those and other outstanding obligations. There was more than enough.”

A mad dash was full-on and accompanied by the gnashing of very expensive teeth as a howl rose from the middle of the chamber. Representative Dan Burfield stood and proudly raised a flask of fine, New Jersey made, Irish Whiskey, toasting and laughing uncontrollably. He did ‘drink a little’, but he was no fool. He had been on to Petey’s treachery from the start, as executor of the NPF trust fund, and had been key to this insurrection.

“Fifth! All shipments of American materiel to foreign countries are terminated until we can determine who owns what. Proof of Work will be the determining factor in all distributions of material wealth, in a free marketplace, unencumbered by big government or big business.” He raised both palms to the ceiling.

The few who were actually listening were flummoxed. It was all gibberish to them. They didn’t get it. It just didn’t add up.

“Sixth! All property acquired after the Great Withdrawal will be held in escrow until its ownership is determined. In order to apportion the wealth stolen from those who fought and died to create it, we now evict the perpetrators of that theft from whatever properties they do currently hold claim to. The situation you created for our heroic veterans will now apply to you . . . thieving shit bags.”

Brian Stahl had promised not to ad-lib, but couldn’t help himself. “The wealth you squandered over the last fifty years could have eliminated poverty and despair. The very things that cause war — the most expensive mistake we keep making. Whatever tradition, superstition or political ideology was used to justify that stupidity, is now vanquished forever.”

The former representatives scrambled like bees from a fallen hive. Some ran straight to their banks, only to find them closed; it was Sunday. To their shock and horror, ATM machines showed they had a zero balance. Their account activities listed the transfer of all their money to an account in Malta — designated only by an upside-down martini glass on an acid green screen. With sinking hearts, they ran to their skyscrapers, only to find them locked down. Where had their private militias gone? Where would they go?