Knave's Gambit

by Deforest Day

  After they left the major said, “Well, Im-press my ass; took the man two months to learn my name. Of course that gave me two months to use my Snake Eater skills to scare the man shitless.”

  She made another noise, this time deep in her sinuses. Kat assumed these were useful communications skills among snake eaters. The major lowered her voice, even though they were alone on a restricted access floor in the middle of the night. She made it a point to always believe the walls had ears.

  “Sometime I’ll give you a peep at the file I been building.” She then made a sound through her nose that Kat interpreted as a laugh. “Man asked me was it possible to rig to up a spy camera for him. I bought a fifty-dollar eight-gig ballpoint camera pen at Office Max, said it was a one-of-a-kind prototype.” She slowly shook her head. “I believe the man thinks that James Bond shit is real. The QP1341 surveillance camera comes with three ink refills and a USB cable. I didn't give him that, or the instruction booklet.

  “He brought it back a couple days later, asked could I transfer his recording from the jump drive to ‘one of those CD things’, so he could hide it in a safe place.” This time the chuckle was human. “Lord save us from presidential appointees.”

  She headed along the hall toward her office. “Come on, I’ll show you where the Army coffee is made. Like everything else in this world, you want it done right, you do it yourself.”

  Kat asked, “I didn't want to appear stupid in front of Secretary Edgerton and Levon, so I'll ask you. What the hell is a fusion center?”

  Major Machler laughed. “You catchin' on quick, honey.” She rolled her eyes up and fluttered her lids. “Quote, Fusion centers operate as state and major urban area focal points for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information, Unquote.” She snorted. “They're part of our full employment program for the functionally disabled.”

  Kat said, “Speaking of functionally disabled, when I first met Mr. Edgerton, in my doctoral advisor's office, I saw they were two peas in a pod. Professor Becker is a two finger typist. When he grew up, only secretaries did the typing.” She turned to Geneva, a woman she saw as both mentor and friend, in this crazy new world. “Baby boomers may rule the world, but anything more complicated than email is beyond them. They're computer illiterate.”

  The Major made another trademarked noise. “They's real-world illiterate. Half of 'em haven't driven a car in decades. There's a story about Ike, after he left the White House, he picks up a telephone, asks what's that noise.” Another snort. “It was a dial tone.”

  She punched numbers on her door lock. “4-2-2-6. Last four digits on my dog tags. I expect you could figure it out fast enough, I’ll tell you now.” She opened the door, grinned at Kat. “In case I need you to step and fetch me some coffee.”

  The major headed for Six, and Kat found an olive-green can of coffee and a Braun drip machine on the credenza. While she waited for the machine to brew she ran the day's data through what she called her CPU and Hercule Poirot called his little grey cells.

  She logged onto the major's computer, used her own password, and called up the DHS fact sheet on fusion centers. Major Machler made them sound like a glorified information clearing house. She scrolled down past the boilerplate.

  “A fusion center is a collaborative effort of two or more agencies that provide resources, expertise and information to the center with the goal of maximizing their ability to detect, prevent, investigate, and respond to criminal and terrorist activity."

  That was a lot more than paper pushing. Resources. Like the FEMA Temporary Internment Facilities.

  —o—

  Upstairs, Kat stepped off the elevator and into the shadowy silence of the Sixth floor. The Corridors of Power. Thick carpeting muffled her footsteps as she carried the major's carafe to the empty dining room, where she found cups, cream and sugar.

  She followed the murmur of conversation down a richly paneled hallway decorated with engravings of 18th and 19th Century Washington DC. She paused in the doorway of Secretary Edgerton’s office. He, Levon, and Major Machler were spread out in the darkened room.

  The brightly-lit Capitol dome filled the big windows. Kat placed the tray on a low table in front of the Secretary, and quietly slipped into a chrome and leather chair. She’d gone to the Met for the Bauhaus Retrospective, and was pretty sure she was sitting on a Mies Barcelona. What had Levon said? The fifty billion yearly budget came to six million dollars an hour.

  They broke off their discussion of using National Guard helicopters to patrol the Interstates, and performed the coffee kabuki. Kat figured this was as good a time as any to offer her thoughts.

  “Something what’s his name, Mr. Paloma—I’ve got to stop thinking of him as the ‘Tattooed Prick’—said this afternoon.” That got their attention. “You’ll remember, major, because you’re the one who picked it up. You said that rooftop was a bad place for a sniper. But Mr. Paloma told me it was the only place.

  “A few minutes ago, while I was waiting for the coffee to brew, I was watching the traffic, five floors below. And I thought, what if he wasn’t waiting for a gas truck to come along. What if he was in a car, and stuck his gun out the window?”

  No one said anything. Everyone drank coffee. Levon finally broke the ice. “My people tell me there’s ninety-five thousand miles of petroleum pipeline, serving I don’t know how many fuel terminals. Gas, diesel, home heating oil. The tanker trucks just carry the gasoline a short distance to the service stations. Maybe they hang around a terminal, follow a truck full of gas.”

  The Secretary added an observation. “Waiting until the right spot to strike. I'm told these incidents are all at locations which cause the greatest havoc.”

  Major Machler threw cold water on the conversation. “No way a man can drive a car and shoot with any accuracy. At sixty, seventy miles an hour? And nobody sees nothin’?” She turned her laser gaze on them. “Y'all been watchin’ too many movies.”

  It was Kat’s baby, and she didn’t want to let it die, so she decided to fire the one arrow in her quiver bigger than the major’s. She picked up the coffee pot, leaned over the Secretary’s cup, and poured a refill, hoping to catch his attention. “What if it was two guys?”

  Edge caught a flash of white flesh and black lace, and lost his train of thought. “Sorry, dear. What was that again?”

  Kat smiled at the old fool, and had a sudden realization. Guys at the top of the heap were still. . . guys. Nature equipped them with a handy handle; activate it, and you could lead them anywhere. “I said, what if it was two people; a driver and a shooter?”

  Secretary Edgerton shook off his brief fantasy, and said, “I’ll bring your supposition to the FBI’s attention. In the morning. Meantime, let’s all grab a few hours of shut eye. I have a feeling tomorrow will be a test of our resolve.”

  —o—

  Nick crossed the darkened street to the impoundment facility. He studied the bank of trafficam images for a moment, stuck his head in the office. A pair of drivers were playing cards. The second shift dispatcher was stretched out on the sofa, a newspaper over his face. The attacks had already cut traffic in half.

  He poured a mug of stale coffee, carried it across the tracks to his home away from home, where he finished rigging the air bag, then showered and put on a change of clothes. After the fight with the FPS agents he was too wired to sleep; he called home, told Poppy they’d see him when they saw him.

  Except for the pay level, his job wasn’t all that different from doctors and furnace repairmen, and his family knew his odd hours were a part of life.

  He tossed a six pack in a cooler, stuck magnetic Virginia dealer tags on his truck, and picked up I-66 at the Kennedy Center.

  Except for the oversize tires his pickup looked like any other fifteen year-old Ram 4x4. But under the hood Mo and his crew had installed the V-10 from a nearly new Viper that had become the death ride of a too-rich and too-young man from Manassas. The suspension had a similar hist
ory, different only in that it once had been beneath a Porsche Cayenne. So when Nick opened it up on the Interstate, the curves were no challenge for the Porsche and a hundred and twenty was no challenge for the Viper. He cranked down the window, cranked up the Doors, and opened a beer.

  Forty minutes later he was in Front Royal. He turned south, onto Skyline Drive, and slowed to a steady seventy. The nighttime beauty of Shenandoah National Park washed away the craziness he’d accumulated over the last few days. At Mile Marker 44 he pulled into the scenic overlook.

  The ticking of the cooling engine was the only sound as he climbed on the warm hood with a cold beer, and leaned back against the windshield. The star-filled sky above Hawksbill Mountain went on forever. He fell asleep, thinking of Mary and yesterday, and Liz and tomorrow. And was he now a fugitive from justice?

  —o—

  It was after midnight, a school night, and Jahlil, nine, and Tyree, eleven, were in possession of two cans of Rustoleum spray paint. They flitted through the shadows of Camden Yards, tagging railcars.

  Jahlil saw a pale, eerie glow inside a gondola. “Whassat?” he asked.

  “Some kind of shit,” Tyree answered. They dropped their cans, and crept forward, investigating. The glimmer was coming from the dying headlights of a wrecked automobile atop a load of scrap.

  Jahlil jumped, grabbed, chinned himself on the side of the gondola. His head slowly rose above the steel rim, until his eyes were inches from a narrow opening between the roof and the driver’s door of the automobile. And inches from a blood-streaked white man’s head. “AAAAAAAAH,” he screamed, and fell to the ground.

  Tyree, older and therefore wiser, had climbed the rungs at the end of the car, and was carefully walking across the razor-sharp scrap when he heard his brother scream. He looked over the edge at Jahlil. “Fuck’s the matter wif you?”

  His brother clutched his ankle, shrieked, “They’s a devil in that car!”

  Tyree had long given up on Santa, the Easter Bunny, and Devils. So he said, “Bullshit. Ain’t no such thing.” He climbed on the hood and crawled toward the windshield. Sweeping aside bits of glass, he looked through the dark opening. Two bloody faces stared back at him.

  “MUTHAFUCKA,” he yelled, and scrambled backwards, off the hood, away from the automobile, and over the side of the gondola. He landed beside his brother, twisting his ankle.

  They were limping away from the tracks when a passing patrol car ended their midnight ramble. The two Baltimore cops left their cruiser, slipped batons in their belt rings, and aimed five cell flashlights at the boys. “Man,” Tyree said, “Is we glad to see you.”

  The boys slipped away during the excitement of converging police cars and fire rescue trucks, followed by a pair of ambulances racing to Mercy Medical Center.

  Due to the fame and popularity of the two native FPS agents, it was only a matter of minutes before the entire Baltimore police force learned of the Moran’s misadventure. The brothers had been dismissed from the force a year earlier for so many civilian complaints it made the national news.

  Dawn’s early light was once again winning its war with the shadows of night as they limped out of the ER and onto Saint Paul Street. Ernest wore a cervical collar for his sprained neck, and a sling for his dislocated shoulder. Albert had an eye patch covering a scratched cornea, and a walking boot on his right foot.

  They were the subject of much mirth and jocularity fired from the front seat of the cruiser during the brief journey to their Fells Point home.

  When they got there Ern shook a Percocet tab into his palm and swallowed it dry. His older, and therefore wiser, brother washed his down with a shot of rye. They slumped on the sofa, stared out the window at the pastel row houses across the street. “Fucker,” Al said.

  “Dead fucker,” Ern answered.

  “I hope Ma’s Skylark will start.”

  —o—

  Nick was stiff and damp when he awoke. Sleeping outside had been an adventure, back when he had been a whole lot younger, and Mary had been there to snuggle against.

  He rolled off his truck, worked the kinks out, emptied the beer out, and jogged a half mile closer to North Carolina. He picked up the pace on the return, sprinted the last hundred meters. When he reached the truck the sun was above the tree line, and he turned his face to its warmth.

  Nick fired the engine, and Jim filled the cab with, ‘woke up this morning, got myself a beer’. In my younger days, Nick thought, and swapped the Doors for the news. There had been another series of gas truck disasters. The closest was on the Virginia-North Carolina border.

  Gas prices had doubled overnight, and truckers were refusing to haul fuel on the Interstates. Maryland’s governor had activated a National Guard transportation company for convoy duty, only to discover all their vehicles were either overseas or down for maintenance.

  Nick headed East on 211. Not his problem; his problem was DC traffic and a daughter with a school assignment he couldn’t understand, let alone offer parental assistance.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Old Executive Office Building squats at the corner of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. For nearly three decades one of its five hundred and fifty rooms was occupied by Army Chief of Staff General “Blackjack” Pershing. That particularly opulent chamber, decorated with ornamental stenciling, a pair of Belgian marble fireplaces, and a delicate floor of mahogany, white maple and cherry, now serves as the Office of the Vice President.

  Since its restoration in the 1980s it has been a ceremonial office, one used for meetings and press interviews, as well as other important events.

  Important events like poker. Table stakes, ten grand for a seat. The Five—the vice president, Special Assistant to the President Mason Drubb, Attorney General Gabe Oxenhammer, Director of Homeland Security Lawrence Edgerton, and National Security Advisor General Fletcher Bainbridge—were using the excuse of five card stud to discuss strategy.

  A pair of the vice president's Secret Service detail—part of a team he privately called his Praetorian Guard—were stationed outside the door.

  The Five found seats around the same poker table Senator Truman and his congressional pals used to escape their wives. As the putative host, DEERSLAYER sat in the same chair Vice President Truman had occupied when he learned of FDR’s death. The current office holder considered it an auspicious piece of furniture.

  He tore the cellophane from a fresh deck, removed the jokers, and fanned the cards on the green felt. The sight of the Great Seal of the Vice President on the back never failed to give him a thrill.

  “Before we begin, I’d like an update on REX 84.” He turned to the Secretary of Homeland Security. “Edge. Now that FEMA has been folded into your bailiwick, why don’t you begin?”

  Only a handful of people had more than a passing knowledge of REX 84, and five of them were drinking whiskey in the OEOB. Those not present included a number of convicted felons, unindicted coconspirators, and, in President Ronald Reagan’s case, the dead.

  Secretary Edgerton loosened his tie and popped the bottom two buttons on his vest in preparation for a long session. General Bainbridge sighed as he realized HomSec was slipping into professorial mode. For a man of few real world accomplishments, Edgerton sure was quick to the podium.

  The National Security Advisor went to the bar cart, and prepared himself a large tumbler of Kentucky’s finest Bullshit Repellant.

  “A bit of historical background, if I may, so we are all singing from the same hymnal.” Lawrence Edgerton removed his glasses and studied the ornate ceiling. It was a pose he had often assumed, lecturing to a full house in Woolsey Hall, as he called upon the spirits of past historians to validate his words.

  “President Jimmy Carter created the Federal Emergency Management Agency through Executive Order 12148. Bang! Fait accompli. Since it does not matter if EO’s are constitutional, they are a nifty way to make an end run around Congress.

  “During President Reagan’s administration the sup
er-patriot and famous radio talk show host Oliver North assisted FEMA in drafting some so-called ‘civil defense’ preparations. EO’s that allow the government to take control of transportation, communications, food resources. Useful in the event of fires, floods, and volcanic eruptions.” Edge turned to the Attorney General. “Of particular interest to Gabe is Executive Order 11310.”

  Gabe Oxenhammer welcomed the opportunity to grab the spotlight from the Secretary of Homeland Security. “Critical interest. EO 11310 authorizes the Department of Justice to enforce all of those plans set out in the other Executive Orders.” He wet his whistle with bourbon. “It also directs the Department of Justice to, quote: ‘Advise and assist the President’.”

  Edge jumped back in. The AG had fielded the grounder cleanly, enjoyed his moment. Time to move on to the only Executive Order that mattered. “Quite right. And DoJ, I am sure, will rule with an iron hand. Wearing, as it does, the mailed glove of the FBI.” An FBI two steps behind these gas truck killers, and led by a mouth-breathing Hoover relic. “Thank you, Mr. Attorney General. However, there is another Executive Order of more than passing interest to tonight’s gathering. Number 11921. It allows FEMA, in a national emergency, to seize control of every aspect of society.”

  HomSec replaced his glasses, and they flashed as he slowly turned his head, catching the attention of the other four poker players. “It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the president, Congress cannot review the action for six months.” He smiled as he added, “No small amount of mischief can be made in six months.”