“Cleburne is going to take you downstairs now,” said Broyles. “We have a driver waiting, who will take you to the airport.”
“Come on,” said Cleburne, hand on Donny’s shoulder.
66
That morning, when Donny flew to Washington, they launched the first rocket from the Evac Zone. He could see it through the window as they ascended, close enough that you could almost make out the lines of the upper stages. The burn in the clear morning was so bright and orange, beacon of a right turn in the future. For a minute he thought he could see the corporate logo painted on the side, then he just thought it was a trick of the light. But he knew it was there.
They had kept the plan in stealth mode while they prepared for launch, as best they could despite whispered leaks by guys like Ward. But when Donny landed, the news alerts started popping. The mission was a scout, to an asteroid on a near-Earth trajectory believed to contain massive quantities of water and platinum. The next mission, if everything checked out, would try to capture it. The name on the fuselage was Pallantium SPX, explained by the commentators as a joint venture of Texical, privatized elements of old NASA that provided the expertise and IP, and joint venture partners that included Chevron, TI, Blackstar Group PE, and a handful of undisclosed investors.
For all the money and mindpower behind the operation, including the successful maintenance of secrecy, the real geniuses in the deal were the lawyers. They had found an interplanetary loophole in the Accords, one that made the launch legal, a private undertaking on territory that had established sufficient jurisdictional autonomy that the international treaty authorities could not assert control. Donny wondered what sort of back-office financial conduits they had been able to establish on similar lines. And then he wondered what could be done with something like that if it were controlled by the likes of Xelina and her people instead of Trey and his masters.
Maybe in time. Or maybe only in some other timestream.
“What a great day,” said the female Secret Service agent who met him at the gate, took his phone and computer for safekeeping, and rode in the back with him while the TV in the seat replayed the same clip of the rocket arcing over the Gulf.
When Donny didn’t answer, the other Secret Service agent, a guy who was now riding shotgun while their other colleague drove, looked back at Donny.
“She said it’s a great day,” he said.
“Fly me to the moon, asshole,” said Donny.
“Only parts of you,” said the woman, without looking away from the screen. “And now we finally can again.”
Donny looked out the window instead of replying. That was when he noticed that there was no way to open the doors from the inside.
As they came up out of the tunnel into the heart of official Washington, Donny remembered the last time he had been to D.C. It was years earlier, when he was working on the war crimes trials and they brought him up here for training. It was a different town back then, free and still full of possibility, locus of a rare historical moment when politics was infused with the same imagination as the arts, and the so-called politicians were practicing a utopian experiment in applied science fiction. The experiment, in the views of most, turned out to be at the expense of the idea of the nation, an experiment that lost a war and caused the hard-held bonds of union to rapidly decay. The futures people were planning were too many, and too divergent. And when it came down to it, especially as the economy cratered, most people were too deeply imprinted with the tribal codes of national identity to be able to stomach a path to the “totally local and totally global” mañana that the current regime’s predecessors had envisioned. The only future people could really get their heads around was the one that looked like the glorious past of their imaginations. And the only way to conjure that was with the stick.
So now the scene outside the window as they waited at the first checkpoint at 14th and Constitution was one of holiday lights on razor wire and dark flags flapping under grey skies. There was one group of very angry protesters, but they were confined to a small cordon behind the Washington Monument, barely visible to the cars lined up for the ID checks and bomb scan. They were behind chain link and guarded by uniformed federal police with helmets and assault rifles, the first official contingents Donny had seen of the new consolidated security force they were creating from several existing federal services. The whole zone of museums and monuments along the Mall was fortified by them and some local military battalions. Donny saw one Marine directing tourists there between Natural History and the monument, and the craziest thing was how you could tell the people liked seeing combat-ready soldiers controlling the streets.
They passed through four more checkpoints to get to their destination, which was not even technically the White House, but the adjoining Old Executive Office Building. The intense security reminded Donny of visiting clients in prison, but with a better class of guards. Until they got to the third checkpoint, the one where they pulled his biometrics for the file, which was more like going to the doctor’s office. A doctor’s office where the nurses carried automatic weapons and handcuffs.
Donny was just happy that they didn’t put a bag over his head. Maybe that depended on how he conducted himself in the meeting they escorted him to, down an elevator and into the basements beneath the mansions of state.
The office of Andrew Davidoff, Deputy White House Counsel for Domestic Security Matters, was a lot smaller than you would expect. Smaller even than Donny’s vault, not much bigger than a large closet. And Davidoff himself was bigger than Donny expected, maybe because in the photos he had seen, the glasses and unkempt professorial hair suggested something different from the long-limbed guy who got up from behind the desk and looked like maybe he would have to elbow the wall to shake Donny’s hand as the escort brought him in.
“Come in,” he said to Donny. “And you can please wait outside,” he said to the agents.
“Yes, sir,” said the woman.
“I appreciate you making the trip,” said Davidoff, turning back to Donny and extending his hand. He had a Beltway smile. “It’s good to put a face on the briefs.”
Donny had wondered on the way up here if he would even shake the guy’s hand, the same way he wondered if he would ever shake the hand of the guy’s boss in the very unlikely event he ever got the chance. And then it was like, of course you do. And in the process, feel the permanent and irrevocable shift in the aperture of the politically tolerable.
“Likewise,” Donny said. “I appreciate the opportunity to meet.”
He sensed a presence behind him, and looked over his shoulder to see a guy in a military uniform and a woman in a business suit blocking the door.
“Let’s see if we can all fit in here for now,” said Davidoff. “This is my associate Erin Lee, who works on DOJ liaison, and Colonel Shaw from the Guard.”
“Coast Guard?” said Donny.
“Not exactly,” said Davidoff. “In fact we don’t even have a final name yet, but it’s looking like United States Motherland Guard is what it will be. Right, Colonel?”
“Correct,” said the Colonel. His uniform was Air Force, with drone wings and the silver eye of the surveillance corps.
“Why not Fatherland?” said Donny.
“I heard you were a joker,” said Davidoff. “The Colonel’s got your whole file here, maybe we can show you some of the highlights when we’re done.”
Donny looked at the Colonel, who had a thick leather portfolio under his arm. The Colonel returned the gaze with eyes that had already decided what they were looking at.
“Why don’t you grab one of those chairs from the hall,” said Davidoff, addressing the Colonel, but one of the Secret Service agents was already there with the chair. They put Donny in the corner facing Davidoff’s desk, with the Colonel seated between him and the door, and Lee at Davidoff’s side next to the desk. She started taking notes on her computer before they even started talking business.
“I’ve read a lot of your work,
too,” said Donny, addressing Davidoff. It was true, and he’d even re-read some on the plane. Davidoff was the legal architect of the administration’s reconstruction of the American state. He’d spent a decade in academia at the Institute, incubating many of the ideas that were now being implemented, writing books like The Permanent Exception and After Grotius that few people read and many now wished they had before it was too late. Maybe even more important was his white paper on “Executive Governance of Civilian Populations During Geocrisis.” That’s the one they always cited in their write-ups of initiatives around insurrection management, domestic counterterrorist operations, resettlement and dissident identification, and the theory of denaturalization that underlay Article Three of Burn Barnes.
“Fortunately for everyone else we’re here to talk about your case,” said Davidoff.
“Which one?” said Donny.
“We’ll get to that,” said Davidoff.
“I can guess.”
Davidoff had framed photos of the President and Vice President on the wall behind him, above the one of his wife and kids. There was a map of the lower forty-eight on the wall next to him, annotated in dry erase marker to show the zones of heavy weather, mass relocation, and incipient rebellion. It reminded Donny of the map in Amanda Zorn’s office, but through the eyes of national security instead of capital. The climate-stressed middle of the country, from Davidoff’s vantage, looked like one big mid-continental DMZ.
“We should be talking about where the food’s going to come from,” said Donny, looking at the map.
“I think we have that covered,” said Davidoff. “As long as you don’t screw up our access to the water we need to grow it.”
“Isn’t that what today’s launch is about?”
“The Colonel here can tell you better than me,” said Davidoff. “But the short answer is no. That’s about the water we need to expand our sovereign territory beyond orbit, without having to haul it up there. The water we need to restore the American continent is already here.”
“In the Evac Zone.”
“Under it, technically,” said the Colonel.
“So far down that it’s under a lot of countries,” said Donny.
“Right,” said Davidoff. “Which is why we would like to keep this project quiet as long as we can.”
“Do you think you can get it all out of the ground before others join the party?” asked Donny.
“We’ve been working on this technology for years,” said the Colonel. “A production application of scientific drilling. Deep drilling. Now we’ve started implementing it in the field, and it’s working. It’s going to save us, and let us turn the tables back where they belong. And it’ll be a decade before anyone comes close.”
Water is the new oil.
That’s what Jerome had said, without even realizing what he had uncovered. Donny was privately pleased to have followed the lead to its end, even as he worried whether it meant his own end would be the same as Jerome’s. He felt the sweat seeping through his shirt. And then he thought about where Xelina was, and everyone who was there with her, and decided his own burnt-out life was maybe not the most precious thing there was.
“As long as they don’t stop you from doing it.”
“We don’t think they can,” said the Colonel.
“Especially not the way we’ve set it up,” said Lee.
The same logic as the launch pad applied to the new deep-drilling rigs.
“How do you keep the corporations from selling it to people you don’t want to have it?” said Donny. “From doing deals with Beijing or whoever?”
“Maybe the same people who control the government control the companies,” she answered.
“Let’s not get into that,” said Davidoff.
“I agree,” said Donny. “I figured you wanted to talk about my plea to the CIC.”
“We kind of want to talk about all of it,” said Davidoff. “Including, yes, your very annoying call for foreign intervention in our internal political economy. But frankly, I’m not as worried about that as others, because I know that even if you succeeded in getting them to throw out every real estate title in the USA, they could never enforce it.”
“I don’t know,” said Donny. “They can do a lot through their regulation of the international financial markets.”
Lee nodded. Davidoff looked unimpressed. “What I’m worried about,” he said, “is the stuff you haven’t filed yet.”
“What do you mean?” said Donny. He acted surprised, even as he had an idea of what was coming.
“We have the draft in progress,” said Lee. She pulled out a red folder, opened it, and let Donny see a copy of work product that only existed on his computer.
“So much for attorney-client privilege,” said Donny, feigning shock. They had taken the bait. The brief laid out not just the threads he had pulled on the legal tapestry that underlay their plans. It laid out all of the facts that he had uncovered—about what was going on in the Evac Zone. And about who Jerome took the fall for, and why.
“This is U.S. national security you are messing with here,” said Davidoff. “High-stakes provocation to exculpate one green rebel bitch.”
“Are you getting all this in your notes, Erin? Because I may need a good transcript after I file this.” Before she could respond, Donny turned back to Davidoff. “I’m not the one who picks the bogus prosecutions to suppress political speech, Andy. And you guys tapping my files is only going to help my case.”
“That’s not something you are going to be bringing up,” said Davidoff. “And that new brief is not one you are going to file.”
“Like hell I’m not. I’m filing it this week,” said Donny. “And sending copies to the media. Not just the U.S. media. And when what you people have been up to is revealed, and the election is called, we’ll see who has to worry about prosecutions.”
The room was quiet for a long minute.
“You make some big assumptions about the election, counselor,” said Davidoff.
“The Supreme Court is about to rule,” Donny reminded them. “And you can bet even they will agree with the Fifth Circuit, and the trial judge. The Governor overstepped his authority. It’s over. You guys should start packing your shit.”
“The Supreme Court doesn’t decide elections in this country,” said Davidoff. “The People do.”
“And that’s what just happened,” said Donny. “The vote was clear.”
“The vote was a fraud,” said the Colonel. “And the country is at risk. The People need to be led.”
Donny looked at the Colonel. You could tell the kind of leadership he had in mind. Another one in a long line who thought “We the People” meant his people.
“Change is coming,” said Davidoff. “And we have enough in our files to put you in a cell where no one can hear you blab. Ever.”
“Maybe even a trip to the Island,” said the Colonel.
“Or we can work out a deal,” said Davidoff.
Donny swallowed.
“I’m listening.”
67
Clint offered to pick Donny up at the airport, but Donny said you go wait for her, I’ll meet you there.
When Donny arrived, Clint was parked at the outer perimeter fence of the Coast Guard operating base, sitting on the hood of his truck. So Donny joined him up there, after throwing the overnight bag he hadn’t needed into the bed. Clint said you can explain all this to me after she gets here. So they sat there together in the cool air under the Texas stars and watched the choppers come and go, listening to the bugs sing their night songs between the wind-cutting chops of the rotors, until it was the chopper they were waiting for.
The Coasties wouldn’t let them pull the truck in, and they didn’t want to let Clint in at all, but after Donny got done talking and Clint put his pistol in the glove box they said they could wait on the civilian side of the last gate before the tarmac.
When the big Blackfoot flew in, painted a blue so dark you could only see t
he lights until it was there in the arc of the big lamps along the field, it looked like some kind of robot whale. And when they opened the side hatch you could not believe they would use such a huge machine to move such a small person.
Xelina was uncuffed, but still in the red jumpsuit. She didn’t seem to care about that. She ran across the tarmac to Clint, dragging a small plastic bag with her few personal belongings, even as the airmen were yelling at her to walk. And when she was done with Clint, she even gave Donny an authentic hug, and a thank-you.
They wanted to talk, but Donny said let’s talk in the car. So they sat the three of them side by side on the bench seat of the old pickup, Xelina in the middle, as far to the Clint side of the middle as she could get.
The radio came on as Clint started the car. Radio Ochenta, playing some kind of gringo variation on a revolutionary corrida. Clint reached over to turn it off, and when he moved Xelina grabbed on tighter. That was when Donny realized it was the first time he had seen her free—because even after her escape, that hideout was just a prison of her own making. And as he looked at her in the darkness as they pulled away, he could see that she no longer was fully free. That something she’d had before, even in chains, was gone. Left behind on that ship.
They were all three quiet for a while as Clint drove away from the base, Donny looking off out the side window at the distant flareoffs, until Xelina asked the question she had been holding on to.
“How did you pull it off?” she said.
“I found something they were a lot more scared of than you,” said Donny. “It wasn’t easy.”
You could see the hint of a smile on her face at that.
Clint had one eye on the military trucks lined up in the oncoming lane, but he didn’t say anything. None of them did. Instead, Donny kept talking.
“After the way I screwed this up at the beginning, I had my work cut out for me.”
“We did our part,” said Clint.
“You sure did,” said Xelina, holding on to him like they were still on the run. “Not that I don’t appreciate it.”
Rule of Capture Page 28