by Jack Yeovil
"Then you've got your hostile natives. Them Cajuns are strange. One quarter French, one quarter Injun—no offence, man—one quarter skunk and one quarter 'gator. Sometimes, they like you, and kill you straight off. Other times, you're not so lucky and they invite all their cousins over for a party. I've got a few friends. I do favours whenever I can. But friendships don't stretch very far away from the PZs. There are lots of paranoid little communities on islands. People have been trying to clear them out and make them change their ways ever since the pirate days when Andy Jackson tried to make 'em all dance 'possum up a gumtree' on the end of a rope. They don't like strangers. You and me, we're strangers."
Krokodil didn't seem impressed. Elvis felt he owed them the full scare story before he took the commission.
"So, if you're really going to make this trip, then you'd better have a damn good reason for it."
"I have a good reason," Krokodil said, offering no more.
"And I need to know what it is."
There was a pause.
"That's a problem," said the Indian.
"It's easily solved. I've got two ears, and I've heard a lot of unbelievable stories in my time."
Krokodil brushed her hair away from her eyepatch. "I'm trying to salvage some equipment left behind when the space program closed down."
"Valuable equipment," underlined Hawk.
"It would have to be. If my cut is a million dollars, then you must stand to clear…what…ten? Twenty? More?"
"I will not profit personally."
"Lady, that I don't believe."
"You can believe it or not, but it's the truth."
Looking into her clear, green eye, Elvis was sure that it was. Not the whole truth, but a goodly chunk of it.
"This sounds straightforward, then. Dangerous, but straightforward. You must have a few details you want to tell me. The gig has to have some complications. At least a million bucks' worth, if I'm any judge."
The food arrived. Hawk hungrily spooned his into his mouth. Krokodil left hers alone.
"The Cape is owned by the Josephite Church. They bought it from the government last year."
Elvis looked at the Indian. "The Salt Lake City crowd? What do they want with a stretch of real estate under a foot of stagnant water?"
Hawk shrugged. "Who knows? The Josephites are crazies."
The Indian had spoken just a hair too quickly, had been just a mite too dismissive.
"They seem to be doing all right by their Deseret. though. I hear that they've been raising crops where everybody says that can't be done."
"I do not underestimate the Josephites," said Krokodil. "They are dangerous. They are hostile to me."
"Great. If we get through the mutant 'gators, the voodoo butchers and the swamp-skimming psychos, the Black Hats will preach us to death, eh?"
"The Church of Joseph is not what it seems."
"There's a lot of that about."
Did he catch just the barest flicker of an incipient smile twitching at the corners of her mouth? Probably not.
"So, we'll have to go into the swamps loaded for bear?"
Krokodil nodded.
"My advice would be to go in loaded for King Kong and Godzilla," said Hawk. "But what would I know? I'm a Navaho. We haven't won a war since the US Cavalry shoved us on the reservation."
"I'm from the South, mister. We know all about losing wars to the Yankees."
The Indian smiled easily.
Krokodil said, "I'll leave the armaments up to you. You know the country, you get to pick the tools."
"I wouldn't have it any other way. Who recommended me to you?"
The Indian answered. "You have a reputation for public-spiritedness."
"So?"
"We guessed that if you spent most of your time robbing the rich to feed the poor, then you could probably do with the mil…"
Elvis laughed. "That's right, Mama, that surely, purely is right."
The Op signalled to Cissy for more recaff. It wasn't like coffee, but it was hot and wet.
"Look, I don't know how this proposition will go down with you guys, but wouldn't it be easier if you just told me what you want from the Cape and sent me in to get it? I'm not a professional snatchman, but it sounds to me like I'd have an easier time of it alone than with you along, ma'am."
Krokodil wasn't offended, but she was insistent. "1 can take care of myself, Colonel. I will come with you."
"Okay. It was just a suggestion."
Hawk was smiling. "Krokodil will surprise you. Colonel. She came through Santa de Nogueira without a scratch…"
"The monastery that got flattened by the hurricanes and God-alone-knows what else last year?"
"That's right."
Elvis took a swallow of the gritty brown drink. "What did happen there?"
Hawk's face froze slightly, and even Krokodil registered something. The pair had nasty memories.
"Colonel," said Krokodil, "believe me, you don't want to know about Santa de Nogueira."
Elvis believed her.
"Well?"
Elvis looked at the Indian, and at the dark woman.
"One million?"
"You can have cash in any gold standard currency, or GenTech corp scrip, or even negotiable gems."
"Good old US dollars is fine by me."
Cissy brought the check, which Hawk paid with a cashsliver. The waitress gave her smile to the Indian, and Elvis felt a flare of jealousy. He might have to watch his womenfolk with this young buck around.
"We will pay you in advance. Should you not survive the mission, then I'll turn the money over to any heirs you designate."
"I have no family," he said, feeling a little tug of hurt. Some things, you have to give up. On the road, with the music, in the army and as an Op, he'd had no chances…
"Then I suggest you think of a charity. Not that we expect to lose you. Colonel. It's just a formality."
"Yeah, I know. I've been through it before. Hell, bribe a politician to repeal the indenture acts. That's charity enough for me."
"Will do."
"Hawk, Ma'am, you have yourself an Op."
He stuck out his hand. The Indian shook it, but Krokodil sat still, betraying no emotion.
He got the impression this girl would be difficult to get to know.
VI
This is ZeeBeeCee, the Station That's Got It All, bringing you What You Want twenty-four hours a day, sponsored by GenTech BioDiv, the caring cybersurgeons with the delicate touch. Next, for all you celibates out there, it's Jack Off With Jake, in which our firm-fingered resident expert guides you to health, happiness and a disease-free sexual release. Send in now for our FREE seventy-six page booklet, and make a down-payment on any of these gorgeous, practical and thoroughly safety-approved home-aids. But first, tune into reality with luscious Lola Stechkin, bringing you The Post-Siesta Bulletin from the comfort of her Japanese garden…
"Hi, America. It's May 8th, 1999, and this is Lola, inviting you onto the open-air waterbed. Here it is, folks, all the news you can handle…
"The big news today is that we have a name! The ZeeBeeCee Blotto Lotto, the one hundred million dollar giveaway that everybody has been talking about for six weeks is finally over, and a winner has been selected by RaLPPH, the Random Lotto Person-Picking Helper. The lucky, lucky winner, who will receive one hundred million dollars in a big suitcase, plus a lifetime of free medical health care from GenTech BioDiv, has been named by Blotto the Clown as…Gavin Mantle, a kitchen appliance salesman from Springfield PeeZee, Massachusetts. Gavin, who has a lovely wife named Clodagh and two adorable children, Tish and Reggie, told our Blotto Lotto giveaway crew that his sudden wealth wouldn't change him at all. Gavin Mantle, you are America, and we here at ZeeBeeCee love you for it. Happy spending!
"It's official! Sanctioned Ops can damage your health, and the health of the society you live in! The Senior Senator from California, Robert Redford, best known for his tireless relief work in the aftermath of last year's
disastrous tidal wave, was today appointed as the head of the long-promised commission of inquiry into the workings of the Enderby Amendment. Passed on June 23rd, 1985, after an extensive campaign masterminded by then-Senator Terence J. Enderby, the law, under which private firms and individuals can register as law enforcement operatives, has been in operation for nearly fifteen years. Senator Enderby resigned his seat in 1994 when it was alleged by investigative television reporter Ed Murphy that he had sponsored the citizenship of a series of Filippino houseboys whose blood types matched his own, with the intention of using the children as a source of replacement organs. Although the establishment of the Redford Commission has been violently opposed by a number of influential political figures, including the formidably pro-Enderby Governor Jerry Musgrave of Colorado, it has finally been granted the seal of presidential approval by President North, who today was quoted as justifying the decision with 'well, there's no harm in taking a long, hard look at our public institutions. It's that kind of rigour that has made our country great.' Mitchell Beazley, head of the anti-Enderby pressure group stOP, delivered a brief statement to the media, commending Senator Redford for his impartiality and claiming 'the so-called Sanctioned Ops have had it their own way for too long. They're supposed to protect decent citizens from the gangcults, but in practical terms it seems to be hard to distinguish the one from the other.'
"In addition to its concern with the frequent instances of extreme violence employed by Ops in their daily missions, the Commission will probe the alleged tie-ups between the larger Op Agencies and the multinats. Public concern has been raised by incidents like the complete destruction in 1997 of the township of Dead Rat, Arizona, by freelance Ops in the pay of the Holderness-Manolo Agency of Los Angeles. Redd Harvest, of the Turner-Harvest-Ramirez Agency, told our midwest bureau, 'I'd like to see Pretty Boy Bobby try to take my person-to-person missile tube away from me.' Governor Musgrave delivered a fifty-eight minute speech in Boulder, referring to Sanctioned Ops as 'America's best and brightest, the true heirs of the Minutemen—you know, those guys who helped kick the Mexicans out of the Alamo—and our last hope for the survival of our way of life in these blighted days.' Privately, Musgrave is alleged to have referred to Redford as 'that lousy commie skag' and to have calculated the Senator's life expectancy if the Amendment is repealed as 'eight to ten minutes.' We'll bring you more on this story as it breaks…
"Dr Ottokar Proctor, alias the Tasmanian Devil, the award-winning economist and serial killer, was today returned to maximum security confinement in the Sunnydales asylum facility. It will be remembered that the former presidential advisor was found guilty on numerous counts of homicide several years ago, and also accused of deliberately making misleading and dangerous suggestions to the North administration in an attempt to ruin the economy of the United States. Although he resumed his murder spree shortly after his escape from Sunnydales over a year ago, little has been heard from him in recent months. He was found wandering vacantly in the desert a few miles away from the site of the still-unexplained meteorological anomaly at the monastery of Santa de Nogueira in Arizona, and has been unable or unwilling to talk about his activities since his last recorded murder, that of Sheriff Marcus Gronquist of Dos Cabezas, shortly after his escape. Dr Thomas Caligari, the newly-appointed director of Sunnydales, insists that the security arrangements at the facility have been considerably tightened up since Dr Proctor's escape, and since the riots late last year which took the lives of famous mass murderers Rex Tendenter, Hector Childress and Reynard Pershing Fraylman and several guards.
"The resurgence of the Maniax gangcult, who had been believed to be out of business after the United States Cavalry/Turner-Harvest-Ramirez Joint Action before the new year, continues. Their latest atrocity was the take-over of Welcome Springs, New Hampshire, a peaceful community which has been left in ruins. The Maniax apparently selected the township because it was the home of the Dexter Blumguard Crusade for Christian Capitalism, the successful fund-raising fundamentalist televangelist station. Dirk Mazzini and Blade Barrie, Maniak War Chieftains wanted on counts of multiple murder, evidently inspired by the successful terrorist humiliation of Reverend Bob and Dolly Jackson by still-unidentified pranksters, walked into the Dexter Blumguard show and asked the program's estimated three million viewers to phone in pledges, and suggestions about the ways in which the Reverend Blumguard and his special guest-stars—Sister Ermintrude the Juggling Nun, the Cartwright Family Singers, Holy Roily and His Heaven-Bound Hang-Gliders—should be murdered. The Maniax are believed to have raised thirty-eight million dollars during the massacre, which lasted two and a half days and ended only when a concerned parent in Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, found her teenage son pledging his allowance for six months on the condition that Mazzini make Uncle Buck Cartwright eat his own banjolele, and alerted the authorities. The Grand Exalted Bullmoose, the shadowy head of the gangcult, issued a press statement announcing all-out war on the non-affiliated citizens of the United States.
"In Paris, fighting has broken out again on the Left Bank, as a bewildering array of insurrectionist splinter groups took on the UEC forces of European President LePen. General Bruno Rottweiler, well-known as the Butcher of Deauville, has been placed in charge of the troops and declared a condition of martial law. Sady Charbonneau, the CanalEpico television personality, has put in a bid of nine million European Currency Units with Rottweiler and the leaders of the various rebel factions for the exclusive television rights to dramatizations of the riots. Rottweiler is believed to be holding out for script approval, while Biron le Rouge, this week's spokesman for the Violent Tendency, has asked for his fee to be paid in ScumStopper ammunition and high explosive. Those Montmartre madames, hoteliers and cafe-owners able to remain open during the hostilities report a 58% upswing in trade, partially due to the presence of highly-paid UEC troops, but also thanks to the yearly influx of Japanese tourists.
"Having wrought a veritable miracle with the reclamation of Salt Lake City from the desert sands, Elder Nguyen Seth of the Church of Joseph has announced that there will be a South-East Coast sister community on the site of the former rocketry base, Cape Canaveral. Work has been started on draining the area dry and reestablishing the tidal walls. Currently, the site, which was purchased last year from the United States for a nominal fee, is being used as a training camp for Josephite missionaries. Mark Mannix, our Florida correspondent, was sent to give us an on-the-spot report from the Cape, but appears to have been eaten by alligators. As soon as we find a replacement, we'll bring you the full story on the latest miracle. Asked what they intended to do with any leftover space technology that might be lying around the Cape since the US space program transferred its site of operations to Edwards Air Force Base, Seth replied 'let it rust. We have no need of rocketships and space shuttles to get us to Heaven.' Incidentally, President North will have to find a new Ambassador to the Josephite state of Deseret. Admiral Harriman Bosley, the current holder of the post, has just announced his conversion to the Josephite faith and renounced his worldly position to become Brother Bosley, a tenor in the world-famous Josephite Tabernacle Choir.
"As if to underline Senator Redford's concern over the unruliness of Sanctioned Operatives, fighting broke out today along the Kansas-Missouri border between agents in the employ of the little-known Logan's Runners of Kansas City and the Good Ole Boys, the powerful South-Western Area Agency. Judgement Q. Harbottle of the GOB alleges that Logan's Runners have been involved in the operation of the so-cailed 'underground railroad' which has been assisting runaway indentees across the state line into Kansas, where the indenture system is not on the statutes. Max Logan, senior partner in the Runners, countercharges that Harbottle is 'nothing but a slave-whopping cotton-picking chickenplucker.' Indenture remains a controversial issue. Those corps who take advantage of indentured labour maintain that the system is not a form of slavery, but 68% of you, according to a recent national poll, don't believe them. We at GenTech would like to stress that t
hose indentees employed in our Tennessee and Mississippi plants have offered their labour entirely voluntarily and have a standard of living far higher than the average for their socio-economic group.
"Talks again broke down between representatives of Russian Premier Boris Yeltsin and Japanese Prime Minister Noburo Sidehara yesterday, with Sidehara refusing to withdraw support from GenTech East's program of undersea mining in the Sea of Okhotsk. During routine naval manoeuvers last week, the Russian navy depth-charged the GenTech submersible rig Toshiro Mifune, and accusations have been flying all over the Far East. Yeltsin refuses to discipline Admiral Yevgeny Tchernobog for his actions, claiming that the Toshiro Mifune was well off its charted course and could easily be mistaken for a seabed rock formation, and is also ignoring the requests of GenTech East CEO Kobayashi that the Soviet Union pay reparations to the corp for the loss of expensive equipment and personnel during the incident. Three members of the Blood Banner Society, the Japanese ultra-nationalist group, took over the Russian Tea Rooms in Osaka, a popular Sovrock nightspot, and held over forty Petya Tcherkassoff fans hostage for five hours. The desperate siege ended only when the Blood Banner group finished their anti-Russian speeches and committed ritual suicide.
"On a lighter note, Dino the Skateboarding Duck was back on the streets again today after his annual medical check-up and road test. The children's favourite will be competing again in the Indianapolis 500 motor race. "And now, back to the studio…"
VII
"How the hell did you get into the building?" Elvis asked the small man with the big hat in his hand.
Robert E. Lee Chamberlain, Memphis Office Chief of the Good Ole Boys Agency, took a drag on his foot-long cigar.
"Just who d'you think your block committee buys their security from, Presley? The Hound Dog Agency?"
Chamberlain laughed, and coughed smoke into the air. He was leaning against Elvis' Cadillac, trying to look cool despite the sweat running into his white sideburns. Chamberlain was a desk Op if ever there was; all his battles were fought to thfc death in offices, with paperclips and computer terminals.