by Frank Rich
The front window shattered, and a tear gas canister hissed into the room. I jerked open the back door as the front door crashed open. A gas-masked soldier rushed in, and I sent him back out with a chest full of gyras. Figures moved past me into the alley, cloaked by swirling white mist. A narrow shape with short hair was silhouetted in the front door, blinded by the gas. I pointed the gyra at the figure, but before I could squeeze the trigger, shots rang out from the right side of the room and Mack pitched to the floor.
More canisters bounced off the walls, choking the room with gas. George's hulking figure shambled past, and I followed. I jerked open the passenger door of the Caddy and fell in, blinded and choking. The car lurched into reverse and roared backward down the alley. Through burning eyes I looked around. George sat behind the wheel, and Tomas, Kerry and Stevo were in the back.
"Where's Marlene and Monique?" I asked.
"The spifs grabbed them," Kerry gasped, rubbing his tearing eyes. "They must have got Mack, too."
"Yes," I agreed. "They must have." I caught George sliding me a look.
"I guess there's no question about Marlene's guilt now," George said, deftly swinging out of the alley and onto Blake. He slammed the stick into drive and powered south. The windows went down, and fresh air drove out the odor of tear gas. "If they'd have used frag grenades, we'd all be dead. But they used tear gas. They didn't want her to get hurt."
"That's not necessarily true," I said.
"I'd say it was."
"Well, it doesn't matter now."
George focused on his driving. "Where we heading?"
"That depends if the boys want to fight or not," I said.
They shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know," Kerry said.
"We have to rescue Mack and Mony," Tomas said. "That's reason enough." Stevo nodded agreement.
Kerry frowned. "I want to ask Jake a question first."
"Go ahead."
"Were you going to shoot Marlene in there? Or us?"
I smiled. "Well, to tell you the truth, I wasn't sure."
"I don't like that answer," Kerry said.
"That's all behind us now," George soothed. "Fate has made brothers of us once again. Right, Jake?"
"Right."
"Okay," Kerry said. "But no more lame deals."
"I promise," I said.
George smiled happily. "So. We have no weapons, no money, no base of operations and no plan. Where do we go now?"
"The nearest combooth," I said, taking a card out of my wallet. "We have one option left."
23
"I called the whole squad," Cliff said. "Most didn't show up, but the cream are here."
"It'll have to be enough." We stood in the brownstone warrior's post-Warhol living room. The open black raincoat he wore hung to the top of knee-high jackboots, and a red sash around his waist added a splash of color to his camouflaged pants and loose-fitting commando shirt.
"Who are they?" Cliff asked quietly.
I looked back at George and the band hanging out near the door. "Revolutionaries."
"Is that how they dress?"
"Most of them."
He stared at their casual attire, then dropped his eyes to his own outfit. "I've been misled. Well, they can wait in the rain room while we talk."
"The rain room?"
"Yes. It's down the hall, last door on the right." He pointed to the left.
I looked back at George.
"Righto," George said. "The rain room." He and the band started down the hall, snickering.
"So what's your proposition?" Cliff asked as we paced the circular hall. "On the phone you said it was real combat for the best property in the city."
"It's more than that. It's for the entire city."
"The entire city? Does this have anything to do with Remi's joke?"
"What joke?"
"The picture of him on TV. 'The king is dead.' The man is crazy."
"The man is dead."
"How do you know?"
"I killed him."
"Really?"
I told my story for the fourth time.
"Wow!" Cliff said when I finished. "What an exciting career. I'll bet the benefits are great, too."
"Yeah, but it's a cutthroat racket. You interested?"
"What's the plan?"
"We're going back in. We take the building, we take the reins of power."
"What's my side of it?"
"I'll need you to provide a skimmer, weapons and manpower."
"What's the up side?"
"A share of future power. Whatever downtown property you can grab. A cut of the excitement."
Cliff considered it. "That's an attractive offer. But there's great risk involved."
"Just your life."
He laughed. The soles of our boots clacked on the red tiles of the hall. Cliff stopped and gave me a vaguely deranged look. "I can't speak for the others, but I'm in."
"Grand."
Cliff smiled. "I guess you're wondering why."
I shrugged. "I'm sure you have your reasons."
"It isn't for property or power, if that's what you think."
I didn't want to know why but I knew he wanted to tell me. "Why, then?" I asked.
"Let me ask you a question first." He paused to consider for a moment. "Do you know that feeling you get when you're on the brink of something exciting and dangerous, then you back down because you're afraid it might be too dangerous? That feeling of emptiness and self-contempt afterward, the feeling that you've been left behind by life?"
"I think everyone has felt that way."
"Every moment of my life has been like that. That feeling is the sum of my entire existence. I'm always safe, secure."
"The warm safe circle."
"Yes, precisely."
"You must have done one dangerous thing in your life."
"No, never. I've been fooling myself since I was born. I don't even know what I'm afraid of. But then, one need not know darkness to fear the night."
"That's why you took up ruled urban combat?"
"Yes. It's not the brownstones, that was just as excuse for my friends. As long as greed is your excuse, you can do some very silly things and they won't think you're the least bit crazy." He laughed. "But with all the armor and rules, it's not crazy at all — it's as safe as crossing the street. The great warrior. What a joke."
"How'd you get that scar?"
He touched his cheek and contained his self-contempt in a smile. "I don't know. I was asleep at the time. I paid a plastic surgeon two thousand creds to do it."
"Well, this is your lucky day, then."
"How so?"
"I know where you can get your scars for free."
"That's where I want to go." He slammed a fist into his hand. "For the first time in my whole miserable life I want to seize the wheel of my destiny. I want to control the means to my end, no matter how horrible it may be. I want to get so close to death I'm alive." He gave me a look, and there was more than a little madness in his pale blue eyes. "Isn't that where life usually is? On the edge of death?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes there's just death." The circular hallway led us back to the rain room. He opened the door and we stepped inside.
Water drizzled from the high ceiling, creating dim halos of white around the circa-1920s streetlights. Everything was a shade of black or gray, the cobblestones, the shop fronts, the wrought-iron benches. The illusions of clouds and a masked moon crept across the distant ceiling. The band hung out beneath the parapet of a sidewalk caf6. A group of four muppies, dressed like Cliff, stood in the rain, collars up, smoking cigarettes.
"Quite a setup," I said.
"Do you like it? I borrowed the details from the set of The Big Sleep. That's why it's all in black and white."
"I thought it looked familiar."
"I thought we'd hold our meeting in here. So it'd be more memorable and dramatic."
"Setting is everything."
"I agree. Well, let me talk to m
y people."
Cliff put up his collar and walked over to his friends. I visited the band.
"We're going to work with them?" Stevo asked.
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe. At this point in the game, we need all the help we can get."
Kerry squinched up his nose. "But they're muppies."
"Revolutions make strange bedfellows."
Kerry sniffed. "I don't like muppies."
"They're not evil," I said. "At least not consciously."
"Yeah, if you say so. Why are they dressed like that, anyway?"
"That's how they think revolutionaries dress."
"Why they standing in the rain?" Tomas asked.
"Because drama is everything."
Kerry shook his head and stepped on his cigarette butt. "They won't come. Muppies don't want anything to do with revolutions."
I looked at Cliff and his friends. "Don't be too sure. They're a strange breed. They struggle for money, security and comfort, then secretly hold their safe and complacent life-styles in contempt. The muppies are probably the greatest untapped source of rebels in Denver."
Cliff waved me over. I crossed the rain-drenched cobblestones, and Cliff introduced me to the four men.
"You probably recognize Morris and John," he said.
I shook hands with the lawyer and doctor from the brownstone episode.
"This is Pieter, one of the private sector's top computer men." I shook hands with an athletic man wearing yellow cat's-eye contacts.
"And Herb, a stock analyst." A timid man with weak eyes gave me a dishrag shake.
I looked them over. "Well, gentlemen?"
John the doctor spoke first. "Cliff has never led me wrong on the market. I'll go."
"I can't believe I'm saying this," Pieter said, shaking his head and laughing. "But I'm in. I'm ready for some real action."
Herb shook his head. "I… I can't. I've a wife and kids and a mortgage and.
"I understand," I said. "You can leave."
Herb zipped up his leather overcoat and hastily left.
I looked at Morris. "What about you?"
He shot his eyes at his comrades. They regarded him with stares of contempt.
"I'm in," he rasped.
His friends smirked.
"I am! I want some action, too."
"There won't be any law books," I said. "Your armor won't be worth much."
He swallowed. "I know that. I'm ready. I can do it."
"Okay," Cliff said, "we have the men. Now all we need is a plan. When is this raid, anyway?"
"Tonight."
They gasped.
"Tonight?" Morris said. "Couldn't we do it on a weekend? I have a full caseload tomorrow."
"Revolutions don't wait for weekends," Cliff said, taking the philosophical high ground.
I took a more pragmatic stand. "The longer we wait, the more the enemy consolidates his power base, improves his security. The transitional period is when a government is weakest. We have to strike now."
After some muttering about early-morning appointments they agreed.
"Do you have a large table?" I asked Cliff.
"Yes, in the dining room."
"Groovy." I looked at my watch. "We've two hours to come up with a good plan to capture Denver."
Minutes later the muppies and band were settled around a large oak table in Cliff's dining room.
"What kind of skimmer do you have?" I asked Cliff.
"A Superflight Turbo," Cliff said from across the table. "Fully loaded."
I looked at George. "Do you know it?"
"If it's a skimmer, I can fly it."
"I'll fly it," Cliff said.
"My plan involves some tricky maneuvering," I said. "George was a skimmer pilot during the wars."
"Oh," Cliff said, looking at George with new eyes.
"What do you have in the way of firepower?" I asked. "Besides the rubber guns."
Cliff looked embarrassed. "I have a couple rifles. Morris has an extensive collection."
"Modern stuff!" Morris chirped happily. "Top-of-the-line military gear. Enough for everybody."
"How you set for grenade launchers?" I asked.
"I have one, a 60 mm attached to a Mitsu speed rifle."
"Super." I drew a square on a piece of notebook paper, and everyone hunched forward. "This is the top of the Party admin tower." I drew a smaller square in the middle of the larger square. "This is the elevator housing." I drew a square next to it. "And this is the stairwell. The southern half of the rooftop is covered with antennae, and the north half is a landing pad."
"Is it defended?" George asked.
"Yes." I drew a circle on top of the elevator housing. "This is a radar-targeted rocket turret. And I suspect the pad is pressure mined."
"What about the bottom of the tower?" Cliff asked.
"Laser turrets and steel doors, but that doesn't matter. We're going in from the top."
"But you just said there were rockets and mines," Morris whined.
"We're going to get around them."
"How?"
"I'm going to turn them off."
"From where?" Kerry asked.
"From Rob's office."
"Wait," Kerry said. "If we can't land on the roof, how are you going to get into Rob's office?"
"That's the first part of the plan. Prior to the attack, we land on the roof of a nearby office building. I get out with a thirty-yard length of rope. I tie one end to my waist and the other to the landing skid of the skimmer. Then we take off again."
"I've a tensile twine in the skimmer's emergency kit," Cliff volunteered.
"So you're dangling from the skimmer," Kerry said. "Then what?"
"Then," George cut in, "I fly quickly over the tower. We go over the top, he goes through Rob's window."
"That's why we need an expert at the controls," I said. "If the pilot flies too high or low, I eat cement."
"Won't the window be bulletproof?" Morris asked.
"Yes," I said. "That's what the grenade launcher's for."
"That sounds extremely dangerous," Morris said.
"It sounds extremely exciting," Cliff countered.
"If it goes off right, it'll be a tumble in the hay. Once I get inside, I'll seize control and turn off the roof defenses from Rob's office. You'll be hovering at a safe distance, and I'll signal you with three blinks of a flashlight. You'll land on the roof and go down the stairwell."
"Why not the elevator?" Pieter asked.
"Too risky. They could cut power and trap you. With the downward angle, capturing the stairwell will be a cinch. You just roll down the grenades and follow in the wake of the explosions. The office is two floors down."
"What's on the top floor?" George asked.
"I believe that's where Lazarus lives, the computer brain of Remi's empire." I looked around the table and witnessed expressions ranging from rabid excitement to utter terror. "Any questions?"
"How do we know that Rob will be there?" Kerry asked.
"If he's not, he's dead."
"Why do you say that?" Kerry asked.
"While I was in Remi's office, I programmed Lazarus to hunt and kill Rob and his mercenaries."
"Maybe they reprogrammed the computer," Pieter said.
"I put a code lock on the program. Even if he shuts Lazarus off, the poppers will hunt him and his gang."
"What's the code word?" Pieter said.
"Shithead."
George raised his hand. "How did you get the meres' scan data?"
"Remi already had it. He had a spy in Rob's organization. I think it was Babbit."
"Babbit worked for Rob?" Kerry asked.
"Rob thought he did. I think he was Remi's double agent. Remi had a spy in our organization, too."
Tomas squinted. "Who?"
"Mack."
"What? We've known him for years!"
"A good mole takes his time," George said. "I wondered why he was always dragging his feet."
"It
also explains his previous training," I added.
"I've a question," Cliff said. "What'll we do once we get control of the office?"
"Simple," I said. "First we put out a media message informing the masses of the change of power. We announce a general amnesty for all political crimes and encourage the populace to surround SPF stations. We tap Lazarus's personnel lists and send the poppers to eliminate anyone we think will stand in our way. With our hands on the controls of the media, the poppers, and the symbolic center of power, we will be the de facto rulers of Denver."
"Despite the obvious dangers, it seems too easy," Cliff said. "To get so much power from a single, deliberate act of violence."
"The reins of power come easy to deliberate and violent men," George said.
"Especially when a power structure is as centralized as Denver's," I added. "Any more questions?"
No one spoke.
I looked at my watch. "Good. Let's go get our guns."
We loaded into Cliff's skimmer and shuttled to Morris's loft. Most of his arms collection were Brazilian-made rotaries, overdressed but reliable. As I led the team through weapons familiarization, Morris disappeared into his bedroom and reappeared moments later wearing his armor.
"That's just going to slow you down," I pointed out.
"I'll keep up," he promised. "I'm just used to it, that's all."
We loaded back up. George, Cliff, Kerry and I sat in the front seat, the other five in the back.
"Nice ride, huh?" Cliff said.
"Good power for a civilian model," George commented. "Steering's a little loose."
I regarded George. "Not so loose as to jeopardize my life, I hope."
"I'll put you in the hole," George promised. "Just like the old days."
I nodded and turned on the radio, trying to tune in a Party station. There was only buzzing static. Either Rob hadn't figured out Lazarus yet or he was waiting for something. I turned off the radio and looked out the window. A twilight city flashed by hundreds of yards below. We passed over Broadway, and the Friday-night crowd was out in force, swarming the bars and clubs. I half wished I was down there with them, just another anonymous Joe oblivious to the big picture, just worried about the beer in my hand and the girl at the next table. Barnum Park slipped beneath us, populated with the homeless who milled about like zombies with no particular place to go.