Tropic of Kansas

by Christopher Brown

  “Holy shit,” said Clint. “That hoss must be five hundred pounds.”

  Dallas opened up first, action movie style—all spray and no aim. Sig pushed the dogs out of the bed with him.

  Sig kneeled by the front wheel on the driver’s side, while Xelina joined in. Clint said she was a deadeye who’d grown up hunting with her dad, before they took him.

  The hogs squealed when the rounds hit. Xelina nailed the giant hog in the haunch, which only made it look mad. The tusks almost glowed in the weird light of the city sky.

  Sig held the quivering dogs back with two fistfuls of Kevlar, making them watch the hogs scamper off into the rough, toward the tree line. When they had a good enough head start, he unleashed them.

  “Git ’em,” ordered Clint.

  Loco was faster, back legs overtaking the front with crazy gusto, chasing the juveniles through the tall grass. Watermelon Head went after the big boy. Clint signaled Sig and Dallas to follow.

  Sig nodded at Dallas and started running. The big hog had gone through tall thick grass between fairways, but left a trail to follow, downhill toward a man-manipulated little stream. Sig heard Watermelon Head bounding down the water, chasing after an animal smart enough to try to lose his scent. Sig looked back up the path for Dallas, who walked to the lip of the hill clanking gunmetal. He waved at Sig, then leaned over to catch his breath.

  Sig took in the surroundings. A gentle breeze wafted through the trees. Downstream, he could see Watermelon Head’s white ears bounding above the grass. Sig smelled the hog in the wind and realized Watermelon Head had lost him. Sig followed the stream a bit farther, trying to follow the scent, and saw the bent grass where the pig had tracked out of the stream. A little blood, too. He heard a snort, looked right down a long fairway, and saw the beast standing a hundred yards away. It turned and snorted again. Sig knew hogs couldn’t see much, but it looked like the boar was staring right at him.

  Sig ran after it.

  62

  Tania’s interview was in the basement of an old industrial building along the riverfront.

  “What’s that noise?” asked Tania. It sounded like a giant robot doing an Irish clog dance.

  “The makers,” said the interviewer. “Playing with the metal stamper they just got working.”

  “What are they making?”

  “We can talk about that later,” said the interviewer. She was a tired-looking white lady with black hair going gray. She said to call her Davis. “I already have a question pending. Why should I tell you where this guy is? Assuming we even know.”

  “He’s family.”

  “Not much of a resemblance.”

  There was a big mirror behind Davis. Probably two-way. Tania looked at her hair. It was growing out. She wondered if she should cut it close. Retro-radical. Maybe too late to worry about faking it. Especially since she wasn’t entirely sure that was what she was doing anymore.

  “Can you find him?”

  “What’s in it for us if we can?”

  “I have a clearance.”

  “Really.”

  Tania nodded. “And I know how to use it. Do a lot of freelance data mining.”

  “You must have a nice box.”

  “I built it myself,” said Tania. “From salvaged parts. Couldn’t afford it otherwise.”

  “That’s illegal,” said Davis. “Or at least violates the terms of service. BellNet owns all the hardware and we can’t touch it.”

  “Things you find in the trash are fair game,” said Tania. “Even if it’s the virtual trash.”

  “That’s what cops say.”

  Tania skipped a beat. Wondered if this lady could see her blush. Then figured they already knew. Were past that, into a different kind of bargaining phase.

  “Yeah, maybe, but that’s not the kind of data mining I do,” said Tania. “Commercial, not political.”

  “Who said there’s a difference?”

  “There’s a difference.”

  Davis laughed, not like anything was funny. She made some notes, then looked up.

  “So does that mean your access is clean?” she asked. “Like anonymous. Off-issue.”

  “Kind of. I have a clean account I use. They think I’m some guy in Sacramento that died.”

  “Huh,” said Davis. “Could you bring it in? Show us how.”

  “No.”

  Davis grumbled. She looked at Tania from a different angle.

  “I have a question,” said Tania. “Is it true about Maxine Price?”

  “Is what true?”

  “She’s alive.”

  Davis waved that off with both hands.

  “It’s loud but not loud enough for that,” she said. “You’re worse than I heard. Why don’t you go look that up with your magic box.”

  “Maybe I will,” said Tania. This lady was getting under her skin. “If I find proof of that, will you tell me where my guy is?”

  “If you want us to trust you, why don’t you find some of their secrets instead of ours,” said Davis. “Stuff we can use. You look smart enough to know what that might be. Stuff that needs sunshine. Work on that and wait to hear from us. I’ll give you a dropbox code you can use to send us anything you find. I mean anything good.”

  “On who exactly?”

  “Who do you think? Them. The generals. The MMCs. Him.”

  Tania wondered if Davis might be like her. Undercover. It was harder to tell than she would have thought.

  “I’ll think about it,” said Tania. “But I still have my own work to do.”

  “Not anymore, if you check out,” said Davis. “Prove your intentions. We can help you disappear if that’s what you want. Maybe with your bro there. Give you places to stay. We’re making a new world. It’s invisible to the people who live in the other one.”

  “I saw that show already.”

  Davis nodded. “Then we’re going to have a merger.”

  “Reminded me of a book I read.”

  “Put it this way,” said Davis. “Maxine’s words are definitely not dead. Even if she is.”

  “You should reread them.”

  “Maybe I’ve lived them. Learned to turn the words into actions. Maybe you should write your own version. In your own real life.”

  When Tania went back to the building two days later, there was no sign of the people. She wondered how they moved the machines. Or maybe they didn’t.

  It was a while before they contacted her again. In the meantime, she did her research, only it was a little different than she said.

  63

  Sig caught up with the hog just in time to see it disappear at the edge of the course.

  This was a lot of fence for an abandoned golf course. Twelve-foot deer-proof running ten thousand live volts. Another twenty yards in, another layer, this one with razor wire.

  Fluorescent light seeped through from the other side, illuminating the tops of glass and stucco cubes, one of which was adorned with a neon-backlit sign. The sign had a blue logo that looked like a cross between a church bell and a padlock, and a name:

  BARBICAN SECURESOFT

  A BellNet Company

  The electronic hum of outdoor floodlights competed with the rumbling of air-conditioning compressors, drowning the sounds of nature other than the swarms of flying insects buzzing around the lamps. And the snort of the pig, when it appeared on the other side of the far fence. It trotted across the turf, between two stands of trees, and disappeared into a wide expanse of asphalt.

  Sig backtracked, and on the second try found the spot, a deep washout where the rain had carved a fresh culvert then pooled up like an accidental pond. More mud than water, really, as he found when he followed the pig through it.

  Clint had told him to come back when he found it, but Sig figured better to check it out for himself first.

  He came up into the smell of lawn chemicals, pine sap, and pollution, but no more musk. He heard crickets and cicadas singing to the machines. More distant but still close, he he
ard the whining roar of jet engines, the sounds of Charlie Wilson International Airport, which they passed on the way up. And he heard a loud metal bang from inside the office complex, like the sound of a dumpster slamming shut.

  He walked through the eerie landscape of the corporate campus, past the loading docks at the rear, along the edge of the parking lots, around the silently humming office monoliths.

  Around the other side Sig found a clearing where the buildings formed a three-sided courtyard around a large pond. The turf was the uniform unnatural green of grass fed by man-made chemicals. Sprinklers spurted on the other side. Sig noticed all the hidden security cameras surveilling the site, and imagined a fat man sitting in a cubicle somewhere inside one of the buildings watching a monitor that showed twenty simultaneous feeds.

  And then Sig wondered if the fat security guard was watching the monster hog as it walked casually out of the shadows and down to the pond for a drink.

  Sig had crawled halfway after the pig before he realized what a stupid idea it was to come out of the shadows.

  And then he heard the guy yell freeze. When he turned to look, the guy wasn’t fat at all, but his shotgun was.

  64

  “This is amazing,” said Todd. His face looked like it was coming from forty years in the past, saturated with the colors of a richer time.

  Tania adjusted the vertical hold to check the datastream.

  “Amazing how much they can cram into the blanking interval over these crappy bandwidths, right?” she said, looking at the peripheral camera she had added to the rig.

  “I’m impressed,” said Todd. “I couldn’t figure this out.”

  “I had help,” said Tania. “Sort of.”

  “So what do you need me for?”

  “I need a clean access profile. You never delivered.”

  “No wonder you contacted me this way.”

  “I’m so close to breaking through.”

  “They’re telling me you already came out the other side, Tania.”

  “They don’t know. Those Pennsylvania Avenue ramrods have no appreciation of ambiguity. The fact that they think that just shows how well I’ve infiltrated.”

  It was hard to really judge his expression over this weird vidstream, but it looked like maybe that one got through.

  “I’ve done such a good job I need to cut off all my access so they don’t catch me,” said Tania.

  He let out a groan.

  “Don’t forget about the Calibration,” said Tania. “I haven’t.”

  He looked around, off-screen.

  “Let me see what I can do,” he said.

  “Make it high level,” said Tania. “I need to see what they have on the people I’m working.”

  “I bet.”

  “So you’ve been watching the shows?”

  His eyes opened wider. Pulled down a lid so you could see the red.

  “Did I tell you?” he asked.

  “Tell me what.”

  “Oh, cripes. I’ve been watching them so much I was finally able to decode the source. Triangulate the origin.”

  “Mexico.”

  “New Orleans.”

  Of course.

  “How precise?”

  “Working on it,” he said.

  Todd looked off-screen again.

  “What do you hear from Mike?” he asked.

  Tania shook her head. “I’ve been out of contact.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nope. Why?”

  “He said he was trying to find out. Asked me to help. Where should I tell him you’re staying?”

  Tania always knew Todd was the kind of colleague whose main concern was protecting himself. But this was the first time she seriously wondered if his interoffice contacts were more dangerous. And as soon as she had the idea, she cursed herself for not seeing it earlier.

  “I can’t tell you that, Todd. And I need to go.”

  65

  When Sig stood up for the guard, the hog charged, and Sig ran for the dark.

  Now, hidden behind the edge of one of the buildings, Sig watched the guard inspect the dead boar.

  “You better come out, you homeless freak!” yelled the guard. “This ain’t a safe place for you to camp.”

  Sig moved on, looking for a different path out. He should have minded Clint’s instructions.

  He heard the sound of the jet engine again. This time it was closer. He could tell from the way the sound bounced. And then he heard the sound of trucks, and men talking.

  “Shhhh,” said an even closer voice. It was Dallas, in shadow.

  “You stink,” whispered Dallas. “I’ve been trying to find you.”

  “Looks to me like you got lost,” said Sig.

  “Go fuck yerself then,” said Dallas. “Maybe I didn’t grow up catching birds with my hands and shit. Come on.”

  Sig followed Dallas down an unlit path past the office buildings and through another thick stand of trees. Xelina was there, her skinny frame prone on the grass between two trees, looking through a pair of hunting binoculars. Clint stood back in the darker shadow, holding a home-modified military carbine. He had gotten pretty good at bracing it with his stump.

  “Nice tracking,” Clint said quietly. “I knew this was here, but I didn’t know there was a back door.”

  Sig looked through the gap in the trees. The landscaping graded down to a big blacktop parking lot, striped but cleared of cars other than three Chevy Raiders parked in front of a windowless garage that looked big enough to be a warehouse. A small military cargo jet painted with civilian markings was parked nearby, engines warming up. Bright lights like a football field shined down from the perimeter of the parking lot, enabling its dual use as an airstrip. A dozen people bustled around the scene, some in business attire, some in coveralls, and a couple in matching white windbreakers embroidered with a red corporate logo on the back.

  “MMCs,” said Dallas.

  “Corporates,” said Clint, nodding. “These boys work for the President’s pet company.”

  Ground crew were loading shrink-wrapped white metal boxes the size of refrigerators into the back bay of the jet.

  “What are those things?” asked Dallas.

  “Beats me,” said Clint. “Maybe some kind of office computers?”

  “They’re voting machines,” said Xelina. “Offshore-modified, special order. Bringing them in for the midterms. Time to elect a new Congress.”

  “How about that,” said Clint. “I thought he had it all locked up good enough without having to hack it. I suppose those are the candidates?”

  The MMCs helped the suits pull two captives in yellow bodysuits from the back of the truck. Their hands were cuffed behind their backs, and black hoods clamped to their heads with white headphones. Sig looked at Clint, who raised his eyebrows.

  “Extraordinary extradition,” said Xelina. “Members of the opposition being brought back in from exile. Without the permission of the government that had granted them asylum. Wait—”

  One of the suits lifted up the hood of one of the captives, like he was checking to make sure he was still there.

  “Holy shit, I think that’s Robert Luca,” said Xelina. “Used to be a congressman from Chicago. I need my camera.”

  Xelina handed Sig the binoculars.

  He didn’t recognize the man, but he recognized the pain on his face as they pulled the hood back down over it.

  Sig did recognize the other cargo.

  There were three loading pallets.

  Two were stacked with shrink-wrapped bundles of cash. It looked like foreign currency.

  The other pallet had a stack of gold bars, embossed with words Sig could not read.

  “We can’t let those guys get away with this,” said Xelina.

  “And we can’t let them keep that loot,” said Clint. “Probably stolen. We need to put it to better use.”

  “I got a few ideas,” said Dallas.

  Sig put down the binoculars. Xelina was filming
with her phone, and nodded. Clint was smiling and shaking his head at the same time. Dallas made a weird face and flashed two thumbs up.

  “Don’t gimme that ‘what the fuck?’ look, Sigurd,” said Clint. “We use one of the dogs to distract these guys, pin ’em down from cover, and then it’s a simple grab and nab.”

  “Git and go,” said Dallas.

  “Imagine what we could do with better video of this,” said Xelina.

  “There’s cameras all over,” said Clint. “Call Walker. He has people that can grab it.”

  Xelina looked and nodded. She stopped filming, started looking for the number, and walked back around the other side of the building.

  “How do we get away?” said Sig.

  “We take one of their vehicles,” said Clint. “I don’t think they’re gonna call 9-1-1. That’s strictly off-the-books pirate shit they got going.”

  Sig watched the gold flash as the headlights of one of the Raiders passed over it. “Even shares,” he said.

  “All right,” said Dallas, almost dancing. “This is gonna be better than Friday Night Strikes.”

  66

  Instead of hiding that night, or running, Tania went right into the Blue Zone, hunting for credentials.

  The Blue Zone was the secure sector of downtown, the office towers and urban malls protected by corporate security and government law. There were no checkpoints per se, but you could see the patrols when you crossed in, and the eyes on the poles.

  One of the Quantico shrinks once told them in a training lecture that police officers and juvenile delinquents tend to have more or less the same psychological profile. When Tania heard that, she knew it was true. She’d always wondered if they’d found out during her background checks about the times she’d been arrested before she started high school—like maybe it was one of the “talents” they wanted, even though it was supposed to be a disqualification. Part gypsy, her mom said the third time she got caught for pickpocketing business men downtown. Some of the older kids had identified her talent early. They taught her some of their social engineering tricks to distract the marks—have you seen my mommy, bus fare to Chicago, there’s bird poop on your shoulder, look at the gold ring I found—and how to make the lift. Tania never thought she would need to see if she still had the touch.