Allison watched Becca and Mickey adjust the set of the furled banner, tracking their progress as they screwed together sections of PVC conduit to stiffen its top and bottom edges. Melissa and Freddie were distributing their shorter, fatter sections of PVC on the blockade line. “Listen, Leona … No, I won’t tell you how we did it, not now… . Because I’m out of time, we’ve got work to do, and media calls coming in.”
Allison jumped down from the van to let the driver climb in. She gave a thumbs up, and turning, signaled the second Econoline clearance to pull out. “Adjust to it, Leona, this is what’s happening,” she said as the cargo vans accelerated toward the city. “You’re about to see some massive confusion among our uniformed friends at Moscone. I recommend you take advantage of the facts on the ground.”
She began to walk eastward, toward the row of chained vehicles.
“Okay, Leona. Fine. Leona—okay. We’ll talk about it in jail… . Okay, then we’ll talk about it afterward. Seize the day, sister, before somebody snatches it away from us.”
THIRTY-ONE
Past Valentine the light falls away. Twilight, dusk, then the full-on rural night of north-central Nebraska. Chagall passes a huddle of low-slung buildings. Johnstown, population fifty-three. He keeps to the speed limit. A high-pitched whine coming from someplace deep in the trannie doesn’t concern him. Only a few hundred miles to go.
He sits upright in the waffled vinyl seat, eyes prickly, willing himself to stay focused. Seven hours’ sleep in Rapid City didn’t even the books on the all-nighter outside Lincoln.
National Public Radio is playing through the truck’s cheap speakers, pulled down into the Niobrara watershed with a satellite receiver. A captain from the Office of Naval Research is describing Silver Fox, a surveillance drone that weighs in at twenty-some pounds and can be launched from a catapult. Chagall is intrigued. Several years ago he outfitted a pair of HobbyZone Super Cubs with digital cameras and souped-up power trains. The buyer was a sadistic-looking skinhead, fresh out of supermax solitary. Chagall never asks, but he figures whatever the skinhead was looking for wound up destroyed or stolen, and would have with or without a model airplane’s assist.
Vast fields of monocrop lay quilted across the nightscape. Here there’s nothing to surveil. He drives past corn sown for miles on end, then alfalfa for miles and miles more, field edges still in his headlights. Grassland lit by the waxing moon between Ainsworth and Long Pine, road straight as a plumb line. Straight as the run up to the AgBio complex. This would have been good country to exercise his autopilot rig, but it’s stowed in the barn outside Staplehurst. Then again, there’s precious little for the electronics to fix on. Just the road’s faded center line.
Money dipped out of ill-gotten gain, like the wad he was paid by the Brotherhood skinhead, is what funds Chagall’s work. Robbery, extortion, predation on weakness. These are fuel, at perilously thin remove, to his exploits. He harvests from evildoers to prevent another evil’s fruition. In some ways he is distant kin to the navy captain on NPR, Chagall supposes as the radio report wraps. The naval officer is funded by compulsory taxes; Chagall shakes down the nation’s sad underbelly to finance his own arsenal. They are equally convinced of their own ultimate goodness. Neither employs pure methods to influence the course of history. At their best, he and the captain each aim toward principled ends. Their ends differ, of course. But a greater gulf is the chain of command, behind which a military man can take cover. Chagall bears full responsibility for his choices.
Rock County passes underwheel without a stop. Well into Holt there’s a stretch of circular, pivot-irrigated fields, like God’s own change purse emptied out, great earth-coins laid edge to edge in moonlight. Then the dark houses and shuttered businesses of O’Neill. The Elkhorn River glints from time to time between shadowy stands of cottonwood and willow.
The scales are open outside Clearwater. A sallow attendant emerges from the cinderblock shed as he pulls in. Chagall maneuvers the bobtail into place, cranks the window open, and dangles a messy sheaf of paperwork out for inspection.
“Whas’ your destination, cowboy?” the sallow man asks.
“Norfolk,” Chagall says. He gives the papers a rustle.
“Norfork,” the man corrects. “Leastwise if you’re from ’round here.”
“That right?” It’s a lonely job, and Chagall understands that he’s a chance to relieve profound monotony.
“Yep. Eighteen-eighty-somethin’ the US Post Office mucked up the name. Jes’ like government.” He’s scanning Chagall’s forgeries in the beam of a flashlight. “Big ol’ bank holdup there.”
“Catch ’em?”
“Hell yes. Killed four tellers and a little ol’ lady, two years back. Came barrelin’ up this road right here, caught ’em up in O’Neill. Mexican pricks, high on drugs.”
Chagall withholds comment.
“Johnny Carson, he’s from Norfork.”
The scale attendant is a font of wisdom. “Never knew that,” Chagall says.
“Do now. ’Pears you’re deadheadin’ tonight.”
“That’s right.”
“Comin’ in early for this here load. Tri-County Farm Co-op.”
“Yup. First run for these fellas. Sleep up, take a day in town. See what the other drivers say. Maybe sign on regular.”
“A’right. You come in town, angle right on Market Lane, find you some motels with plenty a parkin’.”
“’Preciate it.”
“Never mind that.” The sallow man hands back Chagall’s papers and waves the truck along.
He pulls back onto the road.
Only a half hour now from Meadow Grove. It would have been better if the scales were closed. There’s not enough business along this route to blur the attendant’s memory.
Chagall considers keeping the look he’s wearing all the way through. If he skips a planned makeover at Staplehurst there’s longer to sleep, which has its advantages. If anybody spots a scruffy, crewcut middleweight fleeing the AgBio complex, their description will match what the sallow man saw. The wig he’d planned to wear out of Staplehurst can come into play later on.
He’s clean and America’s wide. Once the building goes down there’ll be time to reach the city before sunrise. He has more unlikely vehicles stashed along back roads and side streets than he’ll need under any circumstances that still allow a chance of escape. An eighteen-speed racing bike, a tractor and cargo cart, a gleaming hearse, a skateboard, a Harley. Once he slips into Lincoln the cops won’t have a chance.
Chagall rolls up his window and drives on into the moon-dappled dark.
THIRTY-TWO
Christopher watched Gregor, Natalie, and Zac load up with shoulder bags full of leaflets and buttons. Melissa and Freddie would work the two outside lanes. On the other side of the blockaded vehicles, a cordon of activists stretched across the span, hands interlocked inside the PVC tubes distributed a few minutes earlier.
He couldn’t help but worry. On the one hand, that was his nature. On the other, he had a point. Something always goes wrong. They didn’t know what it would be this time, and that kept Christopher jittery. Traffic had stopped, but there were still plenty of opportunities for trouble—beginning with the banner crew performing gymnastics a hundred feet up in the air.
“South support reporting climbers in position and ready to haul,” Keith said over the walkie-talkie.
“Banner ground south to north and south towers, you are cleared to haul,” Becca radioed back. “On your mark—”
Christopher half-stood in his seat to watch. Seconds before liftoff, he spotted Beat Gordon cycling up the empty lanes from San Francisco, escorted by Deb Harris from Turnabout. “Yes!” he exclaimed out loud. The KGRB reporter had been sworn to silence in exchange for the day’s premier scoop—he’d been told only where and when to meet. Deb’s timing was perfect. Christopher wondered whether the Channel 4 crew was going to get through traffic in time to film the money shot.
The banner r
ose at speed. He switched in the walkie-talkie. “Groundside lookout reporting banner lift at fifteen percent. North, you’re slightly higher, slow down just a bit.”
Zac approached and knocked on the Subaru’s window. Grinning through feigned outrage, Christopher lowered the glass. “What’s going on here? Are you people insane?”
“There’s a convention on genetic engineering this week at the Moscone Center,” Zac said, swinging into the role play. “They’re here to figure out how to trick people into eating genetically altered food—Frankenfood, as in Frankenstein. Have you heard about that? Did you know that medicines these days are brewed up in huge vats of mutant germs before they’re injected into the veins of old people and kids?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Christopher said. “What does that have to do with jamming my commute? And who elected you conscience of the nation?”
“Take a look at our materials, sir. We’ll be out of your way real soon.” Winking, Zac pressed a leaflet into the hands of its principal editor, along with an “I Sat in Traffic” button. He moved on to Randy—or was it Roy?—and from there into the ranks of truly irritated commuters. The furled banner was thirty feet up, and Beat Gordon was leaning into his microphone. Christopher switched on the radio.
BEAT: —a single row of protesters, Mike, standing next to each other in a line that stretches straight across the Bay Bridge. Like demonstrators at the WTO protests in Seattle, they’re linked together arm in arm, with wrists and hands hidden inside of plastic tubes. When the protesters grab onto each other like this it’s very difficult for the police to make arrests.
The studio DJ, Mike O’Malley, cut in.
DJ: Have police arrived on the scene yet, Beat?
BEAT: No, Mike, they haven’t. I expect it won’t be long, but any way you cut it, we’re looking at the mother of all traffic jams. Between the protesters and literally thousands of stalled commuters there’s a barricade of cars across the width of the upper deck, with their doors spread open like stumpy metal wings—
DJ: Very poetic.
BEAT: I need to tell you, Mike, these cars are not poetry to look at. They’re scrapheaps. They could have been bought out of a junkyard. It’s hard to believe they even made it here this morning. But with those wide-open doors locked and chained together, they’re likely to be here for a while.
DJ: Beat Gordon live on the Bay Bridge, locked down by protesters at the start of this morning’s commute. Beat, can you give any kind of estimate when traffic will begin to clear?
BEAT: This is an incredible mess—traffic is stopped dead across the span. Westbound traffic on the Bay Bridge is going nowhere, and it’s impossible to say when the situation is going to change—
Christopher lowered the volume. “Groundside lookout reporting banner level,” he said into the walkie-talkie. “Two-thirds up, looking good, and the story’s live on KGRB.”
When he called back to the Triangle, Nora answered. “I’ve got Channel 7 patched through to Allison,” she said. “They say they’ve got a ’copter on the way.”
“Banner’s two-thirds up the tower,” Christopher said. “Beat Gordon’s live on KGRB. What’s with Channel 4?”
“They’re hiking through the backup. It took the camera guy a while to give up on his truck. We’re listening to the radio. All else okay?”
“So far it looks great. I’ll call when the banner drops.”
“If Gordon reports it, you don’t need to—we’re leaving him tuned in. Jonah and Buzz are up and they volunteered to help monitor the media. You keep an eye on those climbers.”
“Excellent, Nora, you know I will. Over and out then.”
“Keeping our fingers crossed.”
—
Thirty-five yards above the upper deck, securely harnessed to bridge infrastructure, Marty focused on steel’s solidity. It was a long way to the tarmac, and an even dizzier plunge to the cold, gray chop of the bay. The view started to wobble whenever he looked down. The practical solution, he realized, was to stop looking.
After securing the haul rope, Marty worked at anchoring the banner to ladder rungs above and below his position. First he clipped a quickdraw looped around the top rung to a carabiner on the banner rig. When he couldn’t pull the second quickdraw into the hardware’s open gate, he tried the other way around. No go. The setup worked for either quickdraw singly, but clipping one in meant coming up short on the other.
Ascending another rung for purchase, Marty strained against the banner’s weight.
Still no good. He didn’t have enough hands to manage the weight, fasten the carabiners, and hold on at the same time. Easing off, Marty fingered the equipment on his rack. Maybe a pair of ’biners with their gates opposed would do the trick.
Feeling for the next rung down, Marty set his left boot against the horizontal bar, then braced against a massive bolt with his right. From the upper quickdraw he fingercrawled to its loose end, and clipped in a pair of asymmetrical Ds, triple-checking that the gates faced opposite ways. Again, retrieving the banner’s top rope, he attempted to close the circuit on the weight-bearing rig. The first of the anchors proved an easy hook. He had to sweat over the other, but after several tense seconds he had it. Marty hugged the metal rungs and reached for a rip cord Velcroed to the anchor rope. “North top is securely anchored,” he said into his walkie-talkie. “Sorry for the delay, fellas. Quickdraws came up a little short. Used a pair of ’biners to make up the distance.”
He gathered himself for the last push. In a few minutes it would be all about descent, and the slim hope of escaping the bridge while the police were getting organized.
“Groundside lookout understands south and north anchor ropes are both secured.” Christopher’s voice sounded fuzzy over the walkie-talkie. “Lead climbers, announce when you’re ready to rip.”
“South tower ready to rip,” Phil said.
“North tower ready to rip,” Marty echoed.
“Support climbers, announce when you’re ready to reel.”
“South support ready to reel.”
“North support ready,” Laura said from her roost ten yards below.
One last time, Marty tested the set of the rigging.
—
“Hang on, San Francisco,” Christopher said, steadying the arm holding his binoculars against the Subaru’s steering wheel. “One thousand one … one thousand two … free fall!”
The fan-folded Tyvek seemed to hang in midair. Then the weighted sheet dropped slowly, swelling as it caught the breeze. Support climbers pulled in bottom cords as the banner opened. On KGRB, Mike O’Malley cut away from interviews at the Moscone Center to put Gordon back on the air. Christopher, spine tingling, felt for the radio’s volume control and clicked it up a notch.
BEAT: —the banner is very large, Mike, very large—maybe fifty feet wide, stretching across the tower. I’m guessing thirty or forty feet high, but it’s hard to get an exact fix.
Allison had stopped taking media calls. Working the line with Deb, she alternately looked back toward the tower and attended to the rank of activists, steadying the blockaders while the climbing crew tied down. Scott Cavenaugh, arms committed to comrades on his left and right, was staring fixedly out into traffic. When Allison reached him, her eyes narrowed, following the direction he indicated with his chin. Christopher craned around to see what the matter was. The support team was reeling the banner in flat against the tower, slowly, to balance the pull of the ropes against the release of wind pressure through dozens of half-moon flaps cut into the fabric. Allison fumbled for her binoculars.
BEAT: —taking in the last few feet of rope at the bottom corners. The banner is visually stunning. It has a border of helixes shaped like DNA dollar signs, and the slogan across the top reads ‘GMOs = Poison for Profit.’ What’s stunning—or maybe I should say revolting, Mike—are enormous images of grocery store mutants plastered across this ginormous thing.
DJ: Genetically modified organisms, GMOs. Beat, can you describe the
visual?
BEAT: On the left there’s a—what should I call it?—a disemboweled apple, a green apple with a wedge cut out to expose a bloody tangle of intestines spilling from the fruit. Then there’s a big, juicy red strawberry. But instead of seeds this thing is speckled with dozens of fishy, mucus-dripping eyeballs, staring out of it every which way.
DJ: I’m seeing that scene out of Brother from Another Planet.
BEAT: Yes! Just that nasty! Only multiplied like the monster from Alien was hatching ’em out back of the supermarket.
DJ: Yuck.
BEAT: Last image, Mike. On the right there’s an ear of corn, with the husk pulled back to reveal pills and capsules in place of kernels, all crawling with fat, stubbly gray maggots.
DJ: Maybe a little too visual there, Beat.
Christopher couldn’t see what was catching Allison’s attention. He wanted to know, but his job was to watch the tower. Gordon’s coverage was brilliant. Any moment now he expected to hear helicopters, and the banner would go live on national TV. Somebody stuck in traffic had probably posted cell cam images to the internet by now. The Channel 4 crew would be filming from farther back on the deck, for broadcast later in the day. Thousands of Eddie’s dollars, hundreds of hours, the likely arrests and heavy-duty charges—their high-stakes gamble looked like it was about to pay off.
What the hell was Allison looking at? Again, Christopher craned around in his seat.
“North tower support ready to secure bottom line. Requesting visual confirmation.”
“Ground support to north tower support,” Christopher answered. “Looks good so far. Wait for south tower before you tie in.”
Consequence Page 24