“These people aren’t peaceful protestors,” Amy said. “But Doreen has a point. The media will have a field day with it.”
“So, we’re a house divided. And you all have good points. Richard, what do you think?”
He sighed. “I think our enemies expected and wanted this—for us to be fearful, for us to be divided about the correct course of action, for the government to feel the need to bring out military to protect us, which sends a bad message. But people being murdered at the ceremony will send a worse message.”
“So, fight or flight? Those are our only options?”
Raj cleared his throat. “There may be another way.”
CHAPTER 95
I’D NEVER BEEN IN A FUNERAL PROCESSION, let alone one like we were putting on. Our limo was in the lead, for a variety of reasons. Reader was driving the hearse and it was in the middle of our procession, for safety. Tim’s limo brought up the rear. In between we had an entire fleet of gray limousines doing about five miles an hour down the streets of D.C.
The police had provided what looked like every motorcycle cop in a fifty-mile radius as our escorts. We had four in front, two on either side of every limo, four behind our last limo, and four extras around the hearse.
Because of where we were located in relation to the Arlington Cemetery, we had to take 23rd Street NW down to the National Mall, and then take the Arlington Bridge across the river to the cemetery itself.
There weren’t any protestors along most of this section of our route. However, as we reached the circle that took us off of 23rd and onto the Arlington Bridge, there were a lot of people with signs on the grass in the center, behind the Lincoln Memorial. They weren’t praising the monument.
“Do we start here?” Jeff asked.
“No,” Raj replied. “This is far enough away that the police will handle anything. We’re only concerned with those close to the cemetery itself.”
“What about everyone lining the bridge?” Kyle asked as we drove onto it and could see it was lined on both sides with protestors screaming at us.
“The police will handle them,” Len replied.
“We will, too, shortly,” Raj said.
“We could knock them all into the river,” Francine suggested.
“Wow, she’s really got you down, Kitty,” Chuckie said. “But no. We can’t harm any of these people, much as we’d all like to.”
“It will be fine,” Mister Joel Oliver said. “You all need to relax.”
Jeff looked around. “Makes you wonder why we bother, doesn’t it?” He sounded dejected and defeated.
Held onto my emotions. My being upset hearing Jeff’s disappointment and hurt wasn’t going to help him in any way. I took his hand and squeezed it. “Are you okay?”
He sighed. “I don’t have strong enough blocks for this.”
Felt my worry spike despite my desire to remain emotionally calm and cool. “I have the harpoon with me.”
“I shouldn’t need it, baby, don’t worry. At least, as long as I don’t have to knock heads, which, per Chuck, we can’t do anyway. I can just feel everyone in our processional—they’re all hurt, sad, and scared, even the ones who are ready to fight if we have to. And that combined with the concentrated hatred of everyone on the streets is hard to take, that’s all.”
“Got it,” Kyle said. “Tim’s car just got onto the bridge and has dropped off our first packages.”
“I hope they’ll be careful and run like hell if this doesn’t work,” I said to Raj.
He nodded. “They will.”
“I realize troubadours are persuasive,” Jeff said, “but I don’t like the idea of any of our people out in this mob, let alone an entire team of them, all without guns.”
“They all have hyperspeed,” Raj said. “And they’ll run before they have to fight.”
We stopped. “What now?” Jeff asked.
“The entrance to Arlington is completely blocked by protestors,” Len said angrily. “They let the motorcycle cops through and then closed it up. I realize we still have plenty of cops with us, but they’re in as much danger from this mob as we are. And while I’d like to run these protestors down, I won’t.”
“All troubadours out,” Raj said.
“Everyone ready to run,” Kyle said at the same time.
Raj and Kyle were both hooked into their own networks—Kyle had the link to those riding shotgun in each limo, Raj to all of his troubadours.
“Be careful,” Jeff said to Francine.
“Gosh, you do care.” She winked at me. “I’m touched.” She got out and was surrounded quickly, in part because she did look like me and enough people had seen my face in this town to think she might actually be me. Press was here and they started to assist in the mobbing, clearly under the impression Francine was me.
Raj’s plan was simple—use the troubadours’ natural talent to sway the mob into a more positive frame of mind. It wouldn’t work for all of the crowd, but it had the potential to calm down much of it, and since the troubadours all had hyperspeed and A-C strength, they could grab people and run if they had to.
He’d pulled in every troubadour worldwide, and there were a lot of them. Several of the limos in our procession had held only troubadours. The rest were coming from the Embassy via floater gate that landed them inside the limos that were before and behind the hearse.
The troubadours all used hyperspeed to get out of the limos and into the crowds, so no humans saw them do it. They spread out through the crowd.
“Encircling of the cemetery is complete,” Raj said shortly. “We have a troubadour agent every fifty feet or less around the grounds and on the bridge.”
Our concession to the President was that the police had blocked off public access to the cemetery—if you weren’t on the guest list, you weren’t getting in. The President’s concession to us was that everyone other than those in the American Centaurion procession would be safely inside Arlington before we ever left the Embassy.
We’d asked the police not to physically move the protestors unless they had to in order to let us through. Right now we were still at a dead stop. I couldn’t hear them, but I could tell the troubadours were starting to be effective because signs stopped waving in widening circles around them. A few signs were even tossed onto the ground.
Other than around Francine. In addition to the press, she appeared to have scored the most virulent protestors of the bunch, which made sense since she was closest to the entrance to the cemetery. But even so, she was starting to make some headway when the man I recognized as Farley Pecker, aka the Head Asshat of the Church of Intolerance, came up behind her.
He was between Jeff and Christopher in size, so larger than Francine all the way around. He was older, balding with white hair that was puffy on the sides. He had apple cheeks, and when you first looked at him, you didn’t realize you were looking into the face of the most intolerant person potentially in the world. I could see Clint Eastwood playing him in a movie, but only if Clint was willing to take the bad guy role.
He shoved Francine, hard, and she stumbled into some people with signs. This didn’t look good.
I was supposed to stay in the car, but I was near the door. And I was out of the car in a moment. I shoved him back and away from her while I pulled her away from the people he’d shoved her into at the same time.
“Stop attacking a woman half your size, you horrible man. I realize it’s a hard concept for you, but have some respect.”