“How y’all doing tonight?” Fitzroy asked the driver through the open front window as his eyes scanned the inside of the vehicle. Four male blacks, no obvious open containers, no smell of alcohol or marijuana. Just the glassy stares of men who’d been on the road a long time. The driver especially, and that was his concern.
“Fine,” Roger answered, looking up past the bright spot of light shining down at him. “Did I do something wrong?”
“How long have you been driving?”
“Quite a while.”
“Well, you were weaving a bit back there.” Again Trooper Fitzroy sniffed the air. Still nothing, but there was a bit of an edge to this guy’s voice. “You crossed into the adjacent lanes at least four times.”
Shithead! Darian leaned forward a bit, crossing his arms on his knees, one finger touching the cold grip of the Ingram. I told you to wake one of us if you got tired!
“I’m sorry,” Roger said, averting his eyes to look straight ahead. “I guess I’m a little tired.”
Mmm hmm. “Okay, I want to make sure of that for myself. Do you have your license and registration with you?”
“Yes, sir.” Roger patted his jacket, feeling for the wallet.
“Just leave it in there,” Fitzroy said. “I’m gonna give you a field sobriety test to…”
Damn! Once he was out of the car the pig would ask him where he was heading. Then he’d bring in reinforcements and do the same with each of them separately. Dammit! Darian was cursing himself now for not planning for this contingency. They should have had a singular story all fleshed out to use in just such an instance. As it was there was only one thing to do.
“…check for any impairment. Would you—” Fitzroy’s words froze in his throat as the movement came quick and unexpected from the backseat. He swiveled the flashlight to the rear of the car to illuminate whatever was going on as his right thumb released the topstrap on his holster. The beam of white went not to the faces — faces might frighten, but they are not dangerous — but to the hands, which were on the occupant’s lap. The far occupant was reaching across and toward the window with — NO!
Darian didn’t know what effect the glass would have on his shots, so he swung the Ingram back and forth as he sprayed the rounds at the pig, destroying the window and sending his target falling from view.
“SHIT!” Roger screamed, ducking, then looking in the side view mirror. “He’s still out there! He’s on the ground! He’s moving!”
Darian ejected the empty magazine and noisily dug another out of the gym bag and inserted it. He crawled over Moises and peeked through the permanently open side window just in time to see the pig disappear behind the car, crawling on his belly. A wide trail of blood marked his path. “Stay down.”
The NALF leader popped the door handle and stepped out after cautioning his comrades. Down the interstate he could see only a speck of white approaching, some distance off. But this wouldn’t take long. He edged along the car toward the rear, the stubby Ingram held forward one-handed. A raspy scraping rose from the asphalt behind the Olds, which Darian could tell was the sound of hard soles pushing off the pavement. And there was breathing, or wheezing, which came and went in short bursts. As he reached the rear quarter panel the source of both sounds became visible to Darian.
“Hold it, pig.”
Trooper Fitzroy, his face abraded and bleeding from being pushed along the roadway as his legs attempted to drive his damaged body to safety, paused at the sound, then rolled onto his back near the right front of his cruiser. He winced in pain as his shattered arms flopped with the motion of his torso. Both limbs from shoulder to elbow were red, pulpy strands that seemed strangely long. They, along with Fitzroy’s Kevlar vest, had absorbed the brunt of the submachine gun’s punishment. The trooper’s gun and radio were still in their place on his Sam Browne, useless to him.
Darian stepped closer, trying unsuccessfully to skirt the swath of blood. His thumb moved the selector switch to single shot as he leveled the weapon at the pig. “How long did you think we’d just sit back and take it, pig?”
Fitzroy’s expression became one of mixed pain and puzzlement, but no fear. He knew what was coming, whether the guy shot him or not. Too much blood was pouring from his open wounds. Too much for anything to matter anymore. “They’ll get you,” Fitzroy said confidently, his voice breathy. “Don’t worry.”
The short barrel centered on the pig’s face. “We got you first.” Darian smiled, then pulled the trigger twice, both rounds hitting true and literally exploding the top of the pig’s head, which spilled toward the lowest point on the road’s shoulder.
“Shit!” Roger yelled from the car. “There’s cars coming!”
Darian looked south, squinting past the bright spotlight that shone almost in his face. The single dots had become multiple pairs of distant headlights, and they were coming fast. He gave the patrol car a quick look from where he stood. There was no one else in it. No other pig, and no one locked in the rear seat cage. It was a clean kill. As clean as it could get.
“Come on!”
Darian heeded that call and climbed back in the Olds through the open rear door, pushing Moises over as he did. Roger dropped the car into gear even before the door shut completely and pulled into the traffic lanes with a screech of rubber worthy of Hollywood.
Trooper Fitzroy lay in front of his idling UHP cruiser for another thirty minutes before a passing fellow officer made the grisly discovery. Within twenty minutes there were over fifty state and local law enforcement personnel on-scene. The first thing they did was call for the coroner. The second was to switch off the small video camera mounted in tandem with the cruiser’s rearview mirror and remove the tape from the recorder secured in the trunk. It arrived at the Utah Highway Patrol’s Salt Lake City headquarters by helicopter twenty-two minutes after that.
SEVENTEEN
Remembrance
A hundred and twenty hours after the first person fell in the attack on the First Interstate World Center, the core of the FBI investigative team was moving beyond the “who” to focus on the “how,” a question they believed was explained in the voluminous handwritten diaries of Canadia Conyers Royce.
“I’ll read to you,” Frankie said. Art, Hal, Omar, and Lou gave their attention as she found the first section she had marked. “Here:
December 1985,
The ‘Defender,’ last month’s issue, arrived today, and a very, very powerful piece was on page seventeen. By a man named John Barrish. I have never heard of him before, but he referred to Father’s good friend Dr. Trent in the piece. Powerful, I do say. So clearly does he describe the negro problem that I could almost overlook that annoying habit — the same one Dr. Trent had — of calling the negroes Africans. Words, words, words. This is about more than that. I must look into this John Barrish. I definitely must.”