TWENTY EIGHT
The Switch
It wasn’t a bad little place, Darian thought, but then they’d only be there a short time. Still, it did feel good to have everyone together. And the extra room this larger apartment in Arlington provided made it all the more comfortable.
But comfort was only incidental. They were there for a reason. There to prepare for the big night. There to take the last steps that would set things in motion.
“Whiteboy ain’t got his head screwed on straight if he thinks there won’t be cops there,” Mustafa said, his powerful fingers pressing the .45-caliber shells into the stack of magazines they’d acquired for the Ingrams. He wore no gloves this time. It didn’t matter if there were prints on the casings. Who would know, who would care? But if there was going to be a fight, they were going to breathe plenty of fire. No ammo worries on Friday.
“It’s supposed to be low-key,” Darian said. He was busying his hands with cleaning the Ingrams, as well as the half-dozen pistols and revolvers that lay on the bed between him and Moises. On the floor the “toy” Mustafa had brought with them from L.A., something he’d “acquired” from an associate in the Army some years before, lay on an open towel. It looked like a break-open shotgun on steroids. “And we’ll be shooting first.”
Mustafa stopped what he was doing and looked up. “There’s gonna be a fight.”
“Then a fight there’ll be,” Moises interjected confidently.
“Yeah,” Mustafa said with little faith. “Virgin boy here who ain’t done hardly more than pop some unarmed ratbeard is gonna take out Secret Service pigs.”
“Brother Moises will do fine,” Darian said with confidence.
Mustafa eyed their youngest comrade, then looked back to his leader. “Right.”
“Trust me, Brothers. We’re gonna do this.” He laid the Ingram he’d been cleaning on the bed and took the two .357 revolvers in hand. “Brother Moises, load these. We’ve got work to do tonight.”
The door from the living room opened. Roger took half a step into the room, his eyes on his leader. “Brother Darian.”
“What?” The NALF leader didn’t bother looking up.
“I need to talk to you.”
Now his eyes came up. “Talk.”
“In here.”
Both Moises and Mustafa sensed the strangeness in that request as they looked to their comrade.
“It’s important,” Roger said. He backstepped into the living room, beckoning his leader.
Darian stood and went to Roger, the door closing behind. “What is it? This isn’t good, talking like this. What’s with you? What are they supposed to think, Brother Roger? Huh?”
Roger backed farther away from the door to the couch. “I saw something.”
“Saw? Saw what?” Darian demanded impatiently. An Ingram, its suppressor affixed, lay on a piece of furniture. “You are supposed to have that weapon in your hands, watching that door, making sure that no one gets the drop on us. Is that what you were doing coming in there and saying you had something important to say?”
Roger bent down and reached between the cushions near the Ingram. A folded newspaper came out in his hand.
“What is that?”
Roger held it out to Darian. “The paper. The one you got the classifieds from. Remember?”
An old paper? What… “What are you doing with it?”
“I looked at the front page that day,” Roger admitted. “There was a story about what we did in L.A. I just wanted to take a look at it, to see what—”
“Propaganda,” Darian said. “You know better than to read that shit.”
“Not this, Brother Darian,” Roger countered. “This was talking about something different. Look at it.”
Darian unfolded the paper and immediately saw the small headline that had to have captured his comrade’s attention: WHITE SUPREMACIST WAS SUSPECT IN WORLD CENTER ATTACK. Below that was a picture of John Barrish…and of his wife and two sons. One of those looked amazingly like the white boy with the funky eye that they’d been meeting with.
“That’s him,” Roger said.
Darian looked up from the story.
“That Barrish guy is the one who got off for killing those girls at the church on Crenshaw!” Roger said in a suppressed shout. “Brother Moises’ little sister was one of them!”
“You had this all the time?”
Roger nodded. “I didn’t want to, you know… That thing sounds like we were working for him.”
Darian read some more, then crumpled the paper into a ball. “It says he wasn’t a suspect anymore.”
“Brother, his kid was the cracker we were meeting with!”
Roger always had been the most timid of the NALF’s small number. Now he was more than that. “Have you shown this to the others?”
“No. I didn’t want to believe it myself. But…” Roger looked to the carpet, then to his leader again. “I can’t do this no more. It’s been eating at me. These guys aren’t no tax protesters. They’re killers, man, and they’ve killed our people. Do you think Brother Moises would be doing this if he knew who the crackers we’ve been dealing with are?”
Darian squeezed the ball of newsprint smaller, and pressed it into his pocket. You shouldn’t have read that, Brother Roger. It’s too late to stop now. We’ve come too far. And now you can’t come any farther. He stepped closer to his comrade. “Go get the others.”
Darian stepped aside, toward the couch, to let Roger pass. When he did, Darian reached quickly to the couch and took the Ingram in hand. He spun and raised the weapon in one smooth motion, taking the selector switch from safe to single shot with his thumb. As Roger’s hand was reaching for the bedroom door, the NALF leader shot him once in the back of his head.
A second later the door to the bedroom opened inward, Roger’s limp body collapsing completely to the floor at Mustafa’s feet. “What…”
Darian lowered the Ingram. The sound of the shot had hardly been louder than a phone book dropping to a solid floor, but that report, and the thud of Roger’s body tumbling against the bedroom door, had been enough to alert the other NALF members.
Moises pushed past Mustafa, his eyes flaring at the bloody sight. “What happened?”
“He wanted out,” Darian said matter-of-factly. “He got it.”
“Out?” Mustafa asked. “What do you mean?”
Darian tossed the Ingram across his front to the couch. “Out, Brother. Out. He was going soft on us.”
Mustafa looked to Roger’s still body. “Brother Roger?”
“Why do you think he wanted to talk to me away from you all? He didn’t have the stomach to say it in front of you.” Darian kicked the body’s feet. “Candy ass. He could have blown it all if I’d let him back away from this. He would’ve started shooting his mouth off. We could have all been burned by him.”
“Damn.” Mustafa stepped over the body.
“But how are we going to do it without him?” Moises asked.
“We’re just going to do it. Period. Now get those guns ready, Brother. We’ve got a job to do.” Darian looked to Mustafa. “So do you. Get this pile of shit out of here.”
“Bud, how’s your day?” Secretary of State James Coventry asked over the phone.
“Half up, half down,” the NSA answered blandly.
“An even split? Lucky you. Listen, Gordy’s going to be over at my place to watch the address tomorrow.”
“Oh?”
“He’s not exactly the Hill’s favorite person right now,” Coventry explained. “Anyway, I thought you might like to join us.”
Bud smiled to himself. “Heard about the compromise, did you? I keep my mug away from the cameras and Earl won’t throw a fit if the president talks about Iran.” There was a bit of sarcasm in the NSA’s relation of the political reality he’d been cast into.