Banks took his place and pulled up his binos. Turnbull raised his own and looked toward St. Anthony where 64 left it behind. There was one set of headlights coming from the east – if there had been a civilian vehicle nearby, they would have scrubbed the mission. He swung the binos south to the kill zone once more to make sure no knucklehead had wandered into it. The illumination was poor – no moon yet and some cloud cover, but he didn’t see anything. Off on the periphery, lights from farms, houses and businesses twinkled. There were a lot more occupied shelters out here in the sticks than one might imagine, and with the powerful rounds they were using they had to be very, very careful of their background less someone drop a stray .270 slug through some farmer’s dining room wall.
The PSF cruiser was headed into the kill zone, probably at the speed limit.
“Get ready,” Banks said.
The riflemen aimed.
The PSF cruiser disappeared for a moment behind a willow tree growing on the banks of the small creek that ran north-south through the field. When it emerged, Banks barked.
“Fire!”
The three rifles erupted – the noise was deafening. The first volley off, all three pulled back the bolts on their rifles, jacked in another round and took aim. The three shots of the second volley were staggered, first one then two more in rapid succession. The shooters immediately began jacking in their third round.
Turnbull, ears ringing, was watching the cruiser through his binos. After the initial volley – nothing. The car kept going. But after the second, it swerved and ran off onto the shoulder before recovering. The third volley roared, and the front passenger’s headlight was snuffed out. The cruiser accelerated, crossing the median and back and then tearing off to the west unsteadily.
It vanished out of sight.
“Get your brass and on your feet!” Banks barked. The shooters grabbed up their empty shell casings and arose, and so did Turnbull, carrying one of the liberated Kalashnikovs kindly donated by the People’s Volunteers. The first shooter led them off the ridge and back into the woods along the path they had already reconnoitered. Banks was last out of the position, ensuring that there was nothing and no one left behind.
They tramped through the woods silently and in single file for about 15 minutes until they returned to the barn. They slipped inside, and then began to laugh and congratulate each other. A few minutes later, the two pairs of spotters entered and the whole team was assembled. While Turnbull watched, Banks conducted the after-action review – what went right, and more importantly, what went wrong.
Kyle seemed disappointed. “Well, it doesn’t look like we killed them,” he said.
Turnbull spoke up. “Doesn’t matter. That wasn’t the purpose.”
“I thought in wars you killed the enemy,”
“In wars you beat the enemy. Sometimes that means you kill them, sometimes that doesn’t matter. Alive or dead, after tonight they’ll know that the countryside is ours, and they either have to move in force when they come out here or give it over to us.”
“What the nice officer is saying,” Banks said, “is that tonight we turned Dubois County pink.”
Banks lit his cigar, then Turnbull’s. The air was a bit chilly, but neither showed it.
“This is your area now. Unless we’re doing something bigger, you deal with them when they come through,” Turnbull said.
“The Department of Agriculture inspector is supposed to be coming tomorrow,” Banks said. “Every time, it’s more land ordered out of production, more new rules, and more ‘equality contributions’ of a part of the harvests.”
“When he gets here, have a little talk with him,” said Turnbull.
“Him? I don’t even want to go there – last time some government asshole came through I assumed it was a chick because it had tits and that cost me 20 minutes of crying about how I was imposing my idea of gender identity on it.”
“If it does that again, shoot it,” suggested Turnbull.
“Yeah, that’s my plan. We’re also going to start setting aside food in case things get uglier. The prices are going down – see, because the government loves us – so naturally, there’s less in the stores to buy every week. My wife couldn’t get coffee at the supermarket; you gotta go in town to Starbucks to get any anymore. Nice to be pals with the government, huh? You get a monopoly.”
“They like big companies fine if the big companies do what they say,” said Turnbull.
“And when the government takes over the grocery stores like it says it’s going to, the shortages will only get worse. So, down there, in the red, it’s not bad like the news always says, is it?”
“Well, you can get coffee in the supermarkets and Starbucks isn’t the only coffee shop.”
“You can say what you want, right?” Banks asked, exhaling a cloud.
“Yeah, they kept the old First Amendment and didn’t do what they did here – add a whole bunch of exceptions.”
“I’d go,” Banks said. “But on the other hand, fuck that noise. This is my land and no one’s driving me off it.”
Ted Cannon was still assigned to a desk inside the Jasper PSF station, and he saw firsthand the chaos that followed the four separate sniper attacks on cruisers across the Jasper sector the night before. Walking in for his shift at 0700, he saw the four vehicles that had been shot at. A couple were short side windows; one’s rear window had a bullet hole almost dead center. All four had holes punched through the sheet metal. One had a headlamp shot out; another had blood in the passenger’s seat where a slug went through the door and shattered the officer’s humerus.
The detectives were all over the vehicles; they had retrieved some of the slugs, which were deformed but they were obviously large caliber hunting rounds.
Cannon went inside, where Kessler was fuming in her office, sipping a Starbucks coffee. Her subordinates were not looking to her for solutions. They were exploring their own.
“I ain’t going back out there on those backwoods Deliverance country-ass roads,” one patrol officer told another. “I’ll pull my shit off on a side road and hide until my shift’s done. Get high!”
His pal half-laughed and half-considered that course of action.
“It’s the coordination that should worry you,” PBI Inspector Kunstler was telling the lieutenant. He was in plainclothes and calm; she was shaking with rage and fear. “Four incidents, identical incidents, within a few hours? That’s not a coincidence. They are getting more sophisticated.”
“I don’t understand how this is happening,” Kessler said. “I thought we took all the guns.”
“Well, Lieutenant, apparently they still have quite a lot of them. And I expect ammunition as well. What we need is the people of this region to identify the criminals so we can break up this ring – or rings. But it seems the people here refuse to help. ”
“They’re all racist reactionaries,” Kessler offered. Kunstler’s expression did not change.
“Obviously, we can’t allow any of this into the media,” Kunstler said. “We’ll need more checkpoints and ID checks by your people. We can increase media and communications monitoring. We’re already mapping relationship networks on our software. And we can use the schools, interview students and encourage denunciations.”
“More ID checks and checkpoints. Yes, we’ll do those.”
“And are you going to take any retaliatory action?”
Kessler looked around, as if she were caged. “Sergeant, what are the nearest towns to these terrorist attacks?”
The sergeant, another out-of-towner stared at the map on her wall. “St. Anthony is close by where Unit 14 was shot at.”
“We’ll send the Volunteers in there tonight,” Kessler said. Kunstler did not reply. He turned and went back to his suite of offices.