“You know what empties a station of PSF assholes fast? Dead PSF assholes. Now get in.” Turnbull reached for the radio hand mic as Junior brought the Kevlar vests around and jumped into the passenger seat.
Turnbull keyed it.
“Uh, help, I’m a citizen and there’s two PSF who are shot here. Help! Somebody shot them!”
The speaker came alive. “Who is this? Say again?”
“Uh, yeah, I’m just a citizen and there’s two officers lying in the road here near, uh….” Turnbull thought about it for a moment. “Rosewood and Fairfax.”
That would lead them away nicely. Then he added, “The guy who did it is a short cismale, red hair, blue jacket!”
“What is your name?”
“You gotta come quick! They’re both really badly hurt. Oh no, he’s coming back!” Turnbull kept it keyed as he pulled out his Glock and fired a round out the window, then tossed away the mic. Next, he flipped off the light bar, turned on the ignition, and gunned the cruiser west up the street back to Amanda.
They pulled up outside the deserted office building where they had left her and trotted inside. Amanda stood, holding a two-by-four that was splattered with red. On the ground, a dirty gentlemen groaned. His head had evidently become acquainted with the piece of wood in the not too distant past.
“He was very rude,” Amanda said. “He has no social graces.”
“Yep, you’re a Texas girl. Get the packs. We’re out of here.”
They sat in the cruiser, idling, watching the police station from across Wilcox Avenue. The patrol car lot was nearly empty. On the way over, they had seen at least a dozen heading west fast on their wild goose chase after the cisnormative ginger assassin.
“It looks like they keep the impounded cars over there. I don’t expect them to do an inventory of them and find one missing before we get out to the border,” Turnbull said, slipping a mag into his M4. Junior started putting on his suppressor, but Turnbull stopped him.
“No, we want it loud,” he said. “This is flat out urban guerilla warfare. We’re done with subtlety. We’re going in and shooting anyone who gets in our way. Speed, aggression, and violent execution. Remember, these assholes aren’t soldiers. We are. They’re just thugs with a mandate. I saw it in Indian Country. We hit hard and fast and they’ll be disoriented. It’ll take them time to react. By then, you will have keys to one of those cars and I’ll have Abraham and the drive.”
“How do I find where they keep the impound keys, Kelly?”
“You take a blue and you shove the muzzle of that M4 in his face and ask him.”
“What if he doesn’t tell me?”
“Then you pull the fucking trigger and then ask the next one. He’ll tell you.”
Turnbull was stuffing spare magazines into the black PSF vest Junior had liberated. Junior was staring.
“What?” asked Turnbull.
“Maybe I’m just not as angry at them as you are,” Junior said.
“No, but you should be. They say the worst wars are the civil wars. Well, they’re right. You know those nice Jewish people who helped us? These fuckers helped slaughter them. We laugh at their stupid political correctness shit, but deep down what they are about isn’t funny. We’re all expendable when it comes to them preserving their power. They’re just the latest people to try to butcher their way to utopia. Did I ever tell you what they did to a church full of people in Indiana who they thought were red sympathizers? I got to help pull out the bodies of people whose only crime was not worshipping socialism’s false god. Now that kid and probably a lot of other innocent people are going to die unless we do what we gotta do. So are you coming?”
“I’m coming.”
“You know, I didn’t ask for it to be this way. I didn’t ask for them to rip my country apart. But it fucking is what it is. Now let’s go get that kid.”
They got out and opened the rear door for Amanda. Turnbull produced the PSF Beretta and handed it to Amanda, along with three extra magazines.
“You know how to use this?” he asked.
“I may have been stupid enough to leave it once, but I’m still from Texas,” she answered, pulling back the slide and loading a round.
“Shoot anyone who gets in your way. We’ll be out in about ten minutes with one of those cars.” Amanda nodded, got into the passenger seat and closed the door behind her.
Turnbull and Junior locked and loaded as they walked across Wilcox Avenue to the PSF station.
17.
The convoy of three SUVs eventually arrived at the home of the baffled elderly man on the ridge above Beverly Hills who had played the unwilling host to the Director of the People’s Bureau of Investigation. Rios-Parkinson was livid – he had spent that critical hour trying and largely failing to organize his forces via intermittent cellular phone communication. But now, in the back of the middle SUV, he had clear comms again.
“Do you have the tracker up yet?” he demanded of Larsen.
“The techs are still working on it.”
“Tell them to get it operational. And the raid?”
“We are about an hour away from being able to launch,” Larsen reported. “We are organizing the PSF’s perimeter and the assault element from the PBI.”
“An hour?” Rio-Parkinson shrieked. “Do it now!”
“Director,” Larsen said patiently. “You can’t just launch an assault. You have to plan. You have to move the people and equipment into position.”
“Larsen, I am warning you. Raid the compound. They are coming. The spies are coming if they are not already there and they cannot get the hard drive.”
On the other end, Larsen scowled. Unlike his boss, he was a professional. He had run operations in the old military before the Split, and then for the blues during the bloody Indiana counter-insurgency campaign. If you did not plan, prepare, and rehearse, you failed. Even a relatively simple operation like this could go very wrong, especially when so much was at stake.
“We will move the moment we can, Director,” Larsen said, trying to be soothing.
“When you secure it, you search the building. Everywhere. Tear it apart. Tear out the walls. The drive has to be there,” Rios-Parkinson ordered. But there was a doubt in his mind. What if it wasn’t?
“Understood,” Larsen replied.
“And take the main one alive, this David Kaplan. Get him to tell you where he hid it. Remember, I want not a word of this to become known. So kill the rest.”
The convoy was speeding east toward David’s compound when Larsen called back to report.
“We have entered the compound and engaged a number of the subversives already.”
“Have they resisted?” Rios-Parkinson asked.
“No,” said Larsen. “They have no weapons.”
“Execute your orders. And find the drive.”
The convoy flew past the PSF perimeter and onward until it reached the crush of PSF and PBI vehicles surrounding the apartment complex. Rios-Parkinson’s new ten-man personal security team – it was all male, in defiance of the strict rules designed to stamp out phallocentrism in the security forces – exited the vehicles before their boss, ensuring it was safe for him to come out. They wore black uniforms with modern vests, and each carried a new M4-style carbine with optics. No second hand Chinese-made AKs for them.
Larsen approached as Rios-Parkinson got out of his SUV. His boss’s suit was a mess – it looked like he had spilled coffee on himself.
From inside the complex, there were bursts of gunfire and occasional screams. There was the dull thud of an explosion.