“Tell me where she is, or I drop the tapes into the toilet.”
“You wouldn’t,” Jeb! said. “You wouldn’t dare. You know how valuable-”
“He’s bluffing,” Hillary said. “He probably doesn’t even have them on him.”
Jimmie pressed PLAY on the recorder. Trump’s voice echoed in the stalclass="underline" Here’s what you do. You finance a boat, then you buy the boat company and run it into the ground. They close up shop, boom-free boat.
He paused it.
“God dammit,” Jeb! cried, pounding weakly on the divider. “Don’t do it.”
“He has duplicates somewhere,” Hillary said, unfazed.
“I couldn’t risk making a copy,” Jimmie said. “The interview sessions are on a hard drive inside this recorder. No tapes. No copies. This is it.”
According to Trump: The Art of the Deal, “the worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead.” Right now, Jeb! Bush was sweating desperation. Hillary was playing it cool. Jimmie wondered if she’d colored Trump’s book.
“Your girlfriend is tied up in the Taken exhibit,” Hillary said.
That was all Jimmie wanted to know. That was all he needed to know.
He unlocked the door.
“You think you’re just going to walk out of here without handing over the device?” Hillary said. “Even if you get past both of our men at the restroom door, you’ll never make it out of the museum alive. And neither will your girlfriend.”
“You’ll get the recorder as soon as I make sure she’s safe,” Jimmie said. “I’m in charge now. I’m the goddamn man. I’m-”
The overhead lights went out. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence in Trump’s United States. You just sort of had to expect the rolling brownouts, as all caps on energy consumption had been lifted. Usually, the backup generators in most buildings kicked in after ten or fifteen seconds. Life would return to normal.
But this time, the darkness did not abate. Really? Did this have to happen right in the middle of his big speech where he turned the tables on the kidnappers?
A loud bang outside of the restroom startled Jimmie. It was quickly followed by another, and another. Gunshots.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Killing Everybody
“Did you double-cross us, Jimmie?” Hillary asked in the darkness.
“How could I double-cross you? We were never on the same page to begin with.”
Something landed on the floor outside the stalls with a metallic clang and started hissing like a snake. The room quickly filled with smoke. Jimmie covered his mouth with his T-shirt and crept up onto the toilet seat, where he crouched like Spider-Man.
A red laser cut through the darkness and danced above the stall door. The tiny shaft of light would have only been a red dot if not for the smoke clouding the air. Perched like he was on the toilet, Jimmie Bernwood was a shitting duck.
The red shaft of light passed under the stalls, bouncing off the shoes of his stallmates. He closed his eyes as it passed over the bare tile in front of his toilet. The gunshots outside indicated to him that somebody had taken out the Socialist Justice Warriors standing guard… but that didn’t necessarily mean whoever was doing the shooting was after Hillary and Jeb! More likely, they were after the same thing everyone else seemed to be interested in: the Dorset recordings. And Jimmie didn’t need to be alive to hand them over.
He opened his eyes just as gunfire erupted outside of the stalls. In such close quarters, it was loud enough to take what was left of Jimmie’s hearing and leave a ringing in its place. After the first few rapid-fire shots, he stopped hearing them. The shooting was still going on, though, because the flashes of the muzzles were lighting up the restroom. It was as if somebody were throwing a Fourth of July fireworks show just for his private amusement. Some real asshole.
Jimmie braced for the bullets to enter his body and deliver him to the Lord. Although he’d always been an atheist, he prayed to God that the assassins left enough of him for at least a partially open casket. Those closed-casket affairs were just depressing as all shit-you always wondered just how mangled the corpse was beneath the pine lid.
Finally, the light show stopped.
Jimmie ran a hand over his chest and stomach, checking for wounds. Not a bullet hole to be found. He thanked God for saving him and went back to being an atheist.
The ringing in his ears slowly wound down, and he could make out a couple of voices arguing on the other side of the stall door. The lights flickered back on. Jimmie glanced down to see how his stallmates had fared, then quickly looked away. The floor was a mess of busted ceramic from the toilet seats, plaster chunks from the walls… and blood. So much blood. One of Jeb!’s loafers had somehow found its way back into Jimmie’s stall. Part of a foot was still stuck in it, but it had come undone from the rest of Jeb!’s body.
There were footsteps across the broken tile outside Jimmie’s stall. Then a pause. He could sense somebody standing there, contemplating his fate. An assassin. Jimmie decided to go down swinging.
“You’ll never take me alive,” he said, gripping the only weapon he had-the recorder-with both hands. His voice was trembling and weak.
The words had sounded so much better in his head.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
High Score: 1,072
“If I show up with your casket in tow, the president will probably revoke my Medal of Honor,” the man outside the stall said. His voice was like gravel. “But it’s your choice, amigo. I get paid by the pound.”
“The president?” Jimmie said. “You mean President Trump?”
“Goddamn right I mean President Trump. He’s our boss-the commander in chief. And we have orders to bag your sorry ass. Open the door.”
Jimmie unlocked the door and opened it a crack. The man he was talking to was dressed in camo from head to toe. Jimmie recognized the soldier’s rifle as an FN SCAR (Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle, an acronym he knew from his days playing the original Human Hiroshima on Xbox-er, his roommate’s days of playing video games).
“Who’s ‘we’?” Jimmie asked.
“You’re James Bernwood?” the soldier asked, ignoring his question.
Jimmie eyed the man’s hands cradling the rifle. He nodded in the affirmative.
“I’m Sergeant Spencer Paul,” the soldier said. “And we’re SEAL Team Sixty-Nine.”
“The Spencer Paul?” Jimmie asked. “The Human Hiroshima?”
“If you’re asking if I’m the Spencer Paul who personally shot and killed one thousand seventy-two enemy combatants-the most confirmed kills in US military history-and who was the subject of the Bill O’Reilly book Killing Everybody, then yes.”
Jimmie heard more footsteps. Three figures trotted from the fog to form a semicircle around Jimmie’s stall with the celebrated Navy SEAL. “The perimeter is secure, sir,” one of the other soldiers, a tough-as-buffalo-jerky-sounding woman, said. “Is this the baggage?”
“Baggage confirmed,” Paul said, nodding.
Jimmie stepped out of the stall. The restroom was torn apart. It reminded him of his off-campus apartment senior year.
Immediately, all four soldiers pointed their weapons at Jimmie. A wet, warm feeling spread underneath his butt. He may have pissed himself. It wouldn’t have been the first time, but it would have been the first time he’d done so while sober.
“What’s that in your hand?” Paul shouted.
Jimmie raised his hands. “It’s just a recording-”
“Set it on the ground.”
He set it on the floor so that they could inspect it. Paul fired a single shot through it, causing Jimmie’s heart to skip a beat. While it was practically worthless, it was all Jimmie had.