It was actually worse than he thought. Ninety percent of her organization had been wiped out in the last three weeks. The Feds seemed to know just where to hit them. Sophie didn’t let anything show though. She just popped another stick of gum and kept her silly grin on. “Hey, as long as the Feds haven’t taken out the payroll department, it’s not my problem!”
The trooper wrung his hands, but soon perked up. “The president’s here.”
Sophie’s grin melted away. She swallowed her gum and focused on the incoming motorcade. “It’s time to end this.”
The cop assumed she was talking to him.
“Do you think she’s going to do it? Really surrender the entire country?”
Sophie raised a curious eyebrow. “Would that be a problem for you?”
“Fuck no! Be the smartest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Kampbell sighed and slid her ACH Kevlar helmet on. “Let’s stay focused then. My troops will handle the inner security detail for Salazar. Get all of your men to the edge of the crowd. Push them back as far as possible.”
The crowd roared as one when that famous woman emerged and waved. President Salazar didn’t waste any time jumping into her first public appearance in months. Ignoring the podium, she snatched the mike and moved down the steps, towards the throng.
“My fellow Americans, no matter what side you live…”
The producer for the state-owned network, the only patriotic reporters allowed close, interrupted. “Excuse me ma’am, but we’re not live yet. Just a moment, please.”
While Salazar fought back tears and waited, her senior staffers lined up behind her. They all stiffened when the camera crew counted down from five.
On four, Kampbell patted her helmet twice. Fifty yards away, a dozen teenagers turned away from the president. They spun back a moment later, firing off a salvo of rocks and fireworks at the police line. One of them even went so far as to hurl a Molotov cocktail.
Hmm. Kampbell hadn’t paid them for the tiny bomb. She smirked at their initiative. Forcing a tight edge to her voice, she tapped the radio. “Contact! We’re bringing POTURA inside until you all can get a hold of this crowd. Get every spare man to move this mob back!”
While most of the security detail dashed down the steps and confronted the horde, eight of Sophie’s Freedom fighters took up rear security and led the VIP’s retreat inside. Salazar and her entourage followed on their heels. Before they made it under the outer arches, someone from the crowd fired a real gun in their vague direction. A state trooper five yards away collapsed, clutching his stomach.
“Down!” Sophie snarled. Live fire wasn’t part of the plan. Not yet, at any rate.
One of her snipers on the capitol roof dropped the wannabe assassin after three shots, but that only added to the chaos. The crowd stampeded in every direction. With remarkable coordination, all the Freedom Brigade militia troops donned gas masks without any visible signal. Once masked, several of Sophie’s troops slung their rifles to the side and whipped out drum-fed shotguns. Without any command, they pumped out tear gas into the sea of demonstrators as if paid per shell.
Apparently, they misjudged the wind. Strange, since it hadn’t changed direction all morning. Most of the riot gas washed right back over the security staff trying to stem the tide of panicked cattle. Half a dozen cops drowned under the flood of humanity, never to rise again.
Kampbell ran up to Salazar’s bodyguards, all sneezing and slinging snot as they tried to maintain a tight perimeter around their charge. “Move it! Get POTURA out of here. We’ll cover you!”
Salazar’s head of security wiped a wad of mucus from his swollen nose and flashed her a thumbs up. He dashed inside the building, weapon dangling by his hip. The president and company slid in right behind him.
As soon as the last straggler entered, the darkened hallway exploded in a symphony of gunfire. Beside Sophie, the on scene police commander spun around, pistol at the high ready. He clicked his radio and gave his last command: “Ugh—”
Sophie tugged her knife out from between his second and third ribs and plunged it into his throat, slashing across the windpipe and both carotid arteries. One of her men took a knee and rolled smoke grenades in every direction.
Sophie dropped the gurgling cop as the capitol doors swung open. Through the haze, Sophie caught a gaggle of suits rushing back outside.
“Careful! We need her alive!”
Salazar’s six surviving bodyguards, firing blind through the stinging cloud, didn’t last long under the deluge of automatic weapons fire from Sophie’s small army.
Sophie bounded up the steps and called into a second radio. Every other frequency, both civilian and military, screeched with jamming. All except for the Freedom Brigade’s internal net. “Got the package. Time to extract.”
She butt-stroked some URA general who had the balls to interfere in the face. Reaching down, Sophie shoved a body to the side and snatched the petite woman playing dead by the hair.
“Fuck you, you damn Nazi! The war’s over!” The dragon lady seemed more pissed than scared.
Sophie ignored Salazar and hollered at her team. “Mount up!”
Over the roar of random shooting and wailing, a grumble climbed the steps towards them. Four of her German-made Puma infantry fighting vehicles emerged from the fog and clanked to a halt. They pivot steered around, grinding the steps under them, and dropped ramps right at Sophie’s feet.
“Storm leader! I think people are figuring things out!” Both mini tanks opened up at the cops below with their 30mm guns.
As the smoke and gas dissipated, the random fire became tighter. Before she could answer, the head and neck of the militiaman in front of Sophie exploded all over her. Still dragging the president by the hair, she shoved her towards the track. Sophie halted inside and spun around. She spit out the blood and brains and yelled at the group following her.
“We don’t need all of them. Just excess baggage.”
Two of her men spun on Salazar’s ten surviving cabinet ministers, military officers and assistants. While the staffers dropped to their knees and prayed, the Freedom fighters flipped their TAR-21’s into full auto mode, giving the huddled rebels an immediate appointment with God.
Salazar went green as the ramp whined shut and hid the gruesome sight. “You people are monsters…”
Sophie backhanded Salazar. “That sickens you? What type of psychopath are you? How many thousands of innocents did you gas to death, yet old-fashioned bullets are a problem? What makes me sick are people like you. How sweet a deal did you strike with the president, eh? You think you can just pin your war crimes on us and retire to Tahiti or something? Well, fuck you, ma’am!”
Through her pain and anger, Salazar recognized rhetoric when she heard it.
“Wait a second. You’re not doing this for the bounty?”
All the Freedom militiamen in the track laughed. Sophie leaned in close.
“Money might be all you care for, but this is about justice. Something you could never understand.”
Salazar wiped her eyes and studied the dead serious armed folks around her.
“Oh, a coup d'état, huh? Well, you idiots can have the country. We have nothing to keep fighting with anyway.”
Whispers of a smile cracked through Sophie’s hate. “There’s plenty of firepower where we’re going.”
“God, it’s true. You people are delusional. Everything’s fallen apart. Our army, air force, navy…No! Where are we headed?”
Sophie peeked out a viewport. “We’re almost to the airport. It’ll be a short flight to Los Alamos.”
Salazar’s eye twitched. The consolidated depot for all of the URA’s nuclear weapons was supposed to be the rebels’ best-kept secret. That’s why they’d assigned the best to guard it…