Vaughn: "Michelle…"
Michelle nodded. She knew. A few fries, a few sips more of her cream soda. She stood. All three of them did—Vaughn taking the curled spoon from Aubrey, tossing it in the garbage for no one to see—then walked north on La Brea away from the accident.
At the accident, at the reality/virtual reality event, someone exclaimed during the closing minutes of the show as the family was pulled dazed but unharmed from the wreckage: "It's a miracle!"
G Platoon, MTac's official designation in the Los Angeles Police Department, was split into five units: Central, West LA, Valley, Pacific and Harbor. Each unit was made up of two elements. Each element was made up of three officers and a senior lead officer.
Rysher had been with the LAPD MTac since its inception, its inception being the people of America saying to their president: do something.
The Posse Comitatus Act said the military couldn't do anything. And from the get-go, right after May Day, Europe—the oh so self-righteous international community—was butting its nose in, giving America crap about the laws Congress was writing up concerning metanormals.
So America had to look like it was obeying its own Constitution.
So the president signed an EO that basically said to local law enforcement agencies: do something.
So the LAPD, every PD, did something. They went after all metanormals who refused to leave the country. Whether they fancied themselves as superheroes or villains, even if they were just regular Joes who never put on spandex, but could levitate a car with a shallow thought, they were now criminals. And every freak they went after, every warrant they served, the cops learned from trial and error. Error equaling death. The first thing they learned was that regular cops and metanormals don't mix, regular cops getting sent back from a tangle with a metanormal in body bags. If there were any bodies left to bag. What they learned next was that SWAT cops didn't do much better than regular cops. After that the LAPD, every PD, began forming Metanormal Tactical Units. MTacs. That's when they started learning things that were useful.
They learned an MTac element should only be four operators. A regular SWAT squad would go in with two five-operator elements. Ten strong just to take down bank robbers, bangers or disgruntled ex-employees with AK-47s. With MTac there were only the four. Fewer funerals that way
They learned that you don't send cops wearing metal after a metal morpher. A belt buckle, a shoe clasp, anything metallic on your body could be turned into crawling shrapnel, a slithering razor, a weapon against you. This piece of knowledge came at the expense of the original Harbor MTac. After that synthetic gear was standard issue.
They learned invulnerables and impenetrables usually didn't have enhanced strength.
God overgives with one hand.
They couldn't be shot, but they could be stopped. A well-juiced stun gun did the job good.
Pyrokinetics, the firestarters, had to have a visual before they could induce combustion.
And cops learned, most importantly, if you went up against a telepath, you were as good as dead, most times from a self-inflicted gunshot. That was their signature kill. The ultimate fuck-you.
It was all in the training manual you got with a" Welcome to MTac" your first day of basic.
Rysher had written the manual. Parts of it. The manual itself put together piecemeal, most of it a puree of standard police procedure with theories added and subtracted based on whether cops going at superhumans lived or got killed. As more cops survived encounters—by training or skill or luck—as the elements were filled with more BAMFs, Rysher got credit. Rysher and others who'd sewn together the manual. And Rysher and the others got plaques and awards, and Rysher got an office and a wall to hang them on.
An office with a door that Bo knocked on and waited, respectfully, outside of before being invited in.
Once in, standing before Rysher, he asked: "What's going on with Officer O'Roark?"
"At the moment, nothing."
"IA coming around asking questions isn't nothing, sir."
Rysher's hands flipped over, popped open, signaling powerless-ness in the situation."You know as much as I do."
"You don't know who started the investigation, why?"
"You know why."
"Hell yes, I know. I was there. I was one of the cops who got his hind end pulled out of the fire. Literally."
"With a nonreg weapon."
"She did it on my element. You don't hear me complaining."
"It's not what she did, Bo. You know that. You know it isn't."
"Yes, sir."
"It's how. She knew the regs and went the other way. There are any number of people upstairs who'd like to make sure the LAPD doesn't come off like a pack of vigilantes. All that does is give Amnesty International and their bunch ammunition. I'm guessing IA finds something it doesn't like about O'Roark, they're going to come after her hard as they can."
"Oh, hell, Freddy…"
Rysher looked up. He could do without the familiarity.
Bo: "What is going on? Look, you made the girl sit out. She gets it. Beyond that, it's us operators who've got freaks coming at us one every other month. I don't know an MTac who'd care Soledad used a little independent thought. So why the hell should anybody else?"
"It's our job to care. It's my job to keep a thumb on five units, forty cops, and make sure they're alive enough to go home to their families every night. And when something goes south, I'm the one who takes the punches like a mud wall trying to hold back a tidal wave."
"Why would you be taking punches?" Bo, a cop, always a cop, picked up words and puzzled them together."She did this on her own."
Rysher looked down to the papers he'd been reading through before Bo'd come in. He looked, but he didn't read them. He said, to Bo, but still looking at the papers: "This is my fault."
Bo didn't get that. Before he could say anything, Rysher went on with:
"Maybe I moved her up too quickly, instead of when she was ready."
"She did good work everywhere she landed straight out of the academy," Bo, defending Soledad in her absence."I don't know too many cops more ready for their first call."
"Maybe. I just… when I look back on things, I wonder if I pushed her because… because I thought it would be good for us to have someone like her around."
"Someone like…"
Rysher's head shook, slowly, full of self-lament.
Someone like… And for the very first time Bo considered, just for a second, but he considered it just the same: Was Soledad good cop, or was someone like her just good to have around?
Pushing aside the thought, Bo said: "Put her back in uniform."
"No."
"I'm just saying at least let her wear blues and a badge."
"Bo, I can't."
"Why not?"
"Officer O'Roark is under revi—"
"And it's guys like me out there watching bullets bounce off of freaks or dodging them while they turn into panthers and try to rip our heads off. I don't care what anybody else upstairs thinks. They're upstairs, not out on the streets. And if they've got a doubt, at least put her back in uniform and let her prove them otherwise."
With the back of his thumb Rysher rubbed at his lip, the action disconnected from anything in particular."I'll see what I can do. But what I can do might not be much of anything."