Her cell phone rang.
The name flashed across the screen: Bubba.
She picked up.
“I heard about it, Ellen.”
“I’m looking at it right now, Governor.”
“Then you know what we have to do.”
“No, Governor, I don’t,” she said.
“This is America, dammit, not Afghanistan. This shit can’t happen along my border.”
“It’s America’s border, Bubba.”
“But America won’t do shit to protect it. They failed. Now it’s my turn.”
She took a deep breath.
“Governor,” she said, “you do this, and you could be looking at open conflict with Prescott this time. No more playacting. No more excuses.”
“You think he’s going to send his boys down here to shoot at our boys over us killing some drug dealers?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “But neither do you.”
“Everybody on earth has called the president’s bluff,” said Davis. “Everybody. He’s caved every time. What would make this time different?”
“You,” she answered. “He hates you.”
“That won’t make his cojones any bigger, girl.” He laughed. “This has been coming for a long time. I’m looking forward to seeing some dead criminals for a change.”
The line went dead.
Ellen closed the box softly, walked outside, and looked at the river. “Alea iacta esta,” she whispered. “Damn, damn, damn.”
Soledad
AIDEN BURST THROUGH THE FRONT door of the cabin, sweating. Soledad stood. As she did, the men inhabiting the cabin stood up, readied for danger. Ezekiel picked up his M4.
“We need to talk,” Aiden said.
Soledad nodded. The men filed out of the living room, into the outdoors. Ezekiel nodded at her. “You need anything, holler. I’ll be outside,” he said.
Aiden collapsed into a broken-down sofa, breathing hard. Then he leaned forward, staring at Soledad.
“We need to go to Detroit,” he said.
“Detroit?” she laughed. “I thought we were staying off the grid, holing up. This is the first time in weeks they haven’t been looking for us. And you want me to take all these men into the heart of the firestorm?”
“I wouldn’t ask it, but Ricky needs my help.”
“You mean that cop? The one who shot the black kid? I heard they just let him off on the radio. They’ll get him out of town.”
Aiden shook his head. “No. They won’t. Those pieces of shit just took over the detention center.”
“They’ll let him out. Probably just shake somebody down.”
“I don’t think so.” He reached forward, picked up her portable radio. They sat, listening to the commercials for carpet cleaner and gold. Then the news came back on. A newscaster, speaking in somber tones, his voice cut by static interference. “The protesters—SHSHSHS—gathered outside the detention center—SHSHSHS—chanting that they want their own trial.” Aiden switched the radio off. “It’s an old-fashioned lynch mob,” he said. “They’re not going home without a head on a pike.”
“Why do you care? Bad shit goes down in this country every day.”
His eyes shifted to the ground. When he looked back at her, his eyes were watery. “We’re friends. He saved my life once.”
“So now you want to return the favor.”
He nodded.
“But this isn’t just about you anymore,” she said. “I’ve got forty guys out there who abandoned everything they had to come out here and try to be left alone. You want me to put them into the middle of a shitstorm.”
“The storm is coming to you.”
“They’re distracted. They’ll leave us alone.”
“For how long?” Aiden grimaced. “I’ll bet Ricky thought they’d leave him alone. That he was doing the right thing. Damn idiot.” Aiden looked at her, his eyes begging. “I don’t know what to tell you, Sole. All I can say is I’m going. If you can help, I’d be grateful. If not… all I can say is thank you for helping me find something I’d been missing.”
“What’s that?”
“A reason to do what I do. To fight.”
It stirred something in her. The same feeling that had once forced her to get up at 3:00 a.m. on her ranch. The same feeling that had forced her to build from the dust up, and had forced her to hire criminals to bomb a government installation. A feeling of helplessness in the face of something larger. All she could do, she finally figured, was to chip away at that feeling, bit by bit.
“Maybe I’m a damn idiot, too. But I’ll talk to them all. We’ll head out at nightfall.”
They arrived in the evening, a chain of cars and motorcycles taking refuge in the abandoned Michigan Central Station, the old rail depot for the city. Aiden guided them through the dark—the electric lights in this part of the city went out long ago, and the city didn’t normally send workers to fix them, fearing crime—and the caravan pulled into the empty grass field in front of the building. It stood above them, glorious and decayed, an image from a science fiction film, backlit against the waning twilight. Soledad shook her head. So much promise. All of it wasted.
They made shelter in the building itself, a Beaux-Arts masterpiece tagged and chipped by years of vagrants and hoodlums. A few elderly homeless drunks still lay around the place; Aiden left them where they were. Together, the group of thirty climbed up the stairs to the tower, an unused set of floors crumbling from disuse. At least, Soledad thought, nobody would bother them here.
Aiden whispered information about the building as they climbed, his voice resonating in the ill-lit halls. For years, the city had tried to rehabilitate the building; it had been bought, rebought, bought again. They’d considered bonds, taxpayer subsidies, anything to get the building restored. Nobody had bothered. Detroit was a disaster area; investing money in the city would be a massive waste.
Aiden had grown up in Detroit, he said. He knew the city well. His grandfather worked for General Motors, had a union job that was supposed to keep him employed all his life. Then foreign cars began flooding the American market, and the auto union contracts meant that American car companies couldn’t compete. Jobs started fleeing. As they did, the government of the city decided to raise taxes dramatically on the people who still held jobs, on the companies that still decided to stay in town. They left, too. Mayor after mayor took office promising to bring business back, then pandered by crushing businesses that remained. The tax base disappeared.
The place became a wasteland. White families moved out into the suburbs. Black families couldn’t afford to follow. The city self-segregated.
Aiden thought he was the only white kid left in the city. Then he met Ricky O’Sullivan. The two became fast friends, joined at the hip. Their parents went to church together; they fought back bullies together. Ricky was the straight arrow, Aiden the budding juvenile delinquent eager and ready to do anything to make friends. They grew distant as Aiden hooked up with new friends, missed school.
One day, Aiden’s mother saw Ricky in church, asked him if he’d seen Aiden. Ricky lied to cover for him; Aiden, he said, was probably at the library. Then, hands gripped into fists, still wearing his Sunday suit, he went looking for Aiden. He found him in a rundown tract house, surrounded by a couple of dropouts, high on weed and drunk off his ass.
“Aiden,” Ricky said, “your mom’s looking for you. She missed you at church.”