Jason swore some more. Now what?
Trey looked at the smoking remains of the truck where the gate had been, then looked behind him down the lane whence the missile had come.
A number of soldiers with serious weapons were trotting toward him.
Trey started to bring his gun up to defend himself from the new arrivals, but the leader of the troops waved at him to stand down.
As he waved, Trey’s brain got back in gear and overrode his instinctive reactions. Pointing a gun at these guys would be insane no matter which side they were on. Trey lowered his weapon even faster than he’d raised it. He shouted to his fellows, “It’s okay! Don’t shoot the Army guys!”
As the leader reached Trey, he frowned, and for a moment Trey thought the guy might shoot him.
But the moment passed. The fellow hunkered down next to him. “Marines, son. We’re Marines.”
Trey winced. “Sorry.” He smiled. “I’m Trey, by the way.”
The guy cleared his throat. “I’m Major Drew Moreno.”
Drew Moreno had had a helluva week. He still was not sure whether he’d enabled a rebellion or stopped a coup. His confidence in his decision-making ability had not been uplifted when he got called in to meet with the new President for the Duration.
The President had shaken his hand and pointed him at a chair. “I wanted to thank you again for saving me and saving the country.”
Drew sat on the edge of the seat, crisply erect, and gave a stiff nod. “Thank you, sir.”
“I’m planning on getting you the Medal of Honor once we have Congress operational again.”
Drew simply nodded. Talk of the Medal reminded him of the difficulty of his decisions.
The President, seeing his discomfort, waved it away. “Regardless, we have another pressing problem, and I have very few people in the Armed Forces I can trust yet.” He frowned. “You’ve heard of the Red Cavalry making its way to Hollywood?”
“Yes, sir.”
I need you to take some men out there and stop them. Defend Hollywood.” He stared at Drew hard. “Can you do that for me?”
Drew relaxed. He might have more opinions and ideas in common with the Red Cavalry, but preventing a slaughter in LA was reasonably similar to the kind of job he’d trained for. He might sympathize with the politics of the Red Cavalry, but he had no sympathy at all with the kind of violence they planned.
Drew stood and saluted. “I can do that, sir.”
The President smiled. “Excellent.” He touched the Bible on his desk. “Now, if you’ll just come here and take the Oath of Personal Loyalty, we can proceed.”
Drew stood more stiffly. “I have already given my oath to defend the nation and the Constitution, Sir.”
The President hesitated. “Of course. Another time, perhaps.” He shook Drew’s hand again and let him get on with the job.
So now Drew knelt next to his new ally, a drug dealer. At least, he was pretty sure the guy was a drug dealer because he was armed with a Davis P-380, one of the most popular of the cheap Saturday Night Specials, a weapon of choice among small-time criminals.
Drew masked his sneer at the firearm and made a suggestion. “You and your men might want to withdraw.” He could not help the sarcasm in his voice. He tapped his assault rifle. “Your pop guns are a little short on hitting power.”
Trey acknowledged the offer. “Thank you.” A curious expression passed over his features, a sort of determination to do the right thing that Drew did not normally associate with drug dealers. “You’re in command, but we’re happy to back you up. Just tell us what you want us to do.”
Drew clenched his teeth. “Why are you here, anyway?”
Trey shrugged. “It’s Hollywood. They’re some of our best customers.”
In the end, Drew let them stay. He fully understood the idea of protecting your customers.
Jason swore when the Marines landed.
There weren’t a lot of them. He was quite sure he could still take the gate and burn the studio…if Lance would just show up with his heavy equipment. Where the hell was he?
Dino Longoria looked down through the glass wall of his penthouse office at the half-dozen pickup trucks bouncing onto the sidewalk in front of his skyscraper. He turned to his security chief. “Okay, that’s it. You will gear up, or so help me God, you’re fired.”
Ed Connor frowned.
Dino tried coaxing, which was ridiculous under the circumstances. “If you face them with nothing but tasers, we’ll all die.”
Ed acknowledged defeat. “Not really a choice at this point.” He called in both his men.
Dino heard the elevator bell ring, and footsteps pounded toward them.
Ed looked at him quizzically. “How’d they get up here so fast? The elevator is keyed.”
Dino swore. “They must’ve grabbed the superintendent.” He hurried to the bookcase that filled half a wall. “Okay, boys, just like in the movies.”
That got a chuckle from everyone.
Dino was a movie mogul, a producer and occasional director of action-adventure and struggle-for-justice thrillers. He was beloved of the Blue media and hated by the Red. There was no liberal trope he did not support: the cops were always crooked or useless, the corporate moguls like himself were always evil, the politicians were always compassionate, and the wily hero always had to stop the bad guy without, heaven forbid, using a gun.
Dino found the stereotypes tiresome. He’d met both wonderfully good people and assholes in all walks of life, in every shape and color. Mother Nature had no biases when handing out brains, honor, stupidity, and malice. Well, he conceded to himself, there might be a little excess of arrogant stupidity among Hollywood actors and producers.
And sometimes in the movies he directed, he just wanted to hand the good guy a pistol for his first one-on-one encounter with the villain and let him pull the trigger. But then the movie would only be half as long, and the body count would be wholly inadequate.
So he refrained from meddling with the formula. He gave the audience what they wanted.
He had watched from a distance as the Sacramento madmen imposed rules on the eastern half of the state that might make sense for a big city but made no sense at all for people scattered in an arid wasteland. He’d half expected the people there to rise up in righteous wrath even before the Riot, so he had prepared.
He slid the large bookcase aside, revealing a gun locker nearly as big as the bookcase. He spun the dials.
Moments later, all four men held fake assault rifles. They were fake in that, while the Great Blue State of California classified them as assault rifles, they were only semi-automatic—they fired one round every time you pulled the trigger.
They hadn’t quite gotten organized when a shotgun blasted out the door.
Dino and company started firing. The first Red through the door went down under their fusillade.
Ed observed, “We’ve got the advantage. They have to come through one at a time.”
Dino felt heartened until a low roar sounded and half the wall blew out.
Ed muttered, “So much for that.”
It turned out that the folks from eastern California didn’t have fake assault rifles. They had real ones.
One of the things the movies sometimes got right was that human beings are, with some notable exceptions, terrible shots. When you’re pumped with adrenalin and shooting at a guy across the field, half-hidden by buildings or trees, and the guy is shooting back, most of us are no more likely to hit a target than an Imperial stormtrooper.
But when hundreds of rounds are fired in an area the size of a business office, even a big Hollywood mogul’s office, it’s hard to miss all the time. Moments later, most of the combatants were down.
One of the attackers still standing muttered, “Our work here is done.” He followed up with, “Lance, let’s get our boys out of here.”
After what seemed like several hours but was probably only a few minutes, Dino could no longer hear
anyone moving. He crawled, slipping and sliding in his own blood, and found his cell phone.
“Please state your code and your condition.”
Dino coughed his code haltingly into the phone. “I’m shot. At my office. My men too.”
“We’ll be there in five minutes.”
Dino tried to explain it would be hard to get to him, with the superintendent probably gone and the elevator locked, but before he had built up the strength to talk, the line went dead.
An indefinite amount of time later, he heard a thump on the roof above him. Then another, and another.
People with medical gear moved around him. He was on a gurney, then he was on the roof. The last thing he noticed after a doctor said, “Don’t worry, we’ve got you” was an odd-looking black helicopter.
He’d heard about these—the stealth copters from the BrainTrust. In retrospect, he was not surprised his medical people had them.
When California had turned medicine into a government-run industry, a separate concierge medical system had arisen for those who could afford it. This presented a problem for politicians who had promised that everyone would get top-of-the-line healthcare once the government ran things. If it were true, why would concierge medicine exist?
So concierge medicine was swiftly outlawed to ensure no such comparisons could be drawn.
But if there’s something people want, and the government makes it illegal, it simply goes underground.
In San Francisco, both rich and poor people went to the BrainTrust for serious medical care. But LA was too far if you had either a real emergency or a minor problem.
So Dino belonged to a top-secret super-clinic. He, like many others he knew who belonged, suspected that the clinic lay inside one of the larger mansions in Beverly Hills. He didn’t know, of course; most of the time, the doctors came to him, and when he needed hospital admittance, they blindfolded him before starting the journey.
They blindfolded him this time, too. It didn’t matter. He was unconscious before the copter left the roof.
Jason heard a commotion behind him. A gruff voice carried over the battlefield. “Easy, everyone, I’m here to help.”
Jason looked at the newcomer, a huge fellow wearing fatigues more or less like the Marines on the other side of the gate.
The stranger held out his hand. “Wolf Griffin.” Wolf looked past Jason at the opposing position. “Looks like you’re in a bit of a pickle here.”
Jason growled, “I don’t suppose you brought any heavy weaponry, did you?”
Wolf chuckled. “Sorry. I can maybe offer some advice.”
Jason frowned. “If you’re gonna tell us to stand down, forget it.”
Wolf frowned back. “What exactly do you want, anyway?”
Wolf was watching Jason try to formulate an actual demand when bullets started whining around them, cratering the pavement and Jason’s pickup truck. Both he and Jason dived to the ground and crawled partway under the truck.
The firing ended.
Wolf looked at the exquisitely meticulous pattern of spent shots, a tight circle like the white tape a coroner places around a body in movies.
He stood up with a sound of disgust. While pulling out his phone, he stared into the sky, searching. He couldn’t see the copter, but he knew it was there. “Girl, you don’t have to shoot at me to get my attention. Just call next time.”
Ping laughed gaily. “Good to see you too. And that wasn’t for you, it was for your friend down there.”
Wolf glanced down at Jason, who was still curled into a ball. He sighed and spoke to Jason. “Relax. She’s a friend of mine.”
While Jason got up, cursing in such long streaks Wolf was impressed with his lung capacity, Ping outlined the tactical situation from her airborne location. “There’s another bunch of Red Cavalry pelting hell for leather to reinforce your guys.”
Wolf grunted. That was not the news he wanted to hear.
Ping continued, “But that’s not the interesting thing. Wolf, I think there’s a bunch of Blues approaching you from the left, and they’re very well armed.”
Wolf blinked. “Blues? Well-armed? A lot of them?”
Ping continued. “All of the above. I’m not positive, but I think they’re studio employees. I’ve been studying their guns through my binoculars. Titanium, and they look brand-new. If I had to guess, it looks like they all went home, punched out some rifles on their 3D printers, and are returning to defend their place of work.”
Wolf muttered wonderingly, “Blues with guns.”
Ping laughed. “I think Ciara would say they’re having a teachable moment and learning why Jefferson and Madison thought the right to bear arms was important in the first place.”
Wolf shook his head. “Thanks, girl.” He turned to Jason, who had stood back up and was peering into the air. “Jason. Bad news.” He pointed to the left. “There’s a bunch of Blues, well-armed, believe it or not, bearing down on us.” He licked his lips. “Soon it’s gonna be like what happened when Blucher brought the Prussian army against Napoleon’s flank at the Battle of Waterloo.”
Jason apparently didn’t get the reference. He stubborned up. “We still have a job to do.”
Wolf sighed. “What job do you want done?”
Jason sounded whiny. “We just wanted to trash the studios. You know, send a message.”
Wolf clenched and unclenched his fists. “Let’s see what I can do.” He dialed his phone.
Drew answered his phone on the first ring. “Wolf. You making any progress over there?”
“Not enough. Hey, listen, the folks over here just wanted to send a message. Could you maybe blow up a few buildings, give them something to cheer about, declare victory, and go home?”
Drew paused for a long moment before issuing an explosive laugh. “You want me to do what?”
After Wolf repeated the request, Drew marched over to the studio rep, the producer Kent Jennings. “You got insurance?”
Kent stared at him open-mouthed.
“If we blow up a few buildings, they’ll leave. No one dies.”
Drew pointed at the gate in the distance. “If they try to breach, it’ll be a bloodbath on all sides.”
It looked to Drew as if Kent were visualizing the awesome footage they could get in a bloodbath.
But perhaps Drew had misinterpreted. In the end, Kent said, “Very well.”
Drew yelled for his best explosives guy to join him in picking some buildings and planning where to plant the charges.
Kent made an offer. “Please let my explosives guys help.”
Drew stared at him.
Kent put his hands on his hips. “You want these explosions to be movie-quality, right? It’s not like an explosion at the base of a load-bearing pillar that brings the building down in one piece is very exciting. You need billowing flames.”
Drew’s explosives expert frowned. “That is sooo unprofessional.”
Kent pointed beyond the gate at the guys with the guns and the pickups. “We’re trying to impress them, right?”
Drew placed a hand on each of his temples and squeezed. He couldn’t believe what he was going to say. “Let the movie guys help you.”
His man barely hesitated before saying in a defeated voice, “Yes, sir!”
Kent clapped his hands. “The footage really will be great.”
Wolf tapped the hood of Jason’s truck with an impatient beat. This was taking too long.
The Blues on the flank had started firing—from too far away to be effective, of course. Jason’s Reds were firing back just as ineffectively.
Finally, an awesome tower of fire surged from deep within the studio. They could feel the heat as well as hear the rumble a second later.
Cheering began in the ranks. When the white water tank standing high above all the other buildings in the studio complex pitched slowly over, and the sounds of the explosion that sent it toppling reached them, the cheering soared.
Jason looked satisfied indee
d.
Wolf urged haste. “Okay, we’ve won. Now get back in your vehicles and get out of here before this turns into a disaster. You get me?”
Jason saluted him. “We did something great here today.”
Wolf slapped him on the back, not quite hard enough to break something. “We surely did. Now go.”
Jason led his folks back the way they’d come.
Wolf slumped against the demolished tow truck.
His phone blurted the ring tone, No Diggety. He answered. “Looks like we won after all.”
“Poor boy,” Ping cooed. “You need someone to rub your shoulders?”
10
Hyper Inflated
By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
—John Maynard Keynes
As Dmitri opened the door to his mansion/cabin on the Haven, he heard a woman humming.
Humming? A woman?
He followed the sound into the kitchen. A petite blonde stood looking away from him, wiggling an extremely cute butt in his direction. She wore one of his dress shirts, which was far too large for her. As nearly as he could tell from here, she wore nothing else.
When she spoke, she sounded very familiar, though he could not place the voice. “Dmitri! I’m so glad you’re home. Would you like a cup of Russian Earl Grey? With a drip of honey?” She turned to him, holding two large cups of tea.
Dmitri’s heart did not quite stop. Far too many thoughts passed through his mind at the same time for him to react coherently.
The rudimentary parts of his brain grabbed first priority on his mental processing. He had been right that she was wearing nothing but one of his shirts, with only two buttons buttoned. Watching her made it almost impossible to get to the next thought.
The second thought was quite insistent, however, since his survival was at stake. His instincts asked how she’d gotten in, and what had happened to his bodyguard Yuri, and whether she was an assassin sent by the Premier. It had been a couple of years since the last attempt on his life, and Dmitri had mostly relaxed into an assumption that the Premier had gotten over the urge to kill him. But let’s face it, the Premier was from time to time prone to whimsy.
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