Sanction

by Roman McClay

  He watched as another woman responded to the monotone calling of names by the County administrator. The room looked like a mud wasp nest: domed and beige; the people crawled around with purpose; no wasted movements, even if they looked idiopathic to another species observing. A scaffolding on the south wall had three sheetrock men doing repairs and they too seemed affixed to the structure; hands and feet so close to the walls as if maybe the scaffold wasn't even needed to keep them aloft.

  Another name was called, he heard, “Janice Welbly.”

  A small high-yellow black woman rose and walked with a compact dignity, and he thought, there it was again: that dignity both innate and that which he imbued each woman with; and maybe himself too; he saw details of this dignity with the eyes he had made sharp with another upgrade just last week. She had no children trailing or circling around her. She looks too small to even bear children , he thought. But, he then countered, women often surprise you with their capacity to bear great things; things disproportionately large to their frame .

  He tagged her name in his PGC and left the room with just that one name.

  III. 2037 e.v.

  It was 2230hrs and he stood on the rocky outcropping at 8,766 feet and faced north-northeast toward Pueblo, the Springs and Denver in the rear. He could see the satellite and FLIR images with a holographic image in his view, similar to heads-up display on a car, where one’s eyes saw the road and also a projection of the speed, tachometer and gear position on the windshield just above the dash.

  He watched as each of his Jacks’ men moved into position locating members from each list of 10 names. They had driven in vans and H1s and trucks from all over the US, close to 10,000 men, each broken into 5-man assault teams, each with 10 names for a total of almost 20,000 names. The names were grouped by last known location and could jump from group to group via DM if necessary, but each group had the list, their location -and as they targeted each name- a tracking device showed in real time where they all were.

  Grey men moved like CRISPR cas9 vectors inside the cell wall; efficiently, ruthlessly, perfectly. He watched as five men, men Jack One had trained personally, from Cincinnati, surrounded a home on Bryant street and watched to see if the target moved. He watched the red dot that indicated the target was stationary -in what appeared to be a bedroom- as they approached the side entrance unseen from the street; two men remained at the back of the house and one across the street as look-out for anything that approached .

  Two men entered the house by melting the lock mechanism with a nanobot that contained a metallurgic anhiden that vaporized small amounts of metal without heat or chemicals, it merely scattered the ionic cohesion of the alloy and turned it to a kind of ferric water vapor. The door moved inward with ease and quiet as they refocused their night vison to adjust for higher ambient light. They were using 9mm suppressed semi-auto pistols, loaded with low velocity ammunition, and each man moved with a slice of the area covered by the muzzle, a bias to the left or to the right covering 290 degrees of field. Their infrared and heat sensors picked up a small pet, who looked up at them, but made no sounds.

  They approached the bedroom and the door was ajar, with total darkness in the room. Their vison adjusted again as they double checked the red dot to see if it had moved from the spot in the room; it had not. Their target was here in the room.

  The first man through the door went straight for the far corner then turned toward the target, the second man slowly -but firmly- pressed the door all the way to the wall to make sure nobody was behind it or could get behind it, and this man brought his IR laser onto the target, asleep in the bed. He shot three times as the clacking report of the suppressor -like someone dropping a small book on a hardwood floor- echoed in the room. The room was sparse with no carpeting or curtains or much on the walls; except now a little blood spray from the head and neck of the dying man was present. They read for vitals and the target took his last breath and his heart ceased in five seconds; they activated the brass magnet on their LBEs and the shell casings were snapped off the floor and landing upon that metal chainmail at their hip in that same amount of time. They cleared out; leaving the pet alive as they went.

  Blax watched on his heads-up vision as they left the home -he took count of all five men- as they moved fluidly back to the street behind the target and entered the van. The vehicle had phony plates -they manufactured them themselves- and they drove away to the next apartment complex half a mile north. They drove and reloaded their weapons if fired and made sure they were all on safety. The driver requested an update on location; the navigator told him to turn left at the stop.

  They were on the next target in 7-minutes and disabled the front door in the hallway of the complex with the same nanobot scattering; they turned off their night vison as the room was aglow with a TV. The target was asleep on the couch. Next to him was a child under 12 months in age. Water was running in the bathroom; the first man through the door covered that bathroom door and man number two put two 9mm shots into the target’s head and made sure he did not fall on the baby; placing his hand to the target’s side for five seconds to make sure he was inert. The target -the dead man- had all his weight on the pillow that he was asleep upon and did not make one move.

  The first man then walked backward from the bathroom covering it with his pistol and exited the room as the second man -the shooter- covered his retreat. Then man number two exited the room out the front door, closing it in the jamb -so just a line of light shone through- as all four men returned to the waiting van that had parked one street over. The driver kept the engine running and as they loaded in; he put it in drive.

  In 14 minutes they were already inside the next building; it was a garage on Federal Boulevard. The target was still moving, so they waited in the hallway between the door they had entered and the large bay area he had been in before getting up and going to the bathroom. As he crossed the large rectangle of light at the end of the hall, the target stopped and turned toward all three men in the hall, black clad, night vision off, and he saw what looked like shadow so he stepped into the doorway as man-one and man-two fired two shots each into his chest with the clacking of the slide facilitating the ballistics leaving an automatic pistol echoing in concert with the target’s fall to the ground; five sounds of four large hardback books and one smaller paperback landing on the floor. He had gasped once then fell absent of any audible rejoinder or complaint as man-one approached and placed one additional shot into the head. They waited five seconds for a vitals report from the bots; the report indicated he was dead.

  They retreated three blocks west into an alley on Grant, and drove away as a cat ran toward them, then away from them, as they located the next target, who was moving, in what looked as if in a car. As the target moved at 28 mph and up Federal; he dropped off of their list and onto team 58’s list; a new target appeared to their south on Colfax so they turned around on Bayaud and continued on in silence, re-loading their magazines to hold a full complement of 15-rounds.

  Blax watched all this from up top on this mountain as each of 840 teams in Denver executed all but fourteen people on their lists for a total of 8,397 people, 8,301 men and 96 women. It was a number that would shock the 911 operators when the calls started coming in at 2309hrs; the last target was hit at 2317hrs, 47 minutes after the operation had begun.

  Each team headed out of town along I25 or I70 and in each cardinal direction, the weapons were placed inside black boxes in the vehicles that contained larger version of the metal nanobots that melted the locks on each domicile or business they had to enter that night. These boxes melted each weapon into the same milky, ferric water, and the remaining ammunition they placed into a separate box that they then could throw out from the vehicle once they were alone on the road. That box would fuse itself shut and they would have to be cut open to look inside. The ammo would be denuded of any prints or DNA via an aerosol mist that was emitted as the box fused itself shut.

  The police would rec
over 340 of these boxes but only sawed through 90 of them before giving up.

  Each team traveled out of state and once beyond the traffic and highway cameras and the surveillance systems of Walmart’s and gas stations, once they were on back roads, they switched plates again, tossing the fabricated ones in the dirt or grass of the area around them and continued on their way on the backroads until they could ease back onto the highway from another entrance, one further beyond where they had exited.

  The operation in Pueblo had 566 teams, and they completed 99% of the kills on each targeted individual for a total of 5,110 men and 493 women, in 48 minutes; 11 minutes after the first 911 call.

  In the Springs it was 390 teams.

  In Trinidad it was 10 teams.

  In Aspen it was 5 teams.

  In Castle Rock in was 9 teams.

  And on the eastern slope were the rest; split between Parachute, Rifle and Grand Junction.

  A total number of 18,834 people were killed of the 19,650 targets; most of the missed kills were in Grand Junction when the first 911 call went out at 2259hrs, and the teams had to abort the rest of their missions. A target had had a life-alert tag that had been depressed by the target himself, apparently. But it was still a successful mission, and none of the teams were even intercepted, much less arrested or detained .

  The police in each jurisdiction would not uncover the extent of the damage for days, as many of bodies were not discovered for over 70 hours. The targets often lived alone or were not missed at any rate for whatever reason. But in the first four hours each jurisdiction knew they had a massive murder-for-hire situation -or terrorist attack- and due to the status of each victim as gang member, associate, ex-convict, known drug suspect, illegal alien, or had been arrested at least once on any charge, they figured it was a cartel hit. And they surmised it was one so massive that it needed around 1,000 men to effect. They had assumed two or three-man teams hitting more than 10 targets each; they had no idea the level this was at.

  Blax had watched over a 49-minute period as each team moved with precision and professionalism and total lethality. They had avoided civilians or collateral deaths in all but 48 cases; and killed no one under 16 at all. It was like watching a body’s immune system clean up all the viruses and bacteriophage as each pathogenic colonies’ quorum sensing attempted signaling in vain. The restoration of the body politic, he thought. Of course, he knew this was no metaphor, but a fractal analysis of facts on the ground.

  He hovered above via the hacked Landsat imaging as each team disappeared along the highways and byways, dumping the vehicles they had stolen along park-n-rides or in airport terminals or in shopping malls along old county roads and then rode dirt bikes or got in other cars or took the bus to a secondary stop. Nanobots cleaned the dumped vehicles of all trace DNA with a bleaching aerosol and slick emulsifier that dissolved all hair or skin remnants from anywhere the men had been. The police found nothing inside each abandoned vehicle -nothing- not even the original owner’s DNA or prints. They were 100% scrubbed and law enforcement was incredulous and unnerved.

  He watched as each team dispersed, and their bagged equipment was thrown into rivers and down wells and into dumpsters and off bridges and all of it denuded of trace DNA.

  It was like watching an enema, as 43% of all known criminals and scumbags in Colorado were executed in under an hour. He had accomplished in that time was law enforcement could do in 100 years, what they couldn’t do in 100 years , he thought paraphrasing Nietzsche’s bravura.

  The prisons erupted in violence the next day as the inmates’ contacts and mules and go-between had almost all been killed; they were in revolt thinking their rival gangs had taken action against them, each thinking the others had done it regardless of the fact that it was obvious each gang had been targeted, not just their own. But, after the prisons in Colorado erupted in violence, with 1,098 dead, each prison went on lock down for 24/7, and after 40 inmates killed their cellmates, the violence dropped to zero after that.

  He thought almost 20,000 dead losers was a good start, and he stood there in the dark as the sun eventually came up over the eastern ridge and turned his naked body all aglow. His crew walked up the hill behind him, naked too and drinking coffee, smiling at the news. They had gone to bed early and not known what he was up to; he’d winked at them last night at 1900hrs and merely said, tomorrow I have a surprise .

  His body pointed north by northwest, and they watched as his shoulders pinned back in a stretch. They encircled him like the acropolis and Jack One placed his hand on Blax’s shoulder and squeezed in approval. It had been easy; because all that any single man need do was follow easy instructions and his training; spend a few hours driving, an hour of their life, each man killing 1, 2 or 3 men; and driving back to their homes and their lives as if nothing had happened at all. None of the targets were personally known to the men; no evidence would link them; all cameras were electronically disabled by knock-downs; electromagnetic pulses disrupted all emitting frequencies within five blocks of each place they parked the vehicle, so the most the cops got was images of these type of vehicles leaving within a few blocks of the scene.

  No images of men; no trace evidence; and no witnesses. They were ghosts and it required no more than six hours total of their lives. In the more rural counties the teams had been camping and returned to their campsites without any suspicion, as they only had hunting rifles and no motive or reason to be suspected.

  One team that came in from Montana had seen a police cruiser come by the gas station three days after the mission when they were leaving the area in their own truck; and the cop had nodded at them. That was the extent of their contact with law enforcement after the largest mass murder in US history; one not committed by the Army anyway.

  The news media was quickly told to shut the fuck up as now it was assumed this was China or possibly Iran or Russia and the media’s unlettered jabbering would not help things at all.

  Crime ground to a halt, murder rates dropped to only domestic killings, and a few gangland killings, as not all bad guys in some areas could be dealt with.

  But robberies, rapes, burglaries, and grand theft autos dropped by 77% the next day and for the first four weeks after the killings, and law enforcement was beginning to not even want to solve the murders. They often thought it; and sometimes even said this aloud. They knew half of these dead guys, knew what they were like and figured it was the trash taking out the trash. They call it misdemeanor murder and it was like all true things in the world: unacknowledged.

  But, the total lack of evidence, the high-tech nature of the co-ordination -as time of death reports started coming in within a narrow window- alongside the knock down of surveillance, and as they realized the size of the operation as each abandoned vehicle was eventually found -and it was obvious that upwards of 1,800 vehicles had been stolen and used in these murders- the cops were legitimately scared. The police had never felt this level of paranoia, but due to the sheer size of the operation and the professionalism of no brass being left, no trace evidence, and no witnesses -electronic or human- they knew that this was the new news in murder-for-hire. They knew they -the good guys- were out-fucking-matched.

  The Governor did not call the President; but the President still found out within 99 minutes.

  The CIA had begun to suspect an AI level operation immediately, as they knew the level of co-ordination this required; they began downloading all the satellite data of the regions and zooming in on the areas for those times. They saw what local law enforcement could not, each 5-man team in action, obviously militarily trained , they wrote in their reports. They saw the dispersals, and the abandoning of vehicles in covered garages -or in deadzones not covered by satellite- to prevent the eye in the sky from seeing who left which vehicle and to where they went next. They had evaded local cops that night and overhead surveillance for the long term, the reports stated, these teams knew exactly how to escape and evade.

  They had just melded ba
ck into the fabric of society, unnoticed, unsuspected, unconcerned with any need for escape from the country itself. As the federal government had all four corners covered and nobody was getting out without massive scrutiny; the men merely returned to their lives. But by week five, the government had to allow easier egress to prevent any more diminution of commerce; and while still heavily monitored they allowed traffic into the country more voluminously as well .

  The drop in crime to levels they had not seen in 100-years left all but 13% of Colorado Bureau of Investigation agents available for this search, but with no leads, no evidence, no witnesses and no suspects, they twiddled their goddamn thumbs. They laughed and they joked with nervousness and side-eye, as they began to say under their breath that whoever did this should run for President, because it was the best thing to happen in the world of scumbags since they had run the British from the county in 1776. Of course, the Revolutionary war lasted a few years after that, and the war of 1812 had happened, but nobody in law enforcement even knew that; and so, the reference to 1776 stuck.

  Blax had had listening devices, in the form of nanobots placed in each department; but they could not get into Langley or the FBI, as these agencies had airlocks and seals on their doors too tight for his bots to penetrate. But he could -and did- listen to each police department from Trinidad to Denver and each little town in between. Aspen cops and Durango too, all chattered a lot.

  He smiled often and rubbed the letters on his hand at a good job; a good job, well done.

  21. NVR И

  The sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea , and the gilded velvets of butterflies and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtle deceits… that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within

  The Whale [The Author]

  An absence of literary culture leads to a future blindness