Empire City

by Matt Gallagher

  “This him?” one said.

  “Think so,” another said.

  “The one in the clown suit, they said.”

  “It’s seersucker,” Sebastian said.

  “Right,” the first voice said. “Up you go.”

  I shouldn’t have said that thing about my lizard, Sebastian thought as he was hefted to his feet and led away from the back wall. And the irony is, now I really do have to go to the bathroom.

  “See-Bee.” He heard Mia’s voice behind him, resolute as ever. She’s made of adamantium, he thought.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Do what they tell you. No stupid jokes. It’ll be fine.”

  He didn’t say anything to that. Who were these guys, really? The speech about the endless wars and veterans not getting their due had sounded crazy to Sebastian. Maybe they knew he wrote ads for Homeland Authority and meant to make him an example. Death to the propagandist.

  Despair began to tug at him, so Sebastian told the truth. “I’m poor,” he said. “I’m literally the worst person to kill here.”

  “They’re not going to kill you, clown suit,” the second voice said. “Like Veteran Zero said earlier. Relax.”

  “Well,” the first voice said. “He is getting bored up there.”

  “Naw, brother,” came the response. Sebastian wanted to believe this voice. “They ain’t gonna off a nobody. Orders from the Chaplain himself. High-value targets only.”

  They lifted Sebastian up a platform of stairs like he was a stuffed toy and someone pulled his blindfold. The first thing he saw was the digital silver tree still glowing bright. He flinched from the closeness of the light and asked if someone would put on the sunglasses in his pocket for him.

  “Son, I’m not sure where you belong, but it’s not here.”

  Sebastian’s vision took a moment to adjust. He stood on the ballroom’s center stage, where two hours before, the American Service politicians had been giving their speeches. Now the politicians had been replaced by fifteen mostly white, mostly men in their thirties and forties. They wore a mishmash of military uniforms and were swaddled in shiny assault rifles and ammo belts. A few sported the death skull patch on their helmets or shoulders.

  One of the militants sat in a worn plastic chair, back taut, arm and leg muscles straining like varicose veins. Veteran Zero. He’d sounded the part of a good rogue to Sebastian during his speech, all pebbly-voiced seriousness with just a dash of folly. His appearance mostly measured up: urban camo uniform with rolled-up sleeves, thin black hair, scruffy beard, and dark, puffy eyes that conveyed a very specific sort of hardness. He looked of East Asian descent and there was a classless air about him. His camo top was open and unbuttoned to show a black T-shirt with the words “Gangster 4 Capitalism” etched across it.

  Ahh, Sebastian thought. That’s why he was screwing with Tupac.

  Behind Veteran Zero, bound and surrounded, three men rested on the backs of their heels. One of the men was Pete. He was humungous as ever, slouched a bit, staring straight ahead with lips drawn tight like a rubber band.

  “Before I explain your mission,” Veteran Zero said to Sebastian, “I have an important question for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s vital that you answer honestly. Remember. My soldiers have guns.”

  “I promise to be honest,” Sebastian said, lying.

  “You’ve seen the fantasy show Utopia. On state TV.”

  Sebastian considered his options. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  “Did you see the most recent episode?”

  “Yeah. They’re at the convention.”

  “Good. We’ve been debating all week. You’ll cast the deciding vote. So: Do you think Mr. Bobby Kennedy knew he was going to fail when he brought the police chief and the protest leader to conference? Or do you think he genuinely believed they’d reach accord?”

  “Huh.” It was a good question, Sebastian thought, if under very strange circumstances. He hoped they wouldn’t kill him over it but he knew he needed to answer. Veteran Zero was waiting intently. “I think the key to that scene, to the whole episode really, is when Bobby says, ‘We can only hope. And try.’ So yeah, I think he probably knew the meeting would be unsuccessful. But he went anyway.”

  “But he went anyway,” Veteran Zero repeated, turning over the words in his mouth like a gemstone. “Well said, well said.”

  The head militant plucked at his beard while one of the guards with a death skull patch smacked another’s shoulder and rubbed his fingers together in the money sign. If nothing else, Sebastian had settled a bet.

  “Such a shame, what happened to Bobby,” Veteran Zero mused, holding a beard hair in front of him. “It all could’ve been different. No extended Vietnam. No Mediterranean invasion. None of this bullshit.”

  “Next episode should be a good one?” Sebastian offered, hoping to steer the conversation to something resembling a future. “On to the debates.”

  Veteran Zero’s mind had already moved on, though, pinging away to the next task. “You know who these men are,” he said, more declaration than question. Sebastian shook his head, not sure what he was getting at.

  “In this swirl of fortunate sons and fucking profiteers”—Veteran Zero spat out the word like it was dirty water—“they’re the cherries on top.” Veteran Zero snapped into the air and a bin of cell phones appeared in front of Sebastian. “Pull yours out. You’re going to make a film for us.”

  Sebastian rummaged through the bin. He thought about an SOS text to 911 but Maslow’s hierarchy was a motherfucker. Veteran Zero explained that ransoming off the politicos and celebrities had been their plan, but they hadn’t expected such prestige in the crowd. “The war chest of the cause can always use more coin,” he explained.

  Sebastian nodded solemnly. He was talking with a lunatic, he was sure of it, one with whims, one with the clean conscience of a serial killer, the kind of insane that turned those around him into collateral damage. There was not a doubt in Sebastian’s mind that Veteran Zero himself had been sent to a rehabilitation colony, with good reason too, and somehow gotten free.

  “This is for select media. Se-lect. Understand? Remember this info.” Veteran Zero waved Sebastian to him. He pulled out a jackknife and twirled it around his fingers. Then he cut Sebastian’s cable ties in one firm stroke. “We are not criminals. We are not terrorists. We are patriots.”

  “You are not terrorists,” Sebastian said, rubbing at the marks left from the ties. “You are patriots.”

  “What’s our mission, son?”

  “Getting veterans their due. What the citizenry has failed to honor. Because of the social contract.”

  “Good. Don’t forget the part about humiliating the elite.”

  “Right. Soak the rich. Eat them.”

  Veteran Zero nodded slowly, then tossed the cut cable ties behind him, onto the ground. He shifted in his chair to point to the three hostages onstage. “The cherries. Bernard Gault. Executive vice president at Rubicon Pharmaceuticals, proud member of the Council of Victors. A warfighter himself! An officer, of course. Decorated in Vietnam for valor under fire. And maybe, just maybe, the new Sinai consul. But: Rubicon manufactures maven, which is used at colonies to keep our kin incapacitated and drooling. Management likes its patients easily controlled.

  “All that honorable service flushed down the shitter, Mr. Gault. Somewhere, your old platoon sergeant is fucking ashamed of you.”

  Gault, a reedy man with a long chin, angled his head toward Veteran Zero. Sebastian recognized him from Mia’s engagement party. They’d talked Vietnam and Orwell. He hadn’t realized then Gault was so important.

  “You don’t even know what you don’t know,” Gault said, nostrils flaring. “Maven stimulates brain cells. It’s going to save more traumatized veterans than any treatment program ever could. Money isn’t a panacea. But science can be.”

  A guard mussed his hair like he was placating a child. Gault took it. Veteran Zero s
aid, “You’re lucky we follow a holy man who believes in redemption. Otherwise I’d strangle you right now for that lie.” Veteran Zero seemed to take the maven issue personally, Sebastian thought. And what holy man? One of the guards had mentioned someone named “the Chaplain.” What did religion have to do with any of this? The head militant sniffed sharp and loud before continuing.

  “In the middle there is Liam Noonan. You must recognize him from TV. He was a Navy SEAL, you see. Where were you for the Palm Sunday attacks?” Veteran Zero didn’t wait for Sebastian to answer. “Liam was a first responder. It’s always the lead sentence of his bio.”

  Veteran Zero laughed to himself. Sebastian smiled in appeasement. It didn’t seem like a thing to joke about.

  “Look how mad that made him! Opportunists. Never anything selfless about their service.”

  Noonan growled like a dog. “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” he said.

  Brave, Sebastian thought. If deeply stupid.

  Veteran Zero laughed again. “As long as that country doesn’t include poors or brown people, right?” He clucked his tongue in disappointment and pointed to Pete. “Last we have the real prize. Odd seeing him in a suit, I know. Justice’s reputation as a fighting man precedes itself. Tried to convince him of the goodness of our cause. But. Too much order and discipline on the brain. You’ll come around, someday, Mr. Swenson, and see how you’re being used the same way we all were.”

  “Okay.” Pete shrugged. “Cool.”

  “Your adoring masses are gonna see a whole new side of you, Mr. Swenson. A vulnerable side. A tender side.” Veteran Zero removed a pistol holstered at his hip, directing it above the three hostages. The pistol was sleek and compact and plated in gold. Veteran Zero chambered a round. The dark magic of the gun slammed forward.

  “A side that says, ‘Three Million Dollars,’ or the big hero becomes worm food.”

  Pete took the opportunity to look over at Sebastian, coughing to clear his throat. Then he coughed again. And again. And again. It wasn’t until he arched his eyebrows and grimaced, though, that Sebastian realized what he wanted.

  Oh damn, Sebastian thought. He wants me to do something. And he wants me to do something while… invisible. Yes. That’s what he wants.

  Fear rose through him like hot air.

  “What’s wrong, clown suit?” Veteran Zero lowered his pistol. He seemed to sense something had changed in the ether. Sebastian faced the other man’s bloodshot psychosis and tried not to blink.

  “Nothing.” Sebastian swallowed again to wet his throat and hoped no one else could hear the sounds ricocheting around his chest. I’m just a citizen, he thought. I don’t do things like this. I don’t even know how to. Then he thought: well, now you need to.

  “Can I go to the bathroom first? Need to drain my lizard.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “DO WHAT THEY tell you. No stupid jokes. It’ll be fine.”

  Mia’s words sounded empty even to her as the militants took away Sebastian, but she needed to say something. She’d felt his leg shaking on the ground for the last two hours, and was worried. He’d always been an anxious type, even before Tripoli, and tended to strike authority figures for the worse.

  Tripoli. What in the world had compelled him to ask her about that now? She’d told the truth. Partly. She’d known he was the kidnapped journalist. Saving an old friend from college had been a motivation. It’d served as her pitch to command for why she should be the assigned pilot. And a raid going after Abu Abdallah’s family? Success could be found on an operation like that. Glory, as well.

  She’d volunteered for the wrong mission. It happened. Mia refused to dwell on the whys or hows. No one in the wars volunteered for anything for pure reasons, she knew, not entirely. Of course she’d wanted to help Sebastian. And of course she’d sought something else, too, something beyond charity for an old college friend, something for herself.

  It was the same now, in the ballroom. Sebastian will be fine, she told herself. And if not, he’s not who you need to protect. Something inside her was twinging again, sharp and knotty.

  Mia was still blindfolded. Someone to her left moaned and said they felt dizzy. A charging handle of a rifle was drawn. A voice spoke to the moaner and to the group at once. “No. Noise.”

  Like most pilots, the military had sent Mia to SERE school. Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. She’d learned how to live off the land in any environment, from the Siberian tundra to the Amazon. She’d built smokeless fire pits from scratch. She’d killed a bunny with a trap made from sticks, gutted it with a belt clip, and turned it into kebab. She’d been waterboarded. None of that would help in an Empire City ballroom seized by a militia of disaffected war veterans.

  But the school had also included a sitting session on persuasion and influence. Most of the class slept through it, delirious at the chance to be off their feet for fifty minutes. But not Mia. She’d fought off the siren song and listened, because if there was anything worse than being a prisoner of war, it was being a woman prisoner of war. She’d wanted to know it all.

  Two guards began speaking to each other. They talked low, wary of the ballroom’s acoustics, but not low enough. Mia bowed her head and homed in, like she was lost in benediction.

  “This place is nice.”

  “Rich people, man.”

  “Yeah, I know. But still. See those chandeliers? Pure gold.”

  “Think of how many of our people could be helped with just one of ’em. Keep focused.”

  “Yeah.” A minute or so passed. “Ever seen anything like it before, though?”

  The other voice considered. “The Temple out west,” it said. “And Assad’s sun palace in Syria. Before the wogs blew it up.”

  “Damn, you was over there then!” The veteran laughed. “You’re even older than I thought.”

  “We were winning when I left. Then you trigger-happy bastards came along. The Found Generation, shit. You all messed up everything.”

  They went back and forth like that, arguing about who had screwed up the Mediterranean Wars worse, when, and where. They’d mentioned the sun palace. Mia racked her mind. The high palace had been in the hills surrounding Aleppo. The crescent palace lay in the center of Raqqa, near restaurant row. The state palace dominated what remained of Homs. The water palace floated alongside the island of Arwad. The sun palace, though…

  “Idlib,” she said out loud, surprising herself. No turning back now, she thought. This is the right approach. For me. For them. For her.

  Jesse hadn’t said so, but she knew he preferred a girl.

  “What was that?” The militants had heard her.

  “Idlib,” Mia repeated. “The sun palace. I walked through the rubble there during my tour. Must’ve been amazing before the truck bombs.”

  Through the threadbare of her blindfold, Mia saw the two men approach her. What kind of group plans out something this complex, she wondered, but skimps on blindfold costs?

  “You a vet?”

  She nodded. “Army. Helo pilot out of Fort Sam Damon.”

  “Chinooks?”

  Mia sniffed. They thought she flew cargo. “Black Hawks. Mostly ripping through the Morning Islands, hunting down the last of the Greek radicals.”

  That impressed them enough for her blindfold to be removed. The Morning Islands campaign had a reputation. She looked up to find two men of average stature and slung rifles, bafflement splayed across their clay faces. If they shaved their face stubble, they still could’ve been posting guard at any American outpost across the world.

  “Chaplain didn’t say anything about other vets being here,” the one who’d been admiring the chandeliers said. He looked like he should’ve been delivering Mormon pamphlets house-to-house, Mia thought, not committing terror. “Only rich people and generals.”

  “Jonah’s not here,” the other guard grunted. “So loony tune’s in charge tonight.” Mia’s ears rose at that. For one—the name Jonah. Could
this Chaplain person be the man wanted for the war memorial bombings, army veteran Jonah Gray? Her fiancé, among many others, would be interested in that. For two—“loony tune” was almost definitely the Veteran Zero who’d made the unhinged speech over the microphone. Which meant this group, this Mayday Front, had internal discord. Which was something to exploit, Mia thought.

  “How do we know you’re speaking truth?” the other guard asked her. He was older, and wore the sad, dumpy face of someone who joined the military only to find the same assholes who’d made up his small town were everywhere. A short, barbed mustache would’ve framed his face had it been even.

  “Tap my right leg,” Mia said. “Think a citizen has one of these?”

  The leg clinked.

  The older militant crossed his arms and nodded. He’d figured her out, finally. “Officer,” he said.

  Mia thought about lying, but quickly decided not to. Soldiers smelled out lies like hounds.

  “Don’t hold it against me,” she said, offering just a hint of a smile. “You two worked for a living, I’m sure.”

  The old joke landed. The militants asked about her deployments and units, she asked about theirs. They asked if she knew their old officers, and she did, a couple of them. She asked about the war tattoos covering their forearms, where they got them, what they meant. They told her. She asked if they’d had a hard time since getting out. They had. She asked if they’d loosen the cable ties around her wrists. They did. The younger one asked if she had a boyfriend. She said that she did, a husband, but left out the pregnant part. Babies scared boys. The older one asked why she’d come to the American Service event.

  “Because I believe our government would benefit from having more people with military experience in it,” she said. “Who have skin in the game. We used to behave like a republic. I think we should get back to that.”

  “What do you do now, ma’am?” he asked, dumpy face creasing out into corners. He was probing, still. Probably made a good barracks lawyer, Mia thought, explaining to his fellow joes how leadership was plotting against the regular soldier.