Rule of Capture

by Christopher Brown

  Gregorio argues with the guys, meeting their guns with words and resolve. And then you see a guy in a black technical jacket sneak up behind Gregorio and club him in the back of the head with a metal gun butt. That sound registers clearly on the audio, the sound of steel cracking bone.

  You see a man, still alive, tied to the hitch of a hundred-thousand-dollar SUV and dragged back and forth over the cracked pavement of the old parking area while his people watch from their hiding spots, tracing an infinity loop of blood and skid marks on the sunbaked asphalt. They haul his body up against the hood of the Range Rover, ask him questions and poke him and prod him and then stab him with their well-made knives to make sure he still has some life left in him. Then one of them holds Gregorio’s head up by his famous thick black bangs while another one brings his knife in and slowly severs the head from the body.

  You can hear the screams. A woman runs out to intervene and is shot like a rabbit.

  They hang the head from the flagpole.

  You see people being led out from inside the building at gunpoint, hands tied or over their heads, and loaded in a moving truck.

  The last shot is of men coming toward the camera, and then the recording abruptly ends.

  42

  Judge Sheila Jefferson Jones had been on the bench so long there were no lawyers left who could remember a time when she was not. Most could not even remember the president who appointed her, when she was still a young prosecutor. She had survived several epochs of political change since then, remaining predictably unpredictable throughout. She had life tenure, and she used it.

  In the peak of the post-war reckoning, she had sent three military officers and one congressman to jail. Donny had worked one of those cases, and gotten a taste of what it was like to be on her bad side—and to be in her favor.

  They had tried all sorts of ways to get her off the bench, including one almost-successful public corruption investigation into her finances. But while she liked to live well, famous for her Cadillacs and expensive clothes, it turned out she had done it all within the law, from her salary and modest investments, over decades of hard work as a judge who called the shots the way she saw them—no matter who she might piss off in the process.

  All of which meant she had senior status, and could take the cases she wanted. The judges in charge of the docket would have been happy if she had taken none, or at least stayed away from the domestic counterterrorism docket. But she had her own ideas about that.

  So when Donny heard she had taken his Section 23–2 motion for a rehearing on Xelina’s diversion to the denaturalization tribunal, he knew he owed Wendy for taking care of him. Yet, at that moment, he wondered if he might have made things even worse. Judge Jones was as mercurial as she was independent, and you never knew what turn of phrase or ill-considered objection might cause her to turn against you.

  But there was no other way through.

  “If this doesn’t work, we’re screwed,” he said.

  “You might be screwed either way,” said Percy. “Broyles doesn’t like it when you go over his head.”

  Donny shook his head. “Especially not to judges he considers embarrassing leftovers from ‘a weaker time.’ If she punts today, it’s over.”

  “You’ll still have the denaturalization hearing.”

  “Have you seen one of those?”

  “No. But I’ve read the rules, and there’s always a way.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, but sometimes the only way is outside the rules. I suppose we could get the footage on TV. Miles says no network would run it. But Mort Hanauer just offered me some commercial time. We could be our own damn network.”

  “Why are you assuming people who see it would be on our side?”

  Donny hadn’t considered that.

  “Like my dad always said,” added Percy, “people love seeing protesters get their heads knocked in.”

  “How about when they get decapitated?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  Judge Jones’s courtroom was one floor higher than Broyles’s. It was bigger, too. She was smaller. Not as small as Xelina, and definitely not as skinny, but short enough that the way the black robes draped off her as she entered the courtroom after the “All rise” almost looked like a kid playing dress-up, or a cartoon character made real. Until she took her seat at the bench, looked over the room of powerful and not so powerful people standing in ritual obeisance to her, waited a long moment, and then hit the gavel with such gravity that you wondered if that was bigger, too. She was like a queen, a matriarch at the top of the metropolis who refused to accede to the rule of the guys who had tried to stop her every step of the way for all of her seventy-eight years.

  Hers was the only courtroom in the building without the portrait of the President on the wall. Instead, they hung an official portrait of her, a big oil painting from ten years before.

  There’s one solution, Trey once joked on the course, to the problem of life tenure. Broyles chastised him for that, even though they were out in the surveillance-free zone of the private club, but then a moment later Donny caught him smiling as he put his putter back in the bag.

  “Mr. Kimoe,” said Judge Jones, after impatiently going through some administrative and scheduling miscellany. “I have read your motion. Twice. I think I understand your argument. But why don’t you give me the condensed version.”

  “Gladly, Your Honor,” said Donny, standing. He was happy not to have to make this argument under the judgmental gaze of his own client, even as he was frustrated they would not let her appear at the hearing, saying it was an unnecessary security risk where her testimony would not be required. “Our client is Xelina Rocafuerte, a young journalist who was found by Judge Broyles, presiding as the Special Emergency Tribunal, to be something other than what she is. She was designated an insurgent combatant and transferred for denaturalization proceedings, when all the record shows is that she was an independent documentarian who recorded footage of Councilman Gregorio Zarate-Taylor’s recent occupation of a portion of the Coastal Evacuation Zone. Since the initial hearing in Judge Broyles’s court, we have produced new evidence that substantiates what we contend is the real reason for Ms. Rocafuerte’s detention and consignment to the administration’s new star chamber: that she witnessed the brutal lynching and murder of Mr. Zarate-Taylor at the hands of a paramilitary death squad, and being a documentarian, she recorded video footage of the incident, footage the government wishes to force her to provide them access to so they can destroy it, having successfully suppressed its public release through the press. This afternoon we are seeking your intervention to quash Judge Broyles’s order pursuant to the standard of review set forth in Section 23–2 of Burn Barnes, and on Fourteenth Amendment grounds, and release Ms. Rocafuerte. The government would remain free to take their charges to the grand jury, but we are confident they will not, because they know they can’t even make the case for probable cause.”

  “What do you say to the government’s argument that Judge Broyles’s order is non-appealable, at least at this stage? That a Section 23–2 appeal isn’t ripe until the denaturalization board makes its own ruling.”

  “That’s not what the statute says, Your Honor. And even if you were to read it that way, we say that the statute and the decision are both constitutionally defective, primarily in their deprivation of Ms. Rocafuerte’s birthright citizenship without due process of law.”

  “What about the Supreme Court’s decision in Rojo?”

  “Different facts, Your Honor. That case involved a naturalized U.S. citizen. An immigrant. Ms. Rocafuerte was born here in Houston, and that puts her in a very different category for Fourteenth Amendment purposes.”

  Judge Jones was looking at her benchtop monitor, whose screen only she could view.

  “I see you have provided evidence of your client’s work as a journalist, and supporting affidavits. Where would the court find the footage you claim the government is trying to suppress?”


  “I have that here with me, Your Honor, and would be happy to play it back for you. There is about eleven minutes of legible footage. Shall we set up the big screen?”

  “Your Honor,” said Bridget Kelly, standing and interjecting herself. “The government objects.”

  “Hang on,” said Judge Jones. “Mr. Kimoe, you’re saying you have footage of the incident you claim, that you did not include as part of your motion?”

  “That’s correct, Your Honor. I was only able to obtain a copy after we filed.”

  “How did you obtain the copy?”

  “I am not at liberty to disclose.”

  “Well, that sounds a little fishy, but I’d like to review it and decide for myself.”

  “We object, Your Honor,” said Bridget again. “It’s not relevant to the issue, and if it were we would need an opportunity to authenticate and dispute. And it’s an evasion of the fact that, with all due respect, this court has no jurisdiction to even entertain Mr. Kimoe’s very creative but substantively and procedurally defective motion.”

  “This court has jurisdiction to uphold the Fourteenth Amendment, Ms. Kelly, no matter how much the government wishes to evade its limits. Give the clerk your recording, Mr. Kimoe.”

  Donny looked back at Percy, who already had it ready.

  The courtroom bustled with chatter while Donny gave the memory card to the clerk, and showed him the file to display on Judge Jones’s monitor. There were reporters there in the gallery—the Chronicle, the Wire, and a couple of national stringers. And anything that came out in open court was automatically exempt from the news ban. Bridget was also back there at the gallery now, talking over the bar to a couple of suits, no doubt representatives of her real client. One of them was Donny’s new friend from the night before. He looked a little tired today.

  Donny sat back down. Percy gave him a thumbs-up, which was rare. He looked at his notes, scanned the proposed order he had submitted with his motion, wondered what he had missed, and watched Judge Jones watch the horror movie, trying to assess her reaction and how it would influence her thinking on the matter at hand.

  If she had a strong reaction, it didn’t register on her face.

  “Ms. Kelly,” she said, looking at the prosecution table.

  “Your Honor.”

  “Have you seen this footage?”

  “I have not, Your Honor.”

  “I want the woman who made this recording in here Monday morning.”

  “That’s not possible, Your Honor.”

  “Why is that not possible, Ms. Kelly?”

  “The defendant is being transferred out of this district as we speak, to the temporary insurgent detention facility for further denaturalization proceedings. Jurisdictionally, she is gone, and my office has no further power to produce her.”

  Judge Jones looked down over her glasses. Then she looked over at Donny. Then she looked up at the ceiling, thinking. And after a long moment, turned back to Bridget.

  “I was going to withhold judgment on this until we got further testimony, but I guess you are going to make me do this the hard way. Mr. Kimoe’s motion is granted. You are to release Ms. Rocafuerte immediately. I rule that the proceedings of the Special Emergency Tribunal are constitutionally defective under the Fourteenth Amendment, at least with respect to native-born citizens, and all pending cases are hereby stayed. Mr. Kimoe is to bring his client before us here on Monday morning at eleven. Am I clear?”

  “You do not have that authority, Judge,” said Bridget, her tone suddenly less deferential.

  “You are wrong on that, Ms. Kelly, but you are free to try to convince the Fifth Circuit. They are officing downstairs now, if you recall, so it’s a short trip. In the meantime, I am ordering the marshals of this court to go fetch Ms. Rocafuerte from Coast Guard custody and deliver her to Mr. Kimoe.”

  The suits behind Bridget had changed their demeanor, too. One was typing away frantically on his phone, while Donny’s pal glared at Judge Jones.

  “Have a nice weekend, you all,” said the judge.

  And when she stood to leave, some of the dudes in Bridget’s crew did not rise.

  It made Donny wonder what kind of weekend had just arrived.

  He sent Clint the good news, but got no response.

  Apparently Clint was making his own news.

  43

  Donny was finishing up his celebratory remarks to the handful of reporters outside the courthouse when Percy yanked at his sleeve.

  “You need to come see this,” she said.

  “Hang on,” he said, turning back to the microphones.

  “No,” said Percy. “You need to see this. Now.”

  It was on the TV in the hallway, just past security. A news alert, the kind that preempted whatever else was on.

  TERRORIST ESCAPES

  DARING DAYLIGHT RAID

  SUSPECTS AT LARGE

  “Fuck,” said Donny.

  “It’s her,” said Percy.

  “And him,” said Donny, the elation of victory bleeding off as fast as the anger rose, anger at Clint and anger at himself for talking too much. “Damn it.”

  Onscreen, live helicopter footage. A freeway, one of the toll roads out of town. No cars, just a smoke plume. Grainy zoom of a black armored truck, capsized and burning. Cut to a picture of Xelina’s mug shot. Then back to a wide pan, the other direction, traffic backed up for miles.

  “What did they say?” asked Donny.

  “Ambush, looks like,” said Cleburne, watching with them now. “Two pickups and a motorcycle. Intercepted the convoy. Bike diverted the escort while the pickups got the package.”

  “You forgot about the bomb,” said Cleburne’s colleague, the one with the drone eyes.

  “Yeah, this wasn’t on the news but we just heard it on the squawk,” said Cleburne. “Looks like they disabled the truck with an explosion. Must have had inside info on the route. Or else an inside man who planted it on the truck before it left the jail.”

  “Some boys who knew what they were doing,” said drone eyes.

  Donny remembered what Clint said, about self-help.

  “Anybody hurt?” Donny asked.

  “You better fucking hope not,” said drone eyes.

  “So they were headed south,” said Donny, looking at the freeway footage more closely.

  “Watch and see if these aren’t the same scumbags that killed Turner,” said Cleburne.

  “There’s no way—”

  “Cleburne’s right,” said drone eyes. “I hope you didn’t do anything to help these guys.”

  “We gotta go,” said Donny, grabbing Percy to leave through the back door and make a run for her car.

  44

  Saturday morning, Donny tried to sleep in, but the dreams wouldn’t let him. He woke up before sunrise, in his own apartment. He figured it might be the last chance he had. While yesterday’s hearing may have given him a little breathing room, he knew it was only a day or two before they came after him again. And this time, it would be with charges that could stick, no matter who won the election: that he had conspired with his client and her associates to plan her escape.

  Maybe it wouldn’t happen. Conveniently—maybe too conveniently—the guy who had given him the information he unwisely passed on was now dead. He thought about the bald man. He didn’t seem like the type who needed to kill people to get his way. And those goons in the video didn’t look like feds. But then neither did the bald man. Not really. At least not a typical fed. More like a guy you’d meet in the boardroom of a big company.

  Out the window, the light was coming up behind the towers of downtown. Donny decided to go for a walk, and pay his last respects to Turner.

  The Mayor Donald Barthelme Memorial Turnpike was the name of a freeway they had begun building to the design of its namesake, but never finished. People said Barthelme would have liked nothing more than to have his name plastered on a road to nowhere. Some suggested he had planned it that way, knowing they would run out of mo
ney. Barthelme had been a local developer, but a uniquely creative one, a patron of contemporary art famous for building projects that took advantage of Houston’s laissez-faire zoning laws to let the city’s inner freak flag fly. Sometimes his projects incorporated monumental sculpture, like the giant yellow balloon that had floated over his Museum of the Buffalo Bayou for several years before it finally broke free of its tether during the first night of Superstorm Zelda and rampaged over the suburbs until lodging half deflated against a TV transmission tower. Many of the buildings were sculpture as building—the auditorium since renamed as the Diboll Timber Harvesters Arena along the South Loop that looked from a distance like a pyramid designed by aliens or shrooming hippies or both. Mayor B’s freeway followed the same logic, or smiling defiance of logic. The idea, he had proclaimed when he first published his crazy sketches, was to build the sort of freeway that you are happy to be stuck on. The freeway itself as public art. There was a cloverleaf that corkscrewed on top of itself like an internal combustion Charybdis, a fork that tripled and rejoined, stretches that skirted the edges of buildings or went right through them. A Texas freeway without straight lines, except when it ended abruptly one hundred feet over a block of old warehouses at the edge of downtown.