Sir Karl and Rob made it back to camp just before dawn and found everyone madly running around preparing for a rapid decampment. Sir Karl’s bike was running hot and he wanted to find Bossman to take a look at it, but he knew there wouldn’t be time now.
Rob stopped his bike in front of the mess and asked Connie what was up. “The buttons got Marcos.” She said. “We’re compromised so we’re heading north.”
“How the fuck’d they get Marcos? What happened?”
“He was in town for employment registration and he didn’t come back. Turns out he’d flipped the bitch-switch and Deely didn’t even notice until the Comandante asked where he was. We should’ve left camp hours ago. You guys had better go pack your gear.”
Rob cursed and headed toward his tent. His rank as Subcomandante meant that he had his own private tent, but Sir Karl stayed in the bunk with four other guys. He found his stuff folded in a neat pile where the bunk-tent used to be. Sir Karl thought it would’ve taken just as much effort to throw it in a road case than to leave it in a pile.
He stuffed his clothes and gear into his pack, thinking he was lucky to be on the bike, his bunkmates would be in the back of a twenty year old pickup truck.
Comandante led the caravan south first, around the foothills of Bean Mountain, to a dry riverbed which they followed north into a shallow gulch. Deely raised the alarm in the early afternoon, after hours of travel in the dry desert heat. There was a nanotech cloud to the northwest and they all hunkered down under the thermal camo-tarps, hastily pulled over the three trucks and van and spiked to the sand. The six bikes came under the Comandante’s tarp and their leader took the time for an informal debriefing.
“Mobile propaganda unit South 26 has been compromised by the capture of Marcos Stephens, one of our finest community assets. His operational knowledge is limited so there’s no need for a major shift there, but as far as personnel and tactics this is a serious blow. Our Pick Axe network should be okay, the only transmitter he had was his bitch-switch. Once we’ve relocated and replaced the switches we should be in the clear. Sir Karl you’re with me, everyone else dismissed. PACIFICA!”
“STAND STRONG!” They all yelled.
The Comandante motioned for him to follow and they ran over to another tarp. He told Sir Karl to get in the passenger seat of an empty truck. “Was the mission with Rob successful?” Comandante asked.
“Yes sir.” He said. “We placed five decoy antennas, mostly around the south Yuma wasteland, but we got one up near the Ikea prison factory near the border. They should all be detected and destroyed within a month, and then we can expect a strike. By then we should have a third setup, so if they find the system we’re on now, we can jump to the other uninterrupted.”
“Good, we’ve got a shipment of South American hand-crank radios coming in so we’ve gotta keep the broadcasts going. Scotch got his hands on gigs of new music, mostly anarcho-sewerpunk, liquidbass, and some vintage stuff.”
“No more annihilation sorties?”
“No, that format has been co-opted by the CNP Sound System, so we discontinued it. In fact Scotch is putting together a really funny parody of the party’s sorties -he’s going to play it Saturday night.”
“The system should be running fine.” Sir Karl said.
“Good,” he said, “you’ve been doing important work for this unit for a long time now and I think you’ve earned a promotion. Everyone in the unit has a job to do, but I don’t let anyone move to the rank of Subcomandante unless they’ve done more than is expected of them. They have to prove that they’re not just functional to the unit’s propaganda mission, but that they’re useful to the ultimate mission, winning the war. I’m talking about soldiers. Our function is non violent, but we do occasionally need to employ violence to proceed, and we can’t call in the Guerrillas every time we have to do something ancillary to our explicit mission. Do you understand?”
“Yes Comandante.”
“A mobile propaganda unit is only as strong as the soldiers who defend it.” He said. “You’re ready to be a Subcomandante. I’m putting you out on a solo mission, and when it’s done I’ll make the official announcement. If you can’t get it done or you refuse, you won’t get it, understand?”
“Yes sir, I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Wait’ll you hear the details son. It’s a mop-up operation on the Marcos capture. We were trying to get him a place in town through the housing authority, so he needed employment verification. He approached a business owner named Willie Pat Matron who runs a shop near the prison. It’s a grey market place and we thought he’d go for it, it wouldn’t have cost him anything, but he refused. Marcos told him that if he didn’t get the employment verification he’d kill the man’s daughter. When Marcos went back for the verification the buttons were waiting. Now we have to make good on Marcos’ threat. We can’t have the word go out that the Mobile Propaganda Unit makes idle threats. We’d never get any more deals made.”
Sir Karl looked up at the underside of the thermal camo-tarp, rippling in the hot breeze above the truck. Maybe there was a nanotech cloud above it, straining to see what it could kill in the unforgiving desert below. Sir Karl pretended he didn’t understand. “You want me to liquidate the shopkeeper?”
“No, we might need him.” Comandante said. “I want you to liquidate his daughter. We need to send a message.”
Sir Karl looked in the rearview mirror at Del Rey, one of his bunkmates, talking to the mess-tent girl. She looked like she was 16 or 17. “The daughter,” Sir Karl said, “what’s her name?”
“I don’t know.” The Comandante said. “It really doesn’t matter. It’s not fair to make her pay for her father’s stupidity, but life isn’t anywhere in the neighborhood of fair and this has to happen. Look at it this way son, you aren’t killing the girl, her father is. Marcos told him it was employment verification or his daughter’s life. This guy called the authorities. Even if he thought Marcos couldn’t make good on his threat, he sure took an awful chance with his daughter’s life -and for what? It wouldn’t have cost him anything to put Marcos on his employment rolls. No, he’s going to pay. I’m sorry for the girl, but she has to die. Someone has to do it, and I think it should be you.” He looked hard at Sir Karl. “Will you do the job?”
“Yes Comandante.” Sir Karl said.
“I’ll send you two coordinates.” He said. “The first will be the store that Willie Pat runs, and the second will be our new outpost. PACIFICA!”
“STAND STRONG!” Sir Karl said. The Comandante got out of the truck and headed toward Deely to get an update on the position of the nanotech cloud. Sir Karl held his head in his hands. He’d joined the Mobile Propaganda Unit to avoid killing. He was willing to fight and die for the cause, his whole family was dead or in prison because of the party, and he was no pacifist, but killing just wasn’t in him. Even right after he was liberated from prison, when most of the people he knew were all for a bloodletting, he’d hoped to avoid partaking in any of the slaughter. His best friend Jay, who’d helped him survive the mass starvation when they were kids, and who had been arrested and jailed with him, he’d been all for killing anyone wearing a cruciflag, but not Sir Karl. He used to tell him that half the people wearing it were just afraid not to. As soon as he was old enough Jay had joined the Guerrillas.
Sir Karl went to his bike and by the time he got there the coordinates had come in to his small-screen. He sat on the bike and waited for the all-clear from Deely. When it came everyone started pulling down the tarps and SirKarl headed back down the dry riverbed toward Yuma.
The bike hadn’t been charged after two days of straight use, so he made the long detour to the chili farm, a friendly power dump that didn’t scan VIN chips. Sir Karl pulled his bike up to the side of the garage, next to the vast solar panel array, and got the chug out from under some plywood and plugged it into the battery. He honked the horn to let Morris and Patty know he was there, but they didn’t come out the back door of the big house like th
ey usually did.
Sir Karl had a few minutes while his bike charged so he went up the back steps and looked through the window into the kitchen, but there was no sign of either Patty or Morris. Sir Karl went back down the steps and around the side of the house. He had to let them know he was there or they would think someone had ripped them off for a charge. He heard some noise and stopped and listened. It was the deep section of an annihilation sortie, which wasn’t the sort of thing Morris and Patty would be listening to at all. They probably listened to music to relax, not to have their brains scrambled and put back together with hypnotic suggestions added.
Sir Karl found the music coming from the back bedroom and he had to stand on tiptoes to see in the window. It took him a second to figure out what was going on with all the naked flesh he was seeing. Eventually he determined that it was two men, fucking like wild animals with the music turned up to eleven. Neither of the guys was Morris, they were both young, and Sir Karl knew that something must’ve gone wrong at the chili farm.
He ran quietly to his bike and saw that he still had a minute until it was fully charged. He looked into the window of the garage and saw an armored transport in there with the seal of the Well-Regulated Militia on the side. Sir Karl got his small-screen and sent a Pick Axe to the whole unit: Chili farm possibly compromised -approach with caution. He pulled the chug off his bike and got out of there quick.
Willie Pat Matron’s store was on a deserted strip of industrial buildings. Sir Karl could tell by the look of the place that they traded in liquor, pills, ganja, and women. The cover business was low-cost auto parts, energy production products, and guns. It was most likely profitable too. There were many stores like this all over southern Arizona, and Sir Karl knew that the poor look of the place meant that it was probably prosperous. All the clean-looking shops without back rooms had all gone out of business long ago.
Sir Karl had a half mil credit on his small-screen which was about enough to purchase the least-expensive release option from one of the whores. He pulled his bike up to the front and went into the dark store. It smelled of old leather and oil. there were racks of water purifiers on one side and solar power generator kits on the other. Sir Karl noticed the loft that looked down over the store and the guy up there with an old Uzi, looking down at him. The lady behind the front counter looked like a retired working girl of maybe a rough 50-some years. She had a scar across her forehead that intersected with her left eyebrow at the edge. “We ID verify customers on all sales,” she said to Sir Karl, “so if you don’t got employment verification, we can’t help you.”
“I’m employed,” he said, “but I’m not here to buy a product. I was going to inquire about purchasing services.”
“That’s different,” she said. “Since you aint a regular client and it’s the middle of the day you’re going to have to take what you get. You can’t be picky.”
“Fine by me.” Sir Karl said.
“What’re ya looking for?”
“Something inexpensive.” He said.
“What kind of credits you got, Arizona or limited?” She asked.
“Arizona.”
“Three hundred will get you a roughie from Marlene.” She said.
Sir Karl agreed and authorized a three hundred thousand credit bump on his small-screen and passed it over the lady’s till. She verified the payment and told Sir Karl to wait. She went in the back and was gone a few minutes, leaving him alone with the guy with the Uzi. She came out and told him that Marlene was in room four and to head on back. Sir Karl went down the hall past rooms 1-3 and gently knocked on the door of room number four.
A big brunette with long hair pulled into tight ponytail opened the door. Her face was bare except for some sticky-looking bright red lipstick. She wore a long t-shirt with Minnie Mouse on it, and no pants, just some dingy cotton panties. The look of sad weariness was completed by dirty flip-flops. “You Marlene?” Sir Karl asked.
“Yeah, come on in.” She said. “What’s your name?”
“Derrick.” Sir Karl said. The room was small and carpeted with a box spring and mattress taking up most of the space. There was a wooden crate, overturned, with a mirror and the prostitute’s makeup and a small bag on it. The mattress had a blanket over it, but no sheets. The lighting was a single jittery fluorescent tube, doing no favors to Marlene’s skin tone.
“Have a seat.” She said. Sir Karl smiled at her and sat down. There was a whiff of cheap perfume in the air. “You gonna whip it out, or do I have to do that too?”
“Geez, can’t we talk for a minute? I just met you.”
Marlene shut her eyes and took a deep breath as if saying a silent little prayer for patience. “Sure.” She said. “What’s on your mind Derrick?”
“What’s on my mind is the exact thing I don’t want to talk about.” Sir Karl said. “How long have you worked here Marlene?”
“Going on three years.” She said.
“That lady out front the proprietress?”
“Meg? No. Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious.” Sir Karl said.
“Nah, everyone knows this place is Willie Pat’s. You must not be from around here.”
“I just come into town from Phoenix. Whenever a big division is coming through they send some scouts ahead to check out the local talent.”
“You aint a button.” She said with a laugh.
“Never said I was.” Sir Karl said. “I’m just a scout. The Well-Regulated Militia doesn’t like to lose soldiers to the super-g or hep, or bad pills either. They send scouts out to establish connections to the underground. We come out and find the clean whores and pure pills, so the soldiers don’t succumb to disease or delirium. Seems to me this place might be a good candidate for a partnership, of course it’s a pretty small outfit here.”
“It aint small,” Marlene said, “they make it look like that on purpose. there’s a lot of people working for Willie Pat.”
“Enough to supply a whole division of the Well-Fed?”
“Yeah probably. You should talk to Meg about it.” Marlene said.
“I’d rather talk directly to Willie Pat.” Sir Karl said. “You understand I’m not supposed to be talking to anyone about it. They don’t like people knowing about troop movements, although it’ll be obvious in a day or two anyway. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I’m trying to feel out the situation. The fewer people who know at this point the better.”
“Willie Pat don’t take phone calls.” She said. “If you want to talk to him you’ve got to wait for him here or get out to his place in Fortuna.”
“I guess I’d better head out there.” Sir Karl said. “The movement’s happening pretty soon.”
“Don’t you want to test the merchandise first?” She asked. Sir Karl figured it would look suspicious if he didn’t take what he’d paid for, so he did his duty for a free Pacifica, and then got directions to Willie Pat’s compound in Fortuna.
It was at the end of a long dirt road. There was a high wall with razor wire spiraled across the top of it, and you couldn’t see the house that the wall was protecting. The high iron gate at the end of the driveway looked medieval and Sir Karl saw the security scanners arrayed along the front. He kept his distance.
There was some high brush on the side of a drainage ditch beside the road and Sir Karl drove past the driveway, up the road beyond the compound and pulled off. He laid his bike down on its side, behind a rock, and crept back behind the brush until he could see the gate at the end of the driveway.
He was in an awkward position and he had to stay that way for three hours until finally something happened. The iron gate creaked to life and started to open. It was just after sunset and a security light illuminated a large black car coming down the driveway. There was an overweight, middle aged man driving, and Sir Karl assumed that it was Willie Pat. Before the gate closed Sir Karl saw that there was a chain link fence behind the wall. He knew getting in that way would be impossible. He thought
it made sense that Willie Pat would turn Marcos in rather than give him employment verification. He felt safe behind his wall, and he feared only the party, not the opposition. Sir Karl decided he hated Willie Pat and all that he stood for. He hated people who believed they were safe. He just hoped that when the time came he could extend that hatred to the man’s daughter.
Sir Karl waited. He knew that if he waited long enough he would see Willie Pat’s daughter. She couldn’t stay behind the wall forever. Sir Karl felt that he could stay in his hiding place for days if necessary, but during the very cold night his confidence in his endurance wavered. It was just after dawn when the gate creaked open again, waking him from a shallow sleep. He looked down the road but saw no sign of Willie Pat’s car approaching. A grey vintage sedan came down the driveway with a young man driving and a girl in the back seat. The car turned onto the road as Sir Karl ran back to his bike and started after it.
Sir Karl’s bike was much faster than the car and soon he was speeding up to it. They were in the empty desert and he decided to make his move immediately. He pulled his auto-pistola from the seat compartment behind him and the heat from his hand activated the laser guide. He pointed in the general direction of the sedan’s tires and five shots cracked the early morning cold and sent the car into a dull skid. It stopped on a sharp angle to the road as the driver popped up with a short burst of Uzi fire. Sir Karl kept his bike moving, making a big arc off the road onto the desert and over some bushes. He came around behind the car and accelerated toward the driver, shooting seven times as he went. He connected with the driver on the third through fifth shot and then he’d passed when he realized there were two hot pokers in his upper thigh. He took the same path around the car and shot three more bullets into the corpse of the driver, slumped between the road and the open door.
Sir Karl stopped a good distance behind the car and looked at the holes in his pants where the driver’s shots had connected. He told himself that he deserved the pain for what he was about to do. “Get out of the car!” He yelled to the girl.
The girl flung the back door open with a shaky hand. She looked around the back end of the car to where Sir Karl waited. “Please don’t kill me.” She said.
“Just get out.” He yelled. She slowly got herself out of the car, holding onto the door for support. She looked anywhere from 15-22 and she wore a dark blue minidress with argyle leggings. She had some kind of fancy necklace on, and Sir Karl thought that the necklace would make it easier to kill her for some reason. “Get face down on the dirt.” He said. “On your stomach now. Don’t look at me.”
The woman got down on her stomach, crying. “Your father is a greedy pig and he gave a good man to the buttons.” Sir Karl said. “That’s why you’re gonna die.”
“My father?” She shook her head. “My father’s dead. He died years ago.”
“Are you Willie Pat’s daughter?”
“No, I’m his wife.” She said. Sir Karl rode up next to her and she shielded her eyes form the dust.
“Are you lying to me?” He asked.
“No, no!” She said.
Sir Karl noticed something in the back seat of the car and looked in. It was a baby seat holding a pink-faced little baby, dressed in pink and strapped in tight. “Is that his daughter?” Sir Karl asked.
“No.” She said. “I-I’m just babysitting for my sister.”
“Liar.” He said. He got off his bike and tried putting some weight on his gimp leg. He felt blood running down his calf. He reached in and unlocked the car seat, and as he started to pull it out the woman was on her feet holding something. He dropped the car seat and heard the shot as he turned and fired three shots into the woman’s head. She flopped to the ground and Sir Karl saw the small gun she’d had stashed. He had been shot in the side, but it hurt a lot less than his leg. He picked up the car seat and went back to his bike.
The baby was crying when he propped the car seat on the front of his bike, resting it against the handlebars. He threw his messed up leg over the bike and looked at the woman on the ground. “Your husband was warned.” He said to the corpse. He shoved the gun in the back seat box and took off. The sound of the baby crying was soon drowned out by the wind. He had to get back to camp before he passed out from blood loss. He was flying.
Sir Karl had done many things in his life that he was not proud of, but he wasn’t going to kill a baby. No. He would get medical attention and leave the unit. He’d take the kid with him. He had always dreamed of making a wild run for California. Stories of people getting lucky and just walking unmolested into the UPSA had given him hope and overwhelmed all the stories of people getting caught up and thrown in jail. Maybe the Comandante would understand when he saw that Willie Pat’s daughter was just a baby. Maybe he’d let him stay in the unit. Lots of the guys in the unit had small kids, they could put her in one of the field schools.
The motorcycle gave out miles before he’d reached the new coordinates on his small-screen. It was overheated and he hadn’t noticed because the baby’s car seat was covering the gage. When Sir Karl pulled the whining, smoking bike over to the side of the road the baby stopped crying. Sir Karl rolled the useless bike behind a boulder and sat in the little shade it provided with the baby beside him. He sent a Pick Axe to the unit medic that said ‘hurt bad -losing blood’ along with his position.
It was a bright day but Sir Karl felt like he could see a shadow along the edge of everything in his vision. He thought he had a spider web stuck to his eyelashes and he tried to pull it off but it wouldn’t move. The sky blinked a few times and he stopped caring about anything.
When Sir Karl looked up there was a thermal camo-tarp over him, rippling in the wind. He looked out and was surprised that it looked like morning still. There was a kid sitting next to the bunk he was in. He was playing a game on a flat screen display. “Hey.” Sir Karl said. “Hey kid, what day is it?”
The kid looked at Sir Karl and then out toward the edge of the tent. “Dad,” he yelled, “he’s awake.”
A guerrilla commander entered the tent. He was in his thirties and a bit scruffy from running around dry mountains for too long. He pulled a chair over to Sir Karl’s bed. “You lost a lot of blood soldier, but you’re going to be okay.” He said.
“Who are you?”
“Garcia, Lieutenant, 523rd AZ” He said. “I’m sorry soldier but your unit is gone. MPU South 26 was hit yesterday. By the time we got there it was all over, only a few survivors. We got your Pick Axe and came and found you.”
“The baby?”
“She’s fine.” He said. “She yours?”
“Um yeah, she’s my little girl.” Sir Karl said.
“You must’ve had quite a fight getting her out of there, we took three bullets out of you, but the baby’s fine. You’ve gotta be father of the year.”
“The whole unit’s gone?”
“I’m afraid so.” He said. “Your on-air guy, Scotch, he survived along with a couple of the writers and the mess crew. Everyone else is gone. You’re just an enlisted man?”
“Yeah.” He said.
“Well you’re due for a promotion in my book, you weren’t running away from the fight were you?”
“Hell no, I was acting under orders.”
“That’s what I thought.” He said. “I hereby appoint you to the rank of Subcomandante, effective immediately. I’m assigning you to the 512, that sound alright?”
“Sure, as long as I can keep the kid.”
“The 512 has a nursery. In a few years she can go to a field school. There’s lots of families in that unit. I’m assigning an enlisted man to you, he’ll help you get to the 512 when you’re recovered.” He turned toward the tent’s opening. “ERIC!” He shouted “Get in here.” A youngish thin man came in and stood at the foot of the bed. “You’re assigned to help Subcomandante Karl here. Get him whatever he needs.”
“Yes sir lieutenant.” The kid said.
Lieutenant Garcia stood up and saluted. “P
ACIFICA!” He said.
“STAND STRONG!” The kid and Sir Karl said. When he left the kid turned to Sir Karl. “Is there anything I can do for you Subcomandante?”
“Yeah, get my daughter in here I want to see her.” Sir Karl said.
“Anything else Subcomandante?”
“Ughh, Subcomandante, that sounds weird.”
“What should I call you then?” He asked.
“Just call me Sir.”
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Theoretical Substances