‘That’s more than a lil’ tension and township violence.’
Bell’s face puckered in approval. ‘He’s sure invested in incendiaries, learnt the lessons of 2001. Everything’s got to be upscale and bright.’ Everything had to be designed to blast its way into the living rooms and consciousness of the nation.
‘Competition for us Forresters.’
‘It’s what we need. Makes our final victory more impressive, memorable, more important. There’ll be interracial battles breaking out right across the country.’
‘’Cross the planet. You’ve my word.’
‘Quite a conclusion.’ A self-appreciative sigh. ‘We’ve worked hard for it, dreamt of it, a long time.’
‘Nothing’s gonna stop us.’
‘Nothing,’ Bell concurred.
He reached for the camera. The finest art, the best movies, were all about suffering.
* * *
She wondered what had happened to the personnel left behind, to the human resources girl who crouched in her own urine beneath a desk, to the tax specialist who sat in silent shock with tears staining his face. Perhaps they were the wise ones, the lucky ones, she the fool for leaving with Fletch Wood and Mary. But it seemed churlish at the time to refuse the invitation. It had been a long journey. The pair had arrived in a parade of stolen vehicles, the convoy filled with gun-toting passengers and gleeful looters hitching festival rides on bonnets and roofs. Second echelon troops were unfailingly the worst. There was common purpose among them, and that purpose was to scavenge, rob, join in. A relief force – formed to relieve owners of property, refuseniks of their vital organs. They appeared, circled theatrically to cheers and the shrill note of whistles, building volume, stoking commotion. All primed. Petrol bombs were thrown, cascades of ignited fuel sluicing through door joins, licking at windows, doused by the besieged. Behind the interior barricades of piled furniture, the Alamo inhabitants discussed strategy, surrender, whether to take up improvised arms or leave with their arms held high. Some had left, given themselves up; others opted for likely evisceration by anti-armour warheads or asphyxiation from smoke. Krista stayed among them, took calls from Fletch as he approached Downtown and negotiated the Jeep through, spoke to Josh at FBI command, toyed with an unsmoked cigarette. CNN played relentlessly, voyeuristically, on a wide screen, the only intelligence available. Sheer irony, little comfort. She caught sight of her building, of faces close up taken by cameras far off, of a police helicopter crashing real-time, then slow-mo, repeatedly. Odd to be part of a news story, entertainment, to see one’s fate dissected by pundits, displayed virtually. Could have been a Lakers game.
Escape had been rapid, a flip sequence of snapshots run disjointed, the Jeep bouncing down a ramp – ambient noise and colour blurring – Mary bundling her in as Wood depress-readied the accelerator. Turn around. They were out, the bone-flesh impact of an uninvited rider curiously soft on bonnet and wheels. She lay beneath a blanket and the loose camouflage of boxes and plastic bags, her body superheating, jarring to the engine tremor. One way of travelling. She panted, limbs cramping, dust and exhaust fumes, the smell of urban battle, discharging to her nostrils, leaking to a claustrophobic brain. Couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She wanted to climb out, leap screaming from her prone vulnerability, face the threat with a snarl and a two-handed Weaver fire position. Here, she was blind, inert, wouldn’t know what hit her. Spasmodic progress, sudden halts, continuation, the breaking waves of wrecking – bloodlust – close by, conducted through metal panels and chassis. Fletch and Mary were mad to be involved; it said little for her own judgement.
Acrid fumes poisoned her mouth. She retched, eyes watering, head clearing. Uprising could leave a bitter taste. There had to be a reason for Azania conceding to meet her for interview in police custody. I consider you party to everything. There was not much he failed to consider, few accidents that were purely accidental. Everyone had their assignment, their place in the strategy – Professor Duncan Pitt, the Jamaican in London, the unidentified South African, the unidentified leader of the Forresters, herself – for chance was in the realm of amateurs or the recently deceased. The car jolted, loosened a thought clot. She recalled the satellite broadcast from London, the Reverend’s face thrown large on the giant screen at Selma, his address to the faithful and hopeful before that march along Highway 80. Big Brother, big plans. Even the murdered had a function. She wondered at her own role. Krista Althouse, FBI Not-quite-so-Special Agent, tasked with prevention and pre-emption, failed, rescued, forced to slink away with head and body covered. She was being driven through the realm of her own defeat; a tumbrel was more appropriate. But Azania would not stop at ritual humiliation, pushing her nose in the grimed floor-pan of a sports utility. She would have to be patient while the city burned, as the tinder flickered and caught in the rest of America. Christ, what a calamity. It would certainly put a frown in the Botox-frozen foreheads of the rich androids eating at Kate Mantilini and Maple Drive, upset the fat-sucked, chin-tucked Rodeo drivers in their mission to shop, the anorexic star-fuckers with faces and personalities twinned to the plastic in their wallets. Collagen-plumped lips would quiver, sculpted eyelids try to flutter, register, chemically peeled skin begin to sweat. Not even lifestyle gurus could find an answer to this. As for the Federal Bureau of Investigation …
Muffled talking in front, a slowing of the Jeep. She strained to hear, picked out the see-saw Dixie tones of Mary, the deeper timbre of Fletcher Wood. Reassuring, until the intrusion of a third voice, a fourth. Argument, stridency, a blast of the horn. She shrank, toes working circulation in readiness, fingers crawling towards the pistol-butt. The first seconds would be critical, the first few rounds. She rehearsed the moves, panned back through an archive of lecture sessions and range techniques. Practice, practice, practice. Training merely reinforced imperfection, a false sense of can-do invincibility. Can-do. She must have missed this scenario; there was nothing in the textbooks on taking the lead while prone and wrapped in a blanket. Can-do. And she accused the living embalmed and jewellery armoured populating LA’s boutiques of inhabiting a world of unreality. Line-drawings, fire-at-will commands, did not quite encapsulate the situation. Instinctively, she reached to remove the ear-defenders. They were absent, and the sounds stayed obscure. Fuck this heat.
‘Think Miss Althouse okay back there?’ Mary asked, her accent thick with concern.
Wood stared ahead, pedal-pumping the vehicle through an unlikely gap formed by burning oil-drums. Around, the rubble of plundered stores, the rolling shapes of discarded cans of fruit, peppered the roadway. Each a hazard, every one a mine aimed at a tyre. They could not afford delay. ‘She’s strong.’
‘She’s not a thanksgivin’ turkey, though. Even I’m cookin’ in this.’ She fanned herself with a hand.
A slight correction to the wheel. ‘At least we get to control the oven temperature. Let’s keep it that way until we’re at the safe house.’
‘How far to go?’
‘Barring obstacles and firefights, fifteen minutes. We’ll update Josh in five.’
They had heard the helicopter go down, seen things that shaded their actions, shadowed their thoughts. Along First Street, across Union, where the territory leaked from Mexican to Korean, and the destruction climbed with it. Wood smiled, punched his fist skywards to salute a roving patrol of self-appointed militia. The slogan Freedom Fighters was daubed on the sides of their stolen saloon-turned-personnel carrier. A foot thrashed briefly through an open window, was subdued by the combined weight of body mass and fists. Sneaker treads rather than dental records would doubtless be used to identify the victim.
‘Freedom? Freedom?’ Mary recognized the word. It was iconic, did not require literacy. ‘That ain’t freedom.’
‘Hostiles ahead. I count twelve. Suggest you unfasten your seat-restraint, Mary. You’re supposed to be a law-breaker.’
‘Ah’m doin’ it.’
‘And look delighted. It’s your birthday, the abolition of slavery, and the swearing in of the first black president all rolled into one. Happiest day of your life.’
The scepticism was marked. ‘Then what?’
‘You know the drill. If I’m hit, you take the Uzi, exit the vehicle, use the engine-block as temporary cover. Then you get the hell away. Until that moment, you keep your nerve, act regular bitch.’ She followed instruction, shrugged herself wearily into the role. The volume had been cranked on the stereo, the bass quotient with it. Audio camouflage.
Exploiting diamond mines in Sierra Leone, searching with bayonets for Tutsi children in Rwanda: foraging parties inherited the same look, the same value system. Scorched earth was a way of life. The hand was raised, the man and his acolytes progressing towards them in slow arrow-formation. Eyes were suspicious, body language inarticulate. Ambling aggression, primal hatred. There would be little opportunity to bargain, few grounds for negotiation. Wood relaxed, shouted a greeting, scanned for retreat. Krista thought of the mountain vista she had glimpsed along Figueroa. Any place was better than here.
‘Where you from?’
‘Long Beach.’
‘Nice wheels.’ The words had a subtext, did not include please and thank you.
‘Had to fight for it.’
Delayed response, the crackling intonation of an addict. ‘Might just hitch a ride.’ Gold tooth, yellowed eyes, the withered skin drawn old across the cheekbones. The other men stood dull, indifferent to the outcome. Behind, a bonfire flared intermittently. A bulky object blackened across it, a second had been dragged out and smouldered further off. Elegant additions to the hellscape.
‘Hot weather for cookin,’ man.’
‘Need a decent flame for a pig-roast,’ came the reply. There was blasé laughter, insiders comprehending the inside-joke. ‘This is where it’s at.’ This was how grievances ended. The pupils were pinpricks, the mood hair-triggered. Firearms were touted.
Leaving was always going to be harder than getting in. Wood rested an elbow on the sill, adjusted the music level downwards. He had the machine-pistol lodged beneath his right thigh, accessible. ‘We’ve picked up what we need. We’re outta here.’
‘You’re not familiar with procedure.’
‘I’m familiar with brotherhood.’
‘That ain’t enough, brother. There’s taxation to consider.’
‘Only if you’re white, out of sight.’
