The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination (32 page)

A
gleaming white
Towne Car loped down First Avenue dodging potholes and puddles percolating up from the old subway system. Turnstyle sat in the back texting instructions as they passed Stuyvesant Town and turned left on Tenth Street, toward Avenue A, thirty blocks south of the UN compound. The Lower East Side. Alphabet City.

“Just pull up, right there, at the park gate,” she said.

The Towne Car pulled to the curb at Tomkins Square Park. She jumped out, jogged through the gated entrance and sat on a circle of benches surrounding a huge planter filled with old shrubs about to bud. She folded her hands in her lap and stared straight ahead.

Tomkins Square Park is only three blocks square, but nine paths cut through it accompanied by the breezy smells of souvlaki and jerk pork roasting on open grills. People cluster at the intersections, smiling at babies in strollers, munching away.

The Towne Car driver pulled down the street, slowed just enough for an agent to slip out, then circled back. The agent ducked into a doorway and took out his binoculars. A quick look found Turnstyle still perched on her bench in an oddly rigid posture staring straight ahead. But the crowd seemed to be growing quickly. She pulled her shiny hood up against a nonexistent wind.

The Towne Car driver tapped his earpiece. “You got her?”

The agent in the doorway leaned out and looked again. “Yeah. She’s just sitting there.” He ducked back in as a large group of young people brushed by the doorway.

The Towne Car pulled up on the curb and the driver jumped out, but was swallowed by waves of young people flooding out from every doorway. He tapped his earpiece. “You still got her?”

“Yeah, but I’m stuck.” A crowd dressed in old coats, faces wrapped in tattered scarves, had hemmed him in.

The driver double-tapped his ear. “Where’s our back-up?”

A second Towne Car approached, but the shabby crowd had become so thick it could barely move. Three agents leapt out and tried to push through, but it was no use. The park was now crammed with young people in old topcoats and ratty hats.

Turnstyle continued to stare straight ahead, standing out brilliantly in her uniquely tailored shiny metallic duster and huge hood.

“She’s still just sitting there,” reported the agent. “But I’m losing my eye-line.”

When every inch of the park was packed, the entire crowd tore the old coats off to reveal their shiny metallic dusters. Everyone pulled their hoods up and swirled around Turnstyle. In the chaos, a girl with an identical highly tailored silhouette replaced her on the bench. The crowd turned as one and marched toward the exits.

Turnstyle, a needle in a shiny haystack, was whisked to the northeast corner of the park. A shoulder-to-shoulder blockade of shiny coats controlled that exit. She slipped through, crossed tiny Avenue B and was hustled up the steps and into a boarded-up church, St. Stanislaus, RC. The crowd reversed course and swirled back into the park as one metallic organism.

The Towne Car driver watched from a distance, then called Petey. “She disappeared. She had lots of help. This is way bigger than you think.”

Petey’s lips formed a sinister grin. “I’m glad to hear it.”

* * *

W
ord
of the attack on the Quaker Meeting House reached the Bedford Barracks immediately. The attack had lasted only minutes, but the old meeting house was still in flames. Word of Roy Wils’ demise reached Freddy Cochran immediately; he was overcome with an exalted pride that quickly turned into homicidal rage. “Go! Go, lads. Go and destroy all them fuckin’ tinkers. Avenge our fallen Brothers. Start with that god-damned Brewery.”

Cassandra knew nothing of the Brewery, but the Quaker Meeting House was known to everyone. She stood in the barracks’ lobby watching dozens of men rush to their Peregrines and rocket off toward Pittsburgh.

From the Brewery, Jon Replogle conferred with Admiral Carson. “We intercepted a message from that maniac Freddy Cochran. He’s sent his men to attack the Brewery. You got about twenty minutes.” Jon was on his walkie-talkie at the same time, deploying his men to the 22nd Street Bridge.

* * *

M
ax and Lily
were streaking across the Ligonier Valley toward the wind generators on Somerset Ridge, carrying the dead or dying MacIan. They had no control, but Max knew where they were going. He couldn’t wait. But he feared for MacIan’s life.

* * *

T
he 22nd Street Bridge
spanned the Monongahela River in a single arch supported by an intricate web of steel I-beams. It had a six-lane road surface, and was the most direct approach to the Brewery. Jon knew that when the Leprechauns attacked, the 22nd Street Bridge would be the perfect place to funnel them into a tight formation with two choke points — either end of the bridge.

Jon watched the convoy of camo-colored transporters rumbling up the road on the other side of the icy Monongahela River. Boyne’s transporter was right in front. It had been so severely damaged at his wake, it had to be pushed into the fray with the Driver at the wheel. As predicted, the heedless Leprechauns charged onto the bridge, straight into the fading sun. They had always underestimated the tinkers, so they didn’t bother to look for them in the shadowy I-beams above.

Jon stood across the intersection, behind a dead Cadillac, flanked by hundreds of watchers hidden below the pylons. “On my command!” A young man in coveralls the same pale green as the bridge raised a small yellow pennant to nearly sixty watchers blending into the bridge’s superstructure.

The Driver roared across the bridge, swaying on a tow rope, Boyne’s blood still sopping through the carpets. Once again that feeling hit him — something wasn’t right. “Who slapped a coat of paint on this pontoon?”

In the intersection on the Brewery side, dozens of people ran about in a frenzy, giving the illusion of panic and distracting the Leprechauns from the danger above. In their zeal, the Leprechauns raced across the bridge bumper to bumper. So when Jon gave the signal and a twelve-ton blast-furnace door, the same green as the bridge, toppled from the arches and landed on Boyne’s transporter, nine others rammed it from behind and the tow rope snapped, flipping the tow-car over the rail into the drink. Now the bridge was blocked by the pile-up, and everyone in Boyne’s transporter was a bloody pancake.

Brakes squealed! Fenders crunched! Transporters flipped!

The flagman waved a red pennant. It rained heavy metal. Truck transmissions. Back-hoe buckets. Washing machines. At the far end of the bridge, a section of stadium lights hinged over and crushed four transporters, slamming the door on any retreat. The Leprechauns rushed from their wrecks, firing randomly.

Six transporters had stopped before getting on the bridge. They U-turned back down the on-ramp, demolition derby style, and raced back toward downtown Pittsburgh. But within seconds the sky was filled with Peregrines. The road along the river ran between a dilapidated industrial park on the shoreline and a nearly vertical mountainside. There was nowhere to hide, so the transporters tried to evade, cutting in and out of the abandoned industrial park.

On the bridge, the remaining Leprechauns were being crushed by falling air conditioners, pizza ovens, and empty acetylene tanks. Several thought to escape by jumping over the side. Those not killed in the fall froze to death in the Mon’s fast-moving current.

The Battle of the 22nd Street Bridge was over in minutes.

Jon and the Watchers surveyed the carnage. The Leprechauns, all of whom had sworn to fight to the death, had been accommodated. Suddenly, what seemed a singular explosion drew their attention to the far roadway. Four Peregrines had fired; four transporters were blown to pieces. But two had slipped into the 10th Street Tunnel and were cowering inside.

The lead Peregrine dropped onto the pavement in front of the tunnel and aimed its nose straight in.

T
he humble doors
of St. Stanislaus were swung open by a throng of shiny hackers, and Turnstyle stepped through. She turned to see if she was being followed. But Petey’s agents were still struggling to escape the angry mob swarming around them, yelling. “Aren’t you Americans? You’re Americans! Aren’t you Americans, like us?” they screamed.

She was taken to the back of the church, down the basement steps and through a hole in the foundation into the building next door. Fellow hackers ushered her up a back stairwell to the roof, where another group took her to a bridge made of wooden planks that spanned over an airshaft and into an open window. Once she was in, they pulled a rope and the bridge crashed down into the airshaft.

She jumped from the windowsill and into the once spectacular Polish Falcons Dance Hall. A bevy of hackers greeted her with applause as she waltzed across the squeaky parquet floor toward the stage, upon which a middle-aged woman with large brown eyes, called Cellophane, waved victoriously.

Cellophane, formerly Amy something-hyphenated, wore a permanent frown. She was one of the many jilted lovers of Representative Mahesh Murthy. She’d tell her sad tale to anyone who’d listen, hence the name Cellophane.

“Priyanka here?” asked Turnstyle.

“That was fabulous!” said Cellophane.

Turnstyle tilted her head to an astonished angle. “I was worried about the timing. I tried to stall. He must have thought I was a total idiot. I was just rambling.”

Cellophane looked askance. “You were smack on, girl. You just max-trolled reptile number one. Smack fuckin’ on!”

Turnstyle took a deep breath. She could relax a little, but remembered something that made her howl. “That asshole thinks I have an actual turnstile, like from a stadium, in my living room. The best and brightest?”

“You don’t even have a living room.”

Turnstyle shrugged her shoulders.

“Wait’ll you see this.” Cellophane launched a high-angle clip of General Joe Scaletta imploring his men to make sure the monitors were turned off, capped by him saying: “We must attack New York before Tuke can have his way.”

The hall erupted with cheers as the stunning Priyanka and her wealthy patrons, The Ladies Who Lunch, in their outlandish hats, entered triumphantly.

Turnstyle raised her arms to Priyanka in a joyful, air-hug salute.

Priyanka returned a barrage of air-kisses, and yelled, “We got him.”

M
ax and Lily
shot over the wind generators on Somerset Ridge in a blink. Once they cleared the ridge, they could see for miles down the mountain range. Lily was unaware of just how hard she was squeezing Max’s knee in sheer terror, until she felt him relax. She rolled one eye at him. “What is it?”

Max looked into her eyes, smiled, and turned into the distance. “The Spires.”

Her eyes followed his. The Peregrine slowed. She didn’t notice. Her gaze was riveted to the enchanted spires. He waved a scrunched-up smile at her and poked his thumb at the hillside below. “Lily.”

She laughed out loud and pointed furiously, as though she’d discovered something. “Engineered habitat?”

Max couldn’t stop smiling.

Sheer momentum put them at the Spires in seconds. The spoilers flipped open, they slowed abruptly and their weight sloshed forward. The Peregrine hooked a tight arc around one spire and dove straight into the other through an opening hidden in an eternal shadow facing the sunless north.

Max took Lily’s hand as they flew down a dark tunnel on autopilot. This Peregrine had been here before. A brightly lit area appeared where a few people stood waiting. The wheels dropped and they braked to a stop. The triage shelf slid out and MacIan was whisked away by a group in crisp hospital scrubs. A striking woman with dark hair and wearing a deconstructed men’s suit in multicolored herringbone stepped forward. She aimed an oddly shaped, fire-engine red remote control at the Peregrine. The wind-dome opened. Max and Lily jumped out, happy to be on solid ground.

“Max?” asked the woman with a puppy-talk lilt.

He wagged his chin.

“We brought you here.” She waved the oddly shaped, fire-engine red remote control. “The time differential to South Side Hospital was negligible. The difference in care — monumental. He would’ve died there.”

Max agreed.

Lily extended her hand. “Hello. I’m Lily.”

“Welcome. I’m Catrina Enders. Your room is ready. Or do you need separate rooms?”

Max turned purple.

“Oh, no.” said Lily, taking Max’s arm. “We’re together.”

* * *

T
he atmosphere
in the Bedford Barracks conference room grew cheery, now that they’d defeated the Leprechauns on the 22nd Street Bridge. The Peregrines transmitted scenes of carnage from every angle that flashed from monitor to monitor. But Cassandra kept a close eye on the stand-off inside the 10th Street Tunnel, until a stern face filled the central monitor.

“Admiral? Squadron Leader Kolojejchick — permission to pursue.”

“Do not fire on them in the tunnel. Get them out of there before they damage it. That tunnel is irreplaceable.”

Kolojejchick nodded, and gave his orders. “Lieutenant DeFeo, flush those turds. Gently.”

Lieutenant DeFeo dropped onto the roadway, bouncing on all four tires, taxied to the tunnel’s entrance, tapped his command screen, and said, “One hundred meters, five seconds.” A small trapdoor opened from the nose of his Peregrine. A ramp descended. What looked like a large bowling ball rolled out and into the tunnel. Five seconds later, a huge, powdery white cloud puffed quietly from both ends of the tunnel.

Inside, pandemonium reigned. The transporter drivers were blinded and choking. One was panicked enough to back out of the tunnel, straight at the Peregrines.

“Let him get away from the tunnel,” said Kolojejchick. “Then blow his ass away.”

The one remaining transporter in the tunnel flew blindly out the other end, ricocheting off several stout safety bollards. Kolojejchick flew up and over the mountain and found that transporter roaring up 5th Avenue, going the wrong way, through the brain trust.

“Follow that idiot,” said Admiral Carson. “Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. They’ll go back to the Wall. There’s isn’t anywhere else for them to go.”

* * *

T
urnstyle and Cellophane
worked a computer array set up on the garishly painted bandstand of the old Polish Falcons Dance Hall. It sat about a foot above the dance floor, whose varnish had long ago been polkaed to dust. Turnstyle gave Priyanka, who had taken the center of the dance floor, a wink and a nod.

The clacking keyboards and joyful chatter diminished. A few young women started clearing the room. Tables were pushed aside. The cables eternally crisscrossing the floor were tucked away. Desk chairs were rolled onto the dance floor for The Ladies Who Lunch, who each wore the dignified smile of the confident conspirator, despite their impossible hats. Priyanka stepped onto a chair, then onto the bar, and launched her opening. “I told you this was going to happen,” she proudly announced in a voice nearly as bold as her color-blocked miniskirt sari. “Exactly like this!” She had rehearsed this speech many times, but it was all about the display — girly machismo. She waved and pointed and threw kisses around like confetti. Her joy was infectious. Especially when hurling air-hugs and fluttering heart palpitations across the dance floor at Turnstyle.

Turnstyle returned them with a faux curtsy; she had rehearsed for this moment, too. Manhatmazon was a social game she’d thrown together on a shoestring and pure optimism. This was her jam.

Can’t beat fun.

Priyanka waved her hands over the gathering and stomped her knee-high boots. “First! We have to thank — Turnstyle. She’s just promised Poison Petey a gamified solution he’ll never see, just when he needs it the most. And now we’re all going to be rich!”

Everyone applauded.

Turnstyle’s blush warmed the dance hall as the young women unleashed their love for her and contempt for the corporate state, whose nose she’d just rubbed in it.

Priyanka shouted, “Our next move,” shocking herself with the volume. She paused to fan a hand in front of her mouth, mocking herself coquettishly in an antebellum drawl, “Nearly gave myself the vapors.” The room exploded with sororal laughter. “Oh! And ah, how’s my fucking hair?” They were rolling in the aisles.

Turnstyle looked out over the dance hall floor with a big smile, well aware that they had only entered the delightful zone of proximal victory. The game was still afoot.

Priyanka aimed all ten fingers at Turnstyle. “Big brass, baby. Big brass. Big brass.”

Turnstyle lowered her eyes as the whole house rocked, “Big Brass! Big Brass! Big Brass!”

Priyanka shouted over their cheers, “Can you believe, only minutes ago, this woman sat right across from Reptile Number One, Petey Hendrix. Puppeteer. Thief! Heretic! Adulterer!”

Several of the Ladies Who Lunch squirmed knowingly.

Turnstyle moved to the center of the bandstand as Priyanka cut to the segue. “I could go on and on, as you all know I can, but the clock is ticking. So let me turn it over to Turnstyle! Our history begins with her, and her gift to us, to all women, Manhatmazon!”

“Big Brass! Big Brass! Big Brass!”

Turnstyle waved off their cheers. “Manhatmazon? Funny name, huh.” A hush filtered through the dance hall. “I spent months thinking up a name for a girls-only hacker network with the goal of banishing men from our — personal space. Using the Tuke Massive model, disguised as a social game platform, the men . . . our unwitting opponents, were never to know they were being played. Bonus points for deceptions, decoys and diversions. How ya’ like them triple Ds — boys!?”

Priyanka wiggled two fingers in front of her eyes, Mata Hari style, and yelled, “They love those.” The crowd cheered and danced the Mata Hari, hooting, “Whoooot whooot. Whooohoot.”

Turnstyle forged on in an even tone. “While the uninformed patriots, the reactionaries, the sniveling sycophants and the worthless well-connected were counting their money, we outflanked them. And! They don’t even know it. That’s the part I like the most!”

She paused for another explosion and cleared her throat. “We’ve been waiting a hundred centuries to burn down the old boys’ club. But once they know what’s up, they’ll defend. And they play dirty — always will, as long as they control the resources we and our children depend on. As long as the game is tilted to favor those arrogant thugs.

“Well, we just changed the rules that put us at a disadvantage. Changed the point value of those traits all women, all mothers, all sisters have in common. Female traits that favor us, not in their suicidal competition, but in a social collaboration, where our superior social skills give us the advantage.” She brushed the top of her close-shorn head in big circles, snarling, “Oh, and ah, how’s my fuckin’ hair?”

She shouted angrily into their thunderous applause, “We will no longer be economic slaves and sex toys. Never again. We will control what goes on with us. No one else. No government! No corporation! No church! No one!” She stepped back and made a cranking movement in front of her belly. “They can all go fishin’.”

A percussive cheer shook the walls as all the hackers made the fishing reel cranking gesture and stomped their feet. It sounded just right in a dance hall.

“It all begins with this phone call.” She raised a cell phone. “It is the End Move in the first championship round of Manhatmazon. The coup de grâce. As easy as moving my queen — onto his king.”

She nodded to Cellophane, who spun towards her monitor.

“Cellophane will lift the service blackout we’ve deployed over Petey’s castle. It’s really something, you should see it. And I’m sure you will.”

Priyanka raised both hands to another outburst. “Please, please, everyone be quiet.”

Turnstyle shouted, “No! No! Don’t be quiet. I’ve seen his face, he’s so panicked! This’ll be more fun if we do it right in his shit-eatin’ grin.”

A ringing phone played over the public address system. Petey answered in a low, secretive voice, “Turnstyle?”

“Yes, sir, it’s me, Mr. Hendrix.” She did a mock curtsey. “I have you on speaker.”

“Why?”

“You wanted to game the NPF — as fast as it could be done. So we created an emergency for them. Emergencies always happen in fleeting seconds. It took hundreds of people working furiously to pull that off. Many hands and all that. Everyone here is in on it.” She raised two mocking eyebrows and a twisted pucker to the audience. Everyone choked back a howl, but the chuckles that escaped were quite loud.

“I can hear you all having fun, at my expense.”

“Speaking of expense. Let’s get that out of the way, right away.”

“Yeah! OK, I’ll just drop the cash on the nightstand. Who’s fucking who here? There’s no way you could have made it happen so fast.”

“I knew you were going to be stupid about this. I’ve already explained. Emergency! Emergency! Get it! It happens in a second. That took a hundred people working their asses off to create an illusion for you.”

She made a ‘watch this’ expression. “We built a semi-nominal, autonomously integrated hive mind using representational logic, solution churn . . .”

“Stop! Please stop. My head’s gonna explode.”

“I can only explain what we’ve done for you in the language of games. It’s your ignorance that’s the problem here, not mine. It’s not my fault if you don’t know when the game is on. Why do you care, anyway? They’re going to attack. Just like you wanted. I guarantee it. I know it. I have proof.”

She pinched the tip of her nose and pulled it to arm’s length, crossed her fingers and raised them to the crowd. A few suffocating seconds passed as laughs of every dimension were swallowed.

“OK. All right, all right already. Please, no more game theory. Show me what you got.”

“Show me the money.”

“For Christ’s sake.” He poked a few keys and a screen grab of a banking transfer linked to Cellophane’s monitor. She surveyed it quickly and gave the thumbs up.

Petey’s voice was full of caution. “All I do is push this button, and a hundred and twenty million goes into your account.”

“Push it. Push it good,” sang Turnstyle, her hips swaying.

“Well, since we missed the prom, why don’t you go first?”

“OK. But let me tell you this. We got the NPF to issue an attack by gaming them. By deception. By making them think something is real, that isn’t. If I tell them the truth, they will not attack. So don’t think for a moment you can double-cross me. Got it?”