Crowns and Cabals Page 8

  Those who barely knew me put me in a box-the beautiful, brilliant, aloof blonde. I did nothing to break the stereotype. My parents and Aysa were the only ones I let in. Now I needed others more than ever. Charisma was never my strong point. Time to sink or swim.

  I slowly opened my mouth without a speech or plan, and let the words tumble out. “Thank you all for coming. Finally, we can speak freely. We are here today because we’ve lost family and friends. Some of you lost your loved ones in the war. I know Wendy lost her daughter who lived in Miami. Sai lost her husband Karl who was in New York City on business. I lost my parents in London and my sister who was there, right in the beginning of it, reporting on the Israeli-Iran conflict. Those were casualties of war. Now we are in post-war. Yolanda lost her son Will to the Peacekeepers. Will was also Brick’s friend. There were mysterious disappearances of some Fogle colleagues. Homes for the elderly and the poor have been destroyed. More death is sure to follow. Before we move forward, you all must know that we will be putting ourselves in danger. What we are doing is treason. We will be tortured and killed. The good news is this: The U.N. does not have a leader or an actual government yet. They lost their headquarters and it’s rumored that they will rebuild in Boston. This is our chance before they solidify power. If this is too risky for you, please leave.”

  No one blinked an eye or flinched a muscle. A few seconds passed, and Wendy left the pantry and headed for the cash register. I waited for her to return. I also waited for my words to sink in.

  “Okay, I thought we’d start small and screw over someone who used to be at our level. Now that Wendy is back, I will get down to business. Mayor Cynthia Sheffield used to be an okay mayor. If she was stealing from the town, no one knew about it. On the surface, she kept the streets clean, the snow plowed, and the town safe. I voted for her a few years ago, and would have voted for her again. Maybe it’s not fair to name her as our first victim, but she sold out to the Peacekeepers. She took one of the nicest homes in this town for herself. She helps the U.N. collect taxes from small business owners like Wendy. She also helps the Peacekeepers confiscate those businesses when they can no longer pay. Who knows what else she helps them with? To keep things simple, Cynthia the mayor is not a soldier, just a single woman who lives with her adult son. She just moved into her new house. I doubt that it’s fully secured. She would be a good target to start with.”

  Wendy bounced in and out of the pantry. Finally, she spoke. “I’d love to stick it to her. She didn’t even try to warn us, nothing. But I got some questions before we proceed. Let’s say we do manage to break in and take the good stuff-how do we sell it? Everything is in units now.”

  Brick had just turned eighteen, but looked more like thirty with his dead, emotionless blue eyes. He replied, “Got that already figured out. Let’s just say a black market has evolved.”

  Yolanda wore a look of confusion. She asked, “How do we spend the money we get? Everything is on the microchip now.”

  “Yolanda, have I taught you nothing? Fogle is in charge of interfacing the units with the user’s bank account. You should know this!” Camden said. “Creating security passes is one of my areas of expertise. Yolanda, you are pretty good at it too. I got dozens of names of dead people who aren’t officially registered as dead yet. Like you said, Jaxie, this is our chance. There’s a lot of loose ends that the powers-that-be haven’t thought of yet. I will program the microchips in the names of the dead. Use the newly created microchips when purchasing something. Speaking of microchips, let’s remove them from our arms now. Take them in our pockets when needed, and leave them home when we don’t want anyone to know where we are. There’s a GPS tracker on them. I helped Fogle design them.”

  Brick took out a small knife and washed it in the laundry sink. He then sliced into his forearm, fished around with the knife, and yanked his out. He washed up the chip as well as his arm. Wendy handed him a box of bandages.

  “You made that look simple. Can you remove mine?” I asked.

  Brick used his pocket knife with the precision of a surgeon and removed all of our microchips within the hour. He then said, “Next meeting we leave them home.” We all nodded.

  “Thanks, Brick. Great idea. This looks like it will heal within the week,” I said. “About this black market, if I understand correctly, you believe that our stolen items can be sold with unmarked units? The units of dead people?”

  Camden nodded. “Exactly. That and other unused units are what is being used. We’ll be well-funded. But my wants have changed. I no longer want anything outside of the raw basic necessities. My portion of any units will be used for weapons, maybe even mercenaries.”

  I laughed and Camden glared at me. “Sorry, but aren’t you putting the cart before the horse? We haven’t even robbed a house, let alone amassed an army of mercenaries.”

  “Then let’s get to work,” Camden answered.

  Wendy supplied the address. After a few drive-bys, some satellite imagery, and a hacking of the half-baked security system that Mayor Sheffield had in place, we made our move. Each of us had a job. The entire robbery went off without a hitch.

  Our first booty included two garbage bags filled with silver utensils, rare stamps, old coins, jewelry, and a Faberge egg. We hoped the stuff belonged to Mayor Sheffield, but it could have belonged to the original owner. Either way, she would notice her prized possessions were gone. The robbery acted as a bonding agent by bringing us closer together.

  We found out from the first robbery that precious metals and gemstones were very much in demand. Brick’s little gang had found buyers with units who collected the valuables that we stole. We picked a jewelry store on the other side of town as our next target. The store was once owned by a small business owner like Wendy, but recently taken over by the U.N. The store’s merchant spoke with a thick Indian accent. We guessed he once owned the store and probably didn’t give two-shits if we robbed him.

  As predicted, the Indian man didn’t put up any resistance. There was a gleam in his eye when we waltzed in with our ski masks, turned off the alarm, and broke the glass cases. As easy as it was, it made the Peacekeepers look like fools. Less than a week later, the Indian merchant’s dead body swung from one of the large streetlights in the middle of town. We inadvertently got him killed.

  At Wendy’s bakery, we held a meeting only yards away from the jeweler’s dead body.

  “We are here today to discuss the future of our vigilante gang. We easily robbed a house and a business. Someone is now dead because of us. Do we dismantle or do we continue? I need a vote.”

  Camden was the first to speak. “I feel badly for the man, but that’s what this new government does-kill people. We are doing something important, life-changing. More innocents will die. A third of the world wasn’t enough. This is the way New World Order works. I want to keep it going. Like Patrick Henry once said, ‘Give me liberty or give me death!’ Fuck the Peacekeepers! Fuck the U.N.! Hell, let’s make one of them our next targets!”

  Wendy nodded and said, “Hell yes! We didn’t kill the jeweler. The Peacekeepers did! No trial, no questioning, just killed him and hung him out to dry for all to see. They killed Will too, just because they didn’t know what to do with him. Don’t you see? There is no room for error among these Nazis! Camden, you are spot on.”

  Brick weaseled into the conversation and brought up Patrick Henry’s quote. “Dad, I agree with you and Patrick Henry. You know, we need a name. We need to call ourselves something. Maybe the Patriots?”

  Everyone nodded in agreement, and no one voted to stop what we had started, but Yolanda didn’t seem as enthusiastic as everyone else. She barely said a word throughout the whole meeting.

  I whispered to her, “Are you okay?”

  She wiped away a tear and nodded. “They didn’t hang Will. Maybe they would have if your brother-in-law and Brick didn’t dispose of his body. But you are right, as were our forefathers. We can’t live under tyranny.”

  I raised my
hand to quiet everyone. “Okay then. To Patrick Henry-Give us liberty or give us death!”

  All chanted back, “Aye, aye.”

  Another idea popped into my head. I needed to talk to Raphael.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jaxie

  At the next meeting, we refused to discuss potential consequences while picking another target. Yolanda voted on killing Peacekeepers just for the sake of feeling better. I couldn’t blame her, but pure anger could get us killed. I carefully chose my words. “I feel the same way as all of you. Think about this for one minute. If we attack the Peacekeepers in Brookline, we’re dead. Game over. Maybe we could attack in another town. The randomness could provide a cover. Camden spoke about buying weapons with our loot. Good idea, but I got a better one. Let’s steal them. Does anyone know where the Peacekeepers are keeping their trucks and guns and uniforms, hell, maybe even bombs?”

  Yolanda looked at me and nodded. “I do like the idea of striking in another town.”

  “So far, no one has put up cameras down this alley. I had a friend who was ‘relocated’. His house is three blocks from here. His house and the neighboring houses are vacant. They aren’t fancy enough for U.N. officials or Peacekeepers, at least for now. I have his keys. I used to watch his dog when he was out of town. We might get away with storing a big stash of loot in it for now.”

  “Great idea!” I said.

  Within an hour, we had a loose plan. By next week we would have the information to bring it all to fruition. I desperately needed to call Raphael. Maybe a face-to-face visit would be safer.

  Fogle’s Dallas branch appeared on a long list of cities that needed help with their client-server systems. There were still parts of the country without Internet. Fogle’s vice president needed volunteers to help get other cities fully running. My opportunity to visit Raphael presented itself. Maybe I could recruit him into my gang. He could use a little revenge to cheer him up. He might know more potential Patriots.

  The following Monday I volunteered to help other branches of Fogle get up to speed. My vice president Ed Nowicki was thrilled. “Jaxie, you are perfect person for this job. I didn’t want to ask you only because you’re too high up the corporate totem pole for this. Mister Steele can’t afford to lose you.”

  “I am grateful to be of use. It’s your call.”

  “I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but since you will be in the South, can you check on a few more of our branches? Atlanta and Phoenix are in the dark ages, technologically speaking.”

  “I’ll try to get them all up to speed as soon as possible,” I said like a good little worker bee. Would my Patriots carry on without me? Ed handed me a metal card loaded with units for business expenses.

  I packed four disposable phones in my carry-on bag. The war decimated most of the airlines in America. Coincidentally, there was only one left. The company changed its name to Global Air. The planes’ American eagles were already covered with paint. The airlines had yet to come up with a new logo. I suspected they were waiting for the U.N. to fully organize. With my Fogle identification and microchip in hand, I skated through security and flew directly to Atlanta. Dallas would be my second stop, and if everything went smoothly, I would be visiting Raphael by Friday.

  I still didn’t know Raphael’s address. Our last conversation took place when he was laying low at his grandfather’s farm. A cryptic email was sent from a community college. The letter said very little. I guessed by the email extension that Raphael landed a job. He took my advice and got rid of his old phone, but I didn’t have a new number.

  There was little to do in Atlanta. They had a few glitches in their system, making my job easy. My contact, a young man named Jay, wore that same zombie-hollow-eyed expression as the engineers in Boston. I showed Jay how easy it was to filter and disable the Internet with preferred content. Preferred content was the jargon we now used. Propaganda had too much of a sting. I then taught him some tricks that went beyond his level of security clearance. The dead layer of brown in his eyes livened up. Without ever spelling it out, I implied various ways of how Jay could really fuck Fogle over. Maybe he understood. I couldn’t be sure.

  Jay and I split a cheeseburger in the company’s cafeteria. I told him about the immediate changes Fogle endured after the war. He nodded and then told me a similar story. Relocation among mid-level and low-level employees must have been a global mandate. I couldn’t tell if Jay was angry about his new living arrangements. He hardly knew me and cameras were everywhere. At the very least, I left Atlanta after planting a seed.

  Once I arrived in Dallas, I rented a self-driving car and toured the city. I had been to Dallas several times before. The skies were darker than I remembered, but lighter than in Boston. Drones floated in the air and self-driving cars ruled the road, but the city didn’t have as much of a military presence as Brookline. With only few soldiers and trucks on the main streets, weight on my shoulders seemed to lift. There were a few new skyscrapers in the skyline since my last visit. Time seemed to almost stand still.

  Fogle’s Dallas branch sat right in the middle of the city whereas Raphael’s college was several miles north. I checked into a hotel between the two distances. In the hotel lobby, through a phony email account I had created, I emailed him.

  Got time for a drink? Your old friend, J

  I played around for a few minutes, checking the weather and local bars within the area. Across the street was a run-down, log cabin style steakhouse. They advertised an all-you-can eat salad bar and a five-unit special on all margaritas. The place didn’t look like a chain. Maybe the Peacekeepers in the Dallas area had not gotten around to confiscating businesses.

  I checked my phony account again.

  Time and place?

  Raph understood. I typed back the intersection and time. He showed up twenty-five minutes early, but I was already there. We both laughed at our compulsive punctuality.

  The place had a western theme with cowboy hats and tackle hanging from the split-logged walls. The servers wore western shirts and bandanas. Country music hummed softly in the background, and the smell of steaks wafted through the air. The atmosphere reminded me of America before the war. Nostalgic tears seeped out of my eyes. This place didn’t stand a chance in staying open long-term.

  Raphael motioned for me to join him at a table in the corner. He went straight to the bar and brought back two margaritas. Before he sat down, he gave me a hug.

  “It’s so good to see you. Thanks for coming. What brings you out here?”

  “Work.” I looked around the place. I didn’t see any cameras, but I liked the empty beer garden I saw through the window better. There were old fashioned striped awnings, large trees, and it bumped up to an alley lined with dumpsters. “Hey, it’s nice out. Hot, but nice. I’m inside all of the time. Boston’s weather is always so cold. They say we got a touch of nuclear winter. Can we drink and eat outside?”

  As if reading my mind, Raphael nodded in approval. I wasn’t used to the stifling heat and humidity, but was happy to sit outside without a winter coat and gloves.

  We guzzled down our margaritas and I whispered, “You’re right about Fogle. They are in deep. Did you know they had me write a computer coded program that flags so-called treasonous words and conversations? Camden from security already thinks a man was killed for privately bitching to his wife about the Peacekeepers. This New World Order is more like the Fourth Reich.”

  “You’re singing to the choir. Jaxie, I think we’re safe. You can talk a little bit louder.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll keep on whispering. Too much at risk. Some Fogle employees, Brick, and I decided to take a stand. Wendy, my old neighbor, is also helping. You met her. We use her bakery as a meeting place.” I told him about everything. He listened intently as I filled him in on Peacekeepers and the ad hoc U.N. Three more margaritas later, I blurted out my vigilante plans.

  He hadn’t said a word in two hours. Our steak dinners went cold and untouched,
but our margaritas continued to be refilled.

  “Well? Are you going to say something? Are you interested in joining us or do you think I am insane?”

  Raphael scratched his chin, waved two fingers at the waitress for more drinks, and then said, “You’ve gone and done it, Jax. You started a movement. A fucking movement.” He smiled at me with those gorgeous big white teeth. His eyes that were so dark and desolate lit up to a lighter shade of brown. “I couldn’t be more proud of you than I am right now. Lemons into lemonade. Genius.” His words were slurred, but mine were probably too.

  I told him about my growing little gang and how we called ourselves the Patriots. He absorbed every word, smiling and nodding. “Do you have anyone you can recruit? I mean, I know you just got hired on at the college, but maybe some pissed off college kid can help? A disgruntled professor? Our mission is simple. Everything centers on screwing over one asshole at a time. Some of the details involve removing the microchip, using disposables, finding a fence to sell off whatever you steal, checking for bugs and cameras…What else? Oh, finding a safe place to meet with your Patriots. That’s really essential. We are figuring this out as we strike. We could really use you. Maybe you could recruit some of the nice people I am sure you met here.”

  Raphael laughed at me and said, “Oh yeah, Jax. Piece of cake. I’ll ask one of my college students to fuck up the Internet and then hack into the security system of a top asshole. Piece of cake.” He then rolled his eyes. “Unlike you, my potential recruits are regular people who are stoned out of their minds on anxiety drugs, not MIT computer geniuses.”