The Revolution Chapter Seven
The Fires of Heaven
The system that encompassed the Fires of Heaven Grandville City security web was basic Metanet security. Sprinkled on various message boards and hidden under threads upon threads of other subjects sat hyperlinks to “join the Fires of Heaven.” The links always lead to a meta-mail address but also covertly placed a small Trojan backdoor onto the user’s metapad.
The idea was if somebody clicked on the link, it was child’s play to see if this was a threat or some normal web-surfer looking for a bit of a thrill—the real recruits came from other channels.
Kayla Meyers had taken it upon herself to keep one eye on this channel, even though there hadn’t been a single hit on it in three weeks. She had been called paranoid a time or two, but she like to call it “prepared,” a value beat into her during her career building software for missiles for the Grandville Regulars.
She couldn’t see it, but this paranoia was worse since Barbara’s death. She saw shadows around every corner, worried that the men who penetrated her house were back. She had carried a slug thrower as a matter of everyday routine before, but she had begun sleeping with one under her pillow lately.
The specialized notification sound for what she had began to refer to as the “Fed Trap” shrilly rang through her metapad speakers. A banner dropped down from the top of the screen automatically pausing the Spinner news stream Kayla was watching.
The banner notification said, “New message from MP: 1.013.759.9.”
As loud as she could muster, Kayla screamed, “Becky!”
Rebecca James, as quickly as she could rushed into Kayla’s office, “What’ve you got?”
“The Fed Trap got a hit.”
Rebecca smiled, finally some action, even if it turned out to be nothing. “Have you looked at it, yet?”
“Nuh uhh, not yet anyway.”
“Well, pull it up and tell me what you see.”
Kayla pressed a couple of buttons on her keyboard and the complete file system of the target appeared on her screen. A couple more keystrokes and her pad screen was mirrored on the big screen above her desk placed on the South wall of the apartment. It was the only wall where the morning sun didn’t wash it out as it streamed through the window.
For a few moments, Kayla clicked on files at random, not really sure where to start. She looked at Rebecca, “Maybe we need some beanbrew.”
Rebecca nodded and turned on her heels and left to do just that. There were only five of them in the cell, and she was the only one who could make a halfway decent cup.
The apartment was a small two bedroom in a three tower complex on the city’s north side. Somehow they packed five of them and a small operations center into the two bedrooms and the communal living area. It was a tight squeeze, but somehow manageable.
She took her time making the pot of beanbrew, methodically pulling down the supplies from the cabinet above the sink, filling the pot with warm water, and sitting and watching the dripping brown liquid fill up the glass pot. She was doing anything she could to allow Kayla time to work her magic.
Kayla may be the tech magic of the group, but Rebecca was the defacto leader. She was the one making the day to day decisions of the cell. If there were important jobs to be done, they came from Billy Walker, but the street level work fell on her shoulders to delegate.
One of the nice things about being an “outside the law 'terrorist' force,” like the Grandville media had called them once, was that she didn’t have to worry about being accountable to bureaucrats who didn’t have a clue about the situation on the ground. She was thankful that Billy seemingly had that part under control.
Rebecca walked back to the desk that Kayla called an Office with two mugs full of hot, black, bitter drink, one for herself, and one for Kayla. She sat Kayla’s drink on her desk.
“What’ve you got?” Rebecca asked.
“So, this guy is Jackie Hodgeson. He’s a financial analyst who works for Amnety. He looks like a normal if a bit antisocial person who does his job and goes home and smokes some leaf and drinks a bit too much.”
“So?”
“Well, this sounds normal, but the strange thing is that the work he does is very specialized. He watches the stock market for trends and makes recommendations to his bosses. Still on the level, huh?”
“Seems so, what’re you getting at?”
“Amnety is owned by Financial Services Conglomerated, which is of itself a wholly owned subsidiary of DSI Shapsville.”
Rebecca thought about the corpse of Bob Maklin buried under the barn at The Farm. She cleared her throat before continuing, “So, you think he’s dirty?”
“I didn’t quite say that. The connection between the three companies is tenuous at best, and is not well known, but if this guy is any good at analyzing finances, then I’d be surprised if he didn’t know.”
“So, he knows who signs his paycheck, so what?”
“Well, if he is ignorant, that’s no big deal, right? Well, if he does know, then he’s probably also aware that the data that he’s collecting amounts to corporate espionage if not insider trading.”
“What is your recommendation?”
“He’s either an idiot or a morally questionable person, either way I would like have a conversation with this,” she looked at her screen, “Jackie Hodgeson.”
“Let’s bring him in for a chat,” Rebecca said, taking a sip of her beanbrew, “I’ll let Billy know what we’re doing.”
Jackie regained consciousness just moments before the hood was ripped away from his head. He realized he was in a seated position in a room he had never been in before. His arms were tied to the chair, his legs bound together at the ankles.
The last thing he remembered, before being woken up in this room, was the hood silencing the light. He remembered the hood being damp and smelling vaguely of chemicals. He had lost consciousness right after.
Now Jackie Hodgeson found himself in an unfamiliar and dangerous situation. This was what he got for digging too deep.
He was in a silent warehouse, the only sound came from a far off air conditioning system droning its monotone song. Around him were stacks and stacks of boxes of who knows what kind of inventory, each one had indiscriminate writing and shipping addresses. The only light in the large room Jackie found himself in was a lamp above his head, shining a halo of light around him and only him.
He pulled on his restraints but found no slack in the rope. His wrists began to itch as the rough fibers rubbed his bare skin, but couldn't scratch at it.
“Who sent you?” a feminine voice boomed, breaking through the silence, startling Jackie.
{What have I gotten myself into?} Jackie thought, second guessing the last couple of days.
He struggled to take in his surroundings, fighting with everything he could against the blinding light overhead and the hazy hangover of whatever had knocked him out to see where the voice was coming from. He hadn't even really heard the words that had been said.
“Hey, Foggie, who sent you?” another, deeper feminine voice said. The term “Foggie” cutting through the haze. Jackie suddenly realized the danger he found himself in. “Foggie” had become a derogatory slur for militant members of the Fires of Gaia religion, FOG quickly was extended to Foggie.
If there was one thing that Jackie wasn't, it was a Foggie. He could feel a pang of anger start to well up in his chest. He forced it down, if he was to have a hope of survival he needed to stay calm and think o a strategy.
“N-nobody sent me.”
“Bullshit,” the second voice spat.
It seemed like the only play was to tell the truth. It was the only way Jackie could maybe leave this place alive. He hoped they would believe him, but hope was quickly dwindling.
“A person I only know as Operative 223 left me a note and data stick a-after my friend's funeral.”
“Operative 223? What is this, some kind of spy delusion?” The second voice said.
“It's the truth.”
The higher voice spoke next, “Who was your friend?”
The empathy in her voice was surprising to Jackie.
“Handcock, D-david Handcock. He died at the Flux Market Massacre.”
A laugh of derision came from the lower voice, “A lot of folks died that day, not a lot of them deaths come with shadowy spy men. The world don't work like that.”
Jackie knew they weren't believing him. His heart suddenly started beating harder in his chest. He could feel it in his throat. He was suddenly anxious that his captors were not Fires of Heaven like he thought.
{Should I stop talking? If I do that, will things get rough?} Jackie wondered. {Maybe it's time to look for a Plan B.}
“The data stick was just gibberish and numbers. All it did was lead me to some web pages. I don't know anything other than that.” Jackie mustered as honest sounding a voice as he could. He hoped his captors believed it.
Large double doors opened in front of the chair Jackie was tied to. The midday light overpowered the light Jackie was already used to and his eyes closed to tight slits. There was a very tall, masculine person standing in the door, just a silhouette. The sun, high in the sky, made identification impossible.
The man quickly turned right and headed behind some boxes. There were some hushed voices, but the sound of the air conditioning system made them all blend together. Jackie thought he heard only three voices, but he couldn't quite be sure.
There was a very clear string of expletives came from the second voice.
For a moment, there was only the sound of foot steps walking across the empty warehouse. The sound echoed off the walls and boxes around Jackie.
The man he stepped into the halo of light, his steps sure and forceful, seemingly materializing out of the void.
“I am so sorry for the lack of hospitality. My name is Billy Walker, you may know me as Operative 223.”
The two female voices and their respective owners stepped from the darkness and into the light.
Billy continued, “These are two of our Grandville City operatives, Rebecca James,” the first, higher voice, “and Kayla Meyers,” the second, deeper voice.
“Are you sure we should be telling this guy our name?” The one called Kayla asked.
Billy held up a hand, she stopped talking and nodded.
Kayla took a step toward Jackie, her pocket knife snapping open in front of her face. Jackie wondered if she was about to hurt him.
The short, strongly built woman reached down with the knife, her eyes trained on her captive.
Suddenly, the tightness of the rope around his right wrist went slack as the rope fell to the floor.
There was an awkward silence as Rebecca lit a SmokStik.
“Again, I'm very sorry about your ordeal. When you run a multi-state organization, there's bound to be some miscommunications.”
Jackie, now free, began to rub his wrists to regain circulation, “Is this what you meant by 'we'll be in touch'?”
“Something like that. Now, come and have a drink with me, we have some things to discuss.”
Jackie smiled, “A drink sounds nice.”
Jackie found himself outside, his vision adjusting to the sudden increase in light. He squinted his eyes and cupped his hands over them in a futile effort to reduce his eye strain. Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes.
He had yet to process his feelings about the ordeal he had--and still--found himself in. All he knew was he was angry, but that anger was threatened to be swallowed by a creeping fear that he was still being dragged to his death. He felt a bit like a captured animal in a slaughterhouse.
Shit, where am I? he thought to himself as his vision began to adjust to the scorching late summer Grandville sunlight. The heat was already causing sweat to well up on his forehead.
It became obvious to Jackie as he followed his captors that he was in the middle of a vegetable farm. The smell made him think of his childhood, a sense of nostalgia wafting over him.
"Again, I’m sorry about the rude welcome, I hope my comrades were not too rough," the one called Billy said as they walked.
He didn’t think he had been harmed save for the rope burns on his wrists and the headache from whatever had knocked him out. Nothing too bad. He grunted in acknowledgment.
The four walked for moments in silence. He noticed the women, Rebecca and Kayla, giving him looks of suspicion.
Jackie made a split-second decision to lay it all on the line. "You know, if this is Fires of Heaven and not some weird Grandville police entrapment operation, I don’t know if you’re going to find a sympathetic ear from me."
Billy walked for a moment, his face full of thought, perhaps trying to find the best words. Jackie thought his face and gait looked odly familiar. For a moment, he thought about the man in the red cap from all those months ago.
"Your friend, David, spoke highly about you. He said you were the smartest person he knew. If you knew some of the people he knew, you would know what high praise that is. He was sure you would be receptive to our mission," Billy said, his voice clear and trustworthy.
"I’m just trying to find out what David saw in you people. What was he willing to die for?" Jackie said, his voice biting and spiteful.
The four of them had left the rows upon rows of mostly desiccated and neglected crops and reached a two-story farmhouse, the perimeter of the "yard" was surrounded by a white-painted wooden fence that had seen better days.
The four walked up a couple of stairsteps to a long porch encompassing what Jackie assumed was the front door. The nostalgia washed over him once more. Kayla opened the door as the three others entered the house. She stared at Jackie the whole time she held the door, her gaze terrifying.
The door led to a common area with a small, shin-height table in the center of a circle of five very comfortable-looking cushioned chairs. Jackie and the women sat down while Billy found his way in front of a small bar at the far end of the room.
"I left a bottle of good whiskey here for important meetings like this one," Billy said. The bottom compartment of the bar opened with a large swinging wooden door. Inside, there was a tray with six glasses and a bottle of caramel-colored liquor. Jackie’s mouth was suddenly dry as he anticipated the taste of the alcohol.
Billy filled the first glass while saying, "I don’t think there’s any ice anywhere. The ice trays never get filled."
He offered the first glass to Kayla to his right who waved it away, "I don’t drink on duty." Billy shrugged and handed the glass to Rebecca who hesitantly accepted it and immediately set the glass down on the table.
Jackie’s hands were shaking and he was suddenly very tired as the stress of the day had started to bleed off. He was pretty sure he was, at that moment, safe. He tried to steady his hands as he accepted his drink from Billy.
Rebecca, who up until this moment had been silent, spoke up, "Billy, who is this person, and why is he here with these cloak-and-dagger stories of operatives and data chips and such?" She crossed her arms across her chest.
"David Handcock was an information gatherer and one of the best damn people judgers in Grandville City. If he said that Mr. Hodgeson here was a strategic genius, then I at least had to meet the man," he looked at Jackie, "I had hoped to do this in a lower-stress environment."
Rebecca began putting pieces together in her head, "Hodgeson? There’s a farm about a mile from here run by the Hodgeson brothers, are you related?"
Shit, Jackie knew where he was, fuck.
"Those are my brothers, and that’s my family farm," Jackie said, downing his drink all at once, "we don’t get along."
"Wait, Jackie? Weren’t you some kind of mathlete or something?"
Jackie was tired of this line of questioning, "Yeah, or something, now get on with it, boss. What makes you any different than any number of other terrorist organizations?
Rebecca lit a smokestik to Jackie’s left.
Billy cleared his throat, "The Collapse has laid bare for many of us that in many places in the continent, there is a system of haves and have-nots that have mostly been invisible. The flames of the burning General Assembly awoke monsters who were willing to use this and other systems as openly as possible to take power. These monsters cannot be allowed to gain this power."
Jackie looked at Billy and chuckled, "You sound insane. 'Monsters’?"
The comment hit its mark and Billy, for the first time all day, looked flustered. "I use the term figuratively. Let me ask you a question."
"Go ahead."
"Do you know who owns the company you work for?"
"It’s some venture capital firm in Flandon, nothing strange. Many of these firms hold interests in all sorts of markets."
"Do you know who owns the company you worked for before The Collapse?"
"Some bank in Icebane. Where are you going with this?"
"Do you know where those trails terminate? Who owns your owners?"
"It’s probably a trail of funds and managers and investors."
"DSI. Both roads lead to DSI."
Jackie settled further in his chair as this information washed over him. If this were true, then essentially DSI would have fired him and rehired him elsewhere for half the salary. The connections began to unfurl in his mind.
He began to pull at a string of memories, thinking about the job he had been hired to do. He had manipulated the market with his data. He wondered if he had unwittingly committed corporate espionage for Shapsville. He pinched the bridge of his nose as the weight of what he was thinking began to put pressure behind his eyes.
"You’re starting to see it, aren’t you, Jackie?"
"Let’s say I am, what makes the Fires of Heaven the answer to the problem?"
"All we want is a world of equity and mutual cooperation where a person is entitled to the full benefits of his labor. Where people work to benefit others instead of their bank account. Surely you’ve seen and felt the effects of corporations seeking growth cycle after cycle, haven’t you."
Despite his best efforts, Jackie was beginning to agree with what Billy was saying. "The weather," he offered.
"Among other things. We’ve mined too greedily and deep into the Flux and now all of Gaia is feeling the effects. Gaia is dying."
The words Billy was saying made sense to Jackie intuitively. The only thing Jackie Hodgeson wanted from life was to be a net positive to his environment. Until a few minutes ago, he had deluded himself into thinking he was at least neutral to his surroundings. If he had been so easily duped, then what about other people?
He began to see before him large complex webs of systems built to keep him docile and asleep to the real measurable harm being done by those in power. As a lower-income worker, every late fee he was charged two days before payday made it nearly impossible to save any money and improve his lot in life, or even to have any sense of comfort in his situation. The media apparatus fed nothing but fear into his life, from fear of his fellow man, to fear of missing out on the latest trend.
The privileged few who could afford to purchase a ticket above the web of systems strengthened and used those same systems to reinforce their power in society. Jackie could see it and it disgusted him.
Jackie had once described his politics to his therapist as "Whatever makes the most people the happiest." If what Billy was saying was true, then more people would benefit from Billy’s system than the current one.
Jackie looked at the man in his eyes and said, "I think I want in. What’s next?"
Rebecca put out her SmokStik in the untouched drink, "I don’t trust this. It’ll be shit jobs with a babysitter for now. We’ll see."
"I’ll keep an eye on him," Kayla interjected.
Rebecca smiled, "We’re going to put you through your paces, Farmer Boy."
"Settle in for the suck," Kayla said with a mirthless grin.
The parties thrown by Bishop Ian Quimby were legendary among the DSI Corporation. Large, lavish dinner parties thrown semi-regularly at his home were often the talk of the entirety of Pangea.
Quimby’s home was a palatial three-story mountain estate with a beautiful view of the Southern Ocean and its many floating and migrating icebergs, which reflected the sunset light just so. Quimby often told his guests that he wept when he first saw it. It was this view he would use when someone asked for proof of a higher power.
Tonight’s party was carefully curated to only the most tight-lipped, devout, and rich contacts in his Rolodex. These were a mix of true believers and those with a questionable set of morals in their quest for power.
All of the guests looked to curry favor with the guest of honor, the High Reverend Greg White, Governor of Grandville.
Despite Greg’s love for campaigning, he could feel the greedy eyes of the guests who had come to see him. His views of campaigning had been to project power and magnanimously offer crumbs of that power to the constituents. Now that he had actual power, he found the sycophants tiring.
Greg shook hands and smiled and laughed at jokes for nearly three hours in a haze. These pleasantries were simply preamble before the real show and the real power of the night would begin.
It was in the purple conference room of Ian Quimby’s gaudy home that Greg sat, expected to sit quietly like an obedient puppy while the Council of Five outlined {their} plan of world domination to the money bags who could be trusted with the information. Many of the people sitting in the room with Greg had so much dirt that they could be easily blackmailed in case one of them wanted to leak any information.
All of these people disgusted Greg, but there were at least three kiddie diddlers in attendance. Their sin taped and sat safely at Lenny Ballanger’s Flandon compound, where all the data was collected by the council’s not-insignificant intel network. These men disgusted Greg the most. The irony was not lost on him that he preached to protect the children from the evil child eaters in the north and here he was crawling into bed with more monstrous people than the Gaiacrats could ever be.
Keller Farran was the strategy planner for the Council of Five and he stood at the podium speaking now. If Greg had to guess, Farran was the most dangerous man on the council. Farran had raised Billy Joe Allan, the eyes over Greg, as an orphan and, as such, had an easy overview over every movement of Greg, no matter how secret Greg may have thought they were. If one were to eliminate the Council, Keller Farran would be target number one.
Target number two would easily be Pastor Aaron Thomas, the fire and brimstone pastor of the western mountain folk. His temper and loyalty were well known. He also had a way of making problems disappear, usually with screams and blood. If there was an attack on the council, his retribution was sure to be swift and sudden.
Quimbly, the cowardly old queer would fall in line and could be useful for the near future anyway with his social contacts and rich lovers. Now, he just needed to find a suitable punishment for that bald spy, Allen. Greg smiled at the thought.
He smiled the whole way from his seat to the front of the auditorium after being introduced. He was expected to make a good speech to close out the event like a good little bitch.
“Thank you for staying after such a tiring party, and thank you for your checks.”
There was a chuckle from the crowd.
“And it’s because of those large donations that I know none of you want to hear bullshit.” He turned and pointed at Keller Farran and said, “These fine, peace-loving men have outlined a path to a utopia for all of us in this room. It is, without a doubt, the finest plan for stamping out the Gaiacrats degeneracy I have ever seen. Their plan will lead to little to no bloodshed, and, I’m sure, great profit for cycles to come.”
The crowd applauded loudest at that. Greg had to force himself to not visibly roll his eyes.
“My administration pledges to throw whatever weight behind this council so that Gaia’s will shall be truly done,” Greg lied. He had no intentions of having anything to do with these men’s plans. Not anymore.
The next couple of weeks were indeed hard on Jackie. He had been assigned grunt work from sun up to sun down, moving boxes, screening calls, and ensuring the others had everything they needed—anything the others did not want to do was placed on his shoulders. Jackie did all of this under Kayla Meyers' ever-watchful eye and ludicrously high standards.
He had to suspect that when Rebecca had said, "Pay your dues," she had meant it. Unsurprisingly for farm boy Jackie, there was plenty to do around The Farm. Most nights he fell asleep early and exhausted. He thought it must be a bit like boot camp.
It took twelve days of hard labor around The Farm before Kayla thought it was time to see how Jackie would do on a low-stakes kind of real mission.
In the early hours of the morning, before the sun had even cracked the horizon, Kayla woke Jackie by shaking his shoulders. For the briefest of moments, Jackie thought that there was an intruder in his apartment back in the city, but he quickly realized Kayla had her right pointer finger over her mouth, pleading with him to be quiet. He stifled the sound of terror he felt trying to escape his chest.
"Come with me, spazmoid," she whispered.
Jackie nodded in response. He did not trust his voice.
They left the barn, which had been converted into a kind of simple barracks, and crossed over the fields, now partially cleared and tilled thanks to Jackie’s efforts. They walked in silence in the predawn hours so as not to wake up any of the sleeping members of the cell.
Fritz Baldwin was already outside, fiddling with the tractor in the east field. He had always been good at mechanical things, but Jadckie’s hard work had given him the motivation to show some attention to the machinery around The Farm.
Jackie and Kayla entered the warehouse which had once stored bushel upon bushel of vegetables Michael James had once grown. Now it stored boxes of survival tools.
And prisoners, Jackie thought darkly.
Rebecca James was waiting for them at a table under the same light Jackie had been tied up over a week ago.
Time flies, Jackie thought.
"I want you to know, Farm Boy, that I don’t think you’re ready for real work," Rebecca said. "Kayla does, so I tend to do what my chief of security advises."
Jackie swallowed hard.
Kayla took over. "Don’t tell nobody, but I’m starting to think you are not a complete disaster of a recruit; farm work doesn’t prepare you for the stress of being in the danger zone where we’re doing things that could get you imprisoned or worse."
"This is just a bread-and-butter propaganda mission. You and Kayla are going to go into town and, if it’s safe, hang a few propaganda posters. New ones just came in from the printers. Make no mistake, it may seem simple, Farm Boy, but if you do something stupid you’ll land in a minimum sentence of ninety days in a Super Max Incarceration Facility," Rebecca preached.
Kayla interjected once more, "If you think our workload is bad, you should see theirs. It’d break you."
The way her lips moved reminded Jackie of an olive-skinned Rebecca. If he didn’t know better, he would have taken them for related. Again he thought about Billy and the Red Hat Man.
Was he going crazy? If he was, he decided to hide it as much as he could.
"You act right and both of you come home. Listen to every word Kayla says to you and both of you come home. If you pay attention you might learn a thing or two about stealth and subtlety. "
Jackie didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. It felt hurtful and pointed for no good reason.
"Get your shit, Hodgson. We’re out of here in an hour."
The town of Childless was a small farming community, home to one grocery store, one farm supply store on the opposite end, and two traffic lights (one of which was perpetually burned out). There were various businesses lined down the main north and south streets in the middle of town and always seemed empty, but somehow had been in business for decades in some cases. It struck Jackie just how little had changed since he was a child. The town was seemingly trapped in time.
Kayla walked down the streets, holding three rolled-up posters under her arm. The backs of the posters were covered with a weatherproof adhesive wrapped up in a clear plastic cover.
Unprompted, Kayla said, "You should get yourself a slug thrower. In Grandville, anyone can hold one on them at all times. No licenses needed."
"A gun? I’ve never even shot a gun."
"Maybe that’ll be your lesson tomorrow. A prepared comrade is an alive comrade."
Jackie nodded, feeling a pang of fear in his throat. "Do you have one?"
"Always." She didn’t say any more, and Jackie could not see any out-of-place bulges in her clothes to indicate a weapon under them.
A strange flash in the morning sun drew Jackie’s attention from the conversation at hand. "Shit," he said.
"What?"
Jackie pointed at the object which had drawn his attention.
"Shit, a new camera," Kayla said, the pieces falling into place in her head. "That’s where we need to go. I don’t have my tools to disconnect it, so we’ll have to move by." They kept walking to the next target.
The Williams Antique store was celebrating its thirty-seventh anniversary. The owner had somehow been successful in keeping any of Greg White’s surveillance state from encroaching on his neighborhood. This made it a perfect target for one of the posters.
Kayla handed him one of the posters and pointed toward the side wall. The word’s implication was "Go post it."
Jackie dutifully grabbed the poster and unrolled it. It was a QR code colored like a nice Forrest scene.
He had asked Kayla one time if these codes worked, and Kayla had laughed.
"We’ve got a server offshore somewhere that can break into any metapad that scans it and we have access to everything, including location services."
"And what does the User see?"
"Just whatever movie trailer on Spinner. That makes it look like viral marketing." It was smart and low impact on the user’s phone performance.
All he had to do was take the film off of the back and rub it on. It went without difficulty. Suddenly two targets were down.
The last target was around the corner, but two policemen were standing around smoking smokstix, so they kept walking.
"It’s getting dark. We should start heading back," Kayla said, "You did good today, Stranger." A smile began to pull at the corner of her lips.
The southernmost neighborhoods of Grandville City were crime-ridden war zones. A combination of low income and rampant drug use led to a potent mix of desperation and violence.
The Grandville Department of Police spent most of their statewide resource budget on this couple of square miles on the border of society and nature.
Rebecca stepped from the large PubTrans vehicle when it stopped two blocks from where she was to meet Kayla. Her pistol felt especially heavy in the small of her back, she was off The Farm so she had to be especially alert.
The tensions in this area--called District X by many--between the residents and the police force threatened to boil over. Billy had given her the mission to enflame this tension by any means necessary.
Kayla had several ideas immediately and freely shared them with Rebecca almost immediately after hearing the mission. The easiest and least likely capture plan the two came up with involved Molotov cocktails and a police car. The hope was that the police would send in officers to Division X.
Rebecca wore all black, loose clothing with a mask in her back pocket. She had worn comfortable shoes just in case a quick getaway was required. She hated fieldwork, the stress always made her loopy the next day, but she always insisted on being part of any important missions.
Other than Rebecca James and Kayla Meyers, Bryan Striker requested to come. The standard operating procedure had been for each operative to make their travel to the rendezvous point. Smaller groups made for less suspicion from a constabulary already looking for reasons to hassle the citizenry.
Kayla and Rebecca arrived at nearly the same time to find Striker already there, filling up alcohol bottles with a can of fuel he had stashed earlier in the day.
The three exchanged pleasantries and Kayla pulled a small folded glossy piece of paper from her breast pocket. It was a black-and-white overhead satellite view with a red circle and a line in front of the circle on the road.
"The target is Car 197, who my contacts say is the biggest asshole in the X. There’s roof access above this pastry shop that 197 stops at nightly. This is our window," Kayla said pointing at the red circle on the page.
"I have two bottles for the both of you, should be enough to turn that car into cinder," Striker said.
Rebecca nodded "We’re not trying to cause any loss of life here. We wait for the man to go into the shop, drop our bottles on top of his car, and disappear back home."
The other two nodded.
Kayla checked her watch, "It’s time to move."
The roof access was a rickety, old fire escape ladder on the back of the Logan’s Pastries' building. It was not quiet, but it was uneventful for the three to take up positions on the roof.
It took over an hour, but finally, Car 197 drove toward the bakery from the east. Rebecca fished her lighter from her side pants pocket.
Car 197 parked on the road in an obvious tow-away zone in front of Logan’s. The officer was a tall, well-built man in the sandy brown uniform of the Grandville Department of Police.
Rebecca fumbled a bit with her lighter, as her hands shook from the anxiety. It didn’t take long, though, to catch the rag, well saturated with fuel, aflame. She lit a SmokStik from the flaming bottle.
Kayla was the first one to throw her Molotov cocktail at the Police vehicle. The three quickly expended their supply of weapons.
The darkness of the night was replaced with the red and orange hues of a flaming inferno in front of the pastry shop. The flames engulfed the vehicle.
The three quickly climbed from the roof to ground level. They had a small window of time to make their escape. Rebecca and Kayla started walking down the alley parallel to Logan’s. Bryan Striker decided to look back on their handiwork.
Car 197 exploded in a cacophony of noise and shrapnel as the flames reached the gas tank, shattering the glass of the business. The policeman’s munitions cache caught aflame, the projectiles exploding from the car in all directions.
One of these spontaneously fired bullets struck Bryan in the lower part of his right eye.
Bryan’s yelp and the sound of his body falling caused Rebecca to turn around. To her great horror, the back of his head was gone. She started to rush toward her comrade but was snatched back by Kayla.
She realized that if she did not run, then she would share Bryan’s fate. Her only hope was that his death would not be in vain. Rebecca followed Kayla, guilt welling up in her stomach. It was all she could do to keep from vomiting.
She hoped she had thrown a match from the Flames of Heaven on the citizenry here to fight back.
She knew she had to as well.
