Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

By the time Tim reached the front elevator, this one smooth and slick with a TV screen embedded in the brushed-stainless-steel panel, Yueh’s on-air honeyed tone was pinch-hitting. “…haven’t seemed to express much remorse over those children and men and women who died.” Her brow furrowed slightly, approximating genuine puzzlement.

Tim stood to the front of the car, in the security camera’s blind spot. The interior was exclusively metal-no mirroring through which a second camera could be monitoring.

“Those people were working for a fascist, tyrannical cause. The Census intrusion is a communitarian strike against principled individualism, against the free, independent, constitutional republic that men like me are fighting to reestablish. A list of our citizens, available to whoever digs through a federal filing cabinet…” Lane snickered, his fingers rasping across his patchy beard. “Do you think our Founding Fathers had this in mind? How much we make? What ethnicity we are? Where we live? There’s a war going on in this country, in case you haven’t noticed, and the Census is more ammunition for our so-called leaders. They’re launching a full-scale offensive against American sovereignty and rights-God-given rights, not government-granted rights.”

“Census data isn’t available to other branches of the government, Mr. Lane. Surely you’re exaggerating the-”

“Did you know, Ms. Yueh, that the Census list was used in 1942 to round up Japanese-Americans and throw them in internment camps?”

Her smile clicked on like a flashlight, but the split-second delay showed she’d been caught flat-footed. Tim couldn’t resist a smirk. Score one for the bad guy.

He slid his thumb along the silver remote device in his pocket. It had a flip top like a lighter, which hid a single black button. He’d estimated its range conservatively-it would extend at least ten strides from the building’s front doors.

Lane continued imparting gems of wisdom. “Democracy is four wolves and one sheep voting on what’s for dinner. Liberty is the sheep with an M-60 telling the wolves where to stick it. The government is impinging on us, our rights, nibbling away at us, nibbling away. That attack on the Census Bureau was justice being administered.”

The elevator doors dinged open in the lobby. From janitors to bean counters, KCOM workers were gathered together, watching the interview on the massive screen on the west wall. One woman stood frozen in place, Jamba Juice straw inches from her open mouth. Scanning the lobby crowd were four uniformed LAPD officers and-from the preponderance of fanny packs-quite a few undercovers.

Tim walked the path he’d mentally charted out, keeping to the edges of the cameras’ fields of vision.

Lane’s voice boomed off the marble floor and bare walls. “At its least harmless, the Census is an apparatus to serve the expansion of the welfare state. In this country, today, we pay a higher percentage of our earnings in taxes than serfs once did.”

“Serfs didn’t have inco-”

“And the federal bank is an even bigger perpetration of treason by our usurping government.”

Yueh’s face hardened into her trademark expression, the one used in commercials describing her as “hard-hitting.” “You’ve done everything here but answer the first question I asked. Are you at all sorry that seventeen little boys and girls are dead, that sixty-nine men and women are dead?”

Lane’s smile sprang up fast and crooked. “‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants.’”

Tim crossed the lobby, hand jammed in his pocket, thumb working the lid of the remote device like a rabbit’s foot. “‘Patriots and tyrants,’” he muttered. He tucked his chin to his chest as he neared the revolving doors and their attendant lenses overhead. A quick spin and he was out on the pavement.

Neither Yueh nor Lane relaxed their postures; they remained squared off, predators gauging vulnerability.

The crowd outside surged and ebbed. People had red ribbons pinned to their jackets. Someone was murmuring in rage. A man wearing a fuzzy hat with earflaps watched the TVs in the front window, his mouth agape, his cheeks glistening with tears. Tim counted his steps from the revolving doors. Four…five…six…

Melissa Yueh’s face loomed seventeen times in close-up. Her jaw was set, her eyes shone coal-dark and pissed-the first show of the substance beneath her persona. “You’ve avoided answering my question again, Mr. Lane.”

In the quiet of the street two blocks down, the now-unmarked Chevy van coasted silently to the curb. Tim flipped up the lid on the remote device, rested his thumb on the button. A woman keened softly in the arms of a man.

Lane seemed to gather a sudden, fierce energy. His body tightened and he leaned forward, seventeen images moving in concert, his finger jamming down into the table so hard it bent and whitened. “All right, bitch. Am I sorry they died? No. Not if it brings attention to-”

Tim clicked the button, and Jedediah Lane’s head exploded in mosaic.

RAYNER’S conference room was all postsweat chills and high energy. Robert and Mitchell paced on opposite sides of the conference table while the Stork, kneading out a cramp in his left hand and basking in an almost postcoital glow, sat calmly between Rayner and Ananberg.

Ananberg wore the sleeves of her thin black sweater pushed up to her elbows, her collar tips peeking out with J. Crew perfection. Tim caught her staring at him a few times, her dark, shiny eyes flashing quickly away.

Dumone stood with one hand resting paternally on Tim’s shoulder-which Tim allowed and even didn’t mind-the other holding a remote with which he slow-advanced the explosion of Lane’s head on the overhead TV.

First Lane’s eyeballs ejected from their orbits. The skin covering his scalp and face balloon-swelled, then split, his mandible blown off in a single piece. Then his entire head seemed to dissipate at once, to crumble with the slow-motion horror of an avalanche starting. Lane’s body remained stiffly in the seat, perfectly headless, tie still set firmly against the collar, one finger vehemently stabbed down into the table.

The camera did a Blair Witch swing, catching scrambling techs, militia goons, and Melissa Yueh watching with an expression of unadulterated wonder, a plasma splat of gray matter clinging to her cheek just beneath a mascara-heavy eye.

Dumone froze the screen. Ananberg inhaled sharply, her chest jerking a bit, her lips parting. She caught herself quickly, her usual seen-it-all complacency again taking hold of her features, an expression of icy amusement. Rayner’s face was white, save for disks of color at the heights of his cheeks. He propped his elbows on the table, resting his chin on the bridge of his laced fingers, and exhaled loudly.

Robert passed Mitchell, and the two slapped hands. “Motherfucking genius.”

Mitchell’s face, softer than Robert’s, was flushed with excitement. “Brilliant. I’d forgotten-the slightest explosion in the external acoustic meatus can induce massive intracranial pressure. Open a head right up.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Right there.” Robert strode over and grabbed Tim in a forceful embrace, giving him a faceful of rough shoulder fabric laced with nicotine. He shook Tim once, hard, and set him down. Though Robert was a good several inches shorter than Tim, he was undeniably more solid, his thick arms and legs seeming part of a single, immutable block.

Tim took a step back, away. “What’s next? A victory lap, then we douse Rayner with the Gatorade cooler?”

His comment was lost in the excitement; Dumone alone took note, fixing Tim with his solemn blue eyes.