Neil McMahon - Revolution No.9

It was looking like The Birds, all right-only this time it was thick with human beings.

Monks wandered around the fringes, wearing the disguise that Pietowski’s makeup specialists had provided-ragged jeans, worn-out boots, a threadbare army field jacket. His wiry black hair was dyed gray, then worked with pomade to straighten it and give it a greasy, matted look. One of his incisors was blacked out to appear missing. A thick beard and mustache, along with a weathered baseball cap pulled low over sunglasses, hid most of his face. A tiny receiver was planted in his left ear and a body bug microphone was sewn inside his collar, giving him two-way contact with an FBI listening post set up in a phony delivery truck parked nearby.

The day was pristine, clear, warm with sunshine but cooled by a light ocean breeze. The scene was outwardly festive, something like the mass concerts or happenings of the late sixties-but Monks percieved an undercurrent that was disturbingly different. These weren’t kids who had come to party, to soak up the music, grooviness, peace, and love. These were fully formed adults, most of them well past their teens and many pushing middle age and bearing the hard look of years on the streets or in jails. Even the younger faces tended toward an uncaring cynicism, a sense that nothing they saw was of value or even interest.

He eavesdropped on conversations as he cruised, trying to get a sense of what this gathering was all about, but nothing became clear. There didn’t seem to be any kind of central event planned. All that he could glean was that some mysterious groundswell had named today as the day, and Bodega Bay as the place, for a party. There was a lot of beer and screw-cap wine. Marijuana smoke drifted through the air, and he was sure that there was plenty of hard dope around, too.

So far, all was peaceable. But several police cars had moved into the marina, inching their way through the crowd, which parted, grudgingly, to let them pass, then immediately closed to swallow them like a giant amoeba engulfing its prey. A white-and-red Coast Guard patrol boat was hovering just outside the mouth of the harbor’s channel, and Monks had seen three different helicopters-a Coast Guard Dolphin, a dark green Bell sheriffs’ search-and-rescue craft, and a small one he couldn’t identify that was probably the media. Not surprisingly, the local residents looked alarmed.

The cricket-like chirp of Monks’s cell phone in his coat pocket startled him. He had brought it as a backup in case radio contact failed, but he hadn’t expected it to ring, and he didn’t want to be seen using it. He angled his steps away from the crowd with covert speed, shielding the phone with his hand to talk, as if he were coughing.

“This is Monks,” he said.

“Oh, God, you’ve got to help me.” The woman’s voice was shaking, the words spilling out in a fearful rush.

But Monks recognized Marguerite. This was the first time anyone had heard from her since the night that she had slipped away from him on the beach.

Startled, he said, “Yes, of course, honey. Tell me what you need.”

“You were right, he killed Motherlode, and he wants to let Mandrake die. I know that now. What if my baby’s not perfect? He’ll do the same thing.”

“Your baby?” Monks said, with swiftly deepening surprise.

Then he understood.

“Jesus, Marguerite, are you pregnant?” he said. “By Freeboot?”

“He chose me to start his new dynasty,” she sobbed. “Then I found out the truth. Now he doesn’t trust me anymore. I’m just a, a thing, like a cow. Breeding stock. He’s keeping me here. Please, come get me and hide me.”

Monks strode deeper into the scrubby headland vegetation and raised his voice, knowing that Pietowski would hear at least his end of the conversation.

“Where are you?” he asked her.

“He won’t tell me. Somewhere back in the woods, like always. He’s gone now, but there’s others around. I’m sneaking this call, I can’t let them see me.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“ Bodega Bay. Him and some others.”

Monks’s scalp bristled. “What does Freeboot look like now?”

“I don’t know. They’re all wearing disguises and I didn’t see them leave. Oh, God, I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Come on, Marguerite, think. There has to be something that will help us find him. Then you’ll be safe.”

There was a several-second pause. “Callus,” she said tremulously. “He’s the one you shot. He’ll be limping.”

Monks had a grim flash of satisfaction. He hadn’t known until now that Callus, the maquis who had beaten his shins, was the man he had shot. But a glance at the teeming crowd mocked the hope of finding a single limping man among the thousands.

“Keep talking,” he said. “Think out loud. What else?”

“Someone’s coming.” Her voice sharpened with panic. “I have to go.”

“Marguerite, call back and stay on the line,” Monks said urgently.

But a man’s voice cut harshly into the background on her end. “Hey, what the fuck you doing? Give me that.”

“Chill out, man,” she said shrilly. Then she squealed in fear or pain.

“Marguerite!” Monks yelled.

There was a brief scuffling noise, a clonk as if the phone had hit the floor, more of her squealing and unintelligible words. Then the connection went dead.

Monks clenched the phone in his fist, willing it to ring again, knowing that it would not.

“Andrew, did you get that?” he said into the transmitter.

“Some of it.” Pietowski’s voice was tinny in Monks’s ear, but his vexation came through. “We’re already looking for the limper. You got any more description on him?”

Monks remembered Callus, all right-his ruthless face and brutal efficiency.

“Five-ten to six feet, athletic, hard-looking. Very clean cut when I saw him, like the others. Nothing that stood out.”

It wasn’t much help, but Pietowski said, “All right, now we know they’re here. Let’s go rip some new assholes.”

Monks moved back toward the crowd, his rage at Freeboot and the maquis boiling up afresh. With it came a weight of worry for Marguerite. It seemed that she had finally come to her senses-but at what price?

Traffic moved at a crawl along Highway 1 through Bodega Bay, choked by the thousands of pedestrians and hundreds of cars parked illegally along the roadside. A forty-foot Bounder RV edged along in the stream, another bewildered and frightened tourist trying to get through this wild mess. But then it pulled over into a space conveniently vacated by two cars, just as it arrived. The passing crowd swirled around the big rig like water around a stone, but not without offering up plenty of jeering, hostile glances, and occasional raised fingers to this symbol of leisure and wealth.

Shielded behind the smoked windows, Freeboot watched them stonily, with the mixture of pity and contempt that rare men like him-men of great vision and ability-had always held for society’s losers, whose asses had first to be kicked into realizing the power they held, and then into using it. In fact, the RV was just the opposite of what it seemed-a command post for an army that didn’t yet know it existed. And the first battle in the war was coming together out there on the streets right now.

The RV’s parking spot, secured early that morning by the maquis, was a vantage point on high ground, with a clear view of the marina below. Within a couple of minutes, Freeboot saw a California Highway Patrol motorcycle cop approaching, navigating slowly but steadily through the throng. Tension and disdain were obvious in the faces he passed, but no one was ready to take on The Man.

Yet.

Freeboot moved to the RV’s passenger door and opened it. Anyone who saw him would have taken him for a middle-aged tourist. He looked completely different than he had three months ago. He had spent a lot of that time in Panama. That was a great place-mescal, cocaine, pretty women, and plastic surgeons who didn’t ask questions. His cheeks and nose had been thickened, a chin implant added, and his ears angled forward to give him a bearlike look. His hair and beard were short, white, and well trimmed. He wore a padded shirt and a fanny pack across his belly to accentuate a paunch. But underneath it, his ferally strong body was the same.