The Kingdom - Peter Collinson

Coté chanced a look over the side of the truck. The arguing Marielito was wearing Chief Darrow’s hat and brandishing his AR-15 in the direction of the cops on the trucks. One of the ex-cons was telling the Marielito to do as he was told, that he was not following the plan.

Then a yell from behind. Coté turned in time to see a young man in uniform slipping over the side of the truck, dropping wildly to the ground and taking off. It was the police chief’s son, his arms pumping, boot treads kicking up bits of snow like sparks as he ran full-out for the trees.

Two shrill whistles from one of the ex-cons on the ground and a shot rang out.

The chief’s son stumbled to his knees. A second shot stopped him from crawling.

People on both trucks screamed.

Armed cons and ex-cons jumped from their cars and rushed the trucks. A pickup with an M60 machine gun mounted on its bed pulled around from the shadows, high-beam headlights on, patrolling the road with a small man crouched behind the butt stock, hands at the ready. Coté began saying “The Lord’s Prayer” in his head.

The Marielito was still going on, his debate with the white ex-con ratcheted up a few notches now. The hostages’ fate was being decided. Cons and ex-cons waited on all sides with wild looks of freedom and desire in their eyes, their rifles trained on the trucks, waiting to be told what to do.

Blue police lights came on. There was a cruiser set just off the road. Four men in con scrubs stood outside it, mostly in shadow.

One man stood in front of the rest. That man slowly shook his head.

The Marielito in the police hat gave in. He shrugged grandly and lowered his rifle, swearing in Spanish.

Rifles went down all around the trucks. The man with the mounted machine gun took his hand off the trigger and tipped the barrel toward the sky.

The trucks lurched and started forward again, past the rumbling combine and a sign marking Gilchrist’s town limits. Coté’s eyes remained fixed on the man who, with a simple command gesture to the renegade Marielito, had pardoned their lives. He was certain that blue-tinged silhouette was Luther Trait.

The combine rolled back into place behind them and the other machines crowded in, the snowplows starting to work, pushing snow from the fields onto the road. The prisoners were barricading the routes into Gilchrist. They were expelling every law-enforcement representative and closing off the town. It was a revolution.

The center of town was taken without resistance and Luther Trait entered the Gilchrist police station with little fanfare, like a conquering general inspecting the abandoned enemy headquarters. The sensation was so like one of his mental journeys that he had to remind himself that he was in fact physically in the room. Coffee cups had been left behind and coats were slung over chair backs and the telephones still rang. Trait touched one of the desks, feeling it under his fingers, still uncertain. He put his hand on a ringing phone and the receiver was still warm. He answered it.

The voice said, “This is Salvatore Richardsen of the FBI. Get me Agent Coté.”

Trait said, “He is not here right now to take your call.”

“Who is this?” demanded the caller. “What the hell is going on there?”

Trait hung up and turned to his crew. They were stamping snow off their shoes and exploring the station, except Spotty who stood by his side. Spotty had been Trait’s white shadow at Marion, the Brotherhood of Rebellion pledge a full head taller than anyone else in the room, and loyal in the extreme. He would march at any order. ADX Gilchrist had failed to break him mentally because there was so little there to break. The rest were ex-cons dressed as locals, Brotherhood of Rebellion click-ups from the outside.

Dove Menckley entered the station shivering. Slender and shifty, a compulsive arsonist with burned hands and skin grafts obscuring the Hispanic features of his face, Menckley took in the room with furtive glances out of weepy, bloodshot eyes. Stacks of paperwork, partition drywall, roster notices: Menckley’s world was full of kindling.

“Crazy out there,” he said, rubbing his scarred fingers together thirstily. “No fires, anyway.”

Trait said, “There better not be.”

Menckley nodded, chastened. “They’re rounding up the residents and bringing them to the prison.”

“Good. How do the people look?”

“Bad,” Menckley said, smiling until he realized he probably shouldn’t. “Pretty bad.”

“Cons staying inside town?”

“I think so. They’re enjoying it too much to run off yet. A few will try their luck on the outside, but I think most are excited about assembling back at the pen tomorrow morning. They want to know what your plan is.”

“We have the snow on our side, but not time. Get back to the pen. Some of them might be thinking about tearing it down. Discourage them. We need it for the next phase.”

Menckley looked surprised. “How am I supposed to discourage them?”

“Just do it. See that they stay happy and occupied until tomorrow morning.”

Trait left him and started down the hallway. He had been inside a few police stations in his time, he knew the general layout. He paused at the doorway to the radio room. Every line on the Enhanced 911 switchboard was flashing. An ex-con named DeYoung was working the console, and Trait motioned to him to put a call on speaker.

“Gilchrist Police,” said DeYoung. “What’s your emergency?”

“Oh, thank God, I’ve been calling.” An elderly woman, whispering. “There’re men snooping around my backyard.”

Enhanced 911 displayed the name and street address of the caller. DeYoung said, “Is this forty-three Abenaki Way?”

“Yes.” Relief, her voice growing louder. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Those are plainclothes police officers, ma’am. We’re checking residents door to door. You can let them right in.”

“Oh — thank heavens.”

Trait moved on. He wore the police chief’s key ring on his belt — having changed out of his hack clothes and back into regular prison issue — and found the lockup around the corner to the right. There were only two cells: Gilchrist was a safe community, once you factored out 312 reluctant residents. Trait found the key that fit the lock, and the steel-barred door swung open.

Warden Barton James sat turned toward the wall on one end of the thick plastic bench inside. He was hunched over, head hanging, hands tucked protectively between his legs. His bald skull was florid with yellow and purple bruises and blood from his face soaked the front of his white cotton shirt. He was beltless and shoeless and still.

Luther Trait entered and stood before him. Trait stooped for a good look at his face. The warden’s right eye was a swollen, raspberry egg. Within the bruised orbit of his left, a pale green iris drifted toward Trait, a dilated pupil attempting to focus.

Trait sat down next to the warden. He relaxed and took in the clean, wide cell. Then, for a moment, he was sitting in his foster father’s study, in an oversized, smoothly polished wooden college chair. Trait waited and the image cleared.

“There are things I want you to know,” Trait said, “because no one else will truly appreciate what I have achieved here. I can tell you now, the break started with your guards. Brotherhood of Rebellion parolees got the home addresses of the E-Unit hacks and maintenance personnel. You all live in a neat little hack neighborhood, so it was easy to do surveillance on the hacks and their hack wives and little hack children enjoying their freedom. My men concentrated on dietary habits — specifically, breakfast foods. Getting into the houses was no big deal, and the sedatives were carefully measured with body size in mind, timed to release well into the hacks’ work shifts. Yesterday was shakedown and sterilization in E-Unit. It was smooth, the hacks going down without any biological surges triggering their body alarms. We used the sight lines along the corridor to duck the cameras and swap clothes with the sleeping hacks. Then we played guard, signaling the cameras to open the rest of the pod doors. This same trick worked for the grate openings at the end of the hall, and the range upstairs, your hacks opening doors for us all the way to the Command Center. The battle there was bloody but quick, and then we owned the entire complex by remote control. Pod doors were opened in every security unit and the animals set free.”