Walter Williams - Deep State

He was traveling uphill on a narrow lane between shops and office buildings. Dagmar caught a glimpse of a store called Toys Aras, its facade covered with cavorting Disney characters. How many trademark violations, she wondered, could be packed into a single image?

There were still a large number of the demonstrators walking along with Tuna, but they were rapidly transforming themselves into ordinary, unremarkable people. Hats and scarves were removed. Leftover greeting cards were being stashed atop piles of merchandise or handed to bystanders. Some of the women who, like pious Muslims, had attended the demo with their hair hidden now uncovered to reveal themselves as modern businesswomen in Nikes and designer sunglasses, with BlackBerry earpieces glittering from beneath their hair. Scarves were set decorating the street stalls.

The narrow street came out on a major artery, and Tuna’s long legs carried him along, dodging other pedestrians. A minibus with a blue body and tan roof came into sight, and Tuna flagged it down. A door on the right flank opened with a hiss of compressed air, and Tuna stepped aboard.

The minibus was a dolmu? a kind of cross between a bus and taxi. Dolmu? was a word that literally meant “stuffed,” as in grape leaves, but this minibus was only moderately full, with maybe fifteen people crammed into spaces meant for twelve. Tuna was one of those without a seat.

There was no room for Tuna to approach the front of the bus, so other passengers passed his five-lira note to the driver and then carried his change back. From the little Dagmar could see over the heads of the passengers, it seemed as if the driver was very confident in his ability to drive, smoke, make change, and chat on his phone all at the same time.

The dolmu? traveled along at a fine clip until it ran into a jam of vehicles. Horns sounded in vexation. The driver threw up his hands and engaged in what seemed to be a long monologue in which his grievances against the universe were discussed at length.

The creeping pace taxed the patience of a number of the passengers, who left in a clump. Tuna found a seat that had just been vacated. It was upholstered in an unhealthy-seeming aquamarine inflamed by abstract orange-red patterns.

“Well,” he ventured to mutter, in English, “it looks like this may take a little while.”

Dagmar was surprised that she could still see his video. She would have thought that there would be a hill or something else interfering with the line of sight between Tuna and the receivers that Lincoln had emplaced back in the summer.

The Hot Koans were really doing their job.

“Looks like we’ve lost the drone,” Lloyd said. “If it was coming back, it would have arrived by now.”

“Any idea where it went?” Richard asked.

“None. Probably landed on a roof somewhere. We should hope it got completely smashed up.”

An instant message appeared on Dagmar’s computer; she checked to find that the camera team was now in the safe house. In another minute, she received a text that Rafet was approaching the Haci Bayram Mosque, where he would destroy his cell phone and then attend the next service. Only Tuna was still at large.

She looked up at Tuna’s feed and felt her heart sink. Her hands clamped on the arms of her chair.

The minibus had stopped, and a tall paramilitary had just stepped aboard. He carried an Uzi submachine gun around his neck, and his eyes looked at the passengers insolently from beneath the brim of his baseball cap.

Roadblock, Dagmar thought. Gray Wolves. Oh shit.

The Wolf was in his late teens, with a mustache and a ring glittering in one ear. He’d stuck a huge saw-toothed knife in his belt, not bothering with a sheath. By his appearance he was young and inexperienced and arrogant and stupid, and Dagmar knew at once that he was going to be trouble.

The Wolf rapped out commands. Dagmar jumped as Ismet’s voice came close to her ear.

“He’s asking for identification.”

The video image panned down to Tuna’s big hands, reaching into his jacket for his ID. Then the image panned up again.

The Gray Wolf checked the two passengers at the front of the bus, both elderly men, then moved to a middle-aged woman sitting with a pair of shopping bags on her lap. She reached into her handbag for her identification and knocked one of her shopping bags to the floor. She gave a cry and bent down to retrieve her groceries.

The Wolf yelled at her to get back into her seat and show her ID. He prodded her with the barrel of his gun, and she slid back into her seat with a sob of terror.

Tomatoes rolled on the floor of the bus.

The woman reached for her handbag with shaking hands and knocked it to the floor. She reached for it, then drew her hand back, afraid of the gun, afraid of doing the wrong thing.

Suddenly one of the elderly men was standing and yelling at the Wolf.

“He asks the Wolf to have some respect,” Ismet said.

The Gray Wolf was clearly telling the old man to shut up. The old man stepped into the narrow aisle and approached the Wolf.

“He says he’s not afraid,” Ismet said. “He says he fought for the fatherland.”

The Gray Wolf continued to shout back. Ismet didn’t bother to translate.

The old man pounded his thin chest with a fist.

“He says he was with the navy in ’74,” Ismet said. “He says he helped to land the army on Cyprus.”

The boy’s answer was clearly something along the lines of “Who gives a shit?”

Tuna’s point of view kept moving slightly, as if he was quietly shifting his position before going into action. Dagmar watched in horrified fascination, barely breathing. All she could think of was that everyone in the bus was about to die.

The Wolf jabbed the old man with his gun. The old man clearly told him to stop. The Wolf poked him again-and the old man, with admirable timing, slapped the gun away.

The machine pistol went off and put two rounds into the lady with the groceries. Dagmar gave a cry.

Arterial blood spattered from the lady’s throat and she began to shriek.

The Gray Wolf stared.

The old man shouted out two angry syllables, threw himself on the Gray Wolf, and tried to wrestle the gun away. The boy shoved the old man back into his seat and then brought his gun around and fired more rounds. Blood flew. The old man collapsed into the lap of the second elderly man, who recoiled. The driver, who seemed to have caught a round himself, was shouting.

The woman with the groceries kept screaming while trying to plug the hole in her neck. Her vegetables rolled around the floor of the bus.

Dagmar watched as the wide eyes of the Gray Wolf surveyed the situation, as his mind tried to grasp the significance of what had happened.

Tuna watched as the boy’s mind failed to find anything within itself but the necessity to keep pulling the trigger.

Tuna charged, of course, but by then it was too late.

Tears streamed from Dagmar’s eyes as she stared at the blank screen. The video shades continued to record after Tuna had been shot, though the angle showed only boots and the floor. The audio continued to record shots and screams for another fifteen or twenty seconds. Now there were boots marching back and forth, sounds of traffic and distant conversation, the Wolf apparently talking with his teammates.

Ismet was holding her from behind, crouched down behind her with his warm cheek laid against the side of her head. She wiped tears from her face with the back of her hand.

“What’s that?” she said. Something was moving in a corner of the frame.

“Jerrican,” someone said.

A red plastic container for gasoline. There were flashes of gold, the sound of gurgling.

“No,” Ismet said, appalled.

“They’re going to torch it,” Magnus said.