Kurt Schlichter: People's Republic

“Get the fuck out of the car.” From the corner of his eye, over the terrified kid, Turnbull could see the cop’s smiling partner cup his earphone. Turnbull could make out a few words – “about sixty seconds to your 20, over.”

One minute. All right. So now it’s going to go how it’s going to go.

“I’m getting out,” Turnbull said.

“Hurry up,” said the cop, never having been taught, or not remembering, to stand back and put some space in between himself and the suspect.

Turnbull shut his eyes for a moment, ran through his plan, and then opened the door slowly, pushing it all the way out. The cop stepped back just a bit, but not far enough. Turnbull stood up to his full 6’3” height deliberately and smoothly, doing nothing to spook them until his left hand shot back, grabbed the cop’s utility belt and pulled the stunned thug forward and around into the “V” between the door and the body of the Ford. As Turnbull drove his full weight into the pseudo-cop to pin him, he drew the Glock with his right hand and swung it into the passenger compartment. It roared twice inside the car, the hollow point rounds streaking over the kid and into the chest plate of the other pseudo-cop’s body armor. The pseudo-cop staggered back and fell, the 9 mm bullets pounding his chest plate like sledgehammers.

Turnbull pivoted and brought the pistol out and up under the pinned one’s chin. The pinned one felt it and knew he was screwed, but his self-critique ended a half-second later as Turnbull put a round up through his jaw, tongue, and soft palette into his brain. The pseudo-cop sagged and collapsed like a bag of warm, wet meat.

Turnbull’s ear rang as he moved around the back of the Ford to the sidewalk – the tinnitus blurred the kid’s terrified howling. The other cop was lying on his back and twitching like a roach, waving his arms and legs as he tried to catch his breath instead of drawing his own weapon. Turnbull casually killed him with two rounds to the face, then turned and opened the passenger-side’s rear door.

Thirty seconds. Replacing the Glock in its holster, he unzipped the duffle bag, pulling out the modified M4, leaving its suppressor in the bag. He wanted noise. There was a Magpul mag in already, and a parallel mounted spare – you could see both were full of 5.56mm rounds through the smoky plastic.

Forty seconds. People were watching now up and down the street, but Turnbull’s focus lay elsewhere. He walked back into the road past the idling cruiser with the black carbine in his right hand, yanking back the charging handle with his left. He let it go, slamming a 5.56 mm round into the chamber. Locked and loaded.

Using his thumb, through pure muscle memory, he set the selector switch to “Auto.”

Fifty seconds. The back-up cruiser appeared ten seconds early, rounding the corner expecting to assist on an easy score. From their angle, the scene before them was unclear – that lump on the street by the Ford was merely a lump and would be for a few more seconds until it came into focus.

But they didn’t have a few more seconds. Turnbull shouldered the carbine and fired a long burst – seven or eight shots – into the driver’s side of the car. The roar was horrendous; he wanted it loud to disorient his targets and to discourage others from intervention. Golden brass spurt from the ejection port like a fountain, and white geysers of pulverized glass danced across the blues’ windshield. He could see shadowy jerking and thrashing inside the passenger compartment.

The cruiser wobbled and pulled right, toward the curb. Turnbull unleashed another burst, this time on the passenger side. Another string of craters erupted across the windshield in front of the passenger. The cruiser went up on the curb and slammed into a telephone pole. Turnbull fired two more long but controlled bursts as he approached, weapon high, and then he squeezed off a third burst. It was cut short as the weapon ran dry. Without pause or even a glance, he dropped the mag from the well using the thumb button, reinserted the loaded mag clamped to its side, and hit the bolt release. The bolt slammed a fresh round into the chamber.

By then he had reached the brutalized, smoking cruiser, his weapon high and ready. The blue cop in the passenger seat was bloody, but still gasping and trying to sit up. Turnbull put a burst in his head and then another in his partner’s. Then he turned back to the Ford as onlookers ran and shouted.

All Turnbull heard was ringing.

Tossing the carbine in the back seat, he got behind the wheel and turned on the ignition. The kid was crying; his ears were still roaring from the two rounds Turnbull had fired inside the passenger compartment.

Time to move. Every PSF thug on the Westside would be inbound when word broke that four of their own were down. That might just clear his path out of town.

It was not far to the freeway, and from there to home. Turnbull pulled out in traffic, and in his mirror saw the locals already scavenging the bodies.

“You killed them, you killed them!” the kid was screaming. Turnbull hit the gas and the Ford accelerated.

“Stop talking,” he said, but the kid couldn’t hear him.

From the 97th floor of the Lone Star Tower, you could see Dallas sprawling out in every direction all the way out to the horizon and beyond. The city was a living thing, humming, alive, with people on the sidewalks and cars filling the streets and freeways. To the north, the New Capitol complex was gleaming in the sunlight. The New White House lay a mile away at the other end of the Mall. This was the nerve center of the United States of America, version 2.0.

Turnbull did not feel much more at ease here than on the other side. But then, no one was trying to kill him here, so there was that.

Still, he openly carried a Kimber 1911 .45 for his long trip into town. Security took his phone downstairs, but made no attempt to disarm him. You don’t mess with a man’s weapons in the USA. That’s how fistfights and civil wars start.

He could feel the heat outside radiating through the windows; the air conditioning was cranked. Turnbull sipped his coffee and took a seat at the conference table, back to the window and, as always, facing the door.

This had better not be a waste of his time.

The door opened and Turnbull recognized the first guy to walk in – George V. Ryan, looking every bit like the kingmaker he was. Tall, handsome, probably 55ish. Usually when you saw him he was on TV standing behind the President. His suit probably cost as much as Turnbull’s ranch.

The next guy was a young man, good shape, probably recent military judging by the hair and his general demeanor. There it was, the red star pin on his jacket’s lapel – he’d earned his citizenship with military service. The young man looked a little like Ryan – probably his son.

And a third man entered, smaller, wearing a cryptic smile, looking like he knew things you didn’t. Turnbull knew him well, and it figured he’d be wrapped up in this somehow.

“Hello, Clay,” Turnbull said. Clay Deeds nodded and took a seat across the table.

“Hi, Kelly. You look good for a guy everyone on the other side is looking for.”

“Oh really? Now why is that?” “Somebody waxed four People’s Security Force thugs in LA last week. My sources tell me not one of them even got a shot off.”

“Probably militant climate change deniers. Those guys are super bad news.”

“Clearly. That was you, wasn’t it?”

“Me? Of course not. No way,” he replied. “So, do they have my name?”

“No. Just a vague description and a blurry security camera photo of some big scary guy. But you’ll be happy to know you’ve inspired a whole new round of internal security arrests. Apparently you’re not a loner. Apparently, you’re part of some giant conspiracy to undermine the legitimacy of the People’s Republic.”