Kurt Schlichter: People's Republic

“Would you do it for $5 million?”

“I would sure think about doing it for $5 million. See, that would pretty much set me up to retire and I could stop going back and risking my ass to solve other people’s problems.”

“Mr. Turnbull, I’ll pay you $5 million to do it.”

“One in advance.”

“Agreed. But there are conditions. You will take George Junior with you. And if you do not recover her relatively intact, you forfeit the remaining four million.”

“’Relatively intact.’ Okay. But I have conditions too. First, I take Junior here to the range tomorrow and decide whether I’m willing to have him tag along. If I do, Junior understands that the chain of command is me, then him. He does what I say, when I say it, how I say it gets done.”

“Agreed.”

“I want to hear Junior say it. Junior, do you understand?”

“Yeah, I understand chain of command. I was a lieutenant.”

“Oh good, a lieutenant. That’s reassuring. I guess I’ll be handling the map and compass. And speaking of equipment, I’m going to have a shopping list and some of the stuff Clay here is going to have to provide. Which brings me to another thing that’s been gnawing at me. Why is there a spook here?”

“I’m just here to assist. This is a private transaction. The government is not involved, of course.”

“Oh, of course not.”

“We’ll chat after you and Mr. Ryan are finished.”

“Uh huh. Naturally.”

Ryan sat down across from Turnbull.

“You’ll do it?”

“If you meet my conditions, and if your spy friend here can get me what I need. And if what he tells me doesn’t lead me to think that I’m not coming back relatively intact.”

“Thank you, Mr. Turnbull. I’ll have my people start making the arrangements.”

“Okay. And Junior – tomorrow, my ranch, nine a.m.”

George Junior nodded. His father rose out of the chair and George Junior followed him to the door.

“Bring my daughter back to me safe, Mr. Turnbull. Please.”

“I’ll do my best.”

They went out the door, leaving Turnbull and Clay at the table alone.

“Why are you involved in this, Clay?”

“Well, let’s say that Mr. Ryan has a lot of friends in high places and those friends have my phone number. You should be happy. You can retire after this one.”

“There’s a big empty space I gotta fill between the agreeing to do it part and enjoying the money part.”

“Just a bit of one. So, what the hell happened in Los Angeles? You’ve always been a shoot first then shoot again kind of guy, but four blue cops?”

“I deny all knowledge of any violence,” said Turnbull. “But PSF aren’t cops. They’re glorified muscle. All the real cops picked up and left with the rest of the working people after they saw how things were going to go. So you got a few rich people, a lot of poor people, and an army of thugs keeping them apart.”

“Do you think they made you?”

“I think it started as a shakedown, but what was weird was that they were mad , Clay. Usually when they shake you down or rip off your stuff it’s just business, but these guys were angry. They saw I had a car and a pretty high privilege level and they got pissed. Everyone’s pissed. It’s falling apart over there.”

“That’s how we assess it. We always knew the blue model would fail. It was just a matter of time. We kept the farms and the fuel, and they kept the mouths to feed in the big coastal cities. They won’t exploit their resources – they still buy most of their energy and food from foreigners, and they are running out of credit. They picked on the people who did the hard work, and those people came here. We told people here that if you don’t work, you don’t eat and the ones who wanted handouts picked up and went blue. I think we got the better part of that deal.”

“Yeah, the People’s Republic is what happens when you let movie stars and college professors pick the government. Okay, we all know it sucks and it can’t last. So why me? You have your own network inside the PR. Where do I come in?”

“Well, for one thing you aren’t in any network, meaning you are hard to compromise. Those socialist bastards may suck at most everything, but they are good at the oppressive arts. Our people keep getting swept up. We aren’t sure who to trust. But there’s not much chance they know you.”

“Wait, you said they are looking for me.”

“They are looking for some blurry bourgeois terrorist who capped some local heroes. But they are focused inward – it’s part of a factional power play. The players in the government are trying to use the incident against each other for leverage. They aren’t looking for you to come back and bring something out for us.”

“Is this girl that important?”

“No, she’s just a stupid girl who went to college and got stupider. Oldest story in the world. No, there’s something over there we really want and we need you to walk it out.”

“Can you tell me what this mystery McGuffin is?”

“Data on a hard drive some of our friends on the other side liberated.”

“What kind of data?”

“Classified.”

“I still have my clearance. You know I’m still in the Reserves like every other citizen who’s too young for a walker.”

“We got a source inside the PBI HQ and the source tore out a hard drive. It’s got the files on their informers. It’s gold – every narc, weasel and snitch on the West Coast on one little hard drive. If we get it out, we can figure out who they’ve turned and who they haven’t and rebuild our networks.”

“Okay, but why walk it out? You can plug it in, go online and transmit it to some foreign country, then back here to get around the e-blockade.”

“Too risky. All of Silicon Valley didn’t pick up and move. It might have protection that would let them detect and block or alter the transmission. Or it might report who we are interested in. Regardless, we need to decrypt it here, on an air-gapped system.”

“Carrying it out by hand is safer? You thought that through?”

“Marginally safer. I can trust you’d have sense enough to ditch it if the heat comes around the corner. So, basically, I’ll square you away to go in and all you do is make a quick stop with a contact in LA on your way home, pick up my hard drive and bring it out along with the girl and you get your millions and I get my data and everyone’s happy.”

“It sounds so simple and easy. So why are there hairs standing up on the back of my neck?”

“Because you’re not a fool. If it falls apart while you are over there, you could get caught up in the reckoning. Plus, as soon as it goes bad in the blue we’re sealing the borders. Now, you’ll have a primary and supplemental re-entry point and we’ll be waiting for you, but if a couple million blue staters start marching our way determined to leave the nest they shit in to come here and shit in ours, all bets are off.”

“Well, let’s just hope that they can hold their shit together for a week or two so I can get paid.”

Clay sat back and smiled. “Try not to get killed, Kelly. You’re extremely useful.”

“Useful, huh? Carve that on my tombstone.”

Kelly Turnbull’s ranch was about 500 acres in the dry hills some 90 miles southwest of Dallas, far away from annoyance and inconveniences like cities and highways and other people. To call it a ranch would be a misnomer; there were old stables, but he had no horses or livestock. They were too much trouble, and he was often away regardless. The only occupied structure was the white one-story house, small but sturdy, and he had done much of the renovations himself. He liked working with his hands, finding it relaxing. He could set his mind on auto-pilot and simply build; when he was on the job, every second he was on edge, planning and evaluating, thinking through scenarios, preparing for threats.