“Take ’em out,” Philipe said coldly.
And we began shooting.
I aimed for the bald man. He was scrambling across the boardroom, trying to get away, and it was as though I was at a shooting gallery. I watched him move jerkily back and forth across the width of the room, like a target on a track, and I trained my automatic rifle on him, followed him for a few seconds, and shot. The first bullet hit him in the arm, the second in the side, and then he was on the floor and howling with agony, and I took a sight on his head and pulled the trigger and blood and brains shot out of his collapsing skull and then he was still.
I didn’t want to feel good, but I did. I felt great. I glanced to the right of the bald man, saw the short guy rolling on the floor, holding his leg and screaming, begging for his life in high womanly tones. Red streaks smeared over the white shag where his blood soaked into the carpet. Pete stood above him, a rifle pointed at his head.
“No!” he screamed crazily. “No! No! No! No! — ”
Pete pulled the trigger and the short guy’s head exploded in a spray of red-and-white mist.
I was still high, still pumped, and I looked around for someone else to shoot, but the others had gotten them all.
Joe fired his last bullet into Harrington’s already unmoving body.
There was silence all of a sudden.
After the screams, after the shots, the quiet seemed spookily unreal. There was a muffled ringing in my ears. The air was filled with smoke, the floor with blood, and the room smelled of metal and cordite, fire and shit.
As quickly as it had come, the elation fled, replaced by repulsion and horror. What had we done? I caught James’ eye. The expression on his face was a mirror image of the one that must have been on my own.
“Let’s go,” Philipe said quickly. “Let’s get out of here. Now.”
Joe looked around the blood-spattered office. “But shouldn’t we —?”
“Now!”
He strode through the doors the way we had come. I followed immediately behind him, my stomach churning.
I made it all the way to the hallway before I puked.
Sixteen
The murders were news. Big news. They were the top story on the front page of
The men we’d killed had not only been important residents of Desert Palms, they’d been big deals in the world of business, and their deaths caused the stock markets of Tokyo and Wall Street to dip for a few days before turning back up. It turned out that Cigar, whose real name was Marcus Lambert, had not only owned Lambert Industries,
We cut out articles and videotaped newscasts and added to our library of media coverage.
Joe was like a new man. The whipped dog we had met that first night at La Amor had been replaced by a cocky bantam rooster. In a lot of ways, I liked the old Joe better, and I knew most of the other terrorists felt the same way. He’d been timid and frightened, but he’d been kind and generous and humble. Now he seemed overconfident, cocksure, and self-important, and there was a hardness within him that made a lot of us uncomfortable.
The day after “the action,” Joe convened a meeting of the city council, and he asked publicly for the resignation of the city manager and the chairman of the planning commission. He called for a vote on several ordinances that he’d been told to support in the past, and he voted against them.
We sat in the audience and watched. Philipe was paying particularly close attention to the proceedings, and he frowned to himself each time the mayor spoke. Finally, after Joe had broken a tie vote on widening a three-block section of road, I tapped Philipe on the shoulder. “What is it?” I asked.
“I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong.”
I followed his gaze, watched Joe lead a discussion on neighborhood watch programs. “What do you mean?”
“They hear him: they pay attention to him.” He looked at me, gestured around the room. “Not just the city council, but the reporters, the people who came to watch. They see him.”
I’d noticed that, too.
“And he’s changed. I mean, he’s killed his boss — with a little help from us — but he hasn’t…” Philipe shook his head, trying to find the right words. “He’s drifted farther away from us instead of coming closer. He’s… I can’t explain it, but I know it. I know what happens after the initiation, and it hasn’t happened to Joe.”
“You know what I think?” Junior said.
“What?”
“I think he’s half-and-half.”
Philipe was silent.
Bill jumped in, nodding excitedly. “Yeah. It’s like his dad was Ignored and his mom wasn’t. Like Mr. Spock or something.”
Philipe nodded slowly. “Half-and-half,” he said. “I can see it. It would explain a lot.”
I cleared my throat. “Do you think we can trust him? I mean, do you think he’ll remember where he came from or do you think he’ll just shine us on? Do you think he’s still on our side?”
“He’d better be,” Philipe said.
“And if he isn’t?”
“We’ll take him out. And we’ll put Jim in his place. Just like the money men originally planned.”
Three days later, Jim showed up at the mayor’s office. He was not only cowed and humbled but frightened, and we had a hard time convincing him that we did not blame him for anything.
He had called Philipe to ask for the meeting, had called from a pay phone because he thought we were going to track him down and kill him for his affiliation with Harrington and Lambert and the power elite. He wanted a truce, he said. He wanted to meet with us, get things straightened out.
There was no truce to be called, nothing to be straightened out, but Philipe agreed to meet with him, and set the time and place.
“Don’t tell Joe,” he told me as he hung up the phone.
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because.”
When Jim stepped into the mayor’s office the next morning at the appointed time, he looked bad. He’d obviously been living hand-to-mouth, and he’d obviously been under a lot of strain. His clothes were dirty, his face gaunt. He smelled as though he hadn’t bathed in quite some time.
Philipe told him about the terrorists, explained what we did and who we were. He put no pressure on Jim, but he made it clear that Jim was free to join us if he so desired.
It was then that Joe walked into the room.
The mayor stood in the doorway for a moment, stunned and unmoving. Then he rushed forward, his face crimson with anger. “Get the hell out of my office!” he demanded, pointing toward the door. “Get the hell out of my city!”
“This is Jim,” Philipe said conversationally. “Our newest terrorist.”
Joe looked from Philipe to Jim and back again. “Do you know who that is?”
“I just told you. He’s the newest Terrorist for the Common Man.”
