Flashback

Val, trying to tell him all about what it had been like on the real 9-11, and all about himself—he’d been teaching The Etymology of John Keats’s Ass or some such crap at the University of Colorado in Boulder and had been between wives and raising Val’s three-year-old mom at the time, going to school and joining other instructors in the faculty lounge as they watched the aftermath of the martyrs’ planes crashing into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and…

Val had cut him off. Who gave the slightest sparrowfart about such ancient history? What was he, Val, supposed to do next—get all emotionally worked up about Stonewall Jackson getting killed at Gettysburg? It was all old and done and dead, man.

Stonewall Jackson died before the Battle of Gettysburg was Leonard’s pedantic response.

Well, had been Val’s withering riposte, this right-wing anti-Caliphate crap died before Leonard had gotten senile. Like all American kids, Val had studied the Q’uran since kindergarten and Islam was the Religion of Peace— any dickshit knew that. Why would Leonard get all blubbery about the beautiful Mosque of the Martyrs of the Holy Place in New York? What did he want? demanded Val. For them to move warmonger Greg Dubbya Bush’s bones to New York and build a crypt for them there?

“George W. Bush” had been Leonard’s sad response.

Then Val had gone out to be with the flashgang all that night and the next morning and the conversation was never picked up again.

But now, looking at the New York mayor and vice president slobbering all over the scowling, bearded New York chief imam on the TV images, Val felt uneasy for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Maybe it had to do with all the hajjis here at the open market ripping everyone off. Or maybe it was as stupid as all those American boots and uniforms being piled up and sold as if they really had just been stripped off dead American soldiers on some unpronounceable Chinese battlefield.

Val shook his head to chase away stupid thoughts and sidled over to the gun table—the reason they’d come here this morning—to watch from a distance as Coyne tried to make his purchase.

Coyne was the oldest and tallest and darkest of the eight of them—his attempt to grow a beard wasn’t completely successful, but at least he’d achieved some good, dark stubble—and although he couldn’t tamper with his NICC, he had a separate military-exemption card, originally Brad’s and then fucked around with by Brad’s AB buddies, that said he was over eighteen. Obviously, if Coyne scored with the guns he wanted, he’d have to pay cash… but he seemed to have the cash.

The hajji in charge of the gun table had shooed Toohey and the other boys away— the cop and DHS mini-drones were buzzing and hovering just a few hundred feet overhead—and now the bearded Iranian glowered suspiciously at Coyne. But the military-exemption card seemed to pass his scanner’s inspection. When the scowling hajji demanded Coyne’s NICC, Coyne smiled, shrugged, and said he hadn’t brought it—just his army-out card and a lot of cash. He was a hunter, you see, and wanted to stock up on some new weapons before deer season was over in Idaho.

That last line was such Coyne-ish bullshit that Val had to turn his face away at the nearby table where he was pretending to inspect some VRI glasses from Brazil. It was either turn away or laugh.

The hajji wasn’t laughing, Val could see in the mirror provided for those trying on the glasses, but neither did he appear to be buying Coyne’s bullshit. Still, the bearded men in the stall didn’t chase Coyne away from the table. They were letting him inspect the guns.

Coyne had been able to buy two more guns for the gang at the Old Plaza but the weapons were crap: a .38 revolver that went back to Raymond Chandler days—Val did love to read, despite himself—and a new, plastic, folding frame-grip Indonesian pistol that fired toy biodegradable .228 cartridges, the whole thing designed to sneak aboard an airliner sometime in the happy hajji past. Gene D. was carrying the .38 belly gun—it had a two-inch barrel—and Monk had been placated with the Indonesian toy.

Coyne hadn’t yet told the gang where or how they were supposed to do this endlessly flashable hit on an important Jap, but he was insisting that they all needed weapons and that he needed at least one serious auto- flechette mini-gun. To Val, he’d whispered that he’d give him the 9mm Beretta, which pleased Val. He’d liked the heft and feel of the gun in his hand and he was still having images of shooting his old man in the belly with one of those big dum-dummed bullets.

Coyne was lifting and checking the balance of a modern black, blocky OAO Izhmash flechette-spewer. It seemed to be what the flashgang leader wanted and he’d started dickering with the hajji when the glowering carpet-bumper, with a quick glance at the mini-drones overhead and the four LAPD black knights now walking the length of the stalls, suddenly and angrily waved Coyne away from the table.

Coyne shrugged and slouched away. But he was grinning when Val caught up to him at the games table.

“The nasty old fudge-packer slipped me this, Val.” Coyne showed him a tiny green card with the address of a street Val knew to be under another condemned slab and a pencil-scribbled 2400 on the card. “Midnight market,” whispered Coyne. “Tomorrow night. Towelhead’ll sell me three of those beautiful OAO fuckers—more if I have the money—and by Monday we’ll be set. You sure you don’t want a mini-gun?”

Val shook his head. “I like the Beretta.”

Coyne grinned and punched him on the arm just as the other guys showed up.

“Hey, B.C., saw you get chased away by the hajji stud,” shouted Cruncher. “When we gonna hear about when we get to zip the Nip, zap the… ooof!”

This last noise was as the air went out of the big, slobby boy after Coyne had punched him—not at all in a friendly way—deep in the gut. Coyne hit him again and Cruncher went down like a bag of laundry. As the other boys stepped back, Coyne flicked a fast finger up at the drones.

One of the LAPD black-armored wraiths swiveled at the sound of Cruncher hitting the pavement and spoke into his helmet mike. The three other cops also then swiveled Coyne’s way, their movements smooth and oily as those of robots in a sci-fi movie, and visors snicked down as the cops magnified the scene.

Grinning broadly, Coyne showed empty palms in the cops’ direction and then offered his hand to help Cruncher up. Val started laughing stupidly as if it were all just play and a few of the smarter guys in the gang followed suit. Cruncher got up, scowling, his lower lip thrust out like a sulking four-year-old’s, and Coyne led the way to the nearest down-ladder, his arm around the fat boy. Just a bunch of dumbshit homies on their early- morning adventure out to the grown-ups’ market.

Three blocks away and in the musty-smelling darkness under an angled, low-hanging, block-long tumbled slab of the 10 and safely out of sight or mike-range of any interested thing aerial or on foot, Coyne hit Cruncher again, this time full in the mouth.

Val heard teeth snap off and watched coldly as the heavy, stupid fat boy went down again.

“You stupid fuck,” snarled Coyne, standing astride the fallen Cruncher. “You fucking stupid cunt-stupid fuck. Do you think this is a fucking game? Don’t you know that you can get us all killed? Dropped in the ass-fucking Dodger Stadium DHSDC hole for the rest of our fucking lives? Do you want to be manpussy for spanic and nigger humpbugger killers for the rest of your fucking life?”

Coyne twirled, fists still clenched and face still distorted into a snarling mask, to face the others—to face everyone, Val knew, except Val—and screamed, “Do you, you pansyassed motherfuckers? You want to get yourself picked up by DHS and tortured or just offed, fucking do it! But don’t do it to me, goddamn you, or I’ll do it to you first, you fuckheads!”

Suddenly the Beretta was in Coyne’s right hand. Thinking about it later, Val still couldn’t see him reaching back for it, making the motion toward it. One second Coyne’s hand was a fist and in the next second—the black muzzle-circle of death was moving, aiming at all of them one after the other.

Everybody except Val was babbling an apology, was swearing he wouldn’t fuck up, was saying he’d never say anything where anyone could hear it. Even Cruncher was spewing apologies along with shards of his broken teeth and gobbets of blood from his pulped lips.

Everyone was talking except Val.

Coyne aimed the Beretta—Val’s Beretta it was supposed to be—straight at Val’s