“Kendall didn’t care either way,” Donahue said. “If the Chen agreed, he had a new, major supporter. If the Chen disagreed, he would arrest him. This would keep people in line, because if he can arrest the Chen, he can arrest anybody.”
“Arrest the Chen?” Drake asked. “He’s a big guy. Good luck with that.”
“Yes, but he is an original colonist, and he was an adult when he got here,” Donahue said. “He’s seventy years old. Harmless.”
“But he’s big in another way,” said Olga Golov, the director of the infrastructure department. “He has a powerful family and powerful friends. I think Kendall may have bit off more than he can chew.”
“That might be the reason for the emergency meeting, then,” Drake said.
The limousines stopped in the street outside the overhead garage door leading to the basement of the council building. It, of course, was one of the new buildings, and the chairman’s offices were in this building as well. The overhead garage door remained closed.
The other limousine pulled in behind them, presumably with the other six members of the council on board. Their driver got out to go and talk to a guard standing by the closed garage door. The other limo’s driver joined them.
The bodyguards got out and nervously looked up and down the street. They clearly didn’t like having the cars sitting out here in the open.
Meanwhile, the drivers and the guard at the door were having an argument. The guard who refused to open the door for the limousines didn’t know that the message he got from Kendall telling him not to let the limousines into the garage under any circumstances had actually come from Matt Chen-Jasic via Kendall’s account.
The bodyguards took an interest in the argument and walked over to the door. When they were about a hundred feet from the limos, one of them reached into his pocket and activated a radio transmitter.
The additions the Chen-Jasic family had made to the limousines were six homemade claymore mines – an explosive covered on one side with hundreds of pieces of shrapnel. One was installed in each of the two rear armored doors of each limousine behind the interior door panels, up against the armor plate. One was installed in each limousine against the armored roof above the headliner.
When the bodyguard enabled the transmitter, the mines all went off simultaneously. The heavy armor plate provided a good back plate for the mines. Shrapnel from three directions shredded the rear passenger compartments of the limousines and the occupants thereof. The armored cars actually held together, the explosive in the mines being sized to propel shrapnel, and not to blow up the cars.
The bodyguards pulled out their guns, rapidly scanning the street up and down.
“Shit! Get us inside before they launch another one!” one of the drivers yelled at the door guard.
“Another what?”
“Another one o’ whatever the fuck that was. Come on. Get us off the street. That’s not against your orders. You’re not letting the limos in.”
The guard turned around and unlocked the man door next to the overhead door. He pulled it open and let the drivers in, then the bodyguards. The second bodyguard holstered his pistol, then held the door and waved the door guard ahead.
The bodyguard walked in the door behind the door guard. He grabbed the door guard’s head from behind and twisted it in both hands until the door guard’s neck broke with a crunch. The other bodyguard turned around and picked up the man’s feet. They carried him to a nearby equipment room and dumped the body in the corner.
One of the drivers went back over to the man door. An unmarked van pulled up. The driver walked out to the van as the side door opened. A man inside handed him a small suitcase, and the driver carried it back into the building as the van drove off.
Alarms were sounding in the building now, and the driver could hear sirens outside as the door closed behind him.
Matt Chen-Jasic got a message from the strike team that they were inside the building and had the suitcase. He sent a message from Kendall’s mail account to all the police ‘special teams’ units to suit up and come to the council building immediately, as there had been an attack on the council, and he expected an attack on the council building.
The police special teams were all Kendall’s hand-picked enforcers, the squads he was building to enforce his new policies. The people who were willing – perhaps eager – to use paramilitary force against citizens going about their business in violation of Kendall’s policies.
In response to Kendall’s message, they all headed downtown to police headquarters, suited up in their paramilitary gear, and headed for the council building next door.
Matt tracked their locations on Kendall’s access to the police dispatcher’s information panel.
The strike team – the two drivers and two bodyguards from the limousines – made their way up the fire stairs to the roof of the council building. They exited onto the roof using the door guard’s building keys and huddled out of site next to the big HVAC unit on the roof.
The driver with the suitcase opened it. Inside were four lightweight homemade hazmat suits and gas masks. They were black. The strike team put on the hazmat suits over their uniforms.
Also in the suitcase was a device that consisted of two one-gallon plastic bottles with a radio-controlled double valve joining them at the bottom, and a large cake pan. They set the cake pan down on the roof under the air intake for the building, then set the device in the pan.
The driver armed the radio-control receiver on the double valve. When it received the signal, the valve at the bottom of each plastic bottle would open, and the contents of
