Indivisible, Chapters 9, 10, & 11

America’s day of reckoning has come...

A global run on U.S. Treasuries overwhelms the Federal Reserve and collapses the dollar. Mass inflation sparks civil unrest and panic as store shelves are cleaned out, gas prices rise tenfold, and Americans’ life savings are wiped out. Desperate to maintain control, the federal government grows increasingly totalitarian. The president orders the army home in an attempt to restore law and order, but the army’s battle-hardened attitude and heavy-handed tactics only manage to spur the insurrection.

The lives of a tormented soldier, a tyrannical sheriff, a vain diplomat and a desperate father converge amidst the chaos of total economic collapse and civil war in contemporary America.

Previous Chapter

Chapter 9

The president appeared on morning television on every channel, even ESPN and HBO. Their executives strongly protested the hastily drafted White House programming order (and usurpation of the First Amendment). "Show it or else..." was the reply from the White House. "The First Amendment does not apply during a national emergency." The resistant networks meekly complied. It's best not to upset the man holding the telecom kill switch.

At first glance, the president’s inescapable face appeared to beam strength and resoluteness. His eyes were reassuring, squinting with a confident glint. His navy blue suit and red tie shouted, "I’m in charge! Everything is okay!" He spoke in a smooth, gentle current, smiling often.

But something was askew. His cosmetics were a little off. It seemed too thick or badly retouched or the tone was flat—like a dead man’s makeup. His shave was not close, and his shoulders slumped a little bit.

He sat behind that familiar White House desk, framed by an American flag, and a bureau of family photos, and the Oval Office window draped in gold curtains. The window opened out into what appeared to be a quaint, wooded, suburban backyard. Somehow, the sky framed in that window was blue and clear that morning while the rest of Washington D.C. was being bombarded by a deluge of rain.

The Oval Office set—which might have actually been a blue screen on Air Force One for all anyone knew—was designed to conjure images of a fatherly chat in the household study. The president played the role of Ward Cleaver in the minds of the middle class who were obediently awaiting instructions. But the choreographed invocation did not conjure personal memories of real fathers for the audience so much as it conjured a nostalgic vision, implanted into the American mind by the family-themed television shows they absorbed over the course of their lives. The Oval Office chats parroted stylized TV life which itself parroted stylized life of the 1950s. Few had studies in their homes, anymore. And most Americans never had a real chat with their real dad while he was dressed in a suit and sitting behind a desk. Many Americans had no memory of meaningful chats with their dads at all, other than superficial conversations every other weekend. And if they were so lucky as to have a real chat with their real dad, the view out the study window would probably be that of the siding of the next door neighbor’s plywood mcmansion.

Yet so many presidents had given addresses from that fabricated set, apparently because it worked so well. For an audience conditioned by a lifetime of mass media, the conjured image instilled calmness, trust, and submissiveness. It made the infantilized and helpless population of dependent serfs feel at ease. "The president is father and father knows best. Everything will be okay. Just keep doing what you’re told."

Vaughn poured himself a cup of coffee as he contemplated calling in sick from work. He was exhausted from running around all night, but he decided he needed to go in. This is not the time to inconvenience my employer, he thought. There was twenty percent unemployment out there, by some unofficial accounts.

The president started to speak as Vaughn took his first sip of designer coffee. Good thing he stocked up on the stuff before the Seattle firm went bankrupt.

"My fellow Americans, over the past night, while most of you were sleeping, rogue elements, operating in foreign markets and exchanges—elements unfriendly to America—launched a coordinated surprise attack upon the people of United States. This attack was not one waged by ships and planes or on any battlefield, but it was an attack nonetheless. This was an act of terror, not with bombs, but by keyboards and the internet and on public trading exchanges. These foreign agents and rogue elements have sought to injure America," he paused for a moment, then smirked, "but they will soon discover that they cannot subdue our great nation by cowardly acts of terrorism. America is a resilient nation. It has survived a Civil War and the Great Depression. It and has mobilized the arsenal of democracy to win two world wars. It’s a nation that always rallies, always comes together. America will unite to confront this challenge, as it always has in times of tribulation and struggle. We have the most powerful economy in the world. America is the world’s engine of prosperity and growth. Our industriousness and our diversity are the envy of all the countries of the earth. And no matter what the forces of evil may attempt in order to harm us, we shall endure. We will vanquish our foes and recover. America has faced adversity and always come back stronger. Tested," he paused for emphasis, "but with greater resolve. Our democracy has always been reborn wiser and stronger by her trials…

Blah, blah, blah, Terrorism...
Blah, blah, blah, Freedom...
Blah, blah, blah, Sacrifice...
Blah, blah, blah, Diversity...
Blah, blah, blah, Progress...
Blah, blah, blah, Responsibility...
Hope...Security...Faith...Future Generations....
Thank you. God bless you and God bless the United States of America."

Presidential speeches never change.

While the president spoke, corporate purchasing agents, who had no time for imperial propaganda, were on the phone with their overseas suppliers. After hanging up, they frantically updated their spreadsheet models with new raw materials costs.

"Holy shit!"

Millions of "Effective Immediately" emails flew out to distribution centers and warehouses and convenience stores and retail outlets. Out in the real world, while the big media talking heads blathered on about the emperor’s new clothes, shopkeepers were doubling and tripling the numbers on their price tags, databases and marquees. Prices were rising in real time.

On-the-street reporters, only marginally less vapid then the in-studio anchors, hit the streets seeking to expose the "evil capitalist price gougers" who were using the economic emergency as an opportunity to line their pockets. The reporters shoved microphones and cameras into disgruntled customer faces and captured their lamentations. Grocery store traffic was elevated, but the clerks noticed that the big movers were potato chips and soft drinks and beer. Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.

Local police departments were notified overnight by agents of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA to increase their presence. Vaughn noticed two patrol cars cruising through his neighborhood as he got ready for work.
Vaughn's 72-inch, high-definition, flat screen made in China droned on. "We have gone past the point of no return," said the chief European economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland. "There is a complete loss of confidence. The bond markets are disintegrating and it is getting worse moment by moment."

"What should the government do?" asked the anchor who couldn’t understand why the government had allowed it all to happen in the first place.

"The banks need more liquidity. The Central Banks—the Fed, B of E, Bank of Japan—they need to create more money and lend it to the commercial banks so they can continue to operate. They have to have the cash to buy up the glut of sovereign debt before the system collapses. But first, we need to close the markets and let the Central Banks get together and sort everything out."

"So, more bailouts? What do you say to those who argue that that isn’t capitalism—that markets should be allowed to liquidate?"

"We’re dealing with the real world here, not some textbook ideology. Call it whatever you like, intervention, QE, whatever, we have to destroy capitalism in order to save capitalism!"

It was quite a morning. The contagion cruise that embarked from Asia while America snored the night away tucked in their Therapedic, space-foam mattresses purchased on their Visa cards,continued its world tour through China and Australia, past India and the oil fiefs and Europe, and across the Atlantic. Markets in India, Russia, Germany, and London all crashed, triggering circuit breaker rules that suspended trading in the darkness of the American night. The ship of destruction finally sailed up the East River, on to Manhattan Island, and right down Wall Street.

Advisors tried to convince the president to preemptively close the markets. "No can do," he bristled with executive bravado. "The markets must open. Refusing to open is a sign of capitulation and surrender. America never surrenders!"

The professorial Federal Reserve chairman, his ever-whitening beard and ever-receding hairline making him look ever-the-more gnomish, loosened his tie and poured himself a drink at the 9:30 open. Perhaps the great sovereign ship would not sink, he hoped. The Fed had key-stroked hundreds of billions of dollars throughout the night and had managed to prop up the jittery futures markets. The expectation was that this could tame the animal spirits in time for the NYSE open. But all hope was dashed as the market sank nine percent at the opening bell.

"Fools! Don’t they know they’re killing us all?" The Fed chairman cried out as he gulped his breakfast bourbon. The Plunge Protection Team, the Fed's equivalent of Special Forces, stepped in and started buying which stabilized things for a few moments. Then a rumble thundered through the sovereign hull when word got out that the Chinese were not buying anything. The dollar immediately began a rapid decent against the yuan.

The floor traders started asking questions. "Who’s buying up the treasuries? Chase? Citi? Deutsche? RBS? Goldman? Dubai? What did you say? Come again? You mean they all stopped trading treasuries a week ago? Holy shit! Who then? Direct dealers? Like who? Moriah LLC? Who the hell is that? You say they bought fifteen billion? Really? Some outfit called Crazy Horse bought ten? Who are they? I've never heard of them. What’s going on? Where are the big banks? Wait a sec, this isn't right. Just heard two hedge funds liquidated due to redemptions. Are you sure about that? Oh My God! This is it! This is it! Abandon ship! Abandon ship! Get out now! Sell it all! Sell it to those pension fund chumps! Sell it all to the Fed before they stop buying. Sell! Sell! Sell! Sell! Sell!"

A full-fledged avalanche of panic ensued, cracking the hull of the multi-trillion dollar sovereign vessel. The unsinkable U.S.S. (United States Sovereign) Titanic sank in a spectacular, cascading selloff with three-times record volume.

The gnome fed chairman downed his drink and poured another, and another, and watched the bond ticker on his closed circuit network. Prices down...4%...11%...18%.... Interest rates up plus .5%...plus 2.0%...plus 5.0%!
The Fed tried to pump out as much of the tsunami of debt as it could by key-stroking the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to clear all the offers. The Plunge Protection Team went all in. They hijacked the fiber-optic bandwidth to make sure their buy orders got through first. Then they stalled the private sellers. They worked covertly through friendly foreign central banks: the Bank of England, the Bank of Australia, the Banco de Panama—yeah that’s right, Panama. They had private banks on the dole, too—not the household Wall Street names but most of the regional outfits. The Fed gave them huge guarantees and unlimited lines of credit and agreements to repurchase everything they bought with guaranteed returns, but the rumors of the Fed’s scheme had gotten out. As the Fed key-stroked more and more dollars, and the names of the buyers of treasuries got more and more obscure, and the purchase amounts got more and more spectacular, the dollar itself listed, then tipped over, then began sinking faster than the treasuries they were supposed to be backed by.

The unsinkable Titanic of American sovereign debt, the flagship of profligacy and arrogance, was sucked into a vortex. Over the course of twelve hours, the dollar price of a Japanese car, a barrel of Saudi oil, and a container ship full of Chinese chotskies DOUBLED. The U.S. stock market big boys all tanked as the cost of rolling over their debt exploded. The exchanges plummeted further, going limit down and suspended trading in dollars.

The Gnome had seen enough. He stepped in and pulled the plug at 10:01. International currency exchange in dollars was suspended worldwide. Wire and ACH transfers were suspended. To prevent capital flight, transfers from checking and savings accounts to foreign banks were limited to one thousand dollars. Banks on the east coast opened for an hour so the patrician class from Martha’s Vinyard could withdraw some walking-around money. Then all the banks went on holiday. There was a flurry of internet activity as intrepid nerds tried to move their offshore money market dollars and PayPal accounts into foreign currencies and commodity money and Bitcoins, but that too was brought to a screeching halt when the internet kill switch was thrown on financial transactions.

At the silent, somber floor of the NYSE, the highlights of the president’s speech played on yet another Chinese-made big screen above the ticker which read "U.S. Markets Closed...FOMC in emergency session...Yankees beat the Red Sox 4-2.” The remaining traders on the floor erupted in sarcastic applause.

Vaughn took a moment before leaving for work to look in on his young daughter. He quietly pushed her door open and snuck into her room. She was still asleep, lying sideways in her crib with one tiny foot dangling out, buried in an avalanche of blankets and her toy monkey. Her cherubic cheeks moved slightly as she suckled blissfully on her pacifier. Vaughn felt she was getting a little old for pacifiers. A feeling swept over him as he watched her, like a breeze of fresh cool air in some stale, stagnant chamber. It was a righteous feeling, a sensation of clarity and purpose. How bad will things get? What will I have to do for my family? What am I capable of doing? The answers blew into him as he looked down at little Brooke.

With the country crumbling into talc under the weight of its hubris and corruption, with the Nero president blustering away with his platitudes, with the zombie masses taking their opiate of big media propaganda, Vaughn realized then and there that there would be nothing, no one, no event that would come between him and his family. He loved them more than his own life. He would pay any price for them. He found casting off worry to be liberating. He released the millstone of worry that had been chained to him.

The dying republic, a victim of its pointless, bankrupting wars, its corporate welfare and bloated nanny-state, finally succumbed. Her citizenry concerned themselves only with who was going to win American Idol. America was meaningless to Vaughn now. Now it was time for survival. He felt an arm slip under his elbow and around his chest. It was Jess. She pulled in tight against him and rested her head between his shoulder blades.

"You were right," she whispered.

Her acknowledgement meant everything to him. He needed to be and do right by her and her assessment was the only one that really mattered. He was vindicated for dragging his family out to the store in the middle of the night. He almost took pleasure in seeing things unravel the way that they had, but he knew that that was selfish and foolish to think about things that way. He wondered if the karma wheel would spin back onto him somehow. Tough times were ahead for all.

Chapter 10

Mae would have preferred a better hotel, but the Airport Hyatt was boarded up. She couldn’t bring herself to go back to the DIA bunker, but she hadn’t quite convinced herself to impose upon the only person she could in the whole of the greater Denver area. So she stalled, passing the dull nights with her security detail, turning them into lounge drinking buddies and ultimately one drunken and regrettable three-way.

Mae spent two weeks at the airport Red Roof Inn, waffling over what to do. She finally received the dreaded phone call. The voice was unfamiliar and nasal. Some low-level Secret Service nobody, she guessed. The voice informed her that her time at the hotel purgatory was up. She either had to go to the DIA bunker or find her own arrangements. She requested a driver and within the hour, a solitary black SUV limo picked her up.

"People will think I’m a senator or something, riding around in this thing," she joked as the limo rolled down the sparsely developed airport superhighway.

"Sorry, Ma’am. It’s the only car we had with bulletproof glass," explained the driver.

They rolled down the pristine highway, which traversed property owned by one of the cronies who had secured the airport's funding and ensured Denver International Airport's terribly inconvenient location. Pena Boulevard spanned fifteen miles of bleak, windswept steppe, linking Interstate 70 to the gleaming, canvas spires of the most expensive airport ever built. Those spires rose up from the flaxen plain much like the pyramids, but the design was probably inspired more by that goofy artist Christo than by any ancient Egyptian stimulus project. Christo's prior art included hanging a humungous white curtain across a Colorado canyon in the 1970s.

Mae was relieved when they passed Bluecifer, a giant, blue, demonic horse sculpture with orange glowing eyes and the grim karma of having fallen over and killing its sculptor during its creation. Bluecifer was the symbolic gatekeeper for Denver International, and once past it, Mae hoped to have nothing more to do with that place. The entire complex felt sinister to her with its cryptic Masonic symbols and creepy murals of Armageddon. She also hoped to never see the two young men of her security detail again. She was making her getaway from all of it. She could not be persuaded to go back and pass through the red door and enter the airport bunker.

Traffic on I70 was very light that morning, as it had been for several days. The big economic crash was like a concussion bomb that scattered all the civilian agents of commerce. To make matters worse, the reeling banks had closed a half dozen times since that black Friday. On any given trading day, the slightest rumor triggered panic redemptions and movement into commodities. This didn’t sit too well with the bankers, so they leaned on the Fed Chairman, who in turn leaned on Congress, to make the new alternative currencies less attractive than their dying dollar. The Currency Stabilization Act, drafted by the bankers themselves, rammed through by Speaker Leatherface, and hastily passed by Congress who had not been given time to read it, slapped a ninety percent windfall gains tax on the sale of twenty-five different commodities. But this didn’t accomplish anything other than to drive the commodity markets out from the light of the exchanges and into the dark alleys of the black market. The SEC and IRS couldn't do much to enforce the new regulation, but at least government could say it was doing something. Government always has to do something. Things never change in that regard.

The first bank holiday was the longest at five business days and a weekend. By business day three, tens of millions of Americans had exhausted their emergency stores of frozen pizzas and soft drinks. Their diapers had all run out and so had their baby formula and then the graham crackers and the egg noodles and eventually even the olives and mustard.

In order to save everyone, FEMA set up egg noodle and baby formula distribution centers at all the nation’s football stadiums. They were quickly inundated by angry, hungry, desperate mobs. The cops drove them back with their megaphones. The mobs regrouped. They were driven back again by water cannon and sound blasters. They re-formed. Out came the batons and the pepper spray. They finally dispersed for good.

Batons and pepper spray worked well for subduing the desperate mobs at the FEMA centers, but not so well at the banks where the throng had justice and retribution on their mind rather than hunger. Many banking institutions were set ablaze, often with their pitiable, essentially blameless, minimum-wage-earning clerks still holed up inside.
By the fourth business day of the holiday, many cops had been on duty for stretches of twenty-four straight hours. Their nerves and sanity were pushed beyond mortal limits. They had become, to borrow a Roger Waters analogy, the "rusty wire holding the cork that keeps the anger in". Not all of them held it in. Rumors of mass shootings both by and of cops swirled around on what was left of the internet. Television and the papers reported nothing of it. They didn't want to foment panic in Mainstream America.

Fearing an inability to prevent the cauldron of civil unrest from boiling over, the president took decisive action. He held a press conference flanked on either side by the Fed Chairman and T, the Treasury secretary—whose own red hair, small stature, and pointy nose gave him a leprechaun-like aura. So together The Gnome, The Leprechaun, and Prince Charming declared that the crisis was over and the banks would open and stay open for good the next morning. The fairy tale was to take place on a Friday, and the triumvirate clung to hope that they would only have to make it through one anxious day of holy-shit-this-might-be-our-last-chance-to-get-our-money-out mania. Then the establishment would be saved by the weekend.

Truckloads upon truckloads of paper money emerged from the garages of Federal Reserve regional banks. New bills were printed with bigger denominations of one thousand and five thousand dollars dubbed "Reagans" and
"Roosevelts." To hell with catching the money-laundering drug dealers! America needed cash. The Fed stuffed the new bills into the vaults of every bank of any significance, nationwide.

The Fed chairman, the Treasury secretary and the president crossed their fingers and held their breath. Futures trading revealed nothing as the Plunge Protection Team was key-stroking money and buying everything in sight trying to tame the animal spirits once again.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

Their mouths dropped. In less than thirty minutes the market reached its limit down again.

"Fuck!" exclaimed the president, flanked by his sidekicks in the Oval Office. He lit himself a Marlboro.

The trio somberly ordered the foreign currency trading desks closed again. No dollars were allowed to be dumped until the rulers could come up with some other scheme to halt the slide. The domestic banks, however, remained open. They had to. The entire economy had nearly seized with rigor mortis during a week without money.

As an emergency remediation, all the New York banks were given access to special lending facilities. In other words, every bank that the Fed chairman had deemed too big to fail gained access to an unlimited line of credit, at zero percent interest, with principal that was never to come due, all in hopes that the big banks might churn enough digital dollars to survive the bank run.

The move to shutter the banks the week before proved disastrous. Keeping them open might have been even worse, but closing them definitely fomented a panic—giving it legs, as they say. The lesson of being caught without the ability to buy toilet paper because debit card transactions were shut off was not lost on Americans. Americans could be accused of sheep-like idiocy in times of plenty, but they were quick learners. They were not going to get devoured by the wolf again.

When word got out in the middle of the night that the banks were reopening, the lines quickly accumulated. When the doors opened, a swarm inundated the terrified bank tellers. The truckloads of cash were quickly exhausted despite personal withdrawal limits of ten "Reagans" per customer. Customers were turned away cursing. Some turned over the signs. Some banks reported assaults. Some were set on fire, again.

With their debit cards turned back on, there was a mad rush to the grocery stores and gas stations. People weren’t buying potato chips and pepsi, this time. Now they were buying fuel and canned goods and dried goods and paper products and batteries and medicine. The pumps and shelves were cleaned out in minutes. Americans indeed learned quickly.

The supply chain, a super complex machine greased by millions upon millions of credit transactions, began sputtering within hours of the initial collapse. Parts of it blew apart as unsound trucking companies ran out of gas and could not do anything about it other than have their drivers pull their trucks onto the shoulder and walk away. Despite the gaping holes, sound businesses endured by the wits of their brilliant, industrious managers who hustled fuel with collateralized IOUs to keep their fleets rolling. The goods that were moving were moving based on million dollar deals sealed with handshakes and emails. There were crafty, resourceful men and women, millions of them, dealing in millions of products, making billions of decisions, holding what was left of the sputtering economic order together. They were adjusting to the extraordinary situation. They were surviving.

Then the government just had to do something again.

The government busybody administrators could not resist their pervasive and pathological urge to save the day and be heroes. So, like a monkey wrench—or more aptly a hand grenade—tossed into the machine-works, the busybodies went about meddling and destroying the fragile arrangements created by the resourceful business managers.

"How dare anyone profit in these extreme times!" the politicians declared. First, the evil price gougers were to be cited, then arrested. Then their assets were to be seized. This started with the gas stations and progressed to the sellers of produce, and then the merchants of diapers. The possibility of high profits, which could be made if one could get a truckload of diapers from New Jersey to Flagstaff, for example, was quickly doused by the government busybodies who made it illegal to make any exploitative windfall profits. The exploiters, who were on their way to Flagstaff to fulfill the desperate diaper demand, and make a buck in the process, caught wind of the new regulations that would result in landing them in prison for five years. They turned their trucks around and went back home. The Arizonian babies were saved from those greedy capitalists! They would just have to do without diapers and the other things they needed, regardless of what their parents were willing to pay.

The government busybodies, through passage of the Commercial Goods Transportation Prioity Act, determined that certain goods had to have priority when being transported on the king's roads. Priority was largely determined by political connection. The handlers of those goods were moved to the front of the growing fuel lines. This destroyed the complex procurement and hauling matrix of pickup, delivery and backhaul. Within hours of the regulation, trucks were rolling empty. Gluts and shortages of goods exploded everywhere. A mountain of tires accumulated in Toledo while trucks across the country were idled by flats.

Mae, of course, cared not one whit about any of it. She only studied econometrics and concepts like aggregate demand in her PhD program. She, like most quantitative economists, was incapable of comprehending the interdependent, infinite locus of goods and services and time preferences and personal choices that form the complex matrix of an economy. To her, like most modern PhDs, economics was just two intersecting curves on a graph and a bunch of equations containing Greek letters. Besides, she was still getting paid. Her investments were being adjusted in value by keystroke entry so as to keep her whole.

Her job function as an assistant Treasury secretary was, for the moment, obsolete. The Asian countries were her clients and they were not speaking to anyone in the U.S. She had nothing to do except reach her hideout and wait until the whole thing blew over.

She gazed out the window from behind her Jackie-O sunglasses as her bulletproof limo flew down I70. The outside
world had changed during the two weeks she spent inside the Red Roof Inn. She observed dozens of semi-trailers parked along the sides of the highway, their tires removed, their doors pried open, and their contents looted. Many were burned.

Several abandoned cars lined the interstate as well, mostly older models, beaten down by years of abuse, they finally gave out. They were the cars of poor people, older models, dented, and rusted. Their destitute owners lacked the wherewithal to get them home. All of these abandoned cars had their windows smashed, tires removed, and gas siphoned out. Whatever was of value on the inside was taken as well.

Mae sipped from a martini glass as they whizzed past the wreckage.

The interstates, the arteries of commerce spanning coast to coast, were becoming the repository of the plaque of economic collapse. Wasted vehicles on the roadside nearly outnumbered the vehicles still being driven on the road.
Mae’s limo made good time until they hit a traffic jam.

"What’s going on?" she asked, as she checked her lipstick in her compact. It had gotten smudged by her drink.

"Got a call out. Should hear any second," replied the driver.

"Well, I don’t want to be stuck out here in Road Warrior land for long."

"Don’t worry, ma’am. We’re bulletproof. And I can always call in air support, if necessary."

They sat there staring into the back end of a rusted out Sierra pickup, mud flaps emblazoned with chrome nude silhouettes. Its expired tag was from Guadalajara.

"Almighty says there was an explosion up ahead. DHS and FBI are on scene investigating. They think it was a roadside bomb. Can you believe that? An IED in Denver."

"How long is the wait?" Mae asked, impatiently.

"It could be a while, ma’am."

"Any way we can take a detour?"

"Not from here. We’re a half mile or so from the next exit."

Mae swallowed the last of her martini and dozed off in the air conditioned, leather seat.

Mae awoke to a forward lurch of the limo. She checked her watch. She’d been asleep for over an hour. They were still on I70 but at least they were moving. Mae poured another martini. After about twenty minutes of creeping along, the roadside carnage finally came into view. Two fire trucks, one facing the wrong direction, flanked the smoldering, burned-out car on the right lane of the elevated interstate. Its tires had completely burned away and the twisted, blackened heap of metal rested on its axles in a puddle of grease and fire retardant foam. A group of policemen were huddled on the shoulder. On the ground before them was a white sheet covering a bundle with two stumps of charcoal poking out one end. Mae took a giant gulp and sucked the olive off the plastic skewer.

"Never thought I’d see anything like that in America," remarked the driver who chomped away at his chewing gum as they passed the carnage.

"Surreal. It looks like a war zone."

"I’m afraid I've got some bad news, ma'am."

"What’s that?"

"We need to get some gas."

"Oh no, you’re not stopping!" Mae ordered, now terrified at the prospect of pulling off the highway into some proletarian ghetto in a government limo.

"We’re stopping one way or another, ma’am."

"Then turn back," she ordered.

"Can’t do it. We wouldn’t make it half way back to DIA. Just relax. We’ll be fine. Did I tell you we’re bulletproof?"

"You did."

They pulled off the interstate onto an arterial and found an open gas station not far from the highway. Ahead of the pump was a long line of cars waiting for the petrol that had tripled in price in just three weeks. Mae’s driver accelerated, bypassing them all, eventually angling the limo into the front of the line. The horns of the cars behind furiously let loose. Drivers started getting out of their cars and letting curses and gestures fly. "Who the hell are you?!" screamed a burly man with a mullet three cars back. He looked like he might stomp up and throw his hairy fist through the limo's bulletproof windshield, yank the driver out through the hole, and strangle him with his bare hands. The driver calmly radioed in the situation to "Almighty." Then, to Mae’s surprise, he opened the door.

"Where’re you going? Don’t get out!" she screamed.

Mae's driver hopped out, spit out his gum and flashed his badge to the cursing mob. "Everyone just calm down!" The mob's response was a barrage of four-letter curses and threats of violence. "I’m with the Federal Government," the driver continued as he raised his badge higher, as though it would give him more prestige. "I apologize for cutting into line like this but we must not be delayed. We are on official government business."

"Fuck you!" was the universal reply.

"The line starts back there," shouted mullet-man.

One car lurched forward and bumped the limo, jolting Mae’s head back and spilling her new martini down her chest. She was afraid.

"Everyone just calm down," the limo driver shouted. "It’ll only be a minute and then we’ll be on our way."

"You can wait in line just like everyone else," screamed a woman with a crying kid strapped into her beat-up minivan.

"Look," the driver continued, "we are with the government. We are here to help you."

"Haven’t you helped us enough?" asked the mullet-man. "Move that damn car to the back of the line!"

The car that had just bumped Mae’s limo backed up and revved its engine. Mae’s driver apparently decided that the mob was neither impressed with his government status nor amenable to his reasoning, because he got back in and locked the door. Mae caught a glimpse of his concerned face in the rearview mirror. Images of the roasted car and the two charred stumps on the highway flashed through her mind. Her limo was bulletproof but it wasn’t fireproof.

"Where are they?" shouted the driver into his radio.

"What’s wrong with these idiots?" Mae interrupted. "Don’t they know who we are?" Feeling the effects of the martini, she rolled down her window a few inches and screamed out at the mob, "Don’t you imbeciles know who we are?"
One responded by tossing a bottle at her window which shattered into foamy shards on impact. Mae rolled the thick glass back up. "Let’s get the hell out of here," she pleaded.

"Hang on. We’ve got air support coming."

"Then where the hell are they?"

Looking back, Mae noticed the mullet-man had produced an aluminum softball bat and was making his way to the limo. He stopped at each car along the way, cajoling the occupants to get out and join him. Many did. A gang of angry proles formed behind him as he approached.

"I hope they don't have anything flammable," said the limo driver.

"Let’s go! Let’s go now!" Mae shouted.

"Hang on. I hear them. They're coming."

"You're damn right they're coming. Get us out of here."

"No. The choppers. Listen."

The mullet-man reached the back of the limo with a posse of about a dozen behind him. To Mae’s surprise, her driver got out again.

"Don’t be stupid!" he ordered the mullet-man. "Hear those choppers? Yeah. I called them. There coming here."

"Fuck you, fed," the mullet-man man barked.

"I’m armed," the driver advised. "Don’t make me use it."

"You can’t shoot all of us."

"Yeah, that’s true," the driver answered. "But I can shoot you. Then I can get back in this car and wait another two
minutes for the cavalry to arrive and take out your posse. So I suggest you just calm yourself down and back away and I’ll forget about how you threatened me with your deadly weapon. Threatening a government employee is a carries a mandatory twenty-year prison term, you know. We’ll just get our gas and be on our way."

The mullet-man looked ready to make his move. But he turned his head to look behind him and found that the others had gone back to their cars.

"Your odds aren't so good anymore," said the limo driver.

"Who do you think you are?" asked the mullet-man as he lowered his bat.

"I'm with the government."

"You feds think you’re royalty or something?"

"Do you want me to reply honestly?"

"No, I want you to lie to me some more," he answered, sarcastically.

"More or less, we are royalty. We’re the government. Our job is to rule. And you’re job is to do what you’re told. It's for your own good."

"You’re all liars. You caused all this. You destroyed the country."

"These are tough times, my friend. But we’re all in it together."

"Yeah? Well some are 'in it' more than others."

A thumping black helicopter appeared over the surrounding cottonwoods and rooftops. It hovered around and above the limo. Mae glimpsed the sniper on board, taking aim. One gentle squeeze and the bullet would explode through the target's barrel chest, the energy of the .50 caliber round sending him flopping into the air like a tossed stuffed animal.

"Go back to your car," ordered the limo driver in a calm voice.

Chapter 11

"Will you do it?" asked Marzan.

"Do what? Shoot Americans?" asked Rollins as he screwed his Osiris eye ring down his middle finger.

Their unit had just received the situation report and rules of engagement in the back of their cramped Humvee. Nothing had really changed from how they were instructed back in Shariastan. The platoon was en route to a south Chicago ghetto to quell a developing situation. Rioters had amassed and were turning over cars, smashing out windows, and setting fires. The local police had lost control.

Their orders were that rioters who did not disperse were to be given first a bullhorn warning, then tear gas, then a high-intensity sound blast, and finally warning shots. After that, the appropriate level of response was left to the discretion of the lieutenant, who in this case was a primped man-boy just out of an abbreviated officer candidate school. There was no objective other than to restore order. If they were fired upon, they were permitted to return fire...after headquarters approval, of course.

"Yeah, I mean shoot Americans," Marzan clarified.

"I guess I’m not really too worried about it," Rollins answered, nonchalantly. "I’m a soldier. Orders are orders"

Marzan wasn't at all surprised. He probably shouldn't have asked Rollins. He had known him for eighteen months. He probably knew more about what Rollins was going to do than Rollins knew, himself.

Rollins never appeared to be concerned about what he was going to be doing. He operated reflexively by muscle memory. His complete moral detachment was well-established. If there was an order, Rollins would execute it without hesitation. Bulldoze somebody's house? Done. Lob a hand grenade into a courtyard? Done. Fire on a carload of hajis who failed to stop at a checkpoint? Done. No hesitation. No questions. Rollins carried out his orders as if he were playing a video game. There was never any remorse or second-guessing or empathy. He was the perfect soldier.
I don’t think I can do it, Marzan thought to himself, trying not to reveal his doubt. He forced his face into a deadpan expression to hide any hint of his internal turmoil. He chided himself for not being as hard as Rollins. His conscience increasingly haunted him and he hated himself for it. He had to use the "remember your dead buddies" technique in order to clear his doubts.

I am weak and Rollins is strong, he thought. He was never comfortable with intimidating the little brown people like Rollins was. Despite their small stature and annoying, indecipherable babbling they called a language, Marzan could never fully dehumanize them. Their sad brown eyes would knife through his emotional armor. Through their eyes, he experienced their terror, grief, fear, submission, hatred.

He yearned to be Michael Rollins, encased in impervious emotional armor, impenetrable to any blade. He wanted to see only deception in the enemy’s glances. He desperately wanted everything else—all that touchy-feely bullshit—deflected away. If he were only as hard as Michael Rollins he could be cured of the pain of conscience.

All hajis were liars and savages, much like all the gooks in Vietnam were liars and savages, and all the Japs and krauts during World War II were liars and savages. Things never change in war. The soldier is taught that he is the überman. The enemy is unhuman. In Shariastan, it was assumed that just as soon as the GI's back was turned, haji was sneaking off to his spider hole to finish improvising his explosives. All unhumans are of one savage, evil mind.

"Look," continued Rollins, "we’re giving them plenty of warning. If they don’t want to get themselves dead then they should do what they’re told. It’s pretty simple: Don’t be a dumbass. Respect my authority. Respect this." Rollins jammed a magazine into his M4 and yanked the charging handle.

Marzan wondered why Rollins didn’t return the question. Is he really that self-absorbed? he wondered. Or did he sense my uneasiness about the matter and decide to let me off the hook? No way. He would never let me off the hook. He’s definitely that self-absorbed, he concluded.

Their Humvee stopped.

The night was illuminated by rippling gold dancing on the unsmashed window glass of the numerous store fronts down the street. The power was cut off intentionally to give the Domestic Security Force—or DSF, the new name for Marzan and Rollins's Division—a technological advantage. Cut the power and you greatly reduce enemy coordination and documentation. The U.S. Army loves to fight at night because the lightly armed, third-world insurgents they typically engage can’t see. The Army also had to ensure the battery backups of the nearby cell towers were turned off as well. This was a bit of a pain in the ass, but it got done.

The troops dislodged themselves from their Humvees. They huddled for a moment to receive last-minute instructions and activate their night vision. Then they began their stealthy maneuver into the darkness with the Humvees crawling behind. Their viewfinders pictured green silhouettes scrambling between alleyways, aimlessly hurling bricks and Molotov cocktails.

"Dumbasses," Rollins whispered into the radio.

Marzan watched them scurry around in the darkness, oblivious to the laser sites that were marking them. They would never expose themselves as stupidly as this in Shariastan, he thought as he moved his laser dot from target to target. The Shariastan insurgents learned quickly that the night provides no cover against U.S. Army night vision. But they learned that being still and covering up in wool blankets does.

The soldiers progressed slowly, deliberately, knees bent, rifles aimed, and targets acquired and reacquired. They proceeded around a corner and a block down the street, past the Carniceria, past the prepaid cell-phone store that served the neighborhood drug dealers, up to the Checks Cashed façade at the corner. The firelight danced in flickering green in their optics. Marzan could hear glass smashing and the primordial, raging laughter of an insanity-fueled mob.

What is their problem? Marzan asked himself.

The proles were angry about prices. They were angry about shortages. They were angry about joblessness. They were angry that their welfare checks were delayed. They were angry about being hungry. They were angry that mass transit had stopped servicing their area. They felt trapped. They had been lied to. They had never known an instant in their life when some government bureaucrat wasn’t telling them what to do, where to go, or giving them the financial means to do it. Now their government benefactors were pulling away, disconnecting from them, cutting them off. Despair and panic had set in.

Terrified and not knowing what to do, they gathered and protested during the daylight hours. The cops rode in—polyester vials of mustachioed nitroglycerine. Their nerves were worn thin by twenty-four-hour shifts. They were being asked to do many exceptionally dangerous things that they did not sign on to do.

Someone hurled a brick that careened off a cruiser windshield, shattering it. The cops drew their pistols. Most of the rioters scattered but the angriest among them, the unattached, the unemployed, the unencumbered young men remained. They hurled rocks and bottles and taunts at the cops. A cop was hit in the chest with half a cinderblock.

Gunfire!

No one other than the actual shooter knew who fired first. The cops returned fire with a barrage of 9mm rounds. It sounded like Chinese New Year. Then screams. A wild murmuration of young men ran this way and that. More shots. Someone was firing back with a rifle. More screams.

Outnumbered a hundred to one, the cops retreated back into their cruisers. The mob enveloped them. Fearing a rout, the cops withdrew. A Pyrrhic victory riot ensued.

Marzan was the first to peek around the corner at the rioters. The mob was much bigger than he had anticipated. There were hundreds. The fire teams took their positions. A Humvee pulled into the street and with an enormous bullhorn affixed to its roof it addressed the crowd.

"You are hereby ordered to disperse!"

Rollins laughed as he sighted on one of the "dumbasses," as he called them. The target was some fifty yards off.

"These niggers got no idea what's coming." Rollins said. "You better get the hell out of here before the U.S. Army smokes your ass.”

The firelight flickered in the bulletproof windows of the Humvees, casting a surreal omen. Some rioters spotted the soldiers and their M4s and took cover. Others fled, sensing something wicked was about to happen.

The sight of cops might be cause for concern to the rioters, but cops, although locally despised, were local scoundrels who lived locally and had to answer to locals for what they did. This time, the proles were staring into the ranks of heavily-armed soldiers...mercenaries by all accounts. These soldiers were from faraway places like Orange County and Philadelphia and Houston. They might as well have been foreign invaders from China, as far as the rioters were concerned. These mercenaries had no connection or affiliation to that south-Chicago neighborhood. The soldiers, by and large, deemed the neighborhood as just another foreign battlefield—as if it had been chiseled out of a Shariastan desert and plopped right down into Illinois.

The rioters that did not flee held their concept of being an American before them. They cradled that abstract notion, contemplating it, trying to decide if it was real or just some sort of vaporous nonsense drilled into their brains by public school, national holidays, and television.

The tear gas was launched.

Fearlessly, some rioters grabbed the smoking canisters and tossed them back. The big show of authoritarian force is always just that, a show. There would be some back and forth, the mob would blow off a little steam, then the storm troopers would march in and methodically disperse the crowd. That’s the way it had always worked during riots.

The sound-blaster sirens blared.

They wailed so loud that it made teeth chatter. A few brittle windows crumbled under the pulsating noise. The rioters scattered into the alley ways and behind burned out cars to shield their ear drums.
Warning shots were fired.

It was at that moment that the rioter’s remaining notions of being an American dissolved. America had now just become some far-away gang of white politicians sending an army in to occupy their neighborhood. Only their homes and their friends and their families meant anything to them, from that moment on. They knew then that there wasn’t going to be any theatrical, non-lethal dispersal.

Rifle shots came from a window somewhere above.

"Smoke ‘em!" came the order from the lieutenant through the earpiece radios of the soldiers—after headquarters' approval, of course.

The Domestic Security Force opened fire in three round bursts. Muzzle flash. Ricochet. Beelike-buzzing zips of bullets sliced the air. Dull clangs resonated as automobile hulls were punctured by the rounds.

Rollins gently squeezed his trigger. The victim did a full cartwheel before landing on his face, the American dying in no more special manner than any other of the several dozen little brown people Rollins had already smoked overseas.

After ten more seconds—which seemed like forty-five minutes to the outmatched, outgunned and terrified rioters—the hail of gunfire ended.

The whooshing sound of flames.

Groans from the wounded.

Car alarms wailing.

The platoon advanced to check out their damage, now behind the cover of their lumbering Humvees. Rollins approached his victim with Marzan to his flank. It was a kid, maybe sixteen. He had run right out of one of his sneakers. "Funny how that happens sometimes," Rollins remarked.

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