Even so, there's something more dignified about a company with a name like "Michigan State Police," thought Brierson as he brought his flier down on the pad next to Al's HQ. He stepped out of the cockpit into an eerie morning silence: It was close to sunrise, yet the sky remained dark, the air humid. Thunderheads march around half the horizon. A constant flicker of lightning chased back and forth within those clouds, yet there was not the faintest sound of thunder. He had seen a tornado killer on his way in, a lone eagle in the far sky. The weather was almost as ominous as the plea East Lansing HQ had received from Al's just four hours earlier.
A spindly figure came bouncing out of the shadows. "Am I glad to see you! The name's Alvin Swensen. I'm the proprietor." He shook Wil's hand enthusiastically. "I was afraid you might wait till the front passed though." Swensen was dressed in baggy pants and a padded jacket that would have made Frank Nitti proud. The local police chief urged the other officer up the steps. No one else was outside; the place seemed just as deserted as one might expect a rural police station early on a weekday morning. Where was the emergency?
Inside, a clerk (cop?) dressed very much like Al sat before a comm console. Swensen grinned at the other. "It's the MSP, all right. They're really coming, Jim. They're really coming!... Just come down the hall, Lieutenant. I got my office back there. We should clear out real soon, but for the moment I think it's safe."
Wil nodded, more puzzled than informed. At the far en: of the hall, light spilled from a half-open door. The frosted glass surface was stenciled with the words `Big AI'. A faint smell of mildew hung over the aging carpet and the woo, floor beneath settled perceptibly under Wil's ninety kilo tread. Brierson almost smiled: maybe Al wasn't so crazy. The gangster motif excused absolutely slovenly maintenance Few customers would trust a normal police organization that kept its buildings like this.
Big Al urged Brierson into the light and waved him to an overstuffed chair. Though tall and angular, Swensen looker more like a school teacher than a cop - or a gangster. Hi reddish-blond hair stood out raggedly from his head, a though he had been pulling at it, or had just been wakened From the man's fidgety pacing about the room, Wil guesses the first possibility more likely. Swensen seemed about at the end of his rope, and Wil's arrival was some kind of reprieve. He glanced at Wil's name plate and his grin spread even further. "W W Brierson. I've heard of you. I knew the Michigan State Police wouldn't let me down; they've sent their best."
Wil smiled in return, hoping his embarrassment didn't show. Part of his present fame was a company hype that h, had come to loathe. "Thank you, uh, Big Al. We feel a special obligation to small police companies that serve no-right-to bear-arms customers. But you're going to have to tell m( more. Why so secretive?"
A1 waved his hands. "I'm afraid of blabbermouths. :: couldn't take a chance on the enemy learning I was bringing you into it until you were on the scene and in action."
Strange that he says "enemy," and not "crooks" or "bastards" o; "hustlers. " "But even a large gang might be scared off knowing-"
"Look, I'm not talking about some punk gang. I'm talking about the Republic of New Mexico. Invading. Us." He dropped into his chair and continued more calmly. It was almost as if passing the information on had taken the burden: off himself. "You're shocked?"
Brierson nodded dumbly.
"Me too. Or I would have been up till a month ago. The Republic has always had plenty of internal troubles. And even though they claim all lands south of the Arkansas River, they have no settlements within hundreds of kilometers of here. Even now I think this is a bit of adventurism that can be squelched by an application of point force." He glanced at his watch. "Look, no matter how important speed is, we've got to do some coordinating. How many attack patrols are coming in after you?"
He saw the look on Brierson's face. "What? Only one? Damn. Well I suppose it's my fault, being secret like, but-"
Wil cleared his throat. "Big Al, there's only me. I'm the only agent MSP sent."
The other's face seemed to collapse, the relief changing to despair, then to a weak rage. "G-God d-damn you to hell, Brierson. I may lose everything I've built here, and the people who trusted me may lose everything they own. But I swear I'm going to sue your Michigan State Police into oblivion. Fifteen years I've paid you guys premiums and never a claim. And now when I need max firepower, they send me one asshole with a ten-millimeter popgun."
Brierson stood, his nearly two-meter bulk towering over the other. He reached out a bear-like hand to Al's shoulder. The gesture was a strange cross between reassurance and intimidation. Wil's voice was soft but steady, "The Michigan State Police hasn't let you down, Mr. Swensen. You paid for protection against wholesale violence - and we intend to provide that protection. MSP has never defaulted on a contract." His grip on Alvin Swensen's shoulder tightened with these last words. The two eyed each other for a moment. Then Big Al nodded weakly, and the other sat down.
"You're right. I'm sorry.... I'm paying for the results, not the methods. But I know what we're up against... and I'm damned scared."
"And that's one reason why I'm here, Aclass="underline" To find out exactly what we're up against before we jump in with our guns blazing and our pants down. What are you expecting?"
AI leaned back in the softly creaking chair. He looked out through the window into the dark silence of the morning and for a moment seemed to relax. However improbably, someone else was going to take on his problems. "They started about three years ago. It seemed innocent enough and it was certainly legal...." Though the Republic of New Mexico claimed the lands from the Colorado on the west to the Mississippi on the east, and north to the Arkansas, in f. most of their settlements were along the Gulf Coast and P;. Grande. For most of a century, Oklahoma and northern Texas had been uninhabited. The 'border' along the Arkansas sas River had been of no real concern to the Republic which had plenty of problems with its Water Wars on the Colorado - and of even less concern to the farmers at t southern edge of the ungoverned lands. During the last ten years, immigration from the Republic toward the more prosperous north had been steadily increasing. Few of the southerners stayed in the Manhattan area: most jobs were further north. But during these last three years, wealth, New Mexicans had moved into the area, men willing to pa almost any price for farmland.
"It's clear now that these people were stooges for the Republic government. They paid more money than the could reasonably recoup from farming-and the purchase started right after the election of their latest president. You know - Hastings whatever his name is. Anyway, it made pleasant boom time for a lot of us. If some wealthy New Mexicans wanted isolated estates in the ungoverned land that was certainly their business. All the wealth in New Mexico couldn't buy one tenth of Kansas, anyway." At first the settlers had been model neighbors. They even signed u; with Al's Protection Racket and Midwest Jurisprudence. Bt as the months passed, it became obvious that they were neither farmers nor leisured rich. As near as the locals could figure it, they were some kind of labor contractors. An tin ending stream of trucks brought raggedly dressed men am women from the cities of the south: Galveston, Corpus Christi, even from the capital, Albuquerque. These folk were housed in barracks the owners had built on the farms Anyone could see -looking in from above - that the newcomers spent long hours working in the fields.
Those farms produced on a scale that surprised the locals - and though it was still not clear that it was a profitable operation, there was a ripple of interest in the Grange journals; might manual labor hold an economic edge over the automatic equipment rentals? Soon the workers were hiring out to local farmers. "Those people work harder than any reasonable person, and they work dirt cheap. Every night, their contract bosses would truck'em back to the barracks, so our farmers had scarcely more overhead than they would with automatics. Overall, the NMs underbid the equipment rental people by five percent or so."