“I think that would be a job for the Supreme Court to decide. What’s that idiot done?”
“Doing. We have about three hours. He’s sending his National Unity Guard to go arrest the whole staff of the Advertiser-Gazette at their morning meeting. We’ve got it straight from a Secret Service informant, confirmed by another inside source.”
“Christ. How can he arrest them? On what charge?”
“He just plans to hold them through the election. Supposedly he’s preventing unfair private interference in a Federal election.”
“Well, at that point he’s raped the shit out of the First Amendment, and he’s violated that oath he insisted on taking, Cam. You want me to go stop him?”
“I want you to arrest all the National Unity Guard he sends. There’s an excellent argument that he can’t appoint law enforcement officers on his own hook and all by himself, which we’ll find some good lawyer to argue for the Supreme Court. But what I really want is to catch people acting upon his orders, subverting the Constitution, arresting without warrant or charge, and several other good phrases that come right from Madison and the Federalist Papers as grounds for impeachment. Per Speaker Kowalski’s request I’m assembling a file to use in impeaching our Acting-Out President. Incidentally, how do you feel about the theory that the NCCC is responsible for making sure we have a qualified Acting President during an emergency, and that when an Acting President disqualifies himself during an emergency, the NCCC can take it back and give it to the next choice in line? ”
“Wow. Ask me again if you ever have to do that. I figured you’d just impeach Shaunsen.”
“I’d rather do it by impeachment, but if Kowalski can’t find the votes to impeach, or the Senate won’t remove, we still have to have a functioning president, ASAP. So this latest little escapade looks like one more length of rope to hang him with, and I want someone I trust to handle it. If you make it to Rusty Parlotta’s place, before the Acting Presidential Bozo Brigade shows up at eleven, and bust their asses—ideally if you can swear that you saw them try to make the arrest—I will appreciate the hell out of it, Speaker Kowalski will make great use of it, and the country will be a lot better off.”
“Not to mention we’ll both have kept our oaths.”
“I like that part too.”
“So why did you send for me?”
“Because in all of DRET, you’re the only person with Federal power to arrest who I’m willing to have improvise.”
ABOUT TWO HOURS LATER. WASHINGTON. DC. ABOUT 11:00 A.M. EST. MONDAY. NOVEMBER 4.
“All right, that’s got to be them,” Heather said, watching from the window. Two young women and two young men in the black uniforms with red berets, walking like they were auditioning (unsuccessfully) for the role of the determined sheriff in a community theatre. God, it looks like “when Guardian Angels go bad.” “Rusty, Chris, are you sure you want to do this? Let me remind you, once again, I could just meet them at the door.”
“You’re asking us to throw away the best story we’ve had yet, Ms. O’Grainne,” Rusty said. “Not to mention that Mr. Nguyen-Peters is absolutely right. If they actually say they’re arresting us on the Acting President’s orders—with Betsi inside here taking notes, so we’ll have their exact words—then we can get that asshole out and a real president in. So what the hell.”
“Uh, what the boss said,” Chris said, grinning.
“All right, then, go on out, and move away from the door quick in case I need to come through fast.”
Rusty went through first, then Chris, and they moved down the front porch to the left, clearing a path for Heather immediately. She rested the door on her hand, ready to fling it open.
“Can we help you?” Rusty asked.
One of the young women stepped forward, nervously brushed her hair away from her face, and began to read from a card. “By order of the Acting President of the United States, this company is to cease publication immediately and all staff present on the premises are to come with us. You are also to turn over all materials, supplies, and equipment to us; you may petition to have them returned when the present emergency—”
“On what charges?” Rusty asked. “And do you have a warrant?”
“We don’t need a warrant, we’re not cops, we’re here from the President,” the taller and more muscular of the two young men said. “And it’s a National Security Emergency. And you’re under arrest.”
“Read your Constitution. You don’t come onto this porch without a warrant, and if you’re going to arrest me, you have to tell me what the charges against me are—”
“Fucking Republican, it’s not your fucking Constitution,” the man said, and drew his gun.
Heather burst through the door, crouching into firing position and shouting, “Freeze, Federal police!” in one swift motion.
The young man may have just started and accidentally pulled the trigger; he may have intended to shoot Rusty Parlotta all along; for whatever reason, his gun barked, and Heather shot his head—practically textbook combat handgun, she thought, as she bellowed, “Throw down your weapons! I am a Federal agent, and you are all under arrest now. Throw down your weapons!”
Stunned, bewildered, the two young women and the surviving young man dropped their guns; Heather ran forward, bellowing, “Lie down, lie down on your faces, hands behind your backs,” and was putting the ties on the second one as she recited, “You have the right to remain silent…”
It was only as she tied the third one that she realized someone else had been shouting, and she turned to see Chris bending over Rusty, cradling her in his arms in a sort of Pieta as he tried to hold her so that she could breathe. Beside Chris, ineffectually, a man tried to stop the still-flowing, bubbling chest wound. Heather rushed to join them, but even as she did, the blood flow from the gushing wound diminished, and the dim recognition left Rusty Parlotta’s eyes; they kept trying to revive her while a runner fetched a doctor, but they all knew she was dead long before it was official.
THE NEXT DAY. BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS. BEGINNING AT 7:00 A.M. EST. TUESDAY. NOVEMBER 5.
Election day wasn’t anything anyone had expected: It was surprisingly smooth and dull.
In the burned-out areas of Boston, soldiers walked down the street with notebooks and megaphones, asking people to come out and vote. Many of the people who came out were disappointed to find out that it wasn’t about food, or about rides out of the area, or heated shelters. But once they understood what it was about, they almost all wanted to vote. Since the printed ballots had been mostly destroyed, the soldiers hand-copied the correct spellings of the names and parties from the blackboard at headquarters, then each carried a clipboard with that sheet on it, so that voters would have something to copy correct spellings from.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PALE BLUFF. ILLINOIS. 6:00 A.M. CST. TUESDAY. NOVEMBER 5.
An hour behind Boston, in Pale Bluff, they all voted right on the dot of six in the morning, in the interest of giving Freddie Pranger the maximum daylight for the trip to Springfield. An old mimeograph had been found, along with a still-sealed package of mimeo sheets. A long-retired schoolteacher had figured out how to make it all work, using a turpentine/ethanol mix for fluid. They had printed up a set of ballots, and everyone promised not to peek; in the same community hall where they had all listened to a radio pulled from a sealed box and switched on just before the debate, 681 adult inhabitants and 104 adult refugees cast their ballots, sitting next to each other, filling them out all at once, careful to keep their eyes on their own ballots.