There was also much commentary and speculation as to the identity of the “city of vile iniquity.” America being what it was, there was no short list, but rather a long list of “sinful” cities. New York, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles were referred to most frequently, but, of course, San Francisco, New Orleans, Nashville, and Las Vegas were all possibilities as well. One pundit listed the safest cities, which allegedly included Omaha, Salt Lake City, and Topeka. The city council of Topeka then threatened MSNBC with a libel suit for slighting the city; an action that only increased that network’s ratings.
Zak was sitting at the back of his cell. He’d just been strapped to the second table for an hour while another man was “questioned” by Hamani and his assistants. When the man had passed out, and they’d released Zak, he’d almost run back to his solitary prison. There had been guards there to guide him, but he knew the way, and hadn’t given them any trouble. After listening to another man’s screams for an hour, he was desperate for the deathly quiet of his lonely cell. Desperate for another stretch of time to think of some way — any way — to get out of this hell.
The escape had become more important than ever, because the night before, while he was praying for sleep to come, he’d remembered something. In the pain and stress and fear of the last weeks, it was something he’d forgotten. Now that it had come back to him, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Before his capture, when he’d still been traveling with Yousseff and his men, when he’d still been Shayam, he’d been privy to the same information as every other man in the group. He’d known where they were going, although he didn’t know the exact location. And he’d known what they were going to do there. He wasn’t supposed to know, but he’d learned over the years how to read between the lines, how to hear things that weren’t meant for his ears. He’d never had a chance to pass the information on to his superiors, because he’d been found out by Yousseff and Marak. But he knew what was going to happen within the next month. He was probably the only Westerner who knew.
If he could get out in time, if he could get in contact with someone from headquarters, he might be able to stop it.
24
Turbee felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his left side. The first kick from one of the Aryan Knights broke two ribs. The second broke two more. “C’mon, boys, I said boot fuck the bastard. I didn’t mean soft little pussy kicks. I mean boot fuck him good,” raged Ziggy, feeling a rush of power.
It was a command the other thugs had eagerly awaited. They took turns kicking Turbee about the head and chest. They broke two more ribs, and would have caused brain injury had Turbee not used his forearms to shield his head. Ziggy was about to insist on his turn, growing weary of the somewhat lame efforts of the henchmen, when familiar red and blue flashing lights appeared at the far end of the lot. He paused in the middle of a mighty kick aimed at Turbee’s head, and stood up in the glare of a hand-held spotlight.
“Time to high tail it boys. The fuckin’ heat’s arrived.”
One policeman raced after the Aryans, while the second stood over Turbee. The youth was utterly dazed and disoriented, and covered in blood. He knew only that he was being attacked, and that he might die. They were big and mean, whoever they were, and at that instant Turbee wanted more than anything to live. He felt powerful hands close in around his wrists again. He tried to pull away and struck out with a fist, hitting the constable weakly on the shoulder.
The constable, not one of DC’s finest or brightest, immediately slapped the cuffs on Turbee. The youth had just assaulted a police officer. When he continued to struggle, that charge was bumped up to include resisting arrest. After a long ride and some processing, he ended up lying, bloodied, bruised, and broken, on the floor of the calamitous holding cell at PSA 706. Turbee had committed assault, and of a police officer no less.
Turbee had not been aware of it at the time, but Ballou High stood in the center of the toughest area in Washington, DC; an area festering with violence, drugs, crime, and general mayhem. The local police were accustomed to seeing the Aryan Knights, or the African Brotherhood, or a host of other gangs, terrorizing the streets after dark. The scene they had just encountered was not unusual. Turbee did not appear to be bleeding too severely. The constable, not being trained in medicine, or particularly bright, did not notice the dried blood caked around his smashed nose, or the evidence of six broken ribs. Turbee had technically struck a police officer in the course of his duty. That was a felony. The courts would take care of it from there.
The pre-trial center was bright and loud — two environmental stress-ors that were beyond Turbee’s capacity to tolerate. It stank, and was full of belligerent louts of all creeds and colors, in various stages of intoxication, withdrawal, and madness. For all these reasons, Hamilton Turbee was in one corner, curled up into a ball, attempting to make himself disappear entirely.
The clerks and other officers on duty attempted to drag a name from him, but Turbee had been off his meds for hours, had just been violently assaulted, and had a badly damaged chest. He simply sank deeper into his depression and isolation. He was still carrying the thought that he had single-handedly created so much damage to TTIC that Congress would probably shut it down. He was also shouldering the burden of having handed the President and his cabinet a devastating blow. In regard to real life, Turbee had almost totally shut down, and was in a borderline psychotic state. Even sitting on a cold bench before the admitting clerk, he had held his knees tightly up to his chest, clasping them together with his arms, and rocking slowly back and forth. “Hambee” was all he could say when pressed again and again for his name. “Hambee.” The name his mother and father had used when they were still together, in a house flooded with warmth. His name before he had realized that his mother was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on trinkets, trips, affairs, and alcohol. “Hambee”… his name when the world had been as it should be, when he had spent his time wandering with delight around the vast family mansion at Brambleton Narrows.
The officers recognized the signs. “This guy is off his rocker. Too many drugs, probably. Crystal meth. He needs a psychiatric assessment.”
They all agreed. This Hambee character, whoever he was, needed to be sorted out a little more. There was no way he had the mental capacity to understand or plead to the charge he was facing.
It was obvious to everyone that this individual needed to be assessed at St. Liz’s before any further steps could be taken. Saint Elizabeth’s, or St. Liz’s, as the locals called it, was a medical facility in Washington, DC that dealt with the criminally insane. They’d be able to figure out “Hambee,” whatever his real name, soon enough. He was kept handcuffed. Had to be, said the arresting officer. He called the kid unpredictable and violent. He was placed in a police van, and taken to an imposing brownstone building on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. Once there, his instinctive fetal position tightened to the point that it took four officers working together to get him into a wheelchair. He was rolled down a series of long hallways that smelled of antiseptic and piss, and deposited in a small cell. The officers simply tipped the wheelchair over onto its small front wheels, dumping him on the floor of the cell in much the same manner as a dump truck might deposit a load of dirt. His head smashed onto the cold stone floor, and his body drew up into a fetal position once again. The last sound he heard was the clanging of a metal door, and the sounds of heavy locks clicking into place. The echoes continued in Turbee’s troubled brain long after the hallway became still.