“… our government has ceased to be a voice of the will of the people, has ceased to become a democratically elected union of servants of this great country. It is possible, as we have seen in the past, for an administration to come to power despite losing the popular vote. It is possible, as we have seen in the past, for them to come to power and then act with complete disregard for the will of the people they purport to serve. It is possible for our country to be governed by those who have not been democratically elected and who do not act upon the will of the people. How can that be? It is possible because our country is not run by its government, but instead is bought out by the deep pockets of global mega — corporations who pay for our presidents to come to power on agendas favorable to corporations over people?”
Lopez saw the van almost immediately and then saw two police officers sprinting up from the south, their weapons drawn and their shouts echoing above the noise of the traffic.
‘Stand down!’
Lopez’s scream was drowned out by the sound of gunfire and the squeal of tires as the blue van suddenly lurched into motion. The gunfire cracked the air and Lopez saw one of the police officers tumble to the ground amid the ranks of cars as the van made to get away.
‘This is what happened in Iraq, a country destroyed by our government in a war that was both illegal and not wanted by us, the people. That country was raped of its wealth by powerful arms and industrial corporations, and the remains left for the people who live there. Our country has become the vassal through which global corporations become more wealthy, where trade trumps human rights, where profit conquers altruism, where war vanquishes peace in the name of our right to oil or the right to bear arms!’
The blue van mounted the sidewalk alongside the rows of traffic and accelerated to the sound of screams from pedestrians. Lopez dashed onto the sidewalk in front of the vehicle, her weapon drawn as she took aim at the windshield.
The vehicle’s engine screamed higher as it accelerated toward her and Lopez held her breath for an instant before she fired.
Three shots burst from her pistol and shattered the blue van’s windscreen into a spider’s web of fractured glass that sent the vehicle swerving from side to side as it crashed past a fire hydrant and sent a tower of glistening water high into the air.
Lopez hurled herself sideways as the van careered past her and thumped back onto the road, its fender smashing off the side of a truck’s chassis and then rolling to a halt in the center of the lane. Lopez sprinted to the driver’s side of the van and aimed into the cab to see a Middle — Eastern man slumped against the wheel, his skull shattered into a bloody mess by one of Lopez’s rounds.
She turned and hurried to the rear of the vehicle and grabbed hold of the rear door.
To her shock the door flew open and she was thrown backwards as two men burst from the interior. As Lopez staggered she swung her pistol to bear upon a burly, bearded man who leaped out of the van with a rifle in his hands, and an older man with gray hair and a wispy beard, the cold eyes of a killer glaring at her.
Lopez hit the asphalt hard on her back as she fired, her shot hitting the upper lip of the rear of the van and ricocheting to one side as she heard two more shots fired.
Lopez felt her body shudder as though the ground had shifted beneath her, a double thud that blurred her vision as she felt her arms go strangely numb. Her lungs constricted inside her chest and for a moment she wondered who had fired the shots and why the two men in the van had not fallen, and then she realized that Tariq Adel was aiming his pistol at her, a cruel smile on his face.
Lopez stared at the scene before her, and then she realized that her legs were tingling and her shoulders sinking and the world spun around in a blur of color. The horizon tilted over and she plummeted onto her back on the lawns but strangely felt nothing as she landed, the bright blue sky filling her vision as clouds drifted quietly through the heavens.
‘This very city in which we stand has the highest homicide rate of any in the developed world. Nine thousand Americans died last year as a result of gun crime, more than died in automobile accidents. The National Rifle Association will tell you that it is our right as Americans to bear arms. They won’t tell you that saying so keeps the revenue rolling in for them, even though in this day and age we have armed law enforcement to protect us from those who would harm us in every city. This is not Iraq, but some days Washington DC is starting to feel worse than Basra!’
Tariq and the bearded man dashed toward the front of the vehicle. Lopez tried to get up, but her body would not respond and a savage pain ripped across her chest. She slumped onto her back as the engine to the vehicle started, the dead driver’s body thumping down onto the road as the battered van pulled away in a cloud of exhaust fumes.
Lopez stared up at the blue sky and realized that she was struggling to breathe as citizens broke from cover and ran to surround her, their eyes wide with horror and concern as the sound of a large, thumping engine thundered between the buildings and vehicles.
Hannah Ford’s face appeared as if from nowhere before Lopez, the agent crouching down alongside her and pressing against Lopez’s chest as Agent Vaughn, his face bruised and battered, covered them both with his pistol and shouted at the surrounding civilians to get back.
‘Stay with me, Nicola!’ Hannah urged.
Lopez blinked, still unsure of what had happened until she felt the growing numbness in her chest, saw the blood oozing from between Hannah Ford’s fingers, and she realized that she had been hit and that she could taste blood in her mouth. Suddenly she could not breathe, despite gasping and trying to inflate her chest for all she was worth, and she knew without a shadow of a doubt that at least one of her lungs had been punctured.
Hannah looked back down at Lopez, her face pained.
‘Where’s Ethan?!’ she demanded.
Lopez realized that Ethan had not shown up at the scene and that he had his cell phone on him. She swallowed the blood in her mouth and managed to speak a final sentence.
‘Ethan might be implanted,’ she gasped. ‘He didn’t show.’
Lopez’s head sank back wearily onto the grass. Amid the chaos and the shouting, Lopez lay in a vacuum of tranquility and stared up at the serene sky above her as she heard Kiera Lomas’s final words.
‘If America is truly to become great again we must become a nation of the people, for the people. Are you all going to live your lives knowing that corporations control our country’s government, its capital city, even its presidents? Will you continue to let your children die from gunshot wounds in your schools just because a Constitutional right written two hundred years ago is held up by the NRO as a reason to continue making profits? Or will you take back control of your own country and demand the right to be heard, the right to true governance by democratically elected leaders who are not in the thrall of big business? Who will have to die before the people will wake up to the fact that the right to bear arms, and the right of corporations to control government, is killing us all day by day?’
Lopez smiled as she realized that Kiera Lomas had not made an attempt on the lives of either of the two Presidents standing beside her on the south lawn. She felt herself relax, felt relief wash over her.
For a moment Lopez was reminded of the skies of her native Guanajuato, of the mountains and of how far she had come in the years since, and then the sky fell into darkness and all was lost to her.
XLV
Ethan hauled the Harley Davidson onto 17th Street as a crowd of people gathered around something in the street, and in the distance a blue van with a smashed windscreen accelerated toward him.