Red Suits
This is an excerpt from Isle of Dogs, volume 2 of Drift, the novel I’m currently working on. Volume 1 is GAHA: Babes of the Abyss. The action of volume 2 occurs forty years earlier.
CHAPTER NINE
UN PLAZA
At noon buses and limousines pulled up to the curb, one after the other, and soldiers dressed all alike in red armor poured out of them like ants, each heading to his position. Among them were Balustian, Whitehead and Cowrie. Simultaneously, every guard stationed on the Plaza flowed out to the buses. They did not pause to speak to one another, although individuals touched hands or nodded as they passed each other by. The new guards settled in and no one noticed that they were not attached to a team.
Red Suits. Red Suits everywhere, in clumps. Some were talking on the phone, some stood at attention guarding nothing, some milled about gossiping and guffawing through the windows of their helmets. They each were weighed down with grenades, batons, a rifle and two pistols. He was close to the main doors leading out of the General Assembly Building, the route Senator Maximilian would take.
Balustian gazed up and down the Plaza. It was meditative. He scanned his territory. He watched the people. He breathed slowly. They all looked the same so he had to study the way they moved. After an hour of watching two teams across the way, he settled on mark one, a tense, jumpy Red Suit, whose finger never left the trigger of his gun. He would take his shot and the other was sure to respond with a full on salvo. In the confusion he would break left and take a second shot, at the second team. It was a slovenly team, not ready to return fire. But there was one apparently officious ass who lectured the others, making wild gestures with his hands. Periodically he touched the stock of his rifle and felt for the trigger. He would be the second shot. Shooting would occur in four directions. Plan worked out, he took up his post and stared at his targets and his partners through the datastream, waiting.
The armor, which had felt so comforting at first, had become a clammy, ripe-smelling body bag. His head ached with a sharp, radiating pain and his stomach was bloated with the food he had crammed down his throat. In his mouth was the sour taste of vomit and stomach acid hissed in his throat. He could feel the toxins venting from his lungs and guts, oozing from pores. Periodically sleep overtook him, though he remained standing and ostensibly alert. The Plaza swam in his eyes. Every breath was labored and the recycled air was dirty and hot. It stank of his decay. The data feed was making it worse. It was distracting to have all that information! The constant throb of lights in his eyes and the changing focus of the helmet, if he moved the wrong way, was making him nauseous. He felt trapped. The gear was stupidly heavy. He was weighed down with armor and weapons when all he really needed was a pistol, light armor and a good pair of shoes. The boots sucked. He couldn’t run if he had to. You don’t need all that armor if you can run. And some attacks he’d rather not survive. Many a broken soldier has been extracted from their heavy armor, only to be euthanized.
By 1:15 he was wheezing and felt like his mind had shrunk to the size of a pea. He made eye contact with Whitehead and Cowrie. The teams were starting to form up on the Plaza. It was clear overhead. The flags were limp. Nothing stirred. Then there was the flap and flutter of wings as a flock of gallahs burst off the levee wall and circled over the Plaza, filling the hot still air with their screaming squawks.
He tried to watch his two marks. Mark one swam around in a five member team. They stood in two wobbling lines of attention, facing the doors. Balustian yielded to nature and let out a long, exhausting fart, choosing over cramps the further degradation of his environment.
Mark two’s team stood in a loose circle. He looked to where he would move, after the first shot. To the left, halfway to Whitehead. The destination was drenched in glare. From there, mark two was a straight shot. Balustian gripped the stock and curled his finger on the trigger. He waited to hear the doors opening and the footsteps. Only when he knew it was Maximilian would he fire. He was not going to aim. He was going to raise the barrel of the rifle and point it at the mark. It shouldn’t hit him. And he will return that fire, blindly. Of that Balustian was certain. He blinked the time off from the datafeed and then all the other distracting crap. He watched his man. The doors swung open. He let out his stinking breath and waited for Maximilian to step into sight. The teams on the Plaza seemed even nearer now. It was a small space, intimate. Dense with cars, with guns and grenades and soldiers suffocating in their armor. Balustian’s eyes bulged at the window between them and the world.
They were close now. He made his mark. Maximilian and his two aides passed by. It was him. No doubt about it. He looked grim, scared even. His skin was drained of blood and his eyes were nervous, moving about. Balustian paused to scan the Plaza for his detail. He raised the barrel of his gun, pointed it toward mark one, and fired, as did Cowrie and Whitehead, their shots sounding as one but echoing apart off the buildings. Then several guns went off, as each of the teams they had fired on returned that fire. The other teams attempted to scatter but the drive was narrow and full and they only plowed into each other like football players deprived of sense and purpose in the midst of a play. Some tried to climb the iron fence and got caught up in bushes. In the fray Balustian and the others took up their new positions, and fired again. Now everyone on the Plaza fell under fire from everyone else as the air exploded. It spread across to the Secretariat, where guards stumbled into the fountain to escape the general gunfire. Balustian started to laugh when he saw what they had done. The Red Suits fired at each other in all directions. The bullets thudded against their red armor, knocking them flat. Injured guards rose on their feet and attempted to stagger to safety, but their was no safety, only chaos.
In the midst of it all was Maximilian. His red hair, receding badly, was glowing and beaded in sweat. His earlier apprehension had turned to panic. His eyes screamed as the crowd carried him off. He seemed to float on the mob around him. And then, as a red arm handed him a helmet and chain mail tunic, a red spot appeared on his forehead. His eyes widened and his head trembled and exploded, ending the life of the Ruler Maximilian 4.
It was time to run. Balustian looked for an exit and saw instead, emerging from the building into the riot, a crowd rushing out of the doors oblivious to the firefight.
The first salvoes brought down slews of aides, whose bodies began to pile up before the shooting slowed, in heaps of headless, limbless corpses dressed in singed, bloodied business clothes smoking beneath the blazing sun. Many Senators and House members, when they saw what was happening, turned back to the entrance, but many also fell and lay critically wounded on the sidewalk and in the drive. Without immediate medical attention they would be beyond regeneration and would have to clone and start all over again. It wasn’t like Maximilian could grow a new head.
Gunfire eventually became erratic. There was a chugging noise in the air. The Air Cav were flying in on choppers. A large bellied attack helicopter hovered above the Plaza. Over the loudspeaker a voice ordered, “Lay down your weapons.” Instantly rifles swung toward the sky as all the soldiers on the Plaza fired at the helicopter. But their charges and bullets bounced off the armor, or were repulsed by wave. Downtown and uptown more choppers arrived, landing up and down First Avenue. Two Scythe cannon emerged from the belly and the gunner cranked out a volley of rounds that penetrated the armor as easily as skin. Red Suits fell, torn to pieces by bullets. They returned fire and sought cover behind parked vehicles and planters. Mostly they hid behind each other. Balustian saw no way out. He had on a red suit. Frantically he ripped away at the straps and deflated it. The bodies of fleeing guards smashed into him, and as he surged about, trying to undo the armor in small pauses, sleeved arms and booted legs, helmets full of goo, splatted across his path. He made for First Avenue. He got the helmet off, and then the upper. There was a line of bushes. He dove for them, thinking he could lie there and get the rest off. He flew through the air. At midpoint the muzzle of the Scythe poked through the back belly of the helicopter and loosed a volley. A bullet entered Balustian’s head and exploded, and he fell.
