3
Civil War
We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
—Thomas Jefferson
The Chief Advisor had never heard of a Schelling point. He would not have appreciated the math in any case. But like the government bureaucrats of ancient China, he understood at the primal level where survival instincts kick in that the Governor’s Cavalry represented an existential threat.
A geek might have said it was yet another Schelling point in a week when an astonishing number of Schelling points had coalesced into spontaneous coordination, but you know how geeks are. Years would pass before a team of BrainTrust math nerds working with Dark Alpha 97 would coin the term “Schelling Cascade” to explain this moment in history.
In any event, like the ancient Chinese before him, the Advisor set forth to disrupt the Governor’s Cavalry before it became a deadly rallying point.
He spoke to the handful of reliable media reporters from BreitTart and Coyote News seated with him in the Oval Office. “With this signature, I declare martial law throughout the United States.” He signed with a flourish.
He felt a moment of giddiness. He’d always wanted to declare martial law—to take full power into his own hands, the kind of power true autocrats took as their due. If the circumstances weren’t so dire, he’d be enjoying it.
Regardless, he took considerable satisfaction in his next words. “I now declare the Governor of California’s so-called Cavalry an illegal assembly. I have dispatched a Marine contingent to take the Governor into custody on the charge of treason. I urge the local police to detain him and his followers at the earliest possible moment.” He looked the reporters in the eye. “And now, I have much to do. That is all.”
As the reporters departed, Trixie, his admin, sashayed in. “You already dispatched Marines?”
The Advisor shook his head. “But I’m about to.” His voice turned sour. “Before I do, I thought I should soothe my Secret Service team. They seem to be in need of constant care these days.”
In the hours since the White House Riot, hours that had grown now into almost two days, the Secret Service had muddled its way through a great deal of difficulty.
Once the President for Life was declared legally dead, they had turned to the Vice President. However, the Vice President had been picked by the Chief Advisor for his special qualifications. In other words, the VP was eighty-five and suffered from severe dementia. Half the time, he couldn’t even recognize his wife.
So, once the VP was formally sworn in, the Cabinet had unanimously voted him unfit for office. The Cabinet followed up by unanimously voting for the Chief Advisor as the next in line for succession. This went against the strict interpretation of the law, but to eliminate further turmoil, the Secret Service had agreed. It had been some time, after all, since strict interpretation of the law in contravention of the Advisor’s desires had been a thing. The nineteen-member Supreme Court, with ten selected specifically for their loyalty to the President and the Advisor, would surely agree to this interpretation once they took it under consideration.
The Service’s agreement had, however, been surly at best. The Advisor needed to make sure, practically decision by decision, that they understood he was operating in the best interests of the country.
Trixie settled on his lap. “You should send that major from Lafayette Park to get the Governor.”
The Chief Advisor—now the Acting President, he reminded himself—started moving his hands over Trixie’s personal parts. “The one who got shot? He’s still in the hospital.”
Trixie writhed against him. “No, silly. The other one. The one with the really high loyalty ratings.”
The Advisor’s eyes brightened. “Oh, right. Great idea, if I could just remember his name.”
Trixie leaned over and nibbled his ear lobe. “That’s why you have me. To remember all the little details. His name is Drew Moreno. Major Drew Moreno.”
Wolf sat up stiffly in the bed of the hotel outside Washington DC. Jonathan’s wife Melissa carefully handed him a cup of coffee. He thanked her, then continued, “So, I’m ok to travel, Doc?”
Melissa grunted. “More or less. You should still see a real doctor.”
Wolf winced as he shifted the wrong way. “The real doctors around here are all way too busy with the people with serious injuries from the riot, as you know.” He sipped the coffee.
Jonathan offered, “Need a ride? Goin’ home soon as you’re up and about.”
Wolf looked at him pensively. “Thanks, but I suspect I’m not done here quite yet. I told you that major outside the White House was a friend of mine?”
Jonathan nodded.
“Well, I suspect he’s going to need my help.” Wolf winced again as he breathed the wrong way.
Melissa frowned. “You’re going to have a nasty scar running down your back. It’s going to be stiff for a long time. You sure you don’t want to see a doctor?”
Wolf waved it away. “I think they can fix me when I get back to the BrainTrust.”
Melissa relented. “They probably can at that.”
Wolf’s look turned pensive again. “You do realize, things are going to get worse throughout the country before they get better, right?”
This met with stony silence.
“If you want, I can probably get you a place on the BrainTrust. What do you do for a living, anyway?”
Jonathan answered reluctantly. “Drill wells.”
Wolf nodded. “Oil wells, huh? Sounds both lucrative and useful.”
Melissa laughed. “Don’t I wish.”
Jonathan added, “Water.”
Melissa, knowing her husband would not elaborate in any useful way, explained. “Jonathan doesn’t drill for oil, Mr. Griffin. He drills for water. In the high desert of Arizona, that’s a lot more valuable than oil.” She sighed. “But it doesn’t pay anywhere near as well. Understand that Selman—our town—is a pretty hardscrabble place. No one makes a lot of money, and lots of folks live on fixed incomes. Everybody needs water, but they can’t afford to pay a lot for it.”
Wolf nodded. “Well, I can look around for jobs for you.” He brightened. “You know, there’s a mining company with one of our archipelagos. They might have a use for someone who knows how to drill.”
Jonathan shook his head. “Customers need me. And we’re pretty far out.” He cast his gaze out the window as if viewing the entire nation. “Nothin’ here’s gonna affect us there.”
Wolf hoped nothing would burst his charming bubble. He pointed at his suitcase. “Poke around in there. You should find a couple spare cell phones.”
Melissa rummaged, then came up with a phone.
Wolf nodded. “Take that. If things change and you need to start over, I’m on speed dial. We’ll see what we can do.”
Jonathan gave him another short jerk of a nod.
Melissa touched his hand. “We’ll be leaving, then.” She looked at her new phone. “I promise we’ll call if we need you.”
Once a month, Empress Ping took up residence in the Porto Novo Palace to wrestle with matters of state so weighty that her second in command, Rubinelle, felt obligated to delegate them upward for the attention of the sovereign.
At the moment, the Empress sat in an Aeron chair at the nominal head of the round table. Even though the table was round, everyone knew Ping’s chair was at the head of the table because it sat just below the enormous imperial throne Ping refused to use, although Rubinelle kept trying to force her into it by forgetting at every meeting to bring out the Aeron chair until Ping expressly ordered its inclusion.
Jam, seated on Ping’s right, remained as withdrawn and disinterested in her surroundings as she had seemed since returning from the battle with Khalid. Getting to that battle had taken an incredible toll on Jam, a toll she had not yet risen above. Ping poked her periodically, so far to no avail.
Ciara, seated to Ping’s left, finished her presentation. “We’re making good progress getting Accel onto all the tablets and phones throughout Benin.” She shook her head. “As usual, some of the most impoverished children are the hungriest for education. Some of those kids are on Accel every minute of the day except when the software throws them out.” The Accel Educational Framework detected when the student had been studying too long and was too tired to continue efficiently. It then forced them to take a break, carefully managing the process to maximize the student’s velocity through the materials.
Oziegbe observed, “Probably more would push the limit, but some of them have jobs and chores to do.”
Rubinelle frowned. “Just as well. Accel is costing us a fortune.”
Ciara stared at her. “Which will pay off phenomenally in the long term.”
Ciara had wound up becoming the architect of the evolving principles being used to redevelop the country. For a wild moment, upon realizing that post-dictatorship Benin was practically a blank slate, she’d considered building an anarcho-capitalist community based on the book Machinery of Freedom.
When she had talked with Colin about it, he’d subdued her enthusiasm. He’d explained, “Unfortunately, the societal infrastructure you’d need to build before you could start on the physical infrastructure Benin needs is rather daunting. Best to conduct these libertarian experiments someplace smaller that already has a high-tech base.”
He’d gone on, “As it happens, a couple of libertarian acquaintances of mine have just bought a pair of isle ships for the very purpose of pursuing this bit of research. I recommend you let them be the guinea pigs.” His voice turned dry. “After all, if something goes wrong for them, they’ll have no problem recovering.”
Next she’d considered a corporate dictatorship like the BrainTrust. Colin didn’t offer much encouragement for that, either. “A system built for a tiny set of the world’s most brilliant engineers will probably not translate very well to a much larger nation where the ability to read is considered a significant attainment.”
In the end, Ciara’d given up all the theories and gone for the kind of simple economic pragmatism that had done so well for Hong Kong in the early years of British rule: keep the government small and simple, just big enough to invest in those activities with the highest positive externalities and strongest network effects—in Benin’s case, decent roads, judicial fairness, and basic education.
Which brought Ciara back to thinking about Rubinelle’s criticism of the current situation.
Rubinelle shrugged. “I’m sure you’re right and all that education will pay handsome dividends eventually, but there’s much else to do in the short term as well, and it all takes money.”
Ping joined Ciara in looking at Oziegbe, the other big spender in the room.
Oziegbe brought up a map on the wallscreen showing new roadwork in green. “As you can see, we’ve gotten a good network of roads into the southwest.” He pointed at the beginnings of a new network running north from the capital to the center of the country. “We’ve moved on to build out the infrastructure up to Torou Airport.” SpaceR had used the airport to land a seized FBI/Air Force spaceplane. The spaceplane was still stuck there, although once the Titan launch pads were finished, they’d be able to fly it again.
Oziegbe added, “We’re moving as fast as we can.”
Rubinelle noted dryly, “And spending money as fast as he can, too.”
Oziegbe waved a finger at her dismissively. “Our work crews are half bots, half humans. Those are the most cost-effective roads ever built.” He defended himself further. “As you all know, we have to get those roads in. Matt and SpaceR are trying to build a spaceport and a rocket manufacturing center at the airport, as well as a nuclear power plant that can supply the electricity for lots of additional businesses.” It would be the second power plant in the country, the Chocolate Grange having already bought one. “He’ll be employing an enormous number of people once we get all the heavy gear up there.” He finally conceded, “But we are spending money as fast as we can.”
Ping rolled her eyes. “Which brings us to revenues. Those can only go up if people can create wealth we can tax. Which brings us to property rights, both the establishment and enforcement thereof.” She turned to the wallscreen, which displayed the member of her team upon whom she most depended at this juncture. “Joshua?”
Joshua sighed.
Joshua’s situation was his own fault, and he acknowledged his guilt. It had all started when he’d mediated for Ping for her brutal treatment of the old Benevolent Advisor. Upon concluding that Ping had, even if accidentally, wound up ruling the country, he had demanded that she learn about economics and law. He had also demanded she study an obscure paper from the previous century on how to rapidly uplift countries by outsourcing critical infrastructure, notably the system of justice, to implement and enforce property rights.
Much of the blame for Joshua’s predicament could be traced to the brilliant Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, who demonstrated with meticulous research in the late 80s that the poor people of the world had trillions of dollars of assets. However, these assets were “informal,” i.e., not recognized by the governments. Those assets were not “owned” by anyone, according to the bureaucrats, even when they were apartment buildings in city centers identical to and adjacent to other apartment buildings that were formally recognized as valuable.
Without formal recognition, the owners could not treat their assets as capital and thus could not borrow against them. The owner of a machine shop could not borrow enough money to buy a new arc welder that would have enabled him to dramatically improve his business. The result was an economy stuck in neutral.
Then in 2003 a Silicon Valley software geek, drunk on logic and driven mad by the power of deductive reasoning, published a paper observing that you could digitally bypass the governments by outsourcing property rights management and enabling the mediation of disputes by trusted third parties who resided beyond the grasp of the corrupt local governments.
That insight had created a short-lived stir among both liberal and conservative activists. It then lay dormant until Joshua insisted Ping read the paper. Joshua had figured it wouldn’t have any consequences except to make Ping’s head explode.
How wrong he had been. He recalled the consequences rebounding into his life clearly.
By the side of the bed, Joshua’s phone played No Diggety, the Anna Kendrick version. He groaned. With his eyes still closed, he grasped the offending device. “Ping. It’s the middle of the night. You simply must learn to call at a decent time.” His eyes shot open and he snapped to an upright position when he remembered the last time Ping had called like this. “Please, you haven’t done anything like the last time you called me at an obscene hour, have you? Jam was supposed to stop you.”
Ping laughed, which made Joshua breathe easier. “Jam’s been gone for a few days, as it happens, practicing her brooding skills. But stay cool, Joshua. It’s nothing like that.”
Joshua waited for the bomb to go off.
Ping continued. “I’ve been reading all the stuff you made me read. I’ve made Rubinelle read it too.”
Joshua blinked. “You have?”
More laughter. “Ciara would’ve locked me in my room if I didn’t follow your orders.”
Joshua nodded. “Good woman.”
“Anyway, as nearly as I can tell, the way to kickstart this country is to send people—Rubinelle’s people for the moment since they’re the ones I trust most—off in every direction and get vidtapes of everyone in every village as they agree who owns what. We’ll upload consensus property titles to the SmartCoin blockchain, and then I can get the banks and the other financial institutions to lend against those assets. Am I right?”
Joshua leapt out of bed, excited. “That’s exactly right! That’s your plan?”
Ping’s voice developed a sly note. “There’s just one problem.”
Joshua had a moment of foreboding. “And that is?”
“When there’s a dispute, who’s gonna mediate?”
Joshua opened his mouth, closed it again, and started once more. “You could, uh . . . ”
Ping responded ever so brightly, “I could send the case to you! What a great solution!”
Joshua found himself speechless, then, “Won’t work. One man can’t do all the mediations for an entire country.”
Ping clapped. “Great idea! You can train people here in Benin as mediators! You’ll be the boss of an entire nationwide organization!”
Joshua had uttered the Groan of the Dying.
Ping and the members of her inner circle watched Joshua as he assembled his thoughts. “With Ciara’s and Jim’s help, we’ve gotten some basic mediation modules into Accel, and that’s really accelerated my training of new mediators.” He shook his head. “But at the end of the day, the kind of mediation we do is as much a matter of hands-on apprenticeship as learning. It’s still slow.”
Ciara cleared her throat. “But just yesterday, you certified your first mediation teacher, right?” She turned to the others. “We now have a local mediator Joshua has said is good enough to teach other mediators.”
Ping rubbed her hands together. “Excellent.”
Oziegbe pointed out how their efforts were coordinated. “As you know, I started building the new roads in the southwest specifically because that’s where the weather’s best for Shura’s new cocoa trees.” He pointed at Rubinelle. “That’s also where she sent her first video recorders to establish land ownership.”
Ciara chimed in. “So we were able to get them loans to get set up and cultivate the new crops.” She smiled wolfishly. “Then all the small landholders formed the Grange that then bought bots from us to work the land.” She held up her mug. “Behold! Hot chocolate.”
Ping turned to Rubinelle. “And revenue.”
Rubinelle nodded stiffly. “If we could get the rest of the country on its feet so easily, we could pay for all this education and road building.” Had Rubinelle not chosen to become the commanding general of an army, she could easily have become an accountant—a strict bean-counting accountant. “However, as it stands, we’re strapped for cash.” A disapproving expression covered her face. “And we are not going to put the government in debt.”
This was so obvious that no one disagreed.
Ping summed up, “The most important thing may be accelerating yet again the video capture of property rights. Then the people can take out loans to pursue the opportunities they see, and even though some of them will screw up and lose everything, their individual failures won’t leave the whole country in the dumpster, which is what would happen if the government took on big debts and screwed up.”
Oziegbe rubbed his hands together. “And with the additional taxes, I can build more roads.”
Ciara glared. “And I can raise the national subsidy so more parents can afford Accel educations for their children.”
Ping looked around. “Anything else?”
Rubinelle leaned forward and clasped her hands. “Empress, a matter of considerable significance has come to my attention.”
Ping choked off her eager adjournment of the meeting. She sighed. “What’s next?”
While the Crash consumed the minds of the Western world, in the less developed parts of the globe, life the day after the Crash continued pretty much the way it had gone the day before. The Sky Rubola had had by far the more important impact on their lives.
Despite the speed with which Dash and the scientists of the BrainTrust had developed the cure for the disease, and the early success of Matt’s interceptor pods in mitigating its spread, certain places had been hit hard.
African dictators and terrorists had always had exceptional willful ignorance of the value of vaccines. All too often, the autocratic governments blithely disregarded the risks to their constituents, while the terrorists brutally punished villagers who allowed health care workers to assist them. Consequently, the three groups—villagers, terrorists, and autocrats—remained as underserved markets for the Sky Rubola cure.
However, as Khalid had intended, the impact of the disease on these three populations proved markedly different. Since the virus targeted most voraciously those who had the wealth and indulgence to dine with gluttonous abandon, the autocrats died in droves. The terrorists, almost as lean as they were mean, still ate better than the villagers from whom they stole all their provisions. Casualties among the terrorists ran high.
The villagers, surviving on the dregs left them by the others, carried the disease but generally survived. Among these survivors were the two people who now entered Ping’s throne room.
A thin dark man came in with a thin dark boy. Rubinelle introduced them. “This is Gabriel Eze from western Nigeria.”
Gabriel nodded.
Rubinelle continued, “And his . . . nephew, more or less, Kingsley Okafor.”
The boy smiled and waved shyly.
Rubinelle flicked her tablet to bring up images on the main wallscreen, then went to stand next to Gabriel. She pointed at the images. “Those are pictures of Gabriel’s village before and after Imam Ekon, the new Nigerian dictator, had his men expel the foreign health care workers.”
One set of images portrayed scenes from a reasonably pastoral village life. The other set showed burned-out buildings and a scattering of smoldering corpses.
Gabriel stared longingly at the older pictures of his home. “The Imam has declared takfir against everyone who lives west of Abuja and north of the Lagos swamps.” He shuddered. “Every day there are more tales of villages destroyed like ours.”
Ping squirmed. She asked gently. “This is terrible, Gabriel, but what do you want us to do? If you’d like to move your people to Benin, you’re more than welcome.” She looked at Rubinelle. “We don’t still have anything like an immigration policy, right? I mean, people can just walk in.”
Rubinelle nodded. “We currently do not have properly secured borders. People come and go as they please.”
Ping turned back to Gabriel. “There you have it.”
Gabriel frowned. “I appreciate that, but we have no money, and all your new factories have people waiting in line to apply for jobs.” His eyes glistened. “All we have is the land we grew up on.”
Without that land, Ping realized, these people were destitute. It was the same problem she was working on here in Benin, really; if Gabriel and his fellow villagers had had proper titles, they could have sold their land and moved to a place with more opportunities. But such a dream was fantastical in a place ruled by Imam Ekon.
Joshua made the point. “So Gabriel and all the people of western Nigeria need the property rights and mediation mechanisms we’re introducing in Benin.”
Rubinelle smiled. “Which brings us to Gabriel’s request.” She nudged him.
He clasped his hands. “We would very much like for the Empress to take over our part of Nigeria and make us part of Benin.”
Ping stared as if punched in the gut.
Oziegbe clapped and laughed. “Just do it.”
For the first time, Jam looked up with interest. “Yes.”
Ciara muffled a scream.
Ping tried to find a way out of it. “I suppose, if your village is right on the border, we could talk to the Imam and see if we could buy it or something.”
Gabriel shook his head. “There are many more of us who would like to join than that.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a battered leather notebook. He opened it and started showing them page after page of signatures. “These are all elders for other villages who would like to join Benin.”
Rubinelle worked her tablet, and a map of Nigeria came up on the wallscreen. The western part of the country was covered with dots. “I have taken the liberty of creating a map that shows all the places where they would like us to take over.”
Gabriel pointed out the obvious. “Just about everyone who has been accused of takfir would like to join you.”
Rubinelle tossed in a few more cents. “The Dahomey kingdom that once embraced our Amazons overlapped both Benin and Nigeria. We would be freeing our own people.” Perhaps feeling this was inadequate justification for such an enormous undertaking, she continued, “And of course, the blessings of justice must be propagated at every opportunity.”
Jam sat up straight. “No matter how much it costs us personally.” She rose from her chair and looked at Ping. “I have something to do. I’ve been putting it off, but it’s time.” She smiled, the happy smile of someone who, having made a decision, feels released from the weight they have carried. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back in time to help with the liberation.” She left with graceful speed.
Ping stared at the map. Then she stared at the burned-out village. Then she stared at the map again.
Ciara whispered, “You can’t be serious.” She watched Ping stare at the images with growing determination and closed her eyes. “Never mind. Let’s make sure we have a damn good plan before we start.”
Ping muttered, “Is this what I have an army for? Really?”
After the meeting broke up, Ciara accosted Gabriel. “I just wanted to make clear, I don’t object to liberating you because I don’t want you to have a better future. I objected because we’re stretched very thin, and the cost of war is always greater than you’re willing to believe before it starts.”
Gabriel nodded. “Forgive me if I think you’re wrong.”
Ciara smiled and looked down at Kingsley. “Might I ask why you brought your nephew along?” She bent and shook Kingsley’s hand. “Welcome to the BrainTrust.”
Kingsley smiled shyly.
Gabriel looked uncomfortable. “Honestly, I was hoping to have him tested to see if he qualified for residence. He doesn’t speak hardly at all, but he’s the brightest boy of all the villages near where we live.” His expression turned wry. “He seems to have a remarkable gift for mathematics.” Gabriel’s expression turned quizzical. “You wouldn’t happen to know who to talk to about testing him, would you?”
Ciara laughed. “You’ve found exactly the right person.”
Ciara took Kingsley to the testing center while Ping dragged Gabriel off to discuss matters of military strategy.
A couple of hours later, Ping returned with Gabriel. Kingsley sat on the edge of his seat at a table as he discovered the pinnacle of joy, a chocolate ice cream cone. His tongue darted around the cone, slurping up the ice cream just before it melted, taking meticulous care not to let the ball of chocolate fall off the cone.
Ciara sat across the table from him with a cup of tea, staring at him with an expression of contemplative shock.
Ping recognized the look; she’d seen it before. “Let me guess. A super-genius?”
Ciara turned slowly to stare at her. “That doesn’t describe it. He’s another Sibahle Zwane.”
Ping blinked. “He’s a who?”
Gabriel gave them a wide smile. “Sibahle was a child math prodigy who became famous around the world.” He went to Kingsley and rubbed his head, which got him a glare since he was disrupting the ice cream experience. “I wondered. I hoped, and I wondered.” He swallowed hard. “Does that mean he can stay?”
Ciara nodded in continued amazement. “Oh, yes, Gabriel.” She frowned. “Now I have to figure out what to do with him.” A look of horror crossed her face. “I might have to call my mom.”
Ping laughed. “Whatever for? Can’t you just hook him up with Accel?”
Ciara sputtered into her tea. “If I do, he’ll just run through all the math coursework in the next year or so and be done. It would be a disaster since he needs to learn more than just math.” She turned contemplative once more. “I might be able to rework the incentives in the framework so that when he learns about history, literature, and other topics, he’s rewarded with more math modules.” She brightened. “Maybe I can call Jim and my dad for a system upgrade.”
Gabriel looked concerned. “Is that what he’ll do all day? Study on a tablet?”
Ping clasped his shoulder. “Oh, no. Don’t worry. This is the one place on Earth where he’ll be able to find peers and make friends.” She watched Kingsley not quite lose the ice cream off the cone again.
The empress’ eyes lit up as she had a thought. “As soon as he has full control of that chocolate, I’m going to take him down to the agriculture decks and introduce him to Shura. Shura’s just the person to take another super-genius and show him around.” She glared at Ciara. “Any objections?”
Ciara snorted. “Quite the contrary.” She waved in the direction of the door. “By all means, take command, Empress.”
Drew’s Marines set up camp in the parking lot of the Golden Nugget Hotel & Casino in Wendover, Utah, which was right on the border with Nevada. A jurisdictional dispute had arisen.
The Wendover sheriff stood in Drew’s personal space, breath reeking of garlic and onions. “This is my town, and he’s my prisoner.” He lifted his finger as if to poke Drew in the chest but thought better of it.
Which showed the sheriff had good instincts for self-preservation. Drew would have broken the finger, and if any of the sheriff’s officers objected, he would have reluctantly let his troops shoot as many of them as necessary. He realized he might have to shoot a lot of them because the entire Wendover police force seemed oblivious to the staggering firepower of his team of Marines, who were loaded out with assault rifles, grenades, and a couple of rocket launchers.
The sound of glass shattering interrupted the dispute. A policeman reached through the broken window of the limousine and fished out a wriggling Governor. Both the sheriff and Drew joined the cop holding the struggling politician/terrorist/revolutionary/freedom fighter.
The sheriff barked, “You’re under arrest.”
Drew agreed, in his own way. “By order of the Acting President of the United States, I hereby take you into custody on the charge of treason.” He waved at another of his men. One of them opened the driver’s door to the limo, dragged the driver unceremoniously out, and plunked himself into the now-empty seat. Another reached through the broken window, opened the rear door, slid in, and shooed the Governor’s attendant out the far side, poking the anxious fellow with his rifle.
While Drew’s men were commandeering the car, the sheriff’s man had handcuffed the Governor.
Drew acknowledged the man. “Well done, officer. Now please put the Governor back in the car.”
The sheriff started to object.
Drew growled in his most commanding, carrying voice, “Enough! I have orders to take this man and his followers to Washington, DC for arraignment. I swear to you we will follow our orders, so help me God.” He leaned over to whisper, “Look carefully at the way my men are holding their weapons, Sheriff. If I must make this a bloodbath, I will.”
The sheriff looked around and blanched.
Drew sweetened the deal. “Why don’t you ride shotgun, at least to Colorado? We’ll take a photo of the event as you pass control over to me at the border.”
The sheriff thought about it. “Can my men form a motorcade around your convoy?”
Drew felt magnanimous. “Why not? And while you’re at it, there’s another task you can do for the Acting President.”
The sheriff stood straighter. “How can I help?”
“Get the license plates and IDs on all these people joining the Governor’s little group. We don’t want any of them to get away when we get to DC.” He remembered one more thing. “Oh, and see if someone in the Nugget has some plastic wrap—something we can tape over this broken car window.”
“You got it.”