True Allegiance

They went silent, the sound of the motors whirring on open road permeating the night.

“No,” said Soledad finally. “We stick together. That’s how they’ve kept us under their thumb all this time. No more. If they track us down, they track us down. But we’ll stand together, or we’ll fall separately. If it’s good enough for Benjamin Franklin, it’s good enough for me.”

“You do realize,” Ricky said wryly, “Franklin took off for some French whoring for most of the Revolutionary War.”

It thundered overhead, and the clouds opened up.

“Shit,” she heard Aiden say. “Just what we need.”

A bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, temporarily blinding Soledad just enough that she swerved. Then she straightened out, following the other two. In the distance, thunder sounded. A bit of rain like this, she thought, and we’d never have had to bomb that damn building to make our point.

Another flash of lightning.

In the distance, she spotted a dark dot against the lightning. Not a cloud. Something solid.

Aiden spotted it, too. He hit the brakes, hard. So did Ricky. She skidded to a halt beside them.

“Turn off your lights! Get off the road!” Aiden grunted.

The three of them accelerated into a graded irrigation ditch by the side of the road. “That’s a military drone,” Aiden said. “Too small to be anything else.”

“They could be looking for someone else,” Ricky said.

“Like hell,” Aiden shot back.

The drone glided low through the sky; it couldn’t be more than ten thousand feet from the ground. It flew over them, and they crouched down as it did. “Did it see us?” Soledad asked.

“Not yet,” said Aiden. “But I’ve never seen anything like that over here. Last time I saw something like that was Afghanistan. We used to call them in sometimes. What the hell is a Predator doing all the way out in the middle of Tennessee?”

“I don’t know, bud,” said Ricky, “but I think we ought to get out of here.”

Aiden gunned his engine, drove directly for the tree line. Soledad and Ricky hit the gas and swerved to follow, carving a mud swath into the weeds behind them. She leaned forward over the handlebars, trying to will the machine forward. “Don’t look back!” Aiden yelled. He was forty yards ahead of them now, picking up speed, almost at the tree line.

Soledad looked up anyway. The drone was almost above them now, and dropping closer for a better look. “Peel off!” Soledad shouted to Ricky, who nodded and began veering off to the right, back toward the road. She stopped her bike dead, then flipped it around and drove to the left.

The drone stayed on Aiden.

Soledad didn’t see the drone fire the Hellfire missile—she wouldn’t have had time for that. The explosion at the tree line blew her completely off the motorcycle. She covered her head, hit the ground feet first, then tumbled into the irrigation ditch.

She peeked over the edge.

The first twenty feet of trees had been completely obliterated. The embers of the splintered, burning trees floated through the air. On the ground, its rear wheel spinning, Soledad could make out the twisted metal of Aiden’s bike. Near it, she could see what looked like a white lump of flesh. A mangled arm. A torn fragment of a maroon scarf she’d handed him to wipe off his handlebars.

She felt an arm on her shoulder. “Get to your damn bike!” Ricky shouted into her ear. “They’re coming back around!” She tried to get to her feet, but her left leg wouldn’t respond. Looking down, she could see the black ooze of blood creeping through her pants.

Ricky swung her roughly onto his back, then pushed himself onto the cycle. He cranked the throttle. “Aiden,” she moaned. “Son of a bitch.” Behind them, the drone dropped to attack altitude.

Levon

Detroit, Michigan

“GOOD NEWS, MR. WILLIAMS,” SAID Tommy Bradley. “Things have been taken care of.”

Levon smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

“What’s better,” said Bradley, “we got the Terrorist Mama as well, plus a deserter from the SWAT team designated to take her down. So this will play really well in the press. We’d like you to thank the administration to the media, if you would.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Just so you know, Levon, the president is very proud of what you’ve done there. You’ve kept people under control in a bad situation. It won’t be forgotten.”

“About that, sir.” Levon coughed. “I can only keep them tamped down for so long. My people are agitated about that attack, still. O’Sullivan being dead, that helps. But they still think the mayor is a shill for white privilege.”

Bradley went quiet on the other end of the line. The other shoe was about to drop, and he knew it. He didn’t expect Levon’s boot. “I don’t know how long I can keep these people under control,” Levon continued. “I’m going to need some authority to reconstitute the police force.”

“I can tell you the president isn’t going to use federal forces, Mr. Williams.”