Chapter 30 -- ZWRVCRMPMFEEVOQUL
Carter watched as Jessica worked with two of the trainers. They were wearing
navy blue windbreakers, simulating police officers. One of them walked up to
the car where she sat, window down and hands on the steering wheel at the ten
and two positions. The other stood near the back of the car, one hand on his
holstered gun. The 'cop' at the window began the usual procedure.
"May I see your license and registration please?"
"It's in my purse," Jessica replied, nodding towards the passenger seat.
"OK, take it out."
Slowly, without turning her body, she reached over and retrieved the purse.
Holding it up so he could easily see what she was doing, she retrieved the
small folder containing the requested items, extracted the license and handed
it to him. He examined it, then walked back to the other actor cop. A car
painted to resemble a police car was parked behind the car Jessica was in, and
he got in and sat for a while, while his partner walked around the vehicle
where Jessica sat, looking it over, then returned to the 'police' car. The
other 'cop' had emerged and the two stood talking for a few minutes.
After a while he returned to where Jessica was.
"Ma'am, would step out of the car, please?"
Jessica made a show of placing her purse back on the seat, then
slowly opened the door and got out.
"Turn around and put your hands on the car."
Jessica began to turn, to her left, blocking his view of what she was doing.
As she completed the turn she bent slightly at the waist, lowering her
shoulder and driving it upward into his chest. As they fell to the ground
together with her on top, she thrust a small revolver under his chin. He went
limp, arms outstretched, and lay still. The other actor drew his weapon and
assumed a shooting stance.
"Don't move or I'll fire! Drop your weapon!"
Jessica turned her head to face him with a cool smile.
"Or what?" she asked. "Screw up and he's dead, and maybe me too, but that won't
help him."
"OK, cut!"
That was Larry Driscoll, a battered old soldier who'd earned his look the hard
way. He'd worn the green beret, but opted for retirement as soon as he was
eligible for a pension. The idealistic young man who had enlisted after the
Vietnam war was over never thought such a debacle would be repeated, only to
find himself in a the same situation as those who had gone before. And with
the ongoing destruction of the armed forces by politics and social engineering,
he finished his twenty years and got out. Eventually he found his way into
the freeholders, becoming part of Mesa Victor.
"All right," he said as Jessica and the two men came over to join the group of
participants. "You all right, Ed?"
"I'm all right," said the man Jessica had just tangled with. "Pretty good shot
though, even when I was expecting it."
He took off his vest, which absorbed most of the energy of the blow.
"Excellent timing, too," he said grinning at Jessica.
She smiled.
"I do my best."
"OK, kids," Larry said, "if that ever has to happen - and none of us ever want
to find ourselves fighting the police, but if it all goes bad we will - one of
the things you'll have to overcome is the natural reluctance to resist, or
even attack, authority figures. We're all normal law-abiding people, and more
than most anything a police uniform represents that. The problem is that
when authority has gone bad it still looks the same.
"That's the first lesson, looking past what you see to what is behind it. The
first time you have to do it, if you ever do, it won't be easy, even when you've
practiced it. The second thing is, in a situation like this, you should assume
that the intention is to arrest you. We're all well-versed in avoiding any
suspicious behavior, so if they stop you you're going in. Once they have the
cuffs on you, it's over. Even now, when enemies of the state are arrested,
they're held without bail in the most secure facilities they have. Your
chances of getting free are pretty well non-existent. Even we would have trouble
cracking a supermax prison. Which is exactly where they'd put you.
"So, in situations like this, you have to make your move before the cuffs go on.
Larry, what would your next move have been if Jessica hadn't interrupted you?"
"The next step is a pat-down. If she had let me get that far I'd have found
the gun."
Jessica was still holding the gun.
"Let me see that," Larry said.
Jessica handed it over and he held it up. It was a molded plastic replica
with no moving parts, made for such police training. He picked up another gun
of the same size, functional one, from a nearby table. He released the
cylinder, held it up.
"Five shot, .38 caliber revolver," he said. "Just about a pound, and not much
bigger than some derringers..." picking up another gun and holding it up "so it's
fairly easy to hide. Some of us do like derringers too, they're somewhat
thinner but the trigger pull on the few double-actions available is usually pretty awful."
He inserted five cartridges into the gun, each made of plastic with a spring
under the primer location, made for dry-firing guns without damaging them. He
then held it pointing upward and rapidly squeezed the trigger five times.
"You can empty it in a couple of seconds," he said, "but hopefully you'll never
need to. This is a hideout gun, easy to conceal, and notice the hammer has no
spur so it won't snag in a pocket. This is probably one of the best, and I
know quite a few of us have them. There's a .44 special version, but it's
bigger - this one is ideal. And when you're practically touching your enemy,
one or two shots will do. Let's do it again. Jessica - Ed, you want to be
the victim again?"
Ed grinned. "No, let's let Phil give it a try."
They resumed their positions, with the cop actors switching places. This time
when Jessica made her move, she followed through by squeezing the trigger
twice as she pressed the gun against Phil's chin.
"Obviously, we're talking about a desperate situation here, one you hope never
to be in. If there were two cops and you tried that, the other one would
certainly shoot you once you had fired. Of course, there are any number of
possible variations. If you're detailing with two - or more adversaries - you
might try to get control of the one you have down, get him up in front of you
for a shield. If you have help on the way, and it gets there before the cops'
backup, that would be a good strategy."
Jessica and Phil returned to the group and she handed the gun back to Larry.
He selected another candidate, and two more volunteers put on the blue jackets
to play cop. There were about a dozen of them, about half of them women,
going through this and similar exercises with their more experienced trainers.
Most of them were about the same age as he and Jessica - thirties and forties.
Unless they were born into it, recruits were generally well into adult life by
the time they arrived.
Eventually Carter had a turn, and found it wasn't nearly as easy to process
the experience as he would have thought. Even though he had been comfortable with
rough physical activity from police training, in these exercises he was
actually practicing to kill - not in self defense but more like a criminal
trying to avoid arrest. He described the feeling to Larry afterward.
"That's not surprising," Larry said, "especially for a former cop. Most of them,
and there are quite a few, say that. One of the things we should do, I believe,
is have some of the women play the cop part. That's where you could really
get in trouble - hesitating because your adversary is a woman. And make no
mistake, a female cop will shoot you as quickly as a man, maybe more so. One
of the things that is covered up about police work is that, proportionally,
more bad shootings are committed by female cops."
Carter had actually been aware of that, and that it was a forbidden subject in
the business. Of course, it could work in their favor. Having women driving
could make travel by car less risky. He had a momentary chill as he thought
of Jessica, alone, on a lonely road. He thought of the situation that now
existed in the country and where it was likely to lead, and knowing that he
had chosen the side of the resistance and would have to deal with all of the
unpleasant possibilities. Unlike the millions who, like sheep, would follow
the judas goat into the slaughterhouse. They would have a short time of
blissful ignorance, and those like him and Jessica would have the same time
for hopes, doubts, and fears all ending with some as yet unknown and
unguessable conclusion.
Jessica always noticed the slightest of his mood changes. After the evening
meal, conducted as at most of these affairs, in a communal dining room, they
returned to their quarters. As usual, they sat for a while watching television,
and neither spoke much for a while. Finally Jessica turned the sound down and
looked over at him.
"Everything all right?" she asked.
"You don't miss a thing, do you?"
"Afraid not." She smiled, but it was more of an attempt at reassurance than
anything else. "Some of that got to you, I could see."
"Does it get to you too?"
"Sure it does. I've been to a couple of these, the ones where they teach the
evade and escape, it makes you think about some unpleasant things."
"We're actually practicing sticking a gun in someone's face and pulling the
trigger, someone who hasn't yet threatened us. That's the line that all people,
not just cops, have to be able to see. And are conditioned against crossing."
"It's not pleasant," she said. "That's why we try to prepare. If it happens
that way, as Larry said, if they get the cuffs on you it's over. We just have
to be able to make that decision before we reach the line, or I guess you
could say that they've moved the line."
"And there's a no man's land in there," Carter said. "At some point you may be
facing a cop who's just an ordinary guy doing his job, and is job is to arrest
whomever the state tells him to arrest. There's no malice in his intent. That's
the disquieting part. He dies because his superiors, who are probably not all
that evil either, are obeying their orders. There's a natural inclination to want to
cut the guy some slack, but if you do you end up in the gulag."
"Pretty much," Jessica said . "Of course by then, the way things are going,
most cops are not going to be innocent, even down at the street level. If
they haven't seen what's going on by then there's not much hope for them. And
if they have there's no reason to feel guilty over them."
"You're right, of course," Carter said. "I know at some point there are no more
excuses. No wonder there are so many sheeple. It's easier on the mind to not
pay attention."
Jessica smiled. A sad smile.
"Yeah. The one good thing is that while we have hope, the reason that hope
exists is still a possibility. The sheep die without ever having lived. I
wonder, if sheep could think, and knew what was happening to them, if they
would be angry and wish they could take one or two of the sheep-killers with
them. We can and, even if we lose, we'll take a lot of them with us."
The sat in silence for a while, watching the ubiquitous attractive young woman
saying words they could not understand with the sound so low. After a while
they got up and went to bed. Carter fell asleep with surprising ease.
Wondering about it later, he thought he had crossed some threshold in his mind,
into a place where his doubts could not follow.