Chasing echoes the falle.., p.37
Chasing Echoes (The Fallen Republic Book 3), page 37
The long skylights over the corridors—known as light courts—provided welcome natural light for the two-story underground structure spreading north from the Capitol Building like the roots of a tree. Tunnels connected it to the Supreme Court Building on the west, the Sam Houston State Office Building to the east, and the Reagan State Office Building and Texas Workforce Commission to the north. The tunnel to the Workforce building actually continued on, underneath E. 15th Street, to the Robert E. Johnson Legislative Office Building. Several of the complex buildings were connected to others aboveground, directly or via walkways, and she’d come to be very grateful for its existence and complexity. The Capitol Underground Complex—a much better name for it, in her opinion—afforded her innumerable ways to surreptitiously exit the Capitol grounds, which she felt was somewhat important when the FBI had already tried to kidnap and/or murder you, and might try it again. And might have been involved in an attempt to blow up the largest oil refinery in the state—if she had to guess, simply to make Texas more dependent on others, much like what had happened in California with the emergency shutdown of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power station. The federal government seemed in total disarray, but that might make it more dangerous. She’d met Bob Diaz once, maybe twice, and he hadn’t left much of an impression on her, but Vice Presidents rarely did. Now that he’d ascended to the throne, so to speak, well…it might be the difference between a tiger in captivity and one roaming the plains of Africa.
When she was getting ready to head home Teddy got on the radio, and her security team outside would drive vehicles into position all around the Texas Capitol Complex—up near the front of the various buildings, including the Capitol, or simply idling on the streets bordering the property. They had dozens of spots to choose from. There was also the Capitol Extension underground parking garage, completely invisible to any satellite or drones. Her team used at least three vehicles, sometimes as many as six. They also changed vehicles regularly, not just using the black Chevy Tahoes but sometimes vans, passenger cars, even pickups. Personal vehicles sometimes old enough to have avoided the government shutdown, but many of them were newer and had their corporate remote-control systems—OnStar, etc.—disabled, or removed, using the procedures publicized by Dez’ administration—yet another point of contention between her and the previous Presidential administration. She still didn’t know Diaz’ position on the vehicle shutdown or, for that matter, on most of Hellar’s polarizing pandemic policies, such as National Guard roadblocks at the state borders. All of them were clearly, blatantly unconstitutional, but that didn’t seem to matter to any elected official but her. Diaz’ prime-time Presidential address had been full of words, but he really hadn’t said anything other than “Relax, we’re in control, everything’s going to be fine.” She wondered if anyone believed it. No word from the President whether he planned on reactivating all the shutdown cars, or ever planned on opening up air travel again. Every cable news channel was wall-to-wall rioting, looting, and fires, and she suspected that was after being heavily censored by the government. She knew a lot of people wanted to believe Diaz and the White House were in control. People were looking for hope anywhere they could find it. Personally, she was hoping for a phone call from him, to say all was forgiven. She knew better than to hope for an apology, the federal government never apologized, not when it mattered. Unless and until they came to some sort of arrangement, publicly or privately, she couldn’t discount another visit from a federal SWAT team. Or a Predator drone missile strike. She’d mentioned that once to her security team. The hard-bitten Texas Rangers had thought she’d been joking. Teddy, though, he knew she was serious.
She never left the Capitol complex by the same route twice, or at the same time. And she assumed all of the computers and smartphones used by her people at work were being monitored, so she never announced which of the exfil locations she planned to use. Teddy gave her the handwritten list of transport vehicle locations that day, and they only knew which one she was using when she showed up, often unannounced. With the serious tint most Texans put on their car windows to protect them from the blazing sun, once she was inside a vehicle she was anonymous.
Today she had an event to attend. She occasionally felt the urge to disappear, to hide in her office in the capitol or in the Governor’s Mansion, surrounded by armed guards, but she always fought it off. If it was easy, anybody could do it. And the fact that there were people actively trying to stop her made her want to fight twice as hard. Especially since she knew she was in the right. So she didn’t just go from home to work and back, she went out into the city, and across the state, for various events. Showing her face. Talking to the people.
Unannounced, for sure, her travel plans were never listed on any digital itinerary, and she rarely confirmed attendance to anything, she just showed up, but no one could say she was hiding, or afraid. Today she was going to put in an appearance at a semi-official memorial service and prayer vigil for President Hellar put on by various local business and political organizations that had loved or at least supported the woman. Dez despised the bitch, but she had been the President, so she would make an appearance as the Governor of Texas, smile, and keep her personal opinions about the woman to herself.
Dez hadn’t shut down any privately-owned businesses, just government offices, but Austin residents tended to be as liberal as Texans got, and many business owners had temporarily closed due to the virus. Those still remaining open were demanding customers wear masks and social distance when inside, which wouldn’t work for such an event. The organizers had arranged with the city to have the event in the public greenspace along the north bank of the Colorado River, between the Congress Avenue and First Street Jefferson Davis Bridges, in the shadow of the six-story Buford Tower. The location was barely more than a mile from the Capitol Building.
Dez rode down in the elevators from the Capitol building with Teddy and Traci Beebers, a blonde Ranger who was an inch shorter than Dez but who even without the body armor outweighed her by more than a few pounds, most of it muscle. She and Dez had hit it off, and Dez knew the aggressive young woman had four older brothers with whom she’d fought nonstop while growing up, and a father who’d been a Ranger and who’d died on the job—drunk driver—when Traci was in high school.
Dez was in a basic blue dress and still wearing her heels, and they echoed loudly on the tile floor as she walked along E1, the upper level of the Extension. To her left was the railing, and she could look down at the floor below, or up at the long skylight which ran on ahead. To her the Capitol Extension looked like nothing so much as a mall, just with offices to either side instead of stores. With the skylights there was no sense of being underground. Traci Beebers went on ahead, her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and bobbing slightly under her white cowboy hat. She and Teddy were wearing the de rigueur Texas Ranger uniform, western-style button down shirts, red ties, and khaki pants, but over it they wore tactical vests, and had M4 carbines slung across their bodies in addition to the pistols at their waists. Beebers got more than a few looks from passing men.
As it was the middle of the afternoon there were still people working, and Dez nodded at them as she walked along. Some of the state staff were sick, and a number had died from the virus or various mishaps in this new, much more dangerous world, and others simply refused to come to work, but the Texas state government was still in business. Perhaps not smoothly humming along, more like chugging slowly and unevenly, but they were still at it, that was the important part. Many states weren’t. Not that she thought people needed government to survive, but a functioning government provided at least the semblance of normalcy for those people looking for something, anything positive to cling to. Nobody gave the rifles or tactical gear of the Rangers a second glance, not after weeks of zombies. A good percentage of the staffers she saw were visibly armed. Hell, this was Texas—she just assumed everyone was armed. The guys eyeballing Beebers weren’t looking at her guns. Well, some of them were also looking at her guns.
Below the two levels of the extension filled with offices and meeting rooms was the two-level parking garage, accessed via several different stairwells and even an elevator. In fact, there was a less visible way to get to where she was going, but Dez was trying to make a point, to show everyone she was still at work. And unmasked. If any state employee wanted to wear a mask she didn’t have a problem with it, but she’d decided early on she wouldn’t be wearing one in public. She was a public figure, a leader, and the best leaders were those who led from the front. Who led by example. Who projected strength, not weakness.
Past the open air rotunda they took a stairwell down into the garage, a stairwell she wasn’t sure she’d ever used before. The parking garage was low-ceilinged, and echoey, but well lit. The two Rangers spread out, looking in every direction. The garage was supposed to be secure, key card access only, but that didn’t mean anything. Between the parked cars—some of which were disabled, and covered in weeks’ worth of dust—and the concrete pillars, there were a lot of places to hide.
Satisfied they were alone, Teddy and Beebers nodded at each other. Beebers climbed behind the wheel of a black Tahoe, setting her hat in the passenger seat, and her rifle muzzle down on the far side of the center console. The driver’s door window wasn’t tinted, and even without her trademark cowboy hat her blonde ponytail was very distinctive. Her white longsleeve shirt and tactical vest were also visible to anyone looking. She drove off.
Teddy took one more look around, then opened the sliding door of a gray Chrysler minivan of indeterminate age. Dez climbed into the back and Teddy slid the door shut, concealing her behind deeply tinted glass. He opened the front door, placed his rifle and hat carefully inside, then donned a baseball cap and an overlarge canvas work shirt which covered his white shirt and tactical vest. Sitting so attired, behind the wheel, he was unidentifiable as a Ranger, and in the back seat she was invisible.
The exit for the extension’s underground parking garage was on the south side of the Texas Workforce Commission building. Teddy zipped up the ramp, barely paused at the crest, then headed straight out to San Jacinto Boulevard, where he turned south. A block down he cut over to Congress Avenue, turned the corner at the offices of the Texas Tribune, and took Congress south. Filling the back window was the Capitol Building, looming over a vast expanse of green-brown lawn dotted with live oak trees. “Crimson Team can break off,” they heard over the radio. Beebers, letting the other drivers in position around the Capitol know the governor had been picked up. Anyone monitoring the radio would assume the governor was riding with Beebers, which was the point. Dez didn’t know where the blonde Ranger had driven off to—probably the Governor’s Mansion, to further confuse anyone trying to keep track of her movements.
Congress was the main street through downtown Austin. There were restaurants and towering skyscrapers to either side, coffee shops and theaters. At various times in recent history BLACK LIVES MATTER and BLACK AUSTIN MATTERS had been painted on the street, the letters stretching nearly from curb to curb, the messages painted all the way from the 6th to 9th Street intersections.
Austin’s famous saying, Keep Austin Weird, was embraced by the liberal-leaning people who inhabited the downtown area. A quarter mile off Congress, on 6th, was Austin’s own Museum of the Weird. Teddy had a prep radio beside him, turned down low, and he listened in. Texas DPS was already at the riverside memorial, providing security, and Teddy was frowning at the chatter, which was indecipherable to Dez.
“It’s a big crowd,” he told the governor. “And it sounds like they’re angry. Turning into as much a protest against you as it is a memorial service for her. Are you sure you want to go?”
“I said I would,” Dez told him. She’d mentioned it, in private, to one of the organizers of the event. And once she said she’d do something, she never backed down. Teddy knew that as well as her husband.
Teddy listened for a few seconds, his head tilted toward the radio in the cupholder. “They’re fixin’ to spill out into the street, sounds like. Maybe go marching up to the Capitol.” He gave her another look.
“It’s a good thing there’s not much traffic, then,” she said. “Last thing we need is another problem, Teddy. Provided all they’re doing is marching, and shouting…”
“Don’t tell me, tell them,” Teddy muttered, but loud enough for her to hear, and she smiled. Then she cocked her head, listening to the radio.
“Are they chanting?”
“Sounds like it.”
“What are they chanting?” To her ears it was just an undulating wall of noise.
Teddy picked up his prep radio and held it to his ear. There were constant transmissions from the DPS officers on site. He listened for a bit. Finally he said, “Hey hey, ho ho, Nazi Campbell’s got to go.”
“Excellent. I haven’t been called a Nazi in a couple of days.” Ironically for refusing to shut down private businesses and force her constituents to wear masks, which she found almost comical. But a lack of critical thinking skills, relying instead on emotion, was the defining aspect of the crowd on the other side of the political spectrum, in her opinion. An extrapolation of the famous quote from Friedrich Hayek, “If socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists.”
Downtown Austin had, strangely considering its political bent, seen almost no civil disturbances. But, while Austin was more than a bit left, it was left in Texas. Even before the country had been turned on its ear Texans were known to be big fans of the Second Amendment, and it was hard to get a good riot going, or loot properly, when half of the store employees and most homeowners were armed, in a state with very strong ‘stand your ground’ laws. Dallas and Houston had their share of problems, but nothing like what you saw in Chicago or L.A. Outside of the cities, Texans were reportedly getting along just fine, and she suspected much the same was happening around the country. The cities had always been the “problem children” of the country, so to speak, where people were far more apt to behave badly.
They’d passed only two dozen or so moving vehicles since leaving the capitol, which was a fraction of the traffic Austin normally saw. At least they weren’t experiencing the gas shortages reported in many states; Texas had its own oil. And its own refineries. President Hellar had ordered the refineries shut down not long after she’d announced travel restrictions between states; saying a reduction in domestic gasoline supply would help further restrict travel and slow down the spread of the virus. Dez had ignored both demands, and had the Texas AG send a letter to the US Attorney General explaining exactly why ordering such a thing was outside the power of the President. Frankly, Dez was surprised Hellar hadn’t publicly sent troops to shut down their refineries, so having the Marita refinery attacked by what she assumed were contractors working for the federal government had been, unfortunately, unsurprising. In addition to the FBI SWAT team showing up at her house in the dead of night. When she thought of everything that had happened in just a few short weeks, Dez shook her head in disbelief.
A block before the river Teddy pulled to the curb, frowning. To their right was the Fogo de Chao Brazilian steakhouse on the ground floor of the massive Austonian condominium building, and on the far side of Congress was the five-story Austin J. W. Marriott hotel. On the south side of the Marriott was the vaguely pyramidal shape of a gold and glass thirty-story skyscraper perched over the river to the south, formerly One Congress Plaza, now simply One Eleven Congress.
Ahead, the riverside park was beyond full. The crowd had spilled over onto W. Cesar Chavez, which ran along the north bank of the river, and up Congress and Colorado streets. Between five hundred and a thousand people, the DPS officers on site had said, chanting and shouting and waving signs. Someone had a bullhorn and was shouting into it, their voice unintelligible. It was loud even a block away, with the windows up and the van’s air conditioning running on low. The crowd noise was echoing off the tall buildings. Most of the crowd was out of sight, blocked by the bulk of the 22-story office building taking up the first block of Congress north of the river. Colorado Street was just to the west, paralleling Congress, and dead-ended at the river right at the Buford Tower, where the memorial service was supposed to be held.
Teddy turned in his seat and gave her a dubious look. “You’re sure about this, ma’am?” She just looked at him. He sighed, and got on the radio, communicating with the DPS officers stationed ahead, trying to figure out how to get her in there without putting her in danger. Well, direct, imminent danger—appearing in public was always a risk. Nobody but her and Teddy knew she was just a block away, in the back of a plain minivan.
She couldn’t understand most of the radio traffic, it was too brief and garbled, but Teddy seemed to. He looked back at her. “We might be too late. They might be coming to you. To us. Sounds like they’re on the march.” In fact, the wall of agitated people at the far end of the next block appeared to be drawing closer. Most everyone she saw was masked, waving their hands or holding signs on sticks they were pumping up and down in the air. Professionally-made signs, which didn’t surprise her at all. The number of organic, real protests in America were dwarfed by those arranged and organized by activist groups, often hiring attendees. She was surprised they were still doing that in the middle of a pandemic, but then the professional protester types rarely had jobs even in good economies. Getting hired to shout obscenities at the governor was probably one of the few ways for them to still make a buck, with most of the businesses shut down. She was pretty sure the only valuable skill most of them had was knowing how to make a half-caff soy latte—likely while complaining about low pay, capitalism, oppression, racism, the colonial dialectic, the American phallocentric paradigm, misgendering, or whatever the outrage of the day was, or had been. Now they had real problems, not that they seemed to understand that. A lot of them had their masks pulled down so their shouts would be louder.
