The Trigger

  The tally was five in favor, one - Rochet - against.

  'I'm glad to hear so much support for the option I've chosen,' said Breland. 'Director Mills, will you make one of the FBI's street tactical units available?'

  'We can have a team there in an hour,' he said, turning a faintly mocking gaze on Rochet. 'I'm afraid our spring fatigues aren't in yet, though, so we'll have to go with basic holiday black.'

  Am I the only one in this room not trying to get Breland impeached? Rochet wondered. 'Mr President, if we're going to do this in public, may I suggest that we at least do what we can to try to build a positive mystique around the LifeShield and its crews. Even if it means a delay of a day or two -'

  'It's covered, Ms Rochet,' said Breland, and smiled. 'I think you'll be proud of us when you see.'

  * * *

  20: Publicity

  Winona, Mississippi - A small band of armed gun rights advocates blockaded the northbound lanes of Interstate 55 near Exit 185 for two hours on Wednesday, creating a 40-mile-long traffic jam. Shouting "Wake up, America!', the demonstrators fired rifles, shotguns, and pistols in the air. The LifeShield is the nose of the camel,' said Winona mayor Tom Mullins, who led the demonstration. The Feds won't stop until they've confiscated every firearm and disarmed every household.' State police responded to motorists' complaints, but made no arrests.

  Complete story Commentary: Guns & The South

  Post Commander Defends 'low-key' Handling

  Tower 11 was the last ghost of Cabrini Green - a fourteen-story concrete monolith rising from a desolate treeless tract of urban desert. A monument to misplaced public charity. Tower 11 and its now-demolished neighbors had been built as Federal subsidized housing. They soon turned into shameful vertical ghettos, a case study in the tragedy of the commons, and a symbol of everything that was wrong with the cities of America.

  For all the misery they inflicted on their occupants, and all the embarrassment they represented for their creators and caretakers, the towers of Cabrini Green had lingered a surprisingly long time on the South Chicago skyline. Even after Cabrini Green was finally closed, boarded up, and fenced off, the stark, windowless towers stood for nearly another ten years as one redevelopment scheme after another fell through.

  Only when the city finally agreed to subdivide the parcel and the Federal government agreed to share in the demolition cost did the towers begin to come down. Tower 11 had been only a week away from a visit by Controlled Demolition when it was occupied by something calling itself the African Heritage Army, who claimed 'moral ownership' and announced plans to turn Tower 11 into a museum of gang history and 'the twentieth-century nigger reservations.'

  Whatever official sympathy for those goals the squatters might have found was squandered in an afternoon. Impatient with the lack of se'rious attention from both the press and the polls, 23 Jordan Nkrumah went to the top floor of the tower and began sniping at cars on the nearby northbound Dan Ryan Expressway.

  An enraged amateur with a cheap Chinese-made assault rifle, Nkrumah had little control over what he hit at that distance. He simply kept firing, through half a dozen clips, until the freeway was deserted and the tower ringed with police cars, a helicopter was circling overhead, and he was the story of the day on CNN Breaking News and the Chicago newsfeeds. It was then that he learned that his bullets and the high-speed accidents they spawned had killed five and injured nine more.

  That was when Nkrumah became Captain Michael Kaminski's problem - and vice versa.

  Kaminski was a seventeen-year veteran of the Gary, Indiana, and Chicago police departments, serving the last five years in the 'headline bureau' - the heavily-armed, combat-trained Selective Response Team. For the last two years, he had served as CSRT commander, handling such high-profile cases as the meat-packer bombings (traced to the Animal Life League) and the Field Museum hostage situation (resolved with only a single fatality among the creationist extremists).

  It had fallen to Kaminski to inform Nkrumah, in their first contact, that most of his victims had been black, including an eight-year-old and a woman pregnant with her third child.

  Nkrumah had been unapologetic. 'They are martyrs to the cause of truth, and their deaths are on the heads of our oppressors,' he said. 'We will write their names boldly on these walls.' When Kaminski asked what Nkrumah hoped to accomplish by murdering black children, the squatter replied, 'A slave is invisible to the king until the slave bloodies the king's nose' - a line he repeated in his next (and last) conference-call media interview.

  Then Nkrumah had rebuffed Kaminski's appeals to surrender and avoid further bloodshed. He vowed that he and his army -which he claimed was a hundred strong - would not be moved until the Federal government promised to 'guarantee justice for the black prisoners of war who died in Concentration Camp Cabrini.'

  Nkrumah's African Heritage Army and Kaminski's Selective Response Team had been locked in a standoff ever since. Nkrumah's band - which Kaminski suspected numbered no more than twenty - held the high ground and had a thousand open windows to fire from. They were also armed with sticks of industrial dynamite -from which they had improvised grenades to thwart the SRT's only attempt to enter the tower in an armored personnel carrier.

  But the police controlled the perimeter, meaning no food, water, ammunition, or reinforcements were reaching the AHA. They also controlled the airwaves, as least insofar as anything originating from within the tower - Nkrumah had been completely silenced. Even so, the story had not gone away. And the continuing press attention meant continuing pressure on Kaminski to resolve the situation.

  Knowing that there was no way to assault the tower without risking a Waco, Kaminski had resisted the pressure. He hoped that hunger and a late-winter chill would eventually soften Nkrumah's resolve. But when sporadic sniping from the tower claimed two more casualties, a second assault was planned.

  Then the director of the Chicago office of the FBI had called with an unlikely proposition, and a few hours later the President had made an extraordinary announcement - giving Kaminski a chance to revise the assault plan one more time, and bringing him to the perimeter gate to await the arrival of the cavalry.

  There were more than two dozen news witnesses waiting there as well - part of the price of the FBI's help was giving advance warning to the press and site access to three pool camera teams They reacted to his arrival like steel filings to a magnet, and he gave them the quote they were looking for.

  'I hope Mr 23 Jordan Nkrumah was watching someone's news-feed last night, so we can keep the explanations short and get every-one here home in time to say "Sleep tight" to your kids,' Kaminski said. 'In a little while, we're going to take away Nkrumah's guns, and a little while after that he's going to be behind bars, answering for the lives he took with those guns.'

  'What about the moral rights of the squatters?' someone shouted to him from the back. 'Do you expect them to be able to get justice from prison?'

  The politics don't interest me. Child murderers have no special claim to moral rights that I can see,' Kaminski called back. 'And yes, I expect them to get justice - considerably more justice than they gave Donnie Stavens, or Vernon Thagard, or Jonita Walkey -'

  Just then, sirens announced the approach of the Lif eShield Assist team. Rather than the ominous keening of the typical American emergency vehicle, it was the more neutral two-pitch trill Kaminski associated with old British crime movies. The sound turned all heads (and the headset-mounted cameras along with them) away from Kaminski and toward the street.

  Moments later, a pair of white vehicles - an all-terrain scout car and a four-wheel-drive panel truck - pulled up at the gate. The scout car had four weatherproof speakers mounted on its roof; the truck, four black antennas half a meter high. The vehicles had large blue LifeShield emblems on the hood, roof, and doors.

  The five-man crew that piled out of the vehicles was dressed in the same color scheme - white jumpsuits with LifeShield emblems over the left breast and on the right should
er. One of the five also had a gold circle ringing his emblems; and it was he who pressed forward through the news witnesses and introduced himself to Kaminski.

  'John Grodin, team coordinator,' he said. 'Any changes from what you sent us this afternoon?'

  'No changes.'

  'Do you have your safety perimeter established?'

  'At two hundred meters. We're ready to pull back on your signal.'

  Then let's do it,' Grodin said. 'Are you riding with us?'

  'I'd like to.'

  There's a seat open in the lead car,' said Grodin.

  Kaminski thumbed his lapel mic. 'SiteOpCom to all units - clear the blue zone. Repeat, clear the blue zone and assume your Baker Hot positions.'

  As the others fell back, the tiny caravan moved forward to the edge of what had been the tower's playground. 'You want the honors?' Grodin said, handing Kaminski a comset.

  'I already have all the publicity I can stand,' said Kaminski. 'It's your play.'

  Grodin accepted the phone back with a nod. 'They're not answering,' he said after a time. 'Not to worry, we'll get his attention.' Using his thumb, he entered a code on the comset's keypad. 'Attention, occupants of Cabrini Green Tower Eleven,' he said, and his words boomed through the night from speakers atop the car. 'Attention, Twenty-Three Nkrumah and the African Heritage Army. This is John Grodin with LifeShield Assist Team Thirty-one. Please listen carefully - this will be your only warning.

  'As of now, your weapons are more dangerous to you than they are to us. I can detonate your explosives and destroy your ammunition in a second, with the press of a single button. That's fact one. If you fire on my vehicles, I'll push that button. That's fact two. If you're standing too close to your weapons when I do that, you're going to get hurt. That's fact three.

  'I don't expect you to take my word about this, so I'm prepared to offer a demonstration. You have two minutes to place something from your arsenal - loaded gun, explosive, it doesn't matter - at the far end of the hallway on any floor of the south wing. You pick the floor, you pick the weapon, and then you get everyone clear. When two minutes are up, I'll activate the LifeShield and destroy that weapon from here.

  'After that, I'm going to wait three minutes, and then start dialing up the power. You can use those three minutes to lay down your weapons and walk out of there, or you can stay. Either way, five minutes from now, every explosive in that building is going up.

  'One minute to the demonstration.

  'There isn't anything you can do about this. You only have one choice to make - put down your weapons and live, or keep holding and die. Fire on my team and you forfeit the choice. Don't think the walls will protect you. Don't think you can hide yourself or your weapons. Don't think you can run. The LifeShield will be everywhere, inside and outside.

  Thirty seconds.

  'Come out unarmed, and you will not be harmed. Cling to your weapons, and you're going to the hospital, or the morgue. Your choice.

  'Ten seconds.' He carried the countdown to zero, then switched channels. Tech One, this is Team Director. Do you have a range to the south corner, first floor?'

  'Range is one-seven-two.'

  'Make your range one-nine-zero and prepare to initiate.'

  'One-nine-zero, aye.'

  'Initiate.'

  There was a bright flash from a fourth-story window, followed an instant later by a concussive thunder that made the car vibrate. A hail of concrete fragments rained down on the barren ground. When the breeze blew the cloud of fine dust away, the spotlights showed a gaping hole high on the wall of the tower.

  'Attention, occupants of Cabrini Tower Eleven,' said Grodin. 'You now know that I'm telling you the truth. Your weapons are no longer of any use to you. Your weapons are now a grave danger to you. You have three minutes to abandon them and surrender yourselves to the authorities. Exit the building through the west entrance and walk directly toward the LifeShield vehicles. Do not try to carry a weapon out of the building with you -'

  There,' said Kaminski, pointing. There was movement at the west entrance - a figure that appeared in the ruined doorway, then disappeared again. Moments later, two women emerged, picking their way across the splintered plywood panels which had once covered the entrance. Shielding their eyes against the bright lights directed toward them, they started uncertainly in Grodin's direction.

  That's right - keep coming,' he said. 'Two minutes.'

  Others followed. By the time the countdown reached zero, twenty-four people had emerged from the tower and been escorted away by flak-jacketed members of Kaminski's Selective Response Team. But it quickly became apparent that Nkrumah was not among them. He had ordered his followers out, but defiantly stayed behind himself.

  Kaminski made one last attempt to call Nkrumah's comset, but the squatter did not respond.

  'Do we have enough to declare victory?' asked Grodin. 'No casualties so far, which would please the people I work for. Or do we carry out our threat and give Nkrumah what he wants? He might have enough ordnance up there to bring down big pieces of that building.'

  'I don't think he's the kind to give up his life for the cause,' Kaminski said. 'Not to mention that he's too smart to leave himself with no other options.'

  'You think he thinks we're bluffing?'

  'I don't think he's standing over his armory waiting to find out. My bet is that he's down at ground level somewhere, and unarmed.' He thumbed his lapel mic. 'TacData, this is Kaminski. We're looking for one more. Anything on infrared or audio?'

  'I had some audio transients in one-fourteen about two minutes ago.'

  'Might it have been a comset ringer?'

  'It might have been,' the tech agreed.

  Kaminski thumbed his command radio off. 'We have him,' he said to Grodin, then gave the order to go in.

  Team Red Five found Nkrumah cowering near the window in the ruins of apartment 112, waiting for the explosion, ready to vault the sill and run. Team Red Two found his cache of weapons against an outside wall on the sixth floor, where it would have provided a mighty diversion to cover Nkrumah's attempted escape.

  'Like I said - smart,' said Kaminski as he and Grodin's team watched Nkrumah being taken away in handcuffs. 'Smart enough to come out of this alive.'

  I'm glad we had a smart one the first time out,' said Grodin. 'Can you live with the fact that he didn't give you a chance to kill him?'

  The question surprised Kaminski. 'Yeah,' he said after a moment's thought. 'Yeah, I can. I could even get used to it. I don't suppose you can let me keep that thing.' He jerked a thumb in the direction of the LifeShield van.

  'Sorry,' said Grodin. 'But they'll get you one of your own eventually. This is only the beginning.'

  The core of the Annex team - Karl Brohier, Leigh Thayer, Jeffrey Horton, and Gordon Greene - had come to Washington for the Trigger's unveiling. All but Brohier had been in the gallery itself for Breland's speech, as guests of the President. In fact, had Brohier not objected on their behalf, Breland would have taken that opportunity to credit them with the discovery and introduce them to Congress and the world.

  'You don't want to be celebrities yet,' Brohier had said at a White House luncheon the day before.

  'You're not enjoying the food, Karl?' Gordie had called from the other end of the table. 'I'm pretty sure I'm the first person from the neighborhood to get seated at this restaurant.'

  'Believe me, Dr Greene, I understand. I know how seductive it can be to find yourself here, somewhere that previously only existed for you on TV. This is fun. It is, isn't it? Being invited to the President's tea party. Just being in his company makes you feel like Somebody. Of course, you're not really somebody until you can be blase about coming here.'

  Even the President had laughed at that.

  'We still have work to do, and the spotlight won't make it easier. The theoretical foundations aren't there yet. We haven't earned the spotlight. We don't have good answers to important questions. Every one of you can think of peers who forg
ot to make sure they had it right before they went to the press. I promise you, the country - the world - will find out soon enough who we are. No one else will get the credit - or the blame - for your discovery.

  'Now, I wouldn't ask any of you to turn down the chance to be here. But this week, please take my counsel, and stand a little to one side. The President's kind enough to give us that choice -I think because he understands that it can be a most unwelcome spotlight.' Breland had silently gestured with his glass at that. 'In a little while, we'll know if we're heroes or bums.'

  Heeding Brohier, they had stood a little to one side, and not felt the sacrifice too keenly. They had been feted privately by the White House and by Aron Goldstein at his estate, welcomed by Grover Wilman at Mind Over Madness, and briefed by a four-star general at the Pentagon. They enjoyed government drivers on call and five-star accommodations, and no ticket or reservation was too hard for the President's social secretary to secure.

  Brohier had only stayed in Washington long enough to host a private Terabyte Annex party in his hotel suite the night of Breland's address. Half-drunk on champagne, he praised the members of his team effusively, toasted them repeatedly, and revealed an unexpected command of the ribald limerick. The next morning, he returned to Princeton.

  The others lingered, tempted by Breland's offer of A-list access to whatever landmarks they chose. For Gordie, that meant a peek at the Cold War era Situation Room and an unhurried after-hours visit to a deserted Air and Space Smithsonian; for Horton, a floor tour of the Mint and a chance to watch a sunset through the stained-glass West Rose Window of the National Cathedral. Lee spent an entire day poking through drawers and cabinets at the Smithsonian with the paleontology curators at her elbow.

  The road not taken,' she explained, and the others seemed to understand.

  No matter how many different directions they went during the day, they watched the news together each night, most often in Horton's hotel room, to see what they had wrought. In the week following Cabrini Green, there were half a dozen more LifeShield raids and sweeps. All were carefully chosen to offer the most unambiguous and unsympathetic villains, the most egregious flaunting of civil authority, the greatest threat to innocents, the greatest likelihood of success, and the best opportunities for favorable media play.