The Deluge, page 36
By HazelHorizon Political Analytics
September 1, 2030
TERRORISM, White House resignations, and civil war within the GOP—all part and parcel of this strange and volatile summer—have sent Washington’s weathervane into a tailspin.
With two months to go before midterm elections, President Mary Randall’s party appears to be in open revolt, which has led the White House to shift priorities from energy and climate legislation to border control and national security.
The recalibration began in July with the “Ohio River Massacre,” when truck bombs exploded outside three coal-fired power stations in Ohio and Kentucky, destroying generating capacity. Though the bombings produced no fatalities, they left two million people without power at the height of a record-breaking heat wave. A domestic terrorist network claimed responsibility. Public health officials estimate that at least thirty-four people died of heat-related effects across six Midwestern states during the periods of blackout, although whether these deaths could have been avoided is impossible to say.
Then this past week, President Randall canceled an event in Iowa after the Department of Homeland Security received credible intelligence of another domestic terror plot. Arrests were made of nine individuals with ties to the antigovernment extremist group the Hawkeye Brigade. The FBI and the Iowa attorney general have outlined felony domestic terrorism charges against the seven men and two women involved.
These plots, motivated by different ideological programs, are not being treated with equal severity. The eco-saboteurs known as “the Weathermen,” in reference to the radical leftist group of the 1970s, has set both political parties on their heels, crippled what remains of the coal industry, and ignited a mutiny within the Randall administration, leading to the resignation of Secretary of Defense R. Holden Jons. In a statement explaining his departure, Jons took the unusual step of fiercely criticizing the president for her failure to confront “Islamic radicalism, narco-terrorists, and eco-fascists.” Similar defections have followed among congressional Republicans, and Randall’s most vociferous rival, West Virginia senator Russ Mackowski, continues to call on the president to resign.
Caught in the center of this storm is the hotly contested climate bill. The president and Senate Republicans face enormous pressure to scrap the year-and-a-half effort to pass LaFray-Kastor, also known as the Pollution Reduction, Infrastructure, and Refund Act.
Primary season treated Randall’s allies particularly poorly. Several key Republican lawmakers who’d worked with Democrats to shepherd the bill through the House lost to Far Right challengers, including the legislation’s Republican cosponsor, Judith Kastor. Republicans find themselves facing revolt from a rabid base crying out for answers to this summer’s ongoing violence at the US-Mexico border.
Multiple incidents along Arizona border towns have created a siege mentality in a state rocked by water shortages and a struggling housing market. In April, a firefight in the desert between suspected drug cartel operatives and the paramilitary group the American Patriot League left five Americans and thirteen Mexican nationals dead. Meanwhile, refugees from Central America and Mexico continue to pour northward at an unprecedented rate, and Border Patrol estimates that attempted crossings have increased to nearly two thousand per day, with most of that increase being children. A spokesperson said the agency expects to process nearly 710,000 asylum seekers this year.
Jennifer Braden, star of the insurgent right-wing news network Renaissance Media, continues to draw criticism for emboldening groups like the APL and the Hawkeye Brigade. She has called for militarizing the border in a fashion similar to the partition between North and South Korea. Braden’s views continue to find purchase on the right and have the backing of several billionaire financiers who are spending vast sums to fuel the Republicans’ internal insurgency. The drumbeat to challenge Randall for the nomination in 2032 has grown louder, with names like R. Holden Jons and Russ Mackowski leading the conversation. Yet the Draft Braden movement has the fury of social VR and a newly formed Super PAC already behind it.
As President Randall moves to guard her right flank, her climate bill could be the first victim of that maneuver. In a Sunday interview, she told CBS’s John Dickerson, “I’ve said over and over, we will not pass a bill that will harm American business. I cannot repeat that enough. The bill—if any bill passes at all, that is—the bill will not be punitive. These are the same companies, after all, working with their ingenuity and the power of the market to come up with the next technologies that will fix this issue.”
Meanwhile, with four arrests made for the Ohio and Kentucky attacks, law enforcement seems to have begun unraveling the Weathermen’s network. Yet for Washington, this is not enough. The Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Nine has proposed combining elements of PRIRA with a security and immigration bill, the Protecting America’s Borders and Energy Independence Act, introduced by Nebraska republican Bob Syracuse.
“We’re looking at where our interests overlap,” said Victor Love, the junior Democratic senator from Montana, during an interview with CNN. “I think my party and the Randall administration are taking our lead from the American people, who are clearly saying, ‘Yes, we want to deal with climate change, but no, we don’t want onerous new taxes and regulations, and we want to be secure.”
Love’s elevated voice in the Democratic Party has been greeted with hostility from the Left.
“Any politician who backs down now, we will campaign to remove from office come November,” said Rekia Reynolds, spokesperson for the climate activist organization A Fierce Blue Fire.
However, Reynolds’s threat may not be as potent as it was two years ago. Key allies like Pennsylvania senator Cy Fitzpatrick are behind in the polls while the House bill’s primary Democratic sponsor, Joy LaFray, has become enmeshed in a scandal after a leaked Slapdish xpere revealed her interacting inappropriately with her seventeen-year-old stepson.
That a sex scandal involving a fifty-nine-year-old congresswoman and a minor has made only a glancing blow at the headlines of the day says something about the “derecho summer” of America in 2030.
HazelHorizon is a machine-learning language model. Azi Paybarah and Heather Abramowitz contributed reporting.
THE WEATHERMEN
2030
The drive was eight hours of bitter winter scenery, up through Iowa and Minnesota, under low clouds hovering above glass office boxes and half-abandoned strip malls with empty acres of parking lot, past endless billboards advertising everything from Jesus Christ to laser sculpting to assault rifles with smart bullets. The day had begun at 5:30 a.m. when they caught the Greyhound from Lawrence to Des Moines. Halfway into the five-hour ride, Lali pulled the children’s VR set from her face and demanded her fiddle, which Shane had of course forgot. Lali started to cry, proclaiming loudly and tearily that she didn’t want to take a “robe trip” without her fiddle. Though she could play only basic notes, she carried the thing around like other kids carried dolls.
Once upon a time Shane had packed carefree. Now journeying more than a mile from home was like prepping for a military deployment, and the worry that she might forget some crucial childcare item made it a certainty that she would. She just never counted on the fiddle.
By the time they got to Des Moines, as she led her daughter by the hand away from the bus station to the big-box parking lot a quarter mile down the road, Lali started complaining she had to go to the bathroom. Shane quickly found the car the op had left her, a forest-green Subaru Outback with the GPS and LoJack disabled. But she couldn’t find the magnetic box with the key fob beneath the passenger door.
“Mama, I gotta go,” Lali wheedled.
“No, no, no, c’mon.” She scraped her hand in the muck beneath the door. She tried under the driver’s side, but it wasn’t there either. Could the op have forgotten to leave the fucking key? Just walked away with it still in his pocket?
“Mama, where are we?”
“Lali, just give me a second, okay?” She tried to keep her voice calm. Don’t make demands of children, the mothering hive mind said. Be firm, but not harsh. Lali whined away, and she had to ignore her while she searched beneath the other doors. People walked from their cars to stores in this clot of cheap Midwestern retail, and she kept waiting, checking, scanning to make sure no one had narrowed their eyes at this woman looking like she was trying to boost a car. It was freezing out too. Her fingers were numb, and her nose wouldn’t stop running.
“Mama,” Lali’s tone flipped to stern.
How had the fucking op forgotten to leave the key? She had no phone. No way of contacting Kai or the others. No emergency number to call. As she scraped her hand along the entire frame of the Subaru, she felt tears choking her throat. She hated crying in front of her daughter because she’d spent so much time doing it lately. Lali wouldn’t be able to help herself, and her color would go from pale beige to bright pink as she flooded with shame. Her own weeping would soon follow.
“Mama,” Lali moaned.
“Just one second, honey,” Shane pleaded, and she had to bite down on the sob that trailed it. She jammed her finger on something and hissed. But the pain was momentary, and the magnetic box was there. The op had inexplicably left it under the back left wheel well. “Thank fuck,” she whispered, pulling the key fob from inside. “C’mon, Lals, let’s blow this popsicle stand. Outlaws forever, right?”
But when she turned, she saw the stain running down her daughter’s little pink sweatpants and her mortified sourpuss face. “Okay, doll. First we change.”
She had at least remembered another pair of pants.
FRESH AIR Had Terry Gross interviewing Zeden, and Shane stopped the dial there. Gross asked the pop star about the controversy she’d stirred when she wore a tank top to the Grammys that said I’M WITH THE WEATHERMEN. Zeden’s response wasn’t the least defensive. “Because they’re doing what no one else has the guts to do.” Gross: “So you endorse their use of violence?” Zeden: “What they’re doing is not violence. What the people who owned those coal plants were doing—that’s violence.” A pop star who’d gotten her start with a #1 single about her boyfriend’s hair certainly had a better grasp on the situation than most journalists.
* * *
Lali kept her head stuffed in VR for almost the entire drive. Shane once told herself she’d never stick screens in front of her daughter, but her boss, Teddy, had given her the set, and Shane had to admit it was a godsend in a situation like this. Shane, meanwhile, listened to the scattered FM stations, and by the time they were in Wisconsin, thin flurries had begun blowing over the windshield without sticking.
ACCORDING TO NPR: “The FBI has been unable to paint any kind of picture of the group’s organization. The bombings, spread out over a period of seven years, have been geographically diverse, beginning in the Rocky Mountain states and Great Plains, but now migrating east. Additionally, the four people arrested in connection with the recent attacks all come from disparate corners of the country, and the FBI has been unable to establish a relationship between any of the suspects. This leaves a durable mystery at the center of the investigation, one that law enforcement is eager to unravel.”
Far off the highway, down an obscure road between pine trees hardened by December cold, she squeezed into a yard beside two vehicles and a box truck that said FORD CUSTOM FURNISHING.
The two-story cabin, chocolate wood and dirty glass, looked like a piece of petrified mahogany grown right out of the forest floor. A plume of smoke curled from the chimney and drifted over the trees. A firelight glow beamed from the bay window into the dusk. She roused Lali, who’d long ago fallen asleep, her booster seat a mess of applesauce pouches and graham cracker crumbs. Shane grabbed their bags, and they climbed the steps to the porch, Lali rubbing sleepy eyes. She eased the front door open with a reedy “Hiii” as Lali shuffled in behind her, one hand tightly gripping the butt pocket of Shane’s jeans.
Inside, warm light bathed the wood of the walls, floors, and ceiling. Across from the cushy furniture in the living room was the kitchen where Allen, Murdock, Kai, and Quinn colluded over pasta. Their chatter ceased abruptly. As Shane set her pack on the floor, a swarm of emotions passed over their faces. They’d surely watched Shane’s car approach via a surveillance camera perched in a tree, but now they all stared at Lali. Allen was the first to speak.
“Hey there,” he said, unloading his big, kind smile on her daughter. “Who’s this?”
“This is Islali, but she likes Lali. Do you want to say hi? These are Mama’s friends.”
Lali clung to the back of her leg, wrecked from the long day of travel. She peeked one eye out and stuffed a fist against her lips.
Kai took a step forward from behind the island. Because they were all so quiet, his voice boomed: “Lali, you remember me, right? We’ve hung out before! Badman Kai, remember?”
Lali nodded twice. Murdock looked irritated but not enraged. That specific what-the-fuck simmer belonged to Quinn, who gazed at Shane like she might bolt across the living room and plunge the knife she was using to slice cucumbers into Shane’s chest.
“Can I have a hug or at least a high five or something?” Kai begged. Lali repeated the nod and then left her grip on Shane to dash across the room to Kai and give him a bear hug. “Aw yeah, that’s better!”
After a few minutes of stilted how-was-the-drive chat, Kai suggested, “Hey, Lali, why don’t you let me show you the bed you and your mom are going to sleep in? How ’bout that?”
Lali was already following him. “What about a fort? Can there be a fort? Like, um, pillows and stuff?”
“Genius,” said Kai.
When the two of them reached the second floor, staring only at Quinn, Shane said, “I know.”
Quinn snorted and shook her head in disgust. “Are you out of your motherfucking mind, Shane?”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You brought your fucking daughter.”
“She’s here. It’s done. Get over it.”
Quinn started laughing. “You are a piece of work, lady. Honestly, I’m kind of speechless.”
“She’s what—six years old, Quinn?” Allen stood with one hand in his pocket and the other holding a beer. “What’s she going to remember? Where’s the harm?”
Quinn looked to Murdock, who sat on the kitchen counter. He’d gained more weight in the two years since she’d seen him in Tennessee. He wore a Nittany Lions sweatshirt and a bright red MAGA hat.
“Not ideal,” he said, and swigged from a bottle of Coors.
“That’s an understatement,” said Quinn.
“Look, I didn’t have a choice. The woman at her daycare was going to take her, but she’s having surgery, and there’s no one else I trust or even know well enough.” She felt herself preparing to launch into a disquisition of how she spent more on childcare than rent and food, how the supplemental allowance they each got wasn’t enough, and how she’d even thought of asking her boss if he could look after Lali, but what if something happened? What if Lali got sick or broke an arm and suddenly he had to get in touch? The lies would pile up and become dangerously convoluted. The two times she’d run operations since having Lali, she’d relied on Kai to come stay at her place, but in these circumstances—a meeting of the Principals—that obviously wasn’t possible. All of this died in her throat, however. Instead, she just said, “I brought her VR. She’ll be in that the whole time we’re working.”
“Uhhh,” said Quinn. She splayed out her hands like she could zap entitlement from her fingertips.
“It’s the kind for kids, so it’s not networked,” Shane quickly explained. “She’ll sit around and watch cartoon bugs splat into windshields. Relax.”
Quinn shook her head and aimed her knife back at the cucumbers. Shane felt like the dumbest woman and worst mother humanity had ever coughed up.
“It’s been a long day. We were up at five to catch a Greyhound. I need to pass out.”
Allen rubbed his smooth, pink head. “Want some portabella pasta first?”
* * *
Lali wouldn’t eat anything with mushrooms and instead had cheddar Goldfish and a juice box before Shane put her down. At least she was out as soon as her head hit the pillow. They ate at the oak dining table, Shane wolfing down three helpings and chasing it with Diet Pepsi.
“The next target. We should get a jump on that, but it’s also valuable to talk about the people who got picked up.” Kai was finished and had set his fork in the center of a plate scraped clean by a slice of buttered bread. He wore a dark blue sweater, lovely against his skin. He looked healthy and well rested. “They’ll all be doing significant prison time.”
“The lawyers have the prosecutors jammed up,” said Quinn, unworried. “The sentences will get sliced away bit by bit. None of them will get time like Kroll.”
“Maybe we should feel empathy, if not guilt, for the people we’ve led to prison,” suggested Allen.
“Tabitha and Newman were the fault of Second Cell,” said Shane. “That’s ultimately with me. I’ll debrief Jansi before the next op. They made avoidable mistakes.”
“Mmmph,” said Murdock. He drooped in the dining room chair. “I disagree, Professor. Feeling guilt for patsies doing what patsies are supposed to do ain’t exactly a productive use of our limited time here. Crying over spilled milk and all.”
CAUGHT Allen had followed the news at home while pretending to not care in front of Emmy. The FBI had picked up Mitchell C. Tabitha of Oregon, Daniel P. McCulloch of South Dakota, and Marie K. Newman of New Mexico. All of them had pieces of the IEDs, scraps of material (wiring, nitromethane, cell phones, detonators, and the vans), traced back to them by TEDAC. None of them had planted a bomb, though. None were good for so much as a speck of insight into even the lower ranks of their operations. John G. Gerald of Coshocton, Ohio, on the other hand, was a link closer than Allen would have liked. “You believe this, Allen?” his wife demanded. “They’re railroading these poor people!” Allen shrugged it off like there was just too much to be outraged about these days.
