Jury of Peers (39 page)

Chapter Seventy–Two

H–Hour

              “It is midnight,” Seth announced.  He came back into the picture wiping his hands on his pants, knelt, and then looked up over his shoulder at the camera.  “Both of the prisoners have been found guilty of at least one of the charges against them, and the Grand Jury’s verdict is in the record.  Derek Siclo, you have been sentenced to death.”  Meek brought the pistol up, drew the side back awkwardly, and chambered a bullet.  It passed out of view, and it was assumed by the masses that he was maneuvering it between Siclo’s buttocks.  “Do you have any last words before the sentence is carried out?”

             
“Mr. Seth wait…”

             
“Quiet Saul, you’ll have your turn,” Seth said. 

             
“Any last words?” he repeated as Bolo sputtered and fumbled for something to say.

             
“Please, this ain’t right, I got kids…”

             
“Then may God have mercy on their souls,” Meek said.

             
Bolo’s eyes were shut tight.  He waited and then finally one eye peeked open.  "Com’on man… please…” he begged.

             
Meek smiled. 

             
Confusion.  “Don’t kill me man.” 

             
“Alright,” Meek said leaned back from the chair without the pistol in view.

             
Both eyes came open.  Bolo looked around, the pain banished in disbelief and elation.  “You ain’t gonna kill me?”

             
“Nope.”

             
A little smile crept up on Bolo’s face.  “You ain’t gonna do it?”  Again his eyes shifted around the room collecting the astonished looks on Ray and Saul’s faces.  “I told ya, yous a straight little bitch.”

             
Meek’s smile didn’t fade but Bolo went on, the rush of shunning death was too much for him to bear.  “I knew it, I knew you was a pussy.  Just ‘nother fuckin’ little bitch!”  He let out a whoop, and then spit on Seth’s face.  “I knew you didn’t have the street to kill me motherfucker.”

             
Meek leaned in, "I was just kiddin'."

             
Siclo's jaundiced eyes searched Meek's face as the color and triumph drained away.  "Whatcha mean?" was all he could muster.

“Aw, com’on now.  I didn’t mean all that,” Seth mocked Derek's street drawl.  “I was just kiddin' 'round.  Just kiddin' that's all." 

              Siclo's dry lips moved, glancing from Seth to the cameras.  He was utterly blanched, bathed in the fear that he'd so often doled out to those around him, and was left with little more than raspy breath. 

             
"I'm not going to kill you.  They are."  Seth pointed back toward the camera.  Suddenly he was pointing at each and every one of the Grand Jury as they sat in their comfy chairs with their flat screen televisions, looked at their phones and tablets in the coffee houses, and blinked in utter disbelief at their computer screens. 

*              *              *

              Seth stood and walked out of the frame leaving Siclo staring after him.  Moments later the image all over the world flickered and the camera feed was replaced with a new screen.  Seth's now familiar voice explained, "What you're all seeing is the measure of your convictions.  The new screen was simple.  A single black bar, very much like a common measuring stick, ran across the screen, dividing it evenly.  Along its length were small white hash marks–zero the only numerical marking at the center.  The right end of the bar was tipped with a small section of red. 

             
"The indictment was overwhelming.  You voted to turn this mess over to a Grand Jury because you wanted to see what would happen.  Once you had the chance to vote to convict, it was clearly a more difficult decision, but in the end far more of you wanted me to pull the trigger.  Mercy was a distant, distant second."

             
Seth's face reappeared on the screen, though the bar remained in the lower third.  "However, I'm not going to do it for you.  If you believe that they should die, then you have to fucking do it yourselves.  No more hiding.  No more pretending.  Not for any of us.  If you believe it… do it."

             
He glanced at Ray who stared back at him in wide–eyed horror.

             
"The pistol that you wanted me to kill Derek Siclo with is now mounted to the bottom of his chair, pointed upward toward his body.  It is loaded and ready to carry out
your
sentence.  Attached to that weapon are leads to my computers here.  In about two minutes I'll open up the final round of voting, first for Derek Siclo, and then for Saul Brown.  Each of final votes will be open to the public for only sixty seconds."

             
Seth's fingers dipped to his keyboard and within moments a bold red arrow appeared just above the zero at the center of the bar.  More tapping.  The word "Execute" appeared in the red at the right.  Things were coming uncomfortably into focus for millions and millions of jurors.

"Each vote in favor of killing him will move the arrow to the right.  And each vote against killing him will move the arrow to the left.  You will all start on even ground.  Neutral.  And then we'll see what you really believe.  During this sixty seconds if the arrow dips into the red at any time, an actuator will turn, the trigger on the pistol will be pulled, and
you
will execute Mr. Derek Siclo. Voting opens in twenty seconds." 

*
              *              *

              At the FOX studios there was an odd silence. 

             
No one had the slightest idea of what to say, and for nearly thirty full seconds the anchors, newsroom techs, and everyone in the studio simply stared at the screen waiting for the bold arrow to waver, to flicker left  or right.

*              *              *

              In the basement, Seth turned his laptop around so that everyone could watch as the arrow came to life.  It surged off of its mark, leaping to the left away from guilty so rapidly that Derek actually smiled through his split lips.  He glanced at Seth, then Ray, then back… but by the time his eyes had returned, the arrow was neutral once again and climbing steadily upward toward the red.  He surged in his seat, trying suddenly to tip himself, to dislodge the gun… to do anything.  But there was nothing to be done.

             
Silence followed.

             
Siclo held his breath as the arrow crawled to the right, crossed into the red, and then pegged, unable to move further.

             
"Night night," Seth said.

             
The computer behind him sounded a warning tone, and Seth frowned… the moment drew out, and the world watched Siclo's face grow triumphant once again. 

             
"All bullshit, I told ya all!" he turned to the camera, a moment of pure rancor that was captured in a flash as the pistol discharged with a surprisingly quiet 'whump.'   The camera jumped from the concussion but refocused almost instantly catching splinters and blood in flight as the bullet raced through Derek Siclo's body.  It mushroomed up and fractured into dozens of razors that sliced through his colon and continued upwards through his lungs.  A few shards exited the soft tissue around his neck, causing a pink mist to leap up around his face and then vanish.

             
His face remained unchanged for an instant as he hung there, defying gravity, then his chair wobbled and crumpled, his ruined body following suit.

Around the world the violence of the decision was downloaded into the consciousness of all who watched.  

The shrieks that suddenly filled the room were conducted worldwide as Siclo began to use the last of his breath to wail.  It was the wild, despairing scream of an animal broken beyond repair.  Derek's body was transformed into an instrument of pure instinct left with two equally futile options–fight or flight.  His hands, blown loose from the impact, scrabbled at the floor, clawing jagged lines through his own blood.  Still tangled in the chair and blood slick tape, his body shuddered as system by system, he began to shut down.  His senses took in all of details so accentuated by his last reserves of adrenaline; the blood spattered across the ceiling in a wide arc, the splintered section of the chair leg driven through his palm, Saul looking down from above, and then Seth Meek standing over him one last time.  He knelt down.

             
"I'm still…
help
me…" he sputtered finding only empty horror in his desperation.  His perforated neck bled from a dozen holes, one of which spat blood several feet into the air–a tiny, pulsing fountain that covered Saul in seconds.  One of Derek's eyes was turned completely back into his head now, a slick sheen of blood held perfectly within the orbit, while the other eye worked incessantly, finding Seth and jittering in the socket as it tried to connect to the human being just inches away.

             
"You won't be alive for long," Seth whispered.  The drain under them gurgled as Siclo's life slipped away into the sewers.  Seth studied him for several seconds as his jaw worked, teeth grinding as his body fought the impending shutdown. "There's no help now.  They all wanted you dead.  Everyone."             

             
"I… hate…." Siclo began, but Seth didn't wait for more.  Standing, he turned to address the camera through the slight haze that now hung in the air.  Behind him, the little jet of blood continued to spatter Saul Brown, diminishing with each pulse.

Chapter Seventy–Three

Heat

             
Finn was standing at the back corner of the bar when his partner returned with the light.  The whole north side of the plaza was dumpsters and air conditioning units covered in icy drizzle.  If anything, the doors on the dark side looked even sturdier than those on the business side.  They walked about two doors down, letting the light lead the way before Tonic said.  "No tracks, no nothing back here.  And we ain’t kickin’ down one of those big steel bastards.  Let’s loop around out front and use this.”  He held up the pilfered thermal scope.  “It won't see through bricks and shit, but maybe if there’s somebody behind glass we’ll get lucky.”

             
They tried to move quickly, but it was an exercise in futility.  The days of on again off again snow had deposited thin sheets of ice under each new layer of snow – the combination was treacherous with Finn’s choice of footwear.  They made their way out into the middle of the lot under the lights and started walking west.

             
Tonic held up the scope and ran it up and down the storefronts from a range of about twenty yards.  The high–pitched activation sound seemed to scream in the quiet night.  “Let’s just keep movin’,” he said. 

             
Finn helped guide him as they made the slow trek.  He didn’t know dick about the big hunk of technology that Tonic was waving around, but it was as good a bet as any, and it gave him time to think.  There weren’t any substantial buildings within fifty or sixty yards, but that didn’t mean that Hack hadn’t just walked away to some other part of the city. 
Still,
he thought,
this would be just about right wouldn’t it?  Places for rent, no one around really.  The Elkhorn was a quiet spot surrounded by more quiet spots. 

             
Tonic's head came away from the scope and it instantly powered down.  "Hear it?"

             
"Hear
what
?"

             
"Somewhere down there," Tonic pointed.  "Gunshot."

*              *              *

              The bar was silent as Seth stood and the camera focused upon him.  A long spray of dark blood crossed his shirt diagonally, eerily reminiscent of the spray paint with which Silo had defiled his family.  In FOX's split screen, the female anchor sat rigid as if replaying in her mind what had been seen on her monitor.  She was utterly pale, and just before Seth spoke, the silence was broken by her sudden gagging.  Vomit exploded outward, peppering the camera just before she dropped out of sight.  The sound continued as Seth began, "The Grand Jury's decision in the matter of Derek Siclo versus the whole world has been carried out.  He's dying right now.  You're watching the last seconds of your decision.  There will be no mercy extended to him, or to the Jury, in order to end the suffering.  Now, the court will proceed on schedule."

*              *              *

              Saul looked down at Bolo while Seth talked to the world.  Bolo's eye jerked toward him and stuck there, still full of malice.  They watched one another until Seth stepped between them, retrieved the pistol from the wrecked chair, and examined it.  The blood in which it had lain ran down Seth's forearm as he held it to the light and rechecked that Saul's bullet was ready in the chamber.  He bent down, intimately close with the boy, and placed the gun into the mount under his body.  As he came up, their eyes met.

             
"I don't ever want to see no more blood," the boy said, the calm in his face genuine and unnerving.  Seth nodded, sharing the desire.  Both were slick with Derek Siclo's life and both wanted nothing more than to be outside in the grey world.  Given the chance, they would have seen it differently now, but each had been sentenced, and in those fleeting seconds, they knew it was as unequivocally so as death itself.  The stench of Bolo's ruptured bowels rose up, filling the room, and the two realized that there was more blood to be seen.

             
Seth moved back to his computers, flicking the blood from his fingers just before he passed out of view, and within moments the black bar was refreshed, the arrow returning to neutral.

             
"You ready Saul?" Seth heard himself say.

             
The boy nodded, eyes already fixed on the monitor, "This ain't like I thought it'd be.  Life ain't 'bout business really.  Not really."  His voice faded away, cracked lips still moving.

             
Ray, who had been sitting in silence throughout, his eyes wide and terrified, suddenly spoke from just beside Seth, "Wait."

             
Startled, Seth jumped and peered over at him for several seconds before answering softly, "There's no more waiting Ray.  You know that."

             
"Just wait… don't," Ray's words rose up unbidden, "you don't have to… you can stop…"

             
"
No
," the resolve in Seth's voice made Ray wince as if slapped.  "No Ray, you can't fucking back out now. 
None of you can
," he shouted so the world could hear, "you're
all
in this and there's no running away.  You can't ignore it, and you can't run and hide just because you don't like your
god damned decision
. 
No!
"

             
He smashed his fists into the keyboard.  "The voting is now open…
so
vote
.  Make it count. 
Stand up for what you fucking believe!"
he screamed.

             
The arrow wavered, jumping for several seconds back and forth on either side of neutral as the world cast their last votes of the trial.  The internet carried the their collective love and hate from around the planet and as it converged into one point, they heard Saul Brown once again begin to pray.  "Angel of God…"

             
The arrow suddenly surged forward from zero to half-way to guilty, finally stalling just short of the red.  "No…" Ray said in the background, "no wait, wait, wait…"

             
Saul shut his eyes and waited.  Tears rolled down his cheeks, mixing with Bolo's blood.  He could
feel
the pent up hate and frustration of humanity focused into a point of density that made his entire body tremble under its weight.

             
"Fuck you Saul," came Bolo's faint voice, "you ain't special."  He spat blood toward the boy, but the majority simply fell back into his face.  "Shakin' like a… little bitch…"

             
For seconds the arrow wavered there, excruciating moments where mankind battled over the life of a boy from the projects–over justice and faith and reason and hate–and then, for the last time, the arrow surged.

*
              *              *

              Baker stood behind Tanner, hands on his shoulders, staring at the same monitor, but not seeing the solution. 

             
"You're sure?"

             
"Yes sir," Tanner said.  Tears had begun to stream from his eyes from the sheer burning fatigue in his eyes, but suddenly he felt electrified… they were close to the end.  He'd searched through an impossible tangle of thoughts and possibilities for Seth Meek and now he could almost
see
him in the code.

             
"So what happens now?" Baker asked.  No fewer than twenty other people were asking the same thing as they watched from their own monitoring stations. 

             
"Once we insert the new code, it'll kill his signal… his live signal.  And we'll be able to see exactly where that signal originates.  Then we have to clean things up."

             
"I personally don't give a shit
where
he is as long as his fucking germy code isn't in our system.  Let the FBI cut off all of his fingers, I couldn't care less.  Just get his stench out of this building.  Do it.  Right now."

             
Heads turned.  Mr. Baker was… angry.  Maybe this is what would finally make the blue lights come to life.

"Do it."

Tanner sent the code.

*              *              *

              Saul's eyes came open just before the arrow dip into the red.  He looked to Seth one last time, and they watched one another, waiting for the dull thud that would announce Saul's death.

             
Ray wept. 

His eyes searched the smeared series of notes and scribbles on his trousers–a timeline toward insanity, reeking of vomit and blood and hate–arrows leading here and there in an effort to make sense of something as primal and senseless as death itself.  He found Saul's name and paused there as time dragged on….nothing.

Seth turned his laptop, a dread welling up within him as he felt something change.  The live feed screen shuddered once, pixilated, and then flashed into white noise.  He was already typing when his signal went dead.  His mind leapt forward, having anticipated this moment, and feverishly he worked to reestablish the link.  It wouldn't last long, it was a last punch thrown in desperation–he didn’t need days now, just minutes. 
Just a few fucking minutes.

*              *              *

Automatically, the script searched… sending out ping after ping down multiple pathways, all of which led to a physical location.  Within moments the ping returned, and with that… Seth Meek's refuge was revealed.  Instantly this information was transferred to the FBI's home office, and without pause to the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia.  It was time to bring it all to an end.  The FBI was not used to losing, and they would not lose now. 
              Tanner's head fell forward and came to rest on his keyboards, adding a few characters to his now unneeded command line. 

Baker simply left the room.

The pair of HRT helicopters had been cleared into D.C. airspace an hour earlier and had begun a lazy orbit of the city.  As this fresh information was fed into the onboard computers, a new heading was generated, the Blackhawks dipped in unison and picked up speed.  The operators in the rear noticed the change of course, and what had been a chilly midnight sight seeing tour of the nation's Capitol, became a life or death race to neutralize Mr. Seth Meek, former employee of the NSA.

Each team member listened to the information being rapidly relayed from Quantico – unlike many UH–60's, where only the team leader was plugged into the intercom system, HRT birds allowed everyone to share information instantaneously.  This freed the team lead to sit in the middle of the men with an old fashioned white board, looking for all of the world like a high school basketball coach detailing a last second play for his boys.  He sketched the building from words alone, noting the nearby bar, the probability of overhead parking lot lights, and then wrote and underlined, "ICE."  With simple arrows he plotted the team's likely entry point and rally point.  One by one he looked at his men and got the thumbs up.

They were ready.  And now, again, they would wait. 

The co–pilot turned aft, staring at the group from behind his four barreled night vision goggles, and flashed them four fingers, twice.  Plus one middle finger for good measure.  Eight long minutes to their LZ, maybe a minute to size it up and get into position to fast rope in, fourteen seconds to get everyone on the ground, thirty to find the entry point, stack, and breach, and then a minute or less to take it all down and secure it. 

They all returned the one finger salute.

*              *              *

              "Is it over?" Ray asked as he watched Seth working at the keyboard.

             
"Almost."

             
"Did they shut it down?"

             
"Yes, but no," Seth looked up briefly and then back to the screen.  He typed without pause for thirty seconds and then put the laptop aside and stood again.  "We'll be live again in about a minute, but it won't last.  Once my script propagates over their system again I'll have about ten minutes tops before they kill it completely.  Then it's really over.  Unless the cops get here first.  I'm broadcasting in the clear."

             
"So what now?" Ray asked through tears.

             
Seth walked to Saul, stepping over Bolo's balled up form who lay unmoving at the base of the chair.

"You can do it yourself Mr. Seth."

Ray put his head down, closing his eyes so tightly that it hurt.

In the background the computer beeped, and the cameras went live one last time.