Revolution No.9

“How is he?” Pietowski asked.

“Lucky.”

“Paramedics are on their way. We’ll get him on a chopper.”

Monks kept his hands on Gle

A team of two paramedics arrived within minutes, carrying a backboard. Monks helped them ease Gle

Pietowski caught his arm. “There’s people lying on the ground who need you here,” he said, pointing at the havoc below.

The crowd was thi

The paramedics with Gle

“Don’t worry, we’re not going to let anything happen to him,” Pietowski said.

Monks nodded, but he knew the bitter truth behind that concern. Gle

The nearest of the fallen bodies was the Highway Patrolman who had shot Gle

“Stand aside,” Pietowski said again, flashing his badge. “This man’s a doctor.” The cops and paramedics moved back.

Monks knelt beside the man who had tried to kill his son. He had been shot twice. He might have survived the round to the helmet, but the second one, just below its rim, was lethal. Monks knew that that was a preferred target of SWAT-team and military snipers-through the spinal cord into the medulla oblongata.

Then he recognized the thick-featured face, and his rage turned to shock.

“This isn’t a cop,” he said to Pietowski. “He’s one of Freeboot’s men. Hammerhead-the one who had that jade pendant.”

Monks was still crouched there, trying to grasp this new insanity, when one of the FBI undercover agents stepped away from the group, pressing his hand against his ear, listening.

Then he yelled, “They spotted a guy with a limp, up on the highway!”

Agents and cops took off ru

“He’s getting into that RV!” someone yelled.

Monks saw the vehicle, a huge white box on wheels, almost the size of a bus. There was no way that it was going anywhere in this jam. Anybody inside it was trapped.

“Attention! Inside the RV!” the megaphone on the sheriff’s truck bellowed. “Come out with your hands up!”

Dozens of cops, Coast Guard, and SWAT-teamers ringed the RV, taking cover behind parked cars.

“Everybody stay the hell back,” Pietowski yelled. “That thing could be rigged to explode.” He looked pleased but wary. There was still plenty of risk, and the possibility of a drawn-out siege.

Monks started to hear a bizarre sound that seemed to be coming from inside the RV-a screaming whine like a dozen chain saws being revved. The others heard it, too. Talk stopped and the megaphone went silent.

Then the RV did explode, the entire barn-door-sized back panel bursting free with a gut-wrenching kuh-whump, spi

In the midst of that, several MX-type dirt bikes came flying out of the RV’s rear section. The gas-masked, helmeted riders hit the pavement, submachine guns slung across their chests, spraying full automatic bursts that hammered into the parked cars and buildings. The bikes tore through the smoke, splitting off in different directions. Cops fired back furiously, and one bike went into a skid, sliding into a curb and throwing the rider hard against a car.

Monks saw that another of the riders, incredibly, had bare feet.

“That’s Freeboot!” he screamed. “The barefoot one!” He ran forward into the acrid reek of the gas, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve, pointing with his other hand. Through burning eyes, he saw the barefoot rider jerk suddenly, in the convulsive spasm of a man hit by a bullet. But he recovered, popping the bike up in a wheelstand and skidding around in a half-circle. Front wheel still raised, he tore back through the heart of the smoke cloud and appeared again a few seconds later, weaving and leaping like the others through the jammed traffic. Helicopters thundered overhead in pursuit.

Pietowski watched them go, his face taut with controlled rage.

“He looked like he got hit,” Monks said.

Pietowski nodded grimly. “That makes me feel a little better.”

They walked to where the fallen rider lay, surrounded by glowering cops, red-eyed from gas. The body was crumpled and motionless against the car it had struck. The torso looked padded, and Monks realized that the rider was wearing body armor. Probably all of them had been, along with bullet-resistant helmets. But blood was seeping from under the jaw-a lucky shot for the cop that had fired it, the end of luck for the rider. Monks knelt to feel for a pulse, but he already knew, again, that life was gone.

“He’s dead,” Monks said, standing. “You can move him.”

“Let’s see who we got,” Pietowski said.

A deputy knelt and eased the helmet off, revealing soft auburn hair and a thin, almost pretty face. He stepped back in shock.

“Jesus,” he said, “it’s a woman.”

“Shrinkwrap,” Monks said. This time, he felt neither anger nor pity, and by now, not even surprise.

Pietowski nodded. “Nice catch, gentlemen,” he said to the cops. “She was a kingpin.”

Highway 1 looked like a mile-long junkyard, crammed with vehicles too impacted to move. The remnants of the crowd were still spiderwebbing out in the distance, over the headlands to the north, across the crescent beach south, and up into the coastal hills to the east. At least another thousand still lined the streets, many huddled on the ground or crouched behind shelter, and there were new casualties from the motorcyclists’ gunfire, explosion, and general mayhem.

“I’d better get to helping,” Monks told Pietowski, and walked out into the chaos, sca