Jade Dragon

1. Once Upon a Time in China

Frankie worked his jaw and frowned, shifting slightly in the depths of the padded acceleration couch. The conformal cushion gave a sensual sigh and moved to accommodate him, but he fidgeted again. The book he’d loaded into his palmtop remained unread, his attention unable to hold past page six of What Gangcults Can Teach Us About Management. Stuffing the computer into his carry-on bag, his eyes returned to wandering over and around the smooth lines of the airliner cabin. On some level he felt like he was failing to project the right image. The other men and women in their seats, each an arm’s length away from the other and surrounded by an expensive halo of legroom, all seemed so at ease in here as to be profoundly bored with it all. Moving so she wouldn’t know where he was looking, Frankie observed the lady in pinstripes with the Eidolon cheek-tatt. She was still having the same conversation she’d started as they came out of boost phase from LA-Double-X, in poppy little spits of subvocalisation that weren’t real words, talking to a dermal mike in her larynx. A privacy masking field made it impossible for him to figure out what she was so animated about, but by the way she kept miming a gun-forefinger extended, thumb a falling hammer-it was clear somebody back in NorCalifornia was getting reamed. Next to her was a large man who looked like a sumotori, forced into a black Ozwald Boateng suit that might have made an elegant pup tent in another life. The big fellow was engrossed in the screen he gripped with fat sausage fingers; the sound was on direct beam, but Frankie could see the tanned face of ZeeBeeCee’s Tammy Popeldouris engaged in serious conversation with Juno Qwan, while the idol singer’s new vid played picture-in-picture.

A gentle swell of turbulence rocked the liner, reminding him where they were. He sniffed the air; the same canned, conditioned taste that the atmosphere in the office had, that the airport lounge had too. The cabin was seamless in muted reds and pale cream, matching almost perfectly to the decor of the executive embarkation area at LAXX, and no doubt to the egress lounge at SkyHarbour and any one of a hundred other airports around the world. Usually that sort of thing made Frankie feel safe, the idea that the corps were helping to maintain a homogenous profile across the world, so that anyone could find a Buckstars or a MacDee no matter if you were in Manchester or Mumbai… But all of a sudden it seemed too plastic to him, just a veneer over a dangerous, unfamiliar place. He looked away, forcing down the little flutter of butterfly nerves rolling around in his gut. He was supposed to be a professional; this sort of giddy rush was the kind of thing a single-term window gazer would experience, not an echelon executive like him.

I should be making the most of this, he thought. It wasn’t every day he got to fly transcontinental; what with the shifts in the fuel markets and the rise of franchise terrorism post Y2K, aviation had moved back to the rarefied state it was in at the dawn of commercial flight-when only the military and the very rich could afford it.

Frankie let out a controlled breath and, for what must have been the hundredth time during the flight, he unfolded the photo.

There they were, the two of them with big, goofy grins on their faces on the upper deck of the Star Ferry, the lights of the city a rainbow blur behind them. He tried to remember who had taken the picture-one of the other grads, maybe that thin girl from Foshan who got posted to orbit? They both looked so happy there, fuelled by too many bottles of Tsingtao and the elation at making the cut at the corporate academy. That was before the company had parted them, sent him to the other side of the world while his brother got to stay home and rise like a rocket through the ranks of the head office. Frankie felt the bite of resentment and instantly flattened it. No. Alan deserves his success. Deserved it. He was always the more diligent of them, and Frankie knew it. While Frankie had toiled to make any kind of advancement at the Los Angeles division, Alan Lam had caught the eye of the upper tiers and skipped entire grades on his way to the top floors.

Not that any of those things mattered now, a morose inner voice reminded him. When the summons from Yuk Lung Heavy Industry’s headquarters had pinged into life on the LA branch office d-screen, there was a moment when Frankie’s supervisor had automatically assumed it was for him. Burt Tiplady, all one metre sixty of his arrogant, noisy self, had swaggered over to take the comm, oozing smarm. Burt had been waiting for four years to get cherry-picked by Hong Kong. The look on his face when he realised the message was for Frankie, not him, was worth every day that Lam had weathered his bellicose presence; but try as he might, Frankie couldn’t rekindle that feeling right now. The cold hollow that formed as Burt passed him the screen to read had overwritten that one moment of elation.

Alan was dead; the company expressed its deepest sympathies, and requested the presence of his brother in the Hong Kong office on the next available stratojet.

That was two days ago. Time had passed in a whirl. The forms authorising his transfer were attached with the comm, and he’d gone back to his dormplex in Santa Monica to find his gear already stowed for transit. YLHI wanted him to come home, and so he did, propelled on a cushion of numbness and faint guilt. Frankie had not spoken to Alan in a year, and even then it had only been a cursory hello-goodbye, something to do with that GenTech problem in Texas. Once, they had been inseparable. Now, the company that had parted them was all that connected them.

Frankie sighed and it came with a shudder. He felt isolated, impossibly disconnected from the young guy in the picture, his hand around his brother’s shoulder, laughing and carefree.

“Going home?”

Frankie looked up with a start and blinked. The flight attendant had materialized from out of thin air, a tray of data needles in the crook of one arm. She had ice blue eyes that matched the sliver-grey glolights in her blonde hair. The smile on her lips was utterly perfect. “I’m s-sorry?” he managed.

“Are you going home? To Hong Kong?” She indicated the picture with a gente incline of her head. “Meeting family?”

“Yes.” His throat went tight. “Can I, um, have a drink, please?”

“Of course. Glen Fujiyama on the rocks, wasn’t it?” She produced the tumbler of whiskey from a trolley at her side.

Frankie took a deep sip, feeling stupid for asking for it like a child begging for sweets. He was in the rare air of the high corporates now, and no one who travelled here had to ask for anything. They were entitled to it.

As if she saw it in his mind, the attendant asked, “Is this the first time you’ve flown with us?” She smiled again. “Congratulations on your promotion.”

“Yes,” he repeated. “Thank you.”

She indicated the tray of software, the varicoloured pins like a spread of fly-fishing lures. “Can I interest you in an entertainment programme? Something from the cinema of the Ukraine, perhaps?”

Frankie shook his head.

“We have sensual recreation automata on board, if you’d prefer. They support a wide range of romantic configurations.”

Another sip. “I’m fine. ”This time he said it with the right tone of dismissal and the attendant melted away with a final, perfectly sculpted smile. He nursed the drink as a low rumble worked its way through the liner’s airframe. Through the half-open window blind, he could see distant hazy blobs that represented the coastal city sprawls of Vietnam. With every passing second the stratojet brought Frankie closer to the point of no return, the moment looming up in front of him where finally irrevocably, he would have to face the hard reality that his brother was gone. But as much as he tried to convince himself that the churn of emotions in his gut was some ridiculous hope that this all might be some huge mistake, he knew in his marrow that Alan had perished. There was nothing arcane about it, no ephemeral spiritual bond between siblings. He just knew it; it seemed right somehow, correct in the order of things.

No, the sick dread that gathered at the corners of his thoughts had a different source. His transfer had come directly from the office of the chief executive officer of Yuk Lung Heavy Industry, from the man who ruled the corporation like a feudal warlord. Mr Tze. If he had a first name, no one spoke it. In an age when the corporate hierarchy was the new royalty of the Twenties, the master of YLHI was a reclusive, shady figure. He never left Hong Kong, rarely even ventured from the towering citadel headquarters of the company, and only then to the fortress compound he maintained along the Pearl River. The man wore his command of the corporation like a suit of ancient armour and he was as ruthless as the Mongols that some said he descended from. The mere idea of being in this man’s physical presence threatened to overwhelm Frankie if he dwelled on it too long. See, there were stories about Mr Tze. The kind that only ever appeared on viral samizdata netcasts in the instants before Datapol shut them down. To even admit to having watched such seditious material would warrant instant termination of contract for Frankie. He drained the last of the drink and lost himself in the motion of the ice cubes in the tumbler, moving over one another as the aircraft’s nose dipped toward China.

Distantly, Frankie Lam heard a soft chime and the ends of his seatbelt snaked across his waist, their steel heads meeting with a decisive click, locking him in place.

“There was this time,” began Lau Feng, fingering the unkempt stubble on his chin, “I think we were near Guilin, when this girl came up to us on the path.”

“Mmm.” Ko gave one of those nothing replies, just a noise at the front of his lips to indicate that he was hearing Feng without actually listening to him. The youth squatted in the lee of the concrete stanchion and threw a quick left-right glance about the underground car park. He knew the security drone sweep patterns better than the guys on the monitor desk.

“She had the nicest eyes. Green. Or something.” Feng’s hand drummed on the breastplate of his armour, and wandered like a bored spider down past his belly and across the threadbare strips of boiled leather that made up his battle skirt. “Anyway, she wanted to come with us. She’d stolen her father’s sword. Very emotional about it all.”

Ko peered closely at the sensor plate on the car locking mechanism. It was a retrofit, reasonable quality European manufacture, probably a Moulinex or a Krupp. He reached for the bright pink disposable cellphone that he’d picked from the pocket of a small boy in the departure terminal and levered off the back with his balisong knife. “You’ve told me this story before,” complained Ko, although not with any real strength behind it.

“So the captain, he laughs at her, because she was just a girl. And she took his head off with the blade. Just like that.” Feng mimed the motion across his neck. “Like that,” he repeated. His stray hand settled on the hilt of the lionhead sword at his hip. “I admired her for it, you know? But in the end we had to hurt her to get the weapon away. ”

Ko actually bothered to give him a look. “Will you shut up? Can’t you see that I’m trying to concentrate?” To punctuate his statement, Ko tugged on the front of his jacket and pulled the kevleather tight. He had the guts of the cellphone in one hand, the microtransmitter inside it making distressed squawking sounds as it fired off spasms of misfired signals. Lights blinked on the lock once or twice, which meant Ko was close to getting the door to open.

Feng sniffed and cocked his head. “Soldiers are coming. You won’t get that done in time.”

“Liar.” Ko glanced at the cellphone. It was overloading, getting hot in his hand. Trying to crack a microwave lock like this was always a roll of the dice; sometimes the phones would blanket the locks with enough conflicting signals that they’d run home to mama, snap back to their default settings and pop open; other times it would fry them solid. Ko was sanguine, though. It wasn’t as if the G-Mek Vista GL he was crouched by was his, after all.

“Bet you a smoke,” said Feng.

“Stop distracting-” Ko’s retort was cut short as something came alive inside the sports car. The vehicle’s lights snapped on all at once, full beam and glaring. From a speaker in the grille a synthetic voice barked at him. “Attention! This vehicle is undergoing a theft! Alert! Alert! Contact authorities immediately!”

Ko swore under his breath; suddenly Feng was nowhere to be seen and sure enough, there were two men in APRC fatigues jogging across the car park toward him.

“Phase two alert!” shouted the Vista GL. “Lethal deterrent charging! This is your legal warning!”

The youth turned and ran as the electro-zappers on the bodywork whined up to full capacity. He’d picked this part of the car park because it was close to the maintenance access wells. Ko forced his way through the gap between two chained gates and sprinted up three flights of concrete stairs. He forced himself to a slow, casual walk as he emerged into the evening, around the blunt concrete architecture of the airport’s vast parking field. Faintly, he heard the deep buzz-crackle of the stunner going off below.

Feng sat cross-legged on a wall. “I warned you.”

“Shut up, dead man.”

The swordsman hopped down and trailed after him. Ko paused to throw the ruined cellphone in a waste drum, and Feng pointed at the vending machine next to it. “You owe me a smoke.”

“Fine.” Ko slammed his debit card into the machine’s slot and the vendor disgorged a packet of Peacefuls cigarettes. Feng licked his lips as the youth removed the plastic wrapper and carefully set the packet on fire with a disposable lighter. The box combusted quickly and Ko let it drop to the ground. Feng stooped to follow it, watching it crumble into a mound of grey ash.

The machine had a mirrorscreen facia, and despite the gang tag scrawls across its surface, Ko could still get a good look at himself. The screen showed him on a tropical beach, cartoon cans in white and blue dancing about him with wild abandon. “Enjoy the Great Taste of Lan Ri!” said the screen. “The Flavour is Now!” Ko used the screen to check himself over; his face was a little flushed with effort, but his spikey black hair-do was still intact and the hachimaki band across his forehead hadn’t slipped. He flicked minuscule dots of dust from his jacket and straightened it a little.

“You preen too much. Like a dandy.” Feng had a cigarette in his hand now and he took a drag on it in the way a starving man would eat a meal.

Ko gave the pile of ashes a desultory kick; an identical and intact packet of Peacefuls went into the drawstring pouch hanging on Feng’s belt. “Those things will kill you.”

The joke was old, but it still raised a smirk from both of them. “The only vice I can have,” said the soldier. “If you can find me another one…”

Ko nodded at the gathering of cars and bikes in the middle of the open concrete plaza. “Come on. Perhaps my luck will change.”

Passport control consisted of a walk through a deep penetration scanner tunnel and an impressively large security automaton modelled on Kuan Ti, the God of War. The machine licked the thick black ident card in his hand with a thread-thin green laser, and took a moment to examine his HIV Negative warrant before intoning a welcome in elaborate Mandarin. Frankie walked through the lounge without stopping; the urge to get free of the identical spaces inside the plane and the airports propelled him into the arrivals area. He slowed, crossing the marble floors, looking up to take in the arching steel framework of the terminal’s roof.

“Hello, Francis.” The voice was soft and melodic.

“Uh. Hello.” A thin Japanese woman extended a hand to him and he took it. She had warm skin, dry and soft. At her shoulders were two very different figures. The first, a younger man, pinched and a little bored-looking. This one took his bags without comment and resumed walking. The other was tall, broad about the chest and he moved in the way that only trained men did. Frankie knew the type instantly; corporate security. All three of them wore suits of a similar cut, the discreet YLHI pennant there on their lapel like his, but Frankie had to wrench his gaze away from the security agent with an almost physical effort. The tall man’s face was concealed beneath a porcelain opera mask of the Monkey King, a swirl of black, yellow and white.

“My name is Alice,” said the woman, “Mr Tze sends his apologies that he could not attend to greet you in person. I’m sure you understand.”

Frankie nodded. She was very pale, he noticed, her skin the colour of milk.

“I would also like to extend to you my personal sympathies on the matter of Alan’s passing.” She gave a little sigh. “I was honoured to work with him.”

A confusion of questions forced their way to the front of Frankie’s mind as he understood in that moment how little he knew about Alan’s life, but they defied any attempt to articulate them. In the end he managed a clumsy “Thank you.”

“Transport has been arranged,” said Alice. “This way.”

Some quirk of legalese meant the car park outside Chek Lap Kok SkyHarbour was still classed as a public area, and so as long as they did nothing too reckless, there was little the greenjackets of the APRC could do with the go-ganger crews and wayward teens but move them on or throw in the occasional rousting when they got too rowdy. Ko privately believed that the soldiers from the mainland liked the corporates as little as he and his street racer friends did, and that they let the gangers hang out here just because it pissed off the suits. As long as they kept the level of fatalities down to an acceptable level, they would be allowed to loiter.

Ko drew closer to the gathering and his heart sank. On his face the emotion showed up as a tight curl at the corner of his mouth. There was the metallic green Kondobishi Kaze he hated, with its ostentatious gold rims and that dumbass hemi blower poking through the bonnet like a little beehive.

“Makes a change for you to see it from the front, eh Chen? Bet you forgot what it looks like, you see the tailgate so much!” A ripple of brusque laughter followed the insult out toward him.

He returned Second Lei a level, icy stare-the same kind that Hazzard Wu gave the Master of Glocks at the climax of Gunfighter Orphanage’s final reel. “I let you win, Second, because you cry like a girl when you lose.” Ko held his hand waist-high. “Like a little girl.”

Lei’s crude sneer froze on his face, the humour fading like vapour. “Watch your mouth, punk. You’re asphalt to me, understand? I wouldn’t even race you for pinks.”

Ko resisted the urge to say what he really thought-that Second was a braggart and a fool, who only kept his green monster on the road because he funded it with cash skimmed from back-alley drug pushing that even the triads wouldn’t touch. Instead he just looked away. Sometimes it was easier to let the fool have his way than start a fresh fight every time they crossed paths. Give the baby the teat.

But Lei had other ideas. “You know who this is?” He put the question to the assembled gangers, who quieted, sensing violence brewing. “This is Chen Watt Ko, spooky Chen, no-hope loser with his imaginary friend!” Second advanced toward him. “Where’s your pal, Ko? Is he here?” Lei cast around, made a show of looking high and low. He pantomimed a shiver. “Whoo-hoo-hoo! Ko sees dead people!”

“Tell him I said he has a face like a baboon’s ass-crack.” Feng was there on the hood of the green car. He stubbed out one Peaceful on the windscreen and lit another.

Second looked right through the swordsman. “No? Not here? What a shame.” He stepped up and prodded Ko in the chest. “You’ve been a freak since we were kids, Chen. I only keep you around for laughs.” Second snapped his fingers and the nondescript dolly with him handed over a pop-pack of clear capsules. He took a couple and tossed them into his open mouth like candy drops. Ko’s antipathy showed; drug-takers disgusted him.

“Zen, zen…” sang the girl. “I’m the quiet mind inside, pretty voice…”

“I see your grandmother…” Ko began, and Second wheeled around to face him, his eyes alight with sudden fury. “Your grandmother is very disappointed in you. She says you’re too fat and you lay with unclean women.”

Second’s fist was cocked and in that second Ko thought the other man would knock him to the ground-he was bigger and it would have hurt a lot-but at the last moment he spat and pushed Ko away. “You’re so smart, Chen, how about you walk home tonight, huh?” Lei snapped out an order and no one argued. “Nobody gives Ko a lift, understand? He don’t deserve to roll with us!”

“I got a car.” The lie came from nowhere.

“Oh?” Second faced him again. “Your sister has that crackerbox Ranger of yours, I saw it down in Central! Where are these new wheels, then?”

A glimmer of movement caught Ko’s eye. A formation of three gunmetal Mercedes Vectors were pulling into the corporate waiting area near the airport terminal. “There it is,” he replied. “I’ll just go get it.”

Second mumbled something under his breath about “idiot” but Ko was already walking away.

Feng jogged after him. “What are you going to do, boy?”

“A daring and stupid thing.”

Frankie watched Alice’s man jog away with his carry-on in his hand, toward the stand of silver cars waiting on the slip road outside the terminal. She gave him a small, controlled smile. “If you prefer to drive yourself in the city, I can have my department arrange something suitable for you. For the moment, though, I would recommend you opt for a pool car and driver. Hong Kong has changed a lot since you left.”

“It, uh, always does.” He glanced at the masked man again.

“Mr Tze takes the security of his personnel most seriously,” said the woman, answering the question before he spoke it.

Frankie frowned. The night air was cloying and strange somehow.

“Is something amiss?” asked the woman.

“It’s nothing,” he replied after a moment. “Just… I was born here. But now… Now I’m home and it feels… Foreign? ”

“The thing about the Euros is,” began Ko, “they got what you call an ‘engineer mindset’.”

The man came up from the back seat with a start, dropping Frankie’s bag and slamming the door. Where the hell had this punk come from? “This is a restricted area-”

Ko was still speaking. “See, they look at fine ride like this and can’t think past the test track and the wheel lab. They forget that cars drive on the Street.” He pointed at the dashboard. “And the Street’s got a manner of finding its way around things.”

“You can’t be here,” said the driver, shooting a quick glance to where his passengers were waiting. “I’m calling security-”

“You know about the design fault, though, huh? Otherwise you wouldn’t be driving one of them, right?” Ko pointed again. “One in every six… That’s a pretty serious risk, neh?”

“What risk-” The driver turned his head to look where Ko was directing his attention and in the next second the armoured glass window was rising up to slam him in the face, the ganger’s hand on the back of his head. He reeled with the unexpected impact and Ko propelled the man away on to the pavement, deftly removing the ignition tag wristlet from him as he fell. The dazed suit dropped to his knees and emitted a moan.

“Sucker.” Ko slid into the driver’s seat and felt it go firm around his waist. From the corner of his eye there was the firefly glow of a cigarette tip and there was Feng, ill at ease on the passenger’s side. He didn’t like cars very much.

The soldier gave him a look, using the cigarette to indicate the sprawled man outside. “That one, he’s going to get whipped because you stole this carriage.”

Ko ignored the phantom smell of tobacco smoke and shifted the car into drive; the fool had left the motor running. “What, I should shed tears for him? He shouldn’t have become a corp, shouldn’t have signed his life away to some rich old breadhead.” Reaching under the dash, he found the cut-off remote and tore it out. With relish, Ko slammed the gears and spun the Merc from the kerb, launching out into the night past the shouting faces of the men in the waiting area. He sounded the horn- Ba! Ba! Ba! -as he blazed past Second and the rest, grinning.

Feng shook his head. “When are you going to learn, boy? Everyone serves a warlord, even those who think they don’t.”

The Merc threw Ko right and left against the restraints as he slalomed past the security gate and on to the airport highway. “Not me,” he insisted, “not ever.”

On the back seat, Frankie Lam’s carry-on bag rolled over and spilt its contents.

The Osprey 990. Man, that’s a cherry cyke, y’know? Fast like a bat outta hell, got those pannier-mounted rear smokers and a cyclops gun in the nose… Badda-bing, can come on you like death hisself if you ain’t, whatchacall, alert.

On the highway I seen one duel wit’ a couple NRG-500s and clean up the blacktop like they was pushbikes. That’s why the cops in the Denver Death Zone use them for race-and-chase. Fine choice. Fine, fine choice.

The point? Oh yeah. Well, last thing I reckoned I’d see was one of them fine machines flyin’ through the air like it ain’t no thing, straight through the window and blazin’ alight. Came through the glass-crash-and straight across the floor. What? A warehouse. That was where we were. A warehouse. Can I tell it my way, or d’you wanna read it off the cop’s books? No? All right then.

So. Gabby, she takes the Osprey in the face and she dead right there. Landed on her, burnt her up. All hell’s breaking loose, Walt’s scramblin’ for his pistols and that little Poindexter, whatever he call himself Doctor Bloom, he’s screamin’ and shoutin’ at me like it’s my gorram fault. And the pigs. The pigs is making this noise like all get out.

But that’s not the thing of it. In through the bust glass comes some tear gas shells, but that’s nothing on a big ship for me, ’cos I sprung for nasal filter implants last year, after I got a capsicum load from the Coast Guard bulls offa Kennebunkport. I got me a Mossbach Tactical Autoloader. Y’know, the kind wit’ the snail drum mag? Yeah? I’m packing double-ought gauge shells in there, ’cos we’re fixing not to mix it up with no one but maybe local five-oh. Shit, we were, whatchacall, wrong about that.

Roscoe and Dooley, they’re fast lads and they got them carbines. I don’t see what they’re shooting at, but like this (snaps fingers) Roscoe has a hole in hisself’s chest like the size o’ my fist and he falls all the way down from the gantry up high and lands-crunch-in the pigs. I reckoned them stories ’bout pigs eatin’ man meat was hooey but no, they start in on him. Still squealing. Guess it was no surprise, though, considering. Roscoe was always gettin’ into arguments with Doc Bloom when he kept hurtin’ the little porkers for shits and grins. The Doc, he got mighty angry ’bout it. See, he got them pig’s brains wired up like into one big ’puter, making them all think alike, or somethin‘. He was usin’ them to play the ponies, screw wit’ the lottery, whatever. Turned the little bacon-balls into a big pink, whatchacall, processor. Illegal as all get-out, so I reckon, but no one gives a rat’s ass about pigs, so who’s gonna stop him?

Well, shit, we found out who.

There’s this pop and the roof grows a new skylight, just like that. Down comes this dark fella-yeah, that’s him-and he sends Dooley straight to hell. Bam-bam-bam, never laid a shot on this guy. He had this sword, see. Blade so sharp you could cut the virtue from an angel. Dooley’s carbine, he slices that sucker in two, takes the boy’s hands off into the bargain. Walt… Well, by now he’s got his irons… What? Oh, they were some nickel-plated sissy guns. Anyhoo. Walt shoots at him, the dark fella, he does a gorram back flip and nails Walt with a crossbow. A crossbow! Like what they used in olden times, for Kylie’s sake!

Well sir, by this here time I’m filling the air wit’ lead and can I hit this boy? Can I hell! He’s on me like white on rice, breaks this arm and shoots me in the leg. Takes the Mossbach just as polite as you like, puts me on the dirt. Now, I’m thinkin’ that this is the end for ol’ Billy, but your man just reaches in a pocket and gives me a card. Like offa poker deck, ’cept it’s got a pitcher on it. A pitcher of a dancin’ loon and the guy smiles at me, he says: “The Fool. This is your lucky day, William. ”And he lets me live.

Off he goes. He caps Bloom… He seemed real angry about the way the Doc was treatin’ the pigs. Leaves me for the marshals with this here card. Lookit. Y’see? It’s what them there boys call tarrow. Tarrow cards or somethin‘. One o’ the marshals tole me that these things got, whatchacall, mojo on ’em, black magic. Well, shit. I unloaded a hun-nerd rounds at that boy and never nicked him one time. If that ain’t black magic, then I dunno what is.

William “Big” Buettner, arrest suspect #6575FG, Fresno State Militia Service. Subject brought to book by Sanctioned Operative Joshua Fixx (independent), serial number 1800979.

For more information on any of the weapons systems mentioned during this transcript, Touch Here for Hyperlinx. This RealTime Interrogation is a WKIL-TV program, sponsored by Turner, Harvest and Ramirez.