Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [60]
“I agree with you, of course, sir…”
“But? I sense a but, Geoff.”
“Some of those people aren’t going to cooperate, sir.”
“Well… that’s why we have Casa del Diablo, isn’t it?”
CHAPTER 26
It was eleven o’clock in the morning—noon, Washington time—and Alex was in her office at the police station wondering if she was ever going to get any work done. The phone rang every couple of minutes, as reporters from all over the country called wanting some comments on the “anti-immigrant riots and out-of-control violence” that had erupted in Home.
None of them wanted to hear it when she told them there hadn’t been any riots or any out-of-control violence. They just kept asking questions as if the scenario they had laid out was completely correct. The truth didn’t interest them.
So she had started saying she couldn’t comment on matters that were still under investigation, although the last few times she’d been more curt and just said, “No comment.” She was considering telling Jimmy to tell callers she wasn’t here. She didn’t want to do that unless she absolutely had to, though. She had always prided herself on being available to the people she served.
So she already felt pretty tense and impatient when Jimmy called through the open doorway of her office, “Delgado’s on the … radio, Chief. Sounds like we’ve got more … trouble.”
Alex sighed as she got up and went out to the dispatch station. She took the microphone from Jimmy and keyed it. “What’s up, J. P.?”
“The cavalry’s here,” Delgado’s voice came back over the speaker. “Or rather, the Federal Protective Service.”
“It looks like a damn invasion, Chief.” Delgado sounded angry and worried at the same time. “They’ve got armored cars and personnel carriers. We’re about to have a full-fledged panic on our hands again as people hear about this.”
“Where are you?”
“At the high school. They’re setting up a command post on the parking lot.”
“Son of a—” Alex swallowed the rest of the exclamation. “I’m on my way.”
Jack was at the school, she thought as a cold chill went down her back. And so were several hundred other kids.
Alex tossed the microphone back to Jimmy and said, “Call in everybody who’s off duty. Lester works patrol. Everybody else meet at the high school, ASAP.”
“Got it, Chief.” Jimmy began barking the call over the radio. When trouble broke out, he was able to lose some of the halting pattern to his speech.
Alex ran out to her car and headed for the school with lights flashing and siren blaring. As she approached the campus, she saw that Delgado was right. A dozen black SUVs were parked in the lot, along with four deuce-and-a-half trucks of the sort used to carry troops and a couple of armored cars with—Good Lord, Alex thought as her eyes widened in shock. Were those machine guns mounted on the vehicles?
Yes, she realized. Those were machine guns.
Like most people in law enforcement, as well as civilians who actually paid attention to what was going on in Washington—a dwindling number, unfortunately—Alex had heard plenty about the so-called Federal Protective Service while its formation was being debated in Congress.
The President, who was a strong backer of the idea, along with the senators who had sponsored the bill commissioning the organization, made it sound so benign and helpful. The Federal Protective Service would be a sort of national police force, available to help local authorities in times of disaster or strife. It would be better for everyone to have such extra assistance on hand, the President had mentioned several times in speeches. And there would be checks and balances on the system, because supposedly the Federal Protective Service could be called in only if local authorities requested its help.
A few politicians and commentators on the right had noticed that the actual language of the bill did, in fact, not make it a requirement that local authorities request aid from the FPS before it could be mobilized. Instead, the organization was to be considered part of the executive branch, which meant