“On visual,” the radio responded. “We’re tailing the sedan behind you.”
“You’ve got it, Omicron. Federales, for sure. Lay cover for me at Fifty-fourth. Confirm, please.”
“Copy. Burning at Fifty-fourth. Be ready.”
Moose dropped his microphone, telling his passengers, “Get down when you hear the radio squawk. But not before.”
The car was past Fifty-third Street.
“What are they going to burn?” Lorimer asked. Moose did not answer; the car was nearing Fifty-fourth. Suddenly, a green station wagon pulled alongside the FBI sedan. Moose’s radio squawked. Elliot and Lorimer dropped their heads in time to see Eighth Avenue lit to daytime brilliance. Moose immediately floored the accelerator, fast pulling away from an FBI sedan with a temporarily blinded former schoolteacher trying to pull over without crashing. The station wagon continued up Eighth Avenue at normal speed. Moose turned left onto Fifty-fifth Street.
After a few blocks, Moose slowed up a bit. “Magnesium,” he finally answered Lorimer.
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Chapter 21
Auld Lang Syne smelt of wet plaster and birchwood smoke. After Moose had bid them good-bye at the West Side Heliport, Elliot and Lorimer were met by the peak-capped, sunglassed pilot of a private helicopter with corporate markings, examined for bugs, blindfolded by helmets as secure as chastity belts, and flown for just under an hour to parts unknown. Elliot, who loved any flying and had never been up in a helicopter, was heartbroken. A stomach-raising descent, the feel of terra firma as rotors slowed to silence, and a brief, sightless walk being pulled along through icy wind brought them inside again.
The odors of plaster and smoke were their first perceptions of this agorist underground, though they appreciated later ones more: the sound of a crackling log fire and its radiant warmth. When their blinders were finally removed, Elliot and Lorimer were inside a furniture-bare terminal, alone facing Chin’s smiling face.
As they warmed chilled ears and fingers by the fireplace, Chin explained that though Auld Lang Syne had been built as a replacement for Aurora—scheduled for abandonment by June in any event—the raid had rushed things a bit. Nothing serious, of course, but damnably inconvenient. Personnel from Aurora were moved in and some final installations were being made, but the facility was not yet operational. Though, Chin added cryptically, it might never be necessary to open Auld Lang Syne at all.
Chin went on to give Elliot and Lorimer their first overview of Cadre activities. The Revolutionary Agorist Cadre, he said, comprised three main operating arms.
TacStrike was agorist guerrilla forces, elite veterans of civil 200
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wars, revolutions, and “national liberations” throughout the globe. It was nearly impossible to compare it with other forces except by implication. Cadre never fought openly, never claimed victories, and had no television series extolling their exploits. When they died, they died anonymously. Both the United States government and the Cadre had vested interests in keeping it generally unknown how strong the Cadre actually were and how far was their reach. IntellSec was the agorist entry into the intelligence community, though without the restrictions that supposedly limited the FBI to domestic affairs, the DIA to military, and the CIA to foreign. Chin admitted that his first Cadre employment had been in Hong Kong for IntellSec.
TransComm, both the earliest and largest division, was responsible for providing Cadre allies with a wide range of transportation, courier, and communications services secure from invasion.
The network of Agorist undergrounds was TransCommoperated. Normal trading-facility security procedures had not yet been set up. There were merely a few extra Cadre guards—armed with M-21’s—on duty. Hammers and nails were in use only a few feet away from the rough-hewn security room that Chin led Elliot and Lorimer to. Commandant Welch was in charge. Lorimer stepped forward. “I owe you an apology for Saturday,” she told Welch. “I had no right pulling a gun on you, and was wrong when I called you a statist.”
Elliot glanced over to her, shocked.
Welch seemed embarrassed. “Uh—you don’t have to do that. l guess I had it coming. I haven’t gotten it through my skull yet that I’m not a Chicago cop anymore.”
Chin asked Lorimer, “You have no complaint now about this commandant’s treatment of you?”
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and who with. But I suppose that’s what I’d agreed to.”
He faced Elliot. “No complaint.”