Hellfire Rebellion tw-10 Read online

  “Primitive, but nasty,” Chavez said. “I wouldn’t underrate them.”

  He gave the pistol back to Neilson.

  “With weapons like that, I’m surprised they didn’t have stricter firearms regulations in the 20th century.” said Linda.

  “The laws varied, but they’ had the same basic problems we’ve got.” Nielson said. “The law of supply and demand. Hell, look at Boston. Right now, the British are enforcing the customs regulations more stringently than ever, with the Royal Navy backing them up, yet at least half the merchants here are into smuggling. If people really want something, somebody will provide it. You could ban weapons manufacture, but someone would simply set up a machine shop and start turning them out illegally.”

  “I remember an assignment I had in L.A. back in the 20th century,” said Chavez. “We had to bust up a Network drug-running operation. The kids in the barrio could get just about anything they wanted, but even if they couldn’t buy a gun, they sometimes made their own by breaking a radio antenna off a car, taping it to a wooden handle, and using a piece of metal and a rubber band for a firing mechanism. Stick a. 22 shell in the damn thing and you’ve got yourself a single-shot zip gun. as they called them. Liable to blow up in your face, but it could be surprisingly effective if it didn’t.”

  “They tried gun control laws.” said Neilson, “but they only wound up taking weapons out of the hands of honest people who deserved the right to protect themselves. If a person takes it in his head to kill somebody, he’ll manage to find a way. You can control weapons to some degree, but you can’t really control people.”

  “So what are you saying, Scott?” Linda said. “Let anyone who wants to buy a plasma gun or a laser? The streets would be a war zone.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, the streets are a war zone.” Neilson said. “Okay. I understand what you’re saying and I’m really not unsympathetic, but consider where we are now. In a few years, these people are going to fight their war for independence and the incident that’s going to kick the whole thing off is when the British troops march on Lexington and Concord. They’ll fail because the farmers of this time have access to muskets and powder and they’ll fight to protect their rights.”

  “The old argument about the constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” said Linda. “The founding fathers weren’t talking about the right to own and carry guns, you know. They were talking about a militia.”

  “Really? Then why wasn’t everyone disarmed when Cornwallis surrendered?” Neilson said. “What did they mean by a militia, after all? It’s when you gather armed citizens together for defense, like they did at Lexington and Concord. The exact wording in the Constitution is, ‘A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ It doesn’t say that the right of the people to bear arms in a militia shall not be infringed, it says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed because there may be a need to raise a militia. The Minutemen didn’t turn their guns in when they stopped drilling. They took them home with them because they were their own personal property.”

  “It would be interesting if we could speak with some of the founding fathers and find out exactly what they had in mind when they framed the Constitution,” Linda said. “Unfortunately, the timing isn’t right, let alone the fact it would be dangerous.”

  “I wonder what they’d say if we asked them what they meant when they wrote ‘the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’?” said Chavez. “Did they mean the right to live free or did they mean no abortions? And that phrase appeared in the Declaration of Independence, not in the Constitution. In the Constitution, it merely says that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. It certainly never occurred to them that it might become necessary to define exactly what constitutes a person. They also guaranteed freedom of religion, but contrary to popular belief, nowhere in the Constitution does the word ‘God’ even appear. ‘One nation, under God’ is only in the pledge of allegiance, which technically has no constitutional authority behind it. Let’s face it, they never realized that things would get so complicated.” ‘“But you have to admit one thing,” said Neilson, “if it wasn’t for the fact that the colonists were able to keep and hear anus. the British would have rolled right over them.”

  “Well, maybe so.” said Linda, “but I’d hate to think what would happen if any citizen in the 27th century could walk into a store and buy a plasma weapon. I somehow doubt the founding fathers would have approved of that.”

  “Oh. I don’t know.” said Neilson, with a grin. “Just think what the Minutemen could have done with a few plasma guns and laser rifles. And it’s interesting that when you take relative population figures into account, the incidence of violent crime with firearms was far less in times when weapons were not regulated than when they were.”

  “Maybe, but you gotta watch that,” Chavez said. “Statistics are always misleading. It depends on what you use for your data. It doesn’t make much sense to compare 19th-century Dodge City, for example, with 21st-century New York. You can take relative population figures into account, just as you said, but that still doesn’t make for a complete picture. You’re forgetting about the psychological factor of stress given increased population density and things like pollution and noise, which had demonstrable adverse effects upon the central nervous system. making people more aggressive. It’s inevitable that with increased population density and industrialization, you’ll get increased violence. Besides, come to think of it. Dodge City would be a bad example anyway. One of the first things Wyatt Earp and other frontier marshals did was to institute a very basic form of gun control at shotgun point. Surrender your gunbelt within city limits or get out of town. Or take your chances with a load of ‘double-ought.’ They had to run the towns and they understood real well that a gun only gives you power when no one else has got one.”

  “You know. right now in Boston, there are no laws of any kind restricting firearms.” said Nielson.” In fact. there were no such laws at all in America until the middle of the 19th century, when carpetbaggers started passing them to disarm former Confederates. Up until that time, the courts upheld the right of citizens to carry arms, openly or concealed, in order to defend themselves. At this time in Boston, it’s very common for men to carry swords or pistols. There’s been rioting in the streets, but interestingly, not one citizen of Boston has been run through or shot.”

  “Not yet, but they will.” said Linda.

  “Only after the British troops arrive.” said Neilson. ‘Remember, the first fatalities didn’t occur until the Boston Massacre. The Sons of Liberty were a rowdy bunch of street fighters with easy access to firearms, but though they busted a few heads and tarred and feathered a few Tories, they never actually killed anybody until the British sent armed troops against them. To seize their arms and ammunition.”

  “Yeah, like you’ve seized mine,” said Hunter, coining into the room and seeing his cache of weapons spread out on the table along with the commandos’ gear, suppose you found the hand grenades and the plastique, as well?”

  “ What?” said Linda.

  Hunter grinned. “Just kidding, Corporal. You’ve got it all, scout’s honor.”

  “Cross your bean and hope to die?” said Linda. wryly.

  “Hey, not me.” said Hunter. “I’d like to get out of this thing in one piece, if you don’t mind.” He smiled. “You know, I couldn’t help overhearing some of your conversation. It’s funny, in a way.”

  “Funny?” Neilson said, “Yeah. We have the same sort of conversations over on our side,” Hunter said, He grinned. “Get a bunch of C.I.S. agents together and they start sounding like a faculty meeting of some university history department.”

  “Not so unusual,” said Chavez, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. “What we all have in common is that our lives often depend on our knowledge
and understanding of historical events.” He lit one and tossed the pack to Hunter.

  “Thanks.” said Hunter, he glanced at the label. “Noncarcinogenic, huh?”

  “The benefits of genetic engineering,” Chavez said. “Taste better, too.”

  “We banned ’em,” Hunter said, lighting up, “our tobacco companies started selling dope instead.”

  “Seriously?” said Linda.

  “Seriously,” said Hunter. We instituted a system of addict registration. Cut the market out from under organized crime and still managed to turn a tidy profit and generate some tax revenue. You guys ought to try it. ‘Course. now the crime families push cigarettes..

  Craven and Neilson exchanged glances, not certain if he was serious or not.

  “No, it’s a funny thing about soldiers.” Hunter continued, inhaling deeply and blowing out a long stream of smoke. “Not just modern temporal soldiers, but even soldiers in the past, wherever you’re dealing with a culture that’s got a decent rate of literacy. You’ve always got a substantial number of military personnel with academic or philosophical inclinations. ‘They read like crazy. Take graduate degrees. Write books. Learn languages. Study everything from psychology to engineering, but especially history. History’s always been big with soldiers. I wonder why.”

  “Maybe it’s because soldiers never get to see the big picture.” Chavez said. “It’s what we’re always told, isn’t it? Some poor grunt in the middle of an Asian jungle, thousands of miles away from home, just can’t understand why he’s been asked to take the same fucking hill six times, only to pull back each time and let the enemy have it once again. He’s told its all part of the big picture, which is something he never gets to see because only the high command sees the big picture. So if he’s lucky, he survives the action and when he gets back home, he picks up a book and reads about some old battle, hoping he might be able to see the big picture there and relate it somehow to the big picture that he had been a part of. Try to figure it all out. Only that doesn’t make sense, either, because he reads about how the high command screwed up in that old battle and got all these people killed for nothing.

  “So he reads some more about the history of that period where the old battle took place, to see if there was some reason for it, only he can’t find one, so he continues reading, still trying to figure it all out. And meanwhile, while he’s doing all this reading on the side, he gets promoted and eventually he winds up a general, part of the high command, and now suddenly he’s supposed to be in a position to see the big picture for himself. Only he still can’t see it, because some politician is telling him to do something that makes absolutely no sense to him at all and when he says he doesn’t understand it, he’s told it’s because he can’t see the big picture. Only the politicians get to see the big picture.”

  Neilson chuckled.

  “So he studies up on politics,” Chavez continued, “serves his time, retires with a pension, and runs for office. Gets, himself elected to the Senate. So there he is in the Senate, being asked to vote for some ridiculous appropriation that makes no sense to him at all, but he’s told it’s all part of the big picture. Only he still can’t see it, because only the President and his advisors get to see the big picture.”

  Hunter was grinning.

  “So he runs for President.” Chavez went on, in a slow, drawl. “Wins in a landslide because he was a war hero and a great American. Now, finally, the big picture! But no. The corporation heads who contributed to his campaign tell him that they’re the only ones who really get to see the big picture, so he does what they tell him to and after he completes his term of office, they reward him with a seat on the executive board and now he’s really excited. He’s finally made it, he’s going to get to see the big picture at last…” “And?” said Neilson.

  “And they all gather together in the boardroom, and they light up their cigars, and they go over their reports, and they examine all their charts, and they go over all their profit statements, and they have someone come in and explain it all to them so they can understand it, and they pour brandy into their snifters and loosen up their ties and congratulate one another and talk about how things will be even better during the next quarter, and they schedule their next meeting, which will take place in the Bahamas at a corporate resort complete with hookers, and they get ready to leave, and our guy suddenly jumps up and says. ‘But wait! ‘ What about the big picture? ’ And they all look at him like he’s crazy. ‘The big picture!’ he says again. ‘What about the big picture?’ And the chairman of the hoard looks at him with absolute amazement and says. ‘Man, you mean to tell me you were on that fucking hill. too?’”

  Hunter burst out laughing. “Give me that gun.” said Linda. ‘I’m gonna shoot him.”

  “Got a permit?” Neilson asked.

  You go to hell.”

  Delaney walked in the door. “Dinner’s on,” he said. He glanced around at them. “What’s the joke?”

  You ever hear the one about the big picture?” Neilson asked.

  Delaney grimaced, “Yeah. I was the idiot on that fucking hill. Now come on. well have the briefing during dinner.

  8

  The small, secluded country chapel stood in the middle of a grove of trees, well hidden from the road. The estate on whose property it stood was out of sight over the next hill. It belonged to a wealthy Boston Tory who only made use of it on weekends, except on those nights when the Hellfire Club met. On those nights, he would saddle up his horse and ride over to the chapel. tie the horse up outside in the grove, take the hooded black robe out of his saddlebag and tie it around him with a monk’s cord, then put on the black mask that covered his entire upper face and join the “congregation.” He always felt a profound thrill of anticipation at such times, like a small boy about to do something that he knew was wrong. His young wife, with whom he had sexual relations perhaps once a month, would have been surprised at the vigor with which he participated in the night’s events.

  It was late and the moon was full as John Hewitt rode up to the chapel in his carriage with Lucas Priest and Finn Delaney. When told that “young Andrew” would not be joining them. Hewitt had merely shrugged and said. As you think best.” Then he grinned and added, “But it would have been a good education for the lad.”

  The grove was already full of horses and several carriages, being attended to by servants. Finn and Lucas both noticed several men moving about, armed with muskets, pistols, and swords. A wooden table stood not far away, beneath the trees, with several men seated around it, drinking wine, smoking their pipes, and playing cards by lamplight. Several more men were gathered around a crackling fire. Except for the carriages, the scene resembled the camp of a band of forest brigands.

  “It seems that most everyone’s arrived.” said Hewitt. He reached beneath the seat of the carriage and pulled out two black parcels tied with cords. “Put these on.” he said.

  They were the robes and masks.

  Now remember the rules.” said Hewitt in a somber tone. “You are not to ask anybody’s name, under any circumstances. This is a secret brotherhood.”

  “How can it be secret when you all seem to know one another?” Delaney asked.

  Hewitt looked irritated at the question. “That is another matter. Once the vestments have been donned, each man is without a name. We are all merely secret brothers of the Hellfire Club. Keep your vestments on at all times, and especially you must not remove your masks nor ask anyone else to remove theirs. You may not leave until the meeting is concluded. The doors to the chapel shall be bolted, if you need to relieve yourself at any time, use the side door of the chapel and follow the path to the outhouse. Remember that wandering about outside is not permitted. There are guards on duty. We must protect ourselves against unwanted intruders. Afterward, we shall meet back here at the carriage. Any questions?”

  Delaney glanced at Lucas. “No. no questions,” he said. “Shall we ‘don our vestments.’ brother?” Lucas gave him a warning
glance and Delaney rolled his eyes. They put on their robes and masks and stepped out of the carnage, allowing Hewitt to proceed ahead of them.

  “I feel like Zorro disguised as a monk,” whispered Delaney.

  “Keep a handle on it, Finn.” Lucas whispered back.

  “Shouldn’t we be chanting something?” said Delaney.

  They joined a group of silent, hooded figures moving through the chapel doors. Spread out and hidden in the woods around them, dressed in black and with their faces camouflaged, were the other two commando teams, ready to move in quickly it anything went wrong or if Nikolai Drakov put in an appearance, though it was doubtful if they’d recognize him among all the hooded figures. They had no idea what they could expect, so they were prepared for anything. The armed guards moving around outside presented no real problem. The commandos could easily stay out of their sight, and if, by chance, one of them were spotted, the guard would be quickly rendered unconscious before an alarm could be given. Inside the chapel, the glow of candlelight provided a dim, shadowy illumination. The pews had been removed and in their stead were wooden tables, chairs, and benches with cushions, giving the interior of the chapel the aspect of some bizarre religious coffeehouse. There was no altar, merely a tall wooden pulpit looking down upon the congregation. The robed figures were seated at the tables, many of them smoking, while masked women, dressed in white robes, moved among the tables, serving drinks. The soft undertone of conversation was broken only by the rustling of robes, the sound of pewter mugs being put down on wooden tables, some coughing and the tapping out of pipes.