American Dreams | Book 1 | The Decline Page 14

  Wouldn’t she?

  SIXTEEN

  Going into work the day after the raid on Caesar Hernández’s house was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. Sergeant Nguyen’s death was a stark reminder of how dangerous this job could be. He was there one minute, smoking and joking as my old drill instructor Collins used to say, then the next, he was gone. The team had gone from being on top of the world for being selected to be the assault team to the lowest of the low as our leader was killed.

  Cassandra had tried uselessly to console me when I got home in the middle of the night. I felt like it was one of those things that she could empathize with, but she could never truly understand the emotions I felt. Sure, I’d only known the guy for a few weeks, but he’d been a good dude, with a wife and three kids, that he’d dragged halfway across the country to be here with him. What did they do now?

  I’d thought about it deep into the night, long after Cassandra had gone back to sleep and the only movement in the house was the swing of the pendulum in the previous occupants’ grandfather clock positioned prominently in the foyer. Nguyen’s death made me realize just how serious all of this was. As an agency, we were still trying to figure out where our place was, but as individuals, we’d already melded into a team. Now a part of that team was gone forever.

  In addition to my dark thoughts about life and death, I hated the CEA and the NAR for making me question my wife’s loyalties the previous evening when I needed her support. I’d wondered if she felt the same as me, ready to flee in a moment’s notice if the opportunity presented itself to get away from the System. In the light of day, I knew she would always be there for me, but I couldn’t shake the way I’d probed her mind about things when what I really needed was empathy and caring. Fuck the CEA. There was no other way of saying it that would make it any easier on myself.

  When I exited the elevator on the sixteenth floor of the CEA building, Caroline gave me a thin-lipped smile and greeted me warmly. “Oh, Agent Haskins, I’m so sorry about Sergeant Nguyen,” she said as she came around the desk.

  I nodded, still numb from the shock of it all. “He was a good man,” Caroline offered. “The best agent in the office. I’m—Look, I’m sorry.”

  She started to lean in to give me a hug, then stopped, likely remembering the rock-solid agency rule about fraternization and social distancing. “Oh, darn it!” she grumbled, in her thick Texas drawl.

  “I know, Caroline. He was a great mentor and leader.”

  She nodded and rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Y’all need to be safe. People are crazy out there.”

  “We’ll try our best,” I replied, ignoring the social distancing ban by placing one of my meaty palms on her upper arm. “Are you okay?”

  Caroline sniffled and placed her opposite hand over mine on her arm. She seemed to appreciate the gesture. “I will be. I just… Didn’t he have a family?”

  “Yeah,” I confirmed. “I know Director Goodman and Agent Rogan went over there after the operation, so they’re being taken care of.”

  “Thank you. I was worried sick about that.”

  We stood in awkward silence for a moment, me with my hand on her arm violating the agency’s policy on touching anyone in the office, her willfully allowing me to do so. I barely knew her, other than a few pleasantries each day as I went in and out of the office, but it seemed like at that moment, she just needed someone to be there for her.

  “I’m better,” she said. “I won’t keep you. I know you’re busy.”

  Her hand dropped away and I withdrew mine. “If you need anyone to talk with, I’m always available, okay?”

  She nodded and smiled. “Thank you, Agent Haskins. I’ll be fine.” I watched as she shuffled back around her desk and sat down. She gave herself a generous squirt of hand sanitizer and offered it to me. I stuck out my hand and she squeezed some into my palm.

  “Thanks,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

  “Okay. I really am fine. Thank you.”

  I stayed just long enough to be polite, then walked back around to the cubicle farm. The emptiness of the area seemed to be magnified this morning as I walked down the aisle. I felt the sympathetic eyes of the Team Two guys on me from across the room and I chose to ignore them, focusing instead on my teammates in our corner. The other four were already there, I was the last in to work, as usual.

  Rogan had been moved up to be the team leader, so he took point on establishing the after action review from the prior night’s raid. We spent the better part of the day reconstructing the mission for our report and to determine ways to improve if we were to do it again, which he was sure we’d be called upon to do at some point in the future, given Director Goodman’s counterintelligence background.

  From the agency’s standpoint, the mission had been a success. We took out a really bad dude without the hassle of a prolonged court battle, confiscated hundreds of weapons, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and a lot of cash. Getting all of that gear off the streets would ultimately make Austin a safer city, both for the citizens and for the law enforcement agencies. The only downside to the operation was the loss of an experienced agent.

  Nobody really mentioned Sergeant Nguyen’s death until the very end when we had to put it in the write-up and there was no way to avoid it any longer. Rogan stated in crisp military verbiage that, “Agent Nguyen engaged the suspect with his MP5. The suspect responded by firing several rounds from an AK-74, of which, two rounds impacted Agent Nguyen’s neck. He was pronounced dead on the scene by local medical personnel.”

  And that was it. Through some unspoken agreement, the team decided that we wouldn’t mention the incident again. Caroline didn’t mention it again either, even though her red-rimmed eyes betrayed her internal thoughts. The loss of Sergeant Nguyen somehow became synonymous with the loss of everything else. He was just another casualty paving the way for the new System.

  I was sure that there’d be a lot more before it was fully in place.

  SEVENTEEN

  Time passed, as it always does. The early days of the Civic Enforcement Agency will be remembered as a time of growth and unintentional mistakes as we tried to figure out where our jurisdiction butted against local law enforcement agencies. We lost several agents in the first year that I was there, but the CEA-ATC was pumping out new ones at a faster rate than we lost them and the interagency transfer program rounded out the rest of the vacancies. We were well on our way to being a fully-functional cog in the giant, bureaucratic federal government machine of totalitarianism.

  I’d spent the past twelve months learning the ropes as an agent, and was now considered a seasoned veteran amongst all the new agents coming through the training and transfer pipeline. We had what we felt was a firm grip on the community as people had become almost completely reliant on the government for food.

  Like many in my situation, I wasn’t onboard with the NAR’s scheme of total domination of our citizens’ every waking moment, but what could I do? I was one person, who hated the government that I’d been forced to work for. The only person I had to talk to was Cassandra, and even that little bit of relief each night as we walked our neighborhood seemed to cause more stress as the hopelessness of our situation loomed over us.

  What made it worse was that I wasn’t sure where my team’s loyalties lay either. None of us spoke openly about the System’s repression of the people, it was too dangerous to do so. Those who did often disappeared and we never saw them again. The official reason was that they got transferred, but we all knew the truth. They either were sent to the labor camps or the landfill. Amongst my team, there were little quips of conversation that could have been construed as dissatisfaction with the way things ran, but they could have just as easily been chalked up as anger and frustration at how stressful the job had become. The CEA’s injury and mortality rates outpaced the Austin PD at a ratio of six-to-one. The population did not like the CEA or Goodman’s hea
vy-handed approach to policing. I sure as hell didn’t like the brutality that she demanded and Team One was often chastised for being “too nice” to the locals—except for the idiot they’d saddled me with for a partner. He enjoyed being a complete dick to people.

  “Man, I’m so keyed up right now,” Newman said from the Tahoe’s passenger seat. “I hope they try something.”

  “Calm down, Jesse,” I said, checking the rearview to ensure our protection team was still with us. I’d already had to pull over once when they got stuck at a traffic light leaving downtown. “We’re just going out there to see what’s going on. We are not looking to start a fight today, okay?”

  “Yeah, man. I know. You don’t want to leave your wife a widow and your kid fatherless. I get it.”

  Oh yeah. Did I forget to mention that Cassandra was pregnant? Three months along now. She was still rocking that amazing body that made all the guys—and some of the gals—at our neighborhood pool jealous as fuck, but in about a month or two, she’d start to show. She’d already complained that her jeans didn’t fit, just wait until Baby Haskins hit his growth spurt.

  “It’s not even that,” I replied. “The neighbor said she thought she saw gang paraphernalia in the garage. You know how some of these suburbanites have become. They turn in everyone around them hoping for extra ration credits so they can have a giant cookout for Timmy’s birthday party or whatever. It usually doesn’t pan out.”

  What started out as registering people as citizens quickly turned to rationing as the farms and meat processing plants couldn’t keep up with the demand after hundreds of thousands of illegals were rounded up across the country and deported. The reduction of foodstuffs going into the supply system may or may not have been an intentional side effect of the immigration reform, but it definitely brought everyone under a federal rationing program. Citizens were allotted only so much food per week, depending on their family size and occupation. Those who directly supported the System got an additional allotment of food. Rationing credits were also awarded to anyone who provided information leading to the arrest or elimination of criminal elements, so the CEA had no shortage of informants looking to earn extra rations by ratting out their neighbors, most of whom were simply trying to grow some extra food in their back yards, which was illegal if they kept it solely for their own use instead of feeding it into the System.

  “Yeah, but gangs, man. This is the good shit,” Newman replied. Jesse had gone from being a granola-loving hippie to hardcore New Constitution enforcer over the last year. What Drill Instructor Collins and the Smiths hadn’t beaten out of him at the ATC was squashed and molded into his current form. He was still a complete moron though, who followed the letter of the law, whereas I chose to follow the spirit of the law.

  “Alleged gangs, Jesse,” I sighed. He was a shoot first, ask questions…never, kind of agent. The agency allowed him the leeway to be that way, but I was wary of it. We were not the judge, jury, and executioner. Or at least we weren’t supposed to be. That’s not how we were taught that life under the System would be.

  For me, I’d settled into the job, doing what I could to help people, while ensuring that we got the bad guys off the street. Jesse was furious when I’d let people go who’d only committed minor infractions; he wanted to lock everyone who crossed the New Constitution. He was under the assumption that every single person who stood up for the freedoms that they were slowly losing were selfish, extreme, irresponsible, irrational and lawless. Keeping a boot on the throat of the population was no way to advance our society in his eyes.

  As we turned off of 183 into the neighborhood in eastern Austin, my Spidey Sense immediately began to tingle. We’d been here before. This was where a guy barricaded himself into his home with his family and then set the place on fire to avoid being arrested on suspicion of illegal blogging. I could still hear their screams at night when I lay down.

  We drove past the hollow, burnt-out shell of the house. No one had bothered to tear the remains down or clean up the refuse around the old structure. It sat as a stark reminder of all that had been lost as the System replaced our old democracy. While I did feel that some things were better under the new System, absolute equality for one—the government hated everyone—there were a lot of shortcomings. I had become a student of politics during all those months in quarantine and our glorious new System smelled a lot more like communism than the so-called Democratic Socialism that the talking heads called it. Of course, I’d never admit that to anyone except Cassandra.

  “Alright,” I grumbled. “This is the street. Looks like…third house on the left.”

  Newman spoke into his phone. “Security detail, we are about two hundred yards from the target house.”

  I scoffed at his measurement. “That’s about eighty yards, bro.”

  “Well, excuse me. We weren’t all big football stars like you, Bodhi. Measuring things in terms of Astroturf isn’t my strong suit.”

  “I’m still waiting to figure out what your strong suit is, Jesse,” I remarked as I put the truck into park.

  “Your mom knows.”

  I chuckled. Even under an oppressive federal regime that controlled all aspects of our lives, mom jokes were still funny. “You ready?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “My parents need the insurance money.”

  We got out and stood on the sidewalk while the protection team parked their van behind us. Once they were out of the vehicle, I sent two around back to make sure nobody tried running out, then Newman and I walked up to the house. I glanced at the Army guys briefly. The two remaining were about forty feet apart from one another. Smart. Didn’t want to bunch up for an easy target. We’d learned the hard way that having your security detail bunched up was a good way to end up dead if the homeowner was intent on going out in a blaze of glory.

  I rang the doorbell.

  There was movement inside, visible through the glass panel beside the door. A woman’s face appeared and I flashed my badge. She nodded and I heard a chain lock slide up high and fall to the doorjamb, then the thud of the deadbolt being disengaged.

  A very pretty Hispanic woman opened the door. She wore a tank top with no bra and shorts. “Yes, officer?” she asked without even the slightest hint of an accent.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m Agent Haskins and this is Agent Newman with the US Civic Enforcement Agency. We have reason to believe that persons within this household may be participating in illegal gang activity. Who else is in the home with you today?”

  “Gang activity? I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s nobody in a gang around here.” The look on her face seemed genuine. I turned my head slightly to verify that we were at the correct address.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Newman replied. “Please answer Agent Haskins. Who else is in the home with you today?”

  “My… Ah. My boyfriend is here and so is my son.”

  I nodded. “Where is your boyfriend, ma’am?”

  “Is there a problem?” a male said from behind the woman.

  My hand had dropped to the pistol at my side on reflex. I’d let the guy sneak up on us. He threw up his hands. “Whoa, man! I’m cool. I’m cool.”

  “Are you the boyfriend?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are the two of you registered US Citizens?”

  “Yes. Of course,” the woman stated, crossing her arms over her chest, covering her nipples.

  I gave a quick nod to Jesse and resumed watching the two individuals. Jesse reached around behind him and slid the biometric scanner around to the front of his body on its sling. He unsnapped it and held it up.

  “You don’t mind if we get a quick retinal scan then?”

  The woman stepped through the doorway. “Of course not. We’re law-abiding citizens. We know what’s required.”

  Jesse scanned her and then read the screen. “Thank you, Ms. Marin.” He glanced up at the male. “You?”

  The boyfriend complied. “And thank you…Mr. Serrano.” H
e fiddled with the device for a moment and then said, “They both check out. Fully registered, authorized to work outside of the home, there’s one child registered, an eleven year old boy named David with severe autism. Oh, hey, congratulations! Says here your application for marriage was approved last week.” He looked up. “Hope that wasn’t a surprise?”

  “No,” Ms. Marin answered coolly. “We got the email already.”

  “What’s the problem, officers?” Serrano asked.

  “We have reason to believe that individuals in this house may be participating in gang-related activities,” I said.

  “Gang-related?” Serrano asked, seemingly as confused as his girlfriend had been. “Nobody here is doing anything like that… Wait.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did that old hag next door snitch on us?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss where the tip came from, Mr. Serrano,” I replied.

  He shared a look with his girlfriend. “Yeah. I bet it was her. She’s been threatening to call the cops on me since I moved in. I do Crossfit in the garage and play my music loud to help motivate me, y’know? She complains all the time. I haven’t been able to prove it yet, but I think she’s been throwing her dog’s poop in our yard too. Somebody is and she’s the number one suspect in my eyes.”

  I could feel a headache building at the base of my skull. I could already tell by the way these two acted that we were barking up the wrong tree. They weren’t involved with any gangs. They seemed to be fine, upstanding people. “I’m sorry you’re having issues with your neighbors,” I said as a requirement. “Unfortunately, I’m still required by federal mandate to search your home for gang paraphernalia.”

  “You got a warrant?” Ms. Marin asked defensively.

  “You see?” Jesse jabbed a finger at her, but he was looking at me. “That’s why I say they need to remove all of those crime dramas off the television. People think they have all these nonexistent rights to refuse a search.”