Chapter 12

They were worried about the Segways, so they set out to pick up three to replace the ones they had. They left the carts behind because they figured that they would not have any use for them. The trip to the entertainment district was uneventful, and they arrived primed for a fight.

The cops were still using their patrol-in-pairs tactic, so that made it easier to find enough Segways, provided only that they could find the cops. They had been so successful with all three of them shooting at one of the cops that they decided to stick with that. They would ignore the second cop until the first one was down. That insured that they had knocked off at least one of the pair in every attack.

They also liked the operation from the roof, so that's what they did this time. They parked their Segways and climbed to a roof. From there, they were on foot, but they really had more freedom of movement than they did at street level. It was not so easy to find cops to shoot at as it had been when they first started, but they finally found a pair on a quiet, but not completely deserted street.

As soon as the cops were close enough, they opened up. They took the cop on the right, and she fell with only five shots. The other cop didn't turn to run away, instead, she charged toward the shooters. The men had no idea what she was trying to accomplish, but whatever it was, it did her no good. Given, it did take more bullets being fired, eight this time, to bring her down as compared to her partner, but that was a quibble. She was dead, and that was what was important.

The men hurried down to do their thing, and they found a surprise. Both cops were carrying guns! The guns were very short barrel automatic .32 caliber pistols. Why on Earth the cops were issuing these guns was a real mystery. The men took them, but they were not sure what they could do with the pistols. According to the book they used as their gun bible, the .32 had almost no stopping power and a pistol with a barrel that short was going to be so inaccurate that it was virtually valueless for any range beyond about 10 feet. A hollow-point .22 LR had much more stopping power than the .32, and their pistols had longer barrels, so they were inherently more accurate. Who could figure out the bureaucrat's mind?

They had the time, so they cut off the nipples and clit of each woman and slit her throat. That was to let the cops know that Jackie the Ripper was still in business. The two Segways were hidden in a convenient alley and the hunt was resumed.

They had to hunt for nearly an hour before they found any more cops. This time there were four of them, and there was a question of whether or not to try to take on that many at once. Suddenly, it dawned on Otto that the second cop had charged in the hope of getting close enough to make her toy of a pistol do its job. His estimate of the woman's courage went up a notch.

They decided that they would take on the four policewomen. The were on the roof, so they had an advantage from that. Plus, they had a distinct range advantage, so it looked like trying for four at once was a reasonable challenge.

They did change their tactics for this job. Each man was assigned a cop to shoot at, and he was to stay with her until she fell. When that happened, he was to start shooting at cop #4. After she went down, he was free to help with any other of the cops who were still in the fight.

The men started shooting at a range of 30 meters. Each of the first three cops went down, probably not as quickly as she would have if all three men had been shooting at her, but quickly enough that there were no complaints. The fourth cop was shot before she could do much, and they suddenly had an embarrassment of riches. What were they going to do with four Segways? The simplest solution to that problem was to take three from this latest batch and abandon all the others. That's what they did.

It took so long to do the looting and butchering on these cops that they were spotted by another group of four cops who came charging at them, driving with one hand while shooting with the other. Their main problem was that they tried to shoot too soon, so their shots were totally ineffective. On the other hand, the men were able to use their rifles immediately, and knocked off all of the cops before they got close enough to be dangerous.

OK, here were four more Segways that they couldn't use. It was almost funny. The men took the women's guns and spare clips, but didn't expect ever to use them. These women were butchered and marked with the slit throats. At this point, the men decided to go home. Their feeling was that 10 cops in one night was enough. They didn't want to thin the herd too fast. Joseph had described it that way, and the other two men laughed at the concept.

On the way home, the men tried to figure out some good use for the .32s, but they kept drawing a blank. Finally, they decided to stick them in a store room because they might eventually have a use for the guns.

Joseph was desperately haunting his shadow E-mail box, waiting to hear from the Canadians. This went on for two weeks with no results, and he was about ready to give up. However, at what seemed like the last moment, a message appeared: "We are interested. Tell us more." There was no signature, but Joseph was sure that the message was legitimate.

Joseph replied with the statement that they were trying to start a slave rebellion, but they didn't know how to go about it. He related the story of their bombings and killings of cops, but he left out anything that would make it easy for them to find him. He was sure that the Canadians could figure out that the message had come from Phoenix, AZ, simply, as far as Joseph knew, because that was the only city involved in what looked like an armed insurrection.

Two days later, a message came back: "OK, We are convinced. Tell us how to contact you directly so that we can help."

Joseph was still cautious, so he did not give out their address, but he did reply with a drop "mail box" that was a building two blocks away. Mysteriously, a week later, a box appeared at the address Joseph had given. The men picked it up and took it back home where they opened it. It never occurred to them that it might be a bomb designed to kill them—that was how naïve they were.

Inside the box was a radio and a manual on how to use it. The manual explained that this was a special radio that could not be traced because of the way it jumped frequency every few milliseconds. That way, there was nothing on long enough for it to be traced. Furthermore, there was an internal scrambler that made it necessary to have a matching device before the words could be understood. The radio would work from batteries or from the AC mains, so they should have no problem getting power for it. The explanation meant nothing to any of the three men, but they were willing to accept it at face value.

They took the radio to their kitchen/common room and plugged it in. There was a growl of static before the automatic squelch cut in, but that was enough to tell them that the radio was working. Joseph had devoured the instruction manual, so he knew to speak into the microphone. He said, "Hello, Friend, this is Joseph. I hope that you can hear me."

There was an immediate reply. "Hello, Joseph, it's good to talk to you. Please wait while I report this contact to my superiors."

There was a delay of about 10 minutes, and there was a different voice coming from the speaker. "Hello, Joseph, my name is Henry. I am very pleased that you found the radio and were able to get it into operation.

"Congratulations on your exploits so far. You have been very successful for somebody who had no prior training. I am anxious to hear how you managed to do so much, but that should wait for another time. Right now, I need to know what I can do for you that would be the most helpful."

"Thank you, Henry. The main thing we need is advice and training. Our leader, George, has no more training than do Otto or I. We three are the only ones who are actively fighting right now, though we have had some help from a few other slaves in key positions. I really think that you should talk to George, now."

"Hello, Henry, this is George. Thank you for the radio and for listening to us. We started out as three slaves who had taken all of the abuse that we could stand, so we rebelled. So far, we have gotten by on luck and the incompetence of our foes. However, that can't last much longer. Surely, they will react more forcefully as we do. The cops have already started carrying guns, but they are so ineffectual that we have not been in any real danger from them. The guns are palm-size .32 automatics, and they don't seem to have had any real training in their use. On the other hand, we have been using .22s with hollow-point bullets and a little surprise additive of our own. We practice almost every day, so we are pretty good at hitting what we aim at.