a collage with nothing left to give but a fight against the evils.
Geneva turns us down, and we're almost arrested before heading out the back door. so now it's not just our governments chasing us down, but the International Criminal Court, as well.
the very thing we're trying to help is now hunting us down. we figured it would.
it takes little time before we're back on track, and flying over the border into Serbia for our first trip, strapped up to our chins with ammunition. even Maggs is packin on our bouncy chopper ride. just a magnum, but it'll do. she's only fired it about seven and a half times, but we're hoping she'll never have to play the shooter. all the flak should be coming our way and not hers.
the thing we're all thinkin, especially Valentino, is that either way we play this, we all end up the same. it's kinda like an attempt at atonement. an attempt that we already see the rejection stamp ominously on. but for Maggs, she's got a clean slate except for whatever crimes she's just racked up in the past year alone. nothin in her past to make her a choice cut for any administration. nothin in my past to keep me from being anything but a choice cut.
Serbia goes well. well enough. three of us are licking our wounds, and Emil finds it strange to be capturing half the men he used to play poker with. we learn pretty quickly of head-hunters dispatched from several federal organizations. CIA, NSA, and even an extended detail from within the Secret Service. no word yet on Russia's response to our rouse.
maybe they figured they've taken enough. the Czar's washed his hands of us.
three months into the job we've turned over 72 war criminals from five continents and the focus shifts.
there's one continent left where criminals are hiding out.
the most difficult this far, since they're surrounded by cameras, guns, over-zealous animals in a patriotic haze, and the two of them are almost never in the same place. when they were in office, it was official policy to keep em separate for "national security", but as of now, they're just runnin scared.
they're the reason a couple of us and our buddies got off easy. we're grateful, but we're also the only ones who've really changed. we figure now their time is up. the world's waited long enough to see them come to justice.
thanks to them i am scarred. my marriage failed. my children deserted me. my country scorned me. but over half of the country still supported the ones who sanctioned us. f----- double standards!
---
"this is going to be tougher than anything, ladies and gentlemen. I've been dying to get this done, people. it's been several decades since i found out the office that was to blame. the torture bill overturned was the last straw, back in '08. that's how long i've been waitin for this, guys." Valentino's got his crowd's attention. we've got some vague clue of who he's talking about.
Maggs runs her fingers up and down on tee sharp edge of the steel beams supporting the caving ceiling of the warehouse we've made our haven, in Israel. (where better to hide than the country they'd never invade?) this is hitting her pretty hard. she blames these guys for the disappearance of her brother. makes sense to me.
just like Charlize Theron's Stella, this one's pretty personal for her.
we found a lot of the other administration in hiding around the world (ironically a couple were in our new shack). they'd scattered once they realized someone was having success in hunting their kind down.
(it sucks that we've had to kill so many unknowing amateurs who've been conned into protecting devils, but it's sometimes the only way to finish the job. it's not like this is anything new for us. just sad that the demons just get prison and their lackeys get the grave)
and now the last two are making their haven in the bed of vipers, still. latest intel would have us believe so.
it's kind of hard for us to all put everything into this, because once this is done, we can't think of anyone else to go after. the ICC's already in the middle of tens of tribunals and trials. anonymous "drop-offs" started filling their quota a long time ago.
they've finally got some bite, and for the most part, nobody seems to laugh at them anymore.
except for these two.
Emil pipes up, "Valentino, you know what happens when we finish this, right?"
Cal picks it up: "they'll bury the truth. call it a freak accident or a stroke."
"not once we get Al-Jazeera to air our live feed," Maggs says coldly.
"our what?" I'm thrown off a bit here.
"our live feed," Valentino continues, "Maggs will cover us and give a couple of us cameras on our headlamps when we're in the bunkers. she's gonna be using the same signal strength that allowed these two pigs their satellite TV when the world first threatened their empire on 9/11. Al-Jazeera will air it around the world, both Arabic and English, and right now we're still looking for additional networks based off the continent. but Al-Jazeera's a pretty safe bet there won't be anything like a sort of censorship."
"the media was once about truth." Maggs stares all of us down, in turn. "it's what ruined my brother, back when they'd fully gone shoddy on us. now that the west has effed everything up, we've got a little bit of hope outside our normal borders, gentlemen."
i remember that Al-Jazeera was the one that knew everything about everything going on outside the western world. and now they really were going to be a weapon against the west. it wasn't something any of us naturally tended to like. we liked our homes and safe suburbs at one point. but i guess that's all changed on us, so we might as well bite back.
the questions and straight-forward, strong answers keep coming, back and forth for a bit.
then Valentino excuses himself, and slips out of the room, leaving us in an awed, excited, breathless tension. i look over at Maggs, who's beaming.
"you sure you're not a little over-confident about all this?" Miller asks her.
"yeah, i've been working on this little network thing a lot longer than any of you can imagine." cool as ever, our wonder woman dispels our fears.
we're left in another silence as each of us contemplates what comes next. right about the time it should be getting awkward, our SOA brother walks in with his hands behind his back, and a smile bigger than Maggs'.
"gentlemen, the preparation for this will take us several months of cold, hard work. we've got a lot of research and planning to do. these two guys won't just be sitting on their a---- waiting for us. undoubtedly they know they're next. some would think they're old news, but we all know that an old crime is still a crime. at least in the US."
he pauses. for some reason it's kinda comforting. even if this is the last thing we ever do during our natural lives, and even if heaven won't take us, we're gonna do what we can for what we believe in.
"since there's not much good news waiting for us in the next months, or at the end of all this, so we thought we'd invest in a little something that appreciates in value, that'll give us some incentive."
he brings forth a bottle of '49 champagne. it's a fitting year, '49.
we erupt in muffled applause and Maggs laughs for the first real time since i opened the door for her back at our steakhouse meeting. she thought me still a gentlemen, even though she was the one who knew my record the best. she had access to all our files on the same hard-drive as that of the targets.
it's a strange and totally perfect atmosphere that's ushered in by a bottle filled in the greatest year in human rights history.
Maggs hands us each an identical dossier with everything the US government has on our next two guys.
their pictures make my blood boil, for what they made me do at Abu Ghraib:
Valentino raises the bottle high in the spirit of August 1945, "we'll toast to justice the night before we go in!"
for only seven of us, the cheering and applause is deafening. my heart thunders.
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