Joe tried to track where they were headed, but most of the standard green highway signs were defaced by graffiti. So were the sides of the buildings and fences that flanked the highway. As they descended into the city, he noted tents and crude shelters wherever there was bare ground.
Geronimo took the I-405 South exit onto Couch Street and Burnside. He took a left on Burnside.
Joe couldn’t help but marvel at what he saw. Every bank and most businesses were boarded up with plywood. Trash covered the sidewalks and gathered in the corners of buildings. Homeless people slept on the sidewalks and only some of them had sleeping bags.
“Where are we going?” he asked Geronimo.
“North Park Blocks.”
* * *
—
Axel drove two circuits around the Benson Hotel on Broadway until he found what he was looking for. Behind the boarded-up hotel was a small square bordered by Burnside, Ankeny, and Southwest Eighth Avenue. The square was open except for two old squat structures set inside it. There was so much graffiti on the walls of the buildings that it was hard to tell they were made of red brick.
A seven-foot chain-link fence had been erected around the square, but it had been mostly ripped down. Piles of trash littered the gravel inside.
Axel backed into the square over the top of the downed fence so the windshield of the van afforded a panoramic view of North Park across Burnside Street. He backed in slowly, aware of the possibility that he might roll over a sleeping homeless man. But he didn’t feel the thump of a body beneath his tires.
When the transit van was wedged in the shadows between the two brick buildings, he turned the motor off and killed the lights.
People were starting to gather in the park, just like he’d hoped. There were fewer than thirty of them at the moment, but he could tell by their profiles under the streetlights that they were geared up in black bloc and ready to rumble. Most had backpacks and carried skateboards. They were masked or their faces were hidden by motorcycle helmets.
He said to the Blade, “Looks like there’s just a few antifa assholes out at this point, but at least they aren’t like those Seattle pussies. Now all we have to do is wait for BLM and the cops to show up.”
The Blade responded with a moan. He was bent over double in the passenger seat with his arms wrapped tightly around his belly. Axel could smell blood and viscera. It had been like that all the way from Seattle.
“Hang in there,” Axel said. “I’m going to need your help unloading the cache.”
“I need a hospital, man. I’m dying.”
Axel looked away, disgusted. He firmly believed that only the weak got themselves injured. He’d always thought the Blade had more integrity.
“This is your fight, not mine,” the Blade said through clenched teeth.
“Hey, it’s our fight,” Axel said. He reached over and squeezed the Blade’s shoulder. “We made this promise to each other, remember? Now it’s all coming together.”
Axel had looked at his phone as they drove south. The murders in Seattle were blowing up. People were angry that a cop had killed two Black men. Some reports said it was four Black men, and they’d been shot execution-style. It was crazy and it was perfect.
“Can you help me unload the guns?” he asked.
The Blade simply moaned.
“Fine,” Axel said. “I’ll do it myself.”
As he climbed out of the van, he thought of four rivers coming together: antifa, BLM, cops, and a cache of loaded firearms located right in the middle of them. All he’d need to do was unload the weapons and announce the geocache location via his Signal app.
He’d headline the post:
FIGHT BACK!
Then he’d drive to the airport so he could be there when his buyers showed up first thing in the morning.
* * *
—
“There it is,” Geronimo said, holding up Tristan’s phone as they turned onto Broadway. He turned the screen of the phone toward Joe so Joe could read it.
FIGHT BACK!
Along with a Google Maps graphic that showed the exact location.
“How close are we?” Nate asked from the back.
“Close,” Geronimo said.
Joe sat with his shotgun muzzle down on the floorboard between his feet. His stomach roiled and he felt way out of his league. This was an unfamiliar urban hellscape and he’d lost track of directions. Where was north?
He said, “Nate, I’m going to call 911. We need to get the local cops involved.”
Nate said to Geronimo, “I told you he was Dudley Do-Right.”
“I’m not participating in an ambush,” Joe said. “I don’t have any authority here. You guys need to think real hard about this. We’re just three out-of-state dudes armed to the teeth driving around downtown. I’m not sure we could talk our way out of charges.”