Lock In (Lock In, #1)(47)

The threeps were just threeps, of course. The Hadens driving them were somewhere else in the country. But when you’re a Haden and you’re arrested in your threep, if you disconnect, that’s considered resisting arrest and fleeing the scene. This fact was courtesy of a young, rich Haden who in the early years of threeps carelessly knocked down an old lady, disconnected from her threep in a panic, and then spent three years and a couple hundred thousand dollars of Mommy’s money trying to get out of what would have been a standard-issue moving violation. She eventually also ended up adding perjury and bribery to her docket. She should have just done the community service.

Thus our colonials, cooling their heels and glaring through their pixels.

“What you in for, George?” I asked Washington. Davidson had called us in to deal with several different Hadens in his holding cells. This was the first bunch.

“For exercising our constitutional Second Amendment rights,” Washington said. His real name was Wade Swope, from Milltown, Montana. His information was popped up in my view. “Here in the dictatorship of the District of Columbia, a man is apparently stripped of his right to bear arms.”

Vann turned to Davidson. “Shocked, shocked I am to find men with guns somehow landing in jail.”

“Yes, well,” Davidson said. “Our founding father here is correct that he has the right to bear arms, which in this case were long rifles for each of them. The part he’s skipping over is where his little group of colonial fighters went into a coffee shop—private property—and started to make a scene, and when they were told to take a hike, commenced to wave their rifles around. We have it on the store video, not to mention the phone of every single person in the store.”

“We’re here to be the security detail for the march,” said Thomas Jefferson, aka Gary Height, of Arlington, Virginia. “We’re a militia, consistent with the Constitution. We’re here to defend our people.”

“You might be a militia,” I said. “But I don’t think waving your firearms around in a coffee shop accurately describes ‘well-regulated.’”

“Who cares what you think?” said Patrick Henry, aka Albert Box of Ukiah, California. “You’re standing with them. Those who oppress us.” He pointed to me. “You are a traitor and a sellout.”

It occurred to me that Henry/Box actually had no idea who I was, although I don’t know if that would have changed his opinion any. I glanced over at Vann and Davidson. “Oppressing us, as in we Hadens, or oppressing you, dudes waving around firearms in a coffee shop?” I asked. “I want to be clear on the depth of my traitorness.”

“You know what confuses me, Shane,” Davidson said, before any of them could answer.

“Tell me,” I said.

Davidson motioned at the colonial Hadens. “On one hand these guys seem like your basic crazy conservative types, with the Second Amendment and their Yankee Doodle hats. But on the other hand they’re saying they’re security for a march protesting reductions in government benefits. Which seems pretty liberal to me.”

“It’s a puzzler,” I agreed.

“I don’t know,” Davidson said. “Maybe it’s not about politics. Maybe these guys are just *s.”

“Seems the simplest explanation,” I said.

“We have a right to assemble—” Washington/Swope began, clearly winding himself up.

“Oh, Jesus, don’t,” Vann said. “It’s too early in the f*cking A.M. for your brand of pathetic patriotic bullshit.”

Washington/Swope clammed up, surprised.

“Better,” Vann said, and leaned in toward the lot. “Now. Your threeps are here, but each of your physical bodies are in a different state. That makes you the FBI’s problem. Which means you are my problem. And I say five jackasses dressed up like the back of a two-dollar bill, claiming to be a militia and waving around rifles in a goddamn Georgetown coffee shop violates Title Eighteen of the U.S. Criminal Code, chapters twenty-six, forty-three, and one hundred two.”

I quickly pulled up the relevant chapters of Title Eighteen and noted that chapter 43 was for “False Personation.” I didn’t suspect that anyone would confuse Swope with the real George Washington. I also knew to stay quiet.

“So, here’s the deal,” Vann continued. “You have two options. The first is I decide not to make a federal case of it, and you idiots walk your threeps over to the precinct storage room, where you power them down and then we yank out the batteries. You’ll have three days to arrange to have your threeps and your precious rifles shipped back to you, or we’ll assume you’re donating them to the Metro police.

“The second option is I do make a federal case out of it. In which case we confiscate your threeps and rifles, and a law enforcement official comes to all of your houses to wheel you off to the nearest Haden-capable federal detention center, which is probably not actually anywhere close to you. Then you get the joy of spending all the money every single member of your entire family will ever earn on lawyers, because in addition to those three chapters of Title Eighteen I covered with you, I’m going to throw every other single thing I can think of into the indictment.”

“That’s bullshit,” said Thomas Paine, aka Norm Montgomery of York, Pennsylvania.

“Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t,” Vann said. “But whatever it is, I will absolutely f*cking bury you in it. And I will enjoy it, because you chose to waste my time making me deal with you. So, decision time. Door number one or door number two. Choose wisely. And if you don’t choose in ten seconds, we’re going with door number two. Choose.”