How Beer Saved the World Read online

  Verity stood up. “We need to move fast. We can’t keep Ms.—um, Mrs.—Dawson under wraps for long. And it’s hard to keep troop movements quiet.”

  As the two ministers stood to go, Jessica said, “And don’t forget the beer. It shows your mountain men aren’t real Deseret people. Real Deseret people don’t drink any alcohol, the more fools they. Two to one the terrorists are just pawns. You can use the beer.”

  Verity walked over to the window as the door closed behind the others. “Mom, do you have any ideas on how we can use the beer?”

  “Not yet. But if you’ll take me out for a pint of stout, I’ll try to think of a few.”

  Verity hesitated. “Okay. But just one pint. You remember what the doctor said.”

  “Doctors, bah.”

  Verity raised her eyebrows.

  “O.K. Just one. But take me to that new brew pub down near Elliot Bay. If I can’t have more than one, I want something very good.”

  <<>>

  “Sure, you can use our place to set a trap,” Paco Fernandez told the Malheur County police officials. “We want that son of a bitch.”

  His son nodded in agreement. Diego was still in the hospital—his mother with him—but they expected him home tomorrow. The bullet had broken two bones in his arm.

  “I’d like to come with you, though,” Paco said.

  The lieutenant in charge started to shake his head and Paco’s son put a hand on his arm. “Papi….”

  “I don’t mean I want to be on the scene, dealing with those punks,” Paco said. “I’m too old for that and anyway my head still aches. But you’re going to have an observation post nearby, right? That’s where I want to be. I want to see you take those guys.”

  His son threw up his hands in resignation, but the lieutenant said, “I guess you’ve earned the right to do that.”

  <<>>

  Today there were clouds blocking the view of Mt. Rainer.

  Verity liked the new vid at the Fernandez house so much she watched it twice straight through. Hank Dawson had shown up at the house about midnight with another man and a teenaged boy. The vid showed him breaking the lock on the front door of the main house and coming across a stash of beer in both small kegs and bottles in a couple of old refrigerators in a room off the kitchen.”

  “We had to provide the beer and the extra refrigerator,” Rob explained. “The Fernandezes don’t make beer in that kind of quantity and anyway it seemed better to use crap beer than their good home brew.”

  As the two men and the boy came out of the house, each one loaded down with beer, a half dozen police officers appeared with guns pointed at their heads. The boy dropped his load, but stopped midway toward reaching for the gun slung on his back and put his hands up. It was all over quickly.

  “Well, they’re thugs, but not fools,” said Verity. “Have they revealed anything interesting?”

  “Outside of a stream of abuse, the men aren’t saying anything. But the boy has had some interesting information.”

  “Is he old enough to be interviewed?” Verity asked. She badly wanted information, but Cascadian law was adamant about protecting juveniles. It was one of the principles their founders had considered important.

  “He’s Dawson’s son, meaning he’s also Mrs. Dawson’s son. Our people brought her in for the interview. She told him, ‘Tell them what your idiot father is up to,’ and after a bit of teenage posturing and face-saving, he started doing just that.” Rob clicked on his tablet. “Here’s the interview and the transcript. The most important information is toward the end.”

  Both women skimmed down the transcript. “Fifteen mountain men squads?” Emily said. “And they’re all going to do raids on June 23?”

  “Five nights from now, all in places in Malheur County, as near as we call tell. They figure the police can’t respond fast enough.”

  “Well, except for this last raid, which we knew about, that’s been true. Of course, they’ve usually targeted rural areas. Are they going to do that again?”

  “The boy didn’t know what the targets were, except that his dad’s group was going in near the Fernandez place, aiming at another homestead out there. Probably the colonel has kept the information on a need-to-know basis.”

  Emily frowned. “That’s a lot of territory. It’s going to be hard to defend if we don’t know where they’re coming in, even if we know when.”

  “True enough,” Rob said. “We certainly don’t have enough police officers out there.”

  “I don’t see any alternative to putting troops all along the border,” Emily said. “That will protect the civilians.”

  “But it will make it clear to Deseret that we know what’s going on,” Rob said. “They’ll just change their plans. And we can’t keep troops there forever.”

  “Still, we can’t leave our people unprotected. Someone could get killed this time.”

  “You’re right,” said Verity. “Much as I’d like to do something that lets us figure out the whole plan, we have to protect our citizens.”

  Rob looked glum, but he nodded.

  “Don’t forget about the beer.”

  Verity jumped. In her focus on the situation, she had forgotten her mother was in her usual corner.

  Jessica put down her knitting and got shakily to her feet. “Those mountain men love their beer. Why don’t you send them some?”

  Verity stared at her mother. Send the thugs some beer? And then she smiled. “A jailbreak,” she said.

  The other two looked as if they thought both she and her mother were crazy.

  “We let Dawson and his friend break out of jail. Transfer them to another facility—maybe say they’re taking them to Portland or up here—and have the guards act either venal or stupid. And in the place where they escape, have a beer truck sitting there, just waiting to be stolen.”

  Rob’s eyes lit up. “Put some GPS receivers on all the kegs. Figure Hank will want to sell them to the other mountain men.”

  “We’ll be able to follow their every move, so we can have police and military in the right spots when they come across. Nab them quick.” Emily grinned. “We’ve got enough copters for some fast deployments out there. We’ll look all powerful.”

  “It’ll stop it for now,” Verity said. “And we should be able to use it to embarrass Deseret sufficiently to keep anything else from happening for the foreseeable future. But I’d still like to know what they’re up to. I don’t think they’re encouraging mountain men to harass our people just for the fun of it.”

  “Could be they’re trying to get rid of them. They must cause problems for their government, too. After all, those mountain men really don’t subscribe to the Mormon faith.”

  Verity shook her head. “I think they’d just arrest them all, if that was the case. They’re bound to have grounds. No, there’s something else going on.”

  <<>>

  “I was afraid even those punks would see through the plan,” Rob said. “It was one thing to have a guard pretend to sympathize with them—we decided that was the best way to let them ‘escape’ without anybody getting hurt—but having a beer truck up the block with the keys in it seemed awfully obvious. But apparently they just thanked their lucky stars.” He sent the vid to Verity and Emily.

  “And has he been distributing the beer?” Verity asked as she watched the vid show the two men speed down the street, letting an empty keg and a ladder clatter to the street in their hurry to be off.

  “He has. Kegs and cases have gone to 27 different households so far. We’ve got some voice transmitters as well as GPS on most of them, which is giving us some of the raid spots in advance.”

  “I hope that’s all the raiders.”

  “We’ll have some troops ready for fast deployment in case we don’t have them all,” Emily said.

  “People living out there have been put on alert,” Rob said. “We’re getting quite a few false alarms, but it will help us make sure we get all the raiders.”

  “There’
s a bigger concern,” Emily said. “Deseret seems to be beefing up its military presence along our border. I just got the latest reports this morning. Most of them are up near Ontario, though they also have some along the more deserted regions to the south.”

  “Do we have enough troops in all those areas if they decide to cross over?”

  “Yes, but civilians could get caught in the cross-fire if there’s an actual invasion. I’d like to evacuate the area.”

  Verity shook her head. “There isn’t time. And we can’t do it without putting them on the alert. If they figure out we’re expecting this raid, they’re going to postpone it. We need to catch them in the act if we’re going to put a stop to it.”

  Emily sighed. “I thought of that, too, but I hate leaving the people there if we’re actually going to end up at war.”

  “Hauling in their mountain men and bringing our soldiers up to the border should prevent an invasion,” Verity said, trying to sound more hopeful than she felt.

  After the others were gone, she turned to her mother. “I never thought I’d put civilian lives in danger for strategic reasons. That’s not what you all wanted to see when you began the movement for Cascadia.”

  “Leaders always have to make hard choices,” Jessica said. “When I was young, I thought they were all corrupt. Now, though, I know that sometimes the options are between bad and worse.”

  “Mama Alice wouldn’t have done it,” Verity said.

  “Alice was a thorough-going anarchist, much as I loved her. She wouldn’t have had your job for a minute. And if she’d been involved in this at all, she’d probably have poisoned the beer.”

  Verity smiled, but she didn’t stop worrying.

  <<>>

  The night of the 23rd, Verity sat in her office, accompanied by several aides. Rob and Emily were in Ontario, coordinating with the troops and local police. She missed them; all the aides were too deferential.

  She missed her mother, too, but Jessica was too old for all night vigils.

  A phone buzzed. One of the junior aides grabbed it. “Yes?” He handed it to her. “Mr. Allen, ma’am. With good news.”

  “We just took custody of the last group, Verity. No casualties, though we’ve got seven people wounded—four invaders, three of our officers, none of them life-threatening. No civilians, thank all that’s holy. There were five shoot-outs, but we managed to grab the rest without a fight.”

  Thank all that’s holy, Verity thought. “Excellent news. Are we sure there’s nobody else out there?”

  “Nothing else is moving on the GPS, though we’ve still got patrols out looking for movement and we’re still fielding calls. The military has moved most of the troops up to the border. I don’t think… just a second.”

  Verity heard him talking to someone else, but she couldn’t make out the words. She did hear a snort of laughter as he came back on the call. “This is our lucky night. One of the men we’ve rounded up appears to be the mysterious colonel. He’s not carrying papers, but one of the thugs we arrested called him by that title. If he’s who we think he is, that’s going to tie all this back to Deseret. We’re running a trace on him now.”

  Verity clicked off only to have her aide hand her another phone. “The president of Deseret, ma’am.”

  “Mr. President.”

  “Miss Landsdottir. I hope you won’t think I’m meddling in things that are none of my business, but I understand you have some serious trouble down in your southeastern region, right along our expanded border. I’ve got a few troops in the area; we could send some people over to help you deal with the troublemakers.”

  That was it, the purpose of the whole thing. Send the mountain men in to wreak havoc and then offer—as a “friendly” gesture—to get rid of them. And, probably, leave their troops in the region to protect against future raids.

  “Why that’s very kind of you, Mr. President, but we’ve got the whole situation under control. I understand all the terrorists have been taken into custody. All.”

  “Well that’s very fine, ma’am, very fine. If you’re sure. We could just run a sweep through the area, to make sure.”

  “Not to offend you, sir, but if anyone else from Deseret steps across the border, I fear our citizens and our soldiers are going to assume bad intentions. These terrorists have upset quite a few people.”

  “Of course, of course. But….”

  “You should know, Mr. President, that we’ve also arrested a man who appears to be one of your military officers.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Perhaps he’s a rogue, then. We’re investigating. But since the invasion came from your side of the border, we are understandably a little concerned about how it came about.”

  “I can assure you we knew nothing about it,” the president said. “When the people of Idaho joined up with us, we ended up with a lot of these semi-civilized folks. I’m sure you’ve got some people like them. They’re hard to control.”

  “And easy to stir up,” Verity said. “Mr. President, I regret that this episode is going to make any future negotiations between us more difficult. You must understand that my people are deeply suspicious of your country right now. I don’t think we’ll be able to hold any trade talks.”

  “But Miss Landsdottir…”

  “Thanks for your concern, sir.” She hung up.

  <<>>

  The security division had an extensive file on the colonel. Deseret continued to call him a rogue in public, but through private channels they negotiated for his release. So far they hadn’t offered anything worthwhile, but Verity thought she might eventually get something useful. The colonel was a thorough professional, according to the military investigators who questioned him; it was unlikely that they’d get any valuable information from him.

  Several weeks after the raid, Verity went down to Ontario for a ceremony honoring the officers who had captured the raiders. She pinned medals on those injured in the fights, warmly praised everyone, and honored the various citizens who had been attacked.

  “We were most fortunate that the excellent beer brewed by the Fernandez family attracted the attention of these terrorists,” Verity said, “because that gave our police and military the information they needed to fight back effectively. Once we knew who they were, we were able to trace them and figure out where they would strike next.”

  “My abuelo’s beer saved the world,” Diego yelled.

  Everyone laughed.

  “Well, it helped save our small piece of it,” Paco Fernandez said.

  End of the Long Haul

  Frog and Esther Jones

  UNITED SPACE PATROL

  REPORT OF INCIDENT #GA-435-U26

  SUPPLEMENT B: Transcript of Communications Log, Laser Relay Station EU-28

  Note from Patrick Lerenor, Investigating Officer:

  What follows is a transcript of live communications sent and received by the EU-28, a tight-beam communications satellite around Europa. It presents a real-time perspective of the events of E.C. 6-08-2967, beginning at 22:31 system standard time. It was at this time the ship piloted by Murray Laverne Williams, aka "Fat Squirrel" arrived within range of this communications satellite, en route to Europa.

  The majority of communications on this frequency are to and from merchant shipping pilots. These "truckers," as they colloquially refer to themselves, spend most of their time alone in their cabs, and have taken to using relayed tight-beam communications to socialize with one another. I have attempted to provide translations of their jargon where necessary. Truckers are logged by the communications satellite according to their ship's license numbers, which appear at the beginning of every communication.

  -TRANSCRIPT BEGINS-

  EA-29384XB: Breaker, Breaker, one-niner-six, this is Fat Squirrel, coming in off the long haul from the blue dot.(1) Who's out there in Europa local tonight?

  EU-4356: Fat Squirrel, this is Hot Chicken. Been a while since we've seen you kicking around the crush ball.(2) What're you haulin'
?

  EA-29384XB: Hot damn, Gladys. Good to see you're still riding the vaccuum. I'm bringing in about one and a half teralitres from Big Larch brewing company for offload at Delta Station.

  CA-936: Fat Squirrel, this is Puddlestomper. Did I hear you tellin' us that you're bringing actual beer in?

  EA-29384XB: That's an affirm, Puddlestomper.

  CA-936: Hot diggity. They've been dishing out greengrog(3) for way too long. Tastes like yer' gettin' drunk off a salmon's ass.

  EU-4356: (laughs) Copy that, Puddlestomper. I'm on the backside right now, but I'm picking up a load of vat sealant, then I'll be bound for Delta soon as I can. Murray, can you confirm they'll be selling that brew up in the EUX Truck Stop on Delta once you tank in?

  EA-29384XB: I'm not sure on that. If anyone's got the line to Jenny at the EUX, maybe they could give her a direct call. I've just started my deceleration; ETA is 1:32 at Delta.

  CA-936: I've got that number. I'll check in with Jenny. If she's serving once you're tanked, I'm buying a round for everyone at the stop.

  IO-3698: Breaker, breaker one-nine-six. This is Old Henry.

  EU-4356: Copy Old Henry, this is Hot Chicken. Did you hear the news from Murray?

  IO-3698: That's a negative Chicken. Are we talking about Fat Squirrel here?

  EA-29384XB: That's affirm, Hank. How you doin' this fine evening?

  IO-3698: Murray! Can't complain. So what brings a homeboy(4) like you out to the crush ball?

  CA-936: This here's Puddlestomper, and I'm back y'all. I have a big ol' confirm from Jenny. I'm a gonna repeat that so's I know you all heard me. Jenny at the EUX on Delta will be serving Big Larch Lager for as long as it lasts, once Fat Squirrel there can get himself to Delta Station and tank off.

  IO-3698: Well, well. Murray's bootlegging.

  EA-29384XB: Ain't no bootlegging, Hank. Running the first leg off of permits. You Jovians have a hell of a time growing grain, so Big Larch has the contract to deliver the good stuff. I'll be making the long haul for a long time, thanks to that contract.

  IO-3698: That's a mighty fine deal you have for yourself, there.