chapter 12
cavalry
The police met us in Verdugo Park, rapping on the bathroom door. We opened it cautiously, smoke quickly infiltrating the little space, and we passed around the emergency USN95s the officers supplied. The masks came from Velasquez, who let me know that they’d made a point of answering the call when they heard the address. “You’re one of our best customers, Mr. Palazzo.”
Burbank PD had rolled up with a single cruiser, but Velasquez told me that there were more vans waiting on Clark: drone support, SWAT, snipers. They were ready to move into position but they wanted to know as much as possible before they went in. Phuong and I agreed to get in the cruiser with Velasquez to tell them what we knew about the Magas’ locations and arms, and to help them plan an entry.
We talked quickly. I let Phuong take the lead, since she’d actually been inside with the Magas. I listened intently, rethinking the entry plan that Ana Lucía and I had come up with based on her information, realizing that if I’d gone in through the patio doors I’d planned to use, I’d have been completely exposed to the main body of them. They’d likely have shot me dead before I could have gotten out a single word.
I was digesting this fact when Velasquez’s screen beeped and they grabbed it and started tapping. Their face went tight, then they touched their earpiece and had a terse conversation full of “yes, sir”s and “I understand”s.
“We’ve got to move,” they said, getting out of the car. “We’ve got to get all of these people out of here.”
We followed them hastily. “What’s happening?” I said, chasing after them. “Is it more militiamen? Should we get back into the bathroom?”
They kept walking until they reached our group. Their partner, a young female cop who’d been interviewing them, had already crowded them together. Velasquez held their hands up. “Listen up,” they said. “I said listen!” There was a note of urgency that bordered on panic in their voice. We fell silent.
“About an hour ago, the fires reached Sun Valley. Firefighters hit it hard, but the winds picked up and it reached a large chemical refinery there. None of its fire suppression and fail-safes were rated for this kind of fire. The smoke plume is now considered lethal, full of things like dioxins that you do not want to breathe, not even through a mask. Not through two masks.
“Now the winds have shifted and that plume is headed right here, right now.” That’s when the civil defense sirens kicked in, blaring from the community center and lampposts, an eerie moan, then three blats, then a synthetic voice repeating “SHELTER IN PLACE, SHELTER IN PLACE.” Velasquez raised their voice. “Our vehicles are not considered adequate for this kind of chemical hazard. We need to get indoors, now.”
Phuong had her screen out, tapping furiously. She brought it to Officer Velasquez and stuck it under their nose. “These are the filters on the HVAC in our new building. Will they do?”
They squinted at the screen, lifting their goggles briefly. They got out their own screen and tapped at it, comparing the two. “Are you sure?” they asked. Phuong nodded. They looked at us, then at their partner, and then off into the smoke, now blowing from the north.
“Fuck it, we’re going in.”
* * *
Phuong and I got to ride in the cruiser. Everyone else jog-walked as fast as they could to the building. The streets had been mostly empty since the fires started, and now they were totally deserted except for emergency vehicles crawling through the low-visibility smoke, sirens blaring and lights staining the sky red-blue-red-blue.
We met two SWAT vans at the corner and turned off Verdugo and down the street, a convoy that filled both lanes, making incredible noise.
The vans rolled right through the fencing we’d put up around the jobsite, and I watched a third one crash through the fence at the back of the house on the cruiser’s dash screen.
“Get down,” Velasquez said. “Get right down on the floor.” Their partner was already unlocking the shotgun that stood between their seats. I saw pop-ups snap out on the roofs of the SWAT vans, rifle muzzles pointing through the windows, just as swarms of drones lifted off and surrounded the building, so that within seconds, every window had at least one drone at it. That was the last thing I saw before I curled up on the floor of the cruiser, next to Phuong, tightly clutching her hand.
There was a SNAP sound like a bolt of lightning and then a rasping boom—it took me a second to realize that I was hearing a very high-powered public address system. “YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE TO SURRENDER. LETHAL FORCE HAS BEEN AUTHORIZED. LOWER YOUR WEAPONS, LACE YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEADS, AND WALK SINGLE FILE OUT OF THE FRONT ENTRANCE. YOU HAVE FIFTY SECONDS TO SURRENDER.”
The sound literally made the car shake, and I pressed my hands over my ears.
“THIRTY SECONDS. LETHAL FORCE HAS BEEN AUTHORIZED.”
“I hate this place,” Phuong whispered. “Fuck, I hate this place.” She was crying. I squeezed her hand harder. “I want out. I’m reenlisting. I just can’t be here anymore. I know it’s the same everywhere, but it’s different when it’s people you know. I know those imbeciles in there, about to get their brains blown out. Jesus. I hate this place.”
“TWENTY SECONDS.”
I swallowed hard. I loved Burbank. All that had happened, it only made my love stronger. Right? But what did I actually love? I loved the building project. The solidarity. Phuong. God, I loved Phuong.
“I’m coming,” I said, and she looked at me with what might have been alarm. “If that’s okay,” I said. “I mean, I understand if you—”
“Shut up, you idiot,” she said. “Of course I want you to come!”
“TEN SECONDS.”
“NINE.”
“EIGHT.”
And then there was an indistinct holler, and then shouting, and then … it was all over.
* * *
They’d marched out with their hands over their heads, slowly, the cops’ weapons trained on them, drones hovering nearby, and it wasn’t until the last one emerged that someone shouted “GUN!” at the same instant that someone else shouted “WAIT!”
I uncurled from the car floor in time to see Kenneth, one hand bandaged, slowly and awkwardly putting an AR-15 on the ground. He’d been holding it on the rest of them.
The cops swarmed the Magas just as the rest of our group arrived, masked and out of breath. Phuong popped her door and got out to check on them and so I did the same, spotting Ana Lucía at the front of the group and making a beeline for her.
“What happened?” she said. “Is everyone okay?”
Phuong threw her hands in the air. “Who the fuck knows? Who the fuck knows anything? It looks like they surrendered, or possibly that guy I hit with the tack hammer forced them to give up? Who the fuck knows anything?” She gave a wild laugh and I grabbed her hand.
She gave me a hug as wild as the laugh and then Ana Lucía dragged us apart. “Come on, you two, they want us to get inside.”
Velasquez’s eyes were hooded and worried behind their goggles. We filed into the building and Velasquez buttoned up the door. “Do you have anything we can use to seal the windows and doors?” they asked. “The word on the chemical plume keeps getting worse. We don’t want a single whiff of that stuff in here.”
Ana Lucía nodded. “There’s some two-way fiber tape and insulating sheets up on the third floor,” she said. “I’ll go grab it.”
“Wait,” Velasquez said. They hollered down the hallway, toward the two-bedroom ground-floor apartment, where the cops had taken the militiamen. “Three more coming in,” they said. “Friendlies.” They turned back to us. “Okay,” they said. “Can you get the plastic and tape and we’ll seal off this level? Weather office thinks we’ll be in the plume for two to three hours, then we can move out.”
We ripped off our masks and bounded up the stairs two at a time. Ana Lucía led us quickly to the plastic and tape. “There’s food up on the fourth floor,” she said. “Snacks for meetings. I think we should bring them down. I’m starving.”
I was about to say that I couldn’t imagine eating when I realized I was also ravenous. What a weird goddamned day it had been. “Do you need help?” I asked.
“Maybe one person,” she said.
“I’ll go,” Phuong said.
I hoisted one of the heavy insulation rolls over my shoulder and thudded down the stairs with it, dumping it in the lobby and running back up the stairs for another one before Velasquez could ask where Phuong and Ana Lucía were. Back on the third floor, I unrolled foot-long tongues from the tape rolls so I could hang them from my body, then I humped the second spindle of insulation down the stairs, handing it to Velasquez, who took it with an oof.
“Where are—” they began, as Phuong and Ana Lucía arrived, hauling stacked eighteen-gallon tubs of snacks—dried fruits, nuts, popcorn, and bite-sized chocolate chip cookies that someone had baked by the hundreds and donated to the jobsite.
“Food,” Phuong said, heading for the ground-floor apartment door. Velasquez hustled to get ahead of her. They knocked first, announced themself, and then entered, waving the rest of us in.
* * *
I love my crew. They efficiently self-organized to seal off the apartment, working room to room in threesomes: two people to unroll the insulation and hold it over doors and windows, one person to tape around the plastic’s perimeter. They treated the cops and the hangdog, handcuffed militiamen like they were furniture, stepping around their captors without even acknowledging them. Phuong and Ana Lucía floated from room to room, making sure everyone got snacks and topping up their water bottles.
Once everyone was fed, they brought the leftover food to the kitchen, where the militiamen were lined against the walls, alongside the major-appliance hookups, cuffed and furious-looking.
“You guys hungry?” Ana Lucía said. She got sullen glares in return. Kenneth shook his head in disgust.
“I’m hungry, thank you,” he said.
Ana Lucía nodded briskly. “Popcorn or dried bananas?”
“The bananas,” Kenneth said. Then he added, “Please.”
“Can you please cuff him in front?” Ana Lucía asked one of the three cops in the room—the dozen-odd SWAT members had taken over the bedrooms and were resting against the walls there with the eerie patience of armed people with nothing to shoot.
The cop she’d addressed—a Black guy not much older than me—looked at the other two and they played a quick game of eyeball hockey before they all nodded minutely at each other. The Black cop went around behind Kenneth and the other two flanked him as he was recuffed with his hands in front of his body, so he could take the little sack of freeze-dried banana chips.
“Anyone else?”
“Uh,” said one of the other Magas, whom I recognized as the squad leader who’d been on point at the front door. “Uh. Do you have more bananas?”
“Of course,” Ana Lucía deadpanned.
What with the uncuffing/recuffing rigmarole, getting everyone their food took a good ten minutes. The banana chips disappeared first, and the last three men looked disappointed with their popcorn. I had to resist laughing at them. An hour before, they’d been holding us hostage, now they were sad because they had to take second-choice at snack time? The master race was pretty disappointing.
“Ma’am,” said one of the popcorn guys. In a group of middle-aged and old men, he stood out as especially old, like an apple doll in a red trucker cap. His hands shook as they’d recuffed him.
“Yes?” Ana Lucía said.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
Ana Lucía gave him a guarded look. “You’re welcome.”
“Might I ask you another favor?”
She snorted. “You can ask.”
He looked wounded. “I just wondered … would you please call my wife? I’m sure she’s worried about me and—”
Ana Lucía gave him a very long, stone-faced look. Then she rolled her eyes. “Why not? Give me the number.”
She dialed and clamped her screen to her head. “Hello? Is that Marybeth Simms? Yes, Mrs. Simms. I’m here with your husband, Jesse. He is under arrest after he took me and several of my friends hostage. No, ma’am, I’m not joking. Yes, ma’am. Ma’am? Mrs. Simms? Calm down please, Mrs. Simms. Listen, please. Jesse asked me to call you because he wanted you to know that he’s safe. Ma’am? Ma’am? Did you understand me? Jesse is under arrest for terrorism but he’s safe. Ma’am? Mrs. Simms? I’m going to hang up now, Mrs. Simms. Goodbye, Mrs. Simms.”
She pocketed her screen, then met Jesse’s wounded stare. “She knows you’re safe now.” She glared at the militiamen. “Anyone else’s wife need calling?”
They were silent at first, and then Kenneth said, “Ma’am, you have every right to be angry at us, but that wasn’t called for. Marybeth Simms didn’t hurt you.”
Everyone stared at Ana Lucía as she chewed this over: the Magas, the cops, me. Her jaw jumped, then she opened and closed her mouth. Finally, she pointed at Kenneth, her arm straight out in front of him, and began to speak. It was low and dangerous at first, but it got louder.
“No, mister, Marybeth Simms didn’t hurt me. I didn’t hurt her either. All that happened was that she got a few hours’ head start on her new life as a terrorist’s wife. That’s something all your families are going to go through in a few hours, and it’s nothing I did to them. It’s what you did to them. You did it.
“Jesus fucking Christ, you gutless, mindless fucks. Are you fucking kidding me? You’re all poster children—and I do mean children—for ‘personal responsibility’ right up until someone asks you to take responsibility for your own actions. Remember, no one pointed a gun at you and asked you to commit an act of terror. You, on the other hand, you cowards, you pointed guns at us.
“I see you there, looking sad and worried because you’re going to be in court for years, maybe go to prison if your plute buddies can’t bail you out. You think you’re having a hard time? Right now, at this very instant, there are people on the road, walking down the road, with nothing but a mask between them and the toxic plume that’s headed our way.
“Those are my friends. I walked with them. For weeks. Carrying everything they owned. The law entitled them to housing, and so they took their children and everything they owned and walked, and walked, and walked, for weeks. When they got here, you and your friends found a way to take away their legal right to a home and so they’re out there right now. Right now. In the poisoned air. They are out there with their children right now in the poison air and you did that. You were terrorists before you showed up here today, gentlemen.”
She was shaking. I tentatively put out a hand to comfort her or stop her or something, but she slapped it away and gestured with her screen.
“The fucking joke is on you, boys. Oh, this is such a good joke. That dioxin plume out there, the reason we’re all hiding in here with tape over the windows? It is salting the Earth. The particulate that settles over this town will poison it for years. There is no dose of dioxin that is considered safe for human health.
“Burbank is a superfund site, my dudes. And you are all refugees now.”
* * *
When the plume had passed, the city’s emergency warning system came over every screen, explaining that we should minimize our outdoor visits, that pets and children should be kept indoors. We were advised to keep a set of outdoor clothing and to designate a changing room that we would only visit while masked, and leave all outdoor clothing within it, and to shower immediately after every outdoor trip.
The video also explained that FEMA would be here within a week, and that interim emergency services would deliver food and other essentials while we waited.
I was numb. How could this be? How could my home, my town, and everything I fought for be killed? Wiped away, in an instant? How had that happened?
* * *
Phuong knew what to do. She was already coordinating with Valley and LA DSA chapters and the Blue Helmet veterans’ groups to figure out the game plan for mutual aid.
That’s how I managed my first Blue Helmet deployment without leaving my hometown.