Rule of Capture: A Novel

Dedication

For my brother Alex Brown (1966–2019)

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

PART ONE: NON-COMPLIANCE

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

PART TWO: DISCOVERY

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

PART THREE: JUDGMENT

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

Acknowledgments

Chapters from Tropic of Kansas

1

2

3

About the Author

Praise for Tropic of Kansas

Also by Christopher Brown

Copyright

About the Publisher

PART ONE

NON-COMPLIANCE

1

In the year of the coup, Donny Kimoe spent Monday mornings at the federal courthouse trying to help torture victims remember what happened to them in lockup over the weekend. Judge Broyles liked having Donny in his courtroom to take on-the-spot appointments. They had worked together in the U.S. Attorney’s office back in the day, before the country went crazy, and relationships like that had legs. Even when you ended up on different sides of what was starting to feel like the beginning of a civil war.

More importantly, Donny had the security clearance you needed to be able to appear in that court—a hard thing to come by without having worked for the machine, and a harder thing to maintain when you switched sides to work for the defense. Not that having the clearance meant the prosecution would share much of what they had compiled in their classified files on your clients.

Getting justice at secret trials for people the government wanted to disappear was not easy.

Especially when you had to show up on time.

Late again, said Turner, laughing at Donny as he buzzed open the bombproof main door. Turner was one of the four beefy old marshals they had manning the security checkpoint: one on this side of the machines, one viewing the screens, and two on the other side waiting for their opportunity to shoot someone. They looked like a gang of Shriners gone wrong.

Donny likes to party, said the guy manning the machine, the one with the drone pilot eyes.

Have you guys been watching my surveillance feed again? said Donny. Guess they cut off the cable at the home for old fascists.

All four of them laughed at that, a heartier and creepier laugh than you would have expected.

Then Turner took Donny’s phone and his ID and put them in the lockbox. Somehow that was the most invasive part of the protocol, even more than the man-hands all over your body. It made you wonder if this was the day you would exit through the same door as the prisoners.

As Donny emptied the rest of his pockets into the plastic bin, he looked back through the window at the mothers of Houston crowded behind the barricade, holding up pictures and names of their missing kids as if it would help. You couldn’t hear their chants through the soundproofing, but they still echoed in Donny’s ears from his walk up to the building. One of them had called Donny by name as he squeezed through, but he pretended he didn’t hear them. The tears of anguished parents couldn’t improve the odds on those cases, or pay the fees for trying, and Donny already had his hands full that morning with deadlines past due.

Come on, said Turner, brandishing his big electric wand. When it passed over the contours of Donny’s tired body, it sounded like an old radio tuning in whalesong.

You play me like a theremin, said Donny, as if being a wise-ass would keep the horror at bay. But Turner didn’t laugh. He just shoved him into the body scanner.

A German shepherd stared at Donny from the other side, on alert. The kind of dog that wears a uniform.

Donny stood for the scan, looked back at his spectral avatar, endured the fat white hands groping his sweaty spots, and collected his stuff. That’s when he noticed the little tin of breath mints he had left in his jacket pocket, the one that had something other than mints in it.

He looked at the dog, and was glad to confirm it only seemed to care about the kind of homebrew that could explode.

See you on the other side, fellas, he said, grabbing his briefcase and hurriedly collecting his stuff. As he stepped toward the elevator, he noticed what it said on the dog’s police vest.

DO NOT PET.

The Vice President John Tower United States Courthouse for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, had been built by the prior administration, which broke the budget on public projects to keep people working after the war. They also had the idea that justice should look nice, at least on the outside. The main corridor riffed some cross between a Greek temple and a museum of modern art, the way it opened up into these vaulting spaces of concrete and wood filled with light from unseen sources that highlighted the absence of people. They’d warmed it up a little with some timbers harvested from the building that came before, but when you knew that wood was from now-extinct forests, it kind of killed the feeling. And then you noticed the little domes of black glass in the ceiling and walls, and remembered this was a courthouse where justice was not blind, but all-seeing. There were cameras everywhere, except where they could do some good—in the courtrooms.

Especially the one Donny was going to.

Courtroom Five

SEALED PROCEEDINGS

Hon. Harold W. Broyles

Special Emergency Tribunal

Gulf Region

Donny collected himself at the big wooden door, trying to summon a confident composure as he cued up excuses from his compilation of sins committed and lies told, the way a kid prepares to face an angry father. The only thing you could be sure of before you went in there was that the clients they assigned you to represent were probably guilty. It was the laws they had violated that were unjust—laws a government at war with its own people invents to make sure it wins. And to make doubly sure, they did everything they could to keep you from knowing what they knew about your case, often things even the clients did not know, things that only the electronic brains plugged into the eyes of the state could know.

As he reached for the door handle, the jitter in his hand reminded Donny he was guilty, too. He looked up at the government seal laser-cut into the door, an abstracted image of the eagle squeezing the snake, and remembered which one he was. And then he pulled the door open, assuring his slithering avatar the story wasn’t over yet.

When he stepped through, he found the crowd. They were watching the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bridget Kelly, recite the state’s coded reasons why the boy in the dock, some scrawny white kid with the hand-me-down clothes and homemade tattoos of one of the resettlement camps, should be detained on suspicion of membership in a rebel gang that had vandalized a FEMA command center.

Donny couldn’t see the kid’s face, but as he listened to Bridget, he got the sinking feeling this was the case he was assigned to handle, and he’d missed it.

Fortunately, when he looked to the defense table, it wasn’t empty. Loni Sandler was there, a veteran public defender whom Donny admired even though he could always tell the feeling was not mutual.

The gallery behind the bar was packed with feds waiting for their cases to be called. Government suits lined up like buzz-cut funeral directors, Coast Guard special operators in their blue-and-orange camo, Texas Rangers in their government-issue Stetsons, a pair of game wardens outfitted for hunting humans, and one Border Patrol agent in her dirt brown DMZ dungarees, no doubt preparing to testify about some dissident she had nabbed trying to escape the country and sneak into Mexico. Most were members of Counterinsurgency Task Force Foxtrap, though Donny knew some of the suits were also there to make sure the court did its job, ready to report back to Washington or Austin as needed. A few of them turned their heads and looked back at him as he entered their domain, with a judgmental group gaze designed to remind him he was on the wrong side. There was one friendly face, but even that one looked worried. Donny joined him in the front row, on the defense side of the aisle.

Good morning, Miles, whispered Donny. I thought you were supposed to be in Austin today with Mayor Chung.

Miles Powell was the smartest lawyer Donny knew, the most ethical, and the best dressed. All class, no flash, a black man in grey flannel. Where Donny got access to the secret court from having worked for the government, Miles got his from a career fighting it. That Miles somehow prospered in the process only heightened Donny’s sense of moral inferiority.

I am, said Miles, speaking under his breath. This afternoon. Arguments at three. Heading out in an hour.

They still have her in custody?

Miles nodded. Special detention in the brig at Camp Mabry. Live camera feed anyone can view.

Donny considered that as he watched the marshals escort Loni’s client away, relieved to hear the name and learn it was not the case he had been assigned.

That’s messed up, said Donny. I wish Mayor Barthelme were still around. He would know how to handle these guys.

If Barthelme were still alive, he’d be too drunk to fight these guys.

He might have the right idea, said Donny, looking around to see if he could figure out where the muffled squeal of pain came from. So what did I miss?

Miles just shook his head, put his finger to his mouth to shush Donny, and turned his attention to the court.

Which had now noticed Donny. And did not look happy to see him.

Mr. Kimoe, said the voice from the bench, the voice of life tenure and final judgment.

Your Honor, said Donny, standing at the bar. The honorific was reflexive, something they programmed into you in law school moot courts, and if you thought about it, about the system to which it kneeled, it made it hard to say. But Donny had learned to be part of the system before he learned how rotten the system is, and now paid his bills guiding people through it, a job that required a habituation to losing, or at least a rather compromised idea of what constituted winning. When she’d had enough of it, Donny’s ex-girlfriend Joyce, a philosophy professor at Rice, told him it was like dating the riverman of the underworld. Donny said sometimes I bring them back, but Joyce was already gone.

Nice of you to join us this morning, said Judge Broyles, looking down over the rims of the old wire-framed glasses he had been wearing as long as Donny had known him. Broyles was all grey now, and it showed in his eyes. The silvery grey of old money, from one of those blue-blood Houston families that had come down from the East way back when and made successive fortunes building the railroads and then the oil-and-gas business and now the commercial space business. The first lawyer in a long line of financiers, he had the demeanor of a prep school headmaster in charge of a secret prison. One that needed to turn a profit.

The stockholders were watching. Some were right there in the back of the room.

I’m sorry, Your Honor, said Donny. I was stuck on a call in another case. A matter of life and death.

You look about half-dead yourself, Mr. Kimoe. Still trying to annul my sentence in the Hardy case?

Exhausting our client’s rights of appeal, yes.

As is your right, even if you are wasting your time and the People’s money.

We’ll see about that, Your Honor.

Yes, we will. Before sunrise tomorrow, if I’m right.

Donny looked at the clock on the wall behind the judge. The execution was scheduled for midnight, and would proceed unless Donny could succeed in getting a last-minute reprieve. But the law governing his service required him to be here this morning, taking whatever cases the court assigned him to defend—which made it hard for him to do a good job for any of his clients.

Just the way the government that called itself the People wanted it.

Well, added Broyles, fortunately for the client I was going to burden with you today, you were AWOL when his case came up, so I had Mr. Powell cover for you.

Donny looked over at Miles, who just raised his eyebrows.

Mr. Powell proceeded to persuade us to let one detainee go free this morning. It will probably be our last. And so, Mr. Kimoe, I am going to give you the case I had assigned to Mr. Powell.

Your Honor, said Miles, standing. That’s not fair to the defendant.

Aren’t you supposed to be in Austin trying to spring our scofflaw mayor, Mr. Powell?

Yes, Your Honor. But—

Please give my regards to Judge Leakey. And good luck getting her to invalidate the Governor’s declaration of martial law. Though I have to say you have a better chance of winning that one than those avocado-sucking carpetbaggers they are flying in from San Francisco to help you.

Thank you, Your Honor, said Miles, over the laughs from the gallery at the judge’s derisive quip. I’m happy to have all the help I can get.

There’s an election riding on the outcome, I hear. Broyles didn’t mention it was the election of the President who had appointed him, one he had helped get elected the first time. Go forth, he said, pointing Miles to the door. I will help Mr. Kimoe wake up and provide our next contestant with an effective defense.

Yes, sir, said Miles. He glanced at Donny with a face that shrugged. Then he grabbed his briefcase to go.

Judge, said Donny, I don’t have time to take up—

America is waiting, said Broyles, cutting Donny off. And justice is not. He hit the gavel with a hard knock, the forgotten call of some vanquished wood god, and then summoned the appearance of Donny’s new client, spinning the Spanish vowels with Anglo-Texan inflection. Bring in Xelina Rocafuerte.

A door opened in the courtroom wall, just a few feet away. Through it stepped a young woman wrapped in chains, with a black hood over her head.

She was sandwiched by a pair of marshals in their black-and-tan tacticals, one young and burly and the other old and wiry, but both with the eyes of trappers. Each held a stretch of the clanking alloyed link that encircled the prisoner’s elfin body and locked onto the shackles around her wrists and ankles. You wondered how she moved, until you noticed the way the marshals held her.

Broyles made an imperious gesture with his hand. The older marshal pulled the hood from the girl’s head. And suddenly you could sense why they were afraid of her.

They had clothed her in the red jumpsuit of non-compliance, a message that was also sent by her haircut, the kind of exclamatory coif that could get you pulled over in some of the outer suburbs. That and the way she carried herself locked in this steel sandwich of mean-ass white guys projected an aura of defiance so strong you could feel it roll through the room. She was barely as tall as the shorter marshal’s shoulders, but she had her chin up, and after glancing at Donny she looked right at the famously temperamental Judge Broyles, making sure he could see the burn mark on her cheek, which matched her jumpsuit.

Miss Rocafuerte, said Broyles. While I have your full attention, may I ask if you know why you are here on this rainy Monday morning?

He said that knowing she probably hadn’t seen the outside for days.

Because you are afraid of us, she said. Her voice betrayed the uncertainty she was trying to hide with her poise. They never told them why they had taken them in, because the not knowing made them more scared. And usually more glib.

Your Honor— said Donny, standing.

Let us talk, said Broyles. You’re not her counsel, yet.

You don’t have to answer him, said Donny, speaking to Xelina.

Sit down, Mr. Kimoe, said Broyles.

He’s just trying to trick you, said Donny, refusing to sit. Save it until after you and I can talk.

The look in her eyes was an intense mix of anger, intelligence, and fear.

Miss Rocafuerte, said Broyles, leaning forward a bit, to where the forelock of his wiry grey widow’s peak flipped over. You are here because the government has identified you as a rebel. A subversive. A conspirator against your own government. A traitor against the People. Do I have that right, Ms. Kelly?

That’s correct, Your Honor, said Bridget Kelly, standing sharply at the prosecution table in her creased blue suit, blond hair pulled back tight. Bridget was one of the lawyers they had recently transferred down from D.C. to handle the case flow coming out of the crackdown. She was a true believer, with the Old Glory lapel pin to prove it, and a flair for the official narrative. Our investigators have identified the defendant as a member of the Free Rovers Organization. She is a leading producer of their terrorist recruiting videos.

I’m a journalist! said Xelina.

The defendant will speak when spoken to, said Broyles.

The Rovers are not an ‘organization,’ said Donny. That’s an invention of the government. It’s like being an Astros fan.

The court ignored him.

Bridget approached the bench and handed a thick stack of papers to the judge. She then gave a copy to Donny. The top page was a charge sheet—a government form filled out with the defendant’s name, date of birth, alleged aliases, and the laundry list of crimes with which she was charged. It was signed at the bottom by one of the senior prosecutors detailed to the tribunal, Deputy U.S. Attorney Jack McAuley, to whom Bridget reported.

The defendant participated in the FRO’s illegal infiltration, occupation, and sabotage of industrial properties in the Coastal Evacuation Zone, continued Bridget. She documented their raids on several petrochemical facilities, including two on the national defense registry, and the drills in their paramilitary training camp.

Bridget was just getting started, and Donny was already having trouble keeping up. Attached to the charge sheet he had just been handed was a stack of exhibits. Almost all of them had been redacted with the thick black bars of the censor. Donny looked up at the court security officer, an executive branch employee who sat at a bench just below and to the judge’s right, near the clerk and the court reporter. He quickly turned away, after being busted watching Donny digest his work.

I believe I may have seen one of those, said Broyles. Kalashnikovs, burning cars, and targets made to look like certain elected officials?

That sounds right, Your Honor, said Bridget. Government’s Exhibit A-17, at page 73, has some screen shots.

Donny’s copy had no Exhibit A-17. It did have a red sheet where the index of exhibits was supposed to go, pre-printed with a notice.

SPECIAL EMERGENCY TRIBUNAL

Fairness-Transparency-Justice

CASE FILE

Defense Counsel: Portions of the document you are trying to access are currently undergoing a security review per the Regulations for Trial by Special Emergency Tribunal, October 31 Revised Edition, Rule 19.4. At the completion of the security review any portions of the document deemed releasable to cleared counsel will be made available. Please consult the CSO in your case if you have any questions. Thank you for your cooperation.

The defense has a right to see all of those as well, objected Donny. But instead we get this. He tore the red page loose and waved it like a flag. What the hell is Rule 19.4?

If you would read the updates regularly sent by this court you would know, said Broyles. We are trying out a new process to better maintain security while facilitating more expeditious proceedings. I am confident Mr. Walton will be able to get most of these submittals processed within a few days.

CSO Walton looked up at the judge and nodded. Walton was one of those personally powerless but authority-oriented guys who look middle-aged before their time, someone the aptitude tests said would make a great censor. In addition to his redaction machine, the CSO had a button at his desk that allowed him to generate white noise to override any portion of the proceedings that strayed into the garden of secrets. When he did that, a small red light went on at the edge of his desk, so everyone knew.

Donny looked over at his client. She looked terrified and confused. And more than a little pissed.

This is outrageous, Judge, said Donny. I’m supposed to be cleared for this.

I’m advised it’s a sources and methods issue, said Broyles. And we’ve had some leakage. Not saying it’s you.

That’s correct, Your Honor, said Bridget. And the copy provided to defense counsel is not entirely redacted.

Donny scanned what was there. Code names of confidential informants, dates, some fragments of investigatory narrative, a few screen shots that were only partly obscured.

There is no way to mount an effective defense off of this, said Donny.

If you would read the rule, said Broyles, you would know that you are entitled to have the prosecution provide you a summary of all evidence that has been redacted. So you can work with Ms. Kelly to find a time when she can meet you in the SCIF for that purpose.

Also correct, Your Honor, said Bridget, looking over at Donny and nodding. We can do that at this morning’s break.

The SCIF was the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, a fancy name for a dingy little conference room downstairs that had been cleared for reviews of classified information. Technically, the courtroom they were in was a SCIF, but Donny saw no upside in arguing the point further. He sat down and looked back at his client. He gave her a reassuring look, but he could tell she wasn’t buying it.

Probably because he wasn’t selling it all that well.

Thank you, said Broyles. Please continue with your summary, Ms. Kelly.

The truth was Donny had already seen the training camp video. Everyone had. Outtakes from it had been blasted all over the media as proof of the government’s claims that the isolated outbursts of political violence and eco-terrorism in recent years had coalesced into a revolutionary underground. Seeing its rainbow ensemble of young greens with guns made you realize the Second Amendment only applies to certain people. It also made Donny wonder if it was as real as the government said.

Donny looked again at Xelina. She seemed so young. She also looked tough, and angry, but more like a clever prankster than the revolutionary provocateur of Bridget’s script. It dawned on him then that she might even be innocent.

Your Honor, continued Bridget. Many of the videos of these acts of terror and provocations to sedition were posted on public networks using an anonymous account, in violation of the Communications Freedom Act. See Exhibit 4.

Donny looked at the list of aliases on the first page of the charge sheet. They were all user names, which read like graffiti tags. X-Rok, Viridiana, gaia_llorona. The CFA mandated user transparency, in response to evidence that public opinion had been manipulated in recent elections by foreign infiltrators using fake accounts. Enforcement had been lax, but that was clearly changing.

We have provided excerpted transcripts of the defendant’s correspondence with her comrades in arms using these accounts, said Bridget. All of whom also use aliases, and the defendant has refused to cooperate with our investigators in providing us their true names.

You could see the resolve in Xelina’s face as Bridget mentioned her friends.

Based on this information, defendant was detained by the Task Force, said Bridget. Additional evidence of her involvement in these activities was uncovered in their search of her residence, along with unlicensed weapons, suspected explosives, scheduled narcotics, and fence-breaching materials.

Fence-breaching materials, said Broyles, slowly, like a teacher reading an intercepted note.

Our investigation reveals the defendant has been associated with this cell since last winter, with knowledge of their conspiracy against the United States and the State of Texas, and aiding in active concealment of their violent enterprise. She has been refusing to answer questions or provide access to the evidence she possesses regarding other members of her cell and their operational plans. The government recommends she be transferred to this Special Emergency Tribunal as a domestic insurgent and processed for denaturalization.

Denaturalization was the lawyerly way of saying take away your citizenship, even if you were born here.

Your Honor, said Donny, standing. A punishment that extreme can’t be imposed without providing us full access to the information the government has collected in its so-called investigation. Not these crumbs. He waved the charge sheet again. And not an executive summary in the SCIF that only includes whatever the government feels like telling us. How are we to prepare a defense if the evidence against Ms. Rocafuerte is kept secret?

You could start by getting her to give up the names of her associates, said Broyles. That would solve a lot of problems.

What bullshit, said Xelina, more to herself than to the court, but loud enough.

Foul language in my courtroom will not do you any good, miss. How old are you?

Xelina glared at the judge, shaking with fear and fighting her shackles at the same time.

Twenty-three, said Bridget, answering for her.

Old enough to be held accountable for your bad decisions, said Broyles. "And your dangerous ideas. Do you know what misprision of treason is?"

Your lying name for journalism that criticizes the dead system you serve, said Xelina.

Broyles laughed. If you know someone is committing treason against this nation, and you conceal it, or don’t tell us about it, that’s misprision of treason. A kind of aiding and abetting. I’m sure Ms. Kelly is ready to lay it all out for you.

We are, Your Honor, said Bridget. Chief Perez from the Guard is here if you would like her to provide any testimony on that.

That won’t be necessary, said Broyles. Unless Mr. Kimoe is going to make me listen to more from this unkempt punk.

Come on, Judge, said Donny, reddening now, just the reaction Broyles wanted. Broyles cut him off again before he could get his objection out.

Meet your zealous advocate, Ms. Rocafuerte, said Broyles. Donald F. Kimoe, Esquire. He used to have Ms. Kelly’s job, until he decided to help us by helping your kind embrace the eyes and arms of justice. He is pretty good at his work, most days, and he is free. To you, at least.

Who pays for him? said Xelina.

I do, with the People’s money, said Broyles.

No thanks, said Xelina.

I am going to insist you at least talk to him. Because his job is to help keep you from ending up where you will most definitely be sent if you try to represent yourself. Do you know where that is?

They all knew where that was, even though it was a secret. The kind of secret the government wanted you to know existed, and leave the rest to your imagination.

Broyles surveyed his audience with an almost-smile. "I think we are all on the same page now. So I am going to let you meet with Mr. Kimoe, so he can explain the situation to you more patiently than I am inclined to do after he has already screwed up our schedule