Tropical Depression (Billy Knight Thrillers 1)

“Sorry to hear it.”

“I owe it to my men, to our organization. You forced my hand. But I don’t want to kill a good, strong, righteous white man like you, Billy. You’re doing what you think is right, and that’s a rare quality today.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“But I can’t always do what I want to do. The needs of our organization come first.”

“Nice to know I’m advancing a cause,” I said.

“If I thought I could convert you, I would, Billy.”

“I don’t think so.”

He leaned closer. “You say that automatically, and that’s to be expected. You are a product of our times, and our times have prohibited all of us from thinking independently.”

He smiled. It was dazzling. “I don’t come at this cause from ignorance, Billy. My convictions are a result of years of study, thought, and observation. I was like you once.”

“Hard to believe.”

“But true. We all start as liberals, because liberalism is a picture of the world as we want to believe it is.” He shook his head. “But it isn’t, Billy. You know that. It isn’t that way at all.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “The world is not the way we want to believe it. Look at what happened to you.”

He gazed at me, a look filled with compassion and strength. “I read your personnel file, Billy. I know what happened to your family.”

He looked. I had nothing to say.

“Would white men have done that, Billy? Good, honest, God-fearing white men? I don’t think so.”

“Good, honest, God-fearing black men wouldn’t either,” I said, struggling to break his spell.

“Of course not,” Doyle said. “And there are many of them, I’m not denying that. Because the white social order is powerful, and it has converted some, brought some up out of darkness. But the unreachable, the ungovernable, the ones who don’t just live at the bottom but drag the rest of us down—there are a lot more of them.

“And they are winning! Against all odds, the weak minority is overcoming the powerful majority, Billy! Something like that doesn’t just happen, Billy! It’s made to happen!”

“Sure,” I said. “The international Zionist conspiracy.”

“That’s only part of it,” he assured me. “The fact of the matter is, the rest of us make it happen. Through intellectual and moral laziness. The greatest sin is the failure to act rightly, and we as a society have committed that sin. We could stop this headlong slide into the gutter, and we don’t. Because we are unwilling or unable to look at the problem and call it by name.

“It’s a race problem, Billy. If you look at this historically, dispassionately, you will notice all our problems started with integration. It was at that precise moment in time when our decline as a society began. Is that a coincidence? Or is it simply the crystallization of the final struggle, the battle lines drawn? If you could see it without prejudice, you would see that final struggle for what it is—order and decency and all we represent as a white culture, against the anarchy and ignorance of the black culture.”

He was just getting started. I could tell by the way his eyes were focusing on something in the distance instead of me. So I stopped him.

“Thanks,” I said. “But I think you better just kill me.”

His eyes refocused on me. There was no anger there, no hate, just a friendly regret.

“I want to make sure you understand your choice,” he said with one eyebrow raised.

“I understand. If I won’t sieg heil with you, you’re going to drown me in crocodile tears.”

There was a faint glint in his eyes. Something was funny. “There’s more to it than that,” he said. “I told you I’m only killing you for effect. So I have to get mileage out of it, the most bang for my buck.” His eyes twinkled. “Learned that in the budget fights at LAPD.” He leaned forward, the happiest guy in the world. “What I’m saying is, it’s going to be a little bit of a spectacle, Billy. Not pretty, not pleasant. But effective. We videotape it, show it to the troops. An example of what happens to our enemies.” He winked. “Public relations. Part of every administrator’s workload.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. That didn’t seem to matter too much. I’d tuned out when his eyes had gotten distant and his face started to flush slightly from sincerity of his ideas.

Doyle was a true believer. He knew he was right, so he was sure he could find a way to convince me.

But I was more interested in finding a way out. As he talked I had looked around, hoping desperately for something, anything, besides what I knew was there: three heavily armed, well-trained men guarding the only exit, and between me and the exit a guy with apparently superhuman speed and strength who had already beaten me senseless once.

I didn’t see anything helpful. But unless he shot me right now, I thought it had to get better—especially since he was planning to turn my death into some kind of pageant to boost morale.