Overkill 2

(Also published on Royal Road)

The prison cell was comfortable. Clean, quiet, soothing pastels, calming curves, no sharp edges. Western European prisons were luxurious compared to the rest of the world. Even maximum-security prisons housing the worst of criminals recognised the right to a reasonable standard of living. The International Criminal Court held its detainees in the Scheveningen prison, close to the ocean, in a pleasant seaside district of The Hague. At night, if the wind blew in the right direction, Raymond thought he could hear waves on the shore. It may have been a dream, a hopeful aural hallucination, he had been in here long enough to suspect his mind may be playing tricks on him. If the sound of the ocean was indeed conjured from his allergic imagination, it was a comforting distraction.

Raymond’s cell was nicer than many rooms he had rented in his previous life. Fifteen square metres of efficient space utilisation. It was a cell conducive to contemplation and Raymond needed to separate the searing recollections of his past from the current distractions of his wandering mind. He needed to isolate and dissect his memories, even though he knew having a clear focus would not change his destiny. His fate had long since slipped from his grasp.

When they finally arrested him and Dresden, after tracking their drone swarm, Raymond didn’t know what to expect but he wouldn’t have been surprised by a quick death. To be here, alive and in good health, leading a solitary but satisfying existence was more than many people thought he deserved. He would not let himself feel guilty about being a content prisoner. There was a lot more guilt to consider.

He often thought about Dresden. He knew he would never see her again. Maybe from a distance, in court for sentencing, or on television. But she lived in his head, never far from his thoughts, glancing at him with her dark inscrutable eyes, one manicured eyebrow raised.

When the pre-trial hearings began, he was asked to recall his history of activism, and how that graduated into terrorism. It happened years ago, but his memories had become clear.

“I don’t understand why you need to know all this. I am pleading guilty. I am guilty. Why do you want to know every single detail?”

“In order to comprehend how this happened Mr Johansson. What drove you to commit such extreme acts of terrorism, how you got away with it for so long and how you reconciled the death toll. How you managed to live with yourself and carry on killing. We need to know so that we may learn from you and avoid atrocities of this nature in the future.”

Raymond sank back in his seat. He did not mind the fastidious questioning. The prosecutor was just doing his job and he wasn’t a bully. Raymond had plenty of time. He had the rest of his life. He looked around the room, the courtroom was full to capacity. The pre-trial hearing was purely for the prosecutor to convince the judge there was sufficient evidence to commit the case to trial. That was a foregone conclusion. Everyone was there for the details. An insight into Raymond’s motivation, and his relationship with Dresden. They all wanted to know how he could do what he did. They all stared at him, hanging on his every word.

“What got you started down this road of activism and anti-social behaviour. Was there a moment you can pinpoint?”

Raymond sighed. He was a different person back then. Young and stupid. “It wasn’t anything specific. I was a little rebel, hanging out on the streets of San Francisco, taking drugs, tagging buildings, getting into trouble. I suppose it was tagging that got me started, then protesting and activism seemed like a natural progression.”

“What was your first job?”

“One night I convinced some friends to tag a Shell supertanker. We painted the word ‘murderers’ in fluorescent five-meter-high lettering down the side of the ship. Most San Franciscans despise Shell, and we became instant heroes. They painted over it the next day, but it was too late. The pictures were all over the news feeds.”

The prosecutor nodded and motioned Raymond to continue.

“It felt good. I felt like I had achieved something good. It didn’t change anything obviously, but I was proud of that huge damning statement. I loved the short-lived publicity even though we remained anonymous. I started to wonder what else I could do, and I started to think about what was wrong with the world.”

“And so, your vandalism graduated to political activism?”

“I joined marches and protests. There’s always a lot to protest about.”

“Please describe what you did in the years leading up to your first meeting with Ms Herzhoff.”

“I protested corporate polluters, fast-food chains, carbon criminals, energy companies, petrochemical companies, drug companies, unethical clothing brands, Amazon, Nestle, Monsanto, petrol stations. There’s something to protest about on every street corner.”

“But protesting on its own wasn’t enough for you?”

“We didn’t achieve anything. All those people, all the energy and anger. We made the news, but we didn’t make any difference.”

“You were arrested several times.”

“Minor public nuisance violations. Sit-ins on highways, chaining ourselves to buildings, tagging, vandalism, that sort of thing. Those of us that were arrested, we were the hardcore. We were determined and organised. We formed an underground network and would meet regularly to plan jobs.”

“Is that where you met Ms Herzhoff?”

“No but that’s where I was recruited.”

“Recruited by who?”

“I don’t know. I still don’t know. But they were well resourced and well-funded.”

“You have absolutely no idea who recruited you?”

“No. I haven’t ever known who, or what the organisation was. I didn’t then, and I don’t now. There were no names and no contacts. I would receive encrypted instructions on burner phones with a time and place and target, details on the job and the equipment.”

“What jobs did you do for this mysterious organisation?”

“Tree spiking, sabotaging trawlers, I set fire to some SUV dealerships, blew up a few pipelines.”

“But you never killed anybody. Your acts of ecotage had not yet graduated to committing murder.”

“No, I would make sure no-one was harmed doing these jobs.”

“You weren’t focused on one particular area of concern? Logging, carbon emissions, overfishing. These are all very different industries.”

“It’s all part of the same problem. They are all stripping the planet for profit. Fossil fuels are just one of the drivers of climate breakdown, and that’s just one aspect of Earth systems breakdown. Soil degradation, freshwater depletion, ocean dysbiosis, habitat destruction, pesticides, and other synthetic chemicals. They could all cause the collapse of the eco-system. The organisation doesn’t have any favouritism when it comes to various forms of greed and corruption, they are just different forms of evil.”

“And this organisation. They paid you?”

“Yes. Money and equipment was never a problem.”

“We will return to the subject of your enigmatic benefactors but please describe your first impressions of Ms Herzhoff.”

“Dresden picked me up for our first job together. I usually worked alone but the organisation must have thought we would be an effective cell.”

The prosecutor crossed his arms and stared intently at Raymond, waiting for him to fill the silence. It was an interview tactic Raymond recognised and did not fall for. He let he disquiet drag on until it became awkward. “I remember Dresden looked unimpressed to see me, she seemed hostile and didn’t say much.” Raymond looked down and frowned. He had relived their first meeting many times. He would never forget the suspicious look of disdain on her face as he climbed into the pickup truck.

The prosecutor cleared his throat. “Mr Johansson. Please continue.”

“I remember staring out the window at Paranoa Lake. It was a long drive north from Brasilia and I slept off and on. I eventually asked Dresden what got her started in all this, but she didn’t want to talk.”

The prosecutor shuffled his papers. “That was the sabotage of the US based Cargill corporation’s logging operation in the Amazon, yes?”

“Correct.” Raymond was not surprised at the prosecution’s accurate research. They employed 380 staff. Lawyers, investigators and analysts, psycho-social experts, diplomats, and specialists in geopolitics. They had done their homework. “We reached the yard in the middle of the night after driving through hours of felled forests. It was a massive, fenced area lit up by floodlights and patrolled by security guards with Alsatians. We parked off the road, got our backpacks, and made our way to the fence. I cut a hole and we slipped through. I remember my heart was pounding as we crept around the harvesters. They were huge machines, like sleeping dinosaurs. We split up and went around breaking the locks on the fuel tanks and injecting a mixture of grit and molasses into each one. There were skidders, excavators, loaders, feller bunchers and giant trucks. We worked quietly, avoiding the guards until all the equipment had been sabotaged.”

“This mixture of grit and molasses would ruin the engines when started but not destroy the machines. No more than an annoyance for a company such as Cargill.”

“That’s all I was back then. An annoyance. But Dresden wanted to be more than just an annoyance. She had a few time delay remote explosives that she attached to the harvesters. As we drove away, she detonated them. It was quite spectacular, I was shocked, but more excited than scared.”

“Yes. Two security personnel and four guard dogs lost their lives that night. Cargill corporation estimate one point five million US dollars of damage was inflicted.”

“When I heard about the deaths, I was distraught, and angry. I was actually more upset about the dogs than the guards. They were innocent and didn’t deserve to die. I had always made sure no-one was harmed on my missions. I didn’t know Dresden had any explosives and I blamed her for the deaths. We fought. I didn’t understand how she could do such a thing, but she taught me how to cope.”

“She taught you how to cope? With what. Murder?”

Raymond didn’t answer. He stared back at the prosecutor as the silence dragged. Raymond had spent so much time thinking about his transformation. How he grew from being a minor annoyance to a mass murderer. His realisation of what was needed and what he was capable of. It didn’t happen overnight but that was the moment his heart began to harden, and his worldview began to change.

“It was the next job that forced me to confront the truth. The Rota 3 pipeline job.”

“When you sabotaged the construction of the Petrobras Rota 3 gas pipeline?”

“Yeah. They had built 300 kilometres of pipeline, from the offshore drilling platform towards the refinery on land. We drove from Rio to the construction area and planted remex bombs along the pipe from where it emerged on the beach to the refinery. It took two weeks, every night sneaking out in the dark, climbing the fences, avoiding the guards, planting the bombs and leaving no trace. We planted twenty-eight explosives in total.”

“But it wasn’t destroying the pipeline that forced you to confront the truth, as you say.”

“No. It was what happened after.”

***

Each day after questioning Raymond was escorted gently back to his cell where he ate alone after choosing from the impressive cuisine offered on the menu. The European approach to modern prisoner rehabilitation was unique in the world in that he was actually treated like a human being. The irony, when Raymond allowed himself to indulge in ironies, was that the gravitas of his crimes ensured a comfortable retirement. His crimes were so heinous, so despicable, he had to be judged by the most eminent of earthly tribunals. And when they found him guilty and passed sentence, because of his European heritage, he would live the rest of his life in relative comfort, in a prison like this one. If his crimes had not been as serious, only national acts of terrorism rather than global, he might have found himself suffering torture and awaiting death on an American prison island, brutalized in a Brazilian Penitenciário or rotting and forgotten in an African hellhole.

Raymond knew who he shared the facility with, and he knew its history, the information was readily available online. The ICC was established to prosecute individuals for genocides, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and acts of aggressive terrorism. His predecessors and peers included the worst despots in recent history. Radovan Karadžić – the butcher of Bosnia. Dominic Ongwen – the Ugandan commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Charles Taylor – the Liberian warlord sentenced to fifty years for charges including terror, murder, and rape. Reading about these power-crazed tyrants made Raymond depressed and despondent. He was nothing like them. He didn’t know how many deaths he was responsible for, tens of thousands maybe, but he was not a monster. He knew what he was doing and why. He was resigned to his fate. He knew he was guilty.

Those hot days in Rio were seared into Raymond’s memory like it was yesterday. He had driven back through the night after they planted the last remex bomb. Dresden sat beside him, staring at the road ahead. He tried to make conversation as the adrenaline from the job faded, but she ignored him. He remembered the radio talkback show, late night lunatics were the same all around the world, full of sad stories and demented conspiracy theories. He drove along the Mario Covas Road, through São Gonçalo towards the Rio-Niterói bridge as the first flickers of a red sunrise played on the horizon. As he drove over the bridge Dresden ordered him to stop. These were the first words she had spoken in hours. Confused, he pulled over to a viewing platform on the bridge. Dresden got out without a word. She retrieved her backpack and disappeared into the darkness between the floodlights. The bridge was quiet at five am and Raymond sat in silence. He eventually got out and looked around. He was just about to start calling her name when she reappeared and got in the pickup, her brooding surliness dissuaded any questions.

“Take me back to the hotel,” she said.

Raymond slept late, waking up to his phone. Dresden was asking him to meet her at a rooftop bar on Rodrigues Alves Avenue. He was surprised. She had never given any indication she thought he might be worth socialising with. She was so hard to read. He had a shower, tried to wash away the fatigue then caught a cab to the bar. He didn’t recognise her at first, wondering why this blond woman was waving at him. She was wearing a hairpiece, makeup and a bright floral top which totally transformed her, drinking a colourful cocktail and taking pictures of the view like a tourist. Raymond ordered a beer and fries and sat down, still tired from their mission last night and confused by Dresden’s appearance.

“Isn’t it beautiful,” she gestured out at Guanbara bay.

Raymond lowered his sunglasses and took in the view. The bay glistened blue in the afternoon light. Little sail boats cut shapes around the luxury launches and cruise ships on the sun-drenched surface. The Rio-Niterói bridge stretched across the water. The bridge was an architectural marvel, connecting the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Niterói. Thirteen kilometres of concrete curved majestically across the bay.

“What are we doing here?” he asked. The explosives they had planted were due to go off soon. They should be laying low, leaving the city. Not celebrating. He shook his head and stared at her. Why had she changed her appearance? Dresden had never given the slightest indication she had any interest in him outside of their missions, so why had she contacted him? Why here? At this upmarket rooftop bar. Was this a date? He kind of hoped so but was too fatigued to think properly or ask these questions. He tried to relax and drink his beer. Dresden seemed agitated. She kept checking her phone and looking around furtively.

“Need to be somewhere?”

She ignored him, checked her phone again, then stared at the bridge. Raymond followed her gaze. The bridge was busy with late afternoon commuters and freight, he could hear the rumble of traffic slowly inching across and see the smoggy haze of exhaust staining the air. Suddenly the middle of the bridge erupted. A heavy thud echoed across the bay and Raymond could see cars being flung into the air. Huge chunks of concrete shattered and disintegrated. The middle of the bridge was severed, vehicles and debris plunged into the water below. Two more explosions propelled cars and trucks into the air and concussive sonic booms resonated across the bay. A huge section of the bridge fragmented, giant pieces of concrete and rebar warped and buckled, crushing the trapped vehicles, then a kilometre-long span collapsed into the water.

Raymond was stunned. He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. It was like a blockbuster action movie, happening so fast. People around him in the rooftop bar reacted differently, some screaming and running away, some had their phones out, enthusiastically recording. Dresden sat watching her phone as she filmed the devastation, her face unreadable behind her sunglasses. The middle of the bridge had disappeared, broken away and sunk. The crumbling edges were breaking up, twisted rebar and lumps of debris crashed into the water below. Cars and trucks teetered on the edge before tipping over and plummeting down. The collapsing structure eventually settled. Broken slabs dangled huge chunks of concrete from swaying rebar. The rumbling noise of the explosions dissipated and was replaced by sirens and screams. Small waves lapped the shore in front of them. Dresden took a sip of her drink.

“You did this!” Raymond whispered furiously, remembering their unscheduled stop on the bridge the night before. Dresden glanced at him. The corners of her mouth upturned but she wasn’t smiling.

“You fucking did this!”

“Keep your voice down.”

Raymond was horrified, confused, angry and scared. He felt like he should do something. But what could he do? He had just witnessed the deaths of hundreds of people. The destruction of an enormous bridge and he was sitting here with the person responsible. He couldn’t believe it. He stared at Dresden. “You’re insane,” he hissed.

She stopped recording and put her phone down. “Maybe,” she said.

Raymond didn’t know what to do. He had been a dissident for so long the thought of calling the police or any authorities never entered his head. “Why? How could you do that?”

“Just relax. Drink your beer. Don’t draw any attention.”

Raymond shook his head and cursed. He drained his beer. “But why?” he hissed.

“You know why.”

Raymond shook his head. “You can’t go around killing people.”

Dresden shifted in her seat, leant forward and sipped her cocktail. “It’s the only way to make our point. And there’s too many people anyway, we could do with a few less.”

“Our point? What is the point? We’ll be caught and executed as terrorists.”

“Yes, most likely. Look, it’s a waste of time sabotaging machines, blowing up pipelines, vandalising car-yards. That won’t stop the corporates, the billionaires, they don’t care, they just build more. It’s a minor inconvenience for them. We have to attack the infrastructure society depends on. You want people to change, to be less selfish, to reform and start thinking about their footprints rather than their bank accounts, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you see any evidence of that actually happening?”

“Well, I think people are slowly beginning to realise…”

“Fuck slowly. We haven’t got time for slowly. We haven’t got time for people to begin to realise that electric cars might be a good idea and oh, perhaps we shouldn’t fly to Europe this ski season. We need drastic action now or we are all doomed.”

“But how is destroying a bridge going to help? You just killed hundreds of people!”

“It’s going to make people think twice about driving their cars if there’s a possibility they might get blown up on the daily commute.”

“But you killed innocent people! On their way home from work, trying to earn a living, to feed their families!”

“Our fight against environmental collapse is a war against the entire system. To prevent the destruction of this planet, the entire capitalist system needs to be abolished. The whole Earth-eating machine. It’s so ingrained within generations of slaves that we can’t imagine anything different and it’s getting worse every day. We need to fight not only fossil capital and the governments that support it, but all capital and the people it employs. We were running around sabotaging polluters and annoying corporates for years and nothing has changed. The rich get richer, the planet is still terminal. Our soft approach isn’t working. And no-one is innocent.”

“You’re too extreme. It’s overkill. You can’t just go around blowing people up, murdering civilians. Do you really think you can bring down the entire capitalist system this way? Do they know about this? The organisation? Are they endorsing this?”

“Of course, they are. They provided the explosives. Its’s only the fear of death that will change people Raymond. Shock them out of their complacent routines. This is a war. We are fighting a war and we’ve been losing. I know it’s drastic, but we need extreme measures to win. We can’t afford to lose. There will be collateral damage. People will die. There are far too many humans on the planet anyway. Humanity is like a plague on the Earth. Look at the damage we’ve done, in such a short time.”

“If you’ve got such a low opinion of humanity then who are you saving the planet for?”

Dresden looked at him and shook her head. “Humans will always survive in some form, but cockroaches care for their environment more than we do. You know I’m right.”

***

The pre-trial hearing took months. The prosecutor recalled every act of ecotage they had committed. Some jobs Raymond had forgotten about. He and Dresden had been working together for over two years, they had grown better at their campaign of destruction. He talked openly, describing everything they had done. Blowing up motorways was relatively easy, they did their research, found the blind spots, and planted their bombs without detection. Attacking airplanes was more difficult. Raymond had to learn how to fly multiple drones with powerful explosive payloads, but once he had mastered the skill of remote piloting a swarm, targeting the lumbering airborne beasts was easy. One drone in an engine was enough to bring down a plane. Even a near miss was just as effective. Once the passengers realised they had narrowly survived a mid-air attack by a drone swarm they usually wouldn’t fly again. They were the lucky ones.

“Mr Johansson, you have consistently refused to name your benefactors. We know you and Ms Herzhoff had support. Technical support, and financial. Can you explain why you refuse to name these people?”

“I have pleaded guilty to all charges. I have taken responsibility. There is no one else to blame. What are you offering? A reduced punishment for some names?”

Raymond ignored the prosecutor and stayed silent. It had been useful for him to pick through his memories and speak out loud about what he had done. There could be no justification, only added clarity. A lifetime ago, he had thought he was an outlier, a revolutionary, an eco-warrior fighting to save the planet. But there was no revolution, just spray paint. Petty vandalism. An annoyance, a brief headline in the back pages. He had achieved nothing, changed nobody. His past life was like looking back on another person’s history. He had needed some convincing, but Dresden had been very persuasive, and she was right. Once he shed the fallacy that all human life is sacred and should be protected at all costs, he managed to compartmentalise all the death they had caused. Why should death be such a big deal? Why should people be allowed to continue their blinkered, greedy lives of insatiable material consumption. Why would you want to be part of something so rotten? He and Dresden had achieved so much. He was proud of their work, and the changes they had inspired.

The galleries were full of reporters, lights flashing, camera’s pointing. Excited murmuring resonated around the packed courtroom, commentary on the sentencing of the biggest terrorism case in history. Raymond spotted Dresden on the other side of the room. She was dressed in a smart black suit. Their eyes met and she smiled at him. That crooked little smile he hadn’t seen for a long time. She looked smaller, like she had shrunk. She looked older but she looked like a child. She didn’t look like someone capable of killing thousands of innocent people.

Raymond was not nervous about the sentencing. He knew they would eventually be caught. He was amazed they had gotten away with it for as long as they did. He thought he should probably feel lucky to be alive but there was no such thing as luck. Only fate. He knew many countries wanted them extradited so they could be executed. Maybe that’s what they deserved. He had spent a lot of time contemplating death. He and Dresden had caused so much death.

The judge arrived and waited patiently for the noise to subside. “The International Criminal Court will now summarize the case against Raymond David Johansson, and Dresden Marta Herzhoff, for crimes against humanity. Terrorist actions resulting in a horrendous number of deaths, in numerous countries around the globe. The court is now in session.”

Raymond watched his prosecutor take the stand. He felt as if he had got to know the man over many months of conversation and questions. A familiar face.

“The death toll is currently over 150 thousand innocent people with more dying every day from injuries attributed to the destruction caused in your terrorist attacks. The cost of the damage cannot be calculated accurately but must be in the billions if not trillions when we consider the lost revenue from all the airlines and transportation companies. You attacked twelve bridges. Six container ships and eight cruise liners. Thirty-seven of the busiest motorways in the biggest cities around the world have been damaged irreparably. You have destroyed fifty-five airplanes with another eighteen narrowly surviving after being attacked by your explosive drones. The pain, misery and death you have caused is unfathomable and unforgivable. You have both pleaded guilty to all charges which makes the two of you responsible for some of the worst atrocities in human history. There is no punishment sufficient for your crimes. Prosecution rests.”

The judge sighed heavily and shuffled his papers. “I am obliged to ask if the guilty parties have anything to say before sentencing is passed?”

There was a long silence in the courtroom before Dresden stood up. “I was happy once, even normal.” She looked at Raymond as she spoke, she had never talked about her past. “I was married and expecting my first child. I found out I had lead poisoning from the tap water. Bayer pharmaceutical had been dumping toxic liquids that leeched into the water supply. My baby was stillborn. The entire gemeinschaft was contaminated. Bayer refused to acknowledge any responsibility and avoided any blame. That’s where it started, and this is where it ends.”

Dresden looked around the room. The silence was deafening. “Your honour, you are American?”

The judge narrowed his eyes as he considered the question. “Yes.”

“Can I ask how you travelled here to the Hague.”

“The Vestas hydrofoil.”

“That’s a sailboat?”

“Correct.”

“A year ago, you would have probably flown in a passenger jet plane. Does anyone fly anymore? Are there any remnants of the aviation industry left?”

“I see what you are getting at Ms Herzhoff but the recent changes in global transportation methods have nothing to do with this trial, or your sentencing.”

“We all know of the worst environmental disasters in history. The Milan dioxin cloud, Bhopal, Chernobyl, The Baia Mare cyanide spill and Deepwater Horizon. But the fossil fuel industry has killed millions and brought the planet to the brink of extinction. They continue to extract coal, oil and gas when they know the damage and death they cause, and they are only one facet of the corporate Earth-eating machine. They run sophisticated campaigns of disinformation, brainwashing nations, they wash their facade in the blood of the people and make billions in profit that disappear straight into their superyachts. Those companies behind the exploitation, those individuals that profit, they are the real criminals. They are the ones that should be tried in your court.”

“Ms Herzhoff. Mr Johansson. You have both pleaded guilty. But you have refused to name your benefactors. Investigations continue and they will be caught. The world has changed. Transportation methods that were once dependent on burning fossil fuels are now almost obsolete. Carbon emissions have dropped substantially for the first time in decades. Whether your two-year campaign of terror inspired a shift in global thinking, or not, only time, and the court of public opinion will decide. But none of this changes the fact that the two of you are guilty of crimes that will never be forgotten. And you must pay for these crimes. You will be imprisoned for the rest of your lives. You will never be free.”

Raymond looked at Dresden across the silent courtroom as the eyes of the world watched. Their subterfuge, secrets, and schemes to destroy the global dependence on carbon capitalism had brought them close. Their trust and belief in each other had been absolute. Their connection was almost telepathic, beyond mere words. He looked into her eyes for the last time.