From pyramid!oracle!apple!claris!ames!mailrus!ukma!rutgers!att!ihlpa!fish Tue Feb 7 09:45:23 PST 1989 [Synopsis: pinned down behind a dumpster by armed security guards, Spike recounts his past: his origins as Spiro Bikopoulis, son of a prosperous Greek importer; his military service; his bike racing career; and his emergence as a guerrilla when the ruthless Corporatists took over the Government, stripping cyclists of all civil rights, making them targets for every "hothead, redneck, and hell-raiser." In the year 1998, one man fights the tyranny of the automobile. Now he fights for his life...] Bullets rained against the heavy steel of the dumpster and chipped away the concrete of the wall next to it. I was inbetween, in a two- by-six foot pocket of cover which would be my coffin when my ammo ran out. I lobbed one of my three remaining grenades over the top of the dumpster at where I thought the fire was coming from. I must have gotten lucky, for the onslaught broke up. I took advantage of the lull to chance a peek around the corner. Through the smoke, I counted seven bodies, two of which were moving some, and spotted two more men diving for cover behind parked cars. Perhaps six more of the grey-uniformed goons received them there, crouching with pistols drawn and pointed in my direction. My situation seemed hopeless. I'd taken out almost half of them with just two grenades and a few rounds of ammo, but they wouldn't be foolish enough to try a frontal assault again. They were too far away for me to get a grenade behind their cover without exposing myself, and I could not slip away unseen. They would wear me down, or keep me besieged, awaiting reinforcements armed with something heavier than the .38 revolvers that were standard CFGM Security issue. CFGM -- The Chrysler-Ford General Motors Corporation, largest and most powerful of The Twenty, and the most ruthless. They controlled all transportation in America, including cars, trucks, rails, ships, barges, and airlines. Their CEO was also President of The United States, and lately, I'd been on his agenda. I'd been hitting bigger and bigger stuff, like that fleet of construction trucks back home, and I was a huge embarassment to CFGM and the Government. Last week, a group of demonstrating Anticorporatists rode bikes around the White House, and no one had touched them. Iacocca must have given the word to get me at all costs. That must have been how this bunch had trapped me. I suspected that CFGM Security forces all over the Country had been instructed to lure or chase bicyclists onto CFGM property, where they could be apprehended and held for questioning. This bunch just got lucky -- or so they must have thought. Luck had run out for a truck driver and seven security guards when they'd tangled with me. It was the remaining eight, watching the dumpster through the sights of their pistols, that I had to deal with now. A thought occurred to me: they wanted me alive, if they could get me that way, although I'm sure they'd been told to get me any way they could. Perhaps I could parlay that into an advantage. I tore a sleeve away from my white jersey, and waved it gingerly past the edge of the dumpster. I heard a voice ordering the goons to hold their fire. An instant later, the same voice came over the squawk-horn. "THROW OUT YOUR WEAPONS AND COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP," he ordered. Didn't he have anything else to say? He was beginning to annoy me. "Stick it, Butt-brain!" I shouted back, "Just come and get your wounded. I'll hold my fire!" A few moments passed in silence. "Come and get them, they're bleeding to death!" I insisted, and added, "Just leave that bike where it is!" My bicycle, its back wheel collapsed after a stray round had fractured the hub, lay near the top of the ramp, among the fallen men. There were eight more grenades, a .44 magnum, and several magazines of ammo in the panniers, one of which had ripped open to partially display its contents. If I could get to it, I could hold out much longer, maybe even blast my way out. But if they got to it first, they could take me out with my own grenades. After a moment, two men emerged, empty-handed, from behind the row of ugly grey Plymouths the guards drove. They made motions toward the wounded man nearest them, but then quickly darted for my ruined bike. One man scooped it up while the other produced a gun from behind his back and opened fire on my position. As they retreated, the others fired to keep me pinned down. The wounded men lay unattended on the asphalt. The two who'd ventured out ducked back behind the cover with their prize. Long ago, I'd vowed I wouldn't be taken alive, and that I'd get whoever and whatever got me. To that end, every bike I built had a little extra weight: two pounds of C-4 plastic explosive in the down tube, with an electronic detonator linked by radio to a monitor strapped to my chest. If my heart stopped, the bike became a bomb. I had flipped the arming switch during my encounter with the delivery truck. All that remained was to make the bike think I was dead. I drew as far back into my hole as I could, put my head down, reached under my jersey, and ripped the monitor away from my chest. Within seconds, a powerful blast shook the ground, and debris rained down all around me. There was no gunfire as I emerged from the filthy hole that had nearly been my tomb. I surveyed the havoc I'd wreaked. The row of cars my adversaries had used for cover lay twisted and blazing in a disorderly array around the smoking crater the bike-bomb had made. One of the wounded men who'd been abandoned by his comrades was still alive. He groped weakly towards his fallen pistol, but I sprayed it with a burst from my MAC-10, driving it away like a leaf before a garden hose. The man looked at me with terror in his eyes. I looked at him with pity in mine. He was a conscript, no doubt, some poor, dumb slob who couldn't get an honest job. I holstered my weapon, removed his belt to make a tourniquet for his leg, made him comfortable, and picked up a small object from the ground to stick in his shirt pocket. It was the hand-tooled silver head badge of a bicycle, twisted and charred, but still intact. It was inlaid with the caricature of a bulldog with a steering wheel clenched in his teeth. The name on his collar was "Spike." "Give this to your boss," I told him softly. Sirens approached from the south. I found an undamaged security car and made my getaway. 30 miles away, I rendered it to scrap metal and walked the rest of the way to the airport. I would go back to Illinois, rest up for a few days while my road rash healed, and outfit another bike. I had much to do. -- __ / \ Bob Fishell \__/ att!ihlpa!fish