A Reasonable Response

“So at thirty six you decided to blow up an oil rig?”

The recording light of the scuffed tape recorder ticked away the expectant silence that followed.

“Mr Crawford, do you really want to start with what’s already been widely reported?”

“For completeness’ sake.” He spread his arms in a conciliatory gesture.

The briefest of sighs. “Then yes, at thirty six Imogen Roscoe quit her job as deputy manager of a Bridlington supermarket and spent the next eighteen months building up the contacts, funds, and materials to cripple three out of four of the support columns of the Garnet Platform in the North Sea.” Plunging it into the choppy November waters and irrevocably sealing the well it sat atop.

“Twelve people died that day.” Crawford didn’t even blink with his follow up.

“They did.” Divers and support staff working off-schedule maintenance.

“Don’t you feel responsible for them?” He stabbed the air theatrically with his cheap biro, needling home his question.

“Every day.” They didn’t make the same mistake again: always check the crew manifest.

“But that hasn’t stopped you attacking…” checking his notes, “fourteen more platforms, three pipelines, and six refineries?”

Imogen brushed some imaginary dust off her cargo trousers and leaned back into her chair. After enough time in the vast underground facility you could tell the time from the faint rhythmic groans and creaks of the labyrinthine pipework. It was about two thirty in the afternoon.

“And what of the people who have lost their jobs because your actions have bankrupted countless companies?”

“Ah silly me, I should have thought about the economy first.” She flashed an unnerving smile, vaguely predatory.

“Then if not for the working people who are you waging this war for?” Exasperated, Crawford scribbled something on the tatty notebook sitting on his lap.

“For the millions who, in several decades, will be born into a world that isn’t quite so heat blasted, isn’t quite on the brink of an ecological collapse, without quite the disparity between have and have not.”

“So the ends justify the means?”

“There are no other means.”

“What of dialogue, of political-”

“No.” Sudden, absolute, venomous. “Too long have we seen the prevarication of generations of governments and politicians, preaching from the altar of collective responsibility, practising selective blindness while robber barons plunder and squander all and sundry. There will be no scientific magic bullet in time to save us. The time for compromise has long passed, it’s about forcing another way. There will be no amenable pinch to your standard of living. This will fucking hurt.”

A war cry went up, muffled by the thick concrete walls but reverberating down the plumbing. Hundreds of assenting voices swiftly followed by feet and fists stamping in time.

“You’re broadcasting this?!” Crawford looked horrified. He had been black-bagged and brought across land and lake for this interview, and he was very alone.

“We’re on the record.” Imogen ungripped the peeling leather arms of her chair and tapped the recorder sitting on the table between them. Crawford looked like a house cat in a foreign garden searching for a microphone he couldn’t see.

“Just a normal woman was able to do all this?” He gestured to the newspaper clippings and print outs that adorned the walls. “What pushed you to this?”

“Normal? No one can be normal anymore. We all have a steady feed of outrage to dine upon as we lurch through social upheaval. We’re still processing the collective trauma of the last once-in-a-lifetime event when the next one hits. For more and more people, surviving is winning, and on a long enough timeline, humanity will not win.” The proselytising was easy for Imogen, like tapping into an furnace of all the witnessed indignities and wrongdoings.

“Simple as that, you just decided to take action?” Imogen nodded. “Surely there were other, less militant causes Imogen Roscoe, the well respected supermarket manager, could have taken up?”

“I can’t solve every ailment the world has. The continued pillaging of the natural environment seemed like a good place to start.”

“You have plans for more?” A noncommittal shrug. “And you maintain that the public information disclosure of top oil executives has nothing to do with your…”

“Militia? Terrorists? Anarchists? Revolutionaries? What label would your readers most be repulsed by?”

“Organisation.” Crawford managed diplomatically. “Suicides by those exposed isn’t uncommon. There are rumours that some have been murdered, tortured, disappeared.”

“Doxxing isn’t my forte, not great with the computers.” She wiggled her fingers as if that emphasised her point. As Crawford mustered himself, she heard the shuffle of feet as hundreds moved with purpose elsewhere in the facility.

“But you don’t deny that someone in your organisation could have done it?”

“I am a figurehead, not a dictator. No one is coerced, or brainwashed, we don’t radicalise and people leave and join as they see fit.”

“Doesn’t that lead to power-struggles? Jockeying for the glory of leading the charge?”

“The only thing that ‘leading the charge’ comes with is the unrelenting maw of responsibility. We are not shareholders lining our pockets. If anyone doesn’t like what or how things are being done, and they can’t convince us otherwise, they are free to set up their own ‘organisation’.” The air quotes came thick and fast.

“Like Natalie Amer?” Imogen narrowed her eyes. Walked into that one.

“Nat was… squeamish about the impact we were having on people without means.”

Crawford caught how the name fell from her mouth. “And has been very vocal about it.” Imogen knew better than to follow up unbidden and remained silent. “What do you have to say about her accusations that your dealings with weapons merchants go against your stated ethos?”

The base was tomb quiet. Imogen tilted her head as if trying to come up with an answer before standing up suddenly skidding her chair back with a squeal.

“Let me show you something Mr Crawford.” Striding to the back of the room where a gargantuan pin board leaned precariously on a solid metal table, Imogen beckoned the reporter.

“What am I looking at Ms Roscoe?”

All the lights in the room flicked off. Darkness and the tang of corroding pipework.

Thunder and magnesium lightning erupted from the room’s only door, followed by the ear splitting rattle of gunfire. More explosions, the guttural shouts of military commands and, eventually, quiet.

“Apologue,” someone queried in the darkness.

“Benthic,” came Imogen’s reply. Torches clicked on and danced over the floor where six figures lay slumped, lifeless and bloody. Standing by a new, ragged hole in one of the walls were four people, dressed in frayed and threadbare clothing holding sleek military weaponry.

Imogen extricated herself from the limp flailing of Crawford and out from behind the flipped table which had held up surprisingly well against the spray of gunfire. Picking her way around the bodies, she scrutinised the embroidered country-of-origin badges on their arms.

“Germany, Russia, USA, Britain; got just about the whole G8 here.” A swarthy woman squatted beside Imogen, forehead slick with sweat and face dirty from the breached wall she and her team had burst through.

“What do we do with them?” Despite the body armour, helmets, automatic weapons, and night vision goggles, all six interlopers were dead.

“Take what we need, we’ll move to the second backup base immediately. Once they realise they failed, they’ll bomb this place for good measure.” The woman nodded and in the torchlight began to strip the intruders of their gear.

Imogen’s face hardened. Kicking aside the metal table that had acted as their impromptu shield she grabbed the foetal Crawford by his collar and dragged him across the room with surprising strength, depositing him beside the closest corpse.

“You did this.” She spoke like he was a petulant puppy.

Still reeling from the flashbangs, demo charges and close-quarters automatic weapon fire, he managed to stutter “I didn’t-”.

“What? Know they’d send an international anti-terrorist team? Know that they’d treat you as expendable? Idiot.” The lights flickered back on. The gloomy, low-power LED lights cast grisly shadows. Gobbets of concrete and rebar were scattered across the floor while scorches and bullet holes decorated the ceiling and walls. The smell of cordite and burnt paper still hung in the air.

“I didn’t kill them!” Imogen stood, towering over the still prone man.

“No, we did. Because your fucking tracker brought them here.” Crawford looked up fear in his eyes, lip quivering from adrenaline. “How far back do you want to ride the blame? Are we responsible for defending ourselves? Are the weaponsmiths responsible for making their guns? Their leaders for sending them in? Your editor for agreeing to this interview? The Thai government for harbouring us?” Imogen leaned in close to Crawford’s face. “Or was it you, believing you could do some good?” He could just make out the flesh-coloured transceiver in her ear now.

The four other team members had stopped their looting and stood, watching. Crawford said nothing, paralysed by uncertainty, the weight of what Imogen had said.

In a heartbeat, Imogen grabbed the man again, and with forged strength wrestled him up to standing before his flinch could drop him from her grip. Tearing the sidearm from the holster of one of the corpses she shoved it into the man’s tremulous hands, pressing the muzzle to her breastbone. The other team members became very still.

“You thought you could do some good and now you quail from the results!” Spittle broke him from his reverie and he finally began to grasp the situation. “If you think murdering me will stop this then pull the trigger.” The air was heavy and muted. Crawford’s shoulders were slumped, face slack but eyes of flint, looking directly at Imogen who still held the gun to her chest. “These people are dead because of you. Will you dishonour their deaths with inaction? Will you not take ownership of your decision?”

The pistol dropped to the man’s side as soon as Imogen took her hands away. A second later it clattered to the floor. Retrieving the still running tape recorder from the splintered remains of the coffee table, Imogen pushed it unceremoniously into Crawford’s chest.

“Stay here and mourn the dead, go back to your editor and write whatever, I don’t fucking care. We’ve got work to do.” Imogen and the other team members gathered what they could and left the room. The hundreds who had drawn deeper into the facility while the special forces team had crept unhindered through it rumbled back to action, packing and sorting and loading like so many times before.

Crawford listened as the biodiesel trucks several floors up began to make their way from what would in all likelihood soon be a smoking crater. Then he made a decision.