State of War

15

The deposition had barely begun and Alex Michaels was already uncomfortable. Mitchell Townsend Ames was smooth, no doubt about it, and Alex was more than ready to have this all over and done with. He just wanted to get back to work.

Ames was striking in appearance: tall, well-built, and undeniably handsome, with wavy, almost blond hair and cleanly chiseled features. He was dressed in a dark blue pinstripe suit that had to run at least five thousand dollars, and his shoes were clearly handmade.

“Please state your name, address, and occupation for the record,” Ames said, his voice low and even.

Michaels did so.

“Thank you, Commander Michaels. I realize you are a busy man, and I’ll try to get this done as quickly and painlessly as possible.” Ames smiled.

Michaels returned the smile automatically, despite what Tommy had told him: Alex, Ames is a shark getting ready to chomp you in half. This man is not your friend, no matter what he says or does, no matter how polite he seems to be. Don’t ever forget that, not for one second.

They were in the Net Force conference room nearest Alex’s office. There were five of them present: Mitchell Ames and his assistant, a young woman attorney named Bridgette who was flawlessly beautiful; Tommy Bender; a certified court stenographer named Becky; and Michaels. This wasn’t the first time Michaels had been deposed — you didn’t get to his rank in the federal LEO hierarchy without dealing with herds of lawyers — but it was the first time he had personally been a defendant in a lawsuit.

A DVD recorder took it all in, and the court reporter keyed in a transcript as backup. Whatever got said here would be preserved for posterity.

“Commander Michaels, is it true that you were in charge of Net Force operations in January of 2013?”

“Yes.”

“And that the assault by Net Force military operatives, led by General John Howard, upon the CyberNation-owned and Libyan-registered ship the Bon Chance was by your order?”

“Yes.” Tommy had cautioned him to answer direct questions with no more than “Yes” or “No” whenever possible, and not to expand on his answers unless absolutely necessary. The less you said, the less you gave away.

“Because you believed it was a pirate vessel? And as such, you had the right to go after it, even in international waters?”

“Yes.”

Ames paused, looked at a yellow pad in front of him, and made a note on it with a pen.

So far, so good. Tommy had told him the kinds of questions he was likely to get. Alex wasn’t going to lose his cool and give away anything that the man could use against him.

“I understand that prior to the assault, you sent Net Force agent Toni Fiorella Michaels to the vessel as an undercover operative for the purpose of gathering information.”

He hadn’t expected this kind of question so soon. “Yes, I did.”

Ames looked up from his pad, raised an eyebrow. “You sent your wife onto what you believed was a ship full of pirates?”

The scorn practically dripped from the man’s voice. What kind of man would do that? Send the mother of his child into harm’s way?

Or is it that you didn’t really think there was any real danger on the boat, hmm? Not a pirate among them?

Given a choice, Alex would have explained that one. He would have preferred to tell the man that he hadn’t expected there would be anything for Toni to worry about that early in the game. He would also have liked to mention that Toni had only been stuck on the ship due to a passing hurricane. But Tommy’s instructions had been clear.

“She was, and is, a qualified field operative,” he said, keeping his voice bland.

“I see. Well, sir, you are a better man than I. I cannot imagine sending my spouse into a situation like that.” He glanced down at his pad. “Oh, but wait. I also see that your wife is an expert in an Indonesian fighting art, called Pukulan Pentjak Silat Serak, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

Ames nodded. “Well, I suppose your wife’s abilities might mitigate the worry some — that she can slaughter a man with her bare hands, not to mention what she can do with a weapon? And that she has, in fact, maimed and killed people using this art? I see here incidents on 8 October 2010, right here at Net Force Headquarters, wherein she beat an alleged assassin until you shot and killed that person; again on 15 June 2011, in Port Townsend, Washington, when she broke a man’s neck; and, let’s see, again in October 2011 at your home in Washington, D.C. — no, wait, it was you who killed that one, too, wasn’t it? With a pair of little daggers, wasn’t it? Tell me, Commander, do you believe that the family that slays together stays together?”

A year ago that might have gotten to him. Two years ago he certainly would have risen to the challenge. And as little as five years ago he may have risen to his feet and punched this insinuating little lawyer right in the mouth.

But silat, like any true martial art, was about more than fighting. It was about discipline and control, and while Alex still had a long way to go before he considered himself proficient, he had come far enough to be able to deflect Ames’s little gibes.

Tommy answered for him. “Is there a question in there, counselor, or are you just trying to bait Commander Michaels?”

Ames smiled. “No, I’m just trying to establish what kind of people work for Net Force, counselor.”

“People whose actions have all been justifiable under the law,” Tommy said. “Let’s move on, shall we? Like you said, my client is a busy man — wasting his time with character assassination is hardly productive.”

Ames’s smile grew wider. “I wouldn’t think of impugning your client’s character, Mr. Bender. I’m only trying to uncover the truth, in the name of justice. That your client has a propensity for violence goes to the heart of our action, doesn’t it? Runs in the family, too.”

Alex could see all too clearly where this was heading. This was going to get ugly, just as Tommy had said. He wouldn’t mind so much getting dragged through the mud by this guy — he wouldn’t like it, of course, but Alex was a big boy whose actions could stand a little scrutiny. The part that would be most likely to get to him was hearing his wife impugned. That was going to be hard to take.

“Now, then, Commander, let’s return to the reasons you came to believe that my clients’ duly registered recreational ship, minding its own business in international waters, was infested with cutthroat pirates that were somehow a threat to the United States… ”

Michaels stifled a sigh and settled back into his chair. This was going to be a very long morning.

Ames smiled to himself as he left the Net Force building at the FBI compound. Alex Michaels was made of a little sterner stuff than most bureaucrats he’d gone up against. He wasn’t going to lose his cool in front of a jury unless Ames could rattle him more than he had at the deposition. Attacking the wife was a possibility — Ames had thought Alex had shown some vulnerability in that area — but you had to be careful with those. Sometimes even if they worked, a crack about somebody’s spouse could alienate a jury enough to hurt you. Ames didn’t want to risk that. He always presented himself as the soul of goodheartedness, and even when he used personal attacks he made them seem reluctant and only tendered for the cause of truth, justice, and the American way. As if he was genuinely sorry that the defendant was a wife-beating creep, but that the jury had to decide if that mattered.

Next to him, Bridgette said, “What do you think?”

She was bright — top of her class at Lewis and Clark two years ago, as smart as any of the other dozen assistants and associates at his firm. Lovely, too. But she still believed that law and justice were synonymous, which of course they were not.

He couldn’t begin to tell her the real reasons he had instigated this deposition. He had wanted to see his opposition face-to-face. He wanted to get Michaels’s home address from his own lips, because it might come down to nasty and personal, and he wanted that information without leaving a more obvious trail. Mostly, though, he wanted them to see him and be afraid.

Little things, taken separately, but they were all part of a great lawyer’s affect. In this business, presentation was every bit as important as the law itself. It didn’t matter how many statutes you could cite if the jury didn’t like you.

Bridgette wasn’t ready for any of that, however. “It went as well as could be expected,” he said. “You’ll be second chair on this one, so I want you to know everything there is to know about maritime law and U.N. treaties and pirates by the time we are ready to go to trial. Not to mention Commander Alex Michaels and his wife, Toni.”

“Understood.”

“Good.” In truth, though, the results of this action did not really matter. Of course, if it ever actually got to trial, he wanted to win it. Mitchell Townsend Ames didn’t lose, period, but the real point here was to bury Net Force in problems so that he could end-run them legally. If congress and the senate passed an acceptable bill and the President signed it into law, then all this was moot. Net Force would be bound by the results. As much as they might hate it, once it became law they could jump up and down and rant until they turned blue and it wouldn’t make any difference at all.

Ames did not care about the men killed on the Bon Chance. He didn’t care about their surviving relatives. The dead men had been thugs, shooters who had gotten shot instead. They were criminals, and deserved none of his worry. This entire suit was a smoke screen, and if it served its purpose, that was all that counted.

Once he had a goal, Ames always figured out whatever means was necessary to achieve it. If he could do it with a threat of a legal action, great. If it took a trial, fine. If it took sending a knuckle-dragger like Junior to bribe, blackmail, or assault anybody who stood in the way? That was acceptable, too. Whatever was necessary. Second place was for losers. Winning was all.

The chauffeured limo pulled up, and the driver hopped out and opened the door for them. Bridgette climbed in first, Ames followed. As soon as he was seated, he reached into the door’s map compartment and pulled his pistol rig out, the SIG P-210, and slipped the crossdraw holster back onto his custom-made horsehide belt, locking the one-way snaps into place on his left side. Crossdraw was best for in a car. It wasn’t uncomfortable, and was easier to get to in a hurry. This one had been designed for drivers to thwart carjackers. Hard as they were to get, he had a permit to carry a handgun in D.C., Virginia, Maryland, and New York, and in most of the easier shall-issue states as well. That was just one more advantage of big money and a legitimately recognized need. He’d been threatened with death in public by angry men more than a few times. But such permissions did not extend to federal courts or law-enforcement buildings, passenger aircraft, or post offices, among other places.

All in all, this had been a productive visit. He had a better sense of Commander Alex Michaels. He knew where to find the man and his family. If push came to shove, he could always have Junior pay them a late-night visit. A man like Michaels wouldn’t roll over for bribery, blackmail, or even physical intimidation, Ames knew that, but he had a family. And even if his wife was some kind of martial arts death on two legs, they had a little boy who wouldn’t be so adept.

And a man would do just about anything to protect his children.

Howard’s group was badly outnumbered. On top of that, his four-man scout team was only lightly armed. They had come to gather intel, not to fight. The Iraqi foot patrol, on the other hand, was more heavily armed, and they outnumbered Howard’s unit by at least four to one. There had to be sixteen, maybe eighteen of the enemy soldiers.

Howard and his team were already off the road. He waved his team down. In the dark, they’d be hard to spot.

The liquid Arabic flow of the Iraqis talking among themselves drifted through the rocks and scrub growth. The men were joking, laughing, not expecting any trouble, on a routine patrol that had probably never stumbled across anything more dangerous than a lizard.

They were in the El Burz Mountains. The peak elevation along the road from Chalus to Karaj was a thousand meters above sea level, maybe a little higher to the west. They weren’t that far inland yet, only about thirty kilometers from the Caspian on the north coast of Iraq, but that was far enough so that it would take an extraction copter a few minutes to get here. One more good reason to lay low and let the patrol pass.

Contrary to what a lot of people thought, especially after the Gulf War, not all of Iraq’s soldiers were half-witted camel jockeys who ran around yelling “Allah ackbar!” and couldn’t shoot straight. Some of the elite units were battle-hardened vets who could hike all night and then fight all day, men with training as good as that given by any army in the world. In a stand-up fight against B1 bombers dropping daisy-cutters and Navy ships firing rockets from a hundred miles away, the Iraqis would get creamed. You couldn’t use World War I tactics in the twenty-first century and expect to win. But on a narrow road in the mountains at night — in their mountains — against a recon force not wearing SIPEsuits or heavy armor, a quarter their strength? Those AK-47s still worked just fine.

Howard and his men had come to find out if there was a biological weapons plant buried here in the hills, possibly buried deep in a cave where it couldn’t be spotted from spysats looking for it. Cutting loose on a larger and better-armed force was not the way to do that.

The fact that the patrol was here at all probably meant the intel about the bio-weapons plant had some basis. So far, the Big Birds had not been able to pinpoint the location, but the amount of traffic they had tracked in and out of one of the canyons not far from here indicated that there was something going on.

Whatever it was they were doing in that canyon, Howard needed to find out. Once the patrol was past, they’d get to it.

One of the Iraqi soldiers wandered off the road in their direction.

None of the Net Force squad moved. They were statues, hardly even breathing.

The man drew nearer. He came to an outcrop of rock no more than three meters in front of Howard, and rounded it, out of sight of the road, and unzipped his pants.

His back was to Howard, but the noise of his urination was loud in the dark.

Great. Guy had to take a leak, and he picked here to do it.

Howard drew his knife. It was a Loveless-style hunter with a short, stubby, drop-point blade no longer than his middle finger. It was the kind of knife used to skin and gut game, but it would cut a throat just fine. The steel had been blackened with a baked-on powder coating, a flat, matte black that reflected no light.

Howard gathered himself to move. All the man emptying his bladder had to do was to turn slightly and he would see an American trooper prone in the night behind him. If that happened, Howard and his group were in big trouble. But if Howard moved first, he could get to the man before he realized what was happening. A stab to the brainstem at the base of the skull would do it. He didn’t like that, having to kill some poor soldier whose only crime was answering the call of nature, but it was too risky. Better one of them than four of us.

Three regular steps, two long ones, less than a second to get to the man, grab his mouth with one hand, drive the blade in with the other.

Howard came up from his prone position carefully, onto his hands and knees, then to a squat. He leaned forward to push off—

The Iraqi, warned by something, looked over his shoulder as Howard leaped. The man screamed, already reaching for his rifle.

Uh-oh. They were in for it now—

“General Howard?” the computer said, interrupting the VR scenario. “You have a Priority One call.”

Howard dropped out of VR and pulled the headset off. “Who is calling?” he asked.

“Commander Michaels,” the computer said.

“I’ll take it. Put it through.”

Though it probably wasn’t anything drastic, Howard had put Michaels on his Priority One list a long time ago. He wasn’t going to snub his boss while he played war games in VR.

“Commander.”

“Hello, General. We have a small problem here. Tommy Bender is in my office, and he wants to talk to you about the good ship Bon Chance.”

“The lawsuit,” Howard said.

“Exactly.”

“I’ve already been deposed, sir,” Howard said. “A young woman came by on Friday.”

“I know. I met her, along with the big gun lawyer a little while ago, for my own deposition. Apparently there is some additional information about one of the dead security men our lawyer thinks we need to know about.”

“I see.”

“That is, of course, if you aren’t too busy,” Alex said. “I can put him off if need be.”

“No, sir, Commander. I’ve got the time. It’s been pretty slow around here. I’ll be over in about ten minutes.”

“Thanks, John.”

“No problem.”

Howard showed up three minutes early and exchanged greetings with Alex and Tommy.

“All right,” Michaels said, “what’s this all about, Tommy?”

The lawyer smiled. “You’re going to love this,” he said. “Richard A. Dunlop, as near as we can tell, was the man John shot and killed during the raid.”

“The man who shot me first,” Howard said. He touched his side, low. “Right in a gap where my borrowed vest didn’t cover.”

“Yes, well, we’ll certainly point that out. Did you know Mr. Dunlop before you shot him, General?”

“No, sir. The moment he shot me was the first time we’d ever met.”

“Ah.”

“Why?” Michaels said. “What’s this all about, Tommy?”

“Well, it seems that Mr. Dunlop was a member of the WAB.”

“Which is…?”

“The White Aryan Brotherhood,” Howard answered, beating Tommy to it.

“So?” Alex asked. “I’ve heard of them. They’re a prison racist group. How does this affect anything?”

“Well,” Tommy said, “if General Howard — who, I must point out, is a black man — knew that Mr. Dunlop was a racist, that might have given him motivation to shoot Mr. Dunlop beyond simple self-defense.”

Michaels shook his head. “You know, Tommy, that might be the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

Tommy shrugged. “Have you ever been to Las Vegas, General?”

“Yes, I have.”

“And were you in Las Vegas on April 3, 2011?”

Howard thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I believe I was. As I recall, that was just before we mounted an operation in the desert nearby. Our unit was on hold, waiting for a computer glitch in the surveillance sats to be resolved. We were holed up in Vegas while we waited for the go order.”

Tommy nodded. “And did you have an altercation with Mr. Dunlop while you were in Las Vegas, General?”

“Of course not. Like I told you, I never met the man.”

“But the plaintiff’s lawyer can produce records showing that Mr. Dunlop was, in fact, in Las Vegas on that same day.”

Howard frowned. “So what? So were a million other people.”

Tommy leaned back in his chair and smiled. “But you didn’t shoot a million other people, John. You shot Dunlop. Here’s what Ames will do: He’ll show that the two of you were in Vegas at the same time. He’ll postulate a hypothetical meeting, in which you and Dunlop met, and got into an altercation over the man’s racist behavior. He bumped into you on the sidewalk, called you a name, and you nearly came to blows over it. Then he’ll link it to the shooting on the ship, implying that you killed Dunlop because of your earlier meeting.”

Howard shook his head. “That’s unbelievable,” he said. “None of that happened.”

“That doesn’t matter, John. He doesn’t have to prove it. He just has to make a jury believe that it might have happened that way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, you and I both know that he will be able to find a lowlife Las Vegas wino who, for the price of a bottle of cheap bourbon, will swear he saw you with Dunlop. The jury might very well recognize this man as a liar. They might very well not believe a word that he says. But they won’t be able to forget what he says, either. The judge can direct them to disregard it, of course, but that’s like not thinking about the elephant in the living room.”

“I still don’t get it,” Howard said.

Tommy rubbed his eyes. “If you blow enough smoke and wave enough mirrors, you can dazzle an audience,” he said. “Ames is a master at this kind of illusion. He is a magician. He can make people think they saw something they couldn’t possibly have seen. Trust me, Ames will manufacture all the mud that he can, and then drag everybody involved right through the middle of it. Even if none of it is legit, some of it can stick. Remember, this is a civil case, not a criminal one. Reasonable doubt doesn’t apply in the same way. All he really needs to do is to get the jury to doubt, even just a little bit.”

Howard frowned again.

Tommy sighed. “You’ve shot a few other people in the line of duty, haven’t you, John?”

“Yes. But every one of them was justified.”

Tommy shook his head. “Not necessarily. And certainly not in the eyes, ears, and minds of a civil jury. Any Net Force operation in which any person was severely hurt or killed will be fair game for Ames. He will haul every one of them out and do a body count. He will show morgue pictures, offer testimonials of the families, whatever he can get past the judge.

“Ames is going to paint the picture that every Net Force op who ever stepped into the field was a bloodthirsty killer who couldn’t wait to go out and shoot, stab, or stomp somebody. More than that, he is going to show that these ops were not only directed by, but led by a commander and general who love to go out and get their own hands bloody. He’ll have us looking like the Mongol hordes, murdering and plundering for sport.”

“My God,” Howard said. “Can he really do that?”

“If he can convince a judge that such things go to establishing a pattern of behavior, or that a particular incident can be linked directly to his case, yes, indeed. As I’ve said, civil law is not the same as criminal, and the standards are not as high. And for Ames, no stoop is too low. When he’s on a roll, he has to jump up with his arm outstretched to reach a snake’s belly.”

“My God,” Howard said again.

“If you have an in with Him, I’d pray for intervention,” Tommy said. “Ames stepping into an open manhole or suffering a fatal heart attack would be good. Anything less won’t slow him down. He’ll spin fantasy so thick it’ll seem like you’ve been dropped between Sleeping Beauty’s castle and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride… ”

Michaels shook his head, too. How could somebody do stuff like this and get away with it?

“There’s another thing you need to know,” Tommy added after a moment.

“What is it?” Michaels asked.

“You have to be very careful in your ongoing investigation of CyberNation. Every ‘i’ needs to be dotted, every ‘t’ crossed.”

“We do that in all our investigations,” Michaels said.

Tommy nodded. “I know, but understand this: If you bend the smallest rule, it will cost you. Ames obviously knows about the investigation, and you can be sure that he will wave it back and forth like a flag in a Fourth of July parade. He’ll claim Net Force is harassing his clients because of the suit, that there is no other reason to have such a procedure going since they are all law-abiding and upstanding corporate folk just trying to make an honest living.”

“But our investigation predates this suit.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Tommy said. “Remember, Ames deals in perception, not reality. And as far as your normal investigations, can you honestly say that there have never been any instances where you or one of your people didn’t step outside the lines, even a little bit, in order to crack a case or put away a bad guy? Well, Ames will have copies of all your files — everything that isn’t classified, anyway — at his fingertips, and he’ll be going through them looking for any sign, any hint, of anything he can wave in front of the jury.”

He turned to Howard. “For example, General, every time you got tired of being a desk jockey and went into the field yourself, Ames will use that to show that you like to be personally involved. That you like waving guns around and shooting people.”

“But that’s my job,” Howard said.

Tommy shook his head. “Generals don’t lead the charge into battle anymore. They sit back and direct from afar.” He turned to Alex. “And it’s even worse for you,” he said. “You’re not even military. By being hands-on, you demonstrate a certain zeal, which can easily be fanned up to look like full-blown fanaticism.”

Michaels leaned forward. “Are you suggesting we drop this whole CyberNation investigation? And has it occurred to you that this whole lawsuit might be nothing more than an attempt to get us to do that? Stop our inquiry? Or force us to back off enough so CyberNation can do whatever illegal activity it wants without having to look over its shoulder?”

“Of course it occurred to me, and that’s not what I’m suggesting. I wouldn’t object if you put it on hold until this was over, but you don’t even have to do that. What you need to do is exactly what I said: Proceed very carefully and pay extra attention to all the little details here.”

Michaels looked at Howard. Neither of them had anything to say.

“I told you this was going to be a big can of worms,” Tommy said. “And we don’t even have it halfway open yet.”

Michaels sighed and nodded. “I’ll pass the word along to be careful.”

“Good. Well, I’m off. Have a nice day.”

After Tommy left, Michaels looked at Howard. “I think we need to have a staff meeting.”

“Yes, sir,” Howard said. “I believe that would be a very good idea.”