State of War

19

Alex Michaels looked up and saw Tommy Bender standing in his doorway. “You’re like the bad penny, aren’t you? You just keep turning up.”

Tommy didn’t smile, though. “I thought I’d better warn you, Alex. You’ll be getting a copy of the records request later today, pursuant to the lawsuit.”

Michaels frowned and shook his head. “Oh, good,” he said. “That’s just what we need, putting an operative on duty, spending part of our budget pulling files so they can be used against us.”

Tommy nodded. “That’s how the game is played, Commander. And a word of caution, even though I know it’s totally unnecessary: There will be judicial review, with input from assorted federal agencies as to whether or not any material requested is vital to national security. If something should be kept secret for such reasons, it will be tended with appropriate deletions. Don’t decide that the list needs to be trimmed here. If they ask for it, give it up.”

“Of course,” Michaels said. “We wouldn’t want to do anything illegal, would we?”

“Exactly what you are supposed to say. I’ll drop by later and see how it is going.”

“It might take days,” Michaels said. “Weeks, even.”

Now Tommy did smile. “Of course. The initial order won’t set a deadline, it will merely specify that said documents be delivered in a ‘timely manner.’ They don’t expect you to shut down operations for this. But if it looks as if you are deliberately dragging your feet, the judge will not be amused.”

Alex nodded. “I understand, Tommy. We’ll be sure to smile, nod, and tell everybody we are going just as fast as we can. And thanks for the heads up.”

Tommy left, and Michaels leaned back in his chair. Just another day in paradise. He glanced at his small top drawer, the one he reserved for personal items. Inside it was an envelope that came the other day, and inside that was a job offer to head up a computer security service for a big corporation headquartered in Colorado.

He got two or three similar offers pretty much every week. He read them all, but most of them he just threw away. This one he’d kept, though he wasn’t sure he could really say why. And now, in the wake of Tommy Bender’s latest announcement, it was starting to look awfully appealing.

Colorado was certainly beautiful, and the job would be a lot less work. It pretty much had it all, a lot more money, a lot less stress, and more time for his family. On top of that, Colorado was a great place to raise a child, and it was closer to his ex-wife and his daughter, which would make it easier for her to visit. They could learn to ski. Hike in the summer. Enjoy the fresh air, if they could get far enough away from Denver.

Maybe he should talk to Toni about it. This job was never easy, and it seemed like it had gotten worse lately. There was something to be said for working in the private sector…

“Sir?” came his secretary’s voice over the com.

“Yes?”

“Ms. Skye is here to see you.”

Michaels sighed. He had forgotten all about Cory. She’d said she was coming by.

“Send her in.”

And leave the door open, too…

John Howard was walking toward his office with Julio, talking about the latest revision to the official requisition forms, when he heard something. It sounded odd, like an electric motor’s hum. “What’s that?” he said.

Julio looked at him. “What’s what?”

“That noise, kind of a low drone.”

“I don’t hear any — wait. Oh, that. It’s one of the scooters I told you about.”

As if to punctuate his words, Sergeant Franklin Kenny rounded the corner of the hall heading in their direction, riding on what looked like an old manual push lawnmower.

Oh, yes, the Segway, Howard thought. He had seen those out in the real world, and Julio had mentioned they were testing some new models.

Sergeant Kenny rolled past at a pretty good pace.

Julio frowned and said, “You know, General, I couldn’t hear the scooter until after you did. Maybe I ought to look into getting one of those little earplugs like yours.”

Howard smiled. He hadn’t told anyone about his new toy. He certainly hadn’t mentioned it to Julio. On the other hand, he hadn’t made any real effort to hide it, either. He’d just been waiting to see who would say something — or even notice — and who wouldn’t. That Julio had spotted it wasn’t a surprise. The surprise would have been if he hadn’t noticed it.

“Just so you know I’m not always asleep at the switch,” Julio said.

“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day,” Howard said. “So if you’ve got any deaf old man jokes, now’s the time.”

“Oh, no, sir, I wouldn’t do that. Now if you want to ask me if I have any stupid old man jokes, that’s a horse of a different color. I got hundreds of those. Thousands.”

“You are getting droll in your old age, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir, General Howard, sir, I confess that I am. I’m surprised you didn’t take care of that ear thing sooner. You’ve been deaf as a post on that side for a couple years.”

“Why didn’t you mention it before?”

Julio grinned. “Well, sir, I did. You just didn’t hear me is all.”

“Does your wife think you’re funny, Julio?”

“She thinks I’m a riot. That’s the reason she married me. Well, that and my handsome face and dashing and courteous manner, of course.”

Howard laughed.

“I saw Gunny on the obstacle course today,” Julio said.

“Gunny? Our Gunny actually went to the obstacle course?”

“I believe he was holding up one of the barricades by leaning on it. I didn’t actually see him running the course. Anyway, he allowed as how Tyrone has been showing up for the pistol team practices.”

“Ty seems to enjoy himself,” Howard said.

“Gunny says it makes him want to cry, how good the boy is. Says if he can have him for another three months, you can start building display cases for his shooting medals. He’s got all the tools to be a world-class pistoleer. Any of the military services would snap him up to have him on their shooting squads. Pay his way through college, full-ride military scholarship. Has he considered joining the Guard’s very own Net Force troops? Gunny says he could shoot full-time, never have to get his boots muddy, if it was left up to him.”

“His mother would rather he became a doctor,” Howard said. “I think her opinion of our son joining the military in any way, shape, or form usually begins with her saying, ‘Over my dead body.’ ”

“Funny, Joanna says the same thing about little Hoo.”

“And she’s an officer and a gentlewoman,” Howard said.

Julio shook his head. “Women.”

The jet began its final descent, and Junior put up his magazine and looked out the window. The plane was half-full, and though he was in the tourist cabin, he had three seats to himself.

Junior didn’t much like to fly, but getting from the east coast to the west pretty much meant you had to do it. The only real option was to spend the better part of a week driving it, or on a train. The drive was murder, but the train wasn’t a bad way to travel. You got to see interesting stuff, hang out where nobody could get you as long as you turned your phone off, and the rocking motion helped you sleep. You could sit in front of the big picture window in the club car drinking a beer and watching the country go by. And you didn’t have to worry about somebody hijacking the sucker and taking it to Cuba or into a building.

But having a couple weeks for a round-trip wasn’t in the cards this time. He had to get there, do his business, and get back, and he had exactly two days, so it was fly or nothing.

The flight was a hassle with all the security and lines, but that was just how it was. He always took his hardware to FedEx in a big box marked “Survey Equipment,” insured the box for ten grand, and put down that it contained expensive electronic gear for survey work. When a box was insured for ten thousand dollars, FedEx didn’t lose it. He sent it same-day delivery, to be picked up at the FedEx place nearest the airport, and his guns were waiting for him when he got wherever he was going, since they didn’t have to put it on a truck to go elsewhere.

Some shooters simply packed their weapons in their checked baggage. Some had even found ways around the security and actually carried them right onto the planes. Junior didn’t do that. As a convicted felon, he couldn’t risk being caught, and since the airlines did random hand-searches of checked baggage now and then, even a small chance was more than he wanted to take.

He didn’t much like being without his revolvers on a jet — you never knew when some whacko was going to go nine-eleven — but he wasn’t completely unarmed. He had a pair of short knives he carried tucked into his socks. Made of hard plastic — they were called CIA letter openers — the metal detectors didn’t see them. He could walk right though the security checkpoint, no problem.

He’d also been meaning to get himself one of those Israeli two-barreled derringers. Made out of what was essentially layers of carbon fiber and superglue, with scandium barrel liners and titanium springs and firing pins, they shot some kind of boron-epoxy round. The barrel itself was essentially the shell, like an old-time black powder weapon.

Like the knives, metal detectors didn’t spot them, but you had to take them apart to reload. They weren’t rifled, either, but smoothbores, so they were only accurate up close. Expensive little devils, too. They ran three grand each, if you could find ’em, which was also a problem.

Still, any gun was better than no gun when the shooting started. That’s all he’d need, to have his jet taken over by someone who thought he was on a mission from God. If that ever happened, and if the guy didn’t have a gun of his own, Junior was going to slice the fool like he was a watermelon.

One good thing you could learn in prison was how to do nasty stuff with a shiv, even a plastic one. While he was in the Louisiana pen in Angola, he’d met some South African guys who could make a knife do everything but stand up and whistle “Dixie,” and unless the terrorist was one of those, he was going to be dead real fast if he struck at a flight Junior was on.

Junior knew he could gut the guy and be a hero for doing it. If they questioned him about the plastic knife, he would say he found it in the bathroom — the terrorist must have dropped it while doing whatever it was terrorists did to psyche themselves up for their suicide missions. He could plant the second one on the body to make sure. The way he figured it, if a guy saved a plane full of people, nobody was going to give him too hard a time about how he did it.

They landed, and Junior collected his carry-on bag. In and out, quick and dirty, that was the drill. He’d get a car, go collect his guns, and then make a call on a certain congressman who was getting too big for his britches. He’d give him some advice the congressman would be hard-pressed to refuse, what with the pictures Junior had of him with a woman other than his wife at a motel in Maryland and all.

Another day, another dollar.

He smiled. Wonder what the poor folks are doin’ today.