Clear and Present Danger

'The local cops are in a pretty nasty mood about this. First time somebody's put a hit on a cop that way. It was a 'public' hit, and his wife got taken out by a stray round. Local cops are pretty pissed. A drug dealer got taken all the way out last night. It'll come out as a righteous shoot, but I don't think it was a coincidence. That's it for now.'

'Thanks, Mark.' Murray hung up. 'The bastards have declared war on us, all right,' he murmured.

'What's that, sir?'

'Nothing. Have you back-checked on the earlier trips Cortez made - hotels, car rentals?'

'We have twenty people out there on it. Ought to have some preliminary information in two hours.'

'Keep me posted.'

Stuart was the first morning appointment for the U.S. Attorney, and he looked unusually chipper this morning, the secretary thought. She couldn't see the hangover.

'Morning, Ed,' Davidoff said without rising. His desk was a mass of papers. 'What can I do for you?'

'No death penalty,' Stuart said as he sat down. 'I'll trade a guilty plea for twenty years, and that's the best deal you're going to get.'

'See ya' in court, Ed,' Davidoff replied, looking back down at his papers.

'You want to know what I've got?'

'If it's good, I'm sure you'll let me know at the proper time.'

'May be enough to get my people off completely. You want 'em to walk on this?'

'Believe that when I see it,' Davidoff said, but he was looking up now. Stuart was an overly zealous defense lawyer, the United States Attorney thought, but an honest one. He didn't lie, at least not in chambers.

Stuart habitually carried an old-fashioned briefcase, the wedge-shaped kind made of semi-stiff leather instead of the newer and trimmer attach case that most lawyers toted now. From it he extracted a tape recorder. Davidoff watched in silence. Both men were trial lawyers and both were experts at concealing their feelings, able to say what they had to say, regardless of what they felt. But since both had this ability, like professional poker players they knew the more subtle signs that others couldn't spot. Stuart knew that he had his adversary worried when he punched the play button. The tape lasted several minutes. The sound quality was miserable, but it was audible, and with a little cleaning up in a sound laboratory - the defendants could afford it - it would be as clear as it needed to be.

Davidoff's ploy was the obvious one: 'That has no relevance to the case we're trying. All of the information in the confession is excluded from the proceedings. We agreed on that.'

Stuart eased his tone now that he had the upper hand. It was time for magnanimity. 'You agreed. I didn't say anything. The government committed a gross violation of my clients' constitutional rights. A simulated execution constitutes mental torture at the very least. It's sure as hell illegal. You have to put these two guys on the stand to make your case, and I'll crucify those Coast Guard sailors when you do. It might be enough to impeach everything they say. You never know what a jury's going to think, do you?'

'They might just stand up and cheer, too,' Davidoff answered warily.

'That's the chance, isn't it? One way to find out. We try the case.' Stuart replaced the player in his briefcase. 'Still want an early trial date? With this as background information I can attack your chain of evidence - after all, if they were crazy enough to pull this number, what if my clients claim that they were forced to masturbate to give you the semen samples that you told the papers about, or were forced to hold the murder weapons to make prints - I haven't yet discussed any of those details with them, by the way - and I link all that in with what I know about the victim? I think I have a fighting chance to send them home alive and free.' Stuart leaned forward, resting his arms on Davidoff's desk. 'On the other hand, as you say, it's hard to predict how a jury'll react. So what I'm offering you is, they plead guilty to twenty years' worth of whatever charge you want, with no unseemly recommendation from the judge about how they have to serve all twenty - so they're out in, say, eight years. You tell the press that there's problems with the evidence, and you're pretty mad about that, but there's nothing you can do. My clients are out of circulation for a fairly long time. You get your conviction but nobody else dies. Anyway, that's my deal. I'll give you a couple of days to think it over.' Stuart rose to his feet, picked up his briefcase, and left without another word. Once outside, he looked for the men's room. He felt an urgent need to wash his hands, but he wasn't sure why. He was certain that he'd done the right thing. The criminals - they really were criminals - would be found guilty, but they wouldn't die in the electric chair - and who knows, he thought, maybe they'll straighten out. That was the sort of lie that lawyers tell themselves. He wouldn't have to destroy the careers of some Coast Guard types who had probably stepped over the line only once and would never do so again. That was something he was prepared to do, but didn't relish. This way, he thought, everybody won something, and for a lawyer that was as successful an exercise as you generally got. But he still felt a need to wash his hands.

For Edwin Davidoff, it was harder. It wasn't just a criminal case, was it? The same electric chair that would deliver those two pirates to hell would deliver him to a suite in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Since he had read Advise and Consent as a freshman in high school, Davidoff had lusted for a place in the United States Senate. And he'd worked very hard to earn it: top of his class at Duke Law School, long hours for which he was grossly underpaid by the Department of Justice, speaking engagements all over the state that had nearly wrecked his family life. He had sacrificed his own life on the altar of justice... and ambition, he admitted to himself. And now when it was all within his grasp, when he could rightfully take the lives of two criminals who had forfeited their rights to them... this could blow it all, couldn't it? If he wimped out on the prosecution, plea- bargaining down to a trifling twenty years, all his work, all his speeches about Justice would be forgotten. Just like that.

On the other hand, what if he disregarded what Stuart had just told him and took the case to trial - and risked being remembered as the man who lost the case entirely. He might blame the Coast Guardsmen for what they had done - but then he would be sacrificing their careers and possibly their freedom on what altar? Justice? Ambition? How about revenge? he asked himself. Whether he won or lost the Pirates Case, those men would suffer even though what they had done had also given the government its strongest blow yet against the Cartel.

Drugs. It all came down to that. Their capacity to corrupt was like nothing he'd ever known. Drugs corrupted people, clouded their thoughts at the individual level, and ultimately ended their lives. Drugs generated the kinds of money to corrupt those who didn't partake. Drugs corrupted institutions at every level and in every way imaginable. Drugs corrupted whole governments. So what was the answer? Davidoff didn't have that answer, though he knew that if he ever ran for that Senate seat he'd prance about in front of the TV cameras and announce that he did - or at least part of it, if only the people of Alabama would trust him to represent them...

Christ , he thought. So now what do I do?

Those two pirates deserve to die for what they have done. What about my duty to the victims? It wasn't all a lie - in fact none of it was. Davidoff did believe in Justice, did believe that law was what men had built to protect themselves from the predators, did believe that his mission in life was to be an instrument of that justice. Why else had he worked so hard for so little? It wasn't entirely ambition, after all, was it?

No .

One of the victims had been dirty, but what of the other three? What did the military call that? 'Collateral damage.' That was the term when an act against an individual target incidentally destroyed the other things that happened to be close by. Collateral damage. It was one thing when the State did it in time of war. In this case it was simply murder.

No, it wasn't simple murder, was it? Those bastards took their time. They enjoyed themselves. Is eight years of time enough to pay for them?

But what if you lose the case entirely? Even if you win, can you sacrifice those Coasties to get justice? Is that 'collateral damage,' too?

There had to be a way out. There usually was, anyway, and he had a couple of days to figure that one out.

They'd slept well, and the thin mountain air didn't affect them as badly as they'd expected. By sundown the squad was up and eager. Chavez drank his instant coffee as he went over the map, wondering which of the marked targets they'd stake out tonight. Throughout the day, squad members had kept a close eye on the road below, knowing more or less what they were looking for. A truck with containers of acid. Some cheap local labor would offload the jars and head into the hills, followed by people with backpacks of coca leaves and some other light equipment. Around sundown a truck stopped. Light failed before they could see all of what happened, and their