Upstairs, his wife and son slept. It was still hours away from when they'd get up, get dressed and go to church. He hadn't been able to sleep, so he'd come down to the computer to run battle scenarios. He should have stuck to chess or
He stood, walked to the kitchen and opened the fridge. He took out a carton of milk and poured himself a small glassful. Put the carton back. Sat at the table and stared at the glass of milk.
He was, he realized, depressed.
Oh, not clinically depressed, nothing to run to a shrink about, but definitely glum. He didn't understand it. There wasn't any reason to feel that way. He had a beautiful wife, a great kid, and a job most military officers would kill to have. He had just come back from a mission in which all of his objectives had been achieved, he had not lost a single soldier while under fire and everybody was happy with him. His civilian boss had put him in for a Presidential Commendation. What was the problem?
What was wrong, other than that he wanted to jump into the middle of an all-out shooting fracas?
What kind of attitude was that? No sane man wanted war.
He stared at the milk. It was the test, he knew. He'd never been tested, not really. He'd slipped between the cracks, missed the shooting in Desert Storm, been teaching when the police actions in South America got hot, gotten to the Caribbean dustup a day after the guns had gone cold and quiet. He had spent his adult life as a military man, training, learning, preparing. He had the tools, the skills and the need to use them, to see if they would really work — but there was no place for such things in peacetime.
It was why he had joined Net Force. At least there was a chance he'd get dropped into a hot spot. The mission to Ukraine was as warm as it had gotten so far, and while it was better than sitting in an office reading reports, it was… lukewarm…
'Morning.'
Howard looked up and saw Tyrone standing there in his pajama bottoms.
'Just after 0600,' Howard said. 'What are
'I don't know. I woke up, couldn't get back to sleep.'
Tyrone walked to the fridge and got the milk out. Shook the carton, saw that it was almost empty, then drank from it. Grinned at his father. 'Mom says it's okay if I'm going to drink it all,' he said.
Howard grinned, too.
Tyrone took another sip of the milk, then wiped at his lips. 'Can I ask you something, Pop?'
'Fire away.'
'How do you deal with a force that's bigger and stronger than yours, if it already holds territory you want to occupy?'
'Depends on the objective, the terrain, the weapons and equipment available, transportation systems, a bunch of things. First you define your goal, then you have to come up with a viable strategy, then the tactics to make it work.'
'Uh-huh.'
'When did you get interested in such things?'
'Oh. It's what you do. I thought I ought to, you know, kind of check it out. You know.' He stared at the floor.
Howard held the grin back, kept his face serious. The boy was thirteen. Puberty. It had been a while but, yes, he knew.
He said, 'Okay, let's talk about goals and strategy for a second. Your goal is to take the territory without destroying it, am I correct?'
'Oh, yeah.'
'So you have to move carefully. The enemy's forces are bigger than yours, so he's stronger, but — is he smarter? You know you can't just charge in and engage in a stand-up fight if you are outgunned. You'll get slaughtered. So before you move, you have to assess the situation. You look for your enemy's weak points. In guerrilla warfare, you find a weak place, you hit it, then run. You do it fast, then hide, so not only can't he find you, he might not even know who you are.'
Tyrone leaned against the fridge. 'Yeah, I can see that.'
'Also, according to Chairman Mao, to win a guerrilla war, you have to get the locals on your side.'
'How do you do that?'
'You offer them something they can't get from the enemy, something more valuable than what he is giving them. Allow them to compare you to him, and when they do, show them his shortcomings. You reveal how you are better for them. You can't match his guns, but maybe he can't match your brains.
'So you show them why brains are more important than brawn. You teach the locals stuff he can't. How to get more fish in their nets, grow better crops or… how to use their computers, for instance.'
The boy nodded again.
'You have a goal, you move toward it most of the time, but not always. Sometimes you have to take an oblique angle, move away a little so you can come at it from another direction. Sometimes you have take a step forward, strike, then retreat a few steps, so you don't get hit with return fire. Patience is the key in this kind of war. You have to pick your targets carefully, make every shot count. Wear the enemy away slowly.
'Once you get the locals on your side, then it doesn't matter how strong your enemy is, because the locals will start to help you, to hide you from enemy forces. Sometimes they'll overthrow your enemy on their own, and you won't have to do anything. In the end, that's the best way.'
'Yeah.'
There was a moment of silence. Then Tyrone said, 'Thanks, Pop. I'm going back to bed now.'
'Sleep well, son.'
After the boy was gone, Howard grinned at his milk. It had been a long time since he'd been that young. And the problems then had seemed just as big as any he had faced since. It was all relative. He needed to remember that. And that being here to tell his son what he needed to hear was as important as winning any battle in some foreign country halfway around the world. In the end, being a father was more important than being a colonel.
He tasted the milk. Warm. He walked to the sink, poured the milk into it, rinsed the glass and set it to dry on the rack. Maybe he could go back to sleep, too. Might as well give it a shot.
27
Alex Michaels stood by the sliding glass door and watched the dog wander around in the backyard. He'd been asleep when Scout came and hopped up onto the bed. It was a pretty good hop for a dog his size. Once up, he hadn't barked or anything, just sat there staring patiently until Michaels got up and went to let him out.
Michaels had some part of the alarm system lit all of the time now; a tech from the unit had come out and fine-tuned it, connected it to the voxax program of his house computer. All he had to do was say the word 'Assassin!' loud enough for the house mikes to pick up, and the alarms would start screaming. He'd shut the system's sliding-door link off to let the dog out, but he had his taser in his robe pocket. He hadn't played with the taser much since it had been issued to him, but he was going to be spending a little more time at the indoor range practicing. He was going to work especially hard on getting it out of a pocket or belt clip in a hurry.
There was a car parked at his curb with a pair of agents in it. A third guard stood by the gate on the side of the condo. Michaels wouldn't have known about the third guard, except that the dog had seen the man and yapped at him until he'd been hushed. Better than the house alarm, the little pup.
The dog finished watering and fertilizing the lawn and, now sure the territory was secure from intruders, trotted back to the kitchen. He stood by Michaels' feet, tail wagging, looking up at him.
'You hungry, boy?'
'Come on.'
Michaels had bought some expensive canned dog food. He peeled the lid from the little aluminum container and dumped the contents into a small bowl, then put it down on the floor next to the water bowl.
