State of War

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.

Chalus, Iraq

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