Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10 (65 page)

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Authors: Tom Clancy

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BOOK: Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10
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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
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.”
Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia
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.”

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