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.”
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.