Chapter 1

- Daniel-

It was a little overcast and hazy as I entered the mouth of Tampa Bay, and I could barely see the crystalline fingers of the buildings of downtown Tampa. There were a few breaks in the clouds, so when the afternoon sun did break through, it flashed off their plastisteel exteriors, reminding me of an old-style lighthouse welcoming a tired sailor home from the sea.

Not that I could claim I was a sailor of yesteryear returning from a voyage to some exotic, distant land. No circumnavigation of the globe in search of spice for the fat homeland factors or silks for the pretty ladies waiting patiently for their intrepid wanderer to return, bringing wonders and tales from the mythical Orient or darkest Africa. No, it was more like a petulant little boy slinking home after running away from his grown-up duties like a forty-four-year-old Peter Pan. Or maybe more like a pouting teenager hiding in his room, wallowing in self-pity with a broken heart after the head cheerleader dumped him for the star jock.

Both were equally true and not a particularly pleasant self-portrait, if I do say so myself. However, I had to admit I did feel one hell of a lot better than I did when I’d left two months earlier.

What was I running away from, you ask? Well, Cynthia Delmar for one. You never heard of Cynthia Delmar? I’m not surprised, but I’ll bet my last New Dollar you’ve heard of her daughter, Antigua Delmar. That’s right, the Antigua Delmar. Singer, video artist, and the present teen icon and idol of just about every thirteen- to seventeen-year-old girl in the known world and the masturbatory fantasy of every teenage boy who’s ever seen her. Come to think about it, she probably features in the fantasies of quite a few older males, maybe some getting close to their mid-forties.

She’s a cute kid; there is no doubt about it. Tiny, slim with golden hair and piercing blue eyes; she looks about sixteen but is really close to twenty-two. Oh, that’s right, she is twenty-two now. I sort of remember sending her a birthday message when Sara reminded me of it. I say sort of because at the time I had about three-quarters of a liter of cheap rum under my belt and was feeling no pain. I hope I didn’t embarrass myself too badly with it, but to tell the truth, I’d done that so many times during my little midlife rumspringa, one more time probably didn’t matter.

Anyway, you know who I’m talking about. If you don’t, then turn on your video and wait a few minutes; I’m sure she’ll pop up in something. Back to Cynthia and why some big, strong he-man, a war vet feared, hated, loved, and revered throughout South and Central America, in about equal parts, I should add, was running like a scared dog with his tail between his legs and just now slinking back home. Good question, but to understand why, you have to understand just who Cynthia Delmar is.

As I said before, Cynthia is Antigua’s mother. She is also her business manager and a sharper mind in the music business I’ve never seen. Not that I know much about the music business, but she is one smart lady. She is also one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Take Antigua, age her a few years, add legs you would be willing to die for, and a pair of bright blue eyes that could keep any male mesmerized for hours.

We met when Antigua chartered my boat for a weekend schmooze-cruise for recording bigwigs to sell her upcoming comp (that’s short for compilation; us old farts used to call them albums). I have to admit I was a goner from the second she stepped out of her limo. For some reason, she took a liking to this battered old hunk, and I spent the next couple of months as happy as I’ve been since my wife Kathy was killed in a terrorist attack almost six years ago. I can admit it now, but I was head over heels in love and seriously considering the possibility that this one would be one I would be with for the rest of my life. I really think she felt the same way about me at the time. Unfortunately, she had one small flaw that I hadn’t been aware of.

Cynthia Delmar is fucked up in the head. I mean seriously fucked up, and I don’t mean the mass-murderer, killing spree with a knife and high heels type of fucked up. Actually, that I might have been able to tolerate. I’ve been called a mass-murderer and stone-cold killer before many times, so I know how these little incidents can be blown way out of proportion. Nope. Her problem is she can’t stay faithful to any one man for more than a few months if you put a gun to her head. She fell in and out of love faster than a teenage girl changing outfits for the first date with a new guy. Oh sure, she’d love you with a passion hotter than a magnesium flare while she was with you, but suddenly that would be gone like a switch had been thrown, and the lights went out. She did it to me. Silly me. I thought everything was going great, and ... Wham! The next thing I knew, she was cuddled up against her next boy-toy, mooning over him with those baby-blues.

That ain’t the way I’m put together. Say what you want about me, but when I commit to someone, I stay faithful. I was off playing soldier for a lot of my seventeen-year marriage to Kathy, but I never once strayed over the line, and believe me, the opportunities were there for the taking if I’d wanted. I’m sure as death and government incompetence that Kathy did the same for me. If she ever did stray, thank god she was discreet enough that I never found out about it. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d found out she was cheating... probably just died.

The bottom line is I don’t step out on my partner, and I expect the same in return. Oh, sure, over the past five years, I’ve been known to play a little sheet music with a lady friend or two, but with the understanding that’s all it was, just a good old sweaty time together to clear the tubes and let off some pressure. Fuck-buddies is what they used to call it. I don’t know what they call it now, but it’s all the same thing.

Cynthia and I weren’t just fuck-buddies, and as far as I’m concerned, she is pure poison. Sure, she’s still drop-dead gorgeous, but I’d rather take up juggling live grenades than even look at her. It’s true she did offer to come back to me once. Even said she’d stay with me, like that would happen, but I didn’t have to even think twice before I turned down that offer. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, and you can stamp the sucker mark on my forehead and kick me in the ass. I may not be the brightest bulb on the holiday tree, but I’m not that stupid.

So, like any heartbroken adolescent after we snatched Tinker Bell back, I took off in a pout like a cat with a stick of dynamite tied to its tail. Childish, yes, but to tell the truth, I feel much better now, so maybe it was necessary.

Who’s Tinker Bell? Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. Tinker Bell is Antigua. The funny thing is even after being betrayed by her mother Tink, I still remained friends. Don’t ask me why; for some reason, we just click together, and I don’t mean sexually. Sure, she’s cute as a Labrador puppy and sexy as hell in her own right, but there’s this twenty-and-some-odd years age difference, not to mention the fact our experiences set us farther apart than the opposite sides of the Grand Canyon.

She’s the number one teen pop artist, vid star, and celebrity icon of our day, not to mention she’s richer than God. Me? I’m just another broken-down war vet who spent ten years slogging through jungles killing and destroying most everything I could get my hands on. I’m not poor by any stretch of the imagination, but I don’t shit gold when I take a crap. Certainly not a friendship built on shared experience, that’s for sure. Still, I do enjoy her company, and she seems to do the same with me for some odd reason. Maybe it’s the same fascination that keeps you coming back to the monkey house when you go to the zoo.

Anyway, I called her Tinker Bell when I first met her because she looks dead on like the little fairy that was Peter Pan’s friend. I didn’t think about it at the time, but seeing how she somehow integrated herself into my team, it fit pretty well. My team? That’s the Lost Boys or the Muchachos Peridos as we were known in most of SA (South America). We were originally a U.N. SpecFor team put together primarily for crime interdiction when it became obvious to the rest of the world that the SA and Central American countries had about the same ability to govern themselves as two-year-olds in a playpen. Mostly, we were supposed to stop the terrorists being sent out of Venezuela-Columbia by the super-red Chavezistas, but there was also human trafficking, i.e., sex slaves and tobacco heading up to the U.S. That was a good deal; I could almost always pick up my smokes for free from the loose contraband lying around.

Yeah, I know the States banned all forms of tobacco years ago at the same time they legalized almost all other forms of recreational pharmaceuticals. So what? It’s not like cancer is a problem anymore. Shit, take a little shot and no worries about that, and even if it was, I got bigger things to worry about than a little uncontrolled cell division. Even if it were still a problem, the chances of me dying from the Big C instead of, oh, say, a bullet in the brain are about the same as the chances of me winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Damned small. Although, come to think about it, the dead are rather peaceful, so if you factored in body count... Naah, the Muslims, Chinese, and the French still got me beat. I’m just a piker compared to them.

Back to what I was originally talking about: my team and Tink. Anyway, my little band of intrepid adventurers got to calling themselves the Lost Boys, and it kind of stuck. We even had handles (code words identifying each one of us) like Nibs, Tootles, Cubby, and such. For some reason, I never got one of those tags, but one of the first groups we went against started calling me LaMuerte, The Death, and that stuck also. Beats the shit out of being Peter Pan, I guess.

Of course, after the jihadists attacked the States and most of the civilized world, and that crazy bastard Chavez decided he wanted to be king of the Western Hemisphere instead of just President-for-Life of Venezuela-Columbia, they shifted our focus away from the petty criminals to the hordes coming out of SA trying to finish what fifty years of socially progressive U.S. administrations couldn’t: destroy us, that is. I hear that in some rural parts of Venezuela, the mere mention of the Muchachas Peridos can cause a grown man to piss his pants. Who says a man can’t leave his mark on the world?

So anyhow, Tink got her cute little ass grabbed by a syndicate that was looking to expand into the North American market. Unfortunately for them, the business venture they were product-testing was kidnapping, and their first test subject was Antigua Delmar. Not the wisest choice, as it turns out. Suffice it to say, we got her back with almost no bloodshed, comparatively speaking, that is, but that leads me to my second reason for running away. I know Natalie said it was to ponder the strategic possibilities, but I’m trying to be honest here: I ran away.

There is just the tiniest possibility I might have inferred ― taken totally out of context, of course ― during my discussions with this somewhat less than legitimate organization that the vets in the U.S. were a little more organized than they actually were. I suppose after reviewing the recording of that superlatively stupid but tactically effective operation, I could see where they might have gotten that idea. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t true. At that time, the vets were about as organized as a 1990’s rave party put on by a bunch of drunken college boys.

Doubly unfortunate for one ex-SpecFor captain. It was pointed out to me post-op that if our South of the Border buddies found out the sum total of our vet organization consisted of seven broken-down has-beens, they’d be down on us like stink on a dog fart in a heartbeat. So if I or my people were going to survive and thereby continue our lives as public nuisances and burdens to society, someone was going to have to actually organize the vets, a prospect that quite frankly scared the shit out of me.

To begin with, I had to ask myself if I really wanted to get involved in an effort with the ultimate aim of killing in an organized manner again. That’s not as easy a question to answer as it might seem. Remember, I’d spent ten years doing just that, and let me tell you, it ain’t as clean and glorious as they make it out to be in the videos. In fact, it’s nasty, heartbreaking, and soul-destroying at its best. Could I actually lead men and women back into situations where I know for a fact some of them are going to die?

The next question was the vets themselves. If you know a real combat vet, you understand what I mean. Sure, most of us can survive in a civilian world, but to be honest, it’s mostly us just acting like we fit in, and I agree we do a fair job of it. Most people don’t even realize they have a bug-nuts psycho-killer sitting at the desk next to them, and as long as they don’t find out, all is well with the world. Now, I’m not going to say our war was any worse than anyone else’s, but there were times when the casualty rate in the front lines came about as close to 100 percent as you can get. I don’t care if you’re Superman; that kind of intense fighting is going to change you. Try doing that for ten years.

The result was that as the armies drew down post-conflict, they stripped the veneer of control, i.e. uniforms, rank, military discipline, and chain of command, from these men and women, leaving their training, knowledge, memories, and paranoid delusions. My initial thought was that these crazy fucking killing machines in civvies weren’t going to take too kindly to someone trying to bring them back into the same kind of organization that did its best to kill them. My second thought was that the “someone” allowing them to focus their irritation on him would be me. Hence the need for brown pants.

Besides, organizing the vets would be like trying to herd cats. Cats with guns. Cats with guns who knew how to use them.

Now I know some of the noble men and women of our past would seclude themselves behind closed doors to ponder the realities and ramifications of such weighty decisions, maybe surrounded by the works of great philosophers, religious leaders, or ethical gurus. I could see them leaning on the combined works of these intellectual giants, wrestling with the balance of the good to be achieved as opposed to the evil that would surely be inadvertently released along with the angels.

I took a slightly different tack. I spent two months drinking myself stupid, fucking anything that gave me half a chance, and generally doing my best to ensure no actual thought stayed in my conscious mind long enough for me to recognize it.

The end result was the same and a foregone conclusion as anybody could have told me, but my way was a hell of a lot more fun. Okay, I could have done without the hangovers that even D-tox could barely dent, but given the choice between a monistic cell and looking up at the bottom of a barroom stool, I can tell you which one I’d choose.

So now it was time to grow a pair, pull my big-boy pants up, and get on with it.

---

There was only one lone figure standing on the pier waiting for me as I pulled into my home berth. I wasn’t exceptionally surprised; I hadn’t exactly broadcast my arrival time, but given that she knew exactly when I’d arrive, I had to figure all of them did. Like I said, I wasn’t surprised. I assumed she’d been talking to Sara, my, our, AI over the net.

“Hey, Mike,” I called out. “How’s it going?”

“Yo, Boss,” she answered, cocking her head. “You look like shit. Got the bitch out of your system, I’m guessing?”

“You must be looking in a mirror,” I grunted before grabbing her and giving her a tight hug. “Why yes, I’m very happy to be home; I missed you too. That’s a lovely tan you have also; you get that in the County, can?”

“Fucking Top left me there for a week,” she said, pushing me away and punching me on the arm. “He doesn’t love me like you do.”

“I always did spoil you; that’s the problem,” I sighed. “Any bodies we need to hide? What’s the damage this time?”

“Boss,” she said, looking hurt. “It wasn’t like that at all. There I was taking a short nap down by the bay, and these two cops sneak up and slap restraints on me before I could even wake up. Vagrancy is what they said. Can you believe that shit? Vagrant! Me?”

“Delinquent, yes; vagrant, no. Hmm, at least I don’t have to pay off any hospital bills this time,” I said, stretching.

“None they know of or can prove anyway,” she grinned. “So, you ready to roll?”

“Yeah, I guess I am,” I sighed again. “Where is everybody anyway?”

“Here and there,” she said noncommittally. “They’ll meet us later at Bennie’s.”

“Aren’t you even interested in what I’ve decided to do?” I asked.

“Don’t matter to me, Boss,” she said, shrugging. “Besides, Natalie already told us what you were going to do. That’s one scary bitch, Boss. She likes to say something is going to happen, and it happens. She got some deal with the devil, you think?”

“We’ve all danced that dance once or twice.” It was my turn to shrug. “I think she just sees things better than we do. She and Sam are still together, I assume? I don’t remember hearing anything different while I was gone, but then some parts do seem to be a bit fuzzier than others.”

“Couldn’t get them apart with a crowbar,” she answered, shaking her head. “They’ll be there at Bennie’s.”

“Better not let Sam hear you calling her a bitch then,” I chuckled.

“I ain’t afraid of that pussy,” she snorted. Sam massed at least three times hers and could probably twist the barrel of her sniper rifle around her neck without breaking a sweat, but for all that, I had no doubt she didn’t have one gram of fear in her whole body, not from Sam anyway. For one thing, Sam would rather die than hurt Mike, and for another, she just might be able to take him. Not in a fair fight, sure, but who was stupid enough to fight fair? Mike is as deadly as she is pretty, and her idea of a fair fight was you on the ground and her still standing. Come to think about it, that sounds like as reasonable a definition as there is.

“Well, unless you think you need a little nap after your vacation, how about you getting your ass in gear, Boss?” she called over her shoulder as she started walking down the pier. I jogged a bit to catch up. I needed to get out and do some real workouts; drinking and fucking for two solid months may be fun, but it doesn’t do much to keep the meat in fighting trim.

“So, who is Maria?” she asked playfully as I came up beside her.

“Christ! Didn’t you have anything better to do than listen in on me?” I’d left the channel open through Sara, my AI. She also happened to be the team’s combat AI during the war. Don’t ask how it came about that I still have her; I’d have to kill you for sure then. As a combat AI, she had the ability to network all six of my team members. When networked, any team member could listen in on what was going on with any other team member unless they specifically turned it off. Of course, I had an override. I’d set her into combat mode during our little rescue operation and left it on afterwards since I didn’t know what the hell was going to happen with the syndicate. Besides, I figured they would worry about me less if they could hear I was still alive, and who knew if I might have needed someone to bail my ass out of trouble? I didn’t have any secrets from these guys, and if they wanted to listen in on me puking my guts out in the morning or getting sweaty with some willing sweet thing, well, that was their choice.

“Better than a porn channel, Boss,” she smirked.

“If you must know, Maria was a nice young lady I met a couple of weeks ago, and we spent some time together before she returned home.”

“Oh, Johnny, Johnny, my stallion! Oh God and Mother Mary, I’m coming again! More Johnny! Oh my God, you are killing me!” she mimicked in flawless Spanish. “I’d say it was some quality time. Was she able to walk when she left? Should we be expecting some little love-struck bunny to show up looking for her stallion?”

I suppose I should mention I didn’t use my real name on my trip: too much baggage with being Daniel Mayhem anywhere south of the Texas border. I was John Straight for my little escapade.

“I don’t think so. She wasn’t interested in anything more than a few days’ romp. Besides, I never told her my real name; she wouldn’t know where to find me.”

“You take her out in your boat?” Mike asked.

“Sure, a couple of times,” I answered, wondering what she was getting at.

“Then I think she could find you if she wanted to,” Mike laughed, jerking her thumb towards the stern of the Katherine, with its Port of Tampa plainly visible.

“Oh yeah, there is that,” I said lamely. “But like I said, I don’t think that will be a problem. She had other places to go and other people to see.”

“I don’t know,” Mike needled. “A woman will do most anything for some good cock.”

“God, you’re crude,” I said, shaking my head.

“Hey, Boss,” she laughed. “I wasn’t the one making the bitch squeal like a pig on the end of a stick.”

“You’ve been drinking this early?” I frowned.

“Nope,” she grinned. “Just my normal ornery self.”

“And to think I actually missed you,” I sighed, shaking my head.

“Missed you too, Boss,” she said and paused. “Speaking of bitches - how are you feeling about you-know-who?”

“It’s Cynthia, Mike. You can say the name, I can,” I said. “Can’t say it doesn’t still hurt a little if I think about it, but not enough so you’d notice. Most times I don’t think about it at all.”

“So you did fuck her out of your system!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “I told you you would!”

“Damn, you’re crude,” I shook my head. “But yeah, I guess you were right. So, has anybody been thinking about my little brain freeze when I sort of hinted we may have the vets organized around here? I guess Natalie was right: now that I’ve shot off my big mouth, I’m going to have to do something about it.”

“We’ll talk about it when we meet the team, Boss,” she said, not even looking at me.

“So, how about a hint?” She didn’t even bother to answer. “You’re not going to give me anything, are you?”

“Not a God-damned thing, Boss,” she smirked.

“Bitch!” Don’t you hate it when you call a woman a bitch and she just laughs at you?

---

“Hey guys, good to see you still alive,” I said, slipping into the booth and scooting down next to Natalie Bernstead as Mike used her hip to drive me over and plopped down in the end spot.

“Glad you’re back, Cap’n.” “Have a nice one?” “Looking good, Captain.”

“You look like shit, Captain,” Top said, then he added thoughtfully, “Nice tan though.”

“Yeah, well, I might have forgotten to take my sunscreen tabs once or twice,” I admitted. “Hey, Nat, how’s everything going?”

“Just fine, Danny,” she answered from where she was scrunched up against the impressive bulk of Sam Kolbe, her lover. “You seem to be feeling better.”

“Not bad,” I shrugged. “I’m over my tantrum, if that’s what you mean. You in town for a while?” If you’ve forgotten, Natalie Bernstead spent the whole ten years of the war as a USO singer. The whole fucking ten years! If there was a vet anywhere that didn’t know, respect, or even love her for the service she did for us, they must still be in a coma. She’d been touring on the road since the war ended, but it was still in the smaller venues, mostly vet communities and such, but never as a headliner in any of the really big concerts. I suppose if you held me down and threatened to cut off my balls, I’d be forced to admit she didn’t have the best voice so far as professional standards of the day are concerned, not that I gave a shit about that. I still think it’s a crime she didn’t get the post-war recognition she deserved.

“Not touring anymore, Danny,” she grinned and looked up at her huge paramour. “I got better things to do than sleeping alone in some cruddy motel room.” Stan, Sam’s brother, rolled his eyes and snorted.

“What else?” he asked, exasperated. “The only thing you ever do is...”

“Stan,” Sam interrupted softly, tapping his finger on the table. “That’s enough.”

“Well, it’s true,” Stan protested. “The least you could do is put a sound curtain on your room.” I almost grinned. What Natalie lacked in quality, she made up for in volume. Probably came from doing shows so close to the front lines that she had to do them a cappella. Depending on the tactical situation, there were times when any electronic emissions, even those from something as small as a voice amplifier, would be an invitation for a visit from an AR (Anti-Radiation) buzz bomb. She even had a few guys traveling with her playing acoustic music at the time and still traveled with them on some of the more recent tours.

When was the last time you actually saw a real band playing? Not often, if ever, would be my guess; playing a real instrument in front of a live crowd is a dying art. I know, the AI-generated music is technically better and note-perfect, but it doesn’t have the edge that a live band has. Besides, I don’t know about you, but I can instantly tell the difference between a simulated beat and the sound of an actual stick banging on the skins of a real drum. Both have their place, I suppose, but the sound of a real stick man seems to go better with the faster, harder music I like.

“We do have a sound curtain, Stanley,” Natalie said sweetly. Like I said, volume...

“Anyway, Danny boy,” she continued. “Now that you’ve killed some brain cells and cleared your soul of that stupid bitch, it’s time you got to work.”

Natalie and Cynthia were actually good friends and knew each other well. That didn’t mean Natalie approved of the way Cynthia treated the men she trapped and dumped. Natalie was empathetic by nature, and the cruelly casual way her friend treated the feelings of her multitude of lovers didn’t sit well with her. Still, sometimes a friend has to overlook the flaws in the other, or there would never be friends anywhere; kind of like I overlooked Mike’s drinking. I could tell she was still pissed about it, though.

“Yes, Mother,” I said, trying to sound repentant. The sharp elbow to the side made it clear she didn’t believe it for a moment.

“Oof!” I hissed. “Okay, okay. Point taken. But you know you clowns don’t have to get involved with this if you don’t want to. God only knows what kind of shit I’m going to be jumping into. I have a feeling trying to bring even some of the vets together in some kind of coherent organization is going to be like trying to herd cats with mice strapped all over your body.”

“Don’t think it’s going to be as hard as you think, Captain,” Top mused thoughtfully. “I think it’s an idea whose time has come. It’s been almost eight years since the war ended, and honestly, I don’t see things getting much better.

“Sure, we were heroes for the first few months right afterward,” he continued. “But now it’s like we’re nothing more than an embarrassment. They’re talking about cutting our ‘lifetime’ pensions again, and what they’ve done to the widows and children of our fallen comrades is criminal. Not only have they cut their benefits again, now there’s whispering about cutting them off entirely.”

“Yeah,” Brian added. “Now that the country is finally getting back on its knees again, those fat-asses in NW are starting to think they should run the place again. (NW, that’s New Washington. It used to be a suburb of Kansas City called Independence, but when Washington D.C. was rendered uninhabitable by a “dirty” bomb, they moved the seat of the federal government to the center of the country, hoping it would be safer.)

“That’s right, Boss. I’ll bet they even start trying to enforce some of those fucking laws they have again,” Mike said, tapping the pack of Mexican Marlboros I had sitting on the table in front of me.

“Well, we can’t have that, now can we?” I answered, tapping one out of the pack and lighting up.

“While you’ve been gone, we’ve been doing a little reconnoitering of some of the associations around here,” Top said, smiling as he leaned back in the seat. “You might be surprised at just how much the vets around here think getting together a little more formally is a good idea.”

I was surprised. When Top used the word “associations,” he was being exceedingly generous. For the most part, the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who made it out of that goat-rope alive wanted little more than to be left alone. I understood their feeling completely; I felt the same way. All I wanted to do was to mind my own business and have everyone else keep theirs out of mine. These associations he was talking about were nothing more than informal networks of vets who happened to know each other or probably served with each other. As a group, the vets were about as apolitical as you could get, almost to the point of being anti-political, and I was surprised to hear any of them would be even willing to talk about maybe coming together into something a bit more formal.

A friend of mine with a hell of a lot more brains in this area than I do, a forensic sociologist no less, once told me this postwar period where the veterans essentially disappeared into the background was a necessary healing ― a grieving period. I suppose he was correct; maybe it did take that long before even a few of us could drag ourselves back into the land of the living at least enough to care that the country so many of us died for was spiraling down into a shithole.

True, the country ― and the rest of the world for that matter ― was recovering from the war, but slowly at best, and a lot of what was coming back wasn’t particularly good. Take crime, for instance. Say what you want about the war, but it virtually eliminated crime as a problem, especially violent crime. It’s somewhat counterintuitive when you think about it; after all, most of the police and law enforcement personnel who were smart enough to know something more than just the location of the local donut shop (a bad stereotype I know since donuts had been outlawed along with all other fried foods by then) had been pulled into the military in the first few years of the war.

You would have thought the criminals would have run amok without anyone there to stop them. Actually, that did happen for a short while until the Universal Conscription Act in the second year of the war made anyone convicted of anything more than a minor misdemeanor eligible for immediate enlistment in the army. Remember, for the most part, criminals are dumb, really dumb, and even a fat, dumb cop can catch an even dumber criminal. Once caught and convicted, it was two weeks of basic training and into the jungle or out on the burning sands where it was a ninety-nine percent probability they wouldn’t be coming back to cause any trouble. “Repeat offender” was a term that had lost almost all meaning.

For about eight years, the most violent and least sociable of our population was culled. It actually made it fairly peaceful for those that remained. Unfortunately, this culling ended with the war, and those that were too young to be thrown into the meat grinder grew up. The young thugs grew up and filled in the vacuum left by a justice system still trying, and failing, to catch up with them. I doubt there were any more troublemakers or misfits in that generation than there ever were, but it didn’t take much. Crime breeds crime, so the worse it gets, the more we get. Besides, there were a lot of single-parent families in the States then, and it’s politically unpopular to say single-parent households are breeding grounds for crime. I don’t give a shit if you believe me or not, but in this case, the statistics don’t lie.

So crime was a real problem, although not necessarily in the areas vets tended to congregate. Looking back, I suppose it was selfishness more than anything, or maybe just an inability to look and really see what was happening outside our own little world. It was getting bad, and even if we wanted to ignore it, we couldn’t. Sooner or later, it would affect us, whether we wanted it to or not ― kind of like what happened to Tink.

If crime wasn’t bad enough, there was the corruption. When D.C. got hit with that dirty bomb, it didn’t kill as many people as the terrorists had hoped, and it certainly didn’t kill the right people. I know it’s been said forever, and it’s probably true: it really doesn’t matter who’s at the top; they’re all the same. Either they start out corrupt to get the job or the system corrupts them as they do everything they can to keep it. All I know is at that time there wasn’t much of a justice system, and it didn’t seem to apply to those at the top at all. I’m not going to say the elections were rigged because I’ve never seen any proof they were, but it seemed the only time there was a change was when someone retired or died. Come to think about it, there probably wasn’t any need to tweak the votes given the almost universal voter apathy.

Most of us just wanted to be left alone, and the rest were just trying to survive. Besides, the ones in power, especially at the national level, had become so entrenched that most races were run uncontested. Change hadn’t been a particularly high priority during the war, and it kind of spilled over into the postwar years. It probably would have gone on that way for quite a while except the fat bastards living in their huge estates around New Washington seemed to want to start sticking their fingers in everybody else’s pie again. What is it about someone who has everything? For some reason, it’s never enough. If they’ve taken everything that isn’t already nailed down and pried up what they could, they want to start telling everybody else what to do with the crumbs left over.

I could see it happening all over again. Tobacco was illegal, but for almost eighteen years, nobody really tried to do much about it. The same with beef, fried foods, sugared drinks, and everything else that made life worth living. By the way, I’m firmly convinced avoiding these pleasures does not increase your lifespan; it just seems like it. Bullshit, you say? Well, all I know is most of the so-called doctors that babbled that crap are dead, and I’m not. Who’s laughing now?

There was already more talk about increasing the various federal agencies tasked with policing these horrible crimes. I swear, there were times when I really believed the crime syndicates were lobbying the Fed to crack down. You think I’m joking? Who do you think benefits most from this kind of nonsense? Make something illegal or more difficult to get by increasing your interdiction, and the price goes up on the black market. If you don’t believe me, just look at the fifty years and billions of Old Dollars wasted on the dismal failure called the War on Drugs. Did it stop the use of drugs? No. What it did do was make a lot of really nasty crime bosses filthy rich and harder to get rid of than cockroaches. Shit! We still have them today! Under control for the most part but still here.

Like I said, you may think I’m joking, but I’m sure if we could look hard enough at where the money and motive for the resurgence of the “sin” laws, you’ll find the people who were already smuggling the stuff had their hands in it. I’ve had the chance to talk to some of these people over the years, and although I’ve never had one actually admit this to me directly, I’ve garnered enough to know I’m right.

As they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty, but to tell the truth, it wasn’t what I was thinking about back then. All I wanted was to keep the monsters out of my own backyard who wanted to use kidnapping as another revenue source. I don’t think anyone was thinking of much more than that, but it must have been there somewhere under the surface because if what Top was telling me was true, the vets wanted to talk, and it surprised me.

“You’ve already been talking with other vets?” I asked.

“You didn’t think we’d be sitting on our asses while you drank and fucked your way through SA, now did you, Boss?” Mike guffawed and gave me an elbow to the side.

“Oof,” I grunted. “Watch it, Mike. You could poke a hole in someone with one of those.” I should have kept my mouth shut.

“You saying I’m boney?” she hissed, sounding outraged, and jabbed me again. “You think something’s wrong with me? Just because I ain’t carrying the fat around like the skanks you’ve been boning...”

“You’re not boney,” Weird added helpfully. “Just skinny.”

“Skinny!” she shouted. “Why you little sexless...”

“That’s enough, Mike,” I commanded, putting my arm around her shoulder. I knew I was leaving my gut open for another pounding, but I was hoping to diffuse the situation quickly. A bruise on the ribs was worth it, or I should say another bruise on the ribs. Mike had a tendency to wind herself up for no reason at all sometimes, and while I didn’t worry about it becoming lethal ―much ― it could get messy.

“You are perfect just the way you are,” I soothed. “You are a slim, sleek, sinewy jungle cat. Deadly and beautiful at the same time.”

“Damn right I am,” she muttered and looked over at my hand on her shoulder. “You are so full of shit I’m surprised your eyes don’t turn brown.” My eyes are brown, greenish brown anyway. Reaching up, she grasped my hand with her thumb and forefinger and pointedly picked it up and removed it. “And keep your hands to yourself; I know where they’ve been.”

“Sinewy jungle cat,” she preened. “I like that.” Everybody laughed, and Mike settled down, although every once in a while, I could hear a subdued growl coming from her direction. Sometimes I had a tendency to forget that Mike may be one hell of a soldier and deadlier than a viper, but she was still a woman, a pretty woman at that. My sexual interest in Mike was just about zero, but she was still one of the best friends I had, and I needed to remember to acknowledge that side of her once in a while. She was on the unhealthy side of skinny as far as I was concerned, but pointing it out to her wouldn’t be constructive.

“Anyway, back to the subject we were discussing before being interrupted by our Pampas cat,” Mike sat up, grinned, and preened again. “You have already been talking to some of the others?”

“Yep,” Top nodded. “In fact, we have a meeting right here, tomorrow night at twenty hundred hours, with a few of them.”

“That was quick.”

“Had it all set up already,” he shrugged. “We were just waiting for the word that you were coming back.”

“Have you already decided what we’re going to talk about?” I asked curiously.

“Funny you should ask that,” Natalie broke in. “In fact, we’ve been talking about it for a while now. Here are some of the ideas we had...”

Edited by Morgan

Chapter 2

- Daniel-

They were already there when I arrived, which was a bit embarrassing since I’d tried to come early, specifically to be there before them. There were four in addition to Top and Mike, who was hovering around in the background trying to blend into the crowd, which in a vet bar wasn’t difficult.

“If I’d known I was going to be the last one, I’d have made a grand entrance,” I quipped, reaching down to shake the first hand I could reach.

“Bill Maker, St. Petersburg,” said the short, roundish man with the neatly trimmed mustache and dead-cold eyes. His body may have been round, but he wasn’t out of shape, and I don’t think I’d ever want to meet him in a face-to-face fair fight. I doubted that would ever happen. He was a survivor, and survivors hardly ever fought fair. I know I didn’t.

“Colonel, 82^nd Airborne,” I replied. “Seven years in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Republic...”

“Eight actually,” he said, waving to stop me. Then he paused and looked thoughtful. “Or maybe it was seven, and it just seemed longer. No, it was eight, but that’s close enough. Good to finally meet you, Captain.” He had the short, clipped tones of a British officer but was American clear to the bone. It wasn’t unusual for someone who spent that much time over in the sandbox. I’d met a number of fellow officers who’d adopted their British comrades’ mannerisms and speech patters; it was hard not to. Say what you want about the Brits, but their officers were professional, competent, and as cool under fire as a block of ice; they breed them that way, I think. There was a lot to admire in our islander cousins, and it had a tendency to rub off. I smiled, and he smiled back, but there was very little warmth behind it. I moved on to the next one.

“Jim Preston, Tarpon Springs, Marine Forward Expeditionary Forces,” he said. His smile was friendly and wasn’t forced.

“I think Top mentioned you once or twice,” I nodded. “You were in both theaters, weren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “They moved us around a bit. Couldn’t find one place bad enough to kill us, so they’d try another; almost succeeded once or twice.” I could only grunt in agreement.

“Carla Medford, Sarasota,” the next one said, offering her slim, impeccably manicured hand. “US Strategic Air Corp.” Even before the war started, the Air Force had been split, with most of its tactical and logistical wings transferred to the Army or the Navy, depending on their intended use. What had been left was mostly the nuclear deterrent arm: the highly mobile strategic stealth missiles and the space-based defense platforms. It was highly unlikely she had ever seen combat in the same manner the rest of us had, but I also knew she had been head of one of their security divisions, and from what I’d heard, they had seen plenty of action against domestic terrorists, infiltrators, and idiot peaceniks wanting to eliminate our nuclear protection. Like her hand, she was slim and elegant-looking. I knew she had to be in her mid-fifties, but she obviously didn’t disdain modern cosmetic enhancement; she appeared to be an ageless thirty. She reminded me a little of someone I didn’t want to think about.

“Lt. General, I believe. I’m very pleased to meet you.” I smiled at her, but she gave me little more than a hard, appraising stare.

“Shara Billings, Lakeland,” the final one said. Her handshake was firm and no-nonsense. Where General Medford was slim and graceful, Billings was squat and mannish. If she had been trying to give the impression of the stereotypical bull dyke, she did a great job.

“A fellow UNer, I believe,” I said, and she grinned. She had been a Lieutenant in the UN’s Special Operations unit. They had been the planners behind the Special Forces. If we were the pointy end of the spear, they were the hands pointing us. It’s easy for us slope-headed grunting types slogging through the jungle to feel disdain for the REMFs who seemed to do little more than tell us where to go and who to kill, since it usually turned out to be the wrong place, the wrong time, and the wrong targets.

During the first couple of years of the war, that’s pretty much exactly how it happened, but by the end, I have to admit they were doing a pretty damn good job. I’d seen Billings’s name on a number of our operational briefings in the last couple of years, although I’d never met her in person and have to admit I couldn’t think of anything particularly nasty to say about her. Sure, there had been a couple of real clusterfucks, but during war, if anything actually goes right, you count it as a blessing; a pooch-screw now and then is just standard operating procedure. Besides, if we didn’t get stuck in a good ol’ goat-rope now and then, we’d probably start believing in all kinds of silly things like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and effective government assistance.

“Hope you don’t hold it against me,” she said.

“Naw,” I answered while sitting down in the one empty chair. “No hard feelings. Although I have to admit there was a time or two if I’d have had one of you SpecOps types out in the field with us... Well, let’s just say we might have had a discussion or two as to what the term “minor resistance” really means.”

“Are you still whining about that ammo dump?” she chuckled. “What a baby.” The dump she was referring to happened to be a big mother-fucking dump and was supposed to be lightly defended by only a platoon of Indents, that’s indigenous local militia. What we found was a whole fucking battalion of Vencoms; that’s Venezuelan-Communist troops and tough fuckers for sure. The Vencoms were well trained, well equipped, dedicated to their cause, and like all Chavezistas, willing to die for their supreme leader. It was one of those fur-balls I was talking about, and it still gave me nightmares every now and then.

“You got the job done and out of there with all the skin on your ass,” she continued. “What more do you want?”

“Fuck you too,” I grunted, and she sat back in her chair and laughed out loud.

“If you two are finished with your requisite insults and recriminations, can we get to the point of this meeting?” Maker asked, tapping on the table. “Are we here to talk about a little treason?”

“Treason?” I blurted, more than a little surprised. “Not that I know of. I mean, I didn’t ask you here to form a cabal to overthrow the government, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Pity,” he said, steepling his fingers in front of him. “I’ve been thinking lately that a little treason might be in order around here. If you’ve noticed, events have been tending a tad toward the chaotic recently.” Billings and Preston nodded in agreement, while Carla Medford just looked at me as she tapped a long, thin cigarette out of a decorative case and lit it.

“Yeah, well, maybe they have,” I grunted. “But trying to cure the world’s woes isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

“What exactly do you have in mind?” Medford asked, blowing a cloud of blue, perfumed smoke in my direction.

“Something a little more local,” I smiled, lighting one of my own Mexican Marlboros and blowing the smoke back at her. She smiled just a little at that. I’d been right; she was testing me, pushing just a bit, probably just to see what I would do. Would I blow up, cower, or push back? “I’ll admit I haven’t been paying as much attention to what is going on as I should have. Ignoring it and hoping it would go away and leave me alone, I suppose, if you want me to be honest. But unfortunately, I can’t anymore. A situation arose a couple of months ago that demonstrated clearly to this ostrich that he’d better get his head out of the sand, or out of his ass, if you prefer.”

“We saw the recording, Captain,” Maker interrupted. “Quite a respectable little operation you had there. Nasty bunch, those. I wouldn’t have bet a brass penny you would have been able to get the little skirt out alive, but you did. Quite respectable.” I looked over at Top, surprised they had seen the recording. He just looked back at me with that little smile of his that made me want to serve up roast Top for dinner.

“Quite insane is more appropriate,” Medford interjected coolly. “If you had been working for me, I would have had your balls nailed to the wall of my office for a stunt like that.” Involuntarily, I squeezed my legs together and just stopped myself from reaching down to make sure the boys were safe. I don’t think I was the only one.

“I’m afraid I have to agree with you on that,” I said, looking at her. “At least about the insane part anyway.”

“There were probably a dozen better ways to do it,” I admitted as I continued. “But I was a little pressed for time, and none of them came to mind right then.”

“I told you about these SpecFor guys,” Billings smirked. “Crazy doesn’t even begin to describe them. You may think they’re all insane, but that’s only by using your own frame of reference. It doesn’t apply when you talk about them. It’s like wondering why a cat doesn’t act like a dog. It doesn’t because it’s a cat, not a dog.”

“You make us sound superhuman or some such shit like that,” I snorted.

“Captain, humans don’t survive what we sent you into,” she responded casually. I was a little taken aback by that but couldn’t think of a pithy response, so I got on with the business at hand.

“Since you’ve seen the recording, I’ll get right on to what we brought you here for,” I started. “Now, I’m not against a little bit of smuggling in principle. I’ve done a bit of it myself a time or two, so I can’t say I’m personally riled up about Juan Carlos or his group, even though I wouldn’t want them as neighbors or anything like that. For the most part, their operation doesn’t bother me; the kidnapping shit does, and I’m thinking of taking a little harder look at their methods of procuring sex partners for our high and mighty around here. I’m thinking their idea of ‘consensual’ and mine might not be coming from the same dictionary.

“The fact is, if we allow this kidnapping-for-ransom business to get started here, there will be hell to pay getting it out. Now is the time to stop it. As you heard during my little talk with Juan, I might have inferred, if one was inclined to take it that way, that there was a little bit more of an organization behind me than there really was.”

“I’d say that was an understatement, ol’ boy,” Maker chuckled. “I’d say if their organization found out it was just the seven of you, they may believe it worth the effort to remove you.”

“Exactly,” I nodded. “There aren’t just seven of us anymore, though. My team has been recruiting a few of the local boys and girls who are of like mind, but we’re just starting. In a month or two, we’ll probably have enough signed on so that my slight exaggerations won’t have been a complete lie. But that’s for just here in the Tampa area; we don’t have anything where you live, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the same kind of crap popping up there if they think they can get away with it.

“Top has been doing a little research, and it looks like the kind of snatch-and-grabs I’m worried about are beginning to increase all around the Gulf and up the Eastern Seaboard. I’d like to snuff it out altogether, but for now, I’d be happy with just keeping my own backyard clean.”

“So what do you want from us?” Medford asked neutrally.

“Ideas, information, mutual support,” I fired back. “I don’t even know if it’s possible, but I’d like to organize the vets around here in a kind of mutual aid society. Look, we all know the local cops don’t have the wherewithal to handle these people.” Billings and Preston rolled their eyes while Maker and Medford looked at me nonplussed. “They’ve had it too soft for too long now. Even the few vets joining the local cops haven’t been able to stiffen the force’s backbone up to even jellyfish level. Shit, I wouldn’t be surprised if half the force was on the take now, with the other half filling out their applications even as we speak. If someone is going to do it, it’s going to have to be us.”

“And I suppose you want to lead this ... mutual aid society?” Maker asked.

“Me?” That really did surprise me. What did they think I was trying to do, take over their “territory?” “Not in this lifetime, Colonel. Let me say this very clearly: No. Fucking. Way.”

“Then just what are your expectations for this organization?” Maker noticeably relaxed. He may have even smiled, but I couldn’t be absolutely sure; it could have been a trick of the light. “If you aren’t to lead then, who will? An army needs a leader, doesn’t it?”

“This isn’t the army, and no offense, General,” I nodded towards Medford, “but we don’t need or want someone with stars on his or her shoulder bossing us around.”

“Here, here,” Maker grunted, tapping the table again. “I agree completely. But I must add, a group of people - even veterans - without some sort of leadership isn’t an organization, it’s a mob.”

“True,” I reluctantly agreed. “I have to admit I haven’t thought this out completely, but that’s part of the reason I invited you here: for ideas. I guess I was thinking in terms of a number of local, well-known vets getting together like this, exchanging ideas, and planning things together.”

“So we would form our own cabal, our own syndicate, to fight their syndicate,” Maker chuckled. “There is some poetic justice in that.”

“I can’t say I like the sound of that,” I grumbled. “But I suppose if you really want to be honest - a rose by any other name...”

“I understand what you are looking for here and agree in principle,” Medford said, dropping her cigarette into the butt-kit on the table. “I propose we meet next week, at the same time, and continue this discussion. That will give us some time to think and get a feeling for what is or is not possible in our own local areas. Any disagreements? Comments?”

“Where do you propose we meet, General?” Preston asked.

“Why not right here if that is agreeable?” she said, waving her hand around Bennie’s interior. “It’s centrally located, appears to afford us privacy if we wish it, and has an interesting ambiance. Plus, I can smoke here without having to shoot anybody.”

“I think that wouldn’t be a problem, Carla,” I said purposefully using her given name.

“I didn’t think it would be, Daniel,” she answered with just a hint of a smile. “And I believe security shouldn’t be a problem here either. By the way, you can tell your pet attack dog she can stand down. I don’t think any of us will be trying to take you out anytime soon. Her hand stays a little too close to that piece she’s packing under that jacket for my comfort.” She obviously wasn’t talking about Top.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I answered slowly. “I didn’t bring anyone here for protection. Hell, I didn’t even consider the need for it.”

“You trying to tell us the brunette with the legs fleecing the rubes at darts ain’t one of your team?” Billings chuckled.

“That’s Sergeant Darlington,” Top interjected. “And the Captain didn’t ask her here for protection. In fact, he didn’t ask her here at all; I did.”

“Ah, the infamous Sergeant Nibs. You have a nasty, suspicious mind, Master Sergeant Marker,” Shara chided and then grinned. “I heartily approve.”

“So do I,” Medford added as she uncrossed her legs and stood up. “But you can tell her to stop looking at me like I had concentric circles on my back. At the very least, you could inform her I don’t do my own wetwork. It musses the nails.” She pointedly looked down at her perfectly manicured hands.

“I’ll let her know,” I said with a chuckle.

---

That week started a number of interesting changes; some I liked and some I hated. The changes at Bennie’s fell under both of those categories. First, what I hated: the installation of sound curtains around a number of booths and tables in the back of the room. All right, I admit it was necessary, and the privacy was welcome too. They weren’t so much standard sound screens as security curtains. Once activated, you could set them so it just muffled the din of the exterior room as a whole or set at max, it added distortion to the sound block. It would take some mighty sophisticated gear to penetrate those blocks, and even lip-reading wouldn’t be possible. It added quite a bit of security when I met with my group every night as we plotted, planned, and reported.

I know the security was necessary, or could be necessary, but I missed the ambience of the main room: the music, the cursing, and the sounds of a bar filled with friends or near friends having fun. At least they could be turned off when we were finished.

The main reason they were necessary according to Bennie, aside from our security and the necessity of keeping what we said away from some unfriendly government or syndicate weasel’s ears, was the sound level in Bennie’s was becoming - to say the least - intense and customers were complaining they needed a break from it just to hear themselves think. I’m not sure exactly who convinced Bennie he needed top-of-the-line military-grade equipment, but I had a notion it was probably Top along with Weird. I didn’t bother to look all that closely, but if I had, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised that I had subsidized some of it. Not that I cared one little bit; we got security, and Bennie made his customers happy: win-win as far as I’m concerned. Even better was the fact that not everybody had the codes that would move them beyond just a sound screen, only a few select regulars.

Besides, if I’m being honest, it’s more than a little our fault he even needed the damn things. Actually, it was Natalie’s fault, and her being there was Sam’s fault, and Sam being there was my fault ... Anyway, you see why I didn’t mind so much.

Why Natalie’s fault? Easy. What do you think happens when you bring the number-one USO singer into a bar of vets night after night? Remember Natalie was probably the only good thing they remember during the whole freaking time they were in the service. They knew her, they loved her, some of them even worshipped her. What are they going to do? That’s right, ask her to sing. Practically every single night she was there while I was gone - which was most nights she wasn’t on the road wrapping up her tour commitments - there was the constant “Na-ta-lie! Nat-ta-lie! Nat-ta-lie!” as they begged, pleaded, and groveled for her to sing. She did, of course, with Sam’s enthusiastic permission. Let’s be fair: yeah, she had given up the road but not because she didn’t like to perform. Hell, she loved to perform! She’d given it up to be with Sam, and this was her chance to stay in the spotlight and bask in the adoration of the crowd. Truthfully, it’d scare the shit out of me, but she thrived on it.

Anyway, when I’d left on my little jaunt, Bennie’s had this little rinky-dink stage with a pathetic sound system without even AI-assist. They told me after a week or so of her giving them one or two sets a night, the crowds more or less forced Bennie to upgrade all of it. Pretty soon, other singers were asking if they could sing there, and it wasn’t long before Bennie’s was wall-to-wall sound from just after 2000 hours until closing time in the wee hours of the morning, much to the disgust of its owner.

“God damn it, Mayhem,” he groused to me. “You people are fucking up my place totally! I wanted a nice, quiet dive, and now I have this fucking rock-and-roll palace!” I commiserated with him. I kind of missed the quiet times myself, but the music was damn good. Luckily, Bennie’s greed superseded his desire to retain his carefully planned ambiance; it’s hard to complain too loudly when you’re raking in the cash faster than you know what to do with it, and the sound curtains helped. About two-thirds of the place was given over to the new rowdy loudness, while what remained stayed pretty close to what we once had. Like I said: I loved it and I hated it.

Anyway, we could meet in peace, review what we’d all done for the day, and make sketchy plans for the next, and then get shitfaced, dance, or soak up the tunes, sometimes all three. Actually, the good did seem to exceed the sucky parts; didn’t mean I stopped complaining right along with Bennie, but nobody paid much attention anyhow.

Actually, I did stop after a while, at least out loud. I think what finally did it was when Tink told me to shut up and stop whining. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have a girl about the same age as your daughter tell you to shut up, sit down, and soldier on? Needless to say, I took her advice and rolled with the punch in my normal stoic and fatalistic fashion. Some lowlifes called it pouting, but we know it wasn’t, really.

Yes, I still talked to Tink. I hadn’t forgotten what her mother did to me, but she wasn’t her mother, and besides, I really like the little squirt. She’d call or send me a video message every other night or so just to update me on her tour, which was going great from what she could explain. Truthfully, I hardly ever thought about Cynthia anymore; too busy for one thing, and just maybe having tried to fuck myself to death for two months helped. It didn’t hurt, I can tell you that. Anyway, she was just a memory that mildly pissed me off but nothing more than that. I’m not going to lie and say I felt I was lucky to be rid of her, but at least it didn’t ache any more the few times I happened to think of it. So Tink and I kept in touch, and I have to admit I kind of liked it.

---

“Has everybody given a thought to what we want to accomplish here?” Medford asked as she casually lit her long, thin cigarette and blew the blue-colored smoke up towards the ceiling. I nodded, and she waved her hand in my direction as if to give me the floor.

“I think so,” I said, still nodding. “To begin with, I’d like to make a proposal on how we, the people around this table, should govern our little enterprise. Bill was right last week: no matter how independent each of us wants to be, we have to have some rules as to how we work with each other. I’m not suggesting we force anyone to do it this way, but whatever we come up with, we should all follow it. If anyone doesn’t like it, they don’t have to play in our sandbox.” Everybody nodded in affirmation.

“First, I think we should look at ourselves as a sort of executive committee. Everybody is an equal, although I do think we should have a chairman to lead the discussions, or else they’ll probably be about as chaotic as recess time in kindergarten.”

“I agree,” Maker added. “I think we should take care of that first. Who should be our chair?”

“I nominate General Medford,” I said before anyone else could speak up. I was hoping to forestall even the possibility that it would be me. The best defense is to attack early and quickly.

“Why am I not surprised?” she responded dryly. I guess I didn’t fool her one little bit. “Any other nominations? None? Very well, I accept for now. I suppose the first order of business is to decide what the hell we’re going to call ourselves. Any ideas?”

“How about the Veterans Benevolent Society?” I said. “The VBS for short.”

“Sounds about as good as anything for now,” Preston snorted. “Although I’m not sure how benevolent some of your society members have been to some of the more undesirables in the area,” he waved in the general direction of the street.

“Anything that might have happened was done with kindness and compassion,” I said sweetly. “For the good people in the area anyway. The thugs, muggers, and rapists, to be truthful, I couldn’t give a shit about. Don’t tell me there haven’t been similar, ah, cleansings, in your part of town?” He just shrugged.

“I think we can all say the same about our own areas,” Shara Billings added. “But I do think one of the first things we should do is try to develop a set of rules for what we do and to whom - our own rules of engagement, if you will. We can’t just march around and snuff people we don’t like. If we do that, we’ll be little more than a bunch of paramilitary death squads. We have to have some rule of law, even if it’s our own law.”

“I completely agree,” I nodded, and everybody else did also.

“Shara, would you start drafting your thoughts on the matter and bring them to us next week?” Carla asked. Shara nodded and made a note on her comp.

“Now, as for short-term objectives for this benevolent society,” she continued. “What should they be?”

We thrashed that one out for quite a while and actually came up with a pretty long list, but to break it down into simple bites, essentially it came down to three things: First, to protect the lives, property, and honor of veterans. Second, to prevent the encroachment into our sphere of influence of undesirable organizations and practices; and last, to assist in any way possible the families of veterans who died during or after the war. As far as we were concerned, the widow (widowers) and orphans were just as much a part of us as our brothers or sisters in arms had been.

Looking back, it was a pretty unremarkable beginning for something that would become far bigger than the five people sitting around that table.

Edited by Morgan

Chapter 3

Interlude: Pat and Brad

The doorbell chimed its warning, and Patricia slowly made her way to the front of the house to answer it. Fucking debt collectors, she thought tiredly. Haven’t they figured out you can’t get blood from a stone? We already live in government housing. What the hell else do they think they can take away from us? One more month, Harold, just one more God-damned month!

Patricia’s husband had died almost eight years before in the last month of the war, leaving behind his young wife, two daughters, and a third that had been conceived just weeks before his ill-fated return to duty. The death benefit had lasted a few years with her thriftiness and her position in cosmetics sales for a local beauty spa, plus the ever-decreasing survivor’s pension kept them more or less fed but just barely, and there were those emergencies that always seemed to happen... It meant they could never get ahead and were in fact slowly slipping into desperation. The apartment they could keep; it was guaranteed, but if they started to attach her meager pay... At least they would have a roof to starve under.

“Look,” she said, resigned to a half-hour or more verbal fisticuffs with a bill collector who was, after all, just doing his job. “We don’t have anything to give you. I’m sorry, but there just isn’t...” She stopped abruptly when she saw who was standing in the doorway. Actually, she had no idea who the handsome young man was, but she was fairly sure no bill collector would be calling, carrying a very large box. A very heavy box, also, she surmised from his bulging forearm and bicep muscles, and there were quite a few of both of them.

“Mrs. Patricia Henderson?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered slowly.

“You are - were - the wife of Lance Corporal Harold Henderson, ma’am?” he grunted.

“Yes,” she answered again, now more curious than resigned.

“Great,” he huffed. “Ma’am, do you mind if I put this down? This sucker is heavy!”

“Sure, put it down wherever you want,” she said. “It’s yours, after all.”

“Actually, it’s not, ma’am, it’s yours,” he said with a grin.

“Mine? But I didn’t order anything,” she stated and then added ruefully, “I doubt anyone would give me the credit to buy a bag of air, let alone anything else. I hope you don’t expect to get paid for whatever it is you’re pushing because if it cost a nickel to fly around the world, I haven’t got enough to get out of sight.”

“No, ma’am,” he reassured her. “This is a gift from the VBS. It doesn’t cost you anything. Mostly food and a few toiletries and such. Not much, I’m afraid, but we’re just getting started.”

“The VBS?” she asked, puzzled. “Who the hell are they, and by the way, who the hell are you?”

“Oops, sorry,” he muttered sheepishly. He set the box down at his feet with a grunt and fished a card out of his shirt pocket. “I’m new at this and still forget.” The card was a plain white business card, the likes of which she hadn’t seen for years since most contact information is transmitted com-to-com. It read simply in bold script, Veterans Benevolent Society, Bradley Miller, Field Representative.

“I take it you’re Bradley Miller?” she asked, staring at the card.

“Yep,” he said, the grin still plastered on his face. Reaching into a back pants pocket, he pulled out a wallet and flipped it open. He extracted another card and passed it to her. This time, she recognized it as a standard Government Issue service identification card issued to all present or past service members. Harold had had one just like it. They were supposed to be impossible to forge.

“Can be faked,” he said as if reading her mind. “But it’d cost a hell of a lot more than I’d be willing to pay.”

“Okay,” she said, handing the card back to him. “I believe you are you. That still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing here or what’s in the box. Oh, what the hell, come on in. No sense trying to talk with you standing out there.” She opened the door wider and stepped back, giving him room to enter.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, stooping down to lift the box with another groan. He carried it in and glanced at her questioningly, silently asking where she wanted him to set it down.

“Oh, on the table, I guess,” she answered, waving towards the rickety table that came with the apartment. He looked at the table, arched his brows, and then down at the box.

“I don’t think that’s going to hold it, ma’am,” he finally said. “Do you mind if I just set it down on the floor?”

“No, go right ahead,” she said as he put it down and straightened up. “And could you stop with all the ‘ma’ams’? You make me feel even older than I already do. Now, can you please tell me what is going on here?”

“Sure can, ma’am- Mrs. Henderson,” he said as he pulled up one of the chairs next to the box and sat down. He wasn’t even looking up at her when suddenly there was a huge knife in his hand, with its blade springing out and clicking into position. Patricia gasped when she saw it and took a step backwards.

“Oops, sorry about that,” he said sheepishly. “I keep forgetting people can get kind of nervous around knives.” With three deft movements, he sliced the tape holding the lid together, the reinforced tape parting like magic as the blade whispered over it. When he was done, the knife disappeared like it had never been there. Patricia had no idea where it went.

“It’s just a tool to me,” he continued as he pressed the lid back and reached in to pull out an armload of stuff, which he deposited on the table. “Never really even considered it a weapon, although I suppose it sure could be. I never liked knife fighting personally. Always figured if someone was close enough to stick it in, they were too damn close for my liking. Sorry about the language. Got to work on that too, I suppose.”

“What is all this?” Patricia asked, her curiosity over what he was piling on the table overcoming her momentary fear of the man and his knife.

“Well,” he said, picking up a tube that looked like an old-style toothpaste tube. “This is a field ration or FI-RAT for short. There are other names for it, but I wouldn’t say them in the presence of a lady. It’s got all the nutrition needed to sustain your average combat soldier in the field for one day. You and your youngest could probably get by with half a tube a day but eat as much as you want; we got plenty. Make sure you drink plenty of water though; it kind of expands in your stomach. You might want to try to get your oldest two to eat a whole one every day though; kids like them need a lot more calories than us lazy butt-sitting oldsters. Just use what you want and recap it; doesn’t even need refrigeration.”

“My husband used to talk about these,” she said idly, picking one up to look at it. “He said they taste like sawdust.”

“Oh, he got the good ones then,” Bradley laughed. “Seriously, they taste like crap, but they’ll keep you alive forever. I’m not saying you have to eat them exclusively, but none of you have to go hungry ever again. There are a few other things in here: some teeth cleaners, field towels, and some, ah,” he blushed and looked everywhere except at her, then added quickly, “some female things some of the wives packed.” Patricia leaned over and looked in the box and then up at Bradley with a grin.

“A big, strong man like you afraid of a few paper pads?” she teased.

“Not afraid, just embarrassed,” he admitted. She knew she could tease him some more, but right then, there were other things she wanted to know.

“This is wonderful,” she said as she felt tears in her eyes. “But why? Why are you giving this to us? We can’t pay you for it. I can try, but to be honest, I’ll probably never be able to.”

“It’s already been paid for,” he said as he looked straight at her, his voice hardening with every word he spoke. “Your husband paid the price for this and much more eight years ago.”

“But...” she started before he interrupted her as he continued.

“You saw the card, right? You probably haven’t heard of us before since we’ve just started, but the VBS is a group of us vets who have gotten together to help out those of us that need help. The American people’s memories seem to be even shorter now than they have been in the past, and we vets seem to be getting the pointy end of the stick. Cutting benefits, reducing pensions... the whole ball of wax. We know the survivor’s pension you’ve been getting is getting smaller and smaller every year, and it won’t be long until it’s not just tiny, it’ll be nothing. There’s not much we can do about that for now, but we can help ourselves out as much as possible.”

“But I’m not a veteran!” she blurted before he could stop her.

“You yourself didn’t fight in the sand or the jungle,” he replied. “But your husband did. That makes you one of us for as long as you want to be. You need something, just ask, we’ll see what we can do.”

“But how can you afford to do all this?” she waved her hands at the box helplessly.

“Well, I’m not going to say we have all the money in the world,” he answered. “But we have plenty to do this little bit now. Doesn’t take all that much, to be honest. The fi-rats - shoot, the government has whole warehouses filled to overflowing with them, all excess to their needs. They sell it through consignment brokers, but there hasn’t been a real big demand up till now. The government won’t let them trash it, but otherwise doesn’t seem to care how much they sell it for. We pick it up for literally pennies a kilo, and they’re glad to get rid of it. Buying at a slow, steady pace keeps the price down, but don’t worry, there’s more than enough for everybody.”

“This says you’re a field representative. What does that mean?” she asked as she looked at his card again.

“It means I’m here to help you,” he said. “I’ve got another four families pretty much like yours, and it’s my job to help you with whatever we can. I’ll be coming by with supplies like these every week, but if there’s something you need before that, don’t hesitate to call me. I can’t guarantee we can solve all your problems, but we can sure give it a shot.”

“You’re like a case worker,” she stated. She remembered seeing one of those once when she applied for the apartment but not since. She’d heard you could get an appointment with one if you wanted to wait two years. She hadn’t even bothered. “But you’re not with the government?”

“Well, Uncle Sammy pays my military pension,” he grinned. “So I guess you could say the government is paying me to do a job they should have been doing right along.”

“So this VBS doesn’t pay you?”

“Not like that,” he admitted. “Never asked, to tell the truth. I do get cash every now and then if there’s something I need to get that we don’t stock, but I find I don’t need it that often.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head.

“You don’t have to, Mrs. Henderson,” he said, standing to take his leave. “Let’s just work on getting you back on your feet and then work on understanding.”

“Is there something I can do to help?” she asked as she also stood.

“Maybe sometime,” he answered after a thoughtful pause. “Like I said, some of the wives come in to help pack for us, and I’m sure they’d be glad for the help now and then. But the important thing is to get you and the girls up and running again. There’ll be plenty of time to help out later.”

“You seem to know a lot about us for being a complete stranger,” she said. Ordinarily, she might have felt threatened with someone showing up out of the blue knowing so much about their personal life, but for some reason, with Bradley Miller, it didn’t. For absolutely no reason she could put her finger on, she trusted him.

“Just public files, Mrs. Henderson,” he answered. “We won’t invade your privacy, I promise.”

“That’s another thing, Mr. Miller,” Patricia huffed. “I’m not old enough to be a ma’am, no matter that I may look it, and I haven’t been Mrs. Henderson for eight years. I loved my husband, but he’s dead. Please just call me Patricia, or Pat.”

“Sure thing, Pat,” he grinned. “And you don’t look old, and you know it. You’re one of the prettiest women I’ve met and look younger than me, although I happen to know you are just a tiny bit older. Mind if I ask a personal question? Don’t answer it if you don’t want to. In fact, you can tell me to go fu- lose myself if you want. But why haven’t you remarried? Like I said, you’re very, very pretty; I’m sure you have plenty of guys coming to call on you.”

“Well, that is a very personal question,” she laughed. “And thank you for the undeserved compliment. I suppose I have had a few dates, but all they really wanted to do was go to bed, and once they found out I have three little bundles of joy, they usually didn’t even want to do that.”

“Stupid,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“Well, what about you? What does your wife think about you visiting all these lonely, desperate widows every day?” she teased.

“No wife,” he grinned. “And no steady right now either. Haven’t seemed to settle down long enough over the past few years. But someday maybe.”

“As for all you lovely widows,” he continued. “The captain made it perfectly clear that if he caught me taking advantage of any of you just because you might feel gratitude for what we’re doing, he’d nail my ba-hide to the wall and use it for target practice.”

“Well, we certainly wouldn’t want your - hide - nailed to the wall, would we?” she asked with a giggle. “The captain?”

“Captain Mayhem, Pat,” he nodded, also grinning. “Hopefully, you’ll get to meet him soon. A real interesting guy; a legend in the service and about the nicest person you’d like to meet for all his reputation.”

“Reputation?”

“Hmm, not sure I should tell you until you’ve had a chance to meet him,” Brad said after a pause. “Let’s just say he’s not the type of person you want to have mad at you. He and his team were in the Special Forces, if that means anything to you, and they were very good; very, very good.”

“I think I will do my best not to get this Captain Mayhem mad at me then,” Patricia answered with raised eyebrows.

“I think I can say with personal certainty that you would not be able to make him angry,” Brad assured her. “Now, if you have anybody messing with you, that might do it. He’s a widower himself, you see, and feels kind of protective when it comes to dependents and children.”

“I wish he were here now,” she muttered, mostly to herself.

“Oh? And why is that?” Brad asked, his smile disappearing completely.

“Nothing, nothing really,” she said, trying to shrug it off but relented under his withering stare. “Well, there are these guys downstairs. They haven’t done anything to me except a few comments here and there, but Charlene...”

“Charlene’s your oldest, right?” he asked thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “About fourteen, if I remember. They’ve been giving her some trouble?”

“Nothing, I suppose... Nothing we can do anything about anyway,” she said, clasping her hands tightly as she looked down at them. Then suddenly it gushed out, “They tell her they’re going to make her their whore! They surround her and touch her and...” Suddenly, Patricia broke down and started crying. “The police say they can’t do anything until they actually do something, but by then...”

“It’s okay, Patricia,” he said soothingly as he wrapped his arms around her as she began to cry in earnest. It felt good to have strong arms wrapped around her, and the years of frustration, desperation, and helplessness flowed out with the tears soaking into his shirt as she buried her face in the crook of his neck.

“There, there,” he whispered as he gently stroked her hair. “It’ll be all right, I promise.” She clung to him desperately, and he winced as her nails dug into the skin under the fabric. Finally, she cried herself out, and he released her immediately as she gently pushed herself back.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffed. “I feel like such a fool.”

“Crying doesn’t make you a fool,” he said gently. “Sometimes holding it in does.”

“But I got your shirt all wet,” she sniffed again, straightening his collar. “It’s such a girly thing to do.”

“Well, you are a girl,” he laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about it. I dry out just fine. Now, do you have the names and which apartments these brave boys happen to live in?”

“But there are four of them,” she stammered with concern. “You shouldn’t confront them. I’m afraid of what they would do to...” you, is what she almost said. All of a sudden, she didn’t want to think about Bradley confronting those thugs; she didn’t want him hurt.

“Won’t be me,” he sighed as if with regret. “The captain doesn’t want us field reps getting involved in things like this. But don’t worry. I have a feeling I know who he’ll send, and believe me, after they’re done explaining the facts of life, you won’t have any more problems. But if you do, call me immediately. Anytime. Do you understand?” She nodded.

“Will I see these gentlemen?” she asked. “How will I know them if I do?”

“If they’re the ones I’m thinking about, you’ll know them,” he grinned. “Just think big: really, really big.”

“Okay,” she said in a small voice.

“You all right now?” She nodded again. “Then I’ll be going. You have some things to put away unless you need help with that.” She shook her head.

“That reminds me,” he said as he turned back after taking a step towards the door. “You thought I was someone else when you answered the door. Do you mind if I ask who?” She told him about the bill collectors and how they had been hounding her.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said in exasperation. “I owe the money, and I want to pay, but I can’t. I don’t have it.”

“Get me a list of who you owe, how much, and for what,” he said. He didn’t tell her that with a word or two to the right person back at the office, he could have the information, probably quicker than she could write it down. “We’ll talk to them about a repayment schedule and get the vultures off your back.”

“I’ve tried that,” she said, frustrated. “They wouldn’t even talk to me.”

“They’ll talk to us,” he said casually. “Let me take care of it. That’s what I’m here for.

“And Patricia,” he said, reaching out to gently grasp her shoulders, “you’re not alone anymore. It took us a while to get our shi- act together and wake up, but we’re here now, and we’re not going to go away. If you need us - me - for anything, call.”

As she closed the door, it suddenly felt like the crushing weight she’d been carrying on her shoulders for over eight years was gone, and she skipped back to the kitchen table to dig into her magical box like a child on Christmas morning.

---

- Daniel-

“It’s moving along much more smoothly than I had thought it would,” Carla Medford admitted with a stylishly raised eyebrow as she looked over at me. “I wish it were so easy everywhere.”

“We got lucky if you want to blame it on anything,” I said with a shrug. “We have a lot of good people here who were just waiting for something or someone to give them a little direction. They want to help but haven’t known how until now. We also have a higher number of vets around here, which makes it easier to find the few we can use. Some of you don’t have that advantage.”

“Partly true,” Bill Maker nodded as he peered over his steepled fingers. “But let’s be honest: Carla and I haven’t been able to make the same progress as the three of you, and I think we all know why.”

“And why is that, Col. Maker?” Medford asked coolly as she took a drag on her cigarette.

“We don’t run in the same circles as the others, Carla dear,” he answered sweetly with a slight grin. “To put it bluntly, we associate with the upper levels of society and don’t have the same connections that Daniel, Shara, or Jim have.”

“You make me sound like a snob,” Medford answered with a frown.

“Carla,” he said patiently, “if we lie to ourselves, this is doomed to failure, and you know that as well as I do. I understand this isn’t combat,” he paused and then chuckled, “although I see some of Daniel’s people have been into a bit of the roughhousing here and there. But even though it’s not combat and failure doesn’t automatically mean death, it’s still not something we want to happen.”

“Let’s be realistic,” he continued, spreading his hand almost pleadingly. “Where do you and I spend our time? At the club, the downtown restaurants, vacations in Europe. It’s the lifestyle we enjoy, and I don’t apologize for that; but where would you and I meet and get to know the sergeants, the seamen, the privates, the ones who are really the ground forces in this campaign?

“Take this Bradley Miller, for example,” he said, picking one report out of a stack of similar ones. “Corporal, U.S. Army Ranger; three years of combat experience and in less than three weeks already doing one hell of a job as one of Mayhem’s field reps. Would you be able to find a Bradley Miller in Sarasota? I haven’t been able to in St. Pete. Mayhem found and recruited him in two days. Ask yourself why. Why? You know why. It’s because he lives here,” he spread his arms as if to encompass the whole of Bennie’s. “He lives among them every day. If he didn’t know Mr. Miller already, he knew someone who did or someone who knew someone who did. We don’t have the same contacts.”

“Don’t bite off the head of the messenger, Carla,” Maker grinned. “The contacts we have, the people we know will be important, and I’ll get to that in a moment; but for this particular aspect of the battle, they are useless.”

“There is some truth to what you say,” she frowned and stubbed out her smoke in the butt-kit.

“You know it’s true,” he nodded. “You and I have always been on the back end of the fighting: the planning, logistics, and intelligence. We worked at putting the people who could get the job done in the places they needed to be and then letting them do what they do best.” I happen to know his soothing platitudes weren’t exactly accurate. He’d been a divisional commander, and while I don’t doubt he never spent a whole lot of time in the trenches, so to speak, I do know he was intimately involved in repulsing an attack on his HQ by Saudi jihadists that left him wounded three times. The engagement report indicated he was a pretty fair shot with a standard rifle despite what his slightly pudgy frame might lead you to believe.

“So what do you recommend?” she relented with a sigh.

“Ask for help, of course,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Jim and Shara have been doing a pretty fair job organizing the people in their area, but Daniel’s looks more like an army every day. Maybe he has a couple of wily senior non-coms who would agree to assist us.”

“Do you?” Medford asked, looking at me.

“I don’t know,” I answered with another shrug. “I’ll ask around and see if there is. Could be you have the people right there in your own towns and don’t even know it. Maybe Top will know if somebody meeting your requirements lives around where you do. If he does, I’ll leave it up to you to recruit them unless you think one of us talking to them might help. If not, I’ll see if there’s anyone who would be willing to slide on over your way for a month or two.”

“Jolly good,” Maker thumped the table and grinned. “Just make sure they know we will make it worth their while if they do. No living in Sarasota or St. Pete on a pensioner’s salary. I think we can consider this as closed for now.”

“Bill, you mentioned that yours and Carla’s contacts will be important in the future. Do you mind telling us what you mean by that?” Jim Preston asked.

“Not at all, not at all,” he said, sitting upright and leaning on the table with arms folded. “Are any of you familiar with the Irish Republican Army and their battle to drive England out of Northern Ireland late last century?”

“Wasn’t Northern Ireland amalgamated into the whole of Ireland back in the 20s?” Shara asked with a puzzled expression. “Weren’t they some sort of terrorist group?”

“A terrorist is just a partisan for the losing side,” Maker chided. “But as it turned out, it didn’t matter whether they were terrorists or freedom fighters, since the return of Northern Ireland to Ireland had nothing to do with them. I use them as an example only because of the organization they employed. One part was distinctly military and was the ones directly attacking the British and Protestant forces. Additionally, there was the Sinn Fein, their political arm. Sinn Fein was the visible and legal part of the organization using politics to accomplish what the military couldn’t. What we need is a Sinn Fein.

“I know politics is a dirty word,” he continued, holding up his hands to quell our protests. “But again, we must be honest. To do what we want to do, we have to start injecting ourselves into the political process.

“Jim’s idea to use war surplus supplies was brilliant, and for the pennies we’ve been able to put towards it, your clients have reaped a tremendous benefit. But we all know that won’t last forever. Sooner or later, the surplus will be gone, or somebody else will start bidding against us, and the prices will rise. And while those of us with a little means have been able to spare a bit, we all know that won’t last either. There are just too many in need. It’s going to take the resources of the U.S. Government, and to direct those resources in the direction we desire, we need leverage, political leverage.”

“So you want to start a political party,” I said. I wanted to spit to get the bad taste out of my mouth, maybe rinse it out with some dog shit or something. Just about anything would taste better than the “P” word.

“Quite,” he nodded. “A new political party not associated with either of the existing parties.” I didn’t have a problem with that; I couldn’t stand either the Peace Party or the Democratic-Republicans. “By remaining independent, we will be able to leverage our numbers, which may seem large to us; there are some ten million veterans and at least another twenty or so million dependents and survivors, but in political terms, they’re actually quite small - definitely a minority.”

“And you have a front man in mind for this party?” I asked.

“Front woman, actually,” he smiled subtly. “I submit that our good general here is perfect for the task. She is extremely handsome, well-spoken, cultured, well-connected, and of course, a veteran of high rank. I might add she is also wickedly intelligent and utterly ruthless when it comes to the battle of the knives.” I was intimately familiar with knife fighting, but that wasn’t what he was talking about.

You would think that in the middle of a war where millions of people were dying, quite a few of them your own, that the constant backstabbing, bickering, and inter-service rivalries would be put on hold at least until there was a decent idea that the country you were supposedly fighting for would survive. Yeah, right! Fat fucking chance. If anything, it was even more intense as more and more resources were diverted from the civilian economy towards the war effort. These weren’t the type of fights where someone sticks a knife in your belly and rips up; no, nothing that civilized. These were the types of down-and-dirty brawls where you nick the opponent just enough to make them bleed, and then you do it again. And again and again, about a thousand times until this is little more than a pile of bloody hamburger.

Of course, it’s not done with real knives; that’s just a metaphor. No, it’s done with the sharpest weapon of all: words. “General Bennington looks a bit drawn today. I wonder if the news of that mess in Khartoum shook him? A whole battalion wiped out! Well, I’m sure he’ll recover nicely; he always does after one of these disasters.” “I hear they hit the Airlift Command depot again last night. It’d be nice, don’t you think, if they could find someone who could protect these assets? I know, I know, Walter is doing the best he can, and God knows I wouldn’t want that job. But still...” A little bit here, another nibble there, constant and relentless, it’s like being eaten by ants, one tiny chunk at a time. I suppose it’s a damn good thing I didn’t have to get involved in it at that level; I’d have probably pulled out a gun and shot one or two of them. I doubt they would have appreciated my direct and unassuming manner, though; I heard they get upset when someone played the game but ignored their rules.

I once heard from a reliable intelligence source - yes, I can actually use those words in the same sentence without gagging - that the bickering and non-cooperation got so bad at times that up to twenty-five percent of our casualties could be attributed to it from the misdirection of resources, withholding of vital information, and outright deception. Twenty-five percent seems a bit high to me, but I do know there were one hell of a lot of wasted lives because these slimy bastards played their stupid games just to see who could get one more star before the other one did. God, I hate them! If I could ever find out who did that and if they did it on purpose, I’d seriously think about letting Mike have a little target practice; consider it a retroactive abortion.

But Col. Maker had a good point. Carla retired as a Lt. General, and that’s just about as high up as you can get. To get that far and survive, you had to have played the game of knives pretty well. In the political waters, she would be just another shark, whereas someone like me would be chum.

“You flatter me,” she said as she lit another cigarette.

“What about someone like the captain here?” Billings interjected. I think I came as close to killing someone as I had in years, and I let my look at her make that perfectly clear. She smiled back at me and continued, “As you pointed out earlier, he’s well known by the vets and respected. He’d be like a magnet drawing them in around him.”

I would?

“Which is why he should be down there in the trenches with them,” Maker pressed. “It’s true the combat vets like you, Daniel, or at least are in awe of you, which for our purposes means the same thing. You work well organizing them, and we’re going to need that for some time in the future.”

“Besides,” he leaned back and smirked, “the thought of Captain Daniel Mayhem roaming free in a political cocktail party boggles the mind. The carnage alone would be entertaining but hardly productive.”

“It would be amusing to bring him to one once in a while, though,” Medford said drolly. “If for no other reason than to see who defecates in their designer suits.”

“So I’m the barbarian brought in to scare the civilized folk into line?” I chuckled.

“Weapons are often used in that manner, Captain,” she said with a smile. For some reason, that smile didn’t comfort me much. “Knowing your opponent is armed always changes the rules of engagement.”

“Sure, until someone figures out you’re bluffing,” Jim added.

“Captain, how often do you bluff?” Carla asked, looking straight at me.

“Never, if I can help it.”

“Neither do I,” was all she said.

“I’m not arguing against what you’re saying,” Billings mused. “Just thinking out loud. I agree Carla would be a good front face for the organization. You’re smart, sophisticated, and being beautiful never hurts, but is it something you’re willing to do?”

“At the risk of sounding conceited, I have pretty much come to the same conclusion the colonel has. Of the five of us, I probably have the most experience in this type of war.” She paused for a moment, leaned back, and smiled; this time it was a real smile. “Besides, getting back into the game sounds like fun.” I have to admit I shivered a little when she said that. Then she frowned, “Of course, I’d probably have to quit smoking again. Can’t do that in front of the vid cameras. I hope you know how much of a sacrifice this will be.”

“I don’t know how much help someone like me will be working on that political shit,” I admitted.