Political Pressure td-135 Read online

  "I don't care who you compare it to, you're underpaid. No wonder you live in that dive in Rye."

  Mark Howard tried to make sense of the rapid-fire insults and compliments.

  "Don't worry about it, Junior. I'll take care of it."

  "Remo, I do not want you interfering in my relationship with Dr. Smith."

  "Working with Weird Harold's the very reason you ought to be making a hell of a lot more than you do," Remo said.

  "Can we discuss the mission, please?"

  Remo was pleasantly surprised that, for once, it wasn't him being bogged down in idiotic minutiae. This time, he was the bogger instead of the boggee.

  "Okay, shoot, what's on the agenda?" He couldn't help but grin.

  Mark Howard made a sound like he was trying to massage the stress out of his forehead. "Federal Circuit Court at 1:00 p.m. A bunch of state employees hired by the last governor—get this, a bunch of wealthy campaign contributors found a loophole that makes it legal for them to give a personal cash gift to the governor and get employment for their wives or kids or friends in return, and the new job pays more than the cash gift. But the employees were fired by the incoming governor, which he technically did not have the right to do. They're suing to get their jobs back."

  "Yawn," Remo said. "Can't we go after some of the real lowlifes? There's crossing guards out there selling crack to grammar-school kids. Aren't they getting offed by the same bunch of do-gooders?"

  "This is the most high-profile case in the country involving blatant corruption," Mark said. "We tracked a Colorado killing this morning that was probably a White Hand murder. We think it's a prelude to something big and this is it."

  "I hope you're right," Remo said. "This is turning out to be an expensive business trip for the company."

  12

  Boris Bernwick was experiencing a high level of career satisfaction. How many people who liked to murder— professionally, or just as a hobby—got so many opportunities to commit murder? Talk about your dream job.

  And to think how far he'd come.

  Bernwick had started out as a soldier with the good old U.S. of A. and had excelled. Basic training was like a playground romp. The other recruits hated him because he tended to bawl them out after their sarge had already bawled them out. But they deserved it. They were pussies, and they needed to know they were pussies. Bernwick, as the one and only nonpussy, had the responsibility and the obligation to inform said pussies of their pussy status. Eventually, a gang of the other recruits tried to give Bernwick a lesson in teamwork. It happened in his bunk in the middle of the night. They whacked him with a few lengths of pipe that were then hastily reattached to the urinals. The sarge, an understanding sort, allowed Bernwick to individually box his five attackers, bare-knuckle. He knocked them out, every last one of them, sent them to the infirmary, and they all had to repeat basic. Losers.

  Bern wick was quick to rise through the ranks, and if he had one complaint about being in the Army it was that the Army was so damn peaceful. He saw precious little action—until Iraq.

  Bernwick had heard the stories about the first campaign in Iraq, when some soldiers unofficially committed a few atrocities against the Iraqi soldiers. Bernwick never did quite see the problem with killing the enemy. That was the whole idea of Desert Storm, wasn't it? So what if the enemy was unarmed and surrendering at the moment they were killed?

  He never heard of any U.S. soldiers being disciplined for such actions in Desert Storm, and sure as shit no solider was going to get disciplined for it in 2003.

  Fucking embedded journalists.

  See, those fucks were supposed to be on video blackout during the fighting. How was Bernwick supposed to know the blackout was lifted during certain lulls in the hostilities? The idea was to send front-line video back home showing the U.S. military offering humanitarian aid and succor to the surrendering soldiers of Iraq.

  Humanitarian aid to the enemy? No way, Bernwick thought. Succor? He had something the Republican Guard could succor.

  Bernwick shot a few of them, four or five, so what? And so what if they were processed and shackled and scarfing down MREs because they hadn't been fed in days and they weren't armed with any weapon more lethal than a plastic spoon? So what? They were Saddam's solders. They were the enemy.

  But you should have heard the bleeding hearts go yap yap yap, just because Bernwick got caught on video hosing down the POW picnic and just because the video happened to be on the air, globally, within twenty minutes of the last towel-head flopping over dead with a mouth full of half-chewed ham steak.

  It seemed even less than twenty minutes before Bernwick was facing a full-sized court-martial His military lawyer told him that his "They were Iraqis! They were the enemy!" defense was simply not going to work.

  "Because of the damn media, right," Bernwick demanded. "Nobody would have cared if I wasted a bunch of camel jockeys if that fuck from the network wasn't there filming it all. Am I right? Well, am I?"

  "I'm sorry to say you are not right, Captain," his lawyer answered regretfully. "You would face court- martial regardless. The fact that you created a huge amount of negative public relations during a time we can't afford it—that does make this a high-profile case."

  Bernwick shook his head, laughing bitterly in his jail cell on the Kuwaiti base. "You may be educated, pal, but you ain't got a clue, know what I mean? The only reason I'm knee-deep in the shit is cause of that fucking cameraman. If it weren't for that, it would have been no big deal. Just another truckload of dead Ay-rabs and they're a dime a fucking dozen."

  Bernwick found out later that his Army-appointed defense lawyer, whom everybody call Al, was really Army Colonel Akhmed Al-Duri Bey.

  Bernwick left that whole mess behind and good riddance. It was his old sarge from basic training who saved the day. The old sarge had been treated bad, same as Bernwick, and got knocked back down to sarge and now he was managing a bunch of mechanics who worked on Hummers and Bradleys.

  "I'm outta here," said the sarge. "I had enough of this-here puss-army. And I got some prospects, son, and maybe I got you a way out."

  Bernwick was all ears. He liked what the old sarge had to say and he mostly liked the idea of not having to sit through the court-martial hearings.

  "Count me in, Sarge."

  "I ain't through tellin' you yet, son."

  "I heard enough," Bernwick said.

  The old sarge nodded, and his eyes became moist. "You're a good man. You got real guts. I'd trade my own good-for-nothin' boy to have a son like you what I could be proud of."

  Bernwick was deeply touched. The sarge's son was with the Pentagon, technology research, developing nonlethal weaponry.

  Nonlethal weaponry! The pussies who wanted non-lethal weaponry were the same pussies who got irate when a bunch of Iraqi enemies were shot dead while shackled together eating U.S. Army Meals Ready to Eat.

  "I don't even care what else you have to say, Sarge," Bernwick had insisted, fighting back his own emotions. "I trust your judgment. Count me in."

  Sarge smiled, revealing several gaps in his teeth, and held up a security card. "First, though, I get you out."

  Sarge and Bernwick walked out of the lockup, but they didn't get far. The alarm sounded. The base was full of MPs. The place was practically deserted, what with most of the forces on a camping trip in Iraq, and losing themselves was impossible. Sarge and Bernwick took out a couple of MPs really quiet, bashing their heads in and stealing their vehicle. More MPs came after them. Sarge drove and Bernwick emptied the stolen rifles. Scored at least two more Military Pigs.

  It never even crossed his mind that he was killing the same soldiers he had fought beside for six years. Later he thought about it, but his conscience was clean. After all, it was them who fucked him.

  Anyway, Sarge took a hit. He slumped over with blood coming from his shoulder and Bernwick grabbed the wheel, yanked the sarge into the back and drove like a bat out of hell with automatic rifle fire burning the a
ir around him.

  Four MP vehicles waited at the base entrance and the rolls of barbed wire were being put into place over the entrance.

  He wasn't going to make it.

  That was when Saddam Hussein stepped in and gave Bernwick a little bit of friendly help.

  The air-raid sirens went off and the MPs at the gate began to don their chem-bio suits. It was the whoop of the top-level siren. That meant full body protection was needed.

  Morons, Bernwick laughed. None of the SCUD attacks had yet included biological or chemical agents, not to mention the fact that those pieces of missile shit flew off course like an old lady driving at night without her spectacles. And half the time they were blown up in the air by a U.S. Patriot missile anyway.

  So, while the morons were suiting up, Bernwick took a deep breath of the clean desert air and plowed into them full speed.

  To this day he got a chuckle out of remembering how those MPs went flying in all directions, one guy still holding his headgear. The barbed-wire barrier was taken out by a pair of bodies that sailed into it and yanked it off the gate before flopping across the sands in a thick tangle of wire and bleeding bodies.

  His vehicle was still in working order, so Bernwick drove away.

  Half an hour later, he bashed in the sarge's head with the crowbar from the jeep.

  Sarge showed his yellow belly right there at the end.

  "Son, I ain't dyin'! It's a shoulder wound, for God's sakes!"

  "You'll slow me down, Sarge," Bernwick explained, disappointed in the old soldier.

  "Then just leave me for the Army, son!"

  "You think they won't get the truth out? About where you and me were headed?"

  "My lips are sealed, swear to God, son!"

  "You know what they'll do, Sarge," Bernwick said in an even, emotionless voice. "You were the one who told me what they do to a man who won't talk."

  Sarge's wet eyes focused on the sky.

  "They say that they shame a man into tellin'," Sarge said resignedly, then he looked purposefully at Bernwick. "I don't want to be shamed, son."

  "I know you don't, Sarge," Bernwick said. Then, after the sarge's skull was cracked open, he said again, "I know you don't."

  Sarge had some stolen military ID for Bernwick, and that got him home, months later, through Turkey. Once he was back in the good old U.S. he arranged to meet a man at a restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia.

  The man was young, scrawny, pale, but he had a way about him. You listened to him talk and you believed in him. You listened to his opinions and you agreed with him. You experienced his sermons and you had faith in his vision.

  "This war will be fought on two fronts, Mr. Bernwick," the man said with grave enthusiasm. To everyone he was simply the White Hand's head of armed forces. "Call me Haf." Haf always wore a high-quality fake beard and a wig.

  "There will be the public face of our organization, people being groomed to take on the role of spokesmen and legislators. But they will never stand a chance without the backing of true soldiers. I need warriors who are not afraid of dirty work, not afraid to fight for our cause, to open the doors to the future. Without those soldiers, there really is no future for us."

  Bernwick wanted to jump up and down like a little kid on Christmas morning. "I'm in."

  Haf closed his eyes for a moment, as if saying a silent prayer of thanks. Bernwick never felt so valuable in all his life, and he walked out of the restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia, with his self-esteem up in the stratosphere.

  Nowadays he was General Boris Bernwick, and his self-esteem was still floating around up there, right under the feet of the angels. He loved his job, he was good at his job, and he was helping to make his country a better place. Hell, he was helping to carve out the future.

  Today they were doing some good. They were making things better for all of America. All it took was a little janitorial work. You go in with your room-broom automatic rifle, sweep up some of the filth and go away.

  Haf put his hand on Bernwick's shoulder and smiled at the description. "Janitor? Boris, don't sell yourself short. In my mind, you're more like a doctor. One of the specialists at the cancer hospitals who go in and cut out the tumors that no other doctor could cut out."

  Yeah, a doctor was way better than a janitor.

  "You're the surgical specialist, Boris," Haf said. "You go in and cut out the rotten growths. Then the front-end people are the healers, the ones who transplant in the good parts to replace the discarded ones."

  Bernwick liked that a lot.

  "There have been political parties in the past who have tried to do what we do," Haf explained. 'They have good ideas and a strong ethical backbone. They take out some of the cancerous organs and replace them with healthy organs. But you know, it's never enough, is it?"

  "No," Bernwick said as if he understood, but he wasn't sure he did.

  "Think about it, Boris," Haf said. "If I have cancer of the lungs, stomach, spleen and colon, the doctors don't go in and just take out the lung cancer."

  Now Bernwick understood. " 'Course not. Your patient is still sick."

  "Exactly," Haf said. "And getting sicker all the time, even if his lungs are better. The patient is still dying."

  Bernwick nodded. "You got to cut out all the cancer and stick in all healthy new organs. Even one piece of cancer could still kill the guy."

  "Or the nation," Haf said, his eyes ablaze with passion. Bernwick felt it, too, the drive to do what was right.

  "Boss," Bernwick said seriously, "you point me at the bad organs and out they'll come, even if I got to cut them out personally." He gestured with his hand as if digging around inside a human body with a small surgical tool.

  "Dr. Bernwick," Haf said with admiration, "I know it. I see the fire in your eyes. And when the bad ones are out, I'll have plenty of healthy organs to replace them. We'll save the patient yet, you'll see."

  Bernwick smiled to himself as he stood in the darkness. The whole damn nation was going to see. It was going to be better than a recovery. This time the patient was going to come out stronger than when he went in— stronger than ever before.

  Bernwick touched his watch and the glow showed him it was 9:04 a.m. Court was now in session.

  "General, our spotter says the courtroom is full up," reported one of his Special Forces recruits who pressed an earpiece to his head. "Right on schedule."

  "Good," Bernwick said in a low voice. "I know it's not too dignified spending the night in a storage closet, but you're all real soldiers and you've shown your professionalism today. Now it's payoff time. We'll move at 0920, as planned."

  There was a murmur of relief from the commandos. They had all known active duty with Special Forces, but this overnight wait had been tense. They could not ignore the nagging uncertainty stemming from yesterday's mission by their brethren in Chicago—a mission that cost the life of every member of the Midwestern cell of the White Hand.

  Bernwick had tried to hammer it into their heads that the Chicago mission had not failed. The target was achieved. But even he didn't buy that load of bullshit.

  A lot of their comrades died yesterday. No matter how dedicated you were to the cause, it was tough to look at the job as well done when you got killed doing it.

  He had been able to keep his cell isolated from the news pretty well, but then, last night, they had slipped through the security in the courthouse and taken up their station, and then they sat there with nothing to do for six long hours except think about Chicago.

  Time to address it again, head-on, no more bullshit, Bernwick decided. "This is not going to be a repeat of yesterday. Is that understood? We have a smaller space, fewer participants. Our job is easier because the environment will be under our control. I guarantee you this—we go in aggressive and alert, we're going to be invincible. Nobody, but nobody, is going to stand in the way of a professional soldier. Is that understood?"

  "Yes, sir," said a chorus of voices.

  "Good," General B
ernwick said, his own confidence ratcheting up a notch. "Now let's go shoot some civilians."

  13

  "It is no wonder that your courts are not trusted," Chiun stated imperiously. "This trial is a farce."

  "Can't argue with you there," Remo said. They had VIP seating, in the third row behind the families of the fired state workers. Remo knew little and cared little about style and fashion, but he knew expensive clothing when he saw it. Lots of custom tailoring, designer labels and dead animal pelts. This bunch was not hurting for cash. But to hear the opening arguments, every one of the families of the fired workers was on the verge of poverty.

  "It is a sad story the attorney tells," Chiun said, leaning slightly over to whisper to a hippopotamus-sized woman in her early fifties. Her face paint revealed her suspicion, but she saw sympathy in the childlike eyes of the ancient man.

  "It has been horrible to lose my job," she whispered in return. "It makes you feel helpless."

  "It is a despicable breach of trust when a king promises to support his people, then does not."

  The woman considered that, then nodded sincerely and rotated her girth to face Chiun more fully.

  "You are a very incisive gentleman," she said.

  Chiun smiled and closed his eyes in gracious acceptance of the compliment. Remo scooted to the left, opening the gap between himself and the conniving old Korean. He concentrated on listening for unusual noises, but he couldn't help overhear the conversation next to him.

  "I come from an ancient lineage," Chiun said. "My ancestors left their village in Korea to work for rulers around the world and there were many times that we were cheated by rulers who promised us payment."

  "Ix-nay," Remo muttered. Chiun knew good and well that he was not supposed to talk openly about Sinanju.

  "My goodness, how awful! I know just how it was for you to suddenly lose the income you have been promised. It was terribly anxiety-producing to my family."

  Chiun nodded. "You have many mouths to feed, and now nothing to feed them."

  The woman looked uncomfortable. "Well, there's actually just Raymond and myself. The twins are at Notre Dame and my daughter is a state representative. But we do have the schnauzers, Jack and Jill."