The Fiery Trial Page 5

  Once the campaign had begun to take off and real money and operatives had begun to flood in, Governor Bryan had been convinced to quietly shuffle Deckard, who was generally an unsettling presence off the stage. But once he had lost and gone off into his Vice Presidential exile, most of those moneymen and gone astray, but Deckard had remained forever faithful. Now that he had genuine power, President Bryan remembered who his genuine friends were.

  "Thank you for your help with the Seattle business," the President said after Deckard was finally reasonably satisfied that the room was clear of detectable listening devices.

  "Let's not talk about that here," said Deckard.

  "Alright. But it helped. Without that, we wouldn't have had the impetus to really act."

  "I know, I know," replied Deckard hurriedly, "but now they're really going to come for you. And soon."

  "I know," said the President quietly, coming to a sudden stop and gazing out the window, "and that means I'm going to need to ask a great deal of you."

  U.S. Courthouse, Seattle, WA

  "This is fucking bullshit," Seth McLean whispered to his attorney as he was led into the courtroom.

  Two days earlier, barely a week after King County had declined to prosecute him for murder or any other offense, a Federal Grand Jury had indicted him for "Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction" on the grounds that the gun that he had used to kill Harris Folsom had a barrel with a diameter greater than one-half an inch, which allowed it to qualify as a "destructive device" within the wording of the applicable statute.

  "Just keep quiet, Seth," whispered the lawyer in response.

  "I can't believe that a Grand Jury went for this," said McLean.

  "This is Seattle, Seth, are you really shocked?"

  As they sat down, the Clerk began to speak.

  "The United States District Court for Western District of Washington is now in session, the Honorable Malcolm Jackson presiding. The case of U.S. v. McLean will not be heard. Will counsel please identify themselves for the record?"

  The Assistant U.S. Attorney stood up.

  "Good morning, your honor. Casper Gillian for the United States."

  "Good morning your honor," said McLean's attorney, "Jesse Watkins for Mr. McLean."

  "Mr. McLean," began the Judge, "you are here today to make an initial appearance before this court. You have been charged with violation of Section 2332(a) of Section 18 of the United States Code, the use of a weapon of mass destruction. The maximum penalty attached to this charge is death. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, your honor," replied McLean.

  "We waive the reading of rights," said Watkins.

  "Very well," replied the Judge, "now, as to the question of bail..."

  "The government requests that the defendant be held without bail, your honor," announced the Assistant United States Attorney.

  "My client is a respected member of the bar and a noted political activist," replied Watkins, "and these charges are not remotely likely to result in a conviction. We believe that he should be released on his own recognizance, your honor."

  "Your client is charged with terrorism, Mr. Watkins," said the Judge by way of an answer.

  "Bail is set at $10 million," said the Judge.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A Hedge Fund With an Army

  CNN Headquarters, Atlanta, GA

  "Within minutes of the end of the initial appearance, Mr. McLean's bail was posted by the controversial Praetorian International, a private military contractor which has been accused of war crimes in the Middle East, Africa, and the Canadian Civil War," replied the anchor.

  "Indeed," intoned the legal analyst, "this is a surprising development on multiple fronts. While Praetorian has been active in opposing the present Administration, they've avoided being tied too closely to any particular political cause as, of course, they are a lightning rod for criticism."

  "The CEO of Praetorian issued a statement a few minutes ago," continued the anchor.

  "Praetorian is committed to the principles of fundamental justice," read the anchor as the words were splashed across the screen, "and the prosecution of Seth McLean is a travesty. The full resources of the Praetorian Corporation are available to support Mr. McLean and any other individuals who are victims of the tyrannical abuses of the so-called justice system instigated by this President."

  "How rich is the Praetorian Corporation?" asked the anchor.

  "For the answer to that question, we turn to our CNN Financial Analyst, Mischa Barton."

  "Praetorian is a privately-held corporation, so it doesn't have to publish regular reports in the same way that a public one does," explained Barton, "but we can estimate the size of Praetorian, to some degree, from the amount of money that it invested in the Western Republic during and after the Canadian Civil War. For example, organizations linked to Praetorian purchased more than $25 billion – that's billion with a B – worth of Western Republic Bonds."

  "So, $10 million is a trivial amount of money to them?" asked the anchor.

  "That's putting it mildly," said the analyst, "because we know that a number of those investments paid off handsomely. As have other investments they have made, for example in the nation of Equatorial Guinea."

  "Some have argued that the description of Praetorian as a Private Military Company is inaccurate," said the anchor, "that a better way of describing it would be as a hedge fund with an army."

  "That's fairly accurate," admitted Barton, "insofar as Praetorian has a long history of making large and often very high-yield investments in unstable nations where its combination of private military forces and international political connections are then called upon to intervene."

  "Is it significant, then, that Praetorian is becoming actively involved in politics here in the United States, or is this just an example of the personal agenda of Praetorian CEO, Augustus King?"

  "Well, that's the billion-dollar question," replied Barton.

  U.S. Central Command Forward Headquarters, Jerusalem

  General Dylan Mackenzie was leading his senior staff through the latest table-top exercise. His skillful deployment of strategic airpower over the previous months had blunted the region-wide assault on his forces by Islamic insurgents, but the arrival of additional oversight from Washington in the aftermath of the media playing footage of the damage done by his B-52s had left him, in effect, as little more than a ceremonial leader. In that aftermath of that humiliation he had considered resigning his command, but then he had been convinced that there were other available avenues of resistance.

  "Again!" he shouted, slamming his fist down upon the table.

  "We're going to do this until we get it fucking right," he insisted.

  Operation Deluge imagined the full-scale deployment of all of the forces available to Central Command against a general uprising by Islamist forces across the whole of the region. Given the continued pace of attacks against the American forces that had been deployed, even Ambassador Nathaniel Archer, the President's personal representative in Jerusalem, could hardly object to it as a planning exercise.

  "If we execute this," explained Mackenzie, speaking deliberately slowly, "we're going to have to do it perfectly, because we're only going to get one chance to do it."

  "General," replied Major General Fredrick Kahn, the commander of the Fourth Infantry Division, "I think that we're having trouble with this because of the strange parameters that are imposed upon us in the exercise. Normally we would have significantly longer to divide targets and we would have the luxury of more time to take them out sequentially, instead of practically simultaneously."

  "I understand that there is an element of vagueness in what we're practicing here," replied Mackenzie, "but war is naturally ambiguous."

  "Run the exercise again," he ordered before stepping out to a nearby office where both Israeli Lieutenant General Avidgor Aronov and Praetorian International CEO Augustus King were waiting for him.

  "They're frustrated," Aronov gruff
ly commented as soon as Mackenzie closed the door.

  "I don't blame them. We haven't told them what they're practicing for or why they're being forced to run the same scenarios over and over again but not being allowed to share what they're learning on down. Also, I suspect, a few of them have figured out that there are obvious holes in the plan and that there must be a reason why we haven't patched those."

  "The security is necessary," replied King, "we don't know who can be trusted. Even extending this as far as you have is a risk."

  "You can't order divisions and brigades to turn and execute a major operation without any preparation whatsoever," said Mackenzie.

  Deluge was originally conceived as a "break-in-case-of-emergency" plan to be executed when all other options were exhausted. However, it was becoming increasingly clear to Mackenzie and the rest of his inner circle that it might be actually necessary to execute the plan and that it could be used in an offensive rather than defensive context. This was being withheld from Ambassador Archer and almost everyone else in the universe because the details of how such a contingency might play out offensively included details that would conflict with the political agenda of the Administration.

  Lieutenant General Aronov, officially simply the liaison between the Israeli Government and Central Command, but actually the most respected senior official in the whole of the State of Israel, was key to those plans. The theoretically non-partisan "caretaker government" that had been formed in Israel in the aftermath of the nuclear attacks on Tel Aviv and Haifa as part of the price of American intervention in the conflict was unpopular among the Israeli public and the acceptance of the American demands for Israeli disarmament and de facto occupation by the United States by the previous government had destroyed much of the credibility of that nation's political class.

  "My men will be asked to execute more with even less time to prepare," he pointed out.

  "A risk that we must run, General," replied King.

  Vancouver, British Columbia, United Western Republic

  Lieutenant General William Thomas Jackson saluted the soldiers of the Airborne Brigade as they marched down Robson Street in their brand-new dress grey uniforms. The three newly-issued stars glistened on the General's shoulders alongside the fresh gold U.W.R. pin that had been issued to him and every other soldier in the Army. The stoic General could not disguise his pride as he, for not the first time on this particular day, glanced down at the four (of five possible) campaign medals that had been issued to him. It had taken weeks to settle on the names. Jackson had been awarded the Western Rebellion, Liberation of Vancouver, Trans-Prairie Offensive, and Invasion of Ontario campaign medals, missing out only on the Albertan Insurgency campaign medal given to those who had participated in combat action in Alberta against Federal forces before the arrival of the official Western Republic Army.

  The Grand Review of the Army had taken months to organize, as troops had been required to remain in Ontario and in other parts of the West for some months in order to enforce the armistice that had been agreed to first between the Western Republic and the Province of Ontario and then between the Republic and the Federal Government in Ottawa. It had also been stalled because, once the final victory was won and the independence of the West had been secured, the pacifistic anti-military tendency that ran strong in certain quarters in the West, which had been largely suppressed during the fighting, immediately resurfaced. The Vancouver City Council had actually gone so far as to attempt to assert that it had the right to refuse to issue the proper permits for the event, to which Jackson had tartly replied that he hadn't needed a permit to enter Winnipeg, either. After that exchange was reported in the press, President Eagleton had stepped in and smoothed things over as best as he could.

  Behind the Airborne Brigade came the highlight of the day: the First Armoured Division. The division's Merkava tanks had been freshly painted and then polished to a high sheen. The men and women in the Army in general, but this Division in particular, viewed themselves as nation-makers and were extraordinarily proud of their service. After all, the Division had been the mailed fist that had smashed the Canadian Army at Thunder Bay and thereby one the freedom of the West once and for all. While even Jackson recognized that the Army could not be maintained at wartime levels, he was determined above all other things to ensure that this particular formation survived.

  The crowds cheered wildly as the tanks, when they crossed the corner of Robson and Burrard where the first Federal officer to die in the insurgency in Vancouver had been shot, turned their turrets towards the platform in a salute. The tanks were followed by wave after wave of proud men and women who marched across the pavement for more than two hours.

  Too soon it was over. Jackson was invited to a number of parties that evening, but he planned on only putting in an appearance at the official ball. When asked why this was, he would explain that it was because the soldiers deserved to enjoy themselves and that they would not be able to do so fully if they were in the presence of senior officers. Unofficially, it was simply the case that he did not enjoy parties or social occasions in general and now that his rank permitted him to dodge them, he would do so with alacrity. In any case, the combination of his personal prestige and the vast wealth that he now possessed as a result of the appreciation of his stock in Praetorian had opened up other avenues of enjoyment that had been mostly closed to him in earlier days.

  General Jackson wasn't sure if his new attributes made him more attractive to women or merely gave him the confidence to approach women he would have previously never dared to speak to unless first spoken to, but his status as the greatest military hero in the West and a billionaire had let him pursue one of the hidden passions that arouse from his complex personality: having sex with actresses.

  Of course, the General's politics made him – international fame and wealth or not – anathema to many. But not all.

  "Those fuckers don't know whom they're dealing with," said the General, stabbing his finger through the air as he returned to the bedroom in a towel, resuming a rant that had been stopped some thirty-two minutes earlier.

  "Which fuckers?" asked Rachel Sanderson, who had become mildly famous for playing a doctor on a network television series half a decade earlier, as she lay propped up against the headboard.

  "All of them," replied Jackson, "in the Parliament, in the City Council... I mean, don't they know who I am and who my friends are?"

  "I can snap my fingers," he continued, "and I'll have ten thousand men and a billion dollars at my disposal. We can march into the Parliament building and dictate terms to them through the barrel of a gun."

  "I thought that you were a libertarian," said Sanderson softly.

  "That doesn't mean that I have to stand by and be humiliated," said Jackson.

  "Let's think this through logically," she said, "the people out here know what you did for them. Why don't you just run for President in the next election? I think that you could win."

  "I probably could," said Jackson, sitting at the edge of the bed, "but that's not a complete solution. We had a whole Goddamned revolution and the Vancouver City Council – on getting their city restored to them through the blood and sacrifice of this army – went right back to planning new bike lanes. The problem is that society itself is sick. I wish that we could dissolve the people and elect a new one."

  "I think that's a little over-dramatic," Rachel replied.

  "Is it? We overthrew a government that had endured for more than a century and a half because of its willingness to use force to attempt to confiscate our wealth, and yet the new government in Vancouver is debating doing more or less the same thing already. It hasn't even been a year! And can you really blame them? It's what the people want, after all, and that's what democracy is about.

  "The problem is that it's increasingly clear to me that universal suffrage is the greatest mistake that Western Civilization ever made. By all means, we should have liberty and representative government, but the idea o
f one-man, one-vote is founded upon the foolish and provably false notion that everyone has enough wisdom to participate in the government of the nation. Churchill said that the best argument against democracy was a five-minute conversation with an average voter. How long do you have to talk to the below-average voter to grasp their basic unsuitability to any role of trust and profit? It was one thing for us to have one person, one vote as our system when the role of the government was appropriately small but, as it grows larger, it becomes inevitable that the state will therefore be controlled by a coalition between those below the median who realize that by cutting a deal with the right amoral bastards in the other groups, they can trade their vote for something of value."

  "So, what are you going to do about it? Roll your tanks back into Vancouver?"

  "No," Jackson shook his head, "I can show them that I can play the fucking game too."

  Seattle, WA

  Deep down Governor Mitchell Randall had hoped to have nothing further to do with the Seth McLean/Harris Folsom affair. The case was proceeding towards trial in a Federal Courtroom and the protests over the matter had largely burned themselves out. The Governor had hoped to put the whole awful business behind him and prepare to run for re-election. But any good politician knew that when your largest campaign contributor called, you had damned well better answer.

  "Thanks for meeting me here, Governor," said Augustus King as Randall entered King's suite in the Four Seasons Hotel.

  "Not a problem, Mr. King," said the Governor guardedly.

  "Take a seat," King gestured towards a chair that had been carefully set out.

  "I know that you wanted to talk about the Seth McLean matter, but I have to say that I don't know that there's that much that I can do about that at this particular point. That's wholly a Federal matter."