Against All Enemies

by John Gilstrap

  Jonathan leaned in closer to the screen—as if that would do anything. And he squinted. He hated squinting. He hated anything that even danced around the idea that he might one day need glasses. As he watched, the new man—tall, dark hair with a goatee—scanned the room before he walked to the cashier’s station.

  “Wait a second,” Venice said, and she hammered on the computer keys that froze the other two screens. “I want everyone to watch just this one guy with the beard,” she said.

  The action started up again. After the man with the goatee got his order, he retreated back into the room, standing off to the side, his whole head moving as he scanned the room.

  “Could he be more obvious?” Boxers asked. “But no one’s watching him.”

  “Not true,” Venice said. “Take a look at two o’clock on the screen.”

  There, a thick-necked young man wore khakis and a blue shirt—he could have been an insurance salesman with a good workout ethic—did not look away. Instead, he watched the newcomer intensely.

  “He’s not the least bit intimidated,” Dylan said.

  “He looks like he wants a fight,” Rollins said.

  “I agree,” Venice said. “So, keep watching.”

  Goatee-man did nothing for the better part of two minutes, and during that time, the thick-necked kid was the only one to pay him any attention at all.

  “It’s about to happen,” Venice said.

  And then it did. Goatee-man pushed himself away from the wall and sauntered—that’s really the only verb for the swaggering gait—to thick-neck and handed him something that looked like a business card. They exchanged a few words, and then goatee-man left.

  “This gets really interesting,” Venice said. “Count aloud. Well, it’s too late now, but twenty seconds pass before the kid who got the card stands up. There. He’s doing it now. He stands up and walks out of the shop. The rest of them just sit there. After a while, they’ll just sort of filter out and disappear. Shortly after this, there will be some impatient and intolerant e-mail blasts from the offended. But the Commander will not respond to any of them.”

  “So what does it mean?” Jonathan asked.

  “Give it time,” Venice admonished. “Look at the other two screens.” She’d reduced the center screen to nothing, leaving the television with two images where there had once been three. She clicked a button, and the other images came to life. While the actions played out of synch, they all showed the same transaction. Goatee-man entered the shop, bought some coffee, and approached individual customers in the shop. Those selected customers each acknowledged the approach in their own clandestine way, and then within two minutes walked out of the frame into whatever lay in the rest of the world.

  “He’s being selective,” Jonathan said. “The call to the shop is to be seen, and then he makes his selections.”

  “That’s the way I see it,” Venice confirmed. “I haven’t had a chance to cross-reference to the other footage, but it looks to me like it’s entirely possible that at some locations, he never selects anyone.”

  “What’s really interesting,” Boxers said, “is that none of the people in the shops seem to know who they’re looking for. Or, more to the point, who’s looking for them.”

  “That’s a hell of a way to recruit,” Rollins said. “It’ll take forever.”

  “Not necessarily,” Dylan said. “Remember, the Commander’s writings all point to small armies doing big jobs.”

  “The writings are the part that concern me most,” Jonathan said. “The part that doesn’t make sense. Why would someone plotting to overthrow the government put the plan out ahead of time for everyone to see? Why draw that kind of attention?”

  “I think it’s safe to stipulate that our friend is a little off,” Boxers said. “As in, a total freaking whack job. Whack jobs do whacky things.”

  Jonathan acknowledged the point. Sane, well-centered people didn’t do crazy stuff in his experience. On the other hand, they tended not to be able to cobble together intricate plans, either. It bothered him in this case that the Commander, whoever the hell he was, was both organized and crazy.

  “Why don’t we keep an eye out for the next ad—or book review—and then respond?” Rollins said. “We’ll meet the guy at the coffee shop and be done with it.”

  “I don’t think we have that kind of time,” Dylan said. Then, as if in response to the confused looks, he added, “The killings have already started, remember? The plan is underway.”

  “If only we knew what it was,” Jonathan said. He looked to Venice. “What are the chances you can track down the real identity of this Commander dude?”

  “Probably pretty slim,” she said. “I’ll check, but I imagine that given the stakes, he’s been pretty conscientious about covering his tracks through cyberspace.”

  “We’ve seen it before,” Jonathan said.

  “But not often,” Venice said. “I’ll see what I can dig up, but I think you might want to develop alternative plans.”

  “Alternative plans!” Boxers scoffed. “You need to have a plan to start with before you develop alternatives.”

  “Let’s talk about that,” Jonathan said.

  “Not in here,” Venice interrupted. “I can listen to you talk or I can try to find answers for you. I can’t do both. Go play outside again.”

  Rollins looked stunned, as if he didn’t know whether or not to be insulted.

  “Don’t even think about talking back, Stanley,” Boxers said as he unfolded himself out of his chair. “Trust me. It’s easier just to say okay.”

  They were reassuming their places on the front porch when Dylan pointed down the hill toward the curving drive that led to the house from the front gate. “You expecting company?” he asked. A ten-year-old SUV was making its way up the hill ahead of a rooster tail of dust.

  Jonathan looked to Boxers. “Jolaine?”

  Big Guy nodded. “Yeah, I called her this morning.”

  “Did you consider checking with me first?”

  “Would you have said no?”

  Jonathan considered that. “Probably not.”

  “Then quit your bitchin’.”

  “Who’s Jolaine?” Rollins asked.

  “A relatively new associate with our firm,” Jonathan said. “She’s a helluva shot and she’s got a lot of heart.”

  “You just described a Girl Scout,” Dylan said.

  Boxers laughed. “Yeah, right. Be sure to tell her that to her face.”

  Jolaine Cage had joined Security Solutions the hard way, by being on the other end of a mission not too long ago. There may actually have been a time when she’d been a Girl Scout, but those times had ended somewhere in the blur of multiple deployments to The Sandbox as a private security contractor. Back then, her specialty had been personnel protection, but she’d evolved into the covert side of Security Solutions over the months that she’d been associated with Jonathan.

  “I thought it was tough to join your band of merry marauders,” Dylan said.

  Jonathan and Boxers shot him similar looks simultaneously and he blanched. “It’s time for you to be careful,” Boxers growled. “She has more right to be here than you do. You don’t know what she’s been through and you don’t know what she’s capable of. I know both and from what I saw down in Panama, I’d put her against you any day of the week.”

  Jonathan suppressed a smile. He was as defensive as the next guy when it came to discussing his staff, but it was rare to hear Boxers get on so high a horse. There’d been rumors of romance between Jolaine and Big Guy, but if it existed, they’d been careful to hide it. This was Jonathan’s first indication that the rumors might be true. Such relationships were never good in the long run as far as operations were concerned, but given his own past, Jonathan was in no position to say anything.

  The red Chevy Blazer pulled to a stop next to the Batmobile, and Jolaine climbed out. Maybe thirty years old, she wore her dark brown hair in a tight ponytail and sported very little
makeup. To Jonathan’s eye, she didn’t need it. Not beautiful by the anorexic standards of Hollywood, he thought she was pretty in the wholesome way that made people like her at first glance. She wore khaki cargo pants from 5.11 Tactical, a blue T-shirt, and an open-front light blue collared shirt that he was reasonably certain concealed the Glock 23 that seemed always to ride on her right hip.

  She paused in her stroll up to the house and put her fists on her hips, her head cocked to the side. “You’re all staring at me,” she said. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Not at all,” Boxers said. “We were just startled by the company.”

  “You told me to come.”

  Big Guy beckoned her closer. “Okay, they were startled by the company.”

  Jolaine’s scowl deepened. “Okaaay . . .”

  “Come on up and join us,” Jonathan said, waving her forward. “Let me introduce you around.”

  It took a few minutes to bring her up to speed.

  “So you’re the big traitor to the country?” Jolaine asked Dylan. Her face showed an interesting mix of humor and affront.

  Dylan dropped a beat before answering. “I suppose if someone here has to carry that title, it would be me.”

  She held his gaze for a few seconds. To Jonathan, she said, “I think he’s a good guy.”

  “We’re kind of ahead of you on that,” Jonathan said.

  “I just thought you’d want to know.”

  Jolaine was an interesting case. Joining Security Solutions almost literally through the back door on the heels of an operation in which she’d performed brilliantly, she’d shown none of the hesitation typical of a newcomer to a tactical group. In fact, she’d assumed a level of familiarity and equality that Jonathan could have talked himself into taking as offensive. From the beginning, though, she’d shown the hots for Big Guy, and Jonathan wasn’t about to get in the way of that.

  “So, what’s our next step?” Jolaine asked.

  “We were just getting to that,” Jonathan said. “Venice is trying to pull up an ID on anybody as a place to start. Everything else is predicated on that.”

  “Let’s say it comes down to an identifiable militia movement,” Rollins offered. “Is it your plan to invade and overrun?”

  “We’ve done that before,” Jonathan said.

  “Several times, in fact,” Boxers added.

  “But it’s still five steps too early to be talking about that,” Jonathan said. He lowered his tone. They’d reached a pivotal point in these discussions, and he needed to settle a big question. “What are you willing to do?” he asked. “If all of this turns out to be real and the shit hits the fan, are you all willing to be in it till the end? Even if it goes to a shooting war?”

  The words hung in the air for a few seconds. “You know better than to ask me,” Boxers said, breaking the silence. “I live to shoot.” Truer words were never spoken. While Boxers was not homicidal—not exactly—he was the most lethal human being Jonathan had ever known.

  “I’m in, too,” Jolaine said, but neither she nor Big Guy were the ones Jonathan wanted to hear from.

  “Sure,” Rollins said. “What the hell, in for a dime, right?”

  “When was the last time you aimed and fired a weapon at something with a heartbeat?” Boxers asked.

  “More recently than I’m allowed to tell you,” Rollins said. He’d caught the not-so-veiled accusation buried in the question, and he clearly did not appreciate it.

  Jonathan turned to Dylan. “Well, Boomer, you started this. How far are you willing to go?”

  Dylan took his time answering. “It seems that I don’t have a lot to live for, one way or the other. If I have to settle for a blaze of glory, that’s not so bad, right?”

  “Don’t think that way,” Jonathan said, his tone suddenly very serious. “Not even as a joke.”

  “What?” Dylan said.

  “Blaze of glory sounds like a suicide mission. We don’t do those.”

  Rollins scoffed, “A rose by any other name.”

  “No,” Boxers said. “It’s not.”

  “What are we talking about?”

  “We’re talking about winning,” Jonathan said. “That’s the only outcome I will accept, and it is only possible if everyone on the team visualizes victory.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Rollins said. “When did you go all woo-woo?”

  “I’m saying that battles are won or lost in the planning stage,” Jonathan said. “If any of you honestly believe that we might fail, I want you off the team. Right now.”

  “Might fail?” Rollins asked. “That’s a pretty low bar.”

  “No, it’s not,” Jonathan said. “And it depends on the definition of failure, which in this case means that the bad guys win.”

  Dylan cocked his head. “Doesn’t failure mean that the good guys lose?”

  “Depends on the definition of loss,” Boxers said, stealing Jonathan’s line. “If any of us die to make the bad guys lose, then that’s a net win.” He let the words settle on the group, and leaned way back in his chair. “Come on, this isn’t new. The mission has never been about survival, at least not per se. The mission is about the mission. The precious cargo, if that’s in play, or in this case, the derailing of a really bad plot. We’re just the pawns.”

  Jonathan gaped. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Boxers say that many words in a row, and he wondered if Big Guy was posturing for Jolaine. In the end, it didn’t matter because he agreed with every word.

  “Fine,” Dylan said. “However you want me to put it, I’m in. I started it, so I’ll finish it.”

  “I’m still lost,” Jolaine said. “Who, exactly, are we going to be fighting?”

  “Bad guys,” Jonathan said. “To be determined.”

  Jolaine scowled and cocked her head. “Excuse me?”

  “Venice’s trying to untie some knots,” Boxers explained.

  “Ah,” Jolaine said. “That’s why you’re on the porch, right? She kicked you out.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “I have something,” Venice announced after she summoned the team back inside. “Oh, hi, Jolaine. I didn’t know you were here.”

  Recognizing her place as a rookie, Jolaine waited for the others to choose a seat before taking a hard-backed chair for herself.

  Venice sat near the fireplace this time, looking back at her audience as she spoke. “I decided it was best to focus on the Commander,” she said. “Since he’s the one constant in the equation, I thought—”

  “Did you run the goatee guy through the facial recognition software?” Jonathan interrupted.

  She glared at the interruption, then realized that he’d pissed her off on purpose. “Not yet,” she said. She allowed a small smile. “But I will. In the meantime, we’ve got the Commander as the constant.”

  The screen behind her displayed countless lines of code. At least that’s what Jonathan assumed it to be. Lots of formless words and numbers.

  “I was trying to find a pattern,” she went on. “Our boy is pretty computer savvy. I think he’s using a lot of different computers for his postings, so I can’t nail down a common IP address.”

  “So you found another way,” Boxers prompted. Of all the permanent members of the team, Big Guy had the least patience for the drawn-out reveal.

  “Of course I did.” She clicked the screen and more gibberish appeared, only this time, Jonathan assumed that he was supposed to understand it. “Internet access isn’t free, right? You have to pay for it. People can switch out computers all they want—they can even modify the IP addresses if they’re good—but you can only have but so many credit cards and Internet service providers. So, that was my big cross-reference.” She pointed to the screen. “Can you see it?”

  Jonathan’s patience frayed. “Come on, Ven—”

  “No,” Boxers interrupted. “This is fun. Let’s take our time. It’s only the future of the Free World in play. What’s the hurry?”

  Jonathan winced. />
  The offense taken displayed clearly on Venice’s face as her chocolate skin reddened. She swallowed it and turned to address the screen, away from her audience. “I cross-referenced the various IP addresses and the ISPs and the credit card numbers, and I got quite a few hits.”

  She clicked again, and this time Jonathan understood everything he saw. This time it was four columns, IP address on the left, and then moving right, Internet service provider, credit card number, and the name of the cardholder. While he understood the essentials, he also noted that all of the cardholder names were different. “Don’t we assume that these are all fake names?” he said.

  “Of course we do,” Venice said. “I told you he was computer savvy. He’d be a fool to use his real name.”

  Jonathan felt deflated. He’d been so close to understanding what was going on.

  “And yes, I traced the names down, and we have to assume that they are all fake.”

  “And that’s what you have?” Rollins asked. “That doesn’t seem like much.”

  “I think she’s holding back on the punch line,” Jolaine predicted.

  Venice flashed a grin. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we venture to deceive.”

  “Practice,” Boxers said.

  “What?”

  “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. You said venture. Walter Scott would not be happy.”

  Dylan gave him a you’ve-just-grown-a-second-nose look. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  Venice continued, “One lie leads to another. Sooner or later you make a mistake. Apparently, it was important to the Commander—whatever is real name is—to pay his bills, so on these credit cards—which, by the way, he used only for ISP purchases—he paid exclusively by money orders.”

  “Which are traceable,” Jonathan said.

  Venice’s grin widened. “Yep. He prefers convenience stores. The vast majority came from a Shop-Mart in Glen Burnie, Maryland. I figure that’s either near his office or his home.”

  “How do we drill deeper?” Jonathan asked.