Life as a New Hire Ch. 42

"I had a magnetoencephalography recently. The neuroscientists didn't know what to make of my brain patterns. I appear to be somewhat unique in my madness."

She didn't believe me. I didn't blame her. No one really likes hearing a truth they don't want to accept.

"Here," I leaned forward and pointed to the tiny divot in my forehead. "I was stabbed with a needle in the skull. That is why they looked at me, not because of my sexual malfunction."

She touched it to makes sure. We were interrupted by the waiter stopping by to see if we were ready to order yet.

"We will have three of the most expensive appetizers, dinners, deserts and wines," Anais preempted us. Ugh. I was either a millionaire by the wonders of Havenstone accounting, or broke. I foolishly never looked into such things, never having had much money before. I needed a distraction.

"Hey Chaz, nice suit," was what came to mind. It was a swell masterpiece of the tailoring arts I hadn't expect from a ground-pounder from a family of ground-pounders serving Queen and Country for generations.

"Thank you. Pamela picked it out for me, suspecting an event such as this would transpire. She told me you paid for it," Chaz answered.

"I did?"

"I made the reasonable deduction that she forged your signature on whatever medium was used for payment," he shrugged, "in the same way she exhibits a criminal tendency toward every other aspect of her life."

"What does Pamela look like?" Anais glowered.

"She's his grandmother," Chaz responded politely. "They make quite the pair. Normally we don't let them alone in the same room. Bad things happen."

"Bad things?"

"Things like that scenic hostel being reduced to ruin," he enlightened her.

"This is the supposed assassin?"

"Retired assassin," Chaz corrected her. "So far she's only ... what is the term you two use?" he looked at me.

"Sending a Get-Well card to their next of kin? Pumping up the volume? Making a critical attitude adjustment? Retroactively revoking their lease on life? We have a few."

"Yes -- those. Pamela has assured the team director that she no longer accepts assignments of a murderous nature. These days she only practices her skills on those we determine are a threat to the greater endeavor," he explained.

"She murders people? You all murder people?" Anais furrowed her brow. "Cáel, do you engage in these activities?"

"What? Who? Me? No!" I waved off any conspiratorial associations. "The vast majority of people I've killed was totally by accident."

"How do you accidently kill people?" she pierced my soul with her voice.

"Okay, I let them kill themselves because warning them would have resulted in me and some friends meeting very immediate violent ends," I pleaded.

"Miss Saint-Amour, I've talked to trustworthy people who were on the scene when this happened. It was a paramilitary action with the lives of children on the line. Cáel acted to save the lives of innocents," Chaz defended me. That is what Anais wanted to believe; that I was basically a decent human being. I was a pig, but a courageous one. I had confronted her after my infidelity -- on the other side of the US/Canadian border where her jurisdiction didn't apply.

I knew my revelations were hideously hard to believe. In my favor, I had been in dangerous places doing dangerous things. The Metro firefight had been captured on the place's security system (which had been leaked to the public thus leading to some delusional admirers into thinking I would make a great new King of Hungary even though they hadn't had a monarch since 1918 nor was I from the right [Hapsburg] family. In case this whole Havenstone thing came crashing down in flames, I needed to keep my options open).

There had been a bomb threat at Mindszent which I had reputable sources call in (and where I had admittedly hung out with a few of the women who saved me from an earlier disaster) and Miercurea Ciuc had made the international news. Well over 100 people had died and some of the terrorists were still at large. The Romanian government declared I had been 'instrumental' in the confrontation without saying what 'instrumental' meant.

I was heroically vague, more mature than where we left off and clearly incited pussy-twitching memories. We'd once fucked so continuously hard and long one weekend that neither one of us could stand until an hour after we stopped. Anais was well worth the pain I was contemplating. Sex with her wasn't the pain I was worried about. It was dodging all her calls afterwards. Once again reference her being a compulsive control freak with abysmal trust issues.

Oh, how did I know she was reveling in our past coital moments? She hadn't walked out on me yet. She hadn't walked out when she found Odette in my domicile, when she met Juanita, or when she found out that I worked with highly experienced killers as part of my new daily routine.

Normally Anais was smarter than this and had a career in law enforcement to contemplate. Lastly, she hadn't asked to be armed, despite getting permission from the NYPD. Had she decided to get a gun, Anais was sure in her hormonally-cascading mindset she would have shot me by now. I incite all kinds of passion in women. It is a curse.

The rest of dinner was unremarkable. Anais continued to interrogate Chaz who proved that he was both skilled in counter-interrogation techniques and not willing to spill anymore secrets about what anyone at JIKIT did. However he had provided her with every logical reason to beat feet back across the Canadian border and she hadn't taken the hints about what a disaster sleeping with me could be.

We drove Anais back to her motel, then Chaz and I headed home in silence. Despite his earlier declarations, he knew how to drive the 'right' way all along. As he was letting me out in front of my building, he gave me this pleasant warning.

"I'm not going to lecture you about not going back there, or avoiding the crazy ones. You already know better and are going back by her place anyway. I do advise that whatever you do, don't let her restrict your movements in any way. She's likely to make you pay double for your past indiscretions and take payment out on your cock. Good luck, Mate."

"Wait," I stopped him. "Can you help me hotwire her bike? I can use that as an excuse to darken her doorway."

"Dolt," he muttered. He helped me anyway because that's what really good friends do ~ assisting you in your self-destruction so we could joke about it later. At least that was what I hoped was going on. Chaz being a closet sadist was an unsettling idea. I didn't get to immediately pursue my plan because ...

(We work for you, don't we?)

At 9 am, the President of the United States of America, after a late night briefing and a good night's sleep, decided that for the sake of world peace he had to intervene in Southeast Asia ~ Thailand to be specific, though he had some vague notion that a summit of regional leaders was in the offing and the US needed to establish some sort of game plan instead of looking impotent and disinterested.

Based on carefully selected bits of information supplied to him by us (JIKIT), he ordered two carrier taskforces to move to the Gulf of Thailand to enforce an anticipated UN arms embargo and 'No-Fly Zone'. It would take four days (September 3rd) for Carrier Strike Group Nine (built around the USS Ronald Reagan) and the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (2,200 souls) to take up a position in the South China Sea close to the Gulf of Thailand. By fortuitous circumstance, 500 Marines and sailors were already deployed to Malaysia on a joint training mission with the Malaysian Marines.

The second one, the USS Carl Vinson's Carrier Strike Group One wouldn't arrive until the 9th, six days later. What the US government wanted to know was what the Khanate and Vietnam would do in those long, lonely six days. The Khanate had as many modern, up-to-date combat aircraft on Woody Island as the Reagan could send up. The Vietnamese could add another 48 planes worth worrying about.

There was the added complication that Thailand hadn't asked for help yet. His experts (us again) were suggesting that he was about to wake up one morning and find Khanate tanks rolling down the streets of Bangkok ... which would leave little time for anything but a quick exit to the closest airport and flight from the country for our people there. Then, God-forbid, democracy would break out, regime change would be enacted and the Khanate would rack up another regional ally.

Apparently someone along the line had edited that part of the info feed where the Khanate actually liked the US and would have gladly worked with them/us to bring this about. By the Great Khan's thinking, the more power you brought to the initial strike, the fewer people would actually die. Closer to the issue was that the Khanate had no reason to expect the US to intervene. Not only did it run contrary to the Administration's willingness to do nothing, they had no forces in place to influence the Khanate's capability to intervene.

The answer to this conundrum was simple to me/Alal. The US had three regional allies: the Philippines, the Republic of China and to a lesser degree, Malaysia. The Philippines was sitting there, ready and willing to contribute all of her airfields for the use of the US Army and Air Force. North of them was the Republic of China, another long-time ally. Malaysia didn't have a long history of being pro-US, but they were major opponents of the Khanate's rise to prominence in Southeast Asian affairs.

Our President's problem was that allies take convincing and kinda/sorta expect something in return for being your buddies ... and it just so happened all three had pressing issues the US could help with. That would be the Spratly and Parcel Island, in case someone hadn't been paying attention to the Khanate's diplomatic wrangling post-ceasefire. The Khanate, India, Vietnam and the ROC had divided up the Parcels in a treaty that no one else was planning to accept (though only the PRC was getting shafted).

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou was going to provide his air force, navy and air bases and all Obama had to do was give a nod to a key factor in future Taiwanese economic prosperity which would involve the US President helping out in the butt-raping of China, but really 'just a little bit'. Taiwan was ready to do all the heavy lifting (aka, kicking the Asian Colossus when it was down.) Once this Thailand debacle was over, they'd cuddle back up with the Khanate because that would really help their territorial ambitions.

President Benigno Aquino III of the Philippines had his own niggling problem ... called the Spratly Islands and the treaty the Khanate was trying to bring about there. And the Khanate (Amazons actually) had captured all the PRC bases and outposts in that island group. And it would really be nice if the US would step up and back the healthy claims his proud, but impoverished homeland was trying to enforce. They had a chance to exploit the vast wealth in and under the South China Sea and they were more than willing to let the US use all their bases as they brought about a renewed peace in the Southeast Asian theater.

Peace in the South China Sea? Without consulting China? You know -- getting involved. Yeah, that meant ships in 'harm's way', 'boots on the ground' and arming all those expensive fighters with air-to-air missiles because they might really need them. No, the revolution going on in Thailand wasn't going to be solved with another series of drone strikes, Tomahawks and air sorties from 5000 meters up.

Some talking heads in the Pentagon thought that the 42 FA-18 fighters on the Reagan would be able to handle themselves because the Khanate had never had to play in the Big League. The majority of analysts had a slightly grimmer picture of things. The Khanate had 42 fighters just as good as the FA-18 in the Woody Islands plus 16 advanced, supersonic bombers equipped with anti-ship missiles -- just ask the survivors of the PLAN carrier Liaoning.

The Khanate also had 120 combat aircraft in southern China that could be prepared for operations in the Thailand within 24 hours. Satellite reconnaissance had revealed the Khanate's formidable aerial logistics were up and running around the clock, moving stores to the Laotian/Thai border. There were another 860 fighters and combat drones in theater that could be brought to bear given a week or two. That was firepower two carriers couldn't hope to match.

Then there was the fact that US and NATO combat troops were still in the process of evacuating from Afghanistan. Could they defeat the chaotic and disorganized Afghan Army? Yes, but then what? The Khanate had already moved two Tumens into the country and those would be much harder nuts to crack, plus the Khanate was operating within 1000 km of their logistical base. The Coalition would have to fly in supplies from Pakistan ... if the Pakistanis felt like upsetting the Khanate, which was another great unknown.

What this meant was President Obama was getting conflicting advice. The Secretary of State felt the US had to do something and, after reading an abridged version of our report (groan) and consulting with the UK, decided that harsh language would have null effect on Khanate aggression. In the very short term, getting the UN to do anything was complicated by the majority of nations not acknowledging the Khanate's existence.

An even greater disaster came from the Right Honorable Phillip Hammond, UK's Secretary of State, who suggested that it was not in his nation's interests to publically oppose the Khanate considering his nation's public's displeasure with a dictator gunning down unarmed protestors in the street. Human Rights groups in the UK were already confronting the horror of praising a military solution to the Thai's civil rights woes. It was echoes of Tibet all over again.

In addition to that, in response to feelers made by his [deep breath] Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (my old buddy D.R. Russel) and Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian (another one of my fans at State -- R.O. Blake) [exhale] to the Khanate's allies (India and Vietnam), had them accusing the US of retreating to the Cold War policy of supporting repressive regimes. The evaporation of overseas political clout had Secretary Kerry feeling it was time for the United States to wield the 'Big Stick' -- a show of force without a commitment to really do anything.

The holder of the 'Big Stick', Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, was hedging his bets. His subordinates were optimistic they could do something while wanting to know precisely what it was they were expected to do. It wasn't like there was a coherent Southeast Asian policy that actually factored in the titanic shifts in power (aka the Indian/Khanate/Vietnamese Alliance) over the past two months to examine.

The US Navy? Hadn't Hagel once suggested that the US Navy be reduced to only eight carrier groups? His Admirals were saying 'yes, we can' and 'but if we do, we won't be able to meet other security obligations'. Basically a 'we told you so'. The Khanate might not be a naval power, but they could project military influence into the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the South China Sea -- all at the same time.

They also wanted to know why they couldn't use the 7th Fleet -- the one in Japan -- who also had Carrier Strike Group Five built around the George Washington -- and could be there in only four days. What about the George H. W. Bush's Carrier Strike Group Two in the Persian Gulf? They could be there off the western coast of Thailand in four days as well.

What the admirals were stressing was that the Khanate didn't know this was empty posturing. It was their branch of service that was on the line if the Khanate decided they didn't like being threatened and this whole debacle ended up a warzone. Supercarriers carried 3,700 human beings, cost over $10 billion each and took seven years to complete. They had precisely ONE in the works ... and it wasn't due to be commissioned until 2016.

Hagel shook his head. He couldn't leave Wacky Cousin Kim (Kim Ju-un of North Korea) alone with poor, little South Korea, not with him having half of his army mobilized. Japan was already going to have kittens over the carriers not coming their way. Didn't they know that there was going to be war in the Yellow Sea in only six months ... and the Yellow Sea was a major trade conduit to that island nation?

CTG Five was busy fulfilling President Obama's pledge to do something about ISIS's campaign against the Kurds and Yazidi. He didn't want to have the world believe the US Navy could only handle one task at a time. Finally, the admirals suggested that knowing precisely what the ROC's navy was going to be doing was necessary. Also of some pressing need was understanding just what (and when) the Air Force would be bringing into this potentially catastrophic operation.

The US Air Force was more positive about their role in things. After all, the Khanate couldn't 'sink' the Philippines and the ROC had over 200 advanced fighter of their own to protect their air bases. In three days they could have two squadrons (roughly 40 aircraft) -- the 19th and 199th Squadrons -- ready to go.

If they couldn't access Philippine, or Taiwanese bases? Their fighters couldn't fly all the way from Guam unassisted, but if the Navy promised to protect their bombers and air refuelers, they could be used from the comfort of Californian airfields. Would they have to fly airlift capabilities for the Army and Marine Corps? No problem as long as the Navy did their jobs. Lastly, the F-22 Raptor had never been in combat before and the Air Force generals were curious about just how good it was. There was one ... tiny ... problem.

[One side of the Air Force conversation}

By the way Sir, the F-22 has a combat radius of 760 kilometers, so they actually couldn't do anything to anyone unless they were in some place closer ... like Sultan Ismail Petra Airport.

That is in Malaysia, Sir.

Yes Sir, we are aware we don't have a status of forces agreement with the Malaysians. Isn't that the State Department's job?

What about the Woody Islands? We don't own the Woody Island.

Oh, you mean 'can we escort a strike against it'. No Sir. That is 1250 km away from Taiwan. Besides, Sir, the F-22 is not a strike fighter.

From the Philippines? That would be over a 1000 km. Still too far away.

Yes, of course we have other fighters. The F-15E is an excellent aircraft!

Well ... we aren't using it because it is not configured as an air-superiority fighter. For that we need the F-15C/D. Since we can't use any of the ones in Japan ... we can either fly them in from England ... yes Sir, Europe's England ... or we can activate the 194th Fighter Squadron of the California Air National Guard.

You don't want to use the Air National Guard? Ah, Sir, then we have a problem. The 199th Squadron is part of the Hawaiian Air National Guard.

Sir, in our considered opinion, the 19th Squadron might not be up to the task all by themselves. Are you sure we can't use some planes from Japan?

No Sir. We need the Hawaiian's ... because they have the F-22 -- the planes we designed for air superiority missions.

Well Sir, we could use the F-15E's in that role ... but we are worried they might not be better than projected opposition fighters.

Yes Sir, that means we could expect some of them to be shot down.

Yes Sir. That could get quite expensive.

We could launch a preemptive strike.

Yes Sir, we are pretty sure that would be construed as an Act of War as well. We don't have to go after all three of them. Perhaps if we didn't go after the Indians they would take the hint and leave.