"The trouble with socialism is that it takes too many evenings."
-Oscar Wilde

"Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
-Mark Twain

They took the great circle route over Northern Europe and the southern portion of the Confederation of Independent States (Russia) in a commercial Boeing flight from Cleveland to Kuwait City.

Ricci, a Boston native, didn't sleep on the plane, nor did he read on the flight. Roger Gordian had trusted him when he arranged Director Mueller to grant a team member a right-to-carry permit on the flight. Ricci took the honor seriously, and remained hunched at the ready, with a sig .40 holstered over his right kidney. No other passengers carried firearms, said the pilot. You're the air marshal, sailor.

He refrained from alcohol, again reading, sleep, bathroom breaks, any diversion. He'd handoff to Nimec once the flight touched down. They all had concealed body armor, not really more than level one Kevlar vests, but there was that.

Boy, coffee makes one want to persistently trickle. Try crossing your legs. Nuts, try an upright posture.

The pilot is letting everyone know the tower has cleared them to land. Down they go, changing air pressure with it. Earlier, he'd considered letting go in his coffee cup, but now, in the airspace of a Moslem country, even one as tolerant as Kuwait, no way. He knows holy law. Thieves loose hands, adulterers may be stoned, and Tom Ricci could face amputation for public relief.

"The Taliban punished homosexuals by toppling walls on them."

Pete replied. "Sorry, did I nudge you in a suggestive way?"

Ricci issued a subdued laugh.

"I was just thinking about what type of place we're going into. Clerics sanctioned such penalties. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a leak. Hold this for me."

Ricci handed off early, and as an afterthought, flicked over the folded permit.

But it was a bad time to leak in the loo, for the United flight touched down a little sharp.

"That's right, crap all over me," he fussed over his wet khakis, dampened by a roiling toilet. He gravely stormed out to his overhead storage compartment, and removed some spare jeans.

"Hold the lavatory!"

They meet a really strange fellow after disembarking. Nimec identifies him as a South African associate, one that had been a great help in defeating Harlan DeVane and others in places such as Sierra Leone. He wore a crocked bush hat, had a gray rattail, sloppy mustache, and other hints of a survivalist lifestyle.

"Robin Molina, Paul Evens, this is Nigel Braun, an early co-partner in Executive Outcomes."
They shook hands.

"It's a pleasure. EO is now defunct, but I still have a skill to trade. I'll show you to the convoy." He performed an about-face, and skipped to a land rover.

"He looks kind of like Ted Nugent, doesn't he?"
Evens agreed with Molina.

"Had my picture taken with the rocker at Bagram. I think you're right."
They chased him to the cars, and let themselves in. The driver managed to twist around, and offered a hand.

"Fraser Singe, one of Her Majesty's Gurkha riflemen. Nice to meet you."

The two Americans rephrased and repeated the greeting.
Singe shifted into drive, and cautiously stopped at the exit.

"So Evens, Nimec says you had a hand in plugging the highway of death," said the Gurkha, casually, as he merged into traffic.

"Yeah, with a Super Cobra, the AH-1z. Some of the cars looked like this one."

Wrong thing to say.

"Yeah, I was afraid of that. Most of the craziness is north of the border, but I've heard of so-called Westerners being killed over here, too."

"Your definition of western civilization doesn't match theirs, does it?" Molina speaking.

"No, it doesn't. Your public speakers are being too kind. Some people in your United States think much like the Jihadists over here, and your officials correctly call them xenophobic. Skinheads, you call them, right?" Without waiting for confirmation, he sustained his monologue.

"They do their level best to murder anyone trying to import their skills into Moslem countries, in the name of purifying their faith. I call it diluting the region's skilled labor force. After all this time killing off trained individuals, they wonder why nobody knows how to fix something. This is madness. Kuwait's better than others, though, kind of like India, if you think about it. Awe, here's the hotel, the Hilton. We have a whole floor."
They pulled in behind a crime scene. Two corpses in scarves and hoods lay prone beside pulls of blood and Warsaw Pact weaponry.

"Like I said, they aim for foreigners over here, though the indigenous population has accepted the worldwide culture. I understand some of your people aren't fond of Africans some 350 years after they arrived. Here, you Americans have come to expect us to just hand these out." He snaked one hand over the backseat, and dropped two kukris.

"These are some of the more stylish types. Just give me a Glock, and we'll call it an even trade."

The hotel bellman showed them to the proper floor, expected a gratuity, and received a meager one. It was an unskilled task, after all. Evens offered a comment about the air conditioning, Molina said New Mexicans never complained to outsiders.

"Dry heat my arse," replied Fraser faux-irritably, "what do you bloody think the moister level is in Kuwait? Heat is a hellish condition, no matter." The bellman handed Singe the keycard, apparently because he sounded more British, and made his way down the stairs.

"Gee, I thought you'd get the card, Evens," Molina observed, "because you appear more Anglo than Mr. Singe and me."

"We aren't supposed to profile anymore, yet people still hunt for a convenient way to categorize. That begs the pressing question, if these guys unconsciously insist on finding a master in every group, will they ever really become democratic?"

"The Sheik," Singe, slid the keycard through the lock.

"India has a caste system, and the British Empire/ Europe long had an aristocratic system. Most people in these lands now elect legitimate Republics, so don't write them off."


Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Plekhanov spent a long session with Mikhayl Ruzhyo, explaining in great length why the Chechen needed to leave his dear wife during the holiday. It is Christmas, a holiday Ruzhyo had come to appreciate during his days in camaraderie with the Russians, and one not really observed in the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia is in a divided state now, somewhere between an absolute monarchy, and a theocracy. The princes repeatedly tells their benefactors/consumers how they've adopted all the modern glories of the secular west, and promise the peculiar religious police will be swept away in good time.

The thirty-four-year old wet works specialist didn't hold a firm faith in anything but his own craft, but wondered suspiciously why the western thinkers demanded the end of religious observations.

In the hospital room, while Anna slept, he'd tuned in to Atlanta's all-day news station, and pondered over a case involving a popular judge in the American state of Alabama. He'd only been a teenager when the Berlin Wall fell, and Perestroika had been the rule for several years before that, but men of age spoke of such things back in the dark days. Many freedoms were tightly regulated, but they'd had cathedrals operating even under the Stalinist regime. Albania had been the only nation in the bloc to formally go beyond the "religion is poison" rhetoric, and shutdown all religious institutions.

Worse, Enver Hoxha carried the revolution too extremes that made no sense even to the most open thinkers (who he'd doubtlessly have killed). He abolished all military rank, constrained the "People's Military" to a static battle plan, isolated the state from everyone, and madly constructed a meaningless system of useless bunkers over the countryside.

This guy fit Reagan's descriptions of communists perfectly, had doomed his people, and left them with a military impotent to stop the Serbs in Kosovo, and yet, here are a group of Americans, senselessly advocating the same things. Madness.

Anna looked peaceful when he left. Plekhanov now has the doctors exploring stem cells. That means having a baby, and in her state, Anna can't go through that, so they're also looking at a surrogate. Ruzhyo had heard some horror stories about that, but Plekhanov assured him the child would come to no harm.

In the meantime, Anna was looking toward chemotherapy.

One can't get a beer in Saudi Arabia.


Kuwait City, Kuwait

The team filed out of the Hilton before the morning call to prayer, before sunset, perhaps in the last part of the day when the illegal street races were still the biggest threat to western motorists.

Ricci and Braun sat in the middle seat of the lead Chevy Suburban, the sort of vehicle typecast for this sort of role. Forces from the Kuwaiti Emiri Guard weaved around them on motorcycles, occasioning some words of familiarity from Robin Molina, who'd taught them some fine points in radio procedure in the late nineties. He didn't see the irony as he broke radio protocol to chatter with them.

Evens, sitting behind the wheel in the same Land Rover, expressed amazement at how familiar Molina was with all the Guards.

Robin remembered kids, wives, dates-of-birth, and soccer statistics in the leagues Kuwaitis followed.

"A radioman's key duty and diversion are the same," he explained offhandedly, "and in special operations, particularly foreign interior defense, my private cup of tea."

In the convoy, most of the men handled Belgian FN P90s, a polymer submachine gun with ambidextrous fire control, one of the major draws over the H&K (no, not Hugs-and-Kisses!) MP5s. Called Tupperware guns by some, designers conjured the venerable weapon for use by dismounted tankers.

Someone dismounted from a Land Rover can make use of one, also.

Pete and Fraser tailgated behind at a stop. A McClarin F1 seeped a thick miasma over the roadway, a dense oil-vectoring pall on the roadway.

Ricci S-turned without warning, faintly fender-bending one of the Emir's finest. He was okay, and dodged Evens, who'd decided survival followed Tom Ricci, so he would, too.

Pete mimed them both, turning broadside to the expected, a pack of shooters wearing bandoleers of rocket propelled grenade rounds, and flannel or checkered shirts, shooting while crouching behind palm trees and well-watered Bermuda grass.

"My apologies to the officer I hit," Ricci repentantly stammered, "uh, I must have seen the signs."

Fortunately, the Emir's finest had a rudimentary understanding of English, and an appreciation for spiritual functions in daily life. Many such people live in these parts.