I thank everyone! I think I've foreshadowed enough for everyone, do you not agree? This chapter puts everyone in place, so the climax can begin. Have a great Christmas, y'all!


"The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders."

- Ludwig von Mises

Noise pelted ears irritably in homes all over Southern California during the hours before sunrise, when UpLink's legion of secretaries dialed the numbers of the company's network security personnel.
These men, and a few women, slowly rose from the beds or couches of their apartments or bungalows, and groped for the necks of conventional phones, or maybe the arches of headphones, and hailed the other end in original groggy ways.
Not all were asleep. Some, in fact, were playing the new release of PS2 Dragon Ball Z game when their games were interrupted.

They all wondered what the copy-and-paste illiterates in the executive offices needed figured out. They probably wondered how the spreadsheet data vanished, or some such...

Most listened with the usual ill-masked condescension of the dependable office technocrat, sure the answer to whatever they had in the corporate rectum could be wiped out with a sheet from the help contents.

Then they heard the hysterics. Their faces paled. Their mouths plumed green liquid. They speed-dialed India.

"Sanjay, we've got some real trouble!"
They called their own employees, their own enlightened computer gurus, their hired crutches for CODE RED alerts.


Los Angeles, Ca
April 16, 2004

From the Los Angeles Times:

'Iraq War Contract Worker
wanted for Murder.


News from Iraq gets dirtier all the time. Just this morning, the Los Angeles Times received information implicating soldier-for-hire, Paul Evens, for the murder of a popular and well-regarded Arkansas shop-owner.
According to statements taken after the murder, Evens revealed that the death occurred after the owner confessed to relations with Evens' wife, but the police neglected to charge the former marine, despite having a video tape that clearly shows Evens throwing the Mormon shop-owner into traffic.

Evens is currently in Southern Iraq, fighting under the orders of his boss, Roger Gordian, yes, the same Roger Gordian who operates his private army, Sword, in hot spots throughout the world.
Gordian cannot be reached for comment.

Paul Evens was a self-employed repo man in Bennington, Arkansas, at the time of the murder. A former marine attack helicopter pilot, Evens was reprimanded and reduced in rank for disobeying orders, and the reckless endangerment of Somali civilians in 1993. He did, however, manage to work his way to an honorable discharge after finishing the service for which he'd been recalled for when activated from the Marine Reserves in early 2002.

Our legal correspondent tells us the Department of Justice has determined that the task of arresting a military contract worker "in an active theater" falls under the responsibility of the Department of Defense.
We're watching to see how this turns out.'


The DOJ did indeed stick DOD with the case, leaving two very miffed CIS (Criminal Investigative Service) agents the burden of bringing in the alleged murderer. Because Evens was a Marine as late as 2002, the brass (the Undersecretary of Defense) determined that the job belonged to NCIS, the Navy Criminal Investigative Service. It was early morning in Virginia when the Secretary of the Navy got the call. He didn't feel like handling it, so he grumpily phoned the JAG office, and asked the Admiral in charge to task one of his lawyers with finding whether the Navy truly had any obligation to arrest this civilian.

The JAG had a heavy workload involving a prison case in Cuba, so he passed it off to a junior Lieutenant, and left the office for his dawn C-21

Lear flight to GITMO. The Lieutenant shopped around for someone to pass it off to, but he was the last person to delegate to.

Spike TV was showing Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and he'd hoped to have an hour open to watch it during a lunch break. Nuts.

Unhappy to be where the buck stopped, he didn't put much effort into researching how the Navy could legally shirk the responsibility placed on it, the Lieutenant informed the Admiral they'd have to take it, so the Admiral, or rather, the Admiral's secretary, tossed the bad news back up to the Secretary of the Navy, who called the Secretary of Defense, who piped the information to the National Security Advisor in the White House.

Finally, at noon eastern time, Secretary Rice whispered news to President Bush that two NCIS agents were flying to Baghdad International Airport to pickup the former marine. That's how the process was "stovepiped" around.

As a fitting punishment for failing to pass the task to someone else, the Admiral offered the NCIS officers a legal officer; the young Lieutenant. Within official Washington, one never refuses legal oversight, or else certain eyes will look into what sort of untidy practices one is hiding.

So even after the President is told a team is on the job, a few last minute additions are made to the roster. Some caskets from Germany are arriving at Andrews, so the Admiral kindly advises they divert to a small field in Patuxent River, Maryland. Whatever an RC-135 Joint Rivet was doing in hangar 105 of the Navy's test field, it had a few seats open for a small investigative team and a military writer that requested a seat.

The writer had his own reasons for being grumpy that morning. The Navy had refused his request to let a photographer go with him. They'd apologized, insincerely, saying a JAG had requested the seat at the last minute. Well, the military mission does come first...

He looked up from the Sony VIAO laptop he was tapping his fingers across, looked back down, and did a double-take. He saw three white people in white Navy uniforms. One was a tall photogenic man with dark hair, one was an equally photogenic woman with equally dark hair, and the third was a doughy looking younger officer. Is CBS filming a television show in here?

They were worth a picture with the three-mega pixel camera. A cheery Navy tech with a name tag reading "Jones" clasped both hands to the earphones he had plugged in to one of the new digital COTS audio recorders. The writer didn't know someone could smile that wide without the cruel assistance of a knife. He wondered if Jones knew that Apple's ITunes player could store more digital audio than the COTS' 5,2GB capacity. Well, considering that most armed forces probably don't even have digital tapes, that's not so bad.

The three law enforcement types processed the same scene differently. Jones, obviously, was eavesdropping on one civilian electro-magnetic emissions within United States territory. Sure, he was just rehearsing for his airtime over Indian Country, but still, the law's the law.

The navy crime scene investigators turned their attention away from the workstation operators, and toward the writer. They wished to talk over the case, but weren't sure what to say before civilian ears. They glared, then mentally threw up their hands, and delved into some manila folders.

The Lieutenant set a Playstation One, super-modified in anticipation of the PSP, in his crossed lap.

"Does anyone want to play Tekken?"