Counterplay

by Richard Aaron

  The back door of the courtroom burst open and there stood George, Khasha, and Turbee. George, through his numerous divorces and a few assault charges, had some familiarity with legal processes. He also had little respect for judges and lawyers. “We have a witness for the defense, Your Honor,” he said.

  “And just who the hell are you, barging into my courtroom in the middle of a jury submission?” Judge Mordecai did not yet appreciate that there would be a great deal of barging in the next few days. “Do you want the sheriffs to toss you in the slammer for a day or two?”

  Wrong words in George’s world. “Name’s George Lexia, Judge. And we have a witness here for the defense. There was a little confusion between us and Ms. Wittenberg here. Now she’s got a witness. You’d better let him testify.”

  “You telling me what to do, Mr. Lexia?”

  “Just your job, Judge. We’ve been watching bits and pieces of the trial back home, and you’ve really been hammering on Ms. Wittenberg. Not very judge-like, if you ask me.”

  “No one is asking you, you impertinent fool. Do you know that in our common law jurisdiction 200 years ago, the sheriffs would have removed your right hand and nailed it to the lectern, just to let everyone know not to mess with the court? And you are messing with the court.”

  George sidled over to Dana. “Just ask him his name and his qualifications,” he whispered. “Then ask him about the Lestage emails. He’ll do the rest. And I need your telephone number.” She wrote down her telephone number and he went back into the public gallery.

  “Now, Ms. Wittenberg,” said the judge, looking at Dana. “You have a witness, I gather. What’s his name?”

  “Umm. It’s . . . it’s . . .”

  “Hamilton,” interrupted George. “Hamilton Turbee Junior.”

  “Lexia, one more peep out of you and you’re in the calabozo.”

  “Now who is your witness, Ms. Wittenberg?”

  Dana paused. The face looked vaguely familiar. Then she recognized him from their Skype call. That Turbee. TTIC Turbee. She looked at the judge with a smile, realizing that a lifeline had just been tossed in her direction.

  “His name is Mr. Turbee, m’lord. Hamilton Turbee Junior.”

  38

  An entirely different scene was unfolding in a less prestigious part of the city. “We’ve got to get some dry, clean clothes,” said Richard as the three sat down, backs against a brick wall, surveying the human wreckage in the alleyway.

  “I have an idea,” said Zak. “We’ll get one of these characters to help us out.” Before Richard could voice an opinion, Zak pointed to a man who seemed less damaged than the others and motioned with his good hand, urging the man to speak to them. He walked toward them, staring directly at them. “Uh, Zak,” began Richard.

  “Shut up, Rich, I’ve got this,” Zak said.

  The man, rakishly thin, had a scar on one side of his face and tendrils of various tattoos surfacing above his T-shirt. “What do you want, asshole?” he said, standing over the three damp, shivering men.

  “Dry clothes,” Zak replied.

  “Yeah. And I want a fuckin’ Rolls-Royce, okay? Now get the fuck out of here before I snap off a couple of fingers.”

  “Yo,” said Zak. “You’re way too hostile. Tell you what. I’ll give you a couple of Franklins now, and a couple more when you bring us the clothes.

  Two large. One small.”

  “What the fuck is a Franklin?” said the man.

  Richard groaned. “This is Canada, Zak,” he said softly, shaking his head. This was not the pre-capture Zak. Maybe the CIA had been accurate with their complaint about his psychological evaluations.

  “A hundred bucks, you idiot.” He fished around in his pocket and peeled out two of the hundred dollar bills that Jimmy had given him. “Now go to the Sally Ann and get us what we need and I’ll give you two more.”

  The stranger was intently surveying Zak. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it. Don’t go anywhere.” Before Zak could respond, the man was gone.

  “Zak, that was stupid,” he said. “That guy may be a user, but I’m damned sure he’s a dealer, too. Don’t you see how everyone else is reacting to him? We’ve got to get the hell out of here. One of us can go to the Sally Ann and we can work it from there. We don’t belong here.”

  “Richard, we can look after ourselves. I rode with Yousseff for years. I may only have one arm, but the other one is weaponized.”

  Richard got up and motioned Kumar up. “Out of here, guys. This is trouble.” Before Zak was fully mobile, the tattooed man returned, bringing with him two beefy, grim-looking enforcers. One of them pulled a handgun.

  “We don’t want any trouble,” said Richard. “My friend here’s a little off. We’ll leave.”

  “This is High Tight Soldier turf,” said one of the enforcers. “Empty your fucking pockets now. Maybe we’ll let you out of here with your kneecaps.” “Fuck you,” Zak replied.

  The first enforcer weighed well over 250, and stood six-four. He wore a black headband and his head was shaved, save for a Mohawk strip down the center. He sported heavy black sunglasses.

  “Do you have any fucking idea who I am?” he said, staring directly at Zak.

  “Why the hell should I care?”

  “Because, you idiot, I am the enforcer for the High Tight Soldiers.”

  Zak scoffed and pushed the left wrist button that normally released the deadly dorsal blade. Nothing. The electronics inside his prosthesis were still damp. “Jeez, those assholes told me it was waterproof,” he said to Richard.

  Nevertheless he was undeterred. “I don’t know who you are, mister,” Zak continued, “but I know soldiers. I work with soldiers. And you ain’t a soldier. You’re a Tinker Bell. With a bad haircut and cholesterol issues.”

  The enforcer looked a little unsure of himself. Generally the script didn’t unfold this way. “Now, asshole,” he said.

  “Zak, he’s got a gun,” said Richard. “Empty your pockets. We need to get out of here.”

  Zak pulled the wad of hundreds out of his pocket and threw it on the ground. The split second of distraction he created was all that either man needed. Zak was a little over six feet, Richard a little under. Both had a lifetime of training in various forms of combat, including hand to hand. Both were in superb physical shape. The instant that the enforcer looked down, Richard pounced and twisted the gun out of his hand. Zak delivered a powerful kick to the man’s knee, causing it to buckle. With a scream of rage, the enforcer went for a wicked stiletto that he carried on his belt, but before he could reach it, Richard delivered a karate chop to the man’s throat, putting him on the pavement.

  The second enforcer lunged at them with an unsheathed knife, but Zak deftly stepped aside, kneeing him in the groin. The man rolled on the pavement in agony. “Let’s get the hell out of here, Zak,” said Richard, grabbing Kumar by his shoulder and stepping away from the scene.

  “Just let me pick up this money . . .” said Zak.

  “No, Zak. I’ve got enough. Go.”

  The three of them fled the scene. Behind them, a motley collection of addicts scurried across the back alley, fishing up the hundreds that were drifting along the pavement. As it was, Richard was able to sidle into the Salvation Army thrift store. They were ultimately successful in bootstrapping their way into skid row respectability from there. They found a dilapidated ninety-yearold hotel, home to multiple species of insects and rats, and bunkered in for the day. They needed time to formulate their next move.

  At that moment, the Allegro Star was 500 miles due west of Vancouver, on a great circle route to Indonesia. She was picked up by NOSS-26, a component of the Navy satellite surveillance system used by the Office of Naval Intelligence in conjunction with the National Reconnaissance Office. The ONI had the profiles of hundreds of thousands of ships in its database. One of those profiles was that of the Allegro Star.

  39

  “Turbee’s on the witness stand right now,” said Tyra.
/>   “What witness stand?” asked the president, his complexion reddening.

  “That trial in Vancouver,” she replied. “The Leon Lestage trial. You know, that Canadian drug dealer who was involved in the Colorado River terrorist attack.”

  “So, what the hell is Turbee doing there?”

  The deputy attorney general was also present at the meeting. He attempted to answer the president. “The question is not what he’s testifying about, it’s who he’s testifying for,” he said.

  The president had no time for riddles. “What the hell is this about? Someone tell me,” he snapped.

  “He’s testifying on behalf of the defense,” said Tyra. “That means he has to be supporting the view somehow that Leon Lestage is not guilty.”

  “So who cares if some two-bit thug in Canada is guilty or not guilty?”

  “Sir, it ties into that damned conspiracy theory that won’t die. Lestage has been charged with murdering some 20,000 people, some of whom apparently were Canadians, as a result of the destruction of the Glen Canyon Dam. He has pleaded not guilty.”

  “Sir,” added Dan Alexander, who was also present in the tense meeting room, “we are almost certain that Turbee was involved in putting up some of those websites. He and some of those characters at TTIC who have gone rogue are of the view that Yousseff, our Afghanistan connection, was the key figure behind the attack. They say that Lestage did not know that Semtex was being shipped through his mine and into the US. This is directly contrary to the finding CJ made in the Colorado inquiry report. It is extremely dangerous to have someone holding those views in any kind of a public forum.”

  “So who pays attention to some bullshit murder trial up in Canada?” asked the president.

  “That’s the problem, sir,” said Tyra. “Court TV picked it up. The trial judge is a little off-key. There are four super sharp prosecutors, and one dumb, inexperienced, very junior defense lawyer. There is something compelling about it. The major networks have mentioned bits and pieces of it. There are now several million people around the world watching this trial. Many Americans are watching it. Hamilton Turbee is now on the stand. Anything can happen. This needs to be stopped.”

  “How do we stop it?” asked the president, looking at his deputy AG.

  “We can stop it for a day,” he responded. “We can get the senior partners from a distinguished Vancouver or Canadian superfirm, someone of prominence in the profession, to make an appearance in the trial. We can at least stop it for today while we put some affidavits and motion materials together.” “Do it,” the president ordered. “Get to a phone. Now.”

  The deputy AG scurried off, and within minutes was talking to the senior partner of a Canadian megafirm with a prominent Vancouver presence, Inverness McPhail International. Events can develop quickly when the receptionist’s call display shows the caller to be the White House, Washington, DC, and the caller identifies himself as the deputy attorney general of the United States of America. Mr. McPhail happened to be in the office that day.

  Back in the conference room, the president was about to excuse himself when CJ, the secretary of defense, added a further point. “There is one other detail, Mr. President,” he said cautiously.

  “What, CJ? I’m in a hurry here. There’s a photo-op in the Oval Office right now and I’m here listening to you guys.” “I have an email from ONI,” he began.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Office of Naval Intelligence, sir. They have picked up the Allegro Star.”

  “Where is she? In international waters?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then get our closest Navy asset, submarine, destroyer, or whatever aircraft we have in the area to sink the fucking thing. I have already ordered that.”

  “But sir—”

  “This is an order, CJ. Sink the fucking thing. We can put any disinformation we want into the news cycle should that become necessary, which I doubt. We know who’s on board that ship.”

  “But sir, we don’t.”

  The president had stood up and was heading for the door. “What do you mean? Isn’t it a given that Zak, Richard, and Kumar are on that ship?”

  “Sir, she was going west. Away from the Canadian mainland. We reverse plotted the course and she came from Juan de Fuca Strait, which is the main shipping route that leads to the Port of Vancouver.”

  “I don’t care where the fuck it was coming from. I told you to sink . . .” His voice trailed off. The conference room stifled in thirty seconds of dead air. “Yousseff told us how fast the Allegro Star could go. If we plot the distance from Karachi to Vancouver, throw in some time for refueling somewhere, take her to Vancouver, and back away from the shore, is it possible ...?” His voice trailed away again. “CJ? Is it possible?”

  “Some of the pencil necks at ONI have done that calculation, sir. It is possible that the Allegro Star could have left Karachi when we know it did, gone to Vancouver, dropped off Kumar, together I guess with Richard Lawrence and Zak Goldberg, and be at the point that she is now, traveling away from the mainland at about the speed that she is in fact traveling.”

  “Are you telling me it’s possible that Kumar Hanaman is in Vancouver right now?”

  “Sir, it’s possible. Turbee is definitely there. He’s on TV. That means it’s likely that George and Khasha are there. And it is possible that Kumar, Richard, and Zak are also in Vancouver as we speak.”

  There was another long, uncomfortable span of dead air as the president stared directly at CJ, absorbing what he had just heard. “Everybody out,” he ordered. “Tyra, you stay. Dan, you stick around, too.”

  40

  “Step forward, please, Mr. Turbee,” ordered the judge. “Let the clerk swear you in and take the stand.”

  A pale, shaking, mop-haired young man with a crumpled shirt and dark circles around both eyes stepped out from behind George and walked toward the clerk, was sworn in, and trepidatiously took the stand.

  Dana now found herself in the position that every counsel with enough experience has encountered. She had absolutely no idea what would occur next or what the witness might say. She started with the basics. “What is your name, sir?”

  Turbee looked across the courtroom at Dana, and the jury, and up at the judge whose beakish features and dark, threatening eyes were disquieting in the extreme. Turbee looked down and said nothing.

  “I am sorry, sir, you need to answer the question. What is your name?” Snickers from the prosecutors’ table were starting up again.

  Turbee was on many medications—antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds to deal with the PTSD he had acquired when he was attacked by DC thugs and ultimately thrown into a hospital for the criminally insane. This was on top of the cocktail of other meds he took to channel and focus his brain and make him functional. All these medications had side effects. One of those side effects was an extremely dry mouth, a problem made worse by stress. And Turbee, a fugitive and moving ever further into the arena of rogue-dom, was under extreme stress.

  “Water,” he croaked.

  The judge motioned to the clerk, who poured a glass of water and placed it on the edge of the witness box. George, who had taken a seat behind Dana, shook his head. A glass of water? Turbee? A drop-off? Bad combo. The judge repeated the question. “What is your name?”

  Turbee took a long draft of the cool water and in a quavering, raspy voice answered the question. “Hamilton Turbee Junior.”

  “Young man, you may never have been in a courtroom before, but when I ask a question, I expect the person answering to look me dead in the eyes. Got it?”

  “I can’t.”

  “What? Wittenberg, what have we got here? Some guy who looks like the cat dragged him in and he says he can’t look me in the eyes. Is he just going to lie his head off? And,” he said darkly, “what drugs is he on? He looks a bit like a crack addict to me.”

  “Maybe we should ask him why, sir.”

  “Okay. I’ll bite,” said Judge Mordecai. “Why
can’t you look me in the eye?”

  “I just can’t, sir.”

  “You’ve got some kind of head problem, is it?” “Yes,” said Turbee, turning crimson.

  “So do you understand the meaning and the nature of the oath you just took?”

  Turbee screwed up his forehead. “Meaning and nature? What does that mean?”

  Sheff guffawed. “She put a drugger on the stand and he doesn’t even understand the nature and meaning of an oath,” he said to Archambault. He didn’t even bother to keep his voice down.

  McGhee added to it. “Did you find him in the dumpster, Little Puppy? Or in cells when you were there, maybe?”

  “That’s not the crazy part,” said Danson. “She has never even interviewed him. She has no idea what he’s going to say. She’s gone totally random.”

  “Wittenberg,” groused the judge, “have you just put someone on the stand who is incompetent to testify? Is this yet another stalling tactic? Is he like retarded or something?”

  “You bastard!” yelled George from behind Dana. “Where’s the kangaroo?”

  “You may have some kind of issue, Mr. Lexia, but you’re not going to vent in my courtroom. That’ll be a thousand dollar fine. Once more, and it will be a $10,000 fine. Got it?”

  “Ten thousand?” asked George, who has successfully headed several high-flying Silicon Valley start-ups.

  “Yes, $10,000. Payable immediately.”

  “Well then, here’s a check for $11,000. I hope you use it to acquire some manners so you can turn this goat fuck of a trial around.” He whipped out a checkbook, scrawled one out for $11,000, and handed it to a sheriff.

  “Twenty thousand dollars. You can’t use words like that in here.”

  “Sorry, I meant rhino fuck.”

  “Thirty thousand dollars.”