The Trials (The Red Trilogy Book 2) (8 page)

“Part of your conspiracy?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“I told him that . . . that Thelma Sheridan supplied the . . . the nuclear devices, but . . . I only said it because I was afraid. He said he would kill me. And I was afraid.”

FaceValue reports that he’s telling the truth, and I know he was afraid. He was fucking terrified.

Fong asks, “Were you telling the truth when you told Colonel Kendrick that Thelma Sheridan supplied the nuclear devices?”

His mouth is open; his shoulders are visibly rising and falling as he draws in shallow, shuddering breaths. FaceValue redlines him as he says, “No, ma’am. I was not telling the truth.”

“You lied to Colonel Kendrick about Thelma Sheridan’s involvement?”

“Yes, ma’am. I did. Thelma Sheridan did not supply the nuclear devices. She was not involved.”

He’s lying now.

I look at the officers in the jury box. Most of them are looking at Blue like he’s a slug they’d love to step on, but none of them are wearing farsights, and by the terms of a negotiated agreement I know that none are equipped with an overlay. So they’ve got nothing but gut feeling to go on, in deciding if he’s lying now.

“Mr. Parker, what company provided the mercenaries used by you for protection at Black Cross?”

“Uther-Fen Protective Services, ma’am.”

Fong returns to her table, picks up a paper document in a clear plastic sleeve, and returns with it to the bench. “Your Honor, the United States would move to enter prosecution exhibit forty-nine for identification into evidence.”

Exhibit
49
is a document verifying that Uther-Fen is a subsidiary of Vanda-Sheridan. It’s as if Fong is trying to
make our case for us, except I know she’s not. “Mr. Parker, when you contracted Uther-Fen Protective Services to provide security at Black Cross, did you know the company was owned by Vanda-Sheridan?”

Blue is calmer this time, but he still gets redlined when he says, “No, ma’am. I did not.”

“Did you inform Uther-Fen that you intended to commit an act of terrorism?”

“No, ma’am. I did not.”

“Did you insinuate or otherwise imply to Uther-Fen that you intended to commit an illegal activity?”

“No. No, I did not. It was in the contract. They would not commit or participate in any act that violated the law.”

Fong enters yet another piece of evidence into the record: an electronic copy of the Uther-Fen contract, digitally signed by Blue Parker. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Cross-examination,” the judge says.

Major Ogawa is already on his feet. “Yes, ma’am. Mr. Parker, do you have any relatives who survived the assault on Black Cross?”

Parker looks at Fong. If he’s hoping she’ll object, he’s disappointed. “Yes, sir. I do, sir.”

“Could you tell us who those relatives are?”

“My wife, sir, and my two children.”

“How old are your children?”

“Garrett is four. Josh is two.”

“And where is their mother?”

“In federal prison, sir.”

“And your children? Where are they?”

“They’re with my . . . my wife’s sister.” He turns to the judge. “Do I have to say where they are?”

Monteiro tells him, “Please state what continent they’re on.”

“They’re in Europe, but they’re anonymous. People want to kill them.”

Ogawa nods. This is the testimony he was after. “Mr. Parker, did you agree to lie under oath regarding the confession you made to Colonel Kendrick, in order to protect your family from reprisals?”

Parker’s mouth opens. He looks horrified. “No, sir. I did
not
.”

Redline.

But hey, the man’s already murdered ninety-three thousand people. A few more lies aren’t going to make his time in Hell any worse.

“No more questions, Your Honor.”

•   •   •   •

“Okay,” Monteiro says. “It’s now seventeen seventeen, or five seventeen p.m. on the civilian clock. Is there anything else we need to address today?”

Fong stands up. “Your Honor, the United States requests a brief eight oh two.”

There’s a whisper of surprise from the spectators behind us. I turn to my uncle. He’s already scrawling on his legal pad:
802
= conference
.

“All right,” Monteiro says, though she does not look pleased. “Defense, any objection?”

“No objection, ma’am.”

“Then we will recess until seventeen thirty-five.”

After the judge and court members have left, we are escorted to our usual conference room. I’ve been sitting down all day, so while we wait, I pace back and forth. Flynn is in the bathroom, and Harvey’s waiting to take her turn. Jaynie is standing in a corner, her arms crossed, eyeing the door. Nolan, Tuttle, and Moon are dispersed around the table.

In a low voice, Tuttle says, “I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up when they brought Parker in. Ninety-three
thousand people dead. I was scared somebody in the audience would try to kill him. Set off a bomb or something.”

“Court security screens for weapons and explosives,” I say. “And after yesterday, they’re going to be extra vigilant.”

“Yes, sir.”

I reach the end of the room and start back, passing Jaynie. She’s still looking lean and muscular, despite the months spent cooped up in a tiny cell. My mind flashes back to Fort Dassari. I think about the way she looked fresh after a shower, wearing only panties and a thin T-shirt that didn’t hide much. And then I catch myself.
What the fuck is wrong with me?

Flynn steps out of the bathroom. She plops down at the table next to Moon and leans against his shoulder, heaving a dramatic sigh. “I can’t fuckin’ wait to go on leave.”

“Permanent leave, probably,” Moon grumbles. He looks at me. “They’re going to kick us out of the army one way or another, aren’t they, LT? Whether we get found innocent or not?”

I turn around again. “Yes.”

“
Fuck
,” Flynn whispers, looking scared for the first time. “Even if we’re not guilty? How is that fair?”

It’s not about fair and I don’t bother to answer, but Moon does.

“Hey,” he says softly. “It’ll work out, one way or another.”

I’m eyeing Jaynie again, thinking about what she looks like under her Class A’s. She scowls, and for a second I feel like a kid in trouble. But she’s not looking at me. She’s looking past me, at Flynn.

I turn around to find Flynn cuddled in Moon’s arm, her upturned lips brushing his, like they’re a high school couple.

Jaynie and Nolan explode simultaneously.

“Private Flynn!”

“Specialist Moon!”

“On your feet, now!”

Chair legs screech across the floor. Both Moon and Flynn look shocked as they jump to their feet, coming to attention, their shoulders squared and their gazes fixed straight ahead.

My sergeants are responsible for immediate personnel issues, for which I am grateful because I am not in a good position to handle this one. I put on my standard-issue stonewall expression and hope no one will see through it, while Jaynie takes the floor. She steps around the table until she’s standing right beside Moon and Flynn. “You want to fuck each other?” she shouts. “Because that is some twisted shit. We are brothers- and sisters-in-arms here. Brothers and sisters! And brothers and sisters
do not
fuck each other! Is that
understood
?”

Harvey emerges from the bathroom, her lips parted in awe. The door to the hall opens at the same time and Master Sergeant Chudhuri looks in. Meanwhile, Flynn and Moon bark in unison, “Yes, sergeant!”

Moon adds, in a tone of confusion, “It was an accident, sergeant.”

“Accidents don’t happen in my squad, Moon.”

Chudhuri withdraws, closing the door again.

Poor Flynn is horrified. “What the fuck is wrong with me?” she whispers.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I growl.

“Lieutenant,”
Jaynie snaps.

“It’s not her fault!” I tap my head, but I don’t meet her eye. “It’s all the time we spend alone in our cells.” The skullcaps and my skullnet are always working. No one talks about it much, but one effect is that we start perceiving one another as siblings. Then incest revulsion takes over and there’s not much incentive left to try to get into someone’s bed.

But it works that way only when we’re living together, training together, patrolling as a squad.

“Now that we’re aware of it,” I add, speaking half to myself, “be vigilant, and don’t let it happen again.”

We wait in guilty silence for two minutes, and then Chudhuri comes in again. “Let’s go. They want you back in court.”

“Best face forward,” I warn them. “Don’t give anything away.”

We return to our seats at the defendants’ table. When my uncle sits down next to me, I ask, “So what was the conference about?”

He leans close, as if he intends to whisper something, but he changes his mind and writes it down instead on the corner of his legal pad, in tiny black letters:
Carl Vanda.

The judge sweeps in, the bailiff calls, “All rise.” We do it, though I’m still staring at that name as Monteiro takes her seat behind the bench.

As soon as we resume our seats, Jaynie reaches for the pad, dragging it closer until she can read the tiny print. Then she shoves it back like it’s toxic.

“The court is called to order,” Monteiro says brusquely, and I get the impression she’s not happy. “Government, are you ready to call your next witness?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Major Fong says. “The United States calls Carl Reed Vanda.”

•   •   •   •

It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him in person. He’s tall and gaunt, with buzz-cut gray hair, a scarred face like a man who’s been in knife fights, a crooked nose, and electric blue eyes so bright he has to be wearing contacts or using an artificial pigment in his irises. His shoulders are square, his back too straight—broken and reset maybe, after the plane
crash in Africa less than a year ago. He walks with a slight limp, favoring his right hip.

As he takes the witness stand, he looks across the courtroom, and when he IDs me, when those blue eyes meet mine, they make a promise. They tell me they are going to watch while my world burns down around me.

I’m not sure, but I think my glare is promising him the same thing.

My uncle puts a hand on my arm. “Stop it.”

This man murdered my Lissa. Carl Vanda. He caused her death as surely as if he’d put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger himself.

“Jimmy.”

The icon in my overlay indicating activity in my skullnet is glowing in the corner of my vision, and as my skullnet coaxes my brain to pump comforting chemicals into my system, my rage becomes a colder, more patient thing. I look at my uncle.

Okay?
he mouths, while Carl Vanda swears to tell the truth.

I nod.

I kidnapped Carl Vanda’s wife. Lissa is dead because of that, because of
me
, because I dragged her into this mess, because I wanted to slam a dragon.

Major Fong begins: “For the record, your name is Carl Reed Vanda and you are the president and owner of Uther-Fen Protective Services?”

“Yes.”

She asks him to identify and review the contract for services at Black Cross, and to affirm his acquaintance with Blue Parker. “Does the contract name specific employees who were to be assigned to Black Cross?”

“No. There’s no need. All our personnel are fully trained and licensed.”

“Did those Uther-Fen employees who worked at Black Cross speak English?”

“Yes. Not well, maybe, but adequately.”

“Did Blue Parker request that the Uther-Fen personnel assigned to him be foreign nationals with poor English skills?”

“Yes, he did. The little shit—”

“You will express yourself with decorum, Mr. Vanda,” the judge warns, “or be held in contempt.”

“Yes,
ma’am
,” he answers in drawn-out sarcasm. “Mr. Parker informed me the Black Cross facility was being used to develop proprietary technology and that he wanted to minimize the risk of industrial espionage.”

“Did you find such a nonspecific explanation to be suspicious?” Major Fong asks him.

“I find every one of my clients suspicious. Everyone is playing their own game.”

“But you did as you were asked, and supplied Mr. Parker with non-English speakers—”

Fong breaks off as a low buzz ignites behind me. It’s coming from the spectator seats, somewhere to my left. Everyone in the courtroom turns to look, but there’s nothing to see.

“Bailiff,” the judge says. “Summon security now.”

I’m up. I can’t help it. I’m an LCS soldier, trained to think on my feet. My squad stands up too as the buzzing gains a companion sound, like the vibration of some high-speed windup toy against a wooden surface.

“What the hell?” a man shouts, cringing back against the woman seated beside him. Several other people cry out and then a mechanical bug with a cylindrical body smaller than my little finger rises on shimmering, buzzing dragonfly wings. Four limbs, needle thin and curved like pincers, hang beneath it. For a second, it hovers above the
audience, pivoting to survey the room with a tiny, gleaming glass eye.

I flash on the fact that the courtroom is sealed against radio transmissions. So either the robo-bug is being controlled from within this room or the device is autonomous.

I’m betting autonomous. I’m betting a pattern-recognition program is analyzing input gathered by that glass eye.

My dad and Lissa’s parents are an arm’s reach away on the other side of the bar. Keeping my gaze fixed on the toy-size drone, I say, “Dad! All of you—down on the floor!”

They drop, while I reach behind me, grabbing the legal pad with Carl Vanda’s name printed in the corner.

It’s like the little drone was waiting for me to move. It shoots toward me, almost too fast to follow. “Fall back!” Jaynie shouts as I swat hard at it with the yellow legal pad. The pad has a big surface, but I almost miss anyway, because the robo-bug is not coming for me after all. It shoots between me and Jaynie. I barely clip it on one wing, but that’s enough to unbalance it. I turn in time to see it spiral into the front of the judge’s bench. There’s a loud
crack
as it hits the wood. The buzzing stops, and it clatters against the floor.