*Editing magic performed by KJ24 and Shyqash, plus contributions by the regular gang of brigands and neer-do-wells*

*You never really know what you can'tdo until you've tried to do it and failed*

**This is NOT a political commentary; ... public personalities have been butchered in order to make the story light-hearted**

*

{4:45 am Friday, August 29th ~ 10 Days to go}

"Hey," Brooke asked softly, "can I join?"

I was halfway thru my clean up when she'd opened the shower stall door, but I had some time. "Sure. I'll wash your back if you wash mine," I offered.

She gave me a sly grin as she stepped in and closed the door behind her. I signaled her to turn with her back to me (never a safe position), poured some liquid soap in my hands and began lathering her up.

"Did you think you could leave me with only a kiss," she said as she backed up against me.

"I thought you were asleep when I kissed you," I whispered into her ear.

"I was. You are such a romantic -- I assumed you kissed me because that's what you always do. You have a light touch."

"We were up late," I teased.

"You are up early," she let her left hand travel down between us until she could wrap her fingers around my cock.

"Being with you ... it is hardly a surprise," I chuckled.

"Are you implying you like me?" she serpentined her body against mine.

"Me likey -- me likey a whole bunch," I told her as I nibbled her ear. Brooke responded by pulling my cock around like a clock arm until it was fixed between her thighs and rubbing up against her vulva. We left it there a while, she rocking her hips back and forward while I soaped up her front the way I had lathered her back. After all, this was foreplay.

This was kisses planted along her shoulders, neck, ears and, as I turned her head around, on her lips. Brooke was whining with need after our last French kiss, so I pushed my hips back and pressed her down with a hand on her mid-back. At the perfect angle, I let her slip my glans between her labia. That was my cue to plumb her velvety, hot depths with one steady penetration.

"Ah ... this is never going to get old," Brooke moaned. She punctuated her statement by rolling her hips back and forth, letting my cock touch every inch of her vagina. In the interlude, I cut off the water so it would cease to be a distraction. Then my hands went to her hips and the pumping began. It was a slow steady wave-like motion.

I would pull out until only my glans remained within, then gently reverse course so that my pubic hair was against her glorious buttocks. Brooke had one hand against the tiled wall while the other reached under to play with her own clit and with my shaft as I went in and my scrotum when I was pulling out. This was an excellent symmetry we had developed.

I pulled out suddenly.

"No," Brooke protested. She turned around to see me pull a condom from behind the shampoo and quickly apply it. Brooke giggled. "Thank you for that, but don't you think it is a little late in our night together?"

"Would you rather I went without?" I smiled.

"No," she sighed happily. "It is so you." I took that as a sign to slip back in. I felt her fingernails run over the condom as I pressed forward. This time around, I let Brooke do all the work. I placed my torso onto her back so I could worry her shoulders and neck (yes, I gave her a hickey) and fondled her breasts.

"No fair," she whimpered. "No fair ... I wanted you to ... cum first."

"I'm working as fast as I can," I huffed. Her fingers were strumming her clitoris furiously, I was picking up my pace, pounding her with growing ferocity, and her breath was coming in labored gasps.

"Noooo!" she howled as her climax gripped her. She bucked up once, twice, then a third time, holding herself tightly against me, my girth all the way in.

"I'm cumming," I growled and I did. Brooke's groans became longer and lower. She wiggled her cute butt against me, urging out every spurt of my semen into the condom. As I was pulling out of Brooke, she stopped me.

"Wait, I want to try something," she told me. She turned around and went to her knees.

Brooke rolled off the condom and made deep, meaningful eye contact before tilting her head back and draining the contents of my condom down her throat. Oh, that was so sexy.

"Yummy," she gulped down my seed.

"Wow ... that was so ... unforgettable," I stroked her cheek.

"I've been reading some porn and wanted to try ... oh, it has an aftertaste of spermicide. At least I think that is what it is," she snickered.

"I wouldn't know," I shrugged.

"Let me find out," she gave me more of that sultry eye-contact. She put her hand around my cock, stuck out her tongue then slipped it past her lips.

"Noooo ..." it was my turn to moan. She was getting me hard again and I had a date I couldn't be late for. Maybe. The moment her gag reflex kicked in, I pulled her up into a kiss. My hands cupped each ass cheek, I raised her over my cock and impaled her in one rapid motion. Face to face, I began bouncing her hard and deep.

{8:00 am}

I wasn't late, but it was a close thing. I had arrived with three minutes to spare, only to find Hana and Libra waiting for me at Amy's Bread on 9th Avenue. Over some coffee and scones we soaked up the city's morning ambience. I was in my biker clothes with my bike locked up within sight of the counter.

"So," Libra started off after the initial hugs and kisses (Hana on the lips, Libra on the cheek ... no titty snuggle for me at the moment), "how was dinner with Brooke last night?"

I didn't believe Brooke had given anyone any details in the period between since we'd had our last round of high octane love-making at one a.m. and before I grabbed my shower, or the two quickies in the shower, or feeling her up at the door. I had kissed her before leaving and she had been out like a light, naked and curled up with my pillow while resting her weary head on the other one. I had whispered a farewell to Casper, but not looked in. After that, I had biked over to Havenstone for my six o'clock firearm's practice.

There, I had picked up my current minder, Juanita Leya Antonio Garza. She was a mocha-skinned Dominican, twenty-nine years old and a brand-spanking new member of the Isharan House Guard. She came to me by way of Havenstone's Buenos Aires' Acquisitions department. Juanita had earned her spot as my guardian by qualifying for that office's Rapid Response Team. (She had been good enough to qualify for that team's lead. Since there were not enough Security Detail (SD's) to staff all the satellite offices, the offices made do with teams trained by the SD as part of their normal career training.)

She had spent the past week as part of an ad-hoc training program addressing how to bodyguard from on top a bicycle. (The SD had actually been planning this since I had been kidnapped.) Juanita had been identified by Buffy and Halen as a Runner to be brought into House Ishara and she had a seal of approval from both Buffy and Rachel as a bodyguard, so I was more than willing to put up with an aggressive road buddy.

"Entertaining," I grinned. "Definitely something we are going to have to work on together next time."

"Next time?" Hana regarded me studiously. "Was last night that good?"

"We are not going to go there, Hana. I'm doing my best within my limited Code of Sexual Misconduct. I'm trying to be discreet."

"Hana," Libra added her voice, "when you first met Cáel, he was simultaneously dating me and Brooke. At the same time he was also seeing that police officer ..."

"Nikita," I clarified, "and we are keeping it at the 'strictly friends' level right now."

"I was hoping to have something more than just a part-time husband," Hana stated softly. Hana wasn't whining. She was testing our boundaries ... for the long term control of my being. After all, wasn't that what marriage was all about?

"At this point in my life, I'm not that guy," I pushed back. Most of the women I'd been with hadn't been happy about sharing my attentions -- often violently so. Those who did found ways to emotionally blackmail me into spending more time with them. Up until now, that had never worked.

"When I saw you with Õnnela, I realized that you are much more than some sort of playboy," Hana countered.

"I'm learning to like kids," I shrugged happily. "I never thought I would, quite frankly. I wasn't called 'Captain Condom' for nothing."

"I'm not on birth control," Hana enlightened me. Oh shit!

"Good thing we are getting married," I joked feebly. "So, does Õnnela want a baby brother, or sister?"

"Would there be a problem with a boy?" Libra asked.

"Not anymore," I guaranteed them both. "I couldn't ..."

"Couldn't?" Hana requested what I had let slip.

"What used to happen to Amazon boys?" Libra pressed.

"Not something that I feel at liberty to discuss," I hedged.

"That doesn't sound good," Libra mused.

"Would our child be at risk if something happened to you?" Hana worried.

"No," I reached over and squeezed her hand. "There are plenty of people that know how I feel and wouldn't let anything happen to my children," I didn't quite lie. Honestly I had never talked over such things, even with Buffy. Would my sons be okay? Would my daughters?

I needed to reexamine my future plans ... which is to say I needed a plan.

"So how would we deal with your grandfather?" Hana redirected my thoughts.

"Oh ..." I had been worried about my Amazons, not my family.

"I will find a way to deal with Alal," I promised her. What a bold-faced lie. I hadn't a clue how to counter the man yet. I was still playing catch up with several thousand years of what he had already accomplished, much less plumbed the depths of his future conspiracies.

"You big liar," Hana smiled warmly. "That man has your number, even though you don't see it yet. We will have to work on something together."

"I'll help," Libra offered. "That guy weirded me out."

"He did?" I looked her way. I'd been good at avoiding ogling her cleavage for Hana's sake. "I wish I could clarify how I feel about him."

"That man is evil," Hana insisted. "Don't you see that?"

"It isn't that simple for me," I shook my head. "It is ... I can get inside his head and figure out what motivates him ... and sometimes it is scary. In a way, he's lost faith in humanity. His friends have all long since died and he has carried on alone. I get the bizarre sense he is even looking forward to having something he's never had before -- a family."

"What about your -- ummm -- aunts?" Libra challenged me.

"They don't count because he ..." I couldn't say 'made them in a lab'. "He never knew them as children, only after the fact and they have always lived in his shadow and under his control. This time, with me -- us -- things can be different."

"He doesn't deserve a family in my book," Hana shook her head. "Not my family."

I had to think about Katrina and Aya. How different was Katrina, who purposely sacrificed Aya to achieve her long term goals of screwing over the Seven Pillars of Heaven? Aya would bear a permanent scar of that betrayal ... and Katrina had an ironclad faith I would save us both ... a faith I didn't have in myself. I liked Katrina and even trusted her somewhat. Could I afford to feel the same way about Grandpa Cáel?

"Hana, I'm not looking to give you a sane reason for dumping me, but my family is more than a little fucked up," I began. "I have to face the fact that right now, I really can't stop Alal from doing what he wants. That doesn't mean I accept the situation, yet it is what it is. When I have a chance at putting him away, I'll take it and that decision goes beyond my family. He needs to be stopped. As you said 'he's evil'."

"Will you let us help you?" Libra inquired. 'Yeah right, what can you do versus a 5000 year old criminal mastermind' wasn't the appropriate thing to say. The truth rarely is.

"What would you suggest?" I did say. "Considering the resource gulf between what we can bring to bear versus his legions of followers and unspeakable power, what chances do the three of us have?"

"Is that a concession, insult, or genuine inquiry?" Hana questioned.

"Genuine inquiry," I answered. "I hardly feel I know it all. And the more insight I can gather, the better my long-term chances are."

"We can start by finding a way to get rid of my Irish 'minders'," Hana gave me a quirky grin. "They are very good at fitting seamlessly into the background, but I can spot them."

"Keep them around for a while, because all we can accomplish right now is getting a few more we can't identify," I pointed out. "The Ghost Tigers?"

"Oh, they are out and about," Libra snorted.

"They stop by long enough in the morning to get my itinerary, then ... I guess they are out there somewhere," Hana told me. "A few times they have acted on my behalf, so I know they are close by ... and that people really are trying to kill me. But they work their way ... and that includes not being seen with me, it seems."

"They are assassins, so I guess I should have expected that," I shrugged. "Still, while they are on the job, you are safer than you realize. None of the others ~ groups ~ will bother you while they know those two are close by. It is two, right?"

"I've seen two. A young woman and an older man," she elaborated.

"They both come across as diligent sociopaths," Libra added. "I've never seen them emit a single emotion ... and they don't like my sense of humor."

"I'd rather have you two alive than have them chucking at your innate comedic talents, Libra," I smirked. "Besides, the things they find funny you might not appreciate."

"Good point," Hana nodded. "Some of the Great Khan's people certainly have an odd sense of humor -- things that don't translate over well."

I had an alternative to telling what I knew about the Earth & Sky and why they were so grim: that they saw their father's lifetimes, their own and that of their children filled with warfare and struggle. They were geographically trapped between two of the world's greatest powers ~ Russia and China. At best, they had been pawns in the Great Game and even independence had not brought forth a promise of hope. Too many of their kin remained prisoners in other lands.

No, I really had an out ... and I took it, like the big coward that I am.

"Casper's sense of humor is coming along well," I sighed. "She looked somewhat at ease last night. Her salad was the highlight of the meal."

Libra looked out the window while Hana looked down at her plate. Libra had not been as good a friend to the girl as Brooke had been. For Hana, it was the pain her father had gone through over her half-brother's death.

As I had predicted, it brought our breakfast to a somber close. Hugs, kisses and I/we were off to the office. Juanita tapped me at a stoplight. Immediately I looked for a possible tail.

"What did you say at the end of breakfast?" she asked. "Whatever it was, it went over like finding a severed head in your luggage."

"Someday I will have to tell you about a girl named Casper."

She mulled that over.

"I know about Casper Winslow," she confessed. "You did the right thing. Some people ..."

"Doing the 'right' thing doesn't mean I did something that caused the least pain. I'll live with what others did at my behest, but I'll never celebrate it," I looked her way.

"They were right," she nodded. "You are complicated."

I took that wonderful assessment into the office.

(JIKIT 2:00 pm Friday)

Any great teacher, or professor, can teach you lessons that you carry through your later life. They open up your eyes to ways of thinking and to ideas that change who you are as a person. It should never be forgotten though, that those lessons are learned through the lenses of the scholar. It was that way with the memories of Alal in my head. I wasn't reading the Book of Alal. I was experiencing things he had experienced, colored by his perceptions at the time.

At one time, Alal had been a man of great superstition and faith. Over time, his belief in higher powers had soured into a hatred of all things divine and a contempt for those who devoted themselves to otherworldly powers. He wasn't an atheist. He acknowledged that there were things beyond the normal senses of mankind, yet denied they were anything but selfish and precocious.

So, when I was talking strategy with the likes of Addison and Lady Fathom, I had to remember whose advice I was taking. I also had to take into account the invisible hand of the supernatural beings he despised. Temujin was a mortal man with an immortal pedigree. That gave him an outlook like Alal's, in that he thought long term.

It was more than a five- or ten-year plan. It was the surefire belief that if this generation failed to do something right, the stage could be set for the next generation, or the next. It also effected how he viewed allies and enemies. For the Mongol-Turkish civilization, only the Han were sworn enemies. One could not be powerful while the other was.

Outside of that, everyone had a choice. Too often, you only got one chance at being on a friendly basis. And all other enemies would be dealt with in time. That wasn't an overly rational world view, but it was Temujin's and it infected the upper echelon of the Earth & Sky. JIKIT's problem was getting our respective governments to see things that way.

In the Post-Cold War, nations had squabbles and disagreements. Today's belligerent was tomorrow's regional bulwark. The Khanate didn't think that way. India had gained an ally that would be multi-generational. Pakistan and Iran were running in the other direction, and that meant the Horde would eventually come calling.

The original Khanate of the thirteenth century had been a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic conglomerate. Turks, Persians, Russians and Tibetans were all present in that Mongol court. Power resided in the powerful Mongol clans, but their subject peoples wielded real power as well. In the end, it was the Mongols who tore their empire apart. And as it fractured, the parts then made war on one another ... or so Alal remembered. It was that 'lenses' thing once more.

Alal admired the original Temujin and his successors ~ Ögedei, Güyük, and Möngke who established the prototype for his own plans for world domination -- the Pax Mongolica. That admiration influenced and led me down some dangerous pathways. The knowledge that came with those viewpoints was the other reason why I was on JIKIT ... and the main reason they needed me on daily meetings.

(Thailand and the Three K's)

A wise television character once said, 'the avalanche has already started; it is too late for the pebbles to vote'. The avalanche had already started in Asia, but a few pebbles still insisted on voting ... with their feet. For that matter, four 'peoples' were voting with their feet and with their firearms. They were the Karen, the Karenni, and more important to us at the moment, the Kachin groups in Myanmar plus the average working man/woman in Thailand.

The first three groups were involved in a long-running ethnic civil war with Myanmar ... and were losing. For the Karenni and Karen, there was always the refuge offered by the Thai border, behind which refugee camps had sprung up. Also, since those two ethnic groups controlled the overland land routes between Myanmar and Thailand, they had access to a small amount of 'self-financing'.

The Kachin had no such luck. They were stuck in the northeastern part of the country with their back to Yunnan province in China ... except the PRC didn't control Yunnan anymore -- the Khanate did (it was their overland accessibility to the Republic of Vietnam.) No one much cared about the Kachin either ... except the Dali Lama who, now that Tibet was free, began concentrating on gathering aid for his people abroad and bringing to light the conveniently forgotten humanitarian disasters around the globe.

Then the Army of Myanmar launched a campaign to push the Kachin resistance off its last legs and into the grave. The Kachin had fled over the border to China in the past ... and the Chinese had always sent them home to be subjected to the blood-stained hands of the Burmese. When August 14th rolled around, the Burmese offensive was in full swing and once more the Kachin were fleeing north into China ... only this time, they walked right into the path of a Khanate mobile patrol heading south.

'Why are you here in our territory?' the Khanate leader asked thru his local translator. He was the commander of a Zuuns ~ 100 men (now slightly reduced) but the Khanate military prided itself on initiative among its non-commissioned and junior officers.

'We are being slaughtered in our homeland,' the people wailed.

'Well, we don't have the resources to take care of you here.'

'Please don't send us back. We will be raped, tortured and even murdered.'

And since that commander had been told to ally with the local ethnic minorities in this part of Yunnan (who also happened to be kinsmen of these Kachin), he showed his initiative. "I'll go down the road and talk to these Myanmar troops so they will stop attacking you until our Tumens commander can work something out ~ say mediate a cession of hostilities", he told them. And off he went.

A roving Myanmar helicopter saw a light armored column rolling south in the middle of a stream of Kachin heading north. The pilot assumed they had crossed the border, so he attacked. The helicopter had the misfortune to kill one of the 86 remaining Khanate troopers. As he wheeled around for a second pass, a Khanate soldier wielding a 9K333 Verba SAM blasted him out of the sky.

Even as it died, the helicopter was being told that a Khanate column was coming down the valley to exchange bona fides with the Myanmar commander. Since both sides were conversing in Cantonese, there were definitely confusing communication issues going on:

Myanmar commander: 'Be careful, we have a helicopter in the area.'

Khanate commander: 'We are aware of that. It killed one of my men.'

Myanmar commander: 'Where is our helicopter now?'

Khanate commander: 'There seems to be a misunderstanding. You killed one of my men.' In modern English slang ~ 'It is so on!'

Before rolling down into the valley, destroying one mobile column of Myanmar light infantry and then annihilating the closest town garrison, the Khanate commander called up some air support. Amidst the ground carnage, the six Khanate Mig-35's escorting twelve SU-25MS's jumped four Myanmar Mig-29's, shooting down three of them.

By midnight, the tiny Khanate force had retreated back over the border, leaving the Burmese wondering when the Khanate would come stampeding south in even greater numbers.

The next morning the Khanate Commander of a Thousand explained to his Myanmar counterpart that this matter was settled, unless he wanted to take it another step. For both sides, the announcement of an upcoming truce between the Khanate and the PRC hung heavy in the air. Myanmar opted to forget the issue and the outside world was unaware how close the two came to war.

No one gave the Kachin the memo. They immediately came, hat in hand, to the Khanate's Yunnan provincial commander, who was looking for a way to not get squeezed between a hostile PRC and Burma ... and he had plenty of former People's Liberation Army equipment he'd just taken from disarmed Chinese troops lying around. So he gave the Kachin a few thousand assault rifles, grenade launchers, SAM's and mortars ... plus some men to train them in how to use said weapons and in 'proper' insurgency tactics ... some of which was 'on the job' training.

Now why would that mean anything to anyone at JIKIT? Recall the other two K's? They both bordered Thailand and on August 26th, massive 'Red Shirt' [not the name I would have chosen for a pro-democracy movement] protests broke out in some of the country's largest cities and towns. There were strikes and work stoppages. The country was on the verge of grinding to a halt.

Late on the 29th, the regime's military began violently crushing the opposition. Hundreds died in the streets. What few understood was that the majority of the military leadership came from the populous Eastern District ... which bred some resentment in the other's commands. Early on August 30th [Thailand was a day ahead NYC], someone killed the commander of the Royal Thai Third Army. His Chief of Staff took over and immediately declared his support for the 'Red Shirts'.

Why did this matter?

Several thousand Karen and Karenni fighters joined with the 3rd Army theater leadership in hopes that a democratic regime would take a hard line stance against Myanmar's (almost a dictatorship) junta and support their ideas for independent states. These highly trained veteran fighters were desperately needed by the Thai rebels. Still, why would most of us care?

To add to the confusion, the battle in Thailand wasn't even about democracy. The various General-Princes were jockeying for power and the Red Shirts were giving the players with less power a way to express greater influence. The current 'dictator/President-for-Life/Prime Minister by Popular Acclaim', Prayut Chan-o-cha, had taken over a few weeks earlier ... using his hand-picked legislature who were part of the new Constitution he had created.

He had left his rivals out in the cold with little to show for their past loyalty when, as Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Army, he had launched his surprise coup in May. In June, he had created a new Constitution which gave him virtual control of every aspect of the country's life. On the 24th of August, he was unanimously appointed Prime Minister. He was now leader of the Army, the only allowed political party and the country's governmental apparatus. Three for three.

The new Prime Minister had been rounding up dissenters and officers who opposed the coup. His surviving enemies hadn't waited for their time to come. They took to the streets in large, if disorganized mobs. Still, until the Third Army switched sides, these down-trodden citizens had no real chance to create change. The military had been a tightly organized, unified body and the army's size was up to the task of controlling the populous. Now an actual civil war was in the offing.

Most people couldn't tell you what the ten nations of Southeast Asia were, much less where they were. The odds of knowing how democratic or how corrupt they were was even more unlikely. Suffice it to say, the countries at the bottom of the heap were Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, though Myanmar was in the same pack. So the fun geopolitical part was ... the Black Lotus wanted the autocratic Khanate to ask their ally Vietnam to put pressure on their neighbors (Laos and Cambodia) to support the pro-democracy side -- i.e., the most repressive regimes supporting the cause of freedom (in someone else's country).

To add to the bizarre, the world's leading democracy, the United States, was pressing for calm -- which would doom the pro-democracy side. The US was supported by the PRC (People's Republic of China), Russia, Malaysia and Myanmar. The World's largest democracy, India, WAS supporting the Red Shirts. The other regional entities (big Indonesia and tiny Brunei and Singapore) were sitting on the sidelines.

The rest of the world? The European Union wanted the UN to put forth a cease-fire and have the differing sides to sit down together. The government of Thailand wasn't going for any intervention impinging their sovereignty ... because they couldn't see the world of hurt that would be coming down the pipeline. Prayut Chan-o-cha was thinking he was still in pre-Khanate Asia. At worst, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos would send terse letters and withdraw their ambassadors for consultations at home.

Vietnam and the Khanate (by way of JIKIT) were thinking INVASION with a blitzkrieg before the rest of the world could slap down some sanctions hard enough to hurt. All they had to do was lure the Royal Thai First and Second Armies into a climactic encounter, crush them, then set up free, UN-sanctioned elections. Would this foster true democracy? I hoped so, yet I had the impression no one else (except for Rikki maybe) was thinking along the same lines.

Addison and Lady Yum-Yum told me upfront that they didn't give a fuck. All they cared about was that the new Thailand would be a regional ally for the Khanate ... and thus Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. It was harsh, global reality setting in. Laos and Cambodia had anemic economies and weak militaries, while Thailand had a strong manufacturing economy and a powerful army. Vietnam's military was bigger, but didn't share a border with Thailand. When the war with China broke out again, the Khanate would need its southeastern flank and Vietnam to be safe.

To do this meant regime change. Neither Vietnam, India, nor the Khanate were ready to intervene in Thailand, yet they had to act while the iron was hot. That meant going with what they had handy passing over the less than stellar road and river networks through Laos and Cambodia. They would be fighting a war along a very fragile logistical train -- so they needed to win decisively and fast. An answer to this problem was the sea -- the Gulf of Thailand to be precise.

The Thai Navy was more powerful than the Vietnamese Navy to the point where Vietnam's option to arrive by or be supplied by sea was virtually non-existent ... so the Indian Navy was finally going to have to get their hands dirty ... except [I love/hate that word] the Royal Thai naval commanders might not want their biggest bargaining chip ~ the size of their navy ~ committed to a risky battle at sea.

The Third Army wasn't alone in its stand either. Given the opportunity to stay neutral, the Fourth Army and Royal Thai Air Force were both pledging to stay on the sidelines. That still left the Third Army in an uneven struggle. The First and Second Army were both individually larger ... except they sat over a restive, repressed civilian populace who now had a trickle of military hardware coming their way.

The world would react to the invasion, there was no doubt. The problem was: there wasn't much to respond with actually in the military theater. Pro-PRC Myanmar had a house full of internal problems, plus they had border issues with India (~ 'just because' ~) and with Bangladesh, who was supporting the Muslim minority in the west of the country that the Myanmar government was also oppressing. Myanmar had more problems than any other country I'd ever heard of ... oh, and they thought their military junta ruled by popular consent. With their predilection to shoot dissidents, I could see how they won that opinion poll.

Malaysia could attempt to intervene, but they would be mobilizing against the neutral Fourth Army ... unless they wanted to risk the sea approaches as well and their navy was in no way up to challenging the Indians either. The US didn't appear to have the will. The PRC wouldn't want to anger the Khanate this soon into the cease-fire. This wasn't Russia's fight, so all she would do was send words. Besides, she despised the US, UN and EU for all the sanctions she was suffering through because of the 'problems' in the Ukraine.

Yet again, this was on the far side of the globe so why would we care? How could we make any of the key players give a damn?

It was all about the Benjamin's. See, there were plans on the drawing board for a canal traversing Thailand's Kra Isthmus, connecting India's Andaman Sea to the Gulf of Thailand, which would greatly shorten the distance for sea trade from India to the rest of Southeast Asia. If a Thai-Indian consortium controlled that canal, it would be worth untold billions for both those nations. Such trade routes would put Vietnam much closer to the global market place, further boosting their economy (as well as Cambodia's). It took my Alal-mind just over three hours to figure all that out.

Much to my continuous chagrin, young men and women would be dying to make a handful of rich entities richer. It was sometimes difficult for me to understand that most noble fights happened amid the dim perceptions of polite societies. In practical terms, brothers fought for brothers, their families and clans ~ be they tribes, battalions, or unnamed fraternities. Compared to the elected technocrats that ruled ... I was finding myself drawn to the starkly brutal organizations most like my Amazons.

Many of the women who had voted me into a lifetime of slavery were chomping at the bit to join their sisters in this urgent struggle I had brought about. I still knew I should hate them. I also prayed for their success because it was what we all so desperately needed. My children's lives were on the line. All our children's lives were on the line and in that, we were united in bonds closer than blood.

After gifting JIKIT with my insights, Lady Yum-Yum's first response was to call some 'friends' in some of the larger news outlets in Great Britain to make sure they could splash the pro-democracy crackdown as the lead story/front page news because ... the Khanate was going to assure Thai independence the same way they had made sure democracy reigned in Tibet ~ just like Tibet was the theme. That was for the Thai populous as well as for foreign consumption. The Khanate would come -- then go.

Khanate armed forces? Four whole Tumens and a 120 combat aircraft were sitting in Yunnan. They could be riding trains through Vietnam's rather dysfunctional railways on their way to the Cambodian/Laotian/Thai border.

'Was this for real?' the newsies wondered.

Was Lady Fathom Worthington-Burke a member of the shadowy JIKIT, which may/may not have been something more than a mere research body?

Should those news outlets put their people on the streets of Bangkok?

Should they hire some stringers?

Yes and yes ... and she could also imbed them with the Khanate troops closest to the future conflict ... maybe with the military mission to Vietnam itself. No one had been on point with the Khanate military machine before; and being in the front lines with the rawest footage was what the 24/7 was all about.

I must have looked pretty stunned at her audacity, because she patted me on the head like a prized Irish Setter. The moment she finished her fifth phone call, Addison confronted me with a similar list of news agencies that would need a favor for a favor. She knew less people, which at least meant fewer requests I had to make of Iskender.

All the women around me were happy, my co-workers insisted I was doing a fantastic job and people in powerful places thought I was doing the world a great service. The only way I could have been happier was if I really understood what I was doing ... or we had a bathing suit attire dress code ... that would have been pretty cool too.

(... and she brought a spear)

I left work early. I had this sneaking suspicion that yet more people around the globe were going to die and I had advance notice of this calamity and could do nothing to stop it. I could tell myself that people had been, were, and would be trying to kill one another with no help from me. That didn't assuage my guilt much, so I decided that I could extinguish some of my self-pity by going to the Full-Blooded gym and convincing someone to kick my ass.

I imagined I would have plenty of takers. Despite the opinions of Pamela, Katrina and Rachel, I was still largely a pariah -- and unwelcomed intruder foisted upon them by forces they could not question -- their Ancestors. The fact that I was dragging that jumped-up Runner, Juanita Ishara, along with me only added insult to their injury.

It definitely didn't help that Juanita didn't take guff from anyone. Sure, the House Amazons were warriors trained from a tender age to be lethal killing machines, but Juanita was the baddest of the bad -- the hardest, fastest and most determined of the roughly 20,000 Runners that existed alongside the Host. She didn't resent the House Amazons because that would have been counterproductive to her survival. Also, before I came along, she knew she had virtually no chance of joining their exclusive club.

Now that she was a 'House Amazon', she absolutely insisted that she be treated like one and woe to the fool who chose to deny her that hard won right. To add to the unpleasantness, she had the 'Buffy-ist' ideal that no one could disrespect me in the slightest. I tried to take my chiding in good humor. Juanita was having none of that. Ten minutes into my stress-relieving workout, Juanita called out some dingbat to the mat.

I could have let her go alone and be gang-jumped. That would have been unfair to her and something Buffy would take me to task over, once it was all said and done. So in I went .. and when two Amazons joined the first opponent, I blindsided them. It was the Amazon thing to do. I didn't get to enjoy my victory because my intervention was the cue for the grand pummeling to begin.

Letting us both be beaten black and blue made no sense. I grabbed Juanita by the waist and hurdled her into two others, spilling all three off the mat (and out of play).

"Stay!" I commanded, pointing my finger at Juanita. I wasn't going to have her sense of outrage spoil my selfless gesture.

Into this eye of the storm a calm settled. It dawned on my twelve assailants that what they were doing looked bad even by Amazon battle-ethics. Twelve Amazons to beat up one male? That was hardly the conservation of resources they practiced. They were trying to juggle down their numbers when someone decided to help them along in the decision-making process.

They had numbers. She brought a spear, plus she was one of the five scariest combatants I had ever encountered. I would have been happy if it was Pamela ... or Saku (maybe) ... I would have been highly suspicious if it was St. Marie, the Golden Mare and de facto leader of the Host. If it had been Alal, I would have been horrified (that Havenstone security had been so fatally compromised).

No, I got number five, which left me both somewhat elated (I liked watching her fight) and somewhat confused (she was normally kicking my ass). It was Elsa, and none of the others could stand against her. Soon we had cleared the mats, partially out of skill and mostly out of fear (of Elsa).

"Good to see you again," I tested the waters.

"I wish to be alone with Ish -- Wakko Ishara," Elsa announced. Only Juanita hung around. Since I doubted they had actually met before ...

"Elsa ... I've never asked you what your house was," I struggled through the introductions. "This is Juanita Ishara, of the Isharan House Guard. Juanita, this is Elsa, commander of the SD (Security Detail) in Havenstone."

"It is Elsa Zorja," she clarified. "It is normal protocol to not inquire into the house of a member of the SD, as we stand outside the House political structure."

Zorja was the Slavic amalgam of the Two Guardians ~ the Morning and Evening stars. I hoped it didn't mean the whole group was bi-polar aka Super-Bitchy and Super-Bitchy Possessive. That would be unfortunate for Yours Truly.

"I know who she is. She is on our 'Must Watch' List," Juanita stated.

"We have a 'Must Watch' List? How come this is the first I've heard of it?" I questioned.

"Buffy has made a roster ~ a rather long roster ~ of people we can't trust to be alone with you," she explained.

"You mean it is an anti-girlfriend list," I protested. "This is not happening -- no way, no how."

"And, if you wish to defy the list you have to take it up with Buffy ... in person. Phone calls and e-mails won't do," Juanita finished.

"What about Facebook? Twitter?" That didn't warrant a response.

Meanwhile, Elsa was quietly amused. It wasn't like I could request the SD to force my House Guard to not do something they had been told to do by someone in my hierarchy. That would lead to chaos ... and it was unfair to Juanita.

"Fine," I decided. "Get us three some water. Elsa and I will be practicing."

Now Juanita was stuck. I wasn't asking her to leave the room, just leave me alone. I was technically her leader, respect notwithstanding.

"It is good to see you have not become drunk with power," Elsa smirked once Juanita had left on her errand.

"Your mockery is unappreciated," I glared back. I was only kidding. "I haven't seen you around recently. It is good to see you."

"It is good to see you too," Elsa said in a voice far softer and compassionate than I would have preferred. After all, she had me drugged, beaten, then beaten me up again in the not so distant past.

Of course, I had also sexed her up, bringing her to orgasm with my fingers alone. We had also exchanged a burning French kiss in Katrina's office that Buffy was aware of. Then there was the Buffy-Elsa personal feud and the Elsa-Rhada family feud. Balancing that was Elsa's super-hot body and intriguing personality. Sex with her promised to be memorable ... more memorable than normal.

"What have you been up to? I'd like to say I've been behaving myself, but I don't want to advance our relationship by lying (right now, about this)."

"You are largely responsible for what I've been up to the past two weeks," she stepped back. She tossed her spear aside and entered her fighting stance. How nice of her to warn me -- and get rid of her weapon. How erotically odd of her to give me the illusion of a chance.

"I deny everything," I rocked back. She was blindingly fast. The fact that I was able to block most of the blow was a testament to how much I had learned in the past two and a half months.

"Watashi wa nihongo o hanashimasu', 'Wǒ shuō pǔtōnghuà', 'Wǒ shuō guǎngdōng huà' and 'Aku isa basa jawa'," she lectured me as she maneuvered me into a corner with a series of kicks and feints. She spoke Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Javanese. That was nice to know.

"Wait," then she kicked me off the mat.

"Amazons don't have a 'time out'," she smiled. I cautiously worked my way back onto the practice area.

"What part did you play?" I readied myself. This time, I went on the offensive. I used my greater strength and reach to compensate (rather poorly) for her superior reflexes.

"Someone had to ride herd on those disparate forces. My status was respected by the Amazons, I had experience dealing with outsiders, plus your person Addison nominated me, and Katrina suggested that you and I were close. That was enough for the Khanate. Your embassy and earlier aid to the Seven Families brought the 9 Clans along."

"And you stole the carrier?"

"It was an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to humiliate the Seven Pillars," she grinned. "Riding in a nuclear submarine was interesting, right up there with running around, spray painting translations next to all the markings onboard the captured vessel. Herding regular civilians wasn't nearly as much fun."

"In the annals of the SD, that is going to be a victory hard to surpass," I got out right before my legs were swept out from under me. Before I could roll over, she landed on top of me. She didn't go for a pin. Elsa simply sat there, straddling my hips and looking down at me. We were both breathing heavily.

"I owe you for that," she patted me on my bare chest.

"Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?"

"I'll let you figure that out during the Great Hunt," she gave a sliver of a smile.

"Not you too," I groaned.

"Who else are you worried about?"

"You and twenty-nine other Amazons. By name -- Rachel. She's pretty upbeat about her chances and believes she has a score to settle."

"Rachel will be a tough one," Elsa acknowledged.

"Comfortable?" Juanita muttered.

"Yes, I am," Elsa grinned her way. "Thank you for asking." Juanita gave me a look that suggested I do something like protest, or actually try to fight her off.

"Why are you being nice to me?" I wondered.

"I've learned to appreciate your numerous qualities," Elsa enlightened me. "I am also honest enough to admit I was completely wrong about you. You make a good Amazon." That was huge praise indeed and more importantly, it was to a public audience. I was double fortunate that no one was close enough to see Elsa's camel toe resting against my lightly covered hard-on.

"Thank you. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Aren't you engaged to someone?" Juanita reminded me. What she was really saying was 'don't you know you belong to the maidens of House Ishara?' Trust me, I know these things. Had she meant Hana, she would have said Hana.

"She has the patience of Job," I reasoned. "Oh, Elsa, Job is a figure in the Old Testament of the Bible." I doubted she knew.

"Oh. Is he a bloody-handed butcher, raging misogynist, or one of those pacifistic wimps?"

"He's a nice guy who gets swallowed by a whale."

"That's Jonah," Juanita corrected me. "Job is the one who was tested by God. Job accepted God taking away all his family, wealth and health, only to be rewarded for his loyalty to God with more than he ever had before."

"Wimp."

"I would never turn away from Ishara," Juanita rumbled.

"Zorja would never feel the need to test my loyalty so," Elsa riposted.

"Oh look," I thrust my hips up. "I seem to need a shower." Elsa's expression was of superiority and lust combined into a lethal cocktail of my demise.

"Let's go. You can wash my back," she said as she rose over me. She even offered me a hand up. That was unexpected and accepted warily.

"Is there some battle wound that makes you incapable of bathing yourself?" Juanita got feisty. Holy Hell, she was my Caribbean Buffy-twin.

"None," Elsa smugly commented. "I like the feel of his hands on my body. He possesses non-threatening masculinity wed with sisterly solidarity. It is a unique experience that you seem woefully unaware of."

"Yippee!" I whispered.

"You really are a man-whore," Juanita declared under her breath.

"Check," I gave her a thumbs-up. Sadly, Elsa gave me enough respect to walk at my side, not in front of me (so I could have been mesmerized by her buttocks.) As I was stripping down in the locker room, I noticed Juanita hovering close by. "Are you going to follow me into the shower?"

"Yes."

"Why? I am not going to be in danger in the middle of Havenstone."

"I'll be the judge of that," she insisted.

"You do realize I've had sex with an audience before, don't you?"

"I've been warned about that and know proper counter-measures."

"What? What kind of measures?" I was now naked and, towel in hand, was making my way to the communal showers.

"Charlie horses, trips, stun-gun if applicable," she informed me with relish.

"You are threatening to damage my prestige," I enlightened her.

"Cáel, I was chosen for more than my martial skills. I was selected because I will not wilt before your childish ways."

"Are you a lesbian?"

"NO. Why would a woman have to be a lesbian to withstand your wiles?"

"You'll figure it out eventually," I chuckled. Actually, knowing what a playboy-cad I was turned out to be a counter-intuitive edge for me. Expecting me to be a letch just meant I totally ignored the woman. Then the doubt would set in. 'Why wasn't I hitting on her?' she would think. She'd go through the phase of her not being good enough for me to knowing that wasn't the case -- definitely -- and would come at me to prove herself right. Wham-bam, another one in the can. Oink.

Step One: reduce the amount of time talking to her as a fellow human traveler of life. From here on out, I would address her by her name when I wanted something and otherwise treat her like furniture ~ furniture I was comfortable with. In this case, I treated her like a towel rack. She promptly dropped it. That was okay, I was planning to get dressed wet anyway.

I rinsed off my hair quickly as Elsa settled underneath the showerhead beside me. As soon as I finished, she handled me a bottle of (scentless) body soap. It was probably one of those the jaguar will smell me coming ten miles away excuses Amazons used to avoid being girlie. I got my hands all sudsy and began working on her shoulders and neck from behind.

Wordlessly, Elsa followed my physical directions, allowing me to wash her arms before working my way down her back in languid, amorous circles. Around the 10th thoracic vertebrae, Elsa gave me a deep, cleansing exhalation. I dug my fingers into her taut back muscles, racking them down to her buttocks, deftly ran them along the sides of her glutes and finished up caressing them along the line between her thighs and ass.

I worked her buttocks apart, worked my fingers along her perineum, tickling the back of her labia then up, across her anus and back to her tailbone and the small of her back. A crazy idea came to me: maybe I could talk her into a tramp stamp; something like If you are reading this, know I'll kill you next. That would be so Elsa.

I lathered her ass up for another half-minute before working my way down to her thighs, starting with the hip joints and then coaxing of her parted lips. I knelt down so that I was resting on the balls of my feet. Elsa obliged me by parting her legs, standing on her toes with her feet over a foot apart, then placing her hands against the shower stall while arching her back so that her hips were thrust back.

"Oh, come on," Juanita protested. "What kind of bath is this?"

"Did you hear something?" Elsa looked down at me.

"Nope. I was focusing all of my attention on you," I smiled up at her. I was really liking the way her muscles were stressed through her exertions. I couldn't seem to pay enough attention to her robust calves. I didn't pass up the opportunity to plant gentle kisses on each cheek either.

Elsa's ankles and feet happened all too fast and the pretense of a bath was complete. She looked at me while she soaped up her breasts then let the water cascade all over her body.

"Thank you, Cáel," she gave me a regal nod of her damp head, turned and left. "Train harder for the Hunt. You are going to need every edge you can get."

"I'm stalking oysters over the weekend. They are cunning and stealthy adversaries," I replied sagely. Elsa snorted, then started toweling off as she left, going toward her own locker. I walked past my soaked towel on the floor without a single glance. Juanita stalked behind me, clearly with a lot on her mind she was now waiting for the proper moment to share. I got dressed.

"Not going to dry off?" she grumbled.

"I never use towels," I lied. "I like the rain-washed feel." By ignoring her act of defiance, I really steamed her. I wasn't done. As we headed toward the elevator, I opened up with my next jibe. Buffy really shouldn't challenge me so. I'm a past-master of dealing with clingy, bossy women.

"Regretting you made that bet?" I mused while we waited.

"What bet?" she simmered.

"The bet where you assured Buffy and whomever else was in the room that you wouldn't break down and physically harm me ~ punishing me for my wicked ways?"

"What? How did ..." she groused then, "You are playing me."

"Yep."

"You really are full of yourself," she seared me with her gaze.

"No, but I know what I'm good at and I'm good at frustrating women. I've been working at it for the past four years and I've got over 200 women who would agree that I'm very good at doing it."

"Why are you doing this to me? I'm on your side," she turned all pouty and hurtful.

"Because if I don't, I'll go mad, Juanita," I enlightened her. "You want to protect me, right?"

"Yes," she sensed a verbal trap. The elevator opened and we stepped in.

"See, I don't want to be protected," I started.

"That's ..."

"Let me finish, please," I stopped her. She gave me the visual 'go-ahead'. "I don't want to live a life where I need to be protected. I don't want to worry that women I hang out with could be cornered by some unsavory types at an eatery because those women happen to know and like me."

"I admire what you are doing -- I really do. This is not the life I wanted, though. This is not what I wanted to be doing four months after leaving college. I wanted to be some corporate worm, barely scraping by on my work reviews and being, as you said, 'a man-whore'."

"You don't have that luxury," she pointed out.

"Am I not doing my job?" I countered.

"I guess you are," she grudgingly admitted.

"Yet you feel you have the right to critique my personal life and how I approach it," I related. "I'm not beating you up by playing the I am Ishara bullshit. I certainly don't expect anyone to be grateful to me for the opportunity to be in a House. I don't because I believe that every member of House Ishara has already proven they belong here before I ever meet them. I believe in you. Sometimes I would appreciate it if my sisters would give me the same respect."

She looked away because my harpoon had struck home.

"Unlike the rest of you, I inherited my place in this madhouse. Unlike every other Amazon here, I am only a part of House Ishara because I am the choice of a thousand ancestors to be our leader. Notice that no one asked me if I wanted to do this. And I don't think I ask too much of you because frankly, there are times when I feel unworthy to be in your company."

"You are still Ishara and I must still be your guardian," she held her ground. I glared at her. She glared back. I coughed. She kept glaring.

"What's my name?"

"Oh," she shrugged. "Cáel Wakko Ishara."

"That may sound silly you to, but I have chosen the designations for myself, my First Ancestor and the Goddess for a good reason."

We rode in silence. When we got to the ground floor, we made our way to our bikes and got ready to head home.

"What is the reason?"

"To never take ourselves too seriously. The worst thing I can think to befall my House is we become as humorless as the rest of the bitches around here. 'Laugh at Death' should be our motto."

"Isn't that a bit childish?"

"Of course it is," I groaned. "You clearly haven't been paying attention to a damn thing I've been saying. I swear I'm thinking about bringing back 'National Clown Nose Day'."

"We had a 'National Clown Nose Day'?" she pedaled to keep up.

"God help me," I muttered.

(Where is my Serge?)

"You are not going to let me go through my door first?" I sighed in exasperation. Juanita insisted that she go through every door first ... because today was so very different than yesterday ... when I had Pamela ... perhaps I protest too much.

"You have a gun," a somewhat familiar voice said from inside my/Timothy's apartment. Oh ... fuck. Ya know, because Juanita was as pretty as she was lethal -- which is to say 'too much for the given company'.

"Don't make any sudden moves unless you want to see it," Juanita cautioned her.

"Oh, it's okay," Odette intervened. "This is Anais Saint-Armour. She's a Mountie."

"Oh ... she's on the List too," Juanita grumbled. "What has he done wrong this time?"

"Why don't you tell me who you are first?" Anais growled at Juanita while I pushed my way into the room.

"I don't like your attitude," Juanita glared.

"Anais, this is Juanita Leya Antonio Garza; she's my latest bodyguard. Juanita, this is Anais, a good friend of mine who helped save my life in Hungary when the 'terrorists' were closing in," I somewhat exaggerated, ... she had helped me catch up with the rest of the team when Pamela and I got sidetracked.

"Why did he chose you?" Anais fumed. Did I mention she's insanely jealous with an aching need to know why I was marrying anyone else, but her.

"What list?" Odette proved to be on the ball.

"He didn't chose me. I volunteered for the spot."

"Buffy made an anti-girlfriend list. Elsa is on it too," I mumbled.

"I bet you did," Anais (responding to Juanita).

"It is not like that," I moved to interpose myself between my Mountie and my non-mounted (for now) guardian. "I'm on the board of directors for Havenstone now and ..."

"How did that happen?" Anais turned 'The Force' on me. [That's Canadian for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ... really] "You insisted (reference back in the days we were seeing one another) you were impoverished."

"I inherited it from my Father ..."

"He's poor too. I ran a background check when we first started dating," Anais kept up the pressure.

"My Mother?"

"She's dead."

"Okay, it was my Father through a convoluted meandering of genetics," I went back to attempting the truth (shame on me).

"Which is it?" she glowered.

"My Father, but it's too complicated to get into now," I tried to touch her. She recoiled. She was still pissed with me.

"He's telling the truth this time," Odette rose to my defense.

"Why didn't you tell me this when you were in Hungary? For that matter, if you are rich, why didn't you use those resources to get yourself out of trouble instead of involving me?" She really was a great cop.

"I had to make a call to someone I trusted and who couldn't be traced back to me, or Havenstone, or the Irish Embassy," I fibbed.

"What have you gotten yourself into?" Anais thawed somewhat.

"I believe I promised you dinner," I reminded her.

"You did."

"Where are we going?" Juanita stressed our lack of privacy.

"'We' aren't going anywhere. Ms. Anais Saint-Armour and I are going to a restaurant of her choosing. Don't worry about it. She carries a gun."

"I'm not carrying a gun," Anais torpedoed my plan.

"Where are we going?" Juanita repeated herself. I had to switch mental gears quickly to take in the new looks I was getting from Anais. I shouldn't have ignored those cues.

"I can't get around my personal security service," I sighed. Why did I give in? Anais was all about gathering evidence and then drawing conclusions from the facts in available.

I HAD been involved in some significant bad-assery in Europe that was way beyond anything she would have associated with the old me. Terrorist cells duking it out with me (and others) in a Budapest metro station? A rustic inn being reduced to ashes after a suspected firefight? Bomb threats? A full-scale military operation in Romania?

I HAD been kidnapped with a resultant massive manhunt for me then returned under highly mysterious circumstances. There had been a young girl with me, we were close for reasons not really gone into and I had saved her despite all forms of parenthood had been anathema to me.

I WAS a man who others deemed necessary to protect, thus a man making secretive phone calls, getting snippets of information and being involved in the deaths of way too many people to be the old, playboy me. Who had I become?

I therefore MIGHT BE a man who 'needed' to marry a billionairess due to some unspeakable political reasons, not out of any romantic/sexual desire of my own. Anais knew that I was a commitment-phobe, not a gold-digger. That meant she could be involved with me without it really being cheating. I needed her help, I had reached out to her when I was in crisis and she was in the people-helping business, right?

There was clearly more evidence out there for her to discover and she had the good fortune to be able to have me in a spot where I could be interrogated.

"Where do you want to go?" I disengaged and went to my room. The door was only partially shut as I changed.

"Eleven Madison West," I was told.

"Oh," Odette cooed, "that place is expensive."

"I know," Anais remarked.

"Why did you pick it?" Odette inquired.

"To remind Cáel that meals can be very expensive." That was my 'date' reminded me that I'd cheated with her over the course of a home-cooked meal -- cooked not-by-her in someone else's home. I wondered how Maya was doing.

Eleven Madison West meant I pulled out one of my Havenstone suits. They were tailored after all and I suspected that getting into this place at this time of night was going to take some charisma and finagling. Dressing as causal-me wouldn't do. When I stepped out, jaws dropped ~ I do look good all gussied up. Odette dispelled the shock by jumping into my arms.

"You look hot," she squealed. "Too bad I'm not going out with you."

"You might want to remember that," Anais griped.

"We need to stop by Havenstone so I can attempt to dress up for this affair," Juanita stated.

"How about we call in a replacement? Give you the night off?" I suggested.

"Who?"

"Chaz?"

"You want that British SSR non-commissioned officer to be your personal bodyguard for tonight? You've got balls," Juanita coughed. I took out my phone and got ready to give him a call.

"Hey, Anais, why didn't you call me to tell me you were coming over?" I carefully avoided the word 'warned' as she would take that the wrong way.

"I don't have your personal phone number. I called your home phone and got the answering service -- last night and again this morning," she narrowed her eyes.

"Odette, did Timothy get lucky last night?" I looked past the Mountie.

"No. A good friend of his rolled his motorcycle and he went to the hospital to help him out," Odette shook her head. Poor Timothy. My roomie/fuck-buddy misinterpreted Anais's pique. "Timothy is gay, not a sexual enabler."

"Huh?" Juanita wondered.

"Wingman," I translated. "Sometimes the three of us go to gay clubs where I act as his wingman ..."

"And they feed me to lesbians," Odette sounded enthusiastic. Thanks to me she was hardly a same-sex virgin.

"If there are three people living here and two bedrooms, who sleeps on the sofa?" Anais skewered Odette with her eyes.

"If Cáel has company and isn't sharing, I sleep with Timothy," Odette refused to wilt -- or cut me some slack with Anais.

"Isn't sharing?" those ocular death orbs flicked my way.

"Hmmm ... if we are going to Elven Madison West, I had better make that call," I evaded. I rang Chaz.

"Nyilas," he answered. "How are you doing this evening?"

"I'm good. I have an ex-girlfriend from out of town visiting, she wants to go to a swanky place and Juanita isn't dressed for the detail so ..."

"You want me to double date?"

"Noooo ... I need a bodyguard."

"You are assuming I have something appropriate to wear."

"You are British!" I protested. "Even your chicks have tuxedos."

"Very well. Will this be a personal protection detail, or close support?"

"Aahhh ..."

"Close support," said Anais.

"Personal Protection," countered Juanita.

"The one most likely to save me from being stabbed with a steak knife," I muttered.

"I am not going to physically attack you," Anais simmered. Yeah -- right -- I had heard that one before, and not just from her.

"Personal Protection it is," Chaz informed me.

"Oh, and she's a Mountie."

"Is she armed?"

"No," I thanked the goddesses.

"Does she want to be?"

"Huh? Are you going to arm her?" I panicked.

"No. You have a NYPD liaison. Give Officer Kutuzov a call and make a formal request. If she is a law enforcement officer in good standing, it shouldn't be a problem."

"Oh ... I can do that? ... I'm not sure that's the best idea," I prevaricated.

"Man up, Nyilas," he chided me. "You should work on making it so women don't want to shoot you instead of thinking of ways to disarm them."

"Spoken like a man who wisely prefers the company of other men," I grumbled.

"Good use of the word 'wisely'. Next question: what are we using as a means of conveyance?"

"Ummm ..."

"I have my motorcycle," Anais was less than helpful.

"If you weren't one of the bravest human beings I'd ever met, I would determine at this moment that you are a dolt. Call Havenstone and arrange for one of those Mercedes Armored GL550s. Bring your license. I drive on the correct side of the road and I'm not keen on having a distraught paramour driving into a storefront at 80 kph."

"Man, I like the way you speak," I joked.

"I took advantage of a proper English education."

"I was joking with you."

"I know."

"Can I date your sister?" I didn't know if he had a sister, but he'd hinted there were multiple Tomorrow's out there. Anais' mood didn't improve.

"Yes. I like you. You are a good bloke."

"Does your sister know how to kill people?"

"Yes. I'd say she's relatively proficient with a variety of small arms and hand-to-hand techniques," he enlightened me.

"Just checking."

"Cáel, every woman you are interested knows how to kill people, or how to have people killed," Chaz reminded me.

"What about Odette? She's neither well connected nor lethal."

"Odette is indeed an enigma. She counters that by being well liked by people who are capable of killing others who hurt her, except where you are concerned. You live a treasured life."

"Have you made dinner reservations? If you need me for a black tie event it has to be ... what is the American for it ... swanky."

"That's more of a Cael/Pamela thing," I corrected him. "American's say 'high class', expensive, or 'hot spot'."

"Thanks for the update. Make those calls."

"O-kay. Will do. I'll meet you at Havenstone in thirty minutes. Does that work for you?"

"Yes. Make those calls. I'll see you at ... 7:52 pm, EDT. Mark."

"Huh?"

"Goodbye Cáel," and he hung up.

"Who is this 'Chaz' character?" Anais questioned me.

"He is Colour Sergeant Charles Tomorrow of the British Army's Special Reconnaissance Regiment, he's a badass and he's delicious," Odette answered for me.

"How do you know him -- either of you?" came next.

"He was with ..." Odette began blabbing 'National Security' stuff.

"Odette -- don't. Anais, he is member of the Joint International Khanate Interim Taskforce along with me. Odette helps out in an auxiliary role," I answered.

"Cáel, how did you end up doing this kind of work?" she was perplexed. "You were devoid of anything approaching civic responsibility when we were last together. Quite frankly, I didn't think you cared for anyone but yourself."

"Hey now," Odette got feisty. She was my friend after all.

"We can talk about that over dinner?" I suggested. She didn't like that answer, so I lied. "I grew up," which was what she wanted to hear. I was spared any more interrogation at the moment by the necessity of making those three phone calls. Nikita liked hearing from me again, though she was less pleased that it was official business. She did agree to contact the appropriate agency for me, despite me making it for a different female law enforcement agent.

I'd wised up about Havenstone. I called Executive services to have the car delivered to my door step. I cautioned the operative that, in my neighborhood, they might be stopped on suspicion of purchasing guns, drugs, and/or a good time. I would have the car in fifteen minutes and agreed to take the delivery driver back to work afterwards. I'd have done it even if I wasn't meeting Chaz.

At Eleven Madison West, I got a snooty 'exactly who do you think you are?' followed by 'you will be placed on the waiting list ... a spot may open up around 9:50'. Was I going to inform Chaz and Anais of this? Of course not. I planned to beg like a big dog, suggest that while I was a nameless face, I actually knew people ... a person ... and we'd see how far that got me.

While waiting for the SUV to arrive and on the drive back to Havenstone, this is pretty much what followed:

"Do you know who was behind your father's murder yet?"

"Yes, but I can't talk about it."

"Was that the reason people are trying to kill you?"

"Yes. That and other reasons."

"What other reasons?"

"Things I can't talk about."

"Why can't you talk about it?"

"Secret society stuff ~ decoder rings, secret handshakes, writing in cyphers, holding clandestine meetings in public places after dark, and various other things world governments don't want me talking about."

"Are you pulling my leg?" I wished I was running my hands over her legs. This wasn't the time for that revelation.

"No. Most of what I am telling you is the truth."

"Were you in a shootout at the Chicago Medical Examiner's morgue?"

"Yes. I was unarmed at the time."

"Was your life in danger?"

"It depends on what you mean by 'danger'. My allies had guns and were expert shots. I was shot at, but they missed me, so I not sure how much my life was at risk."

"Can you please be serious?"

"I'm trying. You scare me."

"You don't need to be afraid of me. I only want to help." That was mostly true. She was a diligent, hard-working incorruptible public servant ...well, as long as you overlooked her charging me with bestiality when she was truly pissed with me.

"I'm not afraid of you hurting me. I'm afraid for you. You are an excellent peace officer and I'm worried that you will learn too much. Then your life will be as screwed up as mine."

"I can take care of myself."

"The reality that you are going out with me unarmed speaks volumes about what you don't know, Anais."

"Don't think this line of questioning is over, Cáel."

"Don't worry. I know you are not done."

"Very well. How is your aunt?" The crab-fisherwoman, not the Irish menagerie.

"Happy as a clam, working a real job and living life on her own terms."

"Where did you go wrong?" That was a loaded question. I had to tread carefully.

"A girl humiliated me in high school. I decided to take control of my life and somehow, despite my best intentions to be an unreliable lothario, I've ended up with people closer to me than family ...and this constant need for physical protection."

"Why are you engaged?" Finally, the REAL reason she was here. Had she come by to pick up her accoutrements, she would have been gone by the time I came home. She wanted answers -- answers that allowed her to be in charge of our relationship again. It was the double-barreled impact of exceptional sex and wondering why she wasn't 'the one'.

(Me) "Are you seeing somebody?"

"You didn't answer my question."

"I've answered plenty of your questions. Answer mine."

"No. Men expect too much from a career woman." Translation: 'I'm a bitch that, regardless of my dynamite looks and raunchy sex drive, repels men because I'm a compulsive control freak with abysmal trust issues.'

"You do put your career first." Translation: 'I've totally forgotten that you are a compulsive control freak with abysmal trust issues.' It was what she wanted to hear.

"Your turn."

"Put on your tin-foil hat. I did it to save lives in Central Asia when the anthrax strikes were going on. I have this friend over there that people listen to."

"Who? The Great Khan?"

I didn't respond which wasn't the answer she was expecting.

"How?" as in how could I possibly be good friends with the master of arguably the third or fourth most powerful nation on the face of the Earth

"That's one of those things I can't talk about."

"Do you love her?"

"I don't know. I'm lousy at relationships. I get along with her daughter. Her father wants to bury me alive in the Nevada desert. The rest of the family seems to be coming around to the idea that I might be one of them."

"That isn't a 'yes'."

"No, it isn't."

"Do you think you can ever love someone?" If you need translated ... sigh -- okay -- 'why don't you love me?'

"Do you mean 'when am I going to stop stumbling from botched relationship to botched relationship and make something constructive of my personal life?'"

"Yes."

"Did I mention that I've discovered I have a grandfather?"

"No. That isn't answering my question."

"It is in a way. Did I mention that Mom had ten sisters I wasn't aware of? I had an uncle, but he died in my arms."

"No. My condolences on your uncle. What does this have to do with you becoming more of an adult and becoming accountable for your life?"

"Did I mention I have an adopted grandmother who is my spiritual twin?"

"No."

"Don't worry about my uncle. He died trying to kill me. My aunts murdered him, though I can never prove it."

"Oh."

"My grandfather? He was the one who sent those terrorists to kill me. It was his litmus test to see if I was worthy of being in his family. I passed."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes. My spiritual grandma? She's a retired professional assassin. Daily I interact with a half-dozen people who have killed multiple human beings in their lifetimes. You want to know why I'm not behaving responsibly? I am acting responsibly. I'm trying to not get the decent civilians around me killed."

[She took her while digesting that. By that time, we had returned to Havenstone and picked up Chaz. I made introductions.]

"So, are you really with the SRR?" she asked him.

"Yes."

"Why are you with Cáel?"

"My mandate contains multiple answers. Suffice it to say, since my RAF contemporary will not be returning from the UK until tomorrow, I am presently chief liaison officer for Her Majesty's government with JIKIT."

"Why are you coming along as Cáel's bodyguard? Don't you have something better to do with your Friday evenings?" Subtle and polite -- Anais ain't. Why was I putting up with her? She was a sexual tornado who would try anything once. She was a real prize.

"First question: Cáel is a friend, his life is in perpetual danger and I consider it my duty to keep him alive. He would do the same for me. Second question: the nature of my present assignment doesn't leave much room for any meaningful romantic associations."

"Hmmm," I contemplated what wasn't being said. "Chaz, you are nailing one of my security chicks, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Which one?"

"A man of character doesn't brag about such things."

Chaz was getting some Amazon nookie. I had to find a way to tell him how dangerous that was. She might decide he's make good father material -- not a good thing where Amazons were concerned.

"Are all of his security personnel women?" Anais pressed.

"Miss Saint-Amour, Havenstone is a corporation that employs over ten thousand people. There are precisely five men currently on their payroll. All their security personnel are woman. Cáel has very limited, if any, input on the matter."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Yes, Miss Saint-Amour. Who would trust a man of Cáel's dubious experience with his own security?" Chaz pointed out.

"Oh." She hadn't thought of that.

"Can you tell me why you think his life is in danger?"

"He is far more likely to be kidnapped than murdered. He possess certain sensitive data that powerful entities would like to access, thus I am his bodyguard tonight. Considering the quality of the women who normally guard him, I consider it an honor."

"To guard Cáel -- on a date?"

"He was kidnapped visiting a child at a playground. Yes, we believe his life is in constant peril. The training and experience of his security service is top flight and it has been a pleasure to serve among them."

"Were you with him in Budapest and Romania?"

"The metro station?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

"Romania?"

"Do you mean the counterterrorism action south of Miercurea Ciuc?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

Wow ... these two were lousy communicators. I could imagine Chaz propositioning one of my Amazons.

Chaz: 'You have a superior feminine physique which I find appealing. Want to fuck?'

Amazon: 'You look like you have the prerequisite stamina and battle scars to be part of the New Directive. Sure.'

"Were you involved in the actual combat? The SRR is normally an intelligence gathering unit."

"I was gathering battlefield intelligence, Miss. That required my close proximity to armed and actively hostile enemy aliens (as in they were in Romania illegally, not that they were all supernatural beings). My involvement resulted in two KIA's and one WIA."

"Damn Chaz, you rock."

"I am a professional."

"How many did Pamela gak?"

"One KIA."

"Just one? Whoa, that's so unlike her."

"She kept trying to bracket the cell leader (aka Ajax). He had the Devil's Own Luck."

"Cáel, why are you making light of all those deaths?" Anais chastised me. "How many terrorists did you wound, or kill?"

"I wounded one guy."

"That is disingenuous," Chaz chided me. "You orchestrated the operation, showed tactical expertise in seizing the most critical terrain feature and engineered the death of the terrorist leader."

"My Cáel did that? When I knew him, he was adverse to violence," Anais shook her head.

"Considering the considerable number of people he's killed, he's still adverse to physical confrontation where his own life is involved. But God help you if you threaten someone he is close to, though. He's the man who can get things done when the team is in a pinch."

"Cáel, what happened to you?" she didn't sound upset at all.

"I learned to care for people beyond my immediate interest -- you know -- actual long-term relationships," with the unspoken 'as opposed to women I'm currently having sex with'.

"It took you long enough," she snipped. Reference her being a compulsive control freak with abysmal trust issues.

The interrogation was put on hold while we entered the restaurant and ...

"Mr. Nyilas?" the maître de greeted me.

"Yes."

"We will get you a table right away," he nodded obsequiously. What the hell was up with that? Where was my two hour wait time? Oh yeah, I was a minor, fifteen seconds of fame celebrity.

"Will Ms. Sulkanen be joining you this evening?"

"No. She had to oversee a packaged Erythrosine-monosaccharides explosion in Boca Raton. Flaming plastic pink flamingo bits were raining down everywhere. I imagine it is taking an Everest-sized load of hush money to keep this out of the media," I replied. I was so eerily sincere ... he bought it and a look of horror snuck over his face. I had become the public face of corporate malfeasance.

"Your table (gulp) is ready, Sir," he began to sweat. He took us to our table for four then beat a hasty retreat. Undoubtedly his civic-mindedness would have him calling up TMZ within a minute. After all, it was unlikely he owned any plastic pink flamingos, or invested in their construction. Once he was gone, Chaz let a thin smile break through his hard-earned military unfazed-ability.

"What exactly are packaged Erythrosine-monosaccharides?" he inquired.

"Packaged is self-explanatory. Erythrosine is pink food coloring and monosaccharides are ..."

"Sugar," Anais frowned.

"Exploding pixie sticks -- I have nieces and nephews. You are a genius at misdirection, Mr. Nyilas," he nodded.

"Thank you, Colour Sergeant Tomorrow. It is nice to be appreciated for my bizarre and useless preoccupation," I grinned.

"You practice lying?" Anais' view of me dimmed.

"Miss, he excels at extraneous, outrageous utterances. No harm is intended."

"Things like I was helping her find her contact lenses?" That had been my excuse when caught coming out of Maya's apartment. Sadly, Anais is highly perceptive and knew the lady didn't wear contacts. The copious female aroma wafting off me certainly hadn't helped.

"That's unfair," I countered. "Back then, I was a college nitwit suffering from undiagnosed nymphomania. I'd like to think I'm getting better."

[French] "Êtes-vous mieux?"

[French] "Je suis assez intelligent pour aller vers vous lorsque des vies étaient sur la ligne." That's right, Anais. When my life and the lives of others were on the line, she was the first one I thought to call. Letting a woman know that you admire her profession, professionalism and reliability never hurts.

"Are you really a nymphomaniac?" she returned to English. French is the language of sex ... as is any derivative of Sanskrit, Farsi and Portuguese. Reference the multitude of Indians, the hotness of Persian women and the outpouring of lust that is Brazil.

"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.

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.

It would make us look bad? Sir, I am more worried about how bad dead US servicemen and women look. Don't you think ...

Okay Sir. After all, the Khanate might not know about the F-22's range issues. Maybe they don't have an effective intelligence network or [mutters] access to Wikipedia.

(The Marine Corps?}

'500 Marines on site and 1700 Marines on the way; fit, rested and ready, Sir'. Where do you want us to go?'

'Do we have any idea about the level of opposition, the amount of time this mission will take and what precisely we are going to be required to do?' '

What else could the Commandant say? The other six MEU were too far away to affect the nine-day timetable. The Marine Air components would do their job, even if clearly outnumbered. His one voiced concern was for the possible reception his Marines would receive from the Thai people. Apparently the current dictator wasn't terribly popular ... and was gunning down his own people in the streets. Things like that were hard on his men's morale.

{The Army? }

What exactly do you want us do again?

Go into a potential 'hot' warzone where the safety of deployment as well resupply were clearly debatable?

That's why God made Rangers. The Airborne would arrive once all the real fighting was accomplished anyway and, now that they were getting out of Afghanistan, they had someplace new to send their overworked reservists. They could deploy the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne to the Philippines, provided they were welcome.

Unlike the US Navy, who expected their ships to sail around ready for a fight, the US Army would need to access extra funding for this deployment. They also wanted the President's written authorization to fly 'their' (actually the Air Force's) MC-130's into forward bases that existed within a 10 minute fly time of potentially hostile borders.

With no clear operational objectives, limited intelligence on enemy forces and absent an exit strategy, the Joint Chiefs weren't fans of intervention. Yes, they did know this was a bluff. But they were paid to plan for the contingency that THIS bluff was called and they were expected to take this showdown to the level of a true confrontation if that occurred. Lives were at stake.

With that kind of advice, Hagel deferred his support for this endeavor by laying it all on Secretary Kerry's lap. His troopers would go in, if they had the proper regional support. Kerry told the President that he could get that support if he made some backroom deals with the Malaysia, the ROC and the Philippines ... most likely to screw over China in some manner. The Administration could renege later, sighting a mutable geopolitical landscape.

At that point the National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, rallied to POTUS's side and put forth into his mind the gem of an idea that if the US acted decisively, there would be no need for fighting. After all, she had this 'hand-picked' team of intelligence experts who had an in depth knowledge of the Khanate's leadership. The Khanate wasn't a terrorist organization and could be dealt with rationally ~ she'd read our reports! Sadly she had decided to cherry-pick what she wanted to pass on.

We in JIKIT were wondering why she had decided to not recall what else we had warned her about ~ you know: the Khanate not respecting the current administration and doubting its resolve. JIKIT had TOLD her to use OVERWHELMING force. Feeding them one aircraft carrier at a time was the opposite of that.

The Khanate wasn't likely to attack one carrier. A) they doubted the US Navy was feeling particularly suicidal, B) they already believed that if the US hit first, they certainly could flatten that carrier and its supporting ships, and C) if the US appeared to be becoming problematic, the Khanate would strike first and hard.

Did the Khanate believe their planes and missiles were so good that they could penetrate the impenetrable barrier that surrounded a US taskforce?

Perhaps. They had fucked the PLAN pretty hard, striking at a greater distance with less preparation. Why didn't our political bosses see that?

Fathom told me it was information overload. We were providing so much data that the people on top couldn't possibly know everything.

Someone in Washington forgot to put that into the National Security briefing that the National Security Advisor gave the President that the Khanate had captured a series of Chinese missiles in Western China, and not just the nuclear ones. Some of those captured missiles were an advanced Chinese design with a suspected range of 3500 km. It was a freaking intermediate-range ballistic missile! That bitch could hit Mach 10 ... and it could be steered ... and it was radar seeking.

Why had IRBM anti-ship missiles been in Western (as opposed to being on the coast in Eastern China)? To hit targets in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf -- DUH! That was the kind of range we were talking about. JIKIT teams had aided in the capture of those weapons and the Khanate had confirmed it. We were their friends and that's how they treated their friends -- with honesty. Like a good little minion, Addison had passed that knowledge on.

At the same time, the 16 Tu-160M supersonic bombers presently sitting on the tarmac on Woody Island could scramble and then launch 12 advanced anti-ship missiles -- EACH. I was sure that the navy's Aegis-cruisers were the best money could buy. Expecting them to handled 192 incoming 'vampires' [military jargon for the 'shit trying to kill us'] sea-skimming their way at Mach 5 was probably asking too much.

I couldn't claim to divine the inner workings of the President of the United State's mind, but personally I believed he said 'what the fuck. I can always call them back later', forgetting the Khanate's willingness to launch a preemptive strike when it suited their purpose.

Or, the far more likely outcome that we (the US) would be utterly ignored in front of the world-wide media because the Khanate was ruled by military men who took into account what their troops could and couldn't do before making politically-based military decisions.

Could their actions lead to war? Perhaps. When you picked up the sword, expect violence. Could the US beat the Khanate? Perhaps, if the US people had the will to continue fighting long enough. The will of a people to persevere was a great unknown. The US had been underestimated before.

What was known was the US was running a $400 Billion Budget Deficit, carrying over $18 TRILLION in debt and we were a consumer-driven, service economy utterly dependent on foreign trade. The US did have the world's best military, but they weren't designed to be an army of conquest. They'd been stretched thin occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. The ability of our military to replace both people and equipment was limited by high production costs, a long season of peace and a casualty-averse populace.

The Khanate was a resource-driven economy which meant other countries needed the raw materials they were selling. They were hardly an internally independent entity and they appreciated their own trade vulnerability. A big difference was they were ruled by a leadership that fully expected to spend a generation in bloodletting to reconstitute their vanished empire. Their infant nation was already in a war economy. Their people were awake to the cost to citizenry in their state and aware there would be a physical cost for achieving security for those who would follow.

In the end, I believed the US President was aware of both of the above series of facts, but decided his 'there is nothing I can do' policy was way down in the public opinion polls, domestic prices were roller-coasting and there was a mid-term Congressional election right around the corner.

Peace had not broken out across the globe as he had hoped, Islamophobia was a dirty little secret walking the back halls of the temples of power and Osama Bin Laden had only been replaced by a far more insidious foe of the New World Order. The raging currents of the present reality were about to reduce him to a footnote in history and in the land where legacy mattered, that was something too horrible to contemplate.

Then he caged his decisive 'Do it!' with a suggestion that Susan make sure her experts thought this was a viable idea. Talk about passing the buck. The buck landed in Tony Blinken's (Deputy National Security Advisor (DNSA)) lap and he called us ... Addison really, but she had all of us in pretty quick. I didn't have to delve into the deep, mystic thoughts of Temujin to know how to answer that question: 'Don't do it!'

'What is in it for them?'

Tony: 'Nothing, of course. We are the United-Fucking States! Oh, and the Great Khan is a bad guy. Worse, he's unpalatable to anyone who considers Human Rights to be a priority.'

'That's not going to fly. They've got the chance to secure their flanks and get good PR in the process.'

Tony: 'Fine. Can you find a way to hold them off for four days? That's all we need.'

'Four days? What happens in four days?'

Tony: 'You don't need to know that. Get it done.'

'That's not how it works. They aren't relying on us to be their intelligence resource. You are.'

Tony: 'Fine. Tell them we are moving forward with an effort in the UN to bring about a peaceful democratic regime change.'

'Do you really expect them to care? Wait, you do realize they have satellite reconnaissance, don't you?'

At that point in our encrypted conversation with Addison, she began doing some intelligence research of her own. The US had only two tools in their immediate toolbox: missile/drone strikes and carrier deployments. Wrangling UN sanctions and the War Powers Act would take time and we'd see it coming.

Drone/missile strikes weren't ruled out, but the Khanate didn't play the 'only tit-for-tat' game. You attack them, or their logistics, and they took that as an act of war and behaved accordingly. There were plenty of US military bases they could strike. Plus the US needed the free flow of commerce through the South China Sea, not the Khanate.

The Mongol-Turkish regime could turn that body of water into an 'Exclusion Zone'. That was the term for a blockade which, in turn was a euphemism for the Khanate giving fair warning to all merchant ships they could be fired upon at a moment's notice. Ships flying the Indian, Japanese, ROC, South Korean or Vietnamese ensign would be okay. They were either allies, or potential allies.

Panama? Liberia? The Marshal Islands? The Khanate had more pressing things to do than worry about what those little nations (and their combined 40% of the world's merchant ships) cared about them. Next question: how much was that baby insured for? I was sure the guys and gals at Lloyd's of London would be buying Pepto in bulk if this came down to seeing who was the biggest bully on the block.

Sure this was in the short term very bad for the Khanate ~ getting in a shooting war with the US. It was ugly in the mid-term as well ~ the US was the world's leading economic power. In the long term, which was how the Great Khan thought, it was the only thing he could do. He could not let the US think they could dictate Khanate international relations without serious consequences. It wasn't how the Khanate operated. We all hoped the people around the President understood that.

'You are not going to launch drone strikes, are you? They would see that as an act of war and behave accordingly.'

Tony: 'We are keeping our options open.' A 'no comment' would have meant 'yes'.

Addison mouthed to me 'Thank God'.

That left the carrier fleet deployment option. We guessed, incorrectly, that the US was going to place four carrier groups on the Khanate's back door. That would be drawing a line in the sand. None of us believed the US government would ever be foolish enough to come in with only one carrier -- that they would leave the one in Japan and the Arabian Sea just sitting there. The US Navy posted on its web page the general position and activity of her various fleet elements. It was general knowledge.

'You can't possibly move in enough forces in place to deter them, Sir.'

Tony: 'You need to find us a way to delay the Khanate by two weeks. You are the experts -- do it!'

'Two weeks ... what happened to the four days?'

Tony: 'You work for me.'

'Very well, Sir. We suspect the Khanate will intervene in Thailand somewhere between five and seven days. Waiting two weeks is unrealistic.'

'If the US and UN declare Thailand a 'No-Fly Zone', what is the likelihood they will respect it?'

'Zero -- zip -- none. How could you possibly enforce that? You can't and they know it.'

Tony: 'Yes we can. Would they challenge it?'

'Well, if you bring the 'George H. W. Bush' into the Andaman Sea, won't that piss of the Indians ... and leave the Persian Gulf unguarded and ISIS unmolested?'

The 'George H. W. Bush' was in the Persian Gulf and would have to sail around India (passed Indian's submarine fleet) to get into a position to intervene from a body of water the Indian's considered theirs and theirs alone. We all knew President Obama had made a policy decision in the first part of August to punish ISIS and save the Kurds and Yazidis. Would he go back on that pledge?

Tony: 'You don't need to know that.'

'If we don't know the level of the threat, we can't tell you what the most likely response will be.'

Tony: 'What would they do if we placed one carrier in the Gulf of Thailand? Two, three, four, or five?'

'One ... two -- they do nothing. You would need to form an alliance with at least one other regional player ... that isn't the Philippines.'

Tony: 'What is wrong with the Philippines?'

'They have hardly any air force and blue-water navy to speak of.'

Tony: 'What about the Republic of China?'

'They are a totally different matter, but what are you giving the Taiwanese to betray the Khanate? The Khanate has recognized the independence of the ROC while we haven't. They've fought China while you haven't. It had better be something good.'

Tony: 'What about Malaysia?'

'The Khanate and Malaysia aren't getting along right now. They complicate their pugnacious attitude by being somewhat weak in the matter of offensive forces they can bring to bear. Their military is good ... and small. What would you want them to do?'

Tony: 'That is not your concern.'

'Sir, if you begin opening negotiations with Taiwan, or Malaysia, the Khanate is going to find out. [Probably from us.] That's a fact.'

Tony: 'This is not your concern. Our East Asian experts know what's going on.'

'What about the Taiwan Relations Act Affirmation and Naval Vessel Transfer Act of 2014 with the Collins Amendment?'

Tony: 'What about it?'

'If the administration would express support for it, it would go a long way to solving all your problems. Let the Taiwanese and Turkey buy those frigates and make it contingent on their goodwill.'

Tony: 'What does this have to do with the Khanate?' Groan.

Brief Segway :

Senator Susan Collins of Maine, JIKIT's Congressional mentor, at our urging had proposed an amendment to the Taiwan Relations Act Affirmation and Naval Vessel Transfer Act of 2014 which would allow 'Turkey' to purchase six 'Oliver Perry class frigates for $10 million each. The same act already proposed four such vessels to be sold to Taiwan for the same amount as well as giving two to Thailand (and two to Mexico) free of charge.

Things had immediately bogged down in the 113th US Congress. It was too easy for Democrats in both Houses to take the President's position that any additional weapons into the South China Sea area would further destabilize the region. The pro-PRC lobby was equally opposed to the bill. Under normal conditions, that would have been good enough to send the measure off to the procedural graveyard.

Except in the current contrary nature of the US's chief legislative body, this meant Republicans found themselves drawn to the anything the White House opposed. They could claim they found the anti-Communist, anti-Islamic Extremists stance of the Khanate to be attractive to them though none of them felt the need to actually talk to anyone in the Khanate to find out what they were really all about.

We were happy with that policy because true congressional oversight was the last thing we needed. They might start asking uncomfortable questions like...

'Who gave you the authority to do any of the crap you pulled?'

[No one. We lied like big dogs, purloined resources and cloaked ourselves in 'National Security'. Plus we let our elite personnel have a crack at doing what they had so dedicatedly trained to do -- wreck things.]

'Wasn't that ... that ... and that an act of war against the People's Republic of China?'

['No comment'. If that didn't work, we would try 'they will never find out'.]

'Why are 90% of all the names on these documents redacted? We are the freaking Congress! You work for us.'

[Work for them? Not to our way of thinking. We earned our paychecks without any slavish devotion to corporate campaign contributions. We were working so that the lives of Americans and Brits abroad would be that much safer, the world more orderly and for the US and UK to have an ally they could really rely on. We couldn't tell them that. They'd throw us in jail. We'd redacted the records because the names were for people that did not officially exist, or existed in a capacity that didn't imply they were elite warriors, spies and assassins.]

Besides,

['Those are private citizens not in the employ of this group, or any other government agency we are aware of'.]

'We don't care if they are private citizens. We want to know.'

['You don't want to know' followed by some major gobbledygook with the term 'deniable assets' interspersed relatively often.]

'What do you mean ~ you don't want to know? We asked you a question.'

[We meant you people leak information like a sieve and the people we are protecting aren't going to be afraid of getting revealed. They are going to murder people to ensure they are not ~ basically you don't know what is going on and we don't want to tell you -- for both our safety's sake.]

So,

['Trust us. There are factors we are taking into account that you are unaware of because you don't know what's going on'.]

'Of course we don't know what's going on. That's why we are asking you.'

['You really don't want to know.' We are your highly trained and underpaid experts on this, we aren't raging assholes and we are telling you that bad shit will happen if you force this, thus 'you really don't want to know'.]

'What do you mean ~ you really don't want to know?? Yes, we do. We are warning you ...'

[Okay. Execute Plan B. 'Excuse us for a moment -- {create a plausible lie.}'.]

{Pregnant pause ...}

Congressman-type: 'It is rather odd that they all had to go into another room to take that phone call.'

{Minutes pass}

'Go see what is taking them so long.'

'What do you mean they are all gone? Find them!'

'What do you mean they seem have left the building? Find them!'

'Who do I call about this? The FBI, Homeland Security, or the CIA?

And finally ...

'What do you mean they appear to have fled the country? Find them, damn it!'

[Hey, I worked with some real shady characters.]

Then would come the international manhunts, the flight to avoid prosecution and then resurrecting my life under a different ID in another country which hopefully had a dim view of handing me over to the FBI, or the Navy SEALs.

Now back to our regularly scheduled diversion :

'It has to do with giving something to the Khanate if you expect them to do anything for you.'

Tony: 'You can't appreciate how that is going to look. Besides, that is a political decision -- way above your pay-grade.'

[Not a good time to remind him that he didn't pay me.]

'What precisely do you want us to do? Please be specific.'

Tony: 'How is the Khanate going to react to an intervention on the part of the United States?'

'They will ignore you.'

Tony: 'What if the President makes public statement.'

'What is he going to say?'

Tony: 'That the US is dedicated to a peaceful resolution of the unrest in Thailand.'

'They won't care. They truly believe that actions speak louder than words. If Thailand requested our intervention, or was a client state ...'

Tony: 'A what?'

'Client state -- a country beholding to the US, or UK for their external security.'

Tony: 'I know what client state is. That is 20th Century Imperialist thinking. No one does stuff like that anymore. Besides, the UN is responsible for the external security of its member states -- which Thailand is.'

'The Khanate doesn't see it that way. We won't let them into the UN, so they see no reason to play by the UN's rules. The President can evoke the UN Charter all he wants. Unless he makes UN acceptance dependent on their cooperation, they will see no reason to cooperate.'

Tony: 'That's not going to happen.'

'What part of that won't happen?'

Tony: 'The President is not going on international television and endorsing the Khanate as a prospective UN member. What happens if we imply through back channels that the President will support such an action at a later date?'

'You want us to lie to them? Do you have any idea how badly that will compromise our working relationship with the Khanate?'

Tony: 'We will deal with that later. Would they accept such a bargain?'

'So you are going to lie to them ... Mr. Blinken, they will NEVER forgive this act of treachery.'

Tony: 'No, you are going to lie to them.'

Addison: 'I will resign. I suspect that the rest of the team will quit as well.'

Tony: 'What is wrong with your team, Ms. Stuart (Addison)? Can't anyone over there do their damn jobs?'

'We are doing our damn jobs, Mr. Blinken. We are telling you this is a diplomatically fatal move that will not only reduce this taskforce to uselessness, it will have long term consequences for all future Khanate-American relations.'

Tony: 'That is a ridiculous assessment.'

'That is our experienced assessment. They believe treachery is only forgiven by death. They do believe in loyalty and keeping one's word. In our country, perjury is an unfortunate side effect of the judicial progress. To the Great Khan, it is reason enough to cut your head off.'

Tony: 'Fine. I am ordering you to open back-channel talks with the Khanate concerning their admittance to the UN contingent on them taking a reasonable course of action.'

'Even if we were to do such a moronic thing, the Great Khan will ask Cáel directly to verify this. It is that important to him and his state.'

Tony: 'Okay.'

'Perhaps you could suggest to me what form of coercion I should employ to make Cáel to commit such a blasphemous act?'

Tony: 'Tell him to do it. That is what we pay him for.'

'Mr. Blinken, Mr. Nyilas is an unpaid consultant. At the job he is on sabbatical from, he makes more money than I do. He has an Irish diplomatic passport, been nominated to be the Prince of Albania, Georgia and Armenia, been proclaimed a warrior-prince of Transylvania and is a hero in both Hungary and Romania. He has no brothers, or sisters. His parents are both dead. His only surviving kin are people he is not particularly close to. Since economic and social blackmail are off the table, I am asking you if you are ordering me to use enhanced interrogation techniques to exacting his cooperation in this foolhardy endeavor.'

Tony: 'You mean torture him?'

'I would never go on the record using that word. I don't advise you to use it either.'

Tony: 'What kind of people are you?'

'The kind you engage to take on a mission of this delicate nature. You honestly don't want to know what we've done in the name of our constituent national bodies. You employ us so that you don't have to know. As you said, we 'get it done'. Until now, you have never asked us 'how' we got things done. You wanted the intelligence so we got it for you.'

Tony: 'No member of this administration ever asked you to violate US, or International Law.'

'Which is precisely why the government employs me, so that you can keep your hands clean while mine are steeped in blood. Nothing our team has done will ever blow back on you, so don't worry about that. Why don't we get back to our current dilemma?'

[I think until that moment Tony had convinced himself that Addison was another civil servant drone and people like her only existed in the 'black bag' fantasies of conspiracy theorists, hackneyed movie scripts and questionable 'true' spy novels. People like Addison and Lady Fathom weren't standard issue intelligence officers by any stretch of the imagination. They were almost unique in that they did what they did for the very beliefs they had sworn an oath to uphold -- to serve their countries.

There were no personal vendettas going on. No slush funds were vanishing into Cayman Island accounts. Neither had a God Complex. There was no desire for personal power, career advancement, or fame. I was beginning to think that was why Temujin used them, and me -- because we could be counted on to do the right thing when required and only when required. Addison and Fathom had damned themselves forever because someone had to pay the price and get the job done. I imagined they really felt blessed for the opportunity. I worked with maniacs.]

Tony: 'Thailand -- yes. What if we put troops on the ground in Thailand?'

'How many?'

Tony hummed and hawed so we had to guess.

'A Marine Expeditionary Unit? If that is all, they better have an exit plan. Sir, if you want to impress the Khanate with the White House's resolve, you need to start landing troops from the Rapid Deployment Force starting tomorrow. Base aircraft out of Thai air bases. Threaten to ram any Indian Naval vessels that get in your way.'

Tony: 'Is that what it would take?'

['Yes. It would take the US to growing some balls, damn it!' was not the diplomatic reply though it desperately needed to be said. Hey, I could be a bit of a jingoist when I feel the lives of my loved ones are in danger.]

'That is our current assessment of the situation. The Khanate has no reason to take any American threat of force seriously. They won't see anything short of a full-court press as nothing more than posturing for the home audience and what allies we have left.'

Tony: 'What does that mean?'

'It means you are taking the cooperation of Taiwan and Philippines for granted. Our people tell us they see American influence in the region waning and we have been letting the Chinese push them around. Now the Khanate appears and knocks the Chinese back three decades on the World Stage. The Khanate is trying to create a ring of allies around the PRC and a few of them are curious why the US is dragging its heel about such a critical regional issue.'

Tony: 'You don't dictate US foreign policy.'

[No, we simply enacted foreign policy without your knowledge.]

There were probably a large number of Special Forces operators who would be shaking their heads in bewilderment when they found out the US was trying to face down the Khanate over, of all places, Thailand. Hadn't they just busted their humps trying to make the Great Khan see their nations (the US and UK) as potential worthy allies?

Working with the Khanate had been 'interesting'. If you asked them for ANYTHING, they got it for you, danger and consequences be damned. They'd try anything for the men they considered 'brothers in the struggle'. If you were pinned down by fire from a hillside and asked for fire support, they would napalm the whole damn mountain if that was what it took. The man/woman on the other end of that radio cared for your life, not the human rights of the scumbag shooting at you, or any of the people they might be hiding behind.

You also know if they couldn't get it done, it was only because the resources didn't exist. The Khanate Special Forces hadn't acted like co-belligerents, or allies. They treated you like their own kin. They would and had died to make sure some of them got home to their families. If ordered to, they would definitely take the fight to the Khanate. I believed many of them would be asking what had it all been for.

'We wouldn't dream of it,' Addison lied.

'Good. You have your marching orders. Now get to it,' and Tony hung up on us. Everyone in the room was looking around. What exactly were our marching orders? Had I'd missed that part of our conversation?

"Well," Fathom sighed, "there is only one thing we can do." I seriously prayed she would ask me to lie to Temujin.

"Understood," Mehmet nodded. "Somehow we get the Khanate to launch their offensive into Thailand in three days."

"Can they do that?" I blurted out.

"They do it, or everyone in this room is in a shitload of trouble when they get around to it next week," Addison grinned. "The Khanate high command isn't going to back down just because we ask them to. I wouldn't if I were them."

"What happens if they can't make the three day window?" I asked.

"Then you call up your blood-brother and ask him to fuck over his nation to save us from lengthy prison sentences, or outright assassination," Fathom smirked.

"If he says 'no'," I looked into her eyes.

"That's the real tragedy in all this -- he won't," she gave me a comforting look. "He isn't going to leave you hanging in the wind. He'll call off his attack dogs because he isn't the kind of man to fuck you over because it is politically expedient. I'm staking all our lives on that. I always have."

The Black Lotus? We'd explain to them the ugly reality that neither of us could afford to be painted into a corner over this Thailand issue. We were doing our best, but our political masters were dead set on making a colossal error and we had to follow through with those directives. The Khanate would do everything in their extensive power to support the Black Lotus and if they could invade in three days with some nebulous chance at success, they would go.

The Black Lotus -- the entire 9 Clans knew JIKIT had no power except what we finagled from the US and the UK. We had borrowed their resources to accomplish what we'd done. The Black Lotus had profited from some of those operations and both the Khanate and JIKIT would owe them big, but we were good for it. That truism was why they worked with us.

My personal problem was that I knew the Great Khan would not forgive, or forget this interference by the US. It wasn't in his nature. Worse, the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington would see this as a victory and an expression that the US remained the globe's premier super power. Too few would remember the price of this sense of superiority would be born on the back of Thailand's masses. The revolution would fail after a short, brutal civil war. The tyrant would remain in power and the voice of the Thai people would be stilled.

The end result of that late night phone call? We weren't told.

What follows is pure conjecture on my part, fueled by intelligence information provided by other JIKIT resources and knowledge about how much the political landscape of Southeast Asia had been transformed by the PCR being driven back to their own coastline, leaving a power vacuum India, Vietnam and the Khanate were eager to fill.

The Republic of China/Taiwan --

'Aren't you the same people who said only a week ago that sending more weapons into the region would only escalate tensions? And now you want to use our airbases against our latest ally in the region? Do you understand how much internal political turmoil this will cause? Half of us are jumping for joy that someone big and fierce embraces our independence. The other half think it is time to retake China.

Yes, we mean the territory currently under the oppressive yoke of the People's Republic of China. Yes, the China the Khanate just kicked the crap out of. The nation that might not be able to protect say ... Zhusanjiao. That would be the Pearl River Delta to you Westerners ... that huge area on the mainland adjacent to Hong Kong. Hainan is looking pretty ripe for conquest as well. That would be that big island off the coast of ... yes, we have indeed suspected you could read a map.

At the moment we are expecting the permission of the Khanate to use Woody Island as a forward staging area and logistic base to help us do just that. Take Hainan ... yes ... that large island currently, and temporarily, under the illegal occupation by those illegitimate bastards in Beijing.

What do you mean 'don't declare war on them'? We've been at war with the People's Republic since 1945. No, we are pretty sure we would recall signing a Peace Treaty with them. No, we can't 'get over it' either. Why are you even asking us that? Don't you know our history?

Anyway, if we help you, can we expect the same level of cooperation from you as we are getting from the Khanate? In case things go sour ... Yes, a shooting war would qualify. See, your people at JIKIT have been helping the Khanate and us ... your people .... at JIKIT ... we are pretty sure it is made up of Americans and British personnel. Why would we think that? Are you serious? Because that's what your governments told us, that's why. Besides, why are you asking us what your people have been doing? Don't they work for you?

Speaking of the US government helping us out ... what progress is there on the Taiwan Relations Act Affirmation and Naval Vessel Transfer Act of 2014 ? We sure could use those vessels. While we are at it, how about sharing some of the technology used in the F-35. We'll build our own, or a model vaguely similar to it. We value your friendship and know you will help us out in a pinch.

Right?'

The Philippines --

'Sigh. If you really think this will help. By the way, aren't your fighters going to need some in-air refueling? What are you going to do if the Khanate engages them over Philippine airspace? What are you going to do if you get into a shooting war with the Khanate? Will you defend us from their ballistic missile threat? We have a long history as your allies, but the Khanate is totally ruthless ... and they scare us. Can you hold our hand ... say for the next twenty years?'

[The Philippines rolls out their Wish List]

Maybe you could give us some advanced fighters?

We are a poor country and can't afford to buy any before 2018.

We are not greedy -- 72 F-16s will do and you are upgrading to the F-35 anyway so we know you have some lying around. Could you also help us with the maintenance cost? We are a poor country, but very large.

Some of your decommissioned naval vessels would go a long way in showing us some love. One of those Tarawa-class amphibious assault ships would be really nice and you've got the USS Peleliu decommissioned and about to be scrapped. We have hundreds of islands in our Republic so moving stuff around is pretty tough. Can you help us out?

If you could toss in the ship's complement of 20 AV-8B Harrier II and 12 V-22 Ospreys with a fifteen year maintenance package that would be even better!

We are a poor country. We could never afford to buy any of that stuff.

Maybe a frigate, or three? You have a dozen Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates sitting around. We can finally retire some of our World War II relics and make one our new flagship.

We know you aren't going to give us one of those powerful nuclear submarines, but maybe you could secure a few loans so we could buy some of those nifty German-made, diesel-powered Type 214's. We hear they are pretty cool, very silent and practically a steal at $330 million per boat! We love you guys! And, we are poor.

Oh, and some helicopters!

We were going to refurbish some Vietnam-era Iroquois, but since your Marine Corp is retiring the far superior Bell AH-1 SuperCobra, can we have a dozen of those instead?

We were going to fix up some of our aging Sikorsky S-76s as air ambulances. Getting new ones would be far superior, don't you think?

You also have those cool Blackhawks. You have so many. Could you spare us ... say twenty? You're the best!

And some guns. And artillery. And some APC's.

Did we mention we are a poor country going through an expensive force modernization program?

Got any amphibious vehicles lying around? We could use a few of more of those small unit riverine craft (SURC)'s we bought from you recently. They are excellent counter-insurgency tools. You want us doing well fighting the War on Terror, don't you?

Did we mention that we are a poor country? And we love you guys!

The Federation of Malaysia --

We like this idea. Give us say a week to ten days and we can jump right in.

You want to go in four days? With what precisely? Compared to the force projections you have been providing us ... Who? JIKIT, of course. Who else would you send us to when we requested intelligence on Khanate activities from you? Did we believe them? Why wouldn't we? They are your people ...

When do you think Thailand will let us intervene? We've asked the Prime Minister if he needs our assistance and he politely declined. Apparently he thinks he's got things well in hand. He does retain command of over 200,000 troops and the opposition is much smaller. I hope you have better luck than we did in convincing him he's in serious trouble.

Also, what do you plan to do about the Indian Navy's South China Sea taskforce? It is pretty big -- not something we can tackle on our own.

Yes, we kind of need to know what you are doing before we decide what we are doing. You do realize that the Gulf of Thailand is currently under the complete domination of the Indian/Khanate/Vietnamese Axis, right?

48 combat aircraft? What gave you that idea? The Vietnamese have been refurbishing their Mig-21's like crazy, using Khanate stockpiles, plus there are nearly a 150 Su-22's. Sure, they are both older than manned flights to the Moon, but they can drop bombs, fire rockets and launch ground attack missiles with the best of them. They are still jet aircraft.

Worried? You are aware that those antiquated pieces of crap can bomb the northern part of my country, aren't you? So 'yes', we are worried about those 300 flying deathtraps being more than a 'manageable' nuisance.

What about our air force? I imagine it will be doing what we trained it to do -- defend Federation air space because I doubt those relics will be coming at us unescorted. We can already tell you that the Mig-29's and Su-30's the Khanate and Vietnamese will be flying are excellent aircraft. We fly them too, just not as many.

Of course you can base your F-22's out of Sultan Ismail Petra Airport as long as you supply the logistical support. How many? A lot? Could you please be more specific? Two squadrons? My ... that's going to get pretty dicey. I believe you when you say the F-22 is a highly advanced stealthy fighter. I also believe that they are a lot less stealthy when they are sitting on the ground re-arming and refueling.

Do we think they will really threaten us? They are threatening us -- over our Spratly Island claims ... are you sure you know what you are getting into? By the way, when this blows over, do you think you can pressure the Khanate into giving us their Spratly island airbase? It is rapidly approaching completion and is over 3000 meters long.

How did they do that? They are dredging the ocean floor ... it is a man-made island. Didn't your government protest the environmental damage they were causing?

No, not the Khanate -- the Chinese.

Yes, the Khanate currently controls it. They stole it from the PRC hours before the ceasefire. So, can we have it?

Yes, we know it belonged to the People's Republic, but it doesn't anymore. Besides, we both opposed it when the Chinese were dredging it up the island from the sea floor, so giving it to us isn't all that egregious, or unexpected, action. It would also go a long way in supporting our just and worthy claims to the Spratly Islands. We really don't want those greedy Chinese -- yes, both the People's Republic and the 'Republic of' -- or, those incompetent Filipinos to steal them from us.

Both of us knocking the Vietnamese back on their heels will be going a long way to getting those Communist knuckle draggers to back off as well. Hey, if they do get antsy, can we also take the Vietnamese base in the Spratly's? It isn't as big as the one the Khanate stole, but it is finished ... and closer to us. We are sure that if we help you out, you will do the right thing when the time comes. Right?

The President of the United States --

'They want what? Have they lost their fucking minds?

No wonder George spent so much time at Crawford Ranch. Navigating international relations is totally thankless and no matter how rosy we paint the latest economic numbers, someone still finds a way to make me look bad. Oh well, if this blows up in my face, I only have two more years in this shooting gallery. Maybe then I might change my mind and decided I really was born in Kenya ... or Indonesia. I really wish Hawaii was an independent country. I'd like to retire there if there weren't so many of those damn contentious Americans.

The US President wanted to run this operation on a shoestring, not engage in 'nation-building', much less backing an invasion of anybody. In fact, he was trying to stop an invasion.

The Philippines was a poor country. So what? It wasn't his fault. He had poor people in the US too and they cast votes.

Taiwan suddenly thought it could take on China? They were insane. Of course he would be ignoring a major stated political goal of the ROC for the past 65 years ~ reunification on their terms. Any high-level technological transfer wasn't going to happen because if the Republic ran off the reservation, the President would bloody well be sure no one could trace that decision back to anything he'd done.

At least Malaysia was on board ... sorta/kinda. They wouldn't actually be able to help until day ten ... or fourteen and, unlike the Republic of China, they had a small air force that might not be able to protect forwardly deployed troops. If he ended getting of those National Guard yahoos killed his party would be murdered in November.

For a split second, he wondered if he should attempt to make a personal call to the Great Khan -- potentate to potentate ... except he had this sinking feeling that a winning smile and a handshake would be worse than useless. The man would look him straight in his eyes and start making demands. He would demand action and when the Leader of the Free World prevaricated, he knew the Khanate would call his bluff.

And they would fight. The alternative was a grand spectacle of public humiliation and that he could not accept. The US military machine would fight and they would win. They would win because he needed them to win -- fast and clean and home for Christmas. Maybe he would authorize the mobilization of those California airmen. Just in case.

In the end, Secretary Kerry gave POTUS what he asked for.

The Philippines would let them use their country's bases for logistics and strategic assets (aka bombers).

The ROC would extend their air umbrella out 200 km to the east, south and west, acting like a shield between the Khanate and US Pacific assets moving through the tight Formosan Straits.

Malaysia gave them an airbase from which they could strike into Thailand, or Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The US Air Force would have the opportunity to be lethally effective.

Had they known the sum total of the US commitment, they would have been appalled. The Khanate did not fuck around.

One Carrier Strike Group ...

Forty (maybe sixty) Air Force fighters ...

Lumbering B-52's flying half way around the globe ...

Hadn't they been watching the dogfights over China for the past month? Maybe they would like to dive down and examine the wreckage of the PLAN carrier Liaoning and see just how it met its grisly fate?

Apparently not.

(I live, love and have loved)

"What are you doing here?" she got the preliminary nonsense out of the way. With the way she was dressed, I was an expected visitor. She was expecting some make-up sex. I was thinking 'paying for my past mistakes' sex because I was already seeing way too many women who required me to do things outside the bedroom -- non-sexual things. I had my dress jacket swung over my shoulder. It would only get in the way later.

"I brought you motorcycle over. You left it parked by my place," I kept any appearance of lust, or glee off my face.

"It is one o'clock in the morning," she glowered.

"I was called into work. I'm on call 24/7."

"Let me guess, you can't talk about it."

"You wouldn't believe me if I did, so suffice it to say I was doing things I didn't want to do instead of coming over here ... waking you up from a sound sleep."

"I wasn't asleep. I was angry," I pointed out.

"I apologize. Maybe I should have waited until morning." She didn't think I should have waited as long as I had. Keeping her waiting until morning would have left her volcanic.

"I wasn't asleep."

"Your bike is in the parking lot across the street," I handed her the lot ticket.

"How did you find it?"

"There are only two places in my neighborhood that allows parking and the second one is poorly lit," I replied.

"And the attendant let you steal it?" she frowned.

"He knows me. I do a ton of business with him and it wasn't as if I was dressed like your average carjacker."

"How did you start it?"

"Chaz showed me how to spoof the lock. He's got this spiffy lock-pick set on him."

"That he carries with him for such contingencies?"

"Hey, he's the spycraft professional. I'm the amateur who tags along because karma is a bitch," I grinned.

"Did you ruin the ignition?"

"No. He's got this skeleton key thingy. I need to get me one of those," I added. See, I was drifting down the path to becoming a hardened criminal and she had to save me. Girls love saving bad boys from themselves. There is an entire literary genre devoted to the topic.

"Get in here," Anais barked. She emphasized that command by grabbing my tie and dragging me into her room. Now I could ogle her in her bra, panties and dress shirt left open. As I said moments ago, she was expecting me. Anais had thick, light-brown, just-past-the-shoulders hair with blonde highlights. Her dusky skin tone suggested some ancestral link to the South of France while her deep green eyes suggested Celtic ties.

She was definitely someone I would describe as possessing an hourglass figure. She worked out just enough to stay fit, practiced judo (in and outside of the bedroom) and ate right. Her ass was the correct mix of firm and fleshy, her breasts were pleasant without too much bounce and she sported broad, but short, nipples that liked to get bitten.

With her bare foot, she kicked the door shut, spun me around by my tie until I slammed, back first, into the wall in the short hallway that led to her bedroom.

"I repeat, what are you doing here?"

"I never actually apologized for how things ended up," I sodomized the truth. "Anais, I am truly sorry for how badly I fucked up our affair. I acted without a thought for the possible consequences, or thinking about how betrayed you would feel. Can you accept my apology?"

"You came here to have sex," she declared. She stepped up tightly against my body, her eyes boring into mine. I had around six inches on her so she had to tilt up her chin to do so.

"That too," I shrugged.

"I ought to throw you out the window," she growled. We were on the seventh floor. The window didn't open and the safety glass looked alright.

"I'll go then," I nodded. Now to make her beg for/demand sex.

"You are not going anywhere," she snarled. Then she kissed me, a tongue-grapple ensued and she finished things by biting my lower lip so much I tasted blood afterwards. I dropped my jacket. I was about to need both my hands.

"I think us having sex would be a mistake," I pushed her buttons. I wasn't some wimp acquiescing to her demands. I was a free-willed being; a strong man who needed to be wrestled down and forced to perform.

She pulled me down into a second kiss. This was an 'I will leave you incapable of thinking about anything but me' kiss. Yes, I had names for kisses too. They were similar to naming the ingredients of a choice meal. I propelled her back until we slammed into the opposite wall. Anais was a tough chick and a bit of banging around was par for the course.

I cupped each ass cheek and pulled her up. She responded by wrapping her legs around my hips. We were still kissing. Anais slipped her hands along my sides before linking them up at the small of my back. She pulled me hard against her while she ground her crotch against mine.

"Clothes," she rumbled from deep within. As in 'why was I still dressed?'

"Been a while," I taunted her. Since she was glommed on to me, I used my freed up hands to rip off my tie.

"Yes. I bet it hasn't 'been a while' for you," she sizzled.

"Long as in 5:30 this morning," I teased back. At this point in the foreplay that revelation was akin to throwing gasoline on a fire. I was being an unrepentant dog and she was taking me to confessional -- between her thighs.

"Bastard," she condemned me as well as the entire male side of the species.

"It doesn't mean I haven't missed you -- this -- us," I riposted. She retaliated by turning her humping motion into to more of a grind. Bad kitty. Bad kitty wanted to be spanked. Woot!

"You are never going to change," she dug her fingernails into my flesh. I yanked my shirt off.

"If I hadn't changed, you wouldn't be here," I reminded her while nipping at her nose and lips.

"You are still an egocentric bastard," she growled.

"Hey, I always took care of your needs," I countered. I had. She knew I had and since she currently wanted me to take her to that higher erotic plane, she wasn't going to contest that fact. Instead, she began working her shirt off and in doing so, squishing her boobs against my chest.

Holding her tight -- my left hand under her right buttock and my right hand on her mid-back, pressing her torso into mine. We dance through two slow circles before crashing, side by side, on the bed. Anais rolled us over so that she was on top. I didn't let her get in a totally dominant pose -- oh no. I had a kitty to take care off. I grabbed her firm ass and propelled her up until I was face first with her gusset.

I might not remember to check my bank balance, or the atomic number of Technetium (I once had a girlfriend who would rate my performance on the periodic table in the midst of our fucking -- I never made it higher than Copernicium before she passed out), but I can recall the precise taste, texture and topography of every pussy I've had face to face contact with. I knew right where to tongue-fuck Anais to twist her up inside.

Control-orgasm, control-orgasm -- Anais was pig-headed and wanted to keep dictating our reunion. She also wanted to return to the level of sexual bliss we had shared so often before. Her compromise was to hump my face; really grind it in. Black silk underwear is an excellent medium for transferring force and wetness between partners.

She rubbed her love-nub against my upper lip/teeth while I did tongue-ups into her cunt. She was wetter than Bangladesh in the rainy season. That was an indicator of some serious masturbatory sessions stopping just short of orgasm before I arrived. I had some aching sensations to play with and I wasn't cruel. I maneuvered a hand between her thighs, underneath the band of her underwear and exposed her vaginal opening to my fingers and tongue while keeping that silky feel for her clitoris.

"Rrrrrrr," she began growling from the depths of her diaphragm. That was how she always was -- thundering like a female grizzly bear in heat. It was an expression with deep subharmonic components that caused the heart to flutter and her flesh to shimmer with the vibrations mixed with her bodily sweat.

"Come on, Baby," I urged her on.

That pissed her off. She was trying to hold off her orgasm for a few more seconds. My 'baby' crack shifted her resolve into anger allowing her climax to overwhelm her.

"RRRRaaaahhhhhhh," she howled. It didn't sound like a female coming to fruition. It was more akin to the sound European soccer hooligans made when their team scored a goal. The muscles in Anais' thighs were strumming along like the cords of a piano, her belly was undulating in and out, and her head had rolled back so that she was screaming to the ceiling.

The countdown was on. The people next door/across the hall/above or below us would be waking up ... think that someone had unleashed a wild animal in the hotel ... figure out they were not immediately on the menu ... then call the front desk, stating their fears as justifiable fact. Anais and I had been down that road before.

I gave Anais' flank a light smack to get her attention. Sure she looked back at me with simmering anger, yet she also knew the score. That had been round #1 in a nightlong bout of sexual conquest, rebellion and re-conquest. She drew her knees to her chest so she could pull off her damp panties in one swift motion. I worked off my shoes, pants, socks and underwear. While she soaked up my naked flesh (muscles, scars and all), she retrieved the phone from the side table and placed it beside her. She wouldn't want to break up our rhythm when the phone rang.

No romantic small talk interrupted our shared lust. She wanted that dick and I wanted to give it to her. I moved between her inviting thighs while she examined me, her upper body uplifted by her arms resting on her elbows. Bite-kissing-biting resumed. I slowly pushed her head to the bed with the force of my kisses and strength of my upper body pushing down on her. Somewhere along the way, I slipped into her.

Condom? Crap. I was slipping. I would have to pull out, because stopping to put a condom on would earn me some serious ferocity on her part. I plunged in. Anais placed her hands on my hips, claws beneath my kidneys, guiding my pace and power. I may have been on top, but she wasn't giving up on one ounce of control.

"Damn you," she hissed.

"Yes?" I leered.

"Fuck you."

"I'm working on it. Is there anything ..." I teased.

"Bastard ...," she looked away, "You remember how I like it."

"Whatever made you think I would forget?" I kept at it.

"Don't look so smug."

"I'm working on it," I looked smug. Anais dug her fingernails in. I had to be punished, just ask her.

"When do you have to go back to work?" she huffed.

"Six a.m. When do you have to go back?"

"I have two days off."

"Good to know," I stole a kiss from her lips painlessly. Good to know.

(Painful dreams)

I edged back into consciousness realizing that I was not alone. The muffled sense of my surroundings informed me that I wasn't really awake. She sat on my side of the bed, feet on the floor, side to me.

"Good evening, Dot," I yawned.

"Good morning, Cáel," the Goddess Ishara let her melodic voice float over me.

"Hold on," I interrupted her. I weaved as I leaned over, pawed at my pants (still trapped in the real world) and finally drew forth my offering.

"A fortune cookie," she chuckled. "I admire your dedication."

"It is a simple enough request and I aim to please." I hesitated. "We don't have much time, do we?"

"You are dreaming, not concussed, so we will be alright if we tread carefully," she told me. "This time, I have no cryptic warnings, or specious pieces of information. I am giving you a gift. Take my hand."

I did, not that I had much choice. We 'went' ... where to, I wasn't sure yet I suspected we were skirting the Weave itself where concepts like Time and Distance had little meaning.

The Goddess released my hand and I stepped out of the fog brought about by the abrupt nature of our progress to see a woman sitting beside a pool ... no, a sunken bath. She looked up at our approach. Oh shit, it was ...

"Cáel? You are Cáel, aren't you," she smiled. She stared at me with her blind eyes while waiting for my response with deaf ears.

"Yes, Tadêfi, I'm Cáel. How did you know?"

"I bear our shared life inside me," she graced me with her serene presence.

"Ah ... I was warned," I stopped myself. I was going to add 'this might happen'. That would be unfair as she appeared pleased with this alteration of her life path. "I was warned by the Goddess that she had something to show me. How are you feeling? Is there anything I can do for you?"

She put her hand over her lower abdomen and rubbed the spot with her palm.

"Seeing you and giving you the news in person is enough," she glowed with happiness.

"Have you picked out a name yet?" seemed weak.

"I will leave that up to you."

"Oh, come on," I relaxed slightly. "This is something we are doing together."

"No, it is not, kind Cáel."

"Just because she will most likely end up an Isharan doesn't ..."

"No, Cáel. This birth will cost me my life. I am not destined to ever see my daughter draw her first breath," she confided in me.

"No!" I recoiled. "That's unfair." What else could I say? 'I take it back. I shouldn't have listened to my Goddess and screwed you out of what little life you had left.'

"I am content with my fate, Cáel Nyilas Wakko Ishara. Our daughter will be the first female of the Isharan line in nearly 1600 years. Rejoice that we have been confronted by Destiny and triumphed. The light of the Peacemakers will shine once more among our sisters."

"It is not worth the cost of your life," I responded bitterly. This was colossally unfair to all three of us.

"That you grieve for the short time I have left gives me strength, knowing our daughter will grow up with a strong, caring father. I ..."

I could sense Ishara close by my side.

"You must go, my Cáel. We will next see each other in the Halls of our Ancestors. Take our daughter and raise her well. I have faith in you," she sighed pleasantly, as if I had sheltered her from the rainstorm with my umbrella.

"We must go," Ishara whispered in my ear and then we left. I was back in the hotel room, looking down at the tears on my sleeping face and it hurt so much.

"You gave me that command knowing what it would cost her," I sounded so hollow, chin on my chest, eyes closed instead of looking at my feet.

"We are not an easy people to love, Cáel. We are harsh. Endless centuries of suffering, pain and mistrust have made us this way. Please understand that what you see as one life passing is really one life coming into being. It is a life Fate would have denied the line of Ishara. I took you to meet Tadêfi because I wanted you to greet your daughter with understanding, not sorrow. I owed you."

"Steal my anger why don't you?" I chuckled bitterly. "Can I even blame myself for this tragedy? It isn't like you made me do anything. I did it because I wanted to and never gave much thought to the frail health Tadêfi was hanging on to. This is so wrong and I don't know what to do."

"Wake up. Keep living. If this news turns your heart, or fills your mind with doubt, then both of us have failed you. Tadêfi didn't have to tell you. I didn't have to bring you to her. I believed you were owed the chance to say good-bye."

"I didn't say that," I exhaled sadly.

"You openly grieved and let her comfort you. That is more of a 'goodbye' than most people are able to convey. She knows your heart. You were honest in your sorrow. She saw that and that eased her suffering knowing that you are a person who is free with their heart. For a woman who expected nothing but wickedness from men for so long, that was the ultimate gift. You did help her. You truly did."

"I ..." I woke up. Anais was looking down at me, concerned.

"You've been crying," she noted by touching my cheek with a finger then showing me the dampness.

"Do you believe a person's soul can fracture?" I murmured. That sort of talk was unlike the 'me' she once knew.

"Do you believe that another can help you put your soul back together if that happens?" I continued.

"You are not talking about us, are you?" she studied me.

"No. I'm thinking about being a parent, not just a father. Can I fuck that up as much as I've screwed up so many of the other women I've cared for ... am I going to be worthy of being a Dad?"

"Oh ... I don't know. You are not the man I knew two years ago. I think you have changed for the better. You are still far from perfect yet ... you seem to be trying so much harder than previously."

"You think I'm going to screw things up, don't you?"

"Yes. Yes, I do, but I also think you will only make the same mistake once. That is better than most men can hope for," she let her gaze soften.

"This is us breaking up ..."

"Yes. I think if I stayed, you would break my heart; and I am starting to believe neither one of us wants that," she nodded. "One more time?"

"I'd love to," I smiled at her. I still hurt. I was using sex to bandage my pain. Anais knew that and was giving me this unlooked for piece of kindness. It was the best break up I'd ever had, or could ever hope for.