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

*Please note: I wrote this before the incidents in Paris and San Bernardino, which makes some of the fantasy story developments tragic in that life sometimes mirrors fantasy*

*****

{5:45 am, Saturday, August 30th ~ 9 Days to go}

"You look like someone strangled your kitten," Pamela told me as I exited Anais' hotel room. She was leaning against the wall across the hall. I had the feeling she had been there a while. Of course I hadn't been allowed to wander off alone; most likely, Chaz had kept an eye on me until Pamela relieved him.

"I ... I got Tadêfi killed," I unloaded on her.

Pamela immediately dropped her casual façade, her eyes narrowing. "What do you know?"

"Ishara took me to her while I dreamed. I spoke to her ... I guess because I was there in Ishara-space. She told me that the birth of our child will kill her. What the fuck have I done?" I was near tears, damn it.

"You work for bitches, top to bottom," Pamela stated firmly. "Of course you weren't informed of any of this until after the fact. Do me a favor?"

"What is it? I'm not about to throw myself off a building - again."

"Don't let this tragedy bog you down. That is what Alal wants, to soil the goodness and forgiveness within you. That road leads to only one place - being as bad as he is. I've seen that capacity within you as well."

"To be a rank-bastard?"

"Precisely."

"What do I do?" sounded so pathetic coming from me.

"Cry. Weep. Remember you work for bitches, then laugh at them. You only lose if you stop being you."

"I hardly think being an irresponsible playboy is the appropriate response to all of this?"

"Hey. Don't hold back. I still have two ready and willing granddaughters you've promised to do something about," she chided me. I couldn't help myself. I snorted in amusement. I was Anakin Skywalker in the tent. I guessed I would be that forlorn soul for a while longer, except I had Pamela holding me back from the last few, fatal steps.

{3:00 pm, Saturday, August 30th ~ 9 Days to go}

"They want to do what?" I blinked. I was in Doebridge, connecting with Aya and her Squirts. I hadn't asked to come here. Pamela decided our destination on her own initiative, and I hadn't come up with a convincing enough reason to jump out of the moving car. I didn't want to unload my woes on my 9-year old Valkyrie. She was entertaining her friends with a weekend of shooting bows and learning the best way to hobble a surprised foe ... just normal little Amazon-girl stuff.

"Some people of your government want to talk to the Esteemed Oyuun Tömörbaatar," Iskender repeated over the phone.

"In an official capacity? As ambassador from Kazakhstan? Or from the Khanate?"

"I am unsure. That is why we want you there," he informed me.

"In what capacity? Chief Ambassador of the Host? A member of JIKIT ..."

"As the Great Khan's Blood-Brother."

"Oh," I murmured, "This is because war is about to break out ..."

"Yes. We really cannot afford a fatal confrontation with the United States," Iskender told me.

"But if I make a deal in the Khan's name, it doesn't look bad for OT or Temujin, and if we are rebuffed, it isn't egg on their face either," I reasoned.

"That is my belief. You are regarded as the Great Khan's chaotic kinsman - someone tolerated for his eccentricities while being close to the Great Khan's heart - for a very good reason."

Yeah, I had saved his life. More to the point, five Amazon augurs had died so that he might live. To the Mongol-Turkish Empire, that carried an incredible weight. Things such as either being named, or nominated as Magyarorszag es Erdely Hercege, Prinţul Ungariei şi Transilvaniei, Mbretërore Princi i Shqipërisë, t'agavorakan ishkhan Haïasdan and sts'kho prints'I sak'art'velo? That was a whole lot of spaghetti with no actual paycheck, inherited palace, or even loyal palace guards to hold the republican masses at bay.

Okay, that was somewhat untrue. Hungary and Romania thought I was quaintly insane for accepting the Great Khan's claim that I was the Prince of Hungry and Transylvania, but Albania, Armenia and Georgia were far more serious about my honorifics.

In those nations, there was some traction to give the 'office' of prince the powers of a 'powerless' head of state, now that they were part of the Greater Khanate Empire. Essentially, I was to show up, give the Great Khan's blessing to their respective elected governments and then 'rubber stamp' their governing cabinets. On the plus side, I liked Albanian food and both Georgia and Armenia had year-round skiing.

"When do you want me to show up?"

"That is an issue. We need to meet on neutral ground where we are not likely to be noticed," Iskender hedged.

"We could call Addison and have her arrange something."

"The Esteemed Oyuun Tömörbaatar was of the opinion that we could hold this clandestine meeting at your residence," he dropped the anchor on me.

"Ah ... I live in a hole in the wall, Iskender," I pointed out.

"Define a hole in the wall."

"Two modest bedrooms, a kitchenette, one bathroom and a living room that only allows one sofa and one weight set ... small."

"With the money you make? Why?" he wondered.

"When I got the job three months ago, it was all I could afford. Since then, I haven't had the time to house-hunt," I explained. "Besides, I like my roommates."

"Who sleeps on the sofa?"

"Not you too," I griped. "Odette sleeps with me, unless my company minds. Then she sleeps with Timothy, unless he has company - Timothy is gay."

"Aahh ..."

"I'm not gay or bi-sexual, Iskender, if that is what you are worried about," I cut that line of thought off. Some cultures frowned on homosexuality and this wasn't time to make a fruitless stand for alternate lifestyles.

"I'm sure no one would think that of you." 'Because I was a renowned man-whore' was unstated.

"Do you still want to meet at my apartment?"

"Yes. This is a spur of the moment deal. Are you amenable?"

"I need to get back and get things ready ~ say an hour?" I offered.

"That would do nicely. Thank you, Cáel."

"We are all on the same team, right?" I sighed.

"We are glad you feel that way. We do appreciate it. I will see you in an hour."

"You've got to go?" Aya asked.

"Yeah. Work."

"It's okay. Stop burying yourself in the results of Tadêfi's choice and start thinking about raising your daughter, Cáel," she advised.

I had gone to see her because I wasn't sure I could make sense of it talking with Timothy. And Odette would try to comfort me with sex, which would only complicate having sex with her later. Girls rarely let shit like that go. Everyone else I knew ... had ulterior motives.

"And here I had hoped that we could partake of some oyster hunting," I teased her.

"If they corner me, I'll tell Elsa you tried. I'll see you Monday night. After all, this will be our last Monday together until ... you come back," she grinned up at me.

Done ... This Monday was the start of the last week of my Havenstone internship. I'd nearly run the gauntlet and survived. Monday night/Tuesday morning of the following week I would be heading somewhere, meeting up with Felix and forging some strategy that had us winning the Great Hunt.

For me, it was a matter of prestige. For Felix, it was a matter of freedom. Katrina had worked out a compromise. Felix would become the property of the House that captured him, though he would still be allowed to work at Havenstone. Essentially, we would be surrendering up his genetics. For Felix, it would be a permanent thing. If we won? Respect for House Ishara would increase and Felix would be free to choose any woman that wished to share his immaculate heritage.

"Good hunting, Dumu," I pulled her in for a hug. She wrapped her little arms around my waist. {Dumu = daughter}

"Mamitu. Find it in yourself to forgive Ishara, and then you can forgive yourself," she smiled.

"So how did you become so wise?" I felt a tiny bit of the weight lifted from my chest.

"I have a very bright father," she teased me right back, "... and an even smarter aunt."

"Stinker." I grunted,

Aya giggled and I separated on that happy note to make my way back to my current means of conveyance.

"Well, that was fast," Pamela remarked.

"Work."

"I haven't received a notification," she worried.

"Special, off-the-books, Khanate stuff. Temujin wants me to help him out," I confided. Both of us knew this was stuff we might not be able to tell our companions on JIKIT about. Not good. We needed to trust one another.

"That guy better start ponying up some tangible benefits."

"What do you suggest?" I mused as she started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot.

"A few guardians would be nice. His personal phone number. Vast tracks of land in Kazakhstan, worked by serfs," she suggested.

"Beautiful, scantily clad serfs?"

"Are there any other kind? They will fit in well with your female Mongolian bodyguards," she chortled.

"Actually, a few more males in the bodyguard wouldn't suck," I countered. "I have an annoying habit of attracting gorgeous females who want to sleep with me."

I tried to keep the bitter tone from my voice.

"Atta boy," Pamela punched my arm. "Don't let the pain drag you down. As you told me, she's not angry about her fate. Being an Amazon, I believe she feels honored. The life of augurs is rather thankless and their doom is ignored by the majority of our 'sisters'. I don't think you will ever let that happen."

"Not now," I agreed.

"Thought of any names?"

Names for my unborn daughter ... the first of what appeared to be my many children. Holy Hell, what had become of my life as an unreliable cad, a womanizer and a disappointer of women?

"I was thinking of naming her after her mother," I replied.

"Don't do that to her. That's a legacy I wouldn't wish on any daughter - being an augur."

"Shala?"

"Where did that come from?" Pamela asked.

"The Sumerian Goddess of Compassion," I enlightened her.

"That's nice," Pamela gave me a tender look. She really was my spiritual triplet - Aya being our best third. "Of course, if you chose Pamela, I won't be insulted."

"What ..." and she punched me in the shoulder. I was about to say 'what about a legacy I wouldn't wish on ...', but she knew that.

[Note: A brief recap of what's gone wrong with the world - ]

Once upon a time there was a Mongolian chieftain named Temujin. He united his people (the Mongols), took the title of Genghis Khan and began the creation of the largest land empire that ever existed. He wasn't called Khagan, Yekhe Khagan, or Khaan (which means emperor/Great Khan/Khan of Khans in Turkish-Mongol parlance) until after his death. In his time, he was such a bad-ass that he didn't need any honorifics.

Temujin died. Normally, that would have been the end of that, but Temujin was someone special. After his death, a secret society called the 'Earth and Sky' came into existence to prepare for his return and the rebirth of his empire.

He did indeed, come back.

He came back several times, in fact. Each time, he judged the time was not yet ripe to reunify the peoples of Central Asia, so he died and the next generation of the E&S prepared for the next incarnation.

Twenty-two years ago, Temujin was born yet again. He recalled his heritage and set about determining if the time was ripe for his public resurrection.

This time, there were other people besides the E&S waiting for him. They were a rival secret society called the Seven Pillars of Heaven (the 7P). They had figured out a way to uncover his location and planned to kill him for good. That would have allowed the 7P to bring all of Asia under their mantle.

Earlier this year, a group of Amazon augurs reached into the Great Unknown, discovered the 7P's nasty little plan and passed that knowledge to the others. Five augurs paid for that knowledge with their lives. It was not in vain, ... one of the surviving augurs, Tadêfi, was guided by the Amazon goddesses to bear that message to some knucklehead named Cáel Nyilas.

Said knucklehead took that piece of knowledge to the New York City head of the Earth & Sky and gifted him with Temujin's precise location as well as the fact that the 7P's were closing in on him. Thus Cáel saved Temujin's life and Temujin was very grateful.

Temujin, along with the E&S, immediately launched an attack against the little known region of China known as Aksai Chan. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) reacted confidently in this opening action of war ... and saw the annihilation of much of the PLA's mobile forces along the Kazakhstan-Chinese border.

That however was only a highly visible diversion. The real 'first strike' was on the People's Republic of China in the form of an anthrax attack in several western Chinese cities. The plan was to prompt the Chinese to initiate preventative vaccine inoculations for their military and security forces ... because the E&S had lethally compromised the PRC's vaccine system. So the PRC actually gave the anthrax bacterium to their own forces.

A multitude of Chinese soldiers, airmen and sailors died. The E&S also subverted the governments of Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and then announced the creation of a new Central Asian state, colloquially known as the Khanate. Bad things continued to happen to the PLA and the PRC. Soon, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Turkmenistan joined the Khanate.

Khanate forces, organized into tumens (units of 10,000 men), rapidly overran all of the regions and provinces of Gansu, Nei Mongol, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Qinghai, and Xinxiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as well as most of Yunnan and over half of Sichuan provinces.

At the same time, with the aid of the afore-mentioned knucklehead, the Khanate manipulated Russia into 'intervening to preserve order' - aka 'stealing' - Manchuria (the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning), thus denying the PRC of major industrial and petroleum centers. Temporarily unable to defend themselves, the PRC agreed to a six-month cease fire on August 20th. In the closing hours before the ceasefire took effect, the Khanate also managed to seize every island outpost of China in the South China Sea (excluding the big island of Hainan).

After the ceasefire, the Khanate managed to convince Albania, Armenia and Georgia to join the Khanate because (for the second two) being caught between militarily powerful Turkey and oil-rich Azerbaijan had them nervous and the Khanate's offer of union was hard to pass up. A coup in Afghanistan dropped that country into the Khanate's lap as well.

At the start of the crisis, the United States and the United Kingdom desperately needed insight into the changing situation in Asia, so they formed JIKIT (Joint International Khanate Interim Taskforce). For convoluted reasons, this group include the same knucklehead referenced earlier as well as a dozen highly qualified intelligence experts and Foreign Service operatives. JIKIT broke all kinds of rules, laws and guidelines in creating a mutually supportive relationship with the Khanate, up to and including sending Special Forces operators from their respective countries into the PRC to help the Khanate forces.

Unknown to the two governments they supposedly work for, JIKIT formed alliances with not only the Earth & Sky, but also the Amazons, the Black Lotus (the Chinese secret society resisting the 7P's) and the 9 Clans (a coalition of the world's best assassins, which included the Black Lotus and the Seven [now Six] Families of the Ninja). In doing so, JIKIT became involved in a shadow war going on between their allies and the alliance of the 7P's and the Condottieri (aka 'Global Mercs are Us').

Anyway, using the Paracel and Spratly Island holdings as a springboard, the Khanate formed an alliance with India and Vietnam who were bent on dividing up the area's oceanic resources before the PRC could return to prominence. In order to secure their frontiers, this regional group has become involved with the popular rising in Thailand (see Chapter 42) on the rebel side. A civil war is about to break out and now the world was holding its breath because the US was threatening to become militarily involved on the side of the Thai government forces. Which brings us to my apartment.

Note: End what's wrong with them world.

{4:00 pm, Saturday, August 30th ~ 9 Days to go}

"Hey Anais, what are you doing here?" flowed from my lips before I engaged my brain. I was in a rush.

Her brow furrowed slightly as she stood up. She had been sitting in the hallway, her ass on the ground and her knees up.

"You gave me neither your phone number nor my Serge," she explained. She looked past me to Pamela.

"My bad. My private number is 917-555-7399 [that's (an area code of NYC) - (Hollywood nonsense) - (SEXY) for the curious]. We can get your Serge right now," I said as I slipped past her.

"You would be the spiritual grandmother & retired assassin?" she looked over at Pamela.

"You must be something people have sex with, then get accused of bestiality," Pamela zinged right back.

"You are rude," Anais's eyes narrowed.

"And you have made the mistake of bringing an attitude to a gunfight, Princess," Pamela mocked her.

"Pamela - don't," I pleaded.

"But she's French," Pamela smirked. "I hate the French."

"She's Quebecois, not French. And since when have you hated the French?"

"Since about five seconds ago. It came over me like a premonition ... or maybe a past life experience."

"Who were you Lionel of Wandomme?" Anais refused to give an inch for the sake of civility. Pamela was a hopeless case ... which pretty much defined Anais as well. [Ole Lionel was the nobleman who took the surrender of Joan of Arc]

"Noooo ... I was Pierre Cauchon," Pamela grinned.

"Who?" I worked my key into the lock.

"He was the Bishop of Beauvais," Anais enlightened me. "He was the man who condemned St. Joan to the flames."

"How do you know that?" I unlocked the door.

"She has a well-developed knowledge of hypocrites," Pamela snorted.

"I learned of him when I studied how religious/political views can lead to a miscarriage of justice."

"Pamela - stop - please," I groaned.

"Why?"

"Because I love you?"

"That's pathetic," Pamela shook her head.

"Because you like me?"

"I love you more than I do my own grandchildren. And I am forever picking on you for your own spiritual growth, of course," she snickered.

"Cáel, how do you know this woman?" Anais turned her anger on me. I walked into my apartment, Anais and Pamela continued eyeing each other, neither one wanting to turn their back on the other. Anais was doing it because Pamela was dangerous. Pamela was doing it because she had the inexplicable desire to make Anais miserable.

"She's my knife instructor at Havenstone."

"Have you ever stabbed a person?"

"Perhaps. I've hit my fair share and shot a few. I like to think I haven't stabbed anyone who didn't derserve it. Besides, I prefer tomahawks."

"Tomahawks? You prefer to hit people with tomahawks instead of knives?"

"He's a lousy student," Pamela teased.

"Pamela, give it a rest," I sighed. "Anais has decided to stop sleeping with me. We are trying to part on amicable terms."

"She's giving up that dick? I don't think so," Pamela shook her head.

"You speak from experience?" Anais glared back.

"I speak from the experience of seeing women fight over him, Baby-cakes."

"My name is Anais Saint-Amour."

"I know that. I chose to denigrate you instead," Pamela responded.

"Why are you acting like this?" Anais frowned. "What have I ever done to you?"

"I'm doing it because he cares for you and that's counter-productive to what he should be doing," Pamela stated.

"What? He loves plenty of women."

"No. He loves one woman, but she has set him adrift, so he meanders from woman to woman who want to 'change him' and 'make him a better man', as if the real Cáel wasn't good enough," she gave a blistering retort.

I was busy retrieving her clothes bag and boot box (so they didn't get dusty).

"Who does he love?"

"It isn't love like you think of it. It's not a burning romance. It is the love of companionship and mutual respect and I am afraid he'll never recapture that level of devotion and passion," Pamela continued.

"Who is she talking about?" Anais asked me.

"Kimberly," I said sadly. "She taught me to ... Damn Pamela," I looked to my current mentor because she had reminded me of the woman who had helped create the man I was today. Dr. Kimberly Geisler had shown me that I shouldn't be ashamed of who I was.

People only became screwed up if they allowed events to screw them up. Personal responsibility and acceptance ... that I could be a somewhat selfish prick who thought with his dick more than his head, yet never abused a lover even though I'd let far too many women down. No jealousy. No emotional regrets. And flesh healed.

I missed Kimberly, but there was no going back ... to college, or the boy I had once been. I could be a bang-up Dad if I passed those lessons on instead of moping about a tragedy beyond my control. I could forgive Dot Ishara now because she was who she was and expecting her to change for me was the ultimate act of selfishness. Learn - grow - move on.

"Thanks Pamela," I whispered.

"You are welcome, Wakko," she replied softly. She was close to tears, as was I.

"What am I missing here?" Anais looked from one to another.

"I'm not going to be a good father if I try to be what I think a father should be. I need to be the man I am - to be truthful and trusting others to let them find their own way without foisting my expectations on them."

"This isn't about me, is it? This is about your nightmare," Anais reasoned.

"Bingo," I smiled compassionately. "You may be the very best investigator I've ever met."

"I apologize Anais Saint Amour. Sometimes Cáel need to be tricked in order to teach him a life lesson," Pamela grinned.

"You are still rude," Anais griped.

"And you are still thinking about how much better your life would be with Cáel in it."

"On that sour note, Anais, here is your stuff as promised," I handed her the gear.

"In a hurry?" she inquired.

"I'm expecting company," I said.

"What's she like?" Yep. Abysmal trust issues.

"Why do you think ... no, it is business," I promised.

"Mr. Nyilas?" A woman asked from the door we'd left open.

"Oh crap," I groaned.

She was pretty damn sexy with her closely-cropped black hair and an aura that expressed 'I'm physically fit, living healthy and feel comfortable lying to people about what I do for a living'.

She was wearing a long coat, despite it being summer in NYC. She'd also brought some friends who I couldn't see yet.

"Yes, that would be me," I bowed to the inevitable.

"Who is she with?" Anais glowered. "CIA? SVR RF (that would be the Russian CIA)? INTERPOL? SPECTER? The 2nd Department of the PLA General Staff HQ (that would be mainland China's CIA/DIA)? The World Crime League [look it up]? I seriously doubt she is with SCRS (that would be the Service canadien du renseignement de sécurité ~ the Canadian CIA)."

Damn it! Why was I still getting the 3rd degree? Hadn't we broken up?

"My guess is the DOD," Pamela mused. "Most likely the Defense Clandestine Service."

The stranger's mouth gaped open for a second. She might have recovered fast enough ... had I not worked with an insane warrior culture.

"Anais, this is work. You need to be going now," I insisted.

"Here Anais, have a gun," Pamela pulled one from her lower back. "This is going to be a ballet worth remembering."

"Who are these women?" the stranger asked. Her visual clues confirmed there were people behind her in the hall.

"Pamela - rogue octogenarian paramilitary insurgent," I made the introductions. "Anais is a Jedi vigilante mime."

Blink.

"They are my bodyguards."

"I am not your bodyguard," Anais snipped. Hey, she was pretty and dangerous enough to qualify, plus she had the 'beat me like a little bitch' down pat.

"Hush," I chided. "Mimes don't talk."

Anais took the offered gun.

"Don't make me shoot you," Anais hissed.

"You reallymake a lousy mime," Pamela joked.

"Are we in the right place?" the stranger worried.

"I'm afraid so. Anais, you need to leave."

"Not until you tell me what is going on here," she sizzled.

"She's not here to have sex, if that's what you worried about," I retorted. "Wait, are you here to have sex with me?"

"I barely know you."

"That rarely stops me," I muttered.

"He's a master of bedroom antics," Pamela praised me. "He's pretty much at a loss at doing anything else."

"Thanks Grandma," I griped.

"Your welcome, Grandson."

"We ... are here to meet someone," the stranger hedged.

"You came to the right place," Pamela preempted me. "He's definitely someone."

"Fine - redo. I'm Cáel Nyilas," [deep breathe], "NOHIO, HCIESI-NDI, UHAUL, Magyarorszag es Erdely Hercege plus a bunch of other honorifics that have yet to be confirmed. I am single-handedly bringing back medievalism to the center of Europe and the Near East. The woman to my left is Pamela Pale, and she really is my bodyguard. The woman to my right is Sgt. Anais Saint-Amour, RCMP, my ex-lover and the person that needs to leave - RIGHT NOW."

"I'm not sure I should leave at this moment," Anais shifted possessively. I had to recall earlier this morning ... the part where we'd broken up by mutual consent. Yep. That had really happened. I had thought I was whittling down my current list of paramours. Why do the Goddesses hate me so?

"Told you - she can't give up that dick," Pamela whispered.

"As you can see, I have limited control of my life," I told the strange woman. "I know you are here to meet somebody who isn't me. Now you know who I am. Who are you and your companions?"

"I'm Ms. Quincy."

"Sorry; I'm on a first name basis with everyone I meet," I interrupted.

"What's your rank, Honey?" Pamela added.

"What makes you think ...?"

"She doesn't think. That's what makes her so dangerous." I explained.

"Hey now," Pamela faux-complained.

"Okay. She's a fledgling telepath ... or medium," I shrugged.

"Captain ... Zelda Quincy."

"In case you are mesmerized by her tits," Pamela tapped me, "she's packing some serious hardware."

"One of those personal defense gizmos?" I leaned Pamela's way.

"Close, but no cigar. She's my kind of girl - big 'bang-bang', back-up at the small of her back and knife in her boot."

"What!" Zelda gulped.

"She's his knife-fighting instructor," Anais answered drolly.

"Are you Special Forces?" Zelda regarded my mentor.

"Nah - I got kicked out for a consistent failure to observe even the loosest Rules Of Engagement. I'm a free-spirit."

"Oh, you're a sniper," Zelda nodded.

"I like this one," Pamela smiled.

"Ah ... thank you." Then, over her shoulder, "I think we are in the right place." Zelda entered the room, followed by a Hispanic panther of a man (kind of like a tanned, slightly shorter Chaz without the cool accent) wearing a long coat, and a Subcontinent-cast woman who looked at everyone as if she expected us to sprout fangs, or start quoting the Koran any second now. She obviously was a brain seconded to this mission very much against her will.

The fourth person had that cagey 'when my lips move, I'm lying' look while seemingly unhappy with her current assignment. The heavy implication was that the lady was a career diplomat. Considering our current company and who we were talking to, she was State Department. She was in her late 30's or early 40's and giving off the sensation she had devoted so much to her career that she was starting to wonder if that was all that life had to offer.

The fifth member was a military man clearly uncomfortable about what he was doing here, thus not a spook. His off-the-rack suit wasn't terrible, so he expected to socialize somewhat while performing his duties. He also looked like a man who expected other people to speak half-truths and obfuscated lies as easily as they breathed. Numbers three, four and five were dressed for the weather and unarmed.

All of this meant they were good at what they did, though they probably didn't know the particulars of what was expected of them. They had their marching orders. Those orders were about to be made irrelevant in the company they would be keeping. The latter weren't the 'doing it by rote' kind of people they would normally be dealing with.

"I bet you she's a doctor," I murmured to Pamela, "she's with State and he's some sort of Foreign Service type."

"I bet the first guy is Air Force," she countered.

"Like one of those Para-rescue guys?"

"No. More like one of those Battlefield Air Operations guys, I'm guessing," she corrected me.

"That guy?" I nodded to the final guy. "Pentagon wonk?"

"More likely he's one of those embassy guys. I'm going to take an educated leap here - Office of Military Cooperation ... Mongolia?"

"That is pretty clever of you. Kazakhstan. Major Justin Colbert."

"I bet some people in the White House, Pentagon and Langley are disappointed with you right now," I reasoned. His jaw grew tight.

"Don't worry, Major," Pamela grinned. "We consider that a good thing. We don't like the people in charge and have a low opinion of their opinion on just about everything, including their habit of blaming the blameless for their government's fuck ups."

"Who are these people?" the first man whispered to Quincy.

"She's a telepath." That was Zelda

"She's a psychic-medium." That was Anais.

"She can see through time." That was me. "Nice to meet you. Who are you?"

"Chris Diaz. Lieutenant Colonel, USAF."

"Dr. Saira Yamin," the second woman introduced herself. "Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies. Are you the man from Johnston Island?"

"Why yes, yes I am," I beamed.

"The APCSS is in Waikiki, Hawaii," Pamela educated me. "Your arrival probably cost her some prime surfing time."

"I was more interested in the fact that he survived a plane crash in a Category Four Cyclone," she admitted.

"Mother Nature hates me. No matter how hard I try, she refuses to kill me," I confessed. "My suffering is an endless source of amusement to that bitch."

"That ... that wasn't the helpful answer I was looking for," she stammered.

"So, Lt. Colonel Chris Diaz, you must be with JSOC - I have a deep and abiding respect for you guys. If you need something, just ask," I greeted him. "Captain Zelda ... you are not with JSOC."

"She's with the DCS ~ that is the Defense Clandestine Service," Pamela kept going. "Zelda, you love being in your uniform, you're proud, yet happy with the concept of dying in an unmarked grave for Constitution and Country. You are too old to have been in the first female class at Ranger School, so that means no 'in the field' JSOC for you. You've gotten around that stone wall by joining the US Defense Department's own little pack of killers."

"Also, you felt it was necessary to bring a Benelli M4-11707. That's a close-in action shotgun, but a bit over-kill considering the paper-thin walls in this building. That tells me you are used to being in the kinds of places where such a tool is a necessity. Or in other words, since you think you are meeting a band of terrorists, you brought along your favorite toy."

"Your personal weapon is a SIG Sauer P229R DAK in .357 which is a new weapon still under trial by the US Army and Air Force. Your boot dagger is ceramic so it will pass a cursory exam, or scan. You hate the idea of being trapped on a public aircraft weaponless. You have also given up killing power for a proper balance for throwing. I like a forward-thinking gal."

"Air Force ~ you've recently come back from Asia - most likely Tibet. It shows in your breathing brought about by a close call with Altitude Sickness. The only reason for an Air Force guy to be here is because he's familiar with the Khanate military and you are not US Army, or Marine Corp Special Forces. I know the type."

"You went with the MP5K in the standard 9mm, so you are more interested in sending bullets down range than looking into someone's face as you kill them. You may be a 'light' Colonel, which means you are almost somebody. What your higher-ups haven't appreciated is that our guests will respect you because they are like that ~ remembering past friends and comrades in arms. Of greater importance, you have Cáel's gratitude which will count for more than you currently believe."

I pledged then and there to be as good as Pamela at determining that kind of stuff before I died. She had assured me it was as much a matter of psychology as eagle-eyed perception. People were often a type that gravitated to various forms of destruction, be they old school, or going for the latest gadget.

"I told you all that firepower was excessive," State softly chastised her associates (what they really were, not the underlings she saw them as).

"So, you appeared to have forgotten to tell us your name," I regarded the State lass.

"Nisha Desai Biswal. I'm with the government."

"Oh ... Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs - I've examined your website," I told her. It clearly pissed her off somewhat that I so swiftly disregarded her crude attempt at subtle manipulation.

"Hey. I've got some real enemies at State, so it pays to know who might be the next suit trying to dick me over," I explained. I had to prioritize. It would take some serious effort to convince Zelda to have a MFF three-way straight out the gate and she was definitely the hotter number.

"Major, you came here unarmed," Pamela noted. "That won't do. They expect you to be armed because you are a warrior, damn it. Cáel get him one of your Glock 22's."

"Gotchya," I nodded. I went to my room, tipped away the false back to my closet (that Havenstone had installed recently so Odette wouldn't accidently fire off one of my weapons) and retrieved one of my spare Glocks - but not the one with the laser sight. Such over-the-top fancy gear would be inappropriate. I only gave him one mag. If he couldn't get the job done with 15 rounds, he wouldn't have a chance to reload.

Mind you, I took two in a twin-rig shoulder holster and four 22 round magazines ... because I tend to shoot two-handed which doesn't exactly give you a bullseye every time. I returned to our crowded living room, handed the Major his weaponry, and then directed the US group to the far side of the room (towards Timothy's bedroom. Saira and Nisha took the couch.

Because this tiny space wasn't crowded enough, there was a knock at the door. I checked. It was Juanita ... oh yeah, my real bodyguard.

"Listen up everybody," I announced to the room. "This is my other bodyguard - my official one. Her names is Juanita Leya Antonio Garza, she's from the Dominican Republic via Buenos Aires and she is armed, so don't freak out." I opened the door.

"What is going on?" Juanita hissed.

"I'm having a private meeting with a few heavily armed friends. The other side to this party hasn't arrived yet. Why don't you come in?" She came in.

"Why didn't you warn me?" she whispered her complaint.

"Long night - worse wake-up - needed to do some soul-searching. Pamela was looking after me ... then this came up and I forgot. I apologize," I lowered my head in shame. Juanita was only trying to do the job she'd been entrusted with and by not thinking of her, I was making that so much harder.

I made the introductions - first names only.

"Juanita, Anais, Pamela; please slip into the kitchenette," I suggested.

Anais "Why?"

Juanita "Where are you going to be?"

Pamela "Sure. I'm starving. I'm going to raid the fridge."

"Anais - because I need my faction in one place. Juanita, I will be refereeing this meeting, so I will have to remain in the living room ... roughly six feet from you." It was really a small apartment. "Pamela, if it is edible, it isn't mine and you'll have to replace it."

Great Caesar's Ghost! No wonder Big Wigs had their personal assistants handle this pre-meeting crap. I was on my last two fucking nerves and one of those was already stressed and tender. And the real reason for being here hadn't even arrived yet.

"Why am I in your faction?" Anais mulled over threateningly.

"Because you haven't walked out that door. There are going to be three sides to this meeting, not three plus Anais. That is the way it is going to be. Now, are you going to behave, or are Juanita and Pamela going to toss you out?"

"You ARE threatening me!"

"Finally catching on to that, aren't you, Sweetie?" Pamela chimed in.

"I'm only staying because I believe you are in trouble," Anais grumped.

"Why is she [Anais] here?" Nisha inquired heatedly. "This is supposed to be a very, very private encounter."

"I know Anais. I don't know you. I trust Anais with my well-being despite the fact she has numerous reasons to distrust me. She's staying because she is a straight arrow. That's good enough for me."

"But is she going to keep her mouth shut about what happens here today?" Nisha pressed.

"Anais, this is a clandestine meeting that isn't going to be recorded by anybody so, barring a crime being committed, you can never discuss this with anyone who isn't already in the room. Agreed?"

Pause.

"I agree," she nodded. I really was going to have to fuck her again. Not today. Well, maybe not today; I had to keep my options open. Her investigator mind was going into overdrive. Give it a week and she'd be knocking on my door late one night. Inquisitive, truth-hungry dames are like that, trust me. Then it would be 'bask in my genius' sex. It had been a while since I'd experienced that ... with Lady Yum-Yum.

There was another knock at the door. I checked before Juanita could do the checking for me ... in case someone was going to shoot me through the door. Fuck it. I was going to talk to Timothy about moving. Him, me and Odette. I couldn't give those two up. It was Kazak bookends. I opened up and invited them in. It turned out they had names besides Bookends #1 and #2 - Nuro and Roman.

Nuro (I think) checked out the rooms while Roman (I was pretty sure) kept an eye on my guests. I made introductions - first names only and specifying who was with who. Technically, they could trust my side because I was the Great Khan's brother and thus my servants were his servants. Technically.

Iskender came next followed by OT. A woman I didn't know (sadly, not OT's daughter) came in behind him while the other two quintuplets stayed in the hallway. Iskender and I hugged.

"Ulı Khaan süyikti ağası," he smiled. That was 'Prince-something'. My Kazak was a bit rusty. He then whispered into my ear. "OT bows to you first. His title is Hongtaiji." What?

"Ulı Khaan süyikti ağası," OT bowed.

"Hongtaiji Oyuun Tömörbaatar," I bowed back. I remembered I had to rise first. It was an etiquette thing. In retrospect, Iskender had stretched the bounds of tradition by hugging me, his titular superior. "Welcome to my humble abode."

"I thank you for your hospitality," he 'grinned'. His face wasn't made for that gesture so that faint gesture came across as rather unnatural.

My mind finally finished translating what Iskender and OT had called me. It wasn't 'prince'. It was 'beloved brother of the Great Khan'. Mother fucker!

"Wait," Justin, the military attaché guy muttered, "we are here to meet this guy?" indicating me.

"What do you mean?" Saira questioned.

"The title Mr. Nyilas was identified with means 'beloved brother of the Great Khaan'," he explained. "The Kazakhs don't tossing honorifics like that around. This guy," again pointing at me, "is a really important somebody."

"Thanks for dropping this grenade in my lap, OT," I joked. "I'll get you for this ... and your little yak too."

"Odette is going to be so miffed that she missed this," Pamela chuckled.

"Mr. Nyilas ..." Zelda began.

"Please, call me Cáel. It is how I roll."

"Cáel, can I ask you a stupid question?"

"Go right ahead," Pamela snorted. "Cáel does stupid real well. It is a critical part of his skill set. It makes him adorable instead of annoying. Trust me, you'll learn that soon enough."

Too much 'trust me' was flying around in a room where nobody trusted anybody.

"Thanks for that encouragement, Teach," I grumbled. "Ask away, Captain Zelda."

"Why are you playing this game with us?"

"I wasn't. Until thirty seconds ago I was sure I was here totally as a spectator," I gripped. "My buddy," the word dripped with sarcasm, "Temujin likes dumping these kinds of surprises on me."

"Did you mean what Ms. Pale said about you feeling you owed me?" Chris asked.

"Absolutely."

"We need help defusing this Thailand crisis before a shooting war begins."

"What do you suggest?"

"We want the Khanate to back down," Chris stated firmly.

"I thought we had agreed that I would spearhead this delegation," Nisha reminded Chris.

"I think the situation had evolved and we need a different approach," Chris insisted.

"You should listen to the Lieutenant Colonel," I advised. "He knows a whole lot more about what is going on than you do."

"Why don't you explain it to us?" she began her weevil-ling.

"You are engaging in linguistic niceties with men who have bled together, Ms. Biswal," I instructed. "Not that Chris and I have bled on the same battlefield, we have shed blood in the same cause; and that cause has been bringing our two nations - the Khanate and the US - together. The Khanate owes Chris for his efforts on our behalf and we pay our debts."

"How so?" Nisha asked.

"National Security stuff," I evaded. "If you don't know, you shouldn't know and you probably don't want to know. Suffice it to say, the Khanate is willing to listen to Lt. Colonel Diaz's request as a friend."

"But he doesn't speak for the United States Government," she corrected.

"Why not?" I riposted. "He's dealt with the Khanate longer than you have. He has a clue about the mindset of their rank and file."

"But does he know their leadership?" she persisted.

"I don't know. Chris, do you think you have a handle on me?"

"Are you really capable of talking for the Khanate government?" Nisha preempted Chris. What she left unsaid was 'are you culpable in their atrocities?'

"Let's find out," I then looked over my shoulder. "Hongtaiji Oyuun Tömörbaatar, will my words and wishes reach my brother's ear?"

"That is why I am here," he replied.

"Don't you have the authority to speak for your leader?" she grilled OT. Nisha was relentless trying to stay in the limelight. "Aren't you a diplomat?"

"There is no need to insult the man," Pamela snidely commented.

"I am one of many voices that provide information to the Great Khan. I am not his brother. Cáel Nyilas is and has already proved his familial affection by proposing Operation Funhouse and brought whole nations as gifts," OT schooled her. "He is gifted with both tactical and strategic insight as well as sharing the Great Khan's love for his people and his hopes for their eventual freedom."

"I didn't think you were a soldier," Zelda looked me over.

"Oh no," I wove off that insinuation. "I've never been a real soldier and am unworthy of that distinction. I know quite a few who have earned that title and they scare the crap out of me. I mean, they go looking for trouble. In my case, trouble comes looking for me. I'm damn lucky to still be alive and that's the damn truth."

"Bullshit," Pamela coughed.

"What was that, Artemisia?" I winked at her.

"Bitch," she laughed "My men have become women, and my women men. At least you didn't call me Cassandra."

"Well, she's Greek (a deadly insult to all Amazons), but you could be her Evil Twin because everyone believes whatever you say."

"Can we get down to business?" Chris inquired.

"Damn," Pamela shook her head. "They haven't been paying attention."

"What does that mean?" Zelda griped.

"Iskender, you know what I'm talking about, don't you?" I asked.

"Not a clue, Exalted One," he stood there like a stone statue. Note, the Khanate contingent really were standing there like the Altai Mountains, doing nothing. You had to carefully examine them to see that they did indeed breathe and blink.

"Use small words," Pamela advised.

"You really are a rude misanthrope," Anais told Pamela.

"Do you know what's going on?" Pamela volleyed.

"No."

"Then sit back and watch how the madness works," she snickered. "It is all you, Cáel."

"Okay. One; how did Artemisia escape the battle of Salamis?" I began. Nothing.

"Oh ..." Justin nodded. "She rammed an allied ship to make the pursuing Athenians think she was an ally. What does that have to do with our current predicament?"

"Achieve your ends by using violence as a distraction," I sighed. "The Khanate will invade Thailand in ...," I looked to OT, "tomorrow?" He nodded.

"How does that help us?" Nisha complained.

"Second example - Cassandra. She saw the truth through all illusions and falsehoods and no one believed her. Now, reverse that."

Pause.

"We are waiting," Saira finally joined the conversation. I could hear those little microprocessors inside her noggin firing electrons at light speed.

"We fight a phony war. The Khanate and their buddies invade in a lightning campaign that appears to be successful. Shit like attacking the opposition where they ain't. Things that look epic on CNN where some retired colonel - no offense..."

"None taken," Chris responded.

"Where some colonel talks about seizing resources, severed supply lines and encirclement. We - the Khanate - bomb shit like bridges and supply dumps - things with no civilians to get killed. On the downside, to make this work the Khanate needs to put some level of force into Bangkok."

"That will get civilians killed," Nisha reminded me - unnecessarily.

"Civilians are getting killed right now by their own government. This time they will get a chance to strike back," I stated firmly. "The Thai protestors aren't cowards. They are just grossly outgunned. We can change that."

"How does that help the United States?" Nisha queried.

"The US gets to come in and save the day," I sighed. "The US CAN'T get there until the day after, so you don't look bad about letting the first 24 hours of brutality happen."

"Oh," Zelda blinked.

"The US gets to end the fighting that the Khanate has no desire to continue. The US brings peace ... while whomever takes over owes the Khanate. Both sides look good. Both sides claim victory. The President gets a second Nobel Peace Prize [psychic, aren't I?]. The US gathers some regional allies like Malaysia, the ROC and the Philippines along with our Marines to ensure free and fair elections. The Khanate isn't seen to be backing down against the Titan of Western Civilization. They are working with them to bring about a better world."

"Win-win," Saira nodded in agreement.

"The Khanate is still an autocratic tyranny," Nisha commented.

"As opposed to the People's Republic's oligarchical tyranny?" Chris countered.

"Agreed," Saira said. "I now think we should work with the Khanate to bring stability to Central Asia which which was impossible while those member nations were being squeezed between Russia, Europe, China and India."

"What are you a doctor of?" I asked.

"I specialize in 'failed states' ... among other things," Saira grinned.

"This could still turn into one bloody cluster-fuck," Zelda mused.

"My peopled don't have the resources to devastate Thailand," OT finally spoke. "If you, the US, agrees to intervene on our timetable, you will have our thanks - off the record, of course."

"How do we know this isn't some ruse to allow the Khanate to overthrow Thailand's existing government?" Justin questioned.

"You have my word," I replied. No one said anything for several heartbeats.

"Really?" Nisha balked.

"Mr. Nyilas - Cáel, do you give me the Great Khan's word?" Chris studied me intently.

"Without reservation," I answered. "For what you have done for us and more, the Great Khan will honor this deal. We and the Thai's will do the bleeding. You will get your accolades. We avoid a pointless clashing of forces, which is why we are all here today."

"I will give you my written recommendation in a few hours," Saira told Nisha.

Chris stepped forward to shake my hand. He was an alpha-type alright. I gave as good as I got. His eyes bore into mine, looking for a faltering of will.

"What did you do in Romania?"

"I got a lot of good men killed."

"Okay."

"Okay?" Nisha squawked. "A handshake, a pat on the back and the deals done? Since when did our democratic republic do business this way? He admitted he got men killed in Romania. What is to say this won't be Romania writ large?"

"Ms. Biswal, he told the truth. He got good men killed and he isn't happy about it. I would be worried if he claimed one bit of glory from that episode. He didn't."

"Nisha," I took a deep breathe, "When you unleash men with weapons, nothing is assured. Maybe the Thai government will see the hate coming their way and back down. Maybe the people will resist the intrusion. Maybe the Khanate's forces will get slaughtered at the starting line. It isn't like they have enough time to deploy enough forces to win a protracted war."

"What happens if the Khanate decides it won't go?" she continued.

"Then they get destroyed on the ground in a war of attrition," Chris answered for me. "He's right. They can't bring enough in the time allotted to completely overwhelm the roughly 120,000 members of the Royal Thai Army that have remained loyal to the regime."

"In three days they will be out of fuel, shells, rockets and bullets. It is logistics, Ms. Biswal," Zelda piled it on. "The Khanate war-fighting systems are not NATO compatible. That means they can't simply capture more material as they penetrate the frontiers. If they overstay their welcome, we can launch missile strikes against their fuel depots. The combat devolves back to World War I and that's a style of war they can't afford to fight."

"What about stopping the Khanate from invading in the first place?" Nisha wouldn't give up.

"Had the US acknowledged the Khanate, none of this would have happened, Ms. Biswal," I became snappish. "Neither superpower talked to the other until other commitments had been made."

"If you think you can come in and start dictating Khanate policy, you are dreadfully mistaken. The US doesn't have the power, or the resolve," I glared at her. "Don't try convincing the Khanate that isn't the case. We know better."

"You don't know what the US is capable of," she snapped back.

"Abandoning Iraq with a fractured pseudo-democratic process? Abandoning Afghanistan without destroying the Taliban? The Syrian Civil War? The Donbass Crisis? The collapse of Libya? Boko Haram? Somalia? Yemen? Exactly how has the US's power and resolve solved any of those issues?" I countered.

"Ms. Biswal," OT spoke again. "We are willing to create a desert and call it 'Peace'. Our enemies know that. Your unwillingness to do so is neither a strength nor a weakness. It is a hallmark of your society in the same way that 'Total War' is a hallmark of ours. We are more than willing to leave you to manage the Peace. Let us manage the War against the forces opposed to civilized discourse."

"As ugly and disagreeable as it is, we are willing to keep creating pyramids of skulls on every street corner until either they learn their lesson, or we kill them all. Let us do that and you will have your global stability and reap the economic benefits and accolades of Pax Americana. We are not your enemy. We are precisely the ally you need to keep the peace and we will do that, if you let us."

"To allow barbarism is to become barbarians," Saira mused.

"That is complete fiction," I scoffed. "The United States didn't become communist because it allied with the Soviet Union in World War II. Truman didn't become Stalin. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is older than recorded history."

"It is the Carrot and the Stick on a Global basis," Justin agreed. "Listen to the gentle words of the West, or you will end up feeling the wrath of the East."

"As long as the Khanate accepts the limitations of is role," Saira added, "this might work. Please understand there will be factions in the Western Democracies who will not accept that status quo. It is not in the nature of our societies to stifle dissent."

"Is it possible to get any political concessions from the Khanate's leadership?" Justin requested. "A pledge to hold some level of democratic elections? A Constitution with some strong provisions to protect individual rights and liberties would be nice."

"Justin, in case your bosses missed it, the Khanate is still at a state of war with the PRC," I shook my head. "With their limited experience with democratic government throughout most of the Khanate's territories, that would be madness."

"With limited concessions to the Imperial State, we have not interfered with the politics of Albania, Armenia, Georgia and Turkey. We are never going to become a Western-style democracy. We have had limited rule by consensus long before White Men arrived in the Western Hemisphere," OT informed them.

"Discounting the Irish Monks, Vikings and Knights Templar," Pamela interjected.

"If you say so," OT gave a minuscule bow to Pamela. "Long before your nation was anything more than the scribbled history of a long-faded Greek city-state, we had meritocracies, oligarchies of senior statesmen & warriors, thinkers and religious leaders, and we had codified judicial moral equality into the political arena. We have a far superior record of religious and minority freedom, of genuine multi-culturalism plus a deeper understanding of the arts and crafts as a means of uniting disparate peoples. We find your claims of cultural superiority to be childish."

"Oh ... snap," I snickered. "You get'em, OT."

"I bet the boys in Foggy Bottom felt that pimp-slap," Pamela agreed.

"I bet the bronzed skull of some Harvard dean just fell off its pedestal."

"They are called 'busts'," Anais groaned. "With a name like that, how could you forget it?"

"So true," I concurred. "All this responsibility must have clouded my normally hedonistic vocabulary."

"That doesn't change the fact that you have employed biological warfare and genocide in this current day and age," Justin pointed out.

"Tell that to our Native Americans," I snorted. "They are easy to find. They live in trailer parks in whatever blasted Hell Hole we stuck them in ... or in their casinos where they are buying back their country, one rube at a time. Ask them if they've gotten over it."

"We don't claim to be perfect," Justin insisted.

"No, we merely claim to have the only correct form of government, economic policy and schools of philosophical, political, scientific and educational thought," I pointed out.

"We definitely should revive ethical utilitarianism," Pamela slapped a fist into her palm. "Oh - and the guillotine. Work houses for orphans and grist mills for the disabled ... and A Modest Proposal for those chronically unemployed and terminally homeless ... yes, and ..."

"Pamela, what is it with you today?" I snickered.

"It is nearly sunset ..."

"Ah, and you haven't killed anyone yet."

"You know how cranky I get when I don't get my daily dose of homicide."

"Are you two done?" Anais frowned. She did that a lot around me.

"And you don't hand out Mini-Uzi's to your preschoolers," Pamela glowered. "What is wrong with you people?"

Pause ... waiting for that punch line that was never coming. See, it was more difficult to sense Pamela was an immediate threat to your health if you thought she was completely off her rocker.

"Hmmmm ... well, on that note, ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have a deal. Chris and Justin, I will leave you with my loyal Iskender to work out the gory details. Who wants to grab dinner?" I inquired.

"Are you serious?" Nashi gasped.

"Oh yeah. I had the Russian invasion of Manchuria figured out in this amount of time and Manchuria is way bigger than Thailand." Was it? I didn't know. Geography was not one of those subjects which gets you laid.

"What do you have in mind?" Zelda inquired.

"Whatever you want."

{1 am, Sunday, August 31st ~ 8 Days to go}

"How did I end up in bed with you?" Zelda sighed happily, her body splayed halfway over mine and her head resting on my chest, listening to my heartbeat.

"You aren't the first girl to ask me that question."

On the other side, Anais moaned in her sleep. Yeah, she was over me. Abso-fucking-lutely. If you recall, she'd try anything once. I convinced her the military babes were totally different than that Goth chick we'd blown the mind of back in Montreal.

**

Zelda was with me because I had caught her in a lie. She claimed to be a lesbian when I first hit on her. She was adamant. I destroyed her with incontrovertible evidence.

A) She hadn't scoped out Anais when she came in. A glance didn't count and Anais oozed sexy when she was angry ... which was most of the time.

B) She hadn't scoped out Juanita's figure when said worthy went to the kitchenette. I look for such things and Juanita has thighs to die for.

C) When I told her she had a wicked sense of humor, she blushed. Honestly, lesbians rarely care about strange men complimenting their personalities.

D) Then I double-downed by asking her if she preferred a shower, or bath. She said shower (because that's the butch thing to say). When I asked her 'when was the last time she'd had a bubble bath', she blushed again. Lesbians don't like it when a man imagines them naked. Straight chicks, unless you are a creepy, stalker guy, like it when men fantasize about them swathed in bubbles - thus semi-clothed - thus not creepy.

E) In a final and fatal act of evasion, she asked a grumpy Anais what she liked about me. Anais was blunt.

"He can fucking hammer you all night, sneak in a romantic quickie in the shower, cook you a delicious breakfast then give you another round of mind-numbing intercourse up against the wall before you have to go to work. And still find the time and energy to fuck your neighbor."

Woot!

**

"So, this happens to you often?" she mused - it was a trap. She really wanted to know if I was an egotistical scumbag who took advantage of every woman I came across. At the same time, she wanted to know if I considered her a 'whoe' ~ a woman who gives up the goodies for free.

"Do you mean 'am I taking advantage of you'?" I replied.

"That is not what I asked," she persisted. That meant 'yes'.

"Let me see," I laid back and looked up at the ceiling. "I have a fiancée, six women I am close enough to to spend quality time with, a fuck-buddy who is a sweet girl and trusts me too much and a passel of ex-girlfriends who have found my infidelity to be reprehensible."

"Six women?" she frowned.

"Four co-workers (Rhada, Oneida, Yasmin and Buffy), the girlfriend of a co-worker who dumped her in a very public fashion (Brooke) and that woman's friend (Libra). She was the wing-chick who was stuck with me on a quadruple-date and was underwhelmed with me when we first met."

I didn't count my 'hook-ups' and I wasn't sure how to qualify Nicole.

"Ex's?"

"'No' is not a word in common usage in my vocabulary. I've dated a best friend's girl, a mother, sister and aunt of the same girlfriend ... basically, I'm either highly immoral, incredibly loose, or a letch."

"Don't you take responsibility for any of those ... relationships?"

"Hell yeah," I tilted her chin up so that we could make eye-contact. "I've never blamed a woman for taking out her frustrations on my flesh, ran away from a screaming fit [Big Lie!], or blamed them for any failing in our relationship. It is always my fault because I can't stay loyal."

"That's depressing," Zelda moped.

"Don't get me wrong. I don't find fault in any of the women I have spent time with. That is my problem - I find women fascinating; never boring, or bland. Quite frankly, it is a gift that I don't regret having. I may be a fuck-up, but I'm a fuck-up who will give you the very best attention."

"Full of yourself - much?" her attitude shifted. I had short-circuited her fears; I was a cheater - I confessed to it without shame because I was inexorably drawn to her beauty, personality and charm. With Anais around, I couldn't claim to be solely enchanted with Zelda, so I had to think quickly on my feet. After all, Zelda was energetic and had great stamina.

"I promised you pleasure," I countered. "Did I deliver?"

"Yes, you are full of yourself," she slapped my stomach. I wasn't full of myself. I was a confident sex machine.

"Thank you."

"Huh?"

"Wonderful sex - taking a chance with me - agreeing to a three-way - being awake after," I looked at the bed-table clock, "six hours."

"I run five miles a day," she bragged.

"I try to have ten hours of sex a day," I teased. Zelda slapped my stomach again. Anais stirred.

"Do any women like you ... for any reason beyond your dick?"

"I'm considered loyal where sex is not concerned, reliable and brave," I offered.

"What happened in Romania?"

"Have you ever been in combat?"

"I've been in violent confrontations, but not a true firefight," she admitted.

"Hmmm ..."

"Is it something that you can't relate?" she asked.

"No. You are a soldier so you probably know more about combat than I do. It was ... not chaotic at all. I never lost perspective of what was going on despite the bullets flying around. The Romanian Captain in charge knew his stuff, directed his company well and all I had to do was figure out where the terrorist leader was."

"What happened?" she perked up.

"I am here talking with you and he's in a morgue in Bucharest."

"Oh ..." She wanted more.

"I have to live with the knowledge that I set all of that in motion, Zelda. I convinced the Romanians that they had to confront that terror group before they moved on to their next target - me."

"I knew they would come after me and my friends, no matter where we were. Which would have ended up as a blood bath in some urban center. So I felt compelled to strike first. Based on information I provided, the Romanian Army sent two battalions - the 22nd and 24th - of the 6th Mountain Troops Brigade into battle."

"It was a massacre," I remembered sadly.

"But you won," she tried to comfort me.

"Of the four companies involved in the battle, the Romanians suffered nearly two hundred dead and wounded. I hardly consider it anything other than a massacre. Yes, we won. Only three of the terrorists escaped. Their leader died. I don't think I've ever felt so hollow in my life," I finished.

"Forty percent losses ... that is horrific," she crawled on top of me.

"The kicker is the Romanians sent some men of the 24th to hunt me down when I was kidnapped. A squad was in the group that rescued me and my companion from Johnston Island. I thought they would never want to deal with me ever again."

"Don't be so hard on yourself. If they thought well enough of you to send their men out to rescue you, then you must have done right by them."

"Chaz said something like that too," I felt sheepish and sleepy.

"Chaz? Who is she?"

Honest to God, one day I want to find a girl who thinks I'm talking about another girl and asks if we can have a three-way, instead of trying to compare herself to this unknown person. Wait... I already had someone like that. Her name was Odette.

"Chaz is Colour Sergeant Charles 'Chaz' Tomorrow of Her Majesty's SSR," I corrected her assumption.

"SSR? Those are some tough people. How do you know him?"

"Black Bag directives from the National Security Council - sworn to secrecy upon penalty of death - pinky-promise kind of stuff," I grinned. Maybe I wasn't all that sleepy after all.

"You really are a Man of Mystery," Zelda purred. She had truly exceptional stamina. "Maybe I can convince you to talk."

"Maybe I can find another use for my tongue," I countered and off we went. Somewhere along the process, Anais woke up and joined in.

It wasn't all fun and games. Anais' parting words were "You are a pig," then she sauntered out of my room and out of my life. Had she remembered to take her Serge with her, I would have bought the act. As it was ...

"Is she always so volatile?" Zelda remarked.

"Volatile? That's not her being volatile. That's Anais being affectionate. Volatile usually is accompanied by thrown objects and bodily harm," I sighed happily. Meeting her one more time couldn't be all that bad, could it? Zelda looked hungry so I shoved that thought to the back of my mind and got to work.

That was the highlight of my Sunday. Zelda had to fly back to Washington D.C. and I had to go to work with JIKIT. It seemed that the Khanate and the US military were heading for a showdown. I unloaded all my Saturday's activities to the team and we got to work - no recriminations. I was the Khan's spiritual brother and sometimes that meant I had to do him favors.

I asked Addison when she thought he would return the favor. She laughed, then smiled and told me that wasn't how it worked. He was a world leader now and I was merely his kooky kinsman that he would keep throwing problems at until one day I broke. Then it would be some other poor saps turn.

Then she told me she was kidding and clearly the Great Khan thought the world of me. I chose to believe the second lie because it made me feel better ... and it was promising to be a long weekend/start of the week.

Note: Geopolitical Developments

What follows are snippets of the Battle for Thailand that takes place late in the night of September 1stand continued into the early morning of September 3rd. If this does not interest you, you can rejoin Cáel's exploits in four pages)

**On the eve of battle, the Royal Thai High Command had decided to strip all but one armored unit from the 2nd Army in order to give the First Army's offensive against the rebels more of a punch. It's decision to strip the tank battalions from both their infantry divisions as well as the armored and one of the two mechanized regiments would prove to be disastrous. It was as if the leadership of the Royal Thai military were idiots.

The least economically valuable part of the country was the northeast which the 2nd Army warded. They had severely underestimated the airlift capacity of the Khanate as well as the willingness of Laos and Cambodia to both use their armed forces in an invasion as well as their willingness to let Vietnamese troops cross their countries.

That thinking had led the Thai military to adopt a 'forward defense' strategy - the desire to fight the enemy at the borders, as opposed to having stronger formations deeper within the country. Considering the relative weakness of the Cambodian and Laotian militaries, that policy had made sense:

- The baseline Laotian and Cambodian tank was the T-54/55, a 1950's Soviet relic. The normal anti-tank capabilities in all Thai infantry formations was more than equal to such a threat.

-Neither country had an air force worth worrying about.

In contrast, the Khanate's primary tanks, the T-90SM and T-95 were resistant to most of what the Thai Army could throw at them - at least from the front. The seven hundred combat aircraft the Khanate and the Vietnamese were able to field was an equal catastrophe for the Thais. It greatly compensated for the relative small numbers of invaders.

Finally, there was a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Alliance's goals were. Military logic dictated the destruction of Thailand's mobile force followed by the capture of Bangkok. As long as the Thai regime held the capital, it would remain the legitimate power in the country.

Due to the altering political landscape, the Alliance's only option was to make the government 'look bad'. The loss of peripheral provinces, while of negligible immediate strategic value, looked great on the maps the world-wide media would be showing to their audiences. It would appear that the Thai army had failed to defend their country. That would (hopefully) make the Thai Third Army look like the legitimate authority in Thailand.

That was the plan anyway, and you know what they say about battle plans and the enemy, right? H-hour was 4 am, September 1st.*

**The commander of the Zuun stood up and waited to be recognized. The staff officer from the Yunnan Command pointed at him.

"Sir, why are we doing this? I am not afraid to fight for the Great Khan, but this action seems to be suicidal. We will be far behind enemy's lines while our offensive force will be grossly under-equipped."

"You will have to rely on our ability to supply you by air."

"We only have supplies for two days of operations. What happens then?"

"We rely on the Americans to come and save us," the senior officer responded bitterly.

"Allah save us from allies," the young commander muttered. What else could he do?

He was part of the 2nd Mountain Sultan Mehmet Tumen which had just arrived in Yunnan to replace the exhausted 1st Mountain Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur Tumen. His men were from Turkey, inexperienced in combat and using new equipment they were not familiar with. They would be working with a unit he had never worked with before - the 1st Airmobile Tauekel Khan Tumen - Kazaks - who would be seizing the small airport his men needed to land in.

From there, they were to 'run amok'. That was the technical term for racing south down a highway in Central Thailand, attacking the headquarters of the 3rd Cavalry Division - an armored unit. Once that was accomplished, they were to attack the local police precinct. Provided they were still alive after that, they were to return to the air strip to resupply then they were to 'spread chaos' until they were finally hunted down by the vastly larger Thai DIVISION his 100 men would be fighting.

Of course, there was the plan for the rebel Royal Thai Third Army to force their way through the larger frontline forces of the loyalist Royal Thai First Army and come to his rescue. How would the Thai troops respond when ordered to fight their fellow Thais? No one was sure. If there was any hope in this mission, it was the knowledge that several other Zuuns had the exact same mission in other areas of Thailand. It was H-hour minus twenty-two.*

**It was 11 o'clock in the evening when the general in charge of the Royal Thai 9th Infantry Division was woken up. The Marines were leaving. That was correct; the three Royal Thai regiments were heading west to Sattahip Naval Base - because they had been ordered to by the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Navy. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize why this was going on.

Seven hours earlier, the Royal Thai Army had seized all the Air Force bases in the 1st and 2nd Army districts as well as ordering the 4th Army to do the same thing [The Royal Thai Air Force had been trying to remain neutral in the upcoming civil war].

Undoubtedly the navy had decided to make their assets less 'hijack-able'. A few phone calls later confirmed that most of the Navy had set sail for parts unknown and the naval air units at Ban Sattahip Air Base (U-Tapao International Airport) had also departed either out to sea, or to ports and bases in the South.

He made a personal appeal to the commander of Marine Forces to no avail. They wanted no part of the upcoming struggle and advised the general to do the same. The general had other problems. The Royal Thai Marines were the frontline forces facing the southern border with Cambodia. He quickly reorganized his regiments, sending them to take the old Marine strongpoints to await further orders. Stopping the Marines never entered his mind.

That was a bloodletting he wanted no part of. The last thing he did was inform his superiors, thus avoiding any stupid orders to the contrary. Suddenly the nebulous movements along the Cambodian border developed a haunting significance. He wondered how much longer he had before something happened. It was H-hour minus five.*

**At midnight a loyalist commander of a company of mechanized infantry in the 2nd Cavalry's 11th Battle Group [named after their axis of advance - Highway 11] decided to send a motorized section of his command forward to the advance position his battalion was to occupy come sunrise. Either later in the day, or tomorrow morning, the forces loyal to the regime would launch a coordinated assault against the rebels main supply center at Phitsanulok.

He had a cot set up in his communications hut and had just nodded off when the radio squawked to life. His lieutenant in charge of the advance made a hurried report. They had encountered serious opposition in a confusing night action ... then he went silent. The captain immediately swung into action. He put the rest of his men on alert, then contacted the neighboring Tank Battalion. He needed some armored support. He made a similar call to the attached artillery component.

The Tank Battalions night officer quickly put a platoon of light tanks at his disposal. The artillery were ready for any fire mission he sent their way. Before the armor could arrive, the company commander found himself being called to the carpet by the Duty Officer at the 3rd Cavalry [two regiments of the 2nd Cav. had been attached to the 3rd's command] over his 'offensive' action and the relief mission was called off. What had happened to the patrol of 20 Royal Thai soldiers? He was ordered to wait until sunrise to find out.

Little did anyone know, these were the first combat casualties of the upcoming rebel offensive. His patrol had stumbled across a battalion of mechanized troops arriving at their jump off point for the attack that was less than six hours from beginning. Neither the commander of the 11th Battle Group, the 3rd Cavalry Division, or First Army was informed that the enemy had already advanced twenty kilometers south of where they were supposed to be. It was H-hour minus four.*

**Over the Gulf of Thailand an Indian pilot was sweating and anxious. He wasn't upset about the fact that his nation was about to intervene in the nation he was currently flying beside in an unarmed, slow moving transport aircraft. He even wasn't upset that he was about to open the rear ramp of his C-130 and unleash 64 MARCOS in an ocean insertion.

What he was upset about was flying so close to his companion C-130 that they appeared to be one aircraft to the civilian air traffic controllers. After all, there couldn't be two Indian passenger planes flying the same route to Phnom Penh one right after the other.

The 128 MARCOS Special Operators were past worrying about 'The Plan'. In the 1st phase, they were HAHO-ing (High Altitude High Opening) because they had to glide nearly thirty kilometers before landing at night into a body of water. That accomplished, they had to swim the last two kilometers - with gear - to the Thailand coast. Then they had to sneak up on a guarded compound - the U-Tapao Royal Thai Navy Airfield - and hold it until the Khanate could land reinforcements ... and all before sunrise.

The second phase of the operation was a tad nebulous and not tied to any particular time table, or location. It required a good deal of guts and initiative and he and his men had that in spades. They were in the rear area of the 9th Royal Thai Infantry Division.

The MARCOS with approximately 500 Khanate soldiers were to locate any and all elements of said formation, wherever they might be, and destroy them. The enemy had 36 1960-era tanks. The Khanate had promised to bring 11 of their own (hopefully more modern) tanks. The INS promised naval and air support. Things were going to get 'interesting'. It was H-hour minus two.*

**The first planned combat action of Operation Pridi Phanomyong, the name for the combined Thai, Cambodian, Khanate, Laotian and Vietnamese offensive to topple the military dictatorship ruling Thailand, happened at Nong Khai, Thailand.

The commander of a battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division had been denied permission to wire the '2nd Thai-Laos Friendship Bridge' with explosives, so he had targeted it with his mortar team instead, despite the reality that his 81mm round were likely to have negligible impact on the structure.

At 3 am, he was awoken to the sounds of automatic weapons fire far too close by. 'Him' stopping to get dressed saved his life. As he was exiting the private residence next to his Command Post, the Post erupted into a fireball. He even made out the whoosh of the cruise missile impacting. He had planned for that contingency. The man raced back into his home and accessed the public telephone network.

His first call to the mortar platoon went unanswered. His next two calls to the two infantry companies manning positions adjacent to the bridge also went unanswered. His fourth call was to his reserve company. They responded, so he directed them to retake the southern end of the bridge and hold it at all costs.

His fifth call was to regimental command, 100 km safely to the rear, to inform them that his position was compromised. He needed immediate support or he believed his position would be overrun. If assistance wasn't coming, he wanted permission to withdraw with whatever he could salvage.

Before he could get his reply, his residence was rocked by a grenade explosion. As he struggled back to his feet, machine gun fire ripped through the place. His attendant and two security troopers fell back down. The door was kicked open. Though wounded, he scrambled to pull his pistol out. A hammer blow hit his chest. His last memory was of a camouflage-painted Mongolian face looking down at him. It was Hour minus one.*

**The Royal Thai Armed Forces were not designed around a robust anti-aircraft program. Their few advanced systems were around the capital, not in the field with the troops. They had to use more primitive systems and relied heavily on the civilian air traffic controllers for much of their data. A phone call from Khon Kaen International airport operator alerted the area army commander that something ominous was coming their way.

Dutifully, the military officer ordered his radar operators to cut on their search radars to analyze the threat. They found it. At the same time, the waiting Khanate Su-27 pilots registered the range and location of the enemy radars and promptly send radar-seeking missiles their way. Those two aircraft were tasked with anti-air suppression. Behind them, an air armada was descending on Thailand and it would be a disaster if their lumbering Il-76's and An-70's and -74's were blasted out of the sky in a rain of burning men and material.

Patrolling several thousand meters above were two Thai Royal Air Force F-16's. They spotted the Su-27's activating their search radar, identified them as 'hostiles' who had penetrated Thai airspace and dove to the attack. They kept their radars passive, waited for the IR missiles to 'beep', letting the pilots know they had locked on to their targets, and then let loose.

A heartbeat later, half a dozen different search radars went active. It was a group of Mig-29's who were flying air cover over the group of ground attack fighters beneath them. One Su-27 twisted out of the way. The second took a hit and spun out of control. After that, the two F-16 pilots were too busy futilely trying to stay alive. It was H hour.*

Where was the Royal Thai Air Force? The units in the central part of the country had been persuaded to cooperate with the regime. Those in the south and north had kept to their neutrality. The ones in the west were faced with a crisis of conscience when Khanate airmobile forces landed at their bases.

In the south of Thailand, the pilots listened to their brethren to the north fighting and dying. Their resolve to stay neutral was tested. The regime declared this to be a foreign invasion. The Royal Thai Third Army declared the country's hour of liberation was at hand. Conflicted, they did nothing. By daylight, H-hour plus three, the skies over most of their homeland were empty of all Thai aircraft.

**A soldier of the Royal Cambodian 5th Commando was poised and waiting for the ultimate test of his unit's ability. Oddly enough, his unit had been created because of the success of Thai Special Forces against his country in countless earlier border clashes.

Now he was sitting in Thailand, waiting for the largest offensive the modern Cambodian Army had ever attempted in their modern history. Sure, they had been invaded plenty of times in the past hundred years. This time, they would be the invaders.

At thirty-two seconds past H-hour, 130mm howitzer shells began falling on the loose Thai earthworks. They clearly didn't suspect that they were standing in the way of the Alliance 'Cambodia Force' [the designation for the middle of three axis of invasions out of Cambodia].

It wasn't much, as invasion armies went ~ a regiment of Cambodia's Fourth Division plus three batteries of heavy artillery, the 160th Regiment of the Vietnamese 5th Division and 500 Khanate soldiers with 33 T-90SM tanks ~ maybe 3000 men in all. It was a paltry invasion army.

His wasn't the only Cambodia Commando unit in this operation either. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd Commando (Airborne) were over 30 kilometers away, deeper in Thailand. They had to secure bridges on Highway 24 as well as one over Road 224 until relieved by his invasion Battle Group (BG). Their mission was to stop Thai reinforcements from setting up blocking forces. With his 5th Commando was the 7th Commando. When the artillery barrage lifted, they were to attack the Thai battalion from the rear while their brethren attacked from the front.*

One of the most relevant facts in the Alliance's intervention was something their American and NATO contemporaries had thought irrelevant in the upcoming struggle. With the minimal runway space in Northeastern Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, it was the ability of Soviet/Russian aircraft to use unpaved airfields to launch from.

In front of them were the Khanate's airmobile/helicopter borne units. Small in number, they had the unenviable task of seizing river crossings and civilian air bases for the oncoming transports who would be landing troops, supplies and eventually reinforcements. In more than one instance, it was a one-way trip. The unit was being sacrificed in order to confuse the Thai military about the true threat until it was too late. That was the plan anyway.

**The Thai town of Lom Sak was the base for the loyalist Eastern Battle Group (EBG). It was the smallest of the four groups designated to attack the rebel 1st Cavalry Division. They were also the closest to the enemy base of operations. They were also terribly close to the Laotian border. The Colonel in charge of EBG had been very conscious of the current political situation and carefully parked his equipment in lagers outside of the municipality.

Unfortunately, his political consideration also made his command an open, tempting target for the Khanate aircraft. Absent any air defense, or even an early warning system, he was jarred out of his bed by a series of explosion. He died without ever knowing that much of his unit was dying right along with him.

For the dozen Su-25 pilots, this was the start of what promised to be a very long day. Lom Sak was just over the border, so they were to drop bombs, fire their rockets and then strafe the ashes until they stopped twitching. Despite the carnage unleashed, not everyone in EBG died. Many survived, but their tanks, APC's and trucks were destroyed.

West of Lom Sak, the platoon placed on the only road between the town and their target were calling anyone and everyone because they were in trouble too. They heard tanks coming their way and they desperately needed assistance. Then the 125mm High Explosive (HE) shells began hitting their positions. They could see the muzzle flashes from the two oncoming tanks as they fired.

Immediately his Dragon (an anti-tank missile system) fired. It missed. They were reloading when they were reduced to so much blood, bone and rock fragments. The other option? The lieutenant in charge knew the range was extreme for his only anti-tank weapon - two LAW rockets, but he had no other alternatives.

The soldier assigned to the task fired. The platoon watched the rocket streak toward the target ... and hit it ... and nothing happened. Actually, that was incorrect. The tank began machine gunning the location the shot had come from. The second LAW had similar poor success. It did momentarily reveal the infantry moving up with the tanks.

That was enough for the lieutenant. He was courageous. That didn't mean he'd let his men get slaughtered. He ordered his men to fall back to their jeeps and head back toward Lom Sak in all haste. They made it to Lom Sak ... then kept going. There was nothing left in the EBG that could stop tanks, the sun was rising and hanging around seemed contrary to the Laws of Survival. It was H-hour plus 30 minutes.*

**For the loyalist mechanized regiment of the Nan River Battle Group it was a confusing awakening. Promptly at 4:00 am, thunder could be heard from both flanks of their position. It was miles away - not an immediate threat, so their first concern was that the loyalist attack had been launched and no one had bothered to tell them. According to 'The (Loyalist) Plan', they were to push north against hopefully light opposition and approach Phitsanulok from the southwest.

By a quirk of the Thai command structure, the Nan River BG wasn't in contact with the military bodies on either flank. They were in contact with 3rd Cavalry, which they were a part of. The Duty Officer there had no idea what was going on. He did order the unit go to Alert Status and await further orders. Unfortunately for all concerned, those communications were made with radios.

The Khanate A-50 AEW was looking for just such action and sent two Su-25 attack craft to each location. Within twenty minutes, the General in charge of the 3rd Cavalry Division put his units on alert - then died. As did his underling in charge of the Nan River BG. For the Thai troops on the Nan River, it wasn't over. In the dark, 4 old Mil Mi-26's attack helicopters began raining death down on them for five minutes.

It was of little consolation that the troops of the 117th BG were getting it a whole lot worse. The 117th consisted of both the Armored and Mechanized regiments of the 3rd Cavalry Division. 'The Plan' called for two Armored and 3 Mechanized regiments plus an armored and a motorized battalion to attack across a broad front from the south while another mechanized and armored battalion attacked from the east. Forced to defend along multiple fronts, the rebel 3rd Army's 1st Cavalry division would be defeated in detail and the rebellion ended.

The downside to the plan was that it left the loyalist forces facing the same predicament - the risk of being defeated separately in bite-sized chunks. That was not the fate of the Nan River BG, or 117th BG. They were to be paralyzed by air strikes just long enough for the 11th BG to be overwhelmed and the road opened to the 3rd Cavalry Divisions rear area.

Military logic demanded that the mobile flanking forces had to be defeated before a true breakthrough could be achieved, not just disrupted. Otherwise, the invaders could be cut off from supplies and choked of resources. Except the invading forces didn't care about their supply lines. What little reserves they had could be brought in by air ... after that, there was nothing left and the advance would grind to a halt.

Little did the Nan River BG know that it was Alliance strategy to cripple their mobile assets so that an organized counterattack would come too late to save the 11th BG. The 117th would be drawn off to stop the rebel 7th Infantry Division's attack to the west at Nakhon Sawa down Highway 1. The 7th only had a small number of mobile forces, but if those could get behind the loyalist they would be between the loyalist army and Bangkok - the rebellion just might succeed. It was H-hour plus 50 minutes.*

**The commander of the First Army was finally made aware of the Alliance attack at 5:23 am. He was 250 km from the front lines and communications were spotty. The size and composition of the attacking force was unknown, but that wasn't what had his attention. Bangkok itself was under attack. Again, forces were unknown, but they had seized Suvarnabhumi Airport, inside the city. That was his item of primary importance.

He ordered the General in charge of the 1st Division, the garrison of the capital, to secure the critical elements of the city's infrastructure and retake the airport before more enemy could arrive. Had he understood the he was obsessing over less than 240 Khanate soldiers in twenty-four vehicles, he would have let the local military and police checkpoints deal with them.

The attackers had been delivered by helicopter assault. They shot up the airport's control tower, then spread out into the surrounding city. Their helicopter support, at the end of their effective range, had to leave. Those 240 men were on their own. They were not likely to be reinforced nor was there going to be an attempt to rescue them. This was one of those 'one-way' missions that had been complained about during the initial and only briefing. It was H-hour plus two.*

**The General in charge of the loyalist 9th Infantry Division had a better picture of what was going on in his district. He had a mobile force in his rear that was tearing up his 1st regiment, which he had been forced to spread out over a 100 km of coastline. His 2nd regiment was being pushed back by a force coming up from Krong Khemara Phoumin, Cambodia.

The linchpin of their defense was the town of Trat ... and an Alliance force had somehow slipped around the front ling to appear there, seized the bridge over the Trat River and was currently driving his forces to the north and west of that town. The lone battalion facing the primary invasion force was on its own.

His 3rd regiment had been placed to hold open his lines of communication/support along the Cambodian border between his command and that of the 2nd Division - which was also under attack. His sole reserve force, his tank battalion, had already been engaged and largely destroyed in Trat. He immediately ordered one battalion from his 3rd regiment to head to the rear while ordering the other two, plus the remnants of the 3rd regiment to fall back on his central position. There they would make their stand.

No sooner had those orders gone out than First Army contacted him and ordered him to immediately counterattack the invaders.

His response? 'Counterattack? In which direction? I'm surrounded.'

They told him to secure the frontier ... and then stole a battalion from his 1st regiment because the capital was under attack. His pleas that he desperately needed that battalion for any counter attack were ignored.

The sole battalion driving to his rear had a 190 km to travel, over open roads, in trucks and subject to air attack. That move would take at least four hours (hopefully). What remained of the battalion they were going to aid was yet to be seen. They sounded like they were in a world of trouble.

It would take two hours for the other two battalions from the 3rd regiment to arrive. They would be united with the remnants of the 3rd Regiment and the final battalion of the 1st regiment at Chanthaburi, where he had his HQ. Only at that point, absent tank and air support, would he attempt any action to expel the invaders. He figured he had slim odds of success.

In thirty minutes he would be informed that the battalion holding back the main invading force had finally succumbed. It had endured continuous artillery barrages, multiple air strikes and five combined arms assaults. They were out of time, fighting men and largely out of ammunition when they surrendered. It was H-hour plus three.*

**The citizens of Bangkok woke up to another round of shooting in the streets. Some people, somewhere had defied the government and were now either getting killed, or arrested. About an hour earlier, a small number of mysterious operatives contacted the surviving members of the opposition and told them the hour of deliverance was at hand. Khanate troops were already in the city and if they wanted to show the Khanate and the whole world that they deserved freedom, they had to get into the streets for one last, climactic showdown.

So small groups hit the streets. At first, they realized that something had gone wrong for the authorities. The police they saw on the streets were scared. Many of the military checkpoints had been abandoned. One group, over a hundred strong by this point, rounded a street corner nervously and spotted three military vehicles sitting at the next intersection. They weren't in familiar vehicles and the strangers appeared to be lost.

One man, braver than most, approached them, quickly receiving their attention. He greeted them. They didn't respond, but they weren't pointing guns at him either. As he drew close, one of the soldiers approached him and handed him a 'flyer' - a one page pamphlet.

'We are part of the Free Thai Alliance and are here to liberate you. We apologize for not speaking your language. If you would direct us to the closest military or police station, we will attack it for you.'

The man looked at the soldier who gave him the pamphlet then up at the armored vehicle they were standing next to. It appeared to have a very big gun and the soldiers around it seemed ready enough.

"I will show you the way," the man nodded then bowed, his hands clasped together. Over his shoulder he shouted, "They are here to help. Come with us!"

The soldier quickly figured out the Thai citizen wanted to climb up on the BMP-3M. It had a 30mm auto-cannon, three 7.6mm machine guns - and the really big gun was a 100mm cannon that could also fire anti-tank missiles. It was armored enough to defeat anything the police could bring to the fight, though any serious weapon would destroy it. Its main reason for being on that street at that moment was that it was a 'mere' 18 tons and thus could be airlifted by helicopter into the city.

The other two vehicles were jumped-up Russian jeeps called Tigr's. They were armored against small arms fire and had nifty 12.7mm machine guns on top and its 11 occupants seemed rather upbeat about their chances (which was to say they Thai's couldn't penetrate the Kazak soldiers stoic acceptance of their fates.)

"This way," the Thai protester pointed. He wasn't taking them downtown, oh no. He was directing them into a working class section of Bangkok that was a hotbed of anti-government resistance. He had little doubt they could find police officers there. He didn't want to kill them. He hoped they would see the size of his tank's big gun and do the right thing, aka give up.

[BMP-3M owners please note: the BMP-3M is NOT a tank. It is an IFV (infantry fighting vehicle). Fighting a true tank voids the manufacturer's warranty]

He also pulled out his cell phone and made a few calls. The message was always the same -

"There are Mongol soldiers roaming the city. Find them before the military does and use them to break police barricades. Oh, they don't understand our language so speak very slowly and use plenty of hand gestures."

The Commander of a Hundred that the Thai was directing was actually much more upbeat about his chances than he had been five minutes earlier. There was a real worry that the Thai people would see his men as hostile invaders and let the Royal Thai Army destroy them with little to show for their mission.

He activated his military network and informed the Air Force that he had encountered anti-government forces and was interacting with them in a positive manner. In response, he was told he was doing well (like that mattered) and a dozen aircraft were coming his way to provide ground support (far more important). Now they had the real possibility of causing a bloodbath in Bangkok - going out with a Bang. It was H-hour plus three.*

**The leader of the MARCOS team was perplexed. Everything was going better than planned. His allies had arrived precisely on schedule with 11 T-90Sm tanks and sizable number of supporting armored vehicles. They had immediately agreed that their combined forces needed to take the offensive, so they mounted up and raced east to the town of Rayong.

Rayong was the location of the HQ of the 1st regiment of the 9th Royal Thai Infantry Division. They had found a full battalion there and a firefight had ensued. The Thai's had been alert, just facing the wrong way when the Allies went in. The combat broke up into brutal, house-to-house fighting against over a thousand soldiers, paramilitaries and police.

It had been an uneven struggle. The MARCOS were the most elite soldiers of a nation of over 1 billion people with four millennia of martial valor. The Khanate's troopers had been dedicated and very well armed, if somewhat inexperienced. The Thai's had no effective anti-tank weapons versus the T-90's and their artillery support consisted of a handful of mortars that were quickly located and neutralized.

He wasn't perplexed by the three regiments of Royal Marines sitting in the Juksamet Port of Sattahip. They seemed happy enough just sitting out this round of the battle. Whatever moved them would be of a political nature. He wasn't about to attack them and they seemed to accept that situation. If things changed, the Indian Navy had promised to flatten the base with as much firepower as 34 warships could muster.

No, what perplexed the officer was that the other two battalions attached to the 1st regiment hadn't made an appearance by now. He had reconnaissance teams farther to the east and as far west as the resort of Pattaya some 50 kilometers away. Nothing. Since the situation was going so well and he was the titular commander of this force, he went with Plan Nāraṅgī.

That called for the Khanate to start basing four airmobile Zuuns out of his captured airbase. There was plentiful aviation fuel, the base wasn't about to be overrun and having some attack helicopters at his immediate beck and call seemed prudent. Outside, an annoying journalistic team from Sky News were going live. They had come in with the Khanate troops, thus weren't really his problem. No, he had to figure out where those other two battalions had gotten themselves to. It was H-hour plus four.*

**A Thai soldier fired another burst from his TAR-21. The other four soldiers around him did the same. They were using an overturned car as cover. He saw movement at a building across the street to his right. He fired off another few rounds. The figure fell to the ground. By hard-earned experience, he realized the enemy soldier had probably dived for cover, not been hit.

"Time to fall back. One block back," he hoped he didn't sound too shrill. "You two go first," he indicated the two townsfolk. His battalion major had drafted them minutes after the attack began. Any organized supply depot had been an open invitation for an artillery strike, so he had called for civilians to help carry the ammunition loads instead. These two had been attached to his platoon. Now they were with him.

They nodded, hefted up the crate of 5.56mm and sprinted toward the rear while his men gave them cover fire. They made it. He named off two of his other men. It was their turn to go. After their sprint to safety, it was time for him and the last two to go. They ran past some terribly close flanking fire, but all made it.

This Thai soldier wasn't the squad leader, or even the squad's second in command. He was a lowly Phon Thahan (Private - not 1st Class). Those two men were already dead. No, he was a common soldier who found other men listening to his orders so, by default, he was in command. His initial squad of ten had shrunk down to three. The fourth man had been part of the regimental staff - a driver - sent into the firefight to replace losses. He still could point and shoot, which was all that mattered at the moment.

At the next block he found the two civilians. His men dumped their empty clips on them, then positioned themselves for the next enemy rush. The leader of this ad hoc force took the driver over to the far corner of the building they sheltered behind. Too often, going inside buildings was a death trap. The enemy would corner you then call in their artillery.

"Guard this corner," he told the driver. "I'll be checking up on you." The frightened soldier nodded, then took up his post. Now he had a few seconds to consider his position. He was running out of town to retreat through. Behind him lay open fields. Just then he saw the tale-tell site of a Dragon Anti-Tank missile firing from the next raised roadway to his rear-right.

He couldn't see if it hit anything. There was no huge explosion. Still, it indicated that other elements of his battalion were in the fight. From what little briefing he had been given when the attack started, the major had placed his heavy machine guns and recoilless rifles on each flank to stop the enemy's mobile forces from getting around his command and surrounding them.

Little did the soldier understand he was involved in a textbook defense by foot-bound infantry versus armored opponents. His two townsmen were busy shoving bullets into the thirty round magazines. His men had already engaged the enemy to the front. Gone were the cries of 'got him'. No one gave a damn anymore. They were too exhausted to care. Now they counted the comrades they had left, not the possible number of enemy out there.

Six minutes later he heard the sound of death coming his way.

"Everyone down," he screamed a second before an artillery round flattened their shelter. For a few moments all he could do was gaze up at the heavens. His body hurt, his ears were ringing and the belief that he could stop now - he had given it his best shot and his part in this battle were over.

He pulled himself and examined what he had left. He wasn't hurt if you didn't count the blood coming out his ears. He couldn't say the same for his companions. One of the townsmen had the top of his head torn off, his soulless eyes gazing up to the forever. One of his men had a smoking chunk of meat where his spine should have been. A second one was nursing a bad leg wound.

The third soldier? He was already up and firing. The second townsmen was a bit dazed, yet looked like he could carry on. The soldier crouch-ran to check on the driver. He was laying on his belly. For a second he mourned for that fellow then the man got off a burst, then scooted back. He had been 'playing possum' in order to draw some enemy out. He was alive and fighting.

"We have got to get out of here," he told the man. "Get to the elevated road across the field then provide cover fire for the rest of us." The driver acknowledged the command, fired off one more burst then bolted for the field. The Thai made his way back to his other survivors. He gave them the same order - the civilian first.

The wounded man? He couldn't make it with that leg wound and if any of the others carried him they would most likely die too.

"Cover us as long as you can," he ordered. The wounded shoulder crawled to the corner to relieve the only standing soldier.

"Go," he ordered that man. Off he sprinted. The leader placed two spare clips next to the wounded man, wished him luck, then it was his turn to sprint to safety. Close to the end, a few bullets hurried him along. He found the others had made it unwounded as well. The townsman was already shoving more bullets into the empty magazines.

To his right was the remnants of the squad with the recoilless rifle and a light machine gun. To his left was a group of six Thahan Phran, paramilitary border guards. He rejoined the firing line. The enemy had overrun the buildings closest to them and were faced with the same quandary he had just overcome - the open field. When a man tapped his shoulder he nearly jumped out of his skin.

It was his company commander.

"You've been doing well. I'm placing you in command of this section. We have a Carl Gustav (another version of a recoilless rifle) in the trees over there," the Captain pointed to the right. Hold this position as long as you can. Help is on the way."

Before this fight, the soldier had dreaded this officer. He had been so pompous, so spit-and-polished and arrogant. Now he saw different qualities in the man. He was cool under fire, had his mind on the bigger picture of the fight and the discipline he had instilled in his men was paying dividends the private soldier hadn't appreciated at that time.

"You are Sip Tho (corporal) now," the officer told him. With that declaration, the common foot soldier had inherited 13 more men - the squad of seven to his right and the six Thahan Phran to his left. Combined with his two that made something more like a combat command. The Captain made his way back up the line. The Thai didn't have long to appreciate his promotion. Smoke shells began detonating between his position and the town, obscuring the place.

"Remember," he shouted. "Short, controlled bursts and only shoot at something that you know is out there!" With that, he had established his command of the situation. Several explosions detonated in the wooded position. Half a minute later, a tank appeared and pumped another HE into the position. In doing so, it exposed its side to Thai's section.

The two men manning his Dragon launcher looked his way. It was a shot at a 45 degree angle and any heavy weapons fire would bring about all kinds of hate.

"Fire," he ordered. The man aiming the device took a few seconds then let loose. The rocket didn't penetrate the side, but it did knock a track out.

"Now we are going to get it," the Thai mumbled.

A few heartbeats later, a larger TOW missile slammed into it from a position to his command's rear. This time the tank blew up. Of equal importance to the soldier's mind, there were men behind him and that could only mean ... the second regiment had finally arrived. He was sure he wouldn't be falling back any further, giving the invaders one more inch of sacred Thai soil. It also meant his men would most likely live to see the end of the day. That mattered too. It was H-hour plus six.*

**Two hour earlier, elements of the Vietnamese People's Army's 314th Mechanized regiment and 206th Tank Regiment with the Mobile battalion of the Laotian 1st Division and the Khanate's Laos Force Command slammed into Khon Kaen. By that time, the small city had already seen its share of hell. Khanate forces had stormed the regional airport with an aerial assault at 4:10 AM that morning.

There were no dedicated combat troops in Khon Kaen. It was the HQ for both the Royal Thai 3rd Division and its component 1st regiment. That had resulted in a see-saw battle until the relief force arrived from the north. After that, resistance had collapsed. Over three hundred men surrendered. A hundred miles to the north forces in the town of Udon Thani, battalions of the 1st and 2nd regiments of the 3rd Division were still in combat with Laotian and Vietnamese forces. The final outcome of that battle had yet to be decided.

What did matter was that the entire command structure of northeast of Thailand had been neutered. There were five more battalions out there that had no idea what to do next. They suffered from sporadic air attacks, but nothing serious was coming their way.

What none of them were aware of was that a Far North Force out of the Laotian highlands had broken a battalion of the Royal Thai's 6th Infantry Division, taken Roi Et and severed the communications between the two formations. At Roi Et, the Khanate armored spearhead had left elements of the 2nd Regiment of Lao's 4th Division to hold the airport and was blazing a trail westward along Highway 23 - to the south/rear of those five battalions.

South of Roi Et, two other Thai battalions were grudgingly giving ground to a regiment of Vietnam's 305th Division plus the 270th Combat Engineers and 16th Artillery Brigade. What mattered was that those forces were drawing off the efforts of the 6th Divisions to counteract the invasion.

The 6th Division had its own litany of woes. It was the subject of a dozen pinpricks. The division's commander had lost contact with the other two divisions under the 2nd Army's command. He had enemy forces to his north around Amnat Charoen, he'd lost contact with this 1st regiment HQ at Roi Et.

His second regiment, at Ubon Ratchathani, was heavily engaged with the Alliance's North Force. His 3rd regiment, spread out along the southern approaches to his life line, Highway 24, had discovered small teams of Special Forces at every bridge and crossing, making every attempt at creating a unified front costly and ultimately futile.

The 2nd Army's HQ and supply hub were at Nakhon Ratchasima. They were under attack, the airport had fallen and the sole mechanized regiment (minus one battalion) was having a terrible time retaking it. They were presently incapable of coming to his defense, since their third battalion had already been called to the capital to put down unrest/enemy forces.

He finally made his decision. The remnants of the 1st regiment were to retire westward over the back roads towards the division headquarters at the Si Sa Ket Railway Station. The second regiment was to hold in place until sunset. Using all of the division's remaining assets, he was going to secure Highway 24 so that his command could retire using that path before they were cut off and defeated one regiment at the time. It was H-hour plus seven.*

**For one of the drivers in a Khanate Heavy Mountain Supply Zuun, there wasn't much to love about this mission. He was a truck driver with a weapon, not a true foot soldier. He was content with his role in logistics, which was why his current mission scared the crap out of him. He wasn't in an armored vehicle and was accompanied by only one Fast Zuun ~ by its very nature a lightly armored unit. Now he was driving deep into enemy territory with a truckload of Karin freedom fighters, who also were lightly equipped.

He had already reached the first goal, the town of San Buri, 270 kilometers behind enemy lines and only 60 kilometers from downtown Bangkok. There was a fear that his own air force would mistake then for an enemy supply column and shoot them up. Then there was the fear that some rear echelon troops would find the convoy suspicious and fill his unarmed vehicle with holes. His luck held, the enemy were looking to the north and east, not at a group of trucks heading south.

Soldiers from the rebel faction of the Thai Royal Army were stationed in each vehicle to cover any conversation with the local constabulary that might come up. The cover story was that the unit was driving with a purpose ~ the capital was under attack and they were reinforcements using back roads to avoid airstrikes ~ the phone network was a mess and the fact that the plan was so audacious, the normal police officers didn't feel the need to slow the military trucks down.

The last phase was pure madness. They rolled down Road 304 at 80 kph. Every time they approached a checkpoint, the unit's commander called in a hopefully faux airstrike ... on both them and the Thai soldiers. That made it plausible for the convoy to race forward as the troops around them were too busy diving for cover to stop them. If anything, the defenders thought those truck drivers were the bravest men they'd ever seen.

At the end of the journey, they rolled across the Road 304 Bridge over the Chao Praya River, then dispersed. Each truck disgorged 16 Karin fighters, for a total of 560. To that was added the 100 members of the Fast Zuun and 35 drivers, three Tigr's and 59 combat troops. Miracles of miracles, they found the capital to be in total chaos. It was H-hour plus 6 and a half.*

**The Turkish Khanate commander of 100 looked south in the direction of In Buri. He was already in the 'spread chaos' phase of his operation. The central part of In Buri was the junction of Highways 11 and 32. Somewhere to the far north, friendly units were fighting their way to him. Forces retreating south, or reinforcements from Bangkok would have to pass through his position. He commandeered some passing civilian vehicles and created barricades on all three sides of the T-cloverleaf.

Before long, the ground elements of an Airmobile Zuun had joined him. That allowed him to deploy several two-man observer teams over the surrounding countryside. He left two AFV's on the bridge and camouflaged the others in the best ambush points he could think of. Then, he waited. It was H-hour plus eight.*

**For Julia Atwood, this was the culmination of twenty-five years working in Asia, covering a host of military conflicts and both natural and man-made humanitarian disasters. She'd gotten a tip two days earlier that Bangkok Thailand was going to be the place to be. Since she wasn't a known anti-government reporter, her entry into the country had been easy enough.

She had spent the previous day picking a city guide, luckily finding one she knew well, and looking around for sources of information about 'trouble'. What she found was a quiet city on the edge of an explosion. The police, paramilitary forces and the military had everything battened down tight. At the same time, the population was extremely anxious over the upcoming loyalist offensive against the rebel northwest.

The military had clamped down on all information coming out of the prospective war zones while exhorting on all forms of mass media the sacred traditions of Thai national identity and the need for law and order. That made the hairs on the back of Julia's neck tingle. It spoke of an upcoming shit storm. Still, Day One had been a bust. Few people wanted to talk about what was going on; all known opposition leaders were in prison or in exile.

She had awakened early in the morning to the sound of heavy weapons fire. She had been in enough war zones to know the difference between grenades exploding, or pistol, assault rifle, machine gun, and tank fire. She was hearing tank fire, which made no sense. The Thai army didn't need to use their tank's big guns to fire at anything the opposition could bring to bear.

She slipped out the back of her hotel to avoid any possible police minder, gathered up her guide and went hunting for the story. Twice she barely avoided roving army patrols. What immediately occurred to her was these soldiers didn't seem to know what was going on. They were jumpy (not good) and nervous (great for a story).

Her trained ears and years of instinct led her to one of the eyes of the storm. Julia's jaw nearly dropped open. There were Central Asian men riding around in Russian equipment surrounded by throngs of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Thai 'Red Shirt' protestors marching on a police barricade. Several leaders of the movement had bullhorns and were communicating with the police. It was a tense situation.

Julia forced her way to the BMP-3M, then shouted up at the commander standing in the copula. She tried Uzbek. The man looked her way.

"No. I'm Kazak. My Uzbek isn't very good," he replied. Julia's Kazak wasn't the best in the world, but she endeavored to make it work.

"What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," the man smiled. "We are part of the Alliance effort to bring about democratic change in this country." Julia knew he was spouting the party line.

"What are you really doing here?" she pressed.

"I have no idea," he chortled. "I don't speak this language, don't know who these people are and only found out where Thailand was two days ago."

"Are there a lot of you here?"

"Not really."

"How did you get here?"

"We landed at the airport. We are a portion of an airmobile Zuun."

Just then one of the protestors tried to get the unit leader's attention. He kept repeating something.

"He wants you to advance on the police line and look menacing," she translated.

"Okay," the Khanate officer shrugged. "That I can do."

He spoke rapid fire Kazak, which Julia couldn't quite follow. Her ride lurched forward, the crowd parted and she could see the blood drain out of the police commander's face. Without looking her way, the Kazak spoke to Julia.

"Tell them they have thirty seconds to put down their arms or I'm going to shred the lot of them."

Julia thought about it for a second. She was recording this exchange on her camcorder. She knew this was straying dangerously close to becoming a participant, not a reporter. She translated to the Thai young man. He sprinted toward the police and relayed the message. She had no idea what a 100mm fragmentation shell would do, had an idea how bloody a 30mm auto-cannon could get and had great familiarity with the effectiveness of 12.7 & 7.62mm machine guns.

The lead protestor had a rapid discussion with the lead policeman, bowing and begging for this situation to be resolved peacefully. The countdown reached eight when the officer indicated his acquiescence. The mob didn't surge forward victoriously. Julia slapped the turret to get the Kazak's attention.

"You don't need to fire."

"I understand that," the man acknowledged. It wasn't over though. Another protestor, a woman, waved for the Kazak's attention. Since she wasn't alone in doing so, the man hadn't noticed her. What she was saying DID get Julia's attention.

"She is saying that tanks are on the way!" she shouted at the man in the copula.

"Which direction?" he inquired. Julia confirmed the information relayed by the girl, who double checked with the person on the other end of her phone, worked out the terrain in her head, then drew a quick map on her palm.

"They are coming up the road one block up. They are heading north toward us."

"Clear out the crowd," he responded evenly. He once more ordered his unit to action. One of the Tigr's raced forward and disgorged its men close to the next corner then the vehicle withdrew.

"What do you plan to do?" she asked.

"Do what I came here to do - kill the enemy."

"But they have tanks."

"Fortunately I have things that kill tanks," he grinned.

"Do you mind if I stick around?"

"It is your life," he shrugged. The BMP moved forward to the point where, with its barrel turned sideways, the vehicle was just short of exposing itself. He was busy talking to someone else.

Seconds later, one of the Khanate soldiers at the corner launched a grenade up the street, then two others opened fire with their assault rifles. They ducked back around the corner right as a larger caliber machine gun chewed up the wall as well as the street in front of her. Two other soldiers fired off flares into the sky.

"You might want to get down," the Kazak advised her. Julia nodded, jumped off and ran to the corner to join the other troopers. She edged around the corner, leading with her camcorder. Sure enough, up the street was an honest-to-God tank, with others behind it. One of the foot-bound Kazaks was busy shouting at the others. Once more, a soldier fired a grenade at the tank - to no visible effect. This time he apparently got the response the Kazaks wanted.

The tank's big gun fired. One of the troopers, mindful of Julia, grabbed her as they propelled themselves to the ground. The world exploded. Julia was doing a quick check of her well-being when she heard the BMP race forward, barrel turned perpendicular down the street and then it fired. Julia barely caught it all on her camera. The IFV had fired an anti-tank missile out of its main gun. The oncoming tank was a Ukrainian made T-84 Oplot.

It exploded; the turret flying away in a curtain of flame. This time it was the blast that blew Julia to the ground. A Kazak soldier hefted her up and pulled her to safety. He was truly pissed when she dodged back into the danger zone to retrieve her camcorder. She sighed happily when she found it undamaged. The BMP rolled back behind cover.

"Get down," the Kazak ground pounder growled. "It is about to get a whole lot worse."

"How?" she looked at him.

"Well, now that we have stopped the column from moving," he grinned like a maniac. That wasn't much of an answer. Then she noted all the Kazaks clutching at the concrete sidewalks. She did likewise. Seconds later, she heard the jets. 'Oh God', she gulped. She'd seen more than her fair share of airstrikes. She had never been this close to one.

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the Thai crowd moving closer.

"Get down," she screamed in Thai. "Get Down!"

Others repeated her warning and the crowed went down to their knees. Then came the thunder. Julia could barely make out the whoosh of missiles before the detonating rockets and missiles shook her world.

A stubby-winged jet raced past her vision. The pilot had gotten so damn close to the building tops she could make out every feature of his aircraft. This level of caution where civilians were concerned was surprisingly unlike the Khanate. She tried to stand, but the soldier next to her had wrapped an arm around her.

"They come in twos," he cautioned her.

Sure enough another series of explosions rocked her surroundings. No sooner had she gotten to her feet, the Kazak commander shouted,

"They are coming around for another pass - then we go!"

A series of passes followed with the jets using auto-cannons on whomever was left out there.

Julia pushed away from her guardian and rushed up to the BMP officer.

"Wait," she called to him. Stunningly, he waited, looking at her. "Let the crowd save the survivors. This is their struggle too."

"If the soldiers fire on them there will be little I can do," he responded.

"Give them a chance."

Against all her expectations, he did. The crowd moved to discover the carnage visited on their oppressors ... and fellow countrymen. It was H-hour plus eight.*

**The Thai tank commander was close to the end of his rope. He'd been fighting since sunrise. Defend, attack, withdraw to a defensive position then wait for the order to counterattack. His platoon had dwindled down to his sole surviving tank. His company no longer acted as a separate entity. Now his battalion, barely a company in strength, operated as a fire brigade, shoring up his beleaguered battle group.

The last attack, backed by air power, had shattered his unit. He fell back, literally backing into a second story building to avoid the ever-present Alliance attack helicopters. From his vantage point he could see a column of armored vehicles rolling down Highway 11. He was debating which one he would fire on first when he noticed a jeep coming his way. Onboard were three Thai soldiers - rebels.

The jeep rolled right up to his hiding spot. The man in the back dismounted and he walked right up to the tank.

"Can we talk?" the man inquired. The tank commander kept him covered with this machine gun.

"What do you have to say, traitor?" he barked.

"I come to request ..."

"We will not surrender," he growled.

"We are not asking you to surrender," the man corrected him. "We are asking you to let the war pass you by."

"Why should I?"

"If you fight, you will be destroyed. The Thai army will need to rebuild when this is over and we must be strong. If you throw your life away, we will all be weaker."

The tank commander had to think that over. If he began firing on that armored column he would be striking a mighty blow for his country. He would also be sentencing him and his men to death.

"There will be no surrender?"

"No sir," the man insisted.

The rebel soldier made some sense. The Thai military would have to rebuild when this catastrophe was over. He and his men had done their part.

"We will stay here for a while," the tank commander informed the rebel.

"Very well," the soldier bowed. He remounted his jeep and drove away.

"We are going to stay here a while," he addressed his crewmen. "Get a bite to eat and a drink of water."

His men hesitated for a moment.

"Now, while we have the chance."

The men hopped to. They had their orders. They would worry about the morality of their actions later. It was H-hour plus nine.*

**The men in the Royal Thai Army's high command were finally getting ahold of the big picture. The good news was the Third Army's offensive was grinding to a halt along a line stretching along Highway 1 from Tham Pet Tham Tong Forest in the east to Chai Nat on the Chao Praya River in the west. It was accepted as fact that the 3rd Cavalry and 11th Infantry divisions could hold the line.

West of the Chao Praya was a chaotic mess of small garrisons involved in raids and counter-raids. It was deemed unlikely the Alliance forces could push forward any further in that direction either. It also meant that they couldn't pull units from that region to reinforce any of their other trouble points and they had a few.

That was most of the good news.

Another piece of good news was the1st Army's 2nd Infantry Division had stopped the invasion force they were facing only a few kilometers over the frontier in the area of Watthana Nakhon District. As soon as they had gathered the majority of the division together, they would be mounting a counter-offensive with the intention of overwhelming that force and destroying it.

After that, it only got worse.

In the area of the 2nd Army, the 3rd Infantry Division and the 2nd Cavalry Division had virtually ceased to exist as cohesive forces. Two battalions of the 3rd Division were retreating south into the 6th Division's area. The 2nd Cavalry division had been reduced pre-battle to one mechanized regiment. That regiment was gone and with it, the supply routes for the 2nd Royal Thai Army.

Inside that zone, the 6th Infantry Division still existed, but it was in a world of trouble. They had lost control of Highway 24, their primary supply/evacuation route, and were relentlessly being driven out of Ubon Ratchathani. Even with the slowly arriving battalions of the 3rd Division, the 6th could barely muster two combat-effective regiments and those were running short of fuel and ammunition. The 6th had become a static force, too large to be overwhelmed, too immobile to press the enemy out, or save themselves from a slow strangulation. Had they their assigned tank battalion ... but they didn't.

The 1st Army's 9th Division was in the worst shape. They had gathered into one elliptical shaped perimeter centered on Chanthaburi and were down to four battalions and two tanks. Technically, they had another battalion ... except the 1st Army command had ordered that into Bangkok to aid in suppressing the rebel movement. The 9th Division was surrounded, under attack from the land, sea (the Indian Navy had joined the fight) and air. Their commanding general expected to be wiped out before sunset.

And Bangkok?

It was turning into a typhoon scale disaster. They had finally determined that there were eight small Khanate platoons roaming the city, seemingly at will. The 1st Division had finally located and destroyed one of those, along with a dozen protestors who chose to fight by their side. The others were still at large and causing trouble.

That wasn't the worst of it though. The plan had been to pacify outlying neighborhoods and work their way in to the worst areas. That had started out effectively, then suddenly they had lost the northwestern and southeastern sectors. In the northwest, there were Karin fighters killing, or capturing police and paramilitary strongpoints.

In the southeast, it was much worse. Unknown armored troops from the 9th Division's rear area had come seeping in along the riverfront. They seemed to be everywhere at once, surprising roadblocks and checkpoints then ambushing the forces sent to restore order. They were a cancer pushing into a city already short on reserves.

There were public displays of defiance going out over the international news, surgical air strikes and a growing sense among the rank and file 'Guardians of the Public Order' that they were on the losing side. There were reports of police turning their backs on the unrest, directing traffic and arresting petty criminals instead.

The Royal Thai Army in Bangkok still had over 50,000 men under its command. They were sure they were facing less than a thousand hardcore militants ... yet they were losing control of the streets. Part of that was caused by the military being tied down to certain strategic areas they had to hold. They had to protect over a dozen buildings and, as they had painfully learned, a platoon wouldn't do.

The Government House had been temporarily overrun and Parliament had been shelled. Channel 3 had been hijacked and the forces sent to take it back had been subject to intense helicopter attacks and driven back. They'd killed two such craft, but that only seemed to make the Alliance troops angrier. This was what a death by a thousand cuts felt like. This was worse than bad - because it looked bad on media going out all over the world. It was H-hour plus twelve.*

**The commander of the MARCOS had finally taken the time to eat. He was in the Maleenont Towers section of Khlong Toei, Bangkok. It had been his masterstroke, seizing the Channel 3 station. He wasn't sure who the eight shady characters who showed up with the VIPs were and he didn't really care. What did matter was while the VIP's fought like wildcats in private they were putting on a unified front while on TV.

One of the VIPs was the former civilian Prime Minister of Thailand. The other guys seemed to hate her guts, but were willing to work with her to overthrow the generals. What he did care about was the nearly five hundred men under his command plus a dozen helicopters and jets somewhere above, waiting to swoop in and help when the next government attack materialized.

He had to give them this much, the police forces had guts - not a lot of brains, but plenty of guts. Their counter-terrorism unit had known their stuff, but they didn't have any effective anti-tank weapons and he had a half dozen tanks. Whenever the army got feisty, he called up 'Shiva's Fist' ~ his men's joking reference to the Khanate air support. Those bastards not only killed you, they came back around and killed your corpse too.

He got a call from the perimeter. Some of those Karin fighters had crossed half the city to join them. The Indian officer had thought that part of the Khanate plan was utter madness, yet here they were, shooting up the place in a manner only highly experienced insurgents could. Those guys didn't even want to hang around. They were asking for more ammo. The locals were giving them all the food and water they needed.

At nine, once it was truly dark, the Khanate was promising to drop off a few tons of whatever they need plus some more medivac units. He was down nine men dead and twenty-seven wounded badly enough they need to be removed. The Khanate had lost four times as many. All in all, the overthrow of a military regime was turning out to not be as difficult as he thought it would be. He was waiting to be surprised. It was H-hour plus fifteen.*

**The fighting had died down and now the main activity was the Thai civic authorities fighting the fires burning in Saraburi. The Khanate Commander of 1000 looked over his shoulder at the burning city. It hadn't been much of a fight - mainly a few rear echelon forces from the Royal Thai 2nd Army and some paramilitaries.

He wasn't in the town. The majority of his troopers had already rolled down to the junction of Highways 1 and 33. He had communication with other elements farther west on Highway 32 at Ang Thong and to the northwest at the junction of Highways 1 and 32. The offensive operations was essentially over for his command. That was just as well. He was running low on petrol. He still had plenty of ammunition though.

They were sitting on the lifeline for the 1st Army's 3rd Cavalry and 11th Division to the north and the 2nd Division to the east. The 6th Division was too far in his rear to matter and the 9th Division was facing annihilation along the coast. It was very dark now, but the air force was still active. Some pilots were flying their sixteenth mission of the day.

For most of the day, the Khanate Air Force had concentrated on his axis of advance and the battle in Bangkok. The Vietnamese Air Force had concentrated on the hapless 9th Division. In reality, the Alliance was almost at the end of its tether.

His combined Laos and Far North Task Forces were spent. The North and Cambodian Task Forces had the 6th Division pinned down. The South Task Force had done the same with the 9th. Only the Central Task Force facing the 2nd Division appeared to be in serious trouble.

None of those formations were actually near defeat, though many of them wouldn't realize that until morning. Only the 3rd Army's two task force had consisted of more than 5,000 hastily gathered troops and most of those were Cambodians, Laotians and Vietnamese. To that the Khanate had added 50 mobile Zuuns spread over ten task forces and another 50 airmobile, parachute and airlifted units ~ less than ten thousand men and women spread over all fronts.

The cold, hard reality for him was that not a single loyalist Thai unit had been destroyed. The 3rd and 9th infantry divisions has been battered, that was true. The majority of their mobile forces - the 2nd and 3rd cavalry divisions, still existed as a potent force. The 11th and 2nd infantry divisions were also out there, but they were all cut off from the capital. And in this elegant global play, the one theater that mattered was Bangkok.

In the morning, if they came for him, the loyalist Thai's were going to discover that offense was a lot more painful that defense. Only the 2nd Division bothered him. The forces to the north were too heavily engaged with the rebel Thai 3rd Army to dispatch more than a battalion his way and he would gobble up a battalion.

It would be too much to ask the battered Alliance Center Task Force to keep the 2nd Division occupied. From what he had heard, they were on the verge of disintegration after a powerful Loyalist counterattack. He did have patrols on the 304 and 359 Roads in case their commander got creative. What those few men lacked in vehicles, they would compensate for with air power.

The Khanate Air Force was a 24/7, all-weather operation. They had lost 40 aircraft to enemy action and a further forty to mechanical malfunction. Losses in helicopters was also high. But there were still enough of both to get the job done. Now all he had to do was wait for the Americans to arrive. It was H-hour plus seventeen.*

There were only three major acts left in this macabre play before the eyes of the world.

**A squadron of 12 Tu-22M bombers found two of the 2nd Division's regiments sneaking to the west. The Thais had done this with as much secrecy as they could. Unfortunately, their move was one of only two option left to the Loyalist Royal Thai Army.

Option One, the most likely one, had the 2nd Division attacking the Khanate troops south of Saraburi. It would not only give the 2nd Division freedom of movement, it would establish supply lines to the divisions currently holding the rebel Thai Third Army at bay. It was the predictable choice.

The Khanate UAV's were out there, scouting for them and when they spotted the three columns using the backroads to approach their attack positions, they relayed that information to a not-so-distant A-50E/I. The squadron of waiting bombers had incredible endurance and had been circling the suspected target area for three hours. They broke up into groups of six then into groups of two. The first two lined up on their targets then unleashed their lethal cargo.

Each plane dropped sixty-nine 250 kg bombs. That was138 bombs with a combined explosive power of 75,900 lbs. spread out over three-quarters of a mile. The A-50 assessed the damage for 7 minutes before sending the second set of two in. Another 138 bombs. Another 75,900 lbs. of death. The third group wouldn't be needed. In ten minutes the fighting power of the 2nd Royal Thai Infantry Division had evaporated.

Option Two? That called for the 1st Infantry Division, with her added units, to sally forth from Bangkok and rescue the trapped elements of their other divisions. That would have entailed abandoning large areas of the capital to the protestors and the tiny groups of invaders that were helping them. No one thought they would do that and they were right. Had they been wrong, there was another squadron of bombers waiting for them. It was H-hour plus nineteen.*

**The Thai Phon Thahan-turned-Sip Tho looked out into the darkness. Four hours ago he was anticipating crossing the Cambodian border and burning down their town for a change. Now ... now it was wait-and-see. The majority of the division had withdrawn for a long night march to the west. From what he had gathered, the 2nd Army had been pummeled and it was once again the time for the 2nd Division to save the day.

He spotted movement in front of him. He glanced over to his 'sniper', a Thahan Phran who was the best shot in his unit and had a taste for the task. The man had the target in his sights.

"I come to parlay," the voice in the darkness shouted in less than perfect Thai. The Thai soldier had to think what that meant. His instinct was to shoot the man. His training taught him to not make choices above his pay grade.

"Advance. Don't do anything stupid," he called out. To the man next to him he whispered, "Go get the Captain." The man slunk away. No one alive in the unit stood up to do anything. You even pissed crouched down. The man coming toward him was a Cambodian. It was evident in both his gear and accent. "What do you want?"

"We want a truce," the man replied. He remained very erect, his hands in the air and only made slow, careful movements.

"I should shoot you," he growled.

"That would be unfortunate for both of us. I would, of course, be dead, and my allies would open up with our artillery."

The conversation was truncated by the captain's arrival. They went through much of the same routine, absent the 'I should kill you part' and the counter-threat. The captain turned to the Thai soldier.

"Blindfold and bind this man's hands then take him to the Phan Ek (Colonel). Let him figure this out."

Without the soldier saying anything the Captain added, "This could be a ruse. I must stay here. Hurry."

He nodded, took a shirt from one of the civilian volunteers, cut it into strips then blindfolded and bound the man.

"If you so much as sneeze, I'll put a bullet in your head," he warned the man.

"I understand," the Cambodian replied. The soldier took the Cambodian one block behind the lines, spun the man around several times, then led him toward the command bunker. He spun him around twice more before making his final approach. A wounded junior officer met him at the entrance.

"Come on," he took custody of the man. Having nothing else to do and not having been ordered to release the prisoner, the soldier followed along.

The Regimental Commander had the man un-blindfolded. His hands remained bound.

"What do your masters want?" the Major snapped.

"They want a truce," the Cambodian blinked in the sudden bright light.

"You invaded us without a declaration of war. That makes you criminals, not combatants."

"We attacked at the request of the legitimate authority in Thailand - the Commanding General of the Royal Thai Third Army."

"Those men are rebels and you will not refer to them as anything but," the Phan Ek insisted.

"Very well. My Commander wishes to let you know that our mobile hospital has arrived. We wish to exchange prisoners and place our facilities at your disposal as well."

"The Royal Thai army will be there soon enough," the Major glowered.

"Unlikely. Our Khanate allies have informed us that most of your division was destroyed on the road. You have one battered regiment and a handful of tanks. You are not going anywhere."

The soldier wanted to slap the smug smile off the man's face.

"I do not have the authority to hand over prisoners until their status as POWs or criminals has been established," the senior officer countered.

"If you consider our men criminals, we will treat your men like traitors."

"Are you threatening me?"

"Yes. A fact you should be aware of is that the Khanate has been flying in reinforcements since noon and we have five more armored, mechanized and artillery Zuuns to attack with. Come sunrise, we will be coming at you again unless we have a truce."

"Now you are threatening us again," the Phan Ek pointed out.

"I am explaining the realities of your situation, nothing more," the Cambodian countered. "Our task force commander believes that further violence will be futile. You have done your job and we have done ours."

"And your job was to keep us occupied so you could rape and pillage other parts of our country?"

"No sir. The Alliance forces have been operating under very strict guidelines. The Thai people are our allies and we are a liberating force," the Cambodian replied.

"You consider this town 'liberated'? You've destroyed it," the Phan Ek noted.

"It was unfortunate that you chose to fight us here."

The Colonel studied the man silently for thirty seconds.

"I will agree to a two hour truce. That should allow me to contact my superiors for further clarification on my mission. We will hand over any critically injured 'invaders'. You will return any POW's you are holding in exchange."

"Agreed," the Cambodian immediately responded.

"Just like that? It is really within your authority to make such a deal?"

"As I said earlier Phan Ek, we believe the fighting is over. We don't need your captured men. We would like to see as many as our comrades live as possible. No matter what your commanders say, the fact remains that if you come out of these ruins, you will be slaughtered. You know that. I know that. Peace is the only avenue that leads to any level of success. Today ... today, both our forces did what our commanders told us to do. The dying should stop."

"Go. The truce will take effect in ... fifteen minutes ~ 12:12 am. We will transfer prisoners and wounded at your point of entry. We will both give a warning whistle fifteen, ten, five and one minute before the truce ends at 2:12 am. Do you understand?"

The Cambodian repeated the terms of the truce. He was bound up then sent back with the Sip Tho.

"Do you really think this is the end of the fighting," he asked his blind captive.

"On the lives of my children I hope so," the man sighed. "I led 88 men into battle this morning and now I'm down to 46 effectives. I have lost too many already for a battle that wasn't in my nation's best interest. I am tired of the killing."

"Me too," the Thai said a moment later. After he delivered him to the Captain on the front lines, the man was unbound.

"Good luck," he found himself saying.

"Good luck for both of us," the Cambodian gave a weary smile. "May we not meet again."

"If I see you again, I will kill you."

"I feel the same way," the man chuckled. "We are both soldiers doing what more powerful men have commanded us to do. I don't know about you, but I have had enough." Several Thai soldiers nodded. They had driven the enemy off Thai soil. Continuing the fight didn't seem to have much of a point. It was H-hour plus twenty.*

** News anchors, expert commentators and historians would hotly debate exactly what the officers of the 31st regiment (Royal Thai Guards) and the Royal Cadet Guard-Naval Academy meant to do when they gathered their units at the Chitralada Royal Villa. King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej aka Rama IX, was in residence, as was Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn.

Until he granted their commanding officers an audience at 10 pm, the King had been largely unaware of the greater turmoil in his country. Yes, he knew about the Third Army's rebellion as well as the Navy, Air Force and 4th Army staying neutral. He had been hearing noises of combat coming from all corners of his capital. What he didn't fully understand was the beating his military was taking in the field, or the perceived precarious situation the Army faced in Bangkok.

One possible interpretation of what happened was these officers, aware that there was fighting getting closer to the Royal Residence, went to safeguard his Majesty with no ulterior motive. That viewpoint suggested the Crown Prince took the initiative to end the suffering of his nation and decided to make a public announcement from the Grand Palace (the public royal residence), appealing for the cessation of hostilities - for both sides to separate until a council could convene in the morning to resolve the situation peaceably.

Another possible view was the Admiral and Colonel came pleading for the King to do something to end the chaos and the King followed the men's advice. He convinced the Crown Prince to go to the Grand Palace and end the conflict.

A third possibility was this was a counter-coup, led by the Royal Guards and the Navy Cadets who 'convinced' the King and Crown Prince that they had to exercise the threat of lèse-majesté in order to end the fighting since both forces contained Thai soldiers fighting one another and was thus, action against the King's will and an insult to his status as Father of the Thai People.

What did happen? The King was quite old (86), so it fell to the Crown Prince (62) to take an active role in the matter in his father's name. In a manner that was never clarified, he was able to communicate with the Great Khan, who personally pledged a withdrawal of his forces if that is what his 'brother' in the Chakri Dynasty desired.

The Great Khan then contacted the governments of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, requesting they also halt their forces and take up a purely defensive stance (i.e. they had done their part so he would now pay them for their troubles ~ mainly in the form of updated military hardware).

The Crown Prince then contacted the Commander of the Royal Third Army and commanded/suggested that a civil war was not in the nation's best interest. He was then escorted to the Grand Palace where he made a public announcement over every major media network that he had elicited a cease-fire with the rebels and their allies.

First off, he promised the Thai people that they were giving up nothing in this arrangement. The Civil War would end - because he said so and if the loyalist Royal Thai forces who claimed to be serving him (through his father) were truly doing so, they would also immediately cease hostilities. He requested all concerned parties meet at the Great Palace in the morning at nine to work out the particulars of the end of the current civil disorder. Both civilian and military representatives would be present.

Furthermore, he directed the Royal Thai Marine regiments to move into Bangkok and separate the warring forces, thus ensuring the cease-fire. He was also accepting the offer from the President of the United States to deploy a US Marine Amphibious Unit to the countryside to separate the combatants there. The Alliance High Command had already guaranteed they would hold open the captured air bases to facilitate that move.

Once disengagement had been achieved, he had a personal guarantee from the Great Khan, monarch to monarch, that the Great Khan and the other allied governments would withdraw to their respective borders within a week, if not sooner. The country would unite. The country would rebuild. Together, all factions of Thai society would create a stable future. It was H-hour plus twenty-five. Effectively, the war was over, although small skirmishes would continue until sunrise.*

Had the Crown Prince the authority to do any of that? No. He had ministers appointed by the Parliament that took care of things like foreign and civil affairs. He was titular head of the armed forces, but had no actual authority to command. What he did have was a deep well-spring of respect among his people including many leaders in the military. He was throwing down a gauntlet that very easily could be trampled into the mud.

In his favor, not a single faction wanted to be the one to do that. The military had its sworn oaths to consider. Those oaths bound the generals together and bound their underlings to them. They couldn't very well declare they were serving the will of the King any longer if they defied the Crown Prince now.

For the civilian leaders, this was their best avenue to return to power. They were saved the ugly perception that they were relying on foreign intervention to achieve their aims. The outsiders were going away. The Crown Prince had, somehow, gotten them to back off solely with the weight of his personality. He had achieved the military victory the Army had failed to deliver and he hadn't killed a single person doing it.

For the protesters in the street? They were high on the use of force (by the allies) to repress the use of force (by the Army). The protesting population now controlled large sections of Bangkok and had garnered a great deal of police neutrality/cooperation in the process. Besides, while they had been comrades in the streets facing down the military junta, they were still divided in their political views.

What would be the outcome? That was what street protests were all about. Both sides had their 'favored son/daughter' they followed, political parties they adhered to and grievances they wanted addressed. Civilian governments had collapsed under their own weight of accusations and charges of corruption before and they probably would again. That part of Thai politics remained untouched by the recent national tragedy.

What had been accomplished? The next time the Commander of the Armed Forces thought about taking power, he would have to to examine the precedent established by the Khanate:

... now the various civilian factions could appeal for foreign intervention to protect their civil liberties.

Also, a civilian authority was the most likely outcome of the upcoming National Reconciliation Government and they would owe that freedom to the Khanate and would, to a degree, view the Great Khan as the guarantee that the military wouldn't put tanks on the streets anytime soon.

The Khanate? She got what she wanted ... a stable, friendly southern flank.

The Alliance's SE Asian members? Those three allies would be getting several shipments of 'nearly' modern hardware with additional aid to help then maintain said technology in working order.

India? A stable, friendly government would ally with India (not China) to build their canal thru the Kra Isthmus. The creation of the India-Thailand Kra Infrastructure Investment and Development Company (ITKIIDC) was already moving through the Indian parliament. The expected income from tolls alone was expected to accede $400 million a year (though that alone would take 70 years to pay off the predicted $28 billion price tag - Hoo-raah Big Government).

Thailand? A brief brutal civil war that could have been a whole lot worse ~ unless you had actually been in one of the war zones. Maybe they would get a democratic government. Their economy hadn't taken that much of a beating ... and there would be plenty of reconstruction jobs. The IMF would probably pump in a few million into the economy to 'help out'. It had been bad; it could have been worse.

The Philippines? Why were we involved with that again? It was back to the bargaining table with the Khanate, India and Vietnam once more. Nothing much had changed.

The Republic of China? The Khanate still loved them. An invasion of the mainland was still in the works. It was back to working on the South Korean, Japanese, ROC, Vietnam, India and Khanate alliance network dedicated to containing the PRC because the Red Dragon was far from finished.

Malaysia? Not much had changed. Some Malaysian Marines were on their way to Thailand as part of a humanitarian mission, so it wasn't like Thailand hated them. The Khanate tide had receded far short of the border. The US had edged a tad closer and had become a little bit more engaged in the South China Sea. All in all, it could have been much worse. The Khanate could have been sitting on their border - much worse.

The United States? The President of the United States was The Peacemaker. His tiny military presence was up to the task of acting like crossing guards as they escorted the 'Alliance' back across their respective frontiers.

Not only was this his chance to say 'See, I did something', ... without him having to do anything until after the fact since the Crown Prince and the Great Khan had created the cease-fire.

As well as 'See, I can do this Nation-Building thing without spending several trillion dollars', ... Without doing any actual nation-building since the Thai's would be doing that themselves.

And 'See, the greatest military power in Asia respects us enough to back off when we arrive', ... while not having to talk to the Khanate in any official capacity ... because, you know, the Great Khan was still The Bad Guy - revisit the bio-terrorism, genoicide and War of Aggression then subtract one Free Tibet ... and now one Democratic Thailand.

For the daring men and women of the US Military there was an 'Atta boy/girl/team - I knew you could do this - thanks for risking your lives' and an 'Oh, by the way, I'm cutting the Defense budget again next year. Have fun being RIFed. I'm sure you will find a job in the private sector - no problem'.

One horrifying/awe-inspiring thing had been revealed during the 'Thai Expedition'. That was the Khanate's airlift capabilities. It rivaled that of the US and dwarfed every other nation's in comparison. The 'why' of the matter made total sense in hindsight.

The Khanate knew it would control a massive expanse of space ... yet she was saddled with a weak all-weather road network and an inadequate railway system. Furthermore, the resource-rich East was separated by the Caspian Sea from the industrialized West. She had to be prepared to move massive numbers of troops over incredible distances and airlift was the only possible answer.

In a total of seventy-two hours (counting the troops brought in while the campaign was going on) they had brought in nearly 15,000 soldiers, enough hardware to equip a mechanized Tumen plus the logistical support for those warriors and over 500 aircraft. It had been an awesome endeavor and something new for the Pentagon war-planners to factor in the next time they needed to fight/ally with the Great Khan.

Meanwhile: been RIFed?

The Khanate desperately needed you if you had (any) engineering, infrastructure, judicial, law enforcement, logistics, medical, and/or military expertise - and they payed you well for something you would have been doing in the US/UK military, had either of those institutions still employed you. And working for The Khanate was okay because they had (barely) avoided being a US enemy by dint of a back-room meeting that never officially happened.

Note: End explanation of how things played out in the Battle for Thailand.

{9:00 pm, Tuesday, September 2nd ~ 6 Days to go}

"I suggest we all get some sleep," Addison declared as she stood up and stretched. Odette was asleep on the floor, her head propped up by a pillow. The rest of us look like we'd ... been up for the past three days with only cat-naps breaking up the tedium between reports from various sources - namely the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), Khanate and the Black Lotus.

By the time the major news outlets brought up the 'current events' we had already digested it and moved on to the next crisis point. As they had learned, 'Live from the Front Lines' sounded nice, but it wasn't all that informative. Like most sane individuals, reporters and cameramen ducked when people were shooting at them, so you got plenty of good footage of what the dirt/walls/pavement in Thailand looked like.

Around eight o'clock yesterday morning - Bangkok time - an 'expert' commentator brought up the point that the news crews on the 'Alliance's' side of the story were in Thailand illegally ... thus prone to get shot at.

"But they are the Press," a cute news anchor babbled. "Isn't that a war crime ... or something?"

All I could think of was that with those smarts and those lips, she had to give tremendous head. Don't get me wrong - she was clearly college-educated, but she was also lost in some alternate reality bubble where bullets instinctively knew who not to kill.

"They are imbedded with an invading army," the female expert sighed. "I don't think the average Thai soldier can tell the difference between a civilian cameraman aiming his way and, say - a Khanate soldier with a rocket launcher. I imagine that looking down the barrel, they appear to be the same thing."

"But they have 'Press' on their helmets and arm badges," she refused to relent to the other woman's common sense. The female commentator was getting pissed, so she got snide.

"I know. I have seen them. We all have. Unfortunately, while I have seen plenty of them in English, Hindi, Spanish, German, Russian and French, I have yet to see one in Thai ... which would make it rather hard for the average Thai infantryman to understand what those symbols mean."

"Oh," the talking head muttered. "Why didn't the Khanate do something about this? Aren't they responsible for their safety?"

"Well," the commentator rolled her eyes, "I doubt the Khanate conscripted those journalist and short of them living in a hole for the past week, they had to know to what country they were going to. This level of stupidity is all yours."

"Ah ... okay. Why don't we go back to Marcel? Marcel, how are you doing?"

"It is HORRIBLE," the terrified man screamed. "People are killing people everywhere and the two Khanate guards attached to me don't seem to understand English so they won't take us back to the rear area."

"Where did you get this guy?" the expert's brow furrowed. "Doesn't he know that in this kind of action, there are no rear areas." Pause for the sound of rifle fire. "Wait! Wait! Here is an officer. Captain - Colonel - Major," he stammered, "Can you tell us what is going on?"

"It is Ni Züün komandlagch," the officer corrected him in Oxford English. He and three of his troopers were standing up, looking around and occasionally getting some information from his men through his headset. "Why are you hiding here?"

"They are shooting at us," the field reporter wailed.

"No. We are shooting at them. They can't hit us here. You are in minimal danger," he assured the reporter.

"What is going on?"

"We are quelling the last of the resistance in the town of Rayong as per our orders."

"Have there been many civilian casualties?"

"Yes."

"How many?"

"I don't think anyone will be counting them until tomorrow morning at the earliest. Since we are currently in the middle of an invasion, we don't have the time, or resources. Do you want to interview some prisoners? We have some close by."

"That ... that would be nice," the reporter gulped.

"I wonder if any of those prisoners speak English," the expert mumbled. They never got the chance to find out because thirty seconds later the Zuun Commander began issuing orders. He was reconnecting his men with their IFVs and was getting ready to head somewhere with a purpose.

"Where are you going?" the reporter bleated.

"Exactly? I don't know. My orders are to head west," the officer shrugged. "I fully expect to get more precise information on the road."

"You don't know?" the man paled.

"I'm not in charge - this is mobile warfare - and we've already accomplished the second phase of our mission," he explained as he mounted his own BMP-3. "Now one of our scouts has run into trouble and we are going to make a reconnaissance in force."

"Does anyone think that bozo has any idea what reconnaissance in force means?" Odette had interjected.

"I don't think your man knows what is going on," the expert parroted. "Can't he at least ask what the first two phases of the mission were?"

"Unlikely," Chaz commented, darkly amused. "Odette, I think your money is safe."

Chaz had been watching this newsman with some interest since he came on line two hours ago. He didn't care a damn about the man and his lack of courage. No, his eyes and ears were glued to the masked men who seemed to be working as 'advisors' to the Khanate forces.

Chaz had never seen the MARCOS in action. Few people had and here he was with a live action viewpoint. Had the reporter been less of a coward, he might had learned more. As it was, Chaz figured out that the Indian Special Forces were calling the shots while the Khanate provided the firepower.

It was a level of cooperation that was chilling to watch. The Khanate warriors didn't resent the orders the Indian's gave in the least. That level of trust was telling for future operations between India and the Khanate.

"What about us?" the reporter asked.

"Jump on if you like. We have orders to accommodate you," the Kazak offered.

"But where are we going?"

"To find more Thai soldiers to disarm, of course. We won't be purchasing any curios until later this afternoon," the officer grinned.

"Won't they be shooting at us?"

"That is the nature of war - guns being fired - air strikes - land mines - snipers. Don't let me discourage you though."

"Aaahh ..." the reporter stammered.

"BLEEP this BLEEP. I'm coming along," the cameraman declared. The man sprinted around the vehicle and ran up the back ramp, filming all the way. Soon enough the door would close and ... the reporter ... nothing more was heard of him ... for some time.

"Worked for Sky News," Agent 86 yawned.

The Sky News face man had had a spectacular on-scene death - shot through the head by a sniper. His cameraman was carrying on without him quite well. Whatever awards cameramen got for exceptional videography, that man deserved them all. He snuck around with Khanate soldiers as they engaged in fire-fights, had dragged a wounded trooper to cover - while still filming - and returned to the fight.

Next ... Next the leader of the Special Forces team issued his commands - in English while the Khanate troops hurried to obey. In three minutes, the unit had abandoned the ruins of Rayong and was headed toward the tourist mecca of Chon Buri. The JIKIT members looked at the video map. Chon Buri was due south of Bangkok and if the tiny task group could advance that far ... maybe they could cause some major trouble in the city ... as long as you took into account that they had roughly 100 Elite Special Forces, 450 men in armored vehicles and six tanks.

That revelation had brought about Operation Walnut ~ the Black Lotus/CIA rescue of key political prisoners and linking them up with this new, highly lethal detachment. At worst, they could be exited from the city thus free to take to the airwaves and internet with their calls for further social action. Instead of letting the Black Lotus (the CIA had to make themselves scarce) come to him, the MOROS leader decided to go seize a TV station downtown and meet the politicians there.

In anything approaching a normal combat operation, things like this wouldn't have happened, or so Captain Delilah Faircloth, RAF, informed us. This invasion was far from normal. On the CNN and BBC maps, Loyalist Thailand was in blue, the Neutral faction was in green and the Rebel Alliance (at least the Loyalist weren't being called the Empire) was in red.

For the past four hours the red sections of the map had been growing at the expense of the blue. Worse, from this computer generated point of view, there were a dozen tiny red pin pricks all over the place inside the Blue Zone. Those dots were growing like a cancer - mainly because the reporters were telling their media outlets where the Khanate forces were ... without explaining that they areas they had left were effectively back under Loyalist control.

It looked bad - really bad ... as long as everybody ignored the fact that there wasn't that much territory a hundred men could hold down. The problem was the Thai authorities didn't have imbedded reporters, so they couldn't tell their side of this battle. Because of that, it appeared to be a lopsided conflict.

At ten-thirty, the level of the bizarre got deeper for the Loyalist. According to one of the imbedded BBC teams, a combined forces Mechanized Tumen had penetrated Bangkok proper and was pushing into the city from the west. He even showed various Vietnamese, Khanate and Karin fighters standing around some impressive looking vehicles.

The only problem was the proportionality of number meant that column of the invasion army was much more a Light Infantry Regimental Combat Team [RCT], not a Tumen of any kind. According to Mehmet, a RCT was approximately two thousand men, depending on the mission. A Tumen was roughly ten thousand men ... so the Thai HQ, which by now was certainly watching the BBC for their own 'Latest from the Front Line' updates, totally misunderstood the nature of the threat.

This danger was further magnified by the fact that the TOE [Table of Organization and Equipment] of a Mechanized Tumen included five Zuuns (500 men) with 33 tanks each - 165 Very Modern Main Battle Tanks - plus 25 Zuuns with a total of another 600 armored vehicles. That formation didn't have 10,000 men, had no tanks and no armor of any kind. All they had were a few jeeps and a lot of hutzpah.

The tactic you used for fighting an armored incursion was totally different than what you would use to fight a guerrilla infiltration. Against tanks, you set yourself up in a built-up area so you could ambush the vehicles from the side, or from above. By the time the guerrillas penetrated that far into the city, they had already dispersed so much that they were virtually impossible to block.

To add to the Loyalist catastrophe, the military units rushed toward this threat mistook the few Karin they did see to be spotters for the Khanate mobile artillery and air support, so they hunkered down and let the Karin pass through their positions to be mopped up by rear area troops.

That decision was based on the perception that the Karin would be acting as a unified force. Instead, the Karin fanned out over the city in small eight to ten men teams and wreaked havoc with no particular aim except to make a huge racket. Go after hard (heavily guarded/important) targets? Oh Hell no! Shoot up a patrol, or police station - sure. Just remember to run away before they could start shooting back.

The BBC continued to help out. The broadcaster gave ten minute updates on how much farther he and his little band of miscreants had penetrated into the city, how close they were to the financial district and how morning shoppers were somewhat surprised by the sudden outburst of violence in their hometown. The BBC interviewed the 'Thai on the street' and enlightened them that their city was about to fall to Alliance forces.

There were four general reactions to this information. Some panicked and ran home. Others headed straight for the closest grocery store/marketplace and began buying necessities and the third group pulled out their phones and recorded this monumental event for posterity - some even tagging along. After all, how often did you have a front row seat to an invasion?

The fourth group caused the most damage - unintentionally. They ran to the closest bank, or ATM, and began drawing out as much money as they could. That news spread like wildfire. Before long, the Chairman of the Krung Thai Bank, Dr. Somchai Sujjapongse, called the Minister of Finance, Apisak Tantivorawong, and informed him that there was a run on the banks.

The Minister of Finance called the Prime Minister for instructions, but that worthy was a bit too busy to deal with any bureaucrat at the moment. Left to his own devices, Apisak Tantivorawong closed all the banks in the Greater Bangkok Metropolitan Area and asked the Chief of Police to put officers on all the ATMs until they could be shut down.

The harried Police Chief promised that he would do what he could with the forces he had at his disposal - which was not a lot. His decision made great strategic sense - guard the ATMs in the wealthy and middle class areas where a lone officer was far less likely to be overwhelmed by protestors/enemy armed forces.

When the Black Lotus agent in the police force got wind those orders, he immediately relayed them to his superiors. It was Manna from Heaven. Those leaders quickly got in touch with their Karin/Khanate co-belligerents and provided them with maps (courtesy of Mapquest and a printer) of the locations of all the closest bank branches and ATMs - guarded by lone officers, or not at all. If they moved fast enough, they could catch the bank employees before they left work.

Before long, the banks were back in business. The Alliance insurgents sat back and let the panic-withdrawals ensue. There simply weren't enough police left to respond to every bank 'reopening'. The Karin dutifully allowing the Thai people to resume their legal pillaging of the Thai financial system went viral. Before long, everybody was flocking to the banks and marketplaces. After all, hadn't they just heard on the BBC that the city was about to fall to the Rebels?

Welcome to the unverified news era, where a person could babble anything and be believed, no matter now preposterous their assertion was. It made no logical sense that the Loyalist could lose control of the capital, but logic had flown right out the window, to be replaced by a frantic effort to report anything that might be newsworthy and the desire to believe the worst was happening.

Back in New York, Lady Yum-Yum clapped her hands in glee. She felt she had to explain the implications of this to me. Until that moment, the vibrant Thai middle class had largely been unenthusiastic supporters of the current regime. Now the banks were closing and those people, denied their money in this time of crisis, got both scared and angry. It was their damn money.

Hysteria took over. Would there be enough food in their cupboards to carry them through the unrest? If there wasn't, how were they going to pay for what they needed? Prices were going to be skyrocketing. Would the power be disrupted? That would mean the refrigerators would die and the food spoil. The water? Sanitation? An unfounded sense of dread gripped those people - and they suddenly began believing their government had let them down.

Those normally sedate, polite people began flooding the streets to inadvertently make the police's and army's job a far more colossal undertaking. 'No, they wouldn't go back home until the current unfortunateness passed.' They had families to feed and, if the government had everything under control, why were the banks closed?

The security apparatus was in an impossible situation. They couldn't shoot everybody ~ there was no way their troops would go for that. They couldn't arrest people who only wanted to get enough money to feed their families. And, besides, why was the government shutting down the banks? How bad was it really? Were they on the wrong side of this civil war? That nagging fear crept into the minds of the junior officers on the streets.

The BBC team wasn't alone in spreading disinformation and panic either. Several news agencies had reporters in hotels all around Bangkok ~ their version of 'in the field' reporting included three hot meals a day, a massage and a few non-life-endangering attempts at investigative journalism. By eleven o'clock in the morning, there was a whirlwind of destruction from all over the place (if you believed the internet).

One ABC reporter stood on his eleventh story balcony and gave a blow by blow accounting of what he perceived to be going on. (It would have been better, if his cameraman hadn't been hiding in corner with a mattress over himself.) The reporter gave to the world a very wobbly perspective of events.

Tens of thousands of protestors were in the streets [insert stock protestor footage]. Khanate tanks had been spotted all over the place (which were in fact Thai T-84 Oplots) [insert a collage of Khanate war footage and the current situation map]. Airstrikes were going on everywhere [insert stock footage of a variety of air strikes along with the occasional actual Khanate strike in Bangkok].

The two-woman team from Complément d'enquête were far more adventurous. Not only was the journalist hot, her camerawoman was a babe too. Virginia suggested they might be lesbians. I knew they weren't and I had a sudden idea that maybe I could abuse my current popularity to give a 'behind the scenes' interview with both of them. In Paris - I wouldn't put Hana through that here in the States.

Anyway, by eleven-thirty, they had reported on a street protest broken up by police using tear gas and 'less-lethal' rounds. They had avoided being arrested there, but been rounded up four blocks over. A few minutes after that, they were liberated by a different Thai mob and a few Khanate soldiers. Sadly, another reporter had already staked a claim to those souls, so the two women went off looking for another story.

They found themselves in the midst of the protestors taking over the Government House, then the military counter-offensive. This time people were getting mangled, killed and wounded. A few seconds later death came a-calling for the military. They had been advancing up a wide open boulevard. Two Khanate planes [Su-24s] found them and visited some hate on those Loyalists suceuses (her descriptor).

Ten minutes later, the viewing populace found the duo flagging down a cab and speeding through the chaotic streets, running down a lead that the last democratically elected Prime Minister of Thailand, Yingluck Shinawatra (who was even pretty hot for a lady heading toward fifty), had been rescued/executed. Those two looked as if they were having the time of their lives.

At that point in the struggle there were roughly 2,000 Alliance troops in the city. The Loyalist had over 50,000, outnumbering the rebels by 25:1 ... and they were still losing the international popularity contest. Banks running out of money ... marketplace stripped of foodstuffs ... dozens of Karin lounging around, or helping out the general Thai populace.

When asked why, the local Karin commander smiled and, in broken Thai, stated,

"Why fight anymore? The Khanate is already rounding up the band of rascals who have ruined this country. We have already won."

Some of those 'rascals' looked out their windows to be sure what that Karin was saying on national television wasn't the truth.

The reasonable reaction for those 'important people' was to call the local airbase to have a plane prepped for a quick departure and then begin to electronically transfer money in their bank accounts to financial institutions in Malaysia. For those adjutants, who were standing around as this was going on, came the stark realization that they didn't have an exit plan. Someone was going to have to pay for this fiasco ... and the real bandits were getting the Hell out of Dodge. Not good.

Somewhere around noon, those men began calling the officers in the thick of the action and warned them that there might be repercussions for shooting unarmed civilians. What did that mean? The adjutant couldn't say, but the implication was clear - Human Rights was about to become an issue for the men ordering the rank and file to suppress this insurgency. These officers didn't have an exit plan either.

Mind you, not a single officer left his post. None of them fled the country. They grimly hung on because around two in the afternoon they were starting to get a clearer sense of what was going on and realized they should be able to win this. The enemy wasn't in strength anywhere and before long, attrition would start being a factor and the Royal Thai Army could win that fight.

The main front was stabilizing. The 2nd Army was in tough shape though all three divisions were still in the fight. The 1st Army's 2nd and 9th Divisions had corked up the advances out of Cambodia. As soon as night fell, they would maneuver the majority of the 2nd Division to crush the Alliance forces north of Bangkok. The rioters would be crushed tomorrow morning. They would survive.

This realization came too late to them. The rot of fear had infected the 1st Army, 1st Division and the police force commands. Of more importance, a small group of secretive individuals convinced two senior Thai officers that something had to be done before the city fell, or the Prime Minister reasserted control over the city.

Those two conspirators had the same problem as the Loyalists - enemy troops and protestors in the street. Those officers had no way to contact the crucial enemy commanders, but they knew who did - the Indian Navy. Surreptitiously, they contacted the Indian Navy's Expeditionary Fleet. The fleet's Admiral quickly put them in touch with the Alliance Command Authority and within two hours, a deal was made.

The Great Khan would stop the Alliance offensive if the King of Thailand made a public appeal - no strings attached. This new group of rebels and the Alliance worked out the path they needed to take to reach the King so that the Alliance forces were out of the way and no planes, or helicopter attacked their formations. They even had a TV station that would broadcast the King's speech ending the conflict. All they needed was nightfall.

And that was the true story of how the counter-coup was pulled off, how the King of Thailand was able to talk to the Great Khan and how the Thai government was overthrown. In the final analysis, the Loyalist hadn't fallen before the might of the Alliance. They were done in by a tiny number of Black Lotus operative almost no one knew existed, with a small amount of assistance from JIKIT.

"No wonder the Seven Pillars has never been able to wipe out these guys," Addison yawned. "They are slippery as eels and thrice as lethal. I am glad they are on our side." Several sets of eyes looked at her skeptically. "I mean, I am glad we are currently working toward the same goals."

Thus,

"I suggest we all get some sleep," Addison declared as she stood up and stretched.

Odette was comfortably asleep, so I curled her up and carried her to the elevator. I wanted to go home and forget that I had lost any semblance of a normal life. I didn't know what was worse; me doing the shit I was doing, or me understanding what I was doing. Juanita had gone down ahead of us to pull the car around to the front.

Chaz, Pamela, Odette and I went down in the first wave of the exodus from the workplace. The door opened on the ground floor. I wasn't the first person to notice her. My reflexes had improved to the point I had a moment to recognize her before the people around me sprang into action.

Pamela side-stepped to the right, pistol mystically appearing in her two-hand grip. Chaz - Chaz bore Odette and me to the ground. His level of dedication astonished me. He was shielding us with his body. From what, I hadn't been able to determine.

"Deadman switch," one of my aunts stated. "I want to talk with Cáel." The voice had a stressed tenor to it.

"Back outside," Pamela simmered.

"No."

"Chaz, what is going on?" I asked him. He hadn't moved and wasn't letting me wiggle around to see.

"Explosive vest," he responded coolly. That's right. Chaz was shielding Odette and me with his body.

That is what I found astonishing - his desire to give his life for me. His expectation that Pamela could kill the threat while he was currently occupied was understandable.

"We seem to be at an impasse," Pamela edged further away.

She wasn't avoiding the blast radius. That was impossible in this lobby. No, if it came to firing, she was making it easier for Chaz to get a shot off since the shooter couldn't cover both angles of attack.

"Let me talk to him," my aunt insisted. This made no sense.

"Chaz, let me deal with this," I told my bodyguard.

"Are you sure?" he questioned.

"Not really. As Pamela said, she's not going to let any of us leave until she talks to me and if you kill her, she kills all of you." Chaz let me stand.

Odette was just awakening to the threat. Chaz rose to stand by my side. (Sadly, Odette didn't rate him dying for her.) I prayed I didn't fuck this up.

"Cáel, is that really you?" the women with green eyes and red hair asked me. She sounded desperate ... which would explain the suicide vest.

"Yeah ... which one are ... Mom?"