Para Bellum

Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

(Author's Note: To skip to the sex, go to chapters XVII.I, XVII.II & XIX, below

Author's Note 2: This work is the sequel to "Vincit Qui Patitur," and is the fourth part of the storyline that began with "Quid Pro Quo." (All chapters in this work are numbered sequentially, beginning with those in Quid Pro Quo))

XVI

Monday, 0545

Jack Northcutt woke to the compulsion of his subconscious mind to beat his iPhone alarm by fifteen minutes; he felt surprisingly alert and eager for his workout. He'd been lazy the day before and had given in to the (not necessarily bad) temptation of remaining in bed to have wake-up sex with Veronica, his home intruder-turned-girlfriend, before heading out to begin his eyes-on recon and intrusion point-to-case meeting with his old Army buddy, Jimmy, at Veronica's former place of employment, the gentlemen's club, Baby Doll's. Jack hauled himself to his feet, kissed Veronica's lips and forehead and whispered his apologies for disturbing her, then put on a fresh tee shirt and pair of exercise shorts.

Slamming home the last of his 25 pound plates on the barbell, Jack swung underneath and lay upon the thin cushion of the bench and began pounding out his reps, lifting 345 pounds with each push and felt himself becoming increasingly energized as he felt his anger and rage rising, taking charge of his movements and allowing his conscious, rational and (mostly) adult thought processes to retreat to the depths of his mind and contemplate what he'd accomplished so far.

XVI.I

Saturday, 1148

Jack walked into the dimly lit warehouse-cum-Asian market on the Southwest side, recognizing that always reliable indicator of expatriate Chinese shoppers, the smell of fresh blood, rancid fish and faint undercurrent of incense. He kept his pace casual, ignoring the always lingering and never quite welcoming sideways glances the mostly Taishan and Teochew/Chaozhou shoppers gave him. Though he'd never worn a badge and served as a cop, and had been out of active federal service for two years, Jack was white, and his short hair, military bearing, state of fitness and inability to project "soft-eyes" labeled him as a likely fed and even more untrustworthy than the average (Caucasian) bear to these customers.

Absently looking from side to side and noticing such socially progressive products as bags of 'Jew's Ear Fungus' (aka, Auricularia auricula-judae), and tubes of 'Black Man'-brand toothpaste, he proceeded in the manner he still believed to be casual and nonchalant, wandered into the alcove set aside for gold sales and purchases and asked for 'Mr. An.' The teenager standing behind the counter picked up a cheap landline phone and mumbled something into it, likely in Cantonese, and then advised Jack in English that Mr. An would be just a moment. The boy had a severely lopsided haircut and a cringeworthy bloom of acne on his fat cheeks and greasy forehead. Jack calmly strolled around the shop, looking but not caring at all for the thick gold jewelry. To Jack's eye, the twenty three and sometimes twenty four karat gold in the jewelry on display looked disconcertingly similar in color to discount, supermarket-brand macaroni and cheese; clearly, he concluded, something one might wear as a display of wealth, rather than as an objet d'art. Then again, Jack's ability to appreciate precious metals and jewelry was only slightly more developed than his passion for gourmet food, which was non-existent.

"Hello, Jack. What do you need?"

Jack smiled in what he believed was a friendly manner, ever so slightly bowing his head to the rotund, bald East Asian man who stood before him. "Hello, Mr. An. I need some portable video cameras, you know, like trail cameras; do you have any in-stock?"

"You hunting deer?"

"No, some very big rats, and I need to set them up along a few different trails, and be able to check them by proximity, not just manually from a memory stick. Do you have anything like that?"

An tilted his head once and walked toward a side vault in the North side of the gold store, slid open the door and held it open for Jack to follow him in.

"What kind of magnification do you need, Jack?"

"Ten power. I need to be able to see the rats' faces clearly from 100 meters away."

An nodded subtly and asked, "Wifi P2P transfer okay? You can download or stream the feed with an app for your phone."

"Sure. Actually, do you have any drones that I can move within the vicinity of the cameras to transfer the data?"

An smirked and pushed his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose. "Of course. I just got back from the annual Shenzhen electronics fair, I can give you a good price on both."

"Oh yeah? What's the cash discount?" Jack asked.

An thought for perhaps three seconds. "Ten percent."

"Okay, how much for 20 of the cameras and 2 quadcopter drones that can download the data?"

"Two thousand dollars. You want the drones with the license? I can take off another $200 if you want that..."

"No. Unlicensed is fine."

"Okay, $2,000." An repeated.

Jack screwed up his face, before responding. "How about $1,500? That's still the 'Gwai Lo' price, I know you didn't spend more than $200 for what I'm asking, but you did go all the way to Shenzhen to get it, and we go back a little ways, don't we?"

An only nodded and grunted in reply, but his mind flashed back quickly to the memory of staggering out of his electronics store, smoking and mostly in rubble on the Kabul-Kunduz highway in Baghlan Province, and by sheer coincidence, finding a bearded-Jack directing his squad of Afghan Local Police trainees to pick An up and toss him in the back of their Toyota Hilux, before departing the scene. An's store had been collateral damage to a narco-dispute between the owner of his neighboring store and another narco-chieftain, and the fact that he was an American citizen was something Jack couldn't have known when he saw the explosion and had decided to drive by and found An stumbling out of the wreckage. But it was a coincidence that An could never forget. "Ok. But no more discounts. We're even now." He said, holding out his hand.

Jack shook his hand. "Deal."

Jack paid An with 15 crisp, $100 bills, then left the vault and waited back in the jewelry shop while An put what Jack had purchased into a very malodorous green, surplus duffle bag. Jack took the bag and began walking toward the exit, finding the combination of mildew and mothballs more palatable than the smell of coagulated swine blood and fish entrails, slowly putrefying in the close air of the cave-like store.

XVI.II

Saturday, 1352

Jack pulled into the gravel parking lot of "TNT-Tactical," outside of city limits (and therefore exempt from municipal ordinances or sales tax) just on the East side of the County line. His 2015, 5.6 L, Infiniti Q70L was the only non-SUV or pickup truck in the parking lot, and as he entered the store, he was the only person inside dressed in khaki pants, a leather jacket and a collared shirt. Were it not for his hard eyes, menacing smile and short hair, the patrons might have dismissed him as either a 'diverse urban core,' gun control plant, or some suburbanite looking for somewhere to buy a sporting clays shotgun. The patrons Jack saw consisted mostly of wannabe tactical heroes, but there a few genuine hard-edged types (mostly grizzled street cops and a few gray-beard military veterans), to whom he nodded. Jack ignored most of them, and strode up to the very fat, mustached man behind the glass showcase filled with three acrylic shelves of Glock, Sig, Ruger, and FN hammerless, semi-auto pistols. Being a revolver man at heart, he found the propensity for semi-autos to spit expended brass all over creation, troubling. "Why take the time to shoot someone, only to have to look around for all the brass afterward?" Jack had always wondered.

"Rick." Jack said simply in way of a greeting, inclining his head a bit.

"Jack. What can I do for you?" Rick had the clearly grumpy aura about him of a man with no time for people new to 'Gun World' or those looking to engage in small talk to make themselves feel more like the pros they'd never be. He knew just enough about Jack, based on his demeanor and the way he carried himself, and his often prolific buying habits (and willingness to pay cash), to be polite to Jack and treat him as a customer worthy of cultivating.

"I need some 12 gauge adapters for 22 Long Rifle cartridges, and I need them to be able to cycle from the magazine into the breech of a Remington 870, and eject properly; do you sell any that can do that?"

Rick squinted his eyes for a few seconds, ignoring the phone that began ringing and the angry AM radio host ranting in the background. "Fast Lane has a set that just came out that should, I believe, meet your needs."

"How much?" Jack asked simply.

Rick put his beefy paws onto the showcase and pushed himself up to his feet. He went back into his office/garage and rummaged for a bit before reappearing with a package of four metal shotshell adapters. "They only come in packs of four; that work for you?"

"Sure." Jack said, taking out his wallet, but again, Rick held up his meaty hand, this time in a polite signal to pause as he smiled, cautioning Jack in a very 'Treebeard'-like manner to not be hasty.

"I'm curious to see if they actually cycle the way you need them to. Tell you what: you don't live way out here in this County, I'm pretty sure, so how about you let me verify they'll cycle through the tubular magazine and breech of an 870. If so, I'll give you call and you can pick them up. If they don't, I'll see if I can tool them up enough so that they will, and I'll give them to you on the house. I can do that, because while they're supposed to cycle like any other 12 gauge, 3 inch shotshell, this is the first production line to come out, and it's possible, or maybe even likely, they'll have problems fully cycling from the tubular magazine, through the breech and into the chamber. What I'm trying to say is, if they don't work as advertised, I can get my money back, and you can have the doctored versions that should work. Deal?"

Jack put away his wallet and smiled. "Fair enough, Rick. You have my phone number?"

"Yup." Rick said simply, holding out his hand. Jack shook Rick's hand and left.

XVI.III

Saturday, 1430

Jack pulled into the short-term airport parking lot and parked in full view of at least three cameras with obvious, overlapping coverage. He'd just barely remembered in time where he was, and before he exited the car he lifted up his pant leg to unstrap the ankle holster and Ruger LCP .380 auto he kept in it. Though he'd always prefer revolvers to semi-autos, for concealed carry there was just no substitute. And besides, Jack reasoned that if he used a concealed pistol for defense, he didn't need to worry about policing up all his brass. He put the ankle strap and Ruger under his front seat and stepped out, ensuring his car was not only locked, but that the alarm was engaged. The duffle bag with the two drones was in his trunk, under some oil-stained blankets and a trauma kit he always kept there. He took the cameras out of the duffle bag and put them into a large, leather and canvas (distinctly, 'non-tactical') backpack. Closing the trunk and carrying the backpack on his shoulders, he walked with his hands in his jacket's front pockets casually toward the departures terminal, then took the escalator down to the arrivals terminal and strolled toward the rental car pickup shuttle.

He rode the shuttle out to the rental terminal and waited in the shortest line, eventually renting a gray, mid-size sedan for the day. While he'd learned from the real intelligence professionals that this kind of plan would never hold up against a state-run intelligence or security service, for criminals with limited abilities to track rental cars or subpoena records (or even the inclination to shake down an otherwise lawfully run, high-profile business), he thought it a suitable way to keep his identity at arm's length from discovery by Dante or his underlings, and thereby preserve the element of surprise.

As Jack drove away from the rental car terminal, he reviewed in his head where the closest of the three clubs he was going to case was located, and decided to visit Pirate's Cove first, then Poison, and finally Desperado's. From what he remembered when he'd looked up the commercial satellite imagery online, each of them had, within 100 meters of the parking lots (and visible from an elevated position), multi-story parking garages.

The parking garage near Pirate's Cove was the closest to the rental terminal, and he drove there first. The garage was directly across the street from the club and had six levels. It abutted several office buildings and in addition to Pirate's Cove, had quite a few bars and restaurants along the same side of the street as the club. Sunday afternoon was an ideal time to setup the cameras to cover the club's parking lot, as in this section of the Northeast side, there were no rear parking lots, and Pirate's Cove had not even a single rear parking space or (un)loading area; the alley was too narrow and real estate too expensive. There was, however, a VIP/Management parking space directly in front of the club's door, and closer to the entrance than either of the two handicap parking spaces... "Hmm, I wonder what shitbird parks there, Dante." Jack muttered to himself.

Jack took out a can of 3M brand, 77-10 super adhesive spray, and generously coated the mounting pad of the first camera before securing it to the backside of a large, fish-eye mirror on the fourth floor. The mirror was mounted at the corner to provide drivers coming from each direction the chance to approach the intersection informed of traffic from the opposite direction. And with typical high-rise parking garage construction standards, the mirror extended beyond the structure of the corner-pillar and provided a flat, ideal mounting surface for the camera, and one which obstructed any casual view of the camera from inside the parking garage. It was also in a blind spot of the garage internal surveillance cameras' coverage. "Why would parking garage designers ever build them for ideal surveillance?" Jack asked himself, knowing that, at least in pre-911 America, they didn't. And this vintage high-rise garage from 1995 was a perfect example.

Jack mounted two other cameras, one each in similar blind spots on the roof and the fifth story, before returning to his car, paying the $2 he owed for his 20 minutes of parking, then drove through the area around the club, six blocks in all directions, learning the current states of road-construction detours and lane restrictions, noting the street-side parking restrictions, length of time for stoplight changes, sensitivity of stoplights to waiting vehicles, and the number of unoccupied store fronts. The rest of the information he needed he'd get in subsequent casings and from traffic overlays publicly available. He repeated the process for the other two clubs, refilled the car's tank, and returned it to the rental car terminal. On the shuttle bringing him back from the rental car terminal to the airport, he considered his next bit of recon he planned for Sunday.

XVII

Monday, 0700

Jack had just run two of his ten miles on his treadmill. He'd removed his tee shirt before starting his run, as he'd begun to sweat more than normal, which he believed was due to the excessive amount (by Jack's standards) of alcohol he'd consumed at Baby Doll's the previous night, when he'd cased the place. He'd also confirmed what Veronica had told him about how the dancers dealt drugs for the shitbird in charge of the club, Dante. He watched the condensation cloud that formed on the window in front of him with each exhalation, enjoying the way the subzero temperature outside the window would rapidly dissipate the opaque condensation cloud until it was almost gone, then his next breath would renew it. The drama of disappearing and reappearing captured his focus, helped him keep his pace steady and allowed his mind to wander back to his conversation with Veronica about Dante, the day before.

XVII.I

Sunday, 0900

Veronica flinched and inhaled sharply as Jack threw off the bed sheet and comforter, and sat up harshly against the headboard. She opened her eyes to the light pushing through the blinds, illuminating the room sufficiently for her to notice his eyes wide open, the veins in his temples throbbing, his skin slick with sweat and looking quite pale, almost bluish. "He looks awful!" She thought, and saw that his arms were stretched out along the top length of the headboard, his hands clutching the wood tightly and his breathing was rapid.

"Jack, what's wrong?" She asked him, her mind moving from groggy to painful clarity as the warmth of their post-coital snooze evaporated into the cold air of the bedroom.

Jack blinked several times, swallowed twice, and then let out a long breath and closed his eyes. He didn't answer her, but did slowly let go of the headboard and held his palms against his closed eyes and forehead, breathing steadily slower and deeper.

Veronica watched him, not sure what had happened, but very concerned that he wasn't answering her. "Jack?" She asked him again, her voice tentative and quiet. She gently reached out and touched the back of his head and neck with the fingers of her left hand, noticing the coldness of the sweat, and the clammy feeling of his skin. He jerked slightly at her touch, as though he were surprised rather than revolted.

"Jack? Baby, talk to me, please." She implored him, turning to face him and placing her right hand on the area of the comforter that was over his right leg. This time he did not flinch from her touch, and breathed out once more, very deeply, and moved his hands down to his lap, his right hand moving to lay on top of her hand, over his leg.

"Sorry, Ronnie. Just a bad dream." He told her weakly, clearing his throat several times before he opened his eyes and looked at her. He tried to smile at her in his mischievous manner, but it came off as very forced and did not look quite right to Veronica.

"A 'bad dream'"? She asked him, incredulously.

"I didn't mean to wake you up like that. Sorry, Ronnie." He said, lifting her right hand up and kissing the back of it slowly and deliberately. "It just happens sometimes."

She studied his eyes, wondering if it was related to his military service or something else in his past. Regardless, it made her want to be close to him, to comfort him. "Come here." She whispered soothingly, and coaxed him to lay back down in bed with her. She lay on her side, facing him, and cradled his head and face against her breasts, feeling his still shaky breath against them. She once again enjoyed the stark contrast in their skin colors as they lay entwined together. She slowly trailed the fingers of her right hand through the short, clipped hair on his scalp and intermittently kissed and nuzzled his forehead. Eventually she felt his breathing return to normal, and felt him take her right nipple in his mouth and gently suck it as he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, holding himself tightly against her. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the feeling of comforting him and the pleasure he gave her as she suckled him. After perhaps twenty minutes, he released her nipple from his mouth and pushed himself back to a sitting position.

"Thank you, Ronnie." He said simply, his cocksure smile was back.

She continued to lay on her side, her head propped up on her arms as she admired and smiled at him, and reached out a hand and gently ran her fingers across his pecs and abs. "I care about you, Jack, and you can always find comfort with me. Now tell me what you dreamed about that made you startle out of sleep like that."