A job-hunting specialist had pointed him in a natural direction-the Internal Revenue Service.
"You're nuts!" Brull had told the man. "I wouldn't fit in with those paper shufflers."
"You don't know the IRS. It's run by master sergeants. You'd fit in perfectly. Just give it a shot."
Amazingly it turned out to be true.
Brull had come to the IRS for one simple reason, security. But he stayed for an entirely different one: power.
There was no field on earth in which Big Dick Brull could wield such absolute power. Hell, even the President of the United States had checks and balances on him.
The only person Big Dick Brull was answerable to was what he called the Almighty. In this case, he didn't mean the Lord. He meant the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, who in these strange days was a woman.
Right now he was fearlessly chewing a new orifice for the local supervisor of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
"You will pull your people out of the Folcroft perimeter. Today. That means I want those flashy boats of yours pulled back beyond the three-mile fucking limit. IRS won't stand for being spied on by DEA."
"You have no jurisdiction over us."
"The IRS has total jurisdiction everywhere. What was your Social Security number again?"
"I didn't give it," the DEA man said flatly.
"Let me see," Brull said slowly, tapping the keys to his desktop Zilog computer. "I have 034-28-4462. From Massachusetts originally. Isn't that right? You know, compliance up there in Mass has always been a problem. We did a sociological study of the citizens in that area, and do you know what we concluded?"
"No, I do not."
"We concluded that New Englanders in general and Massachusetts taxpayers in particular have an independent streak. They think the rules apply to everyone except them. They actually think they're above the rules. Do you think you're above the rules?"
"I play by the rules, same as you."
"I see by your last year's return you made 1,567 dollars in charitable deductions. That's well above the statistical norm, did you know that? Discriminant function formula is the term we use around here. Your numbers slip above the DIF line, and the service's computers kick out your return, red-flagged for an audit. I guess the computer hasn't gotten around to you yet."
"My charitable contributions are my own business."
Brull pounded his desk. Behind him a wall sign reading Seizure Fever-Catch It! shook.
"Wrong! Your charitable contributions are exactly IRS business, and if you want the service to stay out of your back returns, you stay out of the service's seizures."
"We have a legal claim to Folcroft assets."
"Right behind us."
"You vultures will pick that place clean and leave nothing for DEA."
"And you jerks like nothing better than to seize a property and pick it up at government auction three months later. We know your game. We've audited you DEA cowboy types before."
"I'll take your recommendations under advisement," said the DEA supervisor begrudgingly.
"I know you will," Big Dick Brull said in a suddenly unctuous voice. "I know you will."
Big Dick Brull hung up the telephone and just because he was the kind of guy he was, he red-flagged the DEA official's most recent return for a field audit. It would take three to four months for the notification to go out. Let him kick about it then. Not a damn thing he could do about it. And the agents were sure to find something really fishy. That was an ironclad guarantee. The tax code was over ten thousand pages long and so confusing that even the service couldn't make heads or tails of it.
That made it the perfect bureaucratic bludgeon to pound loose cash out of even the most stubborn taxpayer.
As Big Dick Brull finished issuing the electronic instructions, his desk phone rang.
"Who is it?" he asked his secretary via intercom.
"An Agent Philip Phelps."
"There's no Agent Phelps authorized to report directly to me."
"He says he's reporting from a seizure site called Folcroft Sanitarium on behalf of Special Agent Jack Koldstad."
"What's wrong with Koldstad? Scratch that. Put Phelps on. I'll ask him myself."
The trembling voice of Agent Phelps came on the line. "I have bad news, Mr. Brull."
"I hate bad news."
"Jack Koldstad has been injured in the line of duty."
"That careless bastard! He knows we have an insurance problem. Did he die?"
"No, sir."
"His mistake. One he'll rue, I promise you. What happened?"
"We found a hidden room in the basement of the place, Mr. Brull. It was the jackpot."
"What kind of jackpot?"
"Gold bullion."
Brull perked up. "How much gold?"
"We don't know."
"Didn't you count it?"
"We were, er, forcibly ejected before we could take inventory."
"What the hell's the matter with you! No one throws out IRS agents!"
"A man attacked us. When we woke up, we had ended up on the roof. Koldstad was with us. It seems someone performed a partial frontal lobotomy on him, Mr. Brull. He's a basket case."
"Christ! You know what this means? Long-term rehab. That screwup will be a burden to the service to the day they dump his worthless ass into the cold ground, and there's fuck-all we can do about it."
"I know, sir."
"You secure that gold?"
"No, sir, we're afraid to go back in."
"Afraid of what?"
"Well, there's the guy with the thick wrists and the, um, giant butterfly."
"What giant butterfly?"
"The one Mr. Koldstad claimed lobotomized him." Agent Phelps cleared his throat quickly. "Sir, I know how this sounds-"
"It sounds," Big Dick Brull said in a grinding voice, "as if you had better seal off that basement until I get there and have your resumes in order for your next careers. Because it won't be with the Internal Fucking Revenue Service."
Big Dick Brull slammed down the telephone. It was time to blow the Folcroft file wide open, and there was only one way to do that. Take charge personally.
Chapter 18
It was mission creep at its worst.
Winston Smith had no problem with the primary mission. He just wondered what took the Pentagon so long to get around to authorizing it.
Warlord Mahout Feroze Anin was a penny-ante clan leader and arms merchant in the divided Horn of Africa nation of Stomique until the UN relief mission blew into North Nog-as the Stomique regional capital of Nogongog was called-to set up what started as a people-feeding operation and mission-crept its way to a nation-building debacle.
When the UN tanks rolled ashore, Warlord Anin dug out his one Western suit and welcomed them with open arms. It was good PR. It got his beaming face on CNN and made him instantly the most recognizable Stomique citizen in human history.
But when the UN command didn't annoint Warlord Anin as the natural unifier of Stomique, he ordered hit-and-run attacks on UN peacekeeping forces. Anin made the mistake of not keeping the chain of deniability intact, and the next thing Anin knew he was wanted by UNOSOM for ambushing a French UN contingent.
That was when the US. Rangers rolled in. And speedily got their tails shot up.
Navy SEAL Winston Smith had a ringside seat to it all. SEAL Team Six had been sent in, disguised as Army grunts to reconnoiter the situation. In the rabbit warren of North Nog, there was no finding Warlord Anin.
Smith personally witnessed the multimillion-dollar Blackhawk helicopter brought down by a two-hundred-dollar Soviet-remaindered RPG while riding shotgun on a Humvee down Mission Support Road Tiger. His team was among the first on the scene. They got their tails shot up, too. But they fought their way through the sea of Stomique civilians and pulled the dead and wounded to safety, except for the one guy they missed.