Designated Targets Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Dramatis Personae

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  Praise for Weapons of Choice

  About the Author

  Also by John Birmingham

  Copyright Page

  FOR MY PARENTS,

  the first storytellers

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A big tip of the propeller hat is owed to the usual suspects. Cate Paterson and Brianne Tunnicliffe in Sydney. Steve Saffel and Keith Clayton in New York. I’m abashed by and indebted to Steve Stirling and Eric Flint, who took precious time away from their own, much superior work to give me advice on mine. If I were a better listener, this would be a better book. A special thanks goes to the lads in soc.history.what-if who responded with scarifying enthusiasm to my off-topic requests. You know who you are.

  Finally, love and thanks go to Jane, Anna, and Thomas for putting up with me while I’m on deadline. It’s not a good look. I owe them a treat.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  MULTINATIONAL FORCE COMMANDERS

  Francois, Major Margie. USMC. Combat Surgeon and Chief Medical Officer, Multinational Force. (USS Kandahar)

  Halabi, Captain Karen. RN. Commander Deputy Commander Multinational Force. Commander HMS Trident.

  Jones, Colonel J. L. USMC. Commander 82nd Marine Expeditionary Unit. (USS Kandahar)

  Judge, Captain Mike. USN. Commander USS Hillary Clinton.

  Kolhammer, Admiral Phillip. USN. Task Force Commander. OIC Special Administrative Zone. (California)

  Willet, Captain Jane. RAN. Commander HMAS Havoc.

  Windsor, His Royal Highness Major Harry. Task Force Commander British SAS contingent. OIC Special Air Service Regiment. (Training cadre)

  MULTINATIONAL FORCE PERSONNEL

  Ivanov, Major Pavel. Russian Federation Spetsnaz.

  Nguyen, Lieutenant Rachel. RAN. South West Pacific Area HQ Intelligence Liaison.

  Rogas, Chief Petty Officer Vincente. US Navy SEALs.

  Müller, Captain Jurgen. European Defence Force. Reassigned Special Operations Executive.

  MISC

  Duffy, Julia. New York Times Feature Writer. Embedded 82nd MEU.

  Natoli, Rosanna. CNN Researcher/Producer. Embedded 82nd MEU.

  1942 ALLIED COMMANDERS

  Churchill, Winston. Prime Minister, Great Britain.

  Curtin, John. Prime Minster, Commonwealth of Australia.

  Eisenhower, Brigadier General Dwight D. US Army. Head of War Plans Division. Appointed Commander of US Forces, European Theatre of Operations, June 1942.

  Hoover, J. Edgar. Director Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  King, Admiral Ernest J.USN. Commander in Chief of the US Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations.

  MacArthur, General Douglas. US Army. Commander Allied Forces, South West Pacific Area. Headquartered Brisbane, Australia.

  Marshall, General George C. US Army. Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff.

  Nimitz, Admiral Chester. USN Commander in Chief US Pacific Fleet.

  Roosevelt, President, Franklin D. 32nd President of the United States of America.

  Stephenson, William. Personal Envoy of PM Churchill, Head of British Security Coordination Western Hemisphere.

  1942 ALLIED PERSONNEL

  Barnes, Brigadier Michael. Commander 2nd Cavalry Regiment, (Australian Army).

  Black, Commander Daniel. USN. Senior Military Liaison, Special Administrative Zone. (California)

  Curtis, Lieutenant (j.g.) Wally. USN. Military Liaison, Pacific Fleet.

  Kennedy, Lieutenant John F. Commander PT 101.

  Mohr, Chief Petty Officer Eddie. Transferred to Auxiliary Force Development, Special Administrative Zone. (California.)

  Molloy, Able Seaman Michael “Moose.” PT 101.

  MISC.

  Cherry, Detective Sergeant Lou. Honolulu PD Homicide.

  Davidson, Fmr. Able Seaman James “Slim Jim.” CEO Slim Jim Enterprises.

  O’Brien, Maria. USMC Captain. (Legal Services) (retd.) Chief Counsel Slim Jim Enterprises.

  SOVIET COMMAND

  Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, Secretary General of the Communist Party and Premier of the Soviet Union.

  Laventry Beria, NKVD Chief and head of Special Research Programs.

  AXIS HIGH COMMAND

  JAPAN

  Yamamoto, Admiral Isoroku. IJN. Commander in Chief Combined Fleet. (HIJMS Yamamoto)

  GERMANY

  Göbbels, Reichsminister Josef. German Propaganda Minister.

  Himmler, Reichsführer Heinrich. SS Chief.

  Hitler, Reichschancellor Adolf.

  AXIS PERSONNEL

  Brasch, Colonel Paul. Senior Consulting Engineer. Ministry of Armaments.

  Hidaka, Commander Jisaku. IJN. Chief Aide, Admiral Yamamoto.

  Philby, Harold “Kim.” Fmr SIS officer. NKVD temporary liaison to Skorzeny.

  Skorzeny, Colonel Otto. Waffen SS. Personal bodyguard to Adolf Hitler. Commander of Special Operation Section.

  1

  TUPELO, MISSISSIPPI

  Lordy, thought the boy. It’s a miracle for sure.

  He was seven and a half years old—the man of the house, really, what with his daddy being away in Como, and he had never seen anything like the fearful wonder of the newly chiseled monument.

  HERE LIES JESSE GARON PRESLEY.

  DEEPLY BELOVED OF HIS MOTHER GLADYS, FATHER VERNON,

  AND BROTHER ELVIS.

  A SOUL SO PURE, THE GOOD LORD COULD NOT BEAR

  TO BE APART FROM HIM.

  BORN JAN. 8, 1935,

  TAKEN UNTO GOD JAN. 8, 1935.

  Despite the unseasonable heat of the evening, gooseflesh ran up his thin arms as he read the words again. Whippoorwills and crickets trilled their amazement in the sweet, warm air. With a pounding heart, the boy inched forward and muttered hoarsely, “Jesse, are you here?”

  The stone was cut from blindingly white marble that fairly glowed in the setting sun. The inscription had been inlaid with real gold—he was almost certain of that. He ran his fingers over the words and the cold, hard stone, as if afraid to discover that they weren’t real.

  It must have cost a king’s ransom . . .

  An enormous bunch of store-bought flowers had been placed upon a patch of freshly broken earth that still lay at the foot of the monument. Hundreds of tiny beads of water covered the petals and caught the last golden rays of daylight.

  He dropped down on his knees as if he were in church and stared at the impossible vision for many minutes, heedless of the dirt he was getting on his old dungarees. He remained virtually motionless until one hand reached out and his fingers again brushed the surface of the headstone.

  “Oh,
my,” he whispered.

  Then Elvis Aaron Presley leapt to his feet and ran so fast that he raised a trail of dust as he sprinted down the gravel lane, away from the pauper’s section of the Priceville Cemetery, a-hollerin’ for his mama.

  “He’ll probably get his ass whupped, the poor little bastard.” Slim Jim Davidson smiled as he said it, peering over the sunglasses he had perched on his nose.

  “Why?” asked the woman who was sitting next to him in the rear seat of the gaudy red Cadillac. You didn’t see babies like this every day. Slim Jim had seen to the detailing himself. The paint job, the bison leather seats, everything.

  “For telling lies,” he said. “Headstones don’t just appear like that, you know. They’re gonna think he made it up, and when he won’t take it back, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  The woman seemed to give the statement more thought than it was really due. “I suppose so,” she said after a few seconds.

  Slim Jim could tell she didn’t approve. They were all the same, these people. They’d bomb an entire city into rubble without batting an eye, but they looked at you like you were some sort of hoodlum if you even suggested raising your hand against a snot-nosed kid. Or a smart-mouth dame, for that matter.

  And this O’Brien, she was a helluva smart-mouth dame.

  She’d kept her trap shut, though, while they’d been watching the Presley kid. In fact, she seemed to be fascinated by him. They’d been waiting in the Caddy up on Old Saltillo Road for nearly an hour before he showed. Long enough for Slim Jim to wonder if they were pissing their time up against a wall. But the kid did show, just as his cousin said he would. And he’d heard O’Brien’s stifled gasp when the small figure first appeared, walking out of a stand of trees about two hundred yards away.

  “It’s him, all right,” she said. “Damned if it’s not.”

  Slim Jim had grabbed the contract papers and made to get out of the car right then and there. He’d had enough of sitting still. His butt had fallen asleep, and he was downright bored.

  But O’Brien shook her head. “Not here.”

  He’d bristled at that. His temper had frayed during the long wait. Long enough even to make him feel some sympathy for the cops who’d had to stake him out once or twice. But he took her “advice” because it was always worth taking.

  Her advice had cost him a goddamn packet, too, over the course of their relationship. But along the way, Slim Jim Davidson had learned that you had to spend money to make it. Problem was that up until recently, he didn’t have no money to spend. None of his own, anyway. And spending other people’s money had sent him to the road gangs.

  Mississippi was a powerful reminder of those days. The air tasted the same as it had in Alabama, thick and sweet and tending toward rotten. The faces they’d driven past in town had brought back some unpleasant memories, too. Hard, lean faces with deep lines and dark pools for eyes. The sort of uncompromising faces a man might expect to see on Judgment Day. They’d sure looked that way to Slim Jim when they trooped in from the jury room.

  Well, that felt like a thousand years ago. Now he could buy and sell that fucking jury. And the judge. And his crooked jailers. And the whole goddamned state of Alabama, if he felt like it.

  Well, maybe not the whole state. But he was getting there. This Caddy was bigger and more comfortable than some of the flophouses he’d crashed in during the Depression. He had an apartment in an honest-to-goddamned brownstone overlooking Central Park back in New York, and a house designed by some faggot architect overlooking the beach at Santa Monica, out in L.A. He had stocks and bonds and a big wad of folding money he liked to carry in his new buffalo-hide wallet—just so’s he could pull it out and snap the crisp new bills between his fingers when he needed to remind himself that he wasn’t dreaming.

  Hell, he was so rich now that when those C-notes lost their snap, he could give them away and get some new ones.

  Not that he ever did, of course. Ms. O’Brien would kill him. And she was more than capable of it. No doubt about that.

  She’d insisted that he pick up the Santa Monica house as a long-term investment, too, even though he thought it was kind of down-market, given his newly acquired status.

  “You can stay at the Ambassador if you don’t like rubbing shoulders with your old cell mates down on the piers,” she’d said. “Believe me, Santa Monica will come back, and you need to diversify your asset base. Waterfront property is always a sure bet.”

  Yes, indeed, and Slim Jim was fond of sure bets. After all, they’d made him richer than God. They’d also delivered him a conga line of horny babes, a small army of his own hired muscle, and the slightly scary Ms. O’Brien.

  Thinking about the slightly scary Ms. O’Brien sitting next to him there in the Caddy, however, led naturally to thinking about the slightly scary Ms. O’Brien sliding her body over his in a king-size hotel bed. But that was a dangerous line of thought, he knew. Because Ms. O’Brien wasn’t inclined to get anywhere near a bed with Slim Jim Davidson, naked or not.

  He’d tried feeling her up once, and she’d nearly broken his arm for it. She’d snapped an excruciating wristlock on him without even breaking a sweat, no doubt a party trick she’d picked up back when she was a captain in the Eighty-second MEU. And she’d kept him locked up, gasping for breath and nearly fainting away, while she explained to him the facts of life:

  One, she was his employee, not his girlfriend.

  Two, she would be his employee only for as long as she needed to be, and she would never be his girlfriend.

  Three, she could kick his scrawny ass black and blue without bothering to lace up her boots.

  And four, she . . .

  “Mr. Davidson?”

  Slim Jim jumped, feeling guilty and worried that she might have figured out what he was thinking. But no, luckily she was just dragging him out of his slightly bored daze.

  “Elvis has left the cemetery,” she announced. She said it in a singsong way, and it seemed to amuse her more than it should have. But Slim Jim had given up trying to figure her out.

  “Let’s go over it one last time, just to be sure,” she said, pulling out a flexipad.

  “Oh, please,” he begged. “Let’s not.”

  O’Brien ignored him, and his shades suddenly flickered into life. Windows opened up on the lenses and seemed to float in the air in front of him. Some carried photographs of the boy they’d just seen. Others were full of words. Small words in large type. She’d learned not to burden him with too much text.

  Bitch thinks she’s so goddamned smart . . .

  Slim Jim sighed, and read through the briefing notes again. Some of his reluctance was for show, though. He never really got tired of the amazing gadgets these guys had brought with them.

  “Elvis Aaron Presley, age eight and a half. Mother’s name, Gladys. Father’s name, Vernon,” he recited. “Dead brother, Jesse. Attends school at East Tupelo Consolidated. Father jailed for fraud. Asshole tried to ink a four-dollar check into forty . . .”

  O’Brien shot him a warning look, but he hid behind the shades, pretending he couldn’t see her.

  “Daddy’s out now, away in Como, Mississippi, building a POW camp for the government. Mama takes in sewing when she can get it. Local yokels call ’em white trash behind their backs . . .”

  Slim Jim laughed out loud, glancing out across the ragged fields of corn and soybean that stretched between the cemetery and the edge of the town. “Ha! There’s a fucking pot calling a kettle black if I ever—”

  “The notes, Mr. Davidson. Just review the notes,” said O’Brien.

  Slim Jim returned to the readout for what felt like the hundredth time. He’d heard about some big-time grifters who worked like this. Getting so far inside the heads of their marks that they knew what was going on in there before the chumps realized it themselves. He could sort of see the point.

  O’Brien had helped him close some amazing deals these last few months. But damn, it was hard work. Nevertheless, he plowe
d on, reciting most of the notes from memory even though the words still hung there in front of him.

  “Gladys drinks in private. She finds her comfort in the church. Her first love was dance, her second music. But she’s kind of a fat bitch now so . . . Sorry! Sorry . . . She gets around in bare feet and old socks so her kid can have shoes. Elvis, he’s aware of his family’s low standing. It eats him up and he wants to rescue them. It always tickles him when his mama says she’s proud of him.”

  In spite of himself, Slim Jim couldn’t help but warm to the little prick. They’d listened to his music all the way down here, and you had to admit, the kid had a gift. Or would have.

  Then again, maybe he wouldn’t. If Slim Jim bought him a ticket out of Tupelo now, gave him enough money for a comfortable life, maybe the kid would never sing a song worth a tinker’s crap. Not that the thought really bothered him. Those songs were recorded by an Elvis from another time. No, this was all about who was gonna get paid for them.

  Not some asshole called Colonel Tom Parker, you could bet on that.

  Nope. “Slim Jim Enterprises” would be latching itself on to this particular money tit. And if the kid never became an actual recording star, just because he grew up rich instead of poor, well, who gave a damn? Slim Jim had grown up in a town a lot like this, with a daddy a lot like Vernon. And if some asshole had turned up on their doorstep, offering to buy them out of poverty, Daddy would have been trampled to death by the entire Davidson clan rushing to sign on the dotted line. And to hell with the consequences.

  Slim Jim was only vaguely aware of the deepening dusk as he sat in the Caddy, chanting his way through O’Brien’s notes like some kind of mad priest. Yeah, Tupelo is a lot like home. Besides the two main roads in the center of town, every street was a strip of dirt or gravel. Clouds of dust would rise from them in summer. They’d turn into rivers of mud during the spring rains. Most folks would have worked the Roosevelt program during the Depression, cutting brush, fixing roads. Most, like Gladys Presley, wouldn’t ask for handouts, but would accept what was offered. The men would all be factory workers and sharecroppers.

  Now most of them would be in the army or working in the war industries. Poor but honest, they’d think of themselves. Screwed and stupid was how Slim Jim would have put it.