Self-Defense

Seven years in the Republic of Korea's Special Forces. Nine years as a mercenary across the Middle East and Africa.

Machiavelli was wrong.

Livelihood be damned—I decided to retire and put an end to my private war. Money had never been the issue. One day PTSD simply arrived, and with it a simple, almost capricious craving for quiet and an unhurried life.

But Machiavelli was also right.

In the end I threw myself back into war—bloodier, more vicious combat than anything that had come before. The beginning was almost laughably trivial. And while that triviality piled up, before I knew it I had become a murder suspect charged with killing seven people.

2024. New York County Courthouse, Courtroom Three.

On the eve of the final hearing the prosecutor flipped between his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠papers and my face, then opened his mouth.

"The defendant served as a mercenary for Red One, a private military company operating in Africa and the Middle East. Call sign: Nox. Word is you were something of a legend in that world. That would be you, correct?"

"I don't know about legendary, but yes—I operated as Nox."

"Primary duties?"

"VIP protection, security of strategic assets, and tactical instruction."

"The defendant suffers from PTSD and has been receiving psychiatric treatment for it. Is that accurate?"

"Yes."

The prosecutor wore a look of pure contempt as he dug into my condition with surgical precision.

"Intrusive recollection—vivid, repeating flashbacks of traumatic events. Avoidance behavior—withdrawal from people, deepening social isolation that destroys relationships with family and friends. And then—"

Dissociative symptoms.

Loss of reality, out-of-body experiences. Hallucinations and auditory phantoms ride in on those moments. Dead African and Middle Eastern insurgents I put down sometimes materialize without warning just to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠curse me out.

At first I figured, well, hell's definitely waiting. But every so often the reverse happened too. There was a young man crushed under the rubble of a building leveled by a terrorist bomb, dying in agony; I put a round through him to end it clean. Sometimes he shows up and gives me a bright, easy smile. Oh—and the woman we pulled out of a Nigerian rebel camp once appeared as well. The abuse and torture had carved her up so deep she died only days after the rescue, yet she never stopped blessing me, insisting I was headed for heaven.

Curses or blessings, it made no difference. Random hallucinations and phantom voices are a fucking miserable experience. I lived with them every single day.

"The PTSD the defendant suffers from is the direct result of the killings he committed during those operations. Defendant—how many people did you kill as a mercenary?"

"Objection! Irrelevant to the case at hand."

My lawyer shot his hand up and barked it out, but the judge waved him off.

"The question goes to the defendant's propensity for violence. Answer the prosecutor."

I was about to toss out a rough number when curiosity got the better of me. I glanced at the ceiling and started counting on my cuffed fingers. Ten digits ran out; I folded them and started over, then finally gave up. Best leave off the tens place.

"Nine..."

"Fifty-nine! According to records obtained from Red One, during nine years as a mercenary the defendant took the lives of no fewer than fifty-nine individuals."

What? Oh my God! Really?

The courtroom erupted in gasps and choked exclamations.

That boss of mine had lost his mind. The bastard never once showed his face at the trial, yet he handed over the files? And outing my call sign as Nox on top of it? That was the kind of information you burned. I should have left louder when I quit. For a second I entertained the image of smashing my fist into the Red One boss's smug grin.

My lawyer rolled into a polished defense.

"Even if those kill records are accurate—which we dispute—the men the defendant eliminated were not innocent civilians. They were ruthless terrorists who abducted women and children and trafficked human beings."

Say "terrorist" to an American jury and what springs to mind? Osama bin Laden. Planes slamming into the World Trade Center. My lawyer was banking on exactly that.

"Every American citizen knows how brutal and lawless these animals are! Far from being a monster, the defendant stood on the side of justice, fulfilling his assigned mission to restore order and stability in those nations."

Justice, my ass. I did it for the money. Truth is, government forces and rebels alike barely blink when their own people die. The side that hired me simply had the better public narrative. Beyond that, there was no real difference between them.

Still, the lawyer siphoned the jury's hatred and disgust and wrapped my body count in the flag of righteousness. The man earned his fee.

The prosecutor pressed on.

"Regardless of the targets, the defendant killed fifty-nine people. If there is such a thing as a walking human weapon, that is precisely what we are looking at."

"Objection, Your Honor! That statement is an attack on the defendant's character."

"Sustained. Counsel will stick to the facts and refrain from subjective characterizations."

The prosecutor shifted gears.

"After retiring from mercenary work, the defendant settled not in the Republic of Korea but in the United States. Why?"

"I held a U.S. green card, and a job happened to open up."

"That job was managing a private shooting range on Long Island, correct?"

"Less managing, more just staff."

"Yet your salary was more than double that of the other employees."

"I earned it."

One corner of the prosecutor's mouth lifted as he turned to the jury.

"Indeed he did. And the range that employed him is a business widely suspected of being operated by the mafia."

Mafia?!

A collective gasp rolled through the courtroom. My lawyer lunged to sever any connection.

"Objection, Your Honor. The prosecution is presenting suspicion as established fact."

"There is documented circumstantial evidence that mafia members repeatedly gathered at that range for training. That alone does not prove illegality, of course, but police regard the defendant as a training instructor for mafia personnel. Isn't that so?"

Every word of it was true. The range was mafia-owned. The proprietor, a man named Victor, held a high advisory position in the organization. Years earlier I had provided security for him on a business trip to Syria; that connection led him to hire a PTSD-riddled ex-merc as an instructor for his people. I owed him, and I had no desire to drag him into the mess.

"Whether the customers walking through the door are mafia or chefs, if they ask about firearms you answer. That's the job."

"Do range employees these days also teach close-quarters combat—CQC?"

"Just meddling. Same way soldiers never stop talking army even after they get out. Drop by sometime, Counselor—I'll show you a few things myself."

Deciding the line of questioning was going nowhere, the prosecutor pivoted to the actual incident.

"Three days before the events in question, the defendant had a minor altercation with some of the victims. What sparked it?"

"They did this with their eyes at me."

I used two fingers to pull the corners of my eyes into slits. That alone made the racial slur aimed at an Asian man unmistakable. Sure enough, soft sounds of disgust rippled through the gallery. The prosecutor smacked his lips and continued.

"There were no witnesses. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The claim of racial discrimination is the defendant's uncorroborated assertion. Even granting it for argument's sake, the defendant possessed no legal authority to punish them. Nevertheless he killed six and permanently maimed three."

His gaze settled on one section of the gallery.

"The parents of the victims sitting in this courtroom have lost their precious children. All they ask is that the defendant receive a just and severe sentence under the fair laws of the United States."

I half-turned and glanced behind me. The parents sat rigid with suppressed fury, staring as though they wanted to tear me apart with their teeth. When the prosecutor finished, it was the defense's turn. I faced forward again and stared blankly at the wall.

"Racial discrimination is a grave social problem. And the victims who hurled mockery and insults at the defendant were gangsters dealing drugs out of the Lower East Side. The defendant had encountered them several times before the incident and had endured their abuse on prior occasions."

Of course, letting it escalate into homicide was still extreme. What drove the whole thing over the edge was how far the victims later crossed the line. They had no sense of their place; they kept needling me, so I gave them a lesson. In return they nursed a grudge and eventually showed up at my home—sneaking in at dawn, no less.

"The victims unlawfully entered the defendant's residence and fired on him as if they were toying with prey. He barely escaped with his life, but he could not save the dog that had shared five years of his life. The victims butchered the animal with an axe."

Ah, Max.

Max—the only living thing in the world that ever greeted me with pure joy. I would never again see that cute rump weaving between my legs, tail thrashing. Never again feel those paws smacking my face to haul me out of bed in the morning.

Fucking animals. Lower than dogs.

The rage boiled up again. I wanted to prop their corpses upright and empty a shotgun into them just to feel something close to satisfaction. My lawyer, sensing the spike of emotion, laid a steadying hand on my shoulder.

"Does the defendant hold a firearms license?"

"...No."

"Exactly. The defendant was a peaceable citizen with so little grievance against society that the thought of a gun never even crossed his mind. That fact is crystal clear from the night he walked into the victims' hideout. He brought neither a firearm nor a knife."

I brought a baseball bat instead. The same bat Max and I used for fetch.

"All of the 9mm Parabellum rounds recovered from the six bodies and the wounded men were fired from the victims' own weapons. Of those men, only three possessed legal firearms licenses—and every one of them was a made member of a mafia family."

I turned my head again and looked at the parents. Seated beside them, a middle-aged man in a black suit was whispering something into a neighbor's ear. That man was mafia—a high-ranking officer in a Manhattan family. Vincenzo Gallucci. The father who had lost his third son and three subordinates to me.

For the record, the outfit that employed me was Irish. Vincenzo's was Italian. Coincidence or not, the two families were already locked in a dispute over business rights in Brooklyn. My killing of an Italian officer's son and men at a moment like that had nearly ignited a bloodbath neither side actually wanted. The instant the story broke, the Irish side drew a hard line: I was fired from the range on the spot and received zero assistance with my defense. I couldn't even feel resentful. It was my mess, and I had no wish to damage Victor.

The real problem now was between me and the father who had lost his child—between me and an Italian mafia captain.

Our eyes met. Vincenzo's mouth twitched. The expression was peculiar, the look of a fisherman deciding exactly how he intends to cook the catch thrashing on the deck. And he possessed the power to make that decision stick. Everyone in the courtroom knew it. This case would not end cleanly. A mafia captain who had lost a son would see me die screaming.

Everyone except one person.

Me.

I rejected their certainty. If I went down, I would not go alone. Anyone who wanted a piece of me had better be prepared to bleed rivers. I had that much ability left.

I sent Vincenzo a thin, mocking smile and faced forward again.

The prosecutor asked, "While detained pending trial the defendant read a great many books. Is reading a habitual pastime of yours?"

"It's a hobby."

True enough. Back in the day they even called me "the reading mercenary." The prosecutor decided to sneer at it.

"You claim to have PTSD, yet you can still read?"

"It's quieter when I read."

"And what, exactly, do you prefer?"

"Anything with print."

"I see. Yet in the detention center you checked out more than ten volumes—every single one of them about the mafia. Were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you aspiring to join them? Or perhaps planning a war against them?"

Every eye in the room locked onto my mouth. Even the Italian captain, the victims' father, wore a look of genuine interest. I answered while staring straight at him.

"Aren't you curious, Counselor? How the mafia managed to sink its roots so deep into this country's politics, its economy, its society—even into its courtrooms?"

My lawyer wiped a hand across his forehead. The judge's face twisted in open distaste. The jury needed no comment. The prosecutor himself flushed an angry red and raised his voice.

"Is the defendant suggesting that the mafia exerts influence over this very courtroom?! Your Honor, the defendant is desecrating the sanctity of this court!"

"Sustained. The defendant will retract that statement."

"I merely repeated something I read in a book."

The judge ordered me to withdraw the remark several times. I refused. Historical examples of mafia interference in trials were legion—jury tampering, witness intimidation, bribed judges. Most of those cases belonged to the past, and times had changed, but I still believed their power was far from dead.

"For contempt of court unrelated to the substance of the case, the defendant is fined one thousand dollars. Counsel for the people, you may make your final statement."

Convinced he held the upper hand, the prosecutor turned to the jury and delivered a ringing oration.

"Under the delusion of delivering justice, the defendant extinguished the lives of six young men who had their entire futures ahead of them. Some of the wounded remain hospitalized six months later. What the defendant did far exceeded any 'reasonable' level of force. Seizing their weapons and turning those weapons against them proves beyond doubt that he acted with clear intent to kill."

Therefore the charge was murder in the first degree, and the prosecutor demanded the death penalty as a warning to society.

As the newspapers had already noted, the possible outcomes of this trial spanned an unusually wide spectrum. In direct opposition to the state, the defense argued pure self-defense and asked for a full acquittal.

"Had the victims not opened fire on the night in question, the entire matter could have been resolved through conversation. The defendant never intended to kill them."

Yet nine armed men had threatened his life.

"Consequently the defendant's actions fall squarely within the New York statute that permits a reasonable use of force when one's own life or the life of another is in imminent danger. This was self-defense in its purest form."

Closing arguments ended. The jury retired to deliberate. I was returned to the Manhattan Detention Complex to wait. My lawyer offered a frank prediction and some hard advice.

"Looking at the judge's leanings, even a guilty verdict would land around ten years. Bail could shorten that further. The real problem is inside the prison. They will absolutely try to eliminate Mr. Choi in there. You know exactly who you're dealing with."

"And if I'm acquitted?"

"That... would be worse. Six bodies and a not-guilty verdict? The only conclusion is that the jury was bought. It would mean they intend to execute Mr. Choi on the outside."

A mafia captain, after all. For the sake of a son's revenge he would almost certainly arrange a private, drawn-out execution once I stepped free.

Two weeks later, on the day of the final verdict, I walked out a free man—acquitted on grounds of self-defense.