Serve & Protect

by L. J. Breedlove

  So, a lot of Vietnam veterans found remote places to hole up where they didn’t have to deal with a society that scorned them. At one time whole camps of such men nestled throughout the wilderness areas of the Northwest. The mountains called to them, he thought.

  Ken Bryson looked like he was one of those veterans, although he seemed like he was more integrated into society — if Sedro Woolley counted as society. Bryson was looking over the men he was taking out to the wilderness, and it didn’t look like he was impressed.

  And then he spotted Mac. Mac met his eyes, and he nodded. One lone wolf to another. Bryson frowned. It deepened when he saw Angie and her camera.

  At this point, the other men were ignoring Angie and her camera, which was probably Angie’s whole point, Mac thought. They’d gotten used to her. But Bryson? He was intently watching, focused on her. Mac frowned, and he looked for Anderson. Anderson was watching Bryson as well.

  Then Bryson turned away, and started barking orders at two young men who were apparently his employees. Were they going too? It looked like it. Luxury trip indeed, Mac thought. They weren’t going to have to cook for themselves even. How much did this trip cost?

  And that question drove him to leave the side of his rig and go ask Anderson.

  “Each guy pays $5,000,” Anderson said. He was still watching Bryson.

  “For three days?” Mac said, startled.

  Anderson laughed.

  “Bryson going to be a problem with Angie?” Mac asked softly.

  “He didn’t say anything when I told him,” Anderson said. “But that was weird.”

  “This trip gets better and better,” Mac said sourly. Anderson just grinned.

  Bryson wanted Mac and Angie to ride in his vans but backed down when Craig Anderson supported Mac’s refusal. And he’d wanted Angie in his van, Mac in a different one too. Mac didn’t know why. He pulled his 4-Runner into fourth place in the caravan.

  “Did you notice Ken Bryson looking at you?” Mac asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Didn’t bother me.”

  “Bothered me,” Mac said grimly.

  “He’s worried about a woman with all these men,” Angie said. “I read protective, not predator.”

  Mac considered that. Maybe, he conceded. He put himself in Bryson’s position, running a wilderness survival camp for a bunch of gun nuts on the back side of nowhere, and someone adds a woman? Yeah, he’d get protective real fast too. Keep her close for her own safety. Make sure she didn’t play one man against another. Angie wouldn’t do that; Mac knew her well enough to be confident of it, but Bryson didn’t. OK, he’d give the man the benefit of the doubt.

  “It’s beautiful out here,” Angie said wistfully.

  Mac glanced around. It was getting dark. Sunset was at 8:30 p.m., and they were getting close to that time. He was surprised they were setting up camp so late. So, he looked out there and saw the dark settling in, pooling shadows around dense forests and heavy undergrowth. He was driving with his headlights on, and it barely cut through the gloom. They’d left the main road rather quickly and were on a narrow one-lane road, graveled well enough to still make good speed.

  He looked out into the forested hillside and saw nothing but hiding places for enemies. She saw beauty.

  He smiled at her.

  He downshifted, they were beginning a crawl up a steep incline and the vans ahead were making hard work of it. The oiled gravel had changed to loose gravel and now to rutted dirt and mud. He straddled the ruts, feeling the mud pull at his wheels. They were crazy to take heavily loaded vans out on a road like this early in the spring, Mac thought grimly. He wondered why they were. He didn’t think they had been this far into the back country on previous outings. The noise complaints? Reason or excuse?

  It also bothered him that he was now out in the middle of nowhere, and he hadn’t seen the route in daylight. Mountain survival had one axiom: down was the way out. But that was good and fine, if you could tell which way was down. They’d gone up and down small hills for an hour. He couldn’t tell if there had been viable roads branching off.

  He might as well have been blindfolded.

  It was almost 10 p.m. when they pulled into a clearing. A van was already there, and overhead lights set up. Tents were up, someone had a campfire going. Got it, Mac thought. Ken Bryson had sent up a team ahead of time. Smart.

  He appreciated the planning and forethought that went into the trips, although it spoke of many more trips than he’d previously believed. They had it down. He parked where one of Bryson’s assistants directed him.

  “Welcome, I’m Rand,” the man said. Another veteran, Mac thought, but younger by a generation than Bryson. He was tall, muscled, with weathered skin and squint lines at his eyes. “Ken said to put you two in a tent together near the campfire. That OK with you both?”

  Angie nodded. “I’m Angie,” she said, before Mac had a chance to say anything. She held out her hand, and he shook it. “This is Mac.”

  Mac shook the man’s hand too. Rand’s handshake was firm, and he didn’t play games.

  “Good to meet you,” Rand said. “They’re getting the men organized, and there will be a late meal here shortly. Food is excellent, by the way. This is by no means roughing it.”

  Mac snorted. “I suspect what ‘roughing it’ means to you and me is far outside their imagination,” Mac said.

  Rand grunted. “Marine?”

  “Yeah,” Mac acknowledged. “You served.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Desert Storm,” he said. “Most of Bryson’s employees have served. It’s his way of looking out for men like himself, I think. Not that he’s said. I’ve worked for him off and on for 10 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a complete sentence from the man.”

  Mac grinned. These were his kind of men. “So, what’s the schedule?”

  “Tonight? Dinner. Camp fire. Some storytelling I suspect. The clients like to hear about military maneuvers. We’ll talk about weapons. Craig orchestrates all that — usually so cleverly that it looks casual. Tomorrow? A three-mile hike then breakfast. We’ll do some shooting. Craig probably has some new weapons to introduce. Lunch. Then we do a geocaching exercise. Ever done that?”

  “Only the real kind,” Mac said. Wouldn’t that be a joy to do with amateurs?

  “Well this works like a scavenger hunt, and they have to find all the locations in order to learn where dinner is being served. Dinner. Some wilderness survival techniques to learn. Sleep. Another hike before breakfast. More guns. You get that this is a gun-happy crowd, right? Lunch, and then head out.”

  “How long have you been doing this?” Mac asked.

  “Me personally? I did some trips with Craig last fall. Then these pampered trips stop, but Ken’s always has a few rougher snow trips scheduled over the winter. These comfy weekend adventures start back up in early April — as soon as the weather permits us to get out of town a ways. Every two weeks,” Rand said.

  “How long have the trips been going on?”

  “Two years, I think.” He shrugged. “Not sure. Ken says he makes good money off them. But they’re noisy fuckers.”

  Mac laughed. “The sheriff usually comes along?”

  “Yeah,” Rand said with a frown. “Not sure why he’s not here this time. Not like him to miss.”

  “Malloy?”

  Rand shrugged. “He comes along if we need an extra hand, or if Craig can’t make it. I got the impression that he’s not into the whole wilderness camping gig.”

  First time he’d found something he had in common with that bastard, Mac thought. He heard Angie’s laugh, and looked around. She was sitting by the fire, talking with a couple of the guys. She had a beer in her hand, just like they did. They seemed relaxed enough.

  “First time we’ve had a woman along,” Rand said. “You guys together?”

  “Work team,” Mac said. “She’s great to work with.”

  “Sharing a tent though.”

  Mac
looked at him. “If you brought a woman co-worker along with these guys, what would you do?”

  Rand met his eyes. “I wouldn’t bring a woman along with these guys,” he said. “They get to drinking and they think they have to talk tough. And the talk gets ugly about women, about minorities. Maybe that’s all it is — talk. But.... Anyway, just an FYI.”

  “I hear you. You heard what happened after the last trip out?” Mac asked.

  Rand shook his head.

  “A guy went home and killed his wife and kids. Another guy took his wife and daughter hostage, but a police sniper got him before he could use the weapon on them,” Mac said bluntly. He watched Rand closely for his reaction.

  Rand was silent. He looked over at the men who were collected around the fire. “I wish I could say I was surprised,” he said. “I don’t know who’s feeding them that shit. Craig doesn’t do it here. But those guys ought to be nice family men coaching Little League. And maybe they were. But they’re not anymore. They’re becoming suspicious, anti-government militia types. You ever know any of those kind?”

  Mac shook his head. “Not personally.” Then he reconsidered. “Well actually, I went up against Army of God last fall.”

  Rand raised his eyebrows. “Militia and religious fanatics,” he said. “We get the militia types out here in the Cascades. And they are all assholes, and their women live in fear. But they don’t leave.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve said too much,” he muttered. “Time for me to work on supper.” He walked away. Mac looked after him thoughtfully. Then he headed toward the fire and his partner.

  “Heads up,” Craig Anderson said and tossed him a Mountain Dew. Mac caught it, popped the tab and took a long drink. He sat down next to Angie and glanced at her beer bottle. It was full. If she had any, it was one sip, maybe two. Smart girl. She was getting the men to accept her as one of them, but she stayed alert. Good. Rand’s comments worried him. He hadn’t said anything Mac hadn’t already observed. But the fact he said them? Rand was worried about something too.

  “So, Mac, you were in Afghanistan,” Craig said. He sounded casual; Mac didn’t think he was.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Three years, felt like a decade.”

  The men laughed, as if they had any idea what it was like. It struck him that none of these men had military experience. Was that by design or coincidence? What exactly was Sensei up to?

  “Bad place,” Craig said. “You were recon?”

  Mac nodded shortly. He didn’t want to be show and tell for these assholes. Unfair, he thought. Just because two men came back and went off the deep end last trip doesn’t make these men assholes.

  “What’s that like?” one of the clients asked. “Did you kill?”

  Mac frowned. “That’s not something you ask a veteran,” he said shortly. “It’s just not. It’s private, for one thing. And for another? You could trigger flashbacks, nightmares. Most vets come back with PTSD, and they struggle with it for a long time.”

  “But you saw action?” the man persisted.

  “Yeah, I saw action,” Mac responded. He had a hard time not sounding sarcastic about the phrase.

  “What’s one mission you won’t forget?” he asked.

  Mac looked at him. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Brett Butler,” the man answered.

  “You cheat on your wife? What’s your favorite sex position?” he asked.

  “You don’t ask a man that!” he protested.

  “And what did I just tell you about asking a veteran about his experiences?” Mac demanded. “You want me to talk about death, but you think sex is too private? Fuck, man!”

  Craig intervened. “Mac’s right,” he said. “You have to respect a man’s silence about what he did while in uniform. And some things? We aren’t allowed to talk about even if we wanted to.”

  Brett Butler looked like he wanted to protest that, but Craig stared him down.

  “I can tell you about Army of God trying to blow up Planned Parenthood Clinics last fall, if you want,” Mac said. “A lot of that was in the newspaper.”

  “You were the reporter for that,” someone else said. “That’s why your name sounded familiar.”

  Mac nodded. He told them the basics, let them ask questions.

  “FBI arrested the men involved,” Mac said.

  “One man died,” Brett Butler said suddenly. “Did you shoot him?”

  “No,” Mac said coldly. “What is your problem?”

  “I want to know what it feels like to kill someone,” he said.

  Mac hesitated, thinking of the body bags he’d seen two weeks ago. Thought of the man he’d killed a year ago, a man he’d thought was a friend. “Depends on what kind of man you are,” he said. “A good man, a real man? He feels sick to his stomach even if it was a necessary kill. He hates that he had to kill someone. If you don’t feel like that? You’re a sick son of a bitch, a sociopath.”

  The men were silent. Mac chugged the rest of his Mountain Dew, and started to get up. Way to kill a mood, he thought bitterly. This whole thing was getting to him.

  “And which kind of man are you, Mackensie Davis?” Ken Bryson asked.

  Mac wondered how he knew his whole name. “Best if you don’t find out,” Mac said. And then he got up and went for a walk in the dark.

  Angie watched him go. Well, then, she thought. She took another pretend sip of her beer. He wouldn’t go far. He wouldn’t leave her unprotected with these men. But something about this entire situation was getting to him.

  There were rumors about Mac Davis. The Examiner gossip was full of stories and speculation. About what really happened in the story that ended Howard Parker’s nomination for Homeland Security. About the Army of God and Mac’s rescue of Janet from kidnappers. All of them were believable because if you were around Mac, you sensed this coiled rage buried deep inside of him. Smart people shied away from the rage. These idiots seemed to want to poke at it with a stick.

  But Angie had noticed that Janet Andrews didn’t fear Mac or his rage. And she thought Janet was one smart woman. So, she had decided she would trust him too. Trust him to be a protector, not a predator. But she wondered now, if Mac was completely sure which he was.

  And if at some time in his life, he had been both.

  “Dinner!” A man called cheerfully. And the men started toward the tables with food spread out on them. Angie followed and Mac materialized beside her.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No apology necessary,” she said. “I know where you are. And I know you’re never very far. As for the asshole? He deserved far more than a few harsh truths.”

  Mac smiled at her. It was a slow, sexy smile. “You’re not afraid of me,” he observed.

  She shook her head. “Not yet, anyway,” she said, and grinned at him.

  He just shook his head and laughed.

  Dinner was good: barbequed pork, a bunch of sides, cornbread. She wasn’t sure how they’d done the cornbread, but she could see the barbeque they’d built back behind the tables. Big slabs of meat were still grilling back there. She ducked behind the tables to talk to the man who had greeted them when they arrived — Rand.

  “So how did you do the cornbread?” she asked.

  He grinned at her, and showed off his barbeque grill, and the oven made of coals underneath it. She snapped some photographs of the setup and of him. He didn’t seem to mind. He answered her questions about how much food was required to feed all these people. She never ran out of questions. When the line shortened, she thanked him and went to fill her plate. Mac had waited for her. They found seats at the table with Ken Bryson.

  “So how did you know my full name?” Mac asked him, as if it were no big deal. But Angie thought it might matter more to him than he was letting on.

  “Checked you out,” Bryson said. “Wanted to make sure you could carry your own weight out here.”

  Mac nodded.

  “And?” he said. He tu
rned and called out to Rand, “This barbeque is excellent,” he said sincerely. “And I’ve lived in places where barbeque is king.”

  “Thanks!” Rand replied. “There’s plenty.”

  Mac turned back to Bryson. “And what did they tell you?”

  “Said you could take care of yourself,” he said. “That you’d do whatever it took to get the job done.”

  “You OK with that?” Mac asked.

  Bryson looked around at the men eating at the tables, at his employees helping with the meal. He looked back at Mac. “I’m OK with that,” he said.

  Angie took a deep breath. Men, she thought suddenly. She’d never been in an all-male group, because she immediately changed the dynamic by being a part of it. Right? And co-ed groups, even dominated by men, were different.

  But this group? Maybe because she was so out-numbered, or because she was really outside of the group itself, but this was as close to an all-male group as she’d ever see. And it was as tense and volatile as she’d thought it could be. It was as if violence could break out at any moment.

  They are sorting out the pecking order, she thought. Because adding Mac to the mix, changed the order of things. So, it’s even more volatile now.

  Weird, because as a news photog she was around men a lot. She knew how to handle them. She’d demonstrated that last weekend with Norton, and she knew Mac had been complimentary about her to Janet and to her own boss. But this? This was different.

  These men wanted to prove themselves. They wanted to be alpha. They weren’t. Would never be. Bryson? Mac. Maybe Craig Anderson, although he hid a lot of himself. Rand? They knew who they were and what they were capable of. Being vets was a part of that, although it wasn’t the only way a man could test himself. But these others? They seemed soft. Nice guys, she thought from the earlier conversations. At least they had been. But they’d convinced themselves they wanted to be something else — that they were something else and deserved more than what they were getting.