The Grey Man: -Vignettes-

by JL Curtis

  Finally satisfied, he told Aaron, “Okay, this looks pretty good for three days in, but I want to get an IV into you with some additional antibiotics and a sleep aide, and I’m going to rebandage this with a soft cast and admit you for now. I don’t want you walking on this, so if you have to piss, either use the bedpan or ring for a nurse, I don’t want you trying to do it yourself, understand?”

  Aaron nodded, and the doc turned to the two corpsmen after he’d finished the rebandage, “Okay, haul his ass to 120, no need to screw up anymore sheets or a gurney. Tell the charge nurse I’ll be along but nothing by IV until after his interview. Understood?”

  With a chorus of “Yes, sirs,” they pushed Aaron out of the room. The doctor took Aaron’s record and the additional treatment record and went over to admissions to get young Staff Sergeant Miller, Aaron one each entered into the Big Green Machine’s system.

  As soon as the corpsmen had deposited Aaron in his room, the two captains and the first sergeant came in. The captains took chairs and the first sergeant leaned against the door. Captain Hurst reviewed with Aaron what had gone down on Sunday, asked numerous questions. By the time he was done, Aaron felt like he’d been put through the ringer.

  Aaron finally got to ask a question on of his own about what was going to happen next, and was stunned to hear that the JAG didn’t have any idea. He said, “Well, I got a call from Colonel Powers, and he told me last night to come meet the airplane and get you in the hospital immediately and get a statement. Everything else was up in the air, including whatever the hell I’m supposed to get a statement about.”

  The two captains left, and the first sergeant finally came over and introduced himself saying, “Miller, I’m Sergeant Brill, you got yourself in a world of shit haven’t you sergeant? You get shot and never get a round off in return? What the fuck were you doing?”

  Aaron looked up at the First. “I never got the chance to shoot, I was in a damn four-foot deep ditch trying not to bleed to death and giving intel to the two that took out the first two bad guys. And, honestly, I have no fucking clue as to what’s going on here. Yesterday afternoon, I was being taken care of by my girlfriend, and looking forward to recovering there for a few more days. Her grandfather gets a phone call from somewhere, a lawyer shows up, and the next damn thing I know, I’m on a fucking Lear Jet, and here I sit. The only good thing out of this is the lady and her baby are safe, and four bad guys are worm food. Other than that, I don’t know shit, Sarge, so what now?”

  Sergeant Brill flipped a chair around and sat straddling it. “Well the first thing we do is keep whoever is trying to fuck you over away from you. I’ll take care of getting you signed into the Batt. Where’s your vehicle and household goods?”

  “My truck’s being driven out from Texas and it will probably be here tomorrow if I know Matt. As far as the household goods, your guess is as good as mine. Matt and I were going to get a place, but I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”

  Brill nodded. “Would Matt be Gunny Carter by chance?”

  Aaron shrugged. “Yeah First Sergeant, we were in 2MEF together; got orders to Weapons Battalion together and both ended up here at the same time. We rented an apartment together at Quantico, and figured to do the same again.”

  There was a knock at the door. “Okay, lemme go handle this shit, and see what the good Captain has up his sleeve. I’ll check back with you tomorrow, or send the clerk over with the stuff you need to sign. And don’t think I’m this easy when you get to the company. I’m just goin’ easy until this situation gets unfucked.”

  “Trust me First Sergeant, I never thought anything different.” Aaron said.

  With that, the first sergeant left, the nurse came in and hooked up the IV, and shortly thereafter, after a quick call to Jesse, Aaron was sound asleep.

  21 The Raid

  US Attorney’s Office Dallas

  In his new corner office, Al Deal, the new US Attorney for the North West Division of Texas leaned forward in his chair and continued to take notes as the speaker phone rattled on, “No sir, actually that shooting down in Pecos County is not in my jurisdic…”

  His contact and rabbi at the Department of Justice overrode him, “I don’t give a shit, we haven’t been able to jack that attorney out of Southwest Division yet, so he won’t even look at this stuff. I didn’t put you down there to sit on your ass and wait for cases to fall into your fucking lap, if I say it’s in your jurisdiction then it will be!”

  “But Mr. Rodman, I…”

  “Shut up and get hot on this. You’ve had two days, and you haven’t gotten a damn thing done yet. Hell, we even pushed your tame little security team down there to get these cops and keep those yahoos down there off the backs of the minorities and especially the Hispanics. That was the deal, they got us elected, we get the pressure off them and their illegals.”

  “I’m working on this, but the judges…”

  “Deal, don’t give me problems, just get it done before this leaks and they find out what’s fixing to land on their asses. That was the agreement, remember?”

  “Yes sir.” And Deal realized he was talking to a dial tone, his rabbi had hung up on him.

  Punching the intercom, he asked the secretary to send in Myers, and he dialed another judge’s number on the list.

  When he got no answer, he slammed the phone back in the cradle and looked at Federal Security Officer Myers. “Goddamn judges, I can’t get one to sign the search warrant and the arrest warrants both. Nothing yesterday afternoon and now this one won’t either. And every damn one wants more information than I’m willing to put in the paperwork. Did your team get all the evidence from Austin yesterday?”

  “Yes sir,” Myers replied. ”But not without some hassles. They wanted to know why all of a sudden this was becoming a federal case, when they say it’s an open and shut good shoot. And it appears there are issues with the chain of custody on at least a couple of items that there seem to only be photos of, with no actual evidentiary material.”

  Scoffing, Deal swiveled around in his chair. “Good shoot, my ass: four dead Hispanics, after a two minute hostage negotiation? Sounds more like vigilante justice to me, and remember that’s what we’ve been sent down here to uncover and prosecute. This administration got voted in on the backs of the minorities, and we’ve got to step up enforcement against these rogue cops, just like we did in New York City.”

  Myers smiled. “Yes, sir, we did put a few away, didn’t we? Do you want me to sit around here or start mobilizing my team for a take down on this bunch in Pecos County?”

  Deal tapped the table with the end of his pen. “Lemme make one more call, and I’ll decide.”

  Turning to his phone list, he flipped through till he found the number he was looking for. He put the phone on speaker, signaling Myers, for quiet.

  A female answered, “Judge Gillory’s office, may I help you?”

  Deal went with his best lawyer voice. “Yes, ma’am, this is US Attorney Deal here in Dallas, I need to speak with the judge immediately if possible, I have two federal warrants I need signed out as soon as possible.”

  “If you will fax them over to 2145125555, I can have the judge review them and get back with you,” the woman replied.

  “Ma’am, these are time sensitive,” he urged. “ I need to get them done today. I will have them there in five minutes, and will call back in ten, please have the judge available to take my call then.” Gently replacing the phone in the cradle, Deal then pounded on the desk. When he was in New York he’d never been treated this way. “God damn bitch, how dare she!”

  Myers, used to his boss’s outbursts, ignored the show of emotion and picked up the stack of warrant paperwork. “What’s that fax number?”

  Deal threw the piece of paper at Myers, and slumped back in his chair as Myers went out to the fax machine. Coming back in, he said, “Done, and I just realized we get to take down a couple of Marines, this might be fun!”

  He looked at his
watch. “Yeah, I think this is one of those hunt club deals; you know, Texas has a lot of them. What if this one is people instead of animals?”

  Glancing at his watch again, he hit redial on the speaker phone as Myers resumed his seat. The same female answered. “Judge Gillory’s office, may I help you?”

  Deal again with his best lawyer voice. “Yes, ma’am, this is US Attorney Deal here in Dallas, I faxed the two warrants, and now I need to speak with the judge.”

  “One moment please.”

  “Judge Gillory, to whom am I speaking?”

  Deal unceremoniously replied, “Judge this is US Attorney Deal in the Dallas office. I just sent over two warrants I’d like to get approved immediately before the possible perpetrators can scatter or destroy evidence.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I can do this with this little information” Gillory said.

  “Can you expand the reasons and justification a bit?”

  “Well, Judge, I understand you’re new to the federal bench, but at the federal level we try to limit disclosure of sensitive material or possibly classified material,” Deal answered. “‘That’s why there is not a lot of detail, because this involves officers of the law, and we don’t want word getting back to them immediately from any leaks.”

  “Well, I’m not sure about this, especially arresting both police officers and Marines. I’ll sign it but I’m not going to sign off on arresting them. I’ll put in here remand to custody, that way the Marines will have control of their personnel. And I’d really like to see more detail on this.”

  Deal’s face turned red, but he maintained voice control. “If that’s what you want Judge that would be fine. When can we… I expect to have those back in hand?”

  “Give me about thirty minutes,” Gillory replied. “I want to check on the federal statutes before I sign them.”

  “Thank you, Judge. I’ll await your pleasure.” Viciously punching the speaker phone off, Deal turned to Myers. “Get your takedown team heading for the airport, use the chopper to fly to El Paso, and I’ll have DHS task CPB[19] to supply you with vehicles out of Fort Bliss. And make sure your team wears the Federal Police patches, no TSA or DHS on this one. Oh yeah, and there might be a female involved so make sure you’ve got one on your takedown.”

  Myers stood up, “Okay, black shirts and brown pants, Police, dyke one each, got it. If we take the helo, that’s going to be about three hours down there, and then an hour and a half drive back to this Pecos County. Can’t we get the King Air or something a little faster?”

  Deal rounded on him. “No, dammit, if I request the King Air, that has to go through channels here, with the helo, I can get that tasked by DHS and direct support from CBP also through them. Do you really think this bunch of dinosaurs here would authorize this raid?”

  Shrugging, Myers moved toward the door. “Probably not. Do you want a call when we take them down?”

  “You know better than that— do it the usual way.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow morning then.”

  After Myers left the office, Deal paced until he heard the fax machine start humming. Slipping out of his office, he confirmed the papers were from Judge Gillory, and spat when he saw the judge had in fact crossed out arrest and written in “remand to custody” in the margin with his initials. Deal hunted through the directory on the fax machine and finally found the flight operations detachment at Love Field’s fax number. Writing a quick cover page, he sent the fax and returned to his office. Pulling out his personal address book, he dialed a number in his cell. “Yes, Pat Shover in operations, please.”

  After a minute, Shover came on the line and Deal asked him if he still could add an operation to the schedule. When Shover said he could, Deal said, “Okay, I need a Blackhawk, Love Field to Ft. Bliss in an hour or less. Tac team deployment and retrieval after the op, and I need two vehicles at Ft. Bliss with full tanks of gas for the Tac team to use.”

  “Give me thirty minutes to confirm the tasking on the Blackhawk, but it’s going to take a while to get CPB to provide vehicles,” Shover said. “What’s the timeframe on them?”

  “Three hours, and they’ll probably need them for five or six hours. Anybody gives you any shit, this is by direction from the front office, so if there was a problem, bump it up.”

  “I’ll get it done,” Shover assured him. “Off the books as usual?”

  “Yep”. Deal decided he’d done a good morning’s worth of work, so he awarded himself an early lunch and left the building.

  Myers was already pissed when the team finally got to Ft. Bliss, and Spears didn’t help his frame of mind when she hauled ass into the hangar to piss. Damn woman should have thought of that before they left, Myers didn’t like her to start with. She’d been a stuck up lezzie bitch when he was just looking for a little fun, and sneering at him ever since. But hell, Deal said bring a woman, and Spears qualified, more or less. After sorting out the team between the two vehicles, he put Spears in the other vehicle and made her accountable for all the weapons. Just a little extra work, but maybe she’d screw it up, and he could get rid of her.

  Finally, they piled into the trucks, and as they pulled out he realized they wouldn’t get to where ever the hell this address was until almost 7 PM, which meant a dusk takedown and maybe a dinner time takedown which would be even easier as everybody would be in one place. He smiled at the thought, and punching up lights and siren hauled it for the main gate; piss on the Army, he thought, they can’t do crap to us for speeding, since we’re their bosses!

  ***

  The old man leaned back in his chair, patting at his belly. “Juanita you’ve outdone yourself again, between the tacos, the Chili Colorado, the guacamole, and the pintos with jalapenos, I know I’m going to pay for this in the morning, but damn that was good!”

  A murmur of agreement sounded around the table, and Ronni Boone got up with a groan. “But, John, I brought dessert, and it’s a homemade apple pie, you’ve got to try some!”

  Clay looked over at Jesse. “Girl, I’ll bet you’ll eat some with a little Blue Bell on top wouldn’t you?”

  Jesse smiled. “Mr. Boone, you know damn well I’m a sucker for Blue Bell, and Ronni’s pies are to die for, of course I’m going to eat some, weight be damned!”

  That brought a laugh around the room as Juanita and Francisco started helping Ronni dish up the pie and ice cream. Suddenly, Rex bolted for the door, barking his warning bark. The old man and Clay both reacted, getting up and moving toward the front door as they heard multiple car doors slamming. The old man looked at Jesse, ”Text the sheriff that the raid is going down.” Jesse nodded a pulled out her phone, typing quickly.

  The old man nodded to Clay who stopped and took a position in the doorway to the kitchen as the old man went to the front door. Stepping to one side, he looked out and saw seven people running for position with one stomping up to the front door in full tac gear with an M-16 at the ready.

  In fact, Myers had decided he wanted to lead this takedown, since he was hoping for a promotion, and this would look good on the reviews. He’d deployed the team for a standard perimeter takedown rather than the normal stack, figuring this would be perfect as he smelled food and assumed they were probably all sitting down to dinner in the kitchen or in front of the TV.

  The old man flashed a hand sign for eight enemy back to Clay, and grabbed Rex’s collar and told him to sit.

  Rex sat, but continued to rumble in his chest as the old man slid just out of sight through the screen door. The old man looked back at Clay, who nodded knowing what the old man wanted.

  As Myers started banging on the door, Clay slid back into the kitchen and the old man stepped directly into the door way, surprising the man who took an involuntary step back.

  Rex growled quietly again as the old man asked, “Who are you and what do you want?”

  The man stepped back up, but pointed the rifle down at Rex, and waving his hand with the search warrants said, “Myers, Federal P
olice with a search warrant. Open the door!”

  The old man didn’t move. “Not so fast, bud. Let me see that search warrant.”

  “Open the damn door, old man!” Myers yelled.

  To which Rex responded with a growl that backed Myers up two steps and he dropped the search warrant and arrest warrant as he grabbed his gun to shoot.

  Very quietly the old man said, “Son, you shoot my dog, I’m gonna shoot you. This dog is not threatening you at all, but it’s obvious he doesn’t like you worth a damn. Now either hand me that search warrant or get the hell off my property. One or the other, but make it quick!”

  Myers heard the others call in position, and Bronson say there were multiple buildings behind the house. All the others called ready to take the house in his earpiece, but he suddenly realized if he gave that order, he was probably going to be a dead man.

  Spears came around the corner of the house and looked at the situation then whispered into her boom mike, “Appears to be a standoff at the front door. I’m going to slide along the wall and see what’s going on. Everybody just hold position.”

  As she moved along the porch, the old man felt Rex shift subtly beneath his hand and heard the boards squeak, “You tell whoever is trying to sneak up the porch to step out, or this is going to go rodeo right now!”

  Myers decided as soon as Spears stepped out, he was going to yell the go word, and hope this old bastard shot Spears. As she stepped forward into the light and the old man’s sight and Myers got ready to yell, the Tac team heard a scared voice come over the net. “There’s somebody out here in the dark, Bronson’s down and there’s a big knife at my throat! Please don’t do anything stupid!”

  The old man directed Spears. “You! Pick up that search warrant and hand it here; your boy Myers doesn’t seem capable of doing that.” Spears had trouble hiding a smile, but did as directed, and the old man opened the door enough to take the search warrant and arrest warrant both.