Sons (Book 2)

by Scott V. Duff

  “This should be fun,” Dad said, close on his heels.

  I looked at Calhoun and asked, “Shall I take him down a peg or two or would you like the pleasure?”

  “Eh, it really should be me,” he grumbled, heading after Echols. “Wouldn’t mind the backup, though.”

  I grinned, hopping off the table and following with Jimmy beside me. Once clear of the tent, we could see the MPs had finished debarking and formed a clear rank and file in the field. They’d attracted the attention of most of the camp, drawing many curious people out of the tents and bunkhouses to observe the fiasco in the making. A loud riff of laughter sounded when they saw me, but it was brief. It was punctuated with catcalls at Echols, though. Apparently he was known by some of them.

  “Simmons!” Echols shouted again as I stopped next to Dad standing a few yards from the tent, arms crossed on his chest, and watching the circus start.

  “Yes, Colonel!” Simmons hollered, trotting out from between two phalanxes of men in green camouflage uniforms.

  “Simmons, prepare the men! We are taking control of this camp!” Echols yelled angrily, turning back to glare us. “I warned you, gentlemen.”

  “Yes, you did,” Calhoun said calmly. “And again I say that under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, you have no authority here. If you make one move to take these men from us and we will consider you and your men complicit with their crimes. Understand that, Colonel.”

  “Oooh, I didn’t think of that,” I said quietly enough that just Dad, Mike, Jimmy, and Calhoun heard. “That is a good point.” The Posse Comitatus act limits the use of the military as law enforcement within a state, unless certain conditions are met. They weren’t met here.

  Mike walked up beside us biting into a huge meatloaf sandwich.

  “Where’d ya’ get that?” Jimmy asked, almost drooling. Watching where Mike waved, he looked at me for permission.

  Dad and I looked at each other in disbelief. “How can you two eat again?” I asked, shaking my head and waving him on with both hands. “Go, feel free.” I could feel my arteries hardening sympathetically.

  “Troy Pennington is no more treasonous than I am,” Echols yelled, cementing his belief of the General’s innocence. “Simmons, deploy the men!”

  Feeling Calhoun begin his attack on Echols, I started with Simmons, deploying a Tower of Babel spell immediately. Simmons just stood there between the two ranks of men looking like he was trying to say something but not knowing how. Which, of course, was the point of the Tower of Babel. You just scramble their ability to communicate complex ideas. I got the idea from the Twice-Dead God. He’s got a worm of some kind embedded in me that makes me unable to talk about certain things. Him, for instance. Anyway, I really wasn’t trying to kill or maim the man. He just needed to be useless for a few minutes.

  Calhoun was following a similar tact with Echols, using a simple tactile push to knock him off his feet and send him flying toward us like he’d been punched in the face. Echols came up swinging at his unseen foe, shouting indecipherably. Calhoun walked slowly in his direction.

  “I warned you, Echols,” he said as he entered the Colonel’s space. “Now we wait for NCIS or I arrest you. Your choice.”

  Echols swung at him, narrowly missing Calhoun as he ducked backward with a little magical assistance in speed. “Simmons!” Echols yelled again, adding, “Grant, Edwards!” Two more men snapped to attention and came forward from the ranks to help him. Simmons saw them moving and wheeled around to face Echols, then started toward him, too. I pulled the Babel spell from Simmons. He needed to understand his situation.

  “How far do you want to let this devolve?” Dad asked off-handedly.

  “Hadn’t thought about it,” I said, waiting for them to near. “It’s really Calhoun’s show, but I’m not risking anyone’s life for this.” The three men converged on Calhoun and two ranks broke and began flooding toward the fistfight, leaving two to stand there gaping momentarily. “Yeah, it’s time to call a halt to this, I guess. Any ideas on how?”

  “A few,” Dad said. I felt a push on the energy plane and a wall of flames erupted between the complement of Marines and Calhoun’s fistfight. Twelve feet high, the wall threw off a lot of light, but no heat, but it stopped them from getting to Echols. No one wanted to test the veracity of the suddenly appearing wall. A few did however try to go around. I met the other three a few yards out from Calhoun.

  “Sorry, guys, but Marshal Calhoun is busy with your Colonel Echols at the moment,” I said. “You’ll have to wait a few minutes.” They didn’t take me seriously, assuming their training and abilities superior to mine. It was written in the sneers on their faces.

  “Just get out of the way, kid, before you get hurt,” said either Grant or Edwards, raising his hand to push me aside. I caught his hand by the wrist before he made contact, twisting hard and breaking one of the two bones in his forearm before he twisted back into the turn. He yelled out, but I didn’t know if it was pain or shock of his first sight of the flame wall. I didn’t have time to consider as the other two attacked me, which wasn’t too terribly bright of them since I still had their man by the hand.

  Marines take a great deal of pride in their hand-to-hand combat skills. Their training in such can be quite extensive, I’ve read, blending several styles into a skill set that they believe to be well-rounded and effective in most instances and venues. While I couldn’t argue with the philosophy, I could certainly argue with this specific execution of it. Totally ineffective, very slow and clunky. I question how well they delivered the philosophy completely, really. They both went for the exact same move: an inside jab.

  I pulled on the man I had from behind, dropping to the ground and simultaneously jerking him to me and into the path of fists. Planting my feet on his butt as I fell, I lifted him off the ground as they connected with his jaw. I heard more bones cracking and breaking as he flew over my head, ass over elbows, his feet connecting with each man as he passed. I stood straight before he landed behind me with a bone-jarring crunch. The left man, Edwards, I think, was off-balance from his swing. Grabbing his collar and kicking his leading leg out from under him, I slammed him down to the ground. Before he hit, I turned and slipped under Simmons’ guard as he tried to recover from his misdirected punch and shoved my elbow into his gut hard. Continuing around the man, I clasped both hands together and slammed them down between his shoulder blades, instantly regretting the act. I heard his heart stop when he hit the dirt from the triple assault on his chest—two solid hits from me and then the ground.

  Damn, I was fast.

  I relaxed a second later when his heart stuttered back into a too rapid pattern. Two of my three were now unconscious and the third was only barely aware. Glancing over at Calhoun, he and Echols were in a crouched face-off with Echols swishing a six-inch knife through the air in front of him. It didn’t look the type to affix as a bayonet to me but I had already admitted my lack of knowledge on modern weaponry.

  “A knife, Colonel?” I asked as I stepped into their field of vision. “If you’re feeling that insecure against Marshal Calhoun, we could get you a gun instead. I think Sergeant Simmons was carrying one. Would you like his?”

  Calhoun snorted a laugh, showing teeth with his smile and making him rather shark-like. Echols feinted to Calhoun’s right, then jumped to his left at me, just in time to meet Jimmy’s truncheon as it slammed down hard onto his knife-hand. Echols dropped the knife and cried out loudly in pain, grabbing his doubtless broken wrist.

  “Good meatloaf,” Jimmy said as he reset his stick. “You can wave that at the Marshal all you want, but Seth is out of bounds for you, asshole.”

  “Jimmy, language, please,” I warned lightly.

  “Like you really care,” Calhoun said, picking up Echols’ knife. “Thank you kindly, gentlemen. I wasn’t looking forward to explaining why I had to kill another one to Harris just yet.”

  “The medics are ready to come in now, Seth,” Jimmy said as he polish
ed off his sandwich. I looked for Mike and Dad, finding them at opposite ends of the firewall, just watching the far side at the moment. Looking through the fire, the ranks of men reformed, sufficiently cowed apparently, and were awaiting real orders again. Glancing at us, Dad started lowering the wall, extinguishing the last two feet in one imaginary gust of wind. That helped to lower the tension level, but it was a small thing.

  Ethan brushed lightly against the anchor, calling for my attention but not strongly.

  “Yes, Ethan?” I asked tugging on him to let him know we weren’t doing any heavy lifting. He erupted through the anchor, appearing beside me and startling everyone nearby.

  “More? Don’t these guys get tired?” he asked cheerfully looking over the rank and file in front of us, then down at the four on the ground around us. “They getting uppity with you, Marshal?”

  “Just the newcomers,” Calhoun said. “The others have been downright pleasant and helpful.”

  “Why are they here, anyway?” I asked.

  “Ideally, to help, I think,” Calhoun answered. “Echols was just too gung-ho about his orders, thinking he could do better than us. Maybe he was supposed to take control, but that wasn’t happening under any circumstances.”

  “Colonel Echols,” I said, squatting down beside him as the medic wrapped his hand. He scowled at me, the hatred clear in his eyes. “Understand something here: your friend the general was trying to kill me. I have four hundred witnesses to that, so feel free to hate me all you want for being faster than he was. I can live with that. You lost your fight with Marshal Calhoun because you allowed yourself to be distracted and tried to kill me, too. You lost, but you are still alive. Learn to live with that. But I would advise you to start treating Marshal Calhoun with the utmost respect from this point on, because he holds your future in his hands. Not only can he prosecute you for complicity to commit treason, but in the last ten minutes the list of your crimes has increased from assault on a Federal officer in pursuit of his duty to attempted murder, all with a host of witness more than willing to testify for us.”

  His scowl deepened as he thought about the depth of the hole he’d dug for himself. It didn’t help that the medic tied his hand poorly; the bones wouldn’t knit well in that position. He didn’t take it well when I turned my back on him either, but I didn’t see the correlation there. Kneeling down beside the guy who’d taken the brunt of his attacks from me and ironically the one not receiving medical attention, I asked of the two attending medics, “Are there other medics available?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. McClure,” answered the one on Simmons. “They just either weren’t on duty or were doing other things.”

  “What about equipment or facilities? This man was caught between a rock and hard place, I’m afraid,” I asked, sinking my senses rather casually down into his body. This was Edwards, Keith R., Lance Corporal, and US Marine. He was proud of it, seeing the military police as a springboard into a career after the military in general. He was only doing what he thought was right, what his commanding officer told him to do. I kind of felt sorry for the guy. He had plans for his life.

  “Nothing of real sophistication. Our original plans included air support for medical emergencies,” he said, leaning back on his heels and looking back at me. “This man needs more attention than I am able to give. He needs an MRI, CAT scans, tests that I can barely pronounce. We need to get him to a hospital.”

  “Yeah, Corporal Edwards, here, needs a doctor, too,” I said. I wasn’t willing to take this man’s pain for him, but I did push a considerable amount of energy into rebuilding the structure. “Echols, can you facilitate something along those lines?”

  “You’re… going to let me?” Echols sounded surprised.

  Okay, that was weird. “What? Why wouldn’t I? What is your problem anyway?” I asked. “I mean, outside the obvious ones.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” he asked angrily, trying to get up, but the medic held him down. I heard him muttering something about green and black and a sword made of fire. The colonel quieted significantly while his eyes burned holes into mine.

  “He means you’re an arrogant prig with delusions of adequacy,” Dad said as he entered the circle of damaged bodies. “But I’m certain you’ve heard that quip many times in your life.” Taking a quick look at Grant, he sauntered over to Simmons. Concern spiked through his aura and he knelt down and started a deeper seeking through Simmons’ body.

  “Echols?” I prodded the Colonel. “Your men, hurt on your orders. Medical support, please?”

  “Oh, yes,” he muttered, standing. The medic let him this time. Pulling a cell phone from his pocket, he started jabbing at its buttons like he’d never used one before until he got it to do what he wanted, then held it to his ear. He started talking to someone in arcane gibberish, sounded like it to me anyway, filled with acronyms and jargon. Apparently, he rolled through several different people until seven minutes later he snapped it shut and said, “Two helicopters will be here in roughly twenty-seven minutes. They want as much information about the patients as possible.”

  Six more men came trotting across to us from the ring of men surrounding us, carrying stretchers and additional equipment. Dad was still involved in his seeking of Simmons. Glancing over at the huge trucks that Echols’ men arrived in, I figured that Echols did not arrive with them. He didn’t look that gung-ho.

  “Where are they going?” I asked.

  “I didn’t ask,” he said.

  “What the hell is going on here?” a voice yelled behind us. We turned to see Messner parting the crowd of onlookers in a rumpled shirt and slacks, his short blond hair only mildly mussed.

  “Agent Messner! Sleep well?” I called out, smiling.

  “We’ve got everything under control, Messner,” Calhoun called, mildly.

  “There’s three men on the ground, another eighty lined up and waiting,” he yelled. “And Daybreak is back. What’s ‘under control’ about any of that?”

  “Daybreak put the three men on the ground, thereby stopping the eighty men from overrunning the camp and maintaining control,” Calhoun said plainly, no longer yelling, but Messner was closer now.

  “Y’all fight this out quietly, please,” I told Messner as he entered the growing inner circle of men around us. The stretchers were dropped next to each man and attendant medics increased as well. “Every man can be safely moved to a stretcher. There’s no risk of paralysis. Everybody have something to write on?”

  Almost unanimously, they looked up at me oddly but all nodded briefly, taking pads out of the kits they carried. I started with Simmons, even though Dad was still coursing through his body, changed to healing nerve damage slowly and carefully. I named each injury by what I thought was the most serious, describing breaks and tears, ruptures and stoppages. He muttered for more paper half way through and stopped me for clarification a couple of times. We had a little difficulty with nomenclature, my biology text diagrams not quite matching to his medical reference and anatomy guides.

  Edwards was extensive, too, but I pushed a number of repairs into place myself before I started explaining what was wrong. Mostly concussion issues from the double punch and being jerked around so much. Grant was already trying to sit up. He’d gotten kicked in the head and behind the knee, only slightly worse than Colonel Echols. He still had a few cracked bones.

  “And Colonel Echols, you need to have that re-wrapped before it sets,” I said finishing, but not really wanting to tell him. It was more of an obligation. “If it mends in that position, it’s gonna hurt later in life.”

  “Two choppers, ‘bout a minute out,” Ethan said blandly. “Might want t’give’m a place to land, Colonel.”

  Echols looked around him, realizing Ethan was right: his men and trucks were taking up the available flat space and his middle management was lying on the ground. Proving he wasn’t completely useless, though, Colonel Echols moved quickly and purposefully. Once a short distance away from
the injured, he raised his voice, not quite yelling but projecting loudly, and started orders using position names and ranks that caused immediate reactions in them. Their anxiety levels were high with their leaders being hidden behind a wall of flames and being held back by whatever means Dad and Mike had employed. They were bristling for some kind of action. Being told to get the hell out of the way wasn’t quite what they wanted in the testosterone-driven yearnings, but it did require running a distance carrying a gun. It helped them.

  The first helicopter was able to land immediately. The second had to wait a minute or two while the last two trucks were moved. Three minutes wasn’t bad.

  “Marshal, why exactly is there a large detail of Marines here?” I asked, turning to Calhoun while making sure that Messner was nearby. “Is this something I should be worried about? Talking to lawyers about, maybe?”

  “Not really,” Calhoun said, trying to lessen the impact. “They’re here basically to confine and begin processing for prosecution for the smaller part of their crimes, Absent without Leave and that crap. Colonel Echols is very territorial and loyal. He is finding the facts here difficult to believe. It’s easier for people at his age and position to try to change the world to their beliefs than to change their beliefs to fit the world.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “That’s very philosophical of you, Glen. Nice way of saying he’s a stubborn ole mule and since none of us had stars on our collars, we weren’t good enough to polish his shoes, right?”

  He shrugged, smiled, and said, “It’s part of my job to make things work right now, but this side of this problem is outside of my expertise. I need to put people in place who have the experience and skills to handle it. Colonel Echols has that and the resources. So, we’ll play nice-nice.”

  “So you are okay with this?” I asked carefully.

  “We’ll see,” he answered, not committing himself verbally or through his aura.

  Turning to Messner with a questioning look, the agent said, “Taking what’s been said at face value and without having reviewed Colonel Echols credentials, I would agree with Calhoun. Neither of our agencies is currently in a position to handle this size of an arrest without causing an immense ripple financially, politically, socially, you name it. We’re not going to be able to hide this, but Echols can help camouflage it considerably, even without knowing it.”