Sheriff Stringer gestured, encompassing the hospital’s waiting room, now almost unrecognizable from its pre-Rockfall configuration. Gone were the wide glass walls facing out on the street, covered over with thick wooden poles that resembled a fence rather than a conventional wall. Or maybe it was a wall, in the style of a frontier fort. The enclosure extended to surround the entire entry atrium, making the waiting room darker with shadows and inadequate overhead lighting, but I preferred the effect to being exposed to random gunfire.
“Frankly, I just didn’t expect you to be one of them. What about your law practice?”
“I stay busy doing wills, since they are so much in demand,” I replied with a touch of humor. I liked that he didn’t refer to Bastrop as Acting Sheriff. It was a small detail, but it showed class. “Working from home since my office was destroyed. Let me introduce you to the other member of our team.”
Along with Mike and Pat, I’d asked Wil Huckabee to join us in our four-man fire team for this trip. He was cool under pressure and knew just about all there was to know about our little group, we didn’t worry about spilling secrets in his presence. Even after his little gaffe with his friend Shawn, I knew he was steady and he had our back.
I introduced Wil and let him give a little background about himself. Wil was simple and to the point, since to a Marine, being a Marine was pretty much all there was to it. Every man a rifleman, after all. At the end, I also added in a little about Sally, indicating she was recovering from her gunshot wound.
“And what about you, Bryan. Where did you serve?” Sheriff Stringer asked, no doubt sensing the theme of the team. All former military, and all from a combat background.
“California Penal League,” I quipped, reaching back to a quote from one of my favorite movies growing up. Mike groaned and Sheriff Stringer gave me a genuine grin, obviously catching my reference.
“That’s a good one, Bryan,” he conceded. “I take it all of you have seen the elephant? Even you, counselor?”
Mike chuckled, and I gave him the finger. I know, real mature.
“Sheriff, you should have seen him when we got into that little scuffle outside Fred. He was all about shoot, move, communicate, but he got a taste of Murphy up close. I know he about had a heart attack when that bandit got the drop on him with a .44 caliber hand cannon.”
“What? Seriously?” Sheriff Stringer gasped, drawn into the story. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
“Bryan was working his way around to flank the attackers,” Mike explained, “and he’d already taken out two or three of them when his luck ran out. He ended up with a revolver right in his face, at a range of about ten inches,” Mike continued.
Mike and I let the tension build before I finished the short description of the climax.
“Like they say, it really is like looking down the end of a sewer pipe. He pulled the trigger, and we both discovered, at the same time, that he was out.”
Pretty much everybody in our little circle shivered at my words. To me, being on the receiving end, that little bit of drama was just about the worst thing that could happen, short of actually being shot.
“I wouldn’t say Bryan’s luck ran out, Mike. Bryan, what happened next?”
I gave Mike a threatening glare before turning back to the Sheriff to give my answer.
“Why, I disarmed the suspect and restrained him until the authorities showed up,” I replied with a straight face.
“Uh-huh.”
Sheriff Stringer wasn’t convinced in the least, but he was too much the gentleman to call me on my bald-faced lie. He also didn’t point out all of us pretty much wore matching battle rattle, and one thing that was missing amongst all four of us: hand cuffs.
With that little bit of ritualistic penis measuring out of the way, the five of us began a walk-through of the hospital as Pat and Mike made security suggestions to the Sheriff and the rest of us bounced the ideas around.
Since Mike and Pat had already disclosed our concerns about remaining National Guardsmen to Sheriff Stringer, we made a point of talking about other things when our group bumped into a trio of the soldiers when we moved through one of the larger patient wards. The space had previously belonged to the day surgery group that practiced out of the hospital, but the chief of surgery had co-opted the few remaining staff and centralized the services into one suite of operating rooms. This gave them five operating rooms all in one cluster, which made the logistics easier, and nobody was in getting a tummy tuck or having a procedure to correct micromastia.
As we walked past the trio, I let my eyes wander over the three soldiers, noting their slovenly appearance and squinting, red-tinged eyes. In short, they looked hungover, rather than overworked. They also had the single rocker insignia on their sleeves denoting their enlisted ranks.
“Private First Class?” I murmured to Pat, who nodded without comment. He didn’t need to, not with all three men looking to be in their early thirties. I knew from my conversations with other Guardsmen that promotions came slow in their service given the limitations on numbers, but these three were either late bloomers or guys who’d been reduced in rank for disciplinary problems. I knew which way my vote was going.
“I notice they didn’t try to get us to check our long arms in at the armory,” I observed instead.
“That’s because you are law enforcement now, not just a concerned citizen,” Sheriff Stringer replied politely, and Mike guffawed.
“He said we were one step up from vigilantes when he saw me the other day,” my brother pointed out. Mike was never one to sugarcoat the obvious, but that made me think of the other escorts.
“We need more of those vigilantes on our side if this place comes under attack,” I said, steering the conversation in the direction it needed to go. We couldn’t deploy all four of our team here like this usually, and Sheriff Stringer admitted he only had enough deputies to rotate four on duty at a time. Still, that was with them working twelve-hour shifts. Even that pace was unsustainable long term, but the department was spread thin with other obligations.
“We really going to discount the National Guard presence here?” Wil asked, and I knew he was playing devil’s advocate for the rest of the group.
“Based on what one of their sergeants told me before they pulled out, their lieutenant was weeding out the men he was afraid to allow at his back with a loaded weapon,” I put in, and the Sheriff made a face. “I don’t think we can discount them. I think we need to plan on having to face them at some point.”
“I thought your brother was exaggerating, but you’re serious, aren’t you?”
“As a graveyard, Sheriff.”
At this point, Pat cut in to get to the point.
“On day shift, you’ll have two of us here, Monday through Friday. We’ll see about getting you additional coverage from Sheriff Bastrop over the weekends. Four of yours on at all hours, working twelves.”
“Which is only going to work for a short period,” Wil chimed in, showing his experience. “They’re going to get worn down and complacent, which means dead. We need to find another way.”
“Which is why I suggested we coordinate with the civilian escorts. I know some of them are prior service, and they have a vested interest in making sure this hospital doesn’t get sacked and looted. They have family working here.”
Sheriff Stringer had to know how important the hospital was to his community, and he could see how fragile the security situation was with most of his doctors and skilled nursing gathered in one place. Jasper County had enough problems with dysentery and cholera as well as other waterborne illnesses alone to justify beefing up security here, and that didn’t count all the chronic illnesses and accident victims being treated as well.
Of course, they were also getting an increasing number of gunshot victims, and the hospital needed a deputy to respond to each of those as well, but we already knew that wasn’t being done. Not enough hours in the day on top of the other, more pressing duties. Unless you came in and reported so
mething to one of the Jasper deputies, then nothing was done to follow up on those shootings. As reserve deputies, and visiting ones at that, the four of us wisely declined to take any of those calls and told Sheriff Stringer we would focus keeping the riffraff out.
Fortunately for us, the hospital complex featured an eight-foot tall, chain link fence around the entire footprint of the campus. I’d never heard the reason for this extravagance, but I figured it had something to do with the now-shuttered psychiatric and behavioral building adjacent to the actual hospital structure. Standard entry came through one of only three points corresponding to the front door, the emergency room entrance, and the service road that connected to the loading docks in back.
When the National Guard had been present in more than a token force, all three gates hosted a pair of guards on duty. Hospital personnel were waved through the main gate if they had the windshield placard, and only ambulances were allowed through the emergency room gate. For deliveries, you guessed it, they needed a delivery truck and a proper bill of lading to get past the back set of security.
Even with the National Guard troops, keeping all three key points manned around the clock turned out to be a major drain on resources. Now, with just four soldiers total on hand to augment the law enforcement contingent, certain decisions needed to be made.
First, the ER gate had been closed and barricaded with a stack of Jersey barriers. All ambulances would need to come through the main gate, where it took the drivers an extra twenty seconds to drive past the main entry atrium and over to the emergency room entrance. Of course, that was provided the gate wasn’t already blocked by an incoming vehicle, which had already happened twice since the changes had gone into effect.
The second change involved the back gate, which would now be locked unless and until a delivery driver called ahead to get the gate opened. And no truck was allowed past the gate guard until their truck was inspected. This would be a massive pain in the butt to do, requiring a minimum of four guards being sent out to meet an incoming shipment, but no one could deny the need for that extra layer of protection.
A big rig might be able to blow through the gate, of course, but the driver and anybody in the back with bad intentions could expect to be met with a hail of machinegun fire before making it to the loading dock. The four-man Guard team had been entrusted with two M249 light machine guns with that purpose in mind. I’d seen that style of weapon before, but I’d never used one. Mike loved the things, and quietly vowed to find a way to add one to our growing arsenal.
“You boys really don’t trust them, do you?” Sheriff Stringer finally asked, catching us up short as we eyeballed the firing positions set up to bracket the back loading dock.
“Are we that obvious?” Pat asked with a concerned tone. He was the most experienced of our group, after all, and took the lead in setting up our training and doctrine.
“Just to my old eyes, son, but then I’ve seen a lot,” Sheriff Stringer’s placating response had the desired affect and Pat relaxed a bit.
“Still no word on getting any of these State Guard guys in here to bolster the numbers?” Wil asked, lowering his voice as he stepped closer. I glanced back, making sure the NG privates were well out of earshot.
“Not a word, and I’ve been pushing,” Sheriff Stringer admitted. “Hell, we need help in more places than just here at the hospital, but yeah, especially here.”
I nodded slowly, showing we were all on the same page.
“I’m sure you heard about the highwaymen who set up outside New Albany the other day,” I started, giving the rest of my crew a look before I continued. Sheriff Bastrop admitted he’d clued his counterpart here in on what had actually happened, but I wanted to connect the dots a little better for Sheriff Stringer.
“Yes, I heard. I take it you…were involved in that operation?”
I evaded the question and got to the meat of the matter.
“We never got a lead on the total manpower of that group, or where they’re based,” I explained, then went on to elaborate. “What we do know is at least the footsoldiers are experienced criminals, and their gear is top-of-the-line. They were on a resource gathering mission, specifically aimed at acquiring food stores. Sheriff Bastrop might not have wanted to reveal this, but they also had possession of a LEO base station radio one of his predecessor’s bad apples had made off with at some point.”
“You think they had some link with Dirty Bernie?” Sheriff Stringer asked, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the apt descriptor.
Pat took over the conversation at that point, and I was happy to bow out. I walked over and took up a position against the rails of the ramp that curved out a few feet from the main portion of the loading dock. Wooden bulkheads, treated with creosote, had been bolted into place and bolstered the dock here to act as rough shock absorbers.
As I leaned against the rails of the loading dock, I took out my spotting telescope with a digital rangefinder and swept the frozen landscape. The hospital complex sat on a strip of approximately fifty acres in a rectangle running longest on the east-west axis. To the north side, I could make out a string of pines running the back of the perimeter, and to the south, we had the access road leading to Highway 190 and back into the older parts of town to the east. This section of Jasper was still being developed, and I seemed to recall the new high school was back towards town and off to the south on the 1004 bypass.
Jasper used to be a busy little town, with a mixture of light manufacturing, and a thriving service industry catering to the tourists and retirees in the summer months due to the draw of lakes just up the road. Now I saw a closed and boarded up Arby’s across the highway as well as an auto repair shop that might still be in business but showed no customer cars in the lot and the three bays were still closed. Most of the rest of the town I’d seen showed a similar appearance, with many stores closed and the remainder just hanging on in hopes of better days.
I had my little notebook out and folded open as I jotted down figures on an otherwise empty page. I felt more than saw the presence and realized the sheriff was now watching me closely.
“What are you doing?” The old lawman asked.
“Just writing out a range card for this position,” I replied distractedly as I finished transferring the last numbers from the digital readout on the scope to the paper. “Won’t do me much good with this carbine, but if we start taking fire from the store across the street, Mike can reach out there with his AR-10.”
“You really are getting quite good at this playing soldier thing, aren’t you?” Sheriff Stringer asked, and from anybody else, I might have reacted a bit more violently. Yes, Pat taught me that a buttstroke from the collapsible stock of my AR would ruin the plastic housing, but I decided cracking him in the face with the barrel would likely not bend the steel in an appreciable manner. For the sheriff, I just gave a little shrug.
“That’s what life’s like these days, Sheriff. I never thought I would have to be this way, but I always suspected I had it in me.”
“You thinking of that whole nature versus nurture thing? A genetic pre-disposition to violence, I think your father called it.”
“You talked to my father about this?” I asked incredulously. My father had been dead for years now, even before I buried Colette and Charlie. I knew he and the long-time sheriff were more than casual acquaintances, but the idea still left me flabbergasted.
“You know he was worried about his family line’s most famous ancestor. He and I talked about it, back with Mike first enlisted in the Army,” Sheriff Stringer supplied, then waited patiently for my response. And there it was. The Hardin’s family legacy, running down through the years since old JW’s first killings back in the 1870s.
I laughed, and it came out like a short bark.
“No, you don’t have to worry about Mike,” I replied somewhat testily. “We can joke about it now that it’s out in the open. He’s been cursed with the hero gene. He’s all noble and shit. Nope, seems I’m
the one from this generation that got hung with the gunfighter gene.”
“How can you tell?”
“Well, I won’t be shooting anybody just for snoring, if that’s what you’re asking. On the other hand, killing someone in self-defense doesn’t keep me up at night, either.”
“You any good on the draw? John Wesley was supposed to be faster than just about anybody, except maybe William Hickok,” Stringer asked, and now I was remembering how he was a big history buff. He probably knew the myths and legends, and the truths, better than I did.
“Please, Sheriff. I’m already older than JW was when he got assassinated in that El Paso saloon. Plus, I’ve learned that the quick draw is just a tiny part of being a what I am. On the other hand, I’m still alive, so I guess I’m fast enough.”
Sheriff Stinger had to laugh at my laconic response, delivered in an affected country drawl. Actually, I realized it wasn’t an affectation, since it was the way I’d grown up speaking and only broke myself from using in the courtrooms or during a deposition.
“I guess I see your point. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t getting overwhelmed in all this that’s been going on.” Dropping his voice, Sheriff Stringer shared some of his own misgivings. “I feel like the whole world is falling apart, Bryan, and every morning, I wake up wondering if I’m going to make it through the day. What the hell happened to us?”
“We are just getting some splash damage from what happened on the other side of the world, Sheriff,” I said, trying to offer some words of encouragement to this grizzled old lawman. “If you want to know more of the real scoop on what’s going on, talk to Major Andy. But if you do,” I warned, “don’t expect your sleep to get any easier.”
“I’ll be thinking on that,” Sheriff Stringer replied as he stuck out his hand, and I returned the gesture. This was clearly a dismissal, and I put away the notebook in my off-hand and tipped my hat to the sheriff, wandering back over to rejoin my crew. Pat and Wil were planning to take off, as only Mike and I were on the schedule to cover the hospital today. We’d just wanted the team together for the pow-wow with Sheriff Stringer.
Tertiary Effects Series | Book 3 | Bite of Frost Page 32