by James Hunt
Jim had seen more people arriving every day. They came from Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, and Las Vegas; there wasn’t a major city in the southwest United States, or the entire country for that matter, that didn’t get hit by some sort of attack. He heard rumors of camps similar to their own on the outskirts of cities all around the country. Any time he asked what was going on, however, he was met with the calculated response of, “we’re working on it.” He just wasn’t sure what “it” was.
When Jim got to the front and held out his tray, the man in the hairnet slopped a pile of bland mush onto his plate. Coyle leaned over with a frown on his face. “Damn. And I was really hoping it’d be the charcoal mush.”
Before Jim could scout a table for everyone to sit at, two MPs slammed into him, knocking his tray to the floor. Jim watched them make a beeline for Samantha and Annie behind him, still in line for breakfast.
“Samantha Kearny?” the taller MP asked.
Samantha pushed Annie behind her. Her daughter wrapped her arms around her mother’s legs, peeking up at the MPs between her mom’s knees. “Yes?”
“We need you and your daughter to come with us,” the shorter MP said.
Jim wedged himself in between the two MPs and the girls. “What’s this about?”
“Sir, please stay back,” the shorter MP said.
The shorter MP reached for Jim’s shoulder, but Jim knocked the MP’s hand out of the way. The taller MP went straight for his pistol, and Jim kicked the side of his knee, collapsing him to the ground. Jim pulled the pistol out of the MP’s holster and clicked the safety off, pointing it at the shorter MP, who had his hand hovering over his pistol.
“Don’t,” Jim said.
The breakfast line had stopped moving. The crowd around Jim had spread out. People had their empty trays pressed against their chests like shields. The soldiers in hairnets behind the counter stood frozen over their vats of slimy meat. A rustling in the back of the crowd caught Jim’s attention.
“Out of the way, move!” a voice shouted.
A brash sergeant burst through the frontline of the crowd with a group of four soldiers with him. Jim kept the pistol aimed between the two MPs he disarmed. The sergeant and the rest of his men un-holstered their weapons. The sergeant inched closer, but Jim didn’t flinch. Not even when the barrel of the sergeant’s Smith and Wesson 9mm was jammed into the side of his temple.
“Drop it, fucker,” the sergeant said.
Jim glanced around the men circling him. He let the pistol go limp in his hand and handed it back to the MP he took it from. The sergeant grabbed Jim’s arms and threw them around his back, cuffed him, and slammed his face into the ground. Jim saw the other soldiers grab Samantha and Annie. The sergeant pointed a finger at Coyle.
“He comes, too,” he said.
The remaining solider lifted Coyle up between his armpits and dragged him from the breakfast line. “But I didn’t get to finish my mush!” Coyle said.
Jim was taken into a separate tent and shackled to a chair. The MP he disarmed made sure to give him a nice pop in the stomach before he left. Once the MP left, an officer in fatigues entered the tent. Jim could only make out Locke’s silhouette, the circling smoke that rose from the tip of his cigar, and the four stars shining on his hat from the sunlight at the entrance of the tent.
“Jim Farr, former officer and specialist in Navy Intelligence. Honorably discharged after twelve years of service and three combat tours during which he earned twenty commendations, two Purple Hearts, and the Navy Cross,” Locke stated.
Jim saw that Locke was reading from a file. He paced around Jim, puffing on his cigar and intently focused on the contents of the file in his hands.
“Now why the hell would someone who was awarded the Navy Cross attack two MPs at a military refugee camp?” Locke asked.
“The military and I haven’t really seen eye to eye over the past few years, General,” Jim answered.
Locke chewed on the end of the cigar. “I can see that.”
Locke’s assistant Chris dragged a chair inside the tent with him and handed Locke another file. Jim could hear the creaks of the chair stressing under Locke’s weight. “Goddamn, I’ve gotten fat,” Locke said.
Jim had never had patience for admirals, generals, or commanders. They had long left the trenches of battle where Jim had spent most of his career. Jim surveyed the heavyset man in front of him with the cigar tucked into the corner of his mouth. His eyes finally came to rest on the nametag of the general’s fatigues.
“General Locke?” Jim asked.
“We can talk about your father later, Farr. We have other pressing issues to worry about.”
Locke motioned to Jim’s cuffs. “You can take those off,” he said.
“General, I highly suggest—” Chris said.
“Dammit, Chris, he’s not going to kill me. Take the cuffs off,” Locke said.
Chris hesitated for a moment, then walked over and set Jim’s hands free. Jim rubbed his wrists and Locke handed him a photograph.
“That’s your brother in-law, Matt Kearny. He was picked up during the evacuation of Phoenix two weeks ago. Do you know what he does?” asked Locke.
Jim looked at the photo of Matt in his hands. It had been taken somewhere in a downtown area. “He’s an engineer for some software company.”
“PamTech. They’re one of the military’s largest contractors. They handle a lot of our digital security platforms. Your brother-in-law was one of their lead engineers who handled a majority of our accounts. Our CIA boys picked him up and have him in a holding cell just east of Phoenix,” Locke replied.
“You think he has something to do with all of these attacks?”
“That’s something I was hoping you could help me with. Matt was in charge of all of PamTech’s digital security functions. He has a security clearance higher than anyone in the company, and we need him to grant us access to those files to see if they’ve been tampered with.”
“Why don’t you just break through their firewall? I know the military has enough resources to do it.”
“We tried, but the files aren’t on their network. We think they’re on a stand-alone hard drive. We need Matt to tell us where it is.”
“How long have you had him?”
“Jim, we’re running out of time. If we don’t get that data, then we could be open for more attacks. Hell, we still have riots happening all over the country. We need—”
“How long?” Jim repeated.
“Two weeks.”
Jim clenched his jaw. His hands curled into fists, crumpling the edges of the photo. He looked to Locke, but not before he noticed Chris’s hand at the firearm on his hip. “My sister has been asking about him since she got here, and each time you told us you didn’t know.”
“Well, depending on who you asked, that was true. Besides us, there are only a handful of people who know where he is and what this is about.”
“You want me to convince him to give you the hard drive,” Jim said.
“Yes.”
Jim’s hands relaxed. He smoothed out the edges of the photo he crumpled. “My sister and niece get to see him before I help you.”
“Done. You leave today.”
Jim extended the photo back to Locke.
“Jim, we need that drive,” Locke said.
Jim’s grip tightened on the photo when Locke tried to pull it away. “And my niece needs her father.”
Locke tapped his cigar with his finger. Bits of ash sprinkled to the floor. He gave a weary smile. “Let’s hope we both get what we want.”
Upon his release, Jim was met outside by Annie, Samantha, and Coyle. They each had a million questions, but mostly Coyle. Jim pulled Samantha to the side out of earshot from the others. “They have Matt,” Jim said.
“What? Where is he?” she asked.
“The military want something he was working on for his company. I think they were going to use you and Annie as leverage to get what they want.”
“They can’t do that!”
“Hey, we need to be smart.” The soldiers around the tents kept eyeing Jim suspiciously. “They want me to convince Matt to give them the information they’re looking for.”
“And what happens if you can’t convince him?”
Jim looked over at Annie, huddled next to Coyle. She had her arms wrapped around his leg and was glancing up at the soldiers around her. Jim saw Samantha follow his line of sight.
“Oh God,” she said.
“It won’t come to that.”
“It might,” a stern, cold voice said from behind him. When Jim turned around, he saw the same sergeant who had his gun against his temple no less than twenty minutes ago. “You give me any trouble on this trip and I’ll put a bullet in your head, right after I make you watch me put one in each of one of them,” the sergeant said.
“Sergeant Hult,” Locke said from behind the two of them, “will you join me for a moment, please?”
“Yes, Sir!” Hult said.
Coyle walked over to Jim, who had his eyes on Locke’s tent. “What’d Captain stars and stripes want?”
“We’re going on a trip. I need you to come with me,” Jim said.
“Why do I get the feeling that we’re going to do something dangerous?” Coyle sighed.
Jim saw Hult exit Locke’s tent with a grimace on his face. Whatever Locke had said to him, he wasn’t happy about it. Hult marched towards Jim and slammed his shoulder into him as he walked by.
“We leave in an hour,” he said, not making eye contact.
It didn’t take long for Jim and everyone to pack. They barely had anything to bring with them. When the two trucks Jim saw rumbling down the dirt path came to a halt in front of them and he saw one of the soldiers jump out, his jaw dropped. The soldier Jim recognized smacked on some gum with a smile on his face that stretched from ear to ear.
“When they told me who I was picking up, I literally told my CO to shut the fuck up. He wasn’t very happy about it,” the soldier said.
Jim laughed and stretched out his arms. The two men hugged and slapped each other on the back. Jim turned around and introduced everyone.
“Sam, this is an old friend of mine, Brett Fox. Brett, this is my sister Sam, her daughter Annie, and my friend Coyle.”
Brett shook Samantha’s hand, gave Annie a high five, and gripped Coyle’s hand so hard that he heard it pop. Coyle made sure he didn’t show the grimace on his face until Brett turned back to Jim. Brett introduced his partner to the group. He simply called himself Twink.
“What are you doing here?” Brett asked.
“It’s a long story, but it’s damn good to see you,” Jim replied.
Annie grabbed Tigs’s cage and lifted it up. The cage rocked back-and-forth awkwardly, barely lifting from the ground. Tigs meowed uncomfortably from inside. Jim tried to convince Annie that Tigs would be safer at the camp, but Annie insisted on taking Tigs along. Coyle agreed with her.
“Yeah, if we run out of food, at least we’ll have something to eat,” Coyle said.
Ten minutes later, they were still trying to get Annie to stop crying.
The truck rumbled off with Coyle in the rear truck with Hult and his soldiers while Jim, Annie, Samantha, Tigs, Brett, and Twink sat in the lead truck. Brett passed the time with old war stories of him and Jim. He kept it clean due to some of the company, but he wasn’t always successful.
“So this dumbass comes running out of the bunker with a handful of grenade pins screaming his head off, and just before they go off, he jumps behind the barricade where I’m sitting with the bomb switch in my hand. I asked him what he was doing and he says, ‘Some redecorating.”
Brett pulled up the sleeve on his arm and exposed a six-inch scar that ran along the top of his forearm. “Twenty stitches,” he said. “Some redecorating job.”
“I got a black eye for that one,” Jim said.
“That was almost twenty years ago, right after I joined. I was a little brash during my first tour,” Brett said.
“We got lucky that year,” Jim said.
“Lucky? Hell, it’s like we were protected by a legion of angels. Some of the shi— stuff that we got ourselves out of was unbelievable,” Brett said.
“I thought you got out years ago?” Jim asked.
“Ah, I tried.” Brett looked down at his rifle and dusty uniform and shrugged. “I’m just not good at anything else, Jim. This is what I know. This is what I love.”
Jim thought back to his first few years in the Navy. The pride, the rush of being out on a mission, the feeling of victory after the success of that mission. He understood what Brett meant. There was a time when Jim thought he’d always be in the Navy.
“How long ‘till we get there?” Jim asked.
“A few hours,” Brett answered.
Samantha spoke up, “A few hours? I thought Matt was in Phoenix?”
“He’s in a facility just east of the city. It’d be faster if we cut through, but the city still isn’t secure yet,” Brett replied.
“Secure from what?” Jim asked.
“Half the city is in havoc. With all the other shit that’s been happening around the country, we don’t have the personnel to secure the city. They’re actually bringing home U.S. soldiers stationed in other countries to help with relief,” Brett said.
“It’s that bad?” Jim asked.
“It’s turning into the wild-fucking-west out there, man.” Brett leaned back and slammed his body against the seat, making a loud thump. He flashed another wide smile. “Good job security for me though.”
The sun was still high when they arrived at the makeshift base. It wasn’t much to look at, but what it lacked in building structure, it made up for in firepower. There were constant patrols around the camp along with guard stations that housed machine gun nests. Jim wasn’t sure if this was to keep people out, or in.
Coyle jumped out of the truck first and quickly rushed over to Jim. He clutched his bag and kept glancing back behind him.
“Those guys really don’t have a sense of humor. If you find me dead, tell the police it was that guy,” Coyle said.
Jim looked back to see Hult frowning at them. Samantha pulled on Jim’s shoulder and spun him around.
“When do we get to see Matt?” she asked.
“Once you get him to give us what we need, the rest of you can see him,” barked Hult.
Jim had dealt with men like Hult before. Angry, wreckless, strong, and unpredictable at times. It was men like Hult that made Jim want to leave the Navy in the first place.
“If you think you can keep my daughter from seeing her father…” Samantha said, raising her fist.
“I’ll help you after they get to see him,” Jim said, holding his sister back.
“Five minutes,” Hult said.
There was one stand-alone building in the center of the camp. Jim noticed the camp had been constructed around it. It had one door guarded by two armed men. Jim watched Hult scan a badge and enter a code on the keypad of the door to enter.
Inside was one solid room with cubicle barriers separating different desks and personnel. Jim, Samantha, and Annie were escorted by Hult and his men past the desks to a dimly lit hallway with multiple doors on each side.
The group walked down to the fifth door on the left. When Hult unlocked and swung it open, Samantha and Annie darted inside. Jim watched the family on their knees inside the cell hugging each other. He could see the bandages covering Matt’s face in between the heads of the girls. His eyes were puffy not from the tears, but because someone had beat him.
Samantha held Matt’s face in her hands, and the three of them just sat huddled on the floor whispering to each other. Matt’s bandaged fingers ran through his daughter’s hair. Annie smiled at him and his eyes welled up with tears.
“Matt, what happened? Why are you here?” Samantha asked.
“Okay, time’s up,” Hult said.
“No!” Annie screamed.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Daddy will see you soon,” Matt said.
Matt kissed Samantha goodbye. Samantha had to drag her daughter out of the cell. Her screams of ‘daddy’ echoed down the hall.
Hult motioned for Jim to enter and then slammed the door shut behind him. Matt sat motionless on the ground except for the light shaking of his shoulder.
They’d broken him, Jim thought. The wounds on his face were over a week old. They had let him heal because they knew that they’d bring his family in to see them. Jim felt sick. The military was using his family as bait.