Wings of Steele - Flight of Freedom (Book2)

by Burger, Jeffrey

  “Where to, Skipper?” asked Dunnom, stepping down off the last stair, steering the mine director by his collar across the dirt and gravel, out into the sunshine.

  “Let's take him to the Invader...”

  “Gotcha.” The Corporal steered the man roughly, his arms flopping like a rag doll.

  In a reflex to the bright morning sunlight, Sy Setzel's hands shot up to shield his eyes. “This is my mine!” he shouted unabashedly. “Timmian! Where's that good-for-nothing Timmian? Timmian, you bastard, where are you?!”

  Steele watched the sudden interest of the miners in the tents, feeling hundreds of eyes on them. “Shut your mouth,” he hissed, “or I'm going to shut it for you...”

  “Murderer! Butcher!” came the shouts from the miners, congregating. A mass of humanity poured out of the tents, walking, shuffling, hobbling in their direction, threatening to block access to the ship, parked over a hundred yards away. It might as well have been a mile. “Uh, oh. I think we're in trouble Skipper...”

  Jack looked around, the only soldiers were the medical team, busy tending to the worst of the miners. The rest of the engineers were in the mine working on the recovery efforts. “Keep moving... and keep him quiet.”

  The wall of humanity advanced, swelling to over three-hundred in number, wrapping around the three men like a wave, converging on them, surrounding them. Corporal Dunnom shoved Sy Setzel behind him. “Keep them away from me!” screamed Sy, cowering in abhorrent disgust. “Keep them away!”

  Steele smacked him across the side of his head from behind, “Shut up, asshole.” The encirclement tightened. “Easy guys, easy,” said Steele, calmly, arms out, “you don't need to do this...” The crowd pressed forward, within arm's length, reaching, grabbing for the screeching, cowering Sy, their eyes fiercely fixated on him. It was like the Corporal and the Captain were invisible, didn't matter, didn't exist. With no room to maneuver, Dunnom left the carbine slung at rest, reaching for his sidearm. “Corporal, no!” shouted Steele, grabbing him by the shoulder.

  “What do we do, Skipper?” The arms brushed past the Marine, scrabbling at the man cowering behind him.

  “Nothing,” replied Steele, deadpan. They had suffered enough at the hands of the filthy little tyrant. A cold, soulless, evil little man, without a single fiber of conscience or compassion. The pilot would not fight or hurt the men that had been so tortured and dehumanized. His ethics and morals slightly tarnished but intact, he pushed a screaming Sy Setzel into their hands. “It's his karma.”

  Sy was absorbed, disappearing into the crowd, the group's nucleus shifting, focused on him, changing as he passed through their hands. Steele and Dunnom were on the outside now, left standing alone and untouched. The human mass moved away like it was a living, breathing, thing, the pained, terrified screams of the little tyrant drawing further away, growing weaker and less frequent. Newly released miners poured from the mouth of the mine, adding to the slow motion chaos.

  “God have mercy on his soul...”

  “If he has one,” added Dunnom, darkly.

  The Marine Corporal and the Captain were still watching, when Lisa ran up from the family tents. “What's going on..?”

  “Karma,” muttered Jack. “Karma's a bitch...”

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  FT. MYERS BEACH, FLORIDA : WINDS OF CHANGE

  Chase Holt was suddenly and inexplicably awake, staring at the ceiling in the darkness, listening. Had he really heard that or was he imagining things? The only real sound was Allie's breathing at the foot of the bed, curled up on her blanket. Nothing but crickets... and a dog barking somewhere. Hazarding a glance, the clock showed 3:27 a.m. He took a deep breath and tried to relax, closing his eyes. Solid sleep had been eluding him for weeks and it was getting more than annoying, waking up at odd hours, strange disconnected dreams, insomnia.

  Deployed in Afghanistan, sleep deprivation was a fact of life, you dealt with it, but he'd been back over a year... He was beginning to wonder if he was experiencing delayed PTSD or something. Of course, he knew better than discuss that with anyone other than a Brother, who he could trust implicitly.

  The military's Pre-Separation Exam was not mandatory, but it was something they strongly encouraged all service members to take advantage of, covering all sorts of complaints, symptoms, injuries, disabilities, disorders... the list was huge and the interview questions could be quite personal. Some were almost sinister in their undertones.

  He had to do the Pre-Sep Exam to be sure he would have coverage for the physical injuries he received while he was deployed, but when it came to the part of the interview that covered stress and mental state of mind, he was all rainbows, fairy dust and unicorns. A unicorn that pissed champagne and shit rainbow gumdrops, to boot. Nobody was going to label this boy with a mental disorder. And they looked for that - he had been warned. And darned if that prissy little bitch didn't try to come off all warm and fuzzy, helpful and caring, flirty, best-friendish, you can tell me anything... What a load of crap. Of course, he didn't fall for it. Although the proposition of getting a free ride was attractive and he could easily see how someone who wasn't properly informed could get roped into it. The questions baited him toward answers that would allow them to categorize him as having any kind of lifelong disability, whether it be physical or mental, like PTSD. Their aim was to be able to prescribe medications to service members that would put them at risk for compromising their freedoms, negating them as a threat to the governmental administration.

  One of the guys in Chase's unit that got out about four months before him, got a letter in the mail from the Department of Veterans Affairs, about three months after his Pre-Sep Exam. The letter explained that it had been determined he was incompetent to handle his own financial affairs and that someone had been appointed to handle his affairs for him. At his own expense! In addition to that, it said the determination of incompetency will prohibit him from purchasing, possessing, receiving, or transporting a firearm or ammunition. What?! In a later, but related development, they refused to issue over ten-thousand dollars, in back military deployment pay, until he signed a release for accepting the financial consultant. In fine military fashion, he gave them rather detailed instructions on how to proceed with a self - rectal colon exam with an M203 grenade launcher, and got a good lawyer - a retired Air Force Colonel that his father knew.

  And that wasn't the only one, Chase had heard of others. Many others. Veterans Affairs even interviewed the spouses, and in some cases, had tried to declare the spouse incompetent as well, threatening to remove children from the home.

  It was despicable, that a government would treat its military like that. But the government has never really liked the military, they just consider it a lesser of evils.

  It's a clear violation of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, that states, that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. And let's not forget taking away a guy's Second Amendment rights after he fought and bled for the safety and security of the country. It just wasn't right. Maybe that was what was bothering Chase. There seemed to be a lot of governmental overreaching lately. And it seemed to be getting more and more egregious. Like the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security calling returning vets possible domestic terrorists. Along with; Second Amendment supporters, Pro-Life supporters, anyone from a Christian faith... and the list seemed to expand on a regular basis to include new groups of people the government didn't trust. He was convinced the Division of Homeland Security had been developed to deal with nearly twenty years of military members returning from combat. What else could they possibly be for? To guard the government from the men who would rebel against the coming loss of freedoms they fought so hard to maintain and protect. It seemed the government was gearing up for a war, with its own people.

  And anyone who could say it has never and could never happen here, was simply ignoring history. Or ignorant of it. The Japanese American Internment camps created
during World War II, were a prime example.

  Sleep was not coming easily, but then again his mind seemed to be resisting all efforts to shut down. He wasn't about to give up. Until he heard it again... His eyes popped open as he listened, and Allie jumped off the bed, her ears up. He could see her shape in the darkness as she turned her head to look in his direction. “Did you hear that too?” he whispered. In response, she trotted out of the bedroom, rounding the corner to head out into the living room.

  Probably a raccoon. “Fuck it,” he muttered, throwing off the sheets. He couldn't sleep anyway. Maybe some milk and cookies. When Allie jumped up on the windowsill of the picture window in the living room with her front paws, peering through the vertical blinds, he paused. When he heard her soft, throaty rumble he backtracked into the bedroom, lifting his .40 cal Glock off the dresser, grabbing a small tactical flashlight.

  “OK, Allie, let's go outside...”

  In sleep-shorts and a t-shirt, Chase Holt stepped barefoot out onto the damp concrete of his front stoop, peering out into the dense fog rolling through his quiet neighborhood. He watched Allie out of the corner of his eye while scanning the front yard, “You stay here with me,” he whispered. He knew that if she went more than twenty feet, she'd disappear in the mist. They both swung right when they heard the noise in the bushes, Chase extending his free hand to the side to stay Allie from jumping ahead. “Stay...” he hissed. Her head was down, peering into the wall of gray, her ears rotating back and forth, searching for sound. The flashlight would be useless in this soup.

  “Who's out here?” he barked, “step out before I shoot your stupid ass...”

  Allie growled, shifting uneasily.

  “Chase?” came the reply, barely a whisper.

  “Who the fuck is out here...” demanded Chase

  “It's me, Dan. I'm coming out, don't shoot me,” he whispered. His shape appearing as a gray blob from between the house and the bushes.

  “Dude,” whispered Chase, lowering the Glock to his side, “what the hell are you doing out here? At three-thirty? In my goddamn bushes?”Allie's head came up, her posture changing, her tail swaying gently.

  “Sorry Brother, I didn't want to wake you...”

  “Wake me? You're not making any sense. You came all the way over here at three-something in the morning to not wake me? And hide in my bushes? That's fucked up,” he added, looking around into the fog drifting down the block, the streetlight on the corner turning it sodium-vapor orange. “Where's your car?”

  “I walked...”

  “Walked? From where? Home? You live like six miles from me...”

  The light from a lone set of headlights coming up the street glowed in the clouds of drifting mist, the car rolling slowly through the neighborhood. “Down, down,” urged Dan, dropping prone on the house's walkway. He reached up and grabbed Chase by the ankle, “get down...”

  Chase dropped to a low crouch, refusing to go prone on his own front lawn. Allie dropped all the way down, laying half on the grass, half on the walkway, more than willing to play this new game. Chase scowled at Dan, “What the hell is wrong with you? What's going on?”

  “Ssshhh...”

  The police car idled past the house, the alley lights on, their glow refracting through the mist in either side of the car. The spotlight swinging in an arc past them did little to penetrate the wall of gray-white. In another moment the lights went out and the patrol car continued down the street.

  Chase took a deep breath, wiping the moisture from his face, realizing he was soaked to his skin. He might as well have been caught in the rain. “OK, Dan, you want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

  “Can we go in the house, please?” Dan rose to his feet and picked up the duffel lying on the ground behind him. “But don't turn on the lights, OK?”

  ■ ■ ■

  Toweled dry, sipping hot coffee, the two men sat in the darkness of the living room, with the only light coming in through the vertical blinds from the streetlight on the corner, painting the walls in eerie, pale orange stripes.

  After what seemed an interminable amount of silence, Dan Murphy shifted and set his coffee mug on the table. “Chase, some real crazy shit's been happening...”

  “Like you showing up in my bushes at God-thirty in the morning...?” prodded Chase. Dan Murphy just sighed and shook his head, prompting Chase to change his tone. “OK, like what? We talking stuff related to Caroline's death?”

  “That would be my guess. I've been seeing black sedans everywhere. I'm being followed, even on duty.”

  “You sure it's not IA checking up on you or something?”

  Dan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I've seen them parked near my house even at night. It's not Internal Affairs.” He steepled his hands nervously. “A week ago, I responded to a call for a warehouse burglary alarm, and when I got there, I was the first on the scene. I could see the open door so I backed off a bit to keep an eye on it and waited, but no other units showed up. That's when I noticed two dark sedans at the back of a parking lot across the street. I don't think they realized I saw them...”

  “Didn't you just call for backup?”

  “I couldn't, my radio didn't have a signal, and my cell phone couldn't find one either...”

  “They were jamming you?”

  “I think so. It was a setup. They wanted me to go into that warehouse alone but I wasn't taking the bait. As soon as I left the neighborhood, my radio grabbed a signal, but I didn't want to take a chance, I called into dispatch on a land-line... They had no record of a burglary call coming in, and they had no record of issuing the call to my unit. My unit was logged as unreachable for almost fifteen-minutes.”

  “Son of a bitch...” hissed Chase, “they were going to hit you.”

  “Yeah...” he replied stoically, “I got lucky. I don't think they'll make that kind of mistake again.”

  “Did you tell anybody?”

  “I didn't know who I could trust, or if anyone would believe me.” He picked up his coffee mug, “But that's not the only thing... there's more, lots more.”

  “I don't like the sound of that...”

  Dan sipped his coffee. “And you shouldn't... You've heard about all the equipment buys by the Department of Homeland Security, right?”

  “The ammo, the guns, the drones, the MRAPs...?” Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle. “Yeah, I heard.”

  “How about the practice targets with actual photos of white Americans of all ages? They even have one of a child, and another of a pregnant woman...”

  Chase did a double take in the darkness, “What? No... I...”

  “DHS wanted our department to use them for training too... I saw them... The Sheriff refused to use them. And those MRAPs? They purchased over twenty-seven-hundred of those things! That's over fifty per state...” he waved his mug, “what the hell do they need them in the United States, for?”

  Chase didn't immediately respond, his mind was wandering ahead. The MRAP was a serious piece of military hardware that had no real place in civilian or law enforcement use, except in very limited circumstances. And surely not enough in number to run a fleet of them rampaging across any state in the country, unchallenged. Because there would be nothing in a civilian, or law enforcement armory that could effectively stop one. For all intents and purposes, the MRAP was a tank. A politically correct tank, that could be disguised as a vehicle used to render and deliver aid in the event of a natural disaster. Or on the dark side, deliver troops to counter an armed rebellion.

  He sensed a very real possibility in the not too distant future, when Americans would once again be fighting a bloated power-hungry government. Except this time, it would be the American government on their own soil. His stomach knotted and he felt queasy. This would more than explain the attempts to disarm returning military veterans. And reductions in military readiness by cutting budgets... all the while boosting the DHS funding. The administration was building a personal, private army. It mig
ht also explain why the government didn't seem to be in any hurry to bring troops home en-mass from their mission theaters, but rather to exhaust them with multiple deployments and extended stays.

  He cleared his throat, “They're preparing for a revolution...”

  Dan Murphy leaned back on the couch, his face disappearing in the shadows, “Yeah, that's what I thought you were going to say...”

  Chase motioned toward the bags on the floor near the front door, “I noticed you have a pretty substantial backpack and a bug-out bag, what's your plan?”

  “I think I need to disappear for awhile...”

  “You got money? Cash?” asked Chase. “Because you need to forget credit cards.”

  “Assholes froze my bank accounts, but I had a little over eight grand in my safe. It'll have to do, I guess.”

  “I've got a couple more on hand, need it?”

  “If it doesn't put you in a bind, yeah, that would be great.”

  “So how'd you get out?”

  “If it wasn't for this fog, I wouldn't have. There were two of them sitting in the condo parking lot, one unit near each entrance, that's why I left my car. Besides, I was a little afraid to start it... I was getting the sense they were getting impatient, and I felt like I had a target pinned on my back. It was now or never. I went over the back fence and through yards. I stuck to the side streets until I hit the bike trail. Since the trail's not lit, I could make pretty good time. The fog is actually thicker here than over at my place...”

  “Mmm,” nodded Chase draining his coffee mug, “I'm a little closer to the water. What about work?”

  “I had a lot of comp time, so I arranged a couple weeks off. I left it open to take more if I need to. Suppose I could do a leave of absence. I don't want to loose my job, but it's better than getting popped. Not sure how long it will take for these clowns to get bored and loose interest...”

  “Well you'd been pushing pretty hard,” said Chase standing up, stepping over Allie's sleeping form. “I hate to say I told you so...”