I took out my recording device. It had been my dad’s and was nearly forty years old. I felt its use to be more appropriate to this particular task and subject than something more modern.
“Can we begin?”
He turned his head back to me and gave a brief glimpse of a smile and an even briefer nod of the head.
“Sure, however you want to do this. I promised your father to give you have as much time as you need. Ask all the questions you want. Whatever…whatever questions you want.”
I noted the faint hum of what was likely the tavern’s generator coming from somewhere outside the office – possibly behind one of the doors in the hallway.
“Please state your name.”
“Mackenzie Walker - people been callin’ me Mac since I can remember. You can do the same.”
“When and where were you born, Mac?”
“Born and raised in Carville, Louisiana – 1964.”
“So you are now, at the time of this interview, seventy-three years old, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And when did you enter the United States military?”
“That was October, 1984. Did a couple years of junior college, then signed up. Wanted to see the world. Young and dumb – all that kind of thing.”
“What branch of the military?”
“Navy. When America still had a military – still had its own Navy before it was co-opted by the U.N. Was in for just over a year, then applied and was accepted into SWCC.”
“What is that?”
“Special Warfare Combatant Crewman. Work alongside the SEALs – get in get out operations, and from there…did that for about nine months… I decided to try out for the SEALs. Knew enough of them by then, and figured I was tougher than most, so why not? Did my time at BUD/S, passed my PST easily, so easily that some people from JSOC noticed me and I got handed over to them.”
“And that led to your involvement with SEAL Team 6?”
“Yes – DEVGRU. Naval Special Warfare Development Group. At that time working out of Fort Bragg. This was around 1987...1988. Reagan was still in the White House.”
Mac had become much more animated than when I first saw him. Clearly the subject of his past military experience, at least its beginnings, was a favored one.
“How long did you remain with SEAL Team Six?”
“Nine years, up to about 1997. Did several months in Eastern Europe, Kosovo. Black Squadron. That’s where I started to hook up a lot with the Intel gang. A bit of NSA. CIA. All the voodoo-acronyms. The real nasty ones. Started the transition with them.”
“Transition?”
“NSA was scouring installments like DEVGRU for recruits. Wanted guys like me who could handle themselves in a shit-storm but had some Intel training too. Went over my file, report records, all of it. Liked what they saw and asked me to join up. They fed my ego. I was the biggest bad ass on the planet back then – so I thought. Still young and stupid. Told me how much good I could do for the country, so I said yes. Took the offer. And for government work – the money was damn good. Well, months went by, then years…thought I had made a mistake. Had me pouring over data inside of a cubicle at Fort Meade. I was losing my mind there. Kept making requests to put me in the field and they kept coming back with soon. Real soon. Then 9-11 happened. The World Trade Center attacks in New York. The ones the U.N’s curriculum programs, their cultural sensitivity mandates scrubbed from the history books, from all the media logs. Kids today don’t even know those attacks happened. After 9-11 I was offered to become part of something called Project Icon. A little in-house zero oversight thing of the DoD’s that also ran through NSA. In fact, PI was hardly known about, but what we did…we were even deeper behind the curtain than Icon was. That’s where the picture there on the wall you were looking at comes from. The four of us there – we were Project Icon. That’s where I really learned how to kill. And the more I did it, the more atta boys they gave me. Just like the movies back then, some shit went down, we got the call…we cleaned it up. Or…we went in and stirred the shit up and then got out and waited. And we were good at it. That picture was Egypt…2003. Five weeks before American military forces hit the sand in Iraq. We helped pave the road for them. A few Egyptian weapons smugglers helping out Saddam’s military. First we asked nice. They ignored us. Then we executed them. Then we posed for that picture and slept without a care in the world that night.”
The shock at his last descriptive statement must have clearly registered on my face because he looked at me with more than a bit of amusement.
“I know your dad told you what I was then, and I don’t make any excuses for it. I was a killer on hire by the government of the United States. I swore an oath to defend and if need be, terminate any threats, both foreign and domestic. And that’s exactly what I did. A whole lot of it too. Thing is, as repulsive or scary to some people what I was back then might be, without me there is no America. There’s always been someone to do the dirty work that kept the country going. Kept it safe. While the rest of them were sleeping in their beds at night, I was slitting the throats of the ones who wanted to see those beds burning up with them in it.”
“So where did it start to go bad for you? With the government?”
“Oh – we were a ways off from that. At least from the time I realized it anyways. The machine had been put in place though. Jack was the first of us to start asking questions. He was the one who said things were getting out of hand, that people were being allowed to get away with way too much, including us. But that…that wasn’t for a few… another few years yet.”
I pointed to the photo of the four on the wall and asked, “Which one was Jack?”
“The tallest guy with the biggest smile. He was an Alabama boy, smart as hell. He started to piece things together way before the rest of us. And he had a brother who was Secret Service. Had the presidential detail a spell. So I assumed some of what he was warning us about was coming from him. At first…at first I didn’t really know what to make of it and really didn’t care. By then we had gone private, the four of us. Left the NSA with a promise of government contracts for as long as we wanted them, and then the money really started to come in for us. Hundreds of thousands for each of us. That was the last couple of years after 9-11 when we started that up…competing with the likes of Blackwater and other PMCs. Iraq and Afghanistan were crawling with people like us back then – and the money, the money was incredible. Almost no oversight – none. If something needed to be done that fell outside military code of conduct, and there was a lot of that – then they called us and we got it done. We had access to the best equipment, the best intelligence, and they gave us carte blanche to do it how we wanted to do it. And we did.
“But Jack…Jack was telling us it wasn’t right. Not the missions necessarily. We knew we were dealing with bad guys. Taking out the bad guys, but all the money and no accountability, and how things were turning inward, that had Jack spooked.”
‘What do you mean by inward? Turning inward?”
“They started to order up a lot more operations focused on American citizens abroad - filed it under Patriot Act directives. Jack would go on and on about the Patriot Act. Congress passed that back in 2001, and then it kept getting added to. Bits and pieces here and there. They would say it was to protect the American people of course, that was how they always justified taking away freedom, and Jack was really starting to get pissed about it. By the time 2009 rolls around he’s hearing things about the president from his brother, and he’s watching how Congress is expanding the powers of the Patriot Act. Seizing computer data without warrants, entering people’s homes without them ever knowing – no search warrant, the surveillance stuff they started to have us do by then was really…it started to unsettle all of us. The drone program, we went from fighting the bad guys who were trying to harm America to watching and detailing the movements of Americans themselves. And, because we weren’t a branch of the government, like I said – no accountability. No
oversight. They told us what they wanted and we delivered it to them.”
There was a pause as both of us looked back to the photo of the four men on the wall.
“Who were the other two?”
Mac looked back at me then back to the photo, and his voice softened slightly as he responded.
“The shorter guy, with the glasses – that was Minnick. Jay Minnick. He was the tech guy – damn smart. But he could snipe too. Thousand yards and more - deadly accurate. His father was a former Congressman who helped get us set up with the military contracts when we started out. Weapons, identities, safe-houses…all that.”
“And what about the other one?”
“The Black guy? That’s Benny. Benjamin Williams – we all called him Benny. Or just B. Always laughing, joking, even when the shit got scary bad…he still kept that smile. He loved the work. The life. Had a hard side to him though, like we all did. Of the four of us, Benny was the only one I thought I might not be able to take in hand to hand. He was like a 5th degree Aikido-something, really into the martial arts stuff. I saw him take out three guys once – no weapons. It was about a two second blur and there they all were lying on the ground and there was Benny standing there smiling like he didn’t have a care in the world.”
“How’d he die?”
The question hung in the air unanswered for a moment before Mac looked back at me directly, and though his voice remained calm, his eyes briefly betrayed the still smoldering rage within.
“Suicide. The most positive guy I ever knew, and they say he took out a gun and shot himself in the head. Just like that. And he did it at home so his little girl found him like that. Slumped beside a chair in the kitchen, brains splattered all up against the outside of the dishwasher.”
“And you don’t believe he would kill himself?”
The rage returned, this time showing itself more fully.
“NO. No I do not…”
“Was he the last of the three to die?”
“Yeah – about…shit…he was gone right before I got out. One-two-three, and all that was left was me. That was what got me going, got me running up here. Had heard about this place through your dad. He was the one who told me about the Old Man. Said he had set this place up away from the United Nations, said it was so far out there nobody was bothering him. So this is where I went, where I ended up. Came up here and told the Old Man who I was, said I could help out if he wanted, and I haven’t been back since.”
“Did you have family?”
“No. I knew early on that the life I chose wasn’t…wasn’t really conducive to family life. Maybe I would have started a family later on, but I wasn’t exactly given that chance, right? Prison isn’t the place to do that either.”
“Tell me how you met my father. I’ve heard his version over the years. Tell it from your side.”
Mac pointed to another photo on the wall, one I had taken note of already, but had not indicated to him.
“That’s me and your dad right there, the day I was released from prison. September 10th, 2018 – almost 20 years ago now. They had me locked up for three years. Your dad never gave up on me. Finally got a senator to take notice of my case, when a U.S. Senator still had some power left before…nowadays they are nothing more than symbolic, right? But back then they still had some pull, thank God. And that’s when I first heard about the Old Man too. He was pulling some strings for me. Your dad got him involved on my behalf.”
“Take me back to when you were charged – the details of that. What did you do? What were you alleged to have done that put you in prison?”
“Officially, I was charged with deadly assault using an illegal weapon. The weapon was my side-arm. A little MK-25 from my SEAL days. I carried it with me all over the world, and after the federal handgun ban in 2016, I kept on carrying it, to hell with the law. That was my frame of mind, and a lot of former military were right there with me in thinking that.”
“So describe what happened that day, at the market. Why you did what you did.”
Mac sighed, and the deepening fatigue returned to his eyes.
“First – I wasn’t sent to prison because of what happened that day. I was sent to prison because of what I knew. Even though it had been years ago, any liability was seen as a risk to them. So, many of us…most of us were eliminated. First they were pushed out, from generals to enlisted guys - forced out. Then months later, maybe a few years later, you would hear about them dying. A car accident. Overdose. Suicide. Cancer. Heart attack. Whatever. Over and over again we were just…disappearing. Any of us around Benghazi, we were…eliminated. So what happened to me, the prison sentence, it wasn’t about me killing that asshole in the street, it was about what they thought I might know on Benghazi, simple as that. I was the last one of the four of us left, and I’m sure they were getting ready to take me out too, but then what happened that day made it just as easy to lock me up and throw away the key. And they almost got away with it. If not for your father, I’d still be rotting away in some cell…or dead.”
I was about to ask another question when a loud buzzing sounded and a small red light lit up just above Mac’s office door. Mac shot up from his chair and placed a hand firmly on my shoulder. I could hear movement in the hallway as someone was making their way to the office.
“Stay here. I mean it – don’t say a word and STAY HERE.”
A voice called from just outside the doorway.
“Got a visitor Mac. ETA about five minutes. It’s Carol.”
Mac turned back into the office and sat down in his seat, and I sensed him relaxing a bit more than he was just seconds earlier.
“You followed my instructions when you came here? To the letter? Arrived at the reservation, had Yoti drive you up the trail and drop you off and then you walked the last mile to here, right?”
Yoti was the Eskimo man I had been instructed to contact at the Native reservation – the closest thing to an actual town within a hundred miles of Dominatus, and even then it was nearly three hours of slow travel in a dilapidated 4x4 on an eight foot wide path that hardly resembled a proper road until we finally reached a turnaround where the alleged road devolved into little more than a barely seen trail. Yoti, who had remained unnaturally cheerful during the journey, pointed me to the trail and said “Good luck – watch for bear,” before driving away.
I responded to Mac’s question.
“Absolutely, just like you said. Why?”
“If Carol is making his way up here so soon, that means somebody was keeping a close eye on you. Having that kind of surveillance up here is kind of uncommon. And for Carol, we don’t normally see him this early in the year. Too tough of a drive for him. He’s getting up there now and it’s unlikely he would just go make that kind of trip on his own. So that means somebody ordered him out here, somebody wants a report. And that means you were being watched pretty damn close as you made your way to us.”
“Who’s Carol?”
“He’s the only Compliance Officer within a hundred miles of here. He’s what we would have called a state trooper twenty years ago. Carol Denny. Not a bad guy, but he answers to the N.U.N. office in Anchorage – those New United Nations pricks. So we don’t exactly get all warm and fuzzy when we see him up our way. So they were watching you, and we all know up here they’ve been watching us a lot more lately. We had a flyover a few weeks ago, and that used to never happen this time of year. Sooner or later they’ll come for us – we know that. Only a matter of time. So be it.”
I could hear the approaching sound of a vehicle outside, and Mac once again stood up, though this time he made no indication I was to stay inside the office, so I followed him down the hall. Music still played in the tavern, a song my father had played often at home years ago titled A Country Boy Can Survive by an artist named Hank Williams Jr. Despite the uncommon surroundings and the apprehension for the arrival of this Carol Denny, I couldn’t help but smile while being reminded of my dad loudly singing out the chorus…
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br /> The sound of a shutting vehicle door was heard just outside, followed by footsteps making their careful way to the entrance of Freedom Tavern. As the door opened and a smallish man of sixty or so years stepped through, only Mac acknowledged his arrival. Two of the three men I had seen earlier sitting at the bar were still there, though they were no longer smoking or laughing, and no drinks sat in front of them. One of them, displaying a long grey ponytail that ran well down his back, kept his right hand inside his jacket, where I made out the faint outline of a handgun. A quiet shuffle was heard behind me and I turned to see the third man who had been seated at the bar when I first arrived, now sitting in the darkness of a corner facing the door, intently watching every move of N.U.N. Compliance Officer Carol Denny.
Military Fiction: THE MAC WALKER COLLECTION: A special ops military fiction collection... Page 67