Military Fiction: THE MAC WALKER COLLECTION: A special ops military fiction collection...

by D. W. Ulsterman

  “When was that?”

  “Don’t know exactly. Jack kept good records of everything, but those disappeared. A few months before the ambassador was killed. Three…maybe four months. Shit was hitting the fan by then. We were all hoping we would find a way out of there alive. Three of us did - Jack didn’t.”

  “Now you said Jack had already been concerned about the direction of the American government, right? The Patriot Act, how much stuff was going on without oversight? No accountability?”

  “Yeah, and the brother he had in the Secret Service. Jack would tell us…he would say things about how the public was being fooled, how the president was nothing like his public image. That everything was a fabrication. Stuff like that. Nothing too specific…protecting his brother I imagine, and we didn’t press it. We were getting paid and paid well, so who gives a shit about the politics of it? See, I just blew Jack’s concerns off as politics. He was a conservative guy, had an uncle who had been a governor. He had an interest in all of that. I think maybe he was thinking of running for office himself some day. I didn’t bother much with any of that, Republican, Democrat, as long as the check cashed and there was another job in front of me, who gives a shit? That was my frame of mind back then.”

  “But Jack was right. Things were off – getting weird.”

  “Yeah, Jack was 100% right, all the way. And he was doing double time trying to figure out where those weapons were going and who was approving their movement from Libya to wherever. That’s when he started making trips to Benghazi from Tripoli, asking questions. He called for a sit down after getting back from there one time, said we had a real problem and needed to find someone to report it to.”

  “What was it he found out?”

  Mac sighed again and tapped his right middle finger on top of his desk before looking up at me.

  “What was happening in Libya was a lot more than just weapon smuggling, at least not the kind considered normal in our own experience, and we had seen a whole hell of a lot of that over the years. No, what the U.S. government was doing, not so much the government…it was the FBI and DHS. They were locating these weapons, sharing the locations with insurgents, and then allowing those weapons to be transferred to Islamic hardliners in Turkey. From there, it appears they were going out to Muslim terrorist groups all over the world…Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, parts of Russia, South Korea, Australia. It was some kind of bizarre global weapons market for Islamic terrorists. Whoever wanted these weapons to spread, almost untraceable, to arm all of these groups, they decided Libya would work for them. All the weapons stored up by Gaddafi over several decades, get rid of Gaddafi, then open up the weapons market and initiate the program. And don’t forget who was really behind the fall of Gaddafi. It was the United Nations. The President of the United States did the bidding of the United Nations – not the other way around.”

  “But why…what was the purpose of getting weapons to those terrorist groups?”

  “They wanted, the globalists, they wanted chaos. They wanted war, famine…they were pushing for all of that then. I’m not the one to get you this kind of information, the Old Man can explain this a helluva lot better than I can. You can go to see him tomorrow. He’s expecting you.”

  “So that was what Jack wanted to report to someone? That weapons were being delivered to terrorists?”

  Mac shook his head.

  “Not exactly. The reality was worse than that. Much worse. What Jack uncovered, and I don’t know how he got the information, didn’t want to know, but I believed him when he told us. There was a holding area in Benghazi. It was being heavily guarded, vehicles pulling in and out of there at all times of the night. Inside the facility they were holding an RDD - a dirty bomb. The real deal. And word another dozen were on their way. Kept in coffee canisters. Used a material called strontium-90, lower grade radioactive material. Could have come from North Korea, Pakistan, India, any number of sources. Somebody was preparing a doomsday scenario – mass hysteria. These kinds of bombs don’t kill a ton of people right off, it’s the panic that follows. Would allow for police state actions, denial of citizen rights…that scenario.”

  “What happened in 2016! The suspension of elections, the simultaneous attacks in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago…”

  “Bingo. The country had been disarmed, the multi-national personal weapons ban signed into law in 2014, everyone turned to government to protect them in 2016 after those dirty bombs went off within an hour of each other, and that was what they had planned for the whole time. But again, this is where the Old Man should be explaining things to you. He does a better job of it than I ever could.”

  “Why do they call him the “Old Man”?

  Mac didn’t quite laugh at the question, but was clearly amused by it.

  “Because he’s old. The term is used with great respect around here. Not sure how it started, should ask him. Tomorrow, after the morning meeting, I’ll take you out to his cabin.”

  “My dad, how did he get you out of prison?”

  “He told you about that, right?”

  “Yes…but I want to hear your version.”

  Mac leaned back in his seat again, stretching both of his arms behind him.

  “Your dad didn’t give up on me. He kept snooping around the investigation and eventually, he found somebody with a phone video of what really happened. Like I said, at the trial I was painted as the aggressor. There was about a minute of video that showed different. It showed the truth. Your dad got that video. Whoever took it didn’t want to be found out. Can’t blame them for that, but your dad got it. I’m pretty sure the Old Man paid a bit of money for it, and a copy of that video was sent to a senator with a request to get my sentence overturned. It took some time after that, but they made it happen. Your father made it happen.”

  “And that’s what brought you up here – to Dominatus?”

  “Yeah. Your dad tipped me off to it. Said the Old Man had bought up a bunch of land out here and was allowing a few people to get away from the mandates. To live free. Told me I already had an open invitation to come on up, so that’s what I did. Your dad though…he stayed behind. He kept taking on cases like my own, people who were being intimidated, thrown in jail, whatever. Especially ones with military service connections.”

  I then asked Mac a question I asked myself often.

  “How did it go so bad for America back then? How did we go from a place of freedom, democracy, liberty, all of the things we once stood for into something…something so different? The New United Nations, the mandates, loss of freedom, how do you think that happened? How did it happen so fast?”

  Mac looked back to the photos on his wall.

  “Well, that’s a complicated question, a whole lot of things happened, were allowed to happen to cause all that. And it didn’t happen quick. It was a gradual process, year after year. When places like New York banned things like soft drinks, smoking, when the federal government started telling people what they could eat and drink, what activities they could do, all in the name of the public good…that’s when the slope became slippery enough for what followed. People…I guess people just got tired of wanting the freedom to think for themselves. They wanted to be told what to do. I don’t know, I’ve thought a lot about that myself. Again, ask the Old Man. He has a way of putting things that makes sense to us up here.

  “I got a little room just outside here, door on the right. Has a cot, a blanket. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s clean and with the blanket should keep you warm enough. We’ll be up early and to the meeting by 7:00, so be ready. Tomorrow is gonna be a busy one.”

  IV.

  Despite the strange surroundings, the narrow and uncomfortable cot offered by Mac, and the apprehension of tomorrow, sleep took me quickly and when I awoke, I sensed the morning was already underway.

  I stood up and stretched, noting I had come with no supplies, per Mac’s instructions, and was hoping fresh clothing and toiletries would be available to me. Upon opening the
door I looked down on the floor and found that wish granted with a pile of winter clothing, boots, and a small bag containing a toothbrush and toothpaste. I peered into the next door down in the hall and discovered it to be a bathroom with a small shower, sink, and toilet crammed into a space no more than seven by seven. Regardless of the limited space I was grateful for the opportunity to clean up, but made sure to do so quickly.

  By the time I was showered and dressed, music was playing from the tavern’s main room again – an ironically upbeat but apocalyptic song titled Bad Moon Rising from another long ago group named Creedence Clearwater Revival.

  Mac was behind the bar again, the smell of freshly brewed coffee filling the room. He looked over at me coming down the hall and smiled broadly, his hand slapping the top of the bar in time with the beat of the music.

  Mac offered me a large bowl of cereal and what tasted like rehydrated milk, as well as a cup of coffee. I began wolfing it down before he even had a chance to ask if I was hungry. The coffee was particularly rich, quality rarely seen in the now heavily regulated consumer markets most had to choose from throughout the world.

  “Where’s this coffee come from?”

  Mac smiled again, and pointed to my cup.

  “That’s our own brew. We grow the beans here. Well, a facility just a mile or so from here actually. The Old Man loves good coffee. We produce almost everything ourselves up here…food, fuel, water supply. We use and re-use whatever we can. The less we have to go outside Dominatus the better. Other things are picked up at the reservation. They trade with us regularly. Good people down that way. We have stockpiled frozen fruit, vegetables, dairy products, everything we would need to get us through for a while if we needed to.”

  “How do you get your own fuel?”

  “That heating stove over there is coal burning. We have enough coal stored away up here to last us at least a few years if needed. This place and almost every other cabin in Dominatus has a small coal burning generator. Super efficient units the Old Man had brought in from a supplier in Asia years ago. There’s wood burning furnaces also hooked up and ready to produce power if needed. They aren’t as efficient - more for emergencies. And we even have a little refinery to make our own vehicle fuel. You’ll get the tour on all that later. All this stuff, we are a lot more developed up here than you would think, and certainly more than the New United Nations knows about.”

  With my bowl of breakfast and last sips of coffee now gone, Mac took the dishes and washed them quickly in a small sink behind the bar. He looked up at me and asked if I was looking forward to meeting the Old Man and others who called Dominatus their home.

  “Yeah, absolutely. My dad told me about this place a lot, but he was only here once and that was a long time ago. I’m sure it’s changed a lot since then, lots of new faces.”

  “Your dad was here…man…that’s been almost ten years ago now. He was amazed at this little tavern. He loved the idea of me hanging out here. Him and the Old Man had a long talk together, and a couple days later he had gone back home. He contacted me a few times after that, but in the last couple years of his life I think I only heard from him once. The time I promised to watch out for you, he said you wanted to see this place for yourself too, that you were doing some kind of underground report, getting the word out to people like us who wanted to remember how America used to be. So, I gave him my word, and here you are. Here we are, and it looks like you brought a bit of trouble with you.”

  Mac saw the concern spread over my face and waved it away with his hand.

  “Shit kid, we’ve been on borrowed time up here for a long time now. No sense blaming yourself for Carol’s visit yesterday. And he won’t do anything for a few days yet, maybe longer. We’ve been preparing for a fight, knew it was gonna come to us eventually. I was starting to think they were waiting me out, waiting until I was too damn old to put up a fight, so I guess part of me is glad I still got a little fight left in me.”

  “What kind of outcome are you expecting, Mac? Is everyone here really willing to die fighting against the mandates? Against the security forces? Is there another way out of that scenario?”

  Mac’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses, and his head shook briefly from side to side.

  “The only way out of this is that they leave us alone. Let us live and die up here on our terms, on our time. That ain’t gonna happen now, is it? They’ve been pushing us more and more lately. The drone fly overs, the visits by Carol…last summer it was Carol and another fella, big bastard from the N.U.N. office in Anchorage…he laid it out for us then. Said we had one month to vacate the area or they were coming in and shutting this thing down.”

  “But they obviously didn’t – what happened?”

  Mac shrugged.

  “I’d guess the Old Man paid somebody off, bought some more time. He’s been doing that kind of thing regularly since this place first started.”

  “But Officer Carol said yesterday the Old Man was running out of resources, that he wouldn’t be able to keep all of you safe anymore.”

  Again Mac shrugged.

  “Sure, bound to happen sooner or later. He runs out of influence, or whatever he’s used to keep us safe, or he dies. None of us are getting any younger, so the end result is the same. If people want to keep living free up here, they have to fight for that privilege. Freedom ain’t a right in this world anymore. America gave up on that concept years back. 2008…2012…2016, we had our chance to save it then and we didn’t. We sold it and everyone with it down the river for a little piece of mind, the promise of being taken care of by more and more government – that the people working hard should be forced to take care of the ones who refused to work at all. What’s that saying by Thomas Jefferson about that? You know that quote?”

  I knew the exact quote Mac was referring to. The words had resided behind my father’s desk in his home office on a small plaque, a plaque the compliance officers had removed, along with most of his other personal items, following his death. They were words I continued to repeat to myself often:

  “Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”

  “That’s the one! That’s it! As soon as enough people started taking something for nothing from the government, the country was finished. If that government did wrong, people didn’t care as long as the checks kept coming. Benghazi? The people didn’t care. Just keep sending those food-stamps, that unemployment check, a tax refund for taxes they didn’t even pay, government run healthcare. It crept up quick on us back then didn’t it? Those years set up America for the collapse that happened so fast after that.”

  Mac’s words were reminding me of so many things my dad had told me over the years, and before her own death, my mother as well. They both would point out how things were changing, how the debt was unsustainable, how people stopped caring about anything but whatever mindless entertainment was being shown on the television or the Internet, and how much more the government was promising to give them, until eventually, whatever America once was, simply ceased to exist and in its place was a society of dependence and near total governmental authority – the authority of the New United Nations.

  As the recollections of my parents’ words quickly gathered and dissipated from my mind, I saw Mac take out a single handgun from behind the bar and place it on the counter.

  “You know how to use one of these, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes – a few years ago I started to practice. It wasn’t easy. The mandates forbid it of course. My dad had an area outside the city…we would go out there at least once a month and shoot. He kept a handgun in his office at all times. They, the compliance officers, they took it after he died. They asked me about it but told them I had no idea it was in there.”

  “That was good of him to do that – to teach you. This weapon, we just call it our sidearm up here. We all…almost all of us has one. Every adult around here is given the oppo
rtunity to keep one of these. It’s nothing fancy, your basic Glock19, simple loading 10-round magazine. Ton of them produced years ago and after the weapons ban they hit the Black Market so the Old Man, he was able to gather up…let’s just say a whole lot of ‘em. It’s a low maintenance model, reliable as hell, smooth, safe action. Maybe the best all around handgun for the average user ever made. This thing will get the job done if need be. The only thing I ask of you besides wearing it, is that if you pull it out, you be prepared to use it. I’m no fan of people using a weapon like this just to intimidate. That’s bullshit and bluster garbage, not my style and I find it disrespectful of the responsibility of carrying a loaded weapon. A handgun is meant for one thing only – to kill another human being. If you can’t do that, if that’s not in you to point this at someone and pull that trigger, I would rather not give it to you at all. It’s a last resort, but one you have to be willing to utilize if the situation requires. So…do you want the weapon?”