The Ungovernable

by Franklin Horton

  They anticipated the worst. They each felt within them that the bad things that had happened were not the last of the bad things. The loss they’d experienced would not be the final loss. Hardship and deprivation would continue to shape the land for as far as they could see.

  5

  Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling (JBAB)

  Boss sat in a white plastic chair at a white plastic table in an empty white lunchroom. He scowled at the wall, a thick mug of cold coffee ignored in front of him. He wore short sleeves which glaringly revealed the difference between the two arms resting on the table in front of him. He stared at the angry pink stump with loathing and a seething anger. He tapped it on the table, first one way then another, provoking a pinching sensation and flares of sharp pain.

  When the pain sensation proved inadequate to distract him from the turmoil inside of him he banged harder. As the intensity of his blows against the table increased, the pain grew inside him too, pushing aside everything else. When he found the perfect combination of angle and power, agony shot through his entire body. It was like being skewered by a burning arrow. Boss shoved himself back from the table and pitched forward, cradling his wounded arm while resting his head on the table.

  "You’re gonna reinjure that if you're not careful. It’s too soon to be banging it around."

  Boss snapped his head up in the direction of the voice, his face screwed into a mask of pain and rage. His eyes flared with hatred and he wanted to hurt someone. Not just hurt them but beat them to a bloody, lifeless pulp. Anyone would do. Since he couldn’t injure the person actually responsible for his injury, he’d have to take it out on someone else.

  The man who'd addressed him showed no fear. He’d been Boss’s handler for several years and was perhaps the one man in the world who could speak honestly with him without fear of consequences. The two had a long history. Owen was not just a handler, but the closest thing Boss had to a friend. The pair had done missions together in every sandbox, shithole, and jungle between Musa Qala and Matagalpa. They’d put boots on the ground, spilled blood, and ate dust. That forged a respect between the two men that talking football at the watercooler just couldn’t match.

  Boss didn’t respect many men in administrative positions. Usually he despised them. Owen had walked the walk. He had the gear and knew how to use it. He'd pulled the trigger and seen the consequences of doing so. That Owen had ended up running missions instead of performing them was almost a fluke, a reflection of a minute difference in each man's personality. One had a slight preference toward the chess game of strategy, the other toward hitting the ground, charging an obstacle, and making it happen.

  When the rage cooled, Boss addressed his friend. "If I'm going live with this fucking thing I need to be able to use it. I need to be able to work out and handle weapons. I need to be able to fight. If I can't put it to work for me, if I have to baby it, I might as well pack my shit and go home."

  "You’ll be able to use it. It just takes time," Owen said. "People run triathlons and climb Everest after worse injuries. You’ll adapt, but if you jam that bone through your stump there will probably be more surgeries and a longer recovery. You know that ‘P word’ you struggle with?"

  “Patience?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. You need to draw on it.”

  "I have to train,” Boss growled.

  "Then train,” Owen said, throwing his hands up as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "What you’re doing now is not training. You’re torturing yourself. There's a lot you could do to maintain your conditioning besides pounding your stump on a table just to feel it hurt. That’s messed up."

  Boss knew Owen was right, the comment reminding him that that he was not talking to a pencil pusher. He was talking to a friend, a man who knew him as well as he knew himself. Owen knew exactly what Boss was doing and called him on it.

  Boss stood up from the table and reached to pick up his coffee cup. He extended his right hand by reflex only to find himself nudging the coffee cup with a useless stump that could not close around it. Although he was not embarrassed by the futile gesture it rekindled his fury.

  "See, this is exactly the kind of shit that will get me killed on a job. I have forty-three years of reflexes making me throw out my right hand without even thinking. Now I need to retrain those reflexes. I need my left hand to move without a thought. If I need to consciously force that hand into action I'll never be able to fight and lead operations. It’s that simple."

  Owen went to the stainless steel coffee urn and filled a mug of coffee for himself. He smelled it, frowned with disapproval, but took a sip anyway.

  “Forget to stop at Starbucks on the ride in?” Boss quipped.

  Owen chuckled. "They make this stuff superhot so you can't taste how bad it is. It scalds the buds."

  Boss reached for his own cup, making sure he used his left hand this time. The motion was awkward, alien. The coffee sloshed around and threatened to spill. Owen watched without judgment.

  "You’re only on the sidelines if you put yourself there, Boss. There's a lot you could be doing for the cause. There is work to be done."

  Boss gave a laugh that was both sarcastic and dismissive. “Is this the coach telling the player with the trashed knee that his life isn’t over? That I can always coach college ball or become a physical therapist?"

  Owen shook his head. "Not at all. But I'm not going to let you sit here and feel sorry for yourself while you’re on the payroll. There's work to be done and until you’re released to active duty you can be running operations from the war room. You can put those years of experience to work helping me out."

  "Well, I’ve already demonstrated I suck at carrying coffee. Plus I can only bring one cup at a time. You may need to find someone else unless I can get a serving tray attachment for my stump."

  Owen shook his head in disappointment. "That attitude isn’t befitting of you. You’re better than that. It’s not a request, it’s an order. You can help out even if your heart isn’t in it."

  Owen turned on his heel to leave the room. He’d said all he could say.

  “Owen!"

  Owen paused.

  Boss approached him, his eyes portraying an urgency that was outside of his normally cool demeanor. "I want the bastards who did this. They killed my team and they took my hand. All our work staffing and repairing that facility was wasted. Someone has to pay for that."

  "We’re writing off central Appalachia for now. In fact, folks in the war room have taken to calling it Appalachiastan. It's not worth the trouble. Hillbillies have always been difficult to manage even in the best of times. They never want to play ball, and they always overreact when they get mad. This won’t be the first time in history that they’ve shot themselves in the foot out of stubbornness. They've delayed power restoration to their area for years and I doubt they even care. Who knows if they’re even smart enough to put the pieces together?"

  Boss was shocked. "You’re writing the entire region off?"

  “Yeah,” Owen replied. “We’ve decided to focus our efforts on the dams operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority and those in central Virginia. Those hydroelectric facilities not damaged in the terror attack may be easier to get up and running. No coal or hillbillies required."

  "What about insurgent activity?"

  Owen shrugged. "It exists but it's manageable. Few other regions have experienced anything like what you saw in Southwest Virginia. Most regions are more…civilized."

  Boss shook his head, angry but desperate to convey his need. "Owen, this is me talking. I’m your friend. You understand me and you understand vengeance. I lost a team and I owe them this. I need the people responsible."

  "You don't even know who hit that facility. It could take months of intelligence gathering to even figure out who to kill. I might be able to go along with this, off the books, if you knew the target and simply needed resources to close the deal. That’s not the case. You’re operating in a vacuum, trying to f
ind a needle in a haystack. You don’t even have the most basic idea of where to start."

  "I could get that information!" Boss insisted, his voice rising.

  "I’ve got no doubt, but you don’t have it now," Owen said. "But going beyond your personal need for vengeance, is this an appropriate use of resources? Is it even worth the effort?”

  “Would you think it was worth the effort if it was your men? Your hand?” Boss demanded, spittle flying from his mouth.

  “I would feel exactly like you do now,” Owen admitted.

  "Then turn me loose to do what needs done,” Boss pleaded. “Don’t make me beg here.”

  "I can't spare you now, Boss. Working on my team here, you can produce tangible results. You can do some good. You see things in an entirely different way than I do. I can’t lose you on some futile mission to avenge your lost hand. That's final."

  Those words stunned Boss and he gave Owen a glare. "Final?"

  Owen nodded.

  "You’re actually giving me fucking orders?"

  "You give me no choice," Owen said. “I want you in the war room at oh-seven-hundred hours." He left the room.

  Boss closed his powerful hand around the coffee mug and squeezed. He stopped short of shattering it, not wanting to take a chance on damaging the function of his one good hand. Needing an immediate purge of his rage, Boss drew back and shattered the mug against the wall. Coffee splashed across it and streamed down in vertical rivulets. Boss stalked from the room.

  He went straight to his quarters. He’d had several posts over the years but had been at JBAB for the last three. Aside from a storage unit outside the city, everything he owned in the world was in his small apartment on the base. Once at his quarters he found a Gerber multitool, opened it to the screwdriver blade, and went to an outlet on the living room wall. He sat in front of it and carefully unscrewed the cover plate.

  The receptacle inside was a dummy. If he’d plugged something into it, it wouldn’t have worked. Boss unscrewed it and set it to the side. He’d capped off the wires and pushed them out of the way to allow him to hide a few things he didn’t want anyone finding. The junction box inside the wall was blue plastic. Boss had cut the bottom out of it and a piece of paracord disappeared through the hole, tied off to one of the capped wires.

  He pulled the cord and a velvet Crown Royal whiskey bag appeared. It took some maneuvering to squeeze the heavy, awkward bag through the opening, especially with one hand. He dumped the contents of the bag on the carpet in front of him. Shiny gold Krugerrands spilled out. Boss raked his fingers through them. There were fifty of them and he’d never used a single one.

  Several years ago he’d gone on an operation in Syria to eliminate a man known to be financing terrorist activity. Boss had tracked him to Rashidiyah, a Syrian district roughly northwest of Baghdad. He intercepted him in the process of delivering funds to two of his beneficiaries. Covered by the sound of goat bells, Boss approached through the moonlight and killed the two guards outside. When he was done inside the stone hut, three more men lay dead. The air was thick with smoke from his gunfire but Boss could make out the gleam of spilled gold on the floor.

  If he left the money it would only be used in the war against America. Before anyone came upon the scene and interrupted him, and without thinking a lot about it, he stashed the gold in a goatskin pouch and pocketed it. On his way out, he tossed a grenade into the hut and double-timed it to his extraction point. Although he’d never done anything like that before, in his line of work there might be an occasion where it became important to disappear off the face of the Earth. A handful of gold coins could go a long way toward making that happen.

  Intent on running a mission without the backing of the civilian and military authorities, Boss knew the only thing that motivated people beyond food and security was greed. If he wanted things done he would need to grease some wheels. It worked in every warzone and third-world dive he’d ever shown his face in. It would work here.

  6

  Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling (JBAB)

  Boss didn’t get much sleep that night but he did a lot of thinking. He was practical and relied on having a well thought-out plan before he acted. He was nothing if not disciplined. He understood that his own personal ambitions could not interfere with the larger course of action determined by those in power. In other words, he couldn’t try to win the battle at the cost of losing the war. He was a professional after all. His desire to scorch southwest Virginia to a blackened stubble would not prevent him from doing what his country needed him to do.

  He thought about his future on a personal level too. The problem of reflexively relying on his right hand persisted. He understood it was only natural in this situation, but that didn’t make it any less awkward. It had taken him years to become proficient on a keyboard and now he was back to square one with that. He couldn't count the number of times in recent days that he reached for something with his right hand only to come up short. Sometimes it was scratching or reaching for a light switch. Other times it was opening a doorknob or trying to pick up a piece of paper. Hell, he hadn’t adjusted to dressing or unzipping his pants using only his left hand. He was having to relearn things he’d done his entire life.

  Although it was an inconvenience, he wouldn’t let it stop him. He thought about adaptability. How could he best adapt to his current situation? What could he change or modify to retain his combat effectiveness? That was the question.

  At some point in the night, lying awake in his austere bedroom, Boss had a moment of insight. He’d always understood that he was a tool to be utilized by men with grand goals. That was his role within the special operations community, as well as his role within the government and the military. When someone needed a specialized tool for a difficult job, Boss and other men like him became that tool. Some days he was a scalpel, surgically removing someone impeding the goals of the United States. Other days he was a hammer, flattening everything that got in his way.

  He accomplished his various assignments using his mind, his stamina, and his weapons. Sometimes he needed a different set of tools, though, and through hundreds of missions he’d learned how to get the specialized equipment he needed. At times it was a specialized weapon, designed to fight under a unique set of circumstances. Other times it was different clothing, a unique optic, or some offbeat electronic device. There had been missions that required rifle rounds different than what he normally had available and he’d had them made for a single mission. It was the same with explosives.

  He’d learned that if he needed something and couldn’t find it, it was time to locate someone who could. He’d find the guy with the skills to make what he needed. A specialist. That approach made Boss more successful than some of his colleagues. He didn’t simply make do with what was available. He went to every length to make sure he had exactly what the job required. In the sleepy spiral of his thoughts, he understood this was the approach that would be required. He needed to make some modifications.

  To himself.

  At some point he gave up on sleep and rose to prepare for the day. As he’d been ordered, he appeared outside of the nondescript operations building before 7 AM. Although he was harboring some hostility over the way things had gone with Owen yesterday, he’d chilled out some. It had been an emotional reaction, something he wasn’t proud of. It had been the same when he woke up in the hospital with his hand missing. He was tempted to strike out on his own and find the people responsible. Fortunately, he’d talked himself off that ledge. It wouldn’t have been smart. He had to do the same now, keep the emotions in check.

  His role was a lifetime assignment. It wasn't something you stepped away from, something you quit because your feelings got hurt. He couldn’t leave and go find an equivalent position with a competing firm, at least not without leaving the country and completely switching his allegiances. He had to die in the saddle or get so old they’d put him out to pasture.

  At the operations building, he entered
the exterior door and found two guards positioned outside a second windowless door with a biometric scanner. As soon as he saw it, Boss swore loudly. The system only had data on right hands. If you had a right, they scanned it in. Boss’s right hand was in the system but his left was not.

  Unaware of the reason for his outburst, the guard said, “Right hand on the scanner, sir. Hold for the green light.”

  Boss scowled and held up his right arm. “What right hand?”

  The guards glanced at each other with uncertainty.

  “I’m Captain Ballou. I have my ID,” Boss said, reaching into his pocket for his Common Access Card. It didn’t bear his real name but matched the rank on his uniform and was issued specifically to get him around this base.

  “Sir, we don’t have a protocol for granting SCIF access to visitors unable to utilize the hand scanner. Who are you here to see?”

  SCIF stood for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. Getting past this door required a security clearance. Boss had it but had no immediate way of proving it. He rattled off Owen’s name, credentials, and the name of his division. One of the guards picked up a phone and dialed a number. After a brief discussion Boss was turned over to one of Owen’s flunkies and permitted entrance to the operations center.

  “We’ll get that left hand scanned in today,” the flunky promised. “I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  Boss was proud of himself. He’d maintained his cool. No cursing and no middle fingers. As far as the inconvenience went, it was only one of many.

  Despite the awkward start, his first day in the war room passed quickly. There was a lot going on around the country and a lot of decisions to be made. It was like being in Mission Control during a rocket launch. There were thousands of simultaneous operations underway and a buzz filled the room. Besides Owen, there were dozens of officers and civilians. Some of them Boss recognized, though there were others he’d never seen before. Perhaps they were folks like Boss, men who were rarely seen but had a long reach.