It took half an hour for his turn.
He passed muster without his knife being discovered.
One reason was, because he had a tactical knife, it was much easier to conceal than some others.
His tac knife had a profile which was relatively flat. At least when compared with the large handle of a Bowie.
The blade was also shorter and thinner.
Just before he walked out of his cell and into the common area Marty took the knife and placed it horizontally inside his waistband, behind his belt buckle.
His belt prevented the outline of the knife from showing, even when he was told to lift his shirt.
If Kelly had used his hand to check Marty’s groin area he might have felt the knife.
But most men won’t place a hand in that area of another man’s body and Marty was hoping Kelly would take a pass.
His strategy paid off.
A few minutes later everyone was back in their cells.
Marty was happy he’d been able to keep his knife, though he wasn’t sure what good it would do him.
Going to a gunfight armed with three knives was already a very risky proposition.
Now they were down to one knife.
Now it would be tantamount to suicide.
-37-
General Mannix had a new adjutant.
Captain Kathy Krebbs, the young officer the general had accused of being anorexic, would be missed in the base engineering office.
For she was a fine officer and an exemplary leader.
When the Air Force Chief of Staff asks for something, though, one doesn’t typically answer no.
“I need someone by my side I can trust to get things done. Someone who has a good head on his or her shoulders. I think you’ll fit the bill quite nicely.”
Captain Krebbs was tall, blonde and pretty.
She’d heard similar things from high ranking officers over the years who had less than honorable intents.
General Mannix wasn’t one of them.
He was happily married, had a wonderful family, and would never dream of cheating on his wife.
“Pardon me for asking, sir. But how is it you don’t already have an adjutant?”
“Oh, I did. A fine man. Major Wheeler.
“Unfortunately, Major Wheeler got word his brother and sister both committed suicide.
“He came to me in great anguish.
“He understood we were limited as to the number of relatives we could bring in with us. And that space limitations meant siblings and extended family had to be left behind.
“He understood that, but still couldn’t deal with the grief.
“He asked for a leave of absence for ten days to go and bury his siblings.
“I granted it, knowing full well he wouldn’t be back.
“His aged mother was still alive, you see, with only one other son to care for her.
“And that son was teetering on the edge as well.
“He suspected, and I agreed, that if he came into the bunker with us his brother would eventually kill himself too and take their mother with him.
“He couldn’t bring himself to ask to resign his commission. I’d have granted the request, but he wouldn’t ask.
“I think he left the door open hoping his brother would somehow be strong enough to go on.
“But I knew he wouldn’t be back. We gave him the ten days and waited ten more. I held his place in the bunker, but he never showed.
“Still, I harbor no resentment. These days we all have to make some very difficult choices.
“Which brings me to your situation, Captain Krebbs.
“You’ll find that I can be amazingly blunt, sometimes to my own detriment.
“I don’t apologize for that, nor do I make excuses. I’ve been called an asshole more times than I can count, and sometimes much worse.
“When I asked if you were getting enough to eat I meant no disrespect. It’s important to me that my people get what they need to survive, so they’re at the top of their game.
“You looked like you needed a sandwich.
“Actually, you looked like you needed a dozen sandwiches.
“You told me I was wrong. That I misjudged you. That you merely came from a family of thin people.
“I can accept that and I won’t push you to eat again.
“In this exercise we’ve both learned a bit about one another. I learned that you can be thin and still do your job. From what I’ve heard around the base, you do that job exceedingly well.
“On the other hand, you’ve learned I can say crude things from time to time.
“That doesn’t make me a bad officer, nor does it make me a bad boss.
“Maybe an insensitive boss, but not a bad one.
“I think you’ll find, now that you’ve agreed to be my adjutant, that we’ll make a fine team. I’ll make the decisions, you make sure they’re carried out. You take care of me, I’ll take care of you.
“It’ll work out quite well.”
“Yes sir.”
If she was at all intimidated by him she didn’t let on.
He appreciated that, for he respected strong officers.
Especially those capable of speaking truth to power.
And she was quite capable to that regard.
“Now then, Captain. Are you married, and how many family members do you have to bring in with you?”
“I’m unmarried, sir. I do have a fiancé, Rob. But in light of the circumstances we’ve chosen not to be married or consider having children.”
“In light of the circumstances?”
“In light of the fact the world is a cold and violent place now. No pun intended.
“We’re still young enough to have children later, should we choose to. After the world thaws out again and we decide whether it’s safe to raise a family.”
“Very well. I’ll have the facility manager show you to your quarters.
“If you’d said you have four children I’d be worried you might be cramped. But if it’s just you and Rob there should be plenty of space.
“Do you need any time to move in?”
“No, sir. We can do it over the next couple of evenings.
“Very well.
“Now then, my new adjutant, you know by now I tend to say things which are a bit raw, and sometimes slightly offensive.
“Have I said anything to you that has offended you in any manner?”
“No sir.”
“Can you work closely with a man who is blunt but honest to a fault? A man who occasionally says stupid things but who has good intentions behind them?”
“Yes sir. I believe I can.”
“Welcome aboard, Captain. Are you ready for your first assignment?”
“I am.”
“Please wrangle the base Staff Judge Advocate and get him in here to see me. I want to find out what the status is on a couple of courts martial.”
“Yes sir. I’ll get right on it.”
-38-
Colonel Morris Medley was a kind and gentle soul.
If he had to list his greatest flaw, he’d likely say he was too easily swayed.
He’d been that way all his life.
He was a follower, not a leader.
Oh, he tried to lead. Not being able to lead was a faulty trait for an Air Force colonel.
And truth be known, he wasn’t a bad administrator.
As long as whatever he administered had a clear and defined path. A set of regulations which said what things were to be done and how they were to be accomplished.
As long as things were spelled out Colonel Medley could perform quite well.
It was those pesky gray areas which had always given him trouble.
Those things which required him to use his judgment; to weigh his options, then to make a decision.
He had a difficult time doing that.
That was why he enjoyed being a doctor.
Specifically, one of the top surgeons in the Air Forc
e Medical Corps.
Being a surgeon is a lot like being an automobile mechanic.
Except surgeons get paid more.
Picture this… a mechanic can’t overhaul an automobile just because he’s smarter than everyone else.
He can be a member of Mensa International with an IQ of 150.
But if he doesn’t have the practical experience to know the difference between a piston and a camshaft and how the two work together to generate horsepower he’s dead in the water.
No, a mechanic doesn’t have to be smart.
He has to be educated.
He has to be taught what each piece of the engine does. Both when it’s operating as designed and what happens when it’s defective or broken.
He needs to understand the role of each piece of the engine. What each piece does. And why it’s important that everything, right down to the smallest seal, be in its proper place and be in good condition.
Unless he knows all that, all the intelligence in the world isn’t going to help him much.
Being a surgeon is kinda like that.
Don’t believe it?
Let a surgeon remove your appendix if he doesn’t know what an appendix looks like or what it does.
Then let him sew you back up and hope you don’t get an infection or bleed to death.
Mechanics go to school.
They study illustrated parts breakdowns of internal combustion engines.
They’re tested to make sure they know every single part that makes up such engines.
They get their hands dirty taking such engines apart and putting them back together again.
They learn to diagnose problems.
When they hear an engine cough they investigate the cough’s source.
They fix it.
And the car (hopefully) goes on working.
Surgeons go to school too.
In basic biology they learn the parts of the human body.
They get their hands bloody by sticking them inside of cadavers.
Then, eventually, live human beings.
They learn to diagnose problems.
When they hear their patient cough they investigate the cough’s source.
They fix it.
And the patient (hopefully) goes on living.
The point is everything a mechanic has to do to a car is in a book somewhere.
There’s an established way of doing things.
A mechanic never has to wonder whether to attach the positive cable or the negative cable to the positive post of a battery.
Only one will work.
A surgeon never has to wonder whether to use a Cushing suture or a Halsted suture to close an arteriovenous graft.
Only one will work.
In that respect, being a mechanic requires knowledge and experience more than judgment.
Way more.
Being a surgeon requires knowledge and experience more than judgment.
Way more.
That’s why Morris Medley loved being a surgeon way more then being an administrator. As an administrator he sometimes had to make decisions which affected the lives of others. And he hated that.
As he saw it, removing a diseased gall bladder was cut and dry. Either it was good or it was bad.
If it was good it was left in place.
If it was bad it was removed, according to established step-by-step procedures.
Determining which of his young charges deserved a promotion, on the other hand, required a conscious decision on his part.
A decision which generally left one person happy and several others despising him.
A decision whether to press charges against a young officer who tended to imbibe to an excessive degree required another thoughtful declaration.
One which would surely ruin the man’s career.
No, for Colonel Morris Medley, doctoring was easy.
Administration was hard.
That was why he so easily followed other officers willing to make his decisions for him.
That was why he was a follower instead of a leader whenever he could manage it.
That was why he allowed another doctor, Colonel Tim Wilcox, to talk him into making the biggest mistake of his life.
-39-
Medley paced back and forth in his cell, unsure what he should do.
Sitting on his bunk was Captain David Wright. Captain Wright was his military attorney from the Area Defense Counsel.
A kind of court-appointed lawyer, if you will.
Appointing a counsel with the ADC was the military’s way of making sure its accused had proper representation.
And although Colonel Medley had something in his makeup which made decision-making difficult, Captain Wright had no such problem.
‘Look, sir,” he told the senior officer.
“Ultimately the decision is yours. But it’s my job not only to defend you, but also to advise you. And it would be in your best interest to sever your ties with Colonel Wilcox and to request a separate trial.”
“I know. You’ve said that before. But how would that work, exactly?”
“We’ll file a petition with the convening authority. We’ll point out that since Colonel Wilcox outranked you, and because he has such an overbearing ‘take no prisoners’ personality, that you felt pressured to follow his lead.
“And also that he misled you. Instead of presenting the situation to you in an unbiased light he told you outright the way it was.
“In other words we’ll contend he should have told you there were people in a bunker on the other side of the base.
“The two of you could have discussed the various reasons they might be there and decided among yourselves whether they had a legitimate and legal purpose.
“Instead, Colonel Wilcox made up his mind they were there illegally. He gave no consideration to the possibility they might have a Constitutional duty to be there.
“He decided they needed to be expelled and coerced you, through undue influence, to join him in his efforts.”
It would have been easy for Colonel Medley to go along with his attorney’s efforts to give him a way out of his predicament.
But that wasn’t in Colonel Medley’s makeup.
For while he might be flawed when it came to making decisions and while he might lack some of the leadership qualities other colonels had, he was honest to a fault.
“But that’s not what happened.”
Captain Wright saw it coming. He was just a bit exasperated but tried not to show it.
“Then tell me, sir, exactly what happened.”
“It wasn’t Colonel Wilcox who told me the people in the bunker were Washington insiders who were there illegally.
“It was one of my civilian patients. Hannah Snyder.
“And before I… what was it the young people used to say before the freeze? Before I throw her under the bus, Hannah didn’t intentionally mislead Wilcox or me. She came to a logical conclusion when presented a certain set of facts.
“She came to the same conclusion most people would have come to. To be honest, given the same set of facts I came to the very same conclusion myself.
“But it wasn’t Wilcox who came to me insisting the people in the bunker were there illegally and needed to be expelled.
“It was Hannah who came to both of us. At the same time.
“Wilcox and I both shared her interpretation of the facts.
“It was her who convinced us the people needed to be removed.
“We just took it from there.”
“What set of facts did she interpret, exactly?”
“She met a U. S. Army colonel named Montgomery when he tried to bully her people into giving up their livestock. He said he needed their animals to help feed the people of Bexar County.
“She found out that was bullshit, but not until after they’d decided to donate a portion of the livestock for the common good.
“Colonel Montgomery professed gratitude, although no one can be sure he
wasn’t just trying to ingratiate himself to her to get more of her stock.
“In any event he invited her to the old Kelly Air Force Base to see his growing and stockyard operations. He gave her the tour, I personally think, to show her he could grow crops and livestock much more efficiently than she could.
“Perhaps in an effort to get her to donate her entire herd of cattle.
“We’ll never know for sure because he was killed when their helicopter crashed.
“She was injured in the same crash and was brought here, to Wilford Hall.
“That’s how she became a patient of Dr. Wilcox and me.”
“But why did she suspect Montgomery of being up to no good? And how did she discover the bunker?”
“During her tour of the growing facility and stockyards she came and went by helicopter.
“She remembered seeing, off in the distance, a huge construction project going on. A huge hole dug in the ground.
“She asked Montgomery about it and he played it off as a project to dig soil from deep underground. He said the soil there was richer and better suited for the growing boxes in their greenhouses.
“She took his explanation at face value because she didn’t know any better.”
-40-
“See, that’s what I don’t get,” Captain Wright said. “If she took Colonel Montgomery at his word, how did she know about the bunker?”
“Something else she saw that day stuck in her mind, but didn’t immediately register.”
“What was that?”
“Near the excavation she saw a long line of parked cement mixers, their buckets turning.
“She let it pass and didn’t realize until later their significance.”
“Their significance?”
“Perhaps I should have started at the beginning, Captain. I left out a whole piece of the story that’s extremely relevant.
“Remember years ago? Back in the days when they went public about Saris 7? And the people who went public were hunted by the FBI?”
“Yes. I remember that. President Sanders went on TV and said they were unnecessarily creating a public panic and endangering people’s lives. He said they could divert or destroy Saris 7 and they had it under control, so there was no reason to worry.”
Rest in Peace Page 12