Authors: Scott V. Duff
“Just the newcomers,” Calhoun said. “The others have been downright pleasant and helpful.”
“Why are they here, anyway?” I asked.
“Ideally, to help, I think,” Calhoun answered. “Echols was just too gung-ho about his orders, thinking he could do better than us. Maybe he was supposed to take control, but that wasn’t happening under any circumstances.”
“Colonel Echols,” I said, squatting down beside him as the medic wrapped his hand. He scowled at me, the hatred clear in his eyes. “Understand something here: your friend the general was trying to kill me. I have four hundred witnesses to that, so feel free to hate me all you want for being faster than he was. I can live with that. You lost your fight with Marshal Calhoun because you allowed yourself to be distracted and tried to kill me, too. You lost, but you are still alive. Learn to live with that. But I would advise you to start treating Marshal Calhoun with the utmost respect from this point on, because he holds your future in his hands. Not only can he prosecute you for complicity to commit treason, but in the last ten minutes the list of your crimes has increased from assault on a Federal officer in pursuit of his duty to attempted murder, all with a host of witness more than willing to testify for us.”
His scowl deepened as he thought about the depth of the hole he’d dug for himself. It didn’t help that the medic tied his hand poorly; the bones wouldn’t knit well in that position. He didn’t take it well when I turned my back on him either, but I didn’t see the correlation there. Kneeling down beside the guy who’d taken the brunt of his attacks from me and ironically the one not receiving medical attention, I asked of the two attending medics, “Are there other medics available?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. McClure,” answered the one on Simmons. “They just either weren’t on duty or were doing other things.”
“What about equipment or facilities? This man was caught between a rock and hard place, I’m afraid,” I asked, sinking my senses rather casually down into his body. This was Edwards, Keith R., Lance Corporal, and US Marine. He was proud of it, seeing the military police as a springboard into a career after the military in general. He was only doing what he thought was right, what his commanding officer told him to do. I kind of felt sorry for the guy. He had plans for his life.
“Nothing of real sophistication. Our original plans included air support for medical emergencies,” he said, leaning back on his heels and looking back at me. “This man needs more attention than I am able to give. He needs an MRI, CAT scans, tests that I can barely pronounce. We need to get him to a hospital.”
“Yeah, Corporal Edwards, here, needs a doctor, too,” I said. I wasn’t willing to take this man’s pain for him, but I did push a considerable amount of energy into rebuilding the structure. “Echols, can you facilitate something along those lines?”
“You’re… going to let me?” Echols sounded surprised.
Okay, that was weird. “What? Why wouldn’t I? What is your problem anyway?” I asked. “I mean, outside the obvious ones.”
“What the hell’s
that
supposed to mean?” he asked angrily, trying to get up, but the medic held him down. I heard him muttering something about green and black and a sword made of fire. The colonel quieted significantly while his eyes burned holes into mine.
“He means you’re an arrogant prig with delusions of adequacy,” Dad said as he entered the circle of damaged bodies. “But I’m certain you’ve heard that quip many times in your life.” Taking a quick look at Grant, he sauntered over to Simmons. Concern spiked through his aura and he knelt down and started a deeper seeking through Simmons’ body.
“Echols?” I prodded the Colonel. “Your men, hurt on your orders. Medical support, please?”
“Oh, yes,” he muttered, standing. The medic let him this time. Pulling a cell phone from his pocket, he started jabbing at its buttons like he’d never used one before until he got it to do what he wanted, then held it to his ear. He started talking to someone in arcane gibberish, sounded like it to me anyway, filled with acronyms and jargon. Apparently, he rolled through several different people until seven minutes later he snapped it shut and said, “Two helicopters will be here in roughly twenty-seven minutes. They want as much information about the patients as possible.”
Six more men came trotting across to us from the ring of men surrounding us, carrying stretchers and additional equipment. Dad was still involved in his seeking of Simmons. Glancing over at the huge trucks that Echols’ men arrived in, I figured that Echols did not arrive with them. He didn’t look that gung-ho.
“Where are they going?” I asked.
“I didn’t ask,” he said.
“What the hell is going on here?” a voice yelled behind us. We turned to see Messner parting the crowd of onlookers in a rumpled shirt and slacks, his short blond hair only mildly mussed.
“Agent Messner! Sleep well?” I called out, smiling.
“We’ve got everything under control, Messner,” Calhoun called, mildly.
“There’s three men on the ground, another eighty lined up and waiting,” he yelled. “And Daybreak is back. What’s ‘under control’ about any of that?”
“Daybreak
put
the three men on the ground, thereby stopping the eighty men from overrunning the camp and maintaining control,” Calhoun said plainly, no longer yelling, but Messner was closer now.
“Y’all fight this out quietly, please,” I told Messner as he entered the growing inner circle of men around us. The stretchers were dropped next to each man and attendant medics increased as well. “Every man can be safely moved to a stretcher. There’s no risk of paralysis. Everybody have something to write on?”
Almost unanimously, they looked up at me oddly but all nodded briefly, taking pads out of the kits they carried. I started with Simmons, even though Dad was still coursing through his body, changed to healing nerve damage slowly and carefully. I named each injury by what I thought was the most serious, describing breaks and tears, ruptures and stoppages. He muttered for more paper half way through and stopped me for clarification a couple of times. We had a little difficulty with nomenclature, my biology text diagrams not quite matching to his medical reference and anatomy guides.
Edwards was extensive, too, but I pushed a number of repairs into place myself before I started explaining what was wrong. Mostly concussion issues from the double punch and being jerked around so much. Grant was already trying to sit up. He’d gotten kicked in the head and behind the knee, only slightly worse than Colonel Echols. He still had a few cracked bones.
“And Colonel Echols, you need to have that re-wrapped before it sets,” I said finishing, but not really wanting to tell him. It was more of an obligation. “If it mends in that position, it’s gonna hurt later in life.”
“Two choppers, ‘bout a minute out,” Ethan said blandly. “Might want t’give’m a place to land, Colonel.”
Echols looked around him, realizing Ethan was right: his men and trucks were taking up the available flat space and his middle management was lying on the ground. Proving he wasn’t completely useless, though, Colonel Echols moved quickly and purposefully. Once a short distance away from the injured, he raised his voice, not quite yelling but projecting loudly, and started orders using position names and ranks that caused immediate reactions in them. Their anxiety levels were high with their leaders being hidden behind a wall of flames and being held back by whatever means Dad and Mike had employed. They were bristling for some kind of action. Being told to get the hell out of the way wasn’t quite what they wanted in the testosterone-driven yearnings, but it did require running a distance carrying a gun. It helped them.
The first helicopter was able to land immediately. The second had to wait a minute or two while the last two trucks were moved. Three minutes wasn’t bad.
“Marshal, why exactly is there a large detail of Marines here?” I asked, turning to Calhoun while making sure that Messner was nearby. “Is this something I should be worried about? Talking to lawyers about, maybe?”
“Not really,” Calhoun said, trying to lessen the impact. “They’re here basically to confine and begin processing for prosecution for the smaller part of their crimes, Absent without Leave and that crap. Colonel Echols is very territorial and loyal. He is finding the facts here difficult to believe. It’s easier for people at his age and position to try to change the world to their beliefs than to change their beliefs to fit the world.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “That’s very philosophical of you, Glen. Nice way of saying he’s a stubborn ole mule and since none of us had stars on our collars, we weren’t good enough to polish his shoes, right?”
He shrugged, smiled, and said, “It’s part of my job to make things work right now, but this side of this problem is outside of my expertise. I need to put people in place who have the experience and skills to handle it. Colonel Echols has that and the resources. So, we’ll play nice-nice.”
“So you are okay with this?” I asked carefully.
“We’ll see,” he answered, not committing himself verbally or through his aura.
Turning to Messner with a questioning look, the agent said, “Taking what’s been said at face value and without having reviewed Colonel Echols credentials, I would agree with Calhoun. Neither of our agencies is currently in a position to handle this size of an arrest without causing an immense ripple financially, politically, socially, you name it. We’re not going to be able to hide this, but Echols can help camouflage it considerably, even without knowing it.”
“Okay, just remember that the compulsion won’t be fulfilled until they’ve received their punishment,” I told them both. “It’s part of the spell that they stand before a judge and jury.”
“That’s… pretty specific,” Messner said. “I’m not sure a military tribunal has a jury. What if that is the adjudication process? They are confessing after all.”
“We’ll see,” I said, using Calhoun’s line. If they tried a tribunal, we always had the option of demanding a jury trial. It is a Constitutional right, a trial by jury. Hmm. I wondered if that was true of the military. They have a number of rules that seem to contradict the Constitution that I’ve never quite grasped. “So, let’s get the Colonel to tell us how he wants to work this and we’ll see if we can do that. He’s about to head back this way. Let’s keep the power play small, so have someone start gathering who you want at the second, coordinating meeting. We’ll be waiting in the Command tent.”
It was almost eerie that the five of us turned in unison and started for the tent. “So what happened up north?” I asked Ethan as they closed in on me.
“’Bout twenty men attacked Richard’s house,” Ethan answered, rather blasé about it. “Teams of five wizards backed by five heavies with guns. Went in heavy against his wards, or tried to anyway. They got lucky when they found an underground storm drain collapsed. They managed to get in the first level and thought the rest would be that simple. They were wrong.”
Dad chuckled to my right and I turned, looking back with raised eyebrows. “Rich’s wards are as effective as Ehran’s but are more… psychedelic in nature,” he said grinning.
“He means psychotic,” Ethan amended, shaking his head and grinning, too. “They kept complaining of giant white rabbits named ‘Harvey’ and it took us an hour to break the curse that stopped four of ‘em from hunting down ‘Alice.’ Of course, that was mainly because Peter couldn’t stop laughing at them. Every time he got close enough to them to do it, they’d start yelling, ‘Eat me, drink me,’ and he’d lose it again.”
A chorus of laughter filled the Command tent as we entered at the peak of Ethan’s tall tale. Feeling the punch of pure hatred aimed at me, I looked up and saw the Major there with several of his men. There was definitely hatred in their auras for me for what I had done to them and their general. Reaching into the Major’s mind, I pulled his identity out so I could stop thinking of him as “the Major.”
“Major Byrnes, would you wait outside for a bit, please?” I asked. “We’ll need you in the next meeting, I’m sure, but the first will be more limited.”
“Yes, Mr. McClure,” he said politely, leaving his stack of papers on the table where he stood, he passed us and left the tent with an entourage of three, most likely people on Messner and Calhoun’s list of people to talk to. I hopped back on the table again while Mike and Jimmy brought chairs from behind the now-useless computers. We could hear Messner directing Byrnes and his men to a gathering a few yards away from the doorway seconds before he entered with Calhoun, taking two of the three available chairs around the table.
Calhoun sat down hard, making the chair squeal. Rubbing his face briskly and yawning, he said, “My turn for a nap.”
“Use a different cot,” Messner muttered, stretching to work out kinks.
Echols came in as the quiet chuckles died. “This is by far the strangest internment camp I’ve ever seen. The prisoners guard themselves?”
“After a fashion, yes,” Messner said coyly and not offering to explain.
“There seems to be an uneasy and unspoken question in the back of your mind, Colonel,” I said, watching him looking at each of us in turn as he took the last seat. “Why don’t you go ahead and ask that question now? Get it out of the way.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, genuinely surprised. He hadn’t even given a hint about that question outwardly, truth to tell, but he had ‘sized’ each of us up several times now, looking for some ephemeral quality he couldn’t quite name. I could see the hints of it on his consciousness. He was looking for elves. Not real elves as I knew them, but the storybook, movie-style elves as I’d originally thought of them, too. Drawing this out of him would make the power play easier.