Peter Nealen's Blog, page 31

Six Miles West of Nogales

If it hadn’t been for the earpiece, I never would have heard the radio over the snarl of the four-wheeler’s engine.

“Hillbilly, this is Plug,” Hank called.

I eased off the throttle and took one hand off the handlebars to key the radio.  “Send it, Plug.”

“Can you push up to the top of that ridgeline just to the east of you and take a look to the south?” he asked.  “Tell me what you see.”

“Sure thing,” I answered.  It wasn’t like we had a set patrol route, or even any particular need to be anywhere.  So far, this job had consisted of little more than long hours just hot-wheeling around the hills of southern Arizona on four-wheelers and the occasional pickup truck.

I gunned the engine and sent the sturdy little ATV surging up between the mesquites and the creosote bushes toward the ridge that Hank had indicated.  It wasn’t a long climb, but it was steep and rocky, with plenty more sagebrush and creosote bushes that I had to weave around.  But it still only took a couple of minutes to reach the top.

Halting my ATV, I stood on the running boards and pulled my binos out of the saddlebags.  As I lifted them to my eyes and scanned the open ground to the south, I quickly saw what Hank had been talking about.

There were four figures trotting through the grass and brush in the next draw over.  They were moving pretty quickly, and heading generally north.  Given that Hank and I were the only ones out on patrol at the time, and all of Manuel Lopez’s ranch hands were either working around the house and barns, or watching the herds to the east of us, that kind of narrowed things down.

“Plug, Hillbilly,” I sent, keeping the binos trained on the four.  “I do believe we have some uninvited visitors.”

“That’s what I saw, too,” he replied.  “Just wanted to corroborate it.  Meet you down below, and we’ll go say howdy?”

“Sure,” I answered.  I wasn’t going to complain about actually having some work to do.

The truth be told, even though we were all experienced warfighters, with years of work in the military and some in the contracting world, we had perhaps been a touch naïve when we’d started up our little company.  After all, we owned Praetorian Security, and we knew the score better than any of the soft-clothed financiers who owned most of the rest of the PMSCs out there.  We could determine our own equipment, pick our own jobs, and find the jobs that would keep us in the thick of it, in the shit.

We were finding out the hard way that those kinds of jobs were few and far between, and often involved a lot more shady business to get than we’d necessarily expected.  Most of the time, they were either outright illegal, or in some kind of gray area that tended to get all kinds of scrutiny, so the clients who had those sorts of jobs didn’t tend to be very forthcoming about them.  We’d set up our little private Special Operations company, only to find that we didn’t immediately have clients running to our doorstep.

So, we’d taken the first decent job that had finally come our way.  It paid only a little over three hundred dollars a day per man, which didn’t go even half as far those days as it had even five years earlier, but it was better than nothing.  Even if it was for only two weeks.  For our three hundred a day, we rode around Manuel Lopez’ ranch in the hills west of Nogales and watched for trespassers, be they narcos, illegals, or coyotes.

So far, we’d shot a lot more coyotes of the four-legged kind, along with a few coy-wolves, than we’d seen human interlopers.  And the coyotes and coy-wolves were elusive little critters.

Leaning into the ATV, I started it down the ridgeline, which meandered down and to the south.  It was rocky, but the four-wheeler had a good suspension, and I didn’t have too much trouble negotiating the terrain.  The mesquite and sycamore trees were far enough apart that I didn’t have to do much dodging, either.

In a matter of minutes, I saw Hank’s dust cloud as he crossed the draw behind me, cutting ahead to meet me on the ridgeline, above and about seven hundred meters north of the oncoming group of newcomers.  We’d be able to get a better look at them from there, and plan our next move.  If they were just illegals, we could probably turn them around quickly enough, though if there was a coyote with them, and not the four-legged kind, he might be armed.  But this didn’t look like a group that would have a human trafficker guiding them across the border.  The coyotes usually preferred larger groups, especially with the Border Patrol having essentially fallen back to the Phoenix line.  Bigger groups were more lucrative, and they didn’t have to worry about much interference.

I got to our rendezvous point about thirty seconds ahead of Hank, and sat my four-wheeler easily, taking a long drink from my canteen while I pulled my cap off to wipe some of the sweat and dust off my face.  It was hot down there, and there wasn’t a lot of shelter from the Arizona sun away from the mesquites.

I was in full view of the newcomers, and from what I could make out of their activity with my naked eyes, they saw me.  Well, there hadn’t been any way of disguising the noise of the ATV’s engine in the desert quiet, and besides, we were there as deterrents more than we were as gunfighters, as vaguely disappointing as that might have been for men hankering for another taste of that combat adrenaline rush.

Hank roared up and stopped in a small cloud of dust.  He was short and barrel-chested, built like a fireplug, which had gotten him his callsign.  That, and the fact that he was fire-engine red most of the time, if he was outside.  It wasn’t so much a matter that he sunburned; Hank was just a red-faced guy.  Since he shaved his head, it meant he looked a lot like a boiled lobster much of the time; a boiled lobster with a three-inch blond goatee.

“It’s about fucking time,” he grumbled, standing up on the floorboards of his four-wheeler.  “This shit’s boring as fuck.”

“Ah, it still gets us out in the open, and we’re still getting paid to carry guns,” I pointed out without looking at him.  I was still watching the four below.  “It’s better than nothing.”

“Maybe so, but it’s still not the ‘Next Executive Outcomes,’ is it?” he grumbled.  He laughed suddenly.  “Boy, were we optimistic, weren’t we?”

“Let’s focus on the here and now,” I said.  “Do they look like they’re running for cover to you?”

He squinted, then frowned.  “No, it does not,” he agreed.  “Bad guys, you think?”

“You never know, down here,” I said.  “We’re not that far from Nogales, but I’m pretty sure that the local cops who aren’t on the take aren’t going to be in a hurry to do much law enforcement this far from backup.”  Which was a large part of why we were down there; Mr. Lopez couldn’t be sure that there was anyone else to secure his ranch, and he’d lost some stock already.  So, unable to rely on the law, he’d hired us, at least for as long as he could afford.

“How do you want to play it?” Hank asked.  He was one of the few of us who had been “just a grunt,” though I knew a lot of grunts who could outperform and out-shoot SOF guys, but had just never gotten the chance.  Hank was one of those guys.  He wasn’t bitter about it; he was just glad that Jim had known him and had brought him aboard and given him the opportunity.

It wasn’t like there were a lot of other jobs open for former trigger pullers those days.

I peered around at the sage- and mesquite-covered hills.  There were any number of spots that would make decent overwatch positions, and I didn’t want to be running down there to get in the middle of those guys without somebody watching my back.  We both had our rifles in scabbards on our ATVs for a reason.  Finally, I pointed to a rocky promontory sticking out of the grass and brush about another two hundred meters south of us.  The four down below were going to have to go past it soon.  “Why don’t you go set up there, and I’ll move down to intercept them once you’re in position,” I said.  “Don’t bother about concealment; they need to see you to get the message.”

With a jaunty half-wave, half-salute, Hank revved his four-wheeler again and headed for the indicated position.  I turned my attention back to the oncoming intruders.  Hank knew his business.

The four of them were still moving, threading through the sage and creosote bushes, apparently completely unconcerned about the fact that we were watching them.  That got my hackles up, and I scanned the hills for backup.  Either they thought that we were local law enforcement, bought and paid for, or Border Patrol, which had had its teeth pulled this far south for years now, or they just figured we didn’t have the guts to do anything.  Or, this was an ambush, and they were the bait.

But I wasn’t getting paid just to watch.  There wasn’t anyone to report the crossing to, either.  So, after giving Hank a couple of minutes to move into his pos, I started to thread my way down into the draw, taking a route that would bring me up to them from uphill.  I’d take any terrain advantage that I could get.

I was halfway down the side of the ridge when Hank’s voice crackled in my earpiece.  “Hillbilly, Plug.  In position.  No weapons in sight.”

I waved over my head to let him know I’d heard.  Hank would have set up in such a way that he could watch them and me at the same time.

The four of them had slowed as I got closer, though they hadn’t stopped.  I considered pulling my SOCOM 16 out of its scabbard, but decided that I’d be able to get the .45 on my hip into action a lot faster, especially with Hank providing covering fire from above.  I left the rifle where it was for the moment.

They finally stopped as I roared within fifty yards of them.  I moved to get in front of them before braking hard, the ATV rocking on its shocks as I stopped in a cloud of dust.

“Buenos tardes!” I called out.  “You know you’re on private property, right?”

None of the four of them looked like the type who really gave a fuck whether they were on private property or not.  They were all Mexican, lean and mean-looking, dressed in an assortment of jeans, cargo pants, and t-shirts.  Only one guy, who looked like the youngest, had a collared shirt on, open to his breastbone, and revealing parts of several extensive and somewhat gruesome tattoos.

Yeah, even if the bottom dropping out of the dollar hadn’t slowed down the traffic in migrant workers to a bare trickle, these guys weren’t going to be mistaken for migrant workers looking for a better life anytime soon.

The young guy in the black collared shirt spat in the dust, but none of them said anything.  They just stood there and glared at me.

“Yeah, I get the message,” I said.  “And I couldn’t give less of a fuck.  Turn your asses around and start walking back the way you came.  Otherwise, my partner up above might start getting a mighty itchy trigger finger.”

The beefy-looking, sweaty one spat at my tire.  “Chinga tu madre, maricon,” he said.  Fuck your mother, faggot.

I just grinned like a death’s head and waved my off hand.  A sharp crack echoed across the draw, and dust was smacked up less than a foot from old boy’s feet.  He flinched and jumped backward a bit, almost hitting one of his homies.

“We don’t usually like to use warning shots, but I’m feeling generous today,” I said, not entirely truthfully.  While Mr. Lopez had said he didn’t really give a damn how we went about securing his ranch, he’d still been noticeably uncomfortable at the notion of setting up sniper hides and just schwacking anyone who crossed the line when that course of action had been brought up, though not entirely seriously.  So, Alek and I had decided to go ahead and make warning shots SOP.  “Now turn around and leg it back down the draw, or the next one goes through your fucking skull.”

*************************

The story continues in Drawing the Line, a novella roughly the same length as “Rock, Meet Hard Place,” set shortly before the events of Task Force Desperate.

Coming soon.

Soldiers for Hire

Tim Lynch, over on Free Range International, which I’ve read off and on for years now, makes some points related to not only the recent kerfuffle over the Erik Prince/DynCorp proposal for privatizing the war in Afghanistan, but about professional soldiers in general.  It is a point that I’ve tried to make, in different ways, with both the American Praetorian series and Kill Yuan.

Have you not heard about this? Of course not because it counters the legacy media narrative about so -called “mercenaries” while illustrating the uselessness of the United Nations in combating terrorism. Eeben Barrlow and his men are not mercenaries in any sense of the word. There is not a snow ball’s chance in hell that Joseph Kony or any other terrorist organization could hire them no matter how much money they paid. They are former military professionals who, although retired, remain military professionals willing to endure primitive conditions for months on end to teach their expertise to appropriate clientele.

The concepts that Prince is talking about and that Feral Jundi and I have been writing about for years work. All of us know that because all of us have done it. The only question regarding the concept of a Viceroy for Afghanistan heading a mostly Private Military Corporation effort to move Afghanistan toward peace is who heads the effort.

Read the rest on Free Range International.

Another Article, and Another Review

My latest is up on Breach-Bang-Clear, concerning weapons being, in the words of Sam in Ronin, “A toolbox.”  Knowing your tools means that firearms aren’t like the latest iPhone.  (Of course, the Facebook comments on B-B-C’s page have already gone off the rails…never read the FB comments!)

The NRA recently decided to disallow revolvers and 1911s from their “Carry Guard” classes. They have since reversed that decision, probably after millions of gun owners took to the internet to tell them it was stupid). This decision seems to have once again highlighted the differing opinions in the firearms community about what is and is not an “obsolete” firearm.

I almost said, “reignited the debate,” but who are we kidding? It’s never stopped.

Read the rest on Breach-Bang-Clear.

Also, a fellow denizen of the “Men’s Adventure Paperbacks of the ’70s and ’80s” Group on Facebook, Greg Hatcher, has read and reviewed Lex Talionis.  It is an excellent review.

“I’m not much of a joiner, usually, but I do belong to an online community that is devoted to reading and collecting the men’s adventure paperbacks that dominated drugstore spinner racks in the sixties and seventies.

It happens that many of us write the stuff as well, and one of our number, Peter Nealen, asked if any of us would be interested in reviewing his latest. Of course I lunged at it, despite the appalling size of my to-read pile.”

Read the rest here.  (You will have to scroll down a bit, Greg’s post is a bit of a grab-bag.  Not unlike this one.)

What Do We Have Here?

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Seems there was one more Jeff Stone story to tell, after all.  This is a novella, and a prequel.  Coming soon.

“Older and Fouler Things” Chapter 2

The woman was in the lead, two steps ahead of the man.  She was also half a head taller than he was, with a narrow, severe sort of face, blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail behind her head.  She looked around at us rather imperiously, her mouth pressed into a thin line.

“Who are you people?” she asked.  Her voice was clipped and slightly nasal.  And her tone immediately set my teeth on edge.

“Who wants to know?” I replied, shifting my Winchester to the crook of my arm as I folded my arms in front of me.  I could see the badge on her belt and the big yellow letters “FBI” on her blue windbreaker.  But her attitude put my back up, especially coming after what we’d just done.

“I’m Special Agent Trudeau, and this is Special Agent Miller,” she replied, in the same clipped, arrogant tone of voice.  “Now, tell me who you are.”

“Lady, unless you’ve got a warrant, which the good police chief over there might object to, given what just happened, I suggest you get a lot more polite in the next five seconds, or you can pound sand,” I told her.

Eryn was giving me that look that generally meant I had utterly failed as a diplomat, which was no surprise to anyone.  Kolya had that sort of dead, Russian mobster sort of look on his face.  Anyone who knew Kolya could be sure that he wasn’t actually as murderous as he looked, but neither of these people knew him, and he had a really big rifle in his hands and a big .44 Magnum on his hip.

“I’m sorry,” the man called Miller said, brushing past Trudeau and offering his hand.  “We’re part of an investigation into the recent events south of here.  I’m sure you’re familiar with them?”

He was talking about the swathe of destruction the Walker had left across half a dozen small towns.  Yeah, we were quite familiar.  And I was starting to get an idea about just what brought these two here.

“We might have heard a thing or two,” was all I said.  After Trudeau’s initial approach, I wasn’t going to be any more forthcoming than I had to.  I knew a scalp-hunter when I saw one, and I liked my hair where it was, thank you very much.

“As you might imagine, there are some pointed questions being asked about those events,” Trudeau said icily.  “Especially since several witnesses, including local law enforcement, described a number of armed individuals being involved, armed individuals who then were nowhere to be found after the dust settled.”

“Did local law enforcement blame these individuals for the events in question?” I asked, keeping my enunciation just precise enough to let her know I was mocking her.  Which probably wasn’t all that wise on my part, but she’d thoroughly annoyed me by now.  Sheriff Baker hadn’t seen fit to arrest us; in fact, he’d signed off on letting his deputy, Frank Tall Bear, accompany us in the pursuit of the Walker.  And we’d helped the law and EMS personnel in Ophir and Bartram, trying to put the pieces back together after the Walker had gone through.  This outsider, who hadn’t been in any of those places, coming in and making accusatory insinuations, didn’t sit well with me.  And I could feel Kolya bristling beside me, too.

“No,” Miller said hastily.  “But with multiple corroborating reports of something extremely strange having happened, with that level of destruction involved, you understand how this is of major concern.  If we are going to form a coherent picture of what happened, and whether it amounts to a clear and present danger to the country as a whole, we need to get every bit of information we can.”

“We’ve been keeping our ear to the ground for similar reports of…strange occurrences,” Trudeau said.  “I’d expected that you would show up if something like this surfaced again.”  She looked pointedly at Father Ignacio.  “Some of the descriptions we got were quite detailed.”

“Okay,” I said, after Eryn nudged me.  She had that “Be Nice” look in her eyes when she looked at me.  “You’ve found us.  What do you want?”

“First, I want to know who you are, and what you’re doing crossing a police line on an active crime scene,” Trudeau snapped.

“Why don’t you ask the Chief of Police, who let us cross?” I asked.  “We’re consultants.  We deal with these sorts of things.”

“What kind of consultants?” she demanded.  She really wasn’t going to let this go with the easy answers.

“The good Father here,” I said, jerking a thumb at Father Ignacio, who was still wearing his stole over his biker leathers, “is an exorcist.  We provide physical security.”  In reality, we provided a bit more than that, but what she didn’t know wasn’t going to kill her.  At least, not where we were concerned.

“Look,” Miller said, “we just have a few questions we need to ask you.  That’s all.  None of the first responders we talked to had anything bad to say about you.”  Trudeau’s expression got even more arch and skeptical at that, but Miller really seemed to be trying to smooth the waters.  He was edging ahead of his colleague, as if trying to block her hostility out.  I didn’t think she was getting the message, though.  “Please.  Something outside of normal explanations happened, and we’re just trying to put the picture together.  If there’s something new on the horizon that’s getting that many people killed, we have to know what it is.”  He took a deep breath.  “We just need to talk to you.  That’s all.”

I studied him for a moment.  The others had sort of stepped back and let me take the lead, probably because I’d opened my big mouth first.  Eryn was the closest, with that attitude about her that suggested she was about to try to drag me away if I got too hostile.

“Given your partner’s initial attitude, Mr. Miller,” I said calmly, “I find that slightly hard to believe.  Do we need to get an attorney present?”

“Are you saying you have something to hide?” Trudeau asked sharply.  Miller actually closed his eyes for a second, a look of complete and utter frustration and exhaustion on his face.

“How…chekist-y of you,” I said.  The blank look I got from her suggested she didn’t understand what I’d just said.  “As jaw-droppingly unconstitutional as that question is, the answer is no.  But you obviously have an ax to grind, though I’m blamed if I know why.  Unless you’ve decided that we somehow hypnotized all those cops and EMS folks into thinking we were the good guys, or something.  Which is absurd.”  I was fairly sure I had an idea of why Trudeau was acting the way she was.  And if I was right, she was going to neither like nor accept the answers they were asking for.

Her eyes narrowed, and she opened her mouth to spit her reply at me, but Miller cut her off.  “Karen, just let me handle this,” he snapped.  “You’ve done enough already.”  He turned back to face me, taking a deep breath.  It might have been an act, but I didn’t think so.  I’d dealt with enough law enforcement officers in my time that I had a pretty good feel for them, the good ones, the bad ones, and the unbelieving ones.  Considering how many of our cases get started with what might look like an ordinary crime, Witch Hunters have to be able to deal with the cops.

“Look,” he said, “we got off on the wrong foot, and I’m sorry.  We are investigating the…occurrences in a series of small towns to the south, occurrences that you are apparently intimately familiar with.  You are not being accused of any crime.  We just need to talk to you, to get as much information about what happened as we can.  This is a matter of national security, as I’m sure you’ll agree.  There are a lot of people dead, and we don’t know why.”

I glanced over his shoulder.  Chief Garvey was standing at a decent distance, his arms folded across his chest, his face impassive.  He met my eyes, and there was a moment of unspoken communication.  The Spokane Police Chief hadn’t been a credulous man, until his own officers had been thrown around by things they couldn’t see right in front of his eyes when they’d tried to storm the house.  He was a believer now, even if he wasn’t sure just what he believed in, and he knew that we’d just helped him out.  He wasn’t happy about the FBI’s involvement at all, and even less so about Trudeau’s attitude.

He was still impeccably polite when he stepped forward and spoke.  “We can provide a conference room for you to ask your questions at the police station,” he said.  “It will be nice and secure.”  He glanced at me when he said it, and I took his meaning.  The cops were on our side, if Trudeau started getting froggy.

If Miller got the message, he didn’t show it.  “That sounds good, if it’s alright with you.”  He was looking at me.  He was definitely trying to smooth over what Trudeau had done.

Probably a day late and a dollar short, bud, I thought.  Trudeau had already laid the battle lines.  We weren’t going to trust her farther than I could throw her.  Or her car.

But we couldn’t just blow them off entirely.  The Order generally worked around law enforcement where possible, with them when there was no other choice.  We preferred to work around; a lot of moderns don’t believe in the God or the Devil, much less the Otherworld, and when you start talking about fighting monsters and demons with prayer, holy water, and big, silver-jacketed bullets, such people start getting antsy.  But when you can’t work around, you’ve got to be up front and hope that you can get through the wall of unbelief before too many more people get hurt.

This was going to be an “up front” sort of situation, regardless of how adversarial it had started.  We couldn’t afford an adversarial relationship with the FBI.

So, I nodded amiably.  “We’ll put our gear back in our trucks and meet you there, then.”

Trudeau looked like she was going to object, but hard stares from Miller and Garvey both shut her up before she could speak.  She still glared daggers at me, as if I was trying to pull a fast one.

Oh, boy, I thought.  This is gonna be fun.

 

The conference room looked like just about every other such place I’ve ever had the misfortune of sitting in.  White walls, cheap gray carpet, a veneered particle board conference table stained with hundreds of meetings’ worth of coffee rings, and cheap, vinyl-upholstered armchairs that felt like they were going to break and dump you over backward as soon as you leaned back.  I leaned on the table, instead.

The four of us were sitting on one side of the table, with the two Special Agents on the other, and Garvey standing at the end, leaning on the back of another chair.  He’d simply said that, given what had just happened, he’d like to know as much about this sort of stuff as possible, but I sensed that he also wanted to keep an eye on Trudeau and Miller.  Our newest stray, whose name was Paul, was waiting out in the receiving area, nervously.

“So,” I said to Miller, “do you want the easy to digest version, or the real version?”

Trudeau glared at me.  Granted, she hadn’t done much but glare since the crime scene, though she’d managed to actually look even more peeved when Garvey had shown us to the conference room instead of an interrogation room.  Garvey wasn’t playing her game.  Neither was Miller, if I was reading him right.

Trudeau would actually be quite attractive, if not for her permanent venomous look and attitude.  Nowhere near Eryn’s league, of course, but my wife is a rarely beautiful woman.

“The real version, of course,” Miller said, his hands folded in front of him on the table.

I glanced over at Father Ignacio.  He was sitting back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest.  He’d always looked like some grizzled cartel hitman to me, and I imagined that he wasn’t exactly fitting in with the Special Agents’ idea of what a priest was supposed to look like, either.

“First of all, you’re going to need some basic understanding of the world as it is,” he growled.  He was actually speaking quite calmly, in his “teaching” voice.  Which still came across as a gravelly growl from a very scary-looking man incongruously wearing a Roman collar.  “Forget what you think science has ruled out.  The demonic is very real.  What happened in that Bed and Breakfast down the road only a little over an hour ago was a manifestation of the demonic.  And if you think I’m just blowing smoke, I suggest you get acquainted with the local officers who got tossed around.”

Trudeau was looking angry and skeptical.  Miller was carefully composed.  Father Ignacio was blithely unconcerned with whether or not either of them believed him or not, and continued on with his lecture.  “There are other creatures, not quite wholly grounded in this world, but not quite demonic, either.  We call this category the Otherworld.  There are innumerable creatures of varying levels of hostility to human life crawling around the Otherworld, slipping through the shadows just out of sight.  Many of them can do things impossible to man or beast.  Many are allied with the demons, in one way or another.

“Some of these creatures are so powerful that they may as well be a weapon of mass destruction.  Some are sleeping.  Some are imprisoned.  Every once in a great while, one gets loose.”

For a moment, the room was quiet.  Eryn, Kolya, and I were reliving some of the horror that we’d witnessed while pursuing the Walker.  The Special Agents were taking in what Father Ignacio had just said, Trudeau with a look of scornful disbelief on her face, Miller with studied thoughtfulness.  Garvey’s face was blank, though there was a look deep in his eyes that suggested he was mulling over the possibility that there was a lot more of what he’d just witnessed a few miles away, running beneath the surface of the world he knew.

“And you’re saying that that’s what happened?” Miller asked quietly.  “One of these things…got loose?”

“That’s exactly what happened,” I said.  He didn’t need to know all the details.  We didn’t know enough about the mysterious figure who had deliberately engineered the freeing of the Walker to get into that.  And until we knew more, we definitely didn’t want the FBI blundering after him and getting more people caught in the crossfire.  Whoever he was, he was dangerous as all hell.  “The thing in particular is called The Walker on the Hills.  It’s something of a sower of chaos and madness.”

Miller half glanced over at Trudeau, as if slightly embarrassed about something, then caught himself and turned back to me.  He still hesitated for a moment, before asking, “Like Nyarlathotep?”

Ah, a Lovecraft reader, I thought.  That would actually make it slightly easier, though not by much.  Lovecraft’s fiction might provide some common reference by way of analogy, but he had some pretty weird ideas that didn’t quite fit into reality.

“Pretty close,” I answered.

“What happened?” he asked.  He still wasn’t buying it, not entirely, but he wasn’t as dismissive as his partner, who barely managed to disguise her snort of derision as she sat further back in her chair, rolling her eyes.

“We locked it back up,” Kolya answered, his voice low and flat.  “At considerable cost.”

Miller shot him a look at that, his eyes narrowing slightly as he took in Kolya’s tone and body language.  I had to give it to Miller; he was sharp.  He’d read a lot into that simple statement.  He looked at each of us in turn.  “How many of the dead were yours?” he asked quietly.

“Too many,” Eryn said.  Blake.  Tyrese.  The Ramirez brothers.  Two of the Brothers of St. Macharius of the Mountain.  Too many of the Sisters of St. Peter the Exorcist.  And of those who had survived, many were deeply wounded.

“Okay, this is ridiculous,” Trudeau burst out, sitting up in her chair.  She looked at Miller.  “Are we really going to listen to this…this fairy tale?”

“Do you have another explanation?” Miller asked flatly, turning to her with hooded eyes.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” she replied.  “This looks like some kind of religious militia to me, and what better way to win converts to whatever whackjob version of religion they’re following than to stage some kind of terrorist attack in a backwater part of the country, where there’s not that much education, and then present themselves as some kind of saviors?”

“That doesn’t fit with any of the other accounts of what happened,” Miller pointed out reasonably.

“So they’re good at psychological manipulation,” she sneered.  “You know as well as I do that what they’re describing is impossible.  And I’m surprised you’re not as insulted as I am that they’re trying to pass such an obvious fantasy off to us as fact.”

Miller wasn’t looking at her, but studying us pensively.  “That still wouldn’t explain the observed damage or the consistent stories collected from witnesses.  Those that were still sane.”

“Psychotropic drugs,” she countered.  “It’s been done by cults before.”

“Not on this scale, and not coupled with this kind of death toll,” Miller said.  “Look, I’m not necessarily buying their story.  Yeah, it sounds pretty far-fetched to me, too.  But nothing about this case makes any more sense, and neither does what just happened down the road.”  He looked at us.  “And, frankly, there’s no more evidence to back up your theory than there is to back up their story.  It’s just as much a fairy tale as anything they’ve told us.”

She actually looked shocked at that, almost as if he’d just slapped her in the face.  Maybe she’d been expecting him to back her up just because he was her partner.  Honestly, it felt a bit awkward, sitting there across the table from them and watching this little byplay.

Miller turned back to me.  “Can you give me the rundown of what happened, as you witnessed it?” he asked.  “Just the facts.”

So, I gave him the story, as starkly and dispassionately as I could.  From the first message from Blake that had gotten us to Coldwell, all the way through nightmares of horror, death, and twisted reality to the final showdown at Storr’s Hole.  Kolya, Eryn, and Father Ignacio all occasionally inserted details that I’d missed.

Trudeau was looking more and more disgusted as we went on.  Garvey was looking thoughtful, and a little pale.  He’d had an up-close look at the other side of reality, and now he was learning even more about it, in the form of a horror story that had taken hundreds of real lives.  Miller just listened, taking notes from time to time.

When we were finished, Trudeau looked like she wanted to spit on the floor, Miller was utterly impassive, and Garvey looked like he’d seen a ghost.

“If we’re just going to let them go, then this has been a complete waste of time,” Trudeau said.  “Whatever they’re up to, they aren’t going to tell us.  We’re going to need a warrant.”

“And how are you going to get one?” Miller asked flatly.  “Like I said, you’ve got no evidence that they did anything, and plenty of evidence and testimony that they helped out a great deal.”

“I don’t know,” she snapped bitterly.  “But you know I’m right.”  She glared at us.

Miller sighed.  “Unless you’ve got more to tell us,” he said, “you’re free to go.  Unless the Chief has more for you?”  He looked at Garvey.

The police chief shook his head.  “I’ve got nothing for you guys but thanks,” he said, his voice hoarse.  “That was a hell of a situation, and while I’m still not sure how you took care of it, we sure owe you one.”

I stood up, still feeling Trudeau’s venomous stare even as I ignored her.  “No thanks needed, Chief,” I said.  “It’s kind of our job.”  We all shook his hand, and headed out of the station.

“She’s going to be a problem,” Eryn said as we walked out into the parking lot.  “Like you said, she’s got an ax to grind, and now she’s got a vendetta to go with it.  I don’t think we’ve heard the last of her.”

“I’m sure we haven’t,” I sighed.  “But for now, she’s off our back.  And we’ve got to figure out what to do with him.”  I jerked my chin at Paul, who was getting into Kolya’s old truck.

“He’s not the first lost soul the Order’s taken in,” she pointed out.  “After all, that’s kind of how we ended up married.”

I looked over at her.  She was smiling a little.  “You were hardly in the same shape as that guy,” I pointed out.

“Maybe not,” she answered, as she slid into the passenger’s seat.  “But we’ll take care of him.  He could turn out to be a great Hunter.”

“Maybe,” I answered, as we pulled out of the parking lot.  “I’m just hoping he comes out of this whole.”

Now That Was Downright Poetic

Reader Samuel, on Goodreads, has posted his review of Lex Talionis.  What he wrote can only be described as, “high praise, indeed.”

TAPS

“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.” – USMC General (Ret) James Mattis.

“Let’s roll”. – Todd Beamer.

“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”- Nathan Hale.

“You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out…you might as well appeal against the thunder-storm.”- US Army General William T Sherman.

I’ve always held that Orwell, creator of the most iconic dystopia was wrong about many things. Contrary to his writings, what we hate, will not destroy humanity. Kill some of us perhaps, but that hatred, will keep the embers of life, of defiance burning to let us endure such suffering. No, what will destroy us, as argued by Huxley, will be what we love, cherish, and take for granted. The delusion that the residents of a civilized society are owed freedom from speech and freedom from fear, from cradle to the grave, has led to such freedoms being used, irresponsibly, and some might argue, immaturely.

The freedoms that many claim to cherish, have been squandered, soiled and stained, since 2017 began, with odious, smug extremism corrupting millions around the world. Every idea, however wretched or ill thought out in this age, is just as valid, or even more so than the ideas that have worked and been the foundations of modern society. One is not owed freedom from beginning to end. But for those who demand freedom, there is an obligation to nurture and protect it with care, rather than let it be choked by the weeds of petty squabbling generated by the virus of self-righteousness that has infected all political discourse in the West.

One person who has more than lived up to his obligations in nurturing freedom is Peter Nealen. Mr Nealen is a veteran of the revered USMC Force Recon unit. Serving his country in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nealen has made a fruitful business as an indie thriller writer. He has written a series of urban fantasy novels and a contemporary military thriller novel, but the crown jewel, where he cut his teeth and made his name is the dystopian American Praetorian series. Characterized by cutting edge research, visceral violence that is in a class above half the NYT bestseller list of 2017, a cast of amoral but loveable consummate professionals and a haunting and horrifyingly recognizable fictional universe, the AP saga, is indie thriller writing at its very best.

Focusing on the life and times of Jeff Stone, a private military contractor who finds himself drawn into an epic, globe spanning war in the shadows, Nealen, surprised many fans by stating he would end things on the fifth book – and then actually going through with it. As someone who has grown to love the series, I must confess I was a little sad, and intrigued. With so much narrative potential in the AP setting, would such a conclusion be satisfying? I really should have not doubted the author as Mr Nealen went above and beyond all expectations.

Read the rest on Goodreads.

Happy Independence Day

Today, 241 years ago, our forefathers signed their names to the Declaration of Independence, in so doing establishing a state of war between the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain.

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John Hancock was the first to sign, and his signature is still the most visible and readily recognizable.  There are a couple of versions of an apocryphal story, whereby Hancock said, upon signing, words along the lines of, “The British ministry can read that name without spectacles; let them double their reward.”

Altogether, 56 men signed their names, putting their lives and livelihoods on the line for the sake of a new nation.

The text is well worth reading again:

In Congress, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

What followed was eight years of war, against one of the most professional armies on the planet.  It was by no means certain that the Colonists would win; at several times it looked far more certain that they would lose, crushed by the might of the British Empire.  Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, was one of those who kept the fight going through guerrilla warfare in the South, when the northern Colonies’ military force was all but completely shattered.

 

The South China Sea and Tensions With China

While Russia has taken front and center attention recently, due to the use of Russian agitprop to influence the internal affairs of Russia’s chief strategic rival (i.e., us), Russia is not the only major power that sees the US as a rival in its regional and global strategic goals.  (Strangely, most of the outrage over Russia right now seems to be focused on their information and influence operations, rather than the continuing frozen conflicts in Ukraine, Transnistria, Nagorno-Kharabakh, and South Ossetia, to name only a few.  But that’s another matter for another post.)

China, in addition to conducting quiet resource-gathering operations worldwide, with a pronounced tendency not to care what kind of criminals they’re doing business with (see: shipping illegally mined iron ore out of the port of Lazaro-Cardenas in Mexico while that port was under control of the Caballeros Templarios cartel), has been expanding its regional military power projection, mostly focused on the South China Sea.  Not only do several major shipping lanes pass through the South China Sea, making control of the waters there strategically important for reasons of power projection, but the two primary disputed island chains, the Paracels and the Spratlys, are thought to contain oil as well as being important fisheries for the region.

The Paracels and the Spratlys (Xisha and Nansha in Chinese) are claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, and in the case of the Spratlys, in part by Malaysia.  China has claimed the South China Sea since 1947, claiming that the islands have always formed a vital part of China, a claim actively disputed by Vietnam, which fought the Chinese over the Paracels in 1974, and the Spratlys in 1988.  The Philippines claim the Spratlys primarily due to territorial closeness of the islands to the Philippine islands themselves.  A more in-depth description of the ongoing territorial disputes, thanks to the BBC, can be found here.

In recent years, China has effectively set about muscling in on the South China Sea, by expanding their military and maritime infrastructure, building harbors, airfields, and artificial islands within the disputed archipelagos.  In many cases, it appears that they are essentially making up for a lack of aircraft carriers by creating stationary installations on the islands, not unlike the chain of airfields that the Seabees built on the Western Pacific islands running from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima, to support the air campaign against Imperial Japan.  A more detailed description of the infrastructure installed in the Paracels, complete with imagery, is on the Asia Maritime Transparency Intiative’s website.

Now, lest the reader think that this is all just a regional dispute over oil and fisheries, remember, major shipping lanes go through those same waters.  That makes the South China Sea a strategically important area, and an extremely dangerous flashpoint for any country that relies on international trade.  Which is why the US has been conducting “freedom of navigation” exercises for some time, usually involving a single US Navy warship moving through the South China Sea, essentially making it clear that to disrupt freedom of navigation in those waters means crossing the US Navy.

The latest one of these exercises just happened yesterday.  The USS Stethem, an Arleigh-Burke-class destroyer, passed within 12 nautical miles of Triton Island, the southermost of the Paracels.  By international law, 12 nautical miles out becomes international waters.  China, however, extends its territorial claims beyond that.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy deployed warships and aircraft in response, and Beijing called the action, “a serious political and military provocation.”  This was shortly before a phone call between President Trump and President Xi, which was ostensibly primarily about disarming North Korea.

China and the US have been rivals for a long time.  Sometime allies, after the break between the PRC and the USSR, in recent decades, China has essentially embarked on a slow program of regional hegemony, attempting to assert its own control over Asia, at the exclusion of the United States.  While the situation is extremely complicated, especially considering the economic interdependence of the United States and the PRC, the PLA especially sees the US as a rival, especially given continued (if often unofficial, since Nixon’s trip to Beijing) support of Taiwan.  This rivalry has taken the form of extensive espionage operations, saber-rattling over US support for South Korea, including the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system against North Korea, and apparently designing the new Type 055 destroyer specifically to counteract American naval capabilities (though any such capabilities should still be taken with a grain of salt; Chinese propaganda is no less sophisticated than Russian).

Military rivalry between the US and the PRC is not likely to wind down anytime soon.  And while Taiwan has been seen for decades as the likely flashpoint between our two countries, the South China Sea is growing in importance and delicacy.

As it just so happens, I wrote a thriller set against just this backdrop.  Kill Yuan sees contractors fighting on an obscure chain of islands, south of the Spratlys, as the situation becomes even more dangerous than it is today.  Available on Kindle, Paperback, and Audio.

Revolutions and Civil Wars

One of the themes I tried to explore a little in Lex Talionis is civil strife and out-and-out civil war.  (The line between “revolution” and “civil war” is thin, murky, and often non-existent.  A “civil war” ends up, much of the time, being a “revolution” that didn’t succeed right away.)  Some of the reason for this was, admittedly, in reaction to not only some of the civil strife we’ve already seen on the streets of American cities (and out in the boonies, as well, with the Cliven Bundy bunch), but also some of the calls I’ve seen on the blogosphere and social media, on both sides of the political divide, for “revolution” or “let’s get the civil war over with already.”

Much like Jeff Stone and his compatriots, I’ve been on the ground in countries engaged in civil war.  I’ve seen the disruption, the destruction of infrastructure, the fear, and, worse, the vendettas.  Some of those vendettas in Iraq go back well before the days of Saddam, being tribe against tribe.  We dealt with one small tribe on the south bank of the Euphrates in ’06.  They were friendly enough, insisting that they were fully supportive of the government and were glad we were there.  Maybe it was true, maybe it was what they wanted the big dudes with guns and gun trucks to hear.  They were living in a small village of cinder-block houses, farming on the banks of the river.  They were poor.  We could have blasted their entire village to dust in less than an hour, with air support. (We wouldn’t have, and even if we’d tried, we’d never have gotten authorization, but they didn’t necessarily know that, nor would they necessarily have believed us if we’d explained that.)

The bridge across the river, less than a mile away, had been blown up; it was completely impassable.  To cross the Euphrates, you had to drive several dozen miles upriver to the dam.  When we asked the locals about getting the bridge fixed (that was a great deal of our job at the time: talking to the locals, finding out who lived where, and seeing if there was any way we could help them), they were adamant that they didn’t want it fixed.  Because they had a feud with the tribe across the river, and with the bridge out, that tribe couldn’t come screw with them.

Now, this was a relatively minor anecdote, but it illustrates one of the unintended consequences of civil strife and disorder.  The feud between these two tribes didn’t necessarily have anything to do with the wider insurgencies going on in Iraq in ’05-’06.  But with the civil and sectarian strife happening, there was no order to keep that feud from flaring up.  The only thing keeping it relatively controlled was destroyed infrastructure, probably smashed for an entirely different reason.

And that brings me to a part of revolutions and civil wars that those who are eager for them tend to overlook.  Unintended consequences.  Violence is chaotic and unpredictable on multiple levels.  Political disagreement, while under the cloak of law and politics, can be kept under control.  Once you let the dog of war off its chain, there’s no taking it back.  There’s no controlling it anymore.  Killings lead to grudges.

Some of the difficulty in getting this across to those who have not seen just how messy these wars are in person, is the fact that so much of our own history has been shortened and simplified to fit into a few pages of a high school history textbook.  Our revolution worked out, so it’s time to have another one, get things back to basics.  Except that the American Revolution was a secessionist rebellion, against a power that was otherwise occupied with a long-running cold war with the French at the time.  And the French Revolution that followed, being more of a textbook “revolution,” resulted in the Reign of Terror, with a death toll of tens of thousands.  Later revolutions, particularly in the 20th century, were worse.  Ours only succeeded because of a particular set of historical and cultural factors, that are no longer in play.

The American Civil War gets even worse.  It was not just a series of set battles.  It was also Bleeding Kansas, the Redlegs, and Quantrell’s Raiders.  Grudges from the Civil War were still being fought out on the frontier well into the 1870s and 1880s.

On top of all that, no civil war happens in a vacuum.  The French helped the Colonials out during the American Revolution purely to hurt the British.  The British offered aid to the Confederates during the Civil War to get back at the uppity Colonials, nearly a century after the Revolution.  And outside influences in civil wars has only gotten more pronounced following World War II.  How many civil wars did the US and USSR intervene in, purely as proxy wars against their rivals?  Iran and Syria had their fingers deeply in the Iraqi insurgency, and still do (at least Iran does; the Assad regime has a few other things on its mind at the moment).  For that matter, the Syrian Civil War is a stew of outside influences fighting each other by proxy, ranging from the US and Russia to Iran and Saudi Arabia.  See my earlier post about Russian Influence Operations.

Eventually, there comes a time when there is no remaining choice but to fight.  I am not denying that.  But the downright eagerness for it that I’ve seen across the political spectrum is disturbing.  Because as Jeff Stone said, ““Maybe it’s inevitable,” I continued tiredly.  “But I’m still going to do what I can to head it off.  Because this is my fucking country, and I don’t want to see it turn into the shitholes I’ve been fighting in for the last twenty years.  And that’s why I can’t trust you.  You actually want that shit to happen.  And that plays right into our enemies’ hands.””

Best Review of “Lex Talionis” Yet

Lex Talionis is now up to eleven reviews on Amazon, and still hovering somewhere in the 300s-400s in its category.  This review in particular caught my eye.  This is the kind of thing authors like to hear; it means we did our job and put the reader into the middle of the action.

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If you haven’t checked the book out yet, hopefully that will convince you to give it a shot.  And if you have, be sure to leave a review!