| Subject: ...For Meritorious Service, Chapter 26a |
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TxJAG_b
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Date Posted: 13:15:35 03/31/09 Tue
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TxJAG_b
's message, "...For Meritorious Service, Chapter 25d, part two - continued" on 16:25:09 01/08/09 Thu
A/N: Took longer to get 26a done than I thought it would - a quick recap of 25d just so you're up to speed. Thanks to betas three and all the other great people who helped with this - on with the story....
From Chapter 25d part two, …For Meritorious Service
On their guard, Mac and Victor walked over to where Staff Sergeant Dallas was standing. “What is it Sergeant Dallas?”
“Just a quick question, ma’am. Did Colonel Livingston tell you anything else about this operation?” The question seemed somewhat pointed.
“You heard my briefing Staff Sergeant,” Victor said trying not to sound irritated. “What else would she have said?”
Mark Dallas’ eyes focused on Victor. “Something about the real reason for us being out here, Master Guns…”
“What are you driving at, Staff Sergeant?”
“…you ever heard the song, Witchy Woman, by the Eagles?” asked Kayce. It was an odd question.
“Yeah, I have; now what does this have to do with Colonel Livingston, Corporal?” Mac was equally curious and irritated by these questions. Just what were they trying to learn?
For the first time, Corporal Logan spoke. “So you’re friends with Colonel Livingston?” her question was directed at both of them.
Mac looked Victor and then at the assembled members of the recon team. (Show time…) she thought. “Yeah; we both go way back with her….’’ Kayce had fooled her; they all had. This unit was dirty.
That was when Victor and Mac got the surprise of their lives. Every rifle and pistol in the encampment swung toward them. “Well that’s too bad, sister,” snorted Logan, as the weapons were taken off safety.
…For Meritorious Service, Chapter 26a
Mac and Victor stood stock still for a moment. Mac looked around the group. A few of them seemed like unwilling participants, but Sergeants Dallas and Corbin and Corporals Danvers and Logan looked determined. Szymas and Calapango were conspicuously absent.
Staff Sergeant Dallas seemed to be the ringleader. “Colonel, Master Guns, put your weapons on the ground, nice and slow. All of them. Now.”
Kayce motioned her rifle toward the ground to emphasize Dallas’ ‘request’. “Now Colonel.”
Logan seemed to be getting an even itchier trigger finger. “You heard them, Master Guns. Unt uh, brother, don’t try to be a hero. You’d be dead before you could make a move.”
Mac began to slowly unsnap her pistol holster. “You’re making a mistake, Dallas.”
“I don’t think so, Colonel. And easy does it with that pistol, ma’am; we don’t want there to be any accidents….”
“Your career is over, Dallas,” hissed Victor.
“I don’t think so, Master Guns,” replied Logan who was smiling for the first time. “I think he might get a medal for this….”
“How do you figure that, Corporal?” Mac said as she pulled her service pistol from her ankle holster and lowered it toward the ground.
“You two are crooked! Conspirators with Colonel Livingston! She’s aiding the insurgents--”
“That’s enough Logan!” Corbin snapped. Then he turned to Victor and motioned with his sidearm. “Now Master Guns, lay your rifle on the ground. Slowly.”
Mac exchanged a quick look with Victor. “Do as he says, Master Guns.”
Mac could tell Master Gunnery Sergeant Galindez was torn between obeying their captors and making a break for it. Finally, slowly and deliberately, he lowered his assault rifle to the ground.
“Aye ma’am.”
Mac was starting to sweat profusely despite the coolness of the night air, but she still looked defiant. She turned back to Sergeant Dallas.
“What do you intend to do with us, Staff Sergeant, now that we’re disarmed?”
Mark Dallas motioned with his rifle for her to move away from the cluster of pickup trucks. “You’ll find out soon enough, ma’am.” His motioned with his rifle for Victor to do the same. “After you, Master Guns….”
Kayce and Logan picked up their discarded weapons. Mac noticed that both Corporals were wearing gloves. It was obvious they didn’t want to get any fingerprints on the weapons.
Mac started to raise her hands, but Kayce thrust her rifle toward her.
“Keep your hands down ma’am; we want to make this look as natural as possible….”
*~*
Master Chief Petty Officer (MCPO), Darrell Coskill strained to see with his binoculars what was going on in the nearby camp. Obviously Commander May had a better view of the situation. “Can you see what’s going on, Commander?”
Brad May lowered his binoculars and turned to the MCPO. “Yeah, Master Chief; it looks like Petty Officer Burke has his hands full right now….”
“Is he in trouble, sir?”
The SEAL Team CO shook his head. “No, not yet; but it looks real hairy over there right now….”
*~*
Mac and Victor ‘led’ the procession of Force Recon soldiers who were moving away from the pickup trucks. They ran squarely into Staff Sergeant Reynolds and Corpsman Yader who had been checking on the Marines manning the lookout posts.
Leonard goggled at the rifles trained on Mac and the Master Guns. “Colonel? Master Guns? What the hell!?”
Reynolds was slow in responding, but Yader reacted by instinct and aimed his rifle at Staff Sergeant Dallas. “Let them go, Staff Sergeant!”
Logan quickly pointed her rifle at Yader. “Drop your weapon, Corpsman!”
“Stand down Corpsman!” barked Corbin.
The young Corpsman didn’t flinch. “No Staff Sergeant; not until you let the Colonel and Master Guns go….”
Joe Corbin was surprised by the young squid’s bravery. But, whether or not this kid was one of theirs or just misguided, he couldn’t let the Master Gunny and this sea lawyer do whatever they were planning to do.
“We can’t do that, Corpsman….”
Now Leonard Reynolds had his sidearm out, but he wasn’t pointing it at anyone in particular.
His voice seemed unusually strident. “Mark! Joe! This is nuts!” He looked from one Staff Sergeant to the other. “You can’t kill an officer and a senior enlisted and get away with it, Mark! Joe, try to talk some sense into him!”
Mark Dallas sensed that Reynolds was closed to panicking which could be bad news for all of them considering all the guns being pointed were off safety. He decided a command might cause Leonard Reynolds to respond automatically.
“Back off Leonard! This is none of your concern!!”
But Leon’s automatic response was not what he hoped it would be. “The hell it isn’t! You can’t do this!”
Logan kept her weapon trained on the Corpsman. “Begging your pardon, Staff Sergeant, but we can and we are. Now tell the Corpsman to lower his weapon….”
Leonard looked from Mac to Corpsman Yader. Mac said nothing. The platoon Sergeant shook his head. “I can’t do that, Corporal. Lay down your weapons.”
Mac could see that Corbin was trying to reason with Reynolds. “Leon, this woman is poison. She’s the reason Ebbits was killed….”
But the platoon Sergeant had his own line of reasoning. “Joe, if she’s what you say she is, we should let the JAGs handle it….”
Surprisingly it was Kayce Danvers who poured cold water on that “Begging your pardon Staff Sergeant Reynolds, but *she* was one of those JAGs – what makes you think they wouldn’t be corrupt as well?”
Now Yader waded into the conversation. “So that justifies killing them?”
“Geez! What the hell?!” Corporal Jim Stallings stopped dead in his tracks. He had been one of the first who had volunteered to man one of the lookout posts, so obviously he hadn’t been privy to Staff Sergeant Dallas’ plans. He quickly brought his rifle up and aimed it at Corporal Danvers.
“Stallings! Stand down!” snapped Dallas.
Stallings looked to Reynolds for clarification. “Staff Sergeant?! What the hell is going on?!”
Leonard Reynolds seemed to understand his confusion. “Easy son, I’m trying to figure that out now…Mark, whatever they’ve done…this is not the way to avenge Ebbits….”
Joe Corbin snorted. “Look Leon, if you’re trying to score points with the Colonel, she’d just have you killed sooner or later; this lady does not have any friends.”
For the first time, Kayce Danvers looked embarrassed. “Don’t worry, Colonel, it’ll be over soon.”
Mac knew what their intentions were. A fragging incident. It would look like an insurgent attack that unfortunately claimed the lives of the platoon commander and her platoon sergeant.
“You’re making it look like an accident?” Mac asked innocently hoping they would verify her guess.
Logan rolled her eyes in disgust at that suggestion. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but get real. We have our own skins to think about. Besides you don’t want to be around for what she’s going to do next….”
Two of the pickup trucks started their engines and moved closer to the group
Joe Corbin looked over at Salvatore Williams in the driver seat of the closest pickup. “Sergeant? Are you with us?”
Sergeant Williams nodded silently as did Corporal Burges. Corporal Willet was nowhere to be found.
Stallings who could best be described as nebbish by anyone’s standards, had a panic stricken look on his face. “You can’t kill all of us--”
He moved his rifle threateningly toward Logan. Logan and Kayce aimed their rifles at him and Eddie Willet appeared in the back of Burges truck manning the .50 caliber aiming it toward Stallings.
“Lower that rifle Stallings! Stand down I said!!” Barked Reynolds trying to get the situation under control.
Mark Dallas agreed with Reynolds that things had gotten too intense. “Everybody back down a notch! Now! Weapons on safety!!”
As pistols and automatic rifles could be heard being switched to safe mode, Victor shot the Light Colonel a quick glance. This might be their opportunity to end this standoff before anyone else got involved or a shootout erupted.
Mac nodded. She cleared her throat catching the attention of the wary Marines. In her best courtroom persona she directed her query to whom she thought was the ringleader. “Staff Sergeant Dallas, may I be allowed to present my case?”
Mark chucked, “Present your case? What do think this is, *ma’am*? A court martial?”
Joe shook his head in disgust. “Just like an attorney, she wants to try and weasel her way out of this--”
Mac ignored his barb. “You think I’m corrupt; in league with Colonel Livingston--”
Now it was Corporal Logan’s turn to scoff. “Now wait just a damn minute; you said yourself that you and the Master Guns ‘went way back with her’. Are you trying to tell us different now?”
Mark, though, wanted to see if she could convince them. Despite his belief that Joe was right and that she was responsible for Carlson Ebbits’ death, she had earned his grudging respect by not being a skylarking eightball…despite the reputation that preceded her.
“Okay Colonel, you can have your say. But no sea stories; you have to give us some solid evidence that you are something other than a drunken excuse for an officer in league with killers.”
Had this been any other situation, Mac might have ripped this guy a new one, but considering the amount of firepower present and who she supposedly was, she opted for a logical rational discussion of the situation before launching into her opening argument.
“Staff Sergeant Dallas, you say I was responsible for Lieutenant Ebbits’ death. Were you there when he died?”
“Forget the bid for our sympathy chits, *Colonel*” Joe Corbin ground out, “Master Gunny Wilbane told us how you arranged for the Lieutenant to get killed in that insurgent attack. Sure you were holding him in your arms and crying crocodile tears over him, but Wilbane gave us the word. You killed him as sure as if you had pulled the trigger yourself.”
Mac had not expected the venom of Corbin’s retort or the fact that Rudy Wilbane had obviously set her up for this fall, probably under Darcy’s orders. Another test for her.
The Light Colonel nodded her head contritely. “You’re right, Staff Sergeant Corbin, I shouldn’t play on your sympathy, and I’m not going to. I’m merely stating the fact that you and Staff Sergeant Dallas were not there, so all that you have is second-hand knowledge of what happened between myself and Lieutenant Ebbits. Even Master Guns Wilbane did not know about our conversation”
For a moment Joe and Mark exchanged wary looks. Despite what Master Gunny Wilbane had told them, it *was* still second hand information.
Kayce during this exchange had lowered her assault rifle. “I was there, Staff Sergeant Dallas.”
“So what did you see?”
“The same thing I did, Staff Sergeant, only she didn’t *hear* what the Colonel told Lieutenant Ebbits and me…”
Mark Dallas wheeled around at the sound of the voice. “Szymas! I thought I told you to stay at the perimeter! We’re handling this….”
“Then in order to handle it properly; don’t judge Silver Leaf just on Master Guns Wilbanes’ *scuttlebutt* alone.”
The way Casmir Szymas emphasized ‘scuttlebutt’ Mac wondered if the Sergeant would help her out.
Joe Corbin seemed irritated with the Sergeant. “Okay Szymas; so what did *Tin Leaf* tell you?” Corbin used the derogatory nickname for Lieutenant Colonel to emphasize he still didn’t trust Lieutenant Colonel MacKenzie.
“Silver Leaf, that is, the Colonel, told me she was working undercover. Her real job is to nail Colonel Livingston. Just like Ebbits wanted…and just like you and Dallas want.”
Victor watched the gathered Marines and their expressions. There were looks of doubt and some of anger and some of disgust with this whole fiasco. The ones who seemed to be genuinely interested were Kayce Danvers, Leonard Reynolds, Doc Yader and Jim Stallings.
“That’s a nice story Szymas--” Logan began as she started to raise her rifle again, prompting Stallings and Yader to raise their rifles in response.
“I’m not finished!” Casmir said sharply. Immediately all three lowered their weapons again. “I did some checking, I have contacts at JAG Corps--”
“You run around with Dumb and Dumber?” Corbin said as an obvious reference to JAD officers Barnett and Johnson. “I thought you had more class than that--”
“JAG Corps, Staff Sergeant Corbin. *Judge Advocate General’s Corps*.” He repeated for emphasis. When it was clear the Sergeant had made his point that MacKenzie was not part of Vince and Stephen’s team, he continued. “I called a Lieutenant I met in DC a couple of years ago. Let’s just say she kept me in the Corps.”
“Didn’t figure you for a brig rat, Sergeant” harrumphed Logan.
Dallas’ quick cutting look could have melted an iceberg. “Lock it up Logan; let the Sergeant have his say….”
“Aye sir,” Logan replied, a bit chastened by his rebuke, but her face didn’t show any evidence of shame or regret.
Casmir continued. “Anyway, she owed me a favor. I asked the Lieutenant about Colonel MacKenzie. She asked me why I was asking about her…and I told her I was in trouble. She told me ‘in that case I couldn’t have picked a better lawyer…one of the JAG’s best troubleshooters’.”
“A troubleshooter?” Logan wasn’t sure what Szymas meant. That term raised more than a few eyebrows in the assembled group.
“She and the other officers in her organization take on crew-served problems,” he told the group. “Sometimes at the behest of the SecNav, other times at the request of the CNO.”
“Like Lukens and Buell’s court martial….” Stallings pointed out.
Szymas nodded. “And that’s not all; she and Commander Rabb have gone undercover many times to root out tangos. Their files and missions are classified, but the Lieutenant said she knew their latest case involved terrorists who have contacts in the Corps. Scuttlebutt around the Lieutenant’s office is that they are after the terrorists who attacked Admiral Chegwidden’s Headquarters.”
Undercover? Reynolds seemed totally mystified by this revelation. “You mean the Colonel is undercover now? Who’s your contact, Szymas?”
“Lieutenant Meriwether, Fran Meriwether.”
“Sonova-” Mark Dallas lowered his pistol, obviously stunned by this announcement.
Joe Corbin looked over at his confederate and then back at Mac, trying to decide just what was going on. His pistol, which he had trained on the Colonel and the Master Guns, wavered a little. “Mark?”
“I know Meriwether, Joe. She got me off of a trumped up DUI in a little North Carolina backwater town. Their breathalyzer was malfunctioning and though I wasn’t drunk that night, the incident scared me. I never took another drink again.”
Mark Dallas turned and addressed the group. “Meriwether’s a straight arrow. As straight as they come. She wouldn’t lie for anyone.”
Stallings though, still wasn’t convinced. “It still could be a sea story….”
But Sergeant Szymas had an answer for that. “…except that she gave me the names of some other people to verify the Colonel’s record. And they did. She’s on the level. Sorry I had to blow your cover, Colonel, but you understand.”
Mac nodded silently.
Kayce lowered her eyes. She couldn’t believe that she had nearly killed the Colonel and just on the word of Master Guns Wilbane alone. And Wilbane had been wrong. Worse yet, she hadn’t checked with Szymas after all, he had heard her conversation with Ebbits. Now it was time to make up for that oversight.
“Staff Sergeant Dallas; if Sergeant Szymas believes her, then, that’s good enough for me.” She shouldered her rifle, turned and held out her hand to Mac. “Sorry I doubted you, Colonel.”
Mac wondered for a brief moment if she should shake hands with Kayce. But winning the trust of this unit overrode any lingering doubts that she might still have about her ‘Darcy designated’ aide.
With that handshake, rifles were shouldered and pistols were placed back in holsters. The crisis, for the moment, had passed.
Logan, though, was slow to shoulder hers. She snorted indignantly. “I don’t like lawyers, but if Danvers says you’re cool, that’s good enough for me.”
Mac could tell that even though Logan had not added ‘for the moment’ that sentiment was in her eyes. The Light Colonel had a long way to go toward completely winning Logan’s trust and probably the trust of others in this unit. The question still remained; just how many Darcy loyalists were there still in this unit?
2000? Local
Somewhere over the Persian Gulf
It was Harm’s first night flight in a long time. He couldn’t help but feel a little nervous about doing it even though his ‘night blindness’ had been surgically corrected.
Because Harm’s replacement RIO had gotten in so late, the CAG had no choice but to assign Harm to a night patrol. ‘We don’t have the luxury of taking the usual amount of time to feel out new people,’ the CAG had told him, ‘because we never know when someone else is going to be hit by this flu bug.’ ‘Besides Rabb,’ he added ‘You’ll get a chance to meet one of the other new pilots in your squadron on this patrol.’
Harm remembered nodding and accepting the CAG’s ‘gracious offer’. So now, here he was on night patrol with ‘Flying Cloud’…another new member of his squadron.
“How are you doing up there, Hammer?”
Harm couldn’t help but smile at the confidant cocky voice of his new Radar Intercept Officer [RIO] Peter ‘Right Turn, Clyde’ Gibbon. Pete had red hair, and his body shape did, in vague way, resemble that of an orangutan.
“I was about to ask you the same thing, Clyde.” Quipped Harm, keeping his eyes trained on the night sky ahead of him.
“Oh, I’m doing just fine and dandy now that I’m back in the air and not breathing dust all the time….”
Harm chuckled at his response. It wasn’t too many years ago that Harmon Rabb, Jr. might have said that very same thing.
“Say Hammer, is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“Are you really a JAG Corps lawyer?”
Harm turned their aircraft to the right. His wingman followed his lead “In my other life, yeah….”
“Kinda like a superhero…mild mannered lawyer by day, ‘Cat pilot by night? So what are you doing here, investigating a case? And if you are, I swear I didn’t do it…”
Harm laughed. He liked Pete’s sense of humor. “No cases. Got called up just like you, Clyde.”
“Well, I don’t know about you--” suddenly his voice turned serious. “Hammer, I’ve got two bogies inbound.”
Clyde’s report was immediately confirmed by Flying Cloud. “Got two fighters inbound, Hammer. Smoker confirms them as Iranian Dassault Mirage F1’s”
Harm was glad that Flying Cloud’s RIO hadn’t told them they were Tomcats. They would have been more of a challenge. “That would be our nightly visit from our friendly Iranian watchdogs. What do you say we go over and say hello, Flying Cloud?”
“Lead the way, Hammer….”
Pete echoed Harm’s silent thoughts. “I don’t like them being this close to our current home.”
“Me either Clyde; hang on….”
Harm kicked his Tomcat further over to the right and the two American fighters wheeled in the night sky toward the two approaching Iranian jets.
“They’re turning right toward us, Hammer.”
“I figured they would….”
“They’re painting us with their radar!” Pete noted a little too stringently.
“Confirmed Hammer;” came back Flying Cloud’s calm voice, “I’m being painted too.”
“I’m on it,” He said to both men. He switched his radio to the Iranian air force emergency frequency which he knew the pilots should be monitoring “Unidentified aircraft you are in restricted airspace, you are ordered to turn around and leave the area.”
“Still inbound and painting us with their radar.” Clyde reported tersely.
“Unidentified aircraft you are in restricted airspace, Harm repeated, this time a little more forcefully, “you are to turn around and leave the area, immediately.”
This time Flying Cloud answered. “No change Hammer.”
“Unidentified aircraft you are in restricted airspace; you are ordered to turn around now or we will shoot you down.”
Flying Cloud’s voice came over the voice cockpit intercom. “Permission to arm my Sidewinders and smoke him, Hammer.” In days long ago, Harm might have asked permission to do the same thing.
“Negative, Flying Cloud; not yet. Let’s show’ em we mean business first. On my signal; light up your radar.”
The distance between the two sections of aircraft disappeared rapidly.
“Damn, I had no idea they liked playing chicken so much.” Pete said sounding a little sick to his stomach.
Harm understood how he felt. But the last thing they needed right now was an international incident, but they also couldn’t let the Iranians just fly up to the carrier to say ‘hello’. It was time to act.
“They think it’s their pond. Flying Cloud, let’s light’em up.”
“Roger Hammer.”
“Unidentified aircraft! Turn around immediately! This is your last warning!!”
“They’re breaking off, Hammer.” Flying Cloud noted as the two jets split their formation and wheeled around in the sky headed back for Iranian airspace.
“Cagey little buggers aren’t they?” Pete said as he watched the two planes rapidly retreat into the inky darkness. Harm was surprised Pete hadn’t used any expletives to describe their vistors.
“They only act as they are told to, Clyde. Turn off your radar, Flying Cloud. They don’t want to play tonight.”
“Roger Hammer, good call. I owe you a cold one for keeping us out of that furball.”
“And I’ll collect Flying Cloud. Now let’s get back to our patrol.”
“Roger Hammer, Flying Cloud out.”
Pete’s praise was far more effusive. “Bravo Zulu Hammer! Man, I’ve forgotten just how much *fun* night patrol can be! I think I lost 50 pounds just now….”
Harm laughed again. “You and me both, Clyde. Let’s hope the rest of this patrol is uneventful.”
In the back of his mind, Harm wondered if these Iranian probes were part of something larger… maybe they were tied to the insurgent attacks….
‘You’re letting the conspiracy theorist in you get carried away, Hammer’ he chided himself.
Sure, he had seen this kind of muscle flexing before – Libya-The Gulf of Sidra; North Korea-Sea of Japan; and Serbia – over Kosovo. So, no ulterior motives here; just some pilots told to test the American’s resolve.
Still, knowing Darcy Livingston’s reach it seemed probable if not possible, that the Iranians could be doing diversionary tactics….
TBC tomorrow...
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