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Clint threw his arms out wide, “It’s better than nice, it’s perfect.  We have water; we have a long growing season although it isn’t quite year round.  We have room to spread out, and if things get
really
bad we can always go crawling to the Army for help.”

“How are you going to break it to the families?” Coop asked.

“I haven’t decided yet.  I want to find out what happened and who we lost first.  If we lost couples and single people then it won’t be an issue.  If we only lost one or two family folks then I might be able to play it up and make heroes out of everyone.  You know, big funeral, honors…something.  Give the families bigger trailers, although that would be the exact opposite of what they need.”

Tony snorted and almost had water come out of his nose.

“Something I say strike you as
funny
Anthony?” Clint asked with absolutely no humor in his voice.

“No,” Tony said.  “Well, yeah.  I mean, duh.  Give ‘em a bigger trailer as an honor but they obviously don’t need one because the family is smaller now.”

“And what makes that funny?  Because someone is dead?  The fact that someone who obviously doesn’t need more any longer is getting more of that thing?”

“Um,” Tony was looking around for help and not getting any.

“Did you not hear me this morning when I told you not to make light of the dead or did you think I was kidding?”

Tony looked down at his cup.

“I asked you a question, Anthony, I expect an answer, or at least a response.”

Tony looked up and flinched at the expression on Clint’s face.  “Neither, I guess.  I guess I just forgot.” Tony swallowed.  “Won’t happen again.  Sorry.”

“Last warning.  Make sure it doesn’t.”

“I’m pissed at the Army.  I’m pissed at whoever called for weapons free.  I’m pissed at whoever pulled the trigger on both sides.  I’m pissed at the First Sergeant for not letting people know there’s a friggin’ Army Base in the middle of a
National Park
and I’m pissed that we lost eight people.”  Clint was fighting the urge to get up and pace again.  He was tired of walking in front of his trailer.

“I have to put the best face on this that I can, though, and honoring the dead
has
to be part of thatTelling the story in such a way that we don’t play the part of the evil raider will be another part.  Repeating that story often enough and with conviction so that everyone believes it without question is yet another part and doing it without starting a war with the Army is going to be half the problem.”

“How long are you going to wait?” Frank asked.

“About another ten minutes.” Clint said.…

“Sergeant Jensen,” Clint began, once Mallory was in the communication tent and on the radio.  “I agree that we need to sit down and discuss some things in person but my initial stipulations stand.  All forty-one members of the party are to be returned.”

“As things stand I see no obstacles to that.  One member is currently recovering from fairly serious surgery.  It is entirely up to you when they are transferred back into your care.”

“The specifics of the individual in question can be discussed during the in-person meeting,” Clint replied.  He’d forgotten about the wounded, he’d been so focused on the dead.  Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this leader crap after all.

“Is eleven hundred hours acceptable tomorrow?  I suggest the airport outside of Lexington.” Mallory prompted.  Nothing substantial was going to be discussed right now so she might as well get the meeting set up and get on with the rest of her day.

“That should be fine.  How many people do you want to limit it to?”

“I suggest no more than three people at the table from each side, including ourselves.  I’m bringing one civilian and one military advisor.”

“Sounds fair.  Obviously everyone is going to be armed.  I won’t ask you not to be if you don’t ask the same.”

“Obviously.  My Platoon Sgt’s also won’t let me out of their sight without an escort, which will be held back and out of the way so I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”

“Of course,” Clint replied with a small laugh.  Add a few reporters and a camera crew and you’d think something important was going on.  Throw in an Internet connection and some bloggers and they’d be set!

“Until tomorrow morning, then.” Mallory said.

“Until tomorrow.” Clint replied.

…

Mallory had every intention of not only being at the meeting first but being
obvious
about the fact that she was waiting for Clint to show up.  That plan had been shot to hell when she got the radio call at 07:15 from the advance scout that she’d sent out the night before that Clint had just shown up.

Mallory instructed her scout to lay low, observe, and make sure Clint didn’t do anything hinky.  Apparently, Clint was planning to one-up Mallory in the showing up first game.

When Mallory arrived at 10:30, as though she had no idea Clint was already there, she was greeted with a 12x12 instant canopy under which was an 8’ folding table with six chairs and a cooler at one end.  She had planned to do something similar, including pads of paper and pens for everyone, but gave it up when the call came in as early as it did.  Sometimes you just had to give the other guy the battle and hope to take the war in the long run.

“Mr. Baxter, I presume.” Mallory held out her hand as she approached the table.  She noticed that Clint had, in fact, provided paper and pens for everyone.

“Please, as far as I know my father is still alive.  Call me Clint.”  Clint smiled.  “Sergeant Halstead,” Clint read the insignia and nametape from Halstead’s uniform.  “Mr. Taylor?”  Clint quirked his brow at the lack of any type of insignia, including US Army on Joel’s fatigues but the presence of a nametape.

“That’s correct.”  Was the sum total of Joel’s reply in that regard.  “We met the day after the power went out, on the freeway.  It seems your accent was a bit thicker then.”

Color rose on Clint’s face.  Not in anger but sheer embarrassment.  “Well, Mr. Taylor, as an old acquaintance of mine used to say, I got nuthin’.  Let’s just say it was so thick I cut it out by the roots.”

Joel nodded and chose to let it drop.  No use embarrassing the man any further.  “Fair enough.”

“As you deduced I’m Clint Baxter.  This is Robert Cooper, a former Officer in Madison,” pointing to Coop on his right.  “And this gentleman is Dr. Ferris DeMarco,” indicating the man on his left.  “I asked him to come along to discuss the status of the wounded member of our group and whether or not we could provide adequate care yet.”

“The sodas are cold and they’re cans so they haven’t been opened.” Clint was playing the host but at least he was being realistic about what to expect from those he was hosting.  They knew he wasn’t being gracious; he was simply being the host and trying to make this
his
turf.  At some point the gloves would come off.

…

“There’s no reason to bring anyone anywhere en masse with the exception of the eight we’ve already discussed,” Mallory said with a sigh.  “They already know where we are, they are all healthy and perfectly capable of driving themselves.  All the vehicles are fine as they are in our lot so they haven’t been stolen.  We’ll escort them as far as Lexington but they can drive themselves.”

Mallory leveled a glare at Clint, “They weren’t in a prison camp for a decade.  They haven’t been mistreated.  They’ve been sitting in tents, sleeping on cots, and eating the same food we’ve been eating for three whole days.  I think they’ll live.”

“Ok, ok.  How do you want to handle the transfer of the eight casualties?” Dr. DeMarco asked.  “And thank you for using one of the few refrigerated trucks for a makeshift morgue.”

“You’re welcome.  It really was the least we could do.  Give us a day and we can have the truck driven down, with an escort, to deliver them.  I can’t have a handoff of the truck, I’m sorry.” Mallory was shaking her head.  “We won’t come storming in and take over and we can even crank the temperature down to below freezing for a while so that you can get some additional time outside of the truck.”

“We’ve got the names and only one of them had family still in the camp.  I’ll admit that’s going to make it a
lot
easier on me.” Clint said.  “A couple of them might have been trouble waiting to happen but a few are going to be missed.”

“Lastly, what about the weapons?” Clint had been waiting to ask about this.  He knew that this, unlike the people, might be a sticking point.  Everyone that had pulled the trigger was dead--except one, and he’d been torn up pretty bad and still might not make it.  Everyone else was guilty of nothing more than brandishing a loaded firearm, and Mallory didn’t have jurisdiction.

Not giving the firearms back, now that might be a problem.  See, most of those people hadn’t actually owned those guns three weeks ago.  He was pretty sure some of them still had price tags on them from the pawn shops as a matter of fact.  While he could make an argument that he needed them for protection and possibly for hunting, she could make the argument that they weren’t his in the first place, that they had already been used in a raid against her people, and that if nothing else
she
needed them for self-defense and hunting.  Finder’s keepers and all that.

Mallory didn’t reply right away, she simply looked at Clint for several seconds.  Leaning forward, arms on the table, fingers steepled over her pad of notes she just looked at him.

Finally Mallory spoke and it was like a slap across the face.  “Am I killing my own people?”

“How dare you!  I’m the one burying eight, or possibly nine, of my people, not you!” Clint snapped.

“Spare me the outrage, sincere or otherwise, Mr. Baxter.  Those deaths are on your conscience not mine,” Mallory replied.  “You sent them into harm’s way, not me.  You’re the one burying people because you screwed up so you need to own it.  Man up soldier!”

That caught him off guard but he covered it well by clenching his jaw and turning it into a sneer.  Not since before they’d had the cause but not the proof and he’d taken the Less Than Honorable from the Army had he wanted to fire the gun at his hip in anger.

“So what do you want from me then, my word?  Something tells me it’s going to take more than that.” Clint was almost fighting to get every word out.

“Unfortunately I have to start there.” Mallory hadn’t moved from her position at the table.  “No treaty we could sign would be enforceable, and no declaration or truce would be binding unless we can trust each other.”

“I don’t trust you!” Clint snapped.

“And that’s the crux of this whole charade.” Mallory replied.  “You planned on me not trusting you because I know you’re pissed at me.  That’s why the sodas were in cans.  You got here before me today not to show me up but because you don’t trust me.  You don’t trust anything I say or any motivations I may have.  At some point you might want to think about why you don’t trust me but that’s a topic of discussion for another day.”

Mallory leaned forward, “I don’t trust you because you aren’t trustworthy.  You’ve already proven that.  For whatever reason, good, bad, or indifferent, you tried to raid my base.  You’ve heard all the chatter over the Citizen Band, you knew someone was there, and you decided to try a raid instead of coming in through the front door like a good neighbor should.”

Clint was clenching his jaw so tight he was going to be feeling it for a couple of days.  Mallory leaned back and put her hands in her lap, keeping an open posture instead of folding her arms.  “So, Clint, talk to me.  I’ll lay it out like I do with my Platoon Sergeants and say it just like I do to them.  Give me just one single, solitary, good reason why I should give the guns back and I will.”

She had him.  All she had to do was squeeze, but she wouldn’t, not yet.  The first rule of an ambush is to give the enemy a way out and allow them to use it, or be prepared to fight them to the death to a man.  He just had to humble himself, not only in front of her but in front of his own people.  He couldn’t even send Coop and the Dr. away first because that was how rumors got started.

Clint told himself he would get even one day and even believed it on some level, but that really didn’t help.  He started thinking of all the things he
wanted
to say and forced them down.  Finally, he closed his eyes and took a breath to calm himself down--swallowing just enough of his pride to get through this.

“We need them, pure and simple, for self-defense and for hunting.  Facts are facts and both Coop and the Doc can tell you that we’ve driven off our own raiders,” both of the other men nodded and it wasn’t the nod of someone going along with a story, “and the fact that we had weapons was one reason that another group chose to join with us.  On the way here from Madison we stopped twice in some areas where guys had hunted previously and took down a couple of deer, and we’ve shot a number of rabbit, goose, and duck where we’re at now to supplement the food we’ve got.” The Dr. nodded again at the food comment.

Mallory didn’t react right away but she didn’t make Clint wait long.  “Ok.  And because I’m so nice I’m even sending back the ones you ‘don’t need anymore’.” Clint relaxed.  “However,” Clint tensed again, “as the group is going to be escorted back as far as Lexington they will be disabled in some manner when they leave.  I won’t leave people unprotected, that defeats part of the purpose of escorting them, but I won’t have them shooting at me along the way or as I leave them behind either.  Most likely all the ammunition will be in a locked box which we will radio them the combination to once we are at a safe distance.  That will be safest for all involved.”

It was fair but Clint hadn’t wanted fair, he’d wanted to win. 
What
he didn’t know--but he’d wanted to win
something
.  He hadn’t even surprised her by getting here early.  “Thank you.”  He somehow managed to say it without gritting his teeth.

…

Turning her back on Clint wasn’t the most difficult thing Mallory had ever done, but it was more nerve racking than she had anticipated when she first sat down.  “He hates you.  You do know that right?” Joel asked.