Dominatus (5 page)

Carol Denny took a few steps toward the door before turning around and looking at each of us left standing in Freedom Tavern, while pointing his finger at Mac.

“Whatever might have happened later, what you just did here today…it’s going to happen a whole lot faster now.  Do you understand what I’m telling you?  So if there is someone here who you care about, who you don’t want to see get hurt, I suggest you get them out as fast as possible.  And as for the ones who are staying, yeah…Mac just rattled off some reminders of what is going to happen here.  And it WILL happen here, and this building and anyone in it is going to be the first on the list – very soon now.”

Officer Carol Denny turned back to the door, opened it, and slammed it behind him.  Outside the electric powered whine of his N.U.N. mandate-approved, electric all terrain vehicle could be heard driving away from Freedom Tavern.

Mac turned to me and gave a wry smile, his eyes looking up toward the ceiling as he let out a long, deep sigh.  He then nodded to the two men nearest the bar.

“Ok – no drill, this is a high alert.   I’ll send out the communication but I want you two to also do it in person.  Everyone needs to know.  Start with the Old Man and go from there. I want double-watch on all access points, and make sure we are storing up coal fuel at the cave – at least six months worth.  The freezers should already be stocked but double check.  I want every anti-drone station manned 24/7 until further notice starting now.  7:00 a.m. tomorrow – we meet at the operations center.  Let everyone know the Old Man will be there.  Go – now.”

The taller of the two at the bar, the one with the long grey pony tail that ran down his back, paused in front of Mac on his way out.

“Mac, we all knew this day was gonna happen.  We’re ready.  Me, my old lady, you just tell us what you want done and it’s done.  We’re locked and loaded.”

Mac placed his hand on the tall man’s shoulder and smiled.

“Yeah, I know.  Let’s hope it isn’t going all-in on us just yet, but I hear you friend.  You go get the word out and then go home to your wife and we’ll see you all tomorrow at 7:00.”

The man who had been seated in the corner approached Mac.  He appeared a little less than six foot, his face buried beneath a dark beard and large round eyes with pupils that were even darker – almost black.  Since so much of his face was covered, it was difficult to guess his age.  When he spoke his voice was unusually deep and contained the hint of an accent I was unable to place, though I thought it likely to be from somewhere in the Middle East.

“I’ll stay here Mac, first watch tonight.  You sleep, gather your strength for tomorrow morning’s meeting.”

Mac looked over at me and then back at the bearded man.

“Afrim, did you just call me a tired old man?”

The man whose name I now knew to be Afrim brought both his hands up shaking them from side to side in an apologetic gesture.

“No-no-no Mac, I simply, I am here to assist you.  I will be the first watch so that you, your guest…so you may sleep and be well rested for tomorrow.  It may be…it may be the last night’s rest you get for awhile Mac.  Yes?”

“Shit Afrim, no need to apologize.  I AM a tired old man.  A good night’s rest?  Thank you for the offer.  You got your gun on you?”

“Oh yes – always.”

“Ok then, me and my friend here are gonna go back to my office.  I’m going to send out the high alert communication.  You still want to do the interview?”

I was shocked Mac was interested in continuing the interview so soon after what had just taken place following Carol Denny’s arrival, but nodded my head to him.

“Yeah, absolutely.  If you have the time, you bet.”

“Ok then, Afrim, the floor is yours.  You need anything, come get me.”

And with that, as the daylight outside turned to darkness, I followed Mackenzie Walker back down to his office.  Mac’s steps were quick and confident, his posture suggesting a man with few worries even as he prepared for what Officer Denny warned was the now seemingly inevitable destruction of Dominatus, Alaska.

III.

The conversation with Mac had left off with my asking him the details of his arrest and conviction for deadly assault with a banned weapon – his MK-25 handgun.  Mac had said the actual conviction had nothing to do with his use of deadly force on that day, but rather had everything to do with what he knew, or what powerful figures within the emerging world government thought he knew, about the Benghazi Massacre of 2012. 

Once again I turned my recording device on.

“I had pulled into a station to gas up.  I was…was still doing a bit of contract work here and there to make ends meet, domestic stuff, but the jobs were drying up.  Nobody wanted me.  Like I said, there were four of us, and at that time it was down to just two – me and Benny.  Jack, Jay…they were already gone by then.  The walls were closing in.  I knew it, and figured my time was coming.”

“Just like that, you were just waiting to be taken out?”

Mac pointed back to the photo of himself and his three now deceased special ops comrades.

“Each of them in their own way was as good as me, maybe better.  So if they were taken out, I didn’t harbor any thoughts I was going to end up any different.  I was ready to put up a fight, but if they wanted me gone, I figured there wasn’t much to be done about it.  We knew too much, and that kind of knowledge, little guys like me, we tend to go bye-bye.”

“So what happened that day at the gas station, the day you killed that man?”

Mac removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes before putting them back on, his stare returning to the wall of photos.

“I pulled in, saw a large black man beating a woman.  Black woman.  He was beating the shit out of her too.  Closed fist.   Had her by the hair, screaming down at her.  I could see her mouth was all busted up, an eye that looked like it might be ready to pop out of her head.  Not a pretty sight.  I’d seen a lot worse, but not stateside.  That guy was going to kill her right there in the parking lot.  So I just did what comes natural in that situation…what I was trained to do. Nothing less – nothing more.”

There was a prolonged pause.  Mac’s eyes remained fixated on the wall of his office.

“Explain what happened.”

“What happened was this, and it’s exactly what I told the police officer, the investigators, my first attorney…not that it mattered.  I’m guessing within the hour of my being arrested communications were coming in from D.C. telling them exactly what was to happen to me.

“So I get out of my vehicle and approach the man beating that woman.  He looks up at me and I can tell he’s on something.  Eyes are all over the place.  PCP, meth, something.  So I stop about twenty feet or so, tell him to let the woman go.  Tell him he needs to let the woman go and step back.  He hauls off and hits her again.  Hard.  Could hear his fist just lay into the side of her face – busted her jaw right in front of me.  Then he looks back at me…tells me to mind my own fucking business…he’s screaming at me.  Asking me if I want some too.  Kept saying that – ‘You want some?  You want some of this?’

“Now maybe ten seconds have gone by at this point, and I’m assessing the situation, figuring I need to just get in there, incapacitate the man and save that woman’s life.  Basically, my training is telling me it’s a hostage situation.  I’m not thinking that to myself…it’s instinct at this point.  Not the first time I’ve dealt with somebody having their life threatened and I got to deal with it fast.  No time to think it over, I just got to act.  My training is kicking in now, it’s taking me over.  At that point, people like me, we don’t think.  We just – respond.

“And that’s when, a split second from my going in, that’s when I see his hand go to the back of his pants.  He was wearing jogging pants, something like that, and his hand is moving to the back of those pants and then I see the shape of a gun.  Big gun.  .357.  The asshole is going Dirty Harry on me.  So like I said, I’m not thinking at this point.  I’m in full on active mode.  Before he had that gun even halfway to pointing in my direction, I’ve fired off two rounds to the side of his head.  Half-inch spread.  The MK-25, in the right hands, about as accurate a handgun as you’ll ever find.  Brains go flying out the other side and he just drops.  Dead before his body hits the ground.  Clean kill.

“The woman crawls away, but she’s in a bad way.  Messed up.  Can hardly talk.  Legs aren’t working right for her.  I’m thinking possible brain trauma at that point.  The guy was hitting her hard enough. I use my cell to call 911 and wait.  Strange thing is it takes them almost twenty minutes to get there.  At the time I was just pissed, incompetent local cops, that kind of thing.  By the time they have me locked up I got it figured out.  As soon as I called someone was pulling my phone message, the 911 call, and was doing an assessment on how to use the situation to shut me the hell up.”

“So they had been monitoring you by then?  The government?”

“Yeah, the government was all over me since Benghazi.  I was one of two left of the four of us, so why not use this little mess to put me away?  Easier.  No chance of my returning fire on someone, right?  Just use the legal system to shut me down for good.  Even made it a federal crime so they could make sure to control it.”

“My dad mentioned that, how they took it from a state crime to a federal crime by…they designated it a hate crime?  Right?”

“Exactly.  I’m white, the dead guy was black.  Simple as that.  Hate crime.  They had the woman…the woman whose life I saved, she gave testimony to the Feds I had yelled out ‘Nigger, put the gun down.’  I never said that.  Would never say that.  Black…White…I don’t give a shit about any of that.”

“Why did she testify you said that?”

“Hell, all they have to do is threaten her, offer her some money, whatever.  Easy enough.”

“And then my father became involved.”

Mac gave me a smile and nodded.

“Your dad was already involved.  He had been monitoring the case during its last few weeks. Reviewing what had been done, going over the initial witness statements.  He visited me inside…I think it was within the first month.  Told me to hold on, that he had people working on my case.  I explained to him I didn’t have the money to pay him.  He said it was already being taken care of.  That there was an organization funded by people concerned over how so many in the military during the Obama years were either dying off or forced to resign, or in my case, imprisoned.  He said, and I had never thought about it before he did, your dad showed me statistics of the suicide rates of former soldiers, CIA operatives, FBI, Secret Service…there was a bunch of us killing ourselves.  At least that’s what the government reports were saying. Talking crazy numbers – like 300% more suicides than at any time before.  So your dad, he was part of a group that knew something was up and was out there trying to save as many of us as they could.  I was just the latest project for him at that time.  He already knew about my three partners, our operations in North Africa a few years back.  Your father already knew all about it.”

“And who was funding this group trying to help you and so many others out?”

“You know that already - the Old Man.  The same one responsible for establishing Dominatus.  He had the resources, enough influence, and your dad took it from there.  He probably saved hundreds of us over the years.  Until finally, they took him out too.  The Old Man told me he had warned your dad they were coming for him, begged him to make his way up here, but he stayed back.  Said he wanted to finish what they had started.  That took courage.  More courage than I had by that time.  I left.  Ran away.  Came here…along with others.  I gave up on America.  Your dad never did.  In his own way, he was one of the toughest men I’ve ever known, and I’m honored to have called him my friend.”

I thanked Mac for the compliment to my father, but sensing time growing short, pressed on with my questions, wanting to get a thorough recording of the story he was willing to share.

“Before we get to how you were freed from prison I want you to explain what happened in Benghazi.  The attack on the consulate, the cover-up.  How those events led to the deaths of your partners, and your own prison sentence.”

Mac leaned back in his chair and gave a slight shrug.  He once again appeared far older than his already advanced years, as if the knowledge of what he knew had long been draining the life from him.  Then the previous anger returned, and his eyes grew cold behind the frames of his glasses.

“We were doing work in and out of Libya all summer that year, mostly Tripoli. Had the U.N. people crawling all over there, and British Intelligence.  Oddly enough there were some FBI operatives coming and going as well.  It was a military operation by then so we weren’t sure why they were there.  Jack was telling us we should shut it down and go home.  He didn’t want to be there.  Libya…said it felt wrong.  He kept saying it…‘Guys, this feels wrong.  We need to go.’

“But we had signed a contract, taken funds, and our reputation of getting a job done was on the line.”

“Did you know the ambassador?  The one who was killed?”

“I knew of him.  He was more than some political appointee.  Libya was one of the most dangerous places on the planet back then, very tough.  You had to have skills to get in and out of there…that’s why the ambassador was there.  He was CIA.  Frankly, he shouldn’t have been so alone out there.  He didn’t have the capability, the experience, but that’s who the administration put there to implement their plans for Libya.  Again, Jack was all over that part of things.  He was tracking weapons, the gunrunning, talking huge shipments going in and disappearing.  Iraqi.  Almost all of it was Iraqi – Soviet Union era stuff, and it was tracking to Turkey and then disappearing.  Serious weaponry, some of it pretty high tech. Anti aircraft, armor piercing, guessing it came directly from Saddam’s best stash.  The kind of weaponry you would think the U.S. government would be picking up and moving out of there.  They weren’t though.  They were letting it go to, well at the time I didn’t know, and was focused on doing our recon work, local officials, upcoming election, setting the groundwork for the installment of a pro-American government.  That was what we had signed on for – not trying to figure out what the Obama people were doing allowing massive amounts of weapons to be sent off to God knows where.  At least I wasn’t – but Jack was.  He wouldn’t let it alone.  He was calling bullshit on what was happening and made the mistake of starting to ask questions.  The Ambassador was one of those people he spoke with.”