Injustice
Chapter 1

Copyright© 2017 by Uncle Jim

Characters appearing in the first several chapters:

Maximilian Hardtrick (Max)

Father, retired Major Special Operations Forces; 6’-4’’ tall, 230 pounds, 36 years old, short blond hair, blue eyes, and a powerful Talent.

Son One

Max’s oldest son, Four years old, dark blond hair and gray eyes similar to his mother.

Son Two

Max’s youngest son, Two years old, blond hair and blue eyes like his father.

Colonel Coley

Full Colonel, assigned to Military Intelligence; a tall thin man about 40 years old with short black hair

Dr. Boudinot

Civilian psychiatrist, assigned to Military Intelligence; a medium height slightly over weight man of about 45 years old with brown hair


It was a fine day in June of 2020, and I had taken the kids with me to shop for groceries at the local big box store in our small town to get them out of their Mother’s hair for a while so she could relax for a time. The boys always liked to go shopping and to look at everything in the stores. They were still at that age when children are very inquisitive and attracted by anything colorful.

Like many other small suburban towns, ours had a couple of big box stores. There was one for groceries, clothing, and household items plus another near it that sold hardware and building supplies. Additionally there was a sprinkling of other businesses that shared the large strip mall with them. There were several restaurants of different kinds along with fast food places, other small businesses and a bank. They all shared a huge parking lot with only a few entrances and exits, which caused traffic jams at the more busy times of the day throughout the week.

We had checked out of the big box grocery store, and I had pushed our cart, with both of my sons in it, out to where I had parked. I deposited the boys, one four years old and his brother who was two years old, in the middle seat area of our SUV, but hadn’t strapped them into their child care seats yet as it was a rather hot June day, which is why I had left the doors open also while I loaded the groceries into the back of the vehicle.

“Daddy’s going to put the cart away. Don’t either of you get out of the car. I’ll be back in a minute,” I told them before closing the rear door of the vehicle, and pushed the cart down to where there was a pickup point for them, which was about a hundred or so feet from my vehicle.

I had just pushed the cart into the line of others at the pickup point driving them all together, and had turned around to return to my vehicle, when I noticed the black van stopped in the road near mine. It had passed me on my way to the pickup point. That was also when I saw my children being carried over to the van, kicking and screaming in fear.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing with my kids?” I screamed at them and burst into a run to stop them.

By the time I reached the van, the children were already inside, and it had started to pull away with its doors still open. I reached out and grabbed what I could before they could get away. What I grabbed was the shirt of one of the men in the van, and I pulled him out through the opening of the door which had started to close as the vehicle accelerated. We both fell to the ground, but I was on top of him, and held him down securely.

I’m a big strong guy at 6’-4’’ tall and about 230 pounds, and I’ve kept in shape after the Army retired me for medical reasons on full pay a few years ago.

Quickly recovering, I pulled this guy up from the asphalt paving which had given him some asphalt burns as we skidded along it, and threw him against the side of the nearest vehicle, then grabbed him by the front of his shirt to pull him up close to me, as I cocked back my right arm with my hand in a fist.

Where are they taking my kids?” I screamed at him and then hit him in the face hoping to shake him up enough to make him talk.

“No hablo.” he comes out with after a few seconds.

“I’ll make you hablo!” I screamed at him and punched him in the gut a few times, but before he could answer, the cops pulled up in their vehicle.

“Step away from that man and put your hands on your head,” the lead cop told me from the vehicle. “Do it now,” he added opening the door of their vehicle.

“This guy is one of the men who just kidnapped my kids,” I shouted at him, as I turned to face their vehicle, still very angry.

“If you don’t step away from the vehicle and the other man, and put your hands on your head, I’m going to fill you with an ounce and a-half of buckshot,” the cop who had gotten out of the vehicle on its far side told me as he chambered a round in the 12 gauge shotgun that he was pointing at me. I moved back further away from their vehicle and the kidnapper as directed while putting my hands on my head. I really had no choice at this point.

The first cop, who had been driving, got out of the vehicle at this point with his gun drawn.

“Move further back,” he told me, and I backed up further while he moved up to the kidnapper.

“Are you all right?” he asked him.

“That guy knocked me down, then threw me against this car before starting to hit me,” the kidnapper told him in very good English. “I don’t know what he is talking about a kidnapping,” he added.

“You’re both going down to the station to straighten this out,” the cop told us before speaking into the mike on his collar.

“You get into the back of our car,” he told the kidnapper next. His partner had already opened the back door of the vehicle.

“Now you,” the first cop said turning to face me with his gun still in his hand. “Move up near the front of the vehicle, spread your legs, and put your hands on the hood,” he directed.

“Aren’t you going to question him about my kids? He’s one of the men who kidnapped them a couple of minutes ago?” I demanded, and that was when his partner with the shotgun hit me in the back with the butt of the gun. I went down like a sack of potatoes on my face while he stepped on my back.

“Put your hands behind you,” his partner directed, and he cuffed my hands behind my back when I did.

“You are going to learn to obey and keep your mouth shut, boy. Do you understand me?” the cop who had hit me demanded, but I wasn’t in any condition just then to say anything. It took both of them to pull me to my feet and then search me.

“Nothing but some money, keys, a wallet and a small pocket knife on the suspect,” the lead cop said into his mike when they had finished and placed everything in an evidence bag.

They put me in the back of the second vehicle when it arrived with my hands still cuffed behind my back.

“Watch him, he doesn’t listen well,” the second cop told the others in the new car before the first car departed ahead of us.

“What about... ?” I started before one of the new pair pushed me into the side of their vehicle.

“Shut up and stay that way,” he told me as he opened the back door of their car and shoved me inside. I wound up on the floor of the vehicle on my chest and was unable to move enough in the cramped space to get up on the seat. At the station, they pulled me out by my feet and weren’t very careful about it. They dragged me into the station and up to the desk where a sergeant asked,

“What’s this one in for?”

“Assault and battery,” the lead cop from the first car told him.

“Where’s the guy who kidnapped my kids?” I demanded after looking around for him.

“Shut up!” three of them shouted at me, and one of them hit me in the back again.

“Put him in cell number 16. We’ll get his picture and prints later. Did he have any ID on him?” the sergeant asked.

“Yeah, here’s everything that we took off of him,” the lead cop told him and handed over the evidence bag. The desk sergeant opened it and looked in my wallet.

“Well, Major Hardtrick, you are under arrest for assault and battery in addition to resisting arrest, and not obeying an officer of the law. You will be fingerprinted and your mug shot taken when we have time,” he told me in a sanctimonious voice.

“I want to call my lawyer,” I told him.

“In due time, after you have been processed,” the sergeant told me before they hauled me off to a cell where I was relieved of my belt and wrist watch as well as my shoes before the cuffs were removed. I sat in there for an indeterminate time before two different guards came to get me.

“Stand at the rear of the cell,” I was told before they opened the door.

“Hands in front of you,” they told me next, then one of them entered the cell and handcuffed me before I was led out to the area where they had an electronic fingerprinting machine and digital photo equipment where I was processed. It wouldn’t have done me any good to ask them questions as they wouldn’t know anything about what had occurred, but I was building up a lot of resentment against the system.

After a time, I was returned to the same cell, but the handcuffs weren’t removed and I was given no chance to call my lawyer. Again, I sat there for another indeterminate amount of time before anyone else came to the cell. I was sure that it was night by now, and I wondered what my wife was thinking and how frantic she must be by now. I also realized that my vehicle had been left open all of this time, and was sure that most of its contents were gone by now. My resentment at the system continued to increase.

It was some time later when a single jailer approached my cell alone.

“All right, Hardtrick, come along,” he told me in a gruff voice, before he unlocked the cell door but he didn’t remove the cuffs.

“Where are we going?” I asked, as I exited the cell.

“You’ll see, walk in front of me and don’t try anything,” he directed. and we started down the hall. We had passed through the now empty and quiet processing area, and had come to a hallway with a number of doors before he told me to stop just past a door that was marked ‘Private’. I could hear him open the door before saying anything else.

“Here he is,” was all that he said through the door.

“Send him in and be a little more respectful,” a voice from inside the room told the jailer.

“Inside,” he told me, and I turned and enter the room. The door closed behind me.

“Jailer!” one of those in the room shouted in a command voice, and the door opened again.

“Remove those cuffs,” a full Colonel in a starched Army field uniform directed.

“He’s a dangerous prisoner,” the jailer mumbled.

“He is an Officer and a Gentleman and will be treated as such,” the Colonel told him in no uncertain terms. The jailer came around in front of me and removed the cuffs before departing again.

“Have a seat, Major, we need to talk,” the civilian who was with the Colonel told me as I rubbed my wrists where the cuffs had been, and then took the chair sitting there.

“I’m Doctor Boudinot and this is Colonel Coley. We’re from Military Intelligence at the Pentagon,” the civilian told me.

“How are you feeling, Major?” he calmly asked next.

“I’ll be fine, what about my children? These idiots wouldn’t believe that they had been kidnapped,” I told them in a loud voice.

“We’ll come to that in a minute, Major. Please answer my question, ‘How are YOU feeling’?” he reiterated with a frown.

“I’m all right other than a pain in my back where that asshole cop hit me with the butt of a shotgun, and I have a few scrapes and bruises,” I told him not being worried about my condition but that of my children.

“That’s fine, Major. We’ve already issued an official written complaint to the local police about your treatment,” he informed me, but I could have cared less about that then, though I would remember it later, but I needed to pay attention, as he was speaking still.

“When the request for information on you came into FBI headquarters, it set off alarms, and we were immediately notified. That is Military Intelligence was notified. You see those who were in Special Operations have a tendency to react rather violently to situations that they perceive as unjust or seriously wrong, and we from Military Intelligence have had to clean up a number of incidents involving them.

“As soon as it was apparent who was in trouble presently, we, that is Colonel Coley and myself, were dispatched down here to clean up the situation. While we were in transit, others at MI were contacting the local authorities to determine what the problem was and to take action where required to straighten the situation out if possible.

“The local police were at first a bit ... resistant would be the best word to describe them, to explain things, but when we contacted the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the locals became a lot more ... cooperative. The GBI recovered the security tapes of the parking lot where the incident occurred, and we were able to verify that indeed your children had been removed from your vehicle and moved to a black van that had stopped behind yours, and that you did in fact manage to pull one of the kidnappers from the vehicle before it sped away.

“The GBI, the State Patrol, and the FBI have all been brought into the investigation in addition to a special unit of Military Police to help out. However, we presently have no idea who took your children or what they want. We’ll need to wait until the kidnappers make their demands known to learn more,” he finished and sat there smugly, but I asked the obvious question, obvious to me anyway.

“What about the perp that I dragged out of the van? The cops brought him in also,” I told them.

“There is a problem there, Major,” Colonel Coley said with a frown.

“I don’t give a damn about his supposed rights. Put me in a room with him for about fifteen minutes, and he’ll talk his head off,” I told them in an angry voice.

“Unfortunately, we can’t do that,” the Colonel told me but wouldn’t look at me while saying it.

“Can’t or won’t?” I asked in a sharp tone of voice.

“Can’t! You see the police released him a few minutes after he was brought in. He had immediately called his lawyer who arrived here in record time, and had his client out the door shortly after that.

“It turns out that the name and address that he gave the police don’t exist, and of course they never fingerprinted him or took a mug shot. The lawyer is also out of contact at present and may also be a phony,” the Colonel finished in an unhappy voice.

“In other words the cops totally fucked up, and you’re going to cover for them,” I accused them in a loud voice, very upset.

“We are not covering up for anyone,” the Doctor said in a calm voice. “WE have sent the video from the parking lot’s cameras to the FBI in hopes of identifying the individuals or the vehicle in question, plus the individual brought to the station, but it will require time to identify them or him, and then only if he or they had been arrested and booked previously,” the Doctor told me.

“Has anyone contacted my Wife?” I asked in a voice that was calmer than I felt.

“No, we decided to allow you to handle that little detail. You are free to leave and a car will return you to your house. Your vehicle in the parking lot of the store was secured by the GBI when they visited there to obtain the security tapes. They will be moving it to their headquarters as it is being treated as evidence, and they are trying to obtain finger prints from it,” Doctor Boudinot informed me in a very calm voice.

“Cowards!” was all that I said, as I scooped up my possessions that were there on a table and put my shoes on, before turning to leave, but the Colonel had more to say.

“We have your phone tapped in case they call you, and also your internet feed. There are also agents watching your house. Don’t overreact to any of this, and that’s an order, Major. If necessary, we will have you recalled to active duty and physically restrained until the situation is cleaned up,” the Colonel told me in a sharp voice. It was an implied threat, but I wasn’t impressed.

“Right, Colonel, you go ahead and try that for as much good as it would do,” I told him, and yanked open the door to find the car that would take me back to my house.

As I passed through the station, I could see that the cops there weren’t happy to see me leaving, but I didn’t give a damn, and would consider what action to take against the police force for their errors later. Outside, I found a military vehicle with a young sergeant standing beside it.

“Are you my ride home?” I asked, as I approached him.

“Yes sir, if you’re Major Hardtrick,” he answered coming to attention.

“That’s me. Do you know my address and how to get there?” I asked him.

“Yes sir.”

“Let’s go then, my wife is probably worried sick, and will be even more upset when she learns what happened,” I told him. We were soon on our way.

Back in the room, Colonel Coley turned to the Doctor when Max was well out of hearing.

“What do you think?” he asked in a worried voice. The Doctor turned to look at him with a sarcastic smile.

“The physiological treatments are still in place and working just fine. I’ve checked his chart, he is a man with a violent temper when he thinks someone has wronged him. I wasn’t sure that the treatment would still be in effect with the kidnapping of his children. They need to be found quickly before he becomes more agitated. He doesn’t realize how strong he is, and I would prefer that he doesn’t find out, but with the treatments that he was subject to before he was retired, there is little likelihood of that happening,” he told the Colonel in a smug voice.

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