Part 2

"Unit Taffy 3 goes black and never comes back"

Scenes II and III

A US Army Special Forces Detachment is assigned to be safety inspectors for the City of Detroit while civilian contractors blow up deserted and abandoned and burned out homes to clear 'urban blight' and things get a little bit strange.

The guy who signed the orders for the colonel left it on his desk and went outside[ and the wind blew in and sent the thing scurrying off behind a file cabinet. The Unit had a copy, but the Army had lost theirs and, well, ' ... will assist with such materials as this command provide them to assist in this project' and so...

The civilian demo crews are, well, pikers! Taffy 3 has been detached to be 'safety officers' and make sure the demo was being done safely. Flying debris and all that kind of thing, you know? But they piss and moan and jack up their prices as this involves them spending more money for blast mats and such, covering windows, yada yada, and they ... well, just aren't the artists with high explosives as these guys are.

What was a bit strange is when they went in to get an Army car to drive around in as, hey, why have these guys rides stolen in the city, right? Why take the risks, as these are also three serious motor heads, too. As it happened, a 'special ops' mission order had been confused with which DETACHMENT the 'goodies list' was supposed to go to, and a truck of high explosives was sitting there waiting for them. Ah ha! But an alert supply sarge had figured out that since there were three members, all HE experts, then they should triple the order! So Taffy 3, which had been briefed in on how the US Army cannot directly support such work, was kind of 'unofficially winking' at this group, as there were some very serious heavy hitters on the letterhead, what with it being Hollywood and all, so 'off they go' and this 'uh... ' okay, just a bit of help under the table for the City of Detroit and don't fuck up! These men are professional demolitions experts, used to ops in the black world and nudge nudge, wink wink! and okay, we'd be blowing it up blowing up trees at the John Wayne School for Wayward Boys, it 'apparently was expended in training' and duh! These guys can read between the lines on a moonless night at six hundred meters on a blank sheet of paper. Nudge nudge! Wink Wink? And out the door they go with these three trucks as an explosives convoy moving materials to the Michigan Nation Guard Armory in Detroit, which will provide them with a government issue car to drive around in the city.

Now, this is a hell of a lot more cushy job than camping out in winter, so 30 Dec there they go, hitting the road in these box vans which have gas heaters built into them that keeps the HE stuff from getting 'frisky' and since it's damn fucking cold out there ... when one of the van's gas heaters goes out, it's pull over to the side and contact civilian police to throw up a cordon around the truck because of civilian safety issues. The cops get them a gas powered generator and this hooks into the truck's cargo box electric heaters and things are cool. Well, pretty fucking frosty, actually, and standing around stamping your feet while a whirly bird brings you what you need to fix the damn box and get out of Dodge. So standing around shooting the shit with cops and watching the trucks in this parking lot they are in that has some big highway dividers like are used on construction projects. They move a crane out of the way and then, hey, what the hell? Everyone's going to be shooting their guns off at midnight, eh, guys? So they 'blast pit' the parking lot with a section of those concrete things and this is like an amphitheater and hey! We let the pilot land and then set off and then blow the HE and this popsicle stand and the good men in blue who have kept them in coffee and burgers while they are out stuck here in this middle of wherever the hell they are, little flash bang, right?

So they 'get creative' and Jack the Cat breaks out his very own 'sequencer' that he'd gotten in trouble with the Captain with because he's taught the thing to 'play a tune' the Captain wasn't all that pleased when he'd arrived unexpectedly and there is Jack diddly bopping around and blowing up stuff while doing a little dance and snapping his fingers and some of the finger pops were dead on in time with the music. Hey, the brass is away, so lets play, right? Right!! Only this is not thought a good thing to impress on people, as it leads them to not treating high velocity military explosives with respect. It's kind of his 'hobby' ... or was until the Captain caught him. 'Caught?' How you have 'boom boom boom boom!, sounds that are echoing around a military installation and remote RF detonators on different sides of the base doing that finger snapping thing this guy could do ... a 1,2,3,4, a onetwothreefourfive!, 1, 2, 3, 4, kapowpowpowpowpow! ... and everyone knew it was Jack the Cat out playing and snake eaters love this shit, especially when it's a troop that has his shit wired tight. So Jack gets out his little 'box of magic' and proceeds to show these cops what artists can do and they all huddle and then grab some 'improvised materials' like putting diesel and gasoline in glass jars and such and putting them on top of the HE and this is all rigged up with the best in technology remote control RF detonators, which are to be set off by Jack's Jack and the Magic Box! device, which is inside one of the trucks which is locked up tight while they rig this stuff up, because you don't ever leave anyone around your 'on' switches in this business. So the thing is inside one of their trucks, which they have moved and are just sitting there behind where the landing zone for this helo with their spare part: Slap it in, turn the heater on, pull the bloody plug and off they go. Jack, having had a stroke of what he considered genius, one day rigged a remote detonator to the 'Magic Box' and so he could 'boogie along' and do this way cool 'doorway boogie' in the place with the concrete walls and jump around in there and stay our of the blasts because he knew where and when the thing would fire, so as long as he was cool, he was pretty safe. But he has this ... bad luck, an awfully lot, and generally not considered a good thing in the trade of making things go 'bang!' but since he can do this 'ohmygod! Were all gonna die! face that his buddies find funny and after it's all over, he's back to this super cocky special trooper who blows stuff up Uncle Sam has desired to have removed, and this little escapade he had hanging over his head? Best stay off of that reservation until things settle down a bit. Parking the half track in the furniture store seems to have caused a bit of a stir, shall we say? Jack has no idea at all of how he got there, he just woke up and this couch he was sleeping on ... apparently it had just been parked in this furniture store and someone ran off and there is Jack, who doesn't have a clue ... anyway. Best let things settle a bit. Blowing buildings in Detroit is a hell of a lot better gig that that boy's school camping out in January shit.