Chapter 3

Nothing much happened that night, and I had a good night’s sleep in my own bed. It wasn’t until I went to check my email on Saturday morning that my world went all to hell. I hadn’t checked my email since before the kidnapping, and there were a number of them waiting when I went to my regular email account. The most recent was from early this morning, and when I clicked on it, I nearly fell out of my chair. There was a picture of my kids. They were tied up and crying. Below it in large block letters were the words,

“DEATH TO ALL MAGIC USERS”

I instantly realized that this was from the bastards who had kidnapped my kids, and then I wondered what the hell those words had to do with me? There were more pictures below the words, and when I saw them, I threw up, but on the floor, and not on my computer or its keyboard. Now I knew why Colonel Coley didn’t want me to see the bodies. I had seen similar brutality while in Special Operations, but as a disinterested observer. Still, I had been affected, and these were my children, small boys of four and two years of age, and not some strangers. They hadn’t hurt anyone, and to have this happen to them was unthinkable. I checked the email address but it was from a public computer.

For a time I sat there in shock and frustration unable to do anything. Finally I decided that I needed to do something to find these bastards and pay them back for all of the grief, pain, and suffering that they had caused my kids, my wife, and me. Though it was difficult, I made as thorough an inspection of the pictures as I was able, looking at details of the surrounding areas shown in the pictures for clues. It was difficult and time consuming, as I needed to stop often because I couldn’t see through my tears. I persevered and made a list of the things that I saw in the pictures that might help me discover where these animals were so I could deal with them in my own way. On finishing, I saved the entire email to a flash drive before turning off the computer, ignoring the other emails.

I sat there sick at heart at what my poor little sons had endured before dying, and what had been done to their bodies, hopefully after they had died. This was the lowest point of my life, and I gave into temptation. I didn’t usually drink a lot, and then mostly beer. However, I had acquired two bottles of a very fine Bourbon at a very good price just before last New Year. My wife and I had a couple of drinks from one bottle on New Year’s Eve at midnight.

I pulled the open bottle from where it was kept in the buffet in the dining room and started drinking directly from it. We drank a lot of Bourbon in Special Operations, but it had been mainly to forget both what we had seen as well as what we had done in following our orders. Much of it hadn’t been pretty. But that had been years ago, and I had been retired for four years with very little drinking since then, so I got drunk ... fast. The more that I drank, the drunker I got until eventually I started to remember things ... things that I didn’t want to remember and had been told to forget by someone, but I couldn’t remember who.

At first it was just words; words in a language that I didn’t understand. As I got drunker, flashes of pictures appeared, but I wasn’t sure if I was seeing them, or if they were in my mind. The words also became clearer. By the time I started on the second bottle of Bourbon, I could hardly move, but the words were making more sense and the pictures lasted longer. Many were pictures of my team in places where we had operated, I eventually realized. The words had also started to not only be understandable, but to have meaning.

After a time and more Bourbon, I recognized the words as spells in a foreign language. Eventually following even more time and Bourbon, I recognized the language as Gaelic, but wasn’t sure how I knew that. By then, I was so soused that I could no longer lift the bottle to my mouth, and I dropped it, falling over on my side and passing out.

The man who came to many hours later on the floor of the dining room, wasn’t the same old me, or rather he was the old, old me, the Major from Special Operation who had lost his team, and I had a very familiar headache. Instinctively, I cast a spell to cure the hangover and stopped dead in my tracks wondering how I knew how to do that as well as where I had learned it. I shook my no longer aching head and decided that I could investigate the how and where later after going to relieve my bladder which was over full and to take a shower. On the way to do that, other old habits from my time in Special Operations took hold again, and I checked all of the doors and windows on the first floor to ensure that no one had gotten into the house while I was passed out drunk.

Following my easing the pressure on my bladder, I realized that I knew other spells that would ensure my safety while I figured out the how, where, and when I had learned to do Magic, if in fact that was what I was doing, and I used one of those spells to cast a ward around the house to ensure that no one would enter it while I was busy with these questions. The shower was very hot and melted away the liquor that was still in the pores of my skin. After drying off, I looked at myself in the mirror after wiping away the water that had condensed on it. My blond beard was a bit scraggly, not having shaved in several days, and my hair was rather long for one who had been in the military, but I decided to leave it that way for now. I could always change it with a spell, I suddenly realized. It seemed that I knew a lot of spells now and many of them appeared to be very lethal. I tried to concentrate on more pleasant things, but my mind kept going back to the pictures of my children on the internet.

Following a meal that included six eggs and a half pound of bacon, four slices of toast with apple butter, two glasses of orange juice, and three cups of very strong black coffee, I returned to the computer and pulled up my email, to immediately discover that the email from the kidnappers was gone without a trace, though the other unread emails were still there. It was obvious that someone had gotten into my computer while I was passed out and had erased that particular email. I ran the various malware and security programs on my computer, but they showed no intrusions, which suggested to me that it had been the government who had hacked my computer, and that they had possibly used a ‘backdoor’ in the main program to access the software and remove all traces of that email.

It was a good thing that I had saved it to a removable storage device which I had removed from the computer and placed it in a safe location before I started drinking. Retrieving the flash drive, I disconnected the computer from the internet, and turned off the wifi and the router before installing the storage device and calling up the email from the kidnappers.

I was now able to view the pictures in a somewhat more disconnected manner, and noted additional details that I had missed previously. I found that I didn’t need to write them down, as I remembered them exactly as well as where they were located on the picture, in addition to which picture or pictures they were on. It seemed like an amazing ability, before I realized that it was a part of the ability to remember spells and to use Magic, and that is when I connected it to the words under the first picture.

This also led me to suspect that Magic and its use were the reason all of the children of those who had been in Special Operations had been kidnapped and murdered. Someone knew that Special Operations teams had used Magic at one time, and for all that I knew, they may still be using it. It also explained why the two men here from the Pentagon came from Military Intelligence, and not some other branch like the Inspector General, the Adjutant General, or the Judge Advocate General’s branch.

I also realized now that they were NOT concerned about the deaths of the children or the retired Special Operations people, and had no interest in catching those responsible, although that could be the responsibility of others.

No, they were here to do one thing and one thing only, and that was to ensure that no mention or suspicion that Magic had been or could still be in use by Special Operations personnel. This led me to wonder just how far they would go to prevent the knowledge of this from getting out. Would they go so far as to eliminate those who remembered the use of Magic or who knew about it? It was obvious to me at least that they could NOT be trusted with the fact that I now remembered all, or at least most of what I had learned in Special Operations about Magic and its use.

Since it was already late on Sunday afternoon when I finished, and there was little that I could do here at the house while under observation, I decided to leave the house warded and to depart for someplace where I could start my own investigation. I knew that there were areas in most cities where numerous homeless congregated, and that many of them were veterans. That seemed like the place to start my search for those responsible for the deaths of my children and the others. There are always loose lips in addition to other sources of information available in the congested and poorer areas of a city.

I had an old camouflage backpack, and filled it with well used clothes and other items, plus there were some field rations that I had obtained from a friend in supply before being retired. They were now old enough to pass for having been retired and sold off by the Army. Deciding to leave well after dark and transfer to a location that I knew well that was away from the subdivision where I lived, I would then work my way into the city to hide in plain sight among the homeless.

A short nap was appropriate while I waited for it to get dark. On awakening, I dressed in some old uniform clothing, made and ate a meal. There was a good bit of the Bourbon left in the second bottle, and I used it as a perfume on my clothing and the backpack before drinking some of it to flavor my breath.

Now ready to depart, I checked the wards around the house and reinforced them. No one would be able to get through them anytime soon. All of the shades were already drawn, the doors and windows were locked, and I left a table lamp on in the living room to keep the inquisitive busy. On donning the backpack and picking up the boxes of rations, I cast the transfer spell that I remembered and disappeared from my house.

I instantly reappeared in the parking lot where my children had been abducted. Picking up a shopping cart, I set out to walk into the city. I would collect things that I considered useful from the trash in the various neighborhoods that I passed through or things that were left out unguarded. The first item in the cart was the partly full Bourbon bottle. The second was the two cases of MREs. Where there were no convenient roads going where I wanted to go, I would see what Magic could do to assist in my movement into the city.

By the time dawn broke the following morning, I had moved quite some distance and had collected a number of items in my shopping cart. I was also tired enough that I needed to stop for a time and rest. Fortunately, I had come to an area where several of the major roads converged and there were several bridges and overpasses where it would be possible to spend part of the day asleep. All that I needed to do was to transfer myself and the cart to the other side of the fence meant to keep people out of the denied access area of the roads. It required but a few seconds to cast the spell, and I was on the other side of the fence. From there I headed toward the nearest overpass ramp where I could take a nap in the tall grass growing there under it after warding myself and the cart.

I was awakened some time later by the arrival of a police car. It appeared that they had a key to the entry gate for the area. The two officers got out and started looking around. It was fairly obvious that they were looking for intruders, but I was hidden by the tall grass that covered much of the area, and the cart was out of sight behind a large concrete column. I used a small confusion spell to distract them, and they soon left after reporting over their radio that no one was here. After they were gone, I went back to sleep, but was up later while it was still light out and continued my journey toward the downtown area of the city.

That evening and night, I made good time on the remaining distance to the downtown area. There were now many through streets and cross streets that I could use so I changed streets often to avoid attracting the police and to be sure that I wasn’t being followed. By the time the sun rose, I was on the outskirts of the downtown area of the city and began seeing homeless people where they had spent the night in various alleys, and empty lots, also under the bridges of the interstate. Many of them watched me closely as they didn’t recognize me, and I was sure some of them thought that I was an undercover cop. I quickly moved on past them and deeper into the heart of the city looking for a place where veterans hung out. I found one later that morning and moved to join them. They apparently were not thrilled to see me.

“Who the hell are you asshole, and what makes you think that you can join us?” a rather large individual in often patched camouflage pants and a faded OD T-shirt with his arms folded across his chest blocking my way demanded as I approached where a number of them were gathered.

“Listen you fucking LEG, you fuck with me, and when I get done with you there won’t be enough of you left for the rag-heads to desecrate,” I growled at him.

“Farley, quit fucking with the newbie. You’ll only wear each other out with your jaw jacking, and annoy the rest of us,” another individual shouted at the big guy. “Come over here newbie,” he finished.

(Note: Leg is a derisive term used by Airborne soldiers for those who are not Airborne.)

“So what’s your story, Airborne?” the other man who appeared to be the one in charge here asked as I approached him. He was an older man, but not one that you would normally notice in a crowd.

“What unit were you in?” demanded another man seated beside him.

“I was in the hundred and worst,” I answered.

“Oh, the screaming shitbirds,” the other man added and laughed.

“See any action?” the leader asked, nonchalantly.

“Some.”

“As in when and where?”

“I was with B Company of the 2/327th in Ashcanastan in 2011. In late March they had us set up on the side of a ridge watching the Taliban’s supply lines in the Barawala Kalay valley in Kunar Province when we were hit by the rag-heads. It was still snowing and the clouds were lower than the tops of the mountains. We managed to kill a bunch of them and chase what was left of them out of the valley. We lost six guys and had a bunch of wounded,” I told him.

I hadn’t been in that unit, but in the 5th Special Operations, and we had reconned the area previous to the 2/327th going in. I had heard about the battle and had read the after action report later.

“Yeah, I heard about that little dust up. How did you wind up here?” he demanded next.

“Got tired of the stateside bullshit and got out,” I told him.

“Sounds familiar. Have a drink,” he offered holding out a bottle. I took the bottle which was close to empty and took a swig. God, it was terrible stuff!