Final Disposition (8 page)

      Cellars raised the second container up in agreement, and then began to drink at a slower pace. 
Don’t know what you’re talking about, little voice
, Cellars thought as he observed Marcini disappear behind a stainless steel door that apparently lead back into the kitchen,
she sure looks real to me
.

      Then, finishing off the second energy drink in one final satisfying gulp, he sat the container down, took in and released a deep contented breath, glanced wistfully back at the door that Marcini had disappeared through, and then calmly stood up and walked over to his watchdog’s corner table.

      MacGregor quickly rose to his feet.

      “Sergeant, I need to ask you a personal question.  Is there some place close by where we can talk privately?”

      MacGregor shrugged.  “Outside is about as private as it gets around here … but it’s kind of nippy this time of year.”

      “Looks to me like we’re both dressed for the occasion,” Cellars said, nodding at the heavy field jacket MacGregor had draped over the back of his chair.  “What do you say we go outside for a while?”

      “Fine by me,” MacGregor shrugged agreeably, and then held up a pausing hand as he reached for a portable radio strapped to his pistol belt.

      “This is Mac,” he spoke into the radio mike.  “I’m down in the cafeteria.  The package and I are going outside for a stroll.”

      Cellars heard a faint voice reply “ten-four” before clicking off

      “The package?” Cellars asked as he watched MacGregor return the radio to his belt and carefully re-snap the keeper in place.

      “MP terminology,” MacGregor said with another shrug.  “Nothing personal.  Just a way of keeping things straight.  We’re not supposed to get emotionally involved with our … uh … clients.”

      “As well you shouldn’t, sergeant,” Cellars said agreeably as he motioned with his head at the cafeteria door.  “After you.”

CHAPTER 5

      Cellars followed MacGregor outside into the cold darkness, his breath condensing instantly into clouds of white vapor.  The muscular MP lead them over to a large trash bin located on an inset portion of the parking lot next to the clinic.

      “Okay, Major,” MacGregor said amiably as he turned around to face Cellars with his hands braced on his pistol belt, the fingertips of his now-gloved left hand casually tapping the grip of his holstered baton, “what’s this personal question you wanted to ask?”

      “Do you smoke?”

      MacGregor blinked in confusion.  “Do I smoke?”

      “I noticed back in the clinic that you’ve got nicotine stains on your fingers, so I’m assuming that you do — or did,” Cellars explained.  “But more to the point, what I really want to know is if you’d be willing to sell me any extra cigarettes that you might have on hand?”

      “Well —”

      “Look, sergeant, I’ve been locked up in this damned clinic for five days, and I could really use a cigarette right about now; but there’s no way in hell that nurse Marcini is going to give me one, so I figured —”

      “That I might help you break the rules?”

      “Rules, hell, I’m not going to smoke them in the clinic,” Cellars protested.  “I just need to create myself a little outside stash, for when the craving gets too bad.”

      “Yeah, I know what you mean; breaking that habit is really a bitch.  I’m on my forth try, and it isn’t going all that well.”

      “I’m willing to go twenty-five bucks for a pack and a lighter,” Cellars said.

      MacGregor hesitated.

      “Add a couple more packs to the deal, and I’ll make it fifty.”

      That seemed to be all the incentive that MacGregor needed.  He reached for the radio on his belt.

      “This is Mac,” he said, speaking into the radio mike, “meet me at your POV.”

      Then he re-holstered the radio and turned to Cellars.  “Let’s go take a ride.”

      MacGregor led the way through the parking lot to a squat dark-green military vehicle parked in a front row slot designated ‘MP PARKING ONLY.’

      Minutes later, MacGregor was guiding the hard-top Humvee into a parking slot in front of a brightly-lit building with a sign that said ‘HEADQUARTERS, 33rd MILITARY POLICE DETACHMENT in bright green letters.  Three parking slots away, a man with broad African-American features, who was identically dressed and armed — and looked every bit as big — as MacGregor, stood waiting beside a bright red Ford Minivan.

      “Who’s that?” Cellars asked.

      “My partner, and your covert nicotine source,” MacGregor answered as he quickly glanced around the parking lot.  “He started back up again last Friday.”

      “Ah, poor fellow,” Cellars said sympathetically.

      MacGregor motioned for Cellars to get out.

      “Man, it is really cold out here,” Cellars commented as the two men met in front of the Humvee, watching his and MacGregor’s breath condensing into one large billowing cloud as he stuck his bare hands deep into his jacket pockets.

      “Yeah, it wouldn’t be too hard to freeze to death around here, this time of year.  Definitely want to get yourself a pair of gloves and a hat if you’re going to be spending much time outside,” the MP Sergeant First Class advised as he looked around the parking lot one more time.  “You wait here for a minute, I’ll be right back.”

      Cellars watched as MacGregor walked up to his waiting partner and engaged in some quick back-and-forth conversation.  Then MacGregor waved for him to come over.

      “Major, this is my duty partner, Sergeant Harthburn.”

      “Good to meet you, sergeant,” Cellars said, visibly shivering as he nodded amiably, but keeping his hands buried deep in his jacket pockets.

      “Evening, sir.  Mac tells me you could use some help with a nasty little ‘jones’ that the three of us all share?” Harthburn drawled.

      “A new set of lungs would be nice, but I’ll settle for what I can get.”

      “Hear you five-by-five on that, sir,” Harthburn chuckled.  “Do I understand correctly that the current offer is one General Grant for three full packs and a light?”

      “For the first hit,” Cellars shrugged agreeably.  “And as long as you guys can keep quiet about it, I’ll make it another Grant for an additional four packs, as I run out, until I can get discharged from the clinic and buy my own.”

      Harthburn wasn’t able to conceal the flash of greed in his eyes, but some inner sense of decency seemed to be tugging at his conscience.  “Seems like an awful lot of money for a few cigs, sir.  Really don’t want to be ripping you off over a bad habit.”

      “Officers tend to be over-paid for their efforts, sergeant; especially when they’re sitting around on their ass, and not doing much,” Cellars commented.  “Nothing wrong with spreading the wealth around a little bit, in those circumstances, as far as I’m concerned.”

      “Amen to that, sir,” Harthburn said with a laugh as he turned to open the driver’s side door to the Minivan.

      “Really appreciate you guys helping me out like this, sergeant,” Cellars said to MacGregor as he came up beside the hulking MP.

      “Not a problem, sir,” MacGregor responded with an easy shrug.  “And, by the way, if you ever want some help with that nurse of yours, I’ll be happy to — hey?!”

      Cellars moved aside as the MP’s knees visibly buckled before he collapsed face-forward to the ground.

      “Nothing quite like a million volts to get a guy’s attention,” Cellars muttered as he moved forward to the Minivan where Harthburn was still bent across the driver’s seat, fumbling around in the center console.

      “What was that, sir?” Harthburn called over his shoulder.

      “I said you guys are so damned big, I hope that nurse Marcini was right about the safety factor,” Cellars replied as he jammed the ten-and-a-half-inch Mini Stun Baton® against the side of Harthburn’s thick neck, pressed the trigger, and felt the MP’s muscular body spasm violently and then go limp.

      Working quickly now, he scrambled back around to kneel down beside MacGregor, rolled him over onto his back, used the blunt surgical scissors to slice up along the right sleeve of his jacket and then shirt, felt for the big vein in the crook of his arm, carefully slid the thin syringe needle into the vein, and then slowly pressed the plunger all the way in.

      One minute later, he used a second syringe to inject an identical 2-cc dose of the Farmington-U Cocktail into the vein of Harthburn’s muscular left arm.

      “Okay, guys, that ought to keep you both down and out for a while,” Cellars said as he stood up and looked around to make sure he and the two now-snoring MPs were still alone.  “Now let’s see what we can do to make you a little more comfortable.”

*     *     *

      Still feeling a little weak and light-headed, it took Cellars almost fifteen minutes working to drag, lift and shove the two limp MPs into the back of Harthburn’s van … and then another five to find the emergency blankets stored in the cabinet spaces under the Humvee’s rear seats, and tuck them around the two sprawled and snoring bodies.

      
There, now I won’t feel quite so guilty
, he thought as he scribbled a quick ‘IOU SGT MACGREGOR $65 … MAJ. C. CELLARS’ on a blank page in MacGregor’s field notebook, wrote out a similar IOU for Harthburn for $122, tore both pages out of the notebook, folded and placed them in MacGregor’s and Harthburn’s now-empty wallets, tossed them into the narrow space between the two MP’s, dropped the notebook and pen into his jacket pocket, and then firmly shut the van doors.

      The two unconscious men were at least half-again his size, which meant Cellars had no real idea of how long they’d remain unconscious from the 2X dose of what he knew — from personal experience — to be an extremely powerful and fast-acting sedative mixture.  So, to give himself as much time as possible before the alarm was raised, he tossed Harthburn’s keys under the van along with the battery from his pack set radio.

      Then he walked over to the hood of the Humvee to examine his ill-gotten gains.

      He discovered that the inner Velcro™ tab at the top of MacGregor’s tubular olive-green MP insignia — an official ACU Foliage Green M.P. brassard, according the inner tag — allowed it to be easily adhered to the upper left sleeve of his field jacket … and it only took a couple of minutes to re-adjust the pistol belt to fit his much narrower waist.

      After that, he quickly confirmed that the holstered pistol — a U.S. 9mm M9 Beretta, according to the engraving — contained fifteen solid-tipped ‘ball’ rounds in the magazine and none in the chamber, and that the two extra magazines on the side-mounted pouch were each fully loaded … a process his hands seemed to perform instinctively, as if they’d done it hundreds of times before.

      
Must have
, he reasoned as he replaced the extra magazines in their pouch. 
I had to have been in the Army a few years to make Major.

      Like MacGregor, he looked around the darkened parking lot one last time, slid himself into the driver’s seat of the Humvee, shut the door, and then — having watched MacGregor carefully when they’d first gotten into the vehicle — flipped the ignition switch over to ‘RUN.’

      He waited a few seconds for the ‘wait to start’ light to go out, and then flipped the toggle switch all the way over to ‘START.’

      The powerful 6.5-Liter diesel engine roared to life.

      Three minutes later, Cellars found his way to the Main Gate of the expansive VA complex, carefully braked to a stop in front of the lowered barriers, and rolled down his window as the armed, uniformed and helmeted MP stepped out of the guard shack and approached the squat military jeep.

      Not knowing the protocol, he simply pulled his folded ID out of his shirt pocket and handed it to the MP … who examined it carefully, looked up briefly at Cellars and the markings on the side of the Humvee, and then began writing in his log sheet.

      “Don’t recall seeing you on base before, Major,” the MP said as he handed the ID card back to Cellars.

      “I just got released from the clinic and cleared for active duty this afternoon,” Cellars said, hoping the words made sense.  “Sergeant MacGregor suggested this might be a good night for an orientation drive, get to know the local area.”

      “Um, I guess you should know, sir, the sergeant’s sense of humor sometimes gets the better of him,” the MP said hesitantly.

      “Not a good night for orientation driving?”

      “You’re definitely going to run into some weather, sir.  It’s been snowing like crazy all around us for the last couple of hours, and we should start getting our share any time now.”

      “Ah,” Cellars said noncommittally.

      “On the other hand, sir,” the young MP went on earnestly as he ducked his head to take a quick peek inside the vehicle, “it looks like you’ve got a functional GPS unit, and I’ve never seen a snowstorm around here that a Humvee couldn’t handle.  So as long as you stay on the main roads, you shouldn’t have any trouble.  If you do, give us a call and we’ll come get you.”

      “Sounds good,” Cellars said, “but I’ve never really trusted these GPS units.  What’s the best way to the local main town?”

      “Would that be Jasper, Jackson or Josephine County, sir?”

      “How would you describe my options?”

      “Well, sir, for a decent–sized town, you’ll want Grants Pass in Josephine County, or Medford in Jackson County.  Grants Pass has a population of about forty thousand or so — roughly half the size of Medford — and it’s about an hour drive either way; but the route to Grants Pass is mostly four-lane interstate freeway.  That’s probably the easiest drive for this weather.”

      “Grants Pass it is, then,” Cellars said.

      “All you have to do then, sir, is follow this road to the intersection, take a right, follow the road for about two miles — it’ll wind around a bit — until you get to the junction for Highway Two-Twenty-Seven … what the locals call Tiller-Trail Highway, but that’s a pretty fancy name for a two lane country road.  Take a right onto Two-Twenty-Seven heading west for twenty-three miles until it connects to I-Five.  Go south on I-Five for another forty-two miles and you’re right there.”