Chasing the Son (2 page)

Of course she had to be on time. She had the small window every covert meeting had: two minutes before, two minutes after. Outside that window her contact had strict orders not to meet. To evade. And the mission would be a scrub. A failure.

It would be a long walk back.

As she passed below five thousand feet, she flipped down her night vision goggles from their position on her helmet. The world below lit up in various shades of green. She could see the outline of the lake she was using as a final reference point, the flat surface reflecting the quarter moon, confirming her location. She focused on the drop zone, a small, square field, barely big enough to allow her to land her chute in it.

A infrared strobe light was flickering in the middle of the field. Invisible to the naked eye, it was a clear beacon through the goggles. It went out for a few seconds, then back on, repeating a pattern.

The pattern that meant it was safe for her to land. At this altitude, if the no-go signal, non-stop flickering, had been present (or no signal at all), she still had time to peel off and land at least a couple of miles away and go into her escape and evasion (E&E) plan.

She dumped more air, quickening her descent, aiming for the light, estimating that she would land about a minute early. At two hundred feet she dropped the rucksack full of gear on its lowering line so that it dangled below her.

As she reached the treetop level, she flared, slowing her descent. The ruck hit terra firma, and then she touched down lightly, right next to the light, the chute billowing down to the ground behind her. She quickly unbuckled her harness, looking about through the goggles. A person appeared, moving out of the tree line toward her.

She was pulling her submachine gun free of the waist strap when the person raised a hand, not in greeting, but with something in it. Her gloved fingers fumbled to bring the sub up.

The taser hit her on the arm, sending a massive jolt through her system and immobilizing her. She collapsed, unable to control her body. As she curled up on the ground, she could see others coming out of the tree line, armed men, weapons at the ready.

Her muscles wouldn’t respond. Not even her tongue.

Someone knelt next to her and reached toward her face. Fingers dug into her mouth and probed. The ‘suicide’ was ripped out of its hide spot in the upper right side of her gum.

How had they known about that?

Compromised. She’d been comprised right from the start.

The person who’d removed her suicide option spoke. “We’ve been expecting you. We have quite the welcome waiting for you.”

Her muscles wouldn’t work as her gear was ripped off her body. And then her clothes, until she was lying naked in the small field. Her hands were chained behind her back, the cuffs cinched down, but not too hard, a small fact she processed but found odd.

Her legs were also shackled, but the restraints were padded on the inside.

Like a sack of meat she was lifted by four men and carried. It was cold, the air biting into her naked flesh, but she barely noticed it, her muscles still trying to recover from the massive electrical shock; along with her brain from the betrayal. There was a van underneath the trees and she was tossed in, onto a carpeted floor. Someone grabbed a chain off one wall and locked it to the shackle chain between her legs.

The chains were thick.

She lay on the floor, staring up the van’s roof as the engine started and they began driving. There were two men in the back with her, seated on either side. Despite her nakedness, they seemed barely interested in her; they had their weapons at the ready across their knees. Their demeanor told her they were professionals, men who knew how to use their weapons. They had small, bulletproof windows next to their seats and gun ports, and they alternated between glancing at her and watching the world outside.

They drove for a long time, hours. Movement returned to her muscles and she covertly tested the restraints, she had to, one never knew, but these were professionals. She was cold but knew better than to ask for a blanket or her clothing. If they wanted her covered, she’d be covered. Everything they were doing was according to a script, one she knew most likely ended badly.

For her.

Summer a Year and Half Ago

It is difficult to determine where the sea begins and the land ends in the Low Country. The line between the two is not a fixed one, fluctuating with the tide, which moves in concert with the moon and its phases. Such uncertainty in nature is at odds with the certainty with which the Military Institute of South Carolina seeks to instill discipline in its cadets, especially the first year ones, the ‘rats’ at the bottom of the pecking order. Particularly during their first few weeks at the Institute, in late August, when the fierceness of the Corps is blasted onto the boys trying to become men; or more accurately, trying to become cadets, as manhood sometimes requires different skills from those of the Institute.

But you could not tell an Institute graduate that. As was done to them, they bequeath onto those who follow.

The Institute is located on the northern edge of the City of Charleston, South Carolina, along the banks of the Ashley River, a few miles before it meets the Cooper River. At the confluence of those two bodies of water, the southern tip of Charleston, is the Battery from which the first cannon shots of the Civil War were fired. At least
most
say the first shots of the Civil War were fired that day on 12 April 1861, but true historians can point to many prior shots that portended that war; perhaps Harpers Ferry two years previously? Perhaps Bloody Kansas? Perhaps Nat Turner and his slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831 or, closer to home, the Stono slave rebellion in South Carolina in 1739? Perhaps during the Revolutionary War when the nagging problem of slavery was knowingly left for a future generation to deal with in blood? Regardless, it was the firing on Sumter that ignited the flame that had been smoldering since the founding of the country and the ratification of its flawed Constitution. It was only extinguished after more than seven hundred thousand soldiers, North and South, gave their lives. No one knows exactly how many civilians and slaves perished.

The Military Institute of South Carolina, M.I.S.C. (or Miss C, as it is known more intimately among cadets and graduates), saw glory in battle during the Civil War, although it also saw defeat in war for the state and the cause it served. Such a mindset could be the basis of a character disorder if evidenced by an individual. But when instilled in the fabric of a place like the Institute, it became myth and lore and spirit. The very fiber of the place. While Civil War re-enactors gather every so often to pitch their tents and pretend to be in the days of yore, the stone ramparts of the Institute were rooted in the past and
were
the days of yore.

State, City and Institute are intricately linked. While West Point, founded by Thomas Jefferson, boasted the United States Army, the Great Chain across the Hudson, the Revolution, Sylvanus Thayer, (Benedict Arnold) and other long ago historical footnotes at its birth, the Institute was part of Charleston, part of its heritage, part of its embroilment in politics and commerce and indeed, secession. And while the Military Academy ticks off as graduates: Presidents (2), five star Generals (3), astronauts (18), Medal of Honor winners (74) and others who served the country, the Institute was more subtle, its graduates spread into the very fabric of Charleston and its economic, political and cultural life.

And if you asked, and even if you didn’t, an Institute man would tell you Charleston is more important than the country; and that they would be willing to lay down their lives for Family, Institute, City and then State, with Country coming fifth. Which might partly explain why those first cannon were fired from the Battery at the hulking presence of Fort Sumter, a man-made island, not even native to the place, built with New England stone piled onto a sand bar out in the harbor, which meant even its foundations were an anathema to the South. And, as any Institute man will tell you, again whether you want him to or not, there were Institute cadets and graduates manning those cannon in 1861.

That’s not to say the Institute didn’t send graduates to bleed and die for their country, whether it be the Stars and Bars, and afterward, the Stars and Stripes. Many a monument on the campus gave testament to that, along with the Wall of Honor, listing the graduates who gave the ultimate from the Civil War to the ongoing War on Terror.

There are a lot of names on that wall, each representing a man, an Institute man, in his prime, snuffed out.

Strangely, not the only strange, the Institute is a state college, partly funded by the great state of South Carolina. And while it called itself a military school, it was actually more a facade of a military school since only those cadets who signed ROTC contracts were obligated to serve in the military upon graduation, unlike West Point or Annapolis or the Air Force Academy whose cadets forked over five years of their lives upon graduation. Then again, they didn’t fork over any tuition, while the Institute could cost a pretty penny to attend, despite the State funding.

The Institute, founded in 1845, served a very different purpose than churning out second lieutenants. The need for a military school in South Carolina had grown out of the same institution which later caused those cadets and graduates to fire that cannon in 1861: slavery. Pre-Civil War, South Carolina’s white inhabitants were outnumbered by slaves almost two to one. And South Carolina, despite its relative small size, had more slaves than any other state except Georgia and Virginia. The Stono Rebellion in 1739 cost 21 whites and 44 blacks their lives. It resulted in legislation such as a requirement for white males to carry their guns to church on Sunday as it was the most opportune time for a slave revolt to occur. Closer to home, in Charleston, a freed black named Denmark Vessey plotted a revolt in 1822 that was pre-empted and Vessey and 34 other black men were hung.

Those kinds of numbers and events kept city fathers up late at night in Charleston. The threat of insurrection was ever-present.

There were some who helped found the Institute in 1845 who even remembered what had happened in Haiti beginning in 1791 and culminating on 1 January 1804: the only successful slave rebellion resulting in the formation of a state in a modern era. More importantly, they remembered that after Haiti was formed, the white minority was massacred.

Thus the leadership saw a pressing need for a well-armed militia, as laid out in the Second Amendment, which needed well-trained leaders. And thus the Institute.

And so the Institute is an integral part of South Carolina history and especially that of Charleston’s. There is no city that can compare to that which lies between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. Forrest Gump would have been told to move along, politely, but fiercely, if he’d tried sitting on a bench in Charleston telling his tale of chocolates in a box. His kind did not belong to Charleston, but rather to the lesser city to the south, Savannah, which was founded by boatloads of criminals, a fact of which any Charlestonian would be glad to remind you.

From the mansions south of Broad, to the Market, all built on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water, Charleston is a wonder to walk by day and full of brooding shadows by night. It’s a city that fairly screams ‘here there be secrets’ and it is to Institute Men that such secrets are given along with the keys to those closets in which they lurked. And Institute Men often went far beyond the bounds of the city and state, serving in Washington as representatives of their fine State, where secession was born.

Thus, to be an Institute graduate is to be given a cracking of the door into a special world. But even that wouldn’t be enough for every cadet. Because there were Institute men and then there were the Institute Men of blood, of family, which even the fierceness of four years in the crucible of the Quadrangle at the heart of the Institute, could not grant. At best, one could be on the edge of the true power and benefit from it, but there is no substitute for being born to the right parents and having the proper blood coursing in one’s veins. Old Charleston families held onto their lineage with a fierceness and pride that would make those descended from the Mayflower weep with envy, if they ever wept given their New England stoicism; those Northerners are as hard as the stones from their part of the country that blighted Charleston Harbor and formed the foundation of Fort Sumter.

Of course, the issue of race is also something that has not been untangled from the legacy of the Institute. While putting down a slave insurrection is no longer in the un-written mission statement for the Institute, the mindset cannot be weeded out of both the institution and the city.

And those issues were something Harry Brannigan and a classmate were going to be shown this particular evening. That no matter what they were willing to endure, they were outsiders and always would be.

It wasn’t just the name: Brannigan, which reeked of Ireland and pubs and potatoes. Even his first name did him no favors: Harry. He’d already endured more Potter jokes than anyone should. It was mainly that he was from far away, from Oklahoma, taking a spot that should have gone to a native son if not of Charleston, then of South Carolina. While this wasn’t directly his fault, it was his price to pay. What he could not know, what most would not know until it was too late, was that no matter how much sweat and blood he paid to the Corps, admittance would never be granted to the South of Broad club.

That club of high birth, privilege and money, was where the real business of the Low Country took place and where the true power resided. One challenged it at his peril.

At the moment, Harry was focused on simple survival. It is an axiom of military training to ‘break down’ a boy and make him into a man. It never seems to occur to those inflicting this training that perhaps they might break some blossoming good men in the process, turning them into something entirely else.

Only three weeks into his time at the Institute, Harry had already gone on a Magical Mystery Tour. To the sound of the Beatle’s album, a rat was sent from upperclass room to upperclass room inside their company. Each upperclass room kept the rat for the official ten minutes of hazing, and then, in order to comply with regulations, dismissed the rat with specific instructions on where to go next: another upperclass room. For another ten. And another. And so on. It was efficient in that each upperclass room only had to spend ten minutes hazing, while the rat spent every minute until Taps under the crucible.