A state of disobedience

Echo 63 will you comply?'

With an audible sigh, sent through a voice-activated mike, the pilot of the second gunship answered, 'Wilco.'

* * *

A long column of armored vehicles, fourteen tanks in the lead, stretched along Interstate 35, exhausts smoking and treads churning.

'Goddamit, fuck the speed limits. They don't apply to tanks. General Schmidt said 'now' and I want to be there two hours ago.' If only we hadn't had to send to Fort Hood for main gun rounds, then had to sneak them away from the post. If only. But the general had said 'be prepared to fight' . . . and so they had had to stop to arm up.

'Wilco,' came from five different senders as the better part of 1^st Battalion, 141^st Infantry, with pieces of the 1^st of the 112^th Armor, of the 49^th Armored Division roared down the highway.

* * *

Sergeant Akers watched from the headquarters as the gunship made another pass on the mission compound, chaingun spitting fury. He had lost count of the number of attack runs it had so far made.

There are kids in there, dammit. Texan kids I swore to defend. 

It was hard, so hard. Not to die, no. Hard to break the rules. Hard to lift his arm against a law enforcement agency. Hard to raise his hand to a woman, even one like Friedberg.

But it's not as hard as standing here watching those kids murdered. Reaching a decision, commending his soul to God, Akers undid the restraining strap on his shoulder holster, thumbed back the hammer, and ensured the safety was off. Then he set those shoulders, and walked into the headquarters.

Akers walked unnoticed—few people ever noticed him, really—to a spot right behind the director. He sighed, still unnoticed, then reached his hand under his jacket. As he did, the kindly expression, the grandfatherly expression, disappeared from his face. What replaced it was something not quite human, let alone grandfatherly.

'The next sound you hear will be your brains hitting the wall unless you call off the gunship, Director. Tell your people to freeze.'

Friedberg felt the cold rounded muzzle of the sergeant's pistol pressed against the base of her skull. She felt the warm drizzle of urine begin to run down her legs almost immediately. 'Nobody move,' she ordered, voice unaccountably and uncharacteristically trembling.

'Call off the helicopter,' she told the radio operator, for a change neglecting to insult him.

The operator hesitated. 'Now,' insisted Johnston Akers, sergeant, two medals of honor.

'Now,' echoed the director.

'And I want your agents to drop their weapons and their trousers. Now,' insisted the ranger.

'Do it.'

* * *

The gunship made yet another pass. Few buildings still stood undamaged in the compound. From one small one a small person, carrying a rifle, fled. His apparent destination was a large wooden structure, much like a barn. The gunner cut down Julio, then took aim at the building towards which he had been headed.

It was indeed a barn on the outside. But in the center of the floor was a concrete pad with a steel door. It was, in fact, the storm shelter. And under that pad crouched twenty-six children ages six months to twelve years.

The rockets were a mix; white phosphorus, some, and high explosive, others. The explosive shattered the dry wood of the barn. The phosphorus set it alight.

Even as the last salvo of rockets exploded, the WP in lovely art nouveau of flaming arcs, the pilot received the word, 'Break off your attack now.'

* * *

For long hours had the little ones cowered under their shelter while the muffled sounds of furious battle leaked in. Some of these had been enough to shake the structure, setting the younger ones to crying.

'Josefina, make it stop. Please make it stop.'

'I can't, Nezi,' the older girl said; left on her own as the best choice available since Sister Sofia had been killed. 'I'm only twelve.'

In time, the sounds of firing abated. Yet Josefina was afraid to venture out. They were safe where they were. Father had said they would be.

But if it got much hotter . . .

* * *

Montoya heard the chopper approaching. Perhaps, better said, he felt it. He really couldn't hear much of anything. His eardrums had burst from the impact of a flock of 2.75 inch folding fin aerial rockets on the chapel roof.

He tried to move his head to the side. Oh, God . . . nausea. His eyes seemed not to want to focus. He forced them, willed them to do so.

Amidst bodies and pieces of bodies, most far too young to have been in that place, at that time, nausea quickened and grew worse. The priest shut his eyes, let nausea wash over him and away. Thought . . . tried to think . . . of something. . . .

* * *