"I picked this up on the radio."

  The details were messenger'd up and down the line we were manning. 

  "It's one of us."  A barely graduated from high school kid said to a middle ager.  An agent brought a case file that was rapidly evolving from initial situation into developments.  "But it's still an impasse on some of these rulings," a consultant still studying State-to-State v. Federal Law broke out another folder. 

  "Sure it's not a drill?" A Commander asked a Commander.  "I'll try and find out." 

  Teams called together.  "How could we get there without disrespecting jurisdiction?" 

  "We've got a couple tanks we used in Tennessee." 

  "We could go in as us." 

  "Us?" 

  "Professionals." 

  "Let me think about that." 

  Like a couple decades before there'd been a snarl of road traffic and drug trafficking in West Knoxville.  It seemed a siege in many ways at the point that somebody had to step up.  The Services put service over petty arguments about credit and navigated the Branches' jurisprudence to at least clear paths and treat the wounded.  Back then, narcoterrorism was more of a concept than a foundation word for Americans to rally around and support. 

"What are you doing

  in here soldier?" The administrator started to back out of the broom closet with the quickly grabbed copy paper.  The man didn't answer just squished up his eyes harder and his face turned bright red.  The woman put the paper on a desk in the corner of the office room.  Slipped back into the little space while popping a piece of chewing gum in her mouth.  "Is there something in your eye, Sir?" His head rolled into a no and a yes. 

  "Let's step into more light since you have a firearm.  Okay?" 

  He followed her.  "Is it a sliver or something? I mean I saw you working on the outbuilding earlier." 

  Hands went up to rub the eyes. 

  "Did you get it?" 

  Again the headroll.  "It's not a sliver," he said after a big deep breath. 

  "What else could it be? Did you sleep in poison ivy?" 

  The man chuckled.  "Not last night." 

  "What then?" She looked closely at his eyes.  He ducked his. 

  "Missed my kid's birthday." 

  The administrator gently sighed. 

  "So I feel like I failed everyone." He focused on a cinderblock. 

  "Do they live close by?" 

  "Isn't that like aiding the enemy?" 

  "The Courts wouldn't do that." 

  "What are you kids thinking about for dinner?" 

  "Not hungry." 

  "What if I'm paying?" 

  "Is ending tariffs on enemies 'aiding' them?" 

  "Whoa.  Other people actually think about this stuff too?!" 

  A rifle through a purse for a highlighter and TO DO list. 

  "What do you think?" 

  "Above my pay grade to think that hard...But 

  "What?" 

  "A lot of things are a matter of timing." 

  "Like deciding what to do with war booty?" 

  "War BOOTY?? Are we up to all that paperwork already?!" 

  "Maybe we should eat in."

"What's this for?"

  The photographer snapped a photo of the writer holding up the cash.  "Clean underwear," the airman grinned.  The money pressed back to chest.  "Buy yourself a cheeseburger!" 

  "Remember those?" The photographer snatched up the money that fell to the ground.  "Not since pandemic days, so barely a memory.  'Sides, head's full of all those gorgeous women at the cafè last night." 

  "Bit of a headache too I bet." 

  "It's routine to get these recharged," an officer walking past explained to a newbie, "There where you'll turn in scheduling wish list.  Any questions so far?" 

  Half a world away the sun sank lower in an endless sky.  Not much glinted in ports readied for the steady flow of diplomacy and enforcement of policy.  The buzzword of the day had been whispered, then pried from some vet corrs...undermining.

"What is that smell?"

  "I don't smell anything?" The driving mom said to the mom standing beside the car. 

  "Oh, there's a smell." 

  "Have you guys been eating okay?" The driving mom looked in the rearview and asked.  "Kinda sorta," the young soldier replied.  "So here.  I want you to use these up." She handed him a six inch thick stack of plastic.  "Whaddya do mom? Knock off a credit card factory?" 

  "Most of them only have a few points left."  

  He patted his now bulging pocket and grinned.  "Sorry I had to give you my laundry.  Ours is broke." 

  "It's okay.  Need me to call someone?" To no answer.  "I shouldn't have said that." 

  "Just temporary there anyway." 

  "Well, I brought these!" She reached to the passenger side floor for a giftbag of DVD's.  "Sorry, no porn." 

  "MOM." The guy blushed. 

  Outside a rain shower started to lift lighter.

"Son, how do you plan to win the war if

  they are calling you the belligerent?" The man called out to a called up in the last thirty-seconds.  A really loud belch was the first response from a young gunner drove around all night because of the dogs.  At that point it wasn't only North Korean, patented, robo-dogs, traitors to nation had been stealing kids toys and having them sniffed by erzast "trainers".  We'd been sold yet another bill of goods packaged as U.S. Government property once the bill of lading was signed. 

  The only people that could save us was ourselves and locals were tied up and dog-mauled and half crazed about threats against loved ones. 

  Damn straight people drove to the outskirts of D.C., Virginia to protect this nation.

"Are they stalking us or

  are we just in their way?" 

  She'd asked the question in the jungle as boots and barefeet walked over and over what had been a person. 

  She'd asked a wounded camera person and then a freaking out soldier who'd fallen to knee.  The camera person was probably bleeding out yet her hands stuffed a can top size hole through the body with big soft leaves.  The soldier's hands tied in front of him with a muddy gray silk scarf. 

  It was a long time before the cicada picked up where they'd left off, the cadence of us and them.  

  In the morning the sun could not find it's way through the soupy milk sky.  Someone had tied newspaper plastic wrappers to many of the branches of trees surrounding the yard.  The three people that had been in the jungle were asked to recreate the scenario.  

  The store smoldering sent a long whisp of dirty cloud into the air.  An offshore wind jagged it's middle.  It somehow spoke of what's happening to us.

  "Make the foot work," to "I can't there's no more pulse." 

  A child imagined flexible.  Slithered under the driver's seat, reeeeached, and couldn't quite jam the foot on the gas.  A man hand shimmied a butt-end of a 2x4 up his arm, around the driver's seat. Putchitsh. The tangled mass of bodies shivered.  Marker smell filled the air.

  The candy-striper wiped hands on pink and wipe stripes.  Tucked a wool lap blanket more tightly under the legs of a man in a wheelchair.  Pushed the contrapshun into the vestibule.  Picked up a black medical bag from behind a glory statue and hurried. 

  The posterboard sign smashed up against the passenger side glass read 

     Iwe need you

"Is that an idea," the tourist

  asked while flash bulbs rang out, "Or is it trademarked?" A little humanoid finished the sentence. 

  "WTF?! What's in this room?" 

  We'd run with the bulls in Gatlinburg and skipped a tour of "wine country".  Roads were blocked and "shooters" of tire-deflating harpoons were on the rocks outside Oakridge. 

  Checking out a quasi-public/private gathering of entrepreneurs had brought to head great debates about community. 

  "And you are?" 

  "With 

  "Where's 

  "Mrs. Botox has left the building." 

  "Smoking.  Why?" 

  "That's not a possible antidote." 

  "Lemme see the list." 

  "Did any of you see this person?" 

  "Said she didn't mind.  Likes dogs." 

  "Yeah, but 

  "Those were 

  "The North Korean ones." 

The plane didn't even land but

we'd gotten all the pets in their "cozy" clothing and a bunch of veterinarians met us where we could get low enough to transport the precious cargo. 

  It would be a short ground-drop in and maybe getting out. 

  The dangling clothing rope dragged across the garbage dump. 

  "Has anyone seen my writer?" 

  Only two other people spoke English where we'd dropped. 

  Someone poked a long stick into a heap of foul-smelling rubbish.  The baking sun hit it like it hits tar or asphalt birthing the air into a shimmering. 

  "Carolina de Jesus.  Do you know where to find her?" 

  "Sì, sì pero un problemo." 

  "Que?" 

  The stick caught a black sock and hurled it as the person pointed with the stick to a broadly swinging cargo plane with the clothing rope on fire. 

"They're not self-organizing."

  The barrel fire still smelled horribly electronic.  "Are they self-reporting?" Boots brushed against a noggin squirmed up sleeping in a tent. 

  Embattled.  No one had seen them advance in a weather system to connect commandos with contained. 

  A slept-hard lip smacking.  One hand on a breast, the other shushing on eye open.  Lips moving to tell. 

  In fact, some of ours had been stripped to underwear again and tied to a flammable and potentially  explosive weight that was by-passed by pick up. 

  Someone did a quick headcount.  Silently made way to another campsite. 

  "Two," fingers told. 

  "Are the AWOL still in their uniforms?" A clerk-type turned to ask.

The jeep door slamming added

to the pound in the head.  Chores and contracting the swing door to the saloon-style prepping for settle down.  

  "WHY CAN'T YOU GIVE ME, US, THE retroactive pay?" 

  "It's complicated soldier's mom." 

  A swipe of a cleaning rag off a countertop.  A sigh.  "May I ask another question?" 

  "Shoot." 

  "Was this unit cleaned up well enough for a temporary barrack?" 

  "I'm not the judge.  And I really am endangering others having a plain old conversation with a civilian." 

  Back in the jeep.  "Just go." 

  "Okay.  But I can't make it all the way to there," pointing at a hand drawn cartoon of a map.  A phone call.  "Yeah.  I want you to come back and give me like ten bucks." 

  "For what?!?" 

  "Cleaning like a dozen peoples' tonsil stones off maybe my sister's mirror!" 

  "The realtor's in town?" 

  "She's married." 

  Click.  

  "Why would that be 'complicated'?" 

  Cigarette smoking irritated eyes tearing.  "Manpower on the move.  Dislocation of taxable money from physical address.  And this other thing." 

  "What other thing?" Was asked like, how could you possibly tell me something about my family, my self, that I don't already know.  "Okay, well I've been helping with some historical documentaries.  In real war displaced people and ownership of place 

  "Yeah 

  "Well, there's all this stuff about fluid situation and process.  Especially when places get occupied and people get detained.  Am I making your headache worse?" 

  "No, I think understanding stuff makes headaches better." 

  "See, something like payroll is one of those quasi things, uh, stuff of life.  It is and isn't material substance." 

  "Is that philosophical?" 

  "Everything is 'cuz humans think shit up.  But it also has to do with the part of this prep for war time in our lives." 

  "How?" 

  "We wouldn't even be having this conversation right now had we not bumped into each other, right?" 

  "I guess.  Don't go off on a tangent." 

  "The whole big thing was stalled, then lurching forward.  For people in my vocation, there's a ton of paperwork and documentation.  Which we can then look at for anahmolies." 

  "Drifting

  "So, if a red flag like a retroactive pay goes to budget arena, that calls attention to whatever time period 

  A rapping on the window startled both people.  No jumping but eyes wide open.  Window cracked open.  Some cash stuffed in.  People driving off. 

  "Plus, it's painfully slow to microscope a place, situation in the past when the whole thing is being forced forward.  We often wish we could see, for instance, where the terrorists were watching from when we were just visiting, or 

  "Let's go get gas."

"Thief!!" The woman snatched the

  Field & Stream.  Our two others passed the pillowcase of stuff back, back.  "Then we'll run." 

  Sun was starting to sink to Midway by the time we made it way out the farmer's road.  We'd returned most of the stolen-not-by-us stuff so re-stolen by us to the rightful owners. 

  "Just hobos," and that's what it looked like with our earnings and treasures in bandanas on sticks over our shoulders.  "Why'd ya tell 'em?" One girl just taller knocked the stick off the boy's shoulder.  "Bully!" The boy's treasures came out of his kerchief a little bit.  He bent to pick them up.  A foot stomped on his hand.  "I want that," was ordered.  He handed the lighter up.  "Anything else Sis?" 

  She lit a smoke and clamped the lighter shut.  Coughed a lil'.  "You sayin' I'm a sissy?" 

  "Not while I'm down here on the ground." 

  Crows lit off from sitting on a scarecrow.  "Look!  Those things work."  The boy jumped up and looked.  A saluting hand followed the black birds arcing up and over still tall corn stalks.  The pack of cigarettes hit his back.  "We weren't done talking." 

  "Just saying," he pretended to take binoculars from the other girl and look far, far into the future.  "That was a cowardly, sissy, thing to do.  I was having the perfect day." 

  "I wasn't."  The shorter girl went over and looked her up and down like penguins do.  Careful close looking.  "I don't see nuthin' wrong with her." More looking around back and lifting jean bottoms.  "THERE'S BLOOD!" The boy put his smoke behind his ear as he came right over.  He covered his eyes with a hansome hand and asked, "WHERE?" Then made blinds of his fingers and peeked at the pointing to tore up heels.  The boy sighed.  "You got underwear on?" 

  The girl jujitzoo'd her whole body around in one turn.  "What you askin' for?"  The boy's hands went into karate chop mode.  "She's not a cinderblock!" 

  "Just do it!" The shorter girl threw down the quilt patch and stepped back.  "Like bison!" The two walked away from each other like duelers, then he screamwhooped and they crashed into each other as they ran at each other.  The wrestle drew blood and lasted a good thirteen minutes before the bison crawled off to opposite sides of the road panting and clearing lungs.

  "They're testing." 

  "WHAAAT?" 

  The woman with the empty typewriter bag let a suited man take the little styrofoam cup from her steady-tremble-steadied hand.  She wouldn't let go of the bag and snarled at a man the came close for a kiss, I'll bite it off.  His big nose smelled her anyway. 

  "We can't speak about it," one told another.  Hand gestures moved the camera crews to a different gate.

  "Transvestite!" 

  "Towel head!" 

  "Get to work." 

  Foots on seven shovels then.  Overturned a whole new row to plant.

  "I don't think he's that." 

  "Just let think so." 

  "Do it!"  The handled cup was dipped in the barrel of water and thrown in the air.  Little ones shivered and shimmied.