Warlords MC: Book 3 – Jack : Chapter 5

The door slammed open and in stepped Ace. King was behind him.

“Well, damn.” Stone stood up. “You got fucking huge, Bridges!”

Ace laughed as he came over and hugged Stone. “Damnit, old man. I never expected to see you again. You disappeared into thin air.”

“Nah…” He patted Ace on the back. “I’ve been very occupied.”

“Do I wanna know how you been occupied?” Ace asked with a grin.

“Aww fuck you young’un, I ain’t ready for the rest home yet.”

“He sure isn’t,” Dewy added. “You should see his woman. She keeps him young and hopping.”

Stone’s men all laughed.

King nodded at his brothers, Deuce and Jack as he silently moved into the room to stand next to them.

Ace looked over at Dewey. “Well, Dewey Mann! It is the man.” He hugged him too. He then looked at the other men. “Well fuck, I feel like this is a reunion or something? How the hell are you Reaper, Doc, Viper, Recon?”

They came over and shook his hand.

Jack and Deuce shook their heads. They never knew about this part of Ace’s life or history.

Ace looked over at his brothers. “Looks like we just doubled our team.”

Jack raised a brow at this statement. “Well, Pappy here has been filling us in on a past of yours that we never heard about.”

Ace smiled. “Little brother, you know how it is. What happens in the Sandbox—”

“—Stays buried in the Sandbox,” the 7 other men finished for him as they all chuckled or grinned.

“So what did I miss?” Ace looked over at Stone.

He sighed. “I was busy tellin’ them my life’s story and your part in it, Kid.”

Jack, King, and Deuce had to smile, as they had never heard anyone call their 6 foot 9, 350 pounder brother, ‘Kid.’

Deuce explained what Stone had been telling them, “Stone has told us how he came to meet you and what happened in the Special Forces.” He looked over at the older man. “He was saying how he gave up on the military basically. Some men can’t do that so easy, like they are born to be a Marine.”

Stone nodded. “I would be one of those I suppose. I’d worked my ass off to get where I was and it was the one thing in my life that made sense to me. But it was time to let it go. I’d lived through three fucking wars, starting with Desert Storm. Then there was Afghanistan, then finally the war on terror in Iraq. The last battle I fought was TARFU from the very beginning. All we were doing was a routine patrol. We’d been there before and everything had been quiet. Intel claimed no trouble in the area. As soon as we hit the outskirts of the town, enemy fire blasted us. We didn’t know where the fuck it was coming from or who the hell was shooting at us. Then I heard a lone shot and just before it hit, Dent, the last man who died under my command stepped in front of me and lost his life.” Stone shook his head. “At that point I was done. I’d given the Corp thirty years of my life and at that moment, I wanted nothing more than to walk away from it. I held that boy’s body in my arms and watched him bleed out. I made up my mind then…I would never watch another man die on my command, so I got out. I brought Dent’s body back and I got on my bike and just rode. I picked up these guys along the way and they’ve been with me ever since.” He motioned at the six men sitting in various parts of the room.

“Pappy, we’ve been together a long time now.” Reaper smiled.

Stone chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve been looking at your ugly mug for most the last fifteen years, Master Sergeant, one way or another.”

“Here’s to fifteen more years of watching you get older than dirt.” Reaper saluted him.

Stone gave him the finger and everyone in the room laughed.

Stone then looked around at the men gathered there. “About four years ago, Colonel Shay Montross contacted me. He asked me to come to Washington for a mission. I took these men with me and we met in secret with Montross and a few of his men.” He paused and ran his fingers through his white hair again.

“Who is Montross?” King asked.

Stone stared at him. “You must be the king in the deck?”

King nodded.

“Yeah…” Stone grinned at Ace. “They each wear those names well, I see. You couldn’t have nailed it better, Kid. But as to your question King, He is Shay Montross. Our Intel officer in Desert Storm. He wasn’t a Colonel back then but he was a damn fine Intel officer. He doubled checked everything before he passed it along to the troops and he made sure we weren’t headed into some hell before he let us go in. We came out alive because of him and every man jack of us knew he’d always have our backs. We worked together in some way shape or form for five years before he was promoted and left us. The day he did, we threw him a hell of a party.”

Reaper snorted rudely. “Yeah too bad, the asshole who came in to take his place wasn’t more like Shay.”

“What do you mean?” Ace asked with a frown.

“Like I said before, the man that replaced Shay as Intel was Carmine Vance. Now that man was absolutely useless in the Intel department. He couldn’t find his own asshole if it bit him in the ass. In fact, the last three missions he sent us out on got at least four of my men killed. I told the upper brass he was giving us bad Intel, but all they would say was they would look into it.” Stone shook his head. “That’s when my man Recon started hanging out near the Intel tent. He watched the messages coming and going and got informed as to what was going on. He saw Carmine ignore Intel that would have helped our guys stay alive. Carmine sent one unit out to secure a dumpsite and because he ignored a report from a local, he got six men killed. Not all the men were ours but that didn’t make a difference. I told the Commander about it and when he got all the facts, he stormed over to the Intel tent and reamed Carmine out. He demanded to know what was going on and Carmine lied right to his face. When Recon showed him the report, he’d thrown way earlier the Commander got pissed and demoted Carmine on the spot and sent him to a holding area under armed guard. Two days later, Carmine was sent back to the States under guard. He was supposed to face a court martial but instead, he ended up doing office work for Major Wright at the Pentagon and he even got a new name to go with it.”

Reaper let out a grunt of disgust.

“Should I guess at this new name?” Ace wanted to know.

Stone nodded his head. “We will fill you in on who Carmine is later. Anyway, getting back to our trip to Washington, Shay was now a Colonel and stateside, but he was still a Marine and as such he was given orders to secure things back here. He contacted me and several others he felt he could trust. Then gave us the orders to set up a network on our own home ground. With all the terrorist activity here at home, we needed a way to keep the violence they would bring here down. Using the contacts I’ve made over the years, I’ve been tasked with setting up a network of good honest people to watch out for domestic problems. President Lincoln himself said that the United States could never be brought down by another country but that we would be brought down from within our own borders. I believe that. Whether it’s within our own government or our borders, the result will be the same. I will do whatever I have to do to stop that from happening.”

“And that is why you are here now,” Ace concluded.

“Yeah, it is. I also have some Intel that is of a concern to you all as well. For one, this Oscar Chapman, the Gauntlet.”

Ace stared at him. “He’s dead.”

“Is he now?” Stone asked.

“Yes, he is Pappy,” Jade finally spoke. “Gabriele killed him.”

“Did you find his body?” Stone stared at Ace then Deuce and Jack.

“We found four bodies at the estate,” Ace replied. “But they still have as yet to be identified as the whole place nearly burned down to the ground. Why? What are you getting at?”

Stone let out a sigh. “I think you’d better break out a bottle…” He looked around at the men in the room. “Or three. Cause you ain’t gonna like what I gotta tell ya.”

Ace stepped closer and looked at Jade. “Did you see Gabriele kill Oscar Chapman?”

She shook her head. “I heard it, but I never saw it.”

“So you all don’t know for sure,” Dewey concluded.

“That fucker better be dead,” Jack growled.

They all looked over at him.

Stone then stared at Ace.

“He killed Eagle, Pappy. Our captain,” Ace told him. “Wiped out his whole family in one blow.”

Stone shook his head. “See, this is where I gotta tell ya something and you aren’t going to like it one bit…”

Ace, Jack and Deuce stared at him.

“…Eagle is alive.”

The three brothers stood still as if they were frozen for a full minute.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ace finally broke the tense silence.

Stone gazed down at his watch on his wrist. “I am not really authorized to tell you all of it. But in a few minutes, someone will be here to do just that.”

“The fuck?” Jack exclaimed. “You cannot just come in here and tell us something that fucked up and then refuse to prove it!”

Ace moved over to where Jack stood and placed his large hand onto his arm. “Bro, you need to calm down. We will get answers.”

Jack fought hard to do just that. He raised his gaze and found Jade staring at him.

She looked sympathetic and she gave him a nod.

He felt himself relax. He just couldn’t take all this surprise shit as well as he should have.

They all heard a rumbling noise.

Stone nodded. “Here comes the one person that can explain it all. Just keep in mind that everything that was done had to be done that way.

Jack and his brothers stared at him. Whenever they were told this by the brass, it always meant some bull shit they did not want to know about really.