Cobra and the delinquents 16 Sunday bonus

 

Chapter 16 Mopping up… Maybe.

 

I suspect if Tarquin had sent me here as my introduction to teaching, I would have seen the job through with grim determination, and fled.  I got a taste for teaching with my little class of misfits and math failures, and learned that most of them were no such thing, and most had failed math teachers. Here, however, I had to be alert all the time, even when I was asleep. I had cowed the upper class by having killed its more rabid elements, but I was not amused to be confronted by a dozen sixteen-year-olds with baseball bats.

“You take your own chances, you know, if you don’t drop the bats,” I said.

They did not drop the bats.

There is a move which is forbidden in gymnastics, because it is too dangerous, and killed a number of gymnasts before it was banned; it’s called the Thomas Salto, if anyone cares, and involves a tumbling run which concludes with landing on the shoulders to roll out. I applaud the banning of dangerous moves in competition, but I learned my gymnastics to be where I wasn’t expected to be, not to gain points.

I took two steps back, to the jeers of the little morons, which gave me room to move and take the two paces I needed to launch into a somersault which added further risk in that I landed the somersault in the face of the lead little moron, and pushed off that rather precarious perch into another tumble which took me right over the top of them and into that hellishly dangerous landing, tucking my head well in to land on my shoulders and roll, up onto my feet, and pivot. This gave me a free foot with momentum to kick the elbow of one of those near the back making his hand fly open so I could take possession of the baseball bat. I was going to have bruises from that landing.

One of them near the front – a girl – shouted, “After him! He’s getting away!”

She was not the only one surprised to turn and find me in the act of taking a second bat from another kid.

I set them both spinning.

I grinned.

Two of them fell back and fled.

Good; they had survival instincts.

Now, had they been a team, trained to work together, I would have been in serious trouble. But the Wolfpack regime emphasised the individual leader inserted into various places to control under the overall aegis of the Wolfpack. And so, they fought as individuals. Not like my kids, who can fight as individuals, or as a group, backing each other.

I aimed low with my whirling bats, to avoid too much lethal damage, but I was not going to go soft on them. A dozen armed assailants on one unarmed man does not argue that being nice to them is the answer. I had them down to seven armed, and two unarmed, as neither had thought to pick up the leader’s bat, and I rather think that my use of his face as a springoard had broken his neck.

With two bats, I could parry as well as attack, which meant I did not have to hurt them as much, or at least not cause permanent damage. I confess that once I identified those who were also leading, I deliberately targeted the kidneys both for intense pain and to make them piss themselves; but I was relatively gentle so as not to cause more than heavy bruising.

Security turned up, because one of those who fled begged them to stop sir killing everyone.

They watched as I mopped up and applauded gently.

“Put the little morons in the cells,” I said. “The one on his face surrendered; he can go about his business.” I considered. “Check if the one on his back is still alive; I may have accidentally broken his neck or back. If alive, he will need to be handled with care.”

He wasn’t alive.

Oh, well, we had boilers. And he had made his choices.

The parents of those trafficked had to live with the hell of their child disappearing from school; why should I care about the parents of one of the predators?

The rest? Well, they would vanish into the FBI’s jail as well as their parents.

The younger ones seemed to be more or less buckling down; Hammond’s current hero-status was helping that, and psychologists moved in smoothly to help them and the few older ones who were ready to escape the destiny mapped out by their parents.

I did ask one of the few girls, “What do you gain by being in the Bratpack?”

“I’ll be a wolf one day; I’m my father’s only heir.”

I shook my head.

“There are no female wolves,” I told her. “You’re due to marry a second son, who will be CEO of your father’s company and will take his place in the Wolfpack. I’ve seen the plans.”

Her language was unparliamentary; and she promptly squealed about everything she knew, because a whole lot of things she had been ignoring suddenly slipped into place. Briony Keller turned on the Wolfpack which was planning to betray her to the role they saw for women.

We started getting some of the trafficked kids back, as well; those willing to give the new management a chance, because they wanted the education.

And they were under the protection of my kids.

 

I’d like to say the term went smoothly.

It didn’t; but the hiccups were not too extreme. Several of the trafficked kids ganged up on single Bratpack kids, and that had to be nipped in the bud.

Some of these kids would be in therapy for years.

I opened a dojo and gave them the discipline I had been given which turned me around. It was all I could think of to do, dispensing the same common sense I had been given by my Sensei. They were older, but it was something to calm them and focus them. I dare say many of them hated me for being the representative of what had ripped open their comfortable lives.

Unfortunate, but that’s life. So long as they did not act on it, I could live with it.

Briony was working grimly towards claiming her birthright without a husband to make her decisions for her; and that had to be at least a better ambition than being a wolf.

 

I left the school to get on with it at the end of the term. One of the West Point teachers was appointed head, and I went back to Seattle with my kids.  We found a suitable school for Hammond, and the girls joined Olive and Hana with Auntie Fee. Ruth maintained contact with Briony.

For a summer babysitting five kids in trouble with the law, it had been a long haul, and I was looking forward to a bit of a rest whilst the Feds mopped things up.

And when Tarquin turned up unexpectedly for dinner, I gave him a suspicious look.

“No.” I said.

“I haven’t said a thing,” he said, mildly.

“No.” I said.

“But, you’re the only person who can do it,” said Tarquin.

“No,” I said.

“I need you.”

“I hate you, Tarquin.”

“We need to get one more key figure, and he’s the lieutenant general in charge of a secret military base, and we need someone capable of being military.”

“You want Troy.”

“General Plunkett is racist; won’t have native Americans anywhere near him,” said Tarquin. “Oh, come, Rick, you had noticed, had you not, that none of the wolves was black? Or Hispanic, or Chinese American or anything?”

“Damn, you’re right,” I said. “But the military have a whole different subculture; I’m not up on it.”

“Learn fast, Colonel Orren,” said Tarquin. “That’s your name. You’re exchanging places with the real Damian Orren, who is a cybersecurity expert. You can hack that, can’t you?”

“Probably,” I said, without enthusiasm. “I need to spend a month with a military unit to absorb the atmosphere and learn the little secrets and cultures which are second nature.”

“You have two weeks,” said Tarquin.  “Before the current research is done and Plunkett defects with it to China.”

“I thought he was a racist.”

“It’s amazing how a man’s scruples can be overcome by money,” said Tarquin, dryly. “The New Boer Republic didn’t offer him enough.”

I asked for a month, but I never expected more than two weeks; but don’t tell Tarquin that.

 

My new military colleagues knew I was a plant and they had instructions to pull me up on every small mistake.

I absorbed matters military. I arose with reveille. I drilled [which did me no harm; sitting around headmastering leads to a flabby behind and flabby thoughts] and I went through an intensive course under the real Damian Orren on the military way to do things.

It was interesting. I also noted, and did not tell Colonel Orren, that I could slip through his protocols like a knife through butter by cheating and not using precise military protocol; and that I would never have dared to try if I had not been learning the protocols now. It was all good information.

I could do the military way of walking; I’ve long practised different gaits. You can even make people swear you were taller or shorter if you walk in the right way.

And I pick up languages quickly; military speak is fairly straightforward, once you catch the nuances and in-jokes.

The military love their acronyms. There are acronyms for everything.  I mean, stupidly mundane things like someone asking, ‘TOFN?’ and replying, ‘No, GFAD.’ Or in English, ‘Time out for nicotine?’ ‘No, going for a dump.’

Damian was a decent sort of bloke, actually, scandalised in a way that someone was going to be wearing his face and name to actually kill someone – in cold blood and face to face; he had no problem with pushing a button to obliterate hundreds of faceless enemies – but he was determined that if I was going to wear his face and name, I should do it with honour and efficiency. I did actually learn a lot about surveillance on and through the net. More on, than through, as Willow was already pretty au fait with surveillance through the net, and I wasn’t a slouch myself.  But I learned a great deal about something Damian called ‘Frames;’ which emulated other personae.  In effect, one built a frame around one to do the same sort of job my nanotractors and follicolour^TM did, for the disguising of my person.

The facility to which I would be going had its own  internal net, and any internet searches in the general net had to use the one and only machine attached to the world wide web, and that was not attached to anything else in the facility, and indeed, was in a room lined with dampers and one landline out to a mast, so nobody could link one of the facility computers to it. There were dedicated staff to man it, and the scientists within submitted their searches to the staff, rather than using it themselves.  It was all very paranoid, but as they were developing a new kind of rocket technology so that the Mars Colony could be reached more quickly.

Damian gulped when I came to take my leave of him, wearing his face, his fingerprints, and his mannerisms.

“This is uncanny,” he said.

“Look on me as the picture of Dorian Grey,” I said, facetiously.

“Knowing you, that’s a literary reference,”  he said.

“Spot on,” I told him.

 

So, there I was, in an army car with flags on it, with an army driver, heading for darkest California, where I would disappear into a cave with no external contact. Damn, I’ve gotten soft, having Willow as backup.

Well, I’d operated alone before. I could do this.

 

cobra and the delinquents 15

 

Chapter 15 Nietzsche Teacher

 

 I had instituted a general studies class to get to know the kids in each year, so I had all of them in a double class at some point on Friday.

And Peter Coulter, who had not chosen to attack my family, asked for a discussion on Nietzsche and his theories on man and superman.

“An excellent study,” I said. “Now of course we have to take into context the social situation in which Nietzsche grew up.  It was a period following scientific enlightenment and a separation of church and state; and though not necessarily a fan of Christianity, he recognised that without its firm basis in the morality and upbringing of everyone, when, as he said, ‘God is dead’ then nobody follows a firm moral code based on a belief in God, a striving to attain a better afterlife, and that many people were left adrift.”

“Oh!” said Peter. “Is that what he meant?”

“Yes, and it is well documented in any discussion on Nietzsche which studies him seriously without taking his comments out of context,” I said. “Man, in his view, killed God, and could not get His blood of their hands.  However, he believed that it was possible for mankind to individually seek and find a moral compass, and do what was right from a sense of enlightened self-interest, hence lifting himself to a state of being superman, one who has a stronger sense of self-worth through striving to do what was right, not what was easy.” I went on, “He had a few muddled concepts because of the rather muddled period concepts of what was ‘sin,’ and therefore a rejection of sin being bad was more a rejection of the period morays.  One of his strongest philosophies is that weakness and strength in oneself should be studied, and accepted as a part of the whole, as weaknesses need not necessarily be bad, if approached from a way to turn them into strength.”

“I don’t understand,” said Peter. “If you are weak, how can you turn that into strength?”

“Well, Peter, I believe that you have a poor achievement level in math,” I said.  “Your studying of that weakness could perhaps take you to discover where you started to fail, and ask for help with some fundamental underlying point which you did not understand, which might lead you to succeed.  The weakness of someone else might be, say, someone who has been paralysed from the waist down.  But that does not stop their brain from working, or their hands making wonderful things. Where did you start failing at math?”

He flushed.

“Algebra,” he said. “I don’t understand how you can use letters.”

“Well, let us address that,” I said.  “Suppose you have a job at the weekends, where you set up to wash cars.  You charge ten dollars per car you wash.  Now, one week, you have thirty-five customers; you make three hundred and fifty dollars, right?”

“Right,” he said.

“Next weekend, you only have twenty customers.  The weekend after, you have fifty.  You see that the number of customers can vary?”

“Yes,” he said.

“So, your income is ten dollars times n customers,” I said. “Only it gets more complex; you need to spend a dollar every ten cars for soap and so on; so your income is ten times n, minus n over ten.”

“Oh!” he said, enlightenment coming over his face.

I love seeing that happen.

“And that is a step on your personal road to bettering yourself; which is, essentially, what Nietzsche meant,” I said. “A discovery of the spark within yourself to lift yourself away from the nihilistic concept ‘I cannot do this,’ which was dragging you down.”

“So, it’s not about being stronger, quicker, faster, and smarter than other people?” said Peter.

“No; it’s about being the best that you can be, including morally,” I told him. “It’s not to do with being somehow ‘better’ than others, because how do you quantify that? Because if you quantify it as being able to beat someone up, any grizzly bear is by far your superior, being faster, stronger, better at climbing and more vicious than any human. And without having to gang up either. If it’s cleverer, well, there are many examples of the genius who were not mentally very stable and who are often miserable people for knowing everything and understanding nothing.”

“What do you mean? Sir?” asked another boy. “If they know everything, they must understand it.”

“Not so,” I said. “Do you have any friends?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And you understand that to have a friend, you first have to be a friend and give loyalty as well as expecting it?”

He frowned.

“I have friends because I am rich and people want to do me favours.”

“You poor child,” I said. “You don’t have friends then; you have sycophants.”

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

“The difference is, if you have a true friend, if you lost all your money – which you might do if your father is one of the Wolfpack – a true friend would help you out, give you a place to stay, help you find your feet to become independent. Not just give you things but help you to be in a position to work towards making yourself able to cope. Friends are there for you when things go to shit in short order. And no, I’m not going to make nice and cut my language down; you’re all near adults and I’m going to do you the courtesy of treating you as adults unless you do anything to make me reverse that decision.  I had to treat as adults the idiots who decided to attack my wife and son, and brought firearms to the party.”

“What… what happened to them, sir?” asked Peter.

“I killed them,” I said. “When gunmen threaten my family, I don’t mess about. You’ve been taught that might makes right, which may be a load of bullshit but it ought to resonate with you that my wife and I were mightier. Our son has yet to master the art of walking; he has yet to join me on the dojo.”

There were a few nervous titters.

Peter was staring.

“But… but you can’t…”

“I could, and I did,” I said. “Attack me and mine with fists and I’ll put you down. Attack me and mine with deadly force, and I play for keeps. Home invasion with a deadly weapon; my rights under the fourth amendment.”

“We’re taught that nobody has the right to fight back against Wolfpack because we are supermen, and therefore superior,” said the boy without friends.  William, I think his name was.

“William, if you were superior, for one thing, you wouldn’t lose; and for another, you wouldn’t feel a need to intimidate people to try to overcome your cowardice in eight or ten boys attacking a little girl,” I said. “I’m harder, faster, and smarter than any of you, but I’m also not stupid enough to think I am any kind of superman, save in the way we all can be, by striving towards being the best that we can be. The Wolfpack and the Bratpack are nothing more than spoilt, entitled, overgrown toddlers who want to be given respect without earning it, and want to be on top, without climbing to get it, and demand attention for the sort of behaviour normally grown out of by kindergarten. The whole organisation is based on the premise that you can cheat your way to the top, and you know what? That premise cheats you, the lot of you.”

“How, sir?” asked Peter.

“By leaving you to believe that you are leaders without having to work for it,” I said. “And without knowing what you are doing, the moment any of you tries to lead, things will go pear shaped,” I had a sudden revelation. “There have been, what, three? Four? Generations of Wolfpack and yet, though all are no more than successful individual through family money. There are three congresscritters, who are the exception, not the rule.  What sorts the leader from the masses is the man who sees what needs to be done in a crisis and says, ‘Come on, we need to do this and this,’ and delegates tasks which get done. Do you know how many people in a population are leaders?” They all shook their heads. “One in twenty,” I said. “It’s a fairly exact number, and has been known for many centuries.  If you remove all the leaders, after a while, there may be one who develops leadership abilities in every twenty left.”

“How do you learn to be a leader?” asked Peter.

“Generally, it’s born in,” I said. “But a degree of training can enhance latent abilities. This is what is done in officer training in the military; because one can learn to observe what has to be done, and to choose the best person for the job. But in a crisis? Those who can, will step up.”

“Haven’t we been bred for it?” asked Peter.

“Funny thing is, you can’t,” I told him. “It pops up where It may and where it is needed. If you could breed for it, do you think we would be a Republic?  If leadership could be bred in, then the monarchies of the past would prevail and produce wonderful leaders from those few who were natural born leaders. Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Frederick the Great, though good luck breeding from him, he was gay, Napoleon Bonaparte and others. They would all breed leaders, and we would never have felt a need to fight for independence from Britain, because George III, who was apparently a decent king when not ill, would have been capable of making sure we did not feel slighted. Breeding does not produce abstracts like leadership. Nor, in general, does it make for exceptional abilities. Nature likes a norm.  Let’s go back to Frederick the Great, who wanted a bodyguard of really tall men. He picked men who already had really tall wives, and guess what? Most of them had children of average height.  Now, if he had continued that over several generations, the height of those members of that population would probably have started to become progressively taller. But it was a small population, so what else would happen?”

A girl put up her hand.

“Name?” I asked.

“Jenna,” she said. “You would have started to get birth defects.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Right; I’m not going to set you much homework, but I want each of you to consider three strengths you have, and write down how you could make them even stronger; and three weaknesses, and how you can overcome them, or channel them to improve yourself.”

“Please, sir,” said Jenna, “How do we channel weaknesses?”

“Well, let us suppose you cry like a baby over emotional tridfilms,” I said. “You could resolve to take that into trying to be more empathic about people in real life.”

“What are your weaknesses, sir?” asked Peter, greatly daring.

“I cry like a baby over emotional tridfilms; I hate killing women and nominal children; and I’m a sucker for an underdog fragged by The System,” I said. “They are also some of my strengths. It makes me think twice about whether I need to kill someone; and I care enough to fight the system and do what I can to improve it. That includes things like taking down the Wolfpack.”

“On your own?” asked Peter, incredulously.

“I have friends, who are real friends,” I said. “And we will succeed, because it’s rotten through and through. And unfair to those of you born into it for stultifying your growth in so many ways.”

I left them thinking. Which is about all one can do. Peter was actually clever enough, maybe, to break away. We’d have to watch all the children of the Wolfpack for the rest of their lives.  Because they had been indoctrinated.

And indoctrination in childhood was pretty insidious.

This was why we had child psychologists on the staff as well, one of whom was teaching English in order to observe and analyse from carefully chosen composition titles, and a colleague currently the school nurse.  Once we had settled down, and the kids had seen that the regime change was permanent, absolute, and enforced, we could see about scheduling them for psychiatric assessment time.

And hopefully therapy to escape the cycle of training.

And no, I don’t hold out much hope that it’s going to be a bed of roses, or that many will change their bullying ways, but we have to try for the few who can recognise all that has been done to them. Most, I suspect, will be pretty hard, but capable of running a family business. However, if allowed to go back to it, they will only bring up their own children the same, so that could not be permitted. Not to have to go through all this again. I feared we should have to have them institutionalised in a comfortable, but isolated, cell.

Does that sound unduly pessimistic? Perhaps it is, but there’s only so much of a well-brainwashed belief structure that can be stripped away. Those whose fathers took no interest in them until they were somewhere near puberty had a better chance of being broken from the mould. This had to stop and if it took locking up a bunch of teenagers to stop them growing into monsters – or rather, to stop them acting on having grown into monsters – than it was a necessary measure.

It wouldn’t trouble the Feds, I did not suppose, for a minute. It troubled me.

 

But it would not stop me doing what I had to do.

 

Hammond, meanwhile, had bragging rights in his class.

He had driven with Kyle Evans, and worked on the man’s personal vehicle. This brought him into being a class hero, even with those of the Bratpack who had been trying to make him join the previous year. Kyle had been happy to oblige. He was doing a little freelance pro bono work for the government, handling the congresscritters who were a part of the Wolfpack. He learned a lot about the organisation from Hammond, and like me, Kyle has his ethics and his standards. And a culture which thinks that it is fine to take kids as experimental subjects crosses a line. I think he may have spoken to Troy as well; but so long as the top echelon died, I wasn’t caring much who did it.

I was trying to save those who had a chance to live.