Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Better Judgment
Agent Will Dunbar: “I’m afraid it’s true, Danny. They are still taking Ms. Bell’s testimony, so I am not sure of the exact details, but the allegations appear to be of a sexual nature.”
Zachary Holden: “Oh, it’s just goddamn ‘allegations’ now. Just because your fair-haired boy was a Ranger once upon a time doesn’t make him [fornicating] innocent.”
Agent Dunbar turns in his chair and fixes Holden with a stern look.
Dunbar: “Allow me to make myself perfectly clear, Holden, because I am not sure you understand.
Yes, it is true that I consider your apparent vendetta against Chase Taylor unjustified and unprofessional. I may also have made remarks, in your presence, to the effect that Taylor’s record and every psychological evaluation on him suggest that he served his country well and loyally, but was shabbily rewarded by a cover-up and a culture of silence which prevented him from mounting an effective legal defence at his trial. That, in fact, as far as I could see, he was neither a criminal nor a murderer, but a man who had been illegally experimented upon by unscrupulous scientists, with the drugs he was given as a young soldier apparently causing the tragic side-effects that would eventually lead to him shooting Warren Otis in Decatur.
I also happen to truly believe in the American Constitution, our imperfect, but idealistic legal system, and its underlying principle of ‘Innocent until proven guilty’. I arrest suspects, Holden, not just the guilty. And I don’t set myself up as judge and jury. We have a system for that and what that man-made system occasionally gets wrong, I believe, I have to believe, that a just God will make it right in the hereafter.
None of that, Holden, means that I condone sexual assault. And it certainly doesn’t mean that I’m going to do any less than my best in trying to root it out. It doesn’t matter if the suspect is someone I considered unfairly maligned, whom I even admired. No one gets away with that on my watch. And no woman should have to suffer fear, anxiety or a hostile working environment in any unit where I have the authority to do something about it. So you can rest assured, Holden, that I am going to get to the bottom of what truly happened. And if Taylor has committed crimes of a sexual nature against Ms. Bell, I will see him tried, convicted and punished.”
Holden: “Tried? Really? You’re dumb enough to think anyone will authorise that?”
Dunbar: “I certainly hope that they will. If not, we will do as frontier societies did before formally integrated into the United States. We’ll set up our own courts of those who belong to our society, in their case by association, in our case by security clearance and need-to-know. We will rely on Common Law, the United States Constitution, equity and the Lord’s natural law. We may be forced to operate in the shadows, but that doesn’t mean we have to be unjust or arbitrary.”
Holden: “Jay-zus! Are you sure you’re not a [fornicating] lawyer?”
Dunbar shakes his head and turns again towards Danny O’Toole.
Dunbar: “I’m sure you understand, Danny, why we have to ask these questions. Ms. Bell, no matter what happened at New Year’s 2000, is a wronged woman. Her treatment, by men drawing their pay from the United States government, has been more outrageous, more immoral and more invidious, than any crimes she might have stood accused of at that time. Joint Task Force Onyx Rain is asking for her help and we have a sacred duty to ensure her safety and peace of mind while she is under our care. That means that there can be no suggestion of any improper behaviour by anyone who is to work with her. And any allegations of sexual misconduct will be swiftly and severely dealt with.”
Danny O’Toole: “I, uh, really didn’t notice anything like that. Yeah, sure, I mean, I noticed the mutual attraction, like I said, but she never seemed uneasy or uncomfortable around him in my presence.”
Dunbar: “That seems clear enough. Of course, you weren’t with them the entire night.”
O’Toole: “Nah. I can’t answer for what I didn’t see, you know? And I guess she seemed angry with him at the end there. Frankly, I imagined that he’d rebuffed her and she didn’t take it so well.”
Dunbar: “If you thought there was mutual attraction, why did you imagine that Taylor had rebuffed Ms. Bell?”
O’Toole: “I guess because of what happened to her here. I mean, it’s pretty clear she was sexually abused by men on the guard force. Probably many of them, for years. I suppose I thought Taylor felt she was all messed up about it and didn’t want to take advantage under the circumstances. I mean, he looks the sort. And the briefing materials say he used to be in love with her.”
Holden: “Oh, what absolute [fornicating] bull[excrement]! Mealy-mouthed [vulgar term for female genitalia] is just speculating!”
O’Toole: “Yah, I know. I don’t really know anything about it, like I said. I’m just trying to tell you what my impressions were. I know you got experts to do the psychoanalysing.
There was this one time I noticed that they must’ve been arguing, Taylor and Bell, when they were alone in a corridor one floor up from us for some time. Like I said, judging by what they looked like, the flirting she’d been doing and what I had read in the briefing materials, I thought she’d thrown himself at him and he’d rebuffed her. Maybe it was the other way around, I don’t know. She did look like she’d been crying.
But they still seemed to trust each other when it came to danger. I mean, she followed him like she’d [fornicating] trained with him in Special Forces, obeyed his commands promptly and when she was taking fire, she screamed for his help. There just wasn’t any reason for me to suspect anything. If I did, I would have done something.”
Dunbar: “I’m sure you would. Now, what can you tell us about your relationship with Sherilyn Bell?”
O’Toole: What? No! I didn’t… she never… there wasn’t anything like that!”
Dunbar: “Relax. No one is accusing you of anything. In fact, you’ve done well. You’ve earned her trust. She feels comfortable around you.”
Holden: “You apparently don’t [fornicating] intimidate her, either physically or sexually. Which doesn’t make any goddamn sense to me. All you Southie Micks beat your wives almost as much as you beat off your uncircumcised junk and every time you hear about white men committing gang rape on the goddamn arcade in a dirty local bar, you can bet your ass the perps were named something like Murphy, Connolly and Toole, nine times out of ten.
Guess she must just be stupid, which makes sense, her getting mixed up with [fornicating] Raul Vargas and now Chase Taylor, two prize [fornicating] [rectums]. Anyhow, you can thank whatever heathen, Pope-sucking saint you worship for that slutty Southern white trash [vulgar term for female genitalia] having an unerring instinct for [anuses] to put her trust in, because that’s the only [fornicating] reason anyone is even thinking about not burying you in a shallow mother[fornicating] grave, metaphorical or not.”
Dunbar: “Incredibly offensive stereotyping aside, I’m afraid Holden does have a point, Danny. The strongest argument for maintaining you as an operational agent of JTF Onyx Rain is your rapport with Sherilyn Bell. Obviously, we cannot and will not force her to associate with a man suspected of serious crimes against her person.
At the same time, we are conscious of the need to have someone she trusts in the team that’s sent with her to contact Vargas in Mexico. She’s asked specifically that you are assigned to her, as her personal security, handler or whatever else is necessary. No decision has been made on whether Ms. Bell is well enough to travel anywhere, of course. But if she does go to Mexico, would you be willing to go with her?”
O’Toole: “Yeah, sure. It’s my duty, isn’t it?”
Holden: “It’s a [fornicating] travesty, is what it is. But I guess that shows why you can have secrecy or you can have efficiency, but you can’t have both. We’re classified so high up that we can’t get enough good field agents fast enough to deal with all the [faeces] we’ve got to deal with, especially with this cluster[fornication] here. So there it [fornicating] is. Your only qualification as a field agent is the fact that you apparently didn’t try to rape our quote ‘intelligence asset’ unquote, and she doesn’t expect you to in the future. But I’m expected to [fornicating] sign off on you anyway, because we don’t have a couple of weeks to select and read in someone better and then convince that psycho bitch he’s goddamn trustworthy.”
O’Toole: “Look, I’m sorry you don’t like me, Mr. Holden, but I did my job. And I’ll do my goddamn job in Mexico too.”
Holden: “The [fornication] you will! But if we’re lucky, all you have to do is not rape anybody, fetch the psycho bitch ice cream enchiladas or whatever these spics eat and not screw up for the rest of the people who’ll actually do the job.”
Dunbar: “You’ll have an experienced agent with you and the military side of JTF Onyx Rain will provide intelligence support, an extraction team at the ready and all the C3I* we could ask for. And if there is anything that you believe would make Ms. Bell a more effective and more reliable intelligence asset, you ask and we’ll do the best we can to make it happen.”
O’Toole: “Well, I mean, she’s been through a lot, you know. If she trusts me, that’s good, but she can’t get the feeling that she’s still a prisoner. So we can’t have too many people around her and we can’t act like we don’t trust her. Even when we don’t. I don’t know, maybe it would help to have someone along who wasn’t an agent or soldier. Psychologist, maybe, but not someone she’d be afraid of, like the ones from here. Someone she can trust.”
*Command, control, communications and intelligence.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!
Last edited by Icelander; 02-06-2018 at 08:13 AM.
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