As the lead Humvee pulled into the main town square and squeaked to a stop, Captain Mike DeMetrie hopped out and stretched. It had been a long overnight drive from the marshaling area on the coast. The convoy of Humvee's and open topped six wheeled trucks full of troops slowly ground to a halt. The townspeople that were out in the early morning stood in shock at the sight of armed troops hopping out of vehicles and starting to martial up.

"Sargent!" he called out. As the lean Sargent appeared he issued out several orders covering a number of topics. His first mission was to find the local Sheriff to update him and coordinate their activities. DeMetrie's group of a hundred and fifty or so men would be enforcing the curfew in both this town and the others throughout the county. DeMetrie had spent the night studying maps of the country and decided to marshal most of his forces in town since it was near the center of the county and then distribute forces as needed through the other smaller areas. Roving patrols would also be set up.

DeMetrie had joined the service out of high school because most the men in his family had done the same. He had served well in various places in the Middle East and had seen combat along the way. He was well liked by his troops and had been very effective in leading them. The decision to join the National Guard after rotating out of the regular army was easy because he genuinely liked serving his country. Besides, what was he going to do, sell insurance?

He really wasn't sure why they were doing on this mission. He had received his orders as the tensions built in the past few months and was mobilized shortly after the outbreak of the problems up North. All he knew was that he had to enforce a temporary marshal law in the county for the peoples safety. Something didn't really add up about the orders but he was a solider. He wasn't used to questioning orders.

****

Ketch and DeMetrie rubbed each other the wrong way from the get go. Ketch didn't like the intrusion into his turf and DeMetrie didn't like Ketch's arrogance. But they quickly worked through the details of how the operation would be run. DeMetrie was amused when Ketch tried to give him direction on how to arrange patrols. He made it clear he fully intended on doing things his way by utterly ignoring the advice.

"Captain" Ketch barked out, "you can set your men up in the high school as a base of operations.". He dispatched one of his deputies who left with one of DeMetrie's men to get into the school building and start setting up operations.

"Sheriff, how many contractors are working in the area?" DeMetrie asked. He despised the contractors he had met so far this past week. He knew plenty of good honest men who had taken up high paying jobs as contractors post military service. There were a lot of good ones out there, some of who had served by DeMetrie's side in the sandbox of Iraq. But lately he'd run into far more scum than honest men.

"Well Captain, as you know, our friends in the capitol have sent out quite a few to help augment local law enforcement" Ketch replied obviously not answering the question.

"So how many?" came the straight forward reply.

Ketch was fuming to be addressed in such a way by someone like this but he bit his tongue. "Right now there are about twenty working across the county. Most of them are attached to units with my men."

"Right, well then. Be sure they understand we are in the area, and will be operating with live weapons. I'm sure they won't mistake men in ACU's and helmets as curfew breakers but you need to remind them just in case" the Captain said with obvious disdain.

Ketch merely grunted in response.

As Captain DeMetrie spun and begin to walk out of the Sheriff's office Ketch threw out one last bit of information. "Captain, we are also in the middle of a manhunt for some fugitives wanted for murder"

DeMetrie didn't even turn back around, "get pictures to my Sargent's and they will distribute them. If we see anyone matching the description we'll pass along the information". With that he rounded the corner and left Ketch to glare at his coffee mug.

****

The men took several hours to cover the ground between their overnight campsite and town. They held up in some woods a mile outside of town and took up a protected position just at the top of a small wooded rise.

Webb volunteered to take the first watch so Miller and Dink padded down under some thick bushes and a felled tree. In the event of trouble they kept their AR15’s at the ready, loaded and ready for business.

As they drifted off Dink asked aloud to nobody in particular, “Did I get drunk, pass out and wake up in crazy town?”

****

Smythe strode into Sheriff Ketch’s office in the late afternoon. Ketch was having a particularly bad day as the phone was ringing off the hook and people kept stopping by trying to get more information about the martial law proclamation. He had been able to keep people calm by playing up how it was temporary and that Senator Donovan had to enact it all over the state to be fair to everyone. For whatever reason the mention of “fairness” seemed to make most people happy.

Still it was tiresome and didn’t address the real problems he was facing. The Miller situation was lingering and so far the day’s search had turned up nothing. More ominously nobody had called with information, which Ketch was counting on happening.

The other issue bothering him was word from Lumberton that some of the good-ole-boys in the area weren’t too happy about the martial law proclamation. Worse yet they were quick to say so. Ketch knew Donovan’s actions wouldn’t sit well with most folks and now he was going to have to clean up the mess. Worse yet, he’d have to work with Captain DeMetrie and that didn’t thrill him at all. For now he’d let DeMetrie worry about the martial law and mad redneck situation in Lumberton.

He considered walking over to the Diner for something to eat, and to get out of his office, when Smythe came around the corner. “Shit” Ketch thought to himself. The last thing he wanted to do was play mental sparing games with Smythe.