The MP's Tales Illustrated

As MPs, Patrick, the Captain, and Juliet, his Sergeant, at Fort Shafter, Oahu, Hawaii, pursue a seemingly routine weapons theft case, but find there is more to it, that there are much larger forces operating behind the scenes, both good and bad, their mysterious Colonel eventually initiating and guiding them into these worlds that are even deeper than those of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) and the CIA, and ever onwards towards the ultimate maneuverings, clashes of epic proportions, and even to the underpinnings of reality itself, all as revealed though the shadow empire that is in place to protect the world.

There is adventure, drama, romance, police work, mystery, joy, wisdom, interleaved, all at once, and even a grand insight at the end into how and why everything exists.

A drug case is the ultimate adventure of the movie, which draws the MPs into the mountains behind the fort, where there is also the Captain's secret mountain retreat.

Locales include Oahu, San Francisco, Texas, Tahiti, and Niihau.

Long ago, near the end of my Army term, I became the temporary Captain of an MP unit for three months. It was a rare MP combat unit that had returned from Vietnam/Cambodia. MP combat units guard convoys and other times forward installations. My new job mostly amounted to keeping track of them, their needs, and their pay, although there was an interesting incident which I may get to later. I deployed them around Fort Shafter and Schofield Barracks, as many thousands of troops were returning during the Paris Peace Accords. MPs were always needed. If the Army had only two troops, then one would have to be an MP. There was no Major, so I reported to the Colonel. I had an outside office, during the day and part of the evening, a four-posted open shelter with a thatched roof.

An MP has a lot of power. An MP can arrest a General, even inside the Pentagon. Of course, they'd better be right or have probable cause. Who, then, watches the guards, as one always wonders? Well, it's the Judge Advocate General's corps. And who watches them? No one, really, for they are an end unto themselves. The Uniform Code of Military Justice rules all. The MPs police the internals of the army, mostly, wherein there are even more problems than in civilian life, while the DIA focuses on externals, yet here I was, doing both, due to a shortage of MP Majors. My old friend, the CGUSAPAC–Commanding General USA/Pacific–was gone, having just retired, and so there was a new one. I would probably have to arrest him one day, on the last day of my term, which was another reason for my new assignment made by the former General, now retired in Tahiti.