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An excerpt from “The Steven McCartney Story, Part 9”:
For reasons that I cannot explain, I am not able to reveal the location of Steven McCartney. Too many lives hang in the balance. Even my recent visit to see him was a huge risk. Currently, Steven is doing important work in a place that is riddled with danger and war. Guns are everywhere—big, evil guns that are designed to kill many people at a time. Steven’s task is to stitch up the gaping wounds of war and conflict in this region. An impossible task, some would say. But Steven has never shirked this responsibility.
I have seen him throw himself in front of a thirteen-year-old boy being charged by a Jeep full of militia intent on mowing the boy down. The boy’s crime? He wrote a daring letter of complaint to the local police chief that corrupt local authorities were draining his and other families of their few pennies of income through extortion.
Steven found a safe hiding spot for that boy, his frail grandmother, and the five younger siblings that he single-handedly supports. Then Steven went to work on those local officials. In the dark of night, he boldly sneaked into the offices of those men, retrieving enough evidence of their extortion and other, more terrible crimes to convince even the UN War Crimes Tribunal. He played dirty. He had to. It’s a dirty world.
After days and nights of surveillance, he turned the tables on the militia. Using their own ammunition stores, he blew up their base of operation. They lost most of their vehicles and almost all of their big weapons that night. Some of the more superstitious of the militia were convinced that they were under attack by demons, because they could see no one out there in the darkness beyond their blazing camp.
Then he played the most cunning stroke of all. Flyers appeared throughout the community, notifying the local folk that their days of being terrorized were over. He inspired them with a message of empowerment and justice. The flyer was filled with insulting caricatures of the local authorities and their henchmen, many identified by name. The people found themselves laughing at the very men who had cowed them for years.
When the militia arrived in town, thirsty for revenge against their unknown attacker, they found themselves faced with an entire village of opposition. When they made their usual attempts to beat money out of victims, they rapidly found themselves outnumbered. The tables were turning. Power to the people, baby.
This is the sort of work that Steven loves the best. Restoring justice. Ending fear. Rebuilding what has been destroyed.
And he never sticks around to hear “Thank you”.
