The money for Nguyen and Kingsley had to be retrieved from the paymaster at the Air Force Base, and I knew I was the only one who could present himself in person to claim it. The system, all military and civil governmental systems, were peculiarly protective of cash and its distribution. Quincy would be at my office in minutes, and I needed a little time to explain to that strangely unintroduced man that he was working for me, not the Agency or anyone or anything else. He was not going to get a Christmas tree with my wife and me, although I believed that the mention of that was only humorously offered. If we were going to have satellite offices or ‘collection points’, then he could certainly have that job. Christmas was beckoning, and I’d put off preparing for it too long. I had a wife and I had children who were the apple of my eye, not the Agency. In a way, the CIA was a lot like the Marine Corps and their sometimes stated belief that if the corps wanted you to have a wife, they’d have issued you one. I didn’t buy that.
I went out to inform Nguyen and Kingsley of the plan and also to prepare them for the arrival of Quincy, who seemed a bit arrogant, overbearing, and intrusive. His visit to my home had been uncalled for, but I also understood the subtle pressure the Agency was putting on me. I had become the UFO guy because of the artifact. I’d also become the nuclear guy because of the successful bomb mission. The only way I knew it to be a success, however, was that Waikiki was still there. After going to meet with Nguyen and Kingsley, who were both overjoyed that their families would have Christmas money and their time at all, I went back inside and called my wife.
One half hour, or less, delay and I’d be there to pick her and the kids up. Walt, the man who’d shown up only days after we’d moved into the place on Magnolia, had a spread behind Sandia Mountain.
“We’ll see,” was Mary’s laconic reply. She stayed on the line but said nothing, as she knew that I didn’t much appreciate Herbert’s habit of hanging up when he was done without even saying goodbye. That I was becoming like Tony in doing that to others didn’t make me feel good about myself, but I knew why he did it. It wasn’t for dramatic presentation or domination. It was because he was pushed to the edge with three or more vital personages on hold, waiting for him to come back to them. Regular people, even my wife who lived with a personage who was anything but regular, didn’t sometimes get it that there were vital things that they had to take precedence over everything else. Sometimes, other sources or calls had to be ignored to do that, although that could be a veritable and even real nightmare.
I left with Nguyen and Kingsley, deciding not to wait for Quincy. He was going to work for me. He could wait. Not the other way around. Kingsley drove the Rover simply because it was better if he did. My cutting of corners was sometimes unsafe, I knew, particularly when driving. It was fun and exhilarating, but people could be hurt or die. When I was alone, it was different.
The money was waiting, the warrant officer protecting the canvas bag, not concerned but careful, as the distribution had to be outside the norm for his distribution. He looked at me before handing over the bag.
“So, you’re him, that guy,” he said, his tone not complimentary.
“Actually, warrant officer, it is me, and I’m a full-blown commissioned officer and your superior in rank and position, so you want to rephrase that?
“Ah, I don’t know, sir,” the warrant said. I looked at his name tag. His last name was Ohio, which seemed strange.
“Thanks, Warrant Officer Ohio. I won’t forget your kindness,” I said, taking the bag, having signed for nothing and produced no identification at all.
I delivered the bag to Nguyen and Kingsley, not bothering to open or count it. That the money would not be the right amount, damaged, or anything else was so unlikely as to allow me not to waste my time counting or confirming.
I raced home in the Rover, leaving Nguyen and Kingsley to find their way to the airport and get on civilian air flights to get home. We had not had to say any departing words. Our looks at one another were all the communication we needed.
There was no Christmas tree farm for us, and I’d long ago accepted the evident fact that Christmas trees sold at lots and ‘farms’ were old or in bad health. Walt was a class act, and I knew it. We drove to his place and went in to see him. Walt, with his wife, took us out to the back lot and showed us the tree he’d picked out.
“You picked out a tree for us?” I asked, shocked more than lightly surprised.
“I wouldn’t think of it,” he replied with a laugh. “I know you, and I understand that you’re not regular people. I just cut and set aside a tree I can sell in an instant if you don’t want it.” He moved to where the tree stood, stacked against a wooden wall of an old shed. I looked at the tree. It was the tree, of course. How could the man know the size and everything else necessary to fit the tree into our lives?
Somehow, he’d measured the main living room of the house and come back with a number just under twelve feet, but I only learned that after we arrived out at his place to pick up a tree, which we did, but he wouldn’t let us strap to the top of the Rover.
“You’ll ruin the shape and break branches,” he said. “That’s a Noble Pine, and that means it’s special and expensive. I’ll deliver it for free just to preserve what it is.”
“How much is the tree?” Mary wanted to know.
The tree would come to our home in hours as I drove Mary and the kids back to the house. We’d spent almost no time at all in the selection process, so I headed down to the office, hoping to encounter Herbert, the new Quincy player, and, of course, Marcinko. When I arrived, I went into the office only to discover that the three men were not there, Pat informing me that they’d gone to the other side of the building to visit Allen Weh. Instead of rushing over, I went into my office and shut the door. I didn’t want to deal with any of them, except for meeting Quincy to take his measure and see if it would be possible to work with him and trust him, as well as finding out the truth of his affiliation and origin. I sat in my comfortable office chair and lay my head back against the cushion. I was beaten to death. I closed my eyes. When the men were done with Weh, I knew they’d be back over to see me. There was no missing the fact that my white Rover was in the lot outside. Marcinko’s car was nearby, along with a White Land Cruiser likely belonging to Quincy. I nodded off and fell straight into a dream. I was back inside the monster cargo plane by myself.
It was like I was two beings, except both the same guy, me looking down on me as the other me paced up and down the cargo bay, musing to himself about the governmental expenses made available for agents like me. There seemed to be no connection at all between the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars for jet fuel, supplying the energy forces necessary to lift the giant aircraft he was aboard into the air. There was no mission he knew of. Where was the money coming from to pay for the transport of one seemingly unimportant man, being flown from one U.S. airport to another? A C-5A Galaxy aircraft was one and a half times the size of a 747. Mack had told him that the things consumed about four thousand dollars’ worth of gas an hour. His last fill-up of the Range Rover was made with a purchase of .99 cents a gallon of gasoline. Aboard, as the only passenger or ‘freight,’ was him. First-class airfare cost was a joke when being entwined inside the governmental travel complex. He, the freight, or ‘it’ the freight hauler, flew on into the invisible unknown, inside an airplane with the capacity to move and lift half a million pounds, was transporting only 158 pounds of living human material. Him.
If I could have shouted out into either the cavernous space around me or into the air outside my enclosed aluminum chamber, it would have been, “What in hell are you people doing? I’m nobody going nowhere.” Maybe someone else might have felt like a chessboard, being moved about without having much of a clue as to what piece I was or my importance in a game I didn’t understand. There was no one to shout out to. My earphones pleasantly buzzed. No MUZAC or any of that. Nobody to communicate with. I was trapped in a giant moving coffin of my design, but not my own making.
What was he becoming, despite what he was supposed to become? He was deliberately untrained and therefore a truly ‘clean slate’ for whoever wanted him to do. He knew that he didn’t know enough to say no to his mostly unknown and unmet judges and leaders
I came awake, the strange dream abruptly cut off when the office door opened. I blinked my eyes and shook my head slightly, trying to come back to a reality that I knew I needed a break from.
A strange man stood in the doorway, shorter than I imagined, as I knew he had to be Quincy. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He wore an expensive suit and looked ten times more like an insurance agent than I did. I stood up as he crossed to stand in front of my desk. We shook hands. I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back, disengaging from our clasp and taking a seat in one of the straight-backed chairs.
“I’m Quincy,” he said, his nasal tone vaguely disturbing as he reminded me totally of Peter Lorrie who always entertained me in playing an assortment of horror movie roles. I didn’t like it. I also didn’t want the feeling as I had no evidence at all to allow me to honestly make such a serious judgment.
“I have questions,” I began, but he held up his right hand. I slid back into my chair, realizing that there was little likelihood I would ever be able to assume command and control of such a strange character, much less want to make the attempt.
“Mr. Herbert indicated that you and I must make a short drive to a desert location outside of town to recover the first bit of material that should become our responsibility in this new endeavor. After that, we can proceed to find your wife a Christmas tree. We’ll take my Toyota and we’ll be able to talk along the way as it’s about a half an hour drive to the northwest of Albuquerque’s city limits.”
“Rough country out there,” I said, as we both rose to our feet. I had the time but not much inclination to begin our relationship or the new addition of offices for UFO research and collections in such a way.
The drive was as he’d described. Our talking was limited as he was about the most evasive man I’d ever encountered. He was Agency but he wasn’t. He was educated, but he wasn’t. He lived nearby, but not so much. Once outside the city limits, he turned the Cruiser off the freeway, drove through a nearly invisible break in the freeway fence, and we began a very rough ride into and through the desert bracken that covered the earth around us. Other than understanding our general directio,n I quickly became lost. The mountains were hidden behind closer hills and arroyo embankments. After a half hour of discomfort and wanting to tell the man that we had a perfectly good real off-road vehicle at our disposal I decided I could only wait to see what the man wanted me to see.
We came upon a clearing where Quincy stopped the vehicle. I stepped out immediately to recover myself and consider what we might be doing out in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing in the clearing.
“Over there, behind that set of pinon tree bushes,” Quincy said, pointing with his right index finger toward a wooded clump about thirty yards across the clearing.
I shrugged and began to make my way over to where he’d pointed. When I got to the clump, I leaned down to see what I could find, grabbing the thickest of the branches protruding outward and curving every which way. The thickish branch broke explosively in my hand as, at the same time, I heard the Cruiser drive away. I went to my knees and then fell prone on the ground, no matter how rough it was. My hand hurt, although it didn’t seem too damaged as I lay there no longer thinking about the Land Cruiser or Quincy. The branch had broken because it had been struck by something very powerful, and that could only mean a bullet. My leaning down to examine the spot had saved my life.
I moved across the ground, the desert floor not like something from the movies, not smooth deep sand, hot on the surface but cool just underneath. I moved over roughage, small rocks, agonizingly painful plant life of unknown origin or result. I’d been targeted. I knew that because I was still alive enough to know such a thing and understand that the bullets fired had been fired at me, not as any warning but as terminal messengers.
The bullet’s impact was again silent, or almost silent, the rifle firing too far away for the sound of its explosive release at the muzzle, or even the supersonic shock wave of the bullet’s initial travel, impacting enough on my eardrums to create sound. The impact of the rounds, however, was there. A cracking snap as the bullets gave all their energy up to the desert floor debris. No dust or dirt was flying from the impacts, not like the ‘beaten zone’ created by fully automatic fire discharged from a great distance. This was studied professional stuff but lacking the necessary meteorological data to allow for truly long-distance sniping.’
My short jerky moves, this way and that, were fully observable from a long distance, I knew. The problem the shooter had, other than the hugely high arc of his bullets travelling such a long distance, was not just windage. It was time. Since I couldn’t hear the gun’s discharge, I knew it had to be located almost a mile, maybe a bit less, away. The bullet, even if driven from the barrel of a Weatherby thirty caliber loaded into a .375 magnum cartridge for extreme velocity, the most powerful long-range rifle round ever made, had to cover its distance to where I was in about two seconds. Not long but long enough for me to jerk and move again. I had little doubt that the shooter was comfortable, probably shooting from a solid sand-bagged prone position with plenty of cooling water spray, liquids, and sunshade. The bullets were too regular and adjusted to be anything but those fired from a practiced professional’s weapon.
I moved again. A bullet came into impact only inches away. I kept going. I was as one with the earth, my chest buried as deep into the awful desert floor as I could make it. Without denying me the ability to keep going. Range was my friend. I needed more distance. The further I moved away from the weapon’s discharge, the less accurate the impact of its rounds. The shooter was a sniper. Not a hunter. Not a warrior of the contact kind. He or she would not be moving to catch up with me. That isn’t what snipers did or do, that I knew of. They simply adjusted for increased range, and when adjusting for that became beyond the weapon’s ability to reach out, they packed up and went home to snipe another day. There was no Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or even George Clooney creatures of Hollywood mythos types in the real world…who pursued the target endlessly until the mission was accomplished.
I did not know the enemy. Did the enemy know me? I didn’t have that data either. Grit, painful pointy sand, mulched plant matter, and the baking sun were my desert friends. He or she had water. I had none but water for comfort wasn’t in my game plan. Moving again, I noted the loss if impact sounds from dishcharged rifle fire from the incredible distance. That I’d survived the sniper’s first shot was a wonderful bit of good fortune, and now I’d possibly been able to extend myself outside of the sniper’s comfort zone.
I stopped moving entirely. I became an unwatered desert shrub as I lay in thanksgiving. The sniper had nothing to shoot at because I’d disappeared from his scope and reach in life. I simply lay where I was, one with the cool sandy mass of desert surface, like the mass of the jungle floor in the A Shau Valley. Breath. Breathe again. Still breathing. And now think, finally, thinking.
Somewhere, maybe a mile or more in the distance behind me, there was someone who was assigned a role to take me out. That man, whom I could only presume to be a man, was packing it in to call it a day, more than likely. He’d done his best. It had only been days since I’d been the sniper in his position, a position even worse than his position on the island of Mallorca, and here I was now the subject or target of a long-distance terminal action, a whole lot closer to where I lived and my family lived. With my face in the grit, I breathed the dust in and out, pressing my lungs to do some sort of job in keeping me alive by giving me enough poisonous, rotten air, in and out, to survive.
The sniper appeared done, but I was not afraid, and I was not done. Terror had once again overcome me at the instant of surviving the first shot. But, just as in the valley, time had come to allow the forging of a living callous, hard enough and thick enough to absorb the blows, the hits, the wounds, and then turn. I pulled and then turned. I was not going back. There was no back. There was only my future and the future of my family in front of me. I dug deep inside myself as I worked to recover. Nguyen. Kingsley. Gunny. Zippo. Stevens. The living and dead, all alive inside me.
I stayed low, making no attempt to be seen or noticed, even in the huge expanse of the New Mexico desert south and west of Albuquerque, but I was gently able to ever so slowly ease my way toward the only sign of civilization I could see. A series of telephone poles stretched across my horizon. The only horizon I could see was because the sun was too bright to look directly at. I crab crawled toward the road where the poles had to be erected next to. I was perpendicular to the road. Upon reaching the road, I would have to pick a direction. The greatest news was that the New Mexico desert was in winter. It wasn’t burning hot, and yet no snow had fallen, or ice formed, to be impediments to my progress toward survival.
My thoughts went to Quincy and what part he had in what was happening, and what about Herbert. Doctor Bethe was out. The scientist was simply not built to be a player, but somebody was, and why was I targeted at all? What was the stressor that was leading to such a violent, dangerous result? Why had the shooter not fired one shot and then left? A pro would rarely fire a series of shots because of what might be coming for him when whatever results of his attempt would almost certainly bring a terminal reaction.
James,
these chapters you serve up to us cause a lot of wheels to turn in the brains of us readers. Yes, so many questions. They say cats have 9 lives, and I think you apparently have way more lives than a cat. Why did they want to talk to Weh? Why did you trust this guy Quincy in the first place? Who, other than Quincy knew you would be exiting a vehicle in the middle of nowhere at that particular moment? Quincy driving off just as the first shot was fired and leaving you without a way out? Does not sound like a team player. Could the shots have been fired by a guard who was there to secure “whatever” and scare off anyone who ventured close to it, and Quincy neglected to tell him he was bringing you there? Doubtful, since the shots were fired from a mile or more away–but a remote possibility. I am really grasping as to who and why is behind this attempt on your life. I really do NOT think your wife had had her FILL of you and your antics and was trying to collect on YOUR life insurance policy. When you catch up with Quincy, he deserves a serious nut-kicking and ass-whooping. I am antsy waiting for new chapters to clarify all the mass of mystery you laid on us in this chapter. I have never been shot at, but decades ago on three separate occasions have had long guns leveled at me at very close range in unpleasant circumstances. Ran away the first time (in college), 2nd time was when wife and I victims of an armed robbery by 3 guys in middle of night in our hotel room in Bahamas on last night of our honeymoon (and talked my way into having no physical harm to either of us), and the third time talked my way out of trouble with inebriated guy with a rifle who wanted to rob me of the $700 I had in my hand. Wishing you well, Sir.
THE WALTER DUKE. I can’t answer all those questions that have to be answered in the continued writing of the story. Love reading what you wrote here and your perception is amazing as well as the inclusion of the vignettes about your own encounters with potential violence or death. I presume that you are as gifted as a talker as you are a writer!
Semper fi,
Great friend,
Jim
What made you think of a .375 Weatherby Magnum ? Given the time frame the ammunition for that caliber went out of production by Norma in 1960 and didn’t resume production until 2001 , so it was either a handloading proposition or custom loads . I can think of many hot magnum loads available at the time from the .264 Winchester Magnum through the.300 Weatherby Magnum and various non magnums that were just as hot . If it were me doing the “ hunting “ in that situation, I’d have been using one of the 7mmMagnums or one of the 300 Magnums . Now we get down to dealing with the rat Quincy . He set you up of that there is no doubt , but are you going to get the okay from Tony first ? I think that this is a side job for Ben and Nguyen. Nice and clean.
The Weatherby 30 375 is not a 375 Magnum in that only the brass case for the cartridge is used because it holds so much powder. The front of the brass is necked down to 30 caliber and much lighter bullets are used compared to the old .375 Magnum. This rifle is the most powerful 30 caliber in the world and is an excellent sniper rifle except for its high cost (about five grand now). Sniping is a very challenging ballistic exercise requiring plenty of knowledge and other equipment that simply the rifle, however.
Interesting comment Chuck, and thank you.
Semper fi,
Jim
It just gets better stronger. Keep it going.
Thanks ever so much for the attaboy…from the master that you were and remain in my life.
Semper fi, great friend,
Jim
Jim,
WO Ohio’s remark was unprofessional. His comment after learning he was addressing an officer even more so. His comment of “Oh, you’re that guy” brought up some questions: Just what did he specifically mean by “that guy”? Who did he get the information from that there was a “that guy” and more specifically, what defined “that guy”? I don’t know, but I don’t think his ‘position’ in the Paymasters office required little more than handing out money, keeping track of the actions and following orders. In this case, he already knew ‘something’ about “that guy”. For me, depending on the level of my charitable mood of taking someone’s s__t at the time, I may have responded, umm, a little less diplomatically. Just sayin’.
The last time you bent down, the Don’s son missed your head with the bat. This time, it was a bullet – With Quincy driving away. Too many questions. But it seems for now, concerns with just survival cancels everything else out. It also seems to me that the ‘LT’ is exploding from wherever you are able to restrain him, though I think he’ll be unfettered until this incident is completely resolved.
And why was “truly long-distance sniping” required, with all of it’s risks, when Quincy could have easily taken you out? I’m sure that all ‘involved’ in this will rue the day when they decided to take the ‘Quincy option’ off the table.
Knowing nothing about ‘snipers/sniping’, besides what I learned via “Get Smart” and tank ranges, I’ll now expound upon my experienced opinion. I would think the sniper would have been a bit frustrated for missing their first shot on a totally exposed and unexpecting target. (At least that’s how I felt when having to fire a second round down range.) The continuing misses would have just increased that frustration. (Happened once on the night range, missing even firing from ‘my position’ before realizing some tree branches were blocking my range finder. Moving forward eliminated that issue along with the target. More frustrated was realizing the ‘enemy’ would not have missed that many times, killing my crew and tank. But we all learned something that night, including that advanced technology, while nice to have along with being just one more thing that could break and turn me into an ‘out in the open’ pillbox, alone would not automatically guarantee a successful mission. And that hasn’t changed – See videos of small drones removing tank turrets, littering the fields with newly formed, mini junk piles mixed with various body parts. But I digress.) Then with you ‘out of sight’, he wouldn’t complete his ‘job/mission’ without moving forward to get you back in sight: No complete ‘payout’; the impact on Quincy and the others involved with your death, the ‘why’ you needed to die for some ‘other’ reason so their ‘plans’ could continue; the impact on himself for being a part of their plans while failing in my only mission (Killing you.); your pending retribution for the failed attempt; and so much more. The sniper didn’t care? Again, so many questions.
And why hadn’t Herbert come back to your office with Quincy?
I remember from Chapter one you wrote “If you have a vendetta against the CIA then it’s like a vendetta against God Himself. You will never truly know whom your vendetta is against and you’re going to lose.” So if Herbert, the Agency, etc had nothing to do with this, I would think they would be a bit pissed that someone was trying to kill you. And therefore would want to explain to them the error in their ways. And of course, they and the sniper would have to deal with you/LT. Just sayin’.
The next chapter(s) will be really interesting.
Sincere regards as always,
Really glad he missed my great friend,
Doug
Doug Danko…you have outdone yourself. The longest comment in history.
The most penetrating and analytically corrcect. Yes, indeed. Your questions can only be ansered in the chapters to follow, of course and you know that. Your conclusions sit disturbingly near the surface of my mind simply because, in a rendition of the past I cannot make up endings that satisfy readers with factual results when I nevwr got them. What to do about that? Some are in the next few chapters but some will fanncy dance on into the future as unknown. Disappointing? Yes, but you are here for the reality of my revelations or I so hope. Thanks for the wonder of your comment and the brilliance of it too…
Semper fi, great friend,
Jim
James,
These last 4 chapters have really been outstanding. The first two ending the non-mission mission would have been ‘page turners’ in any ‘spy novel’ written – The key difference being that yours’s were real. The next two seemed to show the Agency had multiple, separate cells, with limited to no communications between them. More later.
Regards as always,
Doug
Thanks Doug for the short (for you) but in depth comment and analysis, not to mention the compliments. Much enjoy reading what you write and am always kind of amazed that I get so many positive comments. I wonder what other authors get but don’t know the answer to that one.
Semper fi, my great friend,
Jim
I don’t think you should be “amazed”. I think regular readers of this genre (Fancy word, huh? I think it’s French.) are glad they found you. And the military that found are very glad. I know I am. Period. Out. End of story.
Major. you are such a class act I must sit in wonder and wonder what to reply. I don’t know. I have an idea that combat and other veterans might love the work, from the tenor of their writings on here but I don’t really know. I’m not alone but in some ways I am. What is it like to take a tremendously powerful and expensive rifle into bed with oneself into the night Hugging what is so great and potentially protective but no longer wanting to use it against anyone. Nobody is coming into this night and yet, is that good or bad when one has my background? I don’t know, but its the truth. Positing such truths on here, well, maybe that’s part of why this writing experience is so very special. In most of life where can you go to read or experience truth?
Semper fi, great friend,
Jim
Can’t recall just who coined the phrase “what a revolting development this is !! ”
Seems like you’ve encountered a new previously unknown enemy, at least in Nam you knew there were two enemies, Charlie and the NVA, but this is for sure different !!
Can’t wait to see what happens next James, keep ’em coming.
Semper Fi
Thanks most sincerely SgtBobD. The complexity of it all was completely overwhelming.
I had so much going on and just trying to keep it all somehow still going was more than
taxing, and then throw personal assassination attempts into the mixed bag.
Semper fi,
Jim
It looks like your dislike and unease with Quincy was entirely justified. I eagerly await your reckoning with him.
Thanks Bob, it was a bit sticky having something like that happen right where I live.
Semper fi,
Jim
Just WOW! Taken out into the desert and suckerpunched sniper style.
Something tells me Mr Quincy and Mr sniper are going to have hell to pay!
I’m trying to tie this to something as a payback from who or where.
Sounds like a mob hit and with the description of Mr Quincy with the voice of Peter Lorrie, well that adds more mystery to the whole escapade. Its a wonder he didnt pull out a Luger P08 and shoot you in the back as you walked toward the bushes.
Hope you get the nest chapter out soon, hard to sit on the edge of this seat waiting! Take it EZ
Snipers are specialists and normally, most mobbed up guys or gals are not
like in the movies in that the killing of humans is not that difficult but
getting away with it can be a bitch…as well as preserving one’s own life
because in the real world there’s plenty of return fire of one kind or another.
Thanks for the great comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
I have always went to see the man that come to see me. I am still here.
Thanks for the help Carroll.
Semper fi,
Jim
Oh good grief! What was that all about? So many questions on this one. Besides the obvious of who and why the biggest one is why a long range sniper? You were in the desert in the middle of nowhere. Close up would have been far more efficient and effective.
Its going be interesting to see how this works out.
Distance is always good for self protection although chancy in that it might involve a
miss…although there’s always tomorrow…unless the target makes you the next target.
Semper fi,
Jim
This was an interesting chapter, leaving me wanting more information. It was suspenseful to be sure. The sniper was a surprise.
I have some comments on the chapter though. I had to read it twice to get through some of what you were saying. A number of sentences were too long and would have been clearer had they been broken up with specific sentences . I also was confused with the narrative shift in the dream sequence from first to third person descriptors. It was not clear, in the first reading, that your wife accompanied you to get the tree, and the limited dialogue was mostly with the man with the tree. As taciturn as my wife is, there would certainly have been more dialogue with her than was presented. ( Picking out Christmas trees with her is one of my most dreaded experiences,)
I as intrigued by the fact that Quincey didn’t just shoot you and that they used a sniper that seems to have failed at his mission. Was it a genuine attempt on your life or a message of some sort- we shall see.
Enjoy your work and hope you keep it up.
Kemp
Back then I just didn’t have a whole day to do the entire selection process and showing impatience meant letting her know that I really didn’t care which was not true even to this day but that’s the way she would take it. Shooters are not generally leaders who plan and control the circumstance of a potential kill. Quincy was not a shooter. Interesting how he was able to separate me quite easily from my own vehicle and my weaponry. I never went armed around my family, except I always had weaponry nearby.
Thanks for the usual introspective comment…and the compliment of your making it.
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim
Never a lack of excitement ,,sounds like you were set up by this Quincy guy!Thank you for what you do.
I won’t comment on some of that William as the next chapter will.
Appreciate the thanks a whole lot though.
Semper fi,
Jim
And to think that Quincy was in your home with your family. I hoping you plug him full of holes
Yes, all of that shocking stuff. Working the mystery through becomes my next course of action.
Thanks for the personal care of the comment too. Back in time but we are here and now.
Semper fi,
Jim
That’s a juniper tree, not a piñon.
Thank you Matt and you are most correct. Junipers and Pinon trees look a lot alike and are often fund together. I could not find a great shot of a piñon so I used the juniper for theatric effect. Neat that you picked up on that which is a compliment to both of us!
Semper fi,
Jim
Just a note – you can delete if you wish.
You went Northwest of the city, and now are Southwest?
No, I appreciate the help and it can be so distressing sometimes to miss those small but important details. Thanks for the accurate edit.
Semper fi, my great friend,
Jim
What a nice guy this Quincy was! Taking you on a free trip into the beautiful New Mexican desert was such a welcoming thing to do… Maybe you can invite him to Christmas dinner?
It’s too bad that cellphones hadn’t been invented yet – you could have called Herbert and registered a complaint. And let Nguyen and Kingsley know you needed a little assistance.
Quincy appeared from the start to be a pushy-type guy – and I can see you beginning to have doubts about your handler, Herbert.
Luckily, as you mention, it is winter, with the desert being much more navigable than it would be 6 months earlier or later.
However, as you are still writing these days, I have no doubts regarding your ability to improvise, adapt, and overcome.
Really enjoying your writing, from the first page of “Thirty Days” to the present. You have a great knack of involving the reader with the story, keeping all of us eager for you to continue. So start your long walk to the power line poles, then trying to catch a non-murderous driver to give you a right. I know you’ve got some good directional sense, being North, East, West or South from the city. And Heaven knows you have no quit in you!
Disorientation out in the desert can happen so quickly under duress.
How to get lost only a short distance outside the big city? I sure did for a
bit, although fear and lack of water can be deadly in taking away any kind of
intelligent logical thoughts.
Semper fi, great friend, and thanks for the address…
Jim
Guess I was correct about the Marine rat in the maze! Episodes indicate many more than 40 journals and someone must be watching with guarded interest! Much more value than Epstein files.
You, Colonel, were among the very few that knew such journals existed and still do. I began the journals in 1987 because I never wanted to be plausibly deniable, which was before I found out that no evidence might save one from such a fate. The government simply comes in and takes everything so the evidence is useless and the media will not go against them either. Note that the Epstein files have not been leaked. They very probably have been but the media won’t publish them. My journals are mostly valuable as concrete and detailed backup for all that I am writing these days. They include tapes, letters, documents and a ton of support to back the story and those could have real value. Thanks as usual for such interesting commentary.
Semper fi,
Jim
Unexpected!!! Evidently you make it home, can’t wait to see what happens next!! Looks like your cover has been blown. CIA involved or they now going to protect you even more?
When you are playing hard and fast in the field there can be all kinds of people and reasons why others might want you dead. Being revealed to be CIA is dangerous but that alone generally does not call for terminal action…and most agencies don’t kill other agents very often either…and certainly never one of their own. You will note that the Israeli’s do that quite often though and the Russians too.
Semper fi,
Jim