The war is over. The mysteries growing up into monstrous size, from Marines dying on San Clemente’s beach to the JFK assassination, the discovery of an alien artifact, and more affecting everything in my new life.
Down in the A Shau Valley of Vietnam in the bloody heat of the war, Gunnery Sergeant Socorro indicated that there was no coming back from that Valley. I’d come back from that valley only to discover that the Gunny was right. I did not come home as me and the search for my old self herein becomes a nearly endless change of adventures.
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THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter I
Marion Smoak was the head of protocol for the White House, or so the printed message delivered to my home by one of the compound Lincolns indicated. The time of the event, to be held at the San Clemente Inn, located not more than a mile from the Nixon residence...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter II
The staff sergeant and I made small talk all the way to El Toro. It was normally a half hour drive, but the sergeant took his time, staying in the slow lane. His background was embassy duty, so he talked on and on about the different embassies and consulates he’d been...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter III
The quiet stillness in the restaurant was broken only by the regular ‘at sea’ noise coming in through the thin wooden walls and cheap sheet glass serving as spume covered windows. I took command of the group, as going any further, with respect to Richard’s loyalties,...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter IV
I walked on the cooling sand toward the Trestles railroad bridge, my mind clearing the web of fear the faux Claymore had brought down upon me. My thoughts were drawn back to a lesser fear. Richard. If Richard was the operative who had disposed of the troublesome...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter V
The ride on the freeway down toward and then through San Clemente was made in silence. I said nothing and neither of the women did either. I refused to look over at the Staff Sergeant as I felt that if I made the slightest wrong move the whole scene of which I had...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter VI
Gularte and Manning walked into the restaurant, both laughing as they crossed the short distance to my table. I didn’t smile when they took the available chairs on both sides of me. Lorraine appeared with ‘bad tea’ for Manning and a cup of coffee for Gularte. Neither...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter VII
Richard and I spent an uncomfortable moment staring at one another. He probably wanted to ask me if I’d recognized his famous guest, but he didn’t. I wanted to ask where the U.S. Marshals that provide security and protection for the United States Secretary of State...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter VIII
My first meeting with Paul, my shrink of questionable credentials and experience, had gone amazingly well. My first act of redemption, which he never truly defined, made me feel better about myself in spite of the fact that I wasn’t sure why. I’d bought in immediately...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter IX
I didn't have an answer for the Staff Sergeant, but then I didn't think he was expecting one. His response might have indicated that he was ready to be a part of whatever action he thought was going to go down but I didn't know him and if there was to be something...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter X
Gularte, Richard and I gathered in the cabin of Richard’s luxury yacht. The interior was so well done in teak, stainless-steel and glass that it felt more like some exotic penthouse rather than the interior cabin of a medium-sized boat. Once again, I wondered where...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XI
The day grew ever darker and more threatening. I knew the storm wasn’t going to miss San Clemente, as it sometimes did. Living right on the shore wasn’t the best place on the planet to make weather predictions about I’d learned over time. I had little time to get to...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XII
We stood outside in the rain and wind, Butch and I staring at the replaced aluminum doors on the side of his Airstream. It was as if they had never been gone. Butch walked forward the few feet to the two steps leading up. He opened the screen door, and then the main...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XIII
As soon as Bob was done talking the meeting turned into bedlam. “What kind of conclusion is that to come to?” Hoodoo asked into the maelstrom of everyone talking at the same time. “You have no basis in fact for any of your conclusions leading to that. We don’t know...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XIV
My wife told me that I had to let the incident between Gates and me go, or I might potentially ruin everything. My argument against that was simply one of trying to live in a state of helplessness. Following Vietnam, I was being made to feel like an important man by...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XV
I sat facing both Haldeman and Ehrlichman, as I had in our previous session. They sat on the couch while I was in an overstuffed easy chair ninety degrees off the view of the ocean that they were facing. I didn’t make any effort to enjoy the stunning view, my full...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XVI
Gularte was there when I arrived. Ideas about how to do what I now felt compelled to do circulated around my brain, my tiredness from having not slept well at National Airport or being able to settle down once I got back as if I had never been there. Gularte and I...
THE COWARDLY LION Volume Three, Chapter XVII
Gularte and I worked back and forth across our interconnected plots of sand, rolling over the state beach area without stopping, as the state guards didn’t much appreciate the beach patrol’s existence much less the mostly reserve officers that manned it. “It’s a turf...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XVIII
I sat still inside the idling Bronco, my mind twisting and turning about the call that had come in and the mission Gularte and I had just finished, except we hadn’t finished it. The call was beyond strange, as Chiefs of Staff for presidents of the country were about...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XIX
The three of us sat on the bench, our backs to Cobb’s smaller, but expensive yacht, and facing Richard’s larger and much more expensive yacht. It was readily apparent that the two boats were so closely slipped near one another out of deliberation rather than ignorance...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XX
There was nobody at the Galloway restaurant when I showed up, half an hour before it was supposed to open. There were certain advantages and disadvantages I presumed in owning or running a restaurant and living in attached quarters. Lorraine was indefatigable, and Tom...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXI
The cat, Bozo, sat at the double doors, almost always open, as it was the morning, the cool breeze wafting in across his short, scarred by still strangely soft body fur. He looked out, although, what with the solid wood railing between him and the more distant outside...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXII
I realized just how different Bob Elwell was, as I sat out at the end of the pier considering the coming dive. The simplicity of his plan, versus the overwhelming complexity of my own, amazed me. I’d given my plan only about a fifty percent chance of succeeding since...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXIII
I made no attempt to rise to my feet, as I lay next to the lapping water on the slanted ramp. The reddish dirty bag rope dangled from my right hand. When I’d been out in the pier-end restaurant with Shawna, neither she nor any of the members of the Dwarfs, really had...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXIV
I lay in bed, my body wanting to fall into a restful and restorative sleep, but my mind was having none of that. In closing my eyes, I wasn’t taken back into combat, which happened only rarely and never when I was so tired. No, it was Gularte’s words about a possible...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXV
The tapes were proving to be a nightmare, not just because the job was boring and delicate but also because of the time. There was the beach patrol issue to be dealt with, as I was on at four in the afternoon and no real way out of not spending six hours, or so doing...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXVI
Earlier in the day the weather had been so very Southern California that I hadn’t noticed it, as I ran around arranging everything I would need for the mission. However, when I was ‘installing’ the Bronco, once again, in between the giant beach cleaning machines at...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXVII
I couldn’t sleep, but that was nothing new since the Nam. The doctors at the VA said that nobody could stay awake for days and nights on end but my time in the valley and then the nights and days after coming home had disproven that, not that my word about such things...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXVIII
The single word “unseeable” ate at my foundations. Instinctively, I knew that word had nothing to do with nuclear power or any of what went on at the plant. The word didn’t refer, by definition, to something being unable to be seen because it was too secret to be...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXIX
Richard and I didn’t speak again. When the staff car piloted by him arrived in the compound parking lot, the Staff Sergeant was appropriately waiting only a few feet from the outer wall doors He opened the back door to the car before I could let myself out, and then...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXX
I sat on the couch, facing the television console, Julie on my left but not snuggled up to my side as she had proven herself to be not that kind of little person. Mrs. Beasley, however, was pulled close into her left side and Bozo made believe he was watching...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXXI
I could not talk to Paul, nor my wife, nor anyone else I could think of except one. Richard. He, Cobb, and Hunt had been intertwined in some fashion I didn’t understand, but intertwined they were, at least in my analysis of their proximity at the harbor, their special...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXXII
The reels moved slowly, as I knelt by the bedside, transfixed by the words of the country’s sitting president. “My friend,” Nixon began, after another pause, saying the words in his strange way that nobody on earth I’d ever heard talked like, “will you guide me...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXXIII
The ‘unseeable’ was coming home to roost, I now understood. The artifact that was entrusted to me had something to do with San Onofre, the one ‘pod’ that had been taken out of service to become some sort of hyper-secret nearly impenetrable laboratory or meeting place...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXXIV
The morning came too soon, although ‘sleeping in’ like I’d loved to do when not at one of my jobs in college, had gone the way of the dinosaurs, lost somewhere down at the bottom of the A Shau Valley. That the valley’s name was known by no one, so never brought up by...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXXV
Joe Beard sat at Gularte’s kitchen/dining room/living room table, its top cleared and cleaned off as I’d never seen it before. He sat behind a gray plastic box that looked like a small suitcase except for its sharp edges and pointed corners. Joe looked across the top...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXXVI
It was Christmas Eve, although it wasn’t the eve of anything and I wondered, as usual, why the day, from early morning until the sun went down, was still referred to as the eve of Christmas when it was simply the day before. My thoughts turned to the single subject...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXXVII
I woke up the morning after Christmas and eased out of bed. My wife made me believe she was still asleep, like she always did although any move on my part to depart the bed never failed to bring her back to life. I moved as silently as possible to get ready for the...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Three, Chapter XXXVIII
My time at night, before sleep and thankfully not during sleep, I thought about things that were occurring, and the less sense they made the more I couldn’t stop lying awake trying not to think about them. “I’m not that special,” I thought, lying there, not realizing...