Yakuza, Chapter XII
YAKUZA CHAPTER XII The Navatek hatch to the main deck was just off the top of the gangway. Lauren guided Shapiro through it and into a huge flat cabin that extended fifty feet wide by sixty feet in length. The single unsupported room took up more than half the deck...
TWENTY-SEVENTH NIGHT, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The M-60s had opened up from in front of me, but I could not estimate the distance or the true direction the machine guns might be firing from, what with the sound of the nearby rushing river water and the incessant beat of the rain down upon my helmet. I knew all the...
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
Wet muddy foxholes rapidly became repositories for almost everything the combat company Marines usually carried on their backs. There was nothing to effectively hide or cover the holes with when they were abandoned, as they’d been there so long that both sides of the...
Yakuza, Chapter XI
YAKUZA CHAPTER XI Lauren brought the twin-hulled Fool’s Gold down off plane, as he eased into the lee waters of the southernmost unnamed island just off the Lanakai coast of Oahu. He’d been to the three small islands years before but, since they lacked any source of...
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY, THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
The Ontos blew a hole in the jungle where the NVA fifty caliber had opened up from. With the resupply chopper down, Hultzer pulled all the stops out, firing both flechette rounds and high explosives. Two of the Cobra gunships slowly approached the edge of the jungle,...
Yakuza, Chapter X
YAKUZA Chapter X Lauren tied the gently bobbing boat off using bow and stern cleats, throwing a couple of rubber bumpers over the side, making sure he didn’t damage the swim step extending two feet from the stern of the big yacht. The magnum revolver hung down a...
Yakuza, Chapter IX
YAKUZA Chapter IX The Zodiac headed toward the cliff face. The rough lava wall plunged twenty-five feet into the heaving sea. Further toward the shore, in the direction back toward Zippys, surfers rode breaking waves which expanded in size as the rollers were pushed...
Yakuza, Chapter VIII
YAKUZA CHAPTER VIII When he arrived to open at the usual appointed time the bar was somehow different. The place was full. Lauren hadn’t been there to either unlock anything or to serve any drinks, but the Honolulu Police contingent and their Yakuza...
Yakuza, Chapter VII
YAKUZA Chapter VII Lauren marveled over the awfulness of Hiyashi’s Karaoke singing, and the obvious fact that his drunken behavior had no effect in diminishing his stature with the men he was obviously in charge of. The Asian mentality was, in many ways, inscrutable...
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The Skyraiders broke the dawn, and everything else, apart, as they came in over the river at an altitude that had to be less than a hundred feet. First light was upon the valley, and the smoke coming up from the still-burning dried mud of the river bank could be seen,...
Yakuza, Chapter VI
YAKUZA Chapter VI Lauren was nervous, as he worked to finish the home-built suppressor for the Mannlicher. He had no doubts about testing the weapon and getting his ‘dope’ right for the shot. Sniping was ninety-percent preparation, equipment, and intellect. Taking...
Yakuza, Chapter V
YAKUZA Chapter Five True to his word, the sergeant’s truck showed up in the night to pack all the belongings they had. It didn’t take long and didn’t come anywhere near to filling up the storage area in the back of the truck. When they got to Shapiro’s place the kids...
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
Picking out who was who or what was what from the cluster of men who hit the end of the bridge was impossible.. I worked the focus knob on the side of the Starlight scope to no avail. I couldn’t get a decent enough resolution to allow the green wispy moving creatures...
The Twenty-Sixth Night, Third Part, 30 Days Has September
The Ontos sat on the bridge, it’s dull presence barely visible across the distance, through the murk of the rainy night, with only the slight radiance of a full moon shining on clouds unseen above. I waited, as the battlefield in front of me across the fore drop of...
THE CAT, Chapter XIX
Cetan and Tama gathered leaves into the sunset, only stopping from making their runs back and forth to the fire in order to eat what fish the women had cooked. There were no meal times. They ate when they had food until they were full and then saved what they could to...
Yakuza, Chapter IV
YAKUZA Chapter IV Lauren opened the Apple computer and took half an hour of bar work time to figure out how he was going to access what he needed to access. He finally logged into the free Wi-Fi Zippys provided, and punched in “Yamashita.” The results surprised him....
The Twenty-Sixth Night, Second Part, 30 Days Has September
I crawled to the lip of the berm and fell straight into an empty hole that had to be six feet deep if it was an inch. Fusner cascaded down upon me with Nguyen slipping down next to him. The sound of the drums and the NVA fifty followed us right down into the bottom of...
The Twenty-Sixth Night, 30 Days Has September,
I moved across the surface of the mud, with what was left of my scout team just ahead. Fusner and Nguyen trailed just behind. We crawled low, the light of the day beginning to die and provide some sort of camouflage, if not cover. The Ontos lay ahead, sitting like a ...
Yakuza, Chapter III
YAKUZA Chapter III Lauren spent his single day-off doing damage control at home. His wife was a shattered wreck, having been told nothing by her employer except that her services were no longer needed. Lauren would not, could not, tell her what the DEA task force...
Yakuza, Chapter II, by James Strauss
YAKUZA Chapter II The altercation came after the end of his first week in his new job as bartender at Zippy’s. That he had lasted the week without complaint had earned him dinner every night, before his shift began. Ochuru called him in and gave him the...
Yakusa, Chapter I
YAKUZA, Chapter One By James Strauss The basin that has become known as Hawaii Kai was there thousands of years before Homo sapiens came along to reshape and remodel it. A man name Kaiser happened on the scene after World War II and using huge amounts of explosives...
Yakuza, a Short Story
YAKUZA By James Strauss The basin that has become known as Hawaii Kai was there thousands of years before Homo sapiens came along to reshape and remodel it. A man name Kaiser happened on the scene after World War II and using huge amounts of explosives his company...
Thoughts About Life after Radio Shack
The Demise of Radio Shack and… Dateline: Lake Geneva June 26, 2019 What did it, and does it, mean that Radio Shack went away? What do you suppose happened there that caused the ‘Mister Wizard’ store where you could get anything electronic or even...
THE TWENTY-SIXTH DAY, THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
Fusner gently shook my shoulder. I inhaled sharply, suddenly realizing he’d been doing it for a while, but the depth of sleep I’d gone into would not allow me to think that I was in the A Shau Valley of South Vietnam commanding Marines in combat. I awoke slowly, no...
TWENTY-SIXTH DAY, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The attack never came. We’d rushed back to our positions in the expectation that the NVA would understand that we’d left our rear area totally unprotected, but either the enemy had not figured that out, or there was another mystery that might never be explained. Even...
THE CAT, Chapter XVIII
The boy laid down to rest near the very back of the lean-to, gathering some leaves the two adult women had somehow strung together to act as a covering for sleep. There was no warmth in laying under the leaves, however, certainly nothing like luxuriating under a...
Vietnam Veterans Day, March 29, 2019…a Reflection
Yesterday was Vietnam Veterans Day…and I didn’t give a damn, really. How can the regular public be expected to understand or care about what we went through over in that god-forsaken country and war of the time? They can’t. I was in the Avant Coffee...
THE CAT, Chapter XVII.
The return to their encampment took much longer than the trip out. The body of the animal suspended between them was heavy and ungainly. They could not travel too fast across the forest floor because the hanging body would begin to swing to the point where they could...
THE TWENTY-SIXTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
A cacophony of open combat fire sent me as deep into the jungle floor as I could get. The sound was pure small arms fire, which at close range, with the Marines around me firing outward, didn’t sound so small. I crawled forward, eventually running into the feet, legs,...
THE TWENTY-FIFTH NIGHT, THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
I had the place and the time but I could not sleep. The NVA had brought its .50 caliber equivalent heavy machine gun up on line. The gun laced our position up and down every twenty minutes or so. I couldn’t figure it out, laying curled up in my cleft. What was their...
THE TWENTY-FIFTH NIGHT, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
“The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky, are also on the faces of people going by. I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do, they’re really saying I love you…” The lyrics gently streamed from Fusner’s small radio, the last song of the day,...
THE TWENTY-FIFTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
Captain Carruthers settled into one side of my cleft, which wasn’t really wide enough to have two sides, but he wedged himself in anyway. There were clefts like my own up and down under the folded rock and he could, with his rank, have stayed in any one of them, but I...
THE CAT, Chapter XVI
Hasti sat next to the boy, his head at almost exactly the same height as the that of the standing human. He sat close, but not too close, knowing each and every nuance of the boy’s movement, breathing, and even facial expression. The cat could not see behind himself...
TWENTY-FIFTH DAY, THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
My small cleft was filled with Marines by the time the day moved into late afternoon. I’d finished my letter home, once again extolling the virtues of the local fauna and flora and how the nearly continuous monsoon mist was such a relief from the harsh pounding of the...
Chickenman, Episodes 17 through 20
Well, I found a few more fabulous Chickenman Episodes to share with you. Enjoy the fun and please comment below and share your reactions to Chickenman Episode 17 finds our fearless fantastic fowl questioning Miss Helfinger about the validity of the...
THE MIDNIGHT HOUR, Short Story.
THE MIDNIGHT HOUR… The water beating on the cold lakeshore was incessant. Tom lay between the two dumpsters in the alley half a block from the lake, the water lapping along the edge if the nearby shore probably intended by God to be comforting, but it was not....
Island In The Sand, Book 2, Part XIII
ISLAND IN THE SAND Book II Part XIII The sand played out before her, and the mild wind ate away any moisture she’d carried through whatever device she’d traveled in, to the point where Star Black felt she might evaporate herself. The place she was in was inhospitable...
THE CAT, Chapter XV
The cat found a place near the bottom of the mildly inclined slope face. He settled in under the outward thrusting branches of a huge pine. The aroma, the deep bed of needles no insects could inhabit, and the gentle wind that wafted its way among the easy waving...
THE CAT, Chapter XIV
The hike down to the falls proved more difficult than either the boy or the warrior imagined. Attempting to stay inside the outside edge of the forest, in order to remain invisible from any observers that might be located up on the canyon rim, was difficult. The...
THE CAT, Chapter XIII
The cat rested through the day, occasionally looking out of half of one eye, toward where the new members of the pride passed back and forth, all of them making believe the cat wasn’t there. The cat passed semi-conscious moments reflecting on how easy it would be to...
Searching for Paradise, a Short Story by James Strauss
Searching for Paradise The fire was over but not long gone. The California Santa Ana kind of winds had blown through the town of Paradise with a blowtorch intensity, turning most homes to little more than cinder foundations and ash. I wasn’t coming home to Paradise in...
TWENTY-FIFTH DAY, SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The red river was a rivulet of bloody water that happened to be running down the valley, back from the direction the company had to head up into. The major problem, as the Gunny pointed out, was not our movement, air support or even hauling Zippo and the bodies that...
TWENTY-FIFTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
The only 25 series radio military occupational specialty in the company, not already serving one of the platoon commanders, was Hultzer. The only thing I knew about him was that he had been assigned to one of the Project Hundred Thousand privates sent in by special...
THE CAT, Chapter XII
The cat moved carefully but quickly through the night. Although a path down from the canyon wall would be much easier to negotiate, it required a lengthy easy walk through the trees along the top of the lip of the abyss. He knew right away that it was the night wind...
THE CAT, Chapter XI
The cat lay flat inside the cleft, sleepily glancing out toward the scene before him, from time to time. He could not remember ever feeling so relaxed, the great ball of fish flesh resting inside his stomach, while his tribe worked at doing interesting stuff outside....
THE CAT, Chapter X
The boy took almost no time at all to spear another fish, this one not quite as large as the last one, but still large enough to force him to get completely wet before he could land it on the near shore. He used his knife to gut and clean it as best he could, holding...
Island In The Sand, Book 2, Part XII
Harriet worked for a few seconds on the keyboard. She didn’t even have to step back before a shudder went all through the house, followed by an underground muffled boom that reverberated for several seconds more. When silence once more pervaded the space, Star looked...
Editorial: That One Thing
Editorial by James Strauss Dateline December 12th, Geneva Shore Report THAT ONE THING The process of writing has little to do with writing at all. Writing can be dictated, scribbled, typed or put down in calligraphy. It can be done in many languages using all manner...
THE CAT, Chapter IX
The big cat carefully and silently backed up into the cleft and then, using its extraordinary strength and sinuously maneuverable body, eased up out of the rocks and moved slowly toward where the humans from further up the valley had descended down into his territory....
THE CAT, Chapter VIII
The cat had not disappeared. He’d withdrawn back into the clustered thickness of low scrub that dominated the bottom of the forest, like a wavy and near limitless thick rug. The writhing and waving plant growth of small size, where rivulets of wind were able to creep...
Island In The Sand, Book 2, Part XI
ISLAND IN THE SAND BOOK II PART XI Star stared at the robot, Ninety-One. The house was no longer communicating? Star knew her life, and the lives of everyone in her band were almost totally controlled by the house, while they were inside it, or the transport,...
Island In The Sand, Book 2, Part X
ISLAND IN THE SAND ~ BOOK 2 PART X Star stood in the cave, staring at the machined walls of metal. She knew instantly where she was, although the shock of being in a conversation back at the dwelling while looking out over the valley below, and then instantly standing...
The Cat, Chapter VII
THE CAT Chapter VII Slowly, ever so slowly, the cat withdrew back into the underbrush, using the super sensitive fur on his backside to assure that he guided himself silently, and without touching anything substantial. Flicking the tip of his tail, he brushed...
Island In The Sand, Book 2, Part IX
Island In The Sand BOOK II PART IX Star’s mind went into overdrive. Sly, and his newly reinforced band were on the way toward the dwelling. His attempts to break in using heavy firepower and brute force had failed previously, but what else was he capable of coming...
Island In The Sand, Book 2, Part VIII
Island In The Sand Book 2 Part VIII Star was more frozen in shock than she would have believed. How could the explosives not have been placed where they were ordered to be placed? Jordan had agreed to the placements of both the supply pile and the ground zero for the...Subscribe to FROM THE WILDERNESS
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