Last Summer I became infatuated with Bond- Fleming’s Bond. Then I watched the movies. Then I thought, ‘what if I write something in the *universe”. . . I thought about a few of my favorite Bond side kicks, Quarrel the Cayman Captain- but Felix, the CIA Agent- whose leg was gobbled by a shark- that was my guy. American- a jazz loving cowboy, ex-Marine struggling with a corrupt CIA. I wrote this- incomplete and unedited. I may never finish it. I want to know if it entertains you- maybe that will be the inspiration to sit down and type some more????. . . …….

I

The Orange Sun

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some area of native land where it may get the love of tender kinship from the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one’s own homestead.

– George Eliot

Felix sat patiently. The rhythmic clop and crush of broken caliche replaced by the rustle of gentle wind in twisted branches and the tweets and thrashes of warbling vireos. He sat erect in the saddle, high over Spirit whom he stopped to water. The sixteen and one half hand Paint Horse was tired and old. He was born on this land the last days before Felix went away, the foal of his first horse. Spirit watered in a small trickle at the bottom of a Cedarbrake. The evening light dappled through the old Cedar down in the ravine. It had survived the post whackers from Llano and wild fires, prescribed burns, and clearly delineated the heart of the old ranch. The little water that ran through this fracture was an oasis for Spirit, the shade a reprieve for Felix.

The sun now shone orange and the cold grey distant hillside turned to warm as the air became cool. It was time for Felix to ride home. Felix massaged the sore junction of his leg and then lifted his dangling prosthetic foot into the stirrup and gave Spirit a gentle whisper to climb up into the plain. In the distance, he could see the silhouette of live oaks dappled against the sherbet sky. Each tree a Pleistocene relic punctuating the distance to his home. A intoxicating spiritual awareness overcame him as he admired all that was before him.  Just beyond the horizon, she was waiting for him there.

He gave a thick whistle at the last live oak and Spirit picked up his pace as they approached the paddock. The wrangler was waiting for him there, hat slung down low just above dark eyes. They mutually grinned and gave a kind nod as the gate  heaved open the fence gate with long strong skinny arms. The wrangler followed him back to the stable on an ATV, at a distance enough and idling quietly to respect the stillness of the evening. 

The wrangler paired the reins  in one hand and brushed over Spirit’s jowls as Felix swung his natural leg over the saddle an onto a knee high stone by the water trough. Their conversation was a volley of staccato words, affectionate- but the directive communication of two tired cowpokes that had routine. Felix walked across the yard to his house flicking stickers off his pant thighs with his glove and spitting out the last of his Copenhagen snuff. He looked back at that silhouette, tall and thin as a cedar post. She removed her hat and shook out her long black hair. She walked Spirit over to retire him in the stable and she would retire to her apartment above the stalls after managing the tack. He was proud of her.

Felix thumped triangle dinner bell as an admirable announcement of his arrival. He took a seat in a rocker on the low slung porch. A pitcher of water was wrapped in a knotted kitchen towel to catch the sweat over a teak table. He poured a tall glass, carefully leaving the last of the melting ice in the pitcher and chugged it rapidly. He then poured a second glass and held it lightly in his fingers as his bones melted into the chair The sun melted into the horizon. The only light on the low slung porch was the radiance of wispy purple ether holding the last of day, a gas signal light flickering in the dogtrot, and the light of the kitchen window. Across the dogtrot, he could peer directly through the narrow window to the stovetop. Smoke and steam curled up from the crockery. A lithesome hand reached out delicately with a spatula. It waved like a gently and rhythmically waving willow branch conducting a band. The hand turned down and moved in wide circles through the cast iron skillet and steam poured over her winsome tan arms. 

She expected him and timed her meal for his arrival. He was generally reserved and she gave him space on the days she knew he needed to muse. She knew he was there in the pale gloaming and he knew that she knew he was there. The direct line between the chair and the window and the stove was a stage she had set to play the coquette. 

The direct halogen light of the exhaust hood cut conical beams through the curling steam. As she moved, her body dipped into the light. A long comma of silky black hair spilled out from behind her neck, over her shoulder and curled to a point over her firm half-covered breast. Her shoulders were bare and angular. As she turned light cast small shadows over the surface of her perfect sunkissed skin. Her hair was lifted into a messy twisted ball and pinned by two pencils exposing her nape. Later he would kiss her there. 

The door creaked open on its cast hinges and light painted the canvas of the wide porch.  She walked out over the threshold feeling the soft wood, aged through generations, with her bare delicate feet. They smiled at each other with their eyes, his a pale green and hers as black as midnight. The wrinkles of concern left his face. His heart was melted by the alluring esthetic of her wrinkles that formed around her eyes and the commissures of her supple lips. The wrinkles proclaimed years of contentment and joy that they had earned together. 

The first stars began to flicker in the bow of the horizon and a calmness pervaded as they touched hands on the porch.II

The Transport

Moonjack and Hernadez stood by the old K5 Blazer in  at dawn a the end of the old airstrip. The tarmac was broken and dusty. Blue torches strobed along its length, they were rarely used. Moonjack had just connected them to a generator prepare for the agents arrival. 

The 172 Skyhawk glided effortlessly East traveling at a speed that lengthen the sunrise over the plains. As it descended through into the morning, Felix crumpled the foil of his burrito omelette and wiped the hot sauce out of the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. The division between the cool air and the looming heat on the ground gave a gentle turbulent bump and he spilled the last of his black coffee as his grip tightened and broke the Dart Styrofoam cup in his left hand. As they approached the ground the sun again fell behind the distant horizon. The Cessna contacted the thin old strip obliquely and jolted and bumped as it decelerated to approach the two men leaning on the old truck. 

Captain Moonjack and his deputy, Hernadez, were arranged to be his liaisons at the Border. The pilot took Felix’s wave as confirmation and pivoted the small plane, without ever powering down the engine, ready to takeoff in the reverse down the strip.

The two agents flicked the last of their morning cigarettes and welcomed Felix with loud voices, 

“Hola my friend!”

“Welcome to West Tejas!

 The single prop twirled and the RPMs increased to a speed that moved the plane away from them. Moonjack escorted him to the Olive green blazer with a coaxing hand gently in the small of his back. 

“We will  ride approximately ten miles Southwest across open range to the river at the border.,” he spoke as they approached the vehicle,

As they along the passenger side door, MoonJack uttered, “shotgun” and offered his hand as he lowered the front seat for Felix to climb into the back of the old vehicle. Hernadez took the wheel and was silent as they bumped forward into the desert dawn. Moonjack began to brief Felix on the current dilemma they were about to face. Jurisdiction is always challenging and Felix knew that these South Western agents were frustrated having their hands tied. Both of the men were Mexican by blood. 

“We came to this country fair and square and love it more than any place on earth,” pontificated Moonjack. 

Hernandez interjected with grunting affirmations as Moonjack continued, “we could fix the whole problem- this problem down here on the border- if they let us stop the cheaters coming in. And the Cartels. We could fight the Cartels. But we can’t fight  the Cartels. I have to go home to my wife. We don’t have the resources, We can’t stop them can we?”

The long diatribe lost Felix. He had heard it all before, but they were really probing. Maybe they believed he was there as a sign of things to come and change.

Felix knew that as a spy and an international agent, his interests only appeared as inquiry rather than action. He was generally reserved.

Moonjack reputed the history of the recent border breech, the coyotes, and increased Cartel presence, he seems to drift to sleep in the bouncing cloth front seat. Hernandez was silent. The ten mile conveyance to the border was said to take approximately an hour by his handler. These agents claimed to make the same drive early to pickup Felix in the dark in two.

 In the back seat, Felix was beginning to cramp. The hard bench had little to support his back and the space was tighter than the plane for the six foot three man. The K5 appeared to be military surplus, a relic of conflicts in South America. 

Felix was cramping in his thighs, but also his stomach was knotted and turning. He lifted his arm and pulled back his cuff to check the time on his Speedmaster. They had been riding for approximately fifty minutes and he had an intense urge to mitigate the sausage and egg that was rumbling in his stomach. The diamond grid divider of the transport began to feel like it was imprisoning him. In fact, it was engineered to detain. 

Moonjack was still sleeping with long snarling tones vibrating through his large nostrils and seeping through his flapping lips. Felix no longer had an amiable regard toward him, nor Hernadez neither as he bounced along the truck, as if deliberately jolting him from tailbone to the crown of his blond hair tapping the headliner. He couldn’t stand the restraint any longer. His claustrophobia was amplified by an intense desire to have a bowel movement. He figured once they rendezvoused with the other agents and “The Brass” at the crossing, it would be embarrassing to take  shelter behind the scrub brush. 

He banged on the steel divider and awoke Moonjack. 

“Hey buddy, do you guys mind pulling over. I’m getting bit uncomfortable and would like to take care of some business before we reach the crossing and the others.”

Startled, Moonjack, placated Felix’s request to stop, the meeting point at the river crossing was only a few hundred yards away. Moonjack and Hernadez rolled up their windows, climbed out of the vehicle and closed the doors. The sound of a long bolt running through the side of the truck as Hernandez laughed. 

A moist perspiration over Felix’s body turned to a profuse sweat. The sun was then high in the morning sky. The heat in the vehicle was rising, but the flashes of his own hormonal heart driven by cortisol was  over whelming him overwhelming. The Randolph Aviators fogged his vision and slid down the slope of his pointed nose. His straw colored hair was wet and clung to his forehead and dripped salty sweat into his eyes. He wore white cotton tube socks under his Lucchesse boots and they were saturated. He was wet from head to toe. 

Outside the two men stood smoking and were laughing at him.

“That poor gringo had it coming.”

“Let’s wait and listen for the boss.”

Felix closed his eyes and took a deep calming breath. He couldn’t hear their words, but he knew this was a trap. He knew panic would not serve him.

He had trained for these moments as a Marine. The early hazing as he entered the elite Raider units prepared him to be uncomfortable. He did not know setting out this morning he would be required to use these skills.

He focused. He could clearly see both of the men in the wide day light. They both wore tactical uniforms, but one was an olive green and the other a clashing emerald. The men were dispatched from the same division, but there was little in their outfit that looked official. The K5 was indeed an odd choice of transportation for a highly funded elite outfit of the Border Patrol. 

Felix knew that he had been intercepted, he posed little threat as an inquisitor and could not understand why or how they knew to detain him. Would they execute him? Would they leave him there to die in the heat of the vehicle? None of that mattered now. He only need to survive.

III

Ride Me High

His body cooled some as he calmed. The wet through his chinos and shirt now there to evaporatively cool him rather than signal his exhaustion and panic. He took deep breaths, each one warmer and more humid than the next as the temperature rose in the car. His 1911 pistol was to his three o’clock waist in a tooled leather holster that his mother made his grandfather after the war. His old papa never told stories, but he cherished the gun he carried across France in his youth. It belonged to Felix now. He had never fired it at a man, despite the weapon’s untold prior life claiming Germans in close combat. He slowly and discreetly drew the tarnished weapon into his lap. 

Moonjack and the driver stood with their backs turned just in sight through the oblique parallax of the passenger window. He contemplated the opportunity to shoot them from his restrained and disadvantaged position in the windowless backseat. 

Moonjack had a device in his hand. The square box fit inside his palm and had an eight inch rubber coated antenna protruding from its top. Felix could see him manipulating some of the knobs as they began to step further away from the old patrol wagon. He wriggled momentarily and kicked at the steel grate. Each moment he feared he was loosing the opportunity to execute a shot. Each moment he feared he was closer to Moonjack detonating something that would destroy the K5 and end his life. 

The men were walking into a declivity nearly fifty yards from the him. Their ankles disappeared and then the ground was level with their waists. Moonjack raised the device up in from of his face and put his hand on a knob. At the same time both men raised their hands in a waving gesticulation. 

Felix closed his eyes. Momentarily he had a flush of regrets and sins that he had not repented came to his mind. At that moment the only thing he could see was the inside of his own heart calmly beating where his faith lived. It was silent and nothing.

He opened his eyes and dust billowed up beyond the downward slope where his executors once stood. They were not waving good bye, but signaling, “over here” to the convoy of vehicles they had radioed in. 

Moonjack and Hernadez had walked into the shallow side of a canyon. Under the long shadow of the opposite tall canyon wall the trucks came in rank and file. In the front were a small fleet of late model NATO specified Landcruisers, all painted in a coyote tan. Four door vehicles each had matching rigging with a slightly lifted suspension desert tread tires roof racks had long Pelican supply boxes tethered to them. At the aft end were Jerry cans of fuel and water and the fore end had rows of Hella lanterns. Each had an impressive bull gate push bar in the front with a winch. Of the dozen Toyotas, the pair in the lead of the two lines had turrets on their roof. Herndadez climbed into one of the lead Cruisers and Moonjack walked down the line beyond the armed vehicles to a longer row of troop carriers. These vehicles were less refined and more of a ragtag lot. The first was a smaller carrier, a Jeep Kaiser with a tall, unloved stance. It was also painted coyote, as were all the vehicles in the line- but the Kaiser had a torn canvas tarpaulin over old hoops. Beyond the jeep was a deuce and a half. Beyond the deuce were two dozen similar vehicles some of the pulling trailers with heavy suspension. 

Moonjack lifted himself into the deuce and signaled the driver to power down the grinding old diesel. He lifted his radio and coded his arrival to his commander in the distant desert. 

He had completed his task. The agent was intercepted and dealt with. The convoy would not be detected or stopped. He clicked away his code over the sparsely utilized band and waited for instructions. He lit a Salem and waited. Would he leave the agent to die? Surely, they would dispose of him and reclaim the vehicle. 

Earlier by the truck, he expressed  his desire to Herrndez, “I hope we maroon him alive outside thee Blazer once the convoy had passed.”

“Leave him to devoured by the coyotes- picked to the bone by the birds until his bones returned to the dust,” added the driver.

Beyond the declivity and over the swirling dust of the canyon bottom, Felix could see a vortex of dust above it. He could hear the drumming thunder of a helicopter. Before he could make out the craft the armored cruisers broke the banks of the canyon and split out into branches across the flat desert floor. Two of them directly flanked his captured position in the Blazer and the one to his starboard briefly broke the formation to slow and strafe close to Felix. He could see the whites of Hernadez’s round yellow eyes staring at him as he sped off to gain the symmetry of the platoon of cruisers. 

Over the top of the high cliff wall a decommissioned Air Cavalry, American Bell Huey. It flew directly over the plain horizon with a vector straight toward the K5 and through the heart of the circular formation of the cruisers. At once heavy machine gun rang out from the cruiser windows with punctuated synchronization. The gunmen in each window shot Heckler and Koch G3 machine guns chambered in .308. Spent brass rapidly filled the backseats as the Huey made its first sweep ascending and turning to assess the battlefield. The helicopter belonged to the Cartel. They knew that it was armed with two M60 7.62mm MG for open door gunners to rain lead from above. The commander had signaled ahead that the chopper had been stolen by a British spy that had infiltrated the command center. He was with a female companion, which they all knew and had admired. The ground soldiers had the advantage of numbers. They had the same M60s mounted on the two turret cruisers. 

Moonjack relayed the directives of his commander in the distant desert. The cruisers and the soldiers in them were disposable. If they couldn’t control the chopper with a wall of bullets, then they could be canon fodder to draw the Huey back in toward the canyon, just in range of the RPG Moonjack was unloading from its wooden case. 

The British intelligence agent had a firm command of the Huey’s controls and instruments. He hovered above, out of range, and peered on the shadows of the cruisers that tattooed the desert floor. His flight companion, Mariposa, was not a warrior. She was not a field agent trained in the art of battle, but rather behavioral arts. She was a seductress. The Argentinian civil servant had beauty was sculpted with DNA of German and Spanish linage. Sandy blonde hair broke across her tan and lightly freckled shoulders. The agent had enjoyed making her acquaintance as they staged the mission from the operation center they had established in a sea side Tulum bungalow to the south. He had to disengage his emotions as he established her infiltration into the Cartel’s base of operation. She would embed herself, for whatever time it took, through any means necessary into the Estancia de Pedro Montenegro.

The convoy was on the move. The cargo payload of narcotics hefty enough intoxicate the entire population of the North America continent at once. It’s value high enough to fund a shadow government. The Brit had extracted Mariposa just as the convoy began to move. The Cartel’s command of the Huey and been revealed only moments before they reached the convoy. The pilot dead in the hanger. His head in deep crimson puddle with his cervical spine pieced by a small caliber bullet. The navigator survived and radioed ahead to the forward command about the incoming craft.

He looked back into rear compartment of the Huey. Mariposa clung tightly to the harness in her jump seat and looked ahead with sky blue eyes that radiated through her Spanish skin. Her blues eye and his cold grey blue eyes had a magnetism. He could see her fear. She would either have to pilot the craft or lay down fire from at least one of the guns. It was not promising.

Felix could hear the drumming of the chopper approaching from behind. The soldiers positioned their guns as the Huey approached. From the canyon floor, Moonjack commanded a unison, “open fire” over the radios. From inside the blazer Felix cold hear the RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT like a production line of sewing machines singing a round. He sat in depair, angry about his imprisonment, angry that he could not contribute to the mission. He was confused about the battle outside of the confinement. He knew his old relation the double goose egg was in that chopper. 

The Huey broke downward accelerating as it flew to directly toward the cruiser in the twelve o’clock position. The gunner there was disadvantaged in his site window to lay downier. He tilted over the plane and prompted Mariposa to lay down heavy fire from the starboard door as he circled the corral of cruisers clockwise. She did not move from her seat.  The dust of the chopper obscured the ground to air battlefield. The tail and rear rotor of the craft took on some fire as the Huey spiraled upward out of the site and accurate range the guns. The pilot was not aware of the RPG, its operator was not certain about when to fire it- not yet. A light stream of white smoke piped out if the upper engine compartment of the craft. Moonjack knew it was only a matter of time before the conflict would be resolved- one way or another.

The British assassin looked back at Mariposa. She possessed much worth to him as a spy and as a lover. Now she was frozen in shock in the jump seat. Black Mascara streamed from the corners of her blue eyes like the tears of a demented clown. At the moment, she was worthless. 

He looked back into the cabin.

“Mariposa. Mariposa my Papilion. Listen to me, Darling,” he exclaimed with a false passion.

Mariposa did not respond. She sat there in an elegant royal blue chiffon gown. Her knees were clinched together and her mouth frowned.

“Mariposa, “ he signaled louder as she lifted her eyes, “take off your dress and hand it to me.” 

She peered at him with an odd awe and followed his command. She first timidly removed the harness and lifted her weight from the narrow seat. She quickly took down the dress over her head and her hair flushed wildly out. She sat there naked and tried to cast the dress forward to the cockpit. He turned and caught it by the hem and immediately tore the long gown into a rope of cloth. He ascended into a position directly over the cliff looking out at the clock work of the cruisers with the blazer in the center. He hovered, schemed and calculated then continued to ascend in a spiral with a radius slightly wider than the bezel of shadows below. The craft reached the maximum envelop of operation and began to spin wildly to the left. The agent gained control of the vehicle at a more suitable altitude. He could see the pressure gauges dropping, presumably from fire taken to the engine box. He knew this volley was his last pass. 

He began his descent in a the same wide spiral. A radius of nearly fifty yards wider than the ring of cruisers. Once the instrumentation was set and the spiral was constant and on course. He tethered the control with the supple blue fabric. He moved to the back of the Huey and gave Mariposa an assuring kiss on the cheek. She reached up and passionately returned her lips to his. 

“We will have time for pleasure later, my Darling,” he assured her as he unrigged the right side M60 and positioned himself to freehand it as he mounted the left door gun. 

At three thousand feet he began to lay down fire. The Huey made it around the circle every quarter minute and was dropping twenty-five feet per second. He had two minutes until the craft would hit the ground either shot up and crashing or with him back in the pilots seat. The cruisers began to rotate into their position then they arched outward and sideways in petal shapes. 

As the fire rained down from the Huey in its perfect spiral, Hernandez radioed, “Capt. This is the Puta- requesting permission to randomized the fleet.”

The cruisers stopped turning like parts of a clock and their shadows now cast like ants stealing crumbs on a picnic blanket. 

“When the chopper breaks the 500 yard ceiling, you my open fire,” commanded Moonjack in a Spanish, “until then, continue to evade.”

The M60 fire was proving effective and the agent had mobilized more than one cruiser, likely terminating the driver and soldiers. If a capable mate and crew were on board he would have the time and talent to win the fight. He liked to work alone, but occasionally it was a blessing to have a friend like Felix join him on a mission. He was not aware that Felix was just below and he would be of little use in his conundrum. The chopper continued its downward spiral. He had immobilized eight of the dozen cruisers. As he swept the far side of the battlefield, away from the canyon, a pair of olive clad soldiers retreated into the rocks still firing on him as they ran. He picked them off with well controlled bursts from the mounted gun that was running to the end of its ammunition. He approached to canyon wall that was thirty feet higher than the rest of the battlefield and the radius swept wider. He had not calculated this distance and this would be his last rotation before he has to abandon the guns and return to the cockpit. Oil and hot white smoked spewed from the craft and warning signals that he could not identify were alarming from the panel. 

“Commander there are only two cruisers left in commission, Sir,” radioed a wayward soldier in Spanish.

Moonjack knew the plane would either crash or retreat. Either way the operative and the damsel would die- either to the ground or the impact of his grenade. On the last pass he could see the pilotless cockpit, the heroic gunner and the naked blond in her seat.  He walked to the shallow edge of the ravine with the Chinese RPG. The gunner was expending the last of the ammo from the mounted gun as he circled past the three o’clock position toward his perch at the lip of the declivity. He raised the rocket launcher and aimed with a slight lead down and left. 

As the left side door came open to view the ground, Mariposa gasped at the site of the canyon wall and the slender dark commander with a rocket aimed at them. Just as she could see his yellow eyes a poof of blue smoke billowed around his body and then she could only see the ground directly below her out of the window. The agents long left arm extended outward, the fabric of her dress clutched in a fist under her chin. The rocket entered the open left door and severed the blue chiffon rope as it exited the right side. The chopper tightly spiraled upward and the charred tag of the chiffon flayed just beyond the cockpit. He grabbed the back of the seat and pulled the helicopter into control just as it gently skated onto the upper plateau of the canyon wall. The agent climbed calmly into the rear cabin.

“Darling, you look stunning under pressure, “ he assured as he fashioned what he could into a gown from the remains of the dress. 

Felix could see the battered chopped directly ahead of him as the rotors slowed and the dust began to dissipate. The convecting heat rising across the plain bent the man running toward the K5 Blazer. Beyond the running man he could see his friend emerging from the battered chopper with an unmounted M60 and one foot of brass belt over his wrist. He approached the edge of the cliff. Felix lifted his Speedmaster and tried to reflect a single back to the cliff. His friend saw the bright glint through the windshield and recognized the distress pattern Felix played with his opposite plan on the glinting Hesalite crystal. 

The running man, half way between them could also see and interpret the signal of distress. He turned abruptly to witness the silhouette of a tall white man wielding the machine gun. Without hesitation he positioned the switch on his MP5 to full auto “F” and opened fire into the canyon top. He could hear the percussion of the M60 fire its first shot. The fifteenth bullet fired knocked off Moonjack’s Pith helmet and the second .45 round  fired entered his heart from behind just after the first pistol blast ruptured the Blazer’s windscreen. On the hillside, the British agent was simulataniously struck in the left shin. 

“My Darling, are you comfortable here?” he asked as he made a limping approach to the hissing Bell UH-1 Helicopter. “I have another friend to attend to while you rest.”

He gathered a rescue basket and long rope in an under carriage box on the chopper’s runners and drug it to the edge of the four story cliff. As the hiss of the spewing chopper faded he could hear the sound of crying women and dozens of large engines below him. It was painful for him to rappel into the ravine. As he put his good leg against the crest and rocked himself out over the wall of the ravine below-  heavy transfer trucks began filing out across the desert. The faint whimper of the cargo drown by the humming of diesel engines. 

Felix could see his international companion approaching at a slow pace. He continued to communicate via the glint of his watch in Morse.  When he finally arrived to rescue Felix, his friend reached under his lapel and brandished a Walther Pk. He heard a clink as the barrel rested against the lock and then a pop as his friend fired into the door lock . Felix instructed him on how to open the steel cage, presumably by pulling a long bolt that course through the exterior body of the car.  When the front seat dropped Felix apologized to his friend. He, like the girl was naked.

“I seem to appealed to everyones natural side today, Felix.”

“I got into some hot shit today, Gooseeggs,” Felix giggled and smirked as his long naked blond hairy legs stretched out of the door.

He stood there with a custom ostrich skin boot over his loin and laughed.

IV

Not the Fancy Stuff.

“Felix, it’s good to see you mate,” the Brit welcomed his old friend as he stood there before him nude less his Omega watch and a boot over his manhood. “I’d say it is time to find you some suitable clothing. Where has yours found its way?”

“I’m sure you know a tailor in this neck of the woods my friend. You always seem to have your resources. I seemed to soiled mine behind their usefulness.”

“It certainly would be nice, but that will be a luxury we will have to dispense of today. Time is of the essence, old friend. Perhaps we might pilfer something from the the gentleman in that cruiser there,” he pointed to a cartel soldier whose waist came over the turret and whose body hung limply over the side of the cruiser. “It appears that I have made a clean head shot and the blood only flowed down. He looks to be your stature, Felix.”

Felix humbly walked over to the bullet tattered cruiser and pulled the corspe over the roof and into the sand. He removed the olive tactical trousers and officer blouse, as well he a tooled belt that read: “MAL HIJO DE PUTA” across a length of mahogany calfskin. He kept his own belt and holster on the outside of the loops and kept the Mexican’s on the pants because he admired it. It was difficult for Felix to put his sockless feet back into his boots, but he would not lower himself to wear another mans socks and his were ruined by an undignified purpose. 

As Felix provisioned himself from the dead man and worked through contents of the cruiser. Bond pulled the panel off of the K5 and looked for the wires to connect to make its ignition go hot. 

“Felix, I believe that we should be going now. I will explain as we make our way,” he shouted across the sand.

“Okay. The keys are in this cruiser, do you want me to try it?” Felix asked with less urgency about the unknown.

He pulled the dead driver into the sand and sat in the front seat. He depressed the clutch and turned the ignition. The engine turned over a the same time as the old Blazer. Felix had driven these Toyotas throughout the world during his tenure on the Joint Intelligence Staff of NATO. His experience with them was nostalgic and skilled and he would not let it go to waste.

“Felix, I know that looks like a much better vehicle, but suppose if you are tempted to drive it that we should hedge our luck and take both.” He spoke to him through the window that he had rolled down into the the shattered passenger window of the cruiser. “I can drive this automatic with just my right leg. I am going to make my way over to let the girl in on the cliff know our plans.”

“There is always a girl, “  Felix muttered

“She will be safe and the chopper has supplies to keep her hydrated and comfortable enough to stay out of danger.” 

As the Blazer pulled away toward the cliff wall, Felix looked down into the passenger floor board and spotted a styrofoam box resting in a puddle of water. He lifted away the shattered lid and could see the brassy tops of four bottles. He put his hand down into the cooler and the brown glass was still cold. Rolled it across his dusty forehead and then pried away the bottle cap with the corner of his teeth. It was a brand of beer he had never seen or heard of and it was absolutely acceptable to his palate.

~~~~

Felix finished the first beer in three long swallows and opened the second one with the seat belt of the cruiser. He had known mariachi music his entire life, today the loud music that came on the radio was a bit obtrusive, only because it belonged to the previous driver. He turned if off and approached the Blazer throwing a beer into the lap of his friend.

“I know it’s not the fancy stuff.”

“Good enough, will do. Let me tell you what we are going to after . . .” 

Felix spend away before the sentence was completed. He didn’t have the detailed intel, but knew that the packages and cartel cargo was ahead of them. The canyon filled with dust and the sound of engines making their way northward. It had been ten minutes and time was of the essence.

Felix drove the cruiser with a demanding and reckless  exactitude across the broken plain. As his dust swirled up, the blazer spun and followed behind. The cruiser stayed on the high ground and the blazer dipped into the shallow declivity of the ravine to set over the exact path of the caravan. On half mile up the trail, he was able to circle back and take the girl. It wouldn’t cost much time, but he didn’t. Her lack of usefulness in the chopper would make her a liability and put her in more danger than she likely faced in the wrecked helicopter. AS long as they didn’t send more.

The rode parallel putting in the distance down the trail and strafing into the plain. The topography rolled just enough to create obscurity. There was prickle pear, occasional low brush and grasses. It was mostly desert. They drove along nearly an hour and were surprised to find them. There was impassable geography to the west and the caravan’s slow dusty trail would betray it if it broke east. The pace of the Blazer and cruiser was greater than the caravan could achieve and the time passed easily calculated that they should have over taken them. Noon passed and the two agents stopped to cryptically communicate with one another over the radio. 

“Rendevous in the creekbed, have you passed that flat head monument stone that you can’t miss to the east of the trail?’

“Yes, I am just at it.”

They met and spoke in person to secure their conversation to listening ears. The cartel mules where out there beyond their ability. It was being to appear that there was no way they would find the cargo. They had disappeared into the desert. 

Felix took a deep breath and it was silent for a moment. In the distance, the men both heard a shallow and painful cry. It was close enough to cover the ground on foot, so Felix absconded the cruiser. The Brit with his bandaged shin with a splintered tibia. Worked over the open ground with the blazer. 

One hundred yards away were six corspes in a pile. A seventh person reached out a withered tan hand. In broken English she muttered, “Help me.”

She was pregnant and whispered her last breath as they approached. All seven of the women there where young beautiful pregnant Mexican girls. They were all dead.

V

Marooned

The afternoon required the primitive work of marooned men that knew survival- secure water first, shelter from the elements second, plan to be rescued third. The Brit was in some considerable pain now. His ego would not let him mention it but his face and blood stained trousers could not conceal it.

The desert was vast and there was little point in driving the vehicles to a rescue point. Regardless of where they sheltered the land was open and visibility was long. They would be evacuated by helicopter to the nearest air strip. This could happen on the open plain. 

“I found a rudimentary medic kit on the cruiser,” Felix shouted as he tossed a molded plastic case up to his counterpart that was resting in the shade. “I’ll rummage for a few supplies and bring up some more water in a bit.”

“Thanks my dear friend,” the Brit answered over the edge of the broad rock.

Felix removed the tarpaulin from the Blazer and covered the bodies of the perished women. He looked into their young eyes and imagined the story of desperation they told. The intel on the cargo was detailed one of the largest movements of fentanyl laced narcotics ever moved into USA soil. The women cast aways did not make sense.

As he worked they could hear the distance sound of the Cessna that had delivered him at dawn. It was distant and circling the empty airstrip several miles to the north-east. 

Felix foraged any natural flammable items he could and arranged a Teepee bonfire at the base of the rock. He would wait to kindle a fire until the skies grew dim. The sun was getting lower in the sky and it would be long until they could light the signal and they would be evacuated.

The two spies sat together in long shade on the broad plinth of a tall rock outcropping they had named the monument stone. Their meeting were always in the most exotic places and felt happenstance although they were always arranged by a command above them. The West Texas desert was a mundane setting for them to be together. Through both of their careers, they travelled to luxurious and remote places. Time was always of the essence. The relationship and the conversation was jovial and symbiotic- but it was business. The commonality of their existence was the mission. The skills each man could bring was always the topic. The Brit an infiltrator. His ego always position himself to be the face of the mission. The Texan the undergirding, the logistics, the supplies. He was the silent messenger of American funding, the resources- the unsung hero. In the moment there was little mission to discuss. Only debriefing and the speculation over their failure. He needed a minute.

Felix took a long draw of water from a metal jerry can. He looked over to the Brit. He had cleaned his wound and made a reasonable bandage and splint on his injured leg. He was now preening his short black hair with a comb. He took a small sip off the brown antiseptic bottle, swished it for a moment, expectorated into the dust. He lifted the blade of a stainless survival knife and examined the reflection of his teeth. When he was satisfied he turned to Felix.

“You know that firing your weapon at that man on domestic soil is a breech of the CIA’s charter as laid out in the National Security Act of 1947,” The Brit reminded Felix.

“Once again, there is always an advantage to working in the shadows of a licensed assassin.”

Felix did not mean to be curt, his humility hid behind his youthful presence and reservation of his honesty. 

Felix changed the subject, “I did not know that you would be on this mission.” 

“Nor, did I,” responded the Brit, “there seems to be a fracture within the ranks of your organization. This very mission lies at the heart of a great division in the fabric of your nation. I know that you have always put you service first to the preservation of Liberty, Felix. I could only imagine that if a nefarious division of your agency exists- you would chose the righteous side,” Felix looked at him in woodier as he continued, “but how do you know which side of the game you are playing on really- the underworld of espionage is dark and confusing- the rules of the game are ever changing, as are the teams, we are just players really.”

“I was sent to gather intel,” responded Felix, “simple reconnaissance to construct an image of the operation . . .”

“You were send to fail,” interject the Brit. “Unfortunately my friend, this time you were posted as a pawn. An agent in place. The situation acknowledged and handled by the agency. The Cartel activity is too prolific to ignore. They put you there so the Caravan could slip under your nose and it could all be lost in the paper.”

It was hard to hid the hard countenance of Felix’s red face under his boyish straw hair. 

“So you are saying my agency is culpable for the affairs of the Cartel?”

“I believe the Cartel is only a mine and bank to fund something far greater. Part of your agency is a sleeping guard dog with its hand on the till.”

“The drugs and the money are are part of something bigger?”

“The money can fund something far sinister. The drugs and instability of the border create CHAOS. This is the greatest existential threat the United States has ever faced. More vast and obscure than the Russians. There is a hidden power behind this.”

~~~~

The shadows grew longer and the cloud less sky faded to a pale indigo. As the Brit thumbed the last Chesterfield for his black gunmetal cigarette case, Felix look out to the horizon. He looked at Texas to the East and admired the spiritual feeling that connected him to his home. The he was guarded in his conversation and ended it by fading into a pensive silence. It was clear that the liberty that he served was being threatened. He was eager to get home, to regroup, and calibrate for his future service to all he defended and held dear. 

As cigarette was nearly finished, he reached out his calloused hand. He took one small puff of his companion’s dart to insure that it had a hot cherry and flicked over the rock. From below and explosive ball of gasoline, hemp rope, and mesquite twigs burst before them. Within twenty minutes they could hear the drumming of rotors in the sky in see red and white signals descending. The bright beam of a search light swept over the Brits face awaking him. They were on their way to find the girl.

The Sikorsky Pave Hawk dwarfed the Huey as their silhouettes and shadows cast dark figures on the cliff top plain. Four helmeted Special Ops airmen dispatched from Lackland ran with crouched bodies in an arching bee line on the ground. Each hugged shoulders and cheeks closely to their MK12SPR rifles as they circled the Vietnam relic craft to extract the girl. It was likely she was alone, but caution was part of protocol. Upon sighting her, they wrapped Mariposa with a foil blanket and slowly escorted her into the Brits arms. Her face was obscured by her wild blonde hair and the nuzzling cuddle that her cheek took into his chest. In the amber glow of the cabin lanterns, her skin was dark and her eyes stared blankly at Felix. Her lips trembled and were split. They both turned off their COMs and Felix was left with no conversation to his own thoughts.

He looked at the Agent of the Minister of Intelligence. Their commonalities were obvious but tangent. His service to a Constitution and his to the dominion of a queen. They were at heart both Scots, both warriors.

His people making the rough passage out of Culloden  into Appalachia and Westward into a savage frontier. All for the sake of liberty. All for the sake of having a piece of land to live freely on, to worship, and to defend. The Scotsman’s struggle since the beginning of time. Bond was similarly Scot in the deepest construction of his DNA. His people didn’t fight. They didn’t struggle. They kept a castle through seduction and pandering to the crown. The Brit’s palms were far smoother.

VI

The Weedeater

Felix knew Texas like the lines and scars in his hands. Through the black darkness he could see the silvery reflection of the South Llano River, its branches casting light light a fracturing lightning bolt. They were flying over his home, but he would fly to San Antonio. 

He longed for his home. Not to be there, but to know that it was safe like a parent giving a tuck and kiss to a sleeping child. He would return to her when she was safe. His mission had only begun.

Felix cooperatively moved through the motions of a medical exam. He sat for an hour in a hospital gown in the base clinic. Impatiently, he went into the rooms lavatory and ran the shower- as cold as it would flow. The white hexagonal tiles on the floor turned a sandy orange for a bit. Felix ran to water up as hot as it would go to relax his shoulders. As steam filled the stall of the shower, he turned the water cold again, splashed the soap out of his hair and got out. He wrapped himself with a towel and sat back in the chair. An orderly opened the door.

“Agent I brought you some water and a bucket of ice chips. Can I get you anything else right now?”

He was polite but frustrated and ready to get to a comfortable bed. 

Resisting the urge to reply with GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE, he answered, “How about some wranglers in 32-35, a shirt, some white socks, size twelve boots, and a can of Copenhagen. And maybe the base has a ball cap?”

“Sir, I’m sure I can get you some Copenhagen from the Px,” the short blonde orderly giggled as she left the room.

Felix was medically cleared and discharged in teal scrubs with instructions on his lodging arrangements and an MP escort. The black sedan was severely cold inside and felt abrupt but welcome. The driver was listening to some old jazzy country and he apologetically turned it down when Felix sat in the back seat. Felix was curious about it but but in no mood for casual conversation with a man he would never see again. He arrived at a small clapboard home on the base. There was a single build light on a concrete front porch. The MP opened the door for him and left. Inside was a decorative tray of pimento cheese and toasted bread points, an avocado pear salad, three deviled eggs, a jar of pickled okra, and a line of folded meat. The house was a bit warm and the cold of the refrigerator hit him in the face. On the top shelf was a quart of milk, a carafe of orange juice, and a six pack of Lone Star. Felix grabbed two bottles and the tray of food and sat on the couch. He woke there in the morning to the sound of weedeaters and leaf blowers.

He wiped the corners of his eyes and lifted the jalousie shades. Sun filled the dim room. Just before him was a gardener running a two stoke trimmer over the compacta shrubs across the back of the house. He made  direct eye contact with Felix. Felix did not immediately budge, but rather peered back at him with his green eyes. The man, in his place blue coveralls, was there for something more than gardening. Felix had felt no need to go through the box of his possessions the night before. He felt safe on the base and no need to arm himself. At the moment he questioned himself. He quickly closed the louvres, dashed to the bed room to open the box of his personal effects. He drew his 1911 from the leather holster and made his way to the kitchen covering both the rear and front doors of the small house from a blind at the refrigerator. The the rear door slowly opened and the room filled with the loud hum of a leaf blower. The hedge trimmer walked in with his hands up and made direct eye contact with Felix. With a calm motion, palms down, and with assuring eyes- the diminutive man suggested he was a safe ally. The lawn equipment continued to roar through the cracked door.

“Agent. You with be questioned today. Debriefed and given directives for a future assignment,” whispered the little Gautemalan gardener as Felix moved closer so he could hear.

He repeated himself and continued, “you agency liaison maybe someone you trust, but don’t. You should be guarded.”

Felix though about the suggestion of a faction in the agency made on the rocks the night before. The message was consistent. 

“You will meet with friendlies later, follow the music.”

The gardener walked out the back door. The engines stopped and he opened the front door to find a rolled and tossed copy of The NEW YORK AMSTERDAM TIMES. He smiled, closed the door, and open the paper to the culture section. In the right column was a piece he had written on Dixeland Jazz. The name of his favorite venue was the only place mentioned in the article.

Home in New Orleans

“Hey Cat-Daddy”, Felix’s neighbor called out with a jovial and gravelly voice from the curb. B-Bob stood there with his short square body, flat square head, square eyes with square horn glasses, and opened his purple square mouth, “how’s business- Big-Cat?”

B-Bob stood beside Felix’s equally square Bronco kindly obliging to pick him up. “Key was inside the winch just like you said Boss-Cat.” He reached out his big square fist and gave Felix a bump. 

“Thanks so much for picking me up, old dog,” returned Felix as they he put his small bag of personal effects into the back of the topless Burnt Orange 1974 Bronco Explorer. There was an awkward shuffle at the rear bumper as B-Bob realized he was going be the passenger now. The regional Royalle flight from San Antonio was an uneventful shuttle. The Gulfstream G-1 had no frills, no food, and the stewardess was nothing to admire as the twin turbo-prop flew steady and he slept soundly. Felix turned the key and brought the stock 302 to life. He could barely hear the engine roar over the music that poured forward from the 6×9 speaker behind them. “Alright, B-Bob, got some Wynston Marsalis up in here.” B-Bob had fine tuned the AM radio. There was little talk about as they left the airport in Jefferson Parish that would trump their mutual enjoyment of the music. Felix could never tell him about his business anyhow.

Felix let B-Bob out to open the gate and nestled the Bronco under a corrugated shed rood in the narrow space between his home and cottage. He favored parking slightly to the right leaving a path on the drivers side for him to turned sideways and squeeze out. It was difficult to see in the shadows of the early night. He had to be careful not to scratch and pick his clothes against the weathered stucco behind him. As he stepped onto the broken sidewalk, the gate squeaked, its length of rusty wrought iron casting oblique shadows of flowers over his feet. B-Bob gave a tired nod and turned up the narrow street of their homes in Faubourg Marigny.

The small one story Creole cottage had weathered the years. His absence left little to be desired to its facade, the small roadside plot of empty dirt, narrow sitting porch without a chair. He unlocked the front door and turned on the lights. This was his home for awhile, embedded in a city he needed to live in to experience fully. He enter directly to a small vestibule and looked at his tired streetlight covered face in an oval mirror. His Bronco keys clanged into a broken mortar shell that he used as a catch-all. Directly ahead was a hall to the back kitchen and beyond of him an arch to the front den. The front room of the home had a sparse arrangement of his necessities, an assembly of oddities if witnessed by a guest entering the home of a cowboy. In each corner of the front wall were massive speaker cabinets on either side of a double width window covered with a quilt that had the faint shadow of the bars outside cast on them. The far wall had a long and low German-made wooden cabinet. The back wall had stacks of wooden milkcrates flanking the small arched door into the kitchen. They were full of vinyl records. A eighteen century Turkish rug painted over the smooth planks in the center of the room. Above the faded Kilim pattern of the room was his Pilates Cadillac. 

The Cadillac, a hulking box of plumbing pipes, hardwood, leather straps, and metal springs, was perfectly centered in the room. The queer apperatus spoke to what he must value or use the most. Felix was not one to take guests in New Orleans. He made his pleasure in the clubs and listening rooms. If one was to visit, especially a person aware of his occupation as a spy, they would assume the large cage his torture device. The dark room, just off the hot and sticky streets, a place to hold a prisoner captive for days, bound by the leather straps. A captive listening to music at volumes that would obscure the world beyond the quilt and would mask screams into the ghetto beyond. 

Felix learned the practice of Contrology when he lived for a stint in Hell’s Kitchen.  He was dating a ballerina that had finished her tenure in her dance company and was deeply fascinated with exercise. She spoke with fervor about the teachings of Joseph Pilates. She had the fanaticism about the man and the pyramid ranks of his devotees below him. Her concern about his infirmities and her desire to heal someone was perhaps her draw to him. The battered veteran with busted limbs, a crooked neck, and tumid discs in his long once athletic back would be her project. Her project was her passion. The initial introduction came with an err of disbelief. The lithe and powerful ballerina asked him to exercise. He expected to run, to sweat. He expected ketttlebells and other weight. The ballerina would clear a space in the floor of his apartment and stretch out long on her back, heels together and battered toes apart. Arms would extend long by her side and she would pump them and count through a pulsing breath. She would roll from a chin tilt, then shoulders up, then each little vertebrae in her delicate spine would peel away from the floor in a long spiral as her weight was shifted to her sit bones and her flat stomach scooped deeper inward. She would reach long out beyond her toes. He looked at her in the disbelief that he would ever be able to stretch like a gymnast. He could imagine that an exercise discipline that was designed around a good stretch would probably do him no harm. He humored her with the queer stretches until he was marked with a humility. After months of gaining a range of motion, months of learning to feel himself breath, feel the deep muscles in his ribs, control his diaphram- he felt challenged. The ballerina introduced him to her studio. 

The Hell’s Kitchen studio was full of wooden boxes, saddle back humps that stood like  black leather covered turtle backs. Walls were covered in lead pipes, springs were everywhere- spaced with a military like precision. There were platform that tracked like the conveyance of an undercarriage mechanic. Saddle leather straps and sheep skin covers. He was introduced to the apparatuses with some thought that he might finally feel like a man and bare some weight- perhaps just springs- but weight. the ballerina put him through the exact routine she had made wrote with him in the apartment. Same order, but now not only with out the weight of his heavy head and feet, but the guidance of a room full of the inventions of a crazy prisoner of war.

The Cadillac was the one piece that did everything. It was a tower, a sliding spine reformer, a platform, an inversion table, and parallel bars. It had followed him through a decade of his nomadic life across the states. 

Felix walked to the rear wall and removed his shoes. He folded his pants and shirt over them and went to the “C” crate. He was looking for Jimmy Cobb but would have to find him tonight inside of Coltraine. Felix listened to Jazz ‘drummer-first’, Cobb was his favorite. He found an old sleeve that contained Stardust. He walked over to the cabinet and slid its doors to the side and powered two McIntosh tube amplifiers. He place the shiny vinyl on the platter of Thorens 160 turntable and waited to drop the needle for a bit- the tubes needed to heat up. He walked around the Cadillac and adjusted it so that he could use it as a sliding reformer. As the tubes of the amplifiers began to glow he walked over and dropped the stylus into Stardust. 

He placed his heel and knob on the angled bar at his feet and his shoulders nestled into the leather blocks at his shoulder as his neck and head cradled back in alignment with his spine. The gentle vibrato of saxophone vacillated every object in the room. It was gentle but loud. Felix believed in listening to music at the volume native to the instrument that produced it in live performance. The Bozac Concert Grand speakers stood as tall as his nipples and were as wide as a double door refrigerator and weighed 250 pounds each. The well oiled walnut cabinet was warm in appearance and also admirably warm in tone. Felix had driven to Arkansas to purchase the audiophile dream pieces from the maker when he moved down South. Each cabinet boasted eight aluminum-diaphragm tweeters, two five and one quarter inch diaphragm cones, and four twelve in inch woofers. Each vertebrae found an appropriate place between is buttock and skull. The gentle tick of Cobb’s high hat splashed across the room with the exact rhythm of him gliding. His breath in and out with his ribs, his spine into the leather. He followed the routine through the first side of the record. He wiped his profusely sweating had to turn the album. He pumped and rolled like a cobra and a tiger and and elephant. He awoke the next morning to the long hiss of the stylus on the label of Stardust, his dried sweat a thin adhesive of his naked skin to the leather.

Marooned II

Waves of heat vacillated purple and tangerine bending over the crackled untold trail of his naked horse. The dust filled one side his slack and gaped mouth, level in the sand to the ground beyond him the way steady winds erase footprints. Dust dust mixed to mortar in the mucosa of his nostrils and occluded his ears from the ambient sound. Before fading, he sprawled cautiously into the forked figure of a dildo cactus, adjusting his body to the sparse shadow as the sun arched over the open sky. Ahead riders were approaching. His was wrung dry of any moisture that might cool him and the backs of his hand and neck were blistered from the cruel heat. There was pain that rested latent is his frail spine and a generalized throb that vacillated through his figure, new and not yet accounted for. In the golden moments that he mustered a spark, he writhed and thrashed. No posture could assuage the discomfort. In an effort to lengthen his spine, if only with the frail crumble of vitality still possessed, his head lifted and discerned life on the horizon. He was left dead to be buzzard pecked and did not fret on the balanced gamble of the riders being friend or foe. The posse moved in leisurely measure in a wide delta that grew as it approached. The pleasant countenance of the riders gifted hope and a measure of assurance. On the wings of the band were a half dozen on each side to a pair of lead riders. The flanking mounts were humble burros and asses from the gate observed. A bobbling gang of jovial dogs strode along between them. In the center were two healthy horses with riders humbly taller in the saddle, the mounts much grander in the shoulder. The attending men on the flank uniformly wore broad woven hats casting cool blue-grey shadows on their white guayaberas. The leading riders, both hatless, grew noble in appearance as they drew near. The man was very tall, slender and commanding of each hard step of his horse. He wore thin indigo chambray. His tightly combed hair shined in the late day sun over a stern, mediterranean face. To his side, a woman’s knees faced him on the facing flank of the horse, her ruby embroidered dress waving its long tail along side an empty stirrup. Her dark sun tipped hair pulsed in a rhythmic bounce. Locks along her hidden ears lifting to her crown as her horse picked a curious pace approaching the broken Samaritan in the ditch of dust. Words would not have been spoken for the broken dryness of his throat, but were not spoken as a defense against the kindness apparently being offered. The man pulled ahead of the band, bent by a force of natural law in the hellish northern reach of his vast land. Without words spoken, the woman parted her long dress and took a mount over a saddle blanket behind her husband. She placed her head affectionately on his shoulder and extended her wrapping arms lovingly over his erect torso. Two rancheros poured water into his broken lips. He coughed and spittled a slurry of dust and water. The hands put the crooks of their short arms under his armpits and waded him through fracturing shale to the lady’s horse. He aimed his toe at the stirrup with a great effort and vision askew. With assistance of three other rancheros, he was in the mount, slumped over and tethered to the saddle horn with at his belt and shoulders with hemp cord. His arms dangled as he was guided down the broken path of shale, dust, and limestone that his horse had left behind, the path amplified in its breadth by the men that would save him. 

Beyond the window the tumult and restlessness of the man was witnessed by all the inhabitant passers-by of the rancho. His feverous sweat soaked a newly dressed and cleaned body that held a moaning agony. She stood in the door, contemplating the will of her parents and observed him. His broken consciousness offered an excuse for her presence and aid. She placed her hand out and the balm of her cold touch comforted him in a brief, unconscious  moment. 

On the third day he was awakened by a diminutive man with a round tan face and a black mustache of caterpillar brow that connected across his eyes and extended into tufts of black whiskers in his ears. The cell of a room was sparse  and doorless with open windows. The only furnishing was the  straw stuffed bedroll on a canvas cot over the swept dust floor. The man, a farrier, Jave, had been tasked to care for the stranger. His exceptional trade in caring for the stock went far beyond shoeing and floating teeth, he was a skilled in healing- the rancho ‘veterinarian’. He offered a kaolin jug and Felix grasped the water with gratitude. “Desacelerar,” whispered the man, enthusiastic at the sight of his revived patient.  By noon Felix was on his feet and with Jave’s assistance, together they dressed him in the white uniform of the rancheros. 

The first steps he mustered, ushered by Jave, led him into a wide plaza, festive with light and color at the heart of the home. The space was an oasis of green foliage and cool ceramic in shadows. Bone white tile covered the floors and topaz squares were set like jewels in the stucco. A small table was placed for him and Felix sat in humble appreciation. 

The farrier approached with a lady of the same stature and appearance. She set out a tin plate divided equally of scrambled eggs and fried beans and a small bowl of peppers and onions in an acid broth. He lifted his fork and mixed serronos and spring onions into the plate in wide slow circles. The victuals disappeared with a manner that he hoped that no-one witnessed. “?Mucho, Senoir?” He denied her offer with better judgement prevailing in defense of his neglected stomach, but gratefully extended a  small cup for her to pour coffee from a glass press.

Over several days a routine evolved with long hours of rest tumultuous healing being displaced with walks deeper into the desolate heat beyond the barracks at Jave’s side. He was given a meal at breakfast and a more robust one at the little table at lunch, by the mute lady. The afternoons were deafly silent and the room, with its open windows felt like a cell without the permissive guide of his would be nurses. Felix enjoyed the hospitality his boarding without making acquaintance of his mysterious host. On the seventh day, he woke feeling particularly revived a rose on his own. The short dark woman that served him meals entered his sparse room with a long garment bag made sewn in ticking cloth. 

“Coser. Ropa.” The kind eyes looking on him encouraged Felix across the room to a narrow mirror that was brought in to the corner of the otherwise empty room. She had measured him while he laid battered and unconscious at the request of her jefe. Felix came to the edge of the cot and removed the white garments of the leading week. With some discomfort he gained the full length of his limbs. She cast a modest eye on the floor as he brought himself to stand nude across the room. In the long reflection before him, he was bruised and scuffed.  Sun crisped lobster skin on his hands and neck were frankly delineated from the pale white of his torso and abdomen. Across his good shoulder there was a long train track of silk sutures taut in puckered violet skin. At the last inspection of himself, his golden hair was more chromatic but now a lifeless mop of platinum. Despite a modicum of rejuvenation, but the hardness of his wounds and the curious emotions couldn’t hide the age on him. 

The seamstress placed a hand on his forearm and lifted her eyes to his chin with a permissive glance. She handed him denim trousers and helped them along his legs as he gently lifted his tired knees. The shirt, cut to not be tucked, was white and had the lingering smell of bleach and starch. Discreet cacti were embroidered along the placket, collar and hem. From low behind him, she held the garment open at the shoulders. He wriggled his arms and back into it with a grunt he could not conceal. His lips communicated a gratitude with smiling affection one might display to a grandmother. He bent over and they embraced. She whipered, “Fiesta de cena.” into his ear.

Felix was escorted along a lawn, its bahamagrass divided along the length by two equal  diagonal shortcuts of grassless dust crossing from one corner to the other.  From the quadrille building that had housed him, he had only seen sunsets over desert rock. Walking east, over this canal of green, he could see an expansive structure the its end. The grand hacienda was surrounded by a low length of arched corridor butting perpendicular to the lawns edge. 

They entered an arch at the perimeter wall and crossed a lengthy geometry of light, tile and stucco. There was a second course of arches and beyond he saw a two story building rising in the core with handsome red tiled shingles on a rather shallow roof. The home was a caricature of a bucolic Spanish castle in the desert. The farrier guided him to a tall wooden door under an open transom. His stubby hand reached up to a heavy hooped ring and pulled it back to knock into a brass plate with a relief of a fox cast into its surface. Felix read the inscription, ‘Zorro Fennec- Sé Valiente’ around this escutcheon as the hinges began to creak. As the door opened, an orange glow dappled in the shadows of the understory of the arches. A short man in a dinner jacket and a face tattooed in solemn emotion greeted him. The primary corridor of the house ran deep in line with the great lawn, perpendicular to the exterior course of arches. A corrugation of light and darkness shimmered between batwinged gaslight flames pulsing sadly in copper cages and dark wooden posts punctuated down the length.  The walls were a dark umber with the shadows of art, sculpture, and door frames cast onto them.

 The path tempted his imagination. He conjured a story the homes inhabitants and their priviledge. He was no stranger to opulence, his profession often embedded him into places of grandeur around the globe. To arrive such a place by happenstance favored more to curiosity than expectation. Each door would remain a mystery as the penguined houseman instructed him into the first room. 

The salon was deep enough to have two separate seating areas in its length, each adjacent to a hearth. 

At the first hearth just before him, delicate Louis XIV furniture  was placed around the perimeter and a vast arrangement of sofas and chairs rested in the rooms center. The blue of a robin’s egg dominated the upholstery and long drapery that ran floor to twenty foot ceiling. The hard furniture was gilded and scarlet red accents repeated in the patterns of fabric. A long section of checkered floor stood between the two terminal divisions of the room.

 A cello on a stand and tall harp waited of the edge of the checker floor. A pump organ was pushed against the wall behind a more dignified ebony piano. 

The interior wall along got presumable ballroom floor had the stacks of a classic library with tomes stacked and accessible by rolling ladder far above hands reach. The walls beyond the open shelves were consoled in a dark tweed suggesting a massive tower of loudspeakers behind a screen. In front of the library wall, contraption of brass weights, counter balances, pulleys, and gyroscopes operated in a stainless steel cage.  The contraption, that appeared to be engineered by Dr. Frankenstein, was topped with a dense acrylic plattered turntable with a curvy graphite tonearm tangent to its edge. 

At the far end of the room the balance of robin’s egg and scarlet were inversed suggesting the far hearth was the masculine side of the room. A bridge table surround by four lowback leather chairs made a silhouette  in a wide window. A deep writing desk topped with two glass shaded bankers lamps and flanked by an archaically cartiographed globe hugged the far corner. The seating was in a Chesterfield leather fashion, all puckered like a tenderized piece of beef. The walls were covered in taxidermy, weapons, livery, and heraldry. Through the feminine beginning of his long walk down the salon, a crackling life-sized  Napoleonic oil provided a portrait of a Mexican Colonial. His dark eyes seemed to warn Felix.  At the dexter end, he could now make out the tall rider, his black tight hair shimmering an orange glare before a crackling new fire. He stole a glance into the library. This was a habit of his profession. Rather than yielding a picture of the Mexicans trade or philosophy, he saw their similar taste in music. The entire two hundred square foot frontage of shelves housed a trove of album jackets. Decades of listening could be sampled from a century of recording. Flamenco Sketches softly and proudly pulsed from the tweed screened wall. The butler dropped step as Felix reached the first broad Persian rug that delineated the man’s personal space. Felix took the last twenty steps alone to a hearth where blue smoked curled above the wingback chair. the tall rider sat with his legs parallel.

“Hello, my friend,” he welcomed. He stood, turned to a barcart, while offering a hand for Felix to sit in a twin wingback at the hearth’s fender.

As Felix sat, the man tapped the glass front of a mahogany humidor and partly cracked the door, tilting an offering eye. Felix nodded, “Si.” and the man opened the door filling the room with aromatic cedar and island tobacco. He carried the dark shaft of tobacco to a guillotine on the cart and dropped it into the first centimeter of the cigar.  The man extended a Ronson desk torch with a hand that was calloused in the palm and oiled tan on its back. Felix dipped his head forward and puffed the cigar to life. Before either man could dispense with the formalities of introduction, the woman that shared his saddle entered the room through an arch beside the near speaker cabinet.

 She wore a velvety emerald dress that kissed the floor. Her face aimed to her husband. Every inch of her skin was luxurious and tight hinting that she commanded seniority in her sparse wrinkles. These wrinkles were blushing around her eyes as she gave a loving glare to her spouse. Without regard for Felix’s presence the husband rose to her. With unconscious etiquette, Felix rose behind him with an equal instinct to connect to her smiling eyes and pursed lips. He knew better and resisted kissing her with a gawking glance. The two gave a brief embrace of hands and touched one another’s cheeks. They were equally tall and well paired.

He had the appearance of a mediterranean man, dark headed and terminally tan.

His head was narrow and angular.  His green eyes were the marquee of his face sitting over tight skin on point cheek bones. Even his smooth earlobes had a masculine elegance. HIs mysteriously handsome face was well suited for a long body that appeared fit from regular activity. He would have been a star of the cinema if he wasn’t alone in his opulent place in the desert. To complement the man’s dishy appearance, his wife stood as a perfect companion. While they both clearly possessed the blood of the Iberian peninsula, she was a marked specimen of Spanish beauty, more exemplary featured. She stood as an indefectible goddess, but Felix was enthralled less by all her physical features than the air of kindness that followed her into the room.

The gentleman of the house seated his wife and Felix bowed to follow suit. 

“Sir, my esposita, Anarosa Luna del Toro,” as he spoke with his glance still connected to hers. He interjected in a heavily accented English, “now to this-Whisky? Neat?” The gentleman poured two fingers of J&B across two crystal glasses and continued his introduction, “And I am del Toro, Ricardo Paulo del Toro. You may address me as you please, but doing so as Rico would tell me that you are my friend.” 

Ricardo del Toro snapped his thin tan signet ringed finger against his thumb. The butler entered with a sterling ice bucket and a dark bottle of champagne and placed it behind them at the bar cart. The short man brandished a short saber. Instinctually, Felix  became cautious at the site of the weapon.  He moved reflexively to the edge of his seat to ensure that no-one was behind him and sat at-the-ready. 

“I see this has you on the edge of your seat,” laughed the husband. “Entretennos, Enrique,” he commanded the butler. As Felix placed his firm palm onto the armrest to launch into defense, Enrique lifted the champagne bottle out of the ice, removed the linen around it and projected  a sharp stroke up the neck of the magnum bottle with the saber. A cork enveloped by a clean and broken ring of glass projected beyond their site out of an open window. “My wife likes champagne. My wife likes to be entertained. Enjoy the whisky we shall have our champagne soon enough shall you desire later.”

The evening moved into a dark wood paneled dining room and Felix was seated mid table. The husband at its head to his far left and she to his right- both three seats away. Across from him was a place setting just before the hearth along the side of the majestic hall. “She will not be joining us tonight,” the wife spoke to the husband.

The Hacienda

Across the plaza, a lithesome figure moved into the silver shadows beyond the first stucco column, disappeared behind the second, and flashed in next arch. Each appearance was a frame of a moving picture. He engaged each interruption of the columns and with each tick of the filmframes her head turned toward him on a long tan neck. When their eyes connected her head turned away before she could she the whisper of instinctual smile in the corner of his mouth. She conjured it and knew that was there. 

Her hair was up and the brief glimpse of her face had a familiarity. She wore a white linen top. A thin smocked band clung tightly under her arms and across her chest exposing defined collar bones. The linen below was loose and flowing from the paired apices of her firm conical breasts to a high hem at her sharp pelvis. Her legs were covered in tight jodhpurs that appeared naked and disappeared into riding boots over the her calves. Her legs moved past one another like the long sharp blades of a tailor’s scissors. Her hips were narrow shell. Her legs were extraordinarily long and slender, defined by musculature on her outer thigh that suggested a vice like command over a saddle. Her figure disappeared as she was midway along the shaded walk behind a jade tile and concrete foundation middlemost in the square courtyard. For that instant, his heart ceased, suspended in desolation and loss. She emerged in a shimmering mirage of spilling water and his blood again pumped. As she passed beyond him, back now facing him,  her lithe arms bowed outward and delicate fingers released the jeweled clasp in her hair. Her sleek black mane fell like a gentle waterfall over her nape and unapologetically broad shoulders. The spotless white linen flowed over her back. Impatient breezes matted the fabric to her back revealing the sculpture of a hard spine that terminated into an inverted heart. Abberantly at the increasing slope of her back, a petite yet plump pair of spheres alternately moved like two animals dancing behind her as she walked. 

He called out to her- not with voice, but rather by scumbling of his aluminum chair. He  beckoned for acknowledgment. Her tender black eyes drew into him and he stood dipping his shoulder forward. She returned his smile, in the peeking tease of a shy coquette, her teeth festooned through lush lips- elegantly straight, sharp, and white in her sharp and feminine jawline. Her color required none of the masquerading embellishment of her glowing skin. Her quiet brow spoke to a life void of despair  and was covered in delicate arching brow hairs. 

Long lashes whispered secrets and the deep glare of her back pupils set almond shaped eyes called him. Her cheeks were high and angular flanking a sharp nose. Her face was narrow and proportioned with symmetry into perfectly balanced thirds. She held her head high over a delicate neck. In whole, she was as tall and slim as her father and mother, both unusually fit and attractive in contrast to the other inhabitants of their small village on the northern plain. She was a specimen of elegant human genetics. 

The esthetic human figure fascinated him. Through life, his eyes had cut on petite women, athletic girls, the soft and feminine all with curious admiration. His heart had once been stopped by an elfish chest-high gymnist and likewise a ballerina that was chiseled of muscle. Once he was in the arms of a buxom Austrian fraulein, a wholesome West Texas prairie rose, and a cotton queen from Georgia as sweet and round and lovely as a midsummer fruit stand. Each of these women earned his righteous affection meeting criteria in some balance his trinity of desire: kindness, intellligence, and his physical checklist that focused on the a diversity overall figure that he could composite as beauty. This composition of form was paramount and he projected the a benevolence on her inside- innocent until proven guilty. He was a gentleman that attracted ‘good girls’. He shirked meaness, crazy girls, and dumb girls. Every girl he ever engaged his time in had a healthy heart and mind and body. Each would be regarded as sexy by others if entering a room with them by his side.

It is natural for all men to gawk in the admiration of the female figure, but his magnetic inspection of this girl was driven by a something more visceral than lust.  At this moment every past affection was inferior. He his sight, he surmised her as perfection. The warmth inside him suggested that his legacy would be carried into instinctual quest for a prodigious combination of their DNA. They would produce a child of unwavering faithfulness and kindness, superior intellect, a hunger for knowledge, and physically dominant whether male or female. He would earn her by honorable means.

The Hand

His future memory of their life together was immediately interrupted by the reality of his present circumstance. He had a mission to complete. The possibility of him seeing her again lied in any opportunity he could stay. If just for another night he might peer on her again and be tormented by her glow. His desire rested not only on his admiration of her beauty, but in the logical assumption that she was as tender and kind as her parents. Furthermore, he contemplated the possibility that their frank and outward hospitality might cleave to some nefarious motive. He was indeed a spy in a land that had proven to be hostile with every turn of his cards. Along the trail to her heart, was a reality of the wealthy he had encountered along such an otherwise humble and primitive path. There was the question of his weapon. The 1911 was on his side in the dusty ditch. News may move slow, he thought, but surely it moved heavy. The odds that Señor and Señorita Ricardo del Toro were part of the greater web of criminal Mexican oligarchy would reason with little coincidence. To entertain several possibilities he would wager his time at the rancho. At the very least, if the master of the home was honorable, he could sort though the conflict of his next moves and at the very most might earn the heart of the girl and the blessing of her father. Likewise, he would be embedded in the mission and gambling with its players.

Felix set out about the property and encountered Señor del Toro after the rancho was coming to a flush of afternoon work after siesta. He was delegating tasks to his managers while sitting in a teak campaign chair in under a broad bladed fan. His hands stroked away at a long tablet with a marking pen and each man around him shared laughs mutually as they went about their work planning for the week ahead. As the Spanish conversation finalized, Ricardo del Toro gave his attention to the English speaking man he had revived. 

“Sir I just wanted to share my appreciation for your kindness,”  spoke Felix as his words were interrupted by Ricardo’s grin.

“If you intend to leave, Jave has prepared your horse,” he pointed out to the ring where the quarter horse he had commandeered flicked flies from its flank. “Oh that is a little surprise. He ran to us and that is what prompted us to go out to you.”

“Sir”

“If I may,” he placed his hand on Felix’s shoulder and drew him in, “I would like to offer for you to stay for awhile longer.”

“So funny you might suggest that, Sir. I was looking for you to discuss that very thing. I would like to offer what services I could here. I know you haven’t seen me on a horse, but I can do a fine job cowboyin’. Don’t mind keeping up in the bunk house either.”

Ricardo’s smile again interrupted him and he continued with words. “Felix, this is a dangerous place. I have a notion to believe that you can be a dangerous man. Or better put you can quell the danger of a threat. My father had to raise arms once to a band of thieves, but we live in a time when the anguish of a threat nerves us like no time in the five generations of our families have lived here. Over the meridian is a gang of organized murders. The devil himself knows my name and thank goodness we have been inconvenient to the web of evil he plots. Perhaps that grace and the opportunity to leverage something I have that they may want might be here. We know who you are or at least who they believe you are. They beat you in the desert, but they fear you. We have hidden you and may leave at your own accord, but I would like to offer a bounty and my further hospitality for you to stay and secure our rancho.”

Felix leaned back against the cool wall behind him and processed the gambit. How did he come to know of him and what did he gather? Did he know he was a spy? A soldier? Was it just the gun? Wold he be sleeping with the enemy or guarding against them?

“Sir, I just wanted to ask about being a hired hand- but I’m can consider giving you a  hand.”

“We would be honored for you to consider joining us. We’re fortunate that our we have some sovereignty because of our legacy here. The camps and operations are close enough to keep the Cartel in our minds. We are blessed their western smuggling routes are more convenient to them than the exposure of dropping into my land, ” he spoke as his facial expressions revealed  his adoration of the vast open land that was his dominion. “For the sake of our security, I believe you would make a handsome addition to our familia.”

Felix interjected politely, “Sir, I imagine you might estimate me a soldier or an outlaw- I’m not sure.”

“What you are, who you are, I would like to know more. In time. But what I know for sure is that you are an American.”

This assertion was simple for Felix to understand.

“Besides,” continued del Toro, “I am assuming you are a veteran,” maintaining eye contact with Felix as the blonde American extended the titanium hook beyond his cuff and unconsciously tocking  a touch to his carbon fiber leg.

“Yessir, I served in the Corps- RECON Marine.”

One of the challenges of Felix’s craft was balancing tactical charade with his ethic of stoic honesty. He challenged himself to be deceptive by creating alternate truths rather than lying. To foil an evil foe, lying was like killing- the long human dilemma of whether breaking a commandment for the greater good, in warfare, was a sin. Sure he was a Marine, ‘once a Marine- always’. So del Toro might surmise that he carried a gun, was a trained warrior, he assumed he had actively served. None of this made since to Felix and he thought, ‘he never came out and asked why I was left for dead, in Mexico.’

Felix cleared his throat, “Sir, there may be several things that you admire about me and probably see useful, but I believe I ought to explain- at least a little why I’m here.”

Felix thread a narrow explanation. “Sir, I believe hearing the truth about me better than any tacit story you might have constructed in the blanks.” 

Beyond the connotation of keeping an American around to quell the threat of the underground of Mexican criminals, Felix thought del Toro’s proposition either oddly optimistic and naive or calculated around an alterior motive. He did not want to be underestimated in the former and liked the play of being direct in the later. “I am an American operative of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Ricardo del Toro postured his jaw in the position of a man that had bitten off more than he could chew. He was silent and blank momentarily. He now imagined his simple plan of mutual benefit between the wayward soldier and his family’s security was far fetched. He leaning back into teak campaign chair his arms went limp and filled the calfskin slings.

Felix could see his thoughts of misestimation and continued, “I am just here to understand and investigate Cartel activity. I am in the simplest terms a scout and a spy. I am not here to engage. When you found me, something had gone awry. Thanks to your care, I should be able to continue my mission and gather the intel I have been sent to retrieve. My presence here, if it is known, would mark you- I am afraid.”

“So I see. I understand . But perhaps we might come to another agreement. You need a base and passage I assume as you have come to me to ask for more time here. If you might believe there are any clues in my house- we are clean living people and unaffiliated with the criminal element, but we know people. I would like to give you asylum here- just because I want you to succeed for our safety. And I like you.”

The Stay

“I will stay here indefinitely,” Felix reached out his hand and firmly clasped del Toro’s, who had now shifted his weight to a more eased posture. “Could be tomorrow through.”

“Excellent then, Jave will see to a few arrangements,” The Mexican squire raised his hand and the attentive farrier came out of the circle of white clad men in the square beyond them.

Felix followed Jave along the length of the stables and out into the great lawn. The air feel cooler there and he could see down its length the barracks he had been nursed to health in to his right and the grand home to his left. Several children and dogs tosseled and and played a game with a stick and hoop. Desert palms waved a gentle dance in the the clement air to the sound of a distance clarinet. The music was broken, yet pleasantly melodic and told a story of a novice practicing. Jave turned right, to the west ad they approached the big house. At the end of the lawn, as they stepped under the first course of arches, the daughter sat in the courtyard on a wrought iron chair, erect and playing the instrument before a stand of waving papers. Jave motioned him to continue and he made way to a flight of iron stairs at the end of the corridor. They ascended and turned back to come back along the upper course. He could not see over the high stucco wall, but he pattered over the music to hear what could be made out. There was a short jazzy flourish and he smiled as the miusic ceased. Jave opened a narrow wooden door, held it open like a bellhop, and disappeared when Felix entered. 

The room was appointed with a large mahogany pencil post bed, a desk with a tan leather blotter, and a low red shaded bankers lamp illuminated the object on it. A box of robusto cigars, writing instruments and a leather bound tablet, and a box of strike anywhere matches in a sterling slipcover were in rank and file on the desktop. An open bureau had several suits of riding trousers and fine shirts. And at the floor were an exquisite pair of boots in buffalo hide beside a modest pair of ropers in goat. On the bed, linens were turned as if inviting him to rest. At the foot of the bed was a long rifle and across the mattress, his tooled holster and Colt. There was not a window in the room, but rather a wide arching entrance to a light filled room beyond. He walked into the arch and a luxurious bath was drawn in a claw foot tub that rested on a bright marble floor. Felix undressed and diligently removed his prostheses. He carefully bowed over to enter the water, and checked the steaming temperature with his fingers. He could see out to the muted figure of her placing the instrument into its case in the courtyard below through the thin curtains. He lowered himself into the water and turned the stainless knob marked ‘frio’ on a porcelain coin to draw cold water into the near boiling bath. His head rested and he thought he might be tormented by her presence.

He washed his face with lavender scented lye and goat milk soap and a tray over the foot of the long tub. There was a cake of shaving soap in a an olive wood bowl and a boar bristle brush on a rack with a safety razor hanging beside it on an obsidian handle. He worked the brushed into the bowl with vigorous strokes and lathered his face and neck, front and back. He could feel each point of stubble tick and fall away from his taut skin. Each time the razor dipped into the bath where he sat, a puddle of white foam laced with course flecks of golden stubble floated. He shaved with the grain in long handsome stokes and then followed behind the first pass with careful staccato upward stokes on his cheeks and sides of his neck. He stood nude for a bit and let the arid breeze from the open window dry him, then wrapped a towel around his waist and hopped to the sink to splash away the last of the shaving foam with cold water. He made himself four limbed again and made way to the room and could hear a bell ring beyond the court that was likely summoning the family to dinner. He selected an outfit of grey wool trousers, a pressed white shirt and a dark blue jacket. It was very American- Navy. He returned to the bathroom and checked his teeth and pulled his hair into a tight part in the mirror. A knock was at the door. The man that served the house was there to fetch him. He returned down the stairs as he came and walked across the courtyard with the butler to join Señor del Toro in the salon.

The men sat again before the hearth and together shared a glass of neat Scot’s whiskey. Ricardo del Toro was dressed in a suit of matching gaberdine in British khaki with a collar open over his tan hairless chest. He stood and gave a wry grin. Behind Felix the tender steps of four slipped feet  approached. His heart tightened and he stood and turned to see the beauty now of two del Toro women. 

“Senora del Toro,” Felix nodded, “and?”. . .

“Isabella,” proudly proclaimed Ricardo, “my daughter.”

Felix bowed in a manner that was embarrassingly and effectually Victorian in nature, “Hello, so nice to meet you.” He made short eye contact with the daughter- then longer contact with the mother before returning a eye to the daughter, who he could only see above the shoulders over the furniture in the dim room.

The ladies continued to stand with eyes that invited the men into the dining room beyond the saloon. “After you, my darlings,” Ricardo proclaimed affectionately.

Ricardo stood implying that Felix fall suit behind the ladies. The señora was just ahead of him, her back open and skin glowing between a plunging ‘V’ of grosgain. The daughter was obscured as they moved ahead to the table. Felix pulled the chair for Señora del Toro, who arguably could be the same age as him. Ricardo moved past them continuing to keep the Señorita out of his site. Felix pushed the heavy wooden chair under her light weight and as she descended he could smell her rosewater hair and then could see beyond. Isabella del Toro smiled ahead of her father as she equally made her purchase in the chair in the center of the long table, before the hearth and Felix’s setting. She looked ahead for a moment and Felix’s eye turned to her. He controlled the instinct to gawk and arranged his face for a second (or arguably third – or perhaps twentieth in his imagination) impression as she lifted her eyes to him with one strong bat of her lush lashes.

Ricardo commanded the conversation by introducing the menu. Under the table Isabella figitted her fingers and for a moment Felix could she her nervously bite her lip. 

“Father, I had a lovely day. I rode to the hill with Sara. Worked on my thesis in the library and practiced.” Her accent was Mexican, but a heavily American midwestern influenced one as she spoke fluently in English. “ That instrument is dreadful, but I will do it for you. And the afternoon was pleasant enough that if you insist I spend it in the gardens, I will not protest.” 

Her father was perhaps as equally smitten as Felix.

“Father, I am so happy you have brought a friend her for me . . .”

“Felix, it comes without saying that you will get to know my Isabella,” he spoke kindly with caution, “I do not want to make the acquaintance of you awkward, but we might need to discuss the particulars and perimeters after dinner.” 

Isabella blushed, “Papa!”

Ricardo’s directive was abrupt and oddly permissive to Felix. The awkward fog of the notion that he might consider the obvious possibility of some relationship between them was broken by the entrance of four house girls with domed silver platters. 

“Felix, man cannot live on beef and goat alone,” each dome lifted and a platter of fried quail over rice and peas steamed before each of them. “Thank goodness for the game we are able to trade for.”

The two pairs of women and men continued to eat. Felix took great pains to take dainty bites and chewed with a rhythm foreign to him to control the audible popping that came from his jaw. The conversation was bright as Ricardo expertly diverted any subject to brandish his pride in his only daughter.

“Felix, Isabella is a student in the states. Our hope is that one day, she might continue to live in this house- long after we are gone- or at least put us up in the attic and bring us desert when we are old,” he laughed. “This rancho was Señora del Toro’s father’s, as she was an only daughter as well and passed from generations before.”

Felix listened attentively with the fantasy that he might hear all these things to know about Isabella from her own voice. Isabella answered questions that Ricardo asked Socratically to display her.

The house girls, all dressed in spotless white entered to remove the modest course and Señorita Isabella looked to her father. “Isabella what shall we have for dessert?”

“Cheesecake, i believe we have a cheesecake in the icebox.”

The house girls stepped away, the head one nodding and left the room. Isabella smiled at Felix with direct eyes. “I believe you will like the cheese cake.”

‘Finally,’ he thought with the exasperation of waiting to be spoken to. The meal was business and the conversation of desert was between them alone with proud parents listening, measuring.

NEED FINISH STORY OF HIS STAY_ FALLING IN LOVE WITH ISABELLA AND THE DADS INTEL THAT GETS HIM INTO THE BASE

30a

He woke at three AM, dressed in jeans, camps moccasins, and an oxford cloth shirt. He packed a small bag with his holster and 1911, and a dopp kit containing: basic toiletries, a couple of cans of snuff, a pen knife, and a cylinder full of various pills, a bottle of DEET, a tube of sunscreen, and a tin of camogrease.  He threw in a small first aid kit, a paisley kerchief, and a fresh pair of oxford boxers. The iron gate rustled to life outside the window and he heard the purr of his Bronco. He stepped on to the bare porch in the dead night. B-Bob hung his square arm on the door out of the drivers side window gave a square, “good morning Sunshine,” as he backed the truck out of the alley to the curb in front of the house on the one way street. He continued in a tenor voice, “You know we should just call this, my truck,. Pal.” 

Felix nodded and they started down Dauphine at a low idle. At the corner of Frenchman, they could see WhiteOwl working his corner, checking on partygirls and his slingers. They turned north on Elysian Fields and the V8 got throaty. Felix didn’t have much to say and B-Bob was just humming away, they drove for ten minutes, a good pace through green signals.  

“Hey Cat-daddy, you ain’t got no gas.” B-Bob pulled into the Exxon just before the 610. Felix extended B-Bob in with a crisp one hundred dollar bill and briefly let it tug from his fingers. He pumped thirty-five dollars worth of unleaded into the tank while B-Bob went in the station.  B-Bob came out with a paper sack and two foam cups of coffee. “They got Madeleines and Croissants,” he spoke through a mouthful of pastry as he extended a flaky bit to Felix in an envelope of waxed paper.

Felix wiped a drop of splashed gasoline into his pants, took the air-filled pasty and smashed into into one dense bite between his tongue and palate. 

“Who knew you could get fresh French bakery in a dang Xpress Mart?” He mumbled with a full mouth. “I’ll drive.” B-Bob hummed through his breakfast as Felix throttled the Bronco up the entry ramp, through city park and turned north on Canal into Lakeview. He split between Tiara and Peridot parks and made a hard left looping back down to the west turn he missed onto Allen Toussaint. He looped down Roadway around the harbor of sailboats and pleasure yachts. Turning onto Breakwater, he slowed the hurried pace and looked for numbers in the dim streetlight on the facades of the boathouses. He came to the 8000s and started looking for the sign. He parked across in the grass and left B-Bob in the cab, thanking him for another shuttle. 

Two men sat on milk crates drinking coffee by a bait freezer under a strobing purple bug zapper that illuminated the hand stencilled words: Letrobe Charters. He approached the men and one gave a flicking  waist high wave. He stood up, nearly as tall as he was when seated. The ether around the purple glow hummed and zapped cathode white and a large insect fell smoldering to the concrete sidewalk. The hog-headed pearl-white Captain had hair doubled-back bangs like Elvis combed over a bald crown. They approached one another and Felix was overwhelmed with the smell of Bryllcreem and years of tobacco smoke in the man’s wide pores.

“Are you Felix,” he asked a Felix nodded the affirmative and offered his handshake. “I’ve got you on the books for a panhandle charter. We’ll be leaving in fifteen minutes. Coffee is in the office- might want to rinse-up a mug.”

Felix went into the registration office. It was sullied with years of detritus and spent-out tackle that remained on the floor, desktop, shelves, and walls as trophies. Hundreds of faded and peeling Polaroids were on the back wall.  Men and sons with a days catch before them on ice. Larger fish strung on a gambrel by scales with weight and date written in felt pen in the white band of the instant photograph. A rectangular void of sunfade with two empty screw holes on suggested where a sign once hung on a narrow door. He opened it to find a lavatory. He felt for a light switch and flipped it up with no success. He could make out the drooping white of a teardrop urinal and the porcelain tray of a sink to its left. Two tarnished faucets were in a trapezoid of  amber streetlight cast onto the sink from a narrow skylight vent. He turned the crossed-bar knob on the right faucet and cold water splashed into the basin. He filled his hand and slapped it against both cheeks. He ran his fingers through his hair, less to groom himself than to dry the last moisture from his hand in the napkin-less room. He stepped back to the streetlight.

“Looks like you’ve got a little bit of your own gear in that ditty bag,” said the second man, a shoulder-heigh, firm-faced blackman with a Cajun accent. “If it’s alright I’m going to carry it to the tender with some of the other cargo. How much do you weigh?”

“Two-O’Five.”

“You pretty skinny for a tall-boy, but heavy enough. We gonna put you on wit’ me. You and the Captain togetha would suck de fuel oughta that thing befo’ we reached Alabama.” He turned his head and murmured, “caint git nuttin’ awn-boar wit dat fat mafukka.”

Minutes later Felix was underway an unlit boat with the Cajun. A ten horsepower Seahorse pulled hard against the wind. The rhythmic lapping of ripples on the aluminum hull competed against the drone of the cowling-less motorhead as they set out into Lake Pontchartrain. The tender taxied over the dark lake down the South shoreline for nearly fifteen minutes. The pace that did not offer a breeze against the hot sappy air. Ahead he could see lights red, green and a warm-white one strobing. They approached two Turbo Beavers moored, ironically beside the jetty runway of New Orleans Lakefront Airport. 

A second tender arrived carrying a man and woman with the hoghead an backed his johnboat to the far plane. He shipped shipped up tubs, canvas bags, and fishing poles into the door as his black mate received and organized them. Felix climbed into the other seaplane as instructed as waited. The couple, dressed like tourists in the amber cabin light, joined him. A third man of small stature climbed into the more provisioned craft along with the hoghead. The payloads were very evenly distributed to permit the 250 mile journey.

“If we’sa flyin’ now,” jovially announced the Cajun that climbed in the cockpit and handed Felix an aviation headset. The igniter sparked and the engine whirled to life. The ascent was smooth to a comfortable altitude of 5000 feet in the unpressurized seaplane. When the Beaver leveled, a brief crack in the headset was followed by a female voice, “good morning, are you excited about going fishing?”

He turned around and a thin skinned hand passed a clipboard back with a felt tip pen clipped over a light goldenrod stationery page with a watermark that faintly read ‘Privileged’. The top of the page was typed in 10 point all caps:

Agent: we will arrive at secret location SEA-Base in approximately 1 1/2 hours. Do not communicate about mission over this radio. When you finish reading make small talk with us about fishing. Weather permitting we will land as close to the tide as possible. As we exit the plane onto a fishing boat you will enter the water as discreetly as possible. Scuba is ready for you and we will pass up pre-landing. Hold under landing point for ten minutes after plane and boats depart. Swim directly to beach. Look for a low point in dune and go through it to the dune lake. If you are not met, retreat inland for cover and shelter. AGent Will Escort you to SEA/BASE.

“I am excited- looks like great weather for fishing,” continued Felix, “I’m sorry it took me a bit to figure out how the microphone worked.”

“First time flying to fish?” Asked the older male companion. “Oh yes.”

“Big fisherman though,” asserted the man, “you gotta be . . . to fly two hundred fifty miles away from one great place to fish, just to find another.”

“Everybody fishes near the city. Just wanted to try something untapped- looking for my record Pompano.”

“We’re after Red Snapper and Grouper. Bottom fishing and freezer filling,” he shouted despite the amplification of their mock conversation over the hum of the Pratt and Whitney turboprop.

Felix scribbled on the paper over his knee: I’m going to sleep for awhile. He awoke to the tap of the clip board on his shoulder reading:

Handing you dive equipment now. You are sitting on the airtank. Do you have any further questions? 

He shook, ‘no’.  He lifter his ass and pulled a flat vessel of steel as wide his shoulders and tore away the cushion buttoned to its top and put tit behind him, leading edge up. He sat back on a thin rivet covered box of sheet metal. A pale sand colored rip stop bag passed into the cockpit, followed by a dry bag, a flat regulator, and mask. They had all be spray painted the colored of flat sand. Finally, a hard sided instrument case came through there was hardly space to manage the armamentarium. He opened the bag. It contained a thin neoprene vest with ballast weights prea-attatched at the belt line. A latex sheath was rolled into a donut and nylon swimming trunks were each equally the color of sand. 

Clicking open the hard case, a Aqualung Master knife and a Glock 43 in mil-spec coyote nestled in a first layer of foam. Below in a deeper sandwich, a mat-tan cylinder filled the length of the oblong case in open-cell foam formed to its shaped.  He lifted the heavy object and recognized a distinct pairing of hexagonal attachment nibs designed to engage slots in his prostheses. The attachment system was the bespoke design of his dedicated engineer, Alex, in the weapons and technology division.  ‘Alex must be with SEA now as well.’ The though of one more liberty-defending patriot was assuring as he travelled as a defector to the Secret-Extra-Agency headquarters.

Along the elliptical cylinder Alex had designed for him were six small nylon rings and two knobs. A laminated card in the case read:

Gas propulsion engine. powered by compressed butane. Unit contains six cells. Red stopcock must be turned parallel to cylinder for flow. deploy each cell by pulling rip cord. Each cell will provide thrust up to one hundred yards or thirty seconds.

He removed all of his clothing and put on the baggie mesh lined swimming trunks and neoprene vest in the tight space. He wrapped the latex sheath over his leg like a condom aligning an oval opening midway down it over the titanium hexagonal holes in his calf. He found his seat and clicked in the custom propulsion device, the conical end at his knee and its terminus flush to his titanium heel.

The sun was just cresting the horizon ahead of them casting a glowing orange line over the water. The other plane had scouted ahead of them. It was moored a wing’s distance from two walkabout sportfishing boats.  They where black against the shimmer of early sun, a silvery surface, and the unilluminated depths of the water. To his right was a wide, flat gulf and to the north an infinite forest of agricultural pine and dune lakes beyond a pencil line of ghost white sand.

As they completed the descent, he transferred the contents of his ditty into the drybag. He clicked the hex-nibbed knifesheathed and hard gun holster to his chest and scooched to the edge of his seat, moving the single flat tank of compressed air correctly in alignment with his spine.  A hand reached in and cinched the shoulder strap into its connection under the epaulets of the tactical vest. There was a pat on his head and the female voice clicked into the headset, “be safe, hope you catch those fish!”

They landed and sprayed a wake of sea mist. The outermost boat idled to them. As the plane killed its engine, he could hear the unseen washing chop of a helicopter. The inhabitants of the back seat urged him to jump with their hands. The oscillating chop grew near and as he spotted it, there was a washing swish of air. A black dragonfly in the violet sky appraoched. As the chopper was just overhead, a momentary blindspot, a spewing ‘pissssh’ of exhaust blew down from 250 ft above at them as he jettisoned into the gulf.

The fleeting thump was replaced with the muted wash of the salt water. He dropped into his shadow twenty feet below and looked up to the crafts above him. Each, in turn, broke the calm surface of the water with their wakes.

The boats and planes departed. He was alone in the benign, clear expanse of empty water. He peered into his Panerai Submersible, a gift from his English counterpart that offered condolences as well as gratitude for his service in the reconasaince mission that was the last water mission he would conduct. SEA did not intend to be act in poor taste or test his emotions with the subsurface entrance. The water was clean- it was not the same. He told himself, ‘this is not the same.”  

He peered at the bronze case for ten minutes and then rolled over. Belly to the bottom, he waited for the second hand to reach the twelve o’clock apex. He reached down to pull a nylon ring on the end revealing a twisted stainless ripcord in the side of the canister. It fell away from to the ocean floor as a  few bubbles floated away from the propulsion end. A steady flow thrusted him forward as he put his hands out like a billfish. 

He counted to thirty with Coltriane’s Lush Life ticking at 60 BMP like a metronome in his subconscious. He confirmed his count, accurate to the second as the Panerai passed by his face at the 6 o’clock position and he pulled the second ring- one hundred yards ahead of the drop point. 

He gained proximity to the beach, recognizing by the decreasing depth. He pulled the third ring at sixty seconds- two hundred yard, two-thirds of the way right at a flourishing saxophone run. After pulling this ring, the pulsing undertow of the waves reflected from the gently sloping beach. He turned the stopcock perpendicular to his leg. He pulled forward in a broad side-stroke in the thin water.

He stopped outside the breaking waves and connected the ballasts to the tank, sinking the unneccesary evidence of his arrival. He moved the molded holster and knife sheath each to his waist attachments where the ballasts once connected. He slung the dry bag over his shoulders. He pulled himself into a breaking wave and surfed the last ten yards.

As his chest beached he lifted his head, rapidly to gasp for his a breath of natural air, but cautiously to remain concealed in the shallow sea foam. The air was salty and susurrious. The coast was clear and he darted, as best he cold without his running blade, at a thirty degree angle across the beach to a low break in the dune. When he was satisfied that he was concealed in the dune, he stopped for a breath and to convene his senses. He breathed heavily from the sprint. He knelt in the ditch at the edge of the beach. A de-ja-vu memory, made him laugh. The Swiss conch-diver his pal once chanced upon. His story of her emerging like a blonde siren in a white bikini, belted with a long knife. It was unlikely that a goddess would come out of the brush to meet him after he came to shore with a knife on his belt. ‘That type of stuff never happens to me,’ he thought, ‘lucky bastard’.

He was not received immediately by any liaison and waited briefly as instructed. Had the fly-over spooked his contact? He would wait five minutes then shelter in the brushline a hundred yard to the north. He reached into the dry bag and found his dopp kit. He removed a small bottle of 95% DEET, and a compound of zinc oxide, titanium dioxide and petrolatum. He rubbed the mineral sunscreen over his face coating it in an iridescent haze of pearl and purple over his peach skin. He misted the repellent on his wrists and neck, which were already being bitten. He looked again at the Panerai and five minutes had passed. He stood up from the dune ditch and surveyed. The beach was clear, there was no sight of boats over the now clear blue water. There was no sign of aircraft. To the northwest behind the dune above him he could see a tea colored ellipse of water with fingers stretching out onto mounds of sea grass and scrub pines. He made a quick dash to a covey of grass twenty-five yards ahead. From this vantage, a hundred yard wade and swim would save him a considerable distance rather than running along the fingered reaches of the dune lake. He stepped into the water and bowed forward letting the water take his weight as he confirmed it was deep enough to swim. The water was devoid of salinity, tannic, and lightly scented of pine. Felix steadily pulled arms across the surface with a strong breast stroke. Realizing the unnecessary effort pulled the fourth ring at his leg.  His head created a bow wake with eyes just above the water. He was nearly twenty yards from the opposite bank, with another forty to dash to the treeline beyond it. His head dipped under the water and raised in synchronicity with a knobby mass. An olive Cretaceous skull with wide set yellow-slit eyes rested in the surface ten yards ahead of him.

He stopped and twisted the stopcock halfway. The last propulsion suspended him, then  he tread water, difficultly,  with the slowest strokes that could suspend him. He thought about the possibility of a 9mm bullet fired from the inaccurate Glock effectively killing the animal. The flat head only presented a three inch sight window over the water. He paddled himself forward toward the alligator, each creature never losing eye contact. Felix supposed that he might be spared by the beast if he was calm. At the least he could place a bullet in the soft spot behind the skull if they engaged one another point blank. The ‘sweet spot’  the boys in the bayou called it. 

He approached the bull gator and realized the size was grossly underestimated. The head alone was nearly half his full body length. He drew the petite plastic pistol and began to sidestroke an arching question mark around the dinosaur. The animal did not yield his engagement with the foreign mammal in the lake. Felix began to second guess any possibility of survival. He controlled himself and did not panic, but accepted the reality that he would again be maimed in water. Perhaps this time, he would be thrashed to the death the great white shark could not achieve.   

At two yards away, the green and yellow gator opened its watermelon pink mouth. Felix double tapped two bullets into the depth of the animals throat. The gator was only agitated and surged forward. Felix held the pistol high and put his other titanium arm forward with the prongs forward like a trident intent to implant his soft palate. The gator slammed into it with a moments forced that jolted into his shoulder and into his spine. The pink cotton mouth clasped shut. Curling yellow salmonela covered teeth just nicked skin above the acrylic junction to his mid humerus. The arm ripped away as he pushed his natural foot into the gators thrashing head. 

Time stood still. He held his breath knowing that lungs full of water wouldn’t improve his odds in the fight. He looked for any possibility to wrestle himself around to the gators back, gun still in hand. He might hit the sweet spot. The gator lashed him with his tail and surged him downward for a moment. He could feel the gentle thrust of his leg and opened the stopcock fully to jet away. Momentarily he was disengaged from combat, but the gator surged at him. Felix reached down and pulled the remaining two rings, in hope to double the propulsion. The gator shot at him and opened its jaws, chomping and missing. It whipped its tail surging forward, mouth again open for a strike. Its muscular force was more malicious that the sharpness of the teeth in the nerveless prostheses. The cylinder of carbon fiber thigh made an exploding tock like a home run hit with an ash bat. At the same instant, Felix desperately fired another round from the 9mm at the gators mouth.The blast from the muzzle crossed the stream of the flammable propellant. There was a deafening explosion. The boom shot a searing pain into Felix’s upper leg and crotch. His mechanical leg and the alligators head exploded into unrecognizable bits. The gator body rolled over its yellow and white plated belly contrasting to the black water.

 On the far bank, a clump of golden sea oats and bluestem grew tall against a green backdrop. Two rushes of grass parted and fell away to two sides revealing a voluptuous figure. A female warrior stepped forward out of the puddle of ghillie tattersall and grass blades. Her slinky camouflaged jumpsuit was skin tight leaving  nothing of the form of her athletic body to the imagination. This left plenty for the imagination. Her thighs plunged downward from sharp hipbones like two bottle-nosed dolphins cutting a V-shape where they crossed a flat abdomen that curled back into her lap. The front edge of the muscularly defined thighs were on the same plane as her round high breasts, arriving ahead of her postured body. She fingered the zipper of the hooded top under her chin, and pulled down it her neck to the notch between sharp clavicles. When she was midway along her cleavage, the weight of plump grapefruit breasts pulled outward and down. The zipper continued to the point of her sternum after her hands moved freely to other tasks. Her fists grasped the tight fabric at her hipbones. She pulled and twisted upward, dividing and lifting her buttocks, then dropping them like two pile drivers over her legs in the skin-tight, camo-striped Lycra.

 Her hands peeled back the tight hood. She the ran her palms across her square face and back under the tender skin below the ears. Her fingers touched and overlapped behind her neck- then flashed up and over her head. The full blonde mane trapped in the neck band of the skin suit was liberated. She bent over on all fours and peered intently over the water. She looked like a Bengal Tiger ready to strike. 

Felix floated on the white gator belly and looked at the girl though blurred tunnel vision. He felt pale, cold, and lightheaded. The shock of gator battle and now the sight on the bank further saturated his veins with flushes of epinephrine. He was entertained by her commanding sensuality. He leveraged his arousal of her display to keep his consciousness. He wryly smiled, with water seeping between his teeth. The sultry big-cat pounced to all fours into the rushes. Instinctively, Felix dropped under the lake surface. There was one thundering crack from her M110-SASS rifle. The surface of the water broke and bubbles ascended from the oblique white contrail of a 7.62x51mm bullet that plugged the sandy bottom.  He imagined her roaring before controlling her breath for a second shot at him. 

From below he could see the profile of a second gator. The larger animal swam outwardly in an arch toward him, its legs tucked against the body, tail sweeping back and forth. The alligator expelled air from knobby nostrils and pulled its lungs back to its hips ready to plunge. A second crack thundered.  The surface broke with a brief thrash above him and the waving tail straightened- lifeless. The gator dropped past him like a slow moving torpedo. Bubbles dripped from nostrils and blood trailed from the back of the head as he thrust up for a breath. 

A southernbelle voice rasped, “Felix, don’t let that one sink- we can grill off him all month!”

SEA/base

She came to the edge of the water and made a swam slowly out. He again clung to the headless coldblooded raft. Muscular arms announced themselves through the skin tight fabric as she rested them on the opposing side of the gator. Her face was square in perfect proportions with blue eyes set over sculpted cheeks. Her nose was sharp and came to a diamond point over her red lips. An angular jaw line framed the fresh face over a long neck. Wet blonde hair clung behind her long-lobed ears and pulsed in the water behind her as she kicked. She parted her ruby lips and two elegantly square central incisors dominated an all-American smile. He knew that smile. He couldn’t place it- but he knew her face. He knew her precious smile and that voice was tupelo  honey dripping from her lips.

“Josie Beauchene!” 

“Josie Hannah.” she reflected.

“I’ll be damned. I haven’t seen you since Knob year.”

Felix had one of those a-guffs that men have when they see girls grown into woman at a ten year reunion. He could picture the seventeen year old, five-foot-one, eighty-five pound girl that nobody thought would make it. 

Josie let go of the gator five feet from the bank as its dorsal side drug the bottom and she came to her feet. She had the gator by the tail in a choking grasp and her elbows out far beyond her ears and flopped the tail up the bankedge. Felix released the gator and stared at her from behind in wonderment. Her knees, her hipsbones, her waist, her hands, her tiny little feet- all that girl from school. 

She reached the short but steep bank and her piston like legs pumped her up it without the aid of her hands, back in a perfectly postured “S”-curved spine. The waist of the suit plunged to a seam that disappeared between the globes of her ass. Felix sat in the shallow edgewater and admired her thinking, ‘if she takes one step back- that thing’s gonna beep like a dump truck’. She threw down a long cord his gawking face and said, “tie this around the back legs.” 

He fashioned a bowline and cinched the legs together. She heaved at the gator with no result and tied the other endow the cord off to a low oak. She returned to the water and put her hands under Felix’s armpits. “Let’s get to the brush.” Her soft chest mashed against shoulder blades and he could feel her flat stomach against the small of his back. She flexed her shoulder backwards and grunted, “you are shaking, are you injured?” 

“I am a little sore in a few spots, but I don’t fell any pain. In fact, I feel really good right now.”

Her sultry voice rasped in her ear, “Don’t get any ideas Cowboy- I said Josie Hannah- I’m married.” He went more limp as she gave a little flash of her ringed finger. Chester Hannah was an instructor when he entered Force Recon. They seemed to match.

“Well I hope you take this as a complement- damn you look good! Ole Chester. Who-da thunk it? Congrats on that.”

She placed him by the Ghillie suit and inspected him before draping it over him. “Wait here.” She dashed to the trees. He heard the rumble of a small four stroke engine. A six wheeled, open-top ATV sped to the bank. She parked it parallel to the long cord with the bed opened and tilted facing the water. She ran to the oak, a winch cord unwinding loudly off of its spool. She tied in a block and tackle as high as she could reach, cut the cord and ran it through and knotted it to the winch hook. She ran the nylon cord over the bed of the vehicle. The alligator drug up through silt as the winch wound in. She managed the long tail between the two seats. He pulled his own weight into the passenger side. She threw the reaming gear on the carcass. and attached the Ghillie suit to the trailer hitch. It drug behind them to erase tracks as sped into a dark path cut through the brush.

The ATV whipped down the sandy path, under branches, and sharply turning around rutted bends at the base of trees. Nearly a quarter mile in, the canopy grew taller and more dense. She slowed the ATV as they drove it under a series dark green permeable tarpaulins. The randomly shaped screens tautly tethered to bolt hooks in the trees. a long winding path of ductwork, pipes, and electrical cabling seemed to guide them along. There were generator boxes, transformers, shipping containers all brush painted in foliage green. Men in equally green uniforms sat on wooden supply crates. She nodded to them as they looked up from light duty work. They each gave signaling glance ahead and the message spread up through the camp like a fire bucket line. She parked the vehicle beside a large canvas campaign tent. The opening was occluded with a shear mosquito nets crossed over one another with lead weights in their corners. Two men in olive fatigues burst through the netting with a medic kit. 

“Welcome to SEA/base, Agent Felix. I see your arrival was eventful. Are you okay?”

Again Felix affirmed his good health as the two men cut away the neoprene vest and trunks and diligently inspected every inch of his body. They transferred him into the tent on a gurney and placed it atop a rectangular steel table in the middle of space. There was a large steel walk-in freezer in one corner. Pots, pans, spoons, and knives hung on a stainless rack beside a large restaurant range under an equally large hood. Stacks of deployment cases, injection moulded coolers, and an IV stand with a bang of lactated ringers ready were on the opposing wall. “This is our kitchen. And our infirmary.”

A thin figure with hands full came to the net and walked in. “Alex,” greeted his WaT engineer jovially. 

“I’m going to put you back together Felix.”

A ambient thunder rolled and vibrated the ad hoc barrack. The corrugated tap by hard afternoon Florida rain. More acute cracking and booms followed near flashes of light and awoke Felix from a four hour nap. The room was made of stud walls and plywood painted white. The a shutter was propped out over a window unit air conditioner. The room was aberrantly decorated as if it belonged in a beach house. A four poster bed was canopied and had shear netting draped and tied off to the posts. There was a lucite bedside table with a tall turquoise lamp with a cockle shell shade.  He reached to turn the switch, be there was presently no electricity flowing. Across the room was a tastefully arranged bar. His personal effects were neatly arranged on a dresser across from him. He walked over to his Dopp kit and removed the canister of pills. He put his fingers over decanters, each with a sterling plaque chained to its neck engraved with the contents. He selected a bottle labelled ‘Scotch’ and made thin pour into a matching cut crystal double old fashioned glass. The pills rattled over a silver tray as he dumped  the from the canister. He selected a Bayer aspirin, a Soma, and a pink Benadryl. He crushed them into a fine powder with the back of a bar spoon, then scooped them into the scotch, muddled them some more and washed the burning tincture down his throat. Peaty fire blew from his nostrils as he exhaled. The plywood door squeaked open without a knock and his old pal Hannah walked in to collect him for dinner. 

“Well if it isn’t you?” greeted the muscle bound commander in a nearly Canadian Northern Montana accent.

Chester Hannah was a Mastery Gunnery Sergeant when they met in SOTG. They had crossed paths through the years in the Corps- and never in the Agency. He was his T-Cell instructor in the Weapons and Tactics Package at Quantico . He was meaner than a snake. His bite could separate wheat from chaff and find a master through insults that were as venomous as they were candidly humorous. He stood five foot seven. His legs were short and his body flared outward from his waist to muscle bound shoulders and a neck as thick as his bald head. His front teeth bucked forward like a jackass eating hay through barbed wire. (Felix always wanted to return that observation- in those words when he took a lashing.) He spit when he talked. He was all bark- hollow insults with no spite, just intentional motivation. His bark was bite enough. What Felix admired was an intense Patriotism that could not be hidden. He was indeed in the company of a man that likely was swaddled in an America flag the moment he was born. 

“Welcome to SEA/base. Let’s get down to the mess hall to get some chow and introduce you to some of the guys that are with us. We can catch up while we walk Cowboy.”

SEA was a newly minted acronym for Secret Extra-Agency, a splinter group of CIA agents and operative recruits. SEA/base, where Felix had now stationed, was the hidden headquarters of their operation. 

The men approached a structure with and randomly shaped hip roof covered in soil and brassicas. They entered and the underbelly was thatched like a Tropical hut over rough hewn beams. The mess hall was a vast arrangements of fine dining tables and chairs. If the men and women at the tables wore resort wear rather than drab uniforms, they might look the subject of a Slim Aarons photo. The hall were each others company. His presence was feel and the laughter and talk stopped. Heads turned, familiar faces nodded and several old acquaintances stood. There was a slow clap momentarily. Felix could see Rearden, Greene, Taggart, and Mulligan. He made eyes to Langley mates: Sara Perry, Ragnar Emrich, and Davis Fuller- all agents- all great people- all leaders in their trade. 

“We have a quorum folks,” Hannah halted the reunion to get down to business. “I know we have some contractors in here. I’m going to give you a five minutes to finish your meal and then I want to conduct a meeting with sworn agents only. Can Clearwater Unit secure the hut’s perimeter?”

Felix had a compulsion to greet old friends in the brief time before the meeting. Ronald Greene caught him first. Talking to Ronald Greene was like being cornered by a lonely great aunt at family wedding. “Have you seen the  . . .” Hannah knew better and seated Felix in front of a bone white plate covered in fried fish and coleslaw. 

“Have all of our contractors left?” thundered Hannah, regaining the rooms attention. “Agent Felix is the last that will join us,” he patted Felix on the back, “He always has to do things the hard way.” He roasted Felix, “dang knuckle headed Texans- you guys could bend an anvil into a pile of dog sit throwing it into a feather bed.” The room sort of laughed. “I’m sure the rest of you recent arrivals have gotten acquainted today. Johnson and Hondo came in last night. With Felix all patched up we can discuss our mission and directives.” Barron erased his loving insult with a smile of admiration as he continued to lead.

“You have all been selected because of several criteria. You are all the best at what we do. What makes you the best is your technical skill and your operational ability is the best in the game. You each possess some mastery that makes you indispensable to our cause. You are all master behavioralists. So on and so forth- I don’t have to fluff a room of egotistical bastards, you guys know that stuff so pat yourself on the back.”

“More than anything you all have an exceptional political value. Each of your records has been intensely scrutinized for quality of intention. You have all taken some action that demonstrates an ethos deeply steeped in putting liberty and country before all other interests. Each of your would defend the Constitution of The United States of America and die doing so. YOU KNOW THIS. You will defend the law to the letter taking command from principle- our founding principles. There is no law that asks us to pledge allegiance to a flag, it is a fairy tale, taught to naive school children. The men now bearing our flag do not have your integrity.” Hannah looked down and lowered the pace of his elocution, “Hard. Hard damn words to say.” He cleared his throat, “Ahem- I have a room of Washingtons, Adamses, Jeffersons, Ben Franklins.”

He continued, “For nearly sixty years we have been slowly infiltrated by communists. The Russians have given our agency work since its inception. The Chinese now offer us plenty of job security as well. Our culture is full of red herrings. A slow drip has worked its way into our schools, entertainment, sports, mass media, even the churchhouses. We always have known this is going on, you’d be blind to not see it. Always a social movement that could be spun for the greater good or at least enough virtue signaling to make Mary Jane-hug-a-whale win the argument.” Hannah was getting hot and spit was flying through is teeth. 

“We can’t just blame the culture anymore. Now we have the intelligence gathered. Several of you here have gathered the greater body of it. You have each seen intel in bits and pieces- but never fully synthesized into the organized monster that we have identified. Our nation is under attack. The assault polished and underway.”

“We have identified operation CHAOS. That stands for Create Havoc and Organize Surrender. CHOAS is a well funded and centrally controlled organization set on destroying America both from within and from abroad. Its leaders are slippery.” He paused for a sip of water. 

“The head of CHAOS is a person that we all know, but known as a great humanitarian and one of the preeminent leaders of business globally, Anthony Horn.” Some in the room gasped as others nodded. “Horn leads a vast network of over 35,000 operatives. CHAOS is funded by individuals in the highest orders of global business and leadership, as well as enemy states. If power corrupts ultimately, we have reached the ultimatum. We are dealing with a wicked bunch that will stop at nothing to destroy America for greed and power.” 

Barron stepped behind the head table and pulled at a white bamboo chair as he was exasperated from his spirited speach. “I will turn over the floor to Agent Hondo.”

Hondo stood beside Hannah as he took his seat. He was middle aged, medium built, and appeared to be Pacific Islander in heritage. He placed thin round acetate glasses on his nose and his hands on the back of his chair. 

“CHAOS has infiltrated every sphere of influence in American culture with concrete directives each with deliberate and measurable cause and effect. The drug trade and the border. They have poisoned the minds of our educators and school children- Our school children. Folks, when I once met a Jesuit monk that told me if he could teach a kindergartener for one year, he could make them a Catholic for life. You have no idea what we have learned about the directives they have to program our kids. CHAOS is winning the propaganda game. They literally own five of the major six media conglomerates. It is Orwellian. The pockets of nearly every politician is jingling with CHOAS coins. Left-Right, it doesn’t matter anymore. If you are looking at the “X” axis of left and right you have already lost the logic, they are operating on the “Y” axis of tyranny and liberty. They own the senate, the executive branch, and the judiciary- if not by direct placements and allegiance, by bribes, blackmail, or a blind hand that pushes and deceives even the most righteous leaders. Every significant bureaucratic organization has CHAOS directives guiding it. They write the scripts in Hollywood. They control the endowments in our universities- Hell, they’ve even put football in their pockets.” The room chuckled.

“More than anything,” Hondo continued solemnly, “They are in our agency. The CIA is recently culpable for global atrocities at CHAOS’s command. Certainly each of you feels some pit of betrayal in our stomach for consenting to ‘break’ into this clandestine group. Spy work is a gambit of ethical decisions. We charade. We have all been tempted in our careers by evil masters on the other side. Be certain that we do not consider allegiance to SEA as leaving the CIA- we consider it preserving it. We are the CIA. Right now we can’t afford to wade through the bureaucracy. We defiantly don’t have time for a screw war in side the agency to play out. Unfortunately, the corrupt might win. They have the advantage of public opinion. They are masters of propaganda and deception- but wrong is wrong. Sin is sin. Our mission is always our mission- pure.”

“Each of you will be handed a dossier. Each is confidential and you are not to share any information contained in it with any other member of SEA. You each will be assigned a mission that confronts one of the major CHAOS leaders or operations. Each mission is unique to you. Our profile of your skills and abilities have matched you to missions that best suit your skill and knowledge.  The composite of your missions should yield the most bountiful outcome. At the very least we will cripple CHAOS. If it is God’s will, we will destroy them.”

Room emptied with fifty agents leaving with fifty dossiers. Fifty missions to be deployed in the next week.

“How are you doing Felix,” Josie Hannah’s southern belle accent broke his step in the assembly line of agents leaving got mess hall.

“Just taking it all in, “ he turned to back to her. She wore the same olive fatigues as the rest of the operators. Her hair was up. She was trying not be sexy- but God made her face perfectly, it was always that way. Cute as a button- sexy as a fox. “Thanks back there.”

“My pleasure. Chester and Hondo would like for you to stay in our quarters this week. If you come with me, I will drive you there. I believe they will be along later after debriefing with each other.” Josie continued to follow the mass of Agents and military contractors along the sandy path in the trees. They came upon the building where he slept that afternoon. “Yep. We’re gonna demo these this week. How long will it take for you to get your things?” 

Five minutes later she was standing at the step in a Kaftan dress that covered her arms. The exotic garment hung from her chest and flowed to her ankles revealing her cute little toes painted in a coral enamel. All of the evidence of her power was hidden.

  “Well look you,” complemented Felix- not asking.They continued on with his ditty bag over his good shoulder. “I wondered how you haven’t been found with those fly overs. So where is the rest of the base?” 

They entered the door in a concrete cylinder. There was a  twelve foot wide shaft lit down its length by a caged bulbs. They stood on a palette shaped platform with handles The “train” descended along the shaft. 

“We’re not sure if the fly overs are friendly or surveilling us. We don’t yet know if they are aware. It’s a normal flight pattern for training.  Hard to tell. But in a few days, the ground base should be clear.”

They reached a vast expanse underground as long as its breadth and supported by concrete columns like a parking deck. Supplies and mechanical equipment filled the five hundred thousand square foot space. The two walked along a path clearly marked with diagonal yellow tape along the far right. Contractors opened doors revealing bunk rooms of concrete and unpainted lumber. They reminded him of his Gulf deployments. They continued along, Josie giving ‘goodnight’, winks, and short waves as beyond a large bank of generators, he could see a motor pool. It was an oddly colorful lot. It did not look like anything he had ever seen on a military installation. There was a row of silver, navy, and black Toyota minivans. A row Yukon Denali, two each in every color manufactured. A row of random luxury sedans and SUVS: four Range Rovers, four Land Cruisers, the midsized Lexus GX and a couple of LX cruisers, Mercedes E-classes, a G-wagon, a Volvo wagon. The final row a dozen Audi Q7s. 

“Time to get to bed,” Josie spoke as a grey Q7 chirped and lights blinked on its side mirrors.

She sped out of the line of cars, wheels chirping on the polished parking deck floor. The light of a tunnel strobed as she torpedoed its length then jerked to a stop. A door rolled up. She moved two car lengths forward. Light spilled under it. They pulled ahead of a concrete building one hundred yards from a two lane road. Looked like a county building, maybe sewer reclamation building. Maybe something to do with power company to an average passer by. A small green light signaled her and she sped down the gravel drive, not stopping and made a hard right over a side walk. 

“The light does a great job letting us know the coast is clear for traffic. I’m still really damn worried I’m gonna hit a tourist on a bike.” 

They made their way east up 30a, a small highway along a stretch of white beaches and clear water. 

“Audi Q7. Pretty nice car. Drives good,” Felix made small talk. Really a Socratic question about the rapid change in digs. 

“The Q7 blends in like urban camouflage in Seaside. She tapped a sticker on the windshield to an Atlanta country club. We blend right in Alys, Rosemary- can’t go GI, you’d stand out like a sore thumb.”

“You mean I swam through a lake of Alligators and you can just drive up to SEA/base

like a day at the beach?”

“We have found that new arrivals tend to have some hitchhikers- but once you’re here its pretty smooth sailing if we’re careful. It’s just not that hard to blend in. You just have to decide whether you want to act kind or pretentious when the neighbors say hello. We try to only rent houses near a bunch of come and go from tourists, instead of local residents. You guys are spies- you get this stuff,” she giggled as she spoke in her peachy southern belle accent. “Listen its easy to blend in. We even get most of our supplies at the Wal-Mart in Panama City. I’m just lucky to get to board with Chester- Um, let’s see. Plywood Bunkbed in concrete hole? Four million dollar bungalow?”

“I’m sure all the other mercenaries are jealous.”

They parked the Q7 on the street in front of the Seaside home. It was white with long blue shutters tilted against an expansive front piazza. The porch was dappled with the light of gas lanterns and decorated with furniture that most folks would have in their living rooms. 

“Have a seat here if you wish Darlin’. Or come join me in the kitchen. Hondo and Chester won’t be long. You want a drink? Margarita?”

“Bourbon,” he shouted through the front door as he sat back into a wide daybed having on ropes from the pale blue ceiling.

CONTINUE WITH HONDO AND Hannah debating felix. and telling his merits versus his operational down falls.

The SEA/base command center was a five thousand square foot basement a one story elevator ride under the primary subterranean floor. The walls in the single hall were a light olive that adorned the walls of nearly every government building across the globe. The first chamber had a slight declivity in the floor.  Ten rows of seating, salvaged from a retired theater, flanked a central passage with a half dozen seats on each side. The far wall was paneled with a light pickled pine. A desk for executives sat before it. There was chalk board in the corner and an American Flag.

The next chamber,  behind a large opaque glass screen, was the war room. There was central desk with telephones and flat computer monitors. The walls were covered in large flat screens. There was a bank of computer kiosks and a communications desk.

Beyond the war room, a third and final chamber, was the executive office. A small secretary’s desk sat in the vestibule beside a large copier. Inside the room was a desk, a carrel with a computer and library of ring binders above it. A flat map cabinet and three file cabinets were beside the workstation. Across the room was a comfort seating area with two buffalo leather wingback chairs. there sat Hondo and Chester Hannah.

Continue with Felix opening his dossier and getting the orders to the poker game..

Anthony Horn

The crepe soils of his loafers made a gentle clop through the plush scarlet carpet. He followed at a distance behind the concierge, far enough back that he could see the pale naked underside of her heels alternate beyond the hem of her dress. The corridor gently curved along the naked skeleton of the mountain on its inner radius. The outer wall was a serpentine sheet of concrete, concentrically tracing each protuberance of the rock face. The ceiling was vaulted with concrete in pyramidal groinings. At regular thirty foot intervals, a rectangular sheet of pale green opalescent glass broke the grey concrete. Presumably the size of a door, each lacked a hinge or handle. The source of light, aside from the jade glow of each pane of glass could not be indentified, neither coming from the floor the walls or the ceiling, but non the less the path was well illuminated. Felix’s instinctual bearing told him that they took gentle lefts more than they wrapped to the right. He imagined the distance similar to walking clockwise around the main concourse of a football stadium- only a bit crooked. After five minutes the corridor bowed with a slight declivity and the place glass stopped. Around the corner the concrete wall terminated into an outcropping of chiseled basalt with a double pane of the milky green glass set in an perfectly rectangular frame of the once volcanic rock. As the concierge approached the doors opened, right and left, smoothly at a constant slow speed. The aperture between the open doors was just as wide as her narrow shoulders she took a step through them occluding his view of what was beyond. He paused to admire how soft light made a revealing silhouette of lithe legs. A warm glow made a vee between them from her ankles and her thighs did not touch at her under carraige. She stood in attention at the door. When she summoned him, her face ushered charm not only in its features but expression of silent hospitality. Her manner of dress was stern and professional, as if a female butler. He could only imagine that she was homely or beautiful. The question answered itself there was a beast under the hood. She continued to pause as he closed the margin between them. Approaching, he could glimpse beyond, just enough to see that the room was dimly lit by gaslight and vast in dimension. As he fell in step behind her she proceeded to the top of a long curved staircase covered in decorative Saltillo. She extended her hand for him to proceed forward. He defended the stairs and looked into the vast sunken den. A gallery of cold art lined the walls each under the tungsten illumination of thin brass rods over each frames. The art felt of death and nothingness, nearly arctic in a room jeweled with a the nearly regal flickers of batwing shaped flames along the walls, candles and downward facing lamps. In the center of the gallery was an exquisite combination of modern furniture and traditional Spanish pieces. Beyond this space was a circular hearth nearly eight feet in diameter with a crackling wood fire still burning the last bits of tinder and kindling. It was mantel-less against an exposed section of the basalt and a long acute conical hood swept upward into a thirty foot ceiling that had sparse pin points of light.

The hood was a cast concrete with moderating smooth texture and their was heraldic crest on a scarlet shield bearing a beast. The animal had the fierce body and head of a griffin, a second head of a goat and a long reptilian tail that transitioned from fur to scales over the hip of the mythical creature.

“Good evening, Sir,” a methodical voice of unknown accent purred from the far corner of the den. “My name is Dr. Heinrich-Ana Fuchs. Welcome to my home.”

A figure partially unveiled from the shadows below the conical hearth, tall and clad in fabric that had a black irridensnce in the occasional light of an errand whisp of fire. Dr. Fuchs came forward with a steady and technical gate- partially erect, yet stiff. Feet moved without being lifted out of the high pile of the carpet, elbows to the side with finger tips touching over the ribs. The hips twisted in a Samba step under an otherwise locked abdomen and torso. The head was tilted slightly to the right side and appeared to compassionately lean in. With further inspection the figure was in a very stiff and unbalanced posture. In fact, the ash colored crown of hair tilted right, but the square lower jaw was perfectly parallel to the floor The right shoulder was hiked and the left rib cage and hip bone nearly touched. Felix thought of Gumby. In all the locked stiffness, the hip swished in a seductively Latin language. The skin was sugar pink under the ash blonde hair an odd black steak in the right part and emanating from this point a cafe-au-lait marking flashed across the forehead, with its tail through the brow and whipping across the right cheek. It appeared as two continents, connected by a thin peninsula throughout the eye. Aside from this odd marking, the features where generally Bavarian, as matched the name just announced well.

“Agent Felix Leiter,” continued the figure lightly spoken and approaching like a wraith. 

“I believe you are mistaken. I am Sam Barth. I’m from the University of Texas Biosciences Department- Little research for the Tuxtlas Biosphere Legislation and . . .”

“Stop-” The figure stepped fully into the the cold light of the gallery lamps as Felix purchased his foot on the first tile of floor beyond the steps. He could see pupils, one brilliantly green and the other a dull brown. “Stop your charade. You are losing in the lie Mr. Liehhh-deer,” the accent more distinguished and Germanic as is mocking his Surname. “Are you the Leade-her, Agent Liehh-deer? The oddly matched round eyes locked on him and he could smell  stale breath- sweet like licorice.

“There is no need to attempt to persuade me with your lies, Agent,” garbled Fuchs, “ you  have entered my web. It is your choice to define whether you will spin it wider and join in the feast- or be trapped in it never to return to the life you knew. We will poison you and eat you. Mr. Leet-heer.”

The wraith stood stiff, in a tailored gaucho suit, more formal than that of a working man, but not festive. The body was tall and zigzagged upward. From exposed ankles, to knees that locked together, shifted hips, slung shoulder, the tiled forehead with square jaw- both a presentation of elegant and demented. Fuchs snapped long fingers with a sharp click and stepped beyond Felix toward the part of the chamber with a long glass dining table set. A steward appeared dressed in a masculine version of the concierge’s long white dress- spotless white pants and pressed collarless shirt. “This way, Agent,” motioned Fuchs with twiggy fingers. The steward stood behind a bar cart and made a long pour of brown liquid over a clear glacier. “Bourbon, on a single rock I presume. Prohibition era Kentucky from a dusty bottle. I will have wine.” The steward poured a ribbon of scarlet into a wide wine glass with a long stem and wide bowl. The calico wraith cradled in a nest of twiggy fingers and lifted it to his calico face. “1950 Mouton-Rothschild.”

The pair were seated at the long glass table, Dr. Fuchs at the head with the beast-like crest over him. The steward pushed the chair in behind Felix and removed the starched white linen napkin from a charger and placed it in his lap. The table was set with silver fanning outward suggest a long night with many courses. The pair sat in silence for several minutes. Felix consumed his cocktail abruptly. It was sweet with a cherry backnote and smoky. It would be best enjoyed slowly, but be was indignant and did not want to show apprecaition. The host finished the wine and at the last sip, two similarly dressed waiters appeared to left of each seat and placed a round plate of live edged olive wood on the chargers. The hors d’oeuvre set was toasted almonds, thinly sliced pickles curled into a flower petal, white Spanish olives, an very thin cutlets of cured pork. The steward appeared with a bottle of rose and poured for each man then removed the cocktail glasses. The wraith lifted the outermost fork, Felix followed suit. He was very hungry and consumed the small portion as the wraith began his screed:

Then the WHY I AM EVIL SPEACH . . . .

I KNOW THE ENDING, SHALL I WRITE MORE????