by Paul Lally
That led to curved graphene upscale applications...
And that led to a revolutionary way to create massive storage units buried beneath the ground like they do with gasoline and diesel fuel tanks.
Up until Jack’s innovative energy storage invention, remote charging stations were precious oases in a gasoline-soaked desert. Folks who drove all-electric vehicles had to plot and plan their journey to arrive before they ran out of juice. And even if they did manage to figure out a plan of attack, they still had to cool their heels once they found an open charging spot and plugged in.
Unlike a conventional gas station, where the average gasoline/diesel fill time averages less than sixty-seconds, back then it could take a half-hour or more, depending on your car’s battery, for electricity to trickle through the grid and into your car.
But nowadays if you do the same thing at a Plug n’ Go charging station? Like drinking water through a fire hose because Jack’s SuperCap “tanks” beneath the ground are packed with inestimable megawatts that can’t wait to find their way into your car’s battery.
How long does it take?
Most likely you already drive a hybrid or full-electric and you already know it’s just as fast as pumping gas. No more cooling your heels for a half-hour, eating stale pretzels and checking your phone for messages.
And that breakthrough inevitably led to the full-service Super Plug n’ Go stations you see on street corners and highways across America. Clean, crisp building design, well-stocked convenience stores, featuring an average four or five “islands” for charging. They’ve even got air pumps (free, mind you. Jack’s no skinflint.)
Here’s the best part:
Unlike earlier inventors who underestimated the competition’s reaction to their creations and got clobbered, Jack knew from the beginning that he needed to throw enough bones to the major oil companies so they wouldn’t see him as a threat and devour him.
Here’s how: if you still drive a conventionally powered vehicle and pull into a Shell or Exxon station to pump gas, you’ll always see off to the left or right—normally near the air pump (cost a buck to use it, though)—a couple of Plug n’ Go charging stations. By this simple solution of sharing the potential wealth (at rock-bottom prices) Jack became a worthy competitor.
That simple.
But then again, most inventions are.
One of which, providing Duracell’s happy with his recent manufacturing suggestion, will make him even more money. Not that he’s personally cares. But folks who work for him have families to raise and mortgages to pay and that he does care about.
A lot.
As he makes his way over to one of the curved graphene winding machines, his smartphone buzzes in his hip pocket.
A glance to see who.
“Hi, Pop, what’s up?”
“On the road?”
“At Duracell.”
“Which one?”
“Akron.”
“As in ‘Ohio’?”
“Affirmative your last. Home tonight.”
A pause. Hard to hear because of the factory floor roar.
“You still there, Pop?”
“We need to talk.”
The tone of his voice brings Jack to halt. “Pain getting worse?”
“About the same.”
Jack checks his watch. “Be at my place eight sharp, tomorrow morning.”
“No way. Meeting the doc at nine. This one’s up at Dartmouth-Hitchcock. A two-hour drive from here.”
“We’ll take my chopper. Fifty miles, straight shot. I’ll have you at the hospital in plenty of time.”
“About my needing to talk. It’s not about me, it’s about the Rock.”
“What about her?”
“She’s in trouble.”
The silence is deafening in the small examination room at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Cancer Center.
“How’s the nausea?” the doctor says.
“Pretty much gone,” Tommy says.
“Excellent.” He looks down at his notes and bites his lower lip.
Jack and his father exchange a look that carries with it the inexpressible horror of being trapped in a brightly lit room with a young, eager oncologist who, despite his national renown for achieving high success-rates with colorectal cancer—hence Dartmouth-Hitchcock Cancer Center snatching him up for patients like Tommy—he doesn’t walk on water.
He bites his lower lip instead.
Tommy knows that gesture from his pro-bono days: the accused doing his damndest to keep from blurting out the truth.
“I’m a big boy, doc,” Tommy says. “Spit it out.”
A final shrug and expressive sigh. “I’m sorry to say that the response from your microsphere treatment last summer, while initially positive, has not been as effective as we had hoped.”
Tommy lets that sink in. It’s no surprise, though. Nobody ever beats cancer. At best, it goes into temporary hiding, at worst, it never does.
“What you’re saying, basically, is that I threw up and felt like shit for two weeks for nothing. Correct?”
“That’s not what I meant. I think—”
“—yes, that is what you meant. It’s okay. I get it. You did your best. I appreciate it. So, what’s my time frame?”
“Excuse me?”
“Ballpark’s okay. Don’t need to pin it down to the hour, minute, and second until I take my last breath. What do I got? A month? Two months? Six?”
A long pause. More breathing.
Jack nudges things along. “A prognosis would help us figure out what to do next.”
“I know, it’s just that—”
“—you want to keep fighting, I get it. That’s why you signed up in the first place, right?”
The doctor sighs. “Based on the disappointing microsphere treatment, I thought today we might discuss the possibility of a hepatic metastasectomy as an alternate way to stop the spread.”
Jack rests his hand on his father’s shoulder. “What do you say, Pop, up for some slice and dice?”
He shakes his head. “The defense rests, your honor.”
The doctor looks puzzled.
Tommy starts buttoning his shirt. “You and the family finally settled in up here?”
“Excuse me?”
“Kids okay with their new school? It can be murder, especially when you come from a big city like L.A. to a dinky little cow town way the hell up in northern New Hampshire, snow included. I for one am glad you did, though. Lots of folks up here going to be needing you long after I’m gone.”
“But I—”
“Your Honor, the cancer jury finds the defendant guilty as charged. What’s my sentence?”
More silence.
Tommy nods to Jack, who leans forward and turns off the computer display screen. For the past half-hour, the young Los Angeles miracle worker had been showing them PET scans of Tommy’s liver and “mapping angiograms” used for injecting the radioactive microspheres that were supposed to clobber the tumors but got clobbered instead.
Jack says. “Based on today’s results, you said my father’s officially in the fourteen-percent range. Please quantify that, time-wise—if at all possible, of course.”
The doctor alternates looking back and forth between his blank computer screen and the father and son. The hiss of the HVAC vent in the ceiling and the faraway piped-in music mix with the steady breathing of three men caught between a rock and a hard place, with nowhere to hide.
A final sigh. “Three months at the least, a year at the very most.”
“—If I’m lucky.”
“Yes, Mr. Riley.”
Tommy grins. “I’m Irish, doc. Nothing but lucky.”
While the doctor ponders, Tommy finishes snugging up his tie and knots it. In a world of open collars and black T-shirts, denim shirts, and smart young sons, Thomas Aloysius Riley, Esq. still believes in dressing for the occasion. Even if it means to receiving his death sentence.
It’s not that you can’t talk inside
a helicopter. They’re soundproof enough to handle it. It’s just that after meeting with the doctor, there’s not much to say.
But at one point, about forty miles northwest of Portsmouth, Tommy spots the New Hampshire Motor Speedway five thousand feet below them, a deserted, multi-laned, oval track surrounded by fall colors of blazing orange, red, and yellow.
“Remember that race I took you to?”
Jack smiles. “The five-hour one?”
“Yes.”
“How could I forget? I was deaf for a week.”
“No way.”
“Sure felt like it.”
“A good excuse not to listen to your old man give you advice that you refused to take.”
Jack grins. “Field expediency, Pop.”
The NASCAR racetrack glides beneath their flight path, empty of high-performance cars going round and round as it silently awaiting the winter snows to come. Not until next summer will the locals once again enjoy the throaty roar of stock car racing at this New Hampshire landmark.
The two men fall silent again. The crisp, cool October sky is crystal clear with only a few puffy clouds gliding high above. Not a speck of haze to be seen. So clear that the distant sparkle of the Atlantic Ocean can be seen on the horizon.
“She’s hell on wheels, that woman is,” Tommy finally says.
“Devillar, you mean?”
“Affirmative.”
“Never liked Munroe when I was growing up. The little brat who became a bitch.”
“Who’s kicking the Rock out of her home.”
“She’s got the law on her side, Pop. You of all people ought to know that.”
“Wish to hell Walt never had that heart attack—and why in blazes didn’t he tell me our dockage rights wouldn’t convey? Phillips Metals is an LLC, and as such, there are provisions to—”
“—Don’t get your bowels in an uproar, counselor.”
“Is that your idea of a joke?”
Jack glances over and grins. His oversize headsets make him look goofy. His broad smile even more so. “Not bad, huh?”
“Here I am, your beloved father, the man who gave you life, and is now dying from colon cancer, and you’re making ass jokes.”
Jack’s still smiling. He raises his eyebrows inquisitively. “And your point is...?”
“My point is, speaking of asses, I want yours to shit a gold brick for me—for us—for the Rock—for Stanley and JJ, and all the others who busted their balls to make that ship what she is today, and what she won’t be if Devillar gets her way, and the Navy hauls her off to the Brownsville shipbreakers.”
“Or one of them over in India. They love the smell of burning acetylene in the morning.”
More silence.
Not until they pass over the traffic circle that leads into Portsmouth, does Tommy point to the distant bridge where U.S. 1 crosses over into Maine. “Mind if we take a look at her?”
“My pleasure.”
Jack begins a slow descent to five hundred feet AGL just as they reach Phillips Metals where the USS New Hampshire is moored.
Tommy smiles and then laughs.
“What’s up?” Jack says.
“JJ said he would, and he damn well did.”
“Did what?”
“Check out his forty-millimeter quad sitting down there in the parking lot.”
Sure enough, the light grey, 40mm Bofors gun tub sits smack dab in the middle of Battleship Memorial Park’s weed-filled, beat-up parking lot.
“That thing weighs twelve tons,” Tommy adds. “Good luck moving it, Munroe.”
“Admiral Lewis does not fool around.”
“Never did.”
Jack slowly circles the battleship. At this height, the Rock’s down-at-the-heels condition is not as pronounced. But the rust is there for sure, and rotted teakwood sections of her deck, too, not to mention unseen compartments, long sealed from view but not from the ravages of almost twenty years of motionless captivity.
As they continue circling, Jack scans the skies for possible airborne traffic. Being this close to the Air National Guard base over at Pease, it pays to have eyes in the back of your head.
“We saved the Rock that day,” Jack finally says. “Captain Lewis and the Savo Island, I mean.”
“Baloney. She could have taken ten of those damn Iraqi missiles, and then blasted their coastal launch sites to kingdom come.”
“Please repeat your last. I can’t hear you because your saber’s rattling too loudly.”
“To hell with your damned missiles. Give me sixteen-inches every time.”
“Said the woman to the sailor.”
“Enlisted humor. Always so fresh and original.”
“Yes, sir, Lieutenant Riley, sir.”
They complete another slow circuit of the Rock, higher this time. At this altitude, you don’t really see she’s worse for wear. (True about people, too.)
“Seen enough?” Jack says.
“I’ll never see enough of her.”
“You love that damn ship, don’t you?”
Tommy looks at his son for a brief moment. Then looks away and nods.
“It’s only the beginning, my friend,” Miguel Lopez-Vargas says. “The longest journey begins with a single step, yes? Your trucking company begins with a single truck—what’s the model again?”
“A Kenworth T-800. Tandem axle, mid-roof sleeper, white as snow. A real beauty. I still cannot believe you are buying it for me.”
His brother Ernesto’s voice sounds tinny. Miguel has him on speakerphone because he’s busy trying to get his constipated bowels to obey.
A faraway female voice beyond the closed bathroom door says plaintively, “Aren’t you ever coming back, ¿cariño?”
“Soon!” Miguel shouts.
“You are at Adriana’s?”
“Si.”
“Tell her I have not forgotten that recipe.”
“Which one?”
“My Tacos al Pastor.”
“I love those!”
“Next time we are together, I promise to make some.”
“I will hold you to it, brother.”
Vargas’s voice echoes slightly in the vastness of the luxurious bathroom. Carrera marble walls and floors, gold-plated fixtures, a walk-in “rain-shower,” twin vanities with mirrors to the ceiling, and a jacuzzi hot tub big enough for a foursome. A far cry from that Porta-Potty in the middle of a tomato field. No question about it, little Miguel has come a long, long way.
And he’s not done yet.
Ernesto says, “Still all right about it?”
“About what?”
“The Kenworth.”
“Of course, I am. Without you I would have ended up in a gutter somewhere.”
“I was just your big brother, that’s all.”
“You still are.”
“Mamma wonders if—”
“Tell her I love her and will visit the minute I get free.”
A long pause. Ernesto breathing but not speaking.
Miguel prompts. “What are you thinking?”
“About the truck. Very exciting.”
“A new beginning for you, my friend.”
“And for you as well.”
“You can’t see me, but I am smiling.”
“Me too. Adios hermanito.”
“Adios, hermano.”
A melodious female voice says softly. “He’ll be awake soon, can’t you hurry?”
Miguel Vargas is in love with a beautiful woman.
He’s also constipated.
An uncomfortable combination considering his lover is out in the bedroom waiting for him. And what a lover she is! Adriana Garcia-Santiago, the only daughter of Vargas’s boss, Hector Garcia.
Up north, the DEA calls Hector a “drug lord.” But Vargas doesn’t see it that way and he never will. In his mind, Garcia’s a commodities trader, pure and simple. Could have been cotton, wheat, corn, sugar, coffee, cattle, pork bellies, lumber, silver... The fact that it’s cocaine i
s of no concern to Garcia—other than the annoying complication of its illegality and the constant efforts by Mexican and American authorities to stop him from making a living.
Before the gangland murder of Adriana’s husband Ramòn, Garcia’s daughter and son-in-law lived twenty miles south of Cancún in Punta Marmora with their five-year-old son Hector (named for his grandfather). Now a widow, she’s taken shelter in one of her father’s four residences; Casa Nautica in Cancún.
Miguel was instrumental in bringing Ramòn’s murderers to “street justice.” But that didn’t bring him back to life. It’s been almost a year now. Adriana’s memories are fading, mostly because of Miguel’s unceasing kindness—not to mention his fatherly attention to “Little Hector.”
Casa Nautica’s quite the place, filled with daring angles and floating ceilings. The four-bedroom, six-bath residence features a gourmet kitchen, swimming pool, gym, and a cantilevered balcony that overlooks the sea. Designed by the renowned Mexican architect Sergio Ramirez, the palatial home includes a private beach that offers majestic views of the vast turquoise expanse of the Gulf of Mexico—much better than endless farm fields, aching backs, and the merciless, ever-present sun.
Alas... no luck in the bowel department.
Vargas cleans up, brushes his teeth and examines his face in the mirror. Despite his plugged-up insides, he likes who’s staring back at him: the future heir to the throne of the Garcia dynasty, now that Ramòn is out of the picture for good.
Thanks to an ambush Vargas secretly arranged.
And because he killed her husband’s killers afterwards, nobody will ever find out a chilling truth—most importantly Adriana—that he was behind the whole thing, from the planning, the surveillance, and the final killing. And if he plays his cards right with Ramòn’s beautiful widow, she will not only be his lover in bed, she’ll also be the queen at his side when he inherits the dynasty.
He opens the bathroom door. “¿Lista para tu amante?”
Adriana spreads her arms wide and the sheet falls away to reveal her naked breasts. “Ven conmigo bebé”
They kiss fiercely.
Then she glances at the digital clock on the bedside table. “We’ve got fifteen minutes before little Hector wakes up.”
“Plenty of time to wake you up first.”
