* * * * *
I am Randal’s mistress, Yolanda, and I demand submission. Now! I wear black leather because it goes well with my whips. I have a flock of male slaves who beg to serve my every need. Those who behave, I allow to lick my boots. I am also a secret agent. If not for me, humanity would have been extinct long ago. My control over inferior males allows me to save the world from their stupidity. Women are jealous of my beauty and talent, but that’s their problem. Get over it!
Yolanda was meeting with the President. The man wanted her to ride him like a horse, make him feel even more small and worthless. Odd duck. Being a lawyer and former ambulance chaser, the fool should feel worthless enough. What’s a women to do? He is the President, so I have to do what he says. Always, no matter what.
The Secret Service knew better than to ask stupid questions about weapons, or to search her. They never search me, damn it! She walked into the Oval Office like she owned the dump. Same old carpet, same old crappy paintings of dead guys. The President sat behind his desk, trying to look all presidential, but she knew he was just a scared little boy in my presence. That naughty boy who stole her panties last time is going to get spanked.
“Brother Barack, have you been bad? Started any wars lately? Budget still unbalanced? Still blaming the last president for your inadequacies? Get on your knees!”
Yolanda grabbed the President by those huge famous ears, bringing that bad boy to her...
* * * * *
“Wake up!” shouted Invisible-Claw, shaking Ceausescu. “Are you in pain? You were moaning.”
“Christ, you really can fuck up a wet dream! Of course I was moaning, I was about to get screwed by the President. Can you say that?”
“President Miller?”
“No, you fool. Brother Barack!”
“No big deal. The database news reports your human pestilence president screws everyone.”
“Only at tax time.”
“I see.”
“Don’t ever interrupt my dreams again!” admonished Ceausescu, trying to drift off again, but not succeeding in getting it right. She kept finding herself getting screwed by a geriatric Supreme Court. Not pleasant. Those flapping black robes were creepy. “Damn it! Are you going to torture me or what?”
Chapter 3
We followed Corporal Ceausescu’s tracking device along the DMZ canal until it stopped broadcasting. Our small window for rescue closed. Now we needed to negotiate, or rely on informants. I ordered Jimmy the Neck and his associates released so they could contact their sources. Goodwill can go a long way.
As we crossed a small bridge back into USGF territory, a roadside bomb exploded, collapsing the bridge and scattering the column. Legionnaires dispersed into a protective perimeter as we took machine gun fire from a nearby hill. Air support was already on its way.
Private Telk slid down the side of the canal for cover, coming to rest in the water. Up to his waist in water, in the middle of the desert. How ironic. Telk hugged the steep bank, clawing at the clay as he drifted further away from reality. Telk hated water. So much water...
* * * * *
Randal Telk loved the ocean and the fresh taste of salt on his lips. A diver all his life, at the tender age of nine, Telk shattered the World Free Diving Record at a depth of ninety-six meters. Free diving doesn’t use any form of stored air, and Telk put his diving skill to good use. Telk grew up in a traditional Romanian household of sponge poachers. Their nightly activity was to dive for sponges off the Greek coast. The best sponges were deep in Greek waters.
When Telk was eleven, that Greek cop Kalipetsis arrested Telk’s father for sponge poaching, a capital offense in Greek waters. Dad was never seen again or heard from again. Too young to go into the other family business, pimping, Telk emigrated to the United States to become a master diver.
At age eighteen, Telk joined the Navy. He noticed Navy scuba divers were trained to always fall backward out of the boat into the water. Why? Duh, if you fall forward you’ll still be in the boat. Telk soon learned there’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Navy way.
Telk’s first assignment was to strap bombs to orcas and dolphins, training them to sink enemy gunboats and tangle Russian fish nets. Telk tired of that job, preferring deep water dives with specially trained squids. Squids are smarter than they look. They’re prone to fits of laughter. Never turn your back on a squid. Their favorite joke is to accidentally slip a tentacle up your ass. Squid humor isn’t really funny. Stupid squids.
On one such accident, Telk lost air pressure and sank to the depths of the sea. His world went dark. However, strong arms pulled him up. Had those dumb-ass squids saved him? Not likely. Yolanda, the most beautiful mermaid in the ocean, her lovely arms cradling Telk, breathed life back into him.
Thankful, Telk rewarded Yolanda in true Navy tradition. Despite the cold water and a serious shrivel factor, Telk taught Yolanda the three-hundred-ninety-six steps to sexual bliss. Afterward, they were inseparable, swimming the oceans together, their love affair gossiped about by orcas and scandalized by dolphins. Neptune himself was jealous of the mere mortal Randal Telk fooling around with his mermaids, especially because Telk refused to give up the secret of the three-hundred-ninety-six steps to sexual bliss. So profound was Telk’s reputation, after he visited the Virgin Islands, they were known merely as ‘The Islands.’
* * * * *
“Telk!” shouted Master Sergeant Green, pulling him from the water. “Wake up! Are you trying to drown yourself, carrying all that equipment? Snap out of it and get that pack off!”
“I hate the water,” groused Private Telk. “My boots slosh with mud.”
“Pair off in groups of three!” ordered Sergeant Green. “Move it! Get up that hill!”
Legion jets flew low overhead, bombing the hillside. The battle ended as quickly as it started. The Fist and Claw fled, with no trace of the fair Elena.
###
AGFL Book 17: Randal Telk – coming soon!
~SNEAK PREVIEW~
DEATH SPIRAL
by
James Boedeker
Chapter 1
I freely admit I am an addict. What is my drug of choice? Duty? Service? Combat? Am I an adrenaline junkie? I don’t know. Maybe all. I am messed up, going downhill fast. The Navy told me not to worry. I am a survivor. I will be fine. Ha!
How do you go from being a US Navy SEAL to working in a toilet paper factory, sweeping floors? How do you go from being a sniper to just another cog on an assembly line? Figure that out and let me know, because I don’t have a clue.
I arrived in Thailand months ago for a short sojourn, but never left. At first, the rush of something new, and strange pussy every night, filled the void. Now, pussy is a hand-job by any other name.
I gaze at the bar girl I brought home. Her name is Nom. She looks about sixteen, but I don’t know. Thai girls all look young for their age. Nom whimpers in her sleep. Is she dreaming about the sex we had? God, I hope not. She had that same look in her eyes I know I do – the look of broken promises and no hope for a better tomorrow. I wonder, not for the first time, how I got to this point. How did I end up in Bangkok, living in a cheap rundown hotel?
I light another cigarette and pour another shot. I am lost, with no way back. I am an addict and know it. My dealer cut me off. Ungrateful bastard. I’m drinking straight from the bottle now. It ain’t the shots I made that cause guilt. It’s the ones I didn’t take that make me rage and drown the flames in booze.
I hate those suited cowards grinning for the cameras, pressing the flesh like they have something to be proud of. They sing to the press and talk about the all important decisions they make. Heroes one and all. Just ask them. They will look you in the eye and tell you how they saved democracy and the free world.
I look at Nom, and she is watching me. I know she is afraid, and what she is thinking. This farang drinks too much and talks to himself. I don’t blame her. I look at my face in the mirror, and I see a lunatic. It scares
me.
I bring the bottle to bed. Why not? She’s earned a belt or two. She takes a drink and asks if I feel horny, if she makes me feel good. No, baby, I don’t feel horny. I pass out.
Nom is gone before I wake. I gave her cab money before we started the night’s adventures. I doubt she had any desire to talk before leaving.
I lie in bed, and echoes of my past wash over me. I flash back to 1999...
* * * * *
My head is pounding. I am fevered, wet and freezing in my ghillie suit, waiting for permission to shoot. Osama bin Laden sits in that shack, all nice and warm. I could kill him right now. He sits, eating with his fucking fingers. We finally have the bastard, but the dickheads in DC can’t make up their minds about what to do. I have been in this shit for three days, waiting for this inbred fuck to show. There he is! What’s to decide?
I’m cold and wet. I haven’t eaten a real meal in a week. This is a shot I need to make. My gut tells me this one will matter. Then comes the word. My spotter authenticates and acknowledges. Frosty roger out. He taps my leg twice, and I know the answer. Abort. I stifle the outburst surging from the pit of my stomach. I consider taking the shot anyway. I know this guy will hurt us. But I am not paid to make that decision. I follow orders. We back off into the night. We have a long walk ahead of us. We don’t have the luxury of venting our frustrations or disappointment. We are deep in-country, with no friendlies for support.
This was the beginning of the end for me. I recognize that now. This was the first day of my death spiral.
Two years later, that scumbag would end up killing thousands of US citizens in the now infamous terrorist attack, 9-11. Sammy ‘The Burglar’ Berger would be caught stealing classified documents, and the former Commander in Chief would be denying that we ever had a shot. He was such a good liar that I almost believed him myself, and I was the one there with my finger on the fucking trigger.
After leaving the Navy, I tried a normal job, and it bored me. When I applied for the job, I was told the Fortune 500 company preferred to hire vets. They felt we were more reliable, more consistent, and better disciplined. At the time, I remembered thinking, Well that’s great. At least they appreciate who we are.
Week one, during indoctrination, they lectured about how they were a ‘principle-based’ business. They didn’t do things like the military. They treated their employees like adults. This ... coming from a gal one year out of college, as if she had a clue about the military.
She went on to explain that the military tells soldiers how to dress, when to sleep, when to wake up, and when to eat. But an hour before that, we had a lecture about expectations. We were required to wear certain clothes and shoes, and no hair below the shoulders. We were told our floor supervisor would tell us when to go to break and lunch. I was wondering what the hell was so different from the military. I found out soon enough. Unlike the military, free thinking in civilian life was frowned upon. You were branded as negative if you didn’t agree with idiots calling the shots that never did the job. Don’t say the F-word because someone might be offended. They expected you to carry dead weight slackers, and make them feel like they contributed. You had to ask for permission to go take a piss. Yeah, like adults in a first grade class, trapped in a Dr. Seuss book. If I wasn’t the one stuck in the nightmare, I would have found it hilarious. “Don’t call me boss,” I was told by my floor supervisor. “We are all business owners.” Boss, you control when I can go piss.
I’ll never forget the meeting where that same young manager told us about an exciting new approach to safety. Every day, we were going to ‘celebrate’ safety. I caught myself thinking, Now what? Then she asked who wanted to lead the safety cheer, and she looked at me like I was going to do a back flip and a split and shout, Go team!
Then orientation was over, and there I was, having to put up with some college grad who actually said, “I get you, man,” because he aced a fucking video game. Yeah, he actually believed he knew what it was like to be in war because he kicked ass at Medal of Honor. Every day he’d ask me questions about shooting bad guys. I’ll never forget him reliving being shot at in the game, and how he faced down Nazis, taking them out one at a time. And then he had the gall to say, “I should have been a SEAL, because I never miss.”
I wanted to punch him in the face and introduce him to a real ass-whuppin’ so he might catch a clue. All the while, I was thinking, If this guy is our future, we are fucked. So I told him, “Let me show you what I would do if you were shooting at me.” I gave him a heat gun we used for checking temperatures on the machines. “Pretend this is a gun,” I said. “Show me what you would do if I were a bad guy.” The idiot actually played along. By this time, other employees were watching, all grins.
The college punk aimed the gun, shouting, “Die asshole!” I stepped inside his stance, knocking the gun hand aside with a left-hand knife-hand strike, followed by driving my right fist into his sternum. I slapped him across his face with my right hand, following through to grab the gun. I wrenched it from him and buried it in his face.
Congratulations hero, you faced down a bad guy. You will get a medal posthumously. A little different than the video games, ain’t it? Surprise ... I was immediately fired.
There’s just no real structure in civilian life. They pretend to provide structure, but it’s really just a straightjacket. I eventually found myself sucking on the nipple of my 45. No wonder I ran away to Thailand. I needed to escape the insanity.
Of course, I could be like most everyone else, and just blame it all on my upbringing. I grew up poor in a small house with a large family. My father was a raging alcoholic, and my mother was a textbook whack job. A kind thought never occurred to that woman. The truth was a stranger to her tongue. We never went without enough to eat, but we never had extra.
When most kids were learning how to ride a bike, I was learning the art of poaching deer for food. I learned to field dress a deer at night without the benefit of a flashlight. Making a shot at three hundred yards seemed normal to me, because I learned fast that a second shot meant a good kick in the ass for wasting ammo. By the age of twelve, I had poached more deer than most people kill legally in a life time. Later, Uncle Sam honed my skills to perfection.
For a family so poor, it was amazing my father always had enough money to stay plastered. My mother never saw a stray dog or cat she wouldn’t take in. Why do people like that even have kids? I didn’t get to go to the mall like most kids. I was twelve before I saw the inside of a mall. I was less in wonder of all the stores than I was in wonder of the hot girls walking by. That wonder is still with me to this day when I watch the Thai women go about their business. I don’t like watching girls pose or flirt. I like watching them in their natural element. I like watching people be for real, in a world where everyone is a clone.
When I was twelve, I worked on my uncle’s dairy, earning my own money. Of course, I had to give my parents their cut of my action. I saved what I could and bought the first new clothes I ever owned, a pair of Levi jeans and some shirts and a pair of sneakers.
When you grow up poor, wearing hand-me-downs, you learn about bullies early on. They never let you forget your place in life. Wearing new threads, I thought for sure my life would turn for the better. The only problem was that bullies are a special breed of prick. They will never let you up once they have you down.
Working on a farm makes you strong. You learn about life from beginning to end. Work builds your body and mind. Throwing eighty-pound bales of hay every day builds your muscles granite-hard. The day comes when you stop being a victim. I never went looking for a fight, but I damn sure finished any fight that found me. One good thing about my dear old dad, he never had a problem teaching us the ways of violence and how to inflict hurt on another man.
* * * * *
It is early afternoon by the time I shag ass out of bed and hit the streets. The air is filled with the stench of sewers and exhaust, mixed with a hint of Thai curry. I see the same ven
dors every day, selling their grilled chicken, som tom, or any number of other foods. They all have a niche, and it’s cheap.
I learned the hard way to go slow at first with the native foods. You don’t need to be a ladyboy to wake up with a sore asshole in this town. Just eat fresh spicy papaya salad, and you will know the wrath of Thailand firsthand. Those days are behind me, and I can eat about anything they offer without getting a blown-out asshole. Today, I just want a cup of coffee and bowl of rice soup. I go to the same place every day, and they tolerate me. Nice old folks, just trying to make do. I may be fucked-up and on my way out, but I mind my manners when it comes to elders. My parents raised me right on that point.
I take my usual seat. The old man greats me, same as always. “Khun Lobelt, sa bai dee mai krub?” He says my name as ‘Lobelt’ instead of Robert. A typical Asian problem with pronouncing the letter ‘r.’ I’m used to it now.
“Sa bai dee krub, khun Non.” I don’t speak much Thai, but I know how to answer a polite greeting. His wife doesn’t like me much. She glares my way. I understand. I don’t like me either.
The old man doesn’t need to ask what I want, because I’ve ordered the same thing every day for eight weeks. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Old Non brings my coffee and soup, along with an English newspaper. I pay up, plus a one-hundred-baht tip. That’s a one-hundred-percent tip, but I like the old man and love his soup. The coffee is a fraud, but so is all coffee in Thailand. One day I’ll shock the old man and order a cold drink, change the whole damn game. I smile about that as I read the paper.
I see that the current Commander and Chief won his bid for a second term. I’m not one bit surprised. Anyone was better than that undertaker-looking son-of-bitch the Democrats ran. Another self-made war hero turned tree-hugger married-for-money kind of guy. As bad as my life is, at least I ain’t him.
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