by Paul Neuhaus
“No, I can’t,” I said.
“Why’s that?”
“Because I have a personality.”
“Hey now! That’s just mean!” For a second, she had an inflection in her voice. For a second.
“I kid. I kid the nice G-men.”
We smiled at one another across the front seat of the car and settled in for another thirty minutes of road time.
Sokil Shipping was, to the surprise of no one, on the waterfront in the Port of Los Angeles, a fair distance from the inlet between Long Beach and San Pedro. On either side of the warehouse that made up the facility were stacks of shipping containers many feet high. The kind of shipping containers that sit on the back of semi- trailers. Sokil was not a small potatoes outfit. Most of what went through it was undoubtedly legit. It was the other things Agent Yelburton and her team had to worry about. She and I parked near the office. There were two SUVs there waiting for us already. From one of them, a tall kid with red hair and freckles approached us. He was carrying a cane which he handed to Yelburton, who handed it to me. “Thanks,” Yelburton said. “How’d you get a cane on such short notice?”
The kid—who was built like a tree trunk—grinned and said, “It’s Manny’s. We swiped it while he was in the bathroom.”
To my great surprise, Yelburton grinned too. “Ooo,” she said. “He’s gonna be pissed.” She turned to me. “Manny’s an administrator in the field office down here. They swiped his cane for you.”
FBI hijinks. A refreshing change. “I’ll try not to ding it.”
“Do that. Remember what happened to your last cane.”
By that point, the remaining people from the two SUVs were milling around Agent Patty. They ignored me while they engaged in shop talk. Apparently, they had I’s to dot and T’s to cross. Meaning paperwork. With that out of the way, Yelburton introduced me to her four team members. Terry was the red-headed tree trunk. Gail was another female agent. She was considerably less feminine than Yelburton, but whatever. Derek looked like Vin Diesel if Vin Diesel was ten years older and twice as angry. Finally, there was Reynaldo. Shaved head. The smallest member of the team by far, but the kind of guy you could easily misread and lose a fight to. All of them wore the requisite suits and sensible shoes. At the end of the intros, she said to them, “This is Jack Huggins. P.I. out of L.A. He’s done some good legwork on this case.”
Reynaldo raised his hand as if we were in Middle School. “I have a question,” he said.
“Yes?”
“What’s he doing here?” He turned to me. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
Reynaldo looked back at Agent Patty. “He’s not Bureau, and he’s on a cane. What if we need to make a quick getaway? He’ll be hobbling behind us like mi abuelo.”
Yelburton looked from the smallest member of her team over to me. The right corner of her mouth went again. “He’s right. Would you mind signing a waver?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, I will not sign any fucking waver. Why’d you bring me if you’re gonna make me wait in the car?”
“Just kidding,” Patty said. “Let’s go.” She started walking, and we all fell in step with her., me the slowest.
“Hey,” I said. “Can I have a gun?”
“Unnecessary,” Terry replied.
“Still…”
“It’ll be fine,” Ronnie Howard on steroids said. “Trust me.”
The office was manned entirely by Ukrainians. I know. Knock me over with a feather. Yelburton and the others showed their badges. I had to hand it to them, they’d done their homework. As the confused workers looked on, shipping manifests were produced and very specific, very pointed questions were asked. I hung back, waiting for a supervisor to come out. The sudden appearance of the FBI was doing little more than cause a stir amongst a staff who’s first language wasn’t English. A higher-up would have to sort through the mess. I was surprised when that leader ended up being Ponomarenko. Black hair. Scar across the middle of his face. Jug ears. We’d hit pay dirt. The boss man was slumming it in Long Beach. “Can I help you ladies and gentlemen?” he said, oozing manufactured charm.
“Yes,” Agent Yelburton said. “As I was just telling your associates, I need to search certain areas of your facility and get access to your records. Here’s a list of everything I need to see.” She handed Ponomarenko a stack of papers. It wasn’t thin.
The Ukrainian took the stack but didn’t look at it. “And you’re from the FBI, is that right?”
“It is.”
“Do you have a warrant?”
“Several, actually.” Our fearless leader handed Hedeon another stack. The I’s and T’s they’d all talked about in the parking lot.
Ponomarenko smiled at Yelburton pleasantly. “What is it you’re looking for? Perhaps I could save you some time…”
“Or you could steer us away from what we need to see. The search-ee doesn’t get to dictate terms to the searcher.”
“Of course,” Sokil’s owner said, never dropping his polite demeanor. “I’ll have Bohuslav get you started.” He stood aside and indicated a little man with hazel eyes and horrible skin. Bohuslav. “Would you mind if I called my attorney?”
“Go right ahead.”
The whole thing went down way more civil than I expected it to. Everyone was so agreeable.
Ponomarenko disappeared back into a sub-office and Bohuslav said, “You come, I show.”
We started to follow him and then Hedeon came back out with a sawed-off shotgun. He shot Reynaldo before any of the other agents reacted. The smallest member of our group went down, and I watched him fall. My synapses weren’t fully fired, and I felt for a moment like a sightseer.
Hedeon’s attack acted as a signal. All the other Ukrainians—including Bohuslav—drew weapons and pointed them at our group.
Terry dropped, a grazing wound on his right arm.
Yelburton shot two of the workers in rapid succession. Both head shots.
Gail shot a guy in the gut then bought one in the shoulder herself.
Derek tackled a dude then, pressing him into the ground, drew his pistol and shot someone else.
Ponomarenko fired, missing Yelburton and blowing out the entire glass facade of the office.
I dropped my cane and then I dropped my body. Without meaning to, I landed on Reynaldo who groaned. He’d been hit in the chest, but he was wearing a vest. He’d be okay. “Told you you should’ve given me a gun,” I muttered as I pulled the agent’s own weapon out of his shoulder holster. Glock 17M. I got into a crouch and pivoting with each shot, I took out a man to Yelburton’s left and another at her ten o’clock. Then I swung to my twelve o’clock and shot upwards into Ponomarenko’s chin. The bullet came out the top of his head.
After the echoes died, Yelburton looked down at me. “Gee, Terry, maybe you shoulda given him a gun.”
I hung out for a while after the shooting was done. Mostly because I wanted to see what if anything we’d found. Turns out we’d found plenty. Girls in a big concrete room with a sputtering light and buckets for toilets. Heroin from Afghanistan. Guns in great quantities earmarked for the Concordance in Riverside. Jackpot, in other words.
A lot of other agents and what seemed like half of the Long Beach PD had come and they were all going through Sokil Shipping with fine-toothed combs. After a while, Agent Yelburton came over to where I was waiting. By her American car. “You know,” she said. “A little bird told me you don’t like guns and don’t carry one.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I’m not good with one.”
“Amen.”
“So… What happens now?”
“Something’s gotta be done about Destiny Base. That’s gonna happen toot sweet. We’ll get inside there and see what we can see.”
“Okay,” I said. “I have two requests if you don’t mind…”
“Shoot.”
“I need a ride back to the Valley because I am tired as fuck.”
“Consider it done. What�
��s the other request?”
“Fill me in on the details. There’re still things I don’t understand. Loose ends.”
“Can do.” She called over Terry, the freckled redhead. “Take Mr. Huggins home. I think he’s earned a little rest.”
“Fucking-A he has,” Terry agreed.
I thanked Yelburton and handed her the borrowed cane. “See that Manny gets this,” I said.
On the car ride north, I fell asleep right there in the passenger seat.
9 After it All
Terry dropped me off at the apartment in Sherman Oaks. I went inside and slept for nearly two days.
Hailey let me sleep through the siege, but I woke up in time to see the raid.
Agent Yelburton and the feds put a perimeter around Destiny Base and, according to MSNBC, made several ultimatums. None of those ultimatums were heeded, and the government went in with their full unchecked might. They met moderate resistance (some of Hedeon Ponomarenko’s firearms saw action), but mostly it was a slaughter. The pictures reminded me of the raids on Ruby Ridge and David Koresh’s Waco compound, but I was sure they wouldn’t have the same cultural impact as those earlier actions of Uncle Sam’s. Even anti-government extremists hated the Aetheric Concordance.
One bright note: The news footage featured the liberation over a hundred “disciplinary cases”. Among them were Helen Dankworth and Tad Albright, both of them looking tired and thin but alive.
Soon it was time for another meeting of Washout’s Anonymous. I’d lost all track of time, but I was sure I’d missed at least one get together. As I hobbled in on my cane, my friends, the ex-comedians, alternately welcomed and jeered me. They knew that I’d had something to do with the big kerfuffle in Riverside, but we had a strict attendance policy.
I was quieter than usual as I ate my corned beef sandwich and sipped my cream soda.
The next morning, Agent Patty asked me to meet her at my office at ten. When I arrived, she was standing out front with a gift-wrapped package. A package shaped suspiciously like a full-sized chair. We went into the building and she graciously unwrapped the present for me. It was a nice chair with a cushioned seat. “There,” she said. “Now you won’t lose clients due to discomfort.” She sat down to christen the new acquisition and I took my place behind the desk.
“Tell me about the raid,” I said.
Yelburton sighed. “I won’t say it was routine because there’s nothing like it in my experience. Long story short, we found Patrick Dankworth’s ‘War Room’. He was aware of the possible loss of tax-exempt status. He planned to use Ponomarenko’s guns to attack Federal buildings. Some misguided Timothy McVeigh-style nonsense.”
“So what you’re telling me is that he was crazier than a shithouse rat…”
“I don’t like to judge. On the other hand, when we breached the compound, Dankworth came out to meet us.”
“Yeah?”
“He had an AR-15 in each hand and he was wearing a kaftan.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “What’d you do?”
“We shot him. A lot.”
“So much for the airheads.”
Yelburton scrunched her nose. “Oh, I don’t believe that. They’ll reconstitute. Maybe in a different form, maybe with a different name, but we haven’t seen the last of them. Wanna know something weird?”
“I do.”
“When they picked up Dankworth’s body, there was something written on the kaftan. In ballpoint pen. Over and over and over until it covered the whole surface.”
“What’d it say?”
“The Lord’s Prayer. ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’”
“And people ask me why I have no dog in the religion fight.” A thought occurred to me. I hadn’t seen anything about it on the news. “Did you guys turn up Evelyn Sallow?”
“You know, we didn’t. I didn’t think anything about it ’til you brought it up. She must’ve slipped out before the raid.”
“If she was even there.”
“If she was even there.”
That weekend, Hailey insisted we have a cookout in Griffith Park despite the fact it was overcast and cold. She kept at me, nipping at my heels, during the hours leading up to the get together. Purposeless nagging. I guess she felt comfortable enough to return to some of her old ways. It switched me off. While we were sitting in the park with Dennis and Marjory Hill, I was mostly quiet.
Marjory tried to draw me out. “Have you given any thought to your amnesia? Do you wanna try to find those memories?”
I sighed. “I don’t guess so. It’s just as well they stayed buried. I don’t need to relive a bunch of religious fanatics beating Arsen Gasparyan to death.”
“There you go,” Dennis said, trying to put a positive spin on my obvious sour mood. “What’d be the point of dredging up painful memories. Still, you got something good out of all this…”
“What’s that?”
“You and Hailey are back together.”
I took a swig of my beer. Hailey was out of earshot. “Yeah, I’m thinking about leaving her.”
They could tell I was serious. Marjory put her head down on the picnic table with a comic thump. Dennis laughed and said, “You’re a genuine, certified nut case, you know that?”
About the Author
Paul was born long, long ago in Cincinnati, Ohio. He had a normal childhood and did moderately well in school. When he came of age, he went to numerous colleges, starting with Ohio State University in Columbus and culminating at Kennesaw State College north of Atlanta, Georgia. That’s right: mid-college, he moved South where he indulged in fatty cuisine and intolerance for his fellow man. He received a BA in English which, sadly, benefited him little. Paul, in his early years, lacked a teacher’s temperament and professional writing jobs were few and far between. Undaunted, our hero returned to school where he received a degree in Computer Animation. For the next decade, he worked in the video game industry. During that ten year span, he relocated from Georgia to sunny Southern California. He also took a wife and — much to society’s regret — he produced twin offspring. In addition to his stint as an artist for games, Paul has also worked in fast food, retail, writing (some fifteen years after getting his English degree), video editing, and — most recently — teaching.
Paul enjoys reading, writing, and watching movies. He is, to this day, shockingly intolerant of his fellow man.
Visit Paul at www.paulneuhaus.com.
Copyright © 2019 by Paul Neuhaus
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
