Profane Men

by Rex Miller

Driving over a small iron bridge, he gets out and pitches in the tools, spent brass, the taped bottle, everything else. He has a small, battery-powered vacuum, which he uses to vacuum out the car floorboards, and then throws the bag over the bridge.

  Bobby Price has earned a few hours of relaxation and fun, but Shooter’s idea of kicks is not quite your typical teenager’s drive-in double date. Bobby pays for what he wants. He whimpers in anticipation as he drives across town to get on the Central Expressway.

  Mistress Leila sees Bobby, as she does all her regulars, only by previous telephone appointment, and punctuality is mandatory. Bobby has plenty of time and waits out in front in his Chevy for twelve minutes, humming contentedly. He is standing on her doorstep, eyes riveted to the second hand on his gold Rolex wristwatch, and at the exact second of his appointment he rings the bell. It chimes inside and in a few seconds a gorgeous woman of indeterminate age opens the door and effuses:

  “Why, hello, Bobby! Come on in, honey,” she says in warm, musical, Texas-accented tones. Shooter Price enters, and she closes and locks and deadbolts the door.

  “How y’all been doin’, you sweet boy,” she asks softly. She is exquisite, with flawless alabaster skin and naturally reddish-brown hair that falls in a lush cascade halfway down her back. She is wearing a robe that is open and cut low in front, exposing a pair of large, creamy, jiggling breasts, and she is holding her right hand at her side as Shooter begins to answer politely, “Well, pretty goo — ”

  She slaps him across the left side of the face as hard as she can, really putting her weight into it and hitting his cheek with her open hand, then pushing him down as he lets her make him drop to his knees, weeping from the humiliation and the sudden pain. It is a tooth-rattling slap that stings her palm and makes a loud, resounding noise inside his head.

  “How dare you speak to me, you sniveling piece of shit! Lick my high-heeled boots, you worthless, whining mama’s boy pussy! Lick ’em! You lick ’em right now, you no-good sonofabitch cunt! Lick! Fall to the floor and lick, damn you!” The voice sounds like it belongs to another person, a harsh, hardened bark seething with malevolence.

  Shooter, eyes full of tears, face stinging and throbbing from Leila’s slap, does as he is commanded, and as he begins licking the toes of her shiny black boots, she lets her robe fall open.

  “No! Not like that, you fucking whore of a castrated, spineless, ball-less perverted wonder! You lick them, goddamn your little ass! Lick faster! Tongue them, cocksucker! Lick those boots with your wet tongue! Make them shine with your foul spit, you dickless piece of trash! Lick, goddamn you!” She pulls her booted foot back and kicks Shooter as hard as she can in the bleep of his left arm. It is a vicious, balanced kick from a muscular, lovely leg that has done a lot of dancing and exercise. She sends him tumbling in fear and rage and submissive pain into a cowering figure huddling against the wall.

  “Get back over here and apologize to me, you prickless freak!” She is screaming like a maniac, really getting into it as she always does.

  “Uh — oh — I — ”

  “Spit it out, you bastard, and stop that mumbling. Are you sorry your clumsy licking irritated your mistress — answer me!”

  “Yes, Mistress,” Shooter says as he rolls his eyes up at the statuesque dominatrix. “Please, Mistress, let your bad little slave lick your boots with my sore, wet tongue?” He drops and begins to lick frantically, hoping to please her and knowing that he has set himself an impossible task. He is crying and whimpering as he licks the high-heeled boots. She draws back a foot again and he cringes, expecting to be kicked, but instead she places a toe against him, urging him to move.

  One of the reasons she can charge her high fees is that she can read a john with nearly flawless intuition. Knowing just how far to take each of her specials and sensing when to draw back is an integral element of this kind of number. She wants to end this soon, as she and her girlfriend are going out in a while, so she decides to get him off again.

  “Roll over on your back, you miserable little faggot. Now!” He rolls over, wishing he could rub that sore arm, but he knows it would only infuriate her.

  “Good doggie. Now, you cunt. Let’s see what you’ve got down there.” She grinds the stiletto heel of her boot into his crotch. He cries out in pain, but she sees the wetness spreading across the tent of his pants. No pain, no stain, she thinks. She knows how to bring him along real fast now, so he’ll leave thinking he really got his ashes hauled. She drops the robe and gestures.

  Quickly, fumbling at his buckle and trousers, Shooter unbuckles the belt and jerks his pants down around his ankles. His groin is slick with cum. She watches him looking up at her sheer, shiny nylons and large, full breasts with the freaky nipples the size of shot glasses.

  “Now, you listen to me very carefully, you cringing excuse for a man. You will do exactly as I command, you little prick, or I will make you regret you ever became my slave. One slip-up and I will go get my riding crop and I’ll beat you on that little ass until you beg for mercy. Do you understand? Answer me!”

  “Yes, Mistress.”

  “What one thing do you wish you could do to me if you weren’t such a little pissy-assed mama’s boy cunt, and if I would let you do it, what would you like to do to my beautiful body? Answer, damn you!”

  “Oh, Mistress. I’d give anything if you’d let me suck those big nipples on your lovely tits. Oh, please, Mistress!”

  “Fuck you, cocksucker! I’ll never let you even touch me there, especially with that dirty mouth of yours. You can forget ever touching my breasts. That is off-limits, cunt, and you’re lucky I even let you look at them. You will never so much as touch your tongue to one of these big, hot nipples, do you understand me? Answer!”

  “Yes, Mistress Leila,” he whimpers. He is playing with his penis.

  “Listen, slimeface, you will look up at my perfect and untouchable, unattainable body, and you will play with yourself like a little kid as you watch me. You’ll never touch those tits. All you’ll ever touch is that miniature excuse for a dick of yours. Now you can play with that cock until you get it nice and hard and just about to spun, but then you will stop, understand? Answer me!”

  “Yes — I — ” He is whacking away now. Good.

  “Now play with it! Harder, you limp-wristed faggot, jack that dick off while you watch your mistress and think about sucking those big nipples!”

  “Unnnnmmmmm.”

  “Now when you get that baby cock good and stiff, we’re going to roll you over and I’m going to get my nice, hard, giant dildo, and believe me, it is the size of a real man’s dick, and I will fuck you in your skinny butt with it just like you were a woman. That’s right, you pussy-whipped wonder, your Mistress Leila is going to fuck you. Then I’ll shove one of my nice six-inch heels up that sore red rosebud of a shitty asshole!”

  Gee, she thought, he’s about to shoot already.

  “Don’t you cum on my clean floor, you dirty prick. Stop! Stop that!” She kicks his hand away from himself. “I can see you need a cooling off. I’m going to have to give you a nice bath in my golden piss. I think you need to drink my piss first, though, don’t you? Answer me!” Shooter Price, who has filled seven syndicate contracts, looks up at his Mistress Leila and nods obediently.

  “Yes, Mistress.”

  “I hope you smother in my pussy when I make you drink my piss, you fag. You will not try to eat my pussy. If you so much as lick my clit once or touch that tongue to me except to suck my piss out, I will beat your little butt to a purple pulp. Understand?” Shooter nods like his head is going to fall off. His erect penis is waving around on its own. He grabs it and starts jacking off.

  What a way to make a living, she thinks as she looks down at the goofy young john lying on her floor whacking off. Well, whatever makes your boat float. She wonders idly what time it is.

  By the time Shooter Price end
ed up in the Nam, drafted, as irony would have it, and reluctant for reasons too unfathomable to explain to avoid the service, he had largely abrogated control of his psychomotor responses to a certain crystalline alkaloid. The computers sorted him right out, naturally, and he became an instant star of the kaleidoscopic spike team.

  He was right at home in the blurry kinescope of speeders, mushroom eaters, hash and dope smokers, acid trippers, smack shooters, dusters, opium smokers, and coke heads. He had a way of leaving folks robbed, raped, and ripped, and in that unrestrained environment he blossomed and flourished.

  Shooter was a sniper of textbook-perfect dimensions. Wired wall to wall, armed and dangerous, locked and loaded and waiting, he was a Katie-bar-the-door expert at putting folks’ lights out. Shooter’s nervous system, stimulated as it so often was into a pharmacological frenzy, was at best unstable and at worst hazardous to your health. But never mind how many bucks he put up his nostrils in top-line snort, or how anaesthetized he was in the field. If he focused those eyes on you in a certain way, it was white-knuckled, wet-palmed, lump-in-the-throat, nobody’s-home time. And when the trigger finger started taking up the slack, it was a deathgram with real bad news: dear occupant, this is the end of your world. Stop.

  Chapter 24

  INTER-OFFICE CORRESPONDENCE

  To: All Personnel

  From: Management

  Bringing liquor or controlled substances into this facility will result in immediate termination.

  “Hello, Hello. . . . Testing, one-two-three, testing. Is this working? I don’t see anything on the — oh, there it is . . . good. OK. Testing, one-two-three-four.

  “This recording being made on 14 June” — (several words unintelligible) — “it in the commo bunker. I want to record some thoughts about this highly classified covert mission, and the recording will be retained for security precaution, just in case some” — (several words unintelligible) — “so I would have a record of the events for which I might be held responsible.

  “I suppose this act could be construed as being unmilitary, or a violation of basic security, but sometimes you have to protect yourself, and this recording may never be used. On completion of the mission, if there are no repercussions or incidents, of course the tape will be immediately destroyed. I’m mindful of the line in Euripides’ Phoenician Women where it says ‘Better a safe commander than a bold.’ I’m going to stop the tape and play this much back to see if it is indeed recording, and then I’ll resume recording.”

  (Pause of thirty-one seconds in recording.)

  “This is the night before the culmination of a mission that is taking us into the Demilitarized Zone, which is pretty much of a joke in itself, being about as militarized as you can get, but that is the direction of this week-long probe, which may finalize tomorrow with any luck.

  “The code name is Operation Toledo Blade, like the sword. It is the spike team probe to find and destroy an outlaw radio station called KILL, with transmitters at a so-far unknown location. But because of the nature of the team’s unmilitary composition, the modus operandi of our unit in general, and my past experiences with this outfit, I have had some serious second thoughts about the mission, and about the motivation behind our orders which are supposedly from the commander-in-chief himself.

  “To me, Toledo Blade is beginning to have the feet of a real scapegoat operation, and that is why I want to put some of my thoughts down for later reference. I’ve had some experience being a scapegoat for the military, and the buck is going to stop with me again, I’m afraid.

  “We supposedly are empowered by the Security Council directive under which we operate hand in glove which MACV to rove autonomously on this sort of a penetration. It is also assumed that if we are captured by the enemy, or in any way incapacitated, that we are to commit suicide. That is how valuable human life is to the individuals who have planned this and similar missions. We would be such an embarrassment to our country that we cannot compromise it by being taken alive, and yet the mission is sufficiently insensitive that we can be employing contract killers who make no pretense of taking orders. There is no way this can be what it appears.

  “Both myself and Gunnery Sergeant Ewell have specific instructions as to the disposition of the team members in the event anyone is wounded under circumstances that would prevent exfiltration of that individual. The orders are to terminate, under those conditions, and naturally that applies to both Ewell and myself. All in all, this operation is enough to grow hairs on a billiard ball, and it has been dumped right in my lap.

  “The other time I went across the line was the mission into Laos, so perhaps I should see this as punishment for the way events turned out. Certain guarantees were made to me by my superiors at the time of that mission, and those guarantees were at least in part breached. The same kinds of assurances have been made here, in another context, and I no longer believe what I’m told, there being limits to blind faith.

  “The orders I followed in the execution of the Laos thing were in my opinion almost designed to guarantee failure. Because I am an officer in the United States Marine Corps, and because I must follow the orders of my superiors, the chain of command was observed and the results were that I had a platoon of men zapped out from under me. I was made the scapegoat for the failure of that mission even though I was promised that would not happen.

  “This insertion tomorrow has a built-in ‘plausible deniability’ factor, which is both for national security and to prevent any heat from reaching senior officers. Insulation. If this mission fails or backfires in any way, I can forget any future in the Corps, both in spite of my overall record and what praise my former CO put in my package.

  “That is fair enough, but there are several things that don’t feel right. I’ve had the feeling we are being jerked around out here, that it is supposed to look on the books as if we are an inept, poorly led unit, which has me a little spooked. It isn’t anything you can isolate, and because of the way we are building a recon cover, it is nothing provable. But when you combine that with the fact that we are going in with only the sketchiest exfiltration plans, I have to question the nature of the mission. First, are we really supposed to find and destroy our objective, and second, are we supposed to survive the mission?

  “The basic premise behind the mission makes no sense to me whatsoever. I find it impossible to believe that with our wealth of combined military, industrial, and intelligence technology, we cannot locate the transmission source of a single clandestine radio station in South Vietnam, or that we cannot jam the telephone landline system by which the station supposedly receives listener input. The technology can’t be that advanced. Therefore, if the premise is not what it seems, does that mean we really don’t want the station silenced? If so, what are we doing here?

  “I also have trouble buying the concept that an English-language operation thought to be maintained by the Soviet KGB is only worth a small, obviously expendable spike team. And there are some similar inconsistencies that make this look like something other than what I’ve been led to believe.

  “In Laos I was leading a combat-tested, highly motivated and well-trained platoon of Marines. Tomorrow I go in with a ragtag outfit of paid mercenaries, civilian personnel including misfits and a couple of out-and-out psychos, assorted dope addicts, and ex-criminals who will follow orders only as long as they think it is in their best interests to do so. So once again, as in Laos, I’ve been ordered to accomplish what would appear to be impossible.

  “Because it may later prove useful in analyzing the real reason why I was selected to lead this unit, I want to review some details of a personal nature. I’ve been in the Corps for four years. I joined at seventeen with my folks’ signatures if not blessings, and by the time I was the beneficiary of a Southeast Asian field commission I found myself a nineteen-year-old platoon commander, a baby butter bar who believed in the tightness of the Marine Corps and the lega
cy of heroes. Now, after two tours over here, I’m not so sure I can say that anymore.

  “I have seen the best people die and the worst people elevated to higher and higher rank. Don’t misunderstand this — just because I was a nineteen-year-old Papa Charlie I’m not so stupid as to think I’m any better than my peers. There are plenty of sharp sergeants who refuse commissions because they don’t want the hassles and pressures of added responsibility. But I’m talking about real incompetent people being elevated to high rank.

  “Had Laos not happened, I could have really climbed the ladder fast in this man’s Marine Corps, and I’m not bragging. With any luck at all I’d have probably been a company commander by now. Again, because of the pressures and accountability factors, the competition was just not that stiff.

  “It is one thing to lose men, or to be responsible for errors in judgment that result in loss of life, but when you are in charge at the field operational level — ” (Recorded reel-to-reel tape B-A-4 ends.)

  — end of transcript —

  The man in the security booth closes the transcript and stops the reel-to-reel tape. Because he is a perfectionist, he insisted on comparing the written transcription to the original recording. The sanitized room is a “hung chamber” in ACID, jargon for the Agent Control Cover Division. The chamber is suspended at the corners and sides by an ingenious webbing of steel springs and baffling, and continually sound-swept by computer-operated bug-killers.

  He puts the materials back in the large pouch marked secret and double-checks the contents with the cover sheet:

  REFERENCE T-21-901H

  ALL REQUESTED MATERIALS ENCLOSED

  1. confiscated recording

  2. transcript of confiscated recording

  3. duplicate of transcript B-A-4, no further copies retained

  4. original memorandum pad with secretariat entries and corrections

  5. typewriter cartridge

  6. recorded file dub, no further copies