Chapter 8

At my place of origination, snow was seen about once every fifteen or twenty years. People in south Texas totaly freaked when the white stuff dropped. Schools closed. Businesses stopped. Police shut down major roads.

Some of us ran around in the sparse white blanket, discovering what new and different problems we could cause. Others barricaded themselves indoors, waiting for the second coming of their Lord and savior. I had been a member of the former group. My family was of the latter group.

Mabs, Jimmy, and me were about sixteen when snow hit along the western Edwards and south LLano plateaus. We ‘borrowed’ a truck, running it across freshly fallen snow on fallow fields, skidding and sliding and tearing up the earth with our innocent and wild abandon.

‘Abandon’ is the correct word here; it marked our differences from the extant population. The three of us were a copse of tall straight conifers, standing amidst a sea of barren deciduous trees that had been lost for the winter. Tell me that’s not fucking poetic. Fucking allusion and metaphor up your ass. Fuck yeah.

“Mark?”

Shit, Mrs Santiago said something to me. And Dinky is laughing. If she thinks its funny, I don’t care.

“Huh? ... Ma’am?”

“Did you pack the both thermos bottles?”

“Yes, ma’am. Good to go.”

Dinky handed me her back-up 1911. I have no idea why she thought I need additional armament, but one can never have too many guns. I verified the weapon was clear, shoved in a mag, stuffed it in the borrowed ALICE pack, then tossed the other stuff into the truck cab. Mr Santiago and myself were off to assasisnate Bambi and its associates.

Deer season in West Virginia was pretty much open all fall and winter for land owners, and it seems that Mr and Mrs Santiago were quite the land barons of the area. Turns out the old folks had sequentially bought up most of the valley and the surrounding mountain sides. We stepped outside the wire, actually we drove, to wage war on the local Marxist (critter) insurgents.

Mr Santiago’s field craft did not impress me. And his choice of an 8mm Mauser rifle with a large scope left me baffled. I suppose he thought me foolish per my choice of an open-sighted Marlin lever action in good ‘ol thirty-thirty. Great bush rifle. And any bozo attempting a shot over 60 or 70 meters in this dense shit is a certifiable retard or certifiably crazy. I wondered about his collection of rifles. Of what use were these weapons? Whatever.

“No, sir. We stay orthagonal to that ridge. The deer will remain on the trail, all the way down to the water and the lick if they do not smell or hear us.”

I wondered if he had ever stalked game before this. For a supposedly very smart guy, he wanted to do some really stupid stuff. I stopped at the edge of a small clearing that intersected the game trail. Seeing no tracks in the snow, I guessed that we had beaten the deer to the downslope side, or they were taking an entirely different route.

I signaled to Mr Santiago where he should wait. I whispered his allowed shooting direction before leaving to scout a spot for me. About 50 meters up the slope and 80 meters down the trail, I stepped away from the trail. Still seeing no tracks or any other signs, I guessed, at most, about an hour wait, if they were gonna come down into the valley at all. I waited, thinking how the falling snow seemed to ‘enforce’ a silence.

The light snow fall was interesting and different for me. Having lived in southern California for almost ten years, and/or on the USS Midway, the only place I had seen snow was when I looked up into the mountain ranges that surround Orange County, or in Japan. I remembered one December at the El Toro base pool doing my swim qual for deployment, feeling warm in the 28C ‘diablo’ winds climate, then looking east to see snow on the top ridge of the Santa Anna mountains. Other than that one time in Texas, and one time in Japan, that was the sum total of my experience with snow. Snow, meet Mark. Mark, this is snow. I shook hands with the falling snow.

Would ya fuckin look at that? Who would’ve thunk it. Two big guys and their three lady friends coming to meet their maker. Interesting that the two bucks tolerate each other around the three doe. The two big guys are mine. The others will probably run directly to Mr Santiago.

The lead buck stopped about twenty meters up the slope. The wind direction was still good, and I was well hidden from their monochrome vision, so I waited patiently for Mister Bambi to lead them in.

I could almost taste the jerked meat and the venison stew that Mrs Banderas used to make from our kill. These guys appeared to have a hellofa lot more fat than those scrawny whitetail in Texas. Odes to the gods above, these fuckers are gonna be tasty. Yum, just mother fucking yum.

I remained motionless as the five intended victims of my muderous plot walked by with minimal caution. About forty meters down the trail the trees opened, and it was the last section of the trail before turning south, directly downslope. It also marked my left lateral limite for my ‘assigned’ ambush FOF. Any further to the left and I would risk putting a round over the bow of Dinky’s daddy-ship, very bad as Dinky would no longer like me if I plugged Mr Santiago.

The first round immediately dropped the lead buck. I jacked the lever to chamber another. No longer having a LOS to the other buck, I plugged a doe. She also fell immediately. Both were headshots. I do not shoot living things for sport or to put their taxidermied heads on the bulkhead. I blow their little brains out so that I can eat their yummy bodies. Hunting may represent a challenge at times, but it is never ‘sport’.

I held my position, watching the ass ends of the remaining deer run towards Mr Santiago’s position. I assumed that my two rounds were sufficent warning. When I heard a single shot, it was assumed, hopefully, the old guy got one.

I waited a few minutes for any follow-up shots. Hearing nothing I started a slow return to his position. Actually Mr Santiago is the one that should have provided some sort of warning. I heard the loud crack and recieved a slamming impact to my left shoulder at about the same time.

What the unholy fuck!? There’s some other asshole out hunting that is off to the east. I had dropped my rifle. I doubted that a lever action rifle could be operated with a single good arm. I dumped the ALICE pack to the deck, ripped off my bright orange jacket and pulled out Dinky’s .45 pistol. Holding it between my knees, I pulled back the slide, chambering a round.

Now wearing heavy tan pants and a brown flannel shirt, I was able to hide my stupid ass by crawling into some bushes, waiting for whatever asshole shot me. My shoulder hurt like a mother-fucking son-of-a-bitch, but at least I was not spurting blood all over creation.

Hearing the rustle of parting brush and branches, I pointed the 1911 at the noise source. And what the fuck is this? Its fucking Dinky’s father?!?! What the fuck is he doing? Shit. Fuck me. He’s looking for me. He intended to shoot me!? Holeee Fuuuck.

I took a shot through the dense brush at the old man’s ill-defined outline, trying not to aim center of mass.

“Pull into that gas station ... into that parking spot ... keep your hands on the wheel. You give me any reason, fucker, and I’ll empty the rest of the mag into your brain...”

Some kid was passing through the parking lot, into the small store. I waved the kid over, hoping that he was not too inbred.

“Yo, dude. Come here. Go in there and call your police out here...”

“Whoa, man. What’s this?”

“He shot me. Please go into that store and call the cops?”

“Whoa. Sure thing, man. Trippy, man.”

‘Trippy’ was not the word I had in mind for this situation.

Good ol’ feebies, to the rescue, once again. Even West Virginia has a FBI office. Those fuckers must be everywhere.

“Jackson, call the US Marshall’s office and state police. Let’s take the investigation out of local jurisdiction. And get me a BI on this Jose Santiago. Is he legal? His ID says he’s Argentinian Federal Police...”

I did not want to hear any more. I walked away, still carrying Dinky’s pistol, pleasantly surprised when the feds returned the weapon when I said that it belonged to my cop girl friend. I didn’t have to offer praise to the Goddess of Liberty or say any Hail Marys, they just handed me the pistol that I had used to blow the shoulder off of my girl friend’s father. Imagine that shit. Ain’t America wonderful?

Yeah, about that girl-friend status. Does not look like it would be too healthy for me to be associated with this family. Maybe Dinky is legit, but her parents were among that group that had disappeared thousands of people that the Argentia junta did not particuarly care for. Maybe she did not know that the parental units were associated with those assholes - she was born in America. But I remember what Gunny Scott always said, ‘if it is too good to be true, then it is’.

But what is ‘it’? Is Dinky too good to be true? Maybe common slubs like me do get lucky on rare occasions. And why has this previously strong woman suddenly taken to emotional bouts of tears? Damn, my mind is getting de-fogged. Gunny Scott did say that a human’s sense of ‘love’ is a form of insanity. Bugs Bunny and Gunnery Sergeant Scott, two of America’s greatest philosophers.

Dianne Santiago arrived at her parents hacienda, making it a point to avoid me as she collected some clothes, under the watchful eyes of the feds, then exited the area. Actions speak louder than words. Cliche, but true. Dinky had made her point, so I made my exit.

The West Virginia feebies turned out to be good eggs. They helped me put my bike into a U-Haul rental and pack two field-stripped deer carcasses. God damn right I was not going to leave those deer behind. The FBI agents were amused when I dumped several buckets of snow onto my precious venison, keeping it fresh for the trip to Pascagula. And God damn right I took the little furbag with me. Nyota was mine.

As I re-entered to the house, now empty of any people, to collect the last item of importance, imagine my surprise when the feds stopped me to gift me one of their sacred ‘little’ handguns. Or don’t imagine it.

The Smith model 27 looked virgin. And it had papers. A double-action revolver is the perfect solution for one-armed idiots, like myself. I picked up Nyota and some blankets for the trip. Little Miss Uhura had been an excellant travel companion going north, so I decided to keep it that way going south.

“You’re back? ... What the hell happened to your arm, Mark?”

“Bullet hole. Long story, Senior Chief. I’m okay.”

Helen saw the little furbag on my shoulder and snatched her away. No way Helen is getting my kitty. Find your own, woman. Besides, you’re a female, so you already have a pussy. I crack myself up.

“Let’s get your shit unloaded. And your machine was delivered. I need to bring you up to speed on the changes in the build schedule. But the big thing is that she’s going up in the second dry-dock station tomorrow.”

“Yeah? I’d think its a bit late for that tub to go back to stage two.”

“Nope. Big design changes coming. Some of it is your fault, asshole. You and your fancy engineering numbers. We’ll have to rip out three arrays.”

I laughed at the chief and the madness he had been saddled with. But there was no way any of this shit was gonna be dumped and blamed on my peon ass.

I was back, with reduced distractions, and a painful and new insight into the way a mind and the brain works; well, at least my mind and brain. I was ready to dive back into said shipyard madness and commit all of my attentions.

The chief and Nyota and myself settled in for a few beers and a long conversation on the subject of building a missile cruiser, and how to support it with some level of automation. Nyota Uhura Watson found the details of missile cruiser systems inane and boring, thus finding a spot on my lap to sleep.

“Remove all four units? Commander, I would have no way to determine the materials requirement that I would need to write a critical-path schedule. The conduit work alone would require that most of the computers be removed.”

“Mr Watson, unless ALS or Lockheed engineers have an alternate protocol for backing out these systems, there is no choice.”

“Aye, commander. I’ll need a full day with the Lockheed-Martin rep and the Ingalls scheduler, along with the electrical boss.”

Well, if that’s what the navy wants, we’ll just have to give it to them. Speaking of the navy, here comes my favorite chief. What an incredibly stupid smile, he must have banged Helen last night.

“Mark, after you see Jerry and the scheduler, you need to come to my office. And this came from the Justice Department. You need to get your own fucking mail box. Do I look like your mail orderly?”

“As a matter of fact, senior chief...”

“Fuck you...”

“Holeee shit...”

“What?”

“Looky at this shit, senior chief. Its a fucking federal permit to carry a shootin iron on my person. Armed and dangerous, that’s me.”

The chief looked at me like the idiot that I probably was.

“Don’t shoot yourself, asshole. And get to my office as soon as you’re able.”

A young, slightly built female sailor, wearing navy blue coveralls and of the blonde persuasion was sitting in the chief’s outer office. She had a folder in hand, so I assumed the girl was a gopher, and was obviously waiting to see the chief.

“Hows the shoulder?”

“The quacks said it’s okay. Gonna pull the stitches next week.”

“Not wearing the sling?”

“No can do. Too much shit to hump. That’s why I got this ALICE pack.”

The senior chief waved his arm towards the small female outside his office. Once again, with that weird ‘I just got laid’ smile. Helen must have really done a number on him last night.

“Yeah. About that. I’m going to fix that problem. I snagged one of the XO’s admins. She’s your mule and gopher.”

“Say what? Should she even be in yard or on the docks?”

“The kid is good to go, Mark. Use her ... Anderson?”

I ignored the kid as she popped into the chief’s office. This was not good. She was maybe 45 kilos when loaded with a full magazine, and under 155 centimeters. This little thing is gonna carry 15 to 30 kilo loads up and down ladderwells and scaffolds and planks? Yeah, sure thing, mein chief. I’ll give the kid two days, tops. Let the games begin.