Chapter 6

After the girls left, Earl and I took a shower and then took the tractor and brush hog over to mow the airstrip. I had had a landing strip of asphalt put in along with the necessary items like a windsock and a hanger that would hold 3 two-engine planes, a hanger for my plane and strobe lights.

About 4 PM, a plane buzzed the house and I knew it was Gary and he probably had Frank with him. Earl and I headed for the airstrip in my Hummer. Gary was just landing as we pulled up. They taxied back to the hanger where Earl and I were waiting. Gary, Frank and Bob got out of the plane. There were the usual greetings with insults flying all around. We got the plane in the hanger and headed back to the house for some beer and to find out what everyone had been up to.

Around 6, Bubba buzzed from the gate and I opened it and turned off the mines. Dave was with him and there were greeting all around. About 7, Butch showed up and the team was complete. While everyone was swapping lies, I grilled steaks and we had a great arrival dinner.

After dinner, with beers in hand, we sat down to go over Earl's problem. Earl laid out the scenario for everyone and then the questions started. Frank took the lead.

"Earl, what do you think brought on this audit?"

"Hell, I don't know."

"Well, what had your activities been in the year before you got audited?"

"Hell, I was just doin' what I usually do, my consulting work, chasin' women, drinkin', and trying to stay out of jail."

"Earl," I interrupted, "didn't you testify about Clinton's health plan?"

"Ya, I did that, but it was no biggie. I was just one of a whole parade of people that testified."

"Now, we're getting somewhere," Frank stated.

"You mean because I was opposed to that communist asshole taking over 1/7^th of the GNP I was targeted for this shit?"

"Well, it's possible. I haven't heard anything else that would trigger this amount of bullshit from the feds."

Well, that really set Earl off. "That ignorant, communist, draft dodging mother fucker. Were the hell is Oswald when we really need him?" Earl ranted on for about 15 minutes before we could calm him down. By the end, he was going to shoot the Clinton's, all high-ranking officials of the IRS and most of Clinton's advisors.

Frank finally got him calmed down and told me he would need to do some checking before we could pin things down. He asked me if I had a satellite up link, which I did. Then he asked which satellite. I referred him to Bubba and, of course, it was the wrong satellite. Bubba told him to calm down and give him the coordinates of his satellite and he would be getting things set up. Frank fished out the coordinates for Bubba and he went to the control panel and messed with it until he got things right.

"Everything is all set, use the blue connector, it has a filter on it," Bubba told Frank.

Frank pulled out his laptop and connected it to the uplink. Bubba sat right with him and asked questions. Frank was going into the IRS.

"How the hell are you going to do that?"

"Before I left the company, I made sure I had a back door into the government system that could not be traced."

"Now that is what I call foresight," Bubba remarked.

Frank booted up and went through a few different links and was soon in the IRS.

"Earl, what's your social security number?"

Earl gave it to him and within a minute, he had Earl's file on screen. He filtered through a bunch of pages until he found what he was looking for. Earl was peering over his shoulder by that time and he read the memo from an Assistant Director.

"That mother fucker, how the hell did he get my name and why is he after me?"

"I'd give odds that it has to do with your testifying," Frank told him.

"Son of a bitch, who put him on to me?"

"Well, it doesn't say, but I'd bet on the White House."

By this time, Bubba was looking over Frank's shoulder again and said, "Snelling, I know that name. Is there anyway you can pull his personnel file up?"

"Sure, give me a couple minutes."

Frank went to work on the computer while we tried to calm Earl down. I finally packed some weed into a pipe for him and set him down to cool off. That seemed to work, somewhat, but not completely.

Frank called Bubba over and this guy's file was on the screen.

"Check his record before the IRS."

Frank paged back and found his work record. It included a tour in the Quartermaster Corps from '66 to '74 with a year in 'Nam.

"Damn, I thought I recognized that name. He was that damn straight leg accountant trying to bring the war in under budget. He seemed to get real upset when things turned up missing in a war zone. Who's his superior?"

"The Director. He probably had to pull some political strings to get this kind of a job. He was hired in '78 on the 'hire the vets' program. Not much in his personnel file other than the usual evaluations for raises and promotions. He was office manager, district manager, special investigator and assistant regional manager until '93. In '93 he was promoted to AD. Wait, let's go through this guy's references. Ahhh, here we go, a letter from Schumer, one from Feinstein and a note from the personnel department saying that H.C. would really like to see this guy moved to the AD's position."

"Well, that explains a lot," was Earl's comment.

Frank backed out of that site and asked Ed what day he got his audit letter.

"Well, let's see, I think I testified on the 2^nd Tuesday of August in '93 and I got my audit letter the next Monday."

"Do you remember the names of the folks who testified on that day?"

"Naw, just their first names."

"Ok, let me pull up the hearing record."

After about 5 minutes, Frank had a list of everyone who had testified during the entire 2 weeks.

"Now, let's see how the others were treated."

He started pulling up IRS files of everyone who testified. It took a while longer since he didn't have their Social Security numbers. But finally, after about an hour he had a list.

"This is real interesting. Thirty-Seven people testified during that 2-week period. Twenty-three of them have IRS audits. I'm betting the other 14 were not against the Health Plan."

"Those MOTHER FUCKERS! How in the hell can they get by with that shit? Someone needs to off those two communist assholes."

"Slow down Earl, we can't prove anything yet. Who are your major clients?"

Frank did another search and sure enough, 4 out of 7 of Earl's major clients were being audited.

"Man, these assholes got some balls," was Bubba's contribution.

My question was, "What can we do with this information?"

"Well, the press would love to have it, but it would all be just a 'coincidence' when it came time for an investigation," was Frank's retort. "What we need is more proof. Like getting someone on the inside to talk, which is probably impossible. Or getting our hands on the actual, hard copy, files. That could be done, but it probably wouldn't show anything concrete."