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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781456737405 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 03/07/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 212 |
| File size: | 432 KB |
About the Author
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1st and Dead
By Tony A. Powers
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Tony A. PowersAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4567-3742-9
Chapter One
Carlos Rivera was a mastermind at smuggling illegal aliens into the United States from Mexico and other countries. He'd done it for a number of years and had amassed a small fortune leading illegals across miles of hot Arizona desert—all while working under the guise of a real estate professional. He was surprised when he answered the mysterious phone call at his luxurious home in Nogales, Mexico."This is Carlos Rivera. How can I assist you?"
"You come highly recommended, Mr. Rivera. We need your help in getting some people and equipment secretly transported into the United States."
Rivera feared it was a setup. "I really don't know what you're talking about. I'm a real estate broker. How did you obtain my phone number?"
"C'mon, Mr. Rivera, don't play games with us. We know all about you and your smuggling operation. We're not amateurs either. I'd like to meet with you—in person if you feel uncomfortable on the phone. We can certainly make it worth your while, and I know you don't come cheap."
Rivera was cautious but curious. "I suppose I could meet with you, but remember, I only sell real estate, nothing more. How will I be able to identify you?"
The caller laughed. "We already know what you look like."
The mysterious voice made Rivera uneasy, but the "make-it-worth- your-while" remark proved to be too alluring. He decided to take the bait. "Are you familiar with Pepe's, the coffee bar in downtown Nogales?" he asked.
"Very."
"I'll meet you there tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. How will I recognize you?"
"Don't worry about that. I'll recognize you. Goodbye."
Rivera clicked off his cell phone and suddenly felt very nervous. He wiped drops of perspiration off his forehead. Had his lucrative smuggling operation finally been compromised? Were US Border Patrol and government agents ready to swoop in and arrest him? He'd always covered his operations well. The bribes he paid certain officials to look the other way had always protected him.
He thought about the one hundred thousand in cash he would demand in advance. The lure of money was overpowering. I'll go, he decided. Besides, the coffee bar was a safe place with plenty of people around. He'd conducted a number of business transactions there. Nothing could possibly happen to him, he thought. He reached for his Glock on the table, checked the magazine, and gently placed it into his briefcase under some papers. He closed the case and wondered.
Who are these people?
Chapter Two
The slender woman with the flaming red hair and brilliant smile put her fingers to her lips and motioned to Sheriff Dan Kawowski's secretary, Penny Dowie, not to give her presence away. She then walked slowly to his open office door and watched him for a few seconds while he typed away on his computer keyboard, completely oblivious to her. He still reminded her of an older George Clooney—not bad-looking for a sixty-one-year-old, she thought."I'm baaaaaaaack."
He looked up, slowly shook his head, and smiled. There stood Jane Dockery, beaming in a blue business suit. He thought she was the most beautiful sight in the whole world. His eyes could hardly take in the transformation from forensics intern to FBI agent. After about ten seconds, he finally got his body to react.
He jumped up and flew around his desk to greet and hug his dear friend. "Jane, Jane, I can't believe you're back."
They embraced, and their lips brushed briefly. They both knew Miss Dowie was still watching through the office door.
"I can't believe you're here in person. Where did eight months go? My gosh! Let me look at you," he said, holding her at arms length and surveying her sculpted body.
"You look just fantastic."
"Dan, you look great too. I missed you so much. I thought about you every day in training."
"Was it as tough as you told me?"
"It was both tough and fun. You gave me a good head start as your intern, Dan, so I was ready for the training. We had about thirty women in my class of two hundred. A couple had to drop out because of knee and back injuries, but most graduated. They assigned us all over the country, and I got the Denver main office—my first choice.
"I'm so sorry I missed your graduation. I just couldn't get away."
"I understand, Dan. Would you believe I sold my old red VW? I made the trip here from Quantico in my new, light-blue Chevy Impala with a hemi engine. It looks like a rental car, but it can really go. I like it, but I kind of miss my slow Volks."
"You wouldn't have caught many criminals in that VW." Kawowski laughed. He hugged her again, this time noticing the hidden handgun holster under her jacket and the hard muscles of her biceps and arms. "When do you have to report to Denver?"
"I've got a couple of days to kill yet. I'll be working in the counterterrorism unit." She inspected his white shirt, blue tie, and shoulder patch that read Des Moines County Sheriff in bright blue lettering. "Wow. Look at you, Dan—I mean, Sheriff Kawowski. "I'm so proud of you. We make a great color combination, don't we?"
They both laughed. He took her by the arm, introduced her to his secretary, and then asked her to sit down on his office sofa. He asked Miss Dowie to hold his calls, then closed the office door, eager to hear more about her training and assignments.
"Jane, you wrote in your last letter that you hoped they'd assign you back here in Colorado. I'm so happy to have you back."
He sat down next to her, reached for her hand, and looked into her waiting blue eyes. Suddenly he took her into his arms, and they kissed passionately and hungrily for several minutes. He hadn't held her for eight long months. The passion he had once felt for Lan Cao Ky now belonged to Jane. He held her tightly in his arms and didn't want their embrace to end.
She pulled away and ended the kiss. "I don't want to get lipstick on your fancy white shirt."
He reached for a handkerchief in his pocket and wiped a bright red blotch from his lips.
"Are you available for dinner tonight so we can talk about your training—and us? I also have a special surprise for you."
"What surprise? What about us, Dan? I hate secrets."
"We'll discuss that tonight, Agent Dockery. I know a great restaurant that serves a fabulous stuffed Italian pork chop."
"It's a date," she said, laughing and remembering the giant killer hog he'd shot last year while a detective with DMPD. "Do you still have nightmares about that giant porker, Dan?"
"Only when I see you," he said chuckling. "When that big sucker bore down on me with those tusks, all I could think of was a nice pork chop on a stick."
"Oh, Dan, I bet you were scared to death," she said, giggling.
They reminisced and joked about the days they had spent at the hog farm east of Des Moines, and then they both realized how lucky they were to escape the terrorists.
"Dan, those terrorists came so close to hurting you," she said with a nervous shudder, goose bumps forming on her arms. "Darling, I almost died when you were kidnapped by that creep Guy Braun and his cohorts. And then, that horrible shootout—I don't know what I would have done if anything had happened to you."
"Jane, you saved my life."
"No, Harry Duncan saved both our bacons."
At the mere mention of Duncan's name, they both roared with laughter over the antics of the World War II hero and super-sleuth from Coralville, Utah. It was Harry who had saved Dockery's life when he shot a terrorist who had her in his gunsights.
"How's old Harry doing?" she asked.
"The last I heard, he was still in Utah. There was a big article about him in Time Magazine about how he helped us break up the sleeper cell."
"I know. I read it at the academy. He sent me a letter inviting me to visit him when I got through training.
"Are you going to?"
"Are you kidding? I think that old geezer had a crush on me." She smirked. "I wrote and thanked him for saving us that night. He was definitely an eccentric old bird, but I'll never forget him."
"Me either," Kawowski said, shaking his head and turning reflective for a moment. "You know, Jane, it really was "murder on the opinion page" for all those heroic people who were kidnapped and killed just for expressing their opinions in letters to the editor."
"I would've loved to have known all of them, Dan. By the way, where is that jerk Mr. Braun—or whatever his real name is? Locked up these days?"
"Still in Guantanamo, I believe. He spilled the beans about a lot of their plans."
"With or without waterboarding?" she asked, smiling. "It looks like I'll be plunging headfirst into some of those leads real soon." "Jane, didn't you know waterboarding is illegal?" Kawowski winked. "Well, enough talk about the terrorists. A lot has happened since you've been gone. You heard about Dixon joining the Big Eleven Conference?"
"I was absolutely shocked when I saw the announcement on ESPN. So were the others in my class. Just think, Dan, you'll soon be able to watch your beloved Iowa Hawkeyes visit Dixon Stadium when they travel here to play Dixon."
"I'm going to buy us season tickets, and we're both going to dress up in black and gold. I think Dixon knew they'd be the twelfth team in the conference someday. They've been scheduling Big Eleven teams on their schedules for years."
"Wait a minute, I'm a Dixon fan!" She laughed. "But why did they change the mascot and team name from the Fighting Peregrines to the Canaries? Were they crazy?"
"Some folks are really upset about it—some big boosters and especially the sportswriters and play-by-play announcers. They've really been complaining to the school president about the decision."
"Gosh, somebody must have been paid off or something for agreeing to change the name like that. My classmates at the academy knew I went to Dixon and really ribbed me. Who in their right mind would name a football team the Canaries?"
"You know, there are the Toronto Blue Jays and St. Louis Cardinals," Kawowski said. "Why not the Dixon Canaries? I kind of like the name." He reached for a framed picture next to a table lamp and held up a newspaper photo of the Dixon mascot dressed up like a big yellow finch with teeth.
"Maybe Dixon should start selling bird seed at the games." Dockery laughed.
"Not a bad idea," said Kawowski.
"Dan, I could sit here for hours with you," Dockery said, "but I must go visit my old roommate." She reached into her purse and pulled out a small slip of paper. "Until I leave for Denver, I'm staying with one of my old sorority sisters from Dixon. Here's the address."
Kawowski took the paper and glanced at his watch. "What if I pick you up at six?"
"That's fine, Dan." She jumped up off the sofa as he reached for her again. "I'd love to stay, but I really must go. We'll make up for lost time later."
He stood up, took her arm, and escorted her from his office. Penny Dowie smiled at them as they walked by her desk. Dockery stopped and extended her hand to the secretary. "Glad to have met you, Penny."
"I'm happy to have met you too, Jane. He's a wonderful boss, you know."
"I know. He's quite a man," Dockery said, winking at Dowie and flashing a brilliant smile.
They left the office arm-in-arm and disappeared as Dowie watched. She's young enough to be his daughter, she thought. But they do make an attractive couple. She sighed, thinking about a romance she'd once had long ago with an older man. "Oh well," she said to herself. "It's none of my business."
Kawowski reappeared moments later and walked back into his office, whistling. She really makes me feel good, he thought. I'm too keyed up to even think about work. He sat down at his computer, typed on his keyboard for a few seconds, and brought up a Google search. He typed in "9th Infantry Division Vietnam," hit the enter button, and stared intently at the screen.
Chapter Three
"Sergeant, there's Cambodia just off to your left," the co-pilot of the Huey yelled over the swishing sounds of the helicopter's spinning rotor. "The Plain of Reeds is dead ahead."Sergeant Dan Kawowski stared at the thousands of acres of desolation below. Four- to five-foot-tall green shoots, ferns and reeds, protruded from the muddy brown soil for as far as the eye could see. The choppers resembled a band of angry hornets as they descended, carrying him and Bravo Company to a date with Charlie. He wondered how the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army regulars could build bunkers in such wide-open terrain. The door gunners suddenly opened up, and M-60 machine gun fire sprayed the landing area. The rounds ripped through the reeds, sending shards of green plant, blue, red, and green tracers, and mud geysers flying wildly into the air.
The Plain of Reeds ... no wonder it was a popular hiding place for Charlie, it was so vast. The giant marsh was strategically located between Cambodia and the rice basket of the Mekong Delta, and it was the Viet Cong's main supply route for attacks on Saigon. This was a search-and- destroy mission. Bravo Company's assignment was to find enemy base camps—some with concrete-reinforced bunkers—engage the enemy, and destroy bunkers and ammo caches, many of which were hidden along the canals near the border.
"Let's go," Kawowski ordered, and the squad of soldiers leaped from the helicopter into the soggy field below. The company's other choppers landed, and soldiers streamed out, finding whatever cover they could. A strong gust of wind generated by the spinning blades enveloped the rifle company as the helicopters lifted off and headed back to the safety of Dong Tam, the company's base camp. The reeds were bent almost parallel to the ground by the force of the turbine engines. Seconds after the choppers were gone, there was nothing but a deathly silence.
"Is this the calm before the storm, Sarge?" one of the men joked.
"I hope not. What a fricking, desolate, hot place," Kawowski replied, a little agitated. "Check all your gear, men, and get ready to move."
He studied his map, asked for his radio, and called the company commander, Lt. Harry Nielsen.
"Bravo 1, Bravo 2. We're ready to move."
"Bravo 2, Bravo 1, Roger. Let's head them north for about five clicks. Tell your men to watch out; these damn reeds are sharp and can slice you like a knife."
"Roger, Bravo 1." Kawowski clicked off the radio, flipped open his compass, and watched the arrow bounce due north.
"Baylor, take the point. We're headed this way," Kawowski ordered, pointing toward their direction of travel into the sea of green stalks. "Move out this way, and stay spread out," he bellowed. "Don't get cut by this crap. Watch out for booby traps, bunkers, and Charlie."
What a place to catch a bullet or step on a land mine, he thought. What a place to die.
"Sheriff ... Sheriff, I have those reports ready for you to sign," Penny Dowie said.
Kawowski stared into his computer screen and then looked up at Dowie with an apologetic smile.
"I'm sorry, Penny. I was just sitting here reading on the internet about my old unit, and thinking about my old buddies in Vietnam."
"We lost a lot of fine young men there, didn't we, Sheriff?"
"Yes, we did. They were brave men—and one special woman. Now where did you want me to sign?"
Chapter Four
Carlos Rivera approached his favorite table on the veranda outside Pepe's coffee bar, nervously eyed the occupants of nearby tables, and wondered if one of them was the mystery voice on his cell phone. A young couple sat at one of the tables, talking and laughing while occasionally sipping their espresso. Two elderly men occupied another table, one of them smoking a cigar, which annoyed Rivera. He hated the smell of cigar smoke. He looked around and located a distant table upwind from the cigar smoker. No sooner was he seated than a voice at his back startled him."The usual, Mr. Rivera?" the waiter called out.
Rivera had jumped at the sound of the voice and almost knocked a candle off the table.
"Oh, it's you, Johnny," he said nervously. "Yes, the usual. Make sure it's hot and fresh-brewed."
"You got it, sir."
Rivera scolded himself for being so antsy. He had a clear view of the entire veranda from his table. The waiter brought a cup of steaming coffee and placed it carefully on the table. Rivera opened his briefcase, took out his newspaper, and pretended to read, while his eyes scanned the area from behind his sunglasses. He felt the reassuring weight of the Glock, now located in his side pocket.
The two elderly gentlemen got up from their table to leave and blocked Rivera's view for a moment.
"Mr. Rivera, may I join you?" said a well-dressed man with a perfectly trimmed mustache who materialized out of nowhere. "I phoned you yesterday. I'm Harold Tasif."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from 1st and Dead by Tony A. Powers Copyright © 2011 by Tony A. Powers. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments....................xiPrologue....................xiii
Chapter One....................1
Chapter Two....................3
Chapter Three....................9
Chapter Four....................13
Chapter Five....................17
Chapter Six....................19
Chapter Seven....................25
Chapter Eight....................29
Chapter Nine....................33
Chapter Ten....................39
Chapter Eleven....................43
Chapter Twelve....................45
Chapter Thirteen....................47
Chapter Fourteen....................51
Chapter Fifteen....................55
Chapter Sixteen....................61
Chapter Seventeen....................65
Chapter Eighteen....................69
Chapter Nineteen....................73
Chapter Twenty....................77
Chapter Twenty-One....................81
Chapter Twenty-Two....................85
Chapter Twenty-Three....................87
Chapter Twenty-Four....................91
Chapter Twenty-Five....................95
Chapter Twenty-Six....................99
Chapter Twenty-Seven....................105
Chapter Twenty-Eight....................109
Chapter Twenty-Nine....................111
Chapter Thirty....................115
Chapter Thirty-One....................119
Chapter Thirty-Two....................123
Chapter Thirty-Three....................127
Chapter Thirty-Four....................131
Chapter Thirty-Five....................135
Chapter Thirty-Six....................137
Chapter Thirty-Seven....................141
Chapter Thirty-Eight....................143
Chapter Thirty-Nine....................147
Chapter Forty....................151
Chapter Forty-One....................153
Chapter Forty-Two....................155
Chapter Forty-Three....................157
Chapter Forty-Four....................161
Chapter Forty-Five....................163
Chapter Forty-Six....................165
Chapter Forty-Seven....................167
Chapter Forty-Eight....................171
Chapter Forty-Nine....................173
Chapter Fifty....................177
Chapter Fifty-One....................179
Chapter Fifty-Two....................183
Chapter Fifty-Three....................189
Chapter Fifty-Four....................193
Chapter Fifty-Five....................195