|
Updated Sunday 18 July, 2010 12:11 PM |
|
|
Join Writer Development Section Writer Development Member Section
|
SNAKE OIL
By Doctor What
He who dies with the most toys is, nonetheless, still dead. – Unknown
**
February 21, 2017
Hurley’s didn’t stand out very much if you walked into it.
It was, by all accounts, a fairly non-descript bar. It had the requisite big screen TV in the corner that was perpetually set to a sports channel and a smaller one near the bar that was either set to different sports channel or set to some news channel depending on how the bartender felt that day. Grungy tables? Check. Bathrooms in a deplorable state that probably broke a few county health code ordinaces? Check. Rather large amount of beer of varying quality available? Check. Large number of early drinkers? Check.
However, Hurley’s was a bit different from most bars in the San Francisco area.
The owner and bartender – who went by the most improbable name of George Griffin Huckleberry – had a rather promising career in the Army and had, after a mere five years, reached the rank of Sergeant by the summer of 2003. Unfortunately, an argument over the right of way involving a Hummer, an IED and a motorcycle put an end to that career.
Huckleberry –‘Huck’ to his friends – decided to get his life back on track by opening a bar. Given his background, it didn’t come as a surprise to anyone when he let it be known that any soldier – current or former – who became a regular at his place were given some generous breaks on any large bar tab they may accumulate.
Needless to say – this made him very popular.
Dirt poor of course – but still, nonetheless, popular.
Any nonsoldiers in Hurley’s often found themselves feeling like they stepped into a foreign country.
The new bartender certainly thought so.
He was a college student hoping to make enough money to pay off a few bills and was right now trying very hard to follow what the four very loud drunks in the back were saying.
“No way, man!” yelled a young man, in his late twenties.
“Straight up, Matt!” This was an older guy, easily in his forties.
“So our comm’s out, we’re cooking off ammo...” continued the older man.
“...and now every knucklehead in the sector knows we’re there! So we start getting lit up...” Another man – late twenties, maybe even early thirties.
“Damn!” Yet another young man – roughly the same age as the first young man.
Older guy started talking again. “So they’re walkin’ rounds on us and we’re not even in our play clothes!”
Early thirtyish guy chimed in again. “—Plus—nobody has eyes on! We’re engaging ghosts!”
The two young guys shook their heads in sympathy and bemusement.
“So been there!”
“Word up, man!”
Older man started talking again.
“Okay—so an ISF dismounted element shows up...”
“Ha-ha!!” One of the young men, laughing.
“Instant Iraqi Death Blossom!” yelled the thirtyish guy, also laughing.
“And all because of one little fobbit!” yelled ‘Matt’, joining in the laughter as well.
The four men laughed hysterically for several minutes, almost choking on their beers. Finally – after a few unsuccessful attempts – they managed to stop laughing.
Older guy was talking again.
“Totally FUBAR! Like that time in Tikrit...”
Thirtyish guy began laughing again.
“Could not believe you did that, sir!”
“Aw man – the stories I could tell about Karbala...” said ‘Matt’.
The four drifted off into silence, suppressing a few laughs and smiles and taking a few more sips on their beers.
The older man finished off his beer and slammed the empty bottle down. He turned his gaze to thirties looking man.
“How about a sitrep?”
Thirtyish guy
instantly became all business.
Older man squinted
his eyes, clearly a bit annoyed.
Older guy actually
leaned back in his chair, his jaw dropping a bit but with just a hint of a smile
on his face.
The three other men
nodded their heads in understanding.
Older guy just
grunted and nodded his head.
The three men nodded and one of them waved for the barkeep to come over.
Older guy looked at his watch and grunted again.
“You guys have to have this round without me. Got a plane to catch.”
“Good luck. We’ll hold the fort here.”
Older guy stood up and smiled again.
He turned to face the two younger men.
“Matt, Andrew – keep an eye on Jason here. Make sure he doesn’t blow our whole roll on cheap booze and hookers.”
That brought a grin from the two younger men and a look of mock shock from the thirtyish man, Jason.
“I am deeply offended and insulted by that accusation, sir. Truly I am.”
“Do you deny it?”
“Fuck no! – but I am still deeply hurt and offended by that accusation!”
The three men were still laughing as the older man – Drake – walked out the bar.
Eight and a half hours later. Drake looked up from his notebook and double-checked the address.
He had to admit – he never would have expected him of all people to end up in South Florida.
Shrugging his shoulders, Drake walked into ‘Vega Group Protection (Inc.)’ headquarters.
If you had to describe Alexei Orlov using one phrase, the word ‘Big Bear’ would have adequately described him.
He was tall, heavy set and very far away from being ‘follicle challenged’ as humanly possible -- despite the fact that many of his peers were sighing wistfully at the various ‘hair replacement’ ads that seemed to be on constant rotation on late night TV. For a man obviously in his forties, he was also in surprisingly good physical shape.
He also seemed to have a perpetual smile on his face.
So an outside observer would have been most surprised and confused when, upon being informed by his secretary that an unscheduled visitor by the name of Drake was wishing to speak to him, he calmly informed his secretary to ‘let him in’ – at which point Alexei pulled out a rather small but obviously extremely powerful looking handgun and pointed it at Drake just as he stepped in.
The Vympel unit has had a rather confusing and eclectic history, even by Russian military standards.
Nobody – well, nobody outside the Russia military that is but they ain’t talking -- is one hundred percent certain exactly how and when it started but everyone is fairly certain that by the early 1980’s as a ‘dedicated unit specializing in deep penetration, sabotage, universal direct and covert action, embassy protection and espionage cell activation in case of war’ it was second to none. Even other special forces -- both within Russia and outside – grudgingly admitted that the Vympel group was ‘one of the best special forces units in the world’.
Those in the Vympel group reveled in their status.
Alas – not even they were fully immune to the tides of history and when the Soviet Union more or less self-destructed in the early 1990’s, it took the Vympel group with them.
Vympel ended up being decimated by near-endless ‘reorgs’ or ‘redefinitions’, with the unit being passed to one (short-lived) Ministry after another until somebody came up with the ‘bright’ idea of essentially folding them into the police departments.
Going from ‘best special forces unit in Russian history’ to ‘being subordinated to the police’ was the final straw and most of the group resigned in disgust.
This was bad news for the Russian military (who quickly learned the error of their ways and revamped the group back into their original roles a few years later) but spectacularly good news for everyone else. Numerous highly trained special forces units (all of whom were required to know at least two foreign languages as part of their espionage training) were leaving Russia for whatever country would have them and give them a steady paycheck.
Alexei Orlov was one of those individuals and, after many (mis)adventures working on both an official and unofficial status for the militaries of no less than five different countries in ten years, finally ended up on the shores of the US – on March 19, 2003.
It required quite a few strings to be pulled but the ‘reference letters’ he had were … eye-opening … and certainly greased the slow pondering wheels of bureaucracy (‘Be it Russian or American, Middle-Ages or Space Age, the bureaucratic mentality is the one constant in the universe’, excerpt from Wit and Wisdom of Alexei Orlov, Vanity Press, 2009) but he ended up spending the next five years bouncing in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan in various ‘security contractors’ units and the like.
After ‘retirement’ he decided to ‘take it easy’ by setting up a security company in South Florida that specialized in ‘Executive Protection’, with a special emphasis on ‘several ongoing developing projects on international fronts’.
In just under ten years, he managed to turn what was a one man company into the twelfth largest Corporate Security company in Florida.
He was happy. He was rich. He was looking forward to retiring someplace hot and sunny where the women walked around half naked and had a ‘negotiable attitude’ on the subject of sex.
But that wasn’t the reason he pulled a gun on Drake.
“I’m sensing some hostility here, Alexei,” said Drake.
Alexei slowly squeezed his finger on the trigger a fraction of a centimeter more.
“You have a lot of nerve coming into my office, especially after what you did to me.”
“Dude—I told you before—that Berlin thing wasn’t my fault.”
Alexei snorted.
“Yeah, right! And the two nuns?”
Drake blushed.
“Well—okay. That was me – but it was supposed to be a joke! How was I supposed to know that they weren’t real women?”
“I’m going to shoot you now, Drake…” said Alexei, slowly squeezing the trigger.
“Ummm—how are you going to explain the bullet-ridden dead body in your office?”
Alexei hesitated, the gun still aimed at Drake’s forehead.
He kept the gun pointed there for a full ten seconds as an internal battle raged within him.
“FUCK!” he yelled finally, putting the gun down. “Why did you have to use logic and reason on me?”
“Cause that’s what I do?” replied Drake, smiling.
“I can still beat you over the head with a baseball bat, you know…”
“Right. Moving very quickly to my reason for being here then…” said Drake, sitting down.
“Make this fast Drake –you have two minutes.”
“Ok, I’ll cut to the chase. It’s about our friendly neighbourhood aliens.”
“What about them?”
“Just wanted to get your opinion on them. About how altruistic they were. About what kind of offers were made. About what had to be given in return.”
“In answer to your questions – one -- I don’t think they’re very altruistic. Two – their offers were too good to be true and we have a very old saying in Russia about offers that are too good to be true.”
“Oh—what saying is that?” asked Drake, genuinely curious.
“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
Drake stared at Alexei.
“Look—I said it was an old saying—I didn’t say it was profound! And you have ninety seconds…”
“And what do you think about what had to be given in return?” asked Drake, sweetly.
Alexei…hesitated.
“I really would like a reply to my question,” said Drake after a few seconds of non-response from Alexei. “You were the one to give me a time limit and I don’t think you are supposed to run out the clock like that.”
“I’ve given you an extension. What exactly are you asking me?”
“No tricks this time. No jokes. Just a simple reply. Russia got a crap-load of tech from our friendly ETs. The standard ‘we are assisting them with certain requests’ that everyone else is using is also getting airplay there. So – what do you think?”
Alexei sat there, deep in thought for a few moments.
After what seemed like an eternity, he replied.
“My country may have shafted me many years ago and, truth be told, I have spent almost as much time living outside the country than I have had living inside of it. I’m not too crazy about the current leadership and I wasn’t too crazy about the one before him or the one before him. My homeland seems to alternate between being seen as the laughingstock of the world and the cheap thug of the world.”
Alexei leaned back into his chair.
“Nevertheless – it is my homeland and I have spilled a lot of blood – some of it even my own – protecting it from any threats that may wish to do it harm. These aliens are…uncomfortably close to the way the oligarchs used to act. You Americans had your robber barons who offered the people one thing but gave them another while all the time happily collecting their money. These aliens strike me the same way – I fear that my country – in its haste to dominate the rest of the world – may have ended up being…er…how do you Americans say it?...may have ended up being the bitch to these aliens instead.”
Drake grinned.
“Better to be poor and have no master instead of rich and forced to serve at the whim of one, huh?”
Alexei returned the grin.
“That is correct.” There was a long pause. Then – “I take it you know something?”
Drake shook his head.
“Depends. Are you asking me do I have verifiable proof that the aliens are going to screw us over? No –I do not. Are you asking me do I have some intriguing bits and pieces of evidence that suggests that our suspicions are not totally paranoid? Then yes.”
Alexei raised an eyebrow in surprise.
“Interesting….”
The two stared at one another in silence for a few seconds before Alexei was the first to talk.
“So—why are you here?”
“Suffice to say that I aim to find out whether or not I am only slightly paranoid or completely paranoid. I’ve started putting together a small team of like-minded individuals – some of whom are, uh, old associates of ours – and trying to ascertain exactly what is going on.”
“And then what?”
Drake shrugged his shoulders.
“Well—that depends on what we find out, hmmm?”
Alexei sat there in silence for a few more seconds.
“You still didn’t answer my question.”
Drake leaned back into his chair as well.
“You are still…friends…with some of your ex-colleagues, no?”
Alexei hesitated for a few seconds – and then slowly nodded his head.
“And these…friends…of yours have access to some resources and information that may be difficult for you to get from here in this uncomfortably hot and humid state?”
Another nod.
“And these…friends…of yours, if they were to have proof that their country was being sold out will no doubt be counted on to react in the appropriate manner?”
Yet another nod.
Drake smiled.
“Well—now you know why I’m here.”
Alexei leaned back into his chair and seemed to give this some deep thought.
After a few moments, he leaned forward and placed his hands on the desk in front of him.
“I’m in. “
Drake grinned.
“Excellent! I’ll tell the others and we’ll start bringing you into the loop.”
Drake made to leave when –
“Stop!”
Drake paused, his hand on the doorknob. He turned to face Alexei.
“Yes?”
Alexei frowned.
“Just so we’re clear – I’m doing this because I need your resources. I’m not doing this because I like you. I don’t.”
“Understood.”
“As just so you really do understand – if and when all this is over, I’m going to beat the crap out of you with a crowbar.”
“Understood.”
“I’m never going to forgive you for Berlin.”
“Look—I told you! I didn’t know about the nuns okay?”
“And what about the thing with the gummy bears and the poodle?”
“That was that crazy Canuck’s idea – I was totally against it!
“And whose idea was it about the woman’s gym locker?”
“Oh look at the time! Gotta go! Plane to catch! Let’s do lunch!”
And with that Drake left the room.
Alexei sat there for a very long time, deep in thought. Finally making a decision, he picked up the phone and dialed a long series of digits.
After a few seconds a voice –with a thick Russian accent – answered.
“Hello?”
“It’s me, Alexei – I need to talk to you for a few minutes…”
~~ On to Chapter 11
|
