by Frank Perry
Kingfish
By
Frank Perry, author
Hampton Falls, New Hampshire
[email protected]
Synopsis
A former Navy SEAL becomes and unlikely lobbyist for California in Washington DC dealing with a controversial attempt to legalize recreational drug use under certain controlled conditions. He’s unsure of his job and seeks help from numerous sources more familiar with political processes. The initiative stirs emotions on both sides of the issue and escalates to deadly events when it might ruin fortunes for illicit drug traffickers and politicians bent on promoting and anti-drug platform. Personal lives are uprooted and the people dearest to the lobbyist, including his fiancée become targets of retribution. He’s faced with abandoning his work on behalf of the Governor or bring heartache to those he loves.
Copyright © 2016 by Frank Perry
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email to: [email protected].
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the contributions made to this book by: Sandy Blair, my valued author friend and advisor, Richard Cesario and Beverly Heinle provided invaluable proofreading “red marks,” and Ken Starr, LTC, USA (ret.) provided valuable Army insight. My wife Janet Perry tolerantly read the early drafts, preventing too much embarrassment. The cover theme and designed was created by my talented son, Brendan Perry.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, world organizations, government agencies, regulations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The author professes no medical training related to the subject matter.
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Other books by Frank:
Recall to Arms
The Cobra Identity
Reign of Terror
Letters From the Grave
Kingfish
Sibley’s Secret
The Dolos Conspiracy
Prolog: Failed Policy
The Washington Times, on June 2, 20111, reported the results of an international panel, prepared by the Global Commission on Drug Policy2. According to the Times article, ... “The fact is that the war on drugs is a failure.”
The 19-member commission included several heads of state and noted individuals including former U.S. officials George P. Schultz and Paul Volcker.
The Nixon-era “War on Drugs” has escalated each year, resulting in massive expenditures, organized crime, overcrowded prisons, and human destruction on a scale unknown since the Second World War. This doesn’t suggest that nothing should be done to curb drug abuse in America and around the world, but criminalized production and distribution of illegal drugs has corrupted governments in all parts of the world, including America. Organized crime today exists primarily because of current drug enforcement policies. Drug consumption and Government corruption have both increased dramatically over thirty years since the “war” began—as a direct result of American policy.
U.S. taxpayers have spent over a trillion dollars fighting the war and are continuing to lose an un-winnable battle. It’s ironic that a partially legalized and closely regulated policy, especially for marijuana, would do more to curb abusive drug use and end gangland violence (and actually generate revenue) than any so-called war. The sad fact is that being “hard on drugs” has become a perverted platform for politicians. Practical courage is needed to re-address the problem of drug abuse. From history, we should have learned that barricading the borders (Prohibition) was the wrong answer to controlling substance abuse.
1. Report: Drug war a failure, The Washington Times, June 2, 2011
2. “War on Drugs”, Global Commission on Drug Policy. June, 2011 (https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/Report)
Farallons
The Farallon Islands are an eight-mile-long stretch of uninhabited barren outcroppings jutting from the Pacific ranging from twenty-five to thirty miles off the Northern California coastline. They are remnants of an ancient tectonic upheaval, officially part of San Francisco County today. On clear days, they cast a grey silhouette against the western sky that can be seen from the Golden Gate Bridge. Clear days are rare. Winds and perpetual surf have eroded the islands, sculpting steep craggy peaks and arches rising a hundred feet above the surface then sinking sharply below, to over eight hundred feet. Uninhabitable by humans, the islands are a natural sanctuary for sea birds and mammals. Massive kelp beds and plankton-rich Pacific currents support all forms of marine life, including abalone and urchins, in dense underground natural hatcheries. Seals and otters thrive on the vast food supply. To their peril, a natural enemy, the Great White Shark, inhabits these waters as well in greater abundance than anywhere else in the world.
Tim Chambers and Brock Keefe worked in Sausalito as drywall installers during the week, and spent their weekends as commercial divers along the California Coast, harvesting sea urchins for their roe, which is a delicacy on the west coast and in Asia. Together, they owned an old nineteen-foot open skiff with a single Mercury outboard motor. Their diving gear was a hookah system, consisting of a scuba regulator tethered by a high-pressure hose to a small air compressor aboard the boat. Wearing a wetsuit and heavy weight belts, they could work along the rocky bottom of the ocean for long periods, sending their catch in baskets to the surface by a rope tended from the boat. They would alternate diving and tending duties.
Both men were in their mid-twenties and unmarried. They made enough money working underwater on the weekends to pay for their boat and expenses, but little profit. They were not full-time professional divers, but loved doing it on weekends. They had licenses to dive commercially.
Most of the time, they would anchor in kelp beds near the coast, not far from the mouth of the Golden Gate. If the weather was calm enough, and they had time to cruise farther out, they would venture to the Farallons where the harvest was much richer. It was a kind of manly dare between them to cross the open ocean in the small open boat. Neither would admit being nervous about the sharks, which had multiplied along the Northern California coast since otters and seals had been removed from government protection. At least one diver was attacked each year, on average, in the Farallons. A diver named Edleman had been killed and partially eaten only a week before. The U.S. National Parks Service had issued a warning for divers to avoid entering water near the North Farallon Island for at least a year. The huge sharks were known to be territorial during certain times of the year then would usually move to new feeding grounds. Tim and Brock were diving at the south island, miles away.
The dark pre-dawn swells were running about six feet tall at long gentle intervals in a dense fog. They cruised slowly, watching and listening for ships in the channel, using a magnetic compass for navigation. The fog would lift by mid-morning when the wind and chop would increase. They planned to dive along the leeward side of the southern-most island, shielded from the worst weather. If sea conditions followed a normal summer pattern, the men would return home after dark when conditions subsided again. If it remained too rough at night to cross to the mainland, they carried sleeping bags and food to stay overnight on the boat at anchor. Onc
e the holding tank was filled, the boat would sink ten inches lower in the water, becoming dangerous to manage in anything but a glassy flat sea. At the Farallons, they expected to have a full load quickly.
It was cold and damp, as they neared the island. They could smell it before seeing anything. After two hours of cruising, they slowed as the swells moderated and the gulls could be heard above the engine noise, nearing their destination. They couldn’t see it, but there were indications that the jutting cliffs were somewhere close ahead. The fog was thinning from the sunrise behind them, and the grey ghostly silhouette of south island suddenly appeared. Brock threw the anchor overboard into the kelp and Tim shifted into reverse, stopping forward motion.
Both were psyched about the money they could make in this fertile area but also thought about the man-eaters living there. They didn’t talk about it. With swells and wind coming from the northwest, they were anchored in dense seaweed close to the cliffs on the southeastern side of the highest peak, about fifty feet from shore in thirty feet of water. They were surrounded by a dark brown kelp carpet spreading around the boat from stalks anchored to the bottom. The rocky shore at the base of the cliff had hundreds of sea lions waiting for the sun. Some bellowed