The Jake Fonko Series: Books 4, 5 & 6
Page 1
The Jake Fonko Box Set
Books 4, 5 & 6
Three Jake Fonko Novels
B. Hesse Pflingger
Watchfire Press
Copyright © 2014 - 2016, G. Ray Funkhouser. All rights reserved.
Published by Watchfire Press.
This book is a work of fiction. Similarities to actual events, places, persons or other entities are coincidental.
Watchfire Press
www.watchfirepress.com
www.watchfirepress.com/fonko
Cover design by Kit Foster
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The Jake Fonko Box Set: Books 4, 5 & 6/B. Hesse Pflingger. – 1st ed.
e-ISBN: 978-1-940708-61-4
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Table of Contents
The Jake Fonko Box Set
Synopsis
Book 4: Fonko in the Sun
Preface: Editor’s Note
1 | Johnny Too Bad
2 | Babalu
3 | Jamaica Farewell
4 | Zombie Jamboree
5 | 007 Shanty Town
6 | The Harder They Come
7 | I Shot the Sheriff
8 | Sweet and Dandy
9 | Many Rivers to Cross
10 | Government Boots
11 | You Can Get It If You Really Want
Editor’s Afterword (Amended)
Book 5: Fonko Bolo
Trigger Warning
Prelude to the Story
Introduction to the Story
The Beginning of the Story
The Second Part of the Story
The Third Part of the Story
The Fourth Part of the Story
The Fifth Part of the Story
The Story’s Conclusion
But Stories Never Conclude
Editor’s Afterword
Book 6: The Mother of All Fonkos
Saturday, July 21 & Sunday, July 22, 1990
Monday, July 23, to Thursday, July 26, 1990
Friday, July 27, to Wednesday, August 1, 1990
Thursday, August 2, 1990
Sunday, August 5, to Friday, August 10, 1990
Monday, August 13, to Thursday, August 16, 1990
Sunday, August 26, 1990
Tuesday, September 25, to Saturday, September 29, 1990
Tuesday, October 2, 1990
A Long Stretch of Days in October and November, 1990
December 8, 1990 to January 17, 1991
Monday, January 18, to Saturday, February 23, 1991
Sunday, February 24, to Monday, February 25, 1991
Tuesday, February 26, 1991
Thereafter
Editor’s Afterword
From The Publisher
The Fonko Conundrum Deconstructed
The Jake Fonko Series
Synopsis
Fonko in the Sun (Book 4) - Grand Cayman 1983. A bloody bank robbery. A barroom shootout. A headlong flight out of Castro’s Cuba. Three aerial dogfights. A chopper crash in a Jamaican jungle - and that’s just the first day of Jake Fonko’s trip to the Caribbean. Stranded amidst the beautiful palm trees with incriminating top-secret financial documents, Jake finds himself pursued by government agencies, terrorists, cartels and criminals of every stripe. And with no passport, no backup and suffocating surveillance around every turn, how ever will Jake pull this one out of the fire?
Fonko Bolo (Book 5) - Philippines 1986. Bribed and blackmailed back into the service of the CIA, Jake finds himself dispatched to the Philippines with a basic directive: preserve critical American military bases. But with the Communist New People’s Army’s plotting to topple Ferdinand Marcos from power, Jake soon discovers that his latest mission is anything but simple…
The Mother of All Fonkos (Book 6) - Kuwait 1990. After landing a cushy consulting gig from a mysterious businessman, Jake Fonko flies off to Kuwait City for what he expects will be a leisurely four week job. But no sooner does Jake arrive than Saddam Hussein’s blitzkrieg lays siege to the city. Trapped inside Kuwait with no way out of the heat, Jake must rely on his wits, Ranger training and any allies he can find if he wants to survive the Desert Storm...
And if you missed Books 1, 2 & 3, grab the bundle at: watchfirepress.com/jf
Book 4: Fonko in the Sun
Preface: Editor’s Note
I am pleased to call the reader’s attention to an innovative feature we introduce in Fonko in the Sun—background music. To the best of my knowledge, no serious scholarly text has previously attempted this.
There is an interesting story behind our innovation. One day I looked up from my notes for my lecture course, Trends 101, to find that without exception, every student in the room was not looking at me, but rather at some handheld gadget. I assumed they must be taking notes on recording devices and continued on with the day’s lesson, but afterward, I asked my research assistant, Dr. Bertha Sikorski, about it. She explained that it happens in all the lecture courses these days—the students were sending messages to friends via “texting” or “tweeting,” or were watching pornography or “YouTube.” Pornography I understood, but texting, tweeting and YouTube were new concepts to me.
Dr. Sikorski explained them, and I was particularly taken with YouTube. Astounding! Anybody and everybody posting videos, movies, music, just about everything one can imagine! I spent the afternoon exploring YouTube on my desktop computer, amazed at the wealth of materials available. I even found original David Frost and William F. Buckley Jr. TV interviews. It was clear to me that YouTube could become as valuable a source of insight into contemporary history as Wikipedia is proving to be.
This occurred while Tinderboxed Press was preparing Fonko in the Sun for publication. Dr. Sikorski had recently seen a film by a Mr. James Cliff, The Harder They Come, and she was taken by the music of Jamaica (where that film is set). She thought it would be “cool” to assemble a “playlist” to complement the text of our book, and she prevailed on our colleagues to “give it a shot.” The two of us spent many enjoyable evenings combing through the reggae and calypso songs that so enliven those exotic islands, and the result is a series of chapter headings reflecting song titles that one can easily access on YouTube.
My hope is that this feature will enhance your appreciation of Jake Fonko’s remarkable adventures in the Caribbean Islands by providing a flavor of the environs and people he encountered.
B. Hesse Pflingger, PhD
Professor of Contemporary History
California State University, Cucamonga
1 | Johnny Too Bad
NOTE: The chapter headings all are titles of popular reggae and calypso songs. You might find them good background music for your reading. They are available on YouTube.
They handed me the suitcase, and then the three guys started for the door, and I watched them go. They were good looking young fellows, wore good clothes, and they looked like they had plenty of money. As they turned out the door to the right, a closed car came down the street toward them. The first thing a pane of glass went, and the bullet smashed into a row of bottles on the showcase wall to the right. I heard the gun going and, bop, bop, bop; there were bottles smashing all along the wall.
I jumped behind the bar and peered through the bartender’s cut-out passageway. The car was stopped, and there were two men crouched down by it. One had an Uzi and the other had a
sawed-off automatic shotgun. The one with the Uzi was an African-American. The other was swarthy and wore cutoffs and a loose, untucked cotton shirt with an Island design.
One of the boys was facedown in a growing seep of blood. Another was behind a parked beer delivery van. He’d pulled out a Glock and taken a wild shot around the back of the van. The African-American with the Uzi got his face almost to the street and gave the back of the van a burst from underneath, and sure enough, one came down. He flopped there, putting his hands over his head, and the guy in cutoffs shot at him with the shotgun while the African-American put in a fresh clip.
The third fellow pulled the one who was hit back by the legs to behind the van, and I saw the African-American getting his face down on the paving to give them another burst. Then I saw a man in uniform step clear of the van and get the guy in cutoffs with the S&W revolver he had. He shot twice over the African-American’s head, and once low. At ten feet, the African-American shot him in the belly with the Uzi, with what must have been the last shot in it because I saw him throw it down, and the cop sat down hard and went over forwards. He was trying to get another shot off with his revolver when the African-American took the shotgun that was lying beside his buddy and blew the side of his head off. Some African-American.
Okay, I’ve got to say something here. Professor Pflingger insisted that I refer to the guy with the Uzi as an “African-American,” but the fact is, we were in neither Africa nor America. This happened in George Town, on Grand Cayman Island, in the Caribbean Sea south of Cuba. I’d have used some other descriptor, but Professor Pflingger would accept no substitutes for the current, politically-correct term. He’s one of those university types that call a shovel “a manually-operated dirt-moving device,” rather than speak plain English.
Professor Pflingger insisted on “shovel” too. He even had problems with “manually.”
No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up. Lily Tomlin never spoke truer words than that. You might think an ex-surf rat who’d been around the barn a few times would be mentally hardened enough to brush off just about anything by age 35, but even after my go-rounds with the Khmer Rouge, the Shah’s family and John DeLorean, I still cannot get my mind around some of the stuff that went down in those sun-drenched tropical islands in 1983. Corruption? Terrorism? Brutality? Payoffs? Double-dealing? Treason? Death squads? Black helicopters? Fraud and grand theft on a global scale? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
I’d gone down to the Caribbean on a gig arranged through a guy that knew a guy that knew a guy. Probably I should blame it all on a spate of cockiness that had nudged me into the danger zone. I’d gotten away with a satchel of Irish rebel gun-running money, you see. I’d saved Maggie Thatcher’s life. And the rumor was circulating that I’d been covertly running a mole in the KGB, who’d tipped me off about Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan. Of course, that was just Emil Grotesqcu, but fat chance of explaining that to anybody. Even if I wanted to I couldn’t, being legally enjoined from discussing anything about my erstwhile CIA career, mercifully now eight years in the past. In the shadow world of covert ops nobody knows what’s really going on—even the guys involved—making me in some influential circles an international man of mystery. Truth be told, I was just a freelance gun for hire, sort of, but the more I denied being a deep-cover covert op, the more people believed the rumors that I was a CIA super-agent must be true. Those ill-founded beliefs helped me hustle business, but they carried some serious downsides too. As will soon become clear.
So an increasing volume of shady proposals was coming my way, enough of them that I could pick and choose. Naturally, I chose the ones that offered the best pay for the least danger, steering clear of problems prospective clients brought to my Malibu door that entailed violent solutions. Damn right. Violence hurts, in case you’ve never been involved in any. Who needs that? And then there was the money angle, I might as well admit it. My 1975 Corvette called for a long-overdue upgrade. Maggie Thatcher’s “thank-you” DeLorean DMC-12 hadn’t been a worthy replacement, so I gave it to Steve Spielberg for Back to the Future. Not that I had to have the biggest, newest, fastest, flashiest ride on the block, but repairs and upkeep had outstripped my Vette’s usefulness. So lately I’d been looking longingly at new model Vettes, Porches, Alfa Romeos, Audis… any of which would bite big into my ready cash.
Plus I had a little too much time on my hands. Dana Wehrli had met her destiny and gotten The Call. Three months previously, she’d hied off to Cheyenne, Wyoming, for a weather babe gig on the ABC affiliate there, with intimations of bigger and better career steps if that went well. From what I’d heard about Wyoming weather, she’d have plenty to report on, but her departure left me bereft. Southern California abounds in blonde beach bunnies, sure, but none that matched up to Dana.
Thus, for one reason and another, I wound up in George Town, on Grand Cayman Island. I knew the man who alerted me to the job well enough to trust his assurances. He said he knew the guy who’d contacted him well enough to vouch for him. So I assumed that the client who’d put out the feeler must be reasonably up-and-up too. It was a delivery job, ferrying some undefined valuable item from George Town to a private party, specifics to be revealed (where have I heard that before?). Having once been an unknowing mule to Grand Cayman for Charlie Goldenman’s casino skim, I insisted on guarantees that the job didn’t involve black money. No, I was told, definitely not black money. Illegal merchandise? No, no, a thousand times no! So I signed on: Fly down to the Caymans, make a one-day delivery, fly back and earn a five-figure paycheck, plus expenses. They’d fronted half the fee. It was cool. Just like money from home.
What they say about “ASSUME”—it makes an ASS of U and ME.
The first-class flight from LAX (connecting through MIA) set me down at the George Town airport the day before I was to collect the parcel. I figured that was all the time I needed as the job wasn’t taxing enough to bother with a three-hour jetlag-adjust. All my essentials fit in a small duffel bag, which had to go through luggage check owing to the silenced SIG Sauer I packed along (licensed to carry). It was mid-October, the muggy summer tropical steam bath giving way to the balmy breezes that draw the tourists. The Caymans aren’t much as West Indies islands go, small, low and scrubby, with mangrove forests along some of the coast and fairly nice beaches elsewhere. Rain avoids those islands; water’s a problem. They are noteworthy for two things: superb scuba diving on some of the best coral reefs in the world and off-shore banking. The Caymans don’t qualify as a five-star tourist destination, but doubtful money flocks there from every dark corner of the world. Not that large banks impose over the streets and boulevards, no. Typically, a Cayman Island bank amounts to a brass plaque on a building facade, a mail drop, some filing cabinets and phones and computers through which various currencies in large denominations are received, logged in and hidden away. George Town boasts modern buildings, but they’re low-rise: no one would mistake the place for the looming canyons of Wall Street, especially considering the Caribbean squalor a few blocks away.
The phone by the bed woke me up a little after 0800 (0500. PST). A harried voice told me to be in the hotel bar downstairs in twenty minutes, where I’d get the parcel and instructions. That gave me time to clean up and dress, though no margin for breakfast. I figured I could see to that after I received the goods. The bar, with a big window overlooking the street, was open but not yet serving. A black porter in a more or less uniform sat idly against the far wall, apparently not yet on duty. Or maybe he was. Those islands have never been a refuge for workaholics.
“It’s a puzzlement, mon,” he remarked in the Islands sing-song.
“What’s a puzzlement?” I asked.
“They robbed de bank last night. Mon, that bank don’t got no money in the vaults. My friend Johnson one time go there to change some dollars; they tell him they don’t do that. So what they rob?”
“Which bank they
hit?”
“That BCCI. Bank of Credit and someting or other. Down the road. Late last night. They say watchman was shot, maybe killed. Everybody talking, nobody knowing.”
Three swarthy young men bustled through the front door of the hotel, right on time. One of them carried a Haliburton aluminum two-suiter. The other two stationed themselves by the window, keeping a wary eye on their back-trail. “Jake Fonko?” the guy with the suitcase asked me. He had a Latino accent.
“I’m Fonko,” I replied. “You’re the man who called me?”
“Yes sir. This is the item you are to deliver.” He handed me the case. It was heavier than I’d expected, real heavy. Heavier than lots of money, even. “You take it out to the airport right away. Get a taxi. A helicopter is waiting for you. It’s the only one. You can’t miss it.”
“Shit!” one of his pals at the window exclaimed. “Here they come. Let’s vamoose!” They drew pistols, dashed out the door and took off down the street. Then all hell broke loose.
After the firing stopped, and the street quieted down, the African-American looked around, sizing up the situation. Four bodies sprawled here and there, littering the street and sidewalk with gore and blood puddles. He checked the shotgun for load, paused to consider his next move. Then he looked up and noticed me, standing in the bar behind the shattered window. He took a couple steps, bent down and retrieved his Uzi. Tucking the shotgun under his elbow, he calmly swapped Uzi clips and started toward the hotel door. No one seemed inclined to interfere.
This “African American” business is getting tiresome. Enough PC crap. He was a black man, okay? A very dark shade of Negro. Large. With dreadlocks. Homicidal. And most importantly, intent on taking that suitcase away from me.
The porter was cowering on his chair against the wall. Me, I didn’t need a written invitation. I grabbed the case and clutched it to my belly with both arms, like a fullback hitting the line against a goal-line stand. I dashed into the lobby, pivoted and plunged down a corridor toward the back of the building. My mind was running at warp speed. Extra clothes. Field gear. Passport. Return ticket. Travelers cheques. SIG and silencer. Everything essential but my wallet was back in my room, with no chance of getting to it. A few hundred bucks and some credit cards, all I had on me. The rest of my kit I’d have to come back for later. Much later. Right this minute, it was run-for-my-life. I reached the end of the corridor and glanced back to see the gunman just starting after me. I had a good head start on him and a good chance that I could outrun him, even schlepping that suitcase. The back door of the hotel put me in an alleyway. One end of the alley opened to a main street, the best bet to find a taxi, so I loped down there. Down the block, a beat-up Chevy cab sat at a corner taxi stand, good enough for me. I started for it just as the gunman emerged from the hotel and spotted me.