Patriots Versus Bureaucrats

by Thomas Temple

  PATRIOTS VERSUS BUREAUCRATS

  BY THOMAS TEMPLE

  Published by Starry Night Publishing.Com

  Rochester, New York

  Copyright 2014 Thomas Temple

  This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Thank you for your support.

  “WHEN PEOPLE FEAR THE GOVERNMENT THERE IS TYRANNY, WHEN THE GOVERNMENT FEARS THE PEOPLE THERE IS LIBERTY.”

  THOMAS JEFFERSON

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1 - PETER WALLIS AND HIS MONEY

  CHAPTER 2 - THE MOUNTAIN AND MEADOW RANCH

  CHAPTER 3 - THE MOLE WORKS

  CHAPTER 4 - CALLING IN THE CAVALRY

  CHAPTER 5 - THE TRIAL

  CHAPTER 6 - AFTER THE TRIAL

  CHAPTER 7 - DEAR TAXPAYER

  CHAPTER 8 - REPERCUSSIONS

  CHAPTER 9 - FUN AT OLGA’S

  CHAPTER 10 - ALPHABET SOUP INDIGESTION

  CHAPTER 11 - OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

  CHAPTER 12 - CATCH A FALLING STAR

  CHAPTER 13 - ANGER OF THE PEOPLE

  CODA

  PATRIOTS VERSUS BUREAUCRATS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Peter John “Pete” Wallis, a retired and widowed billionaire, receives a call from the wife of a longtime friend informing him that his friend has passed away suddenly. At the funeral Pete Wallis finds out that his friend had been hectored into an early grave by some overly zealous government bureaucrats who took it upon themselves to act beyond the scope of the law created by the United States Congress.

  Sipping vintage Macallan in front of a roaring fire at his home in northwest Wyoming, Pete Wallis reflected upon his many years of friendship with John Ross and the outrage of his death. Then sadness turned to anger. Then anger turned to action. Pete began to create a list. The left side of “The List” contained the names and organizations whose lives he would make miserable. The right side of this list contained the names of people whose lives would be shortened. In the morning calls would be made.

  PEOPLE AND PLACES IN PATRIOTS VERSUS BUREAUCRATS

  Pete Wallis – retired founder and owner of Wallis Technologies Corporation

  Harry Snyder – owner of Snyder Security Services Inc., one of the largest private security companies in the world and longtime friend of Pete Wallis.

  Mr. Hawkins – the formidable and frightening head of “special” situations at Snyder Security Services, Inc.

  Nelson Franklin Pike – founder of the law firm of Pike and Wasserman.

  Jacob Moshe Wasserman – the other name partner of Pike and Wasserman.

  Pike and Wasserman LLC – a two hundred and fifty lawyer law firm based in Chicago.

  Steven Stoddart – the District Attorney for Plymouth County, Iowa.

  Olga Stromeltz – operator of Olga’s “farm”, nestled in the back hills of Kentucky. Olga is the new name and identity of Elena Bataskya, former KGB colonel known as the terror of the Lubyanka.

  The Mountain and Meadow ranch – a 125,000 acre ranch in Lincoln County, Wyoming, owned by and home to Pete Wallis.

  The “Mole Works” – formerly a Titan II silo, Pete Wallis bought this former missile site and developed his own laboratory at this remote location 120 miles from Wichita.

  PROLOGUE

  October 20, 2013, 11:00 am

  First Presbyterian Church of Le Mars, Iowa

  “And forever and forever, Amen,” intoned the minister and mourners assembled for the funeral service of local farmer John Ross. The Lord’s Prayer ended a brief and tasteful remembrance for a decent and good man, now dead at the age of sixty-nine.

  Pete Wallis sat in the fourth row of pews and sadly reflected upon the dead man’s family and their grief. Sitting in the first row was Betty Ross, her sons William and Peter, their two wives, three children of William, and the two children of Peter. The next pews contained other relatives and close family friends. At least two hundred and fifty people had crowded into the small church to pay their last respects to a man who was much respected and beloved in this small farming community. As the procession headed into the foyer for a receiving line Pete fell in behind them, deep in his own sorrow for the loss of a friend of nearly fifty years. Speaking softly and passing from relative to relative he finally came face to face with Betty and only a hug of mutual grief and a few whispered condolences came between them. Pete stood off to the side and waited until the minister called him and the other pallbearers to the sanctuary to carry the casket to the waiting hearse. John Ross would be interred in the family cemetery on the Ross farm five miles away from the church. The burial was short and poignant and attended by far fewer people than showed up at the funeral service conducted by the First Presbyterian Church. The grey October day was consistent with the somber occasion.

  The Ross house was full of well-wishers and relatives attending the post funeral reception. As with many great old farmhouses the kitchen occupied central importance and most of the guests eventually made their way to it. The mood was lighter as everyone had many the warm memories and stories of the man they had just laid to rest.

  Pete Wallis would probably have excused himself by now and headed back to the ranch in Wyoming to deal with his own grief, but there was something in the expression of John’s oldest son Peter that made him uneasy. Filling their glasses with bourbon, Wallis asked his namesake and godson to join him outside for a cigar. Pete Ross was eager to do so.

  Standing alone on the large back porch the small talk gave wave to an embarrassing silence. The older man broke the silence. “Pete, is there something that you want to tell me?”

  Ross: “Why do you say that?”

  Wallis: “I’ve known you all of your life and I see something in your face other than grief. It sure looks like anger.”

  The younger man smiled and replied: “The old man always said it was hard to get something past you. The truth is that Dad was worried sick about losing this place and I believe that led to his dying before his time.”

  Wallis: “I thought that the farm was doing fine and that John had no debts.”

  Ross: “Right on both counts. You know what Dad and Granddad thought about owing money to the bank.”

  Wallis: “Lawsuit? Is somebody suing you?”

  Ross: “Yeah, I guess you could call it that.”

  Wallis: “Who?

  Ross: “The fucking government, that’s who… those pricks at OSHA.”

  Wallis: “OSHA? I have to deal with them because of the number of employees I have, but why are they interested in you? My understanding is that small family farms have an exemption from their bullshit.”

  Ross: “Well that’s just what Dad and his lawyer maintained, but it seems that sometime in 2011 the powers that be decided to change the rules and bug us about grain storage inspections and paperwork. They cited Dad for not having a grain storage emergency plan and a lot of other shit. Dad decided to fight and they were going to fine him over $250,000. I know that the thought of losing this place for Mom, William, and me aged him years. To see his face the last six months I swear you wouldn’t have known him.”

  Peter Wallis let these words sink in as he studied the face of his godson. There was more than grief and anger in young Pete’s face, there was also fear.

  Ross: “I know that you are about to ask why he didn’t come to you for help. You know Dad, too stubborn to think that there is a problem that he can’t fix.”

  Pete Wallis knew instantly that his godson was right. John Ross was the epitome of the rugged individualist. This time he was overmatched by the forces of the US Government bureaucracy.

  Putting
his hands on his godson’s shoulders, Pete asked him to go inside, gather his brother William and his Mother, and come back out to the porch with a drink so that Wallis might propose a private toast between himself and the family.

  Five minutes later, Pete, William, and Betty, came out of the kitchen door with a drink as requested.

  Wallis: “Betty, William, and Pete, thank you for honoring my request. I propose a toast to my great friend, a brave American soldier, and the best man I have had the blessing of knowing.”

  Wallis and the Ross Family: “Hear, Hear!”

  The Ross’s smiled and started to go inside when Pete Wallis sharply commanded them to not move an inch. They were naturally startled by his demeanor and looked upon him questioningly.

  Wallis came right to the point. “Pete has filled me in on the hell that you folks have been going through with OSHA. That hell stops right now. I absolutely guarantee and promise that the government will not get their hands on this farm. Work through your grief and don’t give one more thought to OSHA. I will make that problem go away. That is my promise to you and John.”

  The Ross’s were stunned. Pete looked each of them directly in the eye and extracted a personal promise from all of them that they would allow him to handle the situation and deal only with their grief.

  Wallis bade everyone goodbye and told Betty that some people would visit her shortly.

  “Some people” would be the forces of heaven and hell that the huge fortune of Pete Wallis could access.

  Leaving the Ross farm at 3:30pm in his rental car, Pete called the crew of his Gulfstream 450 waiting at the Sioux City Airport. “Ron, I should be there in 30 to 40 minutes, are we good to go?”

  “Sure thing boss, the weather is good and we should be home by 5:15pm local time,” replied Ron Javers, the pilot. “Thanks Ron, see you soon.”

  The flight from Sioux City to the private airport at the Mountain and Meadow Ranch was a pleasant hour and forty minutes. Wallis said goodbye and thanks to the crew and jumped in his truck for the five minute ride to his house on the sprawling Mountain and Meadow Ranch. As usual, there to greet him were Josie, the housekeeper and cook, and the “three amigos” Sara, Niko, and Mordecai. Josie was a pleasant and plump woman of sixty-two who had worked for Pete Wallis for over fifteen years. She and her husband Earle lived in a neat little bungalow on the ranch. Sara was the real boss of the ranch. She was a six year old female golden lab that was everybody’s mother, human or otherwise. Sara tipped the scales at a little over eighty-five pounds. Niko was Sara’s adopted son. He was officially listed as a mixed breed of German Shepherd and Alaskan Malamute. This designation was an accommodation from the local vet to avoid any problems with the Parks and Wildlife people. Niko, who had been rescued as a week old cub and nursed by Sara with the other pups from her first litter was actually pure canis lupus. He had grown to a healthy one hundred and twenty five pounds by his third year. Mordecai was the alpha male of Pete’s household or at least thought himself so. He was an eighteen pound yellow tabby cat who looked down upon all of God’s creatures unless they happen to have a warm spot on the couch or some tuna fish, in which case he could be quite charming.

  Finishing off some wonderful venison stew prepared by Josie, Pete poured himself a few fingers of 24 year old Macallan and reflected on the day’s emotional roller coaster.

  Laughter and tears alternated in seeming randomness as he remembered his friend of so many years. The one image of the day that he couldn’t get out of his mind was the look of fear on the face of his godson. A little more, actually a lot more, Macallan and the regrets, sadness, and concern turned to rage. Pete had resources and he was hell bent on using them to even some scores. Tomorrow he would call Jake Wasserman and Harry Snyder. Right now he was adding a few more names to the left and right side of his “List.”

  CHAPTER 1 - PETER WALLIS AND HIS MONEY

  Growing up on a 900 acre popcorn farm 30 miles south of Bloomington, Indiana, Pete Wallis never even thought about becoming wealthy. Although he loved the rural farming life of a popcorn farmer, Pete’s real ambition was to become a scientist. He indeed did have a talent in math and science and performed very well in school. A good, but not great athlete, an athletic scholarship was a remote possibility. Pete instead focused on math and science and mixed in a little mechanical ability that those raised on a farm either possessed or learned out of necessity.

  The other great interest of young Pete was the outdoors. He inherited this from his maternal grandmother, Daisy Mettenberg. From the age of eight, Pete would spend as much time as he could fishing, hunting, and hiking with Gram Daisy in the wooded hills of southern Indiana. Her small farm was adjacent to the Wallis farm and most of the farm had become untilled land after Daisy and her husband Frank had retired. For a young outdoorsman such as Pete, this was nirvana. Daisy, Pete, and Daisy’s collie Queenie, would tramp the woods and streams at every opportunity in all seasons. Squirrels were hunted in the fall, rabbits and pheasants in the winter, and spring and summer were the fishing seasons. The young farmer never realized how the knowledge of trees, plants, and animals would make his future courses in college biology considerably easier.

  Good grades and high SAT scores landed Pete an admission from Purdue where he majored in electrical engineering with a minor in computer science. It was a tough and serious curriculum but Pete was a serious student and graduated cum laude in 1967. The Wallis family had a tradition of serving in the military and so it was natural for Pete to join Army ROTC, receiving a commission as a second lieutenant upon his graduation. With stops at Ft Hood and Fort Polk, Lieutenant Wallis arrived in Vietnam in June of 1968 with the Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) of 1542, infantry officer, one each.

  Fortunately, the Tet offensive was beginning to wind down and the platoon that Pete commanded did not see much action for several months. This gave the new platoon commander time to learn the ropes and get to know his men. Chief among these was staff sergeant John Ross, a six year army veteran now on his second tour in Vietnam. Ross immediately took a liking to his new commander who was determined to do the job well and take as few casualties as possible. Young lieutenant Wallis was a quick study and had learned to “read” the jungle and its threats. So far the platoon had suffered only three casualties, all minor wounds, in 25 combat patrols. Then somebody at III Corps headquarters conceived Operation Sheridan Sabre in November 1968 and everything changed.

  For the rest of Pete’s tour of duty every patrol or insertion was “hot” and casualties began to mount for his platoon and company. Assigned to the Third Combat Brigade, First Air Cavalry Division, Pete’s platoon was part of a large scale operation to prevent the infiltration of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) into the Binh Long Provence South Vietnam from Cambodia. It was on one of these screening operations in January of 1969 that Pete and his men were the point platoon on what was supposed to be a recon mission. Instead they ran into the lead element of an NVA battalion and all hell broke loose. Quick to realize the nature of the situation, Pete and Sergeant Ross got their men dug into a good defensive position and called for reinforcements. In the two hours before the arrival of reinforcements the badly outnumbered platoon had to fight for their very survival. Mortar fire, RPGs, and automatic weapons fire from the NVA were brought to bear on the platoon of 28 men. Six men were killed in action and eleven others were wounded. Lieutenant Wallis and Sergeant Ross were among the seriously wounded. It was the end of the war for both men. Wallis would be awarded a Silver Star along with a Purple Heart for his actions in this engagement. Ross would receive the Distinguished Service Cross in addition to his Purple Heart.

  The journey from Viet Nam via military hospitals at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines and Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu were nothing but a blur to First Lieutenant Wallis upon his arrival at Letterman Army Medical Center in San Francisco.

  “Welcome back Lieutenant” were the first words he remembered after his surgery at Letterman. Th
ose words came from an Army surgical nurse as the anesthesia wore off and the young officer began to regain consciousness. The nurse was Captain Elizabeth Wayne and her Midwestern accent did have the effect of Pete beginning to feel like he was returning home to place that seemed years removed from his experiences of the last year. The seven months that he had served in Vietnam seemed more like seven years. Daily combat operations will do that to a man. Elizabeth “Beth” Wayne was a petite woman with red hair, freckles, and blue eyes that always appeared to be laughing. She was one of those women that appeared unremarkable until she smiled and spoke; then she became incredibly beautiful. She and Pete spent hours talking together during his rehabilitation and a romance ensued. A year later, Beth Wayne became Mrs. Peter Wallis. Peter had received his Honorable Discharge from the Army in July 1969 and Beth received hers in August of the same year.

  With Beth working as a surgical nurse, Pete was able to return to Purdue and earn a Master’s degree in Computer Science, graduating in June, 1971. Having graduated Magna Cum Laude, Pete had no shortage of good job offers upon graduation. The newlyweds decided that Pete working for a large defense contractor in Boston would offer a lot of opportunities and Beth would have no problem finding a position at one of the many Boston hospitals. The four years spent in Boston established Pete as a rising star at his firm and the promotions allowed Beth to quit her job to raise a family. Baby Sally came in 1973 and her brother Jimmy followed in early 1975. The politics and culture of a big firm began to wear thin for Pete Wallis and having created six patents for the company drew him into giving up the security of a large firm for the opportunities of a smaller firm. Beth made the decision easier by offering to go back to work in surgical nursing if things didn’t pan out with the smaller firm. Things did indeed pan out and Pete and Beth Wallis were amazed that Pete was now earning a mid-six figure income from salary and bonuses after only two years of employment.