Danger Beyond Intrigue: Volume One

by H. L. Valdez

  Marco and Justin knelt in front of the massive stone fireplace, stacking small bamboo slivers, kindling, and thick twigs, taking turns blowing the measured amount of air on the struggling flames. Together they began to prepare a morning meal for their sleeping team members.

  "Marco, I don’t want to leave Asia broke," Justin blurted, adding thick wood to the fire. “I’m serious, man. I lost big time being assigned to this team.”

  “You lost big time by being caught,”

  “This is messed up,”

  "You're a pawn caught in the web of conflict, caught in a compromising position. But for you, maybe the longest way is the shortest way. Work with us, Commander, then we'll find the balance between your needs and the organization’s needs," Marco said supportively.

  "Hmmm?" Justin answered. "It's going to take more than ordinary police suppression to break the will of the International Heroin Commission. Violence seems to have a residual effect on heroin dealers--it produces a numb acceptance of violence as an ordinary part of life. Do you think we can stop the import--export cycle?"

  "Truthfully, I don't know if we can stop it. We’re dealing with some real bad boys here."

  "As you know, I'm lacking the criminal skills essential to survive in a criminal environment," Justin replied.

  "If you feel your thoughts, your thoughts will become your being. Don't hold back. It will become familiar. It has to," Marco advised, listening to the faint echo of the conch shell.

  “I need a big payday at the end of this ride. I need serious cash.”

  “If you want to live to see a payday, you need to integrate and balance the paradoxical variables of violence and your role in it. Otherwise you won’t see a payday.”

  "The people on this island are sowing the seeds of dissention," Justin suggested, listening to the owl’s hoot and the wind blowing from the edge of the agricultural terraces hidden from time and concealed by wild red camellia bushes.

  “You’re gonna bust your cherry on this assignment. It’s us against the other side.”

  Primo emerged from the dense bamboo forest as wolf dogs whined in the screaming wind and a pair wildcats scurried back into a dark cavern. Reaching the top of the stairs, Primo stood for a moment surveying the terrain, feeling jittery; he was cautiously looking for anything unusual or out of place.

  "I'm back," Primo declared, sauntering through the entrance.

  "Great," Justin replied, standing to greet him.

  "What did you find out?" Marco asked, rising to his feet, extending his hand to greet him as he approached the fireplace.

  "Seems like there’s a sizable operation on the other side of the island," Primo stated, shaking Marco's hand.

  "What do you mean?" Justin asked, watching him remove his bandana.

  "There’s a small docking facility, a lookout tower, a radio antenna, men with weapons, 50-gallon drums lying about and they’re going in and out of caves dug into the mountain," Primo briefed them, while sitting on the floor removing his shoes and socks. “They seem pretty busy and organized. They’re on a mission of some sort.

  "Hmmm." Justin replied. "What do you think, Marco? Fishermen or drug dealers?"

  "Doesn't sound good. I’d say drug dealers. It's either a transshipment point for drugs or a drug manufacturing site, or both," Marco answered.

  "Anything else, Primo?" Justin queried.

  "Yeah, they also have a dock for accommodating seaplanes," he replied, reaching for his canteen. Unscrewing the black plastic cap, he took a long swallow of scotch.

  “What are your thoughts?” Marco asked.

  "I think we've got a problem," Primo stated as Marco stared at Primo with concern about his drinking, but hesitated speaking from his honest feelings and thoughts.

  "What does it mean?" Justin asked.

  "It means trouble," Marco replied, as Primo removed his shirt then rubbed his hands together over the fire. "Good Intel Primo. Thanks."

  "We need a bold plan," Primo stated.

  “OK everybody, wake up! Pay attention!” Marco shouted.

  “Butch, we need to set up a security perimeter and develop an escape plan with booby traps," he said seriously. "Primo set up a watch schedule. I want somebody awake 24-hours a day standing guard. Have the security perimeter at least two hundred yards out," Marco instructed.

  "Commander, divide all the survival gear into six piles. Check all weapons, and then distribute the silencers, and ammo. Have Rita help you," Marco ordered.

  "When do you want me to start?" Primo asked, drying his feet with a towel.

  "As soon as you get cleaned up and eat."

  "Justin, grab a weapon and take the first four hour watch," Marco instructed with deep introspection. "Also make a security sweep around the compound and into the bush. And put Spanky to work."

  "Hmmm?" Justin replied, gradually organizing himself, reluctantly responding, while fumbling around searching for his weapon.

  “One foot in front of the other, Commander,” Marco suggested.

  “Justin, treat your weapon like your best friend,” Primo chided, watching Justin hunt for his weapon in a pile of survival gear.

  “Better yet, treat your weapon like your mistress,” Velvet blurted.

  “How’s that?” Justin asked.

  “All wet and oiled?” Velvet shouted from her sleeping bag, gently and steadily stimulating herself watching Primo dry his rugged body in front of the fire as he removed his wet soiled pants and underwear then wiped the sweat from his toned body with a clean towel.

  “Ahhh, Mmmm” Velvet whispered, closing her eyes, satisfying herself, breathing deep, slipping off into a slumber watching him change clothes.

  Later That Day

  In the natural order of things, early morning slowly turned to noon as the team organized themselves. Hot embers explode in the fireplace as each person rotated, soaking in the courtyard’s lava rock pool. The healing effect of the soothing hot volcanic water seemed to pacify the tired psyche and bodies of the group, as though an emotional victory had been won on the giant karmic wheel of fortune. Throughout the late afternoon, Butch realizing that life is a one-way journey, questioned the prisoner, while preparing for their departure. Close by, massive cow-frogs mooed in eerie tandem as the day silently relinquished to approaching rain clouds that were engulfing the horizon in a vast sea of blackness. Thunder echoed across the sky as scattered raindrops fell. Nature seemed to speak its own language, surrounding the temple with teeming ferns and black lava rocks created by volcanic eruptions some twenty-five million years ago. With the mission drawing near, roles had to blend and facades had to be replaced with genuine behavior. Everyone was looking for the balance between friendliness and familiarity, professional-self and private-self; new professional and social boundaries were being extended and formed.

  Justin was sitting on the temple steps sipping coffee watching Spanky sniff the ground where wild cats had relieved themselves. Primo stood at the top of the stairs adjusting the silencer on his .44-magnum, staring into the thick bamboo trees. Velvet was on guard duty standing nearby, peering through binoculars.

  "No easy way to ease into this job, is there?" Primo said, tightening the silencer.

  "Man, this is a psychological chamber of horrors," Justin replied, looking straight ahead.

  “Hey, life ambushes people,” Velvet chimed in, almost out of earshot.

  "Hell, I'm still emotionally limping along and we haven't entered combat yet," Primo answered, tucking the pistol into the front of his pants.

  “You can blow your package off if that weapon accidentally discharges,” Velvet warned as Primo looked down, carefully removing the weapon and checking the safety. “My friend blew his package off,” she grinned, looking toward the forest.

  "Better get off that historical barbed wire,” Justin replied looking up at Primo.

  "My brain needs to be jump-started. I'm frozen in the emotional trenches," Primo moaned.

  “That canteen holds a lot of sc
otch,” Velvet remarked, slowly walking toward the opposite corner of the porch.

  “I’ve got a few bottles in my survival gear, compliments of the Admiral.”

  “I’ll take another swig,” Justin suggested, extending his arm then pouring scotch into his coffee.

  “Hey, it’s your life; people do what is closest to their values anyway,” Velvet stated loudly, walking further away from the men, scanning the tree line.

  "Primo, you gotta get your emotional gravity into first gear or you'll be a bundle of uncontrolled fury waiting to be detonated at the slightest provocation," Justin cautioned while standing, returning the scotch, and sipping his coffee cocktail.

  "My men were brutalized in combat. I'm not gonna sit around and out-nice everyone. I've run out of cheeks to turn. I’m gonna kill someone.”

  "Man, you've got to expand your comfort zone. It’s tough to negotiate your attitude."

  “I know that, I know that. It's just hard for me to accept it," Primo replied disgusted, sipping his scotch.

  "Forgiveness expands the heart and hate contracts it. You gotta go straight fear-ward," Velvet suggested loudly, cupping her hands around her mouth.

  “I didn’t ask for her advice.” Primo whispered, agitated.

  “Forget it; it’s the penalty for being human. There’s no easy way.”

  “I’ve been through a lot, she hasn’t,” Primo whispered.

  “She can’t relate to you,” he whispered back.

  “She annoys me.”

  “Forget her. And quit blaming yourself. Quit feeling guilty. Guilt is a useless emotion,” Justin counseled him. “Are you Catholic?”

  “Am I Italian?”

  “Jeeez,” Justin said, slapping his forehead. “All Catholics suffer from guilt. It’s part of their program.”

  “But do you pray?” Primo questioned.

  “Of course I pray! I was in my helicopter the other day praying, and asking God for help,”

  “I’ve got to get clear,” Primo admitted, seriously.

  “Hey, if it’s not a kick, kick it. Life’s too short.”

  “I don’t know?”

  “You don’t know or don’t care? Feeling sorry for yourself leads to self-pity, that leads to despair; despair leads to apathy, and apathy leads to detachment, and that leads to suicide. Take control of your emotions, Lieutenant.”

  "Why can’t we have peace and not war?” Primo asked, taking a vile of patchouli oil from his vest pocket then applying the smelly oil behind his ears and down his neck. Velvet watched Primo in curious acceptance, reacting to the pungent smell thinking that he was a challenge to any person's cunning and imagination.

  “Peace not war. What a great concept?” Justin shouted, looking up at the clouds.

  “Why don’t you live in Oregon and join a hippie commune, and drink all you want?” Velvet shouted, cupping her hands to her mouth.

  “Hippies don’t drink. They’re vegetarians,” he shouted back, cupping his hands to his mouth.

  “Well, become a vegetarian,” Velvet shouted, shrugging her shoulders.

  “Ignore her, man, she’ll drive you crazy. Forget it.” Justin whispered.

  “She needs a husband,” Primo whispered, shaking his head.

  “What are you two guys whispering about all the time?”

  “Primo’s sex life!” Justin shouted, grinning.

  “Oh,” she mumbled quietly, looking away.

  “You need some male friends. You need a support group,” Justin suggested in a low voice.

  “I have two choices.”

  “What are they?”

  “I can face everything and recover, or fuck everything and run.”

  "Good luck, Lieutenant. The road is in front of you," Justin stated, tilting his head up, catching the falling rain in his mouth.

  "It's not a question of luck," Primo answered, looking up at the dark sky, and letting the rain fall on his face. "It's about hard work and skills."

  "Come on, Spanky! Let’s go for a walk," Justin said, snapping his fingers while carefully removing the pistol from his belt, and re-checking the safety. Velvet stared at both men pondering their true intentions. Primo looked at Velvet, Velvet looked at Primo, then both turned and went their separate ways as thunder rippled through the dark clouds.

  Sasha's Ride

  17 July 1964. Iriomote Island, Japan. Stiff muscles were being soothed by volcanic hot springs after days of observation, mapping, and conditioning training in preparation for the first official Crisis Response Team intervention. After the initial shock of being on the island, the team knew the rules: only 100 percent was good enough and doing the minimum wasn't acceptable. The motivation, camaraderie, and physical fitness levels were high. Marco combined resiliency training and mental toughness into his team. Preparing to move out, adrenalin was soaring as each person checked weapons, survival equipment and bulletproof vests. The hard part was not knowing the enemy. The battle plan was to conduct tactical interventions, confiscate evidence, arrest suspects, then put the pieces together and go from there. The time had arrived to encounter the outer limits of heroin-financed terrorism. A pathway was about to be breached into an alternative world and another dimension of organized international crime, from which there was no return.

  Fifty miles away, Sasha Nakamura sat in the cockpit of the ultra-modern seaplane flying at 15,000 feet, racing toward Iriomote Island and her narcotics rendezvous with her yakuza soldiers. During the month, her men had been collecting heroin and morphine bricks from passing fishing boats trolling in international waters. The transfer of a major heroin shipment is one of the most dangerous aspects of the business, yet her soldiers were prepared for the worst. Her pilot, Miki Kono, a thin, sensual Japanese female with a pixie hair cut, was preoccupied with scanning the darkening horizon, tugging the yoke, and holding her course as rain squalls pelted the aircraft. Reflecting on her life, Sasha sat back, gazing at the dark cloud formations and the white caps rippling on the ocean below. Being in the air renewed her reason for being. Closing her eyes in reflection, she knew her life would not be the same after this mission. Her promotion would pull her away from something familiar and special. The separation anxiety in leaving her women friends created tears on both sides. It was a difficult approach-avoidance conflict pulling her in two directions. The depth of feelings that she shared among the opium farmers and their families gave her a sense of family and inner peace.

  “Well, are you going to miss it?” Miki asked, interrupting her mood, looking at her, then the dark clouds.

  “Sure I will,” she answered, sitting up. “I’ll miss working with the Hmong, Mien, Cahu, and Lisu hill tribes,” she added sadly. “It was fun being involved in opium production and smelling the sweet fragrance of the first petals dropping from poppy blossoms.”

  “That’s why you’re so successful.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, you worked side-by-side with the harvesters in the field, scoring opium pods.”

  “Yeah, my hands got pretty calloused holding the small, sharp blades.”

  “That’s exhausting work, patiently cutting the pods with a steady hand. And if incisions are too deep, the white sticky sap would drip to the ground.”

  “And if the cuts were too shallow, the sap would harden in the pod,” Sasha added, impressed with Yoko’s interest and knowledge.

  “What happens after it’s cut?”

  “It’s left overnight to oxidize; the following morning the yellowish-brown gummy paste is scraped from the pod with a wide-bladed knife.”

  “Sounds like hard work. Tell me about the scrapings.” She asked, tapping the display panel.

  “Simple enough. The scrapings are formed into balls, wrapped in banana leaves, and then sent to chemists who refine the raw opium into morphine bricks.”

  “What a process,” Miki replied, holding the plane steady in the growing turbulence as the windshield wipers flapped left-to-right.