Bad luck. Bad, bad luck. I had dropped down to Hotel 27’s gorgeous bar. As I entered, I heard an unwelcome voice off to my right. Lo, the fruity Tucker Snarlson was holding court. In front of him, he had the Queen’s favourite drink, a Dubonnet Cocktail, a drink made with lemon, a large ice cube, gin, and Dubonnet. If that is what they drink at the palace, no wonder it brims with inverts.
Before I could escape, Snarlson motioned me to his table. I asked for a large order of cream herring without any vodka. The barkeep obliged my unusual order. Snarlson, as if on orders from Peregrine or Wolverine, began to lecture his lackeys on the purity of Putin’s intentions. He sang a hymn of praise to me.
Anybody within earshot heard about the Pulitzer-level journalism I had done for L’Afrique Aujourd’hui on the love of Putin that was the mark of anybody living in central Africa. Like our President, whom some of you know as the Orange Jesus, the man on the street in Kinshasa, Goma, or Kigali knows Putin as a man of peace.
Hence recent insinuation of murderous Russian activity in Somalia was contrary not only to reason but to experience as well. No doubt the Russians were victims of a conspiracy. It was not Putin’s fault if some Russian malcontents, some bad apples from the army had killed al Shabaab terrorists. Just ask Crockett, a cat with first-hand knowledge of Africa and its people, a cat fresh out of Africa, who committed this recent enormity.
“It’s the kind of thing that the Germans, French and Belgian would do, isn’t it, Crocky?’ snarled Snarlson. Never one to miss an opportunity to spread a baseless rumour, Snarlson conjectured that no country had easier access to Ice-10 and Lithuania than the German, adding the Germans specialise in killing innocent people.”
Snarlson was warming up. “But you know, Crocky, we mustn’t overlook the Jews either. I heard rumours of Mossad retrieving two notorious assassins from Entebbe, a place where the Jews have a history of dirty business. Perhaps you or your China woman consort know them. Aren’t they the killer Jews Saul Cohen and Daniel Levi?”
He had crossed so many lines I didn’t know what to say. So, I said the obvious, ‘Saying it doesn’t make it so.” I mentioned too that perhaps a few too many of the Queen’s favourite cocktails might have made him careless in his use of language.
Never one to shun a fight, Snarlson stared at me and then asked, “Are your chums so ashamed of being Jews or a China woman that they want people to use euphemisms?” I was tempted to answer but instead heard Lucky’s voice from the door, “Perhaps Crockett hasn’t mastered teaching prissy closet queens about modern forms of address.” She sashayed to the table, grabbed Snarlson’s nose, and began to twist it.
Snarlson responded wiht a cascade of tears. Lucky kept her grip. “So let’s get this straight. You may call me Ms Ming and you may refer to the other two as Mr Cohen or Mr Levi like a well-manner crybaby girl,” Now Snarlson was blubbering, but Lucky didn’t let up.
Instead, she patted his head while advising, “You should drink fewer cocktails, though I’m guessing you know a lot more about cock than tail, and mind their manners better the next time you see me.” She then reached down to his crotch, grabbed it savagely, and ordered Snarlson to squeal. As he made his wee-wees, Lucky warned, “And do yourself a favour. Have better manners whenever I’m in a room unless you want an abbreviated life. Remember who I am. You know. Don’t forget it.”
Then Lucky scooped me up and walked me back to our room. The blubbering Snarlson’s friends were trying to console him. They were saying things like “As far as we’re concerned we never saw this. It never happened.” etc. A fellow in a tight leopard print shirt and leather pants whispered in his ear, then stroked him behind the ear, helped him from his chair, then led him from the bar. The fellow had the sensitivity not to use his leash.
When Lucky and I got back to our suite, she detected disapproval in me. “What is it, darling?”
I told her she was as bad about poufs as Snarlson was about Jews and the Chinese. Lucky rolled her eyes.
“You’re divinely funny, my sweet. The Chinese didn’t legalize guys doing each other until 1997. Most Chinese still disapprove. Besides, darling, look at it this way. You imagine I’m failing morally because I’m hard on faggots. Darling, don’t you remember I kill people for a living? If I get nasty with an obnoxious prissy closet femboi, that’s a misdemeanor at most.”
Perhaps she had a point. When I caught Snarlson on the telly the next day, he was shouting about lawlessness in Holland. He complained a man can’t have a cocktail in a Dutch bar without putting his life on the line. He assured his audience that Holland was worse than the Bronx or southeast DC. He didn’t say a word about gays or Israelis or the Chinese. He had returned his commentary to his beloved tropes on the criminality of blacks in Americas ghettos.
When I was in the suite, Lucky had gone out. Without warning the suite door swung open. In strolled Chaucer. I got a dirty look, then he said, “The holiday is over. I want you back in Saint Louis.” I then got scolded for having done so little to move the project of applying more pain to Wolverine and his crew. According to Chaucer, life with Lucky was making me lazy and fat. He had been talking to Behemoth about it the other day in Moscow. Once Chaucer laid eyes on me, he agreed with Behemoth’s diagnosis. Lucky was ruining my initiative. I was not keen on Chaucey’s project. His eyes glowed like molten iron when he told me so.
What’s a cat to do? With Mr C’s ghost as an escort, I headed to Schipol to mooch a ride on a corporate jet. Fortunately, my dear friend Carl Icahn was headed to National. I bounded on board. The billionaire pirate hugged me. What a guy! You got to like a Princeton man. Six hours later I was in DC.
When Lucky awoke the next morning, she was in a better mood. She ordered a bowl of fresh fish in cream, with the chef given permission to select what he thought looked best for me. For herself, she ordered a caviar omelette topped with smetana. She requested potatoes, asparagus as her sides. She got a croissant with a framboise confiture to go with it all. What I got was a foretaste of heaven. How I love fresh fish in cream in the morning. It smells like breakfast. Who needs napalm?
You’d have to have been a real chowderhead not to notice the Russians were on defence and the Chinese offence. Through backchannels I learnt that Putin had cancelled a tour of central Africa. Not even my L’Afrique Aujourd’hui features had saved him. The people are fickle.
You could now listen to hour on hour of African radio without hearing Putin compared to Jesus, Patrice Lumumba, Amin, Bokasssa, Mobutu, or any other leaders with a following, even if a very bad one. I wondered to myself if it was anything that a few Krugerrand spent on making me happy couldn’t fix. Yes, I could tell some stretchers and rehabilitate him in Francophone Africa if the price is right.
During my time without CNN, I learnt Lord Caligula had gone bold. He passed a motion in the House of Lords to present Constance with the King George Cross. The Tabloids had lots of indecent photos of her getting out of a limo at Parliament to go accept her awards.
Photographers have no shame. The post shots of Constance’s nether parts as she exited the limo. Constance had once mentioned to me that she was allergic to wearing panties, as it made her feel inhibited. Well, I now knew that, at least when in a Limo, Constance was telling lies about that.
And it didn’t stop at a beaver shot. If you nosed about or read the stories, every orgy Constance had attended–I can’t be precise as my parietal lobe damage prevents me from counting so high–had links on the web to the photos sneaked during it. If you wanted photos of her doing anything, and I do mean anything and everything, sexual, all you required to find them was a laptop and patience and search terms like “Constance” and “Orgy.”
Constance said she could and would neither confirm nor deny what the countless photos purported to show. During an interview on CNN, she gave her account, “As you know, so many of these photos are from the neck down. Many attractive women look about the same from the neck down. Also, notice how bad the lighting is in many of these shocking shots. Who know who is in these photos? Let’s just not be judgemental prudes. Observe, too, there are not a lot of duplicative shots of racy act, especially the outre ones. And you know what Voltaire said about those types doings. ‘once a philosopher, twice a pervert.’ As worse, I might be a philosopher”
Nor was Lord Caligula silent. He contended it was all much ado about nothing, a veritable tempest in a teapot. What bothered his Lordship most was, if these were indeed photos of Constance, the cheapskate press never let her monetize any of it. “Where are her modelling fees?” he thundered.
Constance wasted no time in monetizing the episode. In several smut Mags, she posed deshabille whilst using the George Cross to cover up most of her good bits. In her defence about this breach of decorum, Constance told an interviewer, “You got to show some of the juicy bits if you are going to shield them with the George. Who’s go to pay hard cash for it if you don’t?”
In the midst of all this controversy, Peregrine and Wolverine had begun a blitz reconstruction of Munitions Galore’s Reading HQ. The government had even given them a bye to hire replacements of lost guards from former colonies to prevent a rise in salaries. English guards, now that they knew the danger of the job, struck for higher pay. Peregrine got permission, in the name of national security, to hire cheaper foreign guards rather than a pack of English crybabies.
Eventually, Wolverine figured out I was at the Hotel 27, he contacted me. “Name a time when Lucky’s out. I want to talk to you.”
I checked to make sure that we were talking about a Zoom or Skype meeting. Wolverine’s temper made it stupid for me to meet him without a bodyguard present.
Lucky had told me she planned an outing to the Rembrandt museum. I refused to go with her. I’ve never care for Rembrandt’s brownish painting or his self-absorbed self-portaits. I’m more of a Poussin cat. Poussin’s “Dance to the Music of Time” or “Exhibition of Moses” are to my taste. I’m also fond of Pre-Raphaelite art. Don’t judge me. I like clarity and colour.
I also prefer Mozart to Bach or Beethoven. Bach composed music for typists. Beethoven wrote mostly sentimental works for crybabies that weep when they read Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther. If you ask me, the sorrow of young Werther is that he didn’t kill himself before the book got started.
Anyway, Lucky went to the museum. When Wolverine called, I got a shock. He was wearing a US Army Major’s uniform.
I guess he resurrected one of the identifies he had forged at Fort Leonard Wood. Then I learnt he was not at Fort Leonard Wood or in Saint Louis to steal documents from the NGA. Wolverine told me he was in Brussels at the NATO HQ. What a treasure trove of items to steal and Wolverine with his TS SCI, Q, and Cosmic TS clearances. And he bragged of attending meetings where he spiked intelligence that Lord Caligula had made up for him.
Soon he got down to business, telling me he wished me to write stories insinuating that the Jews had committed foul murders in Somalia. It was also the Jews who committed the outrage in Lithuania. According to Wolverine, I needed a light touch for these stories. I must not say the accusation. I must insinuate it was the Jews abetted by the Chinese.
I shuddered. I feared picking a fight with Lucky. “Can’t I a blame the Germans instead?”
Wolverine broke out laughing. “The Germans? The Jews collaborating with Germans? You’re daffier than Daffy Duck, Crocky. Besides, his Lordship wants Emperor Xi made less comfortable about his recent doings. Mind you, if you think you can tar the German and French whilst you smear the Jews and Chinese, I’m fine with that. We want a great confusion about Somalia.” After he mentioned payment in pretty Krugerrand, I couldn’t help myself. I began to purr.
As the CV-22 thumped-thumped-thumped its way to Kampala, I kept giving the bot the evil eye. I had formed a profound, irrational hatred of him. As I saw it, he should have stayed on the ground in the detonation zone to protect me. What’s it to him? It’s not as if he has feelings. Second, if you ask me, he took up a lot of space for a do-nothing. He’d helped tow the stealth bomb to the detonation spot, but then he hightailed it back to the Osprey.
Even worse, he didn’t use his death eye to kill any of our foes. Somebody should have programmed him better than that. I kept hoping Lucky would take a can opener to him.
After several hours we got to Kampala’s Entebbe aeroport. Everybody went their separate ways. A crew that looked rather Anglo=American removed the Russian insignias. I heard that when the Israelis left the Osprey, this crew got on. Wolverine had arranged a private jet to get Fielding and Bart back to the states. Nobody told me that. Instead, I let Lucky bag me. None of the Chinese guys at a gate that seemed reserved just for Lucky tried to stop us. We then went straight to the KLM gate. Lucky got us boarded and she had reserved 2 first-class seats. Less than 1/2 a day later, we were in Amsterdam.
The Mossad gang had taken a chartered flight, which I assume landed in Israel. And I’m not so blind that I didn’t notice a Chinese chap take a USB drive from Lucky’s camera. It, I’m sure, had an Emperor Xi viewing in its near future.
I was relieved to discover Lucky reserved a suite in the Hotel Twenty-Seven. I liked it. I liked it more when Lucky asked for and scored a plate of exquisite Dutch Schmaltz herring just for me. She ordered a bottle of Sancerre and a plate of chevre for herself with a baguette.
I thought it an odd order for a China chick, but Lucky was, after all, a true cosmopolite. Long ago, she had transcended every bit of Chinese parochialism in her. No wonder the two of us got on so.
Lucky did pull a dirty deed at Hotel 27. She drew herself a bath. I was watching Dutch cartoons on the telly to relax. As I unwound, she swooped in on me, burritoed me, then plunged me into the tub. After a ferocious struggle against her aggression, I emerged shampooed and sopping wet. As she released me, she swatted my bottom and said, “What a tiger you are, darling.”
To add insult to injury, she then drained, washed, and refilled the tub before sinking into it herself. I could have killed her as I saw her small, dark nipples making appearances above the soap bubbles if I wasn’t too frightened to mess with her. She had a long soak, then stood up and shaved her legs, and, deft with her razor, recreated her landing strip. One wrapped in a towel, she climbed onto the bed.
We let bygones be bygones. I climbed on to make biscuits on her body, which she adored. You could hear her sigh as I did my work. I’d have kept at it but stepped on the click-y and caused a channel change.
Voila, behold the pasty creep. Putin’s face filled the page. He was protesting an enormity in Somalia. As he carried on, I figured it out. He was talking about the al Shaboobies were had exterminated. From what I heard, Emperor Xi had blamed that killing on the Russians. According to Puti, the Chinese wanted Africa all for their own exploitive ends. Imagine it. Not a single word was muttered about the Israelis. At least for now, they had got away with it.
Nora O’Donnell, one of my favourite Catholic journalists to look at, was describing the maggot-infested bodies of a Russian General and a few enlisted guys. About her, bodies of terrorists littered the site.
If you believed her, she had got photos of the incident and its location from a nameless source (China, of course). Worse than anybody had imagined, the site provided evidence of a new secret weapon that her sources told her was a product of Russian collaboration with an unknown munitions company headed by an English Lord.
Unknown? I thought. Only if you’re a journalist who has done no homework. Further, Ms O’Donnell got grave when she deplored the lack of security in Putin’s Russia. All one needed to do was to inspect this scene to learn that a renegade Russian unit with a General rank officer in charge had swiped the secret weapon, a weapon with the power to freeze human beings at temps way above freezing.
When the camera panned to show many bullet-riddled al Shabaab, Ms O’Donnell built a fantasy of a cataclysmic firefight between the al Shabaab and Russians. She added that the Russians apparently had the advantage of teams of fearless cobras that were left dead on the field by the Russians after the battle. She speculated they had used a helicopter to wage battle whilst leaving scouts and cobras to die. The General had apparently fallen from a great height. Hence the helicopter and cobra/scout teams hypotheses.
I knew Nora had majored in philosophy at Georgetown before turning to journalism. No wonder making up facts to order was second nature to her. it’s a philosopher’s specialty. Philosophers like to call this inference to the best explanation. It’s easy to spot. Human beings wear sunglasses. Sunglasses rest on noses. So, somebody, perhaps God themself, created noses to support sunglasses.
Lucky looked bored as Putin continued. “You’re going to kill me from boredom with this rubbish, my love. Couldn’t you find us some porn to watch.” Fear gripped me. I was in no mood to have to spend God know how long chewing and licking Lucky’s toes as Lil’s Miss Multiple got herself off again and again. Nevertheless, I knew the routine. To protest is futile. The resist is suicidal.
Besides, we were in Holland, a country with no moral standards. The Dutch turned their red-light district into a tourist attraction. You can guess what’s on the Dutch telly from that fact alone. Even worse, the stupid fuckers running Holland learnt nothing from President Trump.
The streets swarmed with loafing refugees. The Dutch never even consider leaving the idling poor on the street to starve. Heaven forbid! Instead, the Dutch reward loafers with benefits that include extra cash when these moochers are due for a vacation.
Praise the Lord, nobody can get his greedy mitts on the Krugerrand I have in the Caymans to pay for such nonsense. Anyway, I had no trouble in such a country finding rich offerings of free porn for Lucky. Oh, well . . . Not all countries can achieve America’s high moral standards.
When Lucky awoke the next morning, she was in a better mood. She ordered a bowl of fresh fish in cream, with the chef given permission to select what he thought looked best for me. For herself, she ordered a caviar omelette topped with smetana. She requested potatoes and asparagus as sides. She also got a croissant with a framboise confiture to go with it. What I got, the fresh fish swimming in cream, was a foretaste of heaven.
As I walked in circles in the Somalian desert as murderous al Shabaabian raiders hurtled toward me, little did I know what Lucky was doing. Fielding and Bart were busy spreading dead cobras about the coming battlefield. They seemed to have a limitless supply. Lucky was nowhere in sight.
Now I know that she, Danny, and Saul had a heated argument about me. Lucky wanted an immediate rescue party formed. Danny and Saul preferred to pretend my fate was with the gods.
Once Lucky realised she was not going to be able to commandeer the CV-22, she grabbed her AK, a few additional mags, and put MREs and water into a rucksack. She donned the sack, and then headed out to where I got left, about 22 miles as the crow flies, if I lucky right. You can picture here making double time across the dessert to mind me.
As Fielding and Bart wandered about the detonation site, Bart found a welcome addition on a dead al Shabaab. In his frozen arms, he clutched a PKP Pecheneg machine gun. Bart began stroking its barrell. “Look at this commie killer. It shoots good up to just short of a mile. It shoots 600 to 800 rounds a minute.”
Bart then ordered me and Fielding to get it mounted on the tripod. “I’ll use this dead booby as cover. These Shaboobs are in for a surprise, I’ll tell you that.”
Before I could get assigned further tasks, I slipped away. Bart and Fielding were too busy loading the machine gun to notice. Bart loved machine guns.
I could hear Bart and Fielding continue to chatter about tactics. Boring! If I had the basic idea right, they planned to let the first Shabaabs come in unopposed. Bart would not aim for the foremost men. Instead, she’d pick targets at the rear. Fielding would also start making her kills from the rear. When the foremost group spotted the dead cobras, they’d get careful. Bart would then blow away a few of the forward group.
Time has taught me that Saul and Danny had no objection to going back to the detonation site. In fact, it was part of their plan. They wanted to document how many Africans the Russians had murdered with Ice-10. They planned to splatter the worlds papers with photographs of the dead, including the dead Russians. What they did object to was going back to the site before the CV-22 fueled up and had a lot of bullet holes repaired.
All this went on as Lucky, like Lola, did her Run, Lucky, Run march. Sweaty and dusty, she ran. Towards me, she ran.
Hours passed before we heard the voices of the al Shabaab raiders. I had counselled Bart and Fielding that we should hide in the ravine, rather than pick a fight. Fielding glared and me. “And let the terrorist tramp through here scot-free? Where’s the fun in that?” So, Bart stretched out behind the PKP. Fielding went out a mile to the edge of the accurate range of the PKP.
I had moved into a hollow in the ground. The journalist in me was defying danger to be an eyewitness to the pending conflict. I was peering from my hollow when the first al Shabaab began to arrive.
There was a near infinitely large group, perhaps 40, but, as I’ve told you before, a parietal lobe injury had reduced my brilliance as a mathematician. I kept expecting something to happen. Instead, I heard footsteps, chatter, buzzing flies, and birdsong on a background wash of silence. The sun had climbed past the meridian in the azure sky.
Let’s admit from the start that the al Shabaab were small-brained. As the last of them moved beyond Bart’s position, she sprang to action. The poisoned on her helmet began putting one raider after another down as she rammed their calves. The front of the troop had by then seen dead cobras. Believing it was a bad omen, they slowed down. If I had to guess, they assumed each dead snake should get a check, as a live one would be in a bad and biting mood. The forward guys were probably at least a 1/2 mile from Bart.
When Bart opened up her PKP, a clump of guys in the rear of the formation got blood-stained. Fielding ran over to do shallow dives to drive her helmet’s spike into their foramen magnum. The wounded on the ground, but not yet dead, took their big sleep. Fielding was getting a scarlet staining. At the front of the formation, a few of the baffled al Shaboobies fired without aiming. A small cluster must have located Bart. Their shots were going plink-plink about her.
Unlike them, Bart did aim. That cluster went to gore lickity-split. When I listened carefully, I could hear Bart mewing her satisfaction. I then heard her singing “Sympathy for the devil.” Again and again, over the battle noise, I heard “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a cat of wealth and fame” followed by a burst at 600 to 800 rpm.
Everything was going well from my perspective. Despite my pessimistic nature, Fielding and Bart had made a killing field. I relaxed.
I shouldn’t have done, as I had a maddened al Shaboobie coming at me. How terrifying he was with a massive beard and a huge bayonet he was waving at me. Somebody shouted “Tawaquf” at him. A second later a bullet hole blossomed on his forehead. I felt a lice body land next to me. “I told him to halt, darling. He had no ears . . . Of course I’d have shot him anyway. He had bad character.” Lucky then began to shoot more al Shaboobs with her AK. Even with it, she was a dead shot. Three Shaboobies trying to flank Bart fell.
Lucky then got up and ran forward firing, dropping Shaboobs on the way. Of course, I should have noticed it before, but I then heard the powerful Rolls Royce engines of a CV-22. It had two machine guns blazing. Everybody that Bart, Fielding, and Lucky had not already killed died.
Lucky pulled a gun from a dead Shabooby. One by one she began addressing each body on the battlefield. She’d put killing rounds into each body whether it was already dead. As she explained to me later, “It’s just good practice, sweetie. You make sure the scum you shoot dead are all dead. If you need a prisoner, you can spare him for the moment.”
Perhaps after 30 minutes, Lucky came back for me. She was a sweaty, blood-spattered, dusty mess of a woman. She took non-essentials from her back. She took pictures of a few frozen corpses, and she picked me up, stroked my face, and put me gently in her rucksack. ‘You stayed alive, darling, just as I told you. And I have found you.” I got a kiss on the forehead. She moved off.
I was a bit confused. It turned out Lucky knew that Saul and Danny would be documenting the Ice-10 effects at the al Shabaab encampment. When we got there, Danny and Saul were all smiles, but Lucky not so much. The Ice-10 bomb had killed everybody in the encampment. Danny said, “That bomb is a boy.” Lucky said, “Fuck you.”
Nobody wasted any time. Fielding and Bart had already hopped on the CV-22. The rest of the party loaded on. As soon as Lucky saw Fielding, she reached out to Fielding, “I’ve seen you work, ma’am. It is an honour to shake your paw.” When she looked at Bart, she also thanked her for her fine work with the PKP. “You’re small, but you are cut from the same cloth as Fielding.” She shook Bart’s paw. Bart purred.
Our aircraft was in the air. We were all headed northwest to Kampala.
When I awoke in the morning, my back ached. I heard a lot of flies buzzing to my left. One of those al Shabaab chaps was frozen dead, but his throat had somehow got cut. Now the filth flies were laying eggs to feed on him. Soon he would be a platform of maggots. My guess is they would pass on his hard-froze bits.
Above me, I heard birdsong. I was still in the ravine’s cool shadow, but I could tell the sun was heating the rim. I had taken quite a tumble after my freefall. The same was true of my companion to my left, Mr Fly.
Leaving him behind, I made my way up the wall of the ravine. As I clambered over the rim, I heard a familiar voice. “Hello, fool.”
It was Bart’s voice. Next to her, I heard Fielding laughing at me. Beyond them, I made out a horror of horrors. At a small portable table with a sun umbrella to make it comfy, I saw Woland and Behemoth. Woland was devouring a platter of fresh fruits as he chatted with Behemoth. Behemoth had a large bottle of Russian Standard vodka. When he saw me, he pulled herring a chest cooled by dry ice. He shouted “Fish, Crocky”.
Now I asked you, would any cat with a lick of sense refuse fresh herring in an African morning? You don’t get a lot of Baltic herring to eat when you’re in Africa. With caution, I made my way over to the table. Woland’s maid Hella, a real looker if not for the bulging purple scar on her neck, began cutting the herring into kitty-sized bites for me.
Bart followed behind me. She was wearing her pith helmet. Fielding was again wearing her spiked German helmet, with a chunk of frozen flesh hanging from the spike.
I couldn’t help myself. I demanded to know why Fielding and Bart were in Somalia. I knew better than to make any demands on Woland and Behemoth. Hella was always obliging. She once told me she had never refused a man an amorous service, but, unlike Lucky, she also sucked every drop of blood out of whomever she screwed.
Hella would say, “There’s always a price. TANSTAFL: there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. You want bukkake? You owe your blood. You want anal? You owe your blood. You want the old in-out? You owe your blood. You just want kissies on your nipples or stinky feet? You still owe your blood.” I didn’t want to make demands on Bella either. She was over 200 years old, looked barely 20, and was. still making collections, a venerable Dracula, but sans penis.
Bart took no offence. In way of an explanation, I got a lecture on how I was family. She and Fielding felt a special duty to protect me since I was, to quote Roberta, “too stupid, slow, and weak” to care for myself. I was the Love Machine, not a warrior. Once Bart and Fielding had figured out that I was in Somalia during a drunken Skype call from Wolverine, they wheedled my future location from him, a task made simple by his being a braggart. It’s easiest if you get him to tell you in Attic Greek so that he can show off his Eton education.
Bart then got on Zoom to talk to Irascible. Telling him that she and Fielding decided to attack their recent bout of ennui with a cobra hunt, she got him to arrange a flight to Mogadishu. From there they found some khat merchants taking a trip to replenish supplies. One of their preferred harvest areas was within range of the al Shabaab clowns.
After ditching the Khat fiends, Bart and Fielding did start hunting cobras. One cool thing about Somalia is it has 3 species of spitting cobras and assorted other snakes that are fun to kill. Cobra hunts keep cats sharp for combat. Fielding bragged, “Bart and I also got a nice supply of venom to use on pesky terrorists. Cobras like to stare a big game, but they’re slow.
Take a careful look down at that bozo in the ravine. Bart slashed his pretty neck. I emptied an ampule of cobra venom into the wound. Behemoth, a real gent, came over to give him a hard kick in the tuchas.
There was another hoyden I took a chunk of titty meat out of when I rammed her. I think she was trying to save a wife beater.
“Everybody save the al Sha-boobs got into a shelter good ole Woland made. I think he had Hella dig it out. She digs faster than an army of gophers.”
Woland grinned at these kind words. ‘You know, Crocky, any real Russian loves what Lucky and those Jews did last night. I loved that they did it without the high casualties that the average Russian views as essential to anything we do. You can’t build so much as a copula in Russia without doing in a few Russians. In the old days, Stalin killed them in droves to maintain the motherland’s work ethic. What Russian doesn’t enjoy scenes where even pretend Russians are obliterating a foe?
Behemoth and I just had to see it done to comprehend the beautiful possibility of it. Thank the gods Putin was too busy sucking up to that fraud Caligula to commence an African operation. Those two wankers would have botched it for sure. Not our gal Lucky and her killer Jews. If only they were Russians.” Woland’s eyes began to mist. He turned his gaze from me.
He ate what looked like a varenyky. Food is the best medicine. Or is it sleep?
I noticed Behemoth celebrating with a large shot of vodka that was chasing a large piece of Schmaltz herring. I was feeling a wee bit bitter. I had already eaten all my fresh herring.
Was there more? If there was, that cheapskate drunkard Behemoth wasn’t offering it.
Behemoth looked about at the frozen bodies as the strong sun beat down. “You do realise that getting out of here may be dicey? A raiding party of these nasty Somalis are coming back. If you ask me, they’re going to blame you for this mess, especially since Woland, Hella, and I must run. There is so much bad to do in this world and so little time.”
“You all aren’t going to give us a ride out?”
“Why would we? You were told to stay alive and she would find you.”
I protested, “She didn’t say find me here.”
Behemoth had another blast of vodka, rolled his eyes, then told me, “Come, come. It was a conversational implicature. And to think I thought you a philosopher. She meant here.”
“Then she should have said so. I think she meant any here.”
“Then,” roared Behemoth, “stay here and ask her.
“We’re heading out and want to learn whether Lucky is a woman of her word.”
Bart and Fielding were unimpressed. Fielding went on a tirade. “He’ll leave when we tell him to. We don’t need a freakin’ ride. We can all walk to Kampala. Weak white guys Stanley did it. He even managed to find the kook Livingston. So, go when you want, assholes.”
I could have killed my two gals. Let them walk to Kampala. I wanted a ride. But it was too late. Woland and his entourage vanished. As did my cooler of Baltic herring. To think anybody thinks the world is just! Where do such addled souls live?
In the distance, Bart and Fielding were conferring. As Bart explained it to me, they were working out how many al Sha-bah-bahs they’d have to put down before they got spooked and ran. Bart also started working out tactics.
When I asked what I might do, Fielding insulted me. “Why don’t you find yourself an aid station and relax whilst we work out your salvation? You do recall Martinez Creek, don’t you?” What luck! I could feign outrage and hide out until the coast was clear.
In another two days, the CV-22 was ready to go, Lucky mocked me.
“Darling, do you want me to find you a parachute?”
If she wanted to please me, she could find me a ticket home to Saint Louis. I’d have been almost as happy with a trip to Potomac. She had me in her carry-on, and I surveyed the crew on the aircraft as it arrived.
Because I’m no mathematician, I’m unsure if it had more than 24 guys on it. The doomed Russians hogged a lot of space, but I doubt we amounted to more than a squad and a team. Aside from Mr Clean, nobody seemed to be carrying anything heavy than a carbine with a grenade launcher.
Luck scratched my head. Given the desire to frame the Russians, everybody carried Russian rifles. You’d think any moron could tell we were coming in on an Osprey, but nobody on board thought anybody on the ground with al Shabab would go by anything other than markings.
As the pilot powered the engines up, I felt a lurch as we lifted off the deck. Lucky clutched me tight and cooed, “It’s okay, sweetie.” When I looked out the aircraft’s door, I saw the vastness of the Indian Ocean. Even with the gain in altitude, the plan was hot and sticky. We were headed northwest.
Lucky liked facts. I had to hear them. So, I learnt the aircraft was cruising along at about 300 mph. To raise my spirits, she told me when we reached the area to deposit the stealth bomb, we only had to hop a short distance to a fuel depot a team of stealthy Chinese had set up for this purpose. We’d have plenty of fuel to head on to Kampala after checking the lethality of the coming blast.
The CV-22 would head off to Niger and probably take a refueling in flight on the way as if I cared. She told me she had us on a first-class flight from Kampala to Amsterdam. I liked the idea of Amsterdam
To entice me further, Lucky said she had booked a suite at Hotel 27. We’d be feasting at Bougainville Restaurant and having drinks at Hotel 27’s gorgeous bar. The gourmand-me thought it all lovely, provided we were not lying dead and festering in Somalia when we should have arrived in A-dam.
Now that the CV-22 was flying towards the Somalia coast at good speed. I knew the plan was to have the ship about 200 miles after the coast. On we rushed.
Danny and Saul relaxed by playing chess. Saul was the better player. Danny liked bold aggressive sacrifices. Had they been better players, I guess it would have reminded a chess aficionado of Petrosian playing the even inventive, aggressive Tal. Oddly, it was the conservative Petrosian who was a legend at 5-minute chess. Lucky forbid me to play. She knew I loved to gamble when playing Go or Chess. It’s unfortunate that I’m a lousy player at both games. I think my mathematical limits are a hindrance. For example, counting is hard. Lucky started grumbling she had no idea how many men she had to threaten to kill to get my Go and Chess debts covered.
I just thought to myself, “Could it really be that many?”
Once Lucky got over her grievances about my gambling addiction, she pulled out a pack of cards. In no time, she was running a 5-card stud poker game. She was taking all the money the commandos willing to play had. Lucky complained that it was a waste of her time to play with poor men. She had a happy memory of cleaning out Lord Caligula during a game at Monte Carlo. She had made a small fortune wiping out royals at a casino in Menton.
After 40 or so minutes in the air, I noticed we were crossing the Somalia coast. It was dusk. Within a half hour, the Osprey was doing a night flight. I, obedient to the conditions, fell asleep. Besides, what’s the use of being awake when Lucky won’t let me play Go or Chess for me?
I was seeing red lights in the cabin when I awoke. The guys were fiddling with their carbines. The General was given more booze. He was as drunk as Sam Houston on a bender.
At first, I assumed Lucky wished to help the General clear his head. She walked him to the door, suggesting he look down to get a sense of the lay of the land. Before he sensed what she had in store for him, she had unhooked him from his tether. Whilst he was giving her a puzzled look over his shoulder, she was giving him a stiff push in the back and a strong knee to the buttock.
The General headed to earth. He did scream “Почему?”
In case you know no Russian, that means: why? And it’s a rather good question if you ask me. Lucky muttered, “Because you’re worthless alive.” Until then, I hadn’t noticed how the guy resembled Willy Loman without life insurance.
Now that the general had deplaned, the CV-22 headed down. Lucky, perhaps being kind, instructed the pilot not to land on the corpse.
No sooner had the Osprey touched down then Danny hopped out cradling an AK-74M. Some commandos began dragging the 5 Russian prisoners off the Osprey. As the Russians were untied, Danny would fire rounds into them as they staggered away. The first Russian took two rounds to the face. The second took 4 rounds to the chest. Another guy got a round that hit him in the back. His lung collapsed.
In a short while, they were dead at varying distances frp, the aircraft. Danny tossed a few grenades in the vicinity to make it look more authentic, and commandos created plenty of footprints in the desert sand.
During the shooting, the bot rolled off the Osprey with the stealth bomb in tow.
Meanwhile, a commando returned to Saul. Saul then had an announcement.
“One of my guys told me he had to do a silent kill on a sentry. What a sad world it is that even in a godforsaken place like this, somebody bothers to post a sentry almost 5 miles from their camp. “
Lucky got busy with the bot. She also checked the stealth bomb, being a natural genius with munitions. When she pronounced the system good to go, I heard the CV-22 engines revving up. Everybody was getting onto the aircraft.
Then I noticed my razor-sharp danger detection alarm was sounding. I was responding to small arms fire. I stayed low, but the space about the CV-22 was hot. Everybody was onboard except for me. How could I let that happen? I should have been first!
Above I heard Lucky screaming to put the bird back down. “Crockett is still on the ground”. Imagine, gentle reader, my rage when some scoundrel safe in his seat shouted, “Fuck Crockett.”
I realised now I was in a scene straight from Last of the Mohicans. Instead of Daniel Day Lewis, I heard Lucky scream, “Stay alive, darling, and I will find you.” The CV went up and headed southwest to safety and its refueling site.
Everything considered I still had advantages. I am nearly black in the dark. Advantage one: Invisibility. I am preternaturally quiet when my life is on the line if detected. Advantage two: stealth. What’s more, the Ice-10 Bomb could kill me with a blast, but the wise scientists at Munitions Galore had created Ice-10 so that it didn’t kill cats. Cat blood, as I understood the matter, was too hot to make Ice-10 dangerous to us. Advantage 3: Biological Immunity.
I now needed a place safe from the blast. I didn’t want to wait long to find it. First, I didn’t know when the bomb would blow. Second, the al-Shabaab boogers were coming on fast and firing furiously. I saw a nice-sized ravine dead ahead. I jumped into it. Advantage 4: Kitty dexterity and Advantage 5: Fall survivability. Down I went, for a long time. “Ouch”.
Above the firing continued. Then came a loud, loud ka-boom.
And then there was silence.
I had stayed alive. She would find me.
Sometimes I wonder if all Lucky’s fights dented her brain. As I remember it, she specifically asked for a CV-22. What is a CV-22, you ask? Perhaps some of you have followed this aircraft history. It’s a tiltrotor aircraft that permits it to work as both a fixed-wing plane and a helicopter. The Marines, who are not the brain of the Armed Forces, loved this craft. They loved it no matter how many times it crashed. The Air Force decided it wanted to use it as a taxi for its special forces. It has a combat range of about 500 miles.
Lucky wanted it because you can cram a 3-man crew and 24 operators on it. If you’re willing to make people sit on the floor, you can pack in another 8 operators. The CV-22 can carry plenty of killers and their equipment.
Once we made it to the deck of the big ship, I heard the engines of the CV-22 as it approached the helipad. Once it touched down, the ship’s crew shot into action. They painted and marked the CV-22 as a Russian Federation aircraft. The Israeli commandos put on Russian combat utilities, though Lucky, Saul, Danny, and the two othe4 Mossad disdained them.
Fuelers got to work. Techs went over the CV-22 whilst a loadmaster directed people on where to put what I recognized as a Munitions Galore stealth bomb and a military version of a Mr Clean bot. Danny stood on the ship’s deck smoking an English Oval. Saul had loaded a Savinelli pipe. From the look of it, I’d say it was a Savinelli Dublin Bent. I liked it. To calm myself, I imagined smoking one myself.
I saw a group of young of five young Russians loaded on. Saul chuckled. “Look at them. A gift from Syria. When they were interviewed, these creeps carried on so freely about yids and kikes, any self-respecting Jew would rejoice in killing them. Danny won a coin toss with me. Once we reach the site, he gets to shoot them all dead.”
Right now, the Russians looked terrified. They got loaded on the CV-22 like cordwood. When I looked right, I saw a Russian general drunker than Sam Houston. If you know any Texas history, Sam drank so much that the Cherokee called him “Big Drunk.” From what I was seeing, this guy was competitive with Houston for the Big-Drunk title. Lucky told me she couldn’t wait to shove him from the CV-22 ounce we over the site. “We must kill a few Russians. Nobody would believe Russians could pull off an operation like this without casualties.”
I nodded.
Let me get this off my chest. I write two Pulitzer quality columns on Elvis and the Queen. Do I get any honour in my own family? Not a bit. That sullen bastard servant mike has ridiculed my work, telling me it had “the stamp of congenital idiocy and mental illness upon it.” He went so far as to tell me I might as well start reading and, even worse, believing the Book of Morons to learn about the adventures Jesus had in America. As so often happens with prophets, I’ve no respect in my native land. When I told mike that, he suggested I shouldn’t count on much respect elsewhere either. What can I say? The man’s a prick.
But I refuse to let the injustices I suffer keep me from continuing my story. I liked Zanzibar. I got upset when we left.
In the first place, even though Lucky was pressing hard to get started, Danny and Saul were meticulous. Mosaad insist nobody should run around killing enemies of Israel willy-nilly. Useful killers prepare. So, everybody waited on Wolverine getting the CV-22 scheduled.
One moonless evening, Lucky woke me at about 01.00. She threw me in her carryon. We headed to the beach. Imagine my total horror. She was moving into the ocean to get on some kind of Zodiac boat. You may know them as inflatable craft that are little more than floating swimming pools. She entered the faux boat.. Danny and Saul entered with two other Israeli brutes, bodyguards for them, no doubt.. Be assured, these two monsters looked nothing like the weenie Woody Allen at any age. There were two coxmen to run the craft. We headed into the dark, placid ocean.
Perhaps 3 hours passed before the boat halted. The coxmen had used some weird navigational equipment to guide us in the dark.
I aggravated Lucky when I turned her carry on into my personal urinal. What could I do.? Every relationship has its ups and down. Perhaps 3 hundred feet from us or, more likely, a 100 meters, the sea exploded as a Dolphin 2 Sub surfaced. Lucky had to drag me onto that sub. If you think about it, why would a hydrophobe want to be anywhere near a sub? Besidies, everybody knows subs are crewed by bitter insomniacs who have or will have bad marriages.
Once boarded, I didn’t get the idea that the Israelis had spent a lot of money to make the sub commodious enough to suit me. About 20 minutes after we were all boarded, I heard the commander issuing commands in Hebrew, a tongue that is gibberish to me. Then, as I trembled in Lucky’s strong arms, I felt the Dolphin diving. I squirmed, and then Lucky’s voice entered my ears, “Master yourself, darling, or I’ll burrito you. Must you behave like a pussy in a Celine novel. Be braver than Bardamu, sweetie.” She then had the cheek to smack my bottom to demonstrate the sincerity of her command to self-master..
It was an outrage, but I was too terrified to defend my honour. After a short bit, Lucky suggested (insanely) being inside a sub was no worse than being in a house during a torrential rain. A sub? No worse than a house? Didn’t she know I had seen Das Boot more than 4 times. I also had clippings of the Thresher’s implosion. And then there was the Kursk’s sad end in the Barent Sea in 2000, and I’ve just mentioned disasters we know about. In 2005 or so, an American sub managed to run into a mountain. That’s right! a freakin’ mountain. My wise fear was the expression of the purity of my scientific knowledge + judgement. Yes, sometimes knowledge + judgement = fear.
Whether I liked it or not, we were underway. I was trapped. Fear had reduced me to a puddle of fur and pee.
I gathered that a Dolphin 2 taxied at most 10 commandos. We were to rendezvous at some point off the Somali coast to join additional Israeli killing machines on a disguised vessel. The Point of rendezvous was where the CV-22 would land on the larger ship’s helipad. We then would be off to Victory or Doom.
Anyway, we reached the rendezvous point. How long it took is beyond my reckoning. To cope with the pressure of being on a sub, I found a spot in the torpedo room, perhaps the quietest place on a sub, to sleep. Of course, lot of noise started once the sub surfaced.
I went and found Lucky. Her sarcasm irked me. Did I get any lovey-dovey strokes when I hopped into her lap? Of course not. Instead, she led with “Done hiding, darling?” She should have just kept her mouth shut. Perhaps I should have opted to befriend Danny and Saul to spite her. That’s my life: Could’ve, Should’ve, Didn’t.
Recall, gentle reader, my astonishment that so many people believe the Queen has died. These dupes believe that if she is indeed dead, she died from something called old age, rather than from an assassination. Even though I believe Charles would have gone to any length to ascend to the throne, I believe the Queen, like Elvis, lives. Charles got what he wanted, but failed to kill the Queen.
In fact, I believe they now live together. Despite Charles’s effort to kill her, my sources assure me she used his clumsy attempt on her life as an occasion to move in with the love of her life: Elvis.
Now that she is freed of having to present in public with frumpy clothing and a well-aged bod, the Queen has started a regimen of youthening drugs. Elvis’s inner-self now knows he looks as he did at 22 thanks to drugs. The Queen has joined him. Her drugs are already making her look smoking hot. Next to the current edition of the Queen, Kim Kardashian is a jalopy of a woman, a fat-rumped woman that men would run over to have a gander at the youthening Queen.
Few of you know, I gather, that Elvis has spent decades living in secluded mansions in sub saharan Africa. The moral climate in remote Africa was a better fit for Elvis. For one thing, he still likes to hire ingenues to put on skimpy foundation garments before they mud wrestle.
These spectacles get Elvis so hot that develops an insatiable appetite for toasted peanut butter, banana, and bacon sandwiches, a delicacy hard to find outside of Mississippi. The Queen is simply mad for them, and enjoys feeding herself and Elvis mouthfuls of them whilst stroking his beautiful hairless pecs.
Because I have so many contacts, I happen to know the Queen for years has eaten these sandwiches at Balmoral as she mooned over photographs of Elvis in his live-performance duds. Now they eat them together. Or so I am told. I have this from the very best QAnon and Epoch Times sources.
Indeed, I have photographs of them eating toasted peanut butter, banana, and bacon sandwiches in tandem too. My QAnon intentionally made photos appear photoshopped in case they fell into the wrong hands. If the wrong people saw them, they will disbelieve them rather than recognise their truth. The photoshopped look is mere camouflaging of the truth. My next favourites show Elvis is making the Queen a true Mississippi lady. Lizzie is in ecstasy over her transformation into trailer trash.
No wonder she kept a trailer-trash Barbie in a secret room at Windsor. Barbie stands erect before a trailer. She holds an open can of PBR in one hand, a Viceroy dangles from her lips. She is wearing cutoff Levis, and a halter top with a pack of Viceroys rolled up in the left sleeve. The oeuvre’s caption read, “My daddy is the best kisser in the county.” In front of Barbie, you can see a naked baby sitting on her barefoot, as the baby clings to Barbie’s calf. If you press the baby’s head, it will squirt a jet of yellow wee-wee into the air in front of Barbie. This artist thought of everything.
Meanwhile, imagine my exasperation at Charles’ duping of the public. Only yesterday I witnessed a sign from God of this so-called King’s perfidy.
Charles was trying to sign some rubbish when his pen exploded for no reason whatsoever. Rather than admitting he was getting a foretaste of God’s judgement, Charles blamed “the stinking pen,” as if the King does not have pens that are the perfection of reliability. Mark my word, that exploding pen was a miracle of God and a warning to the rest of us. But do we heed it? No. Like sheep we file into the streets of London to witness a counterfeit, overpriced funeral.
I heard, I won’t say where, that the Queen, to cover her escape, had a body double smothered. One must do what one must. The double was put in the coffin to throw. Anything to throw Charles and his murderous lackeys off. Lizzies won’t to be hunted
So, instead of all this faux grief. Let us rejoice that Elvis and Lizzie are living young and sexy in secret mansions in equatorial Africa. Dear Queen Lizzie, happy at last!
PS: I still think King Charles should pay for his crimes. Alas, he’s going to get away with it.
For the sake of my sanity, I must stop watching the news. Lucky and I went with Danny and Saul on the ferry to Zanzibar to “wait.” Lucky checked us in to the Baraza Resort and Spa.
Even though she made a fuss about the many pools, I was unmoved. All my life I’ve had a terror of bathing. How many people have drowned in recorded history? I have no exact number but assure you it is a big, big number. Lucky looked good in a bikini. She knew it. If you dropped by, she was either swimming or standing around 95% naked waiting for the next water adventure.
Lucky continued to secure me a steady supply of fresh seafood, all of it excellent. So with these amenities, why was I watching the news?
CNN came on. To my horror, a correspondent was speaking to Lord Caligula. He had returned from a recent trip to Moscow. As usual, he claimed to have no idea what Putin made of recent accusations of sales of weapons of mass destruction to sundry countries around the world. When asked if Munitions Galore had a role in these sales, as news stories in reputable papers like the London Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung were suggesting, his Lordship denied it. Without losing a beat, he replied, “Nobody loves peace more than we at Munitions Galore. We earn big money during peace. We prevent war. Alas, the world is a hard place. We at Munitions Galore know the wisdom of the Latin adage, Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you went to a Comprehensive School, I’m sorry. For these pitiful ones, let them know the Latin means, If you want peace, prepare for war.”
The interviewer. brushing aside his Lordship’s move to discuss nothing of import, pressed to know what purpose his visit to Moscow had. I knew Lord Caligula would never admit he talked to Putin. Instead, he spoke of how much he loved the Russian people. According to his Lordship, he might have more good friends in Russia, especially in Moscow, than he had in England, a country that the crybabies were taking over.
The interviewer stayed on him but got no new news, though his Lordship sniffed that Constance should already have her George Cross. He conjectured that if she had done what she did in Reading in Russia, she would already have got a Hero of the Russian Federation Medal. Every bit my mind was endangered as his Lordship walked off the stage. He was wearing a perfectly tailored, silk Brioni suit. He had a Coke hat draped over his walking stick. Then I saw her.
He was approaching Constance. She was in a mini. Scarlet fishnet stockings adorned her chubby legs. Tucked into the mini was a T-shirt that had the words “Fight for Peace” on it. Below the slogan, I made out a silkscreen image of near-naked Constance using her Colt Python to dispatch a cartoonish Chinese chap who was laden with weapons, but begging for his life. He had a bullet wound in his head that gushed blood. I think it was Constance’s erect nipples below the shirt that were de trop for me. I literally fainted.
When Lucky discovered me on the floor, I got tender caresses to revive me. I needed them, though she was naked as a newborn when she found me. Perhaps to make me feel better, she said Wolverine had talked to Dayan and Levi. He had a CV-22 lined up to get him into Somalia. Wolverine also promised a warrior version of Mr Clean would also be on the CV-22. He had a supply of petrol stashed as well in “a suitable place.” Better still, NGA had promised the requested photos of the al Shabaab encampment.
With the good news in hand, she advised me to watch less CNN. If you must watch the news, watch Xinhua. The Chinese People insist that the news be boring propaganda. You’d never see those two criminals overstimulating you until you fell out on the People’s News. Standards of decency would have kept Constance out of sight.
I asked if we would leave Zanzibar anytime soon. Lucky kissed me. “Relax. We leave soon, darling, we leave soon. Be prepared to head out under cover of darkness. And don’t worry, sweetie, I’ll put on clothes to travel. I don’t want to put ideas in the heads of those two Israeli leches. I have standards” Standards? That was new news for me.