Covert Ops

How it started

2011-04-17T22:55:47+00:00

Like I explained, or thought I did, the first assignment came by mistake. Who ever sent the first communication transposed two letters in the email address and, lo and behold, it was mine. I thought it was SPAM or phishing and ignored it for a day. The subject was: ‘New Assignment.’ Finally I read it.... and replied yes. ‘If you’ve changed your hair style, up-load a new passport-photo to...’ Hmmm, what could go wrong? Would they make movie-stars who looked like me?

This Happens

2011-04-20T19:24:51+00:00

I read this off the Frag-Wire which is raw data and unreliable:

A small team of enlisted military; maybe four men, one woman went rogue. Using SEAL training they rampaged through a shopping mall. Later, they headed up to a rocky, mountain area where one of them dragged the others on a large flat piece of wood across hundreds of yards of rocky terrain to avoid leaving tracks.

One of them is squat with short blond hair and glasses. Neural-bio efforts to reverse a few ‘gay’ circuits in his head have made him

It pays to be somebody else

2011-04-20T18:40:55+00:00

My time back in the AF was in Tac Air Control. I didn't have a Combat Controller's badge {or AFSC}, but there must have been a temporary ticket in my file because that's what I was pretending to do, hanging out with the Army and carrying a short-barrel carbine. Though unhappy about my low rank I was thankful of carrying an alias, this time as Johnson; which I thought was a name lacking panache. But a couple of these kid-Rangers

Cleared for Field Ops

2011-06-14T17:26:19+00:00

--against my better judgment

Being interviewed for a field job I wasn’t sure I wanted. Decided to be honest as to minimize my chances for success. Let fate rule the outcome. Interviewer was a young Marine Captain with lots of salad on his chest:

He didn’t care for the answers I had put on the form: “Says here, you were hit by car once; almost drowned twice - both by misadventure; wounded by accident and may have risked yours

Company out of time

2011-04-30T18:47:52+00:00

I remember experiments with walking armored vehicles, fire-fights in the background. Afterwards we take tramadol, pregabalin and prazosin; it diminishes the sense of trauma whether there was any or not. It depletes your memories mixing them up with dreams and coming out all fuzzy. The special ops troops & contractors call it 'eating the washing machine.'

... My corporate contact is supposed to be somebody wearing a pin that reads: “Company out of time.”

After 'Lusts'

2011-05-29T18:36:15+00:00

Walking through a garish, gay-black-Carib neighborhood decorated with colorful crepe streamers on my way to a bar in Brooklyn known as ‘Lusts.’ At Lusts, a mixed crowd tolerated one another with détente. Plays and dramatic readings were common, even from the bar. Some not very effeminate gay men, but a lot of Veterans, especially from Vietnam. I tell M that at least on two occasions when I couldn't sleep I made the 4+ hour round trip there, driving to Metropark, then train, bus, subway.

Fitting In

2011-06-05T17:56:52+00:00

Early, steel-gray, wintry morning; city business district: Pulled up wearing jacket and tie on a lightweight, 4 wheeled single-seat, peddle-car for adults. I had been there over the weekend and found plenty of parking but on this Monday I could see most parking spots taken and older men chipping at the ice on their reserved spots. The peddle car folded into a lightweight, aluminum, double elongated A frame which I rolled along on its back two wheels while it held my netbook and coat as I entered a large building through its corner entrance.