Aliens in the Allagash Read online

  ALIENS

  IN THE

  ALLAGASH

  A POSSIBLE FICTION BASED ON IMPOSSIBLE FACTS

  Gary Striker

  Mako Graphics LLC

  Florida U.S.A.

  Aliens in the Allagash

  Copyright © 2016 by Gary Striker

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at Mako Graphics LLC or Create Space/Amazon Digital Services. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Mako Graphics LLC

  4205 Fort Denaud Road

  Labelle, Florida 33935

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition: November 2016

  ISBN -13:978-1539850953 ISBN-10:1539850951

  Book and Cover Design by Mako Graphics LLC

  To: Kim Striker, Wife & Warden

  CONTENTS

  Prologue 5

  Chapter One: The End 7

  Chapter Two: The Beginning 21

  Chapter Three: Moving Up 39

  Chapter Four: Wallagrass, Maine 61

  Chapter Five: The Mission 77

  Chapter Six: Ben Lake 93

  Chapter Seven: New Beginnings 109

  Chapter Eight: On the Job 125

  Chapter Nine: The Unexplained 145

  Chapter Ten: The Game Plan 161

  Chapter Eleven: Fiddleheads for Dinner 177

  Chapter Twelve: The Anomaly 191

  Chapter Thirteen: Mobilized 209

  Chapter Fourteen: The Reckoning 225

  Chapter Fifteen: A Night to Remember 243

  Chapter Sixteen: Driving Forces 259

  Chapter Seventeen: The Encounter 275

  Chapter Eighteen: Proof 293

  Chapter Nineteen: Reality Check 311

  Chapter Twenty: Ambush 327

  Chapter Twenty-One: Introspective Analysis 343

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Battle Plan 361

  Chapter Twenty-Three: In Motion 379

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Communication 395

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Valued Possession 411

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Invasion 427

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Showdown 445

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Acadian Rose 461

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Reconciliation 477

  Epilog 488

  Aliens in the Allagash

  Prologue

  A Possible Fiction Based on Impossible Facts

  by Gary Striker

  This manuscript bridges the gap between science and fiction, not by design, but by unexplainable phenomena. How do I know this? Because I was there! You decide, is it fact or fiction?

  My name is Gary Striker. That’s not a pen name. I am who I am. I’m not a writer. By some unexplainable compulsion and statistical improbability, I created a book. Be aware, it’s more than a book, it’s your survival guide.

  You will become profoundly immersed in living personas and intimate circumstances. You can’t escape. Emotions will connect apparitions with truth. But what is the truth? There is only the illusion of the holographic optical element created in your confused mind to stay the course. You are not on a mission to reconcile reality from imagination. It can’t be done.

  Throughout this work you will encounter various agencies, people, places, incidents, situations, and events. You are challenged to perform your own research. Is it coincidence? The people of the Allagash don’t think so. You will meet the roots of strength and unity. This foundation provides the cohesive force by which ‘Aliens in the Allagash’ was conceived.

  Is the Allagash real? It’s as real as the manuscript you are reading. It’s a place where independent people provide for themselves. They have to be self-reliant. As beautiful and invigorating as the land presents itself, it can be just that hostile. The Allagash can and does swallow up the uninitiated victim, never to be seen or heard from again. Unexplainable stories are never resolved.

  You are about to embark on an expedition that will take you somewhere beyond reality to just this side of fantasy. You will need to decide where you are at any point in time.

  Good luck, enjoy, and beware! You are about to meet the Aliens in the Allagash!

  Aliens the Allagash

  Chapter 1

  The End

  My name is Steve “The Animal” Slattery. From my name you can guess that I’m a tough guy. Anybody in my profession either has to be strong or stupid to survive. I haven’t yet decided which applies to me. Either way, I don’t take no shit from nobody, at least I hadn’t ‘till now.

  Steve is my middle name. ‘Clarence Steven Slattery’ is printed in bold letters across my forty-one year old birth certificate. Clarence is a name that belongs to people of class distinction. Unfortunately, I was faced with a different kind of class structure and ‘Clarence’ was never gonna make it in my world. What were my parents thinking? As a kid, I hung out with guys that had cool cowboy names like Fast Draw, Rebel, and Dusty. A young'un with the name Clarence needed to get street savvy in a hurry and had to be as tough as a twenty-five cent steak. A few expulsions and a trip or two to the Riverside Juvenile Detention Center only served to amplify an already aggressive temper.

  My father was a Master Sergeant stationed at March Air Force Base for much of my teen years. He was a military cop serving in the U.S.A.F. Security Forces. We had spent time at Lackland A.F.B. where he received his training, and where I received my early training, Texas style. It was there that I forged a constitution that Clarence would have to live by for the rest of his life. Needless to say, a kick-ass Master Sergeant had a low tolerance for any bullshit from his kid.

  I received my first expulsion at the Lackland A.F.B. elementary school for beating the crap out of two bullies. They wanted a piece of my hide after losing to us in a baseball game. When I got cornered by Billy the Bully, he took a pasting up side his head with a short piece of two-by-four that I found lying near the field at a construction site. His other creep friend missed a blow to the mid-section and beat it. What I didn’t know was that the bashing also included a few nails that were left in the business end of the lumber. My father found it justified and so did the Military Police, considering my age and the circumstances. The stupid bastard with the nail holes in his head, Billy the Bully, ratted on me at the base hospital. What did he rat on me for? I didn’t start the fight.

  It wasn’t the beating that got me expelled. It was a gallon of varnish in Wood Shop Class that did it. My buddy Frank and I very quietly dumped a gallon of varnish on Billy’s head while he was seated on the can in the little boys’ room. Three stalls set side by side had another very interesting personality. When the two end commodes got flushed at the same time, the center one exploded like Old Faithful. Billy was seated in the center stall. You can fill in the visuals.

  The only effective way to clean up the mess was to sponge it with newspapers. Billy looked like the West Texas version of a human waste burrito wrapped and rolled in today’s headlines. Frank and I got a two week vacation. It would have only been one week had we not sucked the loafers off his feet, which got shredded in a high power industrial shop vac. My old man was secretly proud of the fact that his son wouldn’t take an ounce of bullshit. I got extra homework duty and house arrest, but the mess hall was well stocked with
all my favorite goodies for the duration. Frank was an honored guest and visited every day.

  I did one hitch in the Marine Corps and barely got out with an honorable discharge. I was stationed at Camp Geiger for combat field training after boot camp at the Island. Imagine spending Christmas in Parris, as in Island? While at Geiger, the Base Commander’s daughter snuck into the enlisted club chasing some Sargent. The Sargent had his sights set on another target and got a bit abusive with the General’s daughter. I settled that argument the Slattery way. There wasn’t too much damage, but I had violated every code of rank in the Corps. The Sargent kept his busted mouth shut and never uttered the words, ‘Private Slattery’. The General’s daughter attached herself to me like a high powered magnet. That night was the last time I ever saw her, and I mean all of her. I was transferred out the next day to Camp Lejeune.

  By now, you probably made a few guesses as to my current profession. I’m a Private Dick. It figgers! What other choices did I have, considering the rap I took? After seventeen years with the L.A.P.D., my super cop duties ended abruptly on a hot rainy night while patrolling the East Side. I was charged with use of excessive force. Imagine? A dedicated cop just trying to stay alive and do his job, not to be confused with job satisfaction. For me it was all part of a night’s work. I beat the crap outa some creep who was whaling on a working gal from the ‘hood. He died. She didn’t. He was affectionately known as Johnny Angel. Johnny wasn’t my first victim, but certainly the most famous. Johnny Benavidas was a notorious cartel pimp who ofted his ladies if they even thought about dipping into the evening’s proceeds. He would provide the necessary corrective action for any reason that didn’t set well with him, including bad weather. Hence, a quick trip to the world beyond, complements of The Angel.

  Johnny was interwoven with influential connections that extended all the way to the DA’s office and beyond. He had family and a way to slide through the toughest of predicaments with ease. It would have been easier to nail slime to a wall. Johnny had connections in the department as well as the underworld. Nice things happened to those in power who showed appreciation for what Johnny was capable of. For years, certain enforcement regulations steered us around activities in the ‘hood. Nothing was off limits or beyond Johnny’s control. Enforcement decisions were made on just how mad he would get if we needed to press any investigation process, including murder! The relationship with Johnny was love-hate, depending on which side of the benefit table you happened to sit. Mysteriously, new Jaguars from the local dealer in Long Beach, yachts, diamonds, cash, and high dollar gratuities of all kinds would show up for those deserving public service individuals, without a traceable source of origin. It was truly an act of God! Praise the Lord! I never got a goddamn thing.

  I did get famous, however, it was after the fact. The L.A. Times ran an ugly story about my use of excessive force on two previous occasions. Both victims died. It was their sanctified opinion that the L.A.P.D. needed to get “The Animal” off the streets before he killed somebody else. “The Animal” stuck, and was seldom applied in a kindly manner by the uninformed.

  My super cop days were well over when I got subpoenaed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney to testify against the newly formed Angel Cartel, a tribute to better days gone by. It was risky. Say anything incriminating about the cops, and the end would come soon. Say anything about the bad guys, and I probably wouldn’t make it out of the court room. I had stories! It didn’t take long for the press to pick up on it either. A hot shot DA with his sights set on the Mayor’s Office had no idea what he was in for. Johnny’s implanted warriors made quick work of the prosecution’s case. Certain items of material evidence, testimony, investigative records, and anything else pertinent to the case were either altered, missing, or shown to have never existed.

  I was on foot heading back to my meager second floor office overlooking a Chinese restaurant and other eateries in a small courtyard. It was a short ride to downtown LA. My office wasn’t meager, it was a second floor two room dump for 350 bucks a month. It was also my home. I noticed a familiar, very well dressed business man who was apparently waiting down below my office. There was another stranger outfitted in fine dress silks and a bulging muscular build with a hit-man appearance, pacing nearby. The business type person approached me as if he recognized who I was and handed me a card titled “Angel Holdings, LTD”. His name was Cruz Benavidas. He requested a lunch date to “discuss a matter of great importance”. In my business, curiosity is the quickest route to the graveyard, but I was sparked and interested, considering where I came from, and that I didn’t have much to lose anyway, plus I was starving. Those were the good attributes! He asked if it would be ok for us to have his driver take us to his special luncheon place across town. My first name might be Clarence, but I wasn’t born stupid. He shifted posture and readily agreed to lunch at the Chinese Fortune Cookie Restaurant, a short walk across the courtyard.

  The smell of a good Chinese restaurant always made my mouth water, and today was no exception. Hot and Sour soup was routinely brought to my table for starters. Cruz requested the same. I introduced him to the very congenial owner of the establishment, who cultivated a relationship with me. For Ming, also known as Lucy, I was a trusted confidant that she could spill her daily woes on. Anything that was out of order with Lucy I would hear about. A certain wrath on a customer, a stray bullet slamming through her window, a contaminated love affair, or anything else that Lucy had on her mind was fair game. But she was good to me and I was often invited to share in her private culinary delicacies. Lucy was a hard worker and busted her ass seven days a week in that place. She was a good handy friend to have around.

  Cruz commented on how fabulous the soup was and said he never had better. He knew his way around a Chinese restaurant. Peking Duck with all the trimmings that went well beyond my lunch budget were on the way.

  “You killed my brother”, were Cruz’s first words related to his business request.

  I almost choked and reached for my piece neatly concealed under my arm beneath my cheap rayon sport coat. This was a mini Glock Model 27 auto handgun in 40 caliber S & W, a pocket cannon of sorts with the fire power necessary to blow Cruz’s head clean off his shoulders.

  “Relax”, he said without interrupting a sip of his soup. “You may have done us a favor. It was going to happen sometime. Johnny got greedy. Johnny had enemies. He forgot where he came from. He decided to take over the metal scrap export business in Long Beach. We tolerated this as a gesture that the entire group could benefit from, as it wasn’t producing to our expectations. But nothing came back to us and Johnny wanted a prime share of the docks. He wasn’t going to touch that operation, no way.” Cruz expounded on gory details to refresh my mind, and also to remind me of just who I was sharing this table with. “Johnny was getting reckless with his other business and put the whole operation at risk”, making a reference to his private prostitution ring. Cruz was an in-your-face hard hitter who left nothing for interpretation.

  I didn’t realize that the duck had been delivered to our table. I was mesmerized and fought to snap out of the trance that Cruz had lured me in to.

  “You could be of great service to us”, Cruz went on to say while tearing apart the duck with his illegal pearl handled pocket stiletto. Was Cruz about to make me a deal I couldn’t refuse? Almost any deal would be better than what I have now! “The D.A.’s case hinges on your testimony”. How did he know this? “Alicia Jimenez was one of Johnny’s working girls”. I clearly remembered the case. It was front page news in the L.A. Times for three days. Cruz continued, “You were the only material witness that saw anything, but got conveniently disqualified on a ‘technicality’, something to do with excessive force and impairment of judgement.” Cruz smiled, obviously recalling a pre-arranged victory for the bad guys. “You had a clear recollection of the crime, including an alleged sighting of me at the crime scene.” So that was it! A cold-case reinvestigation of the murder could put the whole
cartel into the State’s luxury accommodations for the rest of eternity.

  “What do you want”, I asked in sincere interest? Cruz was enjoying his Chinese rendition of a mallard and hardly heard the question.

  “Our new D.A., just like the last one, has her sights set on a fast track to the Mayor’s office and would like nothing better than to put us out of business in the process. She knows that a successful attack on Angel Holdings would clinch the deal, not to mention where she would like to see us sitting for a long time. My contact tells me that the prosecutor’s whole case rests on your testimony.” This was all news to me!

  Cruz had a way with the English language. It was not his first language. His command was impressive and likewise intimidating. How would I look on tomorrow’s front cover of the Times with three hundred bullet holes in me? My cheap rayon suit would certainly be the pick of any wardrobe consultant for that scene! Cruz was counting on the sure bet that this would be the pay back ticket that I couldn’t turn down. After all, what did the D.A.’s office do but to sell my testimony to the highest bidder? It’s the reason my entire apparel collection consists of two cheap suits and a pile of dirty underwear. The choices didn’t seem too appetizing no matter what I did. I could spend the rest of my miserable existence in a cage, or Cruz’s thugs would have me for the main course, sort of a Slattery tartar. But why didn’t he just kill me and solve the problem?