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[Writings]
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Stories by Jim Strahle There
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One of the things I love most about my son is his ability to force me to formulate into words the big questions we all ponder. So it was, when my son asked me about the meaning of life. I had to think about it for many weeks and the following was my answer. I once read a story by Gene Rodenberry, and he professed that the purpose of our existence is to spread intelligence throughout the universe. And he believed, that if his assumption was right, then it would also only make sense that the little pockets of intelligence be placed far enough apart that they couldn't find each other until they had also advanced enough to live in peace. I kinda like his idea. And to take it a little further, whether you are an amoeba, a lizard, or a human, it is your purpose in life to be the best you can possibly be. The meaning of life, therefore, is to make sure the next generation is better than the last. For the only way we can fulfill the purpose of our existence is to advance to the next level, whether or not it is humans that are to become the next tier. Life goes forward, trying thousands of experiments, most fail. We may, or may not be the link to the future, but our only chance of success is to always be moving forward, and to be better than before. Whether you bring children into this world or not, it is every human's job to assure those that follow are better than we were. If I'm right, then I fullfilled my destiny. My life had purpose and meaning, because both of my children have become better human beings than I. Give us a brain and an opposable thumb.... The bridge had a steady stream of cars as town folk drove out to see the river at flood stage. The spillway, usually a serene trickle dropping five or six feet, was now a torrent of churning hell. The water on the down side of the dam was only two feet lower than above the dam. Water boiled to the surface in the back wash. Logs were churning end over end, creating water spouts four feet in the air. Bob and I were intrigued. We had a few years of white water canoeing under our belt and the idea of paddling through the water haystacks seemed exciting. “I don’t think it could be done in a canoe, but I’ve got a rubber dingy that could handle it.” Bob said. “It wouldn’t tip?” I asked. “Not a chance. I’ve been out in the lake and tried tipping it over and couldn’t. I’d stake my life on it.” Little did I know, we would. We had always rented canoes and they came with paddles and life jackets. We had neither. We fashioned paddles in the garage. As for life jackets, if you’re going to ride in a boat that can not tip over, why would you need them? My wife thought it sounded exciting. After we went over the dam a couple of times, she’d like to try it. She packed up the play pen for our one year old daughter and set up on a cliff to the side of the dam. She brought the camera to capture the excitement. Bob and I pushed his two man raft in to the water and jumped in a hundred yards above the dam. We paddled to the center of the current. The bottom of the dingy was soft rubber and the weight of our bodies made deep depressions. I was surprised how pliable the boat was. About twenty yards above the dam I turned to Bob and said, “We’re (screwed).” He said, “Yep.” As the rubber raft went over the dam, it first arched in the shape of the dam, but just as suddenly, when the front of the raft hit the lower level, the raft folded. It took one deep plunge and then sprung open shooting us out of the raft and into the churning backwater. I was under water but I have no idea at what depth or even which direction was up. My eyes could only detect different shades of dark brown. Instantly there was light, I popped on the surface. I managed a single breath before being washed back into the dam and began the process again. Only total darkness, no sense of up or down, and churning water. Occasionally I would hit something, or maybe something would hit me. The bottom? Logs? I never knew. I don’t know how long I was immersed in the swirling chocolate but once again, I popped to the surface, managed a breath and was deposited back into the dam to repeat the cycle. The third time I surfaced, I saw bright yellow and grabbed for it. It was the raft bobbing against the dam. I held to a rope tied around the rim of the dingy and worked my way to the side away from the dam. There was Bob, also clinging to the raft and, for the moment, also hanging on to life. Our weight on the downside wasn’t much of a match for the tons of water pounding the up stream side. A crowd of onlookers were gathering on the bank. My wife managed one picture before going into a panic. Men would call out to us over the roar of the falls, “Look out for that tree!” The river at flood stage was filled with debris. Little by little the current pinning us against the falls was moving us slowly toward a pile of logs churning in the backflow. “Don’t go near those logs! Those logs will crush you!” We had no choice. We were at the mercy of the river. As we washed into the wood pile, we were able to work our way to the outside of the mass and slowly to shore. We walked up the embankment and could hear sirens. It was the fire department and highway patrol coming to our rescue. We later learned a man and his granddaughter were driving across the bridge and saw us go under. He went back in to town to summon help. I’m guessing we were out there twenty minutes or more. Bob put the raft in the back of the pickup and then lied still underneath it. The highway patrol officer came to me and said, “You know, you're awful damn lucky son.” “Yes sir. I know I am.” Back at the house Bob and I sat around my kitchen table. “Bob. You want to tell me that part again about that boat being impossible to tip over?” “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. I remember now, I had a sheet of plywood in the bottom to make it rigid,” he reflected. “Well you said you’d stake your life on it. We almost did.” It may be the dumbest thing I ever did. The point was brought home to me the next day. At work, an employee of mine had listened to the ordeal over his police scanner. “Hey Jim, did you hear about the two idiots that went over the dam yesterday?”
Every spring we looked forward to our annual canoe trip. We would try to get off work a little early on Friday to get ahead start on the six hour drive to Arkansas. Inevitably someone would put us behind, and so it was the year we had a caravan of six vehicles leaving town around 6 pm. It was during the CB radio craze, but only two of us had them, Hab and I. We decided to let Hab lead and we would bring up the rear. The other four vehicles without a radio would travel between us. Six hours later we are lost. We are somewhere in north Arkansas well after midnight and we are exhausted. Hab comes over the CB. “Strahle, I’m going up to channel 19 and see if I can find a local yokel who can give us directions.” My canoeing partner and I look at each other and then reach for the channel selector. We might as well listen to Hab’s chatter. “Uh.....This is Bobcat, looking for a local yokel. C’mon now.” Silence. “Uh yeah, this is Bobcat, looking for a local yokel. Come back.” I can’t resist. I disguise my voice and say, “Uh, yeah. This here’s a local yokel. Come back.” Hab jumps at the opportunity to connect, “Uh yeah, local yokel. This here is Bobcat. We’re trying to find the Buffalo River and we’re traveling southbound on Hwy 7, north of Jasper.” I glance out the window, “Uh yeah Bobcat, have ya come to a...a....Ford Country Billboard?” “I just passed it!” Hab yells. “Well you’ve gone too far,” I say. Hab’s brake lights come on, then the brake lights on all four cars between us. I jump back down to CB channel 11 and cue the mic, “What’s going on Hab?” Hab says, “We’ve gone too far. We need to turn around.” He reaches out his window and gives an arm signal to the others that we need to turn around. One by one, each vehicle makes a three point turn, followed by us and soon we are heading northbound. Hab and I both move back to channel 19. “Uh...okay local yokel. This is Bobcat and we got turned around. We’re heading northbound on Hwy 7. Come back.” I disguise my voice once again, “Uh okay now.......have ya passed a....a...T....on the rightside?” “I just passed it!” Hab exclaims. “Well you’ve gone too far again,” I say. Hab’s brake lights come on once again, followed by the lights of the other four vehicles. I quickly go back to channel 11. “Strahle? You aren’t going to believe this. But we’ve gone too far again.” says Hab. “You’re kidding!” I say. “Nope.” Once again Hab sticks his arm out the window and signals to the other drivers we have to turn around. The others are confused and mad. Without the radio communication, they have no idea what is going on. They start laying on their horns, honking their frustrations at Hab. Meanwhile back in my car, we are laughing so hard we have tears streaming down our faces. Hab goes back to Channel 19 and once again announces his new direction. “Okay local yokel, we are southbound.” He is waiting for a response, but we are laughing so hard, I can’t talk. I am trying to stall long enough to gather my composure so I can talk. Finally I cue the mic, but can’t hold it in and burst into laughter.. Hab recognizes the laugh. “Strahle, you bastard.”
In 1967 I was protesting the war and went into the Marine Reserves to escape the draft. I never took boot camp very serious - it made me laugh. There would be a drill instructor four inches in front of my face yelling at the top of his lungs, "I can't hear you!" and I would get tickled and laugh. They told me I did not have a military mind. I said, "and that's a bad thing, right?" They said, "Strahle, we're sending you on a little picnic." They sent me to "Motivation.“ Whenever you meet an old Marine, they will know someone, who knew someone, who was sent to the Motivation Platoon. I am one of the proud, the few, the Marines, that went. I knew I was in trouble when we passed signs that said, "No one allowed beyond this point. No cameras allowed." We were force marched, carrying a shovel and two metal buckets. We had two canteens of water around our waist. We held the shovel out in front of us. The metal buckets hung on our fore arms. There were maybe twenty of us and maybe ten drill instructors. We were marched three to four miles to where all the latrines of the base emptied into a lagoon. We were told to fill our buckets with the water from the lagoon - human feces and all. The smell alone was awful. We then were told to pour the urine and feces into a pile of dirt and ordered to stir the mixture with our bodies. We were forced to crawl on our stomachs through the slop towards the drill instructor's feet. He continually moved in a circle around us so that you had to keep crawling back through the mixture. A ninety degree turn forced bodies that were parallel to suddenly be kicking the guy next to you in the face. As this was going on, the guys on the outside of the circle were picked up and thrown into the middle of us. One drill instructor was swinging a pack full of dirt above his head. As the guy in front of me moved past him, he lowered the pack and hit him square in the face. The guy was instantly knocked unconscious or killed. He went limp and we carried him to a stretcher. I never saw him again. I was kicked in the mouth and it split my lip and the blood poured across my chin, and neck. By the time the blood ran down my chest it was eight inches wide. Some guy went psycho and was curled up in a little ball crying. In fact several of the men were crying. They took me over to one of them and forced him to look at me and said, "This guy's bleeding all over himself and you don't see him crying, do ya?" More guys passed out from heat exhaustion and the water in the canteens we carried was used to pour over their faces to try to get them to come to. We were not allowed to take a drink. Four guys were sent from my company and only two of us came back. The last time I saw the other two, they were unconscious. As we left, seven to eight people are lying limp in the mess. On our return, several more fell out. One guy, a couple of people ahead of me, was starting to fall and they grabbed him and pulled him by his ears until he passed out. They let go and he fell and we all trampled him. Bruises were already appearing on our fore arms where the metal handles of the buckets cut into the skin. As bad as this was, the worst was yet to come. Because of the amount of blood all over me, I was used as an example. All of the San Diego Marine Corps barracks were called to line up. With blood all over my face, chin, and chest and with human feces and filth all over me, I was paraded past every one of them as an example of what would happen to them if they didn't shape up. From the heat exhaustion and the loss of blood, I could barely walk. I could tell by the looks on the faces of the guys I passed I must have been pretty bad. It was a good experience for me because ever since that day, whenever I have a bad day, I always look back and say, "Today isn't as bad as that one day." I recently attended a high scholl re-union where I ran into a friend who went through boot camp with me. We were talking about my day at motivation and I told him what I learned. He agreed. He said every time he thinks he is having a bad day, he stops and says, "Today ain't as bad as the one day Strahle had."
Corporal Stevens had to go. He recently returned from Vietnam and was a
bit My buddy, Bill Lewis, carries it to the next step. "No way!" Another one of the guys chimed in, "Well, Pat
Rapp can
almost do one." Things were going as planned. Suddenly Sergeant Kline
joins us and begins listening to our conversation. We give each other a
nervous glance, trying to decide whether to continue. We do.
We were cruising the streets of our new hometown, Kansas City. David Chester and I went to high school together but the past few years he had been in Arkansas, and me in Springfield, Missouri. We decided to seek our fortunes in the big city. We were sort of doing a little apartment hunting. On this particular afternoon in October of 1968, I had remarked how ‘stuck up’ the Kansas City girls were. How could you flash them a smile if they wouldn’t even make eye contact? As we came to a red light near the Nelson Art Gallery, a car of five girls inched forward in the lane to our left. “They won’t even pull along side us,” I sighed. Sure enough, the car set back from Chester’s Austin-Healey Sprite as we all waited for the light to change. We turned right on Main and as we hit 39th Street I recognized the car of a co-worker I had just met at my new job. We pulled over and got out of our car to shoot the breeze. We were in the street talking when a car whizzed by and honked. Sure enough it was the shy girls from the stop light on Brushcreek At Main and Linwood, we cruised Nu-way’s Drive-in, then down to Gillham for Sydney’s. Maybe twenty minutes later, as we continued downtown, I saw a, now familiar, green car cross three blocks ahead. “Chester! Catch up to ‘em. That’s the car that honked!” Soon we were side-by-side and I had to think of something fast. “Can you tell us where the ASB Bridge is?” The redhead sitting shotgun turned to her friends and then to us. “We’ll show you.” Crossing the bridge bought me a little more time.As we crossed the bridge, we pulled along side of them. “Can you tell us where the Northgate Apartments are?” Once again the redhead turned to her friends, then to us. “We’ll find it.” The girls wove their way around North Kansas City for maybe thirty minutes with us in tow before they finally gave up and pulled into a parking space. We pulled along side. I confessed I knew where the apartments were, but we did need their help. We didn’t know anything about looking for an apartment and if they would just go with us they could point out things we wouldn’t be aware of. We were, afterall the out-of-towners. The girls held another conference and then agreed to accompany us. Chester and I, and the five girls, toured the apartment. We didn’t take the apartment but we did like two of the girls. The redhead was my favorite. “What’s your name?” “Joan.” “Joan what?” Her eyes rolled and she began to stammer. “Come on. Your real name.” “Joan Davidson.” “Well there are a lot of Davidsons in the phone book. What street do you live on?” She paused again. “Come on,” I urged. Finally she gave me a street. We parted company but, two of the girls chose to stay with us. Chester’s car was a two seater and we spent several hours in the small sports car, winding our way around KC taking them home. When I finally made it to a phone, around 10 P.M. I called Joan. “How would you like to go to a Jimi Hendrix concert at Municipal Auditorium next Saturday?” Joan said ‘yes.’ We had a date. It wasn’t often I was able to lock up a date a week in advance. Around Wednesday, as a primer for our big date, I called Joan to see if she’d like to go for an ice cream. “No.” “Well okay, but we’re still on for Saturday, right?” “No.” “What’s the matter? Silence. “Do you think I’m married or something?” “No.” “Are YOU married?” “No” “Then what’s the matter?” Silence. “Oh, you can’t talk, because your parents are near?” “Uh-huh.” At least I understood what we were doing. I proceeded to ask only ‘yes’ and ‘no’ questions. Through the process of elimination, I was able to determine Joan had decided we couldn’t date because we hadn’t met properly. Exasperated, I tried a final plea. “Joan, you are the only girl I know in Kansas City. I already have the tickets. If you don’t go out with me. I’m out the money for the tickets. “You already have the tickets?” “Yep.” “Okay. I’ll go.” “Then if we’re going out Saturday, how about going for the ice cream tonight?” “Well....okay.” I then raced out and bought the Hendrix tickets before picking her up for the ice cream. Ten months later, we were married. Since then, it has occurred to me many times over the last thirty years we’ve been married, if I hadn’t lied about the bridge, lied about the apartment, lied about the tickets, I would never have had the chance to show her what a nice, honest, young man I really was.
It was a cold, chilly December night. Clusters of snowflakes blew through the dark sky forming snow drifts waist high. Frost covered our windows on the inside glass. It was a perfect night to stay in and cuddle. Joan said, “It’s time!” I threw her suitcase in the back of our truck and went back to collect Joan. The snow was deep, but I knew we could make it. We made it to the middle of our street. The truck was stuck in a snow drift diagonally blocking traffic from both directions. Joan may be delivering, the truck wasn’t. Plan B. We left the truck in street, and walked back up the driveway and got into our other vehicle and attempted to back out once more. We made it to the hospital. We were in the prep room. Joan had her fists clenched around the metal bars, wrenching in pain. It was just like in the movies. Back then, husbands were just people who got in the way. I was asked to go boil water or something. When I got back, Jenny, our daughter entered this world, and suddenly we knew the world would be a better place because she was in it. Two days later, we are lying in bed. It is Jenny’s first night in her new crib, in her new home. Actually she was crying, and had been crying for some time. It was probably only thirty minutes, but for us it seemed to be hours. We were stumped. She had a dry diaper. She couldn’t be hungry again. Joan and I quizzed each other about what should we do. “Should we go get her?” “No, mom said we’ll spoil her. “ “Well Jolene’s a nurse and she said you can’t spoil a baby that young.” We lie in bed, and listen to the cries. We discuss. Meanwhile Jenny cries. “Joan, this is our first night home with our child. We have our whole lives ahead of us. The terrible two’s, the preschool years, the pre-teen years, the teen years, the teen years, oh God the teen years! And here we are on our first night and already we don’t know what to do.” In unison, Joan and I both said, “We’re in trouble.”
I might have been a difficult kid to raise. I wasn’t so much a mean kid, I just had a vivid imagination and it most likely caused some stress among my family members. For instance, I once placed dry ice between the storm window, and the interior window, of our home. I waited til my mom pulled in the driveway and began pouring water from the garden hose on to it. Of course it began to spew smoke and I began yelling the house was on fire! 'Seemed like a fun idea at the time. Another time, my friend Chester and I spent an hour unwrapping 4-10 shotgun shells to collect the gunpowder. We placed the gunpowder in a pipe, put the cap of a shotgun in one end, and placed packing in the other, using a ball of clay as a projectile. We placed the pipe on a big rock in the yard, and put two more rocks on top of it. Chester held a screwdriver to the cap, while I hit it with a hammer. Ka-Boom! We were knocked on out butts. I remember holding up my hands, counting fingers and being relieved when I got to ten. My mom burst out of the house and was yelling at me but my ears were ringing so much I couldn’t hear what she said. We had blown the ball of clay into the side of my parent’s house, shattering the siding. But most of my schemes were done to my sister, Julie. Once I took a roll of kite string and after beginning at her bedroom door knob I strung it though the ceiling light, across to the curtain rods, under the bed, etc. Once I had some good stringers I was able to weave all 1000 feet of string throughout the room. It took me some time just to crawl through the maze to get out the door. As soon as my sister returned home I dialed the phone in her room and then yelled, “Julie! Your phone’s ringing!” She bounded up the stairs and burst through her door to get to the phone. She didn’t make it. In fact she had only made it about six feet. I slowly approached her room. I peaked through her door. All the curtains and the light fixture had come down on her and she was wrapped in string like a cocoon. Still my favorite has to be the night of the bucket. I was 14 and she was 16. She had a date and while she was gone, Chester and I ran a string from my bedroom window on the second story, through a pulley and then tied to the handle of a metal bucket. In the bucket I placed a water balloon. We did a test run and as we pulled the string, the bucket tipped and the water balloon fell on the front step, right where someone on a date would likely pause to say good night. We placed a new water balloon in the bucket and then waited for hours for my sister to return from her date. Finally, sometime after midnight they arrived. I leaned out the window to make sure I didn’t pull the string too early. Sure enough, they paused, right on target for a goodnight kiss. I yanked the string. 'Yank,' rather than 'pull' is the operative word. Rather than tip the bucket, I snapped the string. Konk! The heavy metal bucket hit my sister’s head. She goes crazy, yelling and screaming. Chester and I scramble to our beds and pretend to be asleep. My sister is crashing through the dining room, knocking over chairs, working her way to the steps to come upstairs. I heard several threats made against my life. As she stumbled to the kitchen I heard my mom intercept her. Mom was trying to stay between Julie and me but when I heard footsteps on the stairs I knew I was dead. There was the sound of a pretty good tackle, along with a lot of commotion and I opened one eye to see what was going on. I could see my sister’s arms stretched out, digging her fingers into the shag carpeting, pulling her body forward, inch by inch. I realized my mom must have had her arms wrapped around my sister’s ankles and Julie was having to drag my mom up the stairs. Julie’s head comes into view. She has a cut on her forehead with a little trickle of blood running down her face. She is still screaming about all the terrible things she is going to do to me. Her date must have been left standing on the front porch wondering what kind of lunatic family this must be. And me? I’m praying to my mom, “Please don’t let go of Julie’s ankles.”
Back in the 80s when the VCR craze was just getting started, I owned an electronics store and spent a lot of time putting customers in touch with the new technology. Some folks were more in touch than others. Questions like, “How does a VCR record TV shows when the TV isn’t on?” or “How can it record in color when my TV is a black and white?” were common. But my favorite question came from a woman who asked, “If I record my VCR while it’s connected to my little TV in the kitchen, will it be small when I play it back on my big TV in the front room?” Another customer caught me off guard and I had to think about where the question came from. She was holding a catalog in her hand and she asked, “If I buy a stereo from you, can I get cloth on both speakers?” I didn’t grasp why she asked me. Then I looked at the catalog she was holding and then looked around my store and every picture of a stereo and every stereo on my floor had the grill cloth removed on one speaker cabinet so the consumer can see the speakers. I suppose if I was a good salesman, I would have said, “Well I could get that for you for another $25.” I was sharing tales with a friend who was in the video department of a grocery store. They were running a promotion where you received a free video rental with the purchase of $10 or more of groceries. A little old lady had her groceries and had received her free movie and was heading for the door. She spies my friend and says, “Now these will play on old TVs too, right?” “Yes ma’am, they will play on any TV,” he assured her. “Well then, where do you stick it?” The 43 names on the Homeland Security bulletin looked like all the other lists. As Administrative Aid to the Homeland Security Office of the Kansas City Police Department, Sgt Todd Marks had posted at least 12 lists already. In the short four [four short] months since being transferred from the Career Criminal Section, the new assignment [had] distanced him even further from the excitement of the streets. Watching the 30 copies spit out of the machine, one name did catch his eye; Mohammad Satar Ahmadzai. Unless Ahmadzai was a common Arab name, Todd had met him just months ago at his brother Jack’s wedding. Upon introductions, Jack had slaughtered his name. On the third attempt he Americanized it to “Oh-my daisy.” Ahmadzai was a co-worker of Jack’s at Trigen, the coal-fired steam generation plant in downtown KC. Todd wondered if it could be the same guy. Being on the list didn’t mean much, really. Just being a cousin of one of the 9/11 hijackers is enough to get you posted. For the first time, Todd actually read the script at the top of the page. “For Law Enforcement Use Only. Not to be publicly distributed. Persons listed below are known to be, or have been, in the Kansas City area. No action required." Todd spelled the name for his brother. “Is it your buddy?” “Well, I think so. Why, is he in trouble?” Jack asked. Todd explained what he knew of the list. “I hate to let you down, but Ahmadzai is cool. In fact, he’s probably the most knowledgeable, hardest working guy we have. He has improved our system ten fold. You know how in the movies you always see steam coming out of the manhole covers in the gritty city [gritty-city ?] winter shots? You never see that in Kansas City. Ahmadzai has replaced hundreds of valves in our system. It saves us thousands of dollars a month. In fact, our system is so tight now, we have even had a relief valve pop in the SRS office of the Missouri State Offices. That never could have happened before Ahmadzai.” The Missouri State Offices were the last in the line of the downtown steam distribution system. Emanating from 3rd and Grand, the steam lines warmed several downtown office buildings and almost all of the government buildings; City Hall, City Court, The Jackson County Courthouse, Police Headquarters, the Richard Bolling Federal Building and finally the Fletcher Daniel State Office Building. “So how does a guy from Saudi Arabia become in expert in steam heat?” Todd asked. “Those guys get a free college education, and engineers are a dime a dozen coming out of the Mid-East.” The conversation ended, and he put it out of his mind. Then last July, Todd was in the break-room break room when he encountered Officer Steve Thomas. They had gone through the academy together, and they had both been on the same career path until Thomas’ reserve unit was called to active duty. His unit had just returned intact, and now he was back at the PD working in the Patrol Unit. They had a chance to catch up. “I spent 18 months in Afghanistan attacking deserted camps and empty caves. The locals gave them plenty of time to clear out long in advance of our arrival. They were well funded [well-funded] too. You think of a cave like what a caveman would have lived. These were totally finished rooms with gas lights and steam heat.” “Steam heat in a cave? Todd asked. “Doesn’t it only get down to something like 56 degrees in a cave?” “We thought it was weird too. Another thing, it was like they had to buy everything one at a time, like at a garage sale. One room would have a brand new, enclosed housing, while the next room would have an old radiator out of a hotel or something.” Sgt. Marks was puzzled. What’s with the steam heat? He Googled ‘steam heat.’ Maybe there’s a renowned heating and cooling engineering university in the Mid-east. Maybe there were tight controls on other types of energy. He found nothing. He wondered if there could be a connection between the Ahmadzai, the steam expert on the Homeland Security list and the abandoned cave with steam heat. What could they do, steam us to death? Over his lunch hour he walked the five blocks from police headquarters to Trigen. The October wind made him stuff his hands in his pockets. He had to be buzzed in. At least there are some security measures there. As he walked along the catwalk he looked down on the battleship grey valves, pipes and tanks. The hum and hiss would make conversation difficult, but he followed his brother through the maze of tubes. He never saw another soul. Across from Police Headquarters, he had watched as the Federal Building became a fortress after 9/11. Concrete bunkers ensured an explosive-laden vehicle could never breach the perimeter. Yet at Trigen, pipes connecting all of the government buildings didn’t have so much as a security guard. Again he dismissed it. It’s not like a terrorist could crawl through a steam pipe. Back at work, he wondered if the system could be used to do evil. He wondered if terrorists wondered as well. Using his Homeland Security title and savvy, Sgt. Marks called the one contact he knew on the local level at the FBI, agent Jeff Lemery. Agent Lemery was coasting. Two years from retirement, the last thing he’d want is to make waves. Marks asked if the FBI could tell him how many, if any, of the names on the FBI’s terrorist list had a connection to commercial heating and cooling systems. Lemery pointed out the FBI was in the business of gathering information but they weren’t too big on distributing information. Todd confessed it was probably a his runaway imagination, but asked if there could be could there be a link to the steam in caves half way around the world and the steam in Kansas City . “What are they gonna do, steam us to death?” Lemery laughed. Todd hung up. Todd called Sgt. Glin Tatum, Philadelphia PD. They met at Northwestern University months ago when they had both attended training for Homeland Security. He asked a favor; Would Glin go through one of the lists he has in Philly and check occupations? Philly was ahead of KC. The Philly PD adds the occupations when they receive the list. Two of his 52 were commercial heating and cooling engineers. “But the most famous guy on our list is Abdul Hamid Fuad. He was identified on a videotape recovered by CNN. The tape shows him with Osama bin Laden in doing tests where they were perfecting killing dogs with poison gas. Odorless, colorless, lethal gas.” Sgt. Todd Marks froze at his desk. “Oh my god! Could it be possible? What if there was a plot to deliver poison gas through the Trigen system! The replacement of connections that leaked... The increase in pressure... The ability to blow relief valves spilling poison gas throughout the government district... County, city, and federal employees all use the same system. Furthermore, most of the commanders on the KCPD are staffed at police headquarters. Almost everyone is trained in Homeland Security, including Sgt. Marks. And a bonus; at police headquarters most of the commanders on the Kansas City Police Department are staffed there, including almost everyone trained in Homeland Security. Including Sgt. Marks. Todd had to compose himself. It was just too insane, too diabolical. He was able to go full circle and imagined [imagine] the embarrassment to the department he would cause if he was wrong. Of course there was also Ahmadzai, the hardest working, smartest guy at Trigen. Sgt. Marks retrieved the list again, and one by one began to Google each name on the Kansas City list. A cab driver; a dentist; two unknowns; and Dr. Muktar Nasim, Doctorate in Bioscience, NewCastle, England. It was time he told Tammie. They had been married two years, but it still felt like a honeymoon. She worked across the street, at the Action Center in City Hall. They were able to commute together. If it wasn’t hadn’t been for the growing paranoia inside his head, he could have said life was good. As they walked to the car the next morning, the dew was heavy on the windshield, in just a few more weeks it would be frost. And with frost, came steam heat. He began with an odd request. “Can you have the heat turned off in your office?” Todd asked. “Are you serious? We fight over the thermostat at home, and I am already wearing a sweater at work because they won’t turn on the heat yet.” “Have you ever operated a gas mask?” “Todd, what is this all about?” It sounded crazy even as the words left his lips. But so had the idea of flying an airline full of passengers into the World Trade Center. “Todd, you’ve got to tell your major what you know!” Tammie pleaded. “That’s just it. I don’t know anything. I’ve got to get to the truth, no matter which way it goes. And I have to do it in such a way as to not destroy my career and Ahmadzai’s life as well.” The new Tibiron system is for law enforcement use only. Every search can be traced. Sgt. Marks felt his query was a justifiable search; He just hoped he could convince his superiors if he was caught. The display presented the motor vehicle information and a home address. Both Ahmadzai and Dr. Nasim lived north of the River. Typically upwind from downtown, Todd thought. “I’ve got to get a grip!” Dr. Nasim lived in a gated community. From his own experience, Todd knew there wasn’t much crime here. Yet posted at the grocery store was an odd coincidence. There seemed to be a flurry of lost dogs. to be continued....
When walking through town, one looks around. When walking on a beach, one looks within. If you think a relationship is good it probably is. If you think a relationship is bad, it will be. When a relationship is nearing its end, go out classy, not clingy. When you meet someone you think is a '10' there is a side you haven't seen. We're all '5's
Copyright(c) 2003 Strahle Productions. All rights
reserved.
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