Federal Protection Program

By Ed Carlson

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This story is purely fictitious. The names used herein are for character

identification and should not be construed as real people, alive or dead.

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I couldn’t live with myself any longer. My husband had done a lot of things that he shouldn’t have and things that I loathed because of my Christian principled upbringing. I had arrived at the point of hating him, and myself as well, for putting up with it. It was then that I made the call that would change my life forever. Sure, I could have gone on living with him, but I simply was fed up with his bragging about his deeds. I clearly remember making the fateful call. That’s when I first met Agent Goodfellow.

Our first meeting was in a small, out-of-the-way restaurant. We sat in a back booth with a large window that had a commanding view of the wheat fields. He took copious notes as I talked. His recorder sitting on the table was catching each word that I said. When I finished, I remembered him saying: “You know, they’re going to try and kill you for this. Are you still willing to testify if we bring an indictment?”

I had already moved out and taken a small apartment—much different living conditions than our opulent home—but at least I felt like a huge millstone was being lifted from around my neck. I had the feeling though that someone was always watching and that I was being tailed.

I first testified before the grand jury, and once the indictment was issued, I testified before the judge, jury, and the people that I was accusing. Even though they tried to rebut my testimony, I held my ground and told my story to the jury unwaveringly. Their bank of defense attorneys was brutal in the cross examination, but I was not shaken, and I even weakened their case by my answers to some of the questions they should not have asked. All during my time on the stand, my ex-husband and his cronies gave me icy stares that looked like they would kill me with their bare hands if given the opportunity. The jury brought in conviction on all counts, and stiff sentences were handed down. They all would be in jail for a long time. That is, if multiple concurrent life sentences are a long time. My actions also cost some of his other cronies a lot of money.

I thought I could finally get on with my life when I walked out of the courthouse. When I arrived home, the letter was waiting for me propped up on the kitchen table of my locked apartment. I immediately called Agent Goodfellow. I was hysterical by the time he arrived at my apartment to examine it. He was as concerned as I was as he read the graphic nature of the threats made by people that I knew wouldn’t hesitate a minute to carry them out. He made a quick call for officers to guard me again. He left shortly after the other agents arrived. I was beginning to wonder if I had done the right thing again. It was a thought that has crossed my mind many times in these last six months.

I was really shaken when I received a phone call from Agent Goodfellow the next morning. He said the word on the street was that there was a contract out on my life—a contract with a million-dollar price tag. He wanted to come back to my apartment to talk about his idea.

I was a nervous wreck by the time he arrived. He said that he wanted to put me in the witness protection program. He said that they would do some plastic surgery to change my facial appearance, then relocate me to a different part of the country. I readily agreed. Hell, I would have agreed to anything that would get the mob off my back.

I was checked in to a private hospital, and the last thing I remember was a nurse giving me a shot and telling me I would become sleepy. When I awoke, my face felt strange. Agent Goodfellow was at my side. He told me all went well, and I would soon begin my new life. I asked him for a mirror to see my new self. I still had blue eyes, but now my hair was blond and much shorter. My face was fully covered with bandages. I was a bit apprehensive about my new face and was dying to see it. Agent Goodfellow sensed my apprehension and called a nurse in. She talked to me for a minute and asked some questions about how I was feeling, then left the room. She came back shortly with a hypodermic syringe with a long needle. She had me roll over on my side while she gave me the shot in my backside. Almost instantly, I became sleepy.

I was awakened by someone wrestling me. I tried to see who it was, but there was a bright light in my face, and I couldn’t see a damn thing. Soon there was tape over my eyes, and when I tried to take it off, my hands were bound behind my back. I was forced to stand up, and I felt them putting a robe over my shoulders. They started leading me out of my room and pushing me roughly down the corridor. I screamed for help, but no one answered my pleas for help. I desperately wondered what had happened to the guard.

We must have been waiting for the elevator because I heard it ding before the door opened. I was pushed in; I felt the car drop suddenly, then come to a sudden stop. I was still pleading when I was forced out of the elevator car and down a corridor. I didn’t know for sure where we were, but there was a strong smell of antiseptic. We walked through several doors. My robe and hospital gown were ripped off by someone with rough hands, and I was standing there nude. My hands were untied, and I was forced to lie down on a cold metal surface. I began to struggle and was promptly strapped into place with my arms stretched out at right angles from my body. I soon found that my struggle to get away was futile.

A loud booming voice said: “Stephanie, you’ve been a bad girl. You’ve cost me a lot of money. I was going to have you killed, but that would be too easy. I want you to be a walking notice to everyone who might think of crossing me like you did. Every day of your life, you’re going to remember this until one day, when you least expect it, I am going to kill you, slowly and painfully.”

“What are you going to do to me?” I asked in a shaky, pleading voice.

There was no reply, but I heard the sound of rustling on the other side of the room and the sound of metallic objects. Suddenly something was being put around each arm about three inches from my shoulder and was being cinched extremely tight. It hurt a lot, but the pain suddenly became unbearable as I felt my flesh being cut away. I tried to stay conscious through the unbelievable pain, but the last thing I remember was the high pitch sound of a saw running.

When I woke up, I was in more pain than I had ever felt before. I felt like I was going to pass out again. I could see again, and I looked around and tried to figure out where I was. Agent Goodfellow was standing there.

“What happened?” I asked groggily.

“They jumped the guards and knocked them out. They also incapacitated the staff with a little ether. They took you down to the operating room. That’s where we found you.”

“Oh my God! They didn’t.” I looked at my heavily bandaged shoulders. “OH NO! SHIT, THEY CUT OFF MY ARMS!!!!!!”

“I’m sorry,” Agent Goodfellow said sheepishly.

“Can’t you have them sew my arms back on?” I pleaded. “I’ve seen it on TV. I know they can.”

“I assure you we would if we could,” he said. “The problem is that we don’t have your arms. They took them.”

“What do you mean they took them!” I yelled.

“They took your arms with them when they left. We don’t have anything to sew back on. I am sorry.”

“My God, what am I going to do without arms? They said that they were going to torture me and kill me slowly. They said that they were going to leave me like this for a while for everyone to see as a warning not to cross them. Damn it, what am I going to do?”

“We’ll protect you,” Agent Goodfellow said confidently.

“Shit yes! Look at me! They cut my fucking arms off while you were protecting me. What kind of protecting job do you call that?”

“We misjudged them,” he said, sheepishly looking down at his feet. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll do your damn job and provide me with proper protection!”

OK is all he said as he turned and walked out of the room leaving me by myself. I looked down at the bandages again and began to cry. Every time I moved my shoulders, they hurt like hell. Soon my crying became sobbing. I guess I cried myself back asleep.

When I awoke, it didn’t seem like very much time had passed. A doctor was standing across the room looking at some x-rays. He turned and looked at me and smiled. He introduced himself as Dr. Jones as he walked across the room carrying the x-rays.

“We need to do some reconstruction on those brutal amputations that those nice folks did to you. All we have done so far is stop the bleeding and wrap you up until you could help with some decisions. We’ve purposely had you on reduced pain medication to help you think clearly.”

“What kind of decisions? My arms are cut off short and there’s nothing left to sew back on. What’s there to decide?”

“Well, the short stubs of bone that they left are sticking out and need to be shortened so that we can bring a skin flap down over the end of your arm stubs.”

“How much shorter?”

He held up one of the x-rays and said, “We’re going to have to take most of what they left to do it right.”

“You mean I wouldn’t have any usable arm stubs?”

“They cut your arms off so short that they didn’t give us much to work with. One alternative would be to take some skin off of your thighs and do a skin graft.”

“No, that’s not acceptable. I don’t want my legs carved up too. What else can you do?”

“We could completely remove the humerus bone from the shoulder socket. That would leave depressions where your shoulders had been. The other thing we could do would be to shorten the bone up and pull the remaining skin and muscle down and leave you with rounded nubs where the top of your arms used to be.”

“What you’re saying is that I won’t have any usable arm stubs no matter what you do?”

“I’m afraid that’s what I’m saying. They cut your arms off so short that we don’t have any way of making workable stubs.”

“Well shit,” I said, lying there trying to picture myself. “If we go with the rounded nubs scenario, will my shoulders be as broad as they were before?”

“Almost. Maybe a half inch narrower,” he replied. “Completely removing the bone would leave you with considerably narrower shoulders.”

“This can’t be happening to me. All I’ve done is tell the truth. Why me?” I closed my eyes and thought for a minute. “OK. Let’s go for the rounded nub scenario.”

“I’ll assemble the team,” he said. “We’ll do it this afternoon.”

He left the room and me alone with my thoughts. Why in the hell had I done it or even gotten involved with that overbearing son of a bitch in the first place? We never had a good marriage, at least not the one I had always dreamed of. I only wanted the little cottage with the white picket fence, not the mansion inside the ten-foot high fence with the guard dogs roaming the grounds. I had always wanted a simple life. Not him, mister flash. He had to show me off like a prize he had won in a shooting gallery. Everyone said that I really did have a nice figure and great legs. I guess maybe I was just a prize to him. Now look at me, waiting for them to come and take me away to finish cutting my arms off. Hell, all I did was tell the truth, just like Mom and Dad always taught me to do. A nurse came in and gave me a shot and left me alone again.

I must have drifted back to sleep because when I awoke my bed was being pushed down the hallway. The ceiling was going by as I looked up. Dr. Jones was walking alongside of me and looked down and smiled. I managed a smile back. When we were in the elevator, he said: “We’ll soon be giving you another shot that is part of the anesthesia. It will send you to never-never land and help you to completely relax.”

“How long will the surgery take?” I asked.

“We should have you in the recovery room by four,” he said, looking at his watch. “You should be waking about four-thirty. I’ll see you then.”

The elevator stopped, and he got off first, then my bed was in motion again. I lifted my head to look around. The corridor was full of uniformed policemen. They rolled my bed into a pre-op room, and a nurse gave me a shot in my thigh. The doctor was right; I almost instantly relaxed, and I had to close my eyes to keep the room from spinning around. The next thing I knew, I was being moved into the operating room. They placed me on the cold operating table. A nurse started an IV in my leg. The anesthesiologist came into the room.

“I’m going to do an injection into the IV, and when I do, I want you to start counting backward from one hundred,” he said as he started an injection into the IV Line. “Begin counting.”

“One hundred . . . ninety-nine . . . ninety-eight . . . ninety-seven . . .”

“Come on Stephanie, wake up.” It was Dr. Jones’s voice, but it sounded like he was a million miles away. “Open your eyes.” He was closer now. “Stephanie, you can do it.” Much closer now. “Wake up.” My eyes fluttered open, then closed again. I opened them again and looked up at Dr. Jones standing over me. He smiled and said: “Everything went fine. You have two beautiful shoulders.”

I managed a sleepy smile and said, “Thank you doctor.”

This time, I wasn’t in as much pain but my shoulders felt bound. My mouth was dry, and I asked for a glass of water. The nurse had me suck on a wet towel. It helped a little, but I was dying for a big glass of water. They told me a lot of water would make me sick.

In a little while, my bed was moved to my room. It was early evening when Agent Goodfellow came into my room. “They tell me the operation went well.”

“If you call getting your arms chopped completely off going well, I guess it did,” I said. “If you guys had been doing your job properly, I’d still have both my arms.”

“ I know,” he said. “I feel terrible about it.”

“Not as bad as me. I’m the one who doesn’t have arms,” I snapped back. “Are you sure I’m being taken care of now?”

“Yes. We’re doing everything we can,” he said. “The Director will be here tomorrow to personally see that you’re being well watched. I’ll probably lose my job over this mess.”

I didn’t reply, but he knew what I was thinking. He looked at his feet and walked out the door. He said something to the two guards right outside the door. The nurse came in and fed me a light dinner. Life without arms was going to be a real challenge. Some of their good medicine helped me to drift off to sleep.

In the morning, the nurses gave me a bath and combed my hair. They did a little make up job, and I felt better. Dr. Jones came in and decided to replace my dressings. When he had one of the dressings removed, he held up a hand mirror so that I could see the scar. There was still some seepage out of the drain, but the main scar showed only a little seepage. He said they had used a plastic surgeon, and that the scar would be almost undetectable once the shoulder had healed. He replaced the heavy dressing with a lighter one. He cautioned me about bumping the incision and the pain that would be associated with it. I told him that I wanted to reduce my pain medication as soon as possible.

I was lying there watching TV when Agent Goodfellow came in with another gentleman. The Agent introduced him as the Director.

“Allow me to offer my sincere apology and condolences for what happened to you,” the Director said.

“What are you trying to do, kiss up to me now that your boys screwed up big time?” I said. “If you had been here two days ago, I could have shaken your hand. Now it’s a different story. All I did was tell the truth, nailed most of a crime family, get your so-called protection, and the hoods chop my arms off. Hell, I can’t even scratch my ass now. So what are you going to do about it?”

He was a bit taken back by my verbal attack but said, “What would you like us to do about it?”

“Agent Goodfellow, would you please close the door on your way out,” I said.

The Agent looked at the Director.

“It’s OK. I’m not going to attack the Director. He’ll be safe with armless me in here and you and your men outside the door,” I said.

The Director looked at him and nodded. Agent Goodfellow walked out the door like a puppy with his tail between his legs. The Director had a smile on his face when he turned to face me again.

“You certainly have a way with words,” he said. “Tell me what you have in mind.”

“First, I think that the mistake is worth a hundred million,” I said. “Tax free.”

The director turned a little pale, nodded approval, and said, “That can be arranged. What else?”

“I’d like you to buy me an island in Puget Sound in the San Juan group. It needs to be large enough for an airstrip.”

“How about if we bought the island and let you use it for as long as you want, rent free?”

“That will work if you build a house that will accommodate my newly acquired special needs and the protection staff that you are going to provide.”

“How large of a protection staff are you thinking?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but I would like them all to be trained Navy Seals.”

“How about six?” he offered.

“Full time residents,” I said.

He nodded affirmatively and asked, “What else?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re probably going to need a good boat and an airplane. We can arrange instant access to Canada without customs hassle. Supplies can to be brought out when you need them,” he offered.

“I’m sure that I’ll think of something else,” I said.

“I’m sure you will,” he replied with a big smile.

“One other thing. Is Agent Goodfellow married or attached?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but I can find out. Why?”

“I don’t want you to discipline him for this. Understand?” I said and he nodded. “If he wants to volunteer for the new assignment, I would really like to have him. I think he’s kind of cute.”

He smiled and said: “Piece of cake. He’s just going to love Navy Seal training.”

“I think that pretty well sets me up,” I said.

“I’ll get working on these things right away. Our goal will be to have everything in place by the time you’re ready to leave,” he said as he stood up. “I really am sorry about our screw up.”

“I know you are. Thank you for everything,” I said.

“One last thing. Be thinking of a plan to get you out of here and out to the island,” he said. “I’ll be back so you and I can work out the details.”

“I’ll work on it. Thanks for coming.”

The Director left, and I spent the next couple of weeks lying around and watching TV. Two guards were outside my door at all times and escorted me whenever I walked down the hallway. I was weaned from pain medication even though my shoulders continually ached. The director called and told me they found an island. It had an old farmhouse, and he asked if I wanted it remodeled instead of a new place being built.

After what seemed like forever, I started rehab and learning how to do things with my toes. They tried to fit me with myoelectric arms, but I could never make them work worth a darn. Instead, I concentrated on using my feet to do most things and knowing that I would need an attendant. Life without arms was so frustrating that many times I burst out crying because of not being able to do a simple task.

The Director stopped by with pictures of the island. It was exactly what I had in mind. The setting was perfect, and the old farmhouse would serve our needs perfectly; it even had a picket fence. He showed me the plans for the remodel, and I was ecstatic. He also left a bankbook. The first entry was one hundred million dollars. He also suggested that I find several good investment advisors. I told him about the getaway scheme that I had worked out. He concurred and thought it would work well. He said he would try to find the people that we needed to pull it off. Everything was supposed to be ready in two weeks. I used the time to improve my toe dexterity skills. I hated being armless, but it was better than being dead, though some days I wondered.

I was progressing as nicely as I could at being an armless woman. One day, a nurse left a large envelope that came in the mail. Both my old name and my new name were on the envelope. I showed the envelope to Agent Goodfellow. I had him open it. His face turned white as a ghost when he looked at the enclosed photographs. He slid them back into the envelope without showing them to me. At first he refused to show them to me, but I firmly insisted. He pulled them out of the envelope and laid them on the tray table. I screamed when I saw the three pictures in bright color. The first was a picture of me lying on the operating table, complete with the tape over my eyes. The second made me want to vomit. It was a picture of both of my arms after they had been hacked off. I knew they were mine because my ring was on one of the hands. The third was worst. It was a picture of my hand, complete with my ring, floating in a jar of clear liquid.

It took me a couple of days to shake off the shock of seeing those pictures, and because I was anxious, the next two weeks seemed like two years. It was finally time for me to be on my own, so to speak, as an armless woman.

It was a Tuesday, and I was released from the hospital at ten a.m. My cab was waiting for the drive into the city where I checked into my reserved room at the hotel. I had dinner in the hotel restaurant, being sure to be seated where everyone could see me eating with my toes. My guards were dressed as bus boys. After dinner, I wandered around the hotel lobby and gift shop before going up to my room. The next morning, I caught the cab, with an agent driver of course, for the ride to the airport. I waited with the rest of the passengers at the airport and pre-boarded the flight when they asked for those needing more time. My double was seated near the rear of the plane by the galley. It was uncanny to see myself sitting there. They had done a perfect job on the armless girl they had found to be my double. I went out the back of the plane and into the elevated service truck—which is how my double was smuggled onto the plane. I was quickly dressed in coveralls, complete with phony arms in the sleeves that hung uselessly by my side. The baseball cap finished off the ensemble. The service truck took me to a deserted hanger near the back of the airport where I transferred into a van with no rear windows. The unmarked van took me to the local Air Force base where a military business jet was waiting. In a few hours, we were landing at a military airport in Nebraska. I was now wearing military flight coveralls, again with phony arms, as I boarded a large Navy cargo plane parked in a deserted corner of the airport. My security team was waiting for me, including Agent Goodfellow. Two members of the team that I had chosen were women and were to help me with my everyday living needs. Once I was on board, I was introduced to my new crew and we made preparations for takeoff. On the flight from Nebraska to Whidbey Island in Washington State, I had a chance to get better acquainted with my crew. Chatting with them made the trip go by quickly, and soon we were getting ready to land. As we circled for our final approach, Agent Goodfellow pointed out our island and my new home. I could hardly wait. Soon we were on the ground. We boarded a helicopter for the short hop that was the last leg of the trip.

The place was just as beautiful as I imagined that it would be based on pictures that the Director had shown me and what I had read about it. As we walked up the walk toward the freshly painted house, Agent Goodfellow held open the gate of my white picket fence. We all looked around and explored the house. We all met in the living room, and Agent Goodfellow made the duty assignments.

I walked out onto the large porch. It had a commanding view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and I watched the sunset from there. As the huge red orb sank into the ocean, I knew I was finally safe at home and I loved it. If I was going to live out my life as an armless woman, this would be the place to do it.

We had settled into a routine of island living. Things were very predictable and sometimes almost dull. I didn’t leave the island. My staff would rotate going for supplies and would go to a different town each time. Sometimes we would have the supplies flown in and sometimes delivered by boat. We worked hard at not setting a routine outside of the island.

Six months after we moved out to the island, I was the first one up on that particular morning. I went down to get the coffee. It had been made up the night before. I used my toes to put the plug of the coffee-maker in the outlet. I noticed a large package sitting on the end of the breakfast bar. It wasn’t there when we all had gone to bed. As I looked closely at it, I saw that it was just a box covering something. I used my teeth to lift the box. I set the box down and turned to see a large mayonnaise jar. I began screaming uncontrollably. My staff was there in an instant. They all saw what sent me over the edge. The large mayonnaise jar contained my hand—complete with my ring—floating in some kind of clear liquid. I ran screaming out of the room. Mary followed me and tried to comfort me.

“What are we going to do?” I hysterically screamed. “They know where I am! They’re going to kill me!”

Mary comforted me and got me quieted down. Agent Goodfellow was instantly on the radio talking to the other crew members. He could not account for one of them. Soon his radio said that a guard had been found down on the dock unconscious. Then it said that he was starting to come around. Agent Goodfellow left me with Mary and rushed down to the dock.

When Agent Goodfellow came back, he said that the missing man had been jumped from behind when he was talking to a good-looking girl who said she was lost and asked for directions. Agent Goodfellow went into our control center and reviewed the surveillance video. It showed the girl still sitting in her boat and someone sneaking up on my guard. He was clubbed from behind, then the girl handed the assailant the box. As the assailant headed for the house, he grabbed the guard’s keys. Another view showed the assailant coming into the house and setting the box on the counter and quickly leaving. At the same time, the dock camera showed the girl waiting with a gun on the guard. When the guard’s assailant reappeared, he was carrying what looked like SCUBA gear, including one of those things that pull you along underwater. Once the guard’s assailant was in the skiff with girl, they took off and met a huge yacht, complete with a helicopter on a small part of the back deck. Agent Goodfellow knew who the yacht was registered to—one of the mobsters that my ex-husband had done a lot of business with and was hurt the deepest financially by my testimony.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“Wait for them to come back,” Agent Goodfellow replied. “We need to catch them in the act of doing something other than knowing where you live.”

“How about them being the ones who hacked my damn arms off?” I asked in disgust.

“We need proof it was them,” he replied.

“What more proof do you need than them delivering one of my hands in a bottle for Christ’s sake!”

“We need to establish a chain of evidence that will stand up in court,” he pleaded.

“Court hell,” I replied. “All they’ll do is pat him on the head and say, ‘you bad boy; you shouldn’t do that.’ What we need to do is to eliminate him before he eliminates me.”

“I can’t do that; it’s not legal,” Agent Goodfellow countered. “I can’t do it. I would if I could, but I just can’t.”

“I understand; you’re concerned more about your pension than me,” I said. “Remember those soldiers of fortune that you met in town that you were telling me about. Could they do it?”

“I suppose they probably could for a price,” he said, “but I’m still a federal agent, and I can’t let you do something like that.”

“What about if they were in international or Canadian waters?” I asked with a sly grin.

“Well, it is out of any jurisdiction that we have. I guess I wouldn’t have to tell,” he replied.

“What about you Mary?” I asked.

“I’m cool. I resigned my commission. I work for you now, not the feds,” she replied. “Those bastards deserve all that we can give them after what they’ve done to you. What do you want to do?”

“Can you take me into town to meet with them?” I asked Agent Goodfellow.

“I can’t get that much involved,” he replied.

“What about you Mary?” I said.

“Damn right,” she replied without hesitation. “Where do we find them?”

“They hang out at the Anchor Bar,” he answered. “That’s all I can tell you.”

“That’s enough. I can take it from there,” Mary replied. “Stephanie, let’s get you dressed and get going before they get too far away.”

Mary, who acted as my primary caregiver, and I walked into my bedroom. She removed my long tee shirt that I used as nightgown. I was standing there nude when she helped me with my bra and panties. Blue jeans and a sweatshirt would be the uniform of the day, along with my slip-on clogs, which had become my favorite shoes. When she had finished dressing me, she went into her room and dressed herself. I waited for her out in the crisp morning air on the porch. Soon she joined me, and we walked down to the boathouse. She got on board and helped me onto the boat. She started the engines and cast off all the lines before she slowly backed the boat out of its slip. A quick turn and we were on our way to town. It was cold out on the water so I ducked down into the cabin.

When we pulled into the transit moorage, one of the dock attendants met us and helped her tie up. Mary came down into the cabin for me. She retrieved a coat from the locker and put it over my shoulders. She combed my hair back into a pony tail, then put a baseball cap on me with the tail sticking out of the little hole in the back. She put a little lipstick on me and then the sunglasses. She slipped on a similar ensemble.

We walked down the dock, then up the street to the Anchor Bar. The bar was just opening, and only a few of the early morning regulars were perched on their favorite stools. All the heads turned as we walked in. Mary went over to the bartender and asked him where we could find the mercenaries. He gave her directions to their place, about a mile away. She thanked him, and we left the bar.

The walk to their place didn’t take as long as I thought it was going to take. I had a feeling just by the looks of the place that we were at the right house. We walked up on the porch and knocked on the door. A dog barked from inside, and a very large bearded fellow answered the door. He looked us over closely before he invited us in. The place was terribly unkempt, and by the posters on the wall, it was indeed evident that these guys didn’t like the government.

“What can we do for you?” the largest fellow asked.

“I want you to take out a yacht for me,” I said.

“What makes you think we could do that?” he asked.

“Your reputation precedes you,” I said. “The word around is that you can do it.”

“Why do you want us to take out the yacht?” he asked.

“It’s a matter of me getting them before they get me,” I said. “I crossed those bastards, and now they’re after me again.”

“Again?” he questioned.

“The last time we met, they did this to me,” I said, shaking my shoulders and making my coat fall to the floor. “I had arms before that. Now I need help to wipe my own ass.”

“So without arms, how are you going to protect yourself?” he said as he started toward me.

Mary’s quick kick to the jaw sent him reeling backwards, and he landed in an old overstuffed chair. He sat there rubbing his jaw, and his buddies just laughed at him.

“Can we deal?” I asked.

“If it’s who I think it is, we don’t want to have any part of it,” he said. “That guy’s way out of our league.”

“OK. I can accept that,” I said. “Can you sell us a rocket launcher and a few rockets? We’ll make it a do-it-yourself project.”

“Ya, but it’ll cost you,” he said.

“That’s not a problem,” I said. “Name your price.”

He and his buddies went into the kitchen. We could hear them talking quite loudly at times. When he came back out, he had a price. I agreed, and we were given instructions where to meet them. Mary put my coat on my shoulders, and we headed back for the boat.

“You can handle a rocket launcher for me, can’t you?” I asked as we walked down the hill toward the water.

“Piece of cake,” Mary replied. “I loved firing those things during training.”

“How do you feel about doing this for me?” I asked.

“Hey, I work for you now,” Mary replied. “After what those bastards did to you, I don’t have any problem at all with taking them out. Maybe then we can all relax a bit.”

“Well, we can’t relax completely,” I said. “These guys are the most flagrant, but there still might be more out there.”

The attendant untied our boat once Mary had the engine started. She backed us skillfully out of the slip and then forward slowly out of the marina. It was only a short run to the pickup place. We exchanged cash for the goods and left quickly. We cruised around the island and out into the strait. We didn’t see them at first but spotted them heading for international waters about a half hour later. I had Mary hold her speed until we were sure that they were no longer in U.S. waters. I sat in the helm seat and steered the boat with my feet while she readied the rocket launcher.

When we were sure that they were in international waters, I had Mary overtake them. With the speed of our ocean racing style boat, it only took a few minutes. They were standing on the deck, some of them carrying guns as we pulled into range.

When we hit a wave just as she fired, the first rocket missed. They began shooting at us. The pilot was starting the helicopter. Mary’s second rocket found its mark. The explosion was tremendous—just like in the blockbuster movies. No one could have survived the inferno.

We turned and ran back to a cove. Mary dropped anchor and shut off the engines. We went below, and she fixed us some lunch while the Coast Guard boats went screaming by at full speed. We enjoyed our lunch sitting on the back deck. Mary, of course, fed me like she usually does when we have sandwiches. When it was dark and our radar showed no boat traffic, Mary got us underway for home.

Agent Goodfellow was waiting for us when we docked. He helped us tie up, helped me from the boat, and said, “The Director called.”

“Oh really, what did he have to say?” I quizzed.

“His intelligence told him that the prime suspect in your attack was going to be in this area on his yacht,” he replied.

“And what did you tell him?”

“I told him that we would be on the lookout for him, but it was still nice and quiet here,” Agent Goodfellow replied.

“Thanks,” I said, giving him a peck on the cheek.

E N D