Gats and Cats

I'm known as a workaholic and so it was unusual to pry myself loose for a long overdue vacation. Last year, the cons I planned to attend got cancelled because of Covid and I was left with airline tickets to use or lose. A few months back, a buddy of mine I've known since the 6th grade suffered a heart attack and that prompted me to make plans and get going. Since I was traveling to the East coast, I decided to visit as many friends as I could in one trip. 

I started in Dumfries, then headed to Falls Church to visit Duane, a college chum and Ranger buddy. Being guys in America, we stopped by a gun range to bust caps, using a suppressor. Duane served in Military Intelligence, then Special Forces, and switched careers to work in the CIA. He published an excellent memoir of his last field assignment, which was about the early days of the war in Afghanistan. We didn't talk much how that mess ended.

My next stop was to see a writing buddy, Quincy Allen, who moved from Denver to Charlotte, NC. One of his cats apparently approved of me as it left a feather on my backpack. 

Then north to Rocky Mount to visit Greg, another Army buddy. He and I flew Cobra helicopters in the Air Cavalry. Again, as we were still in America, we went shooting, also with a suppressor.

My last stop was Charleston to visit Mark and Rebel, who I was lucky enough to meet years back when I first got published. Mark is local tour guide and historian with several books to his credit. He and his wife are also cat people and besides taking care of their own felines, twice a day the neighborhood alley cats stop by for chow.

If you're in Charleston, you have to say hello to the carriage horses.

Guest Blogger Arthur Kerns

Type M for Murder is thrilled to welcome guest author Arthur Kerns this weekend. Art is a retired FBI special agent and past consultant to the intelligence community. He is a former president of the Arizona chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO). His award-winning short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies. His espionage thrillers, published by Diversion Books, Inc., The Riviera Contract, its sequel The African Contract, and his 2016 release The Yemen Contract, feature the adventures of CIA operative Hayden Stone.

A STRANGER READS MY BOOK

I noticed her mother first. Stylish and attractive, she was better dressed than most of the churning mob in the Phoenix airport terminal, waiting for their Memorial Day weekend flights. She sat across from me six seats away crammed in with other passengers, listening for their boarding calls. An unintelligible announcement barked over the loudspeaker and she stood, leaned down to a young woman in her early twenties, who I figured was her daughter, and handed her a carry-on bag. The girl accepted the bag without taking her eyes from the book she held. She continued to read as the older woman made her way through the conflicting aromas from the food concessions to the restroom area.

In the seat next to me, my wife tapped my arm and pointed to a message on her phone. Our son and his family were meeting us at the Austin, Texas airport.

I glanced back at the young woman still absorbed in her book. What concentration she had. Amidst all this terminal turmoil, she appeared focused on the pages before her, repeatedly touching a finger to the lips, then with the same finger turning a page.

When she paused and lifted the book, I saw the cover. It looked very familiar. Looked very much like the cover of my book. My debut novel. Had some other author used a similar design?

Then I realized it was my book this stranger was reading. I whispered to my wife to look and motioned with my head toward the young woman.

“Don’t you dare!” my wife said.

“What?”

“Ask if she wants it signed.”

“Never occurred to me.” I said unconvincingly.

The girl returned to the book, that is my book. I tried to study her expression for some indication of what she thought about the story, but saw only focused attention. She turned the pages at a steady rate so apparently she was into the plot—maybe. It looked like she was about mid-way through the book and I tried to imagine what scene she was in. Was it an action scene? Too early for the love scene.

The young woman was a complete stranger. Never saw her in my life. How did she come by the book? Where did she buy it? At a bookstore or over the Internet? Did a friend recommend it?

The older woman returned and spoke to the girl while looking at her watch. She pointed to the book and asked something. I watched to see if I could figure out what the girl said, but couldn’t detect anything positive or negative. She could have been talking about the weather.

“Stop looking at her.” My wife nudged me. “Get your things, our plane’s boarding.”

I put my laptop back in the case, found my boarding pass, and then looked back in the direction of the two women. They were gone.

And any chance to know what the young woman thought of my book.

Just as well.
___________
Please visit Art at his website  http://www.arthurkerns.com

Don't mind Big Brother's wiretap.

I have a problem with some thrillers, especially those of the steely-jawed hero triumphing over evil doers and meddling do-gooders in defense of truth, justice, and the American way. At the heart of my objection is that in these stories, said hero usually belongs to a secretive government organization, which if allowed to shake off the pesky constraints of the law and bleeding-heart whistle blowers, it could smite the villainous foe. It's not that the earth lacks for assholes who deserve such a smiting, it's that in reality those shadowy government entities have a poor record keeping us safe or acting for the greater good. For example, Admiral Michael Rogers, argues that the NSA needs unfettered access to the American public's telephones and can't be bothered with legal trivialities like search warrants. As usual, the boogy-man terrorist is hauled out and made to go boo! What Rogers fails to include in his argument is that the NSA, and the CIA, in fact the entire national security apparatus, has done an abysmal job keeping us safe. People should've been imprisoned for falling asleep at the switch before 9/11. The father of Umar Farouk Adbulmutallab (the Underwear Bomber) warned the US State Department that Umar had come under the sway of terrorists and should be considered a threat. That warning passed across a bureaucrat's desk and was ignored. Years later, the Russians warned the FBI about Tamerlan Tsarnaev (the older brother of the Boston Marathon bombers) and his terrorists leanings. The FBI claims it interviewed Tamerlan and afterwards decided he was no threat, even though the CIA put him on their terrorist database. So we have two instances where the government had credible evidence about terrorist activities and they fumbled the ball. You'd think the feds would have instituted thorough measures to tighten its security protocol. Instead we get excuses that the security agencies can't deal with the volume of leads they get, but that doesn't stop them from turning around and amassing even more data on the American public. So far, despite it's carte blanche, the NSA hasn't done much aside from lying about what it does or doesn't do. Other than the expensive incompetence, a big worry is the government using its surveillance to thwart domestic law. In fact, there is an official program called "parallel reconstruction" where federal agencies like the ATF teach local law enforcement how to disguise the NSA's (or CIA's) discovery of suspected criminal activity. "Parallel reconstruction" means inventing probable cause and excising any mention of domestic surveillance by agencies prohibited to do so. So you ask, "Who's getting busted? Drug dealers? Gangsters? Good riddance." The problem is that if the government, with its limitless resources, can't prosecute its law by its own rules, what chance do we have should we find ourselves under its heel? Dovetailed with this is the "Stingray," a cellular tower emulator the police use to eavesdrop on cell phones. Again, besides the warrantless surveillance, law enforcement agencies sign under-the-table contracts with the Harris Corporation to prohibit the disclosure of the Stingray. These contracts circumvent the legalities that law enforcement cannot enter such contracts without state legislative approval. So who's watching the watchers? Who's keeping the law?