Good Eco Cop, Bad Eco Cop
“Who gave this to you?” An eco-trooper held a smashed faux transducer, one of two beacons, in his hand like a piece of spoiled fruit. The other was on the ground, smashed.
Me, “Where is Jean Pierre? He can …”, crack on the ear with a cable or wire or something.
“It was there when I performed my diagnostics.” Slap! Right across the back of my head. I turned, “Hey, man! Don’t do that!” Sock! Right across my chops.
“What does it do? Who are you?”, the head eco-trooper snapped.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just the vibration analyst doing a service call. Where is Jean P …” Wham! The eco-dude behind me hit me over the head with something hard and I went down. Two hands grabbed me and stood me up. I faked my grogginess, a little, so I could mislead and stall things a bit — but my head did hurt like Hell.
“Jean Pierre not help you.” With an accent so thick, I’m not sure if he actually understood me or knew how to conjugate words. Maybe it was my rapid onset concussion talking.
Again, “Who sent you?”, the head eco-trooper I will now refer to as ‘Eco-Nazi’ because he clearly had a little Heil-Hitler in him. 2-to-1 he probably had a poster of Der Fürher in his childhood bedroom, on the ceiling above the bed.
“It was already there.” Bang! I dumped to the ground like a bag of doorknobs. The little eco-thug behind me, who I will now call ‘Eco-rat’, because his rat-tail hung out his green beret — worn pizza chef style — highlighting a filthy desert camo ensemble and purple steel-toed Doc Martin boots that kicked me in the gut as I lay there thinking about how pain and I don’t get along. Whump!
“We have video of you planting both devices.” Eco-Nazi held a smart device out and there was me, dead bang doing it.
Oops.
I glanced up and Eco-Nazi’s face seemed to indicate a distaste for Eco-Rat’s conversation techniques. Were there some bad vibes between them?
“Ok. Ok.” I held one hand up in a sign of surrender. That seemed to relax them both. And I slowly, slowly, got up. With my rear towards Eco-rat, I got on one knee, still bent over, stood up and level-kicked my heal— mule style — where Eco-rats’ man parts should be. Eco-rat shrieked! Dead Solid Perfect.
I hoped this would please Eco-Nazi. It did. Without the benefit of looking behind me, I stood up fully and lied, “Somebody, …” waving my hands in a futile manner, “… He said he represented a group of U.S. oil companies, gave the devices to me and told me if I didn’t plant them, they would hurt my family.” Eco-Nazi smiled, looked at Eco-rat thrashing on the ground, smiled again – I’m guessing they weren’t coffee-klatch buddies – and suggested we go to his office and talk. And that’s what we did.
Escape
Eco-Nazi, given name Heinrich, and I were sipping café lattes in his office and about to swap frozen Jell-O recipes when the door blew off its hinges and my SOF angels stormed the room, performed a perfect Mozambique on Heinrich. That’s two to the chest and one to the head. Then evacuated me Delta-style: searching my body for booby traps, threw on a Kevlar helmet and ballistic vest. Callsign: Moose, an ex-L.A. Rams lineman, tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of grain, put up a ballistic shield and ran like a gazelle. He used my butt-slash-shield combo as a battering ram. I felt two bodies bounce off, both followed by the sound of muffled shots, before being catapulted into a waiting Land Rover where a huddle of men jumped on top of me.
Gang Pile! Gas! Gunfire!
We flew out the plant compound. I vaguely smelled burning flesh – unconfirmed – but never was allowed to look up until we were a half mile away. Finally, able to look back, I saw the plant’s front gate guard shack sadly burning with all my house-fly family memories. I also noted that groups of UN eco-thugs and vehicles moving in every direction. It looked like a blind sorority fire drill … if blind sororities still have fire drills.
We drove on with no pursuers. A white UN gunship started prowling the facility parameter but strangely never moved in our direction. Was it they had no ammo or just feared anyone resembling professional operators? Perhaps our boys possessed shoulder launched anti-aircraft missiles? Just saying.
We made a very wide semi-circle and — Surprise! — ended up at a small desert base camp.
From a high position on a dune, we could see the oil plant we just vacated. Maybe a mile away. Our guys – hey, I’m one of them now – had a big, sand-colored hide, or canopy, setup.
This is the first time I’ve laid eyes on a Leupold Electronic Spotting and Surveillance System (LESSS) and a Sony 27” Flat-Quad-Folding ™ color monitor (no visible creases). Awesome! Tom (callsign: Rooster), is operating it with the toggle stick on a game pad. It can zoom, track, I.D. and check for hernias. There are six image modes: plain-old-fashion digital, starlight, heat or IR, sonar, motion-detect, and satellite. All of them can overlay with each other. That’s the mil-spec package, not available for home use. Though, I think a lot of cheating husbands’ wives would like to borrow it. It’s super cool!
“Wait a second!? You guys were watching while I got the crap kicked out of me?”
“Affirmative.” As a sly smile grew on Tom. I turned my head and looked to the other side of me, and there, keeping cool under a desert ghillie hide, was a .338 Lapua rifle mounted to a high-tech electronic tripod, Leupold’s electronic sniper system called EARP, as in Wyatt Earp, or Electronic Armalite Rifle Platform. It interacts with the LESSS spotting system, making them a deadly combination. The system as a whole will adjust for all the usual sniper variables, plus a few extras, including heat waves off the ground, earth’s spin and curvature, and if Venus is in phase with Jupiter.
“Who was this pointed at?” Tom and his sniper buddy chuckled.
“You were safe. Believe me.” Tom deadpanned with a delayed wink.
Smart-ass bastards.