Hardboiled Houston

By Jeffery Cox

A South African arms dealer stumbles across a United States Treasury Department shipment of six million dollars in cash, being transported by a commercial air carrier to Fort Polk, Louisiana. The money is delivered to a local bank in order to create a paper trail which ends with the bank. After the Army receives the cash it is distributed to Special Operation Groups in Afghanistan, for off-the-book, BLACK projects, and payroll. The transaction is continuously in motion while the troops are in service.
Parker Van der Westhuizen forms a cabal based in Houston, whose members are involved in their own daily chaos, which inadvertently draws the attention of a Mexican drug runner having his own cash-flow drama.
Jill, a cellist in the Houston Symphony and a helicopter mechanic, supplementing his income to finance his dream blue water sailboat, fall in love. But what is on the surface is not all what it appears to be; it’s a great deal more complicated, and she calls on her Uncle, Sergeant Harlan Gardner, Texas Rangers, to sort-out the details.
Mia, a law student from Tulane, is just looking for a good man. Seeking only acceptance for the woman she is, and love.
They all come together in a romance with greed, lust and love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeffery Cox
• Release date: Nov 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9780473229399

Jeffery Cox

I live and work out of New Zealand, flying helicopters on various contracts worldwide.

Book preview

HARDBOILED HOUSTON

BY

Jeffery Cox

Smashwords Edition

Copyright, 2012, Jeffery Cox

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. All names and characters are either invented or used fictitiously.

Cover art by: Alice Tiankaizi Bi

Henry Perryman ‘The Chief’

who served two years in Thailand

keeping B-52s in the air

and then went on to

greater achievements, so many

people will always remember you.

*

Every other Christmas I would practice good behavior

The Allman Brothers Band

*

I’ve been a bad, bad girl

I’ve been careless with a delicate man

And it’s a sad, sad world

When a girl will break a boy just because she can

Fiona Apple

CHAPTERS

THE DATE FROM VENUS

SKY KING AND PENNY

HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM

HEAVY TRAFFIC

NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIFES

INSIGHTS

DIRECTIONS

THE PLAY BOOK

SAME TIME – SAME CHANNEL

BABY I CAN SHOW YOU A BETTER TIME

TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT

THE BUSSINESS AT HAND

GOING SOUTH

LUCY I’M HOME

LIFE AFTER HOUSTON

THE DATE FROM VENUS

Moisant International airport: At 0800 hours the concourse was chocker block full. Parker Van der Westhuizen sidestepped a bumbling fat man, the size that never consumed a carb he didn’t like.

This guy did look like Idi Amin. The TSA slug made him remove his out-of-date wing tip shoes, so you can image the cha-cha-cha this guy was doing.

Big Daddy almost connected with Parker’s two-meter frame, the fine John Henry cotton suit. Like I said he sidestepped him, and Big Daddy was counting on Parker, with the Hollywood tan and beige cotton suit to support his balancing act. He didn’t and DA-DA made like Gerald Ford, or maybe it was Chevy Chase doing Gerald Ford.

The chick with the French Tri-Colour looking coiffure was checking out the functions of her new HTC One X mobile when she connected with the crocodile trashing around on the floor, and she went down like a French UN resolution.

Next in line was a good-looking college preppie type in cargo shorts and deck shoes, gripping a Frappuccino. Joe College just happen to turn before the drama started to see if this Lady Gaga looking gaga was going to be a candidate for special handling from the security force types; like from the guy with the big wand. The preppie went down, the Frappuccino went up——Frappuccino came down.

People started screaming. Before you knew it, there were enough people standing around that you could’ve filmed a Tarzan movie. Just what Parker needed, on this day, on this concourse.

Parker found a place with a good view of the ramp in one of that most uncomfortable, hard fiberglass, ugly orange coloured seats. People passing by had to wonder what this solitary man was smiling about. If they only knew. He’d been smiling for months. But there were years of turbulence and uncertainly before New Orleans…

The end was on the horizon. What kind of metaphor was this? Parker could tell you. He was disappointed that the Cape Town Symphony evening performance had been cancelled. So he was just standing in the city square, tickets in hand, in front of city hall, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and all at once Parker realized there were a majority of Bantu in the crowd. What was going on? Bantu’s didn’t reside in what you would call a cultural desert, yet the symphony? On the steps of the old Edwardian hall, built in 1905, Parker focused on the man addressing the crowd.

Listening to this speech; which contents for prosperity unquestionably had been gone over-and-over again for years, Parker heard the term ‘new horizons.’ There was no semblance of a horizon left when he than heard the term: ‘The New South Africa,’ emanate from Madiba’s mouth.

The intelligentsia in the Bureau of State Security: `BOSS,’ I know you’re thinking of the man from `U.N.C.L.E.’ No, picture the Gestapo——internal, external, and anal security types. They had the shredding machines going twenty four-seven.

By the end of the day the only employees left were the office weenies. The first of Parker’s Channel Island accounts disappeared faster than a day-traders margin account.

During the Bush Wars——no not the G.W. Bush Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, America——but the West African vintage, specifically in Sierra Leon, the variety with kids on drugs, kids with big guns, kids in gangs roaming the bush hacking off arms. Yeah, I know you’re thinking, So what, we got that right here in River City. But you don’t have diamonds. And West Africa does.

Executive Outcome relied on Parker’s two Russian An-32 cargo planes, based out of Rand Airport to re-supply their operations in the bush. The diamonds must flow. The AK’s must flow, and the Mi-8 helicopters must fly. The money was flowing into his Standard Bank account and that was the bottom-line.

Until… the banning of private armies based out of the `New South Africa,’ became the flavor-of-the-day. The old Standard Bank Book——the latest Channel Island one——received a direct hit from a RPG.

Cape Town had been for months closing in on him. His life-style was spiraling down and without the income he’d been accustomed with. He might’ve well been living in Beirut.

With capital available to Parker, he formed an aircraft-trading house in Cape Town out of, D.F. Malan Airport. Buying and ferrying corporate jets from places like Kansas for customers in Africa. The money sucked. The long flights from America sucked. Life sucked in Cape Town with this `New South Africa’ ambiance.

The accelerated transition from despondency to the daily life situation started with a casual Internet search for a Russian satellite company controlled by some retired GRU type General.

This Lithuanian aircraft broker from Kaunas mentioned that you could purchase real time high-resolution photographs from this guy on any piece of real estate on the planet. Cool, if you’re controlling a cruise missile battery, or maybe for a more practical application, like say, looking for tuna. Yeap, Charles Tuna.

A few months ago he sold this old U.S. Army OH-6 he picked up in Vietnam to a Korean fishing Boat Company. They had a twelve hundred ton purse-seiner which required a helicopter to spot fish with in the Western Pacific.

What a primitive and costly way. You may see the drawbacks: first being the area you may cover on a tank of fuel. The cost factor——okay labor was cheap with Korean pilots——and catching the little buggers foaming on the surface at the right time was really a matter of luck.

No, the GRU General was the real deal. Tuna going for two thousand buckaroos a ton——you do the math. There are a lot of boats out there. He’d work on a percentage.

Google had nothing on this guy. But it did have a few listings on satellite imagining systems. `EROS,’ was one. It had a lot of blah-blah tech stuff which sounded good but wasn’t right. Another `EROS,’ now that opened another world. It wasn’t quite the subject material he’d been researching, but it was… interesting.

Parker got a little side-tracked in his research. In fact by the end of the day he was off the Tuna deal and into online dating. Besides he knew the future was in drones, unmanned aerial vehicles.

Sidetrack, that’s what was needed. Since the AID’s thing hit him a few years ago——it’s killed lotta good men——Aviation Induced Divorce.

With the flying from Kansas and Houston every month for the past year, he never thought about dating. Oh he’d been to Bangkok. But never sidetracked… like this.

She was Brazilian. Just under two meters——he loved tall woman. Her olive skin was glimmering, pixel for pixel across his MacBook Pro. Her eyes were dark, somewhat mysterious, and difficult for Parker to put a finger on, needless to say it was a sexy trait that attracted him to inquire and go deeper into her bio. She appeared to have long black hair——the pic only reviled the face and contours of her shoulders and breast——which in themselves looked pretty damn hot.

But what really got him were those sensual appealing Lauren Green lips. Yeah, the FOX news babe. He figured he would at any time tiptoe through a field of black mambas to kiss those lips.

Her name was, Mia. And she lived in New Orleans, attending Tulane, second year Law. Didn’t do the bar thing, and had a problem with the attitudes from other students. She was twenty-two. He emailed her.

A week later she emailed him back. Expressing apologizes for the delay. Student life being what it was, and of course there was the voluminous email from other members. She said there were elements to his email that appealed to her. Elements? Was this some kinda lawyer tribal language? He liked it.

Two months later, two ferry flights from Kansas later——Dorothy come home——they had a date. Girls from Brazil did lunches, like girls from Botswana.

It was a start. Turned out she was just a nice girl, with good looks, dressed in a long flowing summer dress. He wasn’t going for a ‘Snooki’ high-dive into the sheets, not on the first date. Well, even after the first date, thinking about it now, maybe he was going to wait a little longer, she was just too sweet and innocent.

It was after that first date thing that brought him here today. After the first date thing was completed, Parker headed back to Moisant to catch a Southwest flight to Houston. They were going to meet in Houston and do the symphony thing on his return from Cape Town.

Looking back on that day, that lovely date with Mia now, he couldn’t help but to think of what happened. Parker had retrieved a one-way ticket from a kiosk and made for the gate. He had a little over an hour to wait——in one of those most uncomfortable fiberglass chairs.

For what seemed to be the longest time, he’d been watching the fluid movements and rhythm of the aircraft maintenance personnel and baggage handlers off-loading from the rear cargo-hold.

Parker was thinking, and listening on a Galaxy 3, to Astrud Gilberto’s ‘Girl from Impanema,’ daydreaming about Mia’s beautiful body, those dangerous lips, Mia’s sharp retorts, and his nerve——after all computer dating was a dark forest right out of the twilight zone——— when he realized the Southwest baggage people were absent, replaced by three guys in suits, right out of ‘Men in Black.’

They were each holding those Halliburton cases. A white Ford Econoline van was positioned at the base