Another Fine Navy Day in the desert.

By Karl Aust

A team of NAVY S.E.A.L.s infiltrate Iran to rescue an American Doctor being held hostage. On the ground things change dramatically and the team must use its wits and guts to survive and succeed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karl Aust
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301326273

Karl Aust

Karl Aust is an accomplished liar. I mean this in the best possible way but he really does tend to spin one whopper after another. Hopefully, some of them will hold your interest, at least for a couple hours.

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Another Fine Navy Day (in the desert).

By Karl Aust

Published by Karl Aust at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Karl Aust

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.

Airports these days suck. They turn on all the TVs and just let them squawk as though of course everyone wants to hear whatever they're playing. I remember, way back, if you wanted to watch tv at the airport you had to sit in this funny chair that had a crappy little black and white set built into it and feed it quarters every fifteen minutes or it would just cut out. Put tv exactly where it belongs. The jetways were quiet and calm. Now the big flat TV screens are everywhere. You're wheeling your luggage from one gate to the next and they're all blabbing at you and just mugging you with video. You’d be insane to do anything but tune it all out, which is what I normally do. Then about a month ago, probably because I had finished my book and was facing it, I listened.

News, especially tv news, is always a crap shoot. Probably half of it is written by PR hacks trying to sell you something or get you thinking about something in such a way that you’ll want to buy it later or even just talk about it so someone else will think to buy it. I mean most of what they call news isn’t even really news. I’m saying most, because sometimes real news slips in. They almost always try to disavow it, but even then no matter how much they water it down they can’t hide the fact that there’s more to a story than they want to admit. Like this one that I was watching, bored, book on my lap, you had to notice there was something missing. The gaps were a little too big, something they couldn’t entirely conceal was obviously being held back, something that would have made you freak out or think it was too far out to be true was in there hiding. You could smell it. This was not the first time, either, that this kind of story went out. Happens all the time, really. Sometimes someone comes along later and writes a book around it and you find out that yeah, there was a lot more to it than the news was saying but more often than not these stories just fade away and you're left with a head-scratcher that you forget about yourself a week or a month later.

This was one of those stories.

I don't know if the newsreader knew anything or not, if he realized there were huge gaps in the story or if he was just reading, just doing his job, just killing the time until lunch. I can never figure out where the journalism really starts and stops with these types. Which is how it should be, I'm just one more nameless commuter looking up at the screen being lied to with vigor and the full 24hour news cycle’s technological press. If I could see through it, things would be a real mess. If it weren't for an old friend I saw a week later at the other end of that trip, I never would have been the wiser. No one was going to write a book about this.

The newsreader was at his desk and stock photos, file footage, and graphics popped up on the screen behind him to punctuate his story.

This just in (he brings his hand to his ear) An American Doctor accompanying a UN Peacekeeping force on the border of Southern Afghanistan and Pakistan has disappeared while hiking close to the boarder of Iran. A notoriously dangerous area.

Which was the first thing that set me off. So some guy went hiking and got lost, maybe arrested. So what? People get lost all the time, people camping wander across boarders get arrested maybe even detained. Why are they telling this story? Because he’s in a ‘dangerous area?’ Or is he somehow important or worthy?

A photo of the kidnapped doctor popped up. In the picture he’s at some dinner. He's young, maybe 30, he looks happy and oblivious. OK, he’s young, but he can’t be the only young doctor lost this week. I’m sure somewhere in Antarctica or Borneo or Sub-Saharan Africa someone else got lost, too. Why on earth are they telling this story?

The doctor, identified as Albert Simple is acknowledged as one of the world's foremost authorities on the detection of chemical weapons,

OK, there it was. The graphic behind the newsreader changed to a map of the Persian Gulf.

Simple was part of a team of NGOs who were trying to establish a new hospital in the area. It is feared he has wandered across the border into Iran or somewhere into the Three Tribes region of Afghanistan.

But, if he’s a chemical weapons specialist, why is he setting up hospitals? Now there was footage of people milling around and/or leaving the White House Press Room.

A White House spokesman reports that the President is deeply concerned.

Really? I thought, The White House has something to say about this? It hasn’t even been confirmed that he’s missing and the White House is chiming in?

Simple started as a science teacher in Hinesburg, Iowa...

Screen blanks - some clip is missing. The news reader looks peeved,

Whose students are all praying for him.

So a science teacher who is also a doctor and also an authority on chemical weapons and also helping set up hospitals in Afghanistan, while school is on, got lost while out hiking? Maybe? A new graphic of a stock market ticker came up and the newsreader smiled like he had never known anything in life but happiness and contentment.

Next, the market had another confused day. . .

Incoherent, but that’s what I generally think when I watch the news. Why are they telling me this? I have no idea, and I generally don’t believe they do either. But there was something about this one that I just couldn’t shake. It stuck with me, all the incongruities. Then I happened to read about some computer virus that had attacked some nuclear site in the area and then I ran into an old friend and heard what might have been the real story. Then again, this old friend of mine sometimes liked stories just for the telling of them, facts and truth be damned.

This is what he told me.

It was see-your breath cold and dry, like a night out in the high desert in early March. Which is when and where it was. The warehouse was a metal-sided pre-fab building sitting within a small cluster of smaller, mostly cement, likely residential buildings. There were few streetlights, the odd porch light. The narrow streets were empty.

There was a small group of men standing in the shadows just across the street from the building's entrance. They were carrying rifles and packs and looked at once absorbed in what they were doing and hyper-aware of their surroundings. On their leader’s signal the group split up. Three went down to the end of the building the others up to the door, which was on a small, three step landing.

The man at the back of this second group was keeping watch on the flanks and rear. As they moved out of the shadows he pulled out a talisman hanging around his neck and kissed it. He was not grotesquely large but he moved like a man who lived with few physical limitations.

The leader patted the shoulder of the second man who moved forward and up the steps to the door of the warehouse. When he was on the landing he jumped up onto the railing and steadying himself punched the light fixture over the door, killing the bulb and plunging everything into darkness.

Further down the building, one member of the group that had split off was waiting in the shadows, looking for the signal from the leader. Even in the dim light he looked like he spent time at the gym. His corded forearms were covered with stylized tidal wave tattoos and his nose was broken. His eyes, though, were alert, content, in the moment. When the light over the door went out the leader raised and dropped his hand and Jock moved across the street.