The D.A.D.D.Y. Complex: A Theo Sultan Adventure

By Ryan Sandoval

Adventure and comedy collide like a MQ-9 Reaper drone and a clown car in this edge-of-your seat thriller that makes Jason Bourne and Jack Reacher look like a pair of poodle ovaries. Plus the poodle is in menopause. This hilarious parody of bestselling page-turners your dad reads on the toilet finds hero maverick Theo Sultan – an ex-sharpshooter and former Navy SEAL lawyer – battling his greatest foe yet: a foreign business man who wants to rid the world of true American mavericks... forever. It’s the week before Father’s Day, and one-by-one, the nation’s greatest dads have been mysteriously kidnapped. With the help of a sassy girl-hacker and support from a high-ranking military official, hero Theo Sultan – a patriot who plays by his own rules – embarks on an unclassified mission where everything is as it doesn’t seem. A mission that may reveal the location of his own estranged father, a no-good deadbeat who abandoned Sultan and his mom at a young age. From Langely to Rio to Switzerland to even off-the-Grid, this seasoned maverick is in a race against time to stop a diabolical (and did we mention foreign) mad man from unleashing his evil plot. Can Sultan battle his way to victory and take down all the dirty politicians, secret occultists, and family demons that stand in his way? Only a trip into The D.A.D.D.Y Complex will reveal the truth… (But yes, the hero this franchise is named after has a good chance of succeeding.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Devastator Press
• Release date: Nov 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781942099277

Book preview

Poet

CHAPTER 1

Five Days to Father’s Day

Staring down the barrel of the wild Mestizo man’s semi-automatic FN Five-Seven MK2 – cocked, and ready to say hello in Bullet Language, no translation needed, Theo Sultan found himself armed with only a water balloon and his survivor instinct.

An unfair fight in Theo’s favor.

He thought of the popular war proverb, never bring a water-balloon to a gunfight, and – wait was that right? Was that the proverb? Something along those lines? Perhaps he was remembering that wrong. It felt right...but still. Definitely "never bring a something to a gunfight. Then he had it: Never bring a nice to a gunfight. That’s what it was. When it came to a gunfight a nice person, A.K.A. a nice – in the same way Sultan would call a blind person a blind– had no place. Really, the more Sultan thought about it, the phrase should be never bring anything that isn’t a gun to a gunfight." BLAM-BLAM-BLAM! Sultan ducked his muscular, rugged six-foot-three frame behind a park trash can. The stray 5.7 x 28mm rounds penetrated a clown’s balloon animal. In the underworld these cartridges were nicknamed the cop killer, but today they threatened to take on a new name: picnic ruiner. Specifically, the Father-Son Picnic Sultan incidentally found himself jogging through that day. Once a place of intergenerational watermelon, potato sack races, and inflatable jumping houses, was now a warzone.

The clown frowned comically, then hid behind a tree, less comically save for his attire. Hmm, maybe the saying was never bring a regular balloon to a water balloon fight? Sultan’s mind raced like a tape-worm full of steroids.

Once a Navy SEAL elite sharpshooter with 78 confirmed kills, and then a former military lawyer with nearly as many confirmed kills in the court room, Sultan now spent his days off the Grid. Mixed with savings from his days in active-duty as well as mercenary work, the odd job here and there kept Sultan comfortable and his experience both behind the scope and before the gavel had left him with an eagle eye for threats and a full courtroom in his head. Complete with a mental judge, jury, witnesses, evidence, and an attorney on both sides, Sultan’s time-tested instinct for split second jurisprudence processed every situation he encountered with the fairness of a legal proceeding that our criminally underappreciated Founding Fathers died like dogs in piss-filled ditches to protect.

And right now the courtroom in his head ruled that the man playing target practice with Sultan’s mug had no place in this once beautiful country. Not in a racial way. Forget border walls and foreign naturalization, the only language Sultan hated was jargonese, the native tongue of the career politician. If an ethnic had enough gumption to risk life and limb for a chance to help pull this flaming wreckage of a nation out of its current tailspin then they certainly deserved an opportunity to pledge allegiance to Old Glory.

Which is to say, instead of enjoying Star Spangled hot dogs with this imported mischief maker, Sultan now found himself wondering how he had ended up in a life or death shootout. And before lunch time? Most attempts on his life were made after lunch.

What’s more, today was Sultan’s birthday. But he had stopped celebrating this fool’s anniversary long ago. Like any other holiday industry, Big Birthday existed simply to keep the poor poor, and the rich rich. So Sultan treated it like any other day and decided to get some exercise.

Undumb enough to waste money at a fancy city gym ("Watch the pounds and dollars melt away," he often angrily joked to the customers exiting said fancy gyms whenever he got the chance), Sultan opted for a simpler, more pure workout: blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back, and shirtless in thrift store Harley Davidson brand blue jeans, Sultan forced himself to run barefoot at top speed using only his wits to avoid the likes of traffic, fences, garbage mounds, farmers markets, funeral processions, parades, and anything else that he might encounter along the way.

It was there in a Virginia woods that Sultan ran so fast his blindfold slipped and his whole day became 70% deadlier: for there in a straw hat, worn flannel, with a sack full of recyclables, rifling through the garbage at an unattended picnic table was the Mestizo man. No problem there, as Sultan was not in any way, shape, or form racist. What irked him though was how this man (whose facial features suggested an ancestry of Spanish and American Indian) was attempting to make free money, in the same American sun, where our very forefathers gave every ounce of blood, sweat, tears and other patriotic bodily fluids to water the trees of freedom whose very shade this no-goodnik used to cool his brow. Surely he was up to no good.

That was twenty minutes ago.

Now, squaring off against the gunman – only a water-balloon stolen from a nearby Father and Son picnic as his weapon – Sultan felt his squishy projectile wobble in his palm like the touch of a supple lover, and not the touch of any of his ex-wives. Their touches felt like acid eating through styrofoam. No, the lover’s touch he imagined was the touch of an unattached single woman – who wanted nothing from Sultan emotionally, and only expected the occasional roll in the hay as a sign of affection. And she certainly never asked what Sultan was thinking.

The ethnic man reloaded.

His ex-wives and ex-children never understood that a man like Sultan didn’t have time to think, only act. Lives are lost in the time it takes to think, thought Sultan. He also thought that a good bumper sticker might be Thinking: the #1 Cause of Death. Sadly, like so many excellent bumper sticker ideas, this one would never see the light of day, due to all the forms necessary in the process of making bumper stickers. The only thing he hated more than the forms was the idea of forms and filling them out. And the only thing Sultan hated more than forms in general was injustice. Today’s injustice obviously took the form of this bottle-hoarding stranger who, to the common man, appeared harmless. But Sultan’s greatest weapon – his instinct – told him otherwise. Which is to say, an instinct like the Industrial Revolution powered by prehistoric shark adrenaline. While the common man saw a harmless, downtrodden Mestizo collecting recyclables, Sultan saw a loose thread in the rotten fabric of society: a foreigner profiting off the hard-purchased beverage containers of honest citizens, then using those same profits to likely fund human slavery rings.

Oye amigo, Sultan called, his voice a leathery mix of history’s most rugged tongues: Abe Lincoln, Wyatt Earp and just a dash of Sam Elliot. We can do this the easy way, the hard way, or the MY way.

The Mestizo muttered, then dug deep into the bottom of his reusable plastic woven bag for something, and it sure as little apples wasn’t pan dulce... BLAM-BLAM-BLAM! Sultan dove for cover, hands still tied behind his back. The Mestizo and his pistola ran through a potato sack race, knocking father and son alike into the lush summer grass.

Give it up, compadre! Sultan screamed behind a cooler, undoing the really strong knot binding his hands that he also invented. The gunman tipped over a giant grill, sending hotdog, burger, and even the Grillmaster down into the ant-happy dirt. Screams of sons and fathers surrounded Sultan as he searched for a weapon, finding only plastic cutlery and potato sacks. He continued past the Grillmaster, who was curled up in a fetal position, to a tub filled with water balloons. Water balloons intended for a Father-Son water balloon toss. Water balloons, sparkling like a pile of plump rubies. Rubies for a Sultan...

With a fierce underhand throw (perfected during his time as MVP for the Navy SEAL national softball team) Sultan launched a water balloon across the picnic, when the Assistant Grillmaster shot out from behind the grill. PLAWP!

The bulbous water balloon splattered into the Assistant Grillmaster’s neck unleashing a shrill man’s scream. Sultan shuddered. The only thing Sultan hated more than forms, and injustice, was the sound of a grown man crying. To be sure though, the Assistant Grillmaster certainly deserved only to grill up the tastiest dogs that day, not writhe like the Damned on top of his own meats and itchy grass. As the Mestizo raced for an inflatable castle structure, erected for the fun of children, Sultan arced another balloon high into the air, like a WWI shell on the fields of Verdun. Unfortunately it had been years since he had calculated (or rather instincted) wind resistance, and the balloon came down on a child and crashed his face four inches deep into the dirt.

The youngling didn’t move. He wouldn’t move the rest of the day, such was Sultan’s coma-inducing strength.

Junior! yelled the boy’s father as the gunman disappeared into the inflatable castle. Once conscious the little tyke would be scarred for life at the thought of water balloons, of picnics. No doubt the dear boy would wind up in the Manhattan office of some big city shrink hell-bent on asking crap questions about feelings, and a bunch of other garden variety psychobabble bullshit that ruined this country’s once great children. Sultan grabbed three more water balloons from this tub of jumbo, candy-colored kidney beans and followed the Mestizo inside the inflatable castle. It was big enough to have a few walls and dogleg turns, like a maze. Or a labyrinth. With five feet of space between the top of each wall and the inner roof. Sultan sensed movement from around a partition.

Don’t think, act. Sultan lobbed himself horizontal soaring toward the opening of one room, then underhand threw his water balloon...into emptiness. But his raw animal strength exploded a hole in the wall, slowly collapsing the structure. Sultan would have to move fast, otherwise the criminal would escape, leaving him looking like an ass while this puffy playhouse melted on top of him like a damn giant cake for a giant child left out in the giant rain. Then, a call from behind another wall:

Senor, said the Mestizo. I don’t want no trouble, I work for the cartel. I die, so do you.

So you recycle bottles and cans, then send the money to a drug syndicate? Just as I expected, quipped Sultan.

Si, but the cartel is like my family. And family protects their own.

Thanks for the lesson, Dr. Phil, said Sultan.

The gunman said, I know your type, señor. No family. No code but your own. I can see in your soul something is coming. Something bad.... Sultan kept him talking, using his perfect hearing and instinctual sonar to pinpoint the man’s exact location. And once he got it, it was go time.

Appreciate the free reading, Miss Cleo! Sultan said, leaping into the air. There was a scrambling noise. Of rubber on the PVC tarpaulin surface, of the man’s shoes on the cartoonish floor. But Sultan had already crashed his full weight right on target, diametrically opposed to where the man once stood. The off-set heft of Sultan’s 240-pound frame sent the little guy flying into the air like a starfish in a wind-tunnel, high above the partition, gun clattering out of his hands.

Dios mio! he said.

The man suspended, Sultan underhand torpedoed his last balloons into the man’s face like a carnival game. The first entered the Mestizo’s gaping mouth, and the second filled his lungs with water, before the man crashed lifeless to the ground like a man-shaped water balloon. Sultan flipped the dead man over with a bare foot. Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to bring a gun to a water balloon fight? he said.

CHAPTER 2

Sultan lumbered into his one bedroom, handbuilt cabin deep in the Virginia wilderness and miles from that non-stop shit show known as Society. His loyal dog, Marcus, a mayonnaise white Alsation named for the wise philosopher king Marcus Aurelius, greeted Sultan with three different beer bottles in his mouth – all domestic.

Thanks, boy, said Sultan as he popped the cap with a quick tsss. In his mercenary days, Sultan was once a part of a disastrous mission to acquire rare hops from deep in the Congo for a brewer out of Portland, Oregon. There were no survivors. The cut-throat hops trade made blood diamonds look like cereal prizes. It had been domestics ever since. Besides, in his opinion I.P.A. stood for I Pay (out the) Ass, a joke he made to his doting pup on a near nightly basis. No sooner had Sultan tasted that first bubbly sud of liberty when Marcus returned with a bag of sunflower seeds – Sultan’s favorite treat, and a mysterious package that looked about as world traveled as the dog’s master. Damn time to move, thought Sultan.

His muscular, yet insanely nimble sausage fingers undid the string binding the package’s contents. The return address read M.B., Linegoggin & Haverbrook. A lawyer’s firm. Already Marcus had his hackles up and was instinctively barking at the slimy stench of family law that wafted out along with an eruption of legal letterhead and ancient child support letters. Sultan’s grip tightened like a boa constrictor. My ex-families. They finally found me... Thumbing through the documents, Sultan used knowledge from his lawyering days (hey, everyone makes mistakes) to decipher the meaning of the hate mail: His ex-children were suing him for unpaid child support, plain and simple.

Like the past vomiting into Sultan’s heretofore sparkling clean toilet of a mind, it all came flooding back, bitter carrot chunk memories and all. Sultan’s history as an ex-family man three times over had returned to haunt him. He had started and lost three separate families, been a father and husband three separate times. There was Linda, baby James, and little Susie all swept out to sea during a Disney cruise through the Bermuda Triangle. Margot, the nurse, and their triplets – a handful at times sure, but not deserving of the fate they all suffered – kidnapped by Indonesian smugglers and sold into the underground circus.

Least that was the rumor.

Sultan lit a cigar, inhaled the thick, smokey freedom, and ashed into the ash-tray his dog helpfully brought over in his mouth. Ahh, yes, no wife to complain about his cigars. Not like Denise, mother of Tucker, little Wanda, and the third kid – what’s his face, the wimp with asthma. Sultan simply forgot to pick them up from the shopping mall on Christmas Eve, and had been out of the picture ever since… C’est la vie. No, that life wasn’t for him and he wasn’t regretful at all. He didn’t mind things like eating his Boston Market dinners alone over the running garbage disposal. He didn’t mind falling asleep in his recliner with cigars in his mouth like last night. Guess his ex-families had finally resurfaced – two at least – and were pissed at dear old dad. Hell of a birthday gift. If he didn’t appear in court in three week’s time, Sultan faced incarceration. As far as he was concerned, though, the only court in the land Sultan now recognized was the basketball court found in America’s inner-cities.

With a swig, Sultan tossed the forms, picked up the latest issue of 9/11 Magazine brought over by Marcus, and flipped on the radio he had built from technology waste left on the Appalachian Trail. Lost phones, misplaced earbuds, dumps wrapped in tin-foil. As far as Sultan was concerned, the Internet Age had done nothing but turned nature into a wasteland of wires and dumps wrapped in tin-foil.

He tuned his radio to his favorite Blues program that featured the songs of yesteryear. Of a time when good men were lucky enough not to deal with cultural abominations like free soda refills, or something called an emoji. To not have to deal with child support. Yes sir, Ol’ Sackhead’s Sunday Sampler was like listening to the past.

Tinny voices and crackling percussion spilled out of the speaker and set Sultan at ease. Marcus reappeared with a set of Sultan’s favorite musical spoons in his mouth. A gift from a little boy in Afghanistan. They were gnarled and misshapen, much like Sultan himself, but still brought him great joy. He often used them to play along with whatever musical prophets were speaking the Truth on Ol’ Sackhead’s.

A tappa-dappa-dap and kikkikida-clacka-clack, he started on his handsome thighs...

Not now. Later.

The Mestizo’s ominous warning in the bounce house didn’t sit right with Sultan. How something dark was coming his way. To be sure he deeply respected the Latin connection to the spiritual realm and at one time went undercover deep into the world of shamanism. Or,