The Mother of All Fonkos: Jake Fonko, #6

By B. Hesse Pflingger

IRAQ, 1991. When former Army Ranger turned freelance gun-for-hire Jake Fonko receives a cushy "consulting" offer in Kuwait City, he hops a plane and heads out for what he expects will be a relaxing four week stay.

Soon after Jake lands, however, Saddam Hussein's army blitzkriegs the city, trapping everyone inside. Now, Jake's new mission is simple: survive the broiling desert. But playing all the roles required to make it out alive will tax Jake's training and ironic wit to the breaking point.

And Iraqi prisons are hardly hospitable to former American soldiers...

• Language: English
• Publisher: B. Hesse Pflingger
• Release date: Aug 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386869252

Book preview

Hooray For Hollywood

Saturday, July 21 & Sunday, July 22, 1990

He who meddles

in a quarrel not his own

is like one who grabs

a passing dog by the ears

It was a sweet gesture by Dana Wehrli, my main squeeze. After seeing me return home from my gigs safe and sound, time after time (umm, except from India), she’d finally quit fretting and developed a sense of humor about my profession as a free-lance whatever. When I came back intact from my eight-month Kuwait debacle she presented me with that motto, done in the style of a needlepoint sampler, elegantly framed and nicely gift-wrapped, at a welcome home party she threw, and it drew a big laugh from the assembled.

She must have commissioned it custom-made, because I’ve never seen anything like it for sale or on display, and a beautiful piece of craftsmanship it is. Lord knows it applied to many of my past misadventures, and it was apt for what landed on me in Kuwait. I went there on what seemed to be an innocent-sounding intel assignment and wound up at both ends of that fracas, barely escaping with my life from the bloody Highway of Death during the Iraqi retreat.

If that’s what grabbing passing dogs by the ears is like, I’ll henceforth give peripatetic pooches a wide berth. However, a couple months in Saddam Hussein’s dungeons under the TLC of his psycho son, Uday, ultimately made Operation Desert Storm my own quarrel, up close and personal.

To recap: My Philippine assignment—helping Corazon Aquino steal the election from Ferdinand Marcos (see Fonko Bolo)—left me in good shape despite missing out on Yamashita’s hoard of stolen gold. Not only did it net a solid paycheck but that caper ratcheted my cred for international intrigues up several tiers. My second CIA jockstrap award just iced the cake. Those are supposed to be deeply hidden secrets, of course (you can wear the medal only on your jockstrap is The Company in-joke). But word leaks out to Those In The Know, a roster that includes Very Important People all around the world, some of whom need help of a certain nature from time to time.

Not that I hire out for wet work, nor do I do the bread-and-butter jobs that Hollywood P.I.s like Tony Pellicano thrive on—sanitizing crime scenes, retrieving drugged-out actors and wayward actresses, digging up dirt for divorce cases, breaking studio contracts, and so forth. Oh, I get my hands dirty enough, but after 1986 I could be pickier about jobs I took on and could ask top dollar for my services with a straight face.

Previously, I’d shepherded celebrities and executives through situations they feared posed danger. I’d made deliveries of valuable objects and questionable items. I’d sold advice on security to corporations and overseas concerns. I’d put my Ranger experience to good use for foreign military clients. And I was always happy to take on intel jobs, my old Army specialty, when they came up. Things like that. My foray in Colombia with the drug cartels that included a harrowing traverse of Panama’s Darien Jungle and culminated in my persuading Manny Noriega to give himself up got a little out of control (an interesting story for some other time). But the Philippines job elevated me to the lofty reaches of international consultant/advisor.

What kind of work is that? They say about consultants: He’ll borrow your watch, tell you what time it is, then keep the watch. They also say about consultants: A consultant is just an ordinary man 50 miles away from home. And another thing they say about consultants is: He’s smart enough to tell you how to run your business, but too smart to start a business of his own.

There’s some truth in those sayings.

For example, a corporate or government honcho may hire a consultant to endorse a decision he’s already made. The consultant’s task is not to conjure up a genius business plan. Rather, he’s supposed to figure out what the decision is, and then present an arrangement of the facts of the matter framed in such a way that naysayers in the picture accept that they’d be better off going along with it. Not to mention the added bonus that everybody gets if the decision turns out all wrong: Don’t blame me. That’s what our highly-paid consultant advised.

Or the consultant conducts an investigation on some delicate matter. He may not be any smarter or better informed than insiders, but coming from the outside he can present findings, ideas, conclusions and recommendations that insiders endorse but wouldn’t dare voice for fear of career immolation.

It’s nice work if you can get it, and I was getting more of it through 1987, ‘88 and ‘89. Don’t take me wrong. I wasn’t running some kind of con job on the world. I delivered as much value for money as anybody in my line of work. What had happened over the years was that, starting with my ill-starred stint for the Central Intelligence Agency—our beloved CIA—in the closing days of the Vietnam War, penumbras and emanations surrounding my adventures had created an impression of deep-cover involvements in international espionage intrigues at the very highest levels. I steadfastly denied it, but in that hall of mirrors my denials only bolstered the impression that the rumors and whisperings must be true. The fact that the Russian KGB had a section devoted to thwarting me boosted my legend further. Emil Grotesqcu, the KGB agent in charge of their Fonko Desk, had every reason to maintain the fiction, as his own job security depended on promoting me as a formidable foe. It worked just fine for me and only a fool would argue with it.

Meantime, life at my beach pad on the Malibu shore continued copacetic, a flow of balmy days, lush living and celeb parties. Our nearest brush with local excitement happened in 1989, when the Malibu Chamber of Commerce appointed Marty Sheen Honorary Mayor of Malibu, a ceremonial position. He surprised everyone by immediately issuing a unilateral proclamation: I hereby declare Malibu a nuclear-free zone, a sanctuary for aliens and the homeless, and a protected environment for all life, wild and tame. Then busloads of homeless bums arrived to take him up on the offer. It wasn’t long before The Malibu Inn marquee featured a counter-proclamation: Dump Martin Sheen. You can always count on outraged money to trump harebrained idealism, and the situation was soon straightened out. Was that political experience crucial to landing him the role of President Bartlett on The West Wing? I’m nobody to question anyone else’s cred.

Sad to say, 1989 didn’t go well for Dana Wehrli. She continued producing successful shows for ABC-TV, but clawing her way up the corporate ladder came with supersized stress. The docs discovered that her father, whom she loved dearly, had prostate cancer at a terminal stage. And she gave her lower back a painful and lingering wrench trying for a dig during a beach volleyball game at a surf rat reunion party in my front yard (alas, my old gang isn’t getting younger).

Her resulting menu of pain-killers, uppers and downers reached the extent that she knew every clerk at every pharmacy within twenty miles by their first names. Until she found herself hooked on Vicodin. Dana’s no fool. When she realized she had a drug problem she arranged a leave of absence from ABC and checked into a new clinic in town, Promises. A luxe rehab center up in the hills with an enviable ocean vista, it came to boast a distinguished alumni roster: Charlie Sheen, Robert Downey Jr., and Ben Affleck, among others. They did good work, but it took time.

With Dana at Promises and focused on getting straightened out, I was left temporarily on my lonesome. My workload hit a light patch, and with time on my hands one sunny afternoon I drove down Pacific Coast Highway to check out the action around Marina del Rey. For those unfamiliar, it’s a seaside residential complex on the Los Angeles coast. Apartments, condos, townhouses, what have you, centered around the unifying theme of a sprawling marina stocked with big sailboats and cabin cruisers that rarely left their slips. Off-site party pads, most of them. I dropped into a beachside bar, not special enough to burden you with a detailed description—fishnet draped around the faux-distressed rafters, simulated hatch-covers for tables, mounted sailfish, the place where young up-and-comers and wannabes gather for TGIF Happy Hours. You’ve all been at that bar or one of its kin.

The ratio was better than the typical singles bar five-guys-for-every-gal and pretty soon I was chatting up a pert little California-tanned brunette. She looked lively and seemed welcoming. The mating ritual in those places was like contract bridge, bid and counter bid in breezy small-talk, play your hand and woe betide the dummy. After preliminaries I opened with What’s your sign?—one of the standards back in those days.

Slippery when wet, she said with a mischievous smile. I’ve used that one myself, but from her it suggested playfulness.

Mine is ‘Danger—Animal Crossing,’ I countered with a stage-leer, and we took off from there. She was DeeDee, a stewardess with Pacific Southwest Airlines, and as the Coffee, Tea or Me era hadn’t entirely faded away, one job qualification was comeliness. She lived with another stewardess in one of those apartment blocks in the Marina. I suggested we go somewhere else, and she was for that.

What would you like to do? I asked. We’d filled up on bar munchies enough that the prospect of dinner didn’t entice.

My roommate’s away. Why don’t we go over to my place? she suggested.

And what would we do there?

Well… she said. Are you into kinky sex? That was out of the blue, for sure, but DeeDee didn’t seem depraved. Whatever kinkiness she might come up with wouldn’t likely go amok.

Try anything once, I said enthusiastically. Tell you what, let’s make a party out of it. Is there a liquor store around here? There was, and I was feeling flush just then. We went in and came out with a magnum of cold Dom Perignon champagne. Then over to Marina del Rey. Sports cars and muscle wagons crammed the parking areas, so we wound up in a space far-removed from her pad. She took me by the hand and led me over and in. Your typical bachelorette digs, no need for detailed description. Imagine a mid-scale motel room with a little extra frou-frou.

Okay, we’re here, I said. What do you have in mind?

Confronted with the reality of her offer, she flushed and fished for words. "Gee, I don’t know, it was just something clever to say. Cosmopolitan has these articles about things to try… let me think. She thought a little. I know, why don’t you tie me up? That’s kinky, isn’t it?"

Tie you up?

You know, strip me and tie me to the bedposts. I didn’t know, but what the heck? I shucked off her clothes and she lay back, and I bound her wrists and her ankles to the bedposts with some belts and scarves we’d dug up out of her dresser. Not dangerous prisoner tight, of course, but immobilizing enough.

You okay with this? I asked.

Actually, it’s sort of exciting, she said. What’s gonna happen next, you know? Surveying her spread out there, I could see the situation had possibilities.

Then I remembered that cold bottle of champagne. We’d left it in the Cherokee, and it was a hot summer afternoon. Just a minute, I said. I’ll run down and get the champagne and put it in the fridge. Otherwise it’ll be too warm, and when we open it we’ll look like a winning World Series team in the locker room celebration. I’ll be back in a sec. In the meantime, get your mind fired up for some wild, insane sex. You are in my power, heh heh heh.

Hurry back, she said.

I jogged over to the car, collected the bottle and started back, only to realize that I’d not noted her door number. There were scores of doors, and all the places looked alike. I wasn’t even sure which block it was in. Now what to do? Start knocking on random doors? Find the security office and have them look up DeeDee (if that was really her name, and she’d never given me her last one)? And if by chance they located her they’d open the door to find a naked women tied up on her bed… and what are you doing here, mister?

What to do but beat it for home and hope for the best (I’d not given my last name either, thank God—at least they couldn’t track me down). For the next two weeks I searched through the L.A. Times each morning for stories about stewardesses found tortured and starved to death in their Marina del Rey apartments, and APBs out for the perp. But no such stories turned up, nor did TV news report anything like that. Finally I added it to my long list of Things I Wish I’d Never Done and put it out of my mind.

So, some months later Dana was back as good as new (and she being the quintessence of California blonde beach-bunniness, that’s mighty good indeed!). We were approaching the portals of a steakhouse in Santa Monica when who should come out but DeeDee, on the arm of a dude who looked like, whatever he did for a living, it paid well. She stopped and looked me up and down. Recognition beamed across her face. She gave me a grin and a wink and chirped, Kink-eee!

What was that about? Dana asked after DeeDee and dude had passed out of earshot.

It’s L. A. I said with a puzzled shoulder-shrug. Who knows?

One Saturday evening in July Eddie Lipschitz (Edward LeGrande to his Tinseltown peers) took me along to a big Beverly Hills bash celebrating a studio mega-merger… or maybe it was a mega-spin-off, Eddie wasn’t clear on that. Anyhow, the point of the party wasn’t the point: as usual it was all about schmoozing. Some of those Hollywood parties Eddie took me to had a more than passing kinship to Walgreen’s—lineups of crystal bowls offering a buffet-style rainbow of pills, and guests gulping them by the fistful hoping some new kind of buzz would kick in. Not to mention the cocaine lines. This soiree could have been catered by Merck, Pfizer and Lilly together, for all that was on offer. Myself, I avoid recreational pharmaceuticals; too much risk for someone in my line of work.

An old Indian chief once was asked why he didn’t drink firewater like the braves in his tribe did. I have to deal with the White Man, he replied. Why would I want to make myself stupid? Likewise me with pills, lines and tokes: I have to deal with crooks, assassins and spies. Why would I want to make myself crazy?

Stoners floating along in their own exclusive worlds bore the hell out of us on the outside, and I was feeling out of the flow. I hit the bar for another Dos Equis when a couple of guys weaved over to me. They’d been sampling the goodies—that was obvious.

One of them, once-athletic but now saggy around the jowls, exclaimed to his buddy, a sun-bleached, leather-tanned, wiry guy, I told you it was him! Meet my old compadre, Max Rummage. He meant me. "God damn, Max, long time no see. When was the last time? Doing stunt work for Waterworld, wasn’t it? Man, what an all-time clusterfuck that shoot was, hey? We were in that bunch of bad guys on jet-skis, he asided to his pal. Nobody can handle a jet-ski like Max Rummage! Remember when ya saved my life? One of the rehearsals went way wrong. My ski turned turtle and started sinking, and Max dove down and pulled me off it. Then back at me, How’s life in Topanga Canyon these days, Max?"

Pretty good, from what I hear, but I live in Malibu, I told him.

Coming up in the world, are you? Or down, as the case, topographically, may be, he chortled. You dyed your hair, Max? You was a carrot-top last I saw you.

Well, you know...

He looked me up and down. Hey, are you shrinking, or am I getting bigger? he said. Seems to me you were above six feet, weren’t you?

Must be the lighting in here, I said.

Man, the times Max and I had. Remember that costume gal, Cindy Whatshername? Nobody could give head like good old Cindy Whatshername.

This was getting out of hand. Look, friend, I said, I think there’s some mistake. I’m not Max Rummage. I’m Jake Fonko.

He put a gleeful elbow in his friend’s ribs. Didn’t I tell ya Max was a hoot? he exclaimed. The sonofagun even changed his name!

With that I excused myself and wandered away through the jabbering throng. It’s L. A., I thought. Who knows?

In the atrium by the indoor pool I found Eddie talking to a sharply-dressed, swarthy man. He spotted me and waved me over. Jake, he said, here’s somebody you need to meet. Jake Fonko, shake hands with Mr. Fawaz…? Al Sabah…? Did I get the pronunciations right?

Close enough, Mr. Edward, he said with a smile. He turned to me and extended a hand. Mr. Jake, I am delighted to meet you.

The pleasure is all mine, Mr… . Sabah?

My countrymen customarily use the honorific with the first name, so Mr. Fawaz will be fine for now.

He’s a prince from Kuwait, Eddie put in.

Well he could have been. He was slender, about my height (5' 10) and several years older, with a handsome face that would have looked even better without the Cuban-gigolo mustache and the patch of short chin whiskers. His dark-olive complexion and closely-trimmed brown-black mop reminded me of the folks I’d tangled with on my Iranian gig. You’re a long way from home, I said. What brings you to Los Angeles?"

Various business on behalf of my government. In fact, one assignment is to see about hiring you to perform a service for my government. I was going to try and contact you tomorrow. Knowing of your Hollywood connections, I mentioned your name to several people here, and I was referred to Mr. Edward, and it is my good fortune to find you in attendance.

Eddie and I go back a long way, I said. What is the nature of the service you have in mind?

Now is neither the time nor the place to discuss it. If you could meet me at my hotel, that would be best. I’m staying at the Beverly Wilshire. I apologize for the short notice, but if it is not inconvenient, could you meet me there tomorrow at, say, two in the afternoon?

Kuwait + Prince + Beverly Wilshire = Money. Could we make that a little later, say 3:15? I can juggle my schedule to be available after that.

"3:15 it will be, Mr. Jake. I look forward to seeing you then. Ask at the desk for me. Now, I see someone else I must talk to, if