Appalachian Dreams: A Matt Rodgers Adventure Book Six in Series

By Laife Stoltz

Matt Rodgers and his wife help an old friend who is developing oil and gas reserves in teh eastern Marcellus black shale. They uncover a green eco-terrorist plot to sabotage his holdings and honor a long lost friend's wish for his daughter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781312678927

Book preview

Appalachian Dreams

By

Laife Stoltz

A Matt Rodgers Adventures

Book Six of Series

Copyright Page

Appalachian Dreams

2nd Edition

Copyright @ 2021 Laife Stoltz

All rights reserved.

ISBN 9-781312-67892-7

The Author asserts the moral rights to be identified as the author of this work, not to have this work altered in a prejudicial way and not to have authorship of this work falsely attributed.

www.lulu.com

Notice: All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

Prologue

When the Scotch-Irish immigrants came to Appalachia, they were escaping the persecution of their English masters, and in some respects, imposed starvation, both figuratively and literally. As indentured servants their lot back home was not much better than that of the peasants of the middle ages. Because of their struggle for survival coupled with their lowly station in life, most

were illiterate and uneducated.

Still,like everyone else,they had their dreams and aspirations and they knew in their bones that if given the chance, they would improve their lot and that of their children. So mostly

uneducated and down-trodden, they came to the mountains and hills on the eastern side of

the new World.

Some came seeking their fortune, some sought freedom, but most of all, they were seeking their survival and the right to live and die as they saw fit.

Further west they went,  away from the civilized burdens of the aristocracy in the burgs of New York, Boston, or Richmond to settle in the hardwood valleys and ridges that stretched from New York down past the rugged Sequatchie Valley of what is now Tennessee, all the way to western Alabama.

As they scratched out an existence, first from farming and later from the rock rich in

iron and coal, which they readily found and exploited, little did they know of the other great wealth that lay beneath their feet in the

form of natural gas and uranium. These treasures, locked tightly in the black shale that skirted the edges and bottoms of the

fertile valleys, would not to be released for almost another 400 years after their arrival to

this dark and dangerous land.

And so it was when they came to this land. Still teaming with savage Indians and destined to go through several seemingly

endless wars, first with the French, later the British, and finally with their own kin and

brothers. But that was then and now was now. The lessons learned were now long lost and only sung in snippets from time to time in the traces of old folk songs, written ages ago by long dead heroes. And still they had their Appalachian Dreams…

Chapter 1

A Father's Love

Agent Scott Stein had just gotten off the phone with his oncologist. The earlier diagnosis of pancreatic cancer still stood and in all reality, he knew he had but a few short weeks left to live. He didn't mind dying, he had led a full life and his wife had died two years earlier from a fatal heart attack. Apparently women did not show the same symptoms as men and many of the warning signs had been missed. No, his only regret was that his daughter, who had just finished college a couple of years ago, had been sucked into the shadowy cult world of the 4th Way of Enlightenment. This group was

an offshoot of the original Gurdjieff Schools established in Europe and the United States during the age of liberal enlightenment that helped spur World War I and II and saw the

rise of communism, fascism, and all the other idiotic improvements that threatened the very fabric of God-fearing Christians and sought

to destroy perhaps the greatest strength of the western world, particularly the United States, self-reliance. These schools, which if a rational person truly did their homework and had a modicum of common sense, would realize they by all accounts targeted upwardly mobile professionals by enticing them into believing they were different or better than the average man who, by their tenants was merely asleep, a mere automaton or machine plodding along oblivious to the true rewards and requisite  responsibilities of life. Only by exercising extreme self- observation, meditation, and of course, donating copious amounts of their time, undying loyalty,

servitude and money to their teacher could they hope to develop a soul and evolve to a higher, more purposeful state.

Scott had tried to take her out of the organization but a liberal judge had ruled that she was an adult and was allowed to follow any belief she wanted. So instead of saving her, he was issued a restraining order and was banned from seeing her, his own flesh and blood. Now that he knew his time was limited, he needed to go to plan B.

Looking up the number of his old friend and former mentee, Matt Rodgers, Scott decided it was now or never.

Matt, who had left the darker services of the government a

few years ago to become a geologist, had worked briefly with him doing the bidding of the US government in areas that are not publicized or even acknowledged as unfortunately in maintaining freedom and protecting the peace, unpleasant and desperate deeds need to sometime be performed that can never come to light.

During Matt's tenure, Scott had become like a father to him. Scott now needed to call in a favor, but could not risk dragging Matt in too deeply to his plan.

Matt, I was hoping you could do me a favor, Scott asked after he got his younger friend on the phone.

Sure Scott, anything, Matt had replied.

Scott then explained that he  needed Matt to fly out to a small, remote airstrip just north of San Francisco this weekend and meet him. The favor would not take long and he would gladly reimburse him for his time and fuel.

Oh and Matt, don't file a flight plan. We don't need to advertise that you and I were anywhere near each other for this one. OK?

Matt somewhat puzzled agreed and

promised to meet his old friend that weekend. Scott then had rung off and went about making the rest of the arrangements.

Consulting his Rolodex, Scott next dialed a number of another friend in the DC area.

Mike, the retired agent said, it will go down this weekend. Rodgers will fly down to LZ-12 and deliver the package. Be sure everything is set up and ready to load onto the computers at Langley and Meade. We need to make sure this one goes flawlessly.

The voice on the other end of the line acknowledged that he understood. Then he ended the call.

* * * * *

Gari was feeling pretty smug. He had been with the Cult as a teacher of the 4th Way of Enlightenment now for almost ten years and aside from this work, he recently had become a registered hypnotherapy technologist to help supplement his income. This gave him a bit more credibility in the organization as he had learned early on when he had been recruited that many of Gurdjieff's original methods for controlling and manipulating people depended on either

individually or collectively putting them into a subtle hypnotic trance.

They were constantly looking for recruits to keep the machine fed and the best source seemed to be young professional types, well-educated who either had money or at least had the potential to make copious quantities’ of it in the future.

Naturally the occasional rich widow or the more eccentric types such as professors, writers, and artists were also good prey, particularly if one was lucky enough to attract

one who was actually smart and well known. Having a nice mix of intelligentsia in the cult gave the organization a nice flare that made it look high-class and legitimate.

Like most cons and flim-flam artists, Gari had been trained to identify when a lost soul came along. They were everywhere, perhaps due to a recent life altering trauma such as a death of someone close and dear, a breakup or divorce, or even a move to a strange new city and career. Whatever the cause or reason, people who were hurting were ripe for induction. Naturally he knew that you needed to play on their shortcoming as well as offer them friendship and solace.

The first meeting was always the most critical as you had to draw them out of their gloom and see

you as the person who really got them, as that somebody who cared and really understood their pain.

At the same time it was important to get them to reveal what their fears and perceived shortcomings were. It usually wasn't too hard to find out what it was about them that they

felt was wrong. People tended to love talking about themselves and as long as you listened and slyly asked leading questions you could get the information you needed. Armed with that knowledge, a good recruiter would then store it away for future use.

Gari had found that if they ever started to stray from his

influence he could just subtly remind them that their reservations were because of their earlier revealed deficiencies. He would work

them, making sure they felt good about the attention he doled out to them and that they were special, the elite, not at all like the slugs in the outside world that didn't believe and who were partly to blame for their failings.

Naturally, they didn't even think they were in a cult, but instead, the organization passed itself off as a loose association of spiritually enlightened individuals working towards a greater common good.

New devotees were warned about discussing their group with

outsiders because non-members would not understand, and besides, the message was so complicated, they naturally did not have a complete and thorough understanding of what the 4th way meant until they had been there for a long while. (After all, it wouldn’t do at all to have an influential friend, of

family member gum up the works before the neophyte was completely hooked. That would be bad for business)

Hypnosis was only one of the many tools he used to entice them. Actually, getting them to self-meditate, or getting them terribly exhausted worked just as well to get them to let down their guard and allow him to plant post-hypnotic suggestions and thoughts in their confused brains. The magic centered on eventually getting them to trigger a serotonin release in their brain. So in addition to traditional  hypnosis, getting them to chant mantras, meditate, perform repetitive and confusing dances, or even listen to the sacred music which was constantly changing cadence while keeping an undertone with a semblance of a backbeat or theme helped to keep them off-balance.

Eventually, if they showed up enough times, they would succumb to his control. Finally if you could get them to feel that natural high and convince them it was because of the organization or the message and not just a natural reaction to some stimulus, you had them hooked. Once they went down the path, the clueless devotees got sucked in deeper and deeper and without even knowing it, they were at your beck and call. Temper that with convincing them that non-believers were flawed and to be pitied, and you soon had a small army of brain-washed devotees who would gladly work for free, give large sums of their time and money to the cult without even realizing they were being duped. After all, once they