Book 5: Another Way

Episode 16

© by William Arthur Holmes

Watson was tired of hiring punks like those last two. Tired of the operation entirely. He wanted to return to his favorite pastimes golfing, fishing, and chasing tail. Maybe nudge the governor’s chief of staff — an old Air Force buddy — to get the governor to legalize marijuana for that pot farm idea. If he could generate an income from that, he could afford to decline Charonne’s gigs.

He hated tormenting Kaylie, but the best way to get Dobie to quit the tour was through her. He hated telling Blount to sexually harass her — didn’t take much convincing — but never thought the old perv would confuse harass with rape. At least JD made the world a better place when he killed him.

Watson had dumped Audrey — standard operating procedure — and was in his hotel room, asleep, when his cell phone rang. His latest girlfriend — Chartreuse or something, he could never remember — was awake and watching a sci-fi flick.

Seeing the name Charonne pop up on his phone, Chartreuse muted the TV and roused Watson.

“Nothing you’ve done is working!” the Colonel’s deep voice boomed through the phone, wasting no time with pleasantries. “Pokorny’s still out there selling that tripe and it needs to stop now! I want him gone! No more messing around. You know what I’m saying?”

Watson knew exactly what the Colonel was saying. He was putting out a hit on Dobie.

“He’s just a guy driving around, talking to people,” Watson said, taking it down a notch. “He can’t even handle a gun. He’s harmless, trust me.”

“You’re not getting fond of him, are you?” Charonne was still huffing and puffing, but he was coming down.

Watson got out of bed and shuffled off to the kitchenette. Shutting the door behind him, he opened the fridge and searched for a beer. “When one door closes, another one opens!” he said to himself. With a laugh, forgetting who was on the other end, he added, “I’ve been hanging around Dobie too long.”

“What’s that?” Charonne asked.

“Nothing. Dobie’s just another smart-ass know-it-all, but his girlfriend, Kaylie. Have you seen her? Lord, that girl could stop traffic.”

“So, you and Pokorny are on a first-name basis now?” the Colonel continued. “You should’ve eliminated him back at the barn. Let the mom or boyfriend take the fall. What happened there?”

“Pokorny didn’t run scared,” Watson was careful not to use his first name. “At the diner, he stood up to JD. And at the barn he tried to be a hero. You can’t shoot someone like that.”

“Sure, you can,” said Charonne. “You and I have done exactly that. Remember Iraq? You shot that Haji in front of his wife and kid, and ended up with the wife?”

Watson had killed people, but only in defense of himself and others, and only during sanctioned ops. “I was interrogating her,” he began angrily before calming himself, “when her husband shows up and starts shooting. Luckily, those guys can’t shoot for shit. I nailed him right between the eyes!”

He smiled at the memory. He had shacked up with the woman afterward, but it was opportunistic not premeditated.

“You have to put people in their place,” Charonne continued. “They like to be put in their place.” When Watson didn’t respond immediately, the Colonel barked, “You still there, Major?”

“Still here, sir,” Watson replied without enthusiasm. “We don’t need to kill anyone.”

“I’ll decide what we need, Major!” the Colonel shouted, then changed to a more conversational tone. “If you could go back in time, wouldn’t you kill Hitler, Stalin or Mao before they got too powerful? Of course, you would. That’s all we’re doing. But, make no mistake, Major, either you take Pokorny out or I send in someone who might accidentally take you out in the process. Your call.”

Watson hung up knowing he had no choice but to get rid of Dobie. Yes, he could kill Charonne – problem solved, and good riddance – but half of the agreed-upon sum had not yet been paid. Watson needed that money.

Maybe Dobie is right, he thought. Money is the root of all evil.

He called some old friends at White Sands Missile Range near Las Cruces, New Mexico.

~ ~ ~

Ever since Taylorville, JD and Claire had been out looking for Kaylie and Dobie. At a truck stop in Oklahoma Claire asked, “What are we gonna do when we find them?”

JD was sucking on a Slurpee. Pulling the straw out of his mouth, he snapped, “I’ll worry about the details!”

The fiasco back home was Claire’s idea, but she made sure JD thought he was the one in charge. Always let the man think he’s in charge. It ended up a textbook example of best-laid plans gone wrong, but her intent was to get Kaylie away from Dobie.

When she ran into Watson at the hotel, they recognized their common enemy: Dobie. She suggested he kill him for her but settled for a staged kidnapping. They assumed Dobie would escape — get the hell out of town while he could — but they misread him.

~ ~ ~

Kaylie insisted they head southwesterly. “Just keep driving,” she said, “all the way to Mexico.” She’d always wanted to go there and had heard the dry desert air helped to clear one’s head.

In Las Cruces — not quite Mexico, but almost — things got weird. Dobie and Kaylie shared a dream about a little blue alien named Semmy. Neither of them was into aliens or science fiction — or drugs — so it was a mystery where it came from.

Nothing that Watson had tried up to that point had worked on Dobie. Hiring people to harass him. Putting dents in his car. Kidnapping her. It only made them more determined. Watson couldn’t help but respect that. They were alike in that respect, but he was desperate to end this.

He was sitting in a hard, plastic chair in a cramped little room somewhere inside a secret military location — in town, off the White Sands property. Two airmen – one of them female – sat next to him in much more comfortable chairs. They all wore military-grade virtual reality helmets plugged into the same broadcast that Dobie and Kaylie were seeing. These two “space nerds” as they called themselves were trained in projecting dreams and images into people’s heads from afar but swore that this Semmy broadcast was real.

Neither they nor their superiors knew where it came from or how they captured it — other than entirely by accident — but they had it and everyone who watched it was blown away. Even their aliens-in-residence were unfamiliar with Semmy’s blue race “from the 8th dimension, beyond the Pleiades.”

Watson assumed the space nerds were lying. Half of everything labeled top secret was a lie, designed to throw people off the scent of the other half that was legitimate.

~ ~ ~

In their dream/hallucination/episode, Dobie and Kaylie were joined by a big-eared, smiling, little alien humanoid. Its skin, eyes and hair were all blue, and it sat in a wide, beige, over-stuffed wing-back chair directly in front of them. The humans were in theater seats in the front row.

Its smiling face was that of an effeminate male or masculine female. Delicate and unassuming, its eyes dazzled with intelligence, seeing right through whatever and whoever they focused on.

With its bare feet planted firmly, wearing a simple beige robe that blended with the seat, it sat like a monarch on a throne. Its legs were also bare from the knees down, giving it a disembodied look, with its head hovering above detached legs and feet.

Its voice was that of a man and woman speaking English simultaneously in a Hindi-British accent in the royal we. There was a laughing melody to it, a sort of harmony. Dobie could sing but not harmonize, which he considered one of his many character flaws. He appreciated such ability in others, especially this alien now. Its voice was soothing. Dobie could listen to it all day.

“Our name is Sematalanthoyop,” it began, “but you can call us Semmy... or Talan... or Thoyop. Whatever floats your boat. Do not be frightened. We are from beyond the Pleiades, in the eighth dimension... when we’re not slumming it down here in the third and fourth dimensions with you all. Most of you spend most of your time in the third dimension, influenced more than you know by the fourth, only rarely reaching the fifth. Point being, we are exponentially better than you!

“Just kidding. Don’t let the term ‘higher dimension’ fool you. For one thing, it’s more of an outer dimension. Almost everything in this universe is spherical. To assume that higher-dimensionals are better than you is like assuming that someone who can swim while you cannot is somehow better; or assuming that someone who has been told the answer is smarter than those not told. Never confuse better-informed, -trained or -disciplined with just plain better.

“No one is innately better than anyone else. It’s just that some of you have gone off the rails worse than others.”