Arch Patton Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

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  13

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  About Author

  Down in the Valley

  James

  Strauss

  The

  Bering

  Sea

  An Arch Patton Adventure

  The Bering Sea. Copyright © 2017 by James Strauss. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in review.

  ISBN-13 978-19781410-1-8

  Also by James Strauss

  The Boy: The Mastodons

  The Warrior

  Arch Patton: Down in the Valley

  Thirty Days Has September: The First Ten Days

  Thirty Days Has September: The Second Ten Days

  Visit www.JamesStraussAuthor.com for more!

  The

  Bering

  Sea

  An Arch Patton Adventure

  Prologue:

  Bering Sea

  Joshua Boatwright sat patiently, sipping from his small espresso cup, unsure of how he had come to be where he was — tucked into the back corner of the lobby of the Sheraton hotel in Crystal City. He was looking out a floor-to-ceiling window onto a well-kept courtyard. No, it was not his place to be here. Analysis was what he did, not personal liaisons. His calling in life was to assemble the smallest shards of data and form sweeping mosaics of truth in a world filled with lies. Joshua was proud of his nickname, “Tevie,” a shortened version of the motto he lived by: “Triple Verification.” Three sources to establish the veracity of each shard of data before he added it to his mosaics. He used his art as a vehicle to produce pictures of sanity in an insane world. He worked with a team of analysts at CIA’s Langley complex, located four miles away. His team had not conferred the nickname because of his work, however. Unknown to Joshua, they had given him the name because they knew when he was not at the intelligence facility, his only recreation was watching television non-stop.

  Diminutive and fidgety, he sipped and repetively scanned the room, peering over the tops of his prescription glasses. They had classic jet-black nerd frames. He did not need them to read or drive. But they gave him a distinguished look, or so his ex-wife had told him, and they did help when examining the tiniest details of photo intelligence. The Agency’s electronic surveillance, although not legally allowable for personal use (such as tracking one’s spouse), had proven ruthlessly effective when he’d employed it on her after she’d commented on his spectacles.

  A big man entered the lobby near its grand entrance. He wore an expensive blue suit. Its Italian cut did nothing, however, to disguise his morbid obesity. Joshua flicked his eyes towards the man and then grimaced. The man’s florid complexion, bulbous nose, and polished smile gave his identity away. The Senior Senator from Iowa paused in the center of the large foyer, and took the place in. No assistants, or attendants of any sort, accompanied him, which did not surprise Joshua at all. The Senator noticed him sitting alone in the corner. Joshua glanced at him before looking down at a folder he had placed very exactly on his table. Noticing a slight tremor pass through his left wrist, he quickly tucked it down between his thigh and the arm of the chair. Never had he encountered an Agency representative, and certainly never a sitting senator, much less one who chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee.

  “There’s no shame to having a little bit of fear here,” he whispered to himself, breathing deeply inward as he heard the powerful senator’s approaching footsteps. Joshua squared his shoulders imperceptibly, his back ramrod straight. He had the weight and reputation of the entire Central Intelligence Agency behind him. He would neither genuflect, nor grovel, before anyone.

  “You’d be their man?” the senator inquired very calmly, stopping astride Joshua’s chair.

  Joshua started to rise and raise his right hand. He quickly caught himself, however, putting it down, and reseating himself. He was not there, at a clandestine meeting, to be social, or to appear social.

  “Stay seated,” the senator said, paternalistically, his voice soft and silky. He lowered himself with visible difficulty into the narrow chair Joshua had purposely placed at right angles to his own, before a low coffee table.

  “Got something for me?” the senator asked into the silence between them, his tone now flavored with affability that the analyst instantly hated.

  Before any reply could be made, the senator picked up the unmarked, but highly classified, file Joshua had placed on the table. Neither man said anything while he read its contents. Joshua noted that the lobby was completely empty, save for two clerks working the registration desk near the entrance. The waiter, who had brought his espresso to him, however, had never returned. Joshua actually hoped he wouldn’t, for fear of having to touch the cup and allow the senator to see him shaking.

  Minutes passed. A bead of perspiration ran down his hairline behind his right ear. Fortunately, it was the ear opposite the Senator.

  “Says here that you boys are gonna go ahead and help me out,” the big man intoned, before plopping the file back on the table. “The usual Agency drivel,” the senator commented. “You gonna tell me what the plan is?” he inquired.

  Joshua cleared his throat to steady himself, and then followed his instructions. “Your nephew is being justifiably imprisoned by a foreign government. His violations, meriting that imprisonment, are in keeping with what we normally associate with serious criminal behavior in our own country. The Agency does not normally involve itself in such matters, particularly where such deviant and anti-social behavior is involved.” Joshua halted, having delivered his own righteous version of the background information he had been given during his briefing.

  After a few seconds of silence, he realized that something was amiss. Without looking over, he felt the heat of tremendous anger flowing toward him from the direction of the senator’s chair. Instinctively, he started to drop his left shoulder a millimeter or two in defense, before he caught himself.

  “Just cut to the chase, son. Don’t make me come after your career.”

  The senator’s threat was issued in a low tone, more akin to that of an oversized cat purring than of a human voice. Joshua’s throat froze, a tendril of fear coursing through him at the mention of his career. He finally cleared it by swallowing several times.

  “We’re sending our best man,” Joshua gasped. “He’s experienced, resou
rceful, trained in multiple martial arts and weaponry. No expense will be spared in this operation, but we’re sending him in alone. We can’t afford, no matter what measures you may or may not take, to have this operation rise to the level of an international incident. Not now, anyway.”

  Joshua averted his gaze from the man from Capitol Hill as the Senator finished his memorized message. He waited for an explanation; again, trying to fathom why he had been selected for the role he was playing. Joshua was in the dark, but he sensed the reason. It was about the fact that his analysis group had provided the data, which sanctioned the mess-of-a-mission, in which the so-called “best man,” Arch Patton, had succeeded and then returned home, against all odds.

  Joshua heard the senator rise from his chair. He looked up, but the man was already walking away, his manufactured smile once more plastered to his politician’s face. He had made no comment at all, not even in dismissal.

  Joshua’s shoulders pressed inward and his head sank to the point that his jaw nearly touched his chest. His trembling fingers grasped the espresso cup handle. He took a shaky sip. He thought of the “best man” the Agency was dispatching and then smiled weakly for the first time that day.

  Arch Patton had just come out of West Africa. Under the bloodiest of circumstances, he amazingly accomplished his mission. The skewed manner in which his mission had been conducted would no doubt have the Agency looking like a stone cold, heartless bureaucracy. No one in analysis was taking that lightly.

  His grip steadied as he pondered over what he’d just done. He’d sent a low-life field agent off to save the drug-dealing nephew of a corrupt scumbag of a senator. This time the mission had not even the remotest possibility of success.

  Joshua Boatwright stood up straight, tucked the classified folder under his arm, and strode across the lobby. His mind was already lost in the formulation of the final mosaic, as it would ultimately appear, when the details of an illegal and doomed mission crossed his desk, located in his office, on a cold, rain-swept, dreary portion of the Seward Peninsula.

  CHAPTER ONE:

  Cochon

  The airport at Nome isn’t an airport at all. It’s a hangar at the end of a long concrete pad. In summer the sun shines all the time. Twenty-four hours a day. There is no luggage claim. They put everything in one big pile and then open the doors and let everyone at it. Like Bermuda was in the old days. You fly into Nome when the weather clears. Summer is a lot of fog and mixed rainy coldness. I flew in at three a.m. in the morning. Yet it seemed like noon. The constant light has a really strange effect on the human body, and I was not ready for it. You don’t get tired. Or, at least not at the right times and not with the right symptoms. So, once I got my single bag, I was ready to go. I hadn’t slept since crossing the border and landing in Anchorage the day before. Still, I didn’t feel in the least tired.

  I took a taxi into Nome itself, which only has about a thousand homes and maybe four times as many people. When I got out of the taxi, on Main Street, I was shocked. The town is like something out of Alice in Wonderland. For years, people built homes atop the permafrost layer (that’s about four to five feet of earth, which freezes in the winter and thaws in the summer, while underneath it is always soft), so that many of the homes constructed back then have come to have a distinct lean. They tilt in every direction. Americans, like me, are used to seeing homes flat and level, at all times, so it is truly disconcerting to see homes leaning at weird angles, particularly since none of those angles are congruent with one another.

  Wonderland. I had arrived in a misty, cold, and jumbled Wonderland.

  I walked around the place, hauling my duffel, for a couple of hours, just taking in the town. The raining had stopped, but the streets were still wet. They bore the eerie appearance of never having dried since they were poured. I was supposed to check in at the Nugget Inn, but by the time I was done walking around, it was still only five a.m. I went into the place anyway. There was no one at the front desk, or in the lobby. Nobody anywhere. I checked the place out. A closed and locked restaurant was located at one end of the building. Running right down the center of the place was an impressive bar. It stretched out toward the water and was glassed in on both sides. I peered through the windows of the double doors to see what I could of the place. “The Gold Dust Saloon” was etched across the door glass. As I turned, I accidentally leaned against the door and it gave way. So I looked back and then stepped inside. Nobody was inside. I dropped my bag behind a table and walked through the bar. Behind the long counter, booze bottles were set row upon row, while dirty glasses littered the polished flat surface of the bar itself. I noted that there were un-bussed tables. There was also debris between them, littering the ancient hard wood floor.

  I shrugged to myself. I realized I had happened onto a weird place in the universe…and at a weird time. Instead of departing, I went behind the bar and searched around until I found the ground coffee container. Next, I brewed an urn of coffee, after I cleaned the filthy thing out. Then I started cleaning the bar itself. I worked for an hour, making good headway, until an older man appeared behind me. He made a comment, which caused me to jerk my head around when he spoke.

  “The fryers need to be emptied and cleaned. No drinking until noon. You get the usual breakfast later, when we get some customers. If you work to lunch then you get lunch, and two beers, no more.”

  I examined the man, as he delivered his short speech. His face was large and florid and adorned with a well-manicured handlebar mustache, the kind I had always wanted to grow, but had never gotten around to. The man was also wearing a big yellow apron, which had the single word “Cochon” printed at an angle across its front. French, I knew, but I didn’t know the word. When he was done talking, he handed me a plain, white apron. I took the apron and put it on. It seemed like the natural thing to do, in the strange universe I had chanced upon. I said nothing. I just got busy with the work.

  I emptied the fryers, found large vegetable oil cans in the back, and refilled the fryers. I used a hand brush to work on the floors (“Cochon” had handed me the brush and pointed down) and then applied stainless steel polish to restore all the industrial tables. The man finally stopped me when customers arrived. He handed me a small note tablet. I looked at him, holding the thing in one hand, but he just walked off towards the stoves, located down at the end of the bar. I watched him light all three. He opened some egg cartons he had brought from the back. I wondered whether I should ask him something, or maybe say something, but then I knew what had to be done.

  I started taking orders, trotting out my own Mont Blanc pen to write with. I passed out menus, scribbled orders, and cribbed the notes as best I could. I fastened the notes onto the clips on a small, overhead turntable above the stoves. “Cochon” labored ceaselessly, never asking a question of me, and somehow able to figure out my written instructions. The breakfast crowd abated by nine, so I stopped working, and then leaned my back against the bar. I checked the big front pocket of my apron. I counted out twenty-four dollars in tips, mostly change. “Cochon” slid a plate piled awkwardly with sausage, scrambled eggs, and white toast across the bar behind me. There were no coffee cups in the place.

  “No drinkin’, like I said, till afternoon,” he murmured again.

  I nodded, then got another bowl of coffee, and ate the breakfast, afraid of more customers walking in before I was done. But the run was over.

  “Bus all the rest of the tables, and then get the dishes washed,” barked “Cochon,” throwing me a towel. He cleared my empty plate.

  I did the dishes. By eleven the place was clean and all the work done. A few “coffee only” customers slouched at the bar. They had the look of people waiting for the noon bell, when they could switch to booze. Before I had come, I had been told that people drink a lot in Alaska. “Cochon” came around the end of the bar. He motioned to me to sit with him.

  “You work good. Do the lunc
h crowd and you can then have a couple of beers, maybe a hard drink.”

  I smiled, but said nothing, in keeping with the twilight world I had entered. We both drank coffee slowly from big ceramic bowls.

  “The bowls are from the Navy,” “Cochon” stated, admiring his own. “On destroyers you don’t drink from a cup. You drink coffee and hot chocolate from a bowl.” He looked out the window, toward the sea, his expression wistful. “I still keep my hand in. Got an old LCT from the war. Landing Craft. A hundred feet long, with a beam of thirty. Only draws three feet though. Should sell it, or rent it out. But I hold onto it because it’s a great rough water boat for running supplies between islands.”

  I gestured knowingly, when in truth I was not able to distinguish an LCT from a Chris Craft. I proceeded to check out my Navy bowl carefully, and drank from it again.

  “You want a full time job?” he said.

  My eyebrows went up. The question surprised me. I wasn’t sure what to say. I delayed for a few more sips.

  “Well?” Cochon pressed me, rather forcefully, staring at the side of my face.

  “Well, I already have a job,” I replied, slowly, while taking another sip.

  Cochon examined me closely, taking his time to answer.

  “Hell you say? Job? I know every job in this town, and every person who has a job. You’re not one of ’em.”

  His bushy brows knitted together when I did not immediately respond. Instead of saying something, I eventually pointed out the window to the harbor beyond. I turned to look at him. A question mark appeared on his reddened forehead. I waited a few seconds, before adding words to my explanation.

  “I have a job aboard that expedition ship, M/S World Discoverer, parked out there in the harbor. I don’t report aboard until three,” I said.

  Cochon looked at me in obvious disbelief.

  “You?” Cochon intoned. He then eyed me up and down. “You don’t look like any seaman I ever saw,” he concluded, after a few seconds.

  I grinned. I was wearing Polo trousers, a Paul and Shark shirt, and my Dunhill jacket lay atop the bag that still sat near the front door. I didn’t look like any seaman anyone had ever seen in any port of the world. I looked much more like I belonged in the Channel Islands boardroom I had been in only one day earlier.