9/11 Vigilantes

9/11 Vigilantes

A DUNGAN BOOKS PUBLICATION Copyright 2006

by Fred Dungan

To my grandson, Aidan Connor Dungan

Duty, Honor, Country

Introduction

Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Since school starts tomorrow, this is my last chance to sleep in late. Shortly after 10 AM, I head for the kitchen and, passing a portable radio nestled amongst potted plants on a shelf in the garden window, I flick it on:

At 8:45 AM this morning a hijacked Boeing 767 airliner struck the north tower of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, setting it ablaze. A half hour later, a second hijacked 767 slammed into the other tower. Both have collapsed and continue to burn. The number of casualties is not yet known, but is thought to be in the thousands. Shortly after the attack on the World Trade Center, a third hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon, tearing a huge hole in the west side of military headquarters. Despite severe smoke and flames, the living, injured, and dead are being pulled out from beneath the rubble. For more on this hellacious calamity, an unprecedented three-pronged attack by terrorists on our eastern seaboard, we take you to Washington, D.C., where . . .

Not very plausible, I say to myself. This must be an updated War of the Worlds broadcast. Hadn't Orson Welles fooled millions in the 1930's with a breaking news version of H.G. Well's classic science fiction yarn? I wasn't about to be taken in by a dusty trick and, reaching for the knob, somewhat indignantly turned the dial to what I thought to be a reliable all-news-all-the-time station.

. . . a fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Pittsburgh. There are no known survivors. Police and firefighters are combing through . . .

Oh my God! It's for real. Thousands of Americans—civilians for the most part—mangled, crushed, burned, and buried alive in a sneak attack that by comparison rendered Pearl Harbor a scuffle in a bathtub. Organized terrorism, the kind that involves lots of money and planning, had been confined to the fringes of our collective radar; a daily occurrence in Beirut and Tel Aviv, but not perceived as a pressing domestic problem. This was a wakeup call, a reminder that we are part of a shrinking world where a fire in our neighbor's house needed to be put out lest it spread to our own.

But why? Why us and why now? Was it God's punishment, a prelude to Armageddon? I just couldn't buy that. New York and Washington, D.C. weren't Sodom and Gomorrah—as a matter of fact they weren't anywhere near as decadent as Amsterdam and Bangkok. No, despite the shrill rasping of mullahs and Osama bin Laden, the United States was no Great Satan. If anything, we were simply too complacent, too trusting.

I switch off the radio and eat my bowl of cereal in the living room where I can watch the news on television. The screen portrays the heart-breaking exodus of refugees in business suits and ties fleeing Manhattan on foot. Dust fills the air, coating everything and everyone in shades of gray. It is as if the tragedy is being broadcast in black and white. Unable to pull myself away from the tube, I repeatedly view footage of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. It can't happen here, not on American soil.

In the days to come, many of my older friends will enlist in the military. Flags fly everywhere and it is not unusual to see Old Glory attached to everything from car antennas to fence posts. Never before in my life have I witnessed such a spontaneous display of patriotism. In the heat of the moment, not knowing where and when the terrorists would strike next, is it any wonder that false reports of nonexistent terrorists would lead a number of vigilantes and super patriots to champion an America for Americans in which there would be no place for immigrants or those of foreign birth?

September 11 would soon come to join December 7 in the public mind as a Day of Infamy. In the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, General DeWitt, commander-in-chief of the West Coast, declared, A Jap is a Jap. United States citizens of Japanese descent were rounded up and moved to inland concentration camps. Chinese businesses had their windows smashed by mobs of roving vigilantes who mistook Chinamen for being Japanese. It has been said that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Prejudice is no substitute for studied deliberation. That said, we did our utmost best. May God forgive us for any mistakes we may have made in our initial knee-jerk response to the gruesome carnage of 9/11.

Chapter 1

Although it looks rather barren, this place is a desert resort. Snowbirds—that's what the Canadian tourists call themselves—drive down here in their RV's to work on their tans. Most are working class families with children who cannot afford the Caribbean. But what the travel brochures fail to mention is that the temperature drops when the sun goes down. I never liked the cold. If God had meant for humans to live in cold climates, He would have given us fur coats like animals. It's simply not natural to be bundled in layers of clothing. Slows you down. Better to be cold than clumsy.

There's not much to do for a young stud seeking adventure in a small town in the high desert. Most of the goodlooking local girls go elsewhere to get their kicks. Chugging a 12-pack of beer has been known to make a lessthan-stunning chick seem sexy, but that's not really practical when you live at home and your father is the sheriff.

So that's how I came to be plinking pebbles off our next door neighbor's second story window. I had read somewhere that glass is a liquid rather than a solid; a congealed substance with such graceful moves that not even a slow motion camera can capture its act. Those stained glass windows in old European cathedrals are thicker at the bottom than at the top—proof positive that glass moves in its own sweet time. I figured that a small rock at the top of its trajectory wouldn't have enough force to break a window unless it hit dead center. So far my hypothesis had proven correct. I had selected seven smooth pebbles of approximately the same size and weight from a terrarium on the patio with which to conduct my experiment. The first six had performed stupendously, striking at the edges near the frame without so much as a hairline crack. Perhaps I had grown overly confident or, more likely, I should have dispensed with the quilted coat I was wearing. Anyway, it wasn't as if I had intended to break the window. It was an accident—more like an Act of God than that of a vandal—science gone wrong. A similar mishap had led Alexander Graham Bell to discover the telephone. But while Alex became a millionaire, I became a fugitive. Dumb luck. How was I supposed to know that Old Man Grady slept with his clothes on to save a couple of pennies on his heating bill or that his bed stood directly under the window?

Fortunately for me, his arthritis slowed him down and I was almost to my own driveway by the time he came bursting through the front door with an over-under 12 gauge shotgun. Ordinarily, the sight of a weapon would make me freeze in my tracks, but I remembered that my father had confiscated Grady's ammo several weeks before after catching him taking pot shots at some raccoons that had been rummaging through the trash cans. Besides, in the excitement he had forgotten his glasses. Everybody looks pretty much the same from the back side. Unless I turned towards him to go up the lighted driveway, he wouldn't be able to finger me.

Instead, I ducked behind a shrub and tore off the heavy blue jacket and black baseball cap that even an elderly man as myopic as Grady could not help but notice. When he drew even with the shrub, I struck him with a body block that would have done a NFL lineman proud. Grady and the scattergun flew in opposite directions, the stock having splintered upon impact with the concrete driveway while the old man landed flat on his back atop the shrub with his mouth open as if in disbelief.

A cursory glance at the weapon confirmed my suspicions that it wasn't loaded. Wrapping my arms around his body, I gently lifted Grady and placed him on his feet, being careful not to relinquish my grip lest his shaking knees would suddenly buckle and send him sprawling to the ground. Making a pretense at dusting the dirt from his clothing, I kept my head turned towards the street as if I was searching for someone who had got away. Evidently, Grady was still in shock because his jaw was still agape.

Oh God, don't let this old fart have a heart attack, I mumbled under my breath. Half-dragging, half-carrying, I managed to get Grady back to his house and onto the bed. While removing his shoes, I fed the feeble geezer a cock-and-bull story about how I had been walking down the driveway when I had seen a mean-looking hombre in a blue quilted jacket and a black cap run from his yard and had given chase and probably would have caught the crook if I had not collided with Grady. After covering him with three blankets, I went home, tossing the broken shotgun into a trash can on my way up the driveway. Undoubtedly, my father, being the sheriff, would be getting a phone call from Grady in the morning. And my father was nobody's fool. I must have gone over what I would say to him a dozen times before I finally fell asleep.

Evidently Grady didn't phone my father because I didn't hear anything more on the subject. Maybe he was still mad about having his ammo confiscated or maybe he didn't figure it would do any good to file a complaint. When I came home from school the next day, I noticed that the broken window pane had been replaced with plywood. But instead of cutting it the size of the glass and inserting it in the frame, he had nailed a thick 4 X 8 sheet over the opening. It looked like those pictures on the evening news of homes on the Gulf Coast being prepared for a hurricane. Grady was weird. Rumor had it that he had never married because he was having an incestuous relationship with his younger sister who had been his housekeeper until she had gone to live with another relative. Word was she had to have an abortion and most had assumed that Grady was the father. But I knew different. Latent homosexuals like Grady cannot father children because their sperm dries up. At least that's what our assistant water polo coach had said at practice and he's usually right about these things. Deviates from the shallow end of the gene pool can't get it up. It's nature's way of improving the breed. If you don't believe me, read Darwin.

By the way, I'm Ryan. Hermosa—that's what they call this town—being so small, everybody knows everybody and there isn't normally any need for introductions. In Spanish hermosa means beautiful. If you like sand, this place is positively gorgeous. Sand is everywhere: on the ground, in the air, in your shoes, in your hair—a constant wind forces fine grit through weatherstripping, making it almost impossible to keep it out of vehicles and houses. Like God, sand is omnipresent, but it is more of a curse than a blessing.

Romero is my last name. That sounds Spanish too, but we're not. By giving something a Spanish name, you add a touch of class. It has to do with English being a guttural Germanic language while Spanish seems to flow off the tongue. How else to explain why people are willing to pay upwards of a dollar more for a bottle of cerveza than they would for beer?

The official language is English, but due to a flood of illegal immigrants from Mexico what is spoken on the street is Spanglish, a mongrel mixture of Spanish and English, which is somewhat like the Frenglish spoken in certain parts of Canada. Por ejemplo, a blurb on AM radio for a used car lot gives the directions in Spanish followed by certified quality pre-owned vehicles. The addition of English legalese is supposed to make their worn-out rust buckets sound better than they actually are.

When I was a little kid in second or third grade, I would lie awake at night listening to my inner voice whisper, nobody likes you. While that might sound crazy, I can assure you that I have never gone so far as to allow anybody other than myself to berate me in any way. In effect, my ego was simply letting me know that I needed to keep my own counsel. Since it is impossible for a rational person to put someone else's interest above his own, it follows that friendship only goes so far. If you don't hold part of yourself back, you risk getting hurt. That's why I'm sharing these insights into my inner self with you, someone with whom I am having a superficial relationship that extends no farther than the pages of this book, instead of with a close personal friend. This way we both benefit. Think of it as that rarest of occurrences, a win-win situation, in which I vent my frustrations in order to keep my sanity while you get your jollies by playing the voyeur. Judge me however you want since it matters naught whether you are with me or against me. Feel free to rip pages from this book and use them for toilet paper as it won't affect me one way or the other. Remember, it was you that came to me seeking entertainment and not the other way around.

Chapter 2

Take a look over there. That's my father, the sheriff, having a difference of opinion with a local rowdy shortly after closing time in the parking lot of Sonny's Saloon. No, he's not the big fellow pulling the slide back on the chrome plated 9 mm loaded with bye-bye pills. The other one—the little guy in the starched khakis and badge with the barrel of the gun pointed at his head . . . .

But don't be alarmed. That's just the way he works. Let the crook think he's got the advantage and then turn the table on him. It works every time (well, almost every time). You see, law enforcement officers have MO's just the same as criminals. Early on, they establish a repertoire of tactics and it accompanies them for the rest of their career. It was exactly this type of risky behavior repeated ad infinitum that drove my mother to divorce him. But it doesn't bother me a bit. Following the Second World War, my grandfather served as Hermosa's first sheriff. It's in the blood. My father is the type of man who lives his job. He instinctively knows how to talk down the bad guys. Listen and learn:

I ain't goin' back to no prison. Wasn't doin' nothin' but havin' me some fun. Don't come no closer.

The fun ended when you pulled that gun. Shoot me and the good people of this state will do to you what the animal shelter does to mad dogs. But first you'll rot on Death Row. When you're strapped to a gurney and they raise the curtain at your execution, my family will be sitting ringside. They will be the last thing you see when the second plunger drops and you shit your pants.

Don't make me kill you.

Neither man blinks. But the sheriff banks on taking the initiative and makes a lunge for the gun. He almost got it right. If it hadn't been for the knife in the big guy's other hand, he would have come out on top. A swift upward swing buries the blade in the sheriff's shoulder. A good move, but a gun still beats a knife and the sheriff puts it to good use by pistol-whipping the daylights out of his opponent.

The fight has gone out of the big fellow. But the sheriff isn't taking any more chances and, swinging him around with his good arm, throws the bad guy through the windshield face first. No use reading him his Miranda rights before putting on the cuffs. This guy is out cold.

* * *

We've got an old male dog who is gentle enough but, not being neutered, gets into fights when there is a female in heat. The vet sews him up—sometimes without an anaesthetic—and by the next day he is up and running. Dad's the same way. When he woke up in a hospital bed, he got dressed as quickly as his one good arm would permit and walked out the door with the doctor yelling at him.

With Dad being so busy, I try to help out around the house. Doing the laundry is one of my chores. But what am I supposed to do with a bloody khaki shirt with a gaping hole in it? Surely, he wouldn't have tossed it in the hamper if he didn't believe it was worth saving. I'm about to load the shirt in the washer with the rest of his uniforms when the phone rings.

Hello?

My car keeps stalling. It's got 5,000 miles on it. Do you think I need to replace the fuel injectors?

Recognizing the voice on the other end of the line as Thelma Perkins, who runs the only dress shop in town, I reply, You dialed the Romeros by mistake. It happens all the time. Brothers' Auto Parts ends in 96 and our number ends with 69. Did you gas up on a Sunday at the Circle K? They've got water in the bottom of their storage tank and the tanker truck doesn't come until Monday.

Why don't they get that fixed? I bet that's the reason they are two cents a gallon cheaper than any of the other stations.