Tampa Star (Blackfox Chronicles Book 1)
Read Tampa Star (Blackfox Chronicles Book 1) Online
Authors: T.S. O'Neil
Tampa Star
T.S. O’Neil
This is a work of fiction, and all names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Kindle Version
05/20/2014
Cover Photo and images © 2012 TS O’Neil
Copyright © 2012 T.S. O’Neil
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1491014334
ISBN-13: 978-1491014332
DEDICATION
First and always, to my loving mother who always had faith that I could write something that people would want to read. Thanks Mom, I love you.
To my wife, Suzanne, who did the grunt work of shooting photos for the cover, editing and proofreading. Thanks honey! SOP Number 1 remains in effect.
Contents
Chapter 6 - Dinner at the Don Carlo
Chapter 10 - Meeting with Sally
Chapter 14 - The DeSoto Canyon
Chapter 15 (Part II) - Camp Lejeune
Chapter 16 - The Friendly Tavern
Chapter 22 - Eidetic Eddie Doyle
Chapter 24 - Dinner at the Legion
Chapter 30 - Snake Eater’s Bar
Chapter 33 - Operation Re-Duck
Chapter 35 - A Stripper’s Promise
Charlie Blackfox got his nickname from his Great Grandfather—Halputta, which means alligator in Seminole. The old man’s father was a minor chief who had fought alongside the great Seminole warrior
Crazy Alligator during the Second Seminole War. Halputta was a full-blooded Seminole Indian of undetermined age, who had never really mastered English. After a stroke left half his face paralyzed, he could only manage to pronounce the first syllable of Charlie’s name. Although addled by the old age maladies, Halputta still commanded a lot of respect within the Blackfox family, so Charlie became Char overnight.
To young Charlie, Char sounded fearsome and made him feel like a warrior from the same tribe that defeated and nearly wiped out the U.S. Army at places like Okeechobee and Dade during the Second Seminole War. It was ironic that Char would pick an occupation among the once sworn enemy of his tribe, but after all, a warrior is a warrior regardless of the uniform he wears.
Char had a 1972 Airstream Globetrotter that he had bought from another soldier who was getting married and moving into military housing. He had always wanted an Airstream; he liked the futuristic look of the silver aerodynamic shell and heard that they were the finest trailer on the market. He never saw himself getting an apartment after he left active duty—he wanted to stay on the move.
He was just twenty-six, with eight years of service in the army under his belt, including two tours in Viet Nam, the last tour as a Special Forces Advisor to an ARVN Airborne Battalion—
Sergeant First Class (SFC) Blackfox seemed destined for a fast track military life. However, a 7.62 round to the leg ended that plan.
The resultant medical board determined that the strength left in his leg would not support the arduous demands that the army placed on it; jumping out of perfectly good aircraft, rucking with sixty or more pounds of equipment and running in boots; SF was not a game for the sick, lame, or lazy.
Char was shot by a dead guy—he shot the Viet Cong Guerilla as he crawled up to the Listening Post / Observation Post, located about twenty five meters outside the company’s perimeter. The LP/OP was meant to serve as an early warning in the event of an attack. He was checking on the position to insure the ARVN paratroopers weren’t catching some ZZs. Sure as shit; he heard the soft muffle of snoring and found both of them curled up together, nearly spooning.
The point of an LP/OP was to look and to listen, and these two sleeping beauties were doing neither. Char had no idea how long they had been that way. He popped an observation flare and watched as it lit up the rice paddy in front of the tree line. He was not surprised to see two, black pajama-clad bodies frozen in mid-crawl not five meters short of the LP/OP. Char cursed to himself; he had just become a one digit midget
—with just nine days left to his tour.
Further out the light from the descending parachute flare illuminated more figures in motion, one carrying the tripod to a heavy machine gun. The perimeter would soon be crawling with Viet Cong. He kicked the two ARVN paratroopers awake and ordered them to open fire while simultaneously doing so himself. Once awake, the two proved they could shoot by killing the first three VC guerillas within range while Char tossed a couple of M40 grenades towards the forward line of advancing enemy troops.
The VC retreated; Char figured that they had managed to break up an attempt to overrun his unit’s position. He and the two snoozing troopers had even managed to kill five guerrillas sappers sent to breach perimeter defenses for the follow on assault. They were lucky; Char was good.
Less than a minute later, he heard the radio break squelch three times, indicating that the Battalion Command Post knew the shit was in the wind. Suddenly, he heard a series of pops as the unit’s mortars began lobbing 60 millimeter high explosive shells towards their predefined targets along the enemy axis of advance. A few seconds later, he heard several cascading crumpled thuds as the shells impacted into the rice paddies. Standard Operating Procedure indicated that a QRF, or Quick Reaction Force, would be in route to secure the OP. He was sure that they had broken up the assault, and Char began to believe that he would be on that Freedom Bird in 8 days. But he received a wake-up call when one of his troopers inadvertently accelerated the process.
A young ARVN troop was in the process of searching a dead VC guerilla and cavalierly kicked an AK-47 out of his just dead hands—unfortunately this was while the corpse’s finger still enveloped the trigger.
The kick propelled the muzzle of the barrel up and to the left so it ended up pointing to the rear of Char’s left calf as he stood studying the bush for any sign of a counter attack. The doctor who patched him up told Char he was lucky to keep the leg.
In 1973, the United States withdrew from Vietnam and U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ended with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. Char figured his trigger time was over. In January 1974, he received the medical board’s decision: an Honorable Discharge and a thirty percent disability from the Army.
Char kissed Fort Bragg goodbye and headed south, looking for a new life, with a slightly used travel trailer hitched to the back of his pickup truck.
He knew a few fellow Vets who had settled in St. Pete although most of them had been shot or otherwise messed up. Char figured that was as good a place as any to live as he could get physical therapy for the gunshot leg that still caused him considerable pain and gave him a slight, but noticeable limp.
After an overnight stay with an old girlfriend attending FSU, Char traveled south along the coast until he arrived in Madeira Beach. He liked the ramshackle look of the place; it was weather-worn, but had a certain charm. It would do.
He found the Happy Dolphin Trailer Park a short time later, pulled into the trailer court, opened the screen door of the office and walked inside. There was a white linoleum covered plywood counter, on which sat an old black electric fan oscillating to augment what little breeze there was and a bell with a plastic sign next to it, indicating what needed to be done for service.
Char rang the bell soundly and waited. A few moments later, a tall, good looking woman in a white tennis skirt and halter top entered the office and smiled at him while she slid behind the counter. Char smiled back, noticed her large breasts and determined he was the recipient of a good bit of luck. He silently thanked whatever motivated him to pull into this particular trailer court.
On her chest sat a white plastic nametag emblazoned with the name Carla. She caught him looking and smiled. “How can I help you?”
Most guys Char’s age would have been intimidated, but Char had spent the better part of six years at Bragg chasing, catching
and releasing such beauties; some were married, some divorced—most to soldiers. Char didn’t ask many questions.
“Well hello Carla, the name is Charlie, but everyone calls me Char. I’m interested in renting a pad for a while” he replied, with a wry grin—never breaking eye contact with her.
“That’s great Char, let me see what we have vacant that is seaside, so you have a view and get the sea breeze.”
The transaction was completed, but Char got the distinct impression that Carla would love to see more of him from the way she ended the conversation. “So, Char, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call me. My home is right there,” she said, indicating a rather palatial mobile home she had won as part of the divorce settlement—-the trailer park being the rest of the settlement. The mobile home was a well-kept
Kropf Eldorado, with a unique butterfly roof; a set of raised skylights that resembled wings.
“And if I am not there, she continued, I’ll be at the pool getting some sun. Hope you aren’t shy, because when there is no one around, I take my top off,” she said with a sly grin.
“This place just keeps getting better,” said Char as he retreated out the door.
He paid for six months of rent up front as he didn’t want to worry about it. It amounted to $135 after Carla discounted the price by
fifteen dollars for paying in advance. That was about fifty percent of his liquid net worth, but Char figured that he could find work easy enough and as soon as he established an address he could start getting his disability checks, which should amount to a little over $125 bucks a month.
He backed the trailer onto on a palm-shaded pad overlooking the beach, unhitched from the truck and connected the power and water. Char pulled out a battered green steel Coleman Cooler from the cab of his pickup that he had for as long as he had been drinking beer, placed it on an old picnic table immediately in front of the door to his trailer.
Ceremoniously, he dusted off the tabletop with his right hand before taking a seat, while simultaneously reaching into the depth of the cooler with his left to retrieve a beer. Char set the can of Busch down on the table; it’s exterior glistening with little pieces of ice and reached into the pocket of his shirt to get a smoke. He grabbed the pack and shook out a Winston filter, lighting it with a Zippo emblazoned with Master Parachutist Wings.
The scene was complete as far as Char was concerned: cigarette, beer, sea view, and perhaps even the prospective of a lay. He popped the top of the can, raised it in a toast to his new home. “Welcome to paradise,” he said aloud to no one in particular. About an hour and four beers later, he decided a visit to Carla might be appropriate.
He had fun spending time with Carla for a few days, but being pragmatic and action oriented, Char looked at his dwindling funds and decided a job was in order. He eventually found one by driving along Gulf Boulevard and asking for work at every business for two weeks straight.
The owner of the boatyard where Char found himself after ten days of fruitless searching was a former Naval Engineer and graduate of the Naval Academy. Kip Olsen was a robust
seventy six year old naval retiree, having served in both world wars; the first as a seaman on a four stack Korvette doing convoy escort duty between New York and London and the second tour as a Commander of a new Fletcher class Destroyer, the Charrette (DD 581). Kip was happy that the ship he once commanded wasn’t scrapped nor serving as a floating museum, but rather was sold to the Greek Navy in 1959 and continued to serve, proudly he hoped, as the warship Velos.
Olsen was promoted to Commodore shortly before retirement and although he never referred to himself in that way, the staff at his boatyard as well as his family and friends adopted the title as a form of respect for the man who had fought in two world wars.
Kip didn’t have much use for the army, especially the airborne. He didn’t like their swagger and found them, as a whole, to be a little more cocksure than he would like. He dealt with some of their kind while fighting in the Pacific when his ship was involved in the Battle for the Recapture of Corregidor, during the Philippine Campaign in February 1945.
Planning for the exercise put him in constant contact with officers of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment and their Commanding General, Brigadier General George Jones. The ballsy bastards jumped and performed an amphibious landing on Corregidor and he had to admire them for that.
He had those fleeting thoughts after he asked Char about his limp; Kip never being someone to not say what was on his mind. He felt sorry for the kid and he could always use someone as a Gofer. Tommy always complained when he gave him those type duties, so
Kip offered Char a job at a dollar fifty an hour, which was “two bits’ better than the current mandatory minimum; Kip figured he owed him that much for getting shot in the service of his country.