Glitter Girl, page 1
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
GLITTER GIRL
First edition. February 2, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 James Y. Bartlett.
ISBN: 978-1736393017
Written by James Y. Bartlett.
GLITTER GIRL
A SWAMP YANKEE MYSTERY
BY
JAMES Y. BARTLETT
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Author Bio
Books by James Y. Bartlett
GLITTER GIRL Copyright © 2022 by James Y. Bartlett
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For information contact:
Yeoman House Books
10 Old Bulgarmarsh Road
Tiverton, RI 02878
www.jamesybartlett.com
Cover design by Todd Fitz of Fuel Media
ISBN: 978-1-7363930-1-7
First Edition: January 2022
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Sheppard Bartlett
1924-2021
Prologue
THE UNIT SHIPPED out of Talaqan before dawn that morning, heading north along the D-Road that went all the way up the valley and through the mountains to the city of Chichkeh near the Tajikistan border. Near Talaqan, the valley was broad and green, the well-kept farms looked prosperous and peaceful. But looks could be deceiving. And this was Afghanistan.
As the squad reached the end of the valley, the mountains narrowed on both sides, the road changed from paved to rocky dirt and the men in the back of the armored personnel carriers began to sit up, gear up and pay attention. The normal joshing conversation and the loud Spotify playlist stopped and they all began to listen hard. Up here, the enemy--Taliban, ISIS-K and any of a dozen other sects and fighting groups--were in control.
The mission that day had been explained as a simple S&O: Surveillance and Observation. The chin-strokers back in Kabul wanted a status report on how out-of-control northern Takhar Province was. And unfortunately for the men in Gus Haddock's unit, the only good way to find out was to ride up there and see who or what shot at them.
The convoy consisted of two Cougars, front and rear in the column, with a few up-armored M1114 Humvees in the middle. Haddock, the unit's lieutenant, had twenty men along for the fun, all experienced Special Forces, well trained, well equipped and ready to rumble.
The rumble started about forty-four clicks outside Talaqan AFB, one of the northern outposts of the allied NATO forces in Afghanistan. The first surveillance point was a small village where the D-Road crossed a rocky stream spilling out of the mountains. The plan was to send some soldiers up to high points on both sides of the highway and peer ahead into the steep valley to look for enemy activity.
But as usual, the Taliban, or the enemy forces of whatever name, had other plans. About a klick south of the village, an RPG came screaming down from the steep rocky cliffs above the roadway and exploded in the dirt ten yards in front of the lead Cougar. The 21-ton armored carrier bounced a bit in the shockwave, but kept on going.
"No harm, no foul," Gus cracked. No one laughed, but everyone buckled the chin straps on their helmets. Gus nodded at Gonzo, the chief gunner, who flipped on his CROWS II weapons system, activating the heavy, remotely controlled M2 .50 calibre machine gun affixed to the top of the Cougar and began sending withering fire into the hills. From inside the air-conditioned cabin, the men heard, and felt, the thud-thud of the gun firing, and began to smell the burning gunpowder of its discharge. They'd all heard, and smelled, it all before.
The convoy kept rolling and soon pulled up outside the brown mud huts and buildings of the village. There were no people around, which told Gus that the enemy had known they were coming today. It was uncanny, he thought for the millionth time, how they seem to know when and where we go.
When all the trucks were inside the village, Gus barked orders through his headset and the men poured out of the trucks and took up defensive positions, taking cover behind the mud walls and fences alongside the highway. Gus stayed inside the lead Cougar and radioed in a report, noting the welcoming committee which had fired the RPG, and notifying Mission Control that air support might be needed.
As he climbed out of the thick reinforced metal walls of the Cougar HEV, Gus was greeted with the sound of small arms fire coming from the hillsides above on both sides of the highway. He and his men crouched down behind the mud walls and listened to the sound of the lead wasps as they called them--the angry zipping sound of Russian Kalashnikov's being fired from above.
"Bucky?" Gus called to his sergeant. "You got a location?"
Bucky was peering up into the hills, watching for tell-tale signs of the enemy firing at them: the clouds of dust blown up by the explosive recoil of the weapons being fired or the slight flash from the barrel of the Russian-made rifles. One of Bucky's men said something and pointed, and he nodded.
"Just slightly west of the road, Fish," he called out. "About eighty meters up the hill."
Gus turned to Cranks, his mortar man. "You hear that?" he asked. Cranks nodded and unslung his mortar, quickly set it up to point up the mountain and slipped a charge into the front barrel.
"Mortar out!" Gus called.
Cranks fired a round, the launcher making a dull thump and they all waited and watched. A few seconds later, a puff of white smoke appeared up on the mountainside, followed by a muffled boom as the sound wave echoed through the valley. Working methodically, Cranks laid down a pattern of mortars--short, long, left and right--hoping to flush out the enemy snipers. It seemed to work, as the incoming rounds from above ceased. At least for a while. Then the firing started up again, this time coming from the other side of the highway.
"Call it in Rush," Gus called to his radioman. The guy's name was actually Charles, but everyone called him Rush Limbaugh, or Rush for short, because he was the radio guy. Rush called in the GPS coordinates and got an immediate confirmation back from air control.
"Three minutes, Fish," he called over to Gus.
The unit sat there and let the enemy waste ammo with its fitful small arms fire until, exactly two minutes and forty seconds later, they all heard the thin high screaming of an F-16 jet blasting up the valley from the south. The jet loosed a couple of rockets on its first pass, circled around and sent a couple more into the hills on the other side of the highway. Above the village, clouds of smoke and dust billowed upwards as the jet's missiles exploded against the rocky hillsides. After the jet finished its two passes, the valley was quiet. The gunfire ceased.
Gus and his men stood up and came out into the open.
"We goin' up to check?" Bucky asked the lieutenant, nodding at the towering slopes. "Clean up the mess?"
"Nah," Gus said, shaking his head. "Today we're only doing S&O. Our orders are to look but not touch today."
"Fine by me," Bucky said. "Lotta caves up there. We'd be here for weeks trying to clean all those rat's nests out."
Gus smiled at him and went back to the Cougar. He radioed in an updated report and, after a short delay, was ordered to turn the convoy around and return to base. "But be careful, Fish," the tinny voice said over the radio.
Gus disconnected and was about to order the men back into the vehicles when he noticed several of them scramble into shooting positions, pointing their AK-47s up the road. He looked out through the yellow tinted glass of the bulletproof windshield.
Two children, a girl and an older boy, were coming down the dusty highway. The boy, maybe ten years old, was waving a white kerchief and the girl, who looked to be a couple years younger, was holding his hand. They looked like brother and sister.
"Hold fire," Gus ordered. The men kept their rifles leveled and ready to shoot. They had all been in theater now for more than a year and they all knew what could happen. Most of them had seen and all of them had heard stories of children used by the Taliban to carry out suicide missions against the allied troops.
They all watched as the children continued to approach. The boy was waving his white flag frantically as if
Gus called out, "Where's Hakeem?" He was the unit's Afghan liaison and the only one fluent in the language. Hakeem came forward, near the open doorway of Gus' Cougar, and watched the approaching children with narrow, suspicious eyes.
"Whaddya think?" Gus said, speaking softly.
Hakeem's eyes never wavered, studying both children, what they were wearing, how they looked, how they were acting.
"Hard to tell," he said finally.
"Tell them to stop," Gus ordered. Hakeem called out a command in the harsh guttural patois of the Afghan language. The children pulled up short in the middle of the road. They were about a hundred yards from the front end of the Cougar.
The boy kept waving his white flag. His other arm was wrapped around his sister's back, holding her close. Her face was shrouded by her head scarf. The soldiers could not see her eyes or expression.
Hakeem barked a few more words at the children. The boy smiled broadly, nodding his head and shouted something back.
"He says they want candy," Hakeem said to Gus. "Americans always have candy."
"Tell him to drop the white thing and show us his hands," Gus said to Hakeem. "Her, too."
Hakeem relayed the message. The boy smiled and nodded enthusiastically. But he didn't do what he had been told. He continued to grasp both his white flag and the hand of the girl at his side. The girl looked at him and said something. The soldiers could not hear what it was.
Then, she pulled away from his side, pulled her hand free with a wrenching movement and turned and started to run back down the highway in the direction they had just come. The boy turned and shouted something at her.
"Shit!" Gus said.
Simultaneously, the boy looked back at the soldiers, said something to himself and then the road exploded. The shock wave was loud and it rocked some of the soldiers back on their heels, but the children were far enough away that nobody was hurt in the blast. Except, of course, for the children, who pretty much vanished into thin air as the boy's explosive vest detonated. Before the shockwave receded, the gunfire started again, again from the surrounding hillsides. One of Gus' men, who had been standing there watching, took a bullet in his wrist: he said a bad word and spun away into cover behind a mud wall.
For a long moment, Gus was motionless and silent. Like the others gathered around, he could not believe what he just witnessed. Two young lives ended in a flash and a bang and a spray of blood and matter. It was incomprehensible. And yet, it was real. It had happened. Right in front of all their eyes.
"Right," Gus said finally. His voice was hollow and cracked. "Everybody OK?"
There were murmurs and sounds of assent from his men. They were as emotionally drained as their leader.
"Chicken Wing," he called to the soldier who had been hit by the bullet. "You gonna live?"
"Fuck yeah, Fish," the man called Chicken Wing responded. "It was a through-and-through. I didn't need all that blood anyway." He was busy applying a field dressing to his wound.
"What next, Fish?" asked Bucky, Gus' sergeant.
Gus didn't answer, staring down the road at the blackened depression. Thinking of the two young lives that had been there just a few minutes ago.
"Gus?"
Gus blinked and forced himself to come back to the reality of the present. He shook his head as if to clear out the bad stuff. "Right," he said, nodding at Bucky. "Set up a perimeter. Anybody who manages to pot one of those sonsabitches up there will get extra ice cream for dessert tonight."
"You got it, Fish," Bucky said, and he crawled out of the Humvee to begin positioning the squad.
The men were stuck there in that empty village for another two hours or so, exchanging gunfire with the enemy. None of them ventured down the road to look at the blackened crater in the middle--the small arms gunfire kept them pinned behind their cover. Gus called in two more air strikes, but it was midafternoon before the situation was calm and quiet enough for Gus to round up his squad, load them in the trucks and head back to Talaqan.
It was a long and quiet ride back to base. Everyone was thinking about the small boy with the white flag and his younger sister.
Chapter 1
GUS HADDOCK PULLED his squad car into an angled parking space in front of the Commons Cup. Before he shut it off, he thumbed the radio button.
"Mornin' Dottie," he said. "I'm at the Cuppa. Goin' in for a brew. Can I bring you anything?"
The radio squawked briefly and Dorothy Adams, the police dispatcher, responded.
"Thanks, Chief," she said, "But I'm good. Brought in my Thermos today. But I heard Betty's baked up her cranberry scones today. If there are any left, you oughta jump on it. Out of this world."
"Roger," Gus said. "I'll be right in."
It was a glorious October morning and Gus allowed himself a moment to enjoy the view of the triangular village green of Little Penwick, Rhode Island. The spire of the Congregational church pierced the bright blue and cloudless sky, while the bright white clapboards of the old church contrasted with the gray, tilted, mossy headstones in the surrounding church yard. The leaves on the tall trees that ringed the village green--mostly maples and oaks--were starting to turn to their autumn colors of yellow and red.
Gus Haddock paused for a moment longer. He really wanted a cup of coffee, but he really didn't want to undergo the scrutiny of the other people of Little Penwick, several of whom were probably inside, sipping coffee and munching on cranberry scones while they gossiped about everyone else who lived in this strange little corner of Rhode Island. And Gus was sure they would be talking about him, and his family.
But the need for caffeine won out. Gus pulled open the door to the place and strode inside. A quick glance around showed Gus that the usuals were in place. The president of the town council, Bob Murtha, was sitting with Louise Cox, the town clerk. Each had a steaming mug of coffee and a paper plate with a partially eaten scone on the table in front of them. The Barkleys, an old couple who lived down near Harbor Point, occupied another table and had their noses buried in the morning newspaper. Clancy, one of the Public Works drivers, was sitting at the counter, trying to flirt with Rebecca, a girl in her late teens who was the current server. Since Clancy was pushing fifty and wore a greasy sweatshirt that barely covered his prodigious beer gut, Gus did not believe the flirtation was going to prove ultimately successful. Back in the small kitchen prep area behind the counter, through a pass-through window, Gus could see Betty Billingsly, the owner of the Commons Cup, pencil tucked behind her ear, frizzy gray hair shooting off in all directions, while she deftly assembled a breakfast sandwich for somebody.
All of them, although not all at once, looked at Gus Haddock as he came in. They saw a tall, rangy man, hair kept short in the military style, although not quite as close-shaved as when he was in the Army. He had broad shoulders, long arms, and a solid, fit-looking body. He was clean shaven, with a strong square chin and deep-set gray eyes. He wore a pair of dark khaki slacks and a white uniform blouse, with epaulets on the shoulders, two pleated pockets on the front with two-inch flaps. There was a gold badge affixed over his left breast. No necktie. Gus Haddock hated wearing neckties.
Rebecca immediately ended her conversation with Clancy--it had not been much of a two-way discussion--and came over to the take-out counter, behind which Gus Haddock was standing.
"Mornin,' Chief," she said, giving him a bright toothy smile. "Whatcha have?"
"Large coffee," Gus said. "One sugar. No cream. To go, please."
"You got it," the girl said and turned to fill one of the white cardboard containers. "You wanna scone with that?"
"Two," Gus said. "Please."
"You got it," she said again, and, after fixing the lid on the coffee, she snapped open a small brown paper bag with a practiced flip of her wrist, lifted the glass cover from the baked-goods tray on the counter and dropped two of the golden brown scones, dotted with red cranberries, into the bag. She folded the top of the bag down neatly. She carried the coffee and the bag over to the cash register, punched a few buttons and the machine hummed while it spit out a couple of inches of receipt. "Four forty-two," she said. "Including tax."
