Today’s
excerpt is from Fido, Book #3 of the nine-book Asps Series. Harry rescues a damsel in destress…who is to
become his wife in time. Enjoy and have
a fantastic day.
m.j.
His observation
made, Harry finished his drink and ordered another. In the midst of drinking the second drink, a
burly, rather obnoxious man began pestering the small lady, to the point of
causing a disturbance in the bar area.
Harry looked at the bartender, who just shrugged. “None of my business.”
Finally, when
the lady said for the third time, “Please, just leave me alone,” Harry decided
intervention was mandated.
He walked over
to the table. “Say, pal, the rest of us
in here are trying to enjoy our drinks without all this disturbance, and I have
clearly heard this lady ask you to split three different times. So why don’t you play nice, and take a
walk…at least away from this table.”
The drunken man
then made a terrible mistake. Though he
was as tall as Harry—at six feet, two inches—and outweighed his two hundred and
ten pounds by over fifty pounds, the punch he threw at Harry would be his last
mistake for the next portion of his life.
Harry caught the potentially offending fist in his hand and quickly had
the man’s arm behind his back. During
the process of getting the arm to there, Harry broke it, between the wrist and
elbow. Also in the process of getting
the broken arm behind the man’s back, Harry noticed he was wearing a shoulder
holster. With the man in pain and
basically helpless, Harry deftly reached in and took out the gun which had been
in the holster. As he shoved the man to
the floor, Harry asked, “I presume you have a permit for this, don’t you?”
The man said
nothing, so Harry glanced at the bartender and growled, “While it has been
established this is none of your business, how about being a nice guy and
calling the police…NOW, DAMMIT!”
The hard ice in
Harry’s voice convinced the bartender to do as asked. Harry then stood over the man on the floor,
until the police arrived. When they did,
he handed the gun, butt-first, to the first officer on the scene, and told him
what had happened. The officer looked at
the man on the floor, then glanced around the bar area. Several people there nodded agreement with
what Harry had said, with two of those people and the lady who had been
disturbed saying so verbally. It took
nearly twenty minutes for the police to be totally convinced of Harry’s story,
discover the man did not have a
permit for the gun, and lead him away.
Harry’s CIA identification helped the process along, with Harry telling
the police he was on vacation and didn’t really want to press charges on the
man for the swing he took.
As the police
led the man off, the small lady stood up and looked at Harry. “Thank you.”
Harry
smiled. “You’re welcome.”
“I saw your
identification. You really on vacation?”
“Yeah…about two
or three days’ worth.”
“I guess the
least I can do is buy you a drink, for rescuing me from an uncomfortable
situation.”
Harry laughed,
“Sounds good to me. My place or yours?”
“I was thinking
here.”
“I guess it’s
too late for me to say I might have meant at your table, or at the bar?”
The lady
laughed. “Yeah. But had you asked that, I’d have said at my
table, because if I sit at the bar, my nose barely goes over the top of it.”
Without a word,
Harry held out her chair, then sat down across from her. “I’m Harry Chickamunga. And you are?”
“Patty
Tagget. What kind of name is
Chickamunga?”
“Damned, if I
know. It’s a long story.”
A waitress had
reached the table at that point and, after they had both ordered, Patty
smiled. “I’m not going anywhere until I
finish my drink. So I’d say we’ve got
time for the long story you mentioned.”
“Well, let me
shorten it a bit. A long ago relative
was shot in the head during the Civil War and couldn’t remember who he
was. The doctor who operated on him hung
‘Harry Chickamunga’ on him. If he ever
remembered his real name, he never told anyone.”
“Oh. I bet you could make it a better story if you
told me the long version.”
“No doubt…but
I’m sort of sick of tellin’ it, to tell you the truth.”
“What do you do
at the CIA?”
“Kill people.”
“No, really.”
“A bit of this
and a bit of that. Sort of a trouble
shooter.”
“You’re not
gonna to tell me, are you?”
“Nope. How about you?”
“I’m a
pilot…commercial.”
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