Episode #3
Horror in the High Country
I was fed up with trying to break into the welfare underground via the big city route. Big cities were tough. People saw you coming. I needed to sharpen my clandestine subversive-smashing technique on some unsuspecting yokels. I got out my Rand McNally Hick Atlas and a magnifying glass that had come with a set of Encyclopedia Britannica I'd once tried to rip off through the mail.
America was full of nowhere bergs. My eye fell to Lost Fish, Missouri. No Border, New Mexico had serious drawing power, too. Calcium, Wisconsin sounded wholesome and dumb.
Then I saw Skimask, Colorado. It was far enough from Denver that I might be spared endless prattle about the egg-sucking Broncos, yet it was near enough to the Air Force Academy that I could count on instant backup if the bastards who were conspiring to raise babies at government expense surrounded me at a day care center.
For the best cover, I decided to outfit myself fully in Colorado Springs, then motor into Skimask virtually unnoticed.
"What do I need around here to appear inconspicuous?" I drilled a bearded man in a plaid shirt at a vast sporting goods complex and recreational vehicle showroom.
"Government job?" he asked without looking up.
"Would you mind looking up?" I wanted to see the whites of his eyes.
"Yeah. I mind. This is the latest issue of Frozen Arctic Mercenary and I'm not on commission." He was to be trusted.
"I want to take a little trip up to Skimask. What kind of place is it?" This was enough to make him look me in the face.
"Skimask? The Skimask?"
I nodded firmly, bumping my chin on a cardboard cutout of Suzy Chapstick.
"You crazy man? That place is expensive. I couldn't send you up there with less than a $25,000 vehicle and five G's worth of gear. You still in, pilgrim?"
"Money presents no particular obstacle to me at this point in time," I relished in announcing, and tossed my CIA Moneycard on the counter. A wicked grin tugged at the corners of my mouth.
"What am I supposed to do with this YMCA ID?" His tone was more than catty. It was cougary.
"This is what I meant to give you, Mr. Smartypants Slat and Pole Salesman," I said, handing over the genuine piece of plastic.
Within an hour I was tooling down a snowpacked mountain road in a four wheel drive of five figures that was loaded to dealer sticker with Italian skis, Swedish survival gear, French sport clothes, and Ethiopian freeze-dried food. Flunking out of the Post Office was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
I pulled up over a hillock or whatever you call them, and there in a shallow valley lay Skimask. It appeared to be comprised of a dozen swank condos and at least that number of lifts. I cut my speed and coasted into town very stealthily. I didn't want my entrance to cause any fuss.
"Hey, buddy! Your tailgate is open and you've been leaving a trail of brand name equipment for about a mile and a half."
This from a gorgeous female skier who whisked past me on a pair of beat-up boards wearing nothing but a pair of cutoff jeans from which her muscled buttocks squeezed and a shirt with an excised midriff that read "I'D RATHER BE SKIING ON WELFARE". It looked like I'd found another enemy outpost.
Parking was rough until I remembered I had four wheel-drive and just pulled into a snow drift. I unzipped my eighteen color nylon parka and ambled into a cantina where the entire youthful populace of Skimask seemed to be seated around a huge fire pit.
"Mind if I join you?" I courteously popped to a couple of ne'er-do-wells in ridiculously thick sweaters. They were playing chess. A commie game if there ever was one.
"Your queen is in danger," said one. I smelled code.
"Say how does somebody get on welfare around here? I had to buy a new truck and some ski gear and I'm a little down on my luck."
My forthrightness was prompted by the shirt I seen earlier on the girl who looked like she'd been eating plenty of free chow at taxpayer expense.
"There's no problem, hon." The voice came over my shoulder like Veronica Lake's hair.
"If you really need it, it's there, but you smell pig to me."
I tried to turn toward my accuser but the chess goons pinned me immobile.
"We get about one of you up here a month, except during the thaw," the seductive voice of what I suspected to be the leader of a radical fringe of naughty disenfranchised rich snow punks continued, "and we usually make them play Frosty."
I knew what she meant. I knew the children's tale of a pathetic iceman who doesn't make it through the day. I wasn't going to wait around to get rocks for eyes and a corn cob pipe crammed in my craw.
"No, no. I'm not a CIA snoop. I'm Joe Dokes the dry cleaner from Phoenix. I just got divorced and I want to have a little fun before the child support payments kick in." I was singing like Frank Sinatra at a Corsican wedding. "Here, let me show you some ID!"
When Boris and Illyevitch let go I reached into my parka and whipped out a can of ski pole aerosol defrost and blinded them long enough to break for the door.
"Stay back you horde of economic chiselers!" I screamed, holding the bistro at bay. Then I hustled out the door and lunged into my four-wheel-drive vehicle waiting in the snow bank. And waiting... and waiting...
Playing Frosty wasn't that bad. But my mission to knock the welfare train off it's tracks wasn't going so good. I knew it was time to check in with my leader, the trained professional who had taken me into the company. It was time to call to office. It was time to contact Codename Aqueduct.
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