Ash Butterflies 1. “Love you, have a good day,” Bulluck said to his daughter as she shut the door to their Ford Escape. She did not say anything in return, but that was the standard for her. She did smile back to her father, then turned and crossed over the old crumbling sidewalk onto the tar-covered parking lot of her school. A gentle rain was falling from the drab gray sky, just another 4th grader’s school day in West Seattle.

All things considered, Gael did not feel like a lawyer. He felt like a fraud. These weren’t feelings he could listen to when Jack was present. If he lost Jack’s respect, he’d have lost everything. Sitting there in that cab on the way to the jail to meet his first serious criminal, nay, capital case, he wished very much for a flask of whiskey that Jack hadn’t done away with already. Damn choirboy.

It was hot in Iraq in August. Much hotter than Georgia this same time a year. Some would say that is not fair though because the heat in these two places are two different types of heat. To Anthony though, heat was heat, and Iraq was the worst. He had lived in the desert most of his life. He lived in Palm Springs for many years and had experienced what he thought was the worst. Of course, he was a kid then and was not wearing 40 pounds of military gear.

Ever since I could remember I had always wanted to be a soldier, I would listen to my Father's Stories about when he was fighting in the Spanish-American war in 1898. Not all the stories were good ones, the reason I wanted to be a soldier like my Father wasn't the stories of the killing and the horror's he saw, but the fighting next to the men he called Brothers.

The gleaming stainless steel exterior of the 24/7 Extremist Diner in Wilmington, Delaware didn’t attract the usual crowd. This morning in August 1990, the tiny diner became the setting for a most unusual event. Most of the time, cops came there on their late night shifts with both beaming smiles and gruff mugs, but they did not appear this morning. The dancehall crowd sometimes came through with their beads of sweat and marijuana on their breath. They would distance themselves from the police. Neither appeared now. And of course at this late hour of three am, (or early to some) a most distressing occurrence befell the diner. Where everything usually worked like the female wait staff wore who extra small shirts and the males donned huge 3X tees all seemed well. It was extremist, right?

It was two days before 1921, but rain was eternally a pain in the ass. The cloth roof on his car hadn’t been much protection and his feet rested in a good four inches of hateful cold South Carolina December rain. It was almost warmer than opening the door and letting the water out. Goggles on, to protect the one eye he had left, frozen hands on the steering wheel, he tried to focus on home, a thick warm bed, and a plate of potatoes and eggs. Smirking as dark rain dripped over the edge of his fedora, he thought about how much money he had safely tucked in his trunk, twenty-five bottles of illegally imported French wine, five bottles of Irish whiskey, and three Caribbean rums. Wind blew the cold rain back to slide down his face, winding through the maze of his unshaven face. He also had some rare and not commercially available antiseptic. He was going to make Jack happy, have some booze, make some money, which was good because Jack’s antiseptic had been ungodly expensive. If he hadn’t been stuck in Noah’s newest flood, it would have been a perfect night.

On my first date with Mallory, I prayed that she wouldn’t ask me about what I did for a living. “So, what do you do for a living?”

CHAPTER 1 The year is 1949 around early October just after the war the Sternberg’s are looking forward to moving back to Belgium. Claude Sternberg and his wife Nicole Sternberg had moved to Birmingham to escape the Nazi brutal regime towards people of Jewish descent in Belgium.

The smallest disturbance can cause a ripple to shake the balance in the hands of justice. Breaking away at the familiarity of our world and opening our minds. We must embrace what isn’t normal to achieve greatness. To also dance with danger, even if the outcome is most vicious. The notorious and infamous will only prolong this planet with new discoveries and inventions. Many have died in the name of progress to insure the definite possibilities of futurism. Never underestimate a soul, for the greatest minds can be formed in anyone. Our world was hidden in the shadows for eons; only dreaming of meeting new life in the unknown we call outer space. Longing for communication to prove there is life outside our own atmosphere. What we do with this information is uncertain. Training for a potential war may be the approach we have to take. We plan to have our new discoveries succumb to our way of living. Maybe that way of thinking is what got us in trouble from the beginning.

A tired looking & worn out man hunching over, speaks softly but clearly a very urgent message into a two-way radio. He has provided vital information to his handlers as he has done many times before, but this time he's clearly exhausted, he is tired of the intrigue. He just wants to go home to his wife and children & thank God, that this is his last mission. Then his heart skips a beat & suddenly the door to his apartment bursts open and the room swarms with Syrian secret police. They spend long gruelling moments beating him and then dragging him away to undergo intense & tortuous days & nights undergoing interrogation before being mercilessly imprisoned. This is how Mossad Agent Eli Cohen's successful career as an Israeli spy came to an abrupt end.

The CIA and the KGB have always been the masters of intrigue & secrecy in a world where these two monoliths would challenge each other in a world of intrigue, mysticism & secrecy. These Intelligence Agencies would dare each other in accomplishing covert missions in many different countries around the world. Their competing for global supremacy under the guise of national security would usually cost lives of the innocent & the not so innocent & many of those who simply got in the way. The KGB, which is the Russian branch of Intelligence would go on to continuously challenge the US branch of Intelligence known as The CIA for decades or long after the end of WWII.

In 1944, Flying Officer David "Gnat" Royce, RCAF, is gambling that his last few missions over Germany will be uneventful ones. But no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy...