“We’ll be pushing up to the gate now. Thanks for flying Big Sky airlines, and on behalf of co-pilot Hank Bjornson and stewardess Gladys Tostengaard, I’d like to welcome you to Fargo“. The disembodied voice of the pilot sounded flat but crisp over the tinny loudspeakers.

“Wow, I thought…” she started, unwrapping her hand from its death grip on my wrist.

“…Praise Jesus“.

She stopped. “Did he just say “Praise Jesus?””

I cocked an eyebrow. “I dunno. That’s what it sounded like”.

She slowly unbuckled her seatbelt. “Wow. So do people talk like that out here…?

“Not usually”, I replied, climbing up and offering her my hand to climb out of the seat. “People out here are pretty much like people everywhere”, I said, reaching into the overhead rack to grab our carryons.

“Well, I’m tempted to hope so”, she said, putting her sunglasses on. “That flight in was turbulent as hell”.

I chuckled. “Nah”. I banished the thought from my head, and set about getting us out of the cramped 737.

As we climbed down the ladder to the tarmac, she took my arm. “Mitch”, she said, cocking her sunglasses up onto her forehead to push back her curly brown bangs, “thanks for taking me out here. It felt weird knowing you this long and not having ever seen where you’re from”.

I smiled. “My pleasure!” I said. We shared a kiss as we walked through the door into the Hector Field terminal.

A woman in a bonnet and a plain brown peasant dress stared bullets at us, her plain, un-made-up face creased with lines of anger and hate among the more mundane wrinkles. I filed that thought away for later, too.

———-

We needed to rent a car for the drive to my parents’ place, two hours west of Fargo on I94. We walked into the “Midwest Rent-O” office, at the west end of the Hector terminal. The desk was unmanned. I rang the “service” bell.

Nothing.

I rang it again.

“Wow. Slow…” Marisa started staying, stopping abruptly when a doughy man whose ratty, grease-and-mustard spotted dress shirt barely stretched to cover the spare tire around his waist, with half-hearted blond hair for whom receding was probably a merciful death, slouched into the room from the back office.

“Hullo”, he muttered.

“We’d like to rent a car for two days”.

He rolled his eyes, looking almost irritated. “Oh Kay”, he said, leaning on the “oh” hard enough to make the underlying meaning crystal clear. He walked across the room, grabbing a small stack of forms, walking back to the counter, and then walking back to grab another form he’d apparently forgotten.

“What kind of car?” he asked halfheartedly, as he shuffled his papers and pencils with a great ruffling and grunting.

“Oooh,”, Marisa piped up, smiling, “let’s rent a Jaguar!”

It would be cool having my old friends in Jamestown seeing me in a Jag with a movie star…

“…we don’t rent Jap cars”, the guy behind the counter countered, his voice clipped, his lip curling with muted anger.

“Er – Jaguar is…”, I started – but he didn’t look too interested in talking car trivia. “Look, what can we…”

“And we don’t have any low-riders for your little wetback beaner hootchie, either”, he said, pointing at Marisa.

“I beg your pardon?” she said, rearing figuratively up on her hind legs, “I am Italian American“.

“Whatever. We need two forms of ID. Three if you’re an immigrant”, he said, his speech getting more rushed, almost like he was an an anger high.

“No, man, she’s from New York“, I said, willing my voice to stay calm as I tried to reason with this…man. “And I’m originally from Jamestown“, I added, hoping he’d get the local reference, “not that you couldn’t tell by the accent”, I said, a hopeful smile crossing my face, hoping it’d be catchy.

“Yeah, whatever. People from Jamestown keep moving here taking our jobs. Should send them back where they came from, too…”

“OK – how about an Olds…”

“I’ll give you a Buick Skylark” he said with the finality, like a komissar telling a kulak it was his way or the highway.

I nodded my head. Anything to get out of this dump, I thought.

“A Skylark sounds great”.

I rolled my eyes at Marisa, and reached my hand around her waist, pulling her close. “It gets better. Honest!”

She kissed me. “I believe it”, she whispered. “You came from here”.

“You and seniorita wanna get a f*****g room?”, the doughy man yelled as he bent over the file of cars, his shirt pulling out to reveal an acne-riddled plumber’s crack that might have hidden the Jag Marisa wanted.

———-

My parents weren’t expecting us for another day. We drove the Skylark out to a little Bed and Breakfast in the valley of the Sheyenne River, on the edge of the little town of LaMoure, about sixty miles west-southwest of Fargo.

We drove through the little towns along North Dakota One – desolate little towns where farming hadn’t paid the bills in years. Women in peasant dresses and bonnets, faces lined with worry and scowl lines, tending broods of dirty children, watched from the porches. The menfolk, mostly idled for years by the farm market collapse, mostly stood around by the doorways of the ratty-looking bars, holding cans of beer and bibles, staring us down. Other men – mostly the younger ones – wandered around with hunting rifles and revolvers shooting at signs and vacant buildings and occasional small animals. I bit my tongue; these once-proud men had started out just like me, in towns just like mine. But somewhere along the way…

“This is almost spooky”, Marisa said, peering out at the umpteenth scolding gaze. She was tired from the flight.

“Take a nap. I’ll wake you up when we get there”

“You sure?” she asked, leaning her head against my shoulder.

I nodded. In a few minutes she was softly snoring.

The radio was on a station from Winnipeg. They were playing the Corries, a Scottish folk group. I listened to the lyrics:

Flower of Scotland,
When will we see
Your likes again,
That fought and died for,
Your wee bit Hill and Glen,
And stood against them,
Proud Edward’s Army,
And sent them homeward,
Tae think again.

The Hills are bare now,
And Autumn leaves
lie thick and still,
O’er land that is lost now,
Which those so dearly held,
That stood against them,
Proud Edward’s Army,
And sent them homeward,
Tae think again.

I sang quietly along on the next verse – almost a lullaby, I thought, as Marisa snuggled into my shoulder. But yet so far from one:

Those days are past now,
And in the past
they must remain,
But we can still rise now,
And be a nation again,
That stood against them,
Proud Edward’s Army,
And sent them homeward,
Tae think again.

0 Flower of Scotland,
When will we see
your likes again,
That fought and died for,
Your wee bit o’ Hill and Glen,
And stood against them,
Proud Edward’s Army,
And sent them homeward,
Tae think again.

I looked around at my once-proud, once-prosperous home state, and felt a chill go up my spine.

An angry chill.

I shook it off and kept driving.

———-

We pulled into LaMoure and drove up to the B’nB around 2PM. A plump older lady and her stooped, seventy-something husband came out and helped us haul our stuff into the B’nB – a converted Edwardian-era house that had once belonged to a bonanza farmer. The current owners had lovingly restored it over the past decade. The place had four guest rooms. It was a beautiful place.

I slung my bag – an old Dutch navy-surplus duffel bag I’d picked up in Cote D’Ivoire during that egregious misadventure that I knew I’d never dare tell Marisa about – and led her up the hallway to the room. The owner gave me a key, eyed Marisa suspiciously and left without a word.

As I unlocked the door, I noticed the other room across the hall had its door ajar. I paused, listening:

Just you and me, baby. They can’t beat US. We’ll take ’em. You’ll never let me down. You’ll never let me down”.

I stole a glimpse through the jarred door. An obese forty-something man with a Billy Gibbons beard lay on the bed, sleep-talking loudly, his arms wrapped around a World War I vintage M1903 Springfield rifle.

“Is that saliva?” Marisa asked,referring to the moist glint around the end of the barrel, next to the guy’s mouth.

“God, I hope so”.

The door to room three opened. A youngish, African-American couple poked their heads out. “Hey – are you two from around here?”

“It’s a long story”, I said, thinking better of trying to explain my history. “Not really”.

“What’s with these people around this town – hell, everywhere we’ve been in the Midwest lately?” the man asked. He was an attractive, articulate fellow with an accent that bespoke plenty of higher education. “The guns, the anger about the economy, the fundamentalism, the bigotry…”

“For the first time in my life” said the woman, an equally-attractive woman, “I’m not proud to be an American”.

“Well…” I started as I unlocked the door, non-plussed and unsure of how to answer at all, much less defend a home state I barely recognized myself, “give it time. Things’ll change”.

They shut the door.

We stepped into the room. I started putting my stuff in the closet. “Jeez, they say you can never go home again, but this place just seems so wierd. Like, we stepped into a production of “Our Town” that nobody ever called “Cut” for…”

I heard the water start in the bathtub.

“But I promise, it’s not all this weird…”

I felt something brushing against neck – soft fabric. I looked down. It was Marisa’s blouse, wrapped around me from behind, pulling me backward.

“So are you gonna give me a sociology lesson?” she whispered in my ear – a phrase that I’d have never figured would sound suggestive up until then.

You live and learn.

———–

Knock knock.

“Get the door, hon”, she mumbled,half-asleep.

I pulled on a pair of running shorts and looked at the clock. 7PM, I thought. Wow.

And then who on earth would be knocking on my door here, a hundred miles from the edge of nowhere? “Just a minute” I said, as I fished my SIG P220 out of my suitcase. I quietly pulled the slide back; the .45 cartridge was seated in the chamber.

Good.

I held the pistol at the ready behind my leg as I opened the door…

…and relaxed as the familiar face glared impatiently at me.

“Добрый вечер, Михаил Павлович!”, Yevgenii Batiukh muttered through clenched teeth. A young woman – early twenty-something, Filipina in appearance, dressed stylishly and wearing very non-North-Dakotan stiletto heels, stood next to him.

“Здравствуйте, Евгений Борисович! Почему Вы здесь? Для того, что я в долгу удовольствие?”, I asked – and he really was the last person I’d expected to meet in a B’nB in a little town in North Dakota in 1999, truth be told.

“I hef bain praktising my Eenglish”, he said thickly. “Meets please my girlfrient, Marta Carlosovna Balakanang”

“Magandang gabi po“, I said, nodding politely, hoping I wasn’t mangling my Tagalog too badly – it’d been years.

“Oh, Mista Berg – good evening to you, too!”, she said with a smile, in English that had only the faintest burr of a Philipino accent.

“Who’s there, hon?” Marisa asked from under the covers.

“Oh, you remember my friend, Gene the Crazy Ukrainian Enforcer? The one I told you about? He’s here with his girlfriend Marta”, I looked at Yevgenii and nodded at Marta.

“Oh!”, she answered, shaking fatigue from her voice, “cool!  Hi, Gene”, she said.  “Mitch has told me so much about you”.  She reached out from under the covers to start finding her clothes. “Gimme a minute!”

“Eez Plezha”, he responded.

“To what do I owe the honor, Yevgenii Borisovich?”

“Well, ees not oll plezhoore”, he said, lingering over each word like it was a sloppy cherry Varenikh. “Een fact, I vas soorprized to see you rezhistered here. Eez coincidence! But Mikhail…” he said, nodding conspiratorially, “Ve heff to talk”.

“Meet me at ze Better Days Bar, on Main Strit, in heff an hour”.

———-

Half an hour later, Marisa and I walked down a decrepit but well-maintained side street, as darkness gathered.

Suddenly, she pulled on my arm. “Look”, she said, sounding alarmed.

In front of a house – 210 Second Avenue – stood a cross. A man in a grease-spotted wife-beater with a holstered revolver was wrapping it with turpentine-soaked rags.

I shook my head to try to clear the vision from my mind – but it was real. I walked over to the guy.

“Sir – are you gonna burn this cross?”

“Hail, Yeeeah”, said the guy. “Gotta teach them thar furriners and japs and Ay-Rabs that we ain’t gunna surrender”. He grinned a mirthless grin.

“Mitch”, Marisa whispered, “look!”.

Next door, at 208, the neighbors – a man in a “WWJD” t-shirt, his wife in a bonnet and a peasant dress, and their kids, gamboling about in joy, were wrapping gas-soaked rags around a ten foot tall wooden Star of David.

“Wow”, I thought as we started walking down the street. “Swear, hon – I’ve never seen anything like this before. I lived here over twenty years, and…”

“Mitch!”, she said again, pointing across the street to 207 – where a hawk-faced woman in a bonnet and peasant dress wrapped a kerosene-soaked sheet around a large wooden crescent – the symbol of Islam.She noticed us, and grinned a venal, toothless grin. “Yieeew-all gunna stay fer the cross-burnin’ festival?” she said with a shrill Arklahoma drawl.

“Maybe”, I said, moving along, nodding as I grabbed Marisa’s hand.

The woman abruptly turned and drew a Colt Peacemaker from under her skirt, firing three shots into the air. Marisa flinched.

“Zebulon? Jedediah? Ezekiel! Dinnertime!”

I struggled to take it all in. The woman’s neighbors over in 205 – a paunchy, overall-clad man wearing a seed cap – was pouring a can of gasoline on a big wooden mockup of a Klansman’s hood.

“Sir”, I yelled to him from the sidewalk as we shuffled down the streeet – “you’re burning a Klan hood?”

“Outsahders is outsahders”, he muttered without looking at us as he continued working.

Marisa tugged my sleeve,and pointed to 203, where a group of drunken, mulletted, wife-beater-clad louts was putting the finishing touches on a huge wooden leprechaun, with a fierce, red, drunken, belligerent caricature of an Irish face and big hands clutching a big bottle of whiskey fabricated from a single elm tree stump. One man poured benzine on the wooden statue.

“I have to say”, Marisa nodded, “that, moral aspects aside, the woodworking is amazing“.

“Yeah”, I nodded, eyeing the huge Golden Gopher being rigged with dynamite across the street at 202.

Finally we turned onto LaMoure’s dirty, ratty main street, and walked to the Better Days bar, a little roadhouse that advertised “Eats”, “Beer” and “TV”.

A group of sullen men – teens through the sixties, mostly in flannel shirts and seed caps – sat on benches on the cracked sidewalk, mounds of crushed Shaefer cans piled up around them, as we walked past. They hushed as we got close, and eyed us wordlessly as we walked in.

The bar smelled of cigarette smoke and vomit. Two tables of fat, doughy people in seed caps and quilted jackets sat, wordlessly eyeing their beer; at another table, a man was cleaning a disassembled hunting rifle as two shot glasses of brown liquor jiggled in front of him. Behind the bar the usual assortment of trinkets, bottles and glasses clashed artlessly; a poster declared “Jesus Saves. You Spend”. A George Jones song played on a wan jukebox in the background.

As we walked to the bar, Yevgenii and Marta walked in. “Mikhail! I heff forst rount!”

He turned to the barkeep, a doughy, malevolent-looking man wearing a “Cheaper Crude or No More Food” T-shirt over a slowly-undulating paunch that almost-completely covered a holstered .38 revolver. “Two wodkas, and two glasses of vite vine!”

“Wodka?”, said the barkeep, a malevolent scowl crawling across his wrinkled face. “WOD-ka?”

The bar got even quieter.

“You some kinda FAY-gut?” he said in the same Arklahoma accent that everyone else seemed to be affecting, looking at Yevgenii, whose bonhomie was rapidly bidding him au revoir – and I knew how dangerous that could be.

“Er, hey, bud – nah. He’s from…”, I thought, measuring my words, “Canada. Canadian. Hey – two Buds, and two Bud Lights for the ladies – and ya wanna get us some peanuts and chips?”

He shuffled away to fill the order. A disembodied older male voice muttered, sotto voce, in the background “This country was a lot nicer before we started tradin’ with them Ay-rabs and Wetbacks, and them and the Jieeews started runnin’ the place“.

I looked; a table full of doughy old men sat, eyeing us.

Yevgenii and I led the ladies to a table in the corner by the front; we sat with our backs to the wall.

“Mikhail Pavlovich – Ve came here to get aVAY vrum eet all”, Yevgenii started out, looking puzzled. “Vat is VIT zese peepel?”

“I don’t know. This place used to be – civil. Civilized. A typical small town, in a typical American part of the country, full of people with the same mix of human imperfections and dreams of improving themselves as every other place in the country – hell, the world“, I said, taking a drag off the Budweiser.

“Zo vot heppened?”, Yevgenii asked, focusing intently on a small group of young, wife-beater-clad toughs who’d come in the back door. “Eez like…”

“Like an Ingemah Bugman film”, Marta interjected, not touching her Bud Light.

“No”, Marisa said, her eyes lighting up with a sudden realization. “A David Lynch production”.

Damn, I thought. Maybe that was it.

“Yevgenii – I think that’s it! I think I know what’s happened! The stereotypical Arklahoma accents, the odd behavior, the sense that the whole town is keeping some deep dark secret…”

“Vot?” Yevgenii started – before the sound of breaking glass drew our attention.

Oh, crap.

One of the local toughs was sauntering over to us, a broken beer bottle in his hand. “Ah think we got oarselves a bunch of Fay-guts and Imm-uh-grunts heer”, said the man – average height, with a red mullet tamped down by a green seed cap, stocky in the way that people get when they start slinging hay bales at age eight. His two friends sauntered behind him, carrying pool cues even though the bar had no pool table. Two of the doughy men from the back table rose to join them. “Jee-zuz don’t like fay-guts and imm-uhgrunts”, he said. “I betcha y’all are Moozlems“.
“Left”, I muttered. Yevgenii nodded. “Hey, fellas”, I said. “Howzabout I get you guys a drink. On me”, I said, standing up, digging in my pocket as if for my wallet.

“We don’t want your faw…” he started, abruptly taking a swing at me. I slipped aside, turning his momentum against him and slinging him face-first into the wall behind me, as Marisa and Marta screamed and shuffled backward. I quickly twisted his arm behind his back until I heard a “snap”, and kicked him hard in the ribs to keep him down.

Yevgenii sprang like a coiled cobra at the man on the left, feinting and drawing his block away with his left hand before smashing him in the face with his Bud bottle.

Marta leapt to her feet, and snapped a pair of nunchucks from her purse, neatly smacking the third tough in the face, sending him sprawling over a bar stool.

I heard a metallic snick as I turned. One of the doughy guys who’d come up from the back table was drawing and cocking a Ruger Redhawk, lifting it toward my head, its .357 inch bore looking more like 35.7 inches from this angle…

…when the man screamed in pain and slumped forward, the pistol discharging into the floor in a geyser of sawdust and wood splinters; Marisa had kicked him in the giblets. I sprang forward, kicking him in the face, sending him sprawling backward as teeth and blood spewed from his mouth. He fell like a sack of durum to the floor. I stomped hard on his pistol hand as I drew my own piece to cover the rest of the people in the bar. Yevgenii, his own silenced Makarov drawn from under his jacket, moved silently, his eyes fierce and bright and calculating, toward the remaining table of sitting people. “No vitnesses, da?”

“No!…NYET!” I yelled. He instantly averted his pistol upward from the first man’s temple. “Vy?”

“It’s not their fault – I know why this is going on. C’mon! Get them outta here”, I motioned toward Marta and Marisa, “I’ll cover. Meet me at your car!”

Yevgenii led the way out of the bar, pistol at the ready, as I covered the bar with my SIG. When they’d left, I fished a $20 out of my pocket. “This should cover the beer, the chips and a tip”, I said as the four men groaned in pain on the floor in the otherwise silent bar. I backed out to the street, and ran toward Yevgenii’s rented Cherokee.

“Get out on the highway to the west – now!”

We drove past groups of people, slowly shambling their way out of town to the west – men in mullets and wife-beaters, women in bonnets and peasant dresses, diaperless children in greasy t-shirts trailing behind them. “I knew it!”

Yevgenii spun the wheel, and we turned onto a two-lane road across the flat prairie as the last streaks of sunlight in the west turned the sky a blood-hued purple.

“Zo – vot?” Yevgenii demanded, the adrenaline slowly subsiding.

“Mitch?” Marisa whispered, looking a little dizzy as her own adrenaline rush faded.

“There’s an old Coast Guard “Omega” navigation transmitter outside town”, I started. “It’s a huge old thing, a huge array of towers, from the sixties or seventies, designed to send a signal around the globe so ships and planes could navigate. It was so powerful it interfered with wildlife’s natural homing instincts, and could fry ducks out of the sky if they flew too near. Satellites made it obsolete, so it was decommiissioned in the early nineties. But…” I started – and saw the aircraft beacons at the top of the array of 600-foot-tall antennae, “if someone were to have taken them over, and run some sort of electromagnetic mind-control system…”

“…like ve – ze Sovietz – vur dewelopeeng”, Yevgenii interjected soberly.

“Exactly. The old “Коллективные мозга…”, I stopped and corrected myself, “‘Collective Brain’ system!”

Yevgenii’s face flashed recognition. “Da. Ze system vas zuppozed to make prrropagahnda obzoleet, by controllingk za peoplez minds by remote control…”

“Jeez”, I muttered. It was all coming together now. “The Russians’ – er, Soviets’ experiment failed because they never had the transmitter power at the right frequency to actually trigger the psychochemical reaction outside the lab. But with Omega…the transmitters have enough power at the right frequency to cover all of Middle America”. I calculated the numbers in my head. “Like, there’s enough power here to cover the whole country, from the Poconos to the Sierra Madre…”

I paused to let that sink in for a moment. “Someone is turning Middle America into a David-Lynch-style Hollywood caricature of Middle American life”.
“Ve heff to do someting”, Yevgenii muttered. Our eyes locked for a shaved moment. We both knew what that was going to have to be.

And it was gonna be ugly.

———-

We drove another few miles, past small knots of people sauntering to the west, toward the lights in the sky. Yevgenii finally doused the lights, and we whipped into a shelterbelt.

“Stay here”, I told Marta and Marisa. I thought about giving them the SIG, just in case, when Marta pulled a Smith and Wesson Model 29 – with the eleven-inch barrel – from her purse. My jaw must have dropped; Yevgenii explained “Zey ver free vit a full of gaz at ze WalMart in Wahpeton…”

We camouflaged the Cherokee with fallen branches, and then moved to the west edge of the shelter belt. There were lights on, and the Omega base complex was humming with activity.

Odd, since the base had been closed for most of a decade.

I nodded to Yevgenii, and we set out toward the cyclone fence that surrounded the complex. I hacked through both layers with my jackknife – and we were inside, moving swiftly and silently.

I heard voices. We froze and took cover behind a fold in the ground. Two men, dressed in all-black Soviet-pattern battledress with black ski masks and goggles, walked toward us – the outline of the curved “banana-clip” magazine of their AK-74s unmistakeable in the ambient light from the tower lights.

“음, 베이컨!” said the leader of the two men in a harsh, North Korean accent.

They both lit cigarettes. Perfect.

I signalled Yevgenii, who nodded curtly and took careful aim.

Silently, I slipped behind the trailing man; he’d just blown his night-vision to hell, lighting up the cigarette. Amateur flub, for a pro, I figured. Oh, well.

I slipped silently behind him, grabbed him around the head as I kicked his legs out from under him, and hacked at his neck with my jackknife. He struggled for a shaved moment, and then slumped to the ground, blood geysering and then ebbing. His leader was already splayed out on the sod, two 8mm entry wounds where the bridge of his nose had been. I nodded approvingly at Batiukh; for an older guy, he still had the eyes and the reflexes.

We grabbed the guards’ AKs and a few extra magazines, and set off toward the center of the compound, the concrete Control Bunker. Hunkered down, we alternated between creeping forward and covering each other.

We got into the shadow of a generator building – the last stop before the control bunker – and looked around, taking stock. We counted at least six more guards with rifles – and we knew there were more where they came from, noticing the two-story barracks block across the way. A couple of black Chevy Suburbans sat in front of the control block.

“Cover”, Batiukh hissed, signalling me that he was going in…

…until I grabbed him. There was a car coming. Batiukh held up, as the lights of another black Suburban bounced into view.

The truck ground to a halt in front of the control bunker. Two Koreans got out first, scanning the area. Then, two more men – middle eastern, I noticed, mildly incredulous – got out, pulling a handcuffed, middle-aged caucasian man. He looked familiar…

“Devvid Leench”, Batiukh hissed.

Damn, I thought. A bunch of North Koreans are in the middle of North Dakota, holding oddball American auteur David Lynch, of Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Dune fame, hostage?

I was right!

“Cover me”, I hissed at Yevgenii as the five men walked into the bunker. He switched to the AK – no time for subtlety now.

I got up, and dashed through the scattered shadows, silently approaching the entrance. As I got within ten feet, a guard came out, his rifle slung.

Sucks to be you, I thought, planting the knife squarely in the center of his throat. He slumped to the ground, and I moved into the entry tunnel; I sensed more than saw Batiukh moving up to cover behind me.

I slung the AK, and drew the SIG as I walked down the access hallway, signalling for Batiukh to make sure nobody came through the door behind me.

A sign above the hallway said “Control Room”. I silently slipped to the edge of the door, and peered around the corner. Two Korean guards stood watching the center of the room; one of the middle-eastern men held a gun on Lynch, while the other undid his handcuffs.

“So now you put Blue Velvet in the demoduplexor”, said the man with the gun, “and I will turn the mechanism on”. Stressing the last syllable of each sentence – Iranian. What the…?

And Blue Velvet...?

This was getting serious. Middle Amerrica was about thirty minutes away from morphing from hackneyed urbanite cliche to overwrought and psychodramatic.
I shifted the SIG to my left hand, and took my jackknife in the right. I silently sized up my aim, said a quick prayer, and threw it.

It stuck firmly in the back of the Iranian gunman’s head. He slumped to the floor. The Koreans hesitated for just a second, shocked. It was all I needed; I slid on my back across the linoleum into the room, double-tapping them both. They slid to the floor, a slick of gore on the wall behind them.

The final Iranian – the apparent leader – ducked behind a stack of transmitter gear. “You will never catch me,” he yelled.

“A cigarette”.

Lynch had spoken.

“Huh?” asked the Iranian, as I wondered about the same thing.

“Lush pomegranate smoke”, he said in an affected British accent.

Whaaaa?

The Iranian stepped out from behind the stack of transmitters. “What you say, it make no sense…”

I opened up with the AK, firing all thirty rounds in one long burst, just to clear the conceptual dissonance from my mind in one long cathartic release of tension and ammunition. The Iranian fell to the ground.

“I…never…understood…Blue…Vel…”, he said, before gurgling to a stop, dead.

“Gets them every time”, Lynch said with an enigmatic smile, dancing a wee jig.

I shook my head to clear yet more dissonance, and walked to a VCR player that was attached to a piece of equipment.

“It was playing “Twin Peaks” through the demoduplexor”, Lynch recited in a drab monotone. “The demoduplexor was attached to the transmitter. It was thus affecting the minds of everyone in the middle of the United States – simultaneously hypnotizing them into becoming adjuncts of my concept.” He stopped, then grinned cryptically. “Pretty cool”.

I hit the big red “Emergency Off” button – and with a clanking and rattling, the huge old transmitter shut down.

“They were summoning the locals to do their will”, Lynch said.

“That’d explain everyone that was slowly walking this way like a bunch of zombies”, I mused, riffling through a pile of documents that the Iranian had dropped.

“They should all be OK now”, Lynch said in a Hindu accent.

Yevgenii Batiukh backed into the room. “Come here and look”, he yelled, leading me to the door of the bunker.

From around the facility perimeter, rifles twinkled as the Korean guards fled under a heavy, accurate fire from the locals, who, freed from the mind-control beams, realized the danger that faced their families and their nation, drew hunting rifles from the backs of their pickups, and attacked, taking a heavy toll from the fleeing guards.

In ten minutes, it was over. The locals – shaking the last of the delirium clear from their heads – walked back home to nurse the mother of all psychic hangovers. Marisa, Marta, Yevgenii, Micheal Lynch and I stood in the shadow of the Omega transmitter.

“I, and all of American civilization, owes you my and our lives, respectively” Lynch sang to the tune of a New Bedford whaler’s chanty. “Please accept this as a token of my regard”.

He handed me a Raggedy Ann doll. It had had a pencil stuck through the back of its head. In place of blood was yellow Play-Doh.

“Um – thanks”. I turned to Yevgenii. “I’m trying to figure this out. This operation had Korean muscle and Iranian brains – but most of these documents are in…”

I riffled through a small stack of them, “…Hungarian”.

“Odd”, Yevgenii said. “What are they about?”

“Not sure”, I said – my Hungarian was rusty. “Something about ‘buying mind control on the cheap’? I have no idea”.

In the distance, a siren wailed – probably the county sheriff coming to investigate. Time to get out of here. I pocketed the documents, and we got into the Jeep and drove back to the hotel.

The proprietors met us at the door. “Know what happened to that there nice couple from Chicago?” the woman asked. “They seem to have taken off. Ya, sure – you bet”.

She said it in that “Fargo” accent. The Arklahoma accents were gone! My home is full of real people instead of Hollywood cliches again!

“Crap”, I said. “So the only idea those two will ever have about life in Middle America is that everyone acts like extras in a David Lynch movie, like they’re rotely reciting characterizations from Twin Peaks. Nothing but alarmist, slanderous cliches.” I shook my head. “What a shame”.

“Da”, Yevgenii said. “Good ting he’s not in government!”

I smiled. “Yeah. Whew!”

UPDATE: I’m informed that video shows I was a Human Factors guy at a local network engineering company in 1999. I misspoke – and I am sorry that you simpletons are all bitter about it.