VETTE HEAD'S NOT DEAD
by
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They had arrived in Japan two days earlier at Narita Airport. More than 40 miles outside Tokyo, Narita Airport was the focus of anti-foreigner, anti-American and anti-everything else. Built to replace the old Tokyo airport, Narita, was built on land that had been rice paddies for centuries before being drained and filled for the airport construction. The Japanese government had basically exercised eminent domain and evicted the local farmers to allow the construction of the airport. Rice was almost sacred in Japan. The idea of filling in rice paddies upset a lot of the local populous. Protests began the day the construction was announced. Terrorist groups like Chukaka Ha were quick to exploit the situation and no doubt recruited many new followers in the surrounding neighborhoods. In 1984, just days before the airport was to open, a group of terrorists forced their way into the control tower and destroyed all of the electronics with axes. Narita opened again several months later but the security surrounding the airport made the place look like a war zone. The protesters at the police lines occasionally added to the realism of the macabre atmosphere. Japanese police in riot gear looked like a cross between 15th century samurai and Darth Vader. Dressed in black, with padded flaps attached to their German style helmets and solid plastic cuirass like chest pieces they paraded around the airport with oversized riot batons. Passage in and out of Narita was like going through an airlock. Every vehicle leaving or entering the airport stopped and passengers waited while a black armored bus was pulled back from the roadway. After being ushered into the security area, Stillwater and Joyner’s taxi was motioned to a halt by the police. The armored bus was then pushed back into the roadway, blocking any retreat and trapping the vehicle between it and another identical bus blocking the exit ahead. After the plastic armor clad police glanced at the tourist passports of Stillwater and Joyner, the bus to the front was pulled aside and the vehicle was motioned forward. The surrounding countryside was a stark contrast to Stalag Narita. Carefully manicured farms and terraced rice paddies formed a beautiful panorama. On the day Stillwater and Joyner arrived, the bus being rolled aside was like the opening of a stage curtain in an absurd play. This opening revealed a scene that reminded Stillwater of a scene out of an old movie like Ivanhoe. They were now in the middle of a set from a Middle Ages Castle under siege. A phalanx of the armored police with riot shields was maintaining a line along the exit road from the airport. The road into the airport was well defended in preparation for an assault by a well-organized group consisting of more than five hundred. Young, and old, in woman and man, the groups were differentiated only by different colored armbands, which corresponded to the rioters’ tasks. Green armbands identified the group with gloves and masks that were collecting the tear gas grenades and throwing them back across police lines. Yellow arm bands identified the rock and Molotov cocktail throwers and red was the color for the battering ram crews that charged the lines of shield bearing police with telephone poles, opening holes in the line that the un-arm banded masses could surge through. The baton wielding police quickly regained ground and the police line continued to ebb and flow like waves lapping a beach. Stillwater shot two rolls of film to chronicle the spectacle before the taxi driver threatened to take them back to the Police. The gray haired and be speckled driver was visibly embarrassed by the greeting some of his countrymen had prepared for the two apparent businessmen from the United States.
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About the Book
In the 1980s, Jim Stillwater is a street smart, but idealistic young officer in one of the U.S. Army’s most elite units. As the preparations for a mission in Japan are completed, Jim and his team find themselves being manipulated to take the mission to a new level. Years later, instead of guns and clandestine ops, Jim and a tight group of friends feed their need for speed with a shared love of muscle cars, mainly Corvettes. Their restless adrenaline-junkie nature influences Jim and his friend to plan the retrieval of a buried transmission from a classic Corvette. To accomplish their mission, they collaborate with the former owner of the Corvette—a lesbian biker. Deep in the New Hampshire woods, the friends find themselves in a life and death struggle with a group of religious extremists and corrupt cops that have buried more than a transmission.
About the Author
Lee Sweetappleworked in the US intelligence community for thirty years. He has served as a US Army intelligence officer, a federal law enforcement officer, and currently, as a defense contractor. Most of his career has been spent in the field of counterterrorism. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. He recently published the novel Key West Revenge which although not a true sequel, reintroduces characters from his first novel Vette Head's Not Dead. He lives with his family in the Northern Virginia countryside, outside of Washington, DC.