The Pier

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The Pier
 

Chapter 1
 

Somewhere in the South Pacific, 1988
 

The USS New Orleans (LPH-11) steamed across the vast southern Pacific, days away from the ship’s next port, Subic Bay, Philippines. It was 1988, and the crew of approximately 2,000 sailors and Marines were anxious to return to the port where beers were .25 cents and the girls were $12 a day. Subic Bay and its adjacent slum town of Olongapo had a decades-old history of entertaining troops with sex and booze. The promise of girls in bikinis dancing on the bar seemed like heaven compared to mess cooking in the bottom of the New Orleans to young Deke Sanger and Nick Novacek.
 

Daniel “Deke” Sanger was a stocky college dropout from Buffalo, New York, and a twenty-one-year-old washout from Navy SEAL training. He was a good athlete in high school and parlayed his athleticism into a partial scholarship at the University of Buffalo. After a couple of seasons of playing second string on the football team, Deke realized he was never going to play for the Buffaloes, had no money, no girlfriend, and the football practice was killing his grade point average. He dropped out of college and decided to join the Navy to get away from it all. He saw the SEALs in the recruiter’s job guide and thought it was his destiny. He lasted a few weeks in training but, like most, he eventually succumbed to the cold water and sand. He now stood in the scullery with his paper hat, plastic apron, and USS New Orleans Food Service Team shirt on, spraying down food trays stacked as high as his eyeballs. It was humiliating. He had believed his own bullshit, and the consequences of failure meant the Navy owned him. His new rating would be Seaman Sanger; the shitter scrubbing, wet garbage humping, dishwasher on the mess decks 5,000 miles from Buffalo.
 

Beside him was a tall, thin Nick Novacek from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Novacek was a small-town kid whose father was in the Navy during Vietnam. Nick relished his father’s old stories about riding around in patrol boats in the Mekong Delta and gunfights with gooks hiding in the jungle along the water’s edge. His father always told him he would have stayed in the Navy except Vietnam was hell. Tens of thousands of guys were dying on both sides. His mom was a high school girl who got pregnant just before his dad was drafted. The relationship lasted less than two years after his father’s tour in Vietnam ended and he returned home. His mother ran off with another guy when Nick was an infant, leaving him with his dad to raise him alone. For years, they lived in a beat-up rented house between a bean field and a corn field just south of town. His father worked a swing shift and overtime at the plant, which often left him alone with a television, some video games, a phone, and some frozen pizzas. He picked up playing guitar in high school and spent hours in that beat-up little house playing. He imagined each stalk of corn was a screaming fan in a green sea; of another sold-out concert. The amp got turned up to full blast, and Nick delivered a punishing half-hour solo only the corn would appreciate.
 

Other than that, the rural life of Iowa seemed like a dead end on a gravel road. Although Nick’s dad loved him and did a good job of parenting for a single guy, his life was a monument to boredom. Nick had no ambition to work on a farm or in a factory. He didn’t really have good enough grades for college. The band broke up after high school, and he had no girlfriend. The day after graduation, Nick went to the Navy recruiter’s office and signed up. Two months later, he was shipped off to boot camp and subsequently received orders to the USS New Orleans (LPH-11). Seaman Novacek worked as a dishwasher in the scullery in the bottom of the ship. Nick fell in love with California the minute he walked off the plane for boot camp.
 

“Yo, shitbags. You better stop dickin’ the dog back here and move your asses. We got dry storage that needs to get humped up to mess decks, broken out, and stowed. You fags are part of the ten-man working party that is...” The mess decks Master at Arms yelled through the open tray slot in the bulkhead, but Deke cut him off with a blast of water from the sink hose.
“Shut your fuckin’ cock holster, Pierce. You’re a drunken scumbag. Go get the other cranks off the mess deck to do it.” Deke yelled at the empty hole in the bulkhead.
Nick burst out laughing. He had never heard anyone talk back to someone of a higher rank. “He got busted for getting drunk in Tijuana and throwing a billiard ball at the mirror behind the bar. Some Mexicans beat his ass, and the military police had to get him out of a Mexican jail. The Mexicans not only beat his ass but took his clothes. When the shore patrol brought him back to the ship, he came over the brow in his underwear with two black eyes. He is the laughing stock of the entire ship. The captain took two stripes from him, and his division officer no longer wanted him, so they reassigned him down here to the mess decks. The Filipinos that run the goddamn supply department can’t stand him either.”
Nick kept laughing and shook his head. “Can’t you get in trouble for insubordination or failure to follow an order?”
“From fuckin’, Pierce? Who is he going to cry to? I’ll choke that shitbag out in his rack with my dirty underwear. He is just being lazy and looking for someone he can boss around. Fuck him.” Deke replied as he grabbed another food tray, banged it in the plastic wet garbage can to empty it, blasted it with a sprayer, and set it in the tray rack next to the others waiting to go through the dishwasher.
Nick was laughing at the visual of Deke’s comments. The idea of Pierce gagging on some skid marks was hilarious. Deke looked like he had spent some time in the weight room too and probably could have choked out Pierce with his dirty underwear.
“We should get him a bug juice blaster.” Nick suggested. Bug juice was the name of the artificial colored and flavored “just add water” drinks on the mess decks. It was made up daily, five gallons at a time, and was the only alternative, other than coffee, when the ship ran out of fresh milk.
Deke stopped spraying. “What the fuck is a bug juice blaster?”
“You know if you mix that stuff up in a spray bottle instead of a five-gallon bucket, the acid is so strong it will not only clean up the brass deck drains but will eat through your clothes. I was cleaning a deck drain with some and got some on my dungarees. It made my skin burn, and after I got my laundry back, there was a hole burned through the exact spot where that crap spilled.” Nick pulled his plastic apron aside, showing Deke the hole in his dungarees.
“No shit. That is freakin’ excellent. After we get these trays knocked out, I am going to make some and smoke a bunch of shitbags on the mess decks, starting with Pierce. That fucker put me on the watch bill on our first day in Subic Bay.” Deke slammed the dishwasher shut, pressed the button, and the industrial-sized tray washer started its cycle.
 

The two kept up the routine for another hour; Deke would spray the trays off and put them in the dishwasher, and Nick would take them out of the dishwasher and stack them by the hundreds, literally. Once they finished, they went straight to the stainless steel cabinet under the bug juice dispenser on the mess decks and grabbed a couple of packages each. They returned to the scullery, emptied out some spray bottles, and filled them up with the highly concentrated bug juice and laughed the entire time. “There goes that geek Blowser. That shitbag took the curtains off my rack. I threw his towel in the toilet yesterday when he was taking a shower. He is crankin’ in the officer’s mess. I am gonna fuckin’ smoke him with a blaster.” Deke laughed to himself as he headed out of the scullery in pursuit. About ten minutes later, he came running back into the scullery laughing so hard he was almost crying.
“What did you do?” Nick asked.
Deke held up his almost empty bottle of bug blaster. He was laughing hysterically. “I shot about forty idiots with that shit.” He paused to catch his breath. “I did just a single blast to so they didn’t notice it, and it will take a little while to soak in. This will be fucking hilarious when these jokers are standing in the chow line itching and burning, and their goddamn uniforms fall apart.”
 

Nick laughed hard. It was the most fun he had since joining the Navy. Sure, it was childish but absolutely genius comedy. Being a teenager always trumped being a sailor, and over the course of the next few weeks, the two turned it into a game. There were probably forty guys mess cranking out their 90-day tours any one time. By the end of the week, the uniforms looked like they belonged on a pirate ship; there were so many burn holes and stains in their stupid food service team shirts and dungarees. Guys figured it out quickly, and it turned into the 7-Day Bug Juice Wars. It spread over the ship like the plague, and we hid the boxes of bug juice in the vegetable prep space. Some of the geeks on the flight deck raided the mess decks, carted off a box of cherry-flavored bug juice. When Deke heard about the score on the ammo, he went straight to dry storage and got another box, but this one was stored in the scullery behind a padlock.
It was hard not to be seen as a blatant gunner because other guys would see you going about the ship with a squirt bottle. Deke would walk through the air department’s berthing after lights out in his mess cooking outfit and have his water bottle loaded with bug juice under his apron. He would walk towards the head and shoot guys’ dirty laundry bags hanging throughout the berthing and then exit through the door on the other side. Every meal there, there were always three or four guys looking under the bug juice dispenser for some extra powder packets, wanting revenge. Nick and Deke were one step ahead. After the crew ate, when they went through the line with their tray, they got gunned again. They would sit on milk crates, perfectly aimed out the slots in the bulkheads designed for inserting dirty meal trays. Now they patrolled the mess decks from the safety of their perch on two milk crates in the scullery. Of course, they only shot the smaller guys and the idiots. As guys would walk away, their back sides would get a couple of blasts, and that was all it took. An office guy would start squirming in their chair, then rub the spot that is burning on their skin, then notice their fingers are stained with food coloring, and a sigh of revenge. Damaged forever. The stains would never come off and bleach out white after a single washing when the fibers broke down from the acid in the bug juice and the burn holes replaced the stains.
 

Guys would beat on the bulkhead and yell, “I know what you did, asshole. You think that is funny?” like they were going to do something about it. Then it would be both barrels. Guys would get pissed and kick the bulkhead, then act like they were tough. The revenge only went on for a few minutes at a time, and then no one could tolerate the burning skin. The laughter and insults from the other guys on the mess decks watching the attack were priceless. It always ended the same way; howls and yells from others on the mess decks calling him an idiot or to stop holding up the line. They would move along cursing, trying to act tough, never knowing who in the scullery smoked them, then run down the passageway to get the clothes off and rinse because it was burning so bad.
 

Nick and Deke were so effective that the ship’s store ran out of dungaree shirts and food service team shirts; there were so many casualties. The supply officer noticed a couple of the cranks in the galley were trying to rinse their shirts in a deep sink with nice burn marks on their backs. One of the cranks confessed that they had just walked across the mess decks at the wrong time and got lit up in a crossfire of green and red bug juice. He called down to the supply department and told the Senior Chief he wanted the war ended immediately and new uniforms purchased on the base in Subic Bay out of the supply department’s recreation budget.
 

It came to a head the following morning at inspection when we pulled into Subic Bay. The sawed-off little Filipino Senior Chief that ran the mess deck wanted to know why everyone’s uniforms looked like shit. Unfortunately, for Pierce, he got shit-faced drunk out in Olongapo the night before and barely made it back to the ship. He passed out in his rack and missed the morning inspection. The Senior Chief started flipping out and made Deke go get Pierce out of the berthing. Sensing a golden opportunity, Deke first stopped by the scullery and grabbed his bottle of bug blaster. When he entered the berthing and went over to Pierce’s rack, he could hear him snoring behind his curtains, and the entire cubicle reeked of alcohol. Quietly, Deke lifted the dirty laundry bag hanging from Pierce’s rack and just gunned it with a soaking bug blaster that drained about half his bottle. He then hung it back up. He then emptied the remaining bug juice on his curtains. Noticing the padlock on Pierce’s rack, Deke removed a toothpick from his shirt pocket and jammed it in the keyhole of Pierce’s padlock and broke it off. He then yelled, “Pierce, get your ass up, you drunken shitbag. You missed fuckin’ muster, and the Senior Chief is freakin’ out. He sent me here to get you. Are you sleeping in your clothes, hillbilly?”
“Oh shit.” Pierce groaned and began to move.
“I am outta here, shitbag. He just wanted me to wake you. We are all standing in formation, so I wouldn’t fuck around.” Deke insulted him one last time and took off back towards the mess decks.
 

When Pierce came down to the mess decks, he looked dead on arrival. He was scared and already rubbing from the burn. It was too late; the Senior Chief saw. The same feeling flushed over Pierce again like the night in Tijuana; he had made a mistake. His food service team shirt looked like a tie-dye. The Senior Chief lit him up in front of everyone. He called him everything but a white man in a thick Filipino accent. The purple bug juice blaster from Deke’s carpet bombing of the dirty laundry bag began to burn. Pierce, in a drunken rage, would have been screaming at his padlock and staring at his dirty laundry bag. It was dark in the berthing as it was still only 7am and Pierce reached around over his dirty socks and underwear of the last week to his food service team shirt in the bag. It was too late for Pierce by the time he figured out what was unfolding. He had felt the bug juice burn before and initially figured there was a little stain on the shirt from a few days ago as he ran through the passageway and down the ladders towards the mess decks. He was wrong. He was the number one target on the mess decks already. Someone had already smoked him this morning? It was impossible. The burning skin under his tattooed team shirt didn’t lie, and he was trembling in front of the smaller Senior Chief. That is until the burning sensation was just too much, combined with last night’s binge, and Pierce stumbled away, left formation, and took off running towards the head to rinse off the burn and vomit. That was the last they ever saw of Pierce in the Navy, but that was how it all started: Deke and Nick.
 

The friendship began on the mess decks in the bottom of the USS New Orleans (LPH-11) somewhere along the equator in the South Pacific. The following years, they worked together in deck division as boatswain’s mates; chipping, painting, loading, and unloading the ship across the Pacific. There were bar girls in the Philippines, rickshaw rides in Hong Kong, and mountain treks in Japan. Like most sailors, their ambitions in world travel amounted to getting drunk, trying to get laid, and taking some pictures.
 

Back in California, being stationed on Pier 4 on the 32nd Street Naval Base under the giant blue Coronado Bay Bridge in San Diego provided a ground zero location for the action. Living on the ship took care of a place to sleep, eat, and shower. San Diego offered the harsh reality of the roaming homeless zombies on the streets downtown begging for change, contrasting the Ferrari-driving San Diego elite rolling around on the Pacific Coast Highway. The homeless and the affluent are there for the same reason; the weather is great year-round. The ethnic mix of San Diego was a mosaic of Mexicans, sailors, tourists, and several affluent Americans who also wanted to live in one of America’s greatest cities. By the end of their tour in the Navy, Deke and Nick had visited all the bars downtown and most of the ones in Ocean, Mission, and Pacific Beaches. It was impossible not to like the beach culture of San Diego. However, they usually ended up in Ocean Beach because of the waves, the pier, the lack of other sailors around, and, of course, guys selling pot and acid in the parking lot by the pier.

Chapter 2

The Paper Trail
 

The drive from Mill Valley to Ocean Beach took the entire night in the Volvo wagon. The light blue car was desperately boring but dependable and inconspicuous. That is exactly why it was chosen for the delivery vehicle. The traffic on Highway 101 south to the 405 interchange took seven hours. Another two hours to get through a Los Angeles traffic jam at 4am and still two more hours further to Ocean Beach. The trip could have been reduced by an hour, but there was no speeding when making deliveries.
 

Mario Pepin was twenty-four and a dropout from the University of California, Berkeley. He hailed from Schaumburg, Illinois, and was the third son of an affluent family of Italian descent. His father was a second-generation Italian and managed a drug testing laboratory on Lombard. His mother was an attractive political science professor at the University of Chicago. Mario excelled at math and science in high school and listened to hippie music, as his mother called it. He smoked pot with his friends on the weekends and spent much of his teen years playing video games instead of sports. He avoided trouble and maintained a good social life by attending school events like the rest of the kids. Mario, unlike most of his friends, however, had a gift for academics and received a full ride to attend Berkeley and majored in organic chemistry.
 

It was Berkeley and San Francisco that changed Mario forever. He excelled in his studies and joined a frat house his freshman year. He dropped acid for the first time at a Grateful Dead show in Oakland Coliseum, and it changed his life. Mario was astounded by the effects of hallucinating. It was as if he could taste sound, and the entire heavens were breathing. Never in his life had he felt as if he was having an out-of-body experience. It was as close to a religious experience he had ever known. Suddenly, it all made sense to him; this was his destination. All of the events in his life had led up to a single dose of LSD and a rock concert that changed his trajectory in life, and he was finally able to see the path laid before him. The following day, Mario went to the library to learn all he could about Lysergic Acid Diethylamide 25. He no longer wanted to be a well-paid lab rat in a white coat scribbling down anonymous equations as a science minion for a large chemical company. Teaching organic chemistry seemed boring and constricted by faculty and regulations.
 

In the following two weeks, he had learned all he could about Albert Hoffman, the Swiss scientist who invented it in the 1930s. He was amazed to learn LSD initially was being used as a therapeutic drug for mental patients and alcoholics. The facts from the initial research results were astounding. Patients all reported the exact same feeling he had; as if another dimension was involved in life and somehow LSD had unleashed the ability of the mind to consciously perceive this extra dimension. Unfortunately, these studies were squashed by the US government and the Russians testing it in hopes of weaponizing LSD to become a massive brainwashing instrument that could be deployed on their Cold War enemies. Once the brainwashing experiments flopped, the governments gave up on it, and the beatniks got ahold of it in the 50s and early 60s. By the mid- to late 60s, the hippies had turned it into a movement. It was never taken as a serious science again. Mario was determined he was going to learn to make it.
 

It took a couple of years, but by his final semester of undergraduate school, he had reduced the ergot fungus from rye bread mold spores exactly as Hoffman had done in the 1930s. Through an introduction at a frat party, Mario met another acid-dropping chemical engineering graduate student, Michael “Elvis” Fresley, nicknamed Elvis because his last name was pronounced like the King’s with an Fr instead of a “ P.” The following year, Mario and Elvis synthesized their first batch of LSD in a small music studio they rented in Oakland. The original batch made almost 500 hits that were placed on sugar cubes with an eye dropper. With a single phone call through a pot-dealing frat brother, Josh Palmecci, the entire batch was sold for $1,000. This experiment was repeated time and again, and eventually, the batches grew from 500 to 5,000 hits at a time. Palmecci unloaded them 100 at a time or more to small-time dealers who turned around and charged $3-$5 each for them on the streets. They split the profits three ways and soon had enough money to move out of the frat house and into a three-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Oakland. One room was for Mario, one for Elvis, and one for the lab. The three kept it quiet, and no one would be allowed over; no girls, no friends, and definitely none of Palmecci’s acid dealer buddies.
 

Mario’s parents came to the graduation in the summer of 1986. The family toured San Francisco for a long weekend, and his parents probed him about his future. He said nothing about the LSD manufacturing and opted instead for claiming to be looking into an internship, possibly before committing to graduate school. The scholarship had run out, and he needed to establish residency in California first to dodge the cost-prohibitive out-of-state tuition costs. This would buy him a little time in the eyes of his parents.
 

In August of 1986, however, Palmecci got busted in a raid and was caught with 1,000 hits. He was lucky the cops hadn’t shown up an hour earlier, or they would have caught all three of them with about 6,000 hits and all of their cash. Mario and Elvis were contacted by Palmecci’s attorney and informed he wanted them to pay for the bail and legal fees to try and keep him out of jail. Palmecci had no one. He was raised as a previous rich boy from across the bay in Belvedere. The family’s fortune dwindled when his mother was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer, and his father was busted and sent to jail for stealing millions from the clients of his failed financial planning practice. Elvis and Mario kept most of the money they had made and luckily came up with $10,000 together and posted bond. Palmecci’s attorney said he was looking at a plea bargain that would be ten to twenty years in San Quentin unless he gave up his dealer.
 

In reality, Palmecci was a twenty-three-year-old, lily-white, tie-dyed deadhead with long hair studying psychology at Berkeley. He would be eaten alive in prison. For Palmecci, there were two choices: jump bail, skip town, and begin dealing from somewhere else or create an alias with legitimate identification and quickly fake his own death. He had several contacts, but all were in the San Francisco Bay area. Mario and Elvis refused to entertain the idea of living somewhere else with Palmecci long-term, so together, they opted for the fake death scenario. Coming up with a successful long-term plan seemed impossible in the long run; however, there were millions of Americans living off the grid, and Josh Palmecci would need to become the next until a better long-term plan came to mind.
 

It was the better of two awful choices, but Palmecci’s new identity had to be created first. As a grad student, Elvis was a teacher’s aide and had access to student registration records which had social security numbers. He stole every male student’s social security number in his study group. After an entire day of creating a fake birth certificate, with the help of the Berkeley student computer lab and the impression left from a $20 customized rubber stamp purchased through an office catalog, Palmecci got a driver’s license within a week. His new name: Thomas Snell of Mill Valley, California. It was time to get out of San Francisco for a while.
 

The plan was for the three to drive down to San Diego, open a couple of bank accounts under Thomas Snell, and figure out a way to fake the death of Joshua Palmecci. San Diego was warm and close to Mexico, so if Palmecci had to disappear long-term, that was the plan. Mario and Elvis would return to Berkeley and pick up where they left off in school. Mario and Elvis now had to commute their product through Palmecci, setting up the deals from San Diego. Sure, they thought about cutting Palmecci out, but without him, they would be selling hits one and two at a time like high school kids. They would never make any money without Palmecci setting up the connections. Prior to the bust, the operation worked flawlessly. They never could figure out who tipped off the cops, but Palmecci was convinced it was the boyfriend of a girl he sold some acid to and had sex with. In short, no one in his circle of dealers coughed up his name. Mario and Elvis could return to their studies at Berkeley, but Palmecci would never return to the Bay Area alive as himself.
 

The Volvo chugged along down Highway 101 following the speed limit the entire way. They were stuck in a traffic jam at 2 a.m. in Los Angeles, and by the time they got on Interstate 5 and made it to San Diego, the sun had already risen. The three got a room under Elvis’s name at the Dolphin Motel in the Ocean Beach area and spent the early morning crashing in the motel room and then headed out to the beach. All three immediately recognized Ocean Beach had a ton of hippies, surfers, and skaters along the quay wall that extended north along the water for a few miles. It was perfect. Tons of these youngsters and degenerates would be good prospects as future customers. It would also be easy for Palmecci to blend in with the crowd, as indeed most of them looked like him.
 

The following day, they read in the San Diego Tribune an advertisement for Americans wanting to rent apartments in Tijuana. Keeping the costs low was going to be the biggest hurdle until Palmecci could get established. The three hopped on the red trolley downtown and headed to Tijuana. It was even better than Ocean Beach. It was much cheaper, with no American cops, and with random inspections of the tens of thousands of tourists and service members crossing the border daily, the chance of Palmecci getting pulled aside was slim. If anything, Palmecci definitely didn’t look like an illegal immigrant. Palmecci didn’t speak Spanish, but it really wasn’t needed in Tijuana as most of the locals spoke enough English to get the Americans’ wallets and purses open. They located the apartment complex being offered in the morning paper, and although it was nice, they noticed a couple walking out of a motel across the street. It was not as nice as the advertised apartments, but it was half the price; $500 a month for rent was dirt cheap. Between the three, they didn’t have the money with them for a down payment but now knew Palmecci could survive in Tijuana in the initial phase of the operation. After a few beers and enchiladas, the three walked back over the border through the checkpoint simply by flashing their driver’s licenses to an American guard who waved them through. They took the trolley back to San Diego and a cab back to the Dolphin Motel in Ocean Beach. They kept the same room and opted to get a 12-pack of beer across the street, head out to the pier, and collect their thoughts.
 

The following morning, they piled into the Volvo and found a Wells Fargo branch in Ocean Beach. Palmecci walked in and opened up a checking and savings account under the name Thomas Snell using the driver’s license and memorized social security number. He wrote down on the application that he had just picked up a job working as a groundkeeper at the University of California, San Diego. All he needed now was a phone and some start-up cash. The loan officer informed him that if he wanted to apply for a credit card, he needed to show a pay stub. After some brief negotiating, the three realized it was easier to return to Berkeley and make a fake pay stub from one of Elvis’s actual ones he had received for his teacher’s aid paycheck.
 

It was a long drive back towards the apartment in Oakland. School would be starting on Wednesday, and Elvis had to be back at Berkeley. Mario would begin working on the next batch, and Palmecci’s began plotting out his own fake death. After a few ridiculous ideas were shot down, a suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge in the middle of the night crystallized as the best option from all the worse ones. There was a good chance a body would never be found and written off as eaten by marine life. Surely, there were bodies that were never recovered from past suicide jumps.
 

Upon returning, they discovered Palmecci was not only kicked out of Berkeley but was also kicked out of the frat house by the national fraternal order and subsequently was now homeless. He moved on to the couch in the Oakland apartment. Elvis started school and began teaching another chemistry class. Mario picked up a job at Berkeley as a chemistry tutor just to stay in the academic loop and make a few legitimate bucks for the month. They rented a post office box and purchased 10,000 paper blotter tabs with a tiny image of Homer Simpson’s head on each through an advertisement in the back of High Times magazine. The small, square, perforated paper blotter tabs would be much easier to conceal and carry than a liquid that could break or sugar cubes. After it was finalized, the tabs would be soaked in the LSD solution and then hung up to dry. They would then be wrapped in aluminum foil and placed inside textbooks on the shelf for temporary storage. Until it was show time. Mario and Elvis would take turns monitoring and documenting the progress of their next batch while Palmecci hung out on the couch, keeping watch on the lab, drinking beer, and playing video games. It would take a month to make the first batch after the bust in the apartment, and the confines of the apartment made Palmecci think about prison. The discovery phase of Palmecci’s trial was delayed until April and would carry them through spring break. The attorney was lied to, and Palmecci stopped returning his calls for payment.
 

After the batch was made, the rest of the plan was carried out. It was easy to create three fake payroll stubs for Thomas Snell from the template of Elvis’s payroll stub for income verification to get some start-up cash for Palmecci. The payroll stubs and credit card application were filled out and mailed to the same Wells Fargo bank in San Diego. It took two weeks for the mail to come. A Visa card with a $2,000.00 limit for Thomas Snell came. Palmecci called his contacts from a payphone and informed them he was going to get off on the charges because it was an illegal search and seizure and not to drop by the frat house. He lied and explained he was waiting for things to die down and once the case was officially dismissed, he would contact them. All three knew it was risky to contact dealers, but there was a good chance none of them would read the newspaper and surely not over spring break. The next day, Palmecci did his laundry and put all of his possessions inside two suitcases along with the acid.
 

Palmecci had written and mailed a phony suicide letter to the San Francisco Chronicle claiming he was framed by the police and had no money or place to stay. His life was ruined, and LSD should not be considered a Schedule One drug with stiff mandatory minimums implemented by Ronald Reagan and his wife’s stupid Just Say No to drugs campaign. His life was over, and he was left with two options: prison or death. He opted for the latter. The note sent to the Chronicle would be reported to the police, who would verify its authenticity as the author was awaiting trial on a substantial felony drug charge.
 

That night, Mario was dropped off on the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge just before sunset. They checked their watches. Show time was in exactly one hour. Elvis and Palmecci drove across the span and parked the car in the parking lot on the San Francisco side of the bridge right as the sun went down. There were few tourists out on the bridge as the temperature had now dropped with the setting sun. Palmecci sat nervously in the back of the Volvo. In less than one hour, his life would never be the same. Mario walked slowly southward out to the center of the bridge and began to think about his parents. If he were caught and arrested, this would be a nightmare, and he could easily be sitting in Palmecci’s shoes staring at years in prison. He nervously trudged on as there was no way to cancel the plan now.
 

Elvis would play the health nut who was out jogging north towards the center of the bridge. He stopped about fifty yards from Mario. The fog was rolling in, and neither end of the bridge could be seen. Elvis looked over the edge at the blackness below, had a sinking feeling in his stomach, and brought his head back over the side. Right as the hour struck, they walked towards each other and then began pointing and looking over the edge in case the cameras were watching their movements through the fog in the night. On cue, Elvis began running back towards the police station on the south end, and Mario headed towards the north to the pay phone in the parking lot on the Marin side. Mario placed a call from the pay phone as Elvis entered the small police station and confessed he just saw a guy jump while jogging on his nightly routine. The police took statements from both of them and began an immediate search of the bridge only to find nothing. An hour later, all three were in the Volvo headed south on Highway 101 towards San Diego.
 

A Coast Guard search was prompted the following morning, and nothing was ever found. The following day, the campus police interviewed a few former frat brothers who all stated Palmecci was in a funk and desperate because he got busted and kicked out a month ago. However, the crucial part of their mutual testimony was that no one had seen or heard from him since. The investigation on the campus quickly came to a dead end. The exact same day, Mario, Elvis, and the new Thomas Snell checked out of the Dolphin Motel in Ocean Beach and drove to the San Diego library. In the previous day’s Chronicle, they read Palmecci’s obituary without a photo. The newspaper neglected to print his ranting letter as a policy to avoid romanticizing suicide jumps from the bridge. It didn’t matter; Joshua Palmecci was officially dead. Later that same afternoon, Thomas Snell took out a $1,500 cash advance on his new credit card from a Wells Fargo branch, and the three jumped on the trolley and headed to Tijuana. They found the same apartment they looked at the previous month. Palmecci plopped down $500, signed his lease in Spanish he couldn’t read, and took his suitcases to his room. Once in the small one-room apartment, the three searched for hidden cameras and microphones and found nothing. It was Tijuana after all, and the chance of a set-up or break-in on the gringo was high, they figured. They removed a ceiling tile and hid the acid. They locked up the apartment, walked down to a bar, and had a few beers and agreed to come back in 5 weeks with the next batch. If anything went wrong, a message would be left on Elvis’s campus answering machine, the undergraduate students used to schedule office hours. They said their goodbyes and crossed their fingers. Instead of driving back to Oakland that night, Mario and Elvis checked back in to the Dolphin Motel in Ocean Beach. They grabbed a couple of beers at a bar called Scooter’s and then walked out on the pier to think and talk about all that had transpired and their future game plan.

 

Chapter 5

A Fork in the Road
 
In a surprise to the crew, the ship received orders to overhaul in San Francisco. Deke and Nick were probably the only ones excited about the news. This meant months in port in San Francisco, in a historic party town. They smoked about half the weed over the weekends and stored it in a locker at the train station until it was confiscated. One day, the key just didn’t work, and instead of asking for help, they just kept on walking. The acid had been safely sneaked aboard in Deke’s underwear and stored in the boatswain’s locker in a file cabinet. After taking probably twenty hits each on the weekends in San Diego, they realized they could never eat that much acid. They needed a plan but did not want to get rid of it either, so they kept it stored in the file cabinet no one looked in.
 

The ship eventually headed north to San Francisco. San Francisco was fantastic. The bar scene was hopping, the music scene had major bands every weekend, and there were tons of women. The ship never left the pier and was soon covered in primer with hoses, pallets, and crates lined up everywhere on the ship and pier. After a couple of months had passed in overhaul, the crew was still living aboard the ship, and the galley was preparing meals. What the command did not do was bring on new crew members during overhaul, leaving no new blood to mess cook or their first 90 days. Deke and Nick got called back to serve an additional 45 days each with an as-needed clause, meaning they could be extended. It was an insult. They could have given the crew a varied housing allowance and allowed them to stay out in town. They could have even put the crew up in open bay barracks and galley food ashore, but they didn’t.
 

Deke began working out a lot more as he signed orders and an extension with the Navy for another try at completing SEAL training. His failing the first time meant he had no guaranteed school or training owed to him by the Navy. He would be forced into remaining a deck ape on the ship or extend his time for another school. He opted for the latter. Deke couldn’t dodge the mess cooking duty, but as luck would have it, he became the mess decks master at arms. He would run the cranks. He scheduled Nick as a rover, allowing him to roam about the ship taking off trash, helping with working parties on the pier, and a license to skate around both the ship and pier without any real duties or having to report to anyone.
 

“Yo, Shitbag. Get up. We got 300 breakfasts to make.” Deke threw open the curtains on Nick’s rack, bringing it quickly into reality.
Nick looked at his watch. It was 4:04 a.m. “Oh, this fucking blows.” Nick grumbled.
“Not as hard as your grandma does on my cock.” Deke shined his flashlight in Nick’s face.
“You are such a sweetheart, ya shitbag.”
“I need you to wake up all the other cranks. We got fresh storage sitting on the pier, and the Master Chief wants it off the pier before breakfast is served. We need twenty cranks. Starting with you, shipwreck.” Deke flicked off the flashlight.
Nick hated this part of the Navy; the watches, the mess cooking, the stupid jobs that a monkey could do. “This is bullshit.”
Deke laughed as he found thrill in waking guys up in the middle of the night to remind them they were in real life, they were a crank. “You are right. Would you prefer to speak to the Master Chief about your concerns, Seamen Novacek?”
“Kiss my ass. Get out of the way, I am coming.” Nick said as he lumbered out of his rack.
 

This was the part about cranking that sucked the most; the hours. The rest wasn’t much better. It was always some bullshit on the pier, something left out, someone failed an inspection and the goddamn Filipinos who dominated the supply department. Part of our agreement to have our base in Subic Bay was the US military was required to take in so many of thousands of their nationals into our ranks and offer a path to citizenship. None of them could get a security clearance and thus were limited in their career choices. They were all career guys too. They didn’t pay tax and lived like kings compared to their lives back in the jungle. They ran the galley with an iron fist and rarely spoke English unless they had to.  
 

After a couple of weeks of crankin’, desperation set in. Every division sent their biggest shitbags and short-timers back to the galley to crank. Twenty-four of the worst attitudes on the boat now had to don their paper hats and plastic aprons for twelve hours a day for a minimum of the next forty-five days. The rest of the crew was off at 4 p.m. until 7 a.m. the next morning unless they had watch. Any failed inspections and liberty were restricted until the infraction was taken care of and another inspection could be completed. It was one of these exact failed inspections that spawned the Electric Bug Juice Acid Test.
 

One night, the Filipino division officer was watching a boxing match in the officer’s mess and would not re-inspect the galley until the fight was over. This meant all the cranks were to remain in the galley with nothing to do until he got off his ass and came back down to inspect the previous infraction. Deke confessed to Nick on the mess decks the reality of why they wouldn’t be getting off anytime soon.
“We should dose the asshole.” Nick said quietly to Deke sitting at the table on the mess deck.
Deke raised his eyebrows. “We should dose all of them.”
“Oh, that would be beautiful. I would love to see a couple hundred of these idiots all tripped out.”
Deke looked across the deck at one of the cranks wiping his nose on his food service team shirt. “How would we do it?”
Nick looked around the galley and nodded his head. “Simple, the water coolers. The mess decks fill those twice a day. There are two on the flight deck, two on the hangar deck, and there are the bug juice machines that get drained by the end of the day. We simply slide a bunch of acid in those and set them out with cups like normal. Anyone asks what happened, deny everything and say you thought you had food poisoning. Blame it on the Filipino bastards.”
Deke looked at the bug juice and smiled. He himself always filled up a water bottle from one of the coolers on the hangar bay or on the flight deck. “That is brilliant.” He replied.
“Schedule me for the vegetable prep area, and I will fill the coolers and run the bug juice machine.”
Deke’s mind was racing. “Make up about a dozen spray bottles of your best bug juice blaster. We are going to have a war if everyone is tripping.”
Nick started laughing. “That is fucking genius. All the yard birds on the ship and the derelicts that get shit-faced tonight out in town will be geeked out, and we start smokin’ ‘ em with the bug juice.”
 

The following morning, Deke made his usual rounds at 4am waking up mess cooks. This morning, instead, he made his way across the hangar deck over the hoses and between the crates and pallets stacked higher than he was tall. He reached the boatswain’s locker and opened the file cabinet. Behind the Personnel Qualifications Standards Manual and inside a three-ringed binder was the envelope between two sheets of parts warranties. Deke looked at the envelope, then removed the entire binder and closed the file. He confidently walked aft back towards the galley below. He entered the vegetable prep area, and Nick was already filling the water coolers according to plan. They wanted the laced coolers on the flight deck and hangar bay and the bug juice made before morning muster on the mess decks. No one would care thinking they were left out from last night or one of the cranks made them early.
“How many in each?” Deke closed the hatch behind him and pulled out the envelope.
Nick looked at the Homer Simpson heads on each blotter. He thought about Munster in Ocean Beach getting kicked out and ending up dead dealer on the pier. “Get rid of all of them. I got a couple of months left before I will be getting out, and you will probably transfer on your orders before then. We can always get some up on Haight and Ashbury if we want some.”
“I agree. Fuck ‘ em.” We have had our fun with it. By the time they figure it out, all of the bug juice and water in the coolers will be drained. I’ll keep an eye on them.” Deke said and tore the sheets into 50-hit half sheets.
 

Together they put 50 hits of acid in each of the water coolers and 50 each in the bug juice machines and a 50-sheet in the iced tea as well. The water coolers were then covered in ice and filled with water. The grape bug juice was darkest and would make it harder to see the 50 small perforated Homer Simpson heads floating amongst the ice. The bug juice machine was turned on and was functional. Deke and Nick hustled the four remaining coolers up the ladders to the flight deck and hangar bay unnoticed by anyone. It was now 4:30 a.m. and they split up and began to roust the other cranks for and muster, blaming them for sleeping in.
 

The morning muster went off without a hitch and the crew and the yard birds slowly began filtering about the ship and making their way down to the galley. During breakfast, Nick put out no orange juice, so many of the crew would opt for the grape bug juice. The officers would usually work out during the mornings and come in around 7:30 for breakfast after muster or just stop by the mess to fill up a water bottle with bug juice to carry with them about the ship. Soon after breakfast, guys started feeling a little strange. By lunchtime, several of the crew were tripping with a couple reporting to sick bay. After lunch, the bug juice was drained and the blotter removed both on the mess decks and officer’s mess by Nick. Deke and Nick then, one by one, replaced the half-filled water coolers on the flight deck and hangar bay in the vegetable prep room, pouring any remaining evidence down the drain.
 

On their walk back after exchanging out the last cooler in the hangar bay, they noticed the line of guys outside a hatch on the ladder, well up to the sick bay. Some guys looked terrified, some guys were laughing hysterically, and others looked concerned. The two descended to the mess decks only to find even more guys that looked like they were having a religious experience, for better or worse.
“It’s time. Go get the bottles. Time to start gunning geeks.” Deke said as he laughed hysterically. It was a huge advantage not to be tripping in a bug juice war when tons of guys would be.
Nick thought about teams. “You want the cranks in the scullery and mess decks, and I got the guys in the galley?”
“That’s fair. Some of those guys are already geeked out anyways.”
Deke grabbed a couple of spray bottles of the bug juice off the shelf. “I say we start targeting guys tripping. We take back shots and butt shots. Let it soak in, and then by the time they figure out they got gunned, we will be long gone.”
Nick started laughing thinking about the last bug juice war. “Of course. Three or four shots in the back or on the dungarees will start burning within a minute. By the time you start to feel the burning, the shirt, pants, and coveralls are already doomed.”
Deke was laughing so hard he was almost crying. “I am going to take these bottles back to the scullery and hide them. I want to dump a couple of bottles on geeks roaming the ship. It is hot now, and no one is wearing a jacket.”
“There has to be some guys just absolutely peaking right now.” Nick grabbed a couple of bottles himself.
“The water coolers just were almost empty right after lunch, and the bug juice in the officer’s mess and on the mess decks are almost half full. Let’s go. You move aft, and I will go forward. Start in the berthing’s and heads. Anyone on the shitter just soak them through the crack. Start moving amidships, and we will work our way out on the hangar deck and then back down to the mess decks. Hand out your bottles to the guys in the galley, and it’s on.”
 

Nick and Mario started what was later deemed the Electric Bug Juice Acid Test in the San Francisco Chronicle. Over 200 officers, crew members, and yardbirds were dosed with LSD on a Navy ship. Several of the crew had to be taken off the ship under escort, and some were restrained by other crew members. The Naval Investigative Service was looking into the attack to determine if the event was a domestic terrorism event or a prank. The investigation initially had no evidence or leads but focused on the food or drinks being spiked. The galley was closed, and investigators found the 50 hits in the iced tea Nick and Mario overlooked exchanging out. The dogs were brought on and searched the entire ship to find nothing. The mess cooks all were interviewed and were ignorant except for two.
 

Nick came under the spotlight being in charge of the iced tea and bug juice but denied any knowledge of the events. He said he didn’t know who started the bug juice wars but he was firing back. Deke was also interviewed being in charge of the cranks and played along equally ignorant of any nefarious activity. He told the investigators he thought the government was doing an experiment like they did in the 50s and 60s and then started spreading that rumor all over the ship. The command did an immediate drug test, and several guys were caught testing positive for marijuana, but zero turned up in the investigation as to who could have spiked so many of the crew with LSD. The following week, the captain was relieved of his command after it was reported he too received a strong dose and was hiding in his stateroom instead of tending to a crew incapable of taking care of itself or the ship.
 

After a couple of weeks, the Naval Investigative Service was grabbing at straws and leaned on tons of the crew trying to find out who possibly could have done it. This pissed off Nick, and the entire story was then leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle in an anonymous letter typed by Nick. He was careful not to touch the paper and leave fingerprints on it or the envelope. However, the letter was typed out on the word processor in the ship’s library and on the ship’s letterhead to verify its authenticity. Nick started with finding Munster in the bathroom on the pier and ended with dropping it in the bug juice and water coolers because he felt the Navy could use a change in the routine. The story was front-page news in San Francisco, and everyone on the ship was laughing about the headlines, except the brass. A few guys managed to get transferred off the ship, and a few others requested discharges altogether. Some guys in the crew believed Deke’s bullshit and felt it was the government experimenting on unwitting sailors, and others thought it was a prank. A couple of days later, it hit the national news as The Navy’s Electric Bug Juice Acid Ship.
 

Soon, there were news reporters at the end of the pier talking to guys. Idiots were telling the reporters the wildest stories. They said guys were jumping naked off the flight deck into the water or repeating Deke’s government LSD testing story. The reporters ran with it, put it on the air, and the ship was doomed. The Navy would never be able to shake the incident, and instead of carrying on with the overhaul, it was recommended for scrapping. Within thirty days, the ship would sit empty at the pier with all of the crew transferred to different commands. Thirty days after that, it would be towed across the bay to Mare Island Naval Shipyard, and the dismantling would begin.
 

Deke received his orders back to Coronado, California, to try his luck at becoming a Navy SEAL, and Nick got out and went to college in San Diego. The final night out, they dropped some acid they found up at the end of Haight Street by Golden Gate Park. They walked around the streets, joking and laughing into the wee hours of the morning. They crashed in a hotel room and headed back to the ship in the morning. Nick was getting discharged that day. It was a good send-off. The Navy was good to him. Unfortunately, they knew they would probably never see each other again. They made an oath not to tell anyone about the acid as there were statutes of limitations, and the government would come down hard on them if they were found out. They drifted apart over the years as the military often does to friendships. However, both of their thoughts often drifted back to the Electric Bug Juice Acid Test from time to time, and huge smiles came across their faces followed by the thought of, “I wonder whatever happened to that guy?”
 

Chapter 6

30 Years Later
 

When the planes hit the World Trade Center, Daniel “Deke” Sanger was a BUDs instructor for SEAL candidates in Coronado, California. He had been in the SEAL teams for eleven years and in the Navy for fourteen. He was thirty-five years old and now held the rank of Chief. Within thirty days of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Deke found himself in a SEAL platoon in the mountains of Afghanistan. Deke loved the SEALs: the gunfights, the classified information, jumping out of jets, helicopters, and the diving operations. Finishing training was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life. By far, it was his greatest accomplishment. The early days in the Navy seemed a lifetime ago.
 

As the years went on, the battlefields moved from Afghanistan to Iraq, to Syria, to Somalia, and Yemen. 2008 was the final year of his career, and Deke found himself behind a desk back in Coronado, California, as the Master Chief Petty Officer of the command. Although he never let on to his teammates, he was worn out. His life was a mess. His body was beat, his sleep was sporadic, and he looked at everyone except his teammates with suspicion. He was drinking a couple of bottles of wine every night after work. When he was arrested for a drunk driving charge in Coronado, the district attorney luckily dropped the charges, but the Navy informed him he was done. They allowed him to retire at his E-9 paygrade, but he would be discharged.
 

He was now alone. His wife had left him with his teenage daughter on his final deployment for a Coronado lawyer, and they were now going after alimony, child support, and half of his retirement. The legal fees were outlandish, and his wife’s new lover was providing her free counsel. It was ridiculous. He was a retired, decorated war hero and now living in a two-bedroom apartment in Ocean Beach for $1,500 a month and allowed to see his daughter only every other weekend. He was now 42 years old and looking for a job. Deke filed a service-connected disability claim with the Veterans Administration for PTSD at the VA in San Diego.
 

Nick Novacek left the Navy in 1990 and enrolled at the University of California, San Diego, majoring in psychology. It took almost ten years, but he finished a PhD in psychology in 2001. He accepted a position as a clinical psychologist at the San Diego VA shortly after his graduation. He met a beautiful wife and was the proud father of a son and a daughter. They purchased a home in La Mesa, and he was on top of the world. His days were filled with never-ending one-on-one therapy sessions with veterans ailing from a variety of psychological issues; alcoholism, drug abuse, personality disorders, and PTSD were the usual clientele. His evenings were spent with his family. When the kids went to bed, he relaxed by smoking weed out on the patio. The VA never drug-tested clinicians. He did not prescribe or handle pharmaceuticals. Instead, he measured their efficacy in his patients. For him, smoking a joint after sundown allowed him to relax and reflect.
 

After a few years in the VA system, Nick was burning out. Many of his patients were mostly vets trying to bullshit the system for disability payments for PTSD or washouts and burnouts that no amount of psychotherapy was going to remedy. They would read the internet about PTSD symptoms and then file a claim simply because they were in Iraq or Afghanistan. The idea of being able to help most of the patients was fleeting. He felt he had heard every bullshit military story you could imagine from veterans trying to qualify for compensation. While most of America was bending over backwards to heap praise on our veterans, it was his job to listen to their bullshit about how they felt they were incurably scarred by their military service. There were patients that he connected with and helped them to see that many of the problems in their life were not anything the military had done to them but a manifestation of their life’s events. However, these were few and far between.
 

Deep down, he wanted to prescribe most of the patients a bag of weed and a bong. The medical marijuana industry was booming in California, and the government would have nothing to do with it. Instead, he would refer patients across the hall to a psychiatrist who would prescribe an overpriced pharmaceutical to relieve their symptoms and then measure their progress in their sessions. The results from the pharmaceuticals were terrible. The government was the largest purchaser of medication in America and got ripped off on almost every one of them. The television advertisements would prompt patients to ask about specific drugs in sessions exactly like the pharmaceutical companies wanted. It was as if the entire US population was being conditioned through television commercials that their problems would be solved by an overrated, overpriced pill. It was deflating to say the least.
 

Mario Pepin returned to Schaumburg after Palmecci’s suicide in 1990. He mentioned the entire LSD manufacturing story to no one. Instead, he finished his master’s degree at the University of Chicago and became a pharmaceutical engineer. He worked in his father’s lab for a couple of years during school and through his father was introduced to several medical supply and pharmaceutical company executives. He wanted out of Chicago and eventually accepted a position with Mectel Pharmaceuticals out of La Jolla, California. His company’s biggest sellers were a diabetic drug, an allergy inhaler, and a topical skin cream for eczema.
 

What Mario did not know when he got hired was that Mectel, along with several other companies, received a government contract to work on a new pharmaceutical to help patients suffering from a variety of psychological maladies. The government statistics might have been manipulated; however, the number of veterans that were homeless and killing themselves was not. Once the vets realized they could not get high off the medication they were prescribed, or it made them impotent, they would stop taking it and return to self-medicating through alcohol or harder drugs like meth, cocaine, opioids, and heroin. The objective was to find the silver bullet; the one drug that could truly change the landscape in clinical psychology.
 

Mario learned through managers and executives at Mectel that the unofficial objective was to find something with the dimensional effects of LSD. The government wanted to explore the benefits of these drugs without the negative publicity of investing tens of millions of dollars into manipulating an illicit street drug. It had to be something more palatable to American consumers and voters. The work was fascinating to Mario. Although he never dropped acid after returning from college, he never forgot the profound feelings and thoughts it gave him. He remembered Hoffman’s story, and the internet allowed him to do even further in-depth research into the initial therapeutic experiments done in Canada by Dr. Humphry Osmond and his staff in the 1950s. Via the government, Mectel researchers received copies of many of Osmond’s former patients. The results were amazing and well documented. It was Mario’s belief that they should decriminalize LSD and just begin prescribing it in twenty-five microgram doses. It was now his team’s job to create it and sell it.
 

After three years of testing, the drug they created was named Amilsid. It was modeled on the organic structure of LSD with a slight variation in the ergotamine substrate. Mario was promoted to a government liaison based on his research. His new job would be to help influence the government to begin trials on veterans to win FDA approval for Amilsid. After a year of negotiating with the VA in Washington D.C. the initial guinea pig venue to begin trials was the VA in San Diego. The Navy and Marine Corps bases in San Diego provided a steady stream of discharged veterans with psychological issues and were in close proximity to Mectel’s headquarters.

Chapter 7
 

The New Philosophy
 

“So, what do you think about being selected for the initial Amilsid trials?” Mario Pepin asked Dr. Nick Novacek in his office on the 9th floor of the VA Medical Center in San Diego.
“I am not sure yet.” Nick paused. “I can tell you in the few years I have been doing psychotherapy this much: most of the pharmaceuticals I have seen my patients prescribed do little more than make them numb, impotent, and allow them a little better sleep at most. Most of the ones I see are trying to get compensation through a PTSD claim, and I evaluate them first. About 90% of those I shoot down immediately as they are bogus claims. The leftovers I begin working with and refer them to psychiatry for further evaluation for pharmaceuticals. The others are mostly drunks and hard drug users.”
“This is exactly why this center was selected. There were a few centers that were being looked at, but this was the closest to our headquarters in La Jolla. Are you familiar with the 1950s work of British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond in Canada?” Mario asked.
Nick was surprised by the reference. “You mean the LSD trials?”
Mario was surprised he knew. Most psychologists and psychiatrists had long forgotten the results from the testing completed at Weyburn Mental Hospital in Saskatchewan. “Exactly. Did you ever read the results of some of their trials?”
“I have read it before or watched a program on Hoffman, I think. Why, are you guys trying to make acid?” Nick replied.
Mario smiled. “In a way, yes. I agree with you about most anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs; they are overrated. Veteran homelessness, drug abuse, alcoholism, and suicide trends have not declined in decades. It is time to think out of the box. LSD got a bad reputation by the government, and once they realized they couldn’t brainwash people in the Cold War, they gave up on it. Once the Beatles were singing about dropping acid, it was forever discounted as having any therapeutic value. However, if you look at the statistics from Osmond’s work, it is amazing. All of those involved were board-certified clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. Not only did almost the staff take LSD to become aware of what their patients were going to be taking, they kept extensive records on all the patients. Almost all of those patients have died now, but we were given access to their medical records by the Canadians last year. Osmond’s results were astounding. Almost half of everyone they dosed saw almost immediate positive changes in just a few sessions. Several were discharged and went on to lead productive lives. These are the results everyone wants. In short, what we have done is ever so slightly altered the molecular structure of LSD 25 into Amilsid.”
Nick felt excitement from every ounce of his being. “You have to be kidding me. We are going to start dosing patients?”
Mario nodded in confirmation. “First, we need to find some prospects from your clients over the next few months that would benefit from dimensional psychotherapy.”
“Dimensional psychotherapy? You mean tripping, right?” Nick liked the clinical term. The words tripping and acid always gave off negative connotations for LSD. Just explaining an acid trip to a non-user would make their minds think of a stumbling fool whose brain was the frying egg in the skillet during Reagan-era Just Say No days.
Mario smiled. “I agree. I made up the term myself. I am glad you like it. The dosages will begin as low as 10 micrograms and work up to approximately 100 micrograms.”
Nick didn’t want to lead on that he dropped a bunch of acid back in the Navy and a few times after. “A hundred micrograms? I am not admitting I did, or did not, drop acid in my previous life; however, a 100-microgram dose of acid? Are we going to be strapping these patients down?”
Mario read between the lines. He didn’t know Nick but could tell from his response that he had dropped acid before. “You are exactly right. I am also not confirming or denying that I have made LSD 25 before.” Mario smiled and paused intentionally. “What I can tell you is Amilsid is almost identical. The ergotamine substrate that is used in the initial colonization has a Ph balance that is within about 1/100th difference of LSD 25. Other than that, they are identical.”
Nick could not believe what he was hearing. If this actually worked, he would be at the epi center of one of the most significant changes in mental health treatment on the planet. “What are the effects? Are people hallucinating when they take it?”
“The animal trials were done on Sigmund and Lucy, two chimps we have at our testing facility. I would definitely say they were tripping. We took it up to 50 microgram dosages, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves with zero negative side effects.” “
“What were the positives?”
“Well, that is a little more difficult. They didn’t have any noticeable negative behavior to start with, so when they returned to baseline, they almost as if they never took anything. They learned the word for Amilsid quickly though and would ask for it a few times a week. They were given approximately twenty doses each over the course of a year. You will be able to read all the studies prior to our beginning if you wish.” Mario repeated a paraphrased version of the lab results.
“That is excellent. Now you need patients with some problems to measure the ability of it to improve
outcomes?”
“Exactly, we want to work with about 20-25 patients in our initial testing. We would like to mimic Osmond’s work with PTSD patients, alcoholics, and drug addicts. I would like about half to have previously used LSD before and half who have not. They need to agree to want to begin the trial and can also stop at any time they want. Do you think we can come up with 20-25 in the next 90 days?”
“I will look into it.” Nick’s mind raced back to Electric Bug Juice Acid Test, and he smiled. “I probably have that now. Too bad you didn’t know me back in the Navy.”
“Why is that?”
“Did you ever hear of the Navy ship in San Francisco that had the entire crew dosed with acid?”
“You mean the ship in the 80s? Yeah, I do. The Navy de-commissioned the ship over it and fired a bunch of guys, right?” Mario remembered reading about it in the Chronicle while he was in college. He remembered friends and classmates talking about heading down to the Navy recruiter when the story broke.
Nick leaned back in his chair. “That is the one. I was on the ship.”
“Really? That is amazing. Did you get dosed?” Mario raised his eyebrows.
Nick thought best not to tell Mario the story. Although he had no reason to be suspicious of Mario’s comments, he had only known him for a few minutes. “Not really. The investigators found a bunch of Homer Simpson hits of acid in the iced tea and figured someone spiked the bug juice and water coolers too. There were a couple hundred guys who had a pretty fun day.”
Mario struggled to keep his composure and tried not to act surprised. That was a long time ago, but he clearly remembered the thousands of little blotters he and Elvis made in the Oakland apartment. “Did you say Homer Simpson heads?”
“Yeah. They were little tiny perforated hits on a sheet, and someone threw a bunch in the drinks. It was while we were in overhaul. We had just left San Diego.”
If the first comment was a punch in the stomach, the second was a kick in the balls. “Your ship was from San Diego?” Mario asked.
“Yeah, but after the incident hit the national news, the Navy decided to scrap it instead of having the USS Acid Head floating around the seas.” Nick laughed.
Mario wasn’t laughing but smiled to hide his concern. “What year was that?”
Nick thought for a moment. “Wow, probably 1989 or 1990, I think. I got out in 1990 before Desert Storm.”
 

Mario was stunned. That was almost 30 years ago, and he was sure the LSD that was used in that event was made by him and Elvis in their Oakland apartment. No one else he could remember ever used Homer Simpson blotter tabs. His thoughts went back to the pier on Ocean Beach and the thousands of hits of acid they had taped under the benches. Those were the exact same batch. Could one of the sailors on that ship have found them? He was stunned, silent. He shook his head and collected his thoughts. “Time really flies, doesn’t it? I need to get back to the lab, but I just wanted to stop in and say hello. I will be checking in about once a week on your progress. We have received the green light to begin testing within the next 90 days, so if you could start tagging potential patients in the beginning, that would be the logical place to start, I think.”
Nick stood up and shook Mario’s hand. “No problem. I think it is a great idea and am glad to be involved with it.”
“Take care. I will see you in a week,” Mario said and exited the facility. Once he reached his car in the parking lot, he turned the ignition over and drove directly to the pier in Ocean Beach.
 

Nick sat back down in his chair and looked out the window. He was interrupted by one of the administrative attendants from the check-in area. “Here you go, Dr. Novacek. You have two new evaluations this afternoon.” She said as she handed Nick the patient records. The first name was a patient he had never heard of before on a PTSD evaluation. The second name pushed him back in his chair, Daniel Sanger. “Deke?” he said out loud.
“Excuse me?” The assistant turned around.
“Nothing. The name reminded me of a guy I used to know. No big deal. Anything else other than these?”
“That is it for today. There are about four to be done tomorrow.” The assistant replied.
“Thanks. Can you close my door? I need a few minutes to finish up some reporting before I take off.” Nick asked the assistant. He then opened the file and knew immediately it was Deke. It was a Navy SEAL who had been picked up on a drunk driving charge and was being evaluated for PTSD as well as alcohol and drug dependency.

 

 Chapter 9

Long Time No See
 

Nick was nervous that Monday morning before his appointment with Deke. Deke would have no idea it was Nick on the other side of the door. He thought about reassigning him to another psychologist for the evaluation but decided he would let Deke make that decision. It had been a long time and they were close during the Navy. Deke was the only person he wished he would have stayed in touch with from the Navy days over the years. If he was uncomfortable with the doctor/patient relationship, he could have a colleague complete the evaluation, but it would still be good to see him and talk about life if only for a moment. Nick looked at his reflection in the small porthole with a mirror he had hanging in his office. He looked old. He was still fit, but he wondered if Deke would even recognize him.
“Can you send me my next patient, Sanger?” Nick pushed the button for the administrative office in the lobby and spoke into the speaker phone on his desk.
“Yes, Dr. Novacek. I will send him in.” A friendly female voice replied. Nick adjusted his tie and sat back in his chair. He took a sip of his coffee and looked up right as Deke walked in, guided by the assistant who closed the door behind him.
“Oh my god. Nick Novacek? Long time no see. You are a shrink now?” Deke was surprised and his face lit up. He moved quickly at Nick as he stood up and gave him a warm and firm hug.
“I was wondering if that was your name on that file. It is good to see you. You look great.” Nick felt like a kid again, ready to run the streets of San Diego or San Francisco with Deke.
“You look exactly the same. A little older, of course, but I could pick that mug out of a lineup from a hundred yards.” Deke said.
“Looks like you made it as a SEAL and a Master Chief. Let me be the first to thank you for your service.” Nick replied.
“You’re welcome. It was the least I could do.” Deke had replied to the comment a thousand times.
Nick seemed confused by the response. “If becoming a SEAL was the least you could do, what is the most you can do?”
Deke looked puzzled. “Good question. No one has ever asked me that.”
“Hey, I want to let you know right up front. If you want to have someone else do these evaluations, I can have another colleague…”
Deke cut him off. “Are you serious? Bro, I don’t want anyone else. I want you. You are a doc now, right?”
Nick pointed to the degree on the wall. “PhD, actually. I don’t prescribe meds. I do clinical psychology and psychotherapy with vets.”
Deke stepped in close to read the degree. “Impressive. I always liked you, man. I am sorry I didn’t stay in touch. After I got orders to BUDs, everything changed.”
“I can imagine.”
Deke paused and looked at him for a moment. “You have no idea.”
“I am sure you have some great stories, and I would love to hear them. You are only on the docket for a PTSD and a drug and alcohol evaluation. You get popped on a drunk driving?” asked Nick.
“Yeah, on Orange Ave. in Coronado of all places. I was coming out of McP’s after a long night of drinking with some old frogs, and I backed into a BMW. Some crazy bitch called the cops, and they gave me a breath test on the spot. I should have been thrown out, but some strings got pulled, and the command and Team One let me retire early and keep my rank.” Deke confessed.
“Lucky you.”
“Yeah, it happens a lot more than you think. A lot of team guys saw some pretty heavy shit, and the Coronado cops do their best to look out for us when guys get out of hand. As long as there are weapons, injuries, or serious property damage, they will call the quarterdeck and get a duty driver to come to the station and pick up a guy.” Deke said as he went around the desk and sat in the chair opposite Nick.
Nick had heard so many stories of sailors and Marines who started off with an alcohol or drug bust in the military and then their lives just spun out of control. “I am glad they looked out for you.”
“Yeah, I should have taken a cab. It was my fault. I was ready to retire anyway.”
Nick nodded. “Again, thank you for your service.”
“Do you remember spiking the bug juice with all that acid way back in the day? That was fantastic.” Deke changed the subject.
Nick was glad he asked. “I do. I will never forget it. I have thought about it a thousand times if you want to know the truth.”
Deke started laughing. “Fuck, man, I have told that story around the freakin’ globe. I always blamed it on you, but that shit got famous. They decommissioned the ship over that.”
“Yeah, I got out and went to college in San Diego, but it was on TV and in the newspaper I remember. I was scared there for a minute the feds would come knocking, but they never did.”
“Shit, they got bigger fish to fry. You ever drop acid again?” Deke said looking over his shoulder to make sure the door was closed.
Nick nodded his head in confirmation. “I did in college a couple of times. It always made me think of you.”
“I never did. Shit got pretty serious in the teams, and most of the guys were pretty anti-drugs in general. I always wanted to try that shit again though.”
Nick raised his eyebrows. “Interesting.” Nick paused and did not elaborate. “Let’s start with the evaluations first.”
 

Nick sat down like any patient would. He was dressed appropriately in a T-shirt and jeans. He had definitely changed. He was fifty years old now and had filled out. He was probably 225 lbs. of muscle and suntan. His hair was a tight military buzz cut, but his face had changed. He looked like a hard guy. His tours in the SEAL community had left the look of a no-bullshit guy etched into the lines of his face. Like he had done 1,000 times before, Nick began asking Deke about his drinking. Deke admitted he was drinking a bottle of wine a night at a minimum and going out with the fellas a few times a week. It was more than average, but there were no other alcohol-related incidents. There was nothing that would warrant a diagnosis of alcoholism. After ten minutes of questioning, Nick said he would not recommend further evaluation or treatment. The conversation then moved towards the PTSD.
 

“As far as the PTSD. What symptoms are you having?” Nick probed.
“I don’t know, man. A lot of it is just walking away from the teams and a shitty divorce. I mean, now I am out in a world of fucking clueless civilians, and I don’t know what to tell these people bending over backwards to thank me for my service or can’t get past the bird on the old uniform.”
Nick looked confused. “The bird?”
“Yeah, the SEAL trident insignia on the uniform. Team guys call it the bird. Once people find out I was a SEAL, some are just so awestruck by it you can’t even talk to them without them thinking I was a rock star.”
“Deke, being a SEAL is pretty impressive on any resume.”
Deke shrugged it off. “I get that part. It’s just people are clueless. They have no idea about the shit that is going on. They just move it along trying to get paid, get laid, or stay entertained. If they knew half the shit that is going on, there would be riots at the White House.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Nick asked.
“I don’t know, man. Some of that shit is classified for life, and some it you wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”
Nick could tell Deke had seen some things that were now boiling over. “I understand. I don’t ever recall you being a liar, though. You should also know anything you tell me is classified and strictly on a doctor/patient relationship. It might be some of these things that are causing you problems. What are some of the symptoms you are experiencing?”
Deke turned his head for a moment and then looked back at Nick. “I don’t sleep for more than four hours at a time. I can’t think of the last time I had a dream. I want to kill that son of a bitch lawyer that my ex-wife is fucking. I will never look at Arabs the same again. I can tell you that much. I get pissed when I think about some damn good guys that were wounded or killed in some pretty fucked-up operations. I mean, I don’t give a fuck about the camel jockeys we smoked. But the cover-ups and fuck-ups gnaw at me.” Deke’s blood pressure began to rise as a negative tone emerged.
“Did you really want to kill someone who is with your ex now?” Nick was alarmed by the statement of violent ideations.
“No, but I would like to slap the fuck out of that pencil-dick shitbag.” Deke meant it. He was betrayed by a scumbag who took advantage of the woman he loved in a moment of weakness, is how he felt about it.
Nick felt relieved. “That is a pretty common emotion in divorces. Thinking about it and acting it out are two different things. In combat, did you actually kill some guys?”
“Some? Fuck, bro. I clocked in at twenty-seven confirmed kills. I was rolling in Team Six for about three years.”
“You were in SEAL Team Six. Are you fucking kidding me? Were you on the Bin Laden raid?” Nick could not believe it. His old mess-cooking buddy on the most famous American military operation in history. Deke looked him right in the eye and nodded his head a single time.
“Oh my fucking god. Did you see Bin Laden dead?”
Deke just shook his head. “Some of that stuff is classified still. It is a lifetime security agreement. I can’t speak to anyone about it, or I can be put on trial in a closed-door session and will never see the light of day again.”
“Really? I mean, I am not doubting you. But I don’t give a shit what happened on the battlefield. You are now a veteran, and if you are suffering from mental or physical impairment because of a service-connected disability, I find it hard to believe you are not allowed to speak to an attending health care provider about what you believe is causing the problem.” Nick was correct. The government had a long history of making service members swear to incredibly long security agreements that extended long beyond their military service without any regard for the damage it causes veterans. It was always the same: some classified mission that went bad, and the government didn’t want anyone else to know. To cover their tracks, they forced service members to sign ridiculously long security agreements with no sunset provisions. However, what Nick knew that Deke didn’t is that none of these security agreements would stand up in the court of public opinion when it came to disabled veterans. Politicians, veterans’ groups, and the public at large would squash any attempt to deny adequate care to suffering veterans in the name of covering up a bogus military secret.
Deke sat back and looked at Nick. He wasn’t a team guy, but he always was an honest kid, now a grown man. The fact that nothing ever happened after the acid stunt on the boat meant he could be trusted to keep an important secret too.
“Who looks at your notes?” Deke knew how the military operated. It did what it wanted, denied everything, and controlled information on a need-to-know basis.
Nick raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t think anyone. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act prohibits anyone from looking in the notes without your authorization or mine. In the event you were unable to respond and it became necessary throughout the course of treating you, it could be shared with other attending physicians. My notes are a reminder mostly for me about what we talked about so I can brush up on the patient sessions about 5 minutes before I see them again.”
Deke thought for a moment about the consequences.  He had been out almost a year now and only stayed in touch with a few guys from the teams. No one talked about the stuff from fifteen years ago now. It was all brushed under the rug and the world moved on. “You have to promise me this goes nowhere except between you and me.”
Nick was curious as to why Deke seemed concerned. “No problem. How can I help?”
“Help?” Deke paused. “That’s a good one. How about we start with reality. You ever wonder why there were no bodies found from the planes on 9/11? How about the Bin Laden raid?”
Nick cocked his head. “You know something I don’t?”
Deke raised his head and set the coffee cup down. “That was all bullshit, bro. Bin Laden had been dead for a couple of years. I was in the helicopter that crashed into the wall. Ever wonder why you don’t hear any great stories about the guys on that helicopter? That is because it was hit with a shoulder-launched rocket before we hit the fucking wall. Several guys were hurt pretty badly but no one died. The entire op was to go in and clean out a few of his henchmen and look for any compromising intel. No one on that op was looking for Bin Laden, trust me. When the rocket hit we were fucked.”
Nick was stunned. “Are you shitting me?”
“Nope, it is true. He was on the CIA payroll for years. He was one of our best agents, I guess. He had kidney failure and died from it in a house in Afghanistan. He helped orchestrate the 9/11 events, but other than offering up a couple dozen Muslim zombies for the planes, he pretty much just did what he was told. The whole 9/11 was a hoax carried out by some hardcore right-wing nuts operating off the grid under Cheney and Bush. The unofficial story. The unofficial story is that we were operating with some CIA and Blackwater guys around the time of the Tora Bora incident in Afghanistan, where he supposedly got away. Shit, we let him get away. Some army spec ops guys had him and his posse pinned down in the mountains, and he needed dialysis. We took over and let him slip out through a ravine. He died a few days later.”
Nick couldn’t believe he was hearing the entire Bin Laden SEAL operation was faked. “Why did we not say he died? Why the fake operation in Pakistan where they supposedly killed him?”
Deke shook his head. The sheep, he thought to himself. “It is all designed to keep Arab oil flowing to Europe and the US military complex selling hundreds of billions of dollars in planes, bombs, communications gear, you name it. Look at it like a giant ATM fee. Nixon, Kissinger, and some bankers went to Saudi Arabia in the 1970s and made an agreement that OPEC will sell its oil only in American dollars. This forces all the other countries who don’t have their own oil to first convert their currency in every transaction. The fee for this service has made America trillions of dollars over the decades. Our part in the arrangement is to defend the Saudi kingdom. Ever wonder why we entered Desert Storm?”
“The Petro Dollar agreement? I was watching something about that on the internet a while back. That is true then? I mean it sounded kind of real in the show anyways.” Nick said.
 “That part of it is real. Saddam was a thorn ever since Desert Storm. Once he realized we weren’t going to Baghdad in the 90s to take him out, he went right back to the same old shit. He eventually wanted to opt out of the OPEC agreement like Iran and accept any currency for Iraqi oil. America would have none of this. We needed something huge. An event so terrifying America would commit the resources to invade so the same thing didn’t happen in Iraq that happened in Iran in the 70s. Enter the Saudi Bin Laden family. A plan was hatched between Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and some other right-wingers with the Bin Laden family to stage 9/11. The Bin Laden family supplied the Muslim zombies to carry out the mission, and we supplied the diversion and controlled the narrative through the media. It’s true.”
Nick replied, “I read there are the supposed twenty-eight pages of the missing 9/11 report that deal with the Bin Laden family, and that Bush redacted it under presidential authority.” Nick recited what everyone in America heard about the 9/11 report and the holes in it.
“That is a distraction to lead people to believe those pages contain the real truth; they don’t. The World Trade Center? Shit, Saudi special ops guys were disguised as engineers, security, and an elevator maintenance crew run by an off-the-grid shadow management company with a government security clearance. They Arabs got late-night access to the stairwells and the elevator shafts for weeks before 9/11 and set up remotely detonated shape charges made of thermite; military-grade explosives. It would have been too hard to find Americans who would be willing to do it. Keep in mind jet fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to cut steel. They needed something hotter. This is where the smoking gun comes in; thermite. You can’t buy thermite on the open market either. You can watch the old videos and still see molten steel falling from high up in the towers before they collapse and then still see it burning and smoldering under piles of debris days and weeks after the collapse. Watch World Trade Center building number 7 fall. It wasn’t even hit by anything and it falls exactly like the others. They were all controlled detonations.” Deke laid it out as fact.
 

Nick was stunned. He had seen all the videos on the internet with conspiracy theorists and debunked myths. None of those guys he trusted as much as Deke. It was deeply troubling. “What about hijacking the planes? What about all the people on the planes? The world saw that. Those people are dead. They released the audio of the hijackers making phone calls.” Nick asked about the obvious.

“About half of that was true. The planes? You ever wonder where our fighter jets were to intercept those planes? They flew around for over an hour in the air without a single American fighter jet being scrambled?” Deke paused to make sure Nick was following along. “Let me break it down for you. The planes were hijacked. The 19 hijackers believed they were truly going to crash the planes for Allah. The passengers all thought they were going to die and started making calls to their loved ones, all being monitored and recorded from relays inside the plane sending them to NSA intercept antennas remotely on the ground. Once they had enough recorded calls, the cabins were filled with nitrogen from bottles that had been pre-placed. They all died in their sleep like poultry in the slaughterhouse except for the pilots breathing oxygen. They had free reign of the sky and turned off their transponders so they were flying invisible as all the other jets were required to be grounded if you remember correctly. Those planes were then diverted to secure government airstrips and hangars on the East Coast while the remote dummy planes took to the air. The dead passengers and terrorist were offloaded and cremated with their belongings. The same night, the old planes were then flown across the country to Nevada and secured in Groom Lake, Area 51, until they were loaded with explosives and blown up in the desert shortly after. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, they died in the crash. Once the drones were up in the air, the NSA then hacked into or overrode the FAA national radar system used by all traffic controllers, and the drone planes then emerged and assumed the transponder identities of the other planes.”
“But they found the black boxes of the planes. I remember seeing that,” replied Nick.
 “The black boxes were fakes, bro. They were from other wrecks that were placed at the site to be easily found in the following days. There were also only two planes; the drones that hit buildings. The crash into the Pentagon and the one that landed in the field were ballistic missiles. Ever wonder why there were no plane parts recovered from those sites? Ever wonder why there are no pictures or video of the plane hitting the most securely guarded building in the world? It wasn’t a plane. It was a ballistic missile shot from a submarine. The guys on the sub thought they were shooting a dud missile at a target practice ship in the ocean way off shore off North Carolina. They weren’t. Their monitors were hacked or overridden, like the FAA flight radar was in real time and showed the impact with a retired old cargo ship that sunk. In reality, the cargo ship was pre-loaded with a few hundred pounds of C4 and scuttled with limpet mines. The missile was actually guided all the way to the exact spot on the Pentagon wall. Look at the pics on the internet yourself. It punched a hole in the building with very little flame compared to the planes that hit the towers. There are cabinets, chairs, books, and papers all over but zero that resembles a plane crash. How did these items not get consumed by the same jet fuel burning hot enough to supposedly melt steel on the World Trade Center? Simple, there was no jet fuel. It was a missile. Missiles and bombs are like giant firecrackers, not thousands of gallons of fuel being lit on fire.” Deke didn’t stutter, hesitate, or look away. It was the craziest story Nick had ever heard, but it was obvious Deke believed it.
 

“You are telling me the entire 9/11 was a hoax? We killed our own people? How could you get that many people to follow along and want to kill thousands of innocent Americans? It seems impossible to believe.” Nick had heard almost every bullshit story imaginable from veterans in the office. None of them compared to this tale. If what Deke was saying were true, his entire perception of life as he knew it had to be altered forever. If this was an elaborate tale from his old shipmate, Deke had now reached a place no psychotherapy was going to help.
“It’s all true. The 9/11 committee that investigated it even said their investigation was hamstrung from the word go. Their report is about as legit as the JFK assassination report. The guy that told me this stuff is dead. He was a CIA operative killed in Afghanistan a few years ago. We had a couple of ‘em embedded in our platoon as guides and translators for a few weeks outside the wire. We were going after some Taliban guys outside of Kabul who controlled most of the opium market. We knew they were using the drug trade to fund their operations. We don’t give a shit about that. Some American geologist found a bunch of rare earth elements in the rocks and soil in the region they controlled. The rare earth elements are used in lithium batteries, and Afghanistan has boatloads of it. We didn’t want the Russians and Chinese to make a deal with the Taliban, so we were there to fight off the bad guys. He stepped on a landmine along a trail in the mountains we were using to guide airstrikes. It killed him. He was a good guy and former SEAL too. He also told me it is why all the shit is driven by the CIA; they are immune from Freedom of Information Act requests. It all gets buried in Langley.” Deke took a sip of his coffee and looked at Nick to see if he was making any sense.
“I can’t believe no one has confessed or come forward with the story.” Nick wondered how it was all possible to contain.
“Everyone was sworn to secrecy and signed a lifetime security agreement that forces them to a lifetime of silence and their breach of the information to anyone without the appropriate clearance anywhere at any time, and you can be sentenced for treason or shot. It keeps most people quiet forever. I am taking a big chance here with you, but fuck that. I got used. My teammates got used. We weren’t spreading freedom and democracy. We were tools used to keep billionaires satisfied and keep OPEC oil flowing. Who tells this story? Nobody. The FTC has controlled the media since radio and television were created. They control the narrative in public, and all the private stuff is either immune from open public hearings or denied outright. Then it’s back to murders, rapes, sports, entertainment, and the weather, and people move on and learn to accept it. The Arabs that participated went down in the jihadi hall of fame. It’s all bullshit, bro. We’re living a lie.” Deke put his hands behind his head and leaned back in the chair.
 

Nick was having trouble wrapping his mind around what he just heard. If what he just learned were factual, it was pure evil. Thousands of Americans had been wounded and killed from the events surrounding 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to promote the sale of oil and weapons. The unfortunate part was it all made sense. To hear it from Deke, even after all these years, made it all plausible. Deke never lied. Sure, he was a wild guy when they were younger, but he was intelligent and confident. Most of the pathological liars and bullshitting veteran heroes filing claims had obvious personality disorders that went along with the stories. Deke might have been in some pretty heavy combat and been privy to information the average guy didn’t get, but Nick’s initial impression was it was the same guy he knew thirty years ago. Nick thought about the comments for a moment and then asked. “How many people know this?”
“I don’t know. Hard to say. I would say thousands by now. Probably the Russians and the Chinese too. That is the real concern about cybersecurity. If the truth gets out, we could be exposed to blackmail or it is simply exposed for shock value. It would be catastrophic to American democracy that our citizens were deliberately lied to. In short, we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq after a staged surprise attack and under the false flag of liberating their people from a tyrant in the name of freedom and democracy. Why do you think the Iranians hate us?”
Nick shrugged his shoulders. “I am not sure. I don’t follow it much.”
Deke acknowledged Nick with a head nod. “Most don’t. It is intentional confusing stuff. In short, we tried to make the same arrangement with Iran, but it backfired. The Iranians hate the Sunni Muslims of Saudi Arabia. They also got tired of us taking the profits from their oil and were pissed when they found out we made the petro-dollar agreement with the Saudis. The hard-line Shiite Muslim Khomeini and his henchmen staged a coup, came to power, and started their revolution. They overran the embassy and held the American hostages in the late 70s for over a year. The Russians filled that vacuum, and they have been friends ever since. Now the Russians and Iranians are coming on strong in the collapse of Iraq. They have pipelines headed to Syria and Turkey to provide oil and natural gas to Europe without the ATM fee charged by the Americans for the exact same product. The reason we do not ever fire on Russian positions is exactly that; we don’t want to start a battle with them that provokes them to dump the 9/11 details and intercepts. They have been making huge amounts of money doing the same thing we are; selling oil and weapons. This is coming to a head now in Syria and Turkey because these are the transit pipelines. We want OPEC to continue, but now the Iranians and Russians are controlling Syria.”
“Istanbul was once Constantinople?” Nick referenced the Crusades.
“Pretty much. Now with 24-hour news and the internet, it is harder to keep stuff off the radar, so they make up propaganda and dumb it way down. You just can’t tell the American people the truth because it is a little complex. So, we say shit like “America’s interests in the region” or “Our global partners,” yeah, right.” Deke unwound. It was like popping an emotional zit. He knew most of the guys in the SEAL teams didn’t know it or care to. They were young, great athletes willing to die for the cause. Other than being SEALs, they got drunk, chased women, and liked fast cars and motorcycles. They were patriotic adrenaline junkies. The team missions, however, were always just the mission. The big picture piece was handled by decision-makers behind a desk in the Pentagon and rolled down hill to their commanding officers. The guys jumping out of jets and behind the trigger just did what they were told.
“Are any of the Iraqis and Afghans any good compared to our guys? I mean, did you trust them?” Nick asked.
“Not really. I would take the Afghans over the Iraqis any day, but all of these “Muslim Leaders” or “masterminds” we kill and prop up on TV are mostly illiterate teens and early twenty-somethings we killed in gunfights or with a drone. We never want to say they are worthless degenerates who fuck young boys, shoot smack, and smoke opium all day. These fucking morons were raiding villages and slaughtering other idiots over boxes of Viagra. Nobody gives a shit if we mow these guys down or push them into the sea. It makes for good advertising. Meanwhile, they cut people’s heads off, burn guys in cages, and make stupid videos. It amps up the youngsters. The other Arabs get all worried the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and all these other zombie Muslim freedom fighters are going to come to their towns and cities and start lighting off truck bombs and unleashing suicide bombers. They want stability and to remain in power, so they buy our gear faster than we can make it. That is the whole story.”
Nick sat there stunned. Nothing in Deke’s demeanor signaled he was lying. “That is quite a heavy burden to carry around for the rest of your life. It disturbs the shit out of me if you want to know the truth. Does it make you uncomfortable and irritable keeping that inside?”
 

Deke just sat there trying to feel out Nick. He trusted him and genuinely always liked him. So much had happened and so much had changed. Nick was a refreshing reminder of reality and that there are some people who actually just want help other people. Deke thought his evaluation was going to come in to a VA office and tell a few SEAL gun battle stories to some geek and get signed off on service-connected disability for PTSD. Instead, he spilled the beans and felt relieved. Nick didn’t get all excited nor did he doubt Deke. He was the same guy he had known years ago. He deserved to know the truth. “It does.” Deke replied. “I feel like I am on an island. I don’t enjoy much now other than seeing my kid and walking along the beach. I don’t have any woman in my life. The ex gets half my retirement and alimony until the end of days unless she gets married. Me, I live in a two-bedroom apartment in Ocean Beach and pretty much just hang out.”
Nick laughed. “We did a lot of hanging out on that beach.”
“Yeah, that fucking junkie that died up on the pier and all that acid. That was fucking great. Dropping that shit in the bug juice has made me laugh myself to tears countless times. I always thought about those idiots up in sick bay tripping their assess off with bug juice burns and those stupid ass Food Service Team shirts stained like fucking tie-dye. Man, that was some of the funniest shit I have ever done.”
Nick nodded his head and laughed. The comment brought him back to the current agenda. “It was. You said you have you ever done LSD since?”
Nick shook his head. “No, everything got pretty serious in the teams, man. None of the guys I knew ever even smoked a joint. A lot of guys drank like fish but drugs was looked at as a weakness of character.”
This was definitely a difference in the SEALs compared to the shipwrecks on the old ship. “Would you believe I am going to be testing something very similar to LSD on patients here very soon?”
“Whoa, you’re going to be giving out acid to patients? How the fuck did you manage that?” Deke raised his eyebrows in his reply.
“It wasn’t me at all. We have been struggling with veteran homelessness, suicides, domestic violence, drugs, and alcohol issues for decades with almost zero improvement in our long-term results. I am not sure exactly how LSD got brought into the conversation. The fact is when it was created, it was originally disseminated around the world by Sandoz labs out of Switzerland to clinics and doctors to use on patients. There is a ton of documentation. Their results were amazing. They got alcoholics to stop drinking and drug addicts to clean up. Many of the personality disorders were unwound, and many lives were put back together. When the government got involved, they ruined everything with their Cold War brainwashing bullshit that never worked. Instead of admitting they screwed up, they scuttled it. Anyways, a couple of years ago, a San Diego company was given permission to make a copycat, and we are going to begin some of the initial testing here. I need to come up with 20-30 patients as volunteers.” Nick smiled across the desk. “I think you would be a fine candidate. Want to try it?”
“Not if there are going to be other people around and stuff is getting recorded. But I would take some and go hang out on the beach.” Deke laughed at the prospect. He hadn’t seen Nick in thirty years, and they were talking about acid again.
Nick smiled. “I am not sure about that. It is going to be a controlled environment, I can promise. What I need is someone I can trust who has experience with LSD, a few personal issues they need help with, and be able to give me an honest comparison of the two experiences. If the stuff is junk or a placebo, I want to know. If it works, I also want to know that.”
“How will you know it works?” asked Deked.
Nick stood up. The hour was over. “Simple, patients won’t need me anymore. They will be able to go out into the world with a new perception about their life and the world they live in. Hey, I got another one of these evaluations I have to do. When can I see you again?”
“You have my number. Just call me when your trials begin. Count me in.” Deke stood up, gave Nick a firm handshake, and exited the office.